1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:16,440 All right. So Lucas and I are here today for the next conversation, the next study session over soft war, a novel theory on power projection and the national strategic significance of Bitcoin. This is Jason Lowry's thesis, and we have a PDF of that. 2 00:00:16,440 --> 00:00:44,200 So this is the fifth conversation, I believe. We've had an introduction and then a few chapters before that. So to really back up and then we'll walk into it, kind of the core argument of the thesis is something like Bitcoin represents a soft, as in a non-kinetic form of warfare that could be used to counteract the dysfunctions of abstract power hierarchies that emerge in digital age society. 3 00:00:44,740 --> 00:00:49,040 So there's a lot of terms in that, and we've learned some of those terms up to this point. 4 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:54,260 Two conversations ago, we talked about power projection tactics in nature. 5 00:00:54,260 --> 00:00:55,500 That was chapter three. 6 00:00:56,220 --> 00:01:10,160 There's a lot there, but essentially what emerged is that physical power projection is used to determine resource allocation within a dominance hierarchy for pack animals, a sort of pecking order to determine who gets breeding and feeding rights. 7 00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:16,980 physical power is used within that dominance hierarchy in order to determine those feeding 8 00:01:16,980 --> 00:01:24,860 and breeding rights in a decentralized zero trust and permissionless fashion um then we moved on to 9 00:01:24,860 --> 00:01:30,120 the next chapter which was power projection tactics in human society and there's a continuous line 10 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:36,960 from animals to humans and indeed um lowry draws it from inorganic matter to organic matter single 11 00:01:36,960 --> 00:01:42,540 up to animals. The whole story is an evolutionary story. It's very fascinating. So last time we 12 00:01:42,540 --> 00:01:47,380 talked about power projection in human society on a continuous line from animals. And in the same way, 13 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:53,860 human society begins using physical power projection also to determine humans are pack 14 00:01:53,860 --> 00:01:59,300 animals. So we have the need to allocate resources within the pack. We have a dominance hierarchy. 15 00:01:59,940 --> 00:02:05,280 We also, just like animals, use physical power to determine feeding and breeding rights within that 16 00:02:05,280 --> 00:02:12,040 hierarchy, a pecking order of who gets what, a sort of property rights system where property 17 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:19,320 is defined by who is willing to project power over it. However, humans have the ability to 18 00:02:19,320 --> 00:02:27,160 think abstractly, which leads us to have a theory of mind and to empathize with our other kin and 19 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:32,020 also with other animals. And so we want to avoid physical violence. And so in an effort to avoid 20 00:02:32,020 --> 00:02:36,940 physical confrontations, humans develop belief systems in which a story is told that centralizes 21 00:02:36,940 --> 00:02:41,520 power, and that creates kind of a ruler and a ruled class with the thought being that the ruler 22 00:02:41,520 --> 00:02:47,860 dispenses permission to access property, and the ruled class simply wants to avoid physical 23 00:02:47,860 --> 00:02:53,920 confrontation, so they buy into the belief system. In turn, they get a dominance hierarchy that 24 00:02:53,920 --> 00:02:58,980 doesn't employ explicit physical violence. They don't have to challenge somebody for resources. 25 00:02:58,980 --> 00:03:06,420 instead permission is allocated to people based on rank within that abstract power-based hierarchy 26 00:03:06,420 --> 00:03:10,980 it's called abstract power because it's not physical power it's not real world strength 27 00:03:10,980 --> 00:03:16,360 or intelligence it's simply determined by kind of the rule set of that abstract power-based 28 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:21,660 hierarchy like a religion or a government which dispenses permission to people to access 29 00:03:21,660 --> 00:03:28,860 property within society the feeding and breeding rights kind of broadly stated abstract power-based 30 00:03:28,860 --> 00:03:33,360 hierarchies we learned are easy to construct. All you have to do is believe in them. And so they 31 00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:39,000 scale quickly. We get nation states as these big stories that are told based on abstract power. 32 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:46,280 Someone buys into them simply by believing them. But we learned that abstract power-based hierarchies 33 00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:50,500 have problems. They tend to consolidate centralized power and so become oppressive 34 00:03:50,500 --> 00:03:58,420 over the people within them because it's kind of feeding and breeding rights are determined by rank, 35 00:03:58,420 --> 00:04:03,200 by kind of arbitrary allocations that don't correlate to strength and intelligence, that 36 00:04:03,200 --> 00:04:09,360 don't correlate to merit. And so over time, abstract power-based hierarchies tend to become 37 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:16,100 centralized and oppressive, and so foster, foment revolution from within to break them up by people 38 00:04:16,100 --> 00:04:21,920 who are fed up with the arbitrariness of power, or to encourage invasion from without, because 39 00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:27,660 abstract power-based hierarchies, by avoiding physical confrontation, also tended to self-domesticate 40 00:04:27,660 --> 00:04:32,700 the people that bought into them because it wasn't merit meritocratically selecting for 41 00:04:32,700 --> 00:04:38,400 power for strength or intelligence so the kind of the story that we learned was physical power 42 00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:45,060 became necessary um even for humans who have developed these ideas of abstract power-based 43 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:51,060 hierarchies to break those up so now we move into chapter five power projection tactics in cyberspace 44 00:04:51,060 --> 00:04:56,760 so the title kind of sets up what's going to be the problem um cyberspace is this new realm it's 45 00:04:56,760 --> 00:05:03,060 immaterial and non-physical? How can you project power into a immaterial and non-physical realm? 46 00:05:03,060 --> 00:05:09,480 So Lowry starts off, we get some fascinating histories within this section, including a history 47 00:05:09,480 --> 00:05:16,520 of computing. So I have no specialized education in computer science or anything like that. So I'll 48 00:05:16,520 --> 00:05:21,400 do my best to walk us through this kind of aligning, omitting things that are interesting, 49 00:05:21,640 --> 00:05:26,420 but extraneous to kind of telling the narrative that's going to get us to the thesis of this 50 00:05:26,420 --> 00:05:31,900 section, which is that Bitcoin is a novel form of power projection within cyberspace. 51 00:05:32,500 --> 00:05:37,480 So the history of computing that we start out with, though, so computers, broadly speaking, 52 00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:42,240 right, computers are named after their function, they compute, and not their form. So computers 53 00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:48,200 can take many different forms. And we have this development of computers over time, to 54 00:05:48,200 --> 00:05:53,940 a sort of abstract state where machine code is developed that converts computing from a 55 00:05:53,940 --> 00:06:01,360 physical machine process to an abstract design process. We replace these gigantic computers that 56 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:07,140 are lever pulling or feeding cards into them to computers that are run by a semantically and 57 00:06:07,140 --> 00:06:13,080 syntactically rich language of code. Basically, we develop the ability to speak to machines, 58 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:21,280 and they can speak back to us in our own language. So software emerges as an abstract belief system 59 00:06:21,280 --> 00:06:27,500 within this. It's not a physical thing. It's a form of top-down belief-based control of hardware, 60 00:06:27,660 --> 00:06:33,360 essentially. Software, it's kind of analogous to it is an abstract power-based hierarchy that 61 00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:41,620 controls hardware. It's top-down abstract control over the physical based purely on 62 00:06:41,620 --> 00:06:47,080 permission-granting power that abstract power-based hierarchies depend on. 63 00:06:47,080 --> 00:07:08,100 And computer programmers are storytellers. They construct these belief systems that is software. They create a fictional world. Software presents us with now an object-oriented vision of cyberspace or of the computer world where we see folders on our desktop. 64 00:07:08,100 --> 00:07:24,740 We see a trash bin. We interact as if things are real, but it's all an abstraction. It's all a story that's told within a piece of software to immerse us in a world created by the storyteller who is the computer programmer. 65 00:07:24,740 --> 00:07:34,200 um so software generates or is an abstract power-based hierarchy we can see this in like 66 00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:40,840 facebook google twitter amazon the admins over these systems have sort of like god king rights 67 00:07:40,840 --> 00:07:46,720 to determine how things function within the system um how the resources within those systems are 68 00:07:46,720 --> 00:07:53,540 allocated etc software so we're really interested we're entering an age cyberspace is obviously 69 00:07:53,540 --> 00:07:59,180 immensely important to us. We have digital resources now, not just physical real world 70 00:07:59,180 --> 00:08:06,560 resources to be allocated. Those who control the software typically control how they're like the 71 00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:12,040 centralized power that dispenses the permission and controls the dominance hierarchy about who 72 00:08:12,040 --> 00:08:19,700 gets what digital right and the property who has control and custody over digital rights, 73 00:08:19,700 --> 00:08:25,680 digital property. These digital resources, most broadly stated, digital resources might be like 74 00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:32,920 the computer itself, the data, our data in the computer, which can be sensitive financial data, 75 00:08:32,920 --> 00:08:38,580 or the data about how we interact on something like Facebook, which creates a behavioral surplus 76 00:08:38,580 --> 00:08:48,560 that is then sold back to us as monetized advertisements. So our data is something very 77 00:08:48,560 --> 00:08:53,460 valuable and it's a type of digital resource that is controlled by an abstract power-based 78 00:08:53,460 --> 00:08:55,640 hierarchy, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon. 79 00:08:56,220 --> 00:09:01,200 Musicians and artists obviously produce, have digital resources in the form of their artistic 80 00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:04,260 products, access to financial system and banking. 81 00:09:04,600 --> 00:09:06,520 These are like digital resources online. 82 00:09:07,180 --> 00:09:12,080 So an abstract power-based hierarchy is based on creating a belief system where others are 83 00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:18,440 required to get your permission to do something or to exercise control over a piece of 84 00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:23,740 property, and that's what software does. Lowry is telling us, in the narrative of this section, 85 00:09:23,960 --> 00:09:28,660 is so that we come to see how software is an abstract power-based hierarchy. It is a form 86 00:09:28,660 --> 00:09:35,800 of storytelling. But as an abstract power-based hierarchy, we see the emergence of the same 87 00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:41,680 sorts of problems we saw earlier relating to abstract power-based hierarchies in human societies, 88 00:09:41,680 --> 00:09:44,040 like religions and governments. 89 00:09:44,860 --> 00:09:46,580 I'll read a quote here from Lowry. 90 00:09:47,820 --> 00:09:50,760 Convince the population to use and believe in your software, 91 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:53,960 and you can have unconstrained levels of abstract power 92 00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:57,360 and control authority over them that is so asymmetric 93 00:09:57,360 --> 00:09:59,800 it could rival that of Egyptian pharaohs. 94 00:10:00,380 --> 00:10:04,200 So we see then the development of the two types of problems 95 00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:06,060 with abstract power-based hierarchy. 96 00:10:06,380 --> 00:10:10,080 There's the oppression from within and the possibility of invasion 97 00:10:10,080 --> 00:10:16,620 from without, from external sources. So the oppression from within, software as an abstract 98 00:10:16,620 --> 00:10:24,940 power-based hierarchy centralizes power, gives the god-king admin rights to a ruling class that 99 00:10:24,940 --> 00:10:30,960 is the proprietor of the software or whatever, the operator of the software. These people then 100 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:37,940 have permission-granting powers. They can ban, surveil, control, debank. They can run social 101 00:10:37,940 --> 00:10:42,960 experiments on us, A-B testing by presenting us with different versions of the software to learn 102 00:10:42,960 --> 00:10:51,700 behaviorally how we react and thereby learn how to control us. They can censor, they can term 103 00:10:51,700 --> 00:10:56,880 things misinformation, they can engage in algorithmic manipulation of what we see, 104 00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:02,600 they can steer how individuals even make sense of their objective reality because that 105 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:08,420 ends up being an extension of our abstract knowledge that we gain through Facebook and 106 00:11:08,420 --> 00:11:12,640 Twitter. We then use that to interpret the real physical world. So there's that impression from 107 00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:18,020 within that can occur when we have these softwares that centralize power as an abstract power-based 108 00:11:18,020 --> 00:11:24,860 hierarchy. There's also invasion from without, weaponized misinformation, troll farms, bot farms, 109 00:11:25,020 --> 00:11:30,140 civil attacks, denial of service attacks, hacking epidemics often involving nation states. 110 00:11:30,140 --> 00:11:46,140 The software, bad actors can attack them, and we're kind of powerless to that because we've been self-domesticated within the software. We've given up all enforcement control and power, ability to use power to the admin controllers of the software. 