On the education side, there's a potential to make it more available to a wider
audience in the same way that you would deliver medicine to people in a epidemic.
Bitcoin is the medicine to that problem, to fiat standard problem.
if you can't make the information any easier to digest, you're going
to have a really hard job getting a lot of people to swallow it.
the whole idea of Permissionless, this agency that I'm starting up,
is to make information taste better
Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show, the Bitcoin
philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn.
And today we have another returning guest, Angelo Morgan Sommers, He's the author
of Do Bitcoin and now he's running this new video agency called Permissionless.
That we're going to talk to him about.
So, Angelo, great to have you on again.
Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show.
Incredible to be back.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Good to have you here, Angelo.
Um, so what has this year, last year been like for you?
Like what, what are the main takeaways and what are, what are
you working on at the moment?
so yeah, it's been a, it's been a year.
Um, it's been busy, busy, busy.
I sort of spent most of the time, working on, on the YouTube channel
for, for FastBitcoins, um, so I was producing educational videos,
which was great experience for me to, to sort of get better at my, my
video stuff, because that's always been my main hobby on the side.
but also just to like rack your brain a little bit and try and
find new ways to explain things.
And a big, I think it was, was it Sigmund Freud that had that quote, if you can't
explain it to a five year old you don't understand it, or something like that?
that's the approach I try to take with learning anything, and so when you're
producing videos that are aimed at like as wide a net audience as possible, it
really makes you have to sort of Think how you can take these complex ideas
that often hide behind highly jargon like language and then try to one,
visualize them in the medium of video and also just explain them in words
that the average person will understand.
So I was doing that for a while.
Um, and yeah, of work.
It's really fulfilling as well because it's Bitcoin.
and so yeah.
What about you guys?
Well, we've been doing this amongst other things, but is, is the fast
bitcoins, uh, channels still up?
Can we still still see the videos?
Yeah, the channel's still up, um, the video's still there.
The company isn't, unfortunately.
I don't want to yap my mouth on too much about that.
I don't know what I can and can't say, so I'd better shut my mouth.
Um, but yeah.
The channel is still there, and so the videos, like ghosts, still exist on the
internet and you can still watch them.
So that's, uh, that's good.
Yeah, they're highly recommended.
I love those videos.
I mean, you're a really good explainer and Yeah, you do it with eyebrows.
That's how I'd explain it.
There's some hidden humor in all of it, and I love it.
Yeah, yeah.
gonna say, I had somebody message me the other day.
Um, an old friend who I was trying to To orange pill for ages and convince him
that, um, you know, he should sell all of his, his crypto tokens and everything.
And he just wasn't hearing it.
And then he just messaged me after not hearing from him for months.
Like I sold all of my Ethereum and all of my crypto and put it in Bitcoin.
I was like, what, finally, great.
But why?
Like, how, how come you've suddenly had this?
He was like, it was your proof of stake video.
And I was like, yes.
So that's a win for me.
I've, I've, I've converted one person.
So all of the efforts were worth it as far as I'm concerned.
You probably converted way more than one.
I mean, we can never know how much impact these things have, but I suspect they
have more impact than we can imagine.
And if we orange pill someone who becomes something later
on, then Well, there you go.
Uh, that's network effects, education, or whatever.
so, so you visualize the ideas first.
So, so if someone asks you, what is Bitcoin?
How do you visualize that and explain it to them?
All right, that is a very awkward question, um, because almost,
so the Bitcoin, it's like, how would you visualize Bitcoin?
The network is very different because that's quite clearly.
You just have a network diagram, but then how do you visualize an actual
Bitcoin is awkward because, you know, the only reason you see things is because
there's some substance there for light to reflect from, but, uh, Bitcoin is like
an endpoint of information of Of matter because there is no actual Bitcoin.
You can't highlight the line of code of one Bitcoin.
You could highlight A-U-T-X-O, but the UTXO isn't actually the
Bitcoin, it's the unspent transaction output of a Bitcoin transaction.
So all you have are Bitcoin transactions.
You don't actually have any Bitcoins.
So if they were something to be visualized, like wouldn't , like
wouldn't reflect off them.
So it would be hard to to have something visual that represents it, because then
you are placing it in the realm of.
the existent, but bitcoins themselves aren't existent, they're like an
emergent property of the way in which a certain system functions, rather than
an actual, but I guess you could argue the matter is the same, but I don't
know, I haven't thought about that yet.
Yeah, I'm asking because I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm toe dipping in this
part of the rabbit hole when trying to explain why ordinals are bullshit.
And like, the first thing, like, how do you explain the difference
between a Satoshi and any other data?
And the way I see it, the Satoshi is something more than just data.
All the numbers and all the information can be copied, but a Satoshi can't.
Like, the Satoshi is attached to the secret someone is keeping.
ordinals are one of the things that I, I just, I haven't looked into so
much, I've been sort of since that whole thing exploded, I was like
knee deep in creating videos on the bits that I did understand fully.
So I don't want to say I'm an ordinals expert at all.
