Bitcoin Tech Talk #349

Interesting Stuff

1. Uyghur Experience - This is a haunting tale of what it’s like to be living with uncertainty about your own status with a dictatorial regime. The entire story is just gripping and reminded me a lot of the accounts I’ve read in totalitarian regimes. The remarkable part of the story for me was how tiny things could get you in trouble and that there was an assumption of guilt by the authorities and very little justice seemed to be upheld.

2. AI Danger - To me, this was AI hysteria at its worst. If you study history almost all useful new technology is followed up with a healthy dose of fear and AI is no exception. Electricity could kill an elephant! Microwaves will take all nutrition out of food! Computers will become our overlords! Cell phones will give you cancer! I usually like Eric Hoel’s writing, but it’s clear to me that he’s being chicken little here. Evil comes from people, not technology and we should be very wary of people blaming tech.

3. UFO craze - Remember the UFO stories a week ago? Turns out that a lot of it was from Harry Reid’s (former majority leader in the Senate) pork barrelling some funds to a friend of his that was obsessed with UFOs. The entire story from nose to tail is because of government nepotism and corrupt journalism. I suppose this is par for the course with oodles of fiat money available, but it’s still hard to believe how insanely prevalent this is. It does make you wonder what they want to distract us from.

What I'm up to

1. Decentralization and Natural Law - I’ve been thinking a lot about the need for bottom up systems as centralization crumbles under its own weight and wrote this short essay on Nostr. My basic argument is that in the absence of centralized law, what you get is decentralized law, or natural law. It’s way more robust, more fair and removes so much of the corruption associated with centralized law. In that sense, Bitcoin is a form of decentralized law. But more than that, decentralization leads to not man-made realities like governments but to reality that already exists, and for me, it’s yet another proof of the existence of God.

2. Fiat Ruins Everything - Now that I’m back in Austin, I’m working hard on the book and getting all the edits in. I’m now in the middle of citing references for some of the things I write in the book and honestly, it’s a bit of a slog. If anyone has good resources to help in gathering references, I would appreciate it. I’ve found that it’s very hard to verify these things with AI, so if there’s a way to do that, that would be great as well.

3. CUBO+ - I’ll be in El Salvador next month to teach some Salvadoran students the Bitcoin protocol! I’ll be attending a meetup for Max and Stacy on July 15th. If you’re in town, please let me know as there very well may be a dinner of some kind.

Nostr Note of the Week

What I’m Shilling

• Books

  • Bitcoin and the American Dream

  • Thank God for Bitcoin

  • The Little Bitcoin Book

  • Programming Bitcoin

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