111 00:11:46,140 --> 00:11:54,200 um there's also a sort of modern empire building because uh software is transnational now they have 112 00:11:54,200 --> 00:11:58,640 facebook operates in other countries in other countries as does twitter so there's this 113 00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:04,920 consolidation centralization of power that subjects that makes us subject to oppression 114 00:12:04,920 --> 00:12:14,580 and possible invasion in the forms that i've mentioned um so software only like any abstract 115 00:12:14,580 --> 00:12:22,180 power-based hierarchy depends upon logical constraints in order to kind of establish 116 00:12:22,180 --> 00:12:27,720 a rule of law within that software and determine grant permission and establish the dominance 117 00:12:27,720 --> 00:12:35,100 hierarchy over the digital resources. But logical constraints have lots of failure points 118 00:12:35,100 --> 00:12:41,640 because software is a very complex thing with many different emergent behaviors. There's many 119 00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:48,460 possible hazardous states that are often not identified. There's also a software culture 120 00:12:48,460 --> 00:12:55,100 Lowry describes of abstraction, because the way that software engineering has developed is that 121 00:12:55,100 --> 00:13:03,500 we have these incredibly complex coding languages that are abstracted to make them easier to use, 122 00:13:03,500 --> 00:13:07,060 which leads to a loss of information by the person manipulating these kind of 123 00:13:07,060 --> 00:13:15,800 of higher level abstracted forms, which again, renders software as kind of having these emergent 124 00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:21,560 states that can be hazardous and unpredictable and so manipulable. Of course, also, there's just 125 00:13:21,560 --> 00:13:27,540 the fact that Facebook, Twitter, Google, they're centralized and the admin is the god king again, 126 00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:33,740 who can just change things as they want. We've seen in the past too, in the other chapters, 127 00:13:33,740 --> 00:13:52,000 When physical power is not used, populations become domesticated because they depend upon the software or the abstract power-based hierarchy to determine all of the disputes and strength and intelligence are not rewarded and so not employed. 128 00:13:52,000 --> 00:14:11,300 And here we're confronted with the obstacle that it seems impossible to project physical power into cyberspace to discipline these abstract power-based hierarchies, to break them up, to decentralize them, to get us to stop them from oppressing us, to protect them from invasion through civil attacks, denial of service attacks, etc. 129 00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:14,180 I'll read another quote from Lowry. 130 00:14:14,180 --> 00:14:32,020 With the way the internet is currently architected, users operating in cyberspace are automatically domesticated as the architecture necessary to project physical power to physically constrain belligerent actors is currently missing, in parentheses, at least it was before the invention of Bitcoin. 131 00:14:32,020 --> 00:14:55,360 In the past, with human societies, warfare as a form of physical power projection was used to decentralize. We stood up to oppressive god kings, killed the pharaohs or whatever. Abstract power hierarchies became less oppressive. We transitioned from monarchies to democracies. But it seems like physical power is not available in the same way in the realm of cyberspace. 132 00:14:55,360 --> 00:15:23,980 So this is really Lowry's big point. Software is going to give rise to soft war. We need a cyber warfighting protocol to enable warfighting within cyberspace, something that will decentralize, allow us to project physical power into the cyberspacial realm, the virtual realm, to decentralize, rebalance, and constrain oppressive software, which are abstract power-based hierarchies that are consolidating power. 133 00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:37,240 If a software protocol is not adopted, entire nations could become subservient to, quote, an elite technocratic ruling class, either domestically or from a foreign power. 134 00:15:38,380 --> 00:15:50,740 So Lowry really wants to talk about Bitcoin, more abstractly speaking, whether it's possible to have something that will project power in, from, and through cyberspace. 135 00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:53,180 He uses that phrase in, from, and through a lot. 136 00:15:53,180 --> 00:15:58,520 So it's kind of probably interesting or important to grab onto that and reflect on what that means. 137 00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:03,300 But what does it mean to project power in, from, and through cyberspace? 138 00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:05,720 Well, we do have current physical power. 139 00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:10,440 We have some physical power constraints that are non-Bitcoin related that preceded that. 140 00:16:10,660 --> 00:16:13,640 You can remove USB drives to prevent people from stealing data. 141 00:16:13,800 --> 00:16:18,520 You can carry encrypted keys and access cards. 142 00:16:18,640 --> 00:16:20,080 You can have air-gapped networks. 143 00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:41,060 But these forms of physical constraint of the virtual or software don't constrain others' computers, and they don't constrain kind of the god kings to which we have bought into their abstract power-based hierarchies by downloading their software and entering into Facebook or Twitter. 144 00:16:41,060 --> 00:16:48,780 so what is the key proof of work is the key and Lowry talks about proof of work kind of aside 145 00:16:48,780 --> 00:16:54,860 from bitcoin initially but it's he's really I think focusing on bitcoin and that that does I 146 00:16:54,860 --> 00:17:00,980 think become evident he does talk about bitcoin directly but proof of work is the important part 147 00:17:00,980 --> 00:17:06,520 for this section without specifying bitcoin up front he says he puts the challenge this way 148 00:17:06,520 --> 00:17:24,520 There is a strategic imperative for nation states to be on the lookout for the development of any kind of open source physical power projection protocol, which empowers people to physically constrain or, quote, chain down other people's computer programs in, from, and through cyberspace. 149 00:17:24,520 --> 00:17:29,360 cyberspace. A protocol like this would be of national strategic significance because it would 150 00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:34,140 represent the discovery of a globally adopted physical security protocol for cyberspace 151 00:17:34,140 --> 00:17:39,960 and an unprecedented new cybersecurity capability. So that's the national strategic imperative. 152 00:17:40,120 --> 00:17:43,360 That's what he's looking for, something to chain down other people's computers in, 153 00:17:43,420 --> 00:17:50,220 from, and through cyberspace. This is something that he's going to talk and develop as a way to 154 00:17:50,220 --> 00:17:55,300 bridge the cyber world and the real world. He quotes Sailor to open a portal between these two 155 00:17:55,300 --> 00:18:01,080 different realms, a bi-directional influence between the virtual and the real. He then talks 156 00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:08,040 about this electrocyberdome, Bitcoin as an electrocyberdome security, piece of security. 157 00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:13,300 I think it's helpful just to visualize it that way, because that's going to give some mental 158 00:18:13,300 --> 00:18:17,880 traction onto this idea of what it means to have a form of power projection within the 159 00:18:17,880 --> 00:18:23,500 cyber spatial realm. So imagine like a dome or a wall between your computer and other computers, 160 00:18:23,500 --> 00:18:29,680 all spam and incoming control signals are then rejected, unless they have a proof of work receipt, 161 00:18:29,980 --> 00:18:36,220 a proof of having expended energy in order to have to validate and get permission. 162 00:18:37,460 --> 00:18:43,720 So the features of an electro cyber security dome within cyberspace is that it would be a passive, 163 00:18:43,720 --> 00:18:51,000 like a wall, non-kinetic, no force displacing mass, non-kinetic, that's what it means. 164 00:18:51,140 --> 00:18:54,780 It's not a bomb blowing up, so there's no bodies on the ground, no physical harm. 165 00:18:55,440 --> 00:19:02,480 It makes denial of service attacks costly, and it constrains other computers, meaning 166 00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:06,800 it also constrains other programmers, the god kings that we might be concerned about, 167 00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:12,320 who are telling us a story through their software, and which we are possibly being oppressed 168 00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:19,400 by if the story is to be believed. So Bitcoin has a cyberdome. Bitcoin has a ledger behind a wall 169 00:19:19,400 --> 00:19:26,880 that's protected from attack in this way, and it has 14 years of runtime. So 170 00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:32,280 Lowry mentions Bitcoin as employing this electrocyberdome security concept. 171 00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:42,420 um computation lowry notes didn't develop this way because previously 172 00:19:42,420 --> 00:19:50,500 computation has been optimized to be faster more efficient smaller and cheaper so early computers 173 00:19:50,500 --> 00:19:57,940 had large plug boards to move things around to change the type of special purpose state it was 174 00:19:57,940 --> 00:20:04,940 trying to compute, as I understand. Modern computers, we've just got compressed that and 175 00:20:04,940 --> 00:20:08,860 made that more abstracted and less physical. Instead of large plug board, modern computers 176 00:20:08,860 --> 00:20:12,960 employ floating gate transistors. We know that chips are getting smaller and smaller, 177 00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:22,380 more efficient, cheaper, faster. So computing is an abstraction that's becoming more and more 178 00:20:22,380 --> 00:20:28,720 unmoored from real-world constraint. And so there's an abstract power-based hierarchy that's 179 00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:39,860 scaling quickly alongside this dematerialization of computation. So Lowry asks, what if we thought 180 00:20:39,860 --> 00:20:47,180 about reverse optimizing to make computation, to make it larger and more energy-intensive? 181 00:20:47,180 --> 00:21:13,300 And then this brings on a really interesting idea, and I'll try to do the best I can to flesh it out, but there's a lot to it, which is Bitcoin as a planetary computer as a way to chain down the virtual and cyberspacial realm and open a bidirectional portal between what is virtual and what is real, what is abstract and what is objective to change both for the better, as I think we'll see. 182 00:21:13,300 --> 00:21:19,340 um so what does it mean for bitcoin to be a planetary computer i'm going to kind of radically 183 00:21:19,340 --> 00:21:24,960 condense this and we can expand upon it in conversation it represents a process by which 184 00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:30,720 the world's power grid roughly speaking is converted into bits of information society 185 00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:36,700 our whole agrarian society becomes part of the internet's hardware so again a process by which 186 00:21:36,700 --> 00:21:42,440 the world's power grid is converted into bits of information real world physical energy converted 187 00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:52,580 into bits. This has the emergent impact of chaining cyberspace to the real world. Again, 188 00:21:52,740 --> 00:21:57,560 opening a portal and changing the nature of both cyberspace and real space in a bi-directional way. 189 00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:03,740 So the thought is the internet, by chaining it down to the real world, to the power grid, 190 00:22:04,380 --> 00:22:10,780 to energy production, is going to change cyberspace to make it physically scarce 191 00:22:10,780 --> 00:22:12,680 instead of 192 00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:15,180 kind of spam abundance, 193 00:22:15,340 --> 00:22:17,300 copy paste, a software admin 194 00:22:17,300 --> 00:22:18,880 can do whatever they want 195 00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:21,000 and can replicate something 196 00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:23,060 as many times as they want. We're going to have physical 197 00:22:23,060 --> 00:22:25,220 scarcity imported into the cyberspace 198 00:22:25,220 --> 00:22:27,300 realm. It's going to be decentralized. 199 00:22:28,540 --> 00:22:29,280 It's, again, 200 00:22:29,340 --> 00:22:30,420 a planetary computer 201 00:22:30,420 --> 00:22:35,000 based on the power grid, pieces of which 202 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:36,720 are controlled by different nations and persons 203 00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,140 and entities, not run by 204 00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:45,720 one god king granting admin rights to computation. It's also going to be zero trust. The internet 205 00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:50,960 now will be zero trust. You don't need to rely on a trusted third party for permission or access. 206 00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:59,020 Anybody can participate in that power grid plugging into converting energy into bits. 207 00:23:00,060 --> 00:23:06,040 This would also have a metacognitive impact. People will change the way they perceive cyberspace, 208 00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:12,840 perceiving it not as a manipulated dream state that you don't really understand what's going on 209 00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:17,440 under the hood. Instead, you're going to see it as something maybe more real. 210 00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:25,100 But it's also bi-directional. Once the virtual is chained to the real by chaining it to our power 211 00:23:25,100 --> 00:23:32,220 grid, the real world is going to change as well. The power grid is going to be built out. New energy 212 00:23:32,220 --> 00:23:37,820 tech is going to be developed because energy efficiency is going to be important innovations 213 00:23:37,820 --> 00:23:45,120 to help people provide more energy in order to convert them into bits. 214 00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:51,480 And it also may affect even our belief systems, the way we interact with the world. 