From what I can gather, it was an experiment that sort of slipped
under the radar and some people call an accident that, you know,
led to the ability to store actual data on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Uh, such as NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain rather than IPFS links,
which are used in, in Ethereum.
So everyone got super hyped up about the fact that, oh yeah,
we can have NFTs on Bitcoin now.
and the sort of like Bitcoin as a platform above all else was sort of what
had a lot of people excited about it.
and I can, I can empathize with that position because I know that, you know,
the, The desire for humans to try to control the development of complex
technologies based on their preconceptions of the final purpose that they will
serve can have negative effects on the natural occurrence of truth discovery
when technologies are emerging.
So I can understand why people would be hesitant to say no to something
that could resemble innovation.
However, Bitcoin is a different case because it did have, from the very
beginning, a very specific purpose in mind to which it was supposed to serve,
and so any straying from that could be seen as a tarnish to the original purpose,
especially when you start to have these issues with, you know, the block size
and transaction fees, which I think is causing issues with Lightning as well, if
I'm not mistaken, um, that, you know, if the idea of Lightning is that we can use
it for small transactions like coffee and stuff, but, um, if the transaction fees
on normal on chain settlement transactions goes too high then, uh, you know, the
transaction fees to actually resolve a dispute that occurs on the Lightning
Network would be higher than the actual value of the transaction being made.
And so it's sort of, um, due to the increasing transaction fees can pose big
questions about whether or not Lightning would be able to actually serve the
purpose as a payment layer or whether it, um, I've heard it said on, um, the Um, Guy
Swann's podcast the other day, he thought the final, actual layer, the Bitcoin main
chain will just be more like a court, and that payments will occur on lightning,
like bigger payments, and then for just like your coffees and stuff, solutions
like FettyMint could be in place.
Um, so I don't know if it would work out that way.
But yeah, I can, I can see the danger of it.
I'll say that.
Yeah, so this layering thing is interesting and also, like, Bitcoin's
gonna do what Bitcoin's gonna do, and we can mostly just observe it, and
it takes a lot of time and effort to influence any decision making or make a
change to it, so I guess we'll have to just adapt to what it is, and, I think
a lot of people have this conception that they know what it is and what
it's going to do and therefore they get disappointed when it behaves in other
ways than they expected it to behave.
I think that was the cause of the blocksize wars in the first place,
like the main underlying cause that Bitcoin started behaving
differently than they expected.
Uh, because People have, Bitcoin is different things to different
people, right, so we all have these
notions about what it is, and then it turns out that Bitcoin is just Bitcoin
and it's going to do whatever it does.
Yeah, that was sort of what I said at the beginning, which is like, um,
yeah, when you try to control or sort of enforce preconceptions on the way
in which a technology should develop, you risk averting, like, the actual
process by which accidental great discoveries are made, like the, the
whole thing with gunpowder originally.
And Rubber, I think, was an accidental discovery.
Like, lots of things are accidental discoveries, just from throwing shit
at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Ordinal is another case of that, where people think Uh, let's see if we can
do NFTs and then it ends up being used for something else, which is actually
kind of cool, um, beyond cat pictures.
Maybe, maybe not.
I think to say that you know for sure is hubris, and they're already there.
And so I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not something that
can be undone at this point, is it?
Well, it could be undone by a soft fork even, I think, if I'm technical
enough to explain this, but the op return The size of the op return
could be reduced, uh, so that you wouldn't be able to attach arbitrary
data to a transaction in the same way.
Uh, because, like, the way I see it, the, the Satoshi is, uh, different from all
other data on the, on the time chain.
Because this, the Satoshi is more than just data, it's, uh, it represents the
ability to which the user is able to Change the, uh, the time chain, because
you can move the bitcoins and this is all done by, by keeping a secret, uh,
I, uh, knowing a private key, and the, the, all the other data isn't, it just
isn't, it's, it's there, it's visible for everyone, and it's not attached to the
Satoshi in any way, it's attached to the Coinbase transactions, to the Coinbase
transaction, but not to the actual
So they sort of just pretend that it is like a serial number on a
dollar, but the serial number leaves the dollar as soon as it moves.
And if someone ends up coin joining that Satoshi, for instance, you
can't backtrack it to the Coinbase transaction and see where it came from.
So the whole thing is just a charade, in my opinion.
Yeah, yeah, that would be a soft fork.
I'm pretty sure if it, because it's constricting the rules, right?
If you're reducing the size of the operator and then, yeah, that's a
constriction, so it would be soft.
This, this actually doesn't have to be a fork necessarily, and this is what
Ocean is doing and uh, Luke Dash Jr.
's uh, Bitcoin Knots implementation.
He just doesn't relay transactions that have this opreturn higher, right?
And so, and so, lower opreturns are still in consensus with
the rest of the network, right?
And so Theoretically, more people could just adopt to not relay transactions that
have higher than this opportune limit.
But I guess, I guess the idea would be that if you say, from now on, the
opportune limit has to be smaller than I, then I think that's a, that's a fork.
But right now, right now it's happening with, without a fork.
