meta-protocol
- A protocol is a set of behaviors and expectations for interaction, whether explicit, such as Non-Violent Communication, or just the unspoken cultural norms of any social group. Shared protocols can dramatically increase people’s ability to collaborate and trust each other. But trying to get everyone to operate the same way is imperial, like trying to get everyone to speak the same language, and thus generates a ton of resistance if you try it.
- The meta-protocol is the translation process, the dance by which trust is built between and within people. The meta-protocol is actually relevant even if two people think they’re already following the same protocol, because inasmuch as that protocol is inadequate…
- not able to be used for a particular situation
- ambiguous and understood differently by each person
- a person isn’t fully bought into the protocol as stated thus is unable to consistently use it
- …the meta-protocol is what allows them to notice that and iteratively improve whatever they’re doing and patch those gaps. (Such patches might produce a new ongoing implicit or explicit protocol, or not.)
- No matter how perfect a hypothetical protocol might be, it’s impossible to systematically address everything that arises in the complex experience of being human together. There will be gaps, including during the learning process for how people can come to use a protocol consistently. The meta-protocol is whatever fully and completely answers the question of “well, then what do you do in the meantime, or when those gaps occur?”
- Thus the meta-protocol is simultaneously the process by which people learn to become deeply trustable as collaborators as well as the process by which two strangers who are both already skilled at collaborative trust-dancing would come to be able to recognize that fact about each other and be able to trust each other (and work out any remaining points of concern).
- Perhaps seemingly paradoxically, for developing the meta-protocol, there’s a way in which the process is itself the output, just at increasing degrees of effectiveness. The meta-protocol simultaneously recognizes that there’s a qualitatively different and potent cultural attractor basin possibility (which might be called Game B or Planetary Era or Learner Mindset) than what is ordinarily possible (ie Game A or Empire Era or Judger Mindset) while also recognizing that these possibility fields are not fundamentally separate and no given action is “not Game B”, even if it harms someone or generates distrust in a given person in a given moment.
- The meta-protocol is the process by which our integrities combine into a larger integrity, instead of fighting for turf, but Game A is still made out of integrity. Everything is made out of integrity.
- read more on my blog:
- an old lil piece of writing that used to be what this page was, though it's sort of weirdly technical and would mostly make sense to mathematicians
- there is one meta-protocol, in the limit
- there is no meta-meta-protocol, in the same sense there is no meta-meta-mathematics
- any given instantiation or model of the meta-protocol is not the meta-protocol, because any instantiation or model is incomplete
- I call my model of the meta-protocol the Non-Naive Trust Dance - NNTD
- put another way, I call engaging with the meta-protocol question "non-naive trust dancing"
- the meta-protocol is that which fully generally, satisfyingly-to-everyone answers these questions/koans:
- Who gets to decide?
Who gets to decide who gets to decide? - In what language do we negotiate?
In what language do we negotiate what language to conduct our negotiation in? - Shall we take this action?
Shall we vote on whether to take this action?
Shall we vote on whether to vote on whether to take this action?
Shall we vote on whether this vote needs 50% or 60% to pass?
Shall we vote on what to do if we can't decide whether or not to vote? - How do we answer the question?
How do we answer the question of how do we answer the question?
- Jordan Hall coined the term meta-protocol (to talk about this particular thing) and you can watch a short introduction of the concept here:
- Mark Lippmann's meditation protocol includes a section he calls "meta protocol"
- which is ostensibly very different than the meta-protocol being discussed here, including that it's about individual practice whereas me & Jordan Hall talk about the meta-protocol primarily in the context of interpersonal communication
- however, in the limit, they are in some sense the same
- both are the system that navigates the question of what to do in the meantime when your protocol (for meditation or communication) fails
- and the fractal shape of the universe means that they necessarily need to do this in essentially the same way, including critiquing themselves when they're inadequate
- and the ways in which interpersonal communication and internal communication are fractally similar mean that meditation is still information-theoretically about communication and about recognizing and reconciling the different needs of the constituents
34 linked references
October 20th, 2025
- in that sense, it's a... protocol with a meta-protocol step in it
October 15th, 2025
I woke up today hungry to lay out all my frames/posts/etc › and maybe it would be good to have a doc where I work on … › and I have these concepts that will need new handles (or …
- "NNTD puzzle" - basically meta-protocol puzzle
July 25th, 2024
- something I'm noticing, reading a few posts from Scott Alexander, is how dedicated he is to sorting out a bunch of dimensions of the meta-protocol
- this gives me a sense of like... the kind of conversation I might want to strike up with him next time I see him, that might get us into useful jamming
March 4th, 2024
- The meta-protocol for human trust-building
February 29th, 2024
- > Have been think about trying to run a retreat to bring a bunch of different we-space practice leaders/trainers together to do meta-protocol stuff ie sort out what happens when they try to dance each other's dances and there isn't a single clear form that everyone has agreed we're trying to do. Maybe Decker would be a great fit for that!
