Mike, good for you for seeing through and getting out. Thank you for the insights and warnings about this world that you supply here.
What struck me most strongly was the Steak Dinner. I am not saying no one should eat meat, but to laud steak as a perfect bitcoin meal tells me what I need to know.
You see yourself as the perfect blood-stained predator, a hierarchical being who feels he/she belongs atop the food chain, and everyone else is theirs for the taking. Everyone not in their club to is to be exploited, spitted and broiled. Thinking of "Get Out" Glad you did.
Tbh, I expect the standard of discourse on technology to get less attached to reality.
"And yet the titans of industry can say absolutely crazy things about the future and, rather than having their stocks tank because investors are spooked about having a crazy person in charge, they are rewarded with even greater status and celebrity—and perhaps even a higher stock price. As a society, we have lost the ability to put meaningful boundaries around claims about the future. There has been a total collapse in social consensus about what does and does not count as a legitimate, as opposed to crazy, claim about the future. Short of claiming that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, people nowadays can get away with saying almost anything about what lies ahead."
As I was reading this I kept thinking this is how you build a cult and I was glad to read that you went there. Another case where belonging to a group gives people an identity and once that identity takes hold, people begin to block critical thinking. I suspect the people creating this structure are not unaware of these tactics that hijack a person’s ability to think.
Bitcoin maxis think they can take the politics out of politics. It’s an interesting technology, but property rights can only be secured by a state powerful enough to enforce them. It’s foolish to think otherwise.
I do think there are some useful, niche applications inside a state-sanctioned context, like Lofty.ai does with fractional real estate.
The nature of Bitcoin is difficult to grasp as most people are only familiar with hard cash or credit cards based on that currency. I tried an uneducated explanation of bit coin in my book, "A Quarter Past One". Bitcoin is in its wild west stage. Unregulated, lawless and uncontrolled.
I agree that to develop a universally accepted measure of value we need to rethink how money is used. Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek episode 4, "The Voyage Home" he tells that money didn't exist in the 23rd century. We can get there but not with the regulation, or lack thereof we have today.
Money didn't exist in 1177 B.C. either, when most of the earliest civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean collapsed over the course of a few decades for reasons we still don't know. All of those bronze age kingdoms enthusiasticly traded with each other via gift economy exchanges between the rulers. They treated each other as if they were part of an extended family. Basically, the same way tribal hunter gather trade had worked for millennia. Money (minted couns) evolved from that collapse, emerging 500 years later. It acted as both an instrumentality for evaluating the fairness of trades (equivalent values), and as an affordance for scaling economic activity across diverse peoples which increased both trade and spread of ideas & culture. True markets co-emerged with the emergence of money as the next social organizing governance layer of societies. They were built upon what came before, namely tribal/family circles of trust and hierarchical authoritarian institutions. Money helps manage scarce resources more efficiently & egalitarianly. It also allows great accumulation of wealth (capital) which amplifies the authoritarian hierarchical of power of both organizations & individuals. Money may fall into disuse as resoures become more abundant through shared knowledge. That is Star Trek's premise. That is also why cybercurrencies like bitcoin will never lead to that world. They amplify *individual* power. They are a type of wealth pump siphoning money from many and concentrating it in the hands of the few. That is the appeal for Objectivists & Lassez-Faire Libertarians, even if they don't admit it. It amplifies freedom, but only for the few presimably "better", or "smarter"; the ones who are "early". The distributed & open nature of Blockchain & other Network-based digital tech *might* might be to help move us towards a relatively moneyless society for abundant goods and services. But "civilization" evolved on a social governance stack of "tribes", hierarchical institutions, markets which bind us to certain governance and social solutions. Networks may be the next layer of governance and may help flatten it into being more egalitarian and fair, but the old forms will persist. They will always produce people & systems which want to dominate others, if for no other reason than to prove that they were "right"
Mike, good for you for seeing through and getting out. Thank you for the insights and warnings about this world that you supply here.
What struck me most strongly was the Steak Dinner. I am not saying no one should eat meat, but to laud steak as a perfect bitcoin meal tells me what I need to know.
You see yourself as the perfect blood-stained predator, a hierarchical being who feels he/she belongs atop the food chain, and everyone else is theirs for the taking. Everyone not in their club to is to be exploited, spitted and broiled. Thinking of "Get Out" Glad you did.
Tbh, I expect the standard of discourse on technology to get less attached to reality.
"And yet the titans of industry can say absolutely crazy things about the future and, rather than having their stocks tank because investors are spooked about having a crazy person in charge, they are rewarded with even greater status and celebrity—and perhaps even a higher stock price. As a society, we have lost the ability to put meaningful boundaries around claims about the future. There has been a total collapse in social consensus about what does and does not count as a legitimate, as opposed to crazy, claim about the future. Short of claiming that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, people nowadays can get away with saying almost anything about what lies ahead."
https://nilsgilman.substack.com/p/the-epistemic-crisis-behind-the-ai
As I was reading this I kept thinking this is how you build a cult and I was glad to read that you went there. Another case where belonging to a group gives people an identity and once that identity takes hold, people begin to block critical thinking. I suspect the people creating this structure are not unaware of these tactics that hijack a person’s ability to think.
Bitcoin maxis think they can take the politics out of politics. It’s an interesting technology, but property rights can only be secured by a state powerful enough to enforce them. It’s foolish to think otherwise.
I do think there are some useful, niche applications inside a state-sanctioned context, like Lofty.ai does with fractional real estate.
I value your thoughts and opinions, but sometimes your pieces are just too complex for me to follow 😰
The nature of Bitcoin is difficult to grasp as most people are only familiar with hard cash or credit cards based on that currency. I tried an uneducated explanation of bit coin in my book, "A Quarter Past One". Bitcoin is in its wild west stage. Unregulated, lawless and uncontrolled.
I agree that to develop a universally accepted measure of value we need to rethink how money is used. Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek episode 4, "The Voyage Home" he tells that money didn't exist in the 23rd century. We can get there but not with the regulation, or lack thereof we have today.
Money didn't exist in 1177 B.C. either, when most of the earliest civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean collapsed over the course of a few decades for reasons we still don't know. All of those bronze age kingdoms enthusiasticly traded with each other via gift economy exchanges between the rulers. They treated each other as if they were part of an extended family. Basically, the same way tribal hunter gather trade had worked for millennia. Money (minted couns) evolved from that collapse, emerging 500 years later. It acted as both an instrumentality for evaluating the fairness of trades (equivalent values), and as an affordance for scaling economic activity across diverse peoples which increased both trade and spread of ideas & culture. True markets co-emerged with the emergence of money as the next social organizing governance layer of societies. They were built upon what came before, namely tribal/family circles of trust and hierarchical authoritarian institutions. Money helps manage scarce resources more efficiently & egalitarianly. It also allows great accumulation of wealth (capital) which amplifies the authoritarian hierarchical of power of both organizations & individuals. Money may fall into disuse as resoures become more abundant through shared knowledge. That is Star Trek's premise. That is also why cybercurrencies like bitcoin will never lead to that world. They amplify *individual* power. They are a type of wealth pump siphoning money from many and concentrating it in the hands of the few. That is the appeal for Objectivists & Lassez-Faire Libertarians, even if they don't admit it. It amplifies freedom, but only for the few presimably "better", or "smarter"; the ones who are "early". The distributed & open nature of Blockchain & other Network-based digital tech *might* might be to help move us towards a relatively moneyless society for abundant goods and services. But "civilization" evolved on a social governance stack of "tribes", hierarchical institutions, markets which bind us to certain governance and social solutions. Networks may be the next layer of governance and may help flatten it into being more egalitarian and fair, but the old forms will persist. They will always produce people & systems which want to dominate others, if for no other reason than to prove that they were "right"
Hey, I'm willing to sell you a rebuttal in exchange for 50 early bronze age Mesopotamian shekels? Do we have witnesses? Deal?
Nah. I'll just wait for a Bootstraps 5000 Universal Fabricator, and fab up an open-design WitBot to handle that.