Bitcoin Tech Talk #475
Interesting Stuff
- has one of the most original explanations of the birth rate collapse that I’ve seen. The main idea is analogous to AI model collapse, where if AI trains too much on AI output, after several generations, becomes nonsense. The reason is because the outputs tend to overweigh what’s popular, slowly destroying minority information with each generation, ultimately creating nonsense. Similarly, people training too much on artificial outputs also collapse as dominant propaganda results in loss of minority information. Artificial inputs result in bad programming ultimately preventing reproduction. The idea speaks to the importance of first-principles thinking which reinforces the full picture which is needed to prevent generational collapse.
- makes a pretty convincing defense of the very Millennial phenomenon of hipsters. As he points out, while the whole culture was a complicated social status game, it had the virtue of creating more taste, and thus more beauty, than the subsequent Gen Z’s more ostentatious and obvious status games. The article laments the lack of taste now that hipsters are no longer cool, defeated by charges of bigotry of various forms. The main observation for me is that current culture is almost inevitably a reflection of the status games that hold sway, which in turn is dependent on the technology that people use.
- has a great explanation of how expectations of the future change the game theory outcomes of entire generations. The rhetorical question posed is put in the form of the Marshmellow Test. What is the rational thing to do when you’re unsure about the credibility of the person promising the two marshmallows? What if there aren’t two marshmellows at the end? Then what? The cycle of distrust is where players in such a game get into a vicious cycle where stealing from each other and spending resources on defenses makes sense. It’s an all-too-familiar situation in many developing countries where theft and walls of various kinds are common. Unfortunately, as the article implies, the current western situation is rapidly degenerating into such a vicious cycle, largely due to the collapsing entitlement systems.
- has a powerful essay about the situation in Israel and Palestine and how the root injustice is a disregard for property rights. As he shows, Israel is unique in only allowing ownership (really, government rental) of land based on religion. Jewish people can own land while Arabs cannot. Further, the ability for Jewish settlers to take houses of Palestinians with government permission is largely what causes all of the enmity. As analyzed in the last story, the tit-for-tat in a game like this will continue indefinitely because it’s the only equilibrium when such a policy is applied. A property-rights system encourages the cooperative equilibrium.
American Revolution Revisionism - James Perloff has a revisionist history long-read of the American Revolution and it challenges a lot of assumptions. Did the colonists fake the “Boston Massacre?” Was the first shot really fired at Lexington? What were the motives of John Hancock in signing his name with large letters on the Declaration of Independence? Were Sam Adams and Paul Revere the heroes? The evidence here about all of these events were new to me and have a little more credibility given how history is generally written by the winners. As with most stories, the one we’re given by history is made out to be good vs evil when it’s a lot more nuanced.
What I'm up to
Core v. Knots part 5 - Tone and I talked to Knut here about the economic aspects of this debate, particularly whether we can really price data storage properly when it’s going to be around forever. Knut argued that such data has higher cost the lower time preference you have, and that the core devs have priced such data too low given its permanence.
Core v. Knots part 6 - Tone and I talked to Giacomo about the mistakes on both sides as a somewhat neutral commentator on this debate. We talked about principled vs utilitarian positions, whether devs would admit any mistakes and what attack surface the OP_RETURN might open up. We also talked about the CSAM issue and the possible ways in which both sides can save face.
Bitcoin Historico - There were a bunch of videos that were recorded, including one with Russell Brand above, a panel about paper Bitcoin treasury companies and my talk on Noblesse Oblige, but they’re not quite out yet. Stay tuned, though, because it was an amazing conference.
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