Yeah, which is even better because, like, all forks are, there's a danger
to forks in general, like, changing the rules is sort of missing the point,
like, with, there's a good argument to be made for never changing the
rules, Bitcoin conservatism, if you'd like, there are good arguments to
that because we, it's hard to foresee second and third order effects of
changing anything in the protocol.
but I guess, yeah, if you're running a node, put your spam filter on
so you don't have to see this, uh, things if you, if you don't
like people scamming other people.
I mean, to me it's like buying a star in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Like, it's there, but it's not really yours, is it?
It's, anyone can see it, you can't do anything with it, it's just there.
So that kind of solution could only take place at the, level of the mempool
though, right, like, in terms of what actually gets, what transactions get
relayed before confirmation, because once one's actually been confirmed and
a block has been mined with one of these transactions, you can't ignore it, right,
unless you want to split the chain.
now the transactions that have already been made are there forever, uh, unless
we hard fork and censor and stuff, but still, they're only in the Coinbase,
as, as, to my knowledge, I should, uh, this is the disclaimer here, but to my
knowledge, they're only in the Coinbase transaction, and they don't follow the
Satoshi anywhere, unless you copy the data and do it in the next transaction as well.
But What's the point of doing that?
Yeah, I think definitely anything that poses a threat to the fungibility of
Bitcoin I'm, like, staunchly against, because I think that could be, some,
like, uh, an actual sort of death sentence over the long run, but yeah, what you're
saying about being hard, it reminds me of that, um, Chinese story, you know,
the one about the guy, uh, whose son, um, well, he's, he's out in the wild
and he finds a bunch of horses and, um, the whole village says, Oh, nice.
Well done.
You found some horses.
And then he goes, Oh, we'll see.
And he brings them home and then his son's riding on one the next day and falls off
and breaks his leg and the whole village goes, Oh, you're so unlucky, you know,
wish you didn't find all those horses, your son wouldn't have broken his leg.
And he says, Oh, we'll see.
And then the next day the army's coming around and they're, they're
drafting everyone into a new war.
And, and his son doesn't get picked because he's got a broken leg and
the whole village says, Oh, you're so lucky your son didn't get picked.
And he says, we'll see.
And I think the general point of that is.
With Bitcoin as well.
Um, if you say don't change the rules, we'll see, you know, that the, there was
a change in the rules that happened in the block wall, block size debate, and that
led to, you know, Segwit, for instance, to be able to enable the, utilization of
the Lightning Network, and then, for that to be able to go to taproot, which does
have massive, massive, privacy benefits.
it's hard to say exactly.
You can't really get like a full, bird's eye view of the entire
board to see what the best move is.
And I think to, as a general principle, restricting moves is dangerous because
you have to have such a high level.
And comprehensive understanding.
It almost becomes totalitarian if you believe you'd have, if you
believe yourself to have the total understanding of what's best for
the progression of the technology.
Yeah, absolutely.
I absolutely agree.
And that's why, why we love the system.
Because it doesn't have leaders.
We all have to come to a consensus of some kind.
But like, this is true for everything in economics, by the way.
That you, you live in the timeline you live in.
You never see the alternative timeline.
You never, you can never tell what would have happened if things had
played out another way than they did.
And we are living through this phase, whether we like it or not.
Uh, just as we live through the block size wars, w whether we like that or not.
Uh, and the conclusion as always is study Bitcoin.
Uh, it'll change you more than you can change it then.
That's a good thing.
Yeah, strap in.
Angelo, maybe on the, on the note of studying Bitcoin, can you tell us
a little bit about what you've been up to, to further Bitcoin education?
Yeah, so, um, so I'll say I was working on the YouTube channel project, for
the past year, but, um, that's sort of stopped now, um, and I think while there
is definitely, um, the need for, for more education, that suits a wider audience,
because at the end of the day, this type of conversation, it's hard to get people
And I think one sort of axiom that has to be taken as true when considering how to
get Bitcoin adoption is that the majority of people just don't care and won't,
they won't care about the technology or why it exists or who created it or
what Satoshi means, what Nakamoto is.
They just don't have the time or energy to even, be learning anything outside
of the job they do to pay their way.
And so.
you know, I was speaking to Obi, and not this, uh, last Amsterdam, but
the one before that, and when he was explaining his whole project with
FEDI to me, he made the point that, um, until it's actually, profitable
for these people to use it, until it actually benefits them in some material
way, the utilization won't be there.
and so I think there's two approaches to the adoption.
There's one which is like just make it work for people so
that it benefits their lives.
And if it's, reducing the costs, um, or increasing the outputs of their labor
in some way, they will use it because it's just like the thermodynamics of it.
It's become it.
Adds leverage to their life.
They put in their works for labor and it stores that energy better.
so there's that approach.
And then there's also the approach of, well, the thing is an idea.
And if we want people to grasp the magnitude of the idea,
then they have to get the idea.
and the problem with Bitcoin, it's not something you can
hold in your hand, right?
It, is something that is conceptual to its core.
