Bitcoin Tech Talk #457
Interesting Stuff
Slow Death of College - This is a post-mortem of a liberal arts college by a former professor, talking about how the college system at the low end works. Among other revealing things from the article, they offer “partial scholarships” to mediocre athletes and even e-gaming hopefuls. The money line from the article is this one: “Does anyone else feel guilty about saddling these students with enormous debt and marginal skills just so we can play professor?” Increasingly, it’s not just professor, but administrator, dean and even grad student. The whole college experience at the low end is a rent-seeking game that saddles the “students” with debt.
The Future of Customer Service - Most people see AI as something that will take jobs away, or making inefficient processes a lot more efficient. This is a decidedly different take, about how it’s going to be a Kafka-esque hell of trying to find a human being. To be sure, this is not far from the experience most people have with customer service as even most human operators are not empowered to actually do anything about your problem and escalating the call is usually the only way to get something done, but imagine when these agents are AI’s who completely ossify the bureaucracy. In a sense, it will make the administrative state even more obtuse and difficult to get service out of.
What are Aliens? - This is one of the most out there but somehow still convincing long-reads I’ve enjoyed in a long time. The post is a long explanation of what the author thinks aliens are (spoiler: they’re some long-evolved branch of humans that live deep underwater) and comes up with some convincing evidence that they’re actually malicious and demon-like. The most interesting part for me was the speculation that they’re not necessarily technologically advanced as they are more advanced along a particular tech tree. The biblical references are intriguing, too, and it’s a genuinely different take on aliens than anything from the popular imagination.
MeToo, Silicon Valley - I have no idea if the allegations in this article are even remotely true, but it would not surprise me. The main allegation is that there’s a group of VCs that act more or less like casting directors in Hollywood, but with hopeful startup founders and not Hollywood actresses. I sense that these are the fiat dynamics of any near-monopolistic institution like Hollywood, Washington or Silicon Valley. Gatekeeping is an obvious bureaucratic function and it’s no surprise something like that gets used to advantage the people that gate keep.
Cholesterol Scam - If you’re “watching your cholesterol,” you really need to read this article. It’s a long and comprehensive take down of the “science” behind high-cholesterol-is-bad-for-your-heart orthodoxy. But not only does it take down the stupidity of statins, but it also shows the much better alternative explanation of blood vessel damage repair causing clots. These, in turn, are caused by inflammation and stress. Basically, the entire cholesterol-causes-heart-disease theory is wrong and pushed by bad incentives involving statins and drug companies. Fiat systems extend profitable lies at the expense of truth.
What I'm up to
Why Bitcoin Price Keeps Pumping - This is my talk from BTC Prague where I gave my take on what the valuation model for Bitcoin should be and how it’s very different than the valuation model of altcoins. It’s not a long talk, but it does seem to be pretty popular as it has many thousands of views already.
Thank God for Bitcoin Launch - This is part 1 of the interview I did with a Korean Economics podcast about the launch of the Korean translation of the book. We talked about orange-pilling moments, the Korean Bitcoin community and the speculative aspect vs the store-of-value aspect. Note that it starts in Korean, but after about 2 minutes, the interview is in English.
Tokyo Bitcoin Base - I will be at this meetup in Tokyo at the new Bitcoin Base on July 28, 7pm. There’s only a limited number of spots, so please register early!
Nostr Note of the Week
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