215 00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:58,280 There's a lot of conversations about that, about a fiat mindset versus a mindset once 216 00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:08,400 the real world is tied to the virtual and they're both shown to have scarcity and made more real by 217 00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:16,600 a proof of work protocol that connects the two. So that gets us to Bitcoin. So in talking about, 218 00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:23,160 so up until now, I've been trying to just talk about the cybersecurity dome as like abstract 219 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:30,520 proof of work or whatever within the bitcoin pro within bitcoin lowry begins by first what i think 220 00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:38,320 is a really important point um for his argument is that coin itself within bitcoin is an arbitrary 221 00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:45,140 semantic designation so that we call it a coin has a monetary significance but that's doesn't 222 00:24:45,140 --> 00:24:49,920 it's just an arbitrary way that it's one way that we that we've talked about one of the possible 223 00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:56,280 uses, but it's, in Lowry's estimation, Bitcoin is not primarily a monetary protocol, but rather 224 00:24:56,280 --> 00:25:03,540 a BitPower protocol, which is a term he prefers instead of coin, Bitcoin is BitPower. BitPower 225 00:25:03,540 --> 00:25:09,920 represents the real world cost of solving proof of work, physically costly equations. 226 00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:19,360 BitPower represents state changes occurring outside of our computer that are converted 227 00:25:19,360 --> 00:25:24,740 into bits on the computer. So within bit power, quantities of power are drawn from the planet, 228 00:25:24,980 --> 00:25:29,060 the power is then converted into bits of information by hashing machines and bits are 229 00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:35,220 abstracted as coins. But again, we could call them refer to them as bit power. So that's different 230 00:25:35,220 --> 00:25:41,540 than traditional software in which bits are not derived from real world energy expenditure, 231 00:25:41,540 --> 00:25:47,480 something that's provably costly, but are instead kind of a dream hallucination or story that is 232 00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:51,060 told and controlled and manipulated at will by software admins. 233 00:25:53,320 --> 00:26:11,797 Bitpower in this way Lowry believes could become the foundational layer of the internet because it is chained to the real world physically constrained and decentralized And the bottom line is that for the first time people appear to have discovered through proof of work how to project physical power in from and through cyberspace by converting 234 00:26:11,797 --> 00:26:16,777 global power itself into bits. So again, that's the problem. How do you project physical power 235 00:26:16,777 --> 00:26:22,677 into cyberspace? And proof of work is what Lowry thinks does that. In doing so, you don't have to 236 00:26:22,677 --> 00:26:27,497 rely on an abstract power-based hierarchy with logical constraints because that leads to 237 00:26:27,497 --> 00:26:32,157 oppression and invasion. Instead, we have the ability to project power into the physical world. 238 00:26:33,257 --> 00:26:38,157 Lowry said in a tweet that if you could summarize the book in a single sentence, it would be, 239 00:26:38,517 --> 00:26:45,397 Bitcoin isn't just a new form of money, it's a new form of warfare. So that's soft war. That's 240 00:26:45,397 --> 00:26:52,637 the new form of warfare. Bitcoin as a novel form of cyber warfare. And here, I think this brings 241 00:26:52,637 --> 00:27:20,837 And the other interesting aspect of Lowry's thesis is that it's a solution to kinetic warfare. So Bitcoin as software creates a non-lethal equivalent to warfare that's going to have the same emergent benefits of traditional warfare, which is, again, to break up abstract breakup or discipline abstract power-based hierarchies through a zero trust, permissionless, and egalitarian way of projecting power. 242 00:27:20,837 --> 00:27:26,037 instead of relying on permission granting rights from the ruling class, 243 00:27:26,157 --> 00:27:30,597 the God King admin who determines who has control of what digital resource. 244 00:27:32,237 --> 00:27:37,937 It's going to, Bitcoin as a solution, as software, as a solution to kinetic warfare, 245 00:27:37,937 --> 00:27:40,517 is going to remove mass from power competitions. 246 00:27:41,037 --> 00:27:47,097 Two armies competing are moving mass to fight each other and swap it with energy. 247 00:27:47,097 --> 00:28:06,577 So he draws from the metaphor he developed in previous chapters of antlers, that antlers are a form of power projection that deers use within their dominance contests in order to allow them to project physical power, but also to buffer the use of that so that it doesn't harm them as much. 248 00:28:07,057 --> 00:28:14,857 Bitcoin is antlers for us in that it allows physical power to be projected, but does so in a non-kinetic form. 249 00:28:17,097 --> 00:28:23,017 This has military significance. So the core function of a military is to control trade routes. 250 00:28:23,677 --> 00:28:28,017 For example, the Navy controls trade routes over the ocean. 251 00:28:28,637 --> 00:28:36,237 Lowry then likens cyberspace to an ocean, a place in which there are trade routes and transfers of data that need to be secured. 252 00:28:36,237 --> 00:28:45,977 So we can imagine a hash force, a service dedicated to projecting physical power to preserve a country's freedom of action in, from, and through cyberspace, 253 00:28:45,977 --> 00:28:51,457 They secure their data transfer, secure the data financial, but also data of other types. 254 00:28:53,857 --> 00:29:09,777 Bitcoin as a solution is solving the problem of the kinetic standoff, the kinetic stalemate that we find ourselves in because we've scaled kinetic power beyond our ability to practically use it by developing strategic nuclear arms. 255 00:29:09,777 --> 00:29:19,217 and this has led us to countries that fight really only they solve minor disputes through 256 00:29:19,217 --> 00:29:24,097 less efficient kinetic power projection tactics like small-scale proxy conflicts 257 00:29:24,097 --> 00:29:29,217 but even these Lowry says will eventually be scaled out of practical application 258 00:29:29,217 --> 00:29:37,337 through development of things possibly like AI-powered drones so this we're quickly scaling 259 00:29:37,337 --> 00:29:43,517 all ways to kinetically engage in power projection among nation states because they're becoming 260 00:29:43,517 --> 00:29:51,837 forms of mutually assured destruction. But this is, again, where soft war comes in, 261 00:29:51,837 --> 00:30:00,537 a novel form of warfare, in order to allow us to solve, to not arrive at a stalemate because 262 00:30:00,537 --> 00:30:11,777 we can still project power. It bypasses that kinetic power paradox because Bitcoin and proof 263 00:30:11,777 --> 00:30:17,457 of work allows for infinite scaling. You can keep on plugging more and more power into it 264 00:30:17,457 --> 00:30:22,517 without loss of human life. It also is not a stalemate because it allows for winners and 265 00:30:22,517 --> 00:30:30,517 losers. To quote Lowry in the past, quote, the more society tries to avoid war, the more 266 00:30:30,517 --> 00:30:41,357 Or they must adopt systemically insecure, trust-based, inegalitarian, permission-based cooperation systems like abstract power hierarchies, which tend to break down and lead directly back to war. 267 00:30:43,257 --> 00:30:51,357 So abstract power-based hierarchies used to be that solution to war, but that leads to centralization, oppression, and self-domestication. 268 00:30:52,417 --> 00:30:54,357 The solution is mutually assured preservation. 269 00:30:54,357 --> 00:31:21,217 Bitcoin as softwar allows power summing cooperation without trust-based centralization. So before, with nuclear arms, you would have two great powers. You'd have treaties and alliances, nations getting together to construct abstract power conglomerations, consolidations, consolidating and centralizing power in a way that leads to oppression. 270 00:31:21,217 --> 00:31:28,777 um but with bitcoin again bitcoin allows power summing cooperation without 271 00:31:28,777 --> 00:31:36,257 trust-based centralization we don't by participating in bitcoin everybody's basically 272 00:31:36,257 --> 00:31:42,457 fighting using the same machine our opponents are participating when they add power when they 273 00:31:42,457 --> 00:31:47,337 project power through proof of work they actually strengthen bitcoin overall so that all that 274 00:31:47,337 --> 00:31:53,017 participating in it are actually cooperating and benefiting. It's an interesting idea that we're 275 00:31:53,017 --> 00:31:59,837 all fighting the war using the same machine once Bitcoin and its proof of power aspect are, if they 276 00:31:59,837 --> 00:32:05,957 are considered a form of soft war, allowing us to project power to secure trade routes, the 277 00:32:05,957 --> 00:32:11,777 cyberspacial realm. Again, so by competing in the permissionless access to the network, that is 278 00:32:11,777 --> 00:32:16,757 Bitcoin, we increase the cost of attack to the network. By our opponents participating, they also 279 00:32:16,757 --> 00:32:22,517 increase the cost of attack to the network. And so it scales and cooperation is actually 280 00:32:22,517 --> 00:32:29,797 decentralizing. So software is a novel form of warfare that enables kinetic physical power 281 00:32:29,797 --> 00:32:34,217 competition that scales infinitely and which encourages a sort of cooperation that is actually 282 00:32:34,217 --> 00:32:41,177 decentralizing rather than centralizing. I think that's roughly where this chapter ends, which ends 283 00:32:41,177 --> 00:32:43,937 the theoretical part of this book. 284 00:32:44,297 --> 00:32:46,657 And the next chapter is going to move on to, 285 00:32:46,837 --> 00:32:49,177 I believe, concrete recommendations 286 00:32:49,177 --> 00:32:51,537 that if we accept this thesis as true, 287 00:32:51,697 --> 00:32:55,297 that Bitcoin is a novel form of power projection 288 00:32:55,297 --> 00:32:58,417 enabling this sort of cooperative summing 289 00:32:58,417 --> 00:33:01,077 of even our opponent's power in this version of software, 290 00:33:01,677 --> 00:33:03,577 what are the policy recommendations? 291 00:33:03,577 --> 00:33:08,737 So this, again, so Lucas, I know there's a lot there. 292 00:33:08,737 --> 00:33:12,237 And we both, of course, read through this work through this thought through this. 293 00:33:13,417 --> 00:33:20,877 But I definitely, as I mentioned, I left things out that were of interest in order to try to just tell the straight through narrative. 294 00:33:21,677 --> 00:33:25,937 But but I think that's that's the best I can do for for this chapter. 295 00:33:25,937 --> 00:33:27,757 And again, just to say the best I can do it. 296 00:33:27,957 --> 00:33:31,937 And I don't think that this chapter is like digressively. 297 00:33:32,757 --> 00:33:35,857 It was bad in some in some sense and that it's too digressive or whatever. 298 00:33:35,857 --> 00:33:44,517 The grounded theory methodology encourages this kind of layering of these different types of thought and the use of memos that are then compiled. 299 00:33:44,757 --> 00:33:50,157 So there's a lot of information that's coming into here, and that's one way to put it together the way I just did, I guess. 300 00:33:50,157 --> 00:33:59,877 the grounded theory methodology provides a lot of vectors of attack for the idea so that when we 301 00:33:59,877 --> 00:34:08,777 discuss this idea because he is coming at it from so many different directions from biology from 302 00:34:08,777 --> 00:34:17,777 human society and psychology warfare you know from all of these different angles 303 00:34:17,777 --> 00:34:25,797 it strengthens the final summation of the idea, right? 304 00:34:25,797 --> 00:34:30,617 Where you've got support for it on all sides from everything. 305 00:34:31,377 --> 00:34:39,717 But it does make the process, I mean, like what a laborsome process to do this. 306 00:34:39,717 --> 00:34:45,017 And he mentioned in the methodology, you know, that there's like an inherent fear 307 00:34:45,017 --> 00:34:52,097 when you're using a grounded theory methodology, because it's like, you know, there's so much that 308 00:34:52,097 --> 00:35:00,857 I can draw from the world is my oyster, but then that becomes what I think is the inherent flaw of 309 00:35:00,857 --> 00:35:09,737 abstractions applied in cyberspace, which is unlimited choice. So unlimited choice to defend 310 00:35:09,737 --> 00:35:17,597 the idea here, but getting around to why we're talking about proof of work and how it ties the 311 00:35:17,597 --> 00:35:26,797 physical realm to the abstracted cyberspace realm is that when you enter into that realm, 312 00:35:26,917 --> 00:35:35,477 because we removed the physical component of the computing process and we made general purpose 313 00:35:35,477 --> 00:35:45,097 computers, you no longer had to create these specific use machines. What the computer could do 314 00:35:45,097 --> 00:35:55,197 was only limited by the imagination of the person programming it. And I think we really see that 315 00:35:55,197 --> 00:36:05,597 in the world that we see of abstractions applied to cyberspace, where it truly became, 316 00:36:05,957 --> 00:36:15,357 what is the most imaginative thing that I can do? You know, and so now we, that's why we had, 317 00:36:15,717 --> 00:36:24,557 you know, AI generated, you know, you could, you could overdub anybody and you can do that. 318 00:36:24,557 --> 00:36:34,637 That's why we have that before we have something useful, which would be like your AI doctor or your AI psychologist therapist. 319 00:36:34,637 --> 00:36:39,697 I know that those are in the realm, but I would say that they're a little further behind. 320 00:36:41,777 --> 00:36:45,937 And it was because, you know, like you draw the dreamers. 321 00:36:45,937 --> 00:36:56,057 Like if the domain that you're playing in is abstraction and if it is only limited by your imagination, then who are you going to draw? 322 00:36:56,497 --> 00:36:59,337 Who is going to be inclined to participate in that? 323 00:36:59,597 --> 00:37:13,657 And it's going to be the people with the greatest imagination, not necessarily the people who are most grounded, who are taking an engineer's approach of how can I do the most good with this? 324 00:37:13,657 --> 00:37:21,657 How can I forward humanity with this? Instead, you know, that's what we that's what we wanted. 325 00:37:21,797 --> 00:37:25,557 That's what I think I would hope we all we all deserve. 326 00:37:25,817 --> 00:37:32,737 But instead, what we got was, you know, a way to post your selfies and poke somebody on a social media site. 327 00:37:33,017 --> 00:37:43,217 And it's catching up. It's, you know, now that we have proof of work and we can put the real world and the physical world 328 00:37:43,217 --> 00:37:51,657 and tie them together in a way that instead of being top-down abstract hierarchy control, 329 00:37:51,857 --> 00:37:58,057 it's bottoms up, power coming from the bottom and forcing the abstraction. 330 00:37:59,437 --> 00:38:01,977 And it's useful. 331 00:38:02,277 --> 00:38:03,697 That's what we're finding, right? 332 00:38:03,697 --> 00:38:12,277 And it's not just a theory or a guess or a opinion to say it's useful. 333 00:38:12,277 --> 00:38:26,217 It's useful based on the fact that it's almost a $2 trillion asset 14 years after inception where it was passed between some guys who were trading Magic the Gathering playing cards. 334 00:38:26,217 --> 00:38:33,617 To go from there to where it is now, value is where people put value. 335 00:38:34,297 --> 00:38:36,377 They value that thing. 336 00:38:36,377 --> 00:38:44,397 And so it's turning out to be useful in that it's growing so fast. 337 00:38:44,397 --> 00:38:47,157 It's being voluntarily adopted. 