Testing PoX: Can shared experience function as public infrastructure for action?

šŸ§™ šŸ§™ā€ā™€ļø Ideas and Open Discussion
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Hi everyone,

Iā€™m sharing an early-stage concept called PoX (Proof of Experience).
This is not a product launch or a grant proposal, but an attempt to test a structure.

The motivation is simple:
Many people donā€™t struggle because they lack information,
but because they canā€™t determine which options actually fit their context.

PoX explores whether experienced decision-making processes can be treated as a public good ā€”
not as answers or advice, but as reusable options that others can examine, choose from, and branch with.

At this stage, Iā€™m especially looking for feedback on these questions:

  • Does this approach meaningfully expand peopleā€™s ability to act, rather than just inform?
  • In Gitcoinā€™s terms, could a structure like this be considered a public good?
  • Where does this idea feel weak, naive, or problematic from a public-goods perspective?

Iā€™m intentionally keeping this at the concept level.
Any critical feedback or challenges are very welcome.

For those interested, the full concept overview is here:

Thanks for reading.

1 Like
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Iā€™ve published a more structured write-up of the core idea behind PoX,
focusing specifically on one open question:

ā€œIs ā€˜Decision Questionā€™ a valid primitive for experience-based decision-making?ā€

Rather than proposing a protocol or solution, this is an attempt to stress-test
whether decision-making itself can be represented as a reusable structure,
without collapsing into rankings or ā€œcorrect answersā€.

Iā€™d really appreciate critical or skeptical perspectives.
Discussion is here:
[GitHub Discussions link]

Notion PoX (Proof of Experience) ā€” Concept Overview

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I am currently exploring the usefulness of context-based sharing of experiences and information.

My underlying concern is that, although the internet contains an enormous amount of information and personal experience, it often fails to translate into concrete action or decision-making. One possible reason is that the background conditions and assumptions (context) under which information or experiences were formed are rarely shared or compared in a meaningful way.

My working hypothesis is that if both the person seeking information and the person providing it explicitly share their context, it becomes possible to judge under what conditions a particular approach or decision was formedā€”regardless of whether the outcome was successful or not.

The focus here is not on results, but on whether a given method or decision-making process was reasonable within its original context, and whether it can be meaningfully compared to oneā€™s own situation.

Ongoing discussion:

Observations from recent discussions

From ongoing discussions, several points have emerged regarding context-based experience sharing:

  • It can help surface implicit or hidden assumptions that are usually left unstated.

  • It may support calibration of judgment when comparing oneā€™s own situation with othersā€™ experiences.

  • At the same time, over-formalizing context carries risks, such as:

    • overconfidence (treating a context as definitively ā€œcorrectā€), and

    • rigidity, making it difficult to update or reinterpret context as situations change.

This suggests that context needs to be used carefully, without turning it into a fixed or authoritative framework.

Tentative approaches to mitigate over-formalization

Based on this, I am considering the following approaches and would welcome critique.

1. Treating context models as provisional, editable hypotheses

Rather than treating context as a set of established facts, one approach is to explicitly frame it as a temporary and revisable hypothesis.

Concretely, this would mean:

  • Declaring context as a working assumption.

  • Allowing third parties to examine it from perspectives such as:

    • whether important contextual elements are missing,

    • whether assumptions are overly narrow or biased,

    • whether the stated context actually enables meaningful judgment between options.

This could help keep context open to refinement, rather than fixed and unquestioned.

2. Presenting context primarily through free-form text

Another idea is to avoid rigid schemas at the input stage and instead have people describe their context in free-form text.

For example, rather than asserting a finalized context, individuals might describe:

  • their current situation,

  • what they are thinking about,

  • what kind of state or outcome they are aiming for.

From this text, tools such as AI could assist by extracting and organizing contextual elements (assumptions, constraints, intentions), without forcing premature formalization.

This approach may help avoid rigid conclusions while still making context comparable and reusable.

This post is not a proposal for a finished product or system.
Rather, I am sharing these ideas to explore whether context-based experience sharing can function as a reusable and publicly valuable concept, and where its limits or failure modes might lie.

I would greatly appreciate perspectives, critiques, or counterexamples from the Gitcoin communityā€”especially regarding where this approach may break down or introduce unintended dynamics.