Topic: [ANN] ANACOIN - cryptocurrency for peace - page 9. (Read 15228 times)

After careful consideration from google we are delighted to announce that the Ananas foundation has been accepted for the following programs from google!:

- Google Ad grants
- Youtube Not for profit program


"THE ANANAS FOUNDATION is a recipient of a Google Ad Grants award. The Google Ad Grants program supports registered nonprofit organizations that share Google's philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts. Google Ad Grants is an in-kind advertising program that awards free online advertising to nonprofits via Google AdWords."

"We're pleased to inform you that THE ANANAS FOUNDATION has been selected to participate in the YouTube Nonprofit program: http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits!"

Few updates to the website, hope it helps

http://anacoin.io/

Thank you cryptocronic

Interesting crypto project.  Good idea for a peace coin in this current age of hatred.

https://icotracker.net/project/anacoin

We are delighted to announce that we are now a part of the Nvidia Inception Artificial Intelligence Program.

Thank you ardentvolcanoes for your kind words Ananas has updates and press lined up over the coming weeks, happy to have your support.

great video information mate it will bring new hype for those who will going to watch this I think ANA will get some interest, while waiting
for its token sale, just needed more good updates from this project and lets your supporter learn more about your plan.

Our latest update, check out our video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlB3Mfe75Nk

Thank you Adarwis

Anacoin has a good development, what else to worry about? Let the difference persists
Anacoin has high stability

Bible Coin is an interesting project that is asking for your electricity to do good deeds  

The project needs capital to build the infrastructure for the community and, more importantly, the information infrastructure and taxonomy.

The token structure allows for all contributors, information, technical and community based to participate in the growth of this platform.

Our targets are not excessive versus some of the pie in the sky projects out there, with more immediate value than most just by bringing together liked minded individuals.

The team and advisors do not get any tokens until the following two conditions are both met (see here for full details: https://medium.com/ananas-blog/tokenomics-building-a-token-economy-for-peace-af62ef2f3f32):

1. A year has passed

2. The total Anacoin market cap is over $100 million and daily traded value (30 day average) exceeds $1 million a day, a 10x increase on our initial target market cap of $10 million post launch and $5m cap at presale, at which point 25% (2% of initial 10 million) are released, with the remainder (6%) released above $500 million market cap and $10 million a day traded.

Thus we only get coins when participants in the presale have seen their coin value go up by a factor of 2,000% and only get all our coins once they have  seen a 10,000% increase.

Which we think is quite reasonable! (please see our token economy piece linked above).

This project helps combat hate by allowing people to navigate and understand their ideologies and those of others better using cutting edge technology and behavioural science. It narrows the range of places extremists can hide.

After the Living Quran we expect that a dedicated community of Christians will use the Ananas platform for the Living Bible, free for all to use  

I don't see how this project can help to eliminate hate. You don't need money to make good deeds, you collect money to become rich
There's Bible Coin with very interesting concept. And dev doesn't ask for money at all!

Hi engageformation,

There are a few elements of your response I'd like to touch on.

The beauty of western liberal democracy is that it allows for a range of expression and beliefs unless they specifically contravene the nation's laws or actively seek to impose their beliefs on others by force (which typically contravenes laws, but not always). The team agrees on this.

This is my position as a believer in multiculturalism (others are free to disagree if they prefer homogeneity).

This also means that any individual is free to criticise other ideologies : this is not what I count as Islamophobia (although erudition and actually bothering to do the research is good in this regard). Indeed, I criticise myself certain aspects such as modern (mis)application of hadd punishments. What I count as Islamophobia is hate towards Muslims on account of their faith, manifesting in harassment, violence and a curbing of their civil liberties.

If a populace wishes to elect an Erdogan or a Morsi, they are free to do so under a fair democratic system, just as they are free to elect a Duda, Duterte or Trump.

Given each of these individuals have indications of distinct illiberalism and this is where a country's institutions must come in to preserve civil liberties and stop the oppression of minorities (the majority of course having voted for another course..).

