Bitcoin Tech Talk #494
Interesting Stuff
The Five Seas Theory - The Duke Report™️ writes about this very interesting geo-political framework. That the Middle East is not just important for its oil production, but because of the quirks of earth’s geography, will always have a big place in world events. This is a theory from 1904 that points to the area as where 5 seas meet (Mediterranean, Red, Black, Caspian, and the Persian Gulf) which is where land and sea power collide and also happen to be the key to controlling the Eurasian heartland. It’s a pretty prescient theory given the number of wars we’ve had in that region since 1904, and does point more to how geography plays way more into historical events than we admit.
Fertility and Spirituality - This is a First Things essay that responds to the provocative post by Bronze Age Pervert. The main idea of BAP’s essay is that if society wants to increase fertility society has to bring back the fertility cult. The response essay was more interesting to me because it correctly identified the current fertility crisis as a spiritual one where the practical costs are apparent, but the abstract benefits are not. The abstract benefits being some of the most meaningful things we can have in our lives. In a sense, the current calculation that people make regarding fertility is from a nihilistic metaphysic, which naturally denies the abstract benefits. The real return requires admission of real value and meaning to abstract things.
Property and Caring - Michael Foster writes about property rights from a very Christian perspective and asserts that not owning, or renting constantly, has consequences for the soul. He argues that lack of ownership, rather than making us focus on heaven, actually makes us more flighty and unattached. It’s ownership, having property that creates incentives for deeper relationships to other people and to our communities. Perhaps our lack of attachment to our communities is exactly that. We literally aren’t invested in our communities. Ownership, furthermore, teaches us about commitment, about taking care of something and understanding the consequences of the lack of those. This is one of the subtler ways by which fiat money debases community.
AI Power - This is a bit of an AI doomer article and I don’t take most of it that seriously. That said, there’s a whole lot of truth in there about how much of the AI buildout, particularly data center capacity and power generation, is hype and will be written off as significant malinvestments. I did not realize just how crazy things had gotten in the AI data-center buildout space, and reading this, it sounds like we’ve definitely reached the “pets.com” stage of the AI hype. Fiat money has a tendency to do this as the quality of investments naturally goes down as more money is poured in. And since the money is easy, the investments inevitably get to scam level. It sounds like we’re at that point, and that sound you hear is an AI-driven recession (no catchy name yet like Dot Bomb or Housing Crash) on the horizon.
Boomer Manichaeanism - Chivalry Guild has this very insightful piece on the idea that “it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” As the essay explains, this was a Boomer-era aphorism which subsequent generations have grown up with, that amounts to something like Manichaeanism, or the belief that everything spiritual is good and everything fleshly is bad. This is, of course, nonsense, and physical fitness and spiritual fitness are very often correlated as one helps the other. The irony of the phrase is that it’s as shallow as what they’re accusing others of being. Unfortunately, it’s created a generation of ugly, lazy people that think they’re virtuous who suffer over a long period of time because they can borrow indefinitely against the future.
What I'm up to
The Case for a Conservative Bitcoin Client - I wrote this essay on the heels of announcing ProductionReady, the 501(c)(3) non-profit that we launched last week. We want to make node software that preserves the sound money properties of Bitcoin and in this post I explain exactly how we plan to do that.
Power of Bitcoin - I was on this podcast to talk about the OP_RETURN controversy, its origins, BIP110, and how it might play out. This was notably recorded before the launch of ProductionReady so we did not discuss that, but we did discuss some of the technical realities of the game theory on BIP110.
BitBlockBoom - My talk is scheduled to be at 10:40am on Saturday, April 11 and the title of the talk is “The Third Way,” which you might have guessed is about what we’re planning to do at ProductionReady.
Nostr Note of the Week