338 00:38:47,317 --> 00:38:49,077 It's not forced upon people. 339 00:38:49,217 --> 00:38:50,777 Nobody has to use Bitcoin. 340 00:38:51,177 --> 00:39:02,777 But if you're in the United States or if you're in a country with a legal tender law, you have to use what they give you, which is effectively, again, it all goes back to Watts. 341 00:39:02,777 --> 00:39:14,477 It's their form of power projection, which is the encapsulation of the energy into this abstraction, which is a little five and a quarter inch piece of green paper. 342 00:39:15,277 --> 00:39:21,757 So, again, there's so many different paths to take on this. 343 00:39:22,417 --> 00:39:23,337 Yeah, there's one thing you mentioned. 344 00:39:23,497 --> 00:39:31,577 I wanted to double back on this because I think this will help us sort out part of this theory and get to one of the interesting things. 345 00:39:31,577 --> 00:39:37,777 You mentioned that Bitcoin, and this was just kind of a glib way that you expressed it, enforces abstraction. 346 00:39:38,477 --> 00:39:46,937 But in Lowry's theory, it's that Bitcoin, bit power is, in Lowry's estimation, not an abstraction. 347 00:39:47,597 --> 00:39:51,417 It's a real world, it's the real world expenditure of power. 348 00:39:52,077 --> 00:39:59,077 And it's interesting to think about the role that abstraction plays in this thesis generally maybe, 349 00:39:59,077 --> 00:40:05,397 But in this chapter, software is an abstract power-based hierarchy. 350 00:40:06,017 --> 00:40:09,717 Software is deployed through abstraction. 351 00:40:10,957 --> 00:40:18,177 And its abstraction is one of the ways that it is able to oppress us kind of without us knowing. 352 00:40:18,357 --> 00:40:23,717 For example, so one of the examples is like a folder is an abstraction on your computer. 353 00:40:23,877 --> 00:40:26,957 You literally obviously don't have a folder on your desktop. 354 00:40:27,077 --> 00:40:28,457 And desktop, again, is an abstraction. 355 00:40:28,457 --> 00:40:39,057 These are ways that we describe something through a metaphor, even though that metaphor is just an abstraction based on one use that enables us to interact with it. 356 00:40:39,057 --> 00:40:59,277 And Lucas, you mentioned like in Facebook, there's pokes. That's an abstraction. But what these abstractions do, what a poke does is it gives information about our desires, wants, dreams to the operators of the software, the God Kings. 357 00:40:59,277 --> 00:41:04,057 It describes our behavior to them in a way more intimate than we even realize. 358 00:41:04,977 --> 00:41:14,757 It's been said that through Facebook, they can predict who's going to enter into romantic relationships and things like this. 359 00:41:15,057 --> 00:41:22,597 We're giving so much of ourselves to Facebook because we see it innocently as a poke, as just like, oh, I'm just touching. 360 00:41:22,937 --> 00:41:24,997 We take these abstractions literally. 361 00:41:25,657 --> 00:41:28,217 Facebook seems to us as a book of faces. 362 00:41:28,217 --> 00:41:32,017 We go from one profile to the next and see people, but they're not people. 363 00:41:32,117 --> 00:41:50,357 These are just abstractions that we're interacting with and giving behavioral data to a giant corporation, which then is able to use that data to predict our future behavior, mold our future behavior, or even give that to the government so a government can do that. 364 00:41:50,357 --> 00:42:05,357 One final abstraction in that kind of tier of abstractions that are ways in which software can be used to oppress us is the example that Lowry gives is the designation cloud as a place where we put our data. 365 00:42:06,037 --> 00:42:10,137 Oh, I'm just sending my data into the cloud, into heaven. 366 00:42:10,437 --> 00:42:16,817 You know, I'm just putting it into a neutral space that's like not accessible to humans, not controlled by humans. 367 00:42:16,817 --> 00:42:22,477 It's like, no, the cloud is you're putting your sensitive data on a trusted third party server, computer, whatever. 368 00:42:22,897 --> 00:42:23,837 They have your data. 369 00:42:23,977 --> 00:42:24,897 It's based on trust. 370 00:42:25,017 --> 00:42:26,317 It's not a cloud. 371 00:42:26,417 --> 00:42:28,317 It's not literally a place where the data goes. 372 00:42:28,317 --> 00:42:39,937 These are all abstractions that we self-domesticate and accept because we think that there's no way for us to opt out of these abstract power-based hierarchies for something more real. 373 00:42:39,937 --> 00:42:54,157 And so I think that that's an integral part of understanding Lowry's thesis is understanding the way that abstract power-based hierarchies are just incredibly insidious, including when they seem more real in the form of software. 374 00:42:54,417 --> 00:42:56,217 Like software is not a thing. 375 00:42:56,317 --> 00:42:57,657 We don't load it on our computer. 376 00:42:57,857 --> 00:43:01,077 It's just like it's a language that's describing a reality to us. 377 00:43:02,277 --> 00:43:02,877 Yeah. 378 00:43:02,877 --> 00:43:15,297 Yeah, this has long been a theory of mine that it's so much easier to pull off a conspiracy now than it would have been 50 years ago, 60 years ago. 379 00:43:15,297 --> 00:43:21,257 You know, when the incoming administration goes into office, we may find out who killed Kennedy. 380 00:43:21,537 --> 00:43:27,217 But undoubtedly, I think there was some conspiracy involved somehow. 381 00:43:27,217 --> 00:43:34,997 Right. Like there were people who had to do things, who had to bribe people or pressure people or do something like that. 382 00:43:35,557 --> 00:43:41,497 But I've thought about, you know, thinking about the assassination attempt on Trump. 383 00:43:41,757 --> 00:43:46,157 And I remember when it happened and I actually called you right right then. 384 00:43:46,157 --> 00:43:49,637 I remember you were driving to Kansas and I was driving to Washington. 385 00:43:49,637 --> 00:44:02,317 And what I remember thinking instantly about that was you saw this flood of people saying conspiracy, conspiracy, and the deep states trying to do this and that. 386 00:44:02,317 --> 00:44:14,837 And what I realized, like, I mean, just watching myself online, just watching other people online, how my behavior and my attitude can be influenced by what I see. 387 00:44:14,837 --> 00:44:21,417 it's no doubt in my mind that if you wanted to do something like that, literally all you would 388 00:44:21,417 --> 00:44:27,477 need to do is use what you know about the person and their interactions and then flood their feed 389 00:44:27,477 --> 00:44:33,877 with things that would set them off. And you're like, Hey, I've got a candidate pool of 20,000 390 00:44:33,877 --> 00:44:38,997 people that I may be able to, you know, and all I need to do is get one person to go crazy. 391 00:44:38,997 --> 00:45:07,577 And so it does, as you say, make it so much more insidious because this is just a keystroke. This is not Jolly West going to visit, I can't remember who it was, but the guy from the head of the CIA's mind control unit going to visit the guy who supposedly killed Kennedy before and then also visiting the guy who killed the guy who killed Kennedy. 392 00:45:07,577 --> 00:45:15,697 like it it doesn't even take that it just takes a keystroke uh you know some imagination really 393 00:45:15,697 --> 00:45:22,017 because that's what it was was someone imagined what this algorithm could be how you could draw 394 00:45:22,017 --> 00:45:27,417 all these things like they say amazon i think knows a couple weeks before a woman knows when 395 00:45:27,417 --> 00:45:34,337 they're pregnant based on how their orders change and stuff and six years ago i sat and i heard one 396 00:45:34,337 --> 00:45:40,717 of Amazon's marketing people talk about how they had over 2 million data points on every single 397 00:45:40,717 --> 00:45:45,677 person who shopped there. And I'm sure it's probably an order of magnitude more now. And so 398 00:45:45,677 --> 00:45:53,477 as they continue to refine that, then yes, it comes back to it's trust-based. Like you, 399 00:45:53,477 --> 00:46:01,517 you just have to trust that they're not going to use that for nefarious purposes. But the problem 400 00:46:01,517 --> 00:46:08,417 is every single time in every single domain in history that someone has trusted and authority 401 00:46:08,417 --> 00:46:14,917 that trust is in broken. Like it's, they're batting a thousand on, on, on breaking trust. 402 00:46:15,857 --> 00:46:22,777 You know, that you can't name, I don't think one example of any sort of institution or any sort of, 403 00:46:22,777 --> 00:46:29,437 you know, data gathering company. That's, that's, I mean, they can't, they just can't be in the best 404 00:46:29,437 --> 00:46:34,337 interest of their customers because they're in the best interest of the company first. And if 405 00:46:34,337 --> 00:46:38,337 they're a public company, then they're in the best interest of their, you know, they're doing their 406 00:46:38,337 --> 00:46:42,137 fiduciary responsibility and they're fighting for whatever's in the best interest of their 407 00:46:42,137 --> 00:46:52,497 shareholders. So it's not evil per se in that it's evil people that are doing this. It's that the 408 00:46:52,497 --> 00:46:59,597 system inherently rewards that type of behavior. It brings in the imagineers with their giant 409 00:46:59,597 --> 00:47:08,137 dreams and what all we can do. And then it gets tied to a profit incentive. And that profit 410 00:47:08,137 --> 00:47:17,337 incentive is then tied to a relationship with the authority of the hierarchy in such a way that 411 00:47:17,337 --> 00:47:25,457 the benefit to cost ratio of further pushing the edge continues to stay high, where you have 412 00:47:25,457 --> 00:47:35,657 regulatory capture of these companies, and then you also have government influence and meddling. 413 00:47:35,977 --> 00:47:44,157 It's kind of weird that there's a former CIA operative on the board of every single social 414 00:47:44,157 --> 00:47:50,977 media company. Um, you know, so, but you, so you, you take all those things and you put them 415 00:47:50,977 --> 00:47:55,757 together, you know, you've got the imagination and you've got the profit incentive and you've got 416 00:47:55,757 --> 00:48:05,057 the lack of punishment, um, for, for doing something wrong. And like, I mean, what would 417 00:48:05,057 --> 00:48:10,717 you expect would happen? Like, you know, it's like you add those parts up together and, and it's, 418 00:48:10,717 --> 00:48:16,677 it's not unexpected what happens it it's not evil it's no definitely you know it's a system 419 00:48:16,677 --> 00:48:24,537 that produces this evil that if we take this system to a new domain and we're able to tie it to 420 00:48:24,537 --> 00:48:34,417 um a benefit to cost ratio that is reasonable um then not only does it um halt the option 421 00:48:34,417 --> 00:49:01,857 Like it's, it's, it's not just, do we remove the reward for insidious behavior? It's that simply by removing the reward for insidious behavior, we insert a reward for, um, cooperative behavior and aligned incentives where the more people who, um, put power, put bit power to the network, the better it is for every single person and not, and not proportionately. 422 00:49:01,857 --> 00:49:14,917 Like it's just as important and Michael Saylor benefits just as much by the protection of people adding power as I do and as you do. 423 00:49:15,117 --> 00:49:16,857 Like it's all the same wall. 424 00:49:18,257 --> 00:49:21,557 You know, there's no hierarchy there. 425 00:49:21,677 --> 00:49:22,517 There's no preference. 426 00:49:22,737 --> 00:49:26,757 There's no like, you know, like what's the world we live in? 427 00:49:26,757 --> 00:49:32,117 And it's a class-based world, and the class is determined based on how much money you have. 428 00:49:32,677 --> 00:49:33,117 Yeah, yeah. 429 00:49:33,117 --> 00:49:41,617 And so the laws don't equally apply to people of high means. 430 00:49:42,297 --> 00:49:44,177 They have money to change everything. 431 00:49:44,697 --> 00:49:47,977 The bank account determines the punishment effectively. 432 00:49:48,697 --> 00:49:56,117 But in Bitcoin, the bank account is the same for – like it's not the same amount. 433 00:49:56,117 --> 00:50:01,077 but they're protected under the law the same way, the law of power. 434 00:50:01,917 --> 00:50:02,497 No, definitely. 435 00:50:03,077 --> 00:50:10,977 I mean, I think you're just so, like, it's really correct to say that people are not evil on this account, 436 00:50:11,217 --> 00:50:14,117 that evil itself is a theological idea. 437 00:50:15,337 --> 00:50:19,977 And Lowry has told us an evolutionary story about humans, 438 00:50:20,677 --> 00:50:23,177 an evolutionary account that is beyond good and evil, 439 00:50:23,177 --> 00:50:27,657 that is about how we've arrived to be apex predators. 440 00:50:28,457 --> 00:50:32,637 And like you mentioned, incentives for an apex predator or what matter. 441 00:50:32,637 --> 00:50:39,437 It's not that an apex predator is good or evil when it is predatory over other people, 442 00:50:39,637 --> 00:50:41,117 other entities, over the resources. 443 00:50:41,297 --> 00:50:42,357 That's just what it does. 444 00:50:42,457 --> 00:50:43,657 Humans are apex predators. 445 00:50:45,037 --> 00:50:49,857 Lowry mentions that there are systemic predators. 446 00:50:50,257 --> 00:50:51,757 Like humans have adapted. 447 00:50:51,757 --> 00:51:15,717 There are storytelling predators. You know, we're a very intelligent species that's not evil, maybe something that's even worse. We're just able to use our faculties to exploit dominance hierarchies by telling a story that is, again, creating an abstract power-based hierarchy. 448 00:51:15,717 --> 00:51:30,377 You mentioned one other thing I wanted to jump back to that I thought was really interesting. I think it draws from this idea that there's always a bidirectional influence between the virtual and the real, between the abstract and the objective worlds. 449 00:51:30,377 --> 00:51:37,537 the nature of that bidirectional relationship changes if we opt for a proof of work linkage 450 00:51:37,537 --> 00:51:44,917 between the virtual and the real. If Bitcoin is a electro cyber dome that is protecting us 451 00:51:44,917 --> 00:51:52,777 from the most nefarious aspects of the virtual. But without that, you mentioned, you know, 452 00:51:52,777 --> 00:52:10,994 So our clicks becoming manifestations of psychological aspects of us which are then used to develop an algorithm to nudge us in different directions And I mean we can imagine again like in response to the you mentioned Trump 453 00:52:11,093 --> 00:52:17,394 the assassination attempt on Trump, it's not too, you know, one can construct conspiracy theories 454 00:52:17,394 --> 00:52:24,354 where people are nudged into assassination attempts, because like software admins, God kings 455 00:52:24,354 --> 00:52:31,374 can so perfectly create an abstract software environment for a person 456 00:52:31,374 --> 00:52:33,613 that that becomes their objective world. 457 00:52:33,734 --> 00:52:36,734 They see a political figure demonize, demonize, 458 00:52:36,854 --> 00:52:39,573 that this person is the next Hitler or whatever, 459 00:52:39,894 --> 00:52:43,113 and then that bleeds back into the real world. 