Tom Atlee

It feels like this is a new form of dialectic — bridge / no bridge, and then something new emerges. Not quite the old thesis/antithesis, but it has a similar rhythm.

I understood that if there are many stakeholders — say, a dozen — you'd go in-person right away.

When you say "public deliberation," are you referring to the online Polis phase?

So Join has evolved since our nine hours of conversations a few years ago.

You're so good at creating memorable phrases — do you have one that captures this level of appropriate customization? There's the phrase from the other side, "nothing about us without us," but from the organizing side you'd need something that conveys how much contextual adaptation is happening. And actually your international approach mirrors your local one — there's always a customizing quality of interaction with the actual context and the significant people in those contexts. It's part of your whole message, but we need a phrase.

Are you doing anything with Moltbook — that new social network where AI agents operate and humans aren't present?

Something for me to write about. It fits with what I'm trying to communicate now — expanding the kinds of engagement we normally think of as human deliberation.

That reminds me of Christopher Alexander at the University of Oregon — when they wanted him to design a path across campus, he said: just put grass there and let people walk, and see where the path forms.

Daos that can be named are not the true Daos. Just one way.