Bitcoin Tech Talk #496
Interesting Stuff
Carmelite Monks of Wyoming - Arena Magazine has this feature on these monks who continue to build a gorgeous Gothic monastery in the middle of Wyoming. The story is not just fascinating because of what they’ve built but how they managed to do it. These monks had no experience with any of the tools that they eventually ended up using and essentially learned as they went. They also didn’t have much funding and still sell coffee to fund their enormous cathedral. For me, this is what real building looks like, where innovation meets transcendence to create something not just functional, but beautiful, and interestingly done with a much cheaper budget than anyone could have imagined.
Feminization of the Internet - Freya India writes about how the internet in general, and social media in particular has deeply feminized society. Her insight in this article is that social media isn’t just feminine, it incentivizes the behavior of insecure junior high school girls. The main reason for this is that there are no physical confrontations on the internet, so the default mode of internet fighting is one that characterizes junior high school girl fighting: passive-aggression and reputation destruction. We would all be better served with more in-person events, which unfortunately are still on the down-swing.
Vetocracy - John Hamilton introduces the very useful concept of a vetocracy, which is where many groups have the ability to veto certain changes. The more entrenched and stagnant a place is, the easier it is for various entities to veto any proposed changes. Such structures serve to preserve whatever power and money the entrenched organizations have, and despite their “progressive” reputation, the places that are the most “vetocratic” are places like Massachusetts, New York and California. As I’ve argued many times, the labels liberal and conservative are actually exactly the opposite of their meanings, and this is an excellent illustration of that.
Game Theory - ixcarus has this primer on practical game theory and why mass change is so difficult. The post introduces a lot of game theory in practical examples and goes through why people act selfishly or irrationally by not cooperating even when they are worse off when they don’t. The most important concept is that of zero-sum versus positive sum. Zero-sum games have competitive incentives and result in anti-social behavior whereas positive sum games have cooperative incentives and result in pro-social behavior. If I could sum up the ills of fiat money in one sentence, it would be that fiat money turns positive sum games into zero-sum ones.
ActBlue - Doug Ross exposes some serious violations in political donations, showing how the supposedly grass-roots organization ActBlue likely used many fake accounts to donate millions to various campaigns, sometimes from foreign governments. Such corruption is inevitable when the prize of getting access to the ultimate money printer is at stake. You should expect people to lie, cheat and steal for a chance at making 100x what they invest in such campaigns. The solution isn’t jail time and censure, though, of course, those should be pursued. The solution is to not have such a thing available to be used for any purpose in the first place.
What I'm up to
The Third Way - Here is my presentation at BitBlockBoom this past week, arguing for a third implementation as a way to get out of the nasty political dynamic that we’ve gotten into in the Bitcoin community. We had a node implementation monopoly until recently and a duopoly with Knots now. Neither make for great dynamics and it’s only with three or more implementations that we can get to a place where users get enough of a say through feedback loops that developers will respond to.
Bitcoin and Virtue - I gave this talk at the Thank God for Bitcoin conference held a day before BitBlockBoom which is about how virtue is the Aristotelian mean between two vices at the extremes. It’s a talk I have given before and since the audio is bad and the projector didn’t work, you might want to click over. But I did cater it a bit more to the Christian audience to explain how this framework can be useful for other aspects of life.
Roxum TV - I was on this channel to talk about various news items this week, including quantum computing, North Korea, Production Ready and even the hack I had a month ago.
Nostr Note of the Week
