The Integrated Model · Synthesizer School

Jan '23 (edited) in Other

The Integrated Model

Hi guys, I wanted to share with you a model of the creator economy. It is a profit model that tries to accurately describe what is going on with creator economy and digital media. So I am going to summarize it here, if you want a more in depth look, you can read here. Let's dive in:

Basically there is this pervasive problem, that most people do not even consider as a problem anymore, or can't even imagine it any other way.

And it is basically an opportunity for entrepreneurs to solve a very large problem that people do not yet know how to solve, at scale.

And what I'm referring to is the sense of like, cultural fragmentation, chaos, disconnect, & information overload, that feels sort of pervasive right now.

People basically just think "this is the way it is now" because we live in a technological society, everyone feels kind of insane a lot of the time, and there is not much we can do about it.

But it has really only been like this for the last 15 or 20 years or so. I remember a time when I was a kid before it was not really like that as much.

I think that the problem actually has a very specific cause, and it is not the technology itself, but about specific design choices in the technology.

If we actually live in an entrepreneurial society that can solve real problems, then we shouldn't accept overwhelming insanity is the norm (school shooting, suicide, drug abuse, etc.) for the younger generation; we don't want our families and our kids to live like that.

So what is the specific cause of the problem, how can we diagnose and solve it?

The advertising revenue model was introduced in the 1940's and 50's as a way to monetize though television media.

But then advertising revenue model got ported over from television to the internet, in the late 90's / early 00's, specifically with Google and Facebook.

Keep in mind that the largest tech companies -- Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, even large portion of Amazon -- all still operate basically on the advertising revenue model.

Google had $200 billion in ad revenue in 2021. Facebook around $114 billion in 2021. Huge numbers.

The problem is that advertising is native to television / broadcast media (one-to-many communication), while the internet is inherently a distributed, peer-to-peer media.

The advertising revenue model is not compatible with distributed, peer-to-peer networks.

If you think about it, the underlying incentives of ad. rev. model & social media are for each person in the network to act as if they are the *central node* in the network (broadcaster), even though we all know the internet is a *distributed, peer-to-peer* network.

And so many, if not most people who use social media platforms are incentivized to behave as advertisers (even if they are not) simply in order to be relevant and gain a following, that is the underlying incentive.

And so this creates inherent conflict and noise in the system, because every person sort of has to claim to be the central source of truth, but they can't all be.

It does not optimize for collaborative truth discovery.

So the reason why we have fragmentation, disconnect, and information overload is that the underlying incentives of these platforms are not compatible with peer-to-peer nature of internet media.

And this is why the universal consensus is that social media is toxic. Yet people are addicted to it and so they cannot imagine it any other way.

Yet there must be a native peer-to-peer economic model and incentive mechanism, that incentivizes people to converge to truthful knowledge in a self-organizing manner. (tbh, I think Skool is a lot closer!)

The biggest problem in our society (the biggest opportunity for the entrepreneur) is the idea that things are hopelessly fragmented and we'll never be an actual culture again.

That whole meme is really caused by the advertising revenue model that underlies social media.

There is no inherent reason that the incentive mechanism of ad. rev. model cannot be turned on its head to incentivize truth, goodness, and beauty, instead of low-value, low-truth marketing gimmicks.

(also I'm not saying that all advertising is all bad, there definitely can be good reasons for advertising and getting the message out)

If you think about it, people get paid to watch YouTube videos on digital market, social media marketing, building a personal brand, and learning how to do it.

They don't get paid to make creative discoveries in science, mathematics, philosophy, history, economics, etc.

But there is no inherent reason why they couldn't or shouldn't be able to do so.

Just imagine if we had the fire power of Google's $200B / year ad revenue, to incentivize truth, goodness, and beauty instead of incentivizing the marketing race-to-the-bottom.

Then digital media would truly be a race-to-the-top.

This is what the Integrated Model does, with a few simple assumptions, that both 1.) describe the structure of digital hierarchies and 2.) establish a methodology for creators.

Think about Naval's tweet that "the internet enables eight billion monopolies." What would be the actual conditions in which that could come about? We need a different economic framework to understand the creator economy, for that to actually be a possibility; so that more people could actually see that it IS a real possibility and then work to make it happen.

Welcome to the Integrated Model.

EDIT (adding more):

The Integrated Model: A Peer-to-Peer, Self-Verifying Model of Personal Growth & Economics

What if instead of thousands of different types of advice and different approaches to psychology that work differently for different people, there was one *true & scientifically-proven* model of growth in psychology & economics, that worked for anyone anywhere regardless of their circumstances?

But what if this model couldn’t be developed by one particular person, but had to be discovered through crowdsourced, distributed research?

And what if it never reached a final state, but constituted a race-to-the-top in truth discovery, that always converged closer & closer to the truth without ever finally attaining it?

This would be a distributed, self-verifying model of personal growth. It is based on three simple axioms:

1.) there is an objective model of personal growth that can work for anyone anywhere, and, 2.) many people all over the world coordinate their efforts in order to discover it, by collaborative research that applies the ideas to their individual experience to get results in the market. 3.) Such knowledge would be as valuable, or more valuable, than money, for the coordination of human actions.

This means that the Integrated Model is a scientific (falsifiable) hypothesis of personal growth and economics.

It is a scientific hypothesis because it is one that can be tested, directly in the market. The results of the test are how much money the model receives. This is a valid metric because the model itself, by its own hypothesis, is always as valuable or more valuable than money (#3). This model would essentially be in its own market category.

It is a a good, a market, a community, a system of health & science, and all in one, based in Spiritual foundation of Christ.

The Integrated Model is the first holistic system that works at both the personal level and the societal level, because it is a growth model that combines personal psychology and economics, and works by a compounding network effect.

The model itself already describes the reflexive, distributed hierarchy properties of digital marketing, digital products, networks, crypto. But it puts it into an overall holistic philosophy and mentality that is practical.

This way, anyone anywhere who is interested in growth has a holistic model that they can translate all their concepts between. Essentially, it does this through distributed peer review. It is the same thing as a non-technological platform, completely based in mimetic organization. People playing on the meme of the Integrated Model, rather than any particular platform. It is a multi-platform model, it is compatible with any network.

The three basic assumptions are that: 1.) there is an objective model, and 2.) I am trying to find it. 3.) such knowledge constitutes a very valuable resource.

That creates a reflexivity and compounding network effects in collaboration. It gives people an ambition to unify around, and to work together to support, question, & verify each other’s innovations in this distributed research project.

Imagine if, the same way that Bitcoin is a distributed monetary system, there were also a distributed growth system in social psychology & economics, that converges to the true growth system -- that works for anyone, anywhere, and is validated by scientific methods. That is exactly what the Integrated Model is.

It is not true because people believe it is true, but it is true because of peer-to-peer review system and falsification. And when people see that it is true, then they verify its truth in the market. This spreads its truth to more people and motivates them to learn about it, and it compounds its value for everyone who adopts the idea and creates variations on its theme.

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