The spreading menace example you have outlined is true of all illberal political elements (indeed, one key mutation has been the interaction of reconstructionist Islam with western philosophy, eg Ayatollah Khomenei and Plato..), but the history of Islamic application and breadth of positioning and resonable doubt (shubahat) formation belies that Sunni Islam at its core is necessarily what it has been painted to be.

For example, things have been getting worse and worse for the LGBT community in Poland, a rather anti-Muslim country, with even Nobel Prize winer Lech Wałęsa saying LGBT members of parliament should be segregated and pride marches banned etc. Similarly you can see the Russian gay propaganda laws, reinforcement of Section 377 in India and elements in many other countries.

A focus on increasing "Muslimness" is particularly curious given the categorisations individuals who are Sunni apply to themselves and there have been no studies I have ever seen that increase religiousity (measured any way you like) leads to increased political action, violence, or breaking the law.

There have been studies showing strong disapproval of homosexuality amongst Muslim populations (although curiously its decreasing sharply in US Muslims), but this is not abnormal amongst conservative religions. Historically Islam's relationship with homosexuality (non public, but the old days were not good times for LGBT) was complex, Shahab Ahmed's What is Islam discusses this well, even if I don't agree with parts of his central thesis.

With regards to IslamQA.com, a very popular Muslim website, this is a prime example of why a resource like Ananas is needed.

What are the qualifications of Shaykh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid? What schools does he have ijaza (authority/accreditation) to deliver fatwa in? Who does he represent?

IslamQA is based on one strand of Islam which is practiced by under 2% of global Muslims, the Salafi minhaj, which objectively rejects the classical four school (madhab, Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki, Hanbali) structure.

Salafi Islam is, oddly enough, Sunni Islam's reform movement, but at the puritan stage. It can not therefore reflect the opinions and methodology of the majority of Sunni Muslim jurists by definition as a it is theoretically a deconstructionist version of Islam, but in reality has a set series of popular positions based on a new epistemology.

But the average Muslim or non-Muslim would not know that.

I should also note that the positions articulated on IslamQA do not reflect the positions of the main Salafi nation, Saudi Arabia, where the Council of Senior Scholars have been the only individuals to be authorised to deliver fatwa according to the Saudi Salafi methodology since 2010.

Thus the positions of IslamQA do not necessarily that of Saudi Arabia. In particular Saudi salafism is fully quietist, ie apolitical (it is not a theocracy), even with movements like the sahwa.

Ananas helps solve a lot of issues here as individuals can contact community members or get resources from their local methodology of thought, starting with the Quran, versus necessarily just having to go to IslamQA where they get a mishmash of not always coherent or comprehensive analysis (note there are several instances of multiple usul mixage there, even though it is ostensibly Hanbali/Salafi in minhaj).

The way that we have constructed the platform, it will be significantly more rigorous as it grows than IslamQA (although again initial focus is just Quran), which if you are correct is a small group of individuals outside of the traditional system that have somehow become the go to place for a billion Muslims who have been bought up in that traditional system.

That should be worrying.

It should also be noted that even according to mainstream Sunni thought, you can say that the "agreed upon" positions are reflected by cross school primers like Ibn Rushd's Bidayat al Mujtahid or Ibn Qudama's Mughni, but all scholars are in agreement that fatwa are issue specific, temporal constructs, which is why you have multiple hiearchies of jurists and guidelines to issuance.

This is also why, until the last hundred years, you have seen the separation of siyasa and Shariah, with exceptionally high evidenciary standards to hadd (those severe) punishments: the legislative bench is simply too narrow to define a nations laws, except perhaps in the Maliki and Hanafi schools given some of the key methodologies there. Hanbali and Shafi jurisprudence certainly aren't suited to this.

Again, this resource will go a long way to clarifying some of these issues with regards to coherent application of things like blasphemy, as I discussed above, as well as hopefully combating extra-judicial elements.

The history of Islam isn't spotless, but there is a reason there were Yazidis in Iraq for thousands of years until ISIS came along, in contrast to the religion wars and homogeneity of Europe (cuius regio, eius religio etc).

