Bitcoin Tech Talk #424
Interesting Stuff
Intellectual Laziness - The great Scott Locklin writes a screed on why so many supposedly smart people are idiotic. People basically don’t employ any critical thinking to the news that they’re given and end up trusting, not verifying. As he points out, in a strange way this trust of authorities is oftentimes thought of as a virtue, which of course, is amazingly convenient for the said authorities. Unfortunately, the people most susceptible to this form of intellectual laziness are the most likely to have wrapped their identities around their belief system and are least likely to be convinced by good argument and use their intellectual faculties to rationalize their stupidity. Such are the ways of fiat rent-seeking, and this is a good reminder that most people just don’t want to do the intellectual work.
Conventional Economics and the Soul - This article summed up for me the main problem of the homo economicus construct, that is, the simplification of a human being's spiritual nature, essentially reduced to that of an animal. We are not huperrational actors deciding utility on costs and benefits, but beings with more complex desires and motivations. It is in that sense that conventional economics claims too much and fails. Austrian economics doesn’t make simplifications and derives results from first principles instead, which is why it’s much more effective. As I’ve said before Government economists are the modern day false prophets.
The AI Plateau - This article is about the lack of progress from GPT-4, whose quantum leap from GPT-3 killed a lot of trees with all the articles on the imminent dangers of general AI. As he points out, the only progress they seem to be making is by adding more computing power, which is indicative of the fact that they don’t know what else to do. As I’ve said in the past, we really have no idea how this stuff works or why. Somehow figuring out the probability of what the next word could be has resulted in a pretty well-functioning chat partner. The current plateau, which shows no sign of being quantum leaped, is indicative of this fundamental lack of understanding. I suspect that the obscene sums of money poured into AI will ultimately prove to have been a waste.
Tradeoff Between Freedom and Community - As Bitcoin price has been moving up, I’ve been thinking about what money buys, and for most people, the most valuable thing that money buys is freedom. And while freedom is great, especially at certain points in life, there are tradeoffs and this article is a reminder that these tradeoffs are not insignificant. The main one is that community usually exists where it’s needed, and indeed, it’s much more needed in poorer communities. As you get richer, the lack of dependence generally means a more superficial community. The article posits that you cannot be both maximally free and have deep social connections. I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s worth thinking about to what degree we can maximize both.
What I'm up to
Extension of the Ossification Debate - I had a back-and-forth with Jameson Lopp on X about covenants, soft forks and self-sovereignty. I wish we would have had the time to ask these questions in person, but as it is, it’s a good look into both our thoughts on how Bitcoin should proceed. His view seems to be to keep adding new features into the base layer while I think we should be heavily biased against big changes. The mini-debate brought up a lot of issues at play here, including the desire of Bitcoiners to promote self-custody, but many users simply not wishing to do so.
Bitcoin FUD - This is a free Bitcoin documentary about all the FUD around it and I was interviewed for it. It’s a nice summation of the main talking points that normies have around Bitcoin and a good summary of the various ways in which you can answer the most common propaganda against Bitcoin.
Austrian Economics and Liquidity - I’m looking for resources to study liquidity from an Austrian perspective. My gut feeling is that there’s much more liquidity in general in a fiat system simply because one side of the equation can always be funded by loans from nothing. I’m not aware of any comprehensive treatment of the topic, especially the unseen effects of the reduction in liquidity in a sound-money environment.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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