Bitcoin Tech Talk #489
Californication, SEC Schools, Agency, Canada and Bad Psych
Interesting Stuff
Californication - Aaron M. Renn writes about how Californication of Colorado is mostly complete, no longer the red or even purple state that it was in the 90’s, but now a solidly blue state with solidly blue policies. With large regulatory burdens, high housing prices and liberal drug policies, it’s resulted in many companies moving out along with their jobs, and of course, the productive people. I knew the state was not in a good place, but the downfall is especially sad given how awesome the natural beauty of the place is.
SEC Prestige - Christopher Sandbatch has this take on the increasing popularity of SEC schools, particularly among out-of-state students. The increase in popularity of SEC schools is undeniable in much the same way that the Californication of Colorado is. And though these schools are mostly in red states and have some of that aesthetic which appeals to conservative or even moderate potential students, the shift is a bigger one about what actually is valued about college education. In a shallow way, you could argue that the entertainment value of attending an SEC school, with its flourishing Greek life, party atmosphere and of course, football, is a lot more aligned with what college degrees have become. In a deeper way, they’re becoming more popular because the south is where all the growth is.
On Agency - Johann Kurtz writes about how our elite, particularly those that are on the left, are pretty low agency. The irony is that many elites are pretty obsessed with that word, yet as Johann points out, they very rarely try to solve any problems not in their specific domain. In other words, they tend to “stay in their lane.” This speaks to a cowardice that I’ve observed in fiat-captured people. It’s an ingrained instinct from years of playing within a system that it’s unthinkable to even try to change a small part of the system. The two exceptions he shows are Elon and Trump, who for all their bluster, are not shy about trying things. Fiat money has this effect of serving the system rather than changing it.
Canada - The Library of Celaeno has a similar thing to say about Canadian rightists who are now complaining, like much of Europe that they would be winning in their country if it were not for Trump. As he points out, Trump is a convenient scapegoat. Of course there’s some shenanigans going on in these countries to silence the political right. But the reason why the rightward movement isn’t more popular in Canada is because Canadians are, ironically, conservative. Their natural instinct is to preserve what they have, even when it’s not worth preserving. In that sense, the labels of liberal and conservative have completely reversed and what right parties want is in a sense, revolution from the liberal world order.
Bad Psych - Adam Mastroianni writes about a bunch of psych experiments that have failed replication. The idea that cognitive dissonance is a common trait is challenged, as are studies about the man who mistook his wife for a hat and the Stanford prison experiment. The study “proving” that memory of eye witnesses being terrible also didn’t replicate and the “choice overload” effect was also shown to be questionable. The article was a reminder for me that our cultural narrative is inundated with questionable “facts” and that we really need to get better at verifying these assumed truths.
What I'm up to
Pleb Underground - I was on this show with Phil and Ulric. We talked about ossification, how I define it and why I support it. We dove a little deeper and talked about the incentives for new primitives and why people advocate for them and the costs of new primitives to the entire ecosystem. We talked about the path of hardware resources needed to run a Bitcoin node and the development that we’re getting in that direction.
Claude Code 4.6 - I’ve spent way too much time this week making web and android apps using this tool. As a developer, I now understand that the developer job is never going to be the same again. I’m planning to make an app a day for a month to see its capabilities.
BitBlockBoom - I’ll be in Dallas for this conference on April 9-12th. There’s also Thank God for Bitcoin conference beforehand that I’ll also speak at.
Nostr Note of the Week