So the questions are:

Will the Ananas platform be additive or subtractive to its stated mission?

Will it be of net benefit to the world or a net negative?

Given there are clearly negative elements of both Islam and other ideologies, religious, political and otherwise, causing increasing ideological divides and hate, does this have any chance at helping to bridge this gap for even a few?

I have not seen anything in your contestations against these premises (which I do not believe to be strawmen).

Thus far I have seen:

1. A belief mainstream Islam is reflected by IslamQA
2. Mainstream Islam is immutably illberal, sexist etc
3. A belief an increasing Islamic population will turn Europe illiberal and theocratic and shift its norms, particularly due to faster breeding an immigration

It would appear that Ananas can help with all of these and as other ideologies come online help better integrate Muslims with others as they can, for example, view Judaism from the perspective of Islam as opposed to learning about it through conspiracy theories.

A contention could be that Ananas would promote Islam, but the structure is such that as communities from other ideologies form and are approved they have access to teh exact same resources, which ultimately lays all the information and contexts standardised in data terms and bare..

Thank you for your very long response. My impressions of what you meant by authoritative, what similarities you envision with the SEP and what your goal was were incorrect.

If your goal is to get people off mount stupid, then am I right in thinking that your product does not aim to counter  non-stupid islamophobia or non-stupid islamic beliefs approaching extremism?

On your twitter you've said something like "we should not make an opponent out of conservative islam" , but I don't see why we as western non-muslims shouldn't see  mainstream, conservative Islam which is representative of normal practice and preaching of islam in muslim majority countries around the world (http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/) as a threat to core western liberal values and way of life.  Unless these people assimilate and lose the Islamic values and beliefs they possess which are in opposition to liberal values then as they start forming larger %s in european countries they will want those european countries to accommodate their core values and norms more and more. When muslims form say 30% or 40% or 50% of a european country there is a significant risk that they will form and vote for a muslim-brotherhood like party that will try to change that european country's legal system and norms to become closer to that of a muslim majority country like egypt or jordan or pakistan or afghanistan. There isn't good reason to believe that with the current course being set by european countries this possibility does not have a significant chance of occurring. We might within our lifetime see a northern european county make gay marriage or even homosexuality illegal again as a result of rapid muslim mass immigration and fast breeding, how would you and your team feel about that?

Are your non-muslim team members aware of and happy with this? I could imagine your non-muslim chairman or cto having misgivings about creating a space that will go towards reaffirming for instance that blasphemers and muslims who become atheists or followers of another religion should be imprisoned or put to death  , especially at a time in the world where this is regularly carried out both by official legal systems in islamic countries and by zealous muslims extra-judicially.

Also, since IslamQA.com already gives a range of mainstream scholarly intepretations (with reference to quran and hadith) when answering a question, such that their answers on say gambling or divorce cover most of the mainstream sphere of sunni belief systems , are you not worried that they already have captured the niche of ordinary muslims wanting answers to questions, and it will only be muslims interested in the fringe opinions and groups that IslamQA does not represent that will be more interested in your platform?

Many thanks Rengganis, Castiloros, we will do our best! Please keep an eye on us and spread the word 

This project has an interesting concept, working to make the world better is a nice Idea to make, since now there are more and more awful things happened around the world, and keep continue for a long time.
Good luck with the project.

I see anacoin has a very good development, this project has a good plan, hopefully keep going well, very good anacoin, I will join, soon.

Hi engageformation, thank you for your thoughtful query, you clearly know this space and I hope I can answer your questions to satisfaction!

tldr; beauty of the internets is that communities can define their own belief sets on the platform, authority comes from the structure of the project being broad and gets bigger with each ideology we add (!)

In taking from the SEP we wanted to focus on editorialised crowdsourcing, so the Foundation or sub-communities could commission pieces etc rather than it being a free for all, here is an article describing some of the elements: https://qz.com/480741/this-free-online-encyclopedia-has-achieved-what-wikipedia-can-only-dream-of/

However, what we are trying to achieve with Ananas has some subtle differences that are not captured in the current white paper, but will be in the updated version ahead of the main sale as we needed to stress test certain elements, just as we have only now finalised the Anacoin token economics: https://medium.com/ananas-blog/tokenomics-building-a-token-economy-for-peace-af62ef2f3f32 .

