Bitcoin Tech Talk #455: Innovation, Pol Pot, Stagnation, Kayfabe++
Interesting Stuff
Innovation as a Dirty Word - This is an older article by the esteemed Rene Girard on innovation, imitation and how the modern world has reversed cause and effect. As he points out, until about 200 years ago, the word innovation had a decidedly negative connotation, despite mostly meaning the same thing as it does today. It was once associated with heresy and general wrongness, which has largely been removed in modern usage. The important idea here is that hardened things generally should get the benefit of the doubt and the new thing viewed with skepticism, instead of the other way around, which unfortunately led to stuff like Marxism, fiat money and critical theory.
On Pol Pot - It’s criminal that what Pol Pot did in Cambodia is still largely not known to most people around the world, which as the author notes, is largely due to the fiat intellectuals’ uncomfortable associations with Communist regimes. If you’re not familiar with how this dictator killed something like 1 in 4 Cambodians in a mere 4 years, you need to read this story and understand just how. brutal and crushing communism can be. While Mao and Stalin had larger absolute numbers, Pol Pot takes the cake for percentage, and sadly, this evil is not taught because of the academic affinity toward leftism in general and communism in particular.
Evidence of Stagnation - This is a pretty straightforward article about how almost everything is becoming more rinse-and-repeat of the same rather than anything original. Paired with the first story, it’s an interesting contrast about the mechanics of fiat stagnation, which conserves the wrong things and innovates where there is no need. As the author points out, the advent of AI makes this rinse-and-repeat much worse and unlike imitation which leads to creativity, it’s imitation that becomes slop, or more of the same that becomes very easy to tire of.
Lack of Empathy - For your future self, that is. The post is ostensibly about choosing a career and how it’s mostly an exercise in choosing what kind of high status someone wants, rather than the work and toil that’s required to get there. But as the article points out, there’s so little of the actual looking at what it takes, what’s done day-to-day and even what’s enjoyed by the person in question. In other words, we lack empathy for our future selves and what they’ll have to suffer to get to the career we “want” right now. I suspect much of this lack is due to the high time preference people generally have under fiat money, rather than the more realistic and long-term calculation required of sound money.
Kayfabe - This is an entertaining read about one of the WWF (as it was known back then) wrestlers of yesteryear, the Iron Sheik. But it’s not only about him, it’s also about the crossover between wrestling and politics (Trump, Linda McMahon, especially) about the whole concept of kayfabe (where breaking character is strictly forbidden) and whether we should wonder whether what just happened with Israel and Iran was real. Much like how professional wrestling started to break kayfabe back in the late 90’s we may very well be getting that in politics today. In a sense, this is the perfect time for it, as a significant number of people will cheer or boo on command with much more consideration for narrative than reality.
What I'm up to
Seoul - We will be having a meetup on July 5th somewhere and it will be in English. Come stop by. Details to come.
Tokyo - Similar story in Tokyo, though it’ll be later in the month. The location will be the new Tokyo Bitcoin Base.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Bitcoin Tech Talk to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.