460 00:52:43,113 --> 00:52:46,613 And the abstract, again, this bidirectional portal, 461 00:52:47,154 --> 00:52:50,073 the abstract world that is completely created and controlled 462 00:52:50,073 --> 00:52:56,613 by centralized software is then dominating physical reality too. 463 00:52:56,613 --> 00:53:03,914 And so it's this incredibly malevolent phenomena to have a cyberspace 464 00:53:03,914 --> 00:53:09,194 when we are an ape that tends to confuse the abstract and the real. 465 00:53:10,073 --> 00:53:10,753 Yeah. 466 00:53:11,113 --> 00:53:16,073 He does such a good job of not only pointing out that flaw, 467 00:53:16,474 --> 00:53:19,434 but of pointing out why that flaw exists. 468 00:53:19,434 --> 00:53:28,894 And like it would exist anyway, but he gives the reasoning for so anybody who learns how to code can code. 469 00:53:29,113 --> 00:53:45,273 And there was such a high demand for people who wanted to code that you didn't have people who were grounded in principles of computer science who were, you know, kind of understood, understood that system security. 470 00:53:45,273 --> 00:53:57,753 So again, so all the way back to power projection, what's the most important thing for a country to do? Enforce its borders. Because if a country doesn't enforce it, if it doesn't have a border, it's not a country, right? 471 00:53:57,753 --> 00:54:05,234 Like, I mean, that's such a, that's such a, I know a based thought, but it's also so real. 472 00:54:05,234 --> 00:54:09,394 Like if you, if you don't have borders, you literally do not have a country. 473 00:54:09,394 --> 00:54:15,794 You just have, you know, it's, you're just kind of deeper into this and less into this, 474 00:54:15,874 --> 00:54:17,133 but there's no delineation. 475 00:54:17,654 --> 00:54:22,133 And so take that idea and put borders around your software. 476 00:54:22,133 --> 00:54:31,273 And if you don't have a system security approach first, then you don't have software. 477 00:54:31,814 --> 00:54:34,194 What you have is bait, really. 478 00:54:34,513 --> 00:54:38,854 So if there's any value to it, that someone will come and take that. 479 00:54:40,374 --> 00:54:46,553 And so he talks about not only like two big problems that led to this, such a high demand 480 00:54:46,553 --> 00:54:52,753 for computer engineers and programmers that you can just learn how to do it. 481 00:54:53,194 --> 00:54:59,513 You can learn the language but not know any of the laws kind of that are applied to system security. 482 00:54:59,513 --> 00:55:05,494 And the other part is just the manner in which computer programmers actually code, 483 00:55:05,854 --> 00:55:14,753 which is that you keep removing information until you're only left with the thing that you're working on. 484 00:55:14,753 --> 00:55:37,934 And so, and I did a little terrible coding for a little bit. So I know I understand this concept, which is that it's just Russian nesting dolls where, you know, the, the clear, clear final thing is like, um, this is the text that you see. And then here is like the, um, the way that it's, or here's like the, the font that it's in. 485 00:55:37,934 --> 00:55:44,194 and here's the color that it's in and here's the um the size that it's in and then here's the way 486 00:55:44,194 --> 00:55:50,773 it appears on the screen like is it is it uh wide or is it tall or you know like is it in a column 487 00:55:50,773 --> 00:55:56,794 etc so and it makes sense because you're you're trying to focus you're trying to work on this 488 00:55:56,794 --> 00:56:02,273 one thing and to have all that other information is very distracting and so what you do is you 489 00:56:02,273 --> 00:56:07,053 create all of these different components, all these little Russian nesting dolls, and 490 00:56:07,053 --> 00:56:09,354 you only work on one at a time. 491 00:56:09,354 --> 00:56:16,613 And because software engineers are very, I was going to try to think of a very fun word 492 00:56:16,613 --> 00:56:21,753 for this, polyamorous, I would say, when it comes to their employers. 493 00:56:23,033 --> 00:56:25,613 That just makes me think of SBF stuff. 494 00:56:25,854 --> 00:56:32,093 So anyway, but anyway, so because they are, it's kind of a commodity. 495 00:56:32,273 --> 00:56:47,374 Right. So like the component that somebody designs for my my workout app, that exact same same component may be reused on another job where it's on my banking app. 496 00:56:47,374 --> 00:56:54,974 and if there's a flaw in the one on the on this app then there's a flaw in the other one and so 497 00:56:54,974 --> 00:57:03,654 it becomes where uh one problem can spread to many many many many different products and 498 00:57:03,654 --> 00:57:11,454 and open up tons of different attack vectors where it's like it's not just a hole in the fence 499 00:57:11,454 --> 00:57:20,314 it's like a hole in this fence means a hole in 3 000 other fences yeah um and so it opens 500 00:57:20,314 --> 00:57:29,553 really opens things up like it it makes the importance of system security so much more 501 00:57:29,553 --> 00:57:34,834 important because like i said it's not just one hole in the fence like if you make that one mistake 502 00:57:34,834 --> 00:57:41,314 you can apply it over, you know, over time. And, and like you, I know, I know computer programmers, 503 00:57:41,314 --> 00:57:46,814 like you talk to them and it's like, when was the last time they updated, uh, the, the dependencies? 504 00:57:46,974 --> 00:57:52,093 And a lot of them are like, yeah, like five years, you know, like, so, so if there was a problem 505 00:57:52,093 --> 00:57:58,133 from something back then, and a lot of times these things don't get touched and they don't 506 00:57:58,133 --> 00:58:04,714 get watched. And so not only is the idea of the abstracted hierarchy, not only is that, um, 507 00:58:04,834 --> 00:58:14,593 inherently, uh, biased towards, uh, um, grifters and charlatans. Um, but it's, it's amplified, 508 00:58:14,593 --> 00:58:21,014 um, so much. And, and by the way, we like, we saw that, like we see it right now, um, with all of 509 00:58:21,014 --> 00:58:27,073 the other types of cryptocurrencies that come out where they're all, not all, I'm, I'm, I know that 510 00:58:27,073 --> 00:58:34,073 there's some good pro or some intentional, maybe honest attempts there, but a lot of them are just 511 00:58:34,073 --> 00:58:39,253 literal rub pulls, like it's literal charlatans and grifters trying to make money on people. 512 00:58:39,253 --> 00:58:44,553 And this brings me to what I think is so interesting. So he talks about how the brain 513 00:58:44,553 --> 00:58:52,533 is inclined to produce false positives. And what that means in a walking along the woods, 514 00:58:52,694 --> 00:58:58,273 seeing a stick is that it keeps you safe, right? Because you see the stick and you think it's a 515 00:58:58,273 --> 00:59:05,454 snake because you want it to be a snake because you want it to be, uh, or you, you, you want to 516 00:59:05,454 --> 00:59:10,514 make, you want to err on the side of caution. So you, you want to believe, right? You want to 517 00:59:10,514 --> 00:59:14,553 believe that that thing is a stick because believing that thing is a stick keeps you safe. 518 00:59:15,014 --> 00:59:24,314 Here's the problem. When you apply the same, uh, the same, uh, um, propensity for false positives 519 00:59:24,314 --> 00:59:32,553 to storytelling domain instead of a real world domain, when you apply it to the abstract domain, 520 00:59:33,154 --> 00:59:41,394 what that does is it makes us want to believe the story. And so we're inclined to be taken 521 00:59:41,394 --> 00:59:48,133 advantage of by charlatans and grifters. We want to believe that. And it's the greatest joy of being 522 00:59:48,133 --> 00:59:57,014 human is to believe in a story and to feel what it is and to be moved by it. But also in the abstract 523 00:59:57,014 --> 01:00:06,773 domain, it turns from being a protection mechanism to a threat vector. And like it opens us up and 524 01:00:06,773 --> 01:00:13,674 it's so wild because it's the thing that keeps us safe in the real world makes us vulnerable in the 525 01:00:13,674 --> 01:00:20,633 world of abstraction and storytelling and right. And those beliefs, they are the reality that we 526 01:00:20,633 --> 01:00:26,133 have. The first thing that you'll do at a Tony Robbins seminar is a belief busting, uh, a belief 527 01:00:26,133 --> 01:00:32,154 busting exercise where you just, you attempt to do something in order to shatter the walls that 528 01:00:32,154 --> 01:00:36,113 you've built around your life, whether it's, you know, accepting responsibility for these things, 529 01:00:36,113 --> 01:00:42,593 or you're like walking, you know, walking across, uh, fiery coals or, you know, things when you do 530 01:00:42,593 --> 01:00:49,174 one thing that you didn't believe you could do before it, it breaks everything. It breaks your 531 01:00:49,174 --> 01:00:54,854 whole world of perception. And, and so there's, you know, there's that there's the, there's the 532 01:00:54,854 --> 01:01:03,753 cryptocurrency grab, which is just, um, grifters and charlatans on steroids from, I watched, uh, 533 01:01:03,753 --> 01:01:10,633 the other day, there was like a 10 year old kid who creates a shit coin, uh, and streams it live 534 01:01:10,633 --> 01:01:16,954 and then rug pulls everybody in uh like 10 or 30 minutes or something he made like 30 000 535 01:01:16,954 --> 01:01:24,253 like a 10 year old kid he's like just doing this for fun right and and people want you know they 536 01:01:24,253 --> 01:01:29,233 they see something new they want to believe in it because yeah we have that false positive 537 01:01:29,233 --> 01:01:34,753 predisposition but yeah so so there's that side but then there's also the theft side like that's 538 01:01:34,753 --> 01:01:39,994 like i don't know if you call it legal theft but it's somewhere it's at least in a gray area 539 01:01:39,994 --> 01:01:53,514 You know, I think that somebody should have every right to create a coin in their own name and put it out. If you buy it, you know, that's your fault. I'm not here to protect you. You're not here to protect me. But the other side of that is the cyber crime. 540 01:01:53,514 --> 01:02:07,434 You know, we talked about how that, you know, that componentizing structure and the, you know, the propensity for computer engineers to not have a good basis in system security. 541 01:02:07,773 --> 01:02:13,854 You know, it leads to problems and vulnerabilities that are amplified across the system. 542 01:02:13,974 --> 01:02:15,694 They aren't kept in one spot. 543 01:02:15,694 --> 01:02:21,093 So he said, so cybercrime is to exceed $10 trillion by 2025. 544 01:02:21,093 --> 01:02:42,113 And $10 trillion is an interesting number because $10 trillion is what Michael Saylor has in his presentation to Microsoft for how much of the world's wealth effectively is lost through decay every year, which is about $10 trillion. 545 01:02:42,113 --> 01:02:49,414 dollars. And so it's fascinating because it's enough to motivate people to seek a different 546 01:02:49,414 --> 01:02:55,714 domain, to take the Sun Tzu approach and take the field of battle to somewhere where you can win. 547 01:02:55,714 --> 01:03:02,834 It's like, it doesn't take long to look at this system. And Nikola Tesla did it at the end of the 548 01:03:02,834 --> 01:03:11,253 19th century, somewhere around there, 1890s or early 1900s, when he theorized this form of 549 01:03:11,253 --> 01:03:15,233 electric competition as the future of warfare. 550 01:03:15,714 --> 01:03:19,374 Like back then we still had like cannonballs and, you know, 551 01:03:19,394 --> 01:03:23,233 and we were maybe, you know, we were shooting shells and stuff too. 552 01:03:23,974 --> 01:03:28,694 But we had yet to go to, you know, large scale, you know, 553 01:03:28,814 --> 01:03:32,233 50 years from then, you know, we had nuclear war, but, 554 01:03:32,233 --> 01:03:37,214 but you could foresee that and it doesn't take much to sit and think and go, 555 01:03:37,214 --> 01:03:45,593 okay, if we are going to continue to raise the amount of power projected upon the other side 556 01:03:45,593 --> 01:03:52,674 in a competition of power projection, we will eventually reach a point where there is so much 557 01:03:52,674 --> 01:03:58,553 power being projected that it cannot be used because it would obliterate both sides and you 558 01:03:58,553 --> 01:04:06,874 will reach this stalemate. Like that makes perfect sense. If you're paying any attention at all to 559 01:04:06,874 --> 01:04:11,454 the direction that things are going where, you know, like, Hey, it wasn't that long ago that 560 01:04:11,454 --> 01:04:17,394 people were using spears and then bows and swords. And now we've got, you know, then we had musket 561 01:04:17,394 --> 01:04:23,273 balls and now we've got, um, now we've got shells, um, with, with primers and firing caps. It's like, 562 01:04:23,573 --> 01:04:30,514 okay, this is going in a certain direction. Here's how this ends. Um, and then to be able to take 563 01:04:30,514 --> 01:04:36,434 that step and step from there and go into the realm of a cyber type of competition. 564 01:04:36,954 --> 01:04:37,514 Yeah. 565 01:04:38,174 --> 01:04:38,914 It's so cool. 566 01:04:38,914 --> 01:04:44,894 Like it's this, it's this, this way of, of using first principles to just tear literally 567 01:04:44,894 --> 01:04:48,133 everything down and go, you know, what actually is this? 568 01:04:48,194 --> 01:04:51,133 And so I don't, I don't use the word war anymore. 569 01:04:51,133 --> 01:04:55,974 When I think about this, whenever I see war, I replace it with, you know, power projection 570 01:04:55,974 --> 01:04:59,934 competition because war is so much like a sport, right? 571 01:04:59,934 --> 01:05:09,934 You've got uniforms and you've got, you know, the coach that's in charge and you've got the guys that are the grunts and you've got the, you know, the special forces or whatever, you know. 572 01:05:10,273 --> 01:05:19,894 But all you really have to do is put a grenade in the quarterback's hand or put an AR in the batter's hand and you've got war. 573 01:05:20,093 --> 01:05:21,874 Like it's just a competition. 574 01:05:22,874 --> 01:05:24,874 Who can exert more power, right? 575 01:05:25,014 --> 01:05:25,253 Who can? 576 01:05:25,334 --> 01:05:25,533 Right. 577 01:05:25,854 --> 01:05:26,093 Right? 578 01:05:26,214 --> 01:05:26,753 Like, I mean. 579 01:05:26,753 --> 01:05:27,133 No. 580 01:05:27,474 --> 01:05:27,613 Yeah. 581 01:05:28,474 --> 01:05:28,994 Absolutely. 582 01:05:28,994 --> 01:05:32,694 I think you're right to redesignate war. 583 01:05:33,033 --> 01:05:40,994 Lowry, that's the reason he gives us an account of what he calls primordial economics, because warfighting has this really negative connotation. 584 01:05:42,194 --> 01:05:47,573 People don't want to accept the thesis if they think that Bitcoin is a form of violence or something like that. 585 01:05:47,573 --> 01:06:06,633 But if Bitcoin is just an extension of primordial economics that we are subject to by virtue of being evolved and evolving beings, then we can see we're going to have to keep on scaling the cost of attack to us along with the benefit of attacking us. 586 01:06:06,633 --> 01:06:19,474 That is that in Lowry's language, the prosperity margin we have, the amount of resources that we're accumulating, we have to scale the cost of attack along with our accumulation of resources or else we become a honeypot, right? 