Bitcoin Tech Talk #432
Interesting Stuff
Touching Grass - I was moved by this article about experiencing the real and how so much of modern life, represented by the cell phone is less and less real. The experience of touching grass goes to a picture or video of touching grass to an AI representation to a concept to a meme. The lack of distinction between what’s real and what’s represented has kept us from really engaging in the present, feeling and enjoying what reality is. That same engagement with the real is also prevented by fiat money. It’s also undergone this transformation from something real (gold) to something representational (gold-backed dollar) to something meaningless (fiat money). There’s something fundamentally lost in that transition and it’s that ubiquitous unreality which oppresses our humanity.
Spreadsheet Egregore - Egregore is not a concept I was familiar with before this article, but the basic idea is that it’s a collective spirit of a group not just in an abstract sense, but in almost a demonic sense. You may be familiar with Lily Phillips, the OnlyFans model that made some noise by having sex with 100 men in 24 hours. What this article does is it looks at what led her to that decision, and as the author points out, it wasn’t so much that she’s sex-crazed or because someone was paying her a lot of money. It was because of her fans. The spreadsheet egregore, as it were. She was obligated by the soulless logic of homo economicus, in other words. I suspect that much of the really crass behavior we see is really due to that fiat logic which has pervaded fiat systems.
WNBA Idiocy - The league has a new star in Caitlin Clark and it should be a great time for all the players, as there’s a lot more attention and hence, more money flowing into the league than ever. But such is not the case because, as the article points out, it’s been essentially a subsidized league, losing tens of millions of dollars a year for decades now. As a result, you have a lot of upset players and coaches and owners, who see her as disturbing their rent-seeking than making their product better by drawing more fans. Just goes to show that even in a very obviously meritorious endeavor like sports, you can still have fiat stupidity enter in when you remove market incentives.
Real Gandhi - History is written by the winners and indeed that’s a hard lesson to learn because there are so many ways by which we have been indoctrinated into believing something. Such is the story of Gandhi, which is a bit jarring, given how he’s been made into a secular saint over the years. So reading this piece is going to be a bit of an eye opener if you still hold that view. But as with the news, the point of history isn’t to be accurate, as much as it is to manipulate us. Another instance of fiat ruining everything.
Fertility Rates Among Christians - Some surprising data about who’s having more babies among different religious groups. As the article points out, the more separate a group is from the dominant culture, the more babies they have. Mainline protestants are the least fertile and the Amish and Orthodox Jews are the most fertile. I don’t have any surveys to confirm this, but anecdotally, Bitcoiners are much more likely to have lots of kids, so this would mean Bitcoiners are in many ways pretty radical and distinct from the surrounding culture.
What I'm up to
Brian Paik - Part 2 of the interview I had with Brian is up. We talked about ETFs, rehypothecation, stablecoins and why Tether looks poised to win that battle. We talked about whether it’s better to have your dollars in a bank account or in Tether and I can see the argument for having it in Tether as it’s easier to transfer peer-to-peer. Obviously, cash is preferable, but there’s something to be said about what’s essentially a bank not fractionally reserving their dollars.
Hardcover of Fiat Ruins Everything - I got some complaints about the fact that the original cloth cover didn’t have the great cover that the paperback did, so now that I have the rights, the hard cover is now available! I’m working on getting the audiobook out again, but unfortunately, the AI generated audio that I made goes against the ToS for audible. I will have it on Google Play Store and a few other places, though.
Plan B SV - Not much time left until this conference in San Salvador. I’ll be around and enjoying not just the people, but the weather, food and scenery.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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