NNTD
- my framing of the meta-protocol for learning trustworthiness and developing trust between parts & people
- what's the meta-protocol
February 10th, 2023
- very relevant to the meta-protocol puzzle
November 27th, 2022
- wait, huh, thinking about Synergic Mode while reading Wtf is the deal with Synergic Mode?, and the meta-protocol
- (amusingly Unity by Royksopp is playing right now, and has the lyric "I feel the synergy". I've never heard it before)
- and I'm noting that the synergic mode is not pointing at the meta-protocol itself, but pointing at one dimension of how to play the meta-protocol game really well
- that's necessitated by the sense in which everyone is always doing the meta-protocol, just more or less well (and more or less self-awarely)
- and in some sense the same is true of NNTD and The Circles Maps
- or rather, the latter is pointing at what happens when you play it well, or something... a new attractor becomes available
November 6th, 2022
- basically the thing where I said to Jean Robertson that Coherence Therapy has important stuff to say about our work in collaborative culture / meta-protocol
- first introduced by Jordan Hall in this 7min vide
- in Convening an Ontario meta-protocol jam I wrote
- It seems to me that: these principles are on the meta level. That is, they’re not cultural norms but rather a way of relating to norms
- Michael "Valentine" Smith commented:
- > I suspect that cultural norms are an example of these principles enacted, the same way that biological evolution is the continuation of the same thing that created stars and planets (viewing that as something like "mechanical evolution"). My understanding of the truth of your point here isn't that these principles are meta instead of object. Rather, that the interesting thing for talking about these things explicitly is the way these principles apply to the meta level. Kind of like the most interesting thing about evolution now is at the memetic level.
- I replied:
- > I think what you're saying is that cultural norms aren't ummm separate from these laws of trust-physics any more than biological evolution has ever been separate from physics? although they may not yet have discovered ~sexual reproduction or something and therefore they don't yet have a need to maintain speciation in terms of compatibility. not a bad analogy!
- Michael "Valentine" Smith brought up the liberalism paradox, aka tolerating the intolerant or welcoming the unwelcoming again
- re
- > A vast diversity of cultures can exist on top of this cultural platform. What these cultures have in common is a certain kind of interoperability—a capacity to see and honor each other.
- and I commented:
- well there's also "they can see and honor each other" which is different from "they can see and honor cultures that aren't able to see and honor other cultures"
- like in some sense the answer to the latter also has to be yes, but also... it's in practice much harder/messier.
- oh! huh, using the speciation metaphor, here's another rather weird way of thinking about it:
- Gen3 cultures have wildly different phenotypes but are broadly all of the same species in the sense that they're interoperable...
- and then ALSO some Gen3 cultures will also be able to mate with some Gen2 cultures
- and the Gen3 genes/memes are dominant and therefore the offspring will be Gen3
- I say "some" here because I think that for a Gen3 culture to mate with a Gen2 culture, they need to be much closer in object-level-culture-space than two Gen3 cultures need to be
- (and for completion's sake, I guess Gen3 could also mate with Gen1?)
- also "mate" here is something like the deep perspectival intimacy of parallax/ophanim, which we already talked on tuesday about how it has an interpenetrative vulnerability quality that's somewhat like sex.
October 26th, 2022
- > You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
- vaguely related sermon
- based on this scripture
October 13th, 2022
- re meta-protocol as "geometric"
- a comment from a friend
- I feel lost...meta-norms are optimal--- geometrically? I am confused about how they are geometric? I think you are getting at the fact that they are optimal for the 'space' that they are in... or that they occupy the niche according to principles of humans and interaction and things. The image feels nice, but lands hazy.
October 11th, 2022
- this is about protocols vs meta-protocol
October 10th, 2022
- I looked up the phrase "science of trust" and I found results but they're all inadequate as an actual science of trust
- an article about oxytocin & game theory with high-level (tho decent!) management advice
- a paper called "trust in science and the science of trust" which parameterizes epistemic trust (in experts) as a function of "expertise, integrity, benevolence" (roughly power, wisdom, love, or 2. Power, 1. Presence, 3. Warmth from The Charisma Myth)
reading John Nerst › > scientific astronomy not being meaningfully different i… › but we could equivalently point at the key difference by … › intersubjectivity becomes objectivity in the limit
- I've been over this before, but it's newly salient having been thinking about cultural evolution and the meta-protocol, which has this convergent intersubjective quality, while enabling increased diversity & originality!!
reading John Nerst › > scientific astronomy not being meaningfully different i… › but we could equivalently point at the key difference by … › intersubjectivity becomes objectivity in the limit
- this is the sense in which meta-protocol is a science of trust
October 6th, 2022
- #return - this is somehow relevant to what are necessary elements of the meta-protocol?
- > Commensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science whereby scientific theories are said to be "commensurable" if scientists can discuss the theories using a shared nomenclature that allows direct comparison of them to determine which one is more valid or useful.
- from wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensurability_(philosophy_of_science)
August 30th, 2022
- meta-protocol paradox/koan - the container beyond the container
- we consent to step into a container
- but we're born into the container beyond the container
- are you subject to culture, taking for granted that it works a certain way
- or are you aware that we're constantly cocreating it?
August 11th, 2022
- most of the Upstart "Commitments & Assumptions" are relevant
- improv
marketing but good-noncoercive tho
- Rob clearly sees how it's just one way into the whole meta-protocol / cultural platform puzzle
my youtube channel
- visakanv suggested making my own ~10min vid just paraphrasing Jordan Hall's meta-protocol video
November 5th, 2021
- oh huh, I could use meta-protocol as the concept for the commitment/choice is a confused way to relate to stances/mindsets post
- tho it's not published yet 😅
October 24th, 2021
really great quote at ~2h42 of evening recording › "to the extent that an interpersonal communication protoc…
October 14th, 2021
"the pressure that attempts to game it, needs to push the… › (keeping it from being gamed needs to not be an afterthou…
- this wrt meta-protocol/NNTD
NNTD pith instructions discussion
It can be hard to give quick general instructions for NNT… › Most immediately, there's no way to communicate correctly…
- This in itself could be considered a pith instruction for NNTD, since it points at the flaw with any technique or process or mindset that claims that if you do it correctly and someone doesn't vibe with it, then there's sort of nothing you can do and they need to change. This flaw is what makes a protocol not a meta-protocol.
August 1st, 2021
- a bit about the meta-protocol to make it clear what level this is trying to be on
Sequence on NNTD
- meta-protocol concept
- the value & limitations of specific protocols
February 20th, 2021
- a quote somehow related to David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules which seems very related to why crypto no-trust systems won't be enough and vaguely the meta-ness of the meta-protocol
- > We are witnessing a direct clash between two different forms of materi-alized utopianism: on the one hand, an anti-authoritarianism that, in its emphasis on creativesynthesis and improvisation, sees freedom basically in terms of play, and on the other, a tacitrepublicanism that sees freedom ultimately as the ability to reduce all forms of power to a set ofclear and transparent rules.
For the last two hundred years, in Europe and North America—and increasingly, elsewhere—that latter, bureaucratized notion of freedom has tended to hold sway. New institutional arrangements that operate by rules so strict and predictable they essentially disappear, so that one doesn’teven know what they are (such as the physical or electronic post offices with which I began) tend to be put forward as platforms for human freedom that emerge from the very technical contingencies of running efficient structures of power. These arrangements seem to preserve the positiveelements of play while somehow circumventing its more disturbing potentials.
But time and again, we have seen the same results. Whether motivated by a faith in “rationality”or a fear of arbitrary power, the end result of this bureaucratized notion of freedom is to movetoward the dream of a world where play has been limited entirely—or, at best, boxed away insome remote location far from any serious, consequential human endeavor—while every aspectof life is reduced to some kind of elaborate, rule-bound game. It’s not that such a vision lacks appeal. Who hasn’t dreamed of a world where everyone knows the rules, everyone plays by therules, and—even more—where people who play by the rules can actually still win? The problem is that this is just as much a utopian fantasy as a world of absolute free play would be. It will always remain a glimmering illusion that dissolves away as soon as we touch it.
Such illusions are not always bad things. One could make a case that most of the greatesthuman accomplishments were the result of such quixotic pursuits. But in this particular case,and in this larger political-economic context, where bureaucracy has been the primary meansby which a tiny percentage of the population extracts wealth from the rest of us, they have created a situation where the pursuit of freedom from arbitrary power simply ends up producingmore arbitrary power, and as a result, regulations choke existence, armed guards and surveillancecameras appear everywhere, science and creativity are smothered, and all of us end up finding increasing percentages of our day taken up in the filling out of forms.
February 18th, 2021
- meta-protocol = what allows us to answer the who gets to decide who gets to decide? question/koan fully generally
- It is the process of integrating the entirety of all contexts that are relevant
- it is never done, it's not a state that can be arrived at. It is itself the entire evolving process of the universe. The whole everything.
January 30th, 2021
- I guess it's kind of the same as what Jordan Hall calls the meta-protocol
Sarah McManus
- a collaborator on the whole meta-protocol everything project