587 01:06:19,474 --> 01:06:28,334 If the cost of attacking us is not right in parallel with the benefit of attacking us or doesn't exceed it, then people are going to come after us. 588 01:06:28,334 --> 01:06:54,053 And I like how you emphasized and pointed out the way in which logical constraints are not sufficient to replace a physical power scaling. We can't just put, I mean, because like naively people could think computer code, like that's logic, right? It's an if-then statement. It's something that it's mechanical. It's a smart contract. There's no way to get around this. 589 01:06:54,053 --> 01:07:12,374 But we see cybercrime, we see rug pulls, we see smart contracts are manipulated, people understand how the logic works better than other people, you can use them sometimes in a way to achieve some a result that other people would not have expected to receive because they're abstracting differently than you are. 590 01:07:12,374 --> 01:07:31,814 And it also, as you point out, goes back to just the way that software engineers are human. We're all human. And we have limitations when we deal with things that are more complex than we are. So we're always going to need cost of attack to protect our resources. Otherwise, we have a honeypot. 591 01:07:31,814 --> 01:07:43,854 We have, you know, like Coinbase as the custodian for lots of different entities, Bitcoin, as opposed to holding your keys to your own Bitcoin. 592 01:07:44,214 --> 01:07:57,434 That's the difference between, you know, hoping that logical rules, logical constraints are in some sense protecting you that a third party has decided upon as best kind of best practices. 593 01:07:57,434 --> 01:08:07,533 I have nothing against Coinbase. I just use that as an example because it is a software provider or a form of software or whatever that's being used to protect digital resources. 594 01:08:09,273 --> 01:08:26,173 Again, it's just the difference between Bitcoin is a cyber electric dome that has its own form of real world protection included, whereas anybody else holding your Bitcoin for you is some sort of trusted third party in which you're trusting the logical constraints that they're using. 595 01:08:26,173 --> 01:08:35,173 And I mean, as you elaborated on and mentioned, logical constraints are no substitute for real world, the primordial economics of real world power projection. 596 01:08:35,173 --> 01:08:59,233 Yeah. So the BitPower idea is brilliant in that he, again, uses grounded theory methodology to come to the name of Bitcoin, where he's given these examples previously of how, you know, these things are just named by whatever they, whatever the person chooses to name it, especially in these abstractions. 597 01:08:59,233 --> 01:09:04,534 and it doesn't necessarily relate to what that thing actually is. 598 01:09:04,534 --> 01:09:09,833 Like, you know, they say like a toaster is the most perfectly named product that's ever existed, right? 599 01:09:09,894 --> 01:09:12,113 It's just, it is what it does, right? 600 01:09:12,733 --> 01:09:19,434 But a Bitcoin, like you said, it can very easily be BitPower. 601 01:09:19,954 --> 01:09:23,233 And so BitPower, horsepower, you're expending energy. 602 01:09:23,233 --> 01:09:33,793 what would it mean to be able to have this halo of bit power around your information so that I can still have my Facebook page, I can still have my Amazon account. 603 01:09:33,793 --> 01:09:41,213 But if they want that information, I have to agree and they have to expend energy to get it. 604 01:09:41,213 --> 01:09:54,213 And like, think about how, so the danger of this type of system, you create a tool that tool in exchange for information offers a service. 605 01:09:55,034 --> 01:10:03,314 And, and by the way, your actual activity, just using it, like you don't even need to give them information, right? 606 01:10:03,314 --> 01:10:10,514 Like, I would not need to give anybody information who had a properly coded algorithm. 607 01:10:10,514 --> 01:10:18,594 I would not need to give them any information about me in order to come up with a nearly accurate, perfect profile of who I am. 608 01:10:19,034 --> 01:10:21,873 You know, I'm sure they could figure it out real easy. Right. 609 01:10:22,293 --> 01:10:38,733 But if you could still have that, except, you know, hey, you know, if you want my click history, if you want my if you want to see, you know, like say that they they they time, like how long you spend looking at something and how much it interests you. 610 01:10:38,733 --> 01:10:42,894 and they use that to influence later buying decisions and stuff like that and what they're 611 01:10:42,894 --> 01:10:50,314 going to show you, you know, that's, um, they're doing this, uh, because it's so valuable, like 612 01:10:50,314 --> 01:10:59,394 that, that's knowledge and knowledge is literally power. And so if we were to be able to impose that 613 01:10:59,394 --> 01:11:06,873 halo, that dome, that, um, projection of power around, uh, a cyber dome around our data, 614 01:11:06,873 --> 01:11:13,914 But, you know, we can still have the exact same services like Facebook is not going to be evil if you do that. 615 01:11:14,193 --> 01:11:16,634 Amazon is not going to be evil if you do that. 616 01:11:17,054 --> 01:11:23,494 They will have to in exchange for that information, they will have to make an agreed upon exchange of power. 617 01:11:25,613 --> 01:11:28,954 And and the power of those algorithms. 618 01:11:28,954 --> 01:11:35,634 I listened to a podcast, and I think I told you about this, with the founder of Patreon, who had been a musician. 619 01:11:36,314 --> 01:11:43,354 And he started his career traveling up and down the West Coast, playing every place that he could find, and not making any money. 620 01:11:43,613 --> 01:11:45,773 And then he just started putting some songs on YouTube. 621 01:11:46,394 --> 01:11:53,613 And he gained traction, and he started making a lot of money because people were subscribing to his channel. 622 01:11:53,613 --> 01:12:10,153 And then what happened was the algorithm came out where instead of seeing your timeline, it used to be your timeline, right? Now it's called your feed, what they're feeding you. It used to be chronological and now it's algorithmic based. 623 01:12:10,153 --> 01:12:22,454 And when that went into play, what happened was that type of interaction where you're not showing somebody what they chose to see. 624 01:12:22,713 --> 01:12:30,814 You're showing them what you're choosing to show that is based upon what has gotten the most engagements at all times. 625 01:12:30,894 --> 01:12:33,793 So what's the most addictive thing that you can show them? 626 01:12:33,954 --> 01:12:38,193 And so what that does is that drives something in a certain direction, right? 627 01:12:38,193 --> 01:12:49,373 Where we went from little posts and, you know, hey, this is my salad that I had today to seven second long TikToks that are just ultimately addictive. 628 01:12:49,373 --> 01:12:58,113 And it compressed the attention span and it compressed the ability to impart ideas. 629 01:12:58,113 --> 01:13:00,174 and so it took us 630 01:13:00,174 --> 01:13:02,573 not only did that algorithm 631 01:13:02,573 --> 01:13:04,814 destroy those 632 01:13:04,814 --> 01:13:07,034 operations like this guy 633 01:13:07,034 --> 01:13:09,113 on YouTube where he was making good money 634 01:13:09,113 --> 01:13:09,954 from his subscribers 635 01:13:09,954 --> 01:13:12,894 because when they put the algorithm in 636 01:13:12,894 --> 01:13:14,653 it didn't matter who subscribed to him 637 01:13:14,653 --> 01:13:17,034 if he wasn't making content that fell 638 01:13:17,034 --> 01:13:17,753 into that category 639 01:13:17,753 --> 01:13:20,974 so it not 640 01:13:20,974 --> 01:13:22,373 only destroys that but 641 01:13:22,373 --> 01:13:25,193 it pushes behavior 642 01:13:25,193 --> 01:13:26,934 it moves behavior 643 01:13:26,934 --> 01:13:30,414 And it really has a high cost on society. 644 01:13:31,733 --> 01:13:34,954 It just puts us into a different world. 645 01:13:35,514 --> 01:13:35,954 Yeah. 646 01:13:36,713 --> 01:13:44,474 The vision that Lowry has here is very grand as far as the potential for Bitcoin. 647 01:13:44,474 --> 01:13:54,314 If you want the most bullish thesis possible, then take Lowry at his word that Bitcoin will be a new architect. 648 01:13:54,474 --> 01:13:59,573 Bitpower will be a new foundational architecture for cyberspace. 649 01:13:59,573 --> 01:14:28,514 It will be the presumption for what is real in the virtual realm, a new way to build on top of it an internet that doesn't have the type of algorithmic theft or whatever you want to call it, algorithmic manipulation that you mentioned, in which people have presumptions that the cyber realm has a natural law akin to the real realm of scarcity and things like that. 650 01:14:28,514 --> 01:14:47,773 I forget the other aspects he mentioned, but just the idea that essentially importing gravity into the virtual realm, binding it with natural law akin to what happens in three dimensional space, physical scarcity being one of the most important protection from spam and denial of service attacks and all these things, costliness to action, essentially. 651 01:14:47,773 --> 01:15:10,833 So yeah, the vision that he has, his thesis, the most bullish thesis imaginable, maybe not without its dark sides, because if you don't want to acknowledge that human nature includes a natural propensity towards warfighting or a necessary engagement with primordial economics, 652 01:15:10,833 --> 01:15:19,134 then if your idea of Bitcoin is lovey-dovey, to use a technical word or whatever, then maybe it's not as appealing. 653 01:15:19,394 --> 01:15:29,394 But if you look at it with kind of the hard squint of evolutionary theory and primordial economics, then maybe it's not so far-fetched. 654 01:15:29,394 --> 01:15:39,573 yeah it's um sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me 655 01:15:39,573 --> 01:15:45,014 is is something that i i kept thinking about uh when i was when i was reading this right because 656 01:15:45,014 --> 01:15:52,733 i mean that's what the that's what the logic is the logic is is just words and yeah um and and so 657 01:15:52,733 --> 01:16:09,373 So, yeah, it's like we need to have, in order to keep a wall around our information, we need to have some sort of stick and some sort of stone that can break the bones of these attackers. 658 01:16:09,373 --> 01:16:15,733 And if you think, like, the largest companies in the world are information technology companies. 659 01:16:15,733 --> 01:16:25,854 And so all of that value is value that they have taken, that they, you know, their value is in the information. 660 01:16:25,994 --> 01:16:27,213 Their value is not in the product. 661 01:16:27,414 --> 01:16:40,293 They're, you know, the information informs the product and makes the product even more addictive for robust in engagement. 662 01:16:41,073 --> 01:16:43,314 And so think about all those companies. 663 01:16:43,314 --> 01:16:50,054 Um, so Amazon is, that's data that's going to go into the Bitcoin network and Facebook. 664 01:16:50,054 --> 01:16:55,293 That's data that's going to go into the Bitcoin network because we will be able to encapsulate 665 01:16:55,293 --> 01:17:05,454 this data as we build upon this stack, um, in order to put, um, put a cyber dome around 666 01:17:05,454 --> 01:17:06,733 our, our own data. 667 01:17:07,014 --> 01:17:10,994 And yeah, I had a, I had a couple of ones that I thought about it. 668 01:17:10,994 --> 01:17:15,293 The Mike Tyson quote was, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. 669 01:17:17,193 --> 01:17:38,594 And it's like, yeah, your plan for making a business that was built upon the information that you extract from your customers, that's going to go great until you get punched in the mouth by, oh, you're actually going to have to give a fair market value for that information. 670 01:17:38,594 --> 01:17:42,073 and you're going to have to convince that person to sell it to you. 671 01:17:42,073 --> 01:17:48,573 And the real danger, I was thinking about this in terms of like how laws are enforced 672 01:17:48,573 --> 01:17:51,854 in the real world based on the punishment. 673 01:17:52,253 --> 01:17:56,213 The real danger is not that they will destroy you. 674 01:17:56,713 --> 01:18:19,450 The real danger is that they will milk you dry and they will just take they will take just enough that they can remain fat but you won rise up in offense But you know if you wanted to stop things from happening then the punishment would be so great that the crime would not exist 675 01:18:19,450 --> 01:18:28,490 Like if you really think that, you know, that drunk driving is the worst thing in the world, then put the death penalty on it. 676 01:18:28,590 --> 01:18:38,050 Right. But the way that it's set up is that it just basically is, you know, X amount of money that goes into the system. 677 01:18:39,110 --> 01:18:44,110 We're getting a speeding ticket or littering or, you know, any of these things. 678 01:18:44,110 --> 01:19:04,890 It's like really what it's done is it's created all of these rent seekers who come in and perpetuate this system of extracting and slowly bloodletting the human society as a whole by just taking enough that they don't have the energy to fight. 679 01:19:05,670 --> 01:19:05,850 Yeah. 680 01:19:05,850 --> 01:19:06,470 Yeah. 681 01:19:06,730 --> 01:19:07,970 So I don't know. 682 01:19:08,190 --> 01:19:12,030 The relation to Shakespeare was so cool. 683 01:19:12,030 --> 01:19:15,930 and comparing like computer programmers, 684 01:19:16,150 --> 01:19:17,850 they write their stories using scripts 685 01:19:17,850 --> 01:19:19,950 and they hand these scripts to machines 686 01:19:19,950 --> 01:19:22,650 just like Shakespeare would hand his scripts to actors. 687 01:19:23,470 --> 01:19:24,770 No, that's a part of the argument 688 01:19:24,770 --> 01:19:26,170 is you have to accept that. 689 01:19:26,510 --> 01:19:27,270 I mean, maybe you don't have to. 690 01:19:27,330 --> 01:19:28,710 I want to make this point. 691 01:19:29,630 --> 01:19:32,250 There's a lot of interesting argumentation 692 01:19:32,250 --> 01:19:35,950 and foundation in this thesis, 693 01:19:35,950 --> 01:19:39,970 but to accept that Bitcoin might be a form of software 694 01:19:39,970 --> 01:19:41,430 in a novel form of power projection, 695 01:19:42,270 --> 01:19:43,730 maybe you don't have to accept 696 01:19:43,730 --> 01:19:45,030 all the parts of the argument. 697 01:19:45,250 --> 01:19:46,850 Some of them are kind of, 698 01:19:46,870 --> 01:19:48,550 they give us a sociological 699 01:19:48,550 --> 01:19:49,830 or anthropological account 700 01:19:49,830 --> 01:19:50,910 that fortifies it, 701 01:19:50,950 --> 01:19:52,390 but maybe you're not strictly necessary. 702 01:19:52,950 --> 01:19:54,330 And what you say about this, 703 01:19:54,390 --> 01:19:55,630 the Shakespeare thing was interesting 704 01:19:55,630 --> 01:19:57,930 because people might be reluctant 705 01:19:57,930 --> 01:19:59,290 to accept that software 706 01:19:59,290 --> 01:20:00,850 is a form of storytelling 707 01:20:00,850 --> 01:20:02,230 because it seems so different 708 01:20:02,230 --> 01:20:03,050 to write in code 709 01:20:03,050 --> 01:20:05,570 than to write in the rich language 710 01:20:05,570 --> 01:20:06,830 that Shakespeare wrote in. 711 01:20:06,990 --> 01:20:07,530 So he gives, 712 01:20:08,130 --> 01:20:09,750 Lowry does these different examples 713 01:20:09,750 --> 01:20:13,290 and interesting, but again, 714 01:20:13,430 --> 01:20:15,390 I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. 