The white paper also simplified some things (it is possible for the Pope not to be Catholic (!) although we used it there as a tautology).

It is important to determine what this project wants to do.

If you read our thoughts, we are aiming to move as many people as possible off "Mount Stupid" and give individuals the tools they need to navigate their own ideologies and those of others.

The goal is not to say "This is the only version of Islam" or this is the "correct" interpretation for Islam or any other ideology, but to encapsulate the plurality of belief structures.

Note there is nothing here about being in agreement with the values of liberal, western society (although as Fukuyama predicted illiberal democracy is on the rise).

This is not for the Foundation to call, but to respect the diversity of thought and the correct data/incentive structure to allow them to organise themselves and their data.

Thus there are three structures being built in the Ananas project:

1. The decentralized unstructured/lightly structured space.

Here you need to jump through some hoops and potentially use Anacoins to access (tbd) but is where any Anacoin holder can commission pieces to be written and reward collation of pieces on any area. So a Hanafi could have a piece here on the usage of analogy within their jurisprudence specifically for example. An Islamophobe could commission a piece on "Taqiya".. This data is interlinked in effective ontologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)

2. The community

This is where individuals interested in this project come together in multiple levels

a. Researchers/scholars/lay people helping with 1.
b. Community helpers who want to help in various ways, including helping
c. Individuals from these groups and outside who have genuine questions they want answered in a structured way have a human to help them. For those within a tradition, eg Muslims, it can be connecting them to other Muslims

Apologetics (where groups attack each other) get their own arena to combat

3. Structured "consumer" data

This one of our "one neat tricks". Groups from each community (for example Hanafi, Reconstruction Jewish, Tea Party Conservative) can come together to build data sets from the lightly structured data to reflect the beliefs of their own community.

So, for example, the "traditional" Sunni schools of thought would have their own data set with stronger linkages, that is then presented through consumer applications like the Living Quran (which as you might be able to guess is the first building block to a larger data set consisting of scripture, interpretation, private actions and community actions).

The Quran is a nice place to start and where you need to start before moving up to those additional layers, but doing so in a structured way with a common data format can yield some very interesting results..

Thus a member of the Hanafi school in the subcontinent (presumably Maturidi in theology) could choose to access the Quran from their perspective, looking through that data set in a consumer friendly way, but choose to dig into more depth on their ideology either through the community or unstructured data set, or access ideologies of others (you can do some interesting stuff if you know peoples contexts)

The broadness of multiple data sets (encouraged by financial incentives and/or a technological arms race) in a common format are what lend authoritativeness, as opposed to saying this is the way things must be, which will never work.

In classical Sunni Islam (which I would be happy to discuss in more detail, perhaps off this forum, it has some extra nuances), the key concepts for watering down hate (imo) and moving people off mount stupid are ikhtilaf (reasonable disagreement), shubha (reasonable doubt) and a bit more rigour on ijma (consensus - for example, does Imam Abu Hanifa's take on alcohol not from grapes or dates impact Hanafi consensus?).

This model of authority reflects the epistemology of our modern age - when we want an answer, we go to Google or Wikipedia, which respectively rank on backlinks and "objectivity".

This project focuses on "objective subjectivity", allowing each group and community to define their own ontologies.

Thus for IS for example, as the tool builds it will be a big blow to them even at the Quran step, but then it would be sensible to gradually build full fatwa construction/deconstruction tools for scholars and researchers with respect to primary text probability and contextual analysis, blockchained ijazas and all sorts of other fun things.. This is especially important as fatwa are fundamentally time situational constructs within the Sunni construction, but are taken as something else due to lack of contextual analysis ability.

Siyasa (secular Islamic law (really)) has changed through the years, particularly after Ibn Taymiyyah reconceptualised it as Siyasa Shariah, but it is not relevant here as (we think) for our mission it is sufficient to provide the tools for individuals and communities to make it difficult for extremist elements to claim supremacy and these tools will steadily grow if we crack the equation in utility.. A true reflection of the actual application of hadd would be a nice side effect of this project, as would a better appreciation of the nuances of siyasa, I'm quite partial to Asifa Quraishi-Landes work on Islamic constitutionalism for an example of where Muslim countries currently misapplying "Islamic" laws could do better, but that is for them to decide.

Thus the 'Al Azhar Encyclopedia' could well use our infrastructure and indeed if everyone else is doing so, would be putting their ontologies in a common format (remember Islam is just first, this is a flexible system).

Designing the system in this way also means anyone can contribute to the platform value so funding sources are not restricted and ultimately the primary control is not on the part of the platform 1, but the Foundation controlling 2. and 3. in terms of the formation of individuals from each community to best represent them.

If there is a split in the community, the data set can be easily split too, something not possible before. For the consumer part we will not approve any community where you need to pay for enlightenment or has active encouragement of violence against others based on their beliefs as part of their ontology.

We are trying to be as honest and transparent as possible and if you think there is merit in what we are doing (hard road!), please do join us on slack or [email protected]

Hi, thanks for answering the questions so patiently even when they've been very rude and hostile. I hope you'll be able to answer mine.

I see in your whitepaper that one of the main aims of Ananas is to be authoritative similar to how the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy is regarded as very authoritative.That is great for countering ISIS-style narratives because there are loads of authoritative scholars and organisations that aren't regarded as fringe but as the mainstream, established scholarly consensus on sunni islam who regularly condemn ISIS and explain why Islam should not be interpreted the way ISIS do. So that is great.

But from the other direction of countering islamophobic points of view and interpretations, how are you going to do that when mainstream , sunni, orthodox Islam as characterised by the scholarly consensus of  Hanafi, shafi, maliki and hanbali schools of jurisprudence contains large numbers of rulings and judgements based on the quran and hadith which are antithetical to western , liberal values?

For example on the frequent charge of Islam being sexist, can you deny that the consensus of mainstream, authoritative sunni scholars is that a man can get married to whom he wants with or without his family's permission but a woman is only able to get married with her male guardian's permission? That totally goes against equal rights for men and women. Only the Hanafi school of fiqh has some disagreement on this issue.
Or take the fact that all 4 schools of surviving, mainstream sunni jurisprudence agree that the penalty for converting away from islam or becoming an atheist is imprisonment then death. Note that these rulings by these schools don't say "if you leave islam and become an enemy and traitor working to wage war against muslims" (which is what apologists frequently claim). The jurisprudence,  which hundreds of years of scholars have studied the quran and sunnah and decided upon, is simply whether they convert or declare that they're atheist; if they do that then the penalty is death.

So here is your problem in a nut shell: if you want to be authoritative then you go with the mainstream sunni scholarly consensus; if you go with the mainstream sunni scholarly consensus then you end up with jurisprudence which is regressive, appalling and antithetical to enlightened, liberal, western values like gender equality , freedom of religion, freedom of speech and separation of church and state.  You can't be both islamically authoritative and in agreement with the values of liberal, western society without watering down Islam and adopting fringe, non-mainstream, non-authoritative, liberal positions. 
I mean  since you make parallels to the stanford  encyclopedia of philosophy, what would happen if Al Azhar university were to make the Al Azhar encyclopedia of islam?
What would most of the scholars there say about legal marriage rights for men and women? About what the punishment for converting away from Islam is?  If you want to accomplish both being islamically authoritative and not in opposition to fundamental, core, western values then surely it's just going to be an exercise in cognitive dissonance and dishonesty. Infact, I imagine you would have trouble answering this question honestly without putting your mission statement or funding at risk.

Is there anything I have gotten wrong here? Even if you create a nuanced interpretation where you say something along the lines of "but lets leave virtually all legal discretion to Siyasa, much grey area"  that still isn't going to be what the mainstream of orthodox sunni scholars endorse.