# Trusted hierarchies counter the ‘someone is working on that’ problem In a decentralized system you often hear [[‘Someone is working on that’]] . It is hard to know what this means. What approach are they taking? Is it actually the same thing? Could you be doing it better? How hard are they working on it? Many time people broadcast that they are ‘working on something’ to just get the attention without solving the problem. Everybody trying to come up with their own answers to these questions is one reason why [[It takes a lot of bandwidth to pay attention to decentralized efforts]]. A trusted hierarchy enables you to trust that when you’re told [[‘Someone is working on that’]] someone has asked the necessary questions and the person working on it is accountable. ### Examples In the Coronavirus Crisis contact tracing is important and doing it via an app is probably a good idea. The Singaporean government came out with an app called [[TraceTogether]] and MIT came out with an app called [[Private Kit]]. They both do privacy-preserving contract tracing but use different methods. Clearly [[‘Someone is working on that’]] but it would take a ton of effort to both know which is better and get involved in helping, so there other groups working on their own version. In a situation with no time pressure, this would be great - [[More Uncorrelated Mistakes lead to more success]]. However, in a time sensitive situation we do need *one* app and need to make it as good as possible. A similar situation is at play with 3D printed PPE and at a meta level, platforms for coordinating responses. <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Trusted+hierarchies+counter+the+‘someone+is+working+on+that’+problem) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Trusted+hierarchies+counter+the+‘someone+is+working+on+that’+problem)