715 01:20:15,490 --> 01:20:17,230 If there's some part or element that seems, 716 01:20:17,330 --> 01:20:19,150 as you're reading this, that you're like, 717 01:20:19,210 --> 01:20:20,350 I don't know about that, 718 01:20:20,830 --> 01:20:24,410 keep in mind always the thesis that Lowry has. 719 01:20:25,010 --> 01:20:28,370 And I don't know that all of the grounded methodology, 720 01:20:28,510 --> 01:20:30,270 a lot of it goes into reinforcing the structure, 721 01:20:30,390 --> 01:20:32,550 but maybe not all of it is load-bearing. 722 01:20:32,550 --> 01:20:36,270 And so you don't have to accept it all whole cloth. 723 01:20:36,730 --> 01:20:38,710 I want to also just go back and I said that 724 01:20:38,710 --> 01:20:44,130 maybe this is not the most lovey-dovey account. It's actually incredibly kumbaya because if Bitcoin 725 01:20:44,130 --> 01:20:51,930 is a machine in which we are all with our enemies summing up our power and reciprocally making 726 01:20:51,930 --> 01:20:56,770 ourselves and our enemies, like cooperating with our enemies in this software protocol, 727 01:20:57,110 --> 01:21:02,270 soft war protocol, competing with them, but also reinforcing them and then vice versa with us. 728 01:21:02,750 --> 01:21:08,370 I mean, that's a form of war fighting in their own cyberspace that is both real power projection, 729 01:21:08,370 --> 01:21:11,330 but also unprecedented as a form of warfare. 730 01:21:11,950 --> 01:21:15,990 And so, you know, Bitcoin as a form of warfighting, 731 01:21:16,250 --> 01:21:17,330 maybe some people go, 732 01:21:17,790 --> 01:21:21,450 but if you look at actually what Lowry is saying, 733 01:21:21,610 --> 01:21:24,090 it's almost like on the opposite side of, 734 01:21:24,330 --> 01:21:27,410 can we dare to be that optimistic that, you know, 735 01:21:27,550 --> 01:21:30,550 Bitcoin could be the resolution of kinetic-based conflict 736 01:21:30,550 --> 01:21:34,350 because they've scaled out of application. 737 01:21:34,570 --> 01:21:36,990 And so we can now have this soft war protocol 738 01:21:36,990 --> 01:21:40,750 that we can fight and cooperate at the same time, 739 01:21:40,910 --> 01:21:44,470 decentralize, where in the past we would have had to centralize 740 01:21:44,470 --> 01:21:47,390 to continue scaling our power. 741 01:21:47,890 --> 01:21:50,470 Yeah, it's a whole lot easier to square that circle 742 01:21:50,470 --> 01:21:53,590 when you're not thinking of warfare, 743 01:21:53,810 --> 01:21:56,530 but you're thinking of power contests or power projects. 744 01:21:56,830 --> 01:21:58,890 If you're just thinking of that, you're like, 745 01:21:59,370 --> 01:22:02,030 oh, that makes a whole lot more sense. 746 01:22:02,270 --> 01:22:06,130 If I say, and again, this goes back to Lowry 747 01:22:06,130 --> 01:22:13,190 talking about like things that are named things that may not accurately describe like war is not 748 01:22:13,190 --> 01:22:22,110 really probably the proper term it is the subset of the it's the type of power projection competition 749 01:22:22,110 --> 01:22:27,570 like it's one way of power projection competition and you know you could have a arm wrestling 750 01:22:27,570 --> 01:22:33,290 contest and you could have a canoe contest or whatever it's human antlers right it's software 751 01:22:33,290 --> 01:22:53,230 Yeah. I had a question that I thought was interesting. So there was somebody on X who commented they were following along with chapter three. And in chapter three, he talks about property and defining property as having ownership. Like if you don't have ownership, then you don't have property. 752 01:22:53,230 --> 01:23:00,590 and and so we kind of went back and forth and i think there's a case to be made that bitcoin is 753 01:23:00,590 --> 01:23:08,370 not just property but it is um the only proper like say they're calls it the highest form of 754 01:23:08,370 --> 01:23:15,070 property rights that's ever existed um but i think there's even a case to be made for it's the only 755 01:23:15,070 --> 01:23:20,230 actual property that's ever existed everything else could have been taken from you everything 756 01:23:20,230 --> 01:23:25,370 else could have been taken by weather. It could have been taken by hierarchies. It could have been 757 01:23:25,370 --> 01:23:34,510 taken by fire or, or loss. Um, like it could have been taken somehow. The only way that, um, Bitcoin 758 01:23:34,510 --> 01:23:42,930 can leave your possession is if you give it like, and so you completely flip the script there where, 759 01:23:42,930 --> 01:23:49,530 um, where, yeah, you, and it goes, it goes back to that kind of the, the psychological Tony 760 01:23:49,530 --> 01:23:54,310 Robbins type thing where it's like, you have the power, like it's all the power that exists is yours 761 01:23:54,310 --> 01:23:59,770 to give all this information that, um, is so valuable as yours to give. But anyway, so that 762 01:23:59,770 --> 01:24:08,090 got me thinking about the first time that I realized that I was not in control of my own 763 01:24:08,090 --> 01:24:15,810 property. Um, and that was in like 2000, I don't know what year it was like 10 or 11 or something 764 01:24:15,810 --> 01:24:27,250 like that where I had an iPhone and iTunes put the new U2 album on everybody's phone, 765 01:24:27,330 --> 01:24:28,570 whether they wanted it or not. 766 01:24:28,570 --> 01:24:35,490 And I like me, because I am so particular about my music, I have, you know, I had it 767 01:24:35,490 --> 01:24:36,950 all the way I wanted to. 768 01:24:37,270 --> 01:24:43,270 And there was no way to play through everything without running into a U2 song. 769 01:24:43,350 --> 01:24:44,790 Like I couldn't remove it. 770 01:24:44,790 --> 01:24:53,610 And I have never forgiven and I never will forgive them for enforcing you two upon me without my consent. 771 01:24:54,250 --> 01:25:06,090 But so do you have a moment like that, that you realize that like, oh, there's somebody on the other side of this and they have a key that I don't? 772 01:25:07,350 --> 01:25:10,130 Yeah, I don't know that I had a discreet moment. 773 01:25:10,610 --> 01:25:12,410 So two things. 774 01:25:12,410 --> 01:25:20,950 I would first of all back up and say I do slightly disagree with the theoretical account that maybe Saylor has that Bitcoin is the only property. 775 01:25:21,150 --> 01:25:22,450 I think when you get back – 776 01:25:22,450 --> 01:25:23,250 That was mine. 777 01:25:23,570 --> 01:25:26,310 He says the ultimate property rights. 778 01:25:26,370 --> 01:25:27,410 Maybe the ultimate, right? 779 01:25:27,730 --> 01:25:28,710 Yeah, I'm saying – 780 01:25:28,710 --> 01:25:39,630 I kind of agree with on Lowry's account that if you were able to project power over it such that other people within a dominant hierarchy recognize your right to it, that's the best we can get for property. 781 01:25:39,630 --> 01:25:45,610 and so like the wolf snarling over the carcass it is the acknowledged owner and that's like 782 01:25:45,610 --> 01:25:51,570 primordially the best form of property we can have is just you projected power and you've won 783 01:25:51,570 --> 01:25:56,330 whatever power projection contest and emerged with it but as far as like it's interesting the 784 01:25:56,330 --> 01:26:05,470 question you ask like as things have dematerialized we've lost they've lost that tether to physical 785 01:26:05,470 --> 01:26:11,990 reality that thing chaining them to the real world they they've lost that that that scarcity 786 01:26:11,990 --> 01:26:18,610 and which seems like a good thing like oh man all these spotify gives me access to all this music 787 01:26:18,610 --> 01:26:25,790 and and and all this and you know how great one thing and this is not exactly an epiphany that 788 01:26:25,790 --> 01:26:33,050 you had but maybe i still have this inbuilt bias to have a real material book in my hand 789 01:26:33,050 --> 01:26:40,010 because just to have a thing when you hold a physical thing you are holding the keys to that 790 01:26:40,010 --> 01:26:44,630 thing that thing is the key to itself right i mean you have to defend that or whatever if someone 791 01:26:44,630 --> 01:26:50,330 tries to steal it but there's a way also in which just holding a physical object is projecting enough 792 01:26:50,330 --> 01:26:58,470 power over it that it's yours and having an object in physical space on your person you've 793 01:26:58,470 --> 01:27:03,530 you know, use the proof of realness protocol, you're touching it, it's real, you've exerted 794 01:27:03,530 --> 01:27:08,530 enough power over it, nobody else is within your body bubble. And for me, like that most viscerally 795 01:27:08,530 --> 01:27:15,290 translates into having a physical library of real books, like, knowledge is such a precious thing. 796 01:27:15,750 --> 01:27:20,830 Everything on Kindle could disappear, everything on Kindle could be surreptitiously, people could 797 01:27:20,830 --> 01:27:27,090 go in and remove inconvenient facts from books, books can be rewritten. But once you have an old 798 01:27:27,090 --> 01:27:33,110 edition of a book then even if they new editions rewrite you know the blockchated book or whatever 799 01:27:33,110 --> 01:27:40,030 the rewrite the truth that that book was and erase out inconvenient historical facts the physical 800 01:27:40,030 --> 01:27:45,310 artifact is the record of the thing itself and so i'll always have a bias for for books in that way 801 01:27:45,310 --> 01:27:51,470 yeah and they will be to me the salarian real property is is the book that contains 802 01:27:51,470 --> 01:27:59,650 an account, um, relevant, like oftentimes printed, you know, before a certain craziness happened that 803 01:27:59,650 --> 01:28:05,290 wanted to change history. So the, the ultimate form of property then would be a book on Bitcoin. 804 01:28:06,370 --> 01:28:10,530 Absolutely. So I'm, I want to try to bring you back to my side on this because, 805 01:28:10,530 --> 01:28:16,230 okay, so you're sitting there, you've got your book or the wolf is there and they're guarding, 806 01:28:16,230 --> 01:28:23,290 they're guarding the meal. However, in both instances, really what is occurring is that you 807 01:28:23,290 --> 01:28:32,570 have a temporary claim, but someone else with a greater amount of power just has a delayed claim. 808 01:28:32,950 --> 01:28:39,250 Like at any time, if they want to enact that power, then that property becomes theirs. That 809 01:28:39,250 --> 01:28:46,290 book becomes theirs that um that food in front of the wolf becomes theirs it's just a it's a very 810 01:28:46,290 --> 01:28:57,390 tenuous um and and uh and uh fleeting type of ownership where it only exists so long as somebody 811 01:28:57,390 --> 01:29:03,230 else doesn't exert power and that's such an important well the the difference but the difference 812 01:29:03,230 --> 01:29:09,210 is the difference is in Bitcoin, whenever that power is that delayed power, when that 813 01:29:09,210 --> 01:29:13,550 delayed power comes into the system, it strengthens my property rights. 814 01:29:13,790 --> 01:29:16,450 It doesn't take my, it strengthens my property rights. 815 01:29:16,450 --> 01:29:18,390 If they compete on a software protocol with you. 816 01:29:19,190 --> 01:29:19,430 Yeah. 817 01:29:20,210 --> 01:29:20,450 Yeah. 818 01:29:20,670 --> 01:29:23,030 Because someone can torch you out of your keys. 819 01:29:23,230 --> 01:29:26,130 Someone could kill you and deprive you of your property by making you inorganic. 820 01:29:27,770 --> 01:29:32,430 Well, they can, they can only kill you after they got your keys. 821 01:29:33,230 --> 01:29:35,370 they can kill you before you get your keys. 822 01:29:35,490 --> 01:29:35,850 I mean, 823 01:29:35,930 --> 01:29:36,910 if you don't know nothing, 824 01:29:37,030 --> 01:29:38,430 if you got to bury you with your Bitcoin, 825 01:29:38,550 --> 01:29:38,870 Lucas, 826 01:29:39,090 --> 01:29:39,610 if you've got it, 827 01:29:39,610 --> 01:29:40,770 if you've got it in your head, 828 01:29:40,870 --> 01:29:41,550 like if you've got, 829 01:29:41,690 --> 01:29:44,510 if you've got your passphrase in your head, 830 01:29:44,510 --> 01:29:45,690 then that's what I'm saying. 831 01:29:45,770 --> 01:29:48,390 It's the ultimate form of property because it can't be taken. 832 01:29:48,490 --> 01:29:49,670 It can only be given away. 833 01:29:50,330 --> 01:29:50,650 Um, 834 01:29:50,690 --> 01:29:52,210 where if it can be taken, 835 01:29:52,370 --> 01:29:53,050 then it's not, 836 01:29:53,490 --> 01:29:54,290 can it be taken? 837 01:29:54,290 --> 01:29:56,230 This goes back to the hole in the fence theory. 838 01:29:56,790 --> 01:29:57,590 If it can be taken, 839 01:29:57,670 --> 01:29:58,370 it will be taken. 840 01:29:58,790 --> 01:29:59,370 It's just, 841 01:29:59,490 --> 01:30:00,750 it's just a matter of time. 842 01:30:01,350 --> 01:30:01,910 I don't know. 843 01:30:02,070 --> 01:30:02,430 I think it's a, 844 01:30:02,430 --> 01:30:05,510 I'm not trying to dog the significance of your book. 845 01:30:06,910 --> 01:30:11,410 Bitcoin is only significant in that it's future potential more books for me. 846 01:30:11,530 --> 01:30:13,070 So I got to get the priorities straight. 847 01:30:13,250 --> 01:30:15,110 Knowledge takes precedence over BitPower. 848 01:30:16,650 --> 01:30:19,010 It's doing a really good job of producing books. 849 01:30:19,070 --> 01:30:19,650 That's for sure. 850 01:30:20,010 --> 01:30:20,990 It definitely is. 851 01:30:21,050 --> 01:30:22,010 Yeah, there's a whole mill there. 852 01:30:22,550 --> 01:30:26,930 But I would just say that qualification on property that it can be taken from us is an 853 01:30:26,930 --> 01:30:31,250 important reminder to keep present that we always have to defend our property. 854 01:30:31,250 --> 01:30:39,870 And so don't self-domesticate and think that something, even with Bitcoin, don't self-domesticate to the point where you think it's going to defend itself. 855 01:30:40,010 --> 01:30:46,950 You have to have presence of mind to not broadcast on social media that you have a certain amount of Bitcoin. 856 01:30:47,250 --> 01:30:49,370 You have to take all sorts of precautions in the real world. 857 01:30:49,530 --> 01:30:54,610 And that's an important qualification of property that you have to be a wolf. 858 01:30:54,710 --> 01:30:59,310 You have to be ready at all times to die for what you truly believe is yours, I guess. 859 01:30:59,310 --> 01:31:01,030 And I think that that's a good thing. 860 01:31:01,250 --> 01:31:02,470 we're all wolves here. 861 01:31:02,610 --> 01:31:03,510 I'm a wolf in my books. 862 01:31:03,990 --> 01:31:04,390 Nice. 863 01:31:04,770 --> 01:31:05,030 Nice. 864 01:31:05,250 --> 01:31:05,470 I'm a, 865 01:31:05,470 --> 01:31:05,910 yeah, 866 01:31:06,070 --> 01:31:06,490 I don't know. 867 01:31:06,570 --> 01:31:06,910 I'm a sloth. 868 01:31:06,930 --> 01:31:07,650 One other thing I want to, 869 01:31:07,710 --> 01:31:08,470 I think we should mention, 870 01:31:08,690 --> 01:31:11,230 one other thing I think we should mention is, 871 01:31:11,370 --> 01:31:13,150 because it's an interesting aspect we didn't even touch on, 872 01:31:13,210 --> 01:31:14,610 is the critique of proof of stake. 873 01:31:15,570 --> 01:31:15,970 Oh, 874 01:31:16,230 --> 01:31:16,570 yes, 875 01:31:16,750 --> 01:31:17,030 please. 876 01:31:17,630 --> 01:31:18,090 This is like, 877 01:31:18,090 --> 01:31:18,790 yeah, 878 01:31:19,030 --> 01:31:21,030 I hate proof of stake so much. 879 01:31:21,130 --> 01:31:21,270 Well, 880 01:31:21,310 --> 01:31:21,730 and I don't, 881 01:31:21,810 --> 01:31:22,030 I mean, 882 01:31:22,130 --> 01:31:23,710 I'm not looking deeply into it, 883 01:31:23,750 --> 01:31:27,170 but this embodies any intuition I had without looking deeply into it, 884 01:31:27,470 --> 01:31:28,570 where essentially, 885 01:31:28,990 --> 01:31:29,630 like, 886 01:31:29,650 --> 01:31:30,590 I want to pull up this, 887 01:31:30,590 --> 01:31:32,910 how he says this because it's good. 888 01:31:34,710 --> 01:31:38,350 I mean, essentially it comes down to 889 01:31:38,350 --> 01:31:40,490 proof of stake. 