Blockchains, Twitter Threads, and improv scenes all have something in common.

Each one has a kind of "yes, and" logic to it.

For each, the participants are all making intrinsically-motivated decisions on which of the possible sub-threads are worth being the one to build on.

People intuitively assume that "yes, and" systems cannot be rigorous–that you need to have a "no" to have a hard truth.

But it turns out that if participants are intrinsically motivated to participate and vote of their own free will, they will naturally pick the things they think are "worth it".

They must–they have only limited time to invest, so they choose the subset they like the best.

So a decision to not invest in something is effectively a "no", just a less harsh one.

When lots of people agree, this can create tons of momentum.

And of course, the more people who have already "voted" for a given sub-thread being the "real" one, the easier it is to go with the flow and not fight it.

This can create a quickly-congealing wisdom of the crowds without any explicit coordination.

This force is powerful, if a bit hidden. Things like "leading by gardening" work because of this dynamic.