890 01:31:40,490 --> 01:31:44,490 He really says that proof of 891 01:31:44,490 --> 01:31:48,350 stake is proof of imaginary power. 892 01:31:48,510 --> 01:31:49,550 It's proof of rank. 893 01:31:49,830 --> 01:31:53,410 It's the embodiment of an abstract power hierarchy. 894 01:31:53,910 --> 01:31:54,890 It's plutocratic 895 01:31:54,890 --> 01:31:59,330 by designating purportedly 896 01:31:59,330 --> 01:32:06,010 say or voting rights or whatever it does to certain groups by the amount that the protocol 897 01:32:06,010 --> 01:32:10,550 purports to say they have at stake but which is ultimately maybe unverifiable because 898 01:32:10,550 --> 01:32:15,050 there's an ethereum foundation again i have nothing against eth and i don't know 899 01:32:15,050 --> 01:32:21,010 much about the protocol i've seen some crazy you know those like what is the always sunny in 900 01:32:21,010 --> 01:32:26,170 philadelphia where that the crazy characters got that conspiracy theory backboard like all those 901 01:32:26,170 --> 01:32:31,650 papers on the wall and he's like gesturing was that meme like i saw a ride the roadmap of eve 902 01:32:31,650 --> 01:32:35,150 kind of looked like that to me it's like i could it just gave me a headache to think that like 903 01:32:35,150 --> 01:32:41,110 they're going to execute this perfectly verge and the splurge and the purge and the yeah but again 904 01:32:41,110 --> 01:32:45,730 i got nothing against the power to them but it's a good critique lowry has i think a good critique 905 01:32:45,730 --> 01:32:49,970 of proof of stake at least if people want to maintain that it's the same as proof of work 906 01:32:49,970 --> 01:33:01,110 It's not that. It's not the same. It's proof of, as he says, rank within an abstract power hierarchy that's been designated by the Ethereum Foundation as having certain logical constraints or something like that. 907 01:33:01,110 --> 01:33:31,090 Yeah, it doesn't work. 908 01:33:31,110 --> 01:33:38,230 One of them is a pasture with a hole, like one of them is inherently prone to being corrupted. 909 01:33:39,130 --> 01:33:47,190 And if and that's just the rule that we have to remember here is that if something can happen, it will happen. 910 01:33:47,310 --> 01:33:50,730 It's a matter of time. And so that threat. 911 01:33:50,730 --> 01:34:02,190 And by the way, the more people that believe in that, the more people that join that community and add value to that network, the faster it accelerates that attack. 912 01:34:02,930 --> 01:34:06,230 Because then it becomes the benefit to cost ratio for doing it. 913 01:34:06,230 --> 01:34:07,030 The honeypot grows. 914 01:34:07,150 --> 01:34:09,090 Yeah, it just keeps going up and up and up. 915 01:34:09,530 --> 01:34:13,950 So, yeah, he makes a great argument when he's talking about that. 916 01:34:13,950 --> 01:34:26,090 You and I had actually put down the exact same quote about the digital age God kings because I sat and I stared at that picture of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos looking like pharaohs. 917 01:34:26,090 --> 01:34:46,790 I just stared at that for like 15, 20 minutes just thinking about, like, have we ever had a time in history where you could take three faces of people and they weren't gods or they weren't kings or presidents and know them instantly because of the power that they hold in this world? 918 01:34:46,790 --> 01:34:54,630 You know, there's just been such this asymmetric explosion of reward for the information technology sector. 919 01:34:54,630 --> 01:35:04,070 And we have to, again, keep in mind that the information technology sector is a proxy for the value of our information. 920 01:35:04,470 --> 01:35:06,250 It's coming from us. 921 01:35:06,590 --> 01:35:07,690 It's being taken. 922 01:35:07,990 --> 01:35:16,630 And currently it's being taken most of the times without your consent or with your consent after, you know, they have a forced opt in. 923 01:35:16,730 --> 01:35:21,570 Like you can't use the product unless you don't unless you agree to their terms and conditions. 924 01:35:21,570 --> 01:35:28,170 And those are 7,500-page long terms of conditions where they spell out everything. 925 01:35:28,510 --> 01:35:29,250 So, yeah. 926 01:35:29,250 --> 01:35:29,370 Yeah. 927 01:35:29,670 --> 01:35:35,570 And I would just note that on that God King picture, that's replicated in the section on proof of stake. 928 01:35:35,770 --> 01:35:42,790 It has Vitalik's visage as a pharaoh and two other people who I guess are part of the Ethereum Foundation. 929 01:35:42,930 --> 01:35:43,970 I don't know enough about it. 930 01:35:44,170 --> 01:35:47,350 And again, I just want to say I got no critique of ETH. 931 01:35:47,350 --> 01:35:57,850 I would like to read a book on like Ethereum versus Bitcoin and have them really lay out and fight on, you know, really proof of it used to be proof of it. 932 01:35:57,850 --> 01:36:04,390 Right. Right. And that's all this is, is like, there's not a critique of Ethereum, except except insofar as Ethereum is proof of stake. 933 01:36:04,850 --> 01:36:16,490 And so it just like I just thought it replicates that God King God King critique by having the same picture for like Vitalik as it did for Bezos and Musk. 934 01:36:16,490 --> 01:36:33,850 But I don't know. There's more interesting in this chapter that we haven't touched on. Some of it's not really, I don't think, benefits talking about. It's kind of like historical stuff, like the progression of proof of work from Adam Back to Hal Finney to Nakamoto, like how it developed and things. 935 01:36:33,850 --> 01:36:37,650 like really interesting historical accounts that you can see in this thesis or in other places. 936 01:36:38,270 --> 01:36:42,490 But I mean, not really, like I don't have a disagreement or a comment upon that. 937 01:36:42,570 --> 01:36:50,290 I think we hit the major points that are kind of of intellectual interest beyond historical record. 938 01:36:51,390 --> 01:36:52,890 Yeah, I think we covered it pretty well. 939 01:36:52,890 --> 01:37:02,890 I think this was a really important chapter because it does introduce, really get us to start thinking. 940 01:37:02,890 --> 01:37:17,410 We've been thinking about the past. We've been thinking about the past of biology. We've been thinking about the past of human society. And this actually gets us to the forward looking mechanism where we can we can look into the future. 941 01:37:17,410 --> 01:37:21,550 I think Adam Back should have statues everywhere. 942 01:37:22,110 --> 01:37:27,770 I mean, the invention of proof of work is incredible. 943 01:37:28,190 --> 01:37:43,550 It is truly, I think, going to be looked back upon as the most influential and beneficial thing to happen to human society in hundreds of years. 944 01:37:43,550 --> 01:37:45,030 if not 945 01:37:45,030 --> 01:37:46,770 I think that 946 01:37:46,770 --> 01:37:48,370 I just think 947 01:37:48,370 --> 01:37:51,770 if Bitcoin is something that can literally 948 01:37:51,770 --> 01:37:53,810 benefit every person on earth 949 01:37:53,810 --> 01:37:55,610 because every person on earth 950 01:37:55,610 --> 01:37:57,690 suffers from the same problems when it 951 01:37:57,690 --> 01:37:59,390 comes to trusting their bits of data 952 01:37:59,390 --> 01:38:01,730 so if it's 953 01:38:01,730 --> 01:38:02,190 something like 954 01:38:02,190 --> 01:38:05,610 I think there is a case to be made that proof of work 955 01:38:05,610 --> 01:38:07,650 is the most consequential discovery 956 01:38:07,650 --> 01:38:09,590 in the history of man 957 01:38:09,590 --> 01:38:11,630 I don't think that that's taking 958 01:38:11,630 --> 01:38:15,810 it too far. Although fire was probably a really good one because it got us to the point where we 959 01:38:15,810 --> 01:38:21,010 could create Bitcoin. Yeah. But as far as the historical progression though, like getting, 960 01:38:21,250 --> 01:38:26,850 finding an answer to the double spend Byzantine general problem, like it's just progression. 961 01:38:26,850 --> 01:38:33,850 It's not just back doesn't get a statue. It's a, as a lot of innovations are a progression of 962 01:38:33,850 --> 01:38:39,450 brilliant individuals who innovated, added to, and had the courage to create and put out. 963 01:38:39,450 --> 01:38:53,750 Yeah. I wonder, I got to thinking about this when I was reading it because Lowry's in the military, which is a abstract power-based hierarchy. And I was thinking like, I just, it's so interesting to think about this. 964 01:38:53,750 --> 01:38:58,330 you know, we talked about this, uh, online, I think was like this modern day Billy Mitchell, 965 01:38:58,330 --> 01:39:06,870 who is, um, trying to scream up to the top in an organization that has an abstract power-based 966 01:39:06,870 --> 01:39:12,110 hierarchy that says, um, rules come from the top down and communication comes from the top down. 967 01:39:12,490 --> 01:39:18,610 Um, so yeah, really interesting. I mean, it's gotta be a very brave thing to do. I think, 968 01:39:18,610 --> 01:39:24,190 where there's career reputation 969 01:39:24,190 --> 01:39:25,930 that would have to be taken into account. 970 01:39:26,570 --> 01:39:29,450 But I suppose if you're going to stake your career on anything 971 01:39:29,450 --> 01:39:30,610 and you understand Bitcoin, 972 01:39:31,070 --> 01:39:33,010 then that'd probably be the place to put it. 973 01:39:33,210 --> 01:39:36,690 That'd be the chance, the time to take that risk. 974 01:39:36,970 --> 01:39:39,430 So yeah, I loved the chapter. 975 01:39:39,810 --> 01:39:41,470 I thought it was really cool. 976 01:39:41,470 --> 01:39:47,010 I thought your introduction and your summary is awesome. 977 01:39:47,010 --> 01:39:57,910 So I think people are really going to benefit from that because you did a great job covering everything from the beginning to the end. 978 01:39:57,910 --> 01:40:09,130 So, yeah, one thing I would be interesting on people chiming in on specifically, I gave it short shrift and I would I'm curious to hear more is Bitcoin as a planetary computer. 979 01:40:11,530 --> 01:40:15,250 How serious that metaphor is, what it actually means. 980 01:40:16,190 --> 01:40:22,870 And and yeah, so that's something I would like other people to help me understand more of is Bitcoin as a planetary computer. 981 01:40:27,910 --> 01:40:36,990 basically it's like the first computer it's a a weaving machine and developed in france in like 982 01:40:36,990 --> 01:40:44,570 a like a hundred hundred some years ago um and it was so it's a loom and it's got all the spools 983 01:40:44,570 --> 01:40:51,750 of thread and it has these cards that have holes in it and they are fed into the machine and the 984 01:40:51,750 --> 01:40:58,770 nature of the pattern on the holes determines the nature of the, um, the color of the thread 985 01:40:58,770 --> 01:41:05,070 that you see, um, that's, that's slung back there by the block. And I watched this thing. I watched 986 01:41:05,070 --> 01:41:11,010 a YouTube video of it and it's, it's literally a computer. Like it is 100, like it's just punch 987 01:41:11,010 --> 01:41:15,710 cards. And you think about the first computers that had punch cards that you put, it is 100% 988 01:41:15,710 --> 01:41:23,450 a computer. And then to think that we went from that to what we have today and in a hundred years 989 01:41:23,450 --> 01:41:34,790 is mind boggling. And so anybody who has doubts that we will be having conflict in cyberspace, 990 01:41:35,370 --> 01:41:42,630 like take a look at the trend of technology and where it's going. And it has become 991 01:41:42,630 --> 01:41:46,950 asymptotic where it is reaching this, you know, 992 01:41:46,990 --> 01:41:48,590 which if we talk about the singularity, 993 01:41:48,670 --> 01:41:51,330 the basically it's like the point where we can no longer figure out what's 994 01:41:51,330 --> 01:41:55,410 going to happen because everything is going to be so cyberspacey. 995 01:41:55,750 --> 01:41:59,890 Like that point I think is just going to happen so much faster than people 996 01:41:59,890 --> 01:42:03,830 think. And we've reached that. So yeah, 997 01:42:03,830 --> 01:42:08,690 if we're going to be globally tied to cyberspace, just, 998 01:42:08,690 --> 01:42:15,790 I guess give credence to the idea that cyberspace will be the place where we hold our competitions 999 01:42:15,790 --> 01:42:21,750 and our battles and it's where we hold our value because our value is what we're going to project 1000 01:42:21,750 --> 01:42:30,890 power to protect those resources. So yeah, but no, the Jacquard machine is, it was just the 1001 01:42:30,890 --> 01:42:36,630 coolest thing. That's been my funnest thing that I enjoyed learning most was watching that video 1002 01:42:36,630 --> 01:42:40,070 and just seeing that old, like it's just making a rug. 1003 01:42:41,070 --> 01:42:41,530 But yeah. 1004 01:42:41,850 --> 01:42:42,150 Yeah. 1005 01:42:42,550 --> 01:42:44,530 No, fascinating chapter. 1006 01:42:45,570 --> 01:42:46,830 Thanks for the conversation. 1007 01:42:46,990 --> 01:42:48,410 Fascinating conversation, Lucas. 1008 01:42:48,850 --> 01:42:50,450 I'm looking forward to chapter six. 1009 01:42:50,790 --> 01:42:53,690 And so, yeah, let's wrap it up. 1010 01:42:53,690 --> 01:42:55,890 Let's look forward to next time because this is, 1011 01:42:55,970 --> 01:42:59,270 it's all culminating in the real world consequences of all this. 1012 01:42:59,370 --> 01:43:00,110 And that's chapter six. 1013 01:43:00,990 --> 01:43:01,510 And there we go. 1014 01:43:01,690 --> 01:43:02,050 All right. 1015 01:43:02,450 --> 01:43:05,190 I guess I will say for those of you that are watching, 1016 01:43:05,190 --> 01:43:07,330 it's on X, it's on YouTube 1017 01:43:07,330 --> 01:43:08,450 and it's on Spotify 1018 01:43:08,450 --> 01:43:11,230 we may, if we get demand 1019 01:43:11,230 --> 01:43:13,750 put it on Apple but nobody's asked yet 1020 01:43:13,750 --> 01:43:15,110 if you would 1021 01:43:15,110 --> 01:43:17,410 please subscribe on YouTube 1022 01:43:17,410 --> 01:43:19,350 or Spotify or follow Grant 1023 01:43:19,350 --> 01:43:20,730 or I on 1024 01:43:20,730 --> 01:43:23,250 X, Grant is at 1025 01:43:23,250 --> 01:43:25,470 the whole frame, I'm at Lucas Maddy 1026 01:43:25,470 --> 01:43:27,230 and we really 1027 01:43:27,230 --> 01:43:29,290 enjoy and we're really thankful for 1028 01:43:29,290 --> 01:43:31,090 the amount of attention 1029 01:43:31,090 --> 01:43:32,990 that this topic has gotten because 1030 01:43:32,990 --> 01:43:34,870 it's been a way for us to have 1031 01:43:34,870 --> 01:43:42,170 really good in-depth conversations that we both wanted to have, but it gives us skin in the game 1032 01:43:42,170 --> 01:43:48,970 knowing that there is an audience to it. So it gives us a reason to really up our game and do 1033 01:43:48,970 --> 01:43:54,210 better. So doing better for us, doing better for you. We thank you. Thank everybody. And Grant, 1034 01:43:54,330 --> 01:43:59,090 yeah, awesome. I'm just loving your summaries, man. Killer conversation. 1035 01:44:00,250 --> 01:44:02,490 Yeah, definitely great conversation, Lucas. Appreciate it. 1036 01:44:03,050 --> 01:44:04,010 All righty. See you guys. 1037 01:44:04,870 --> 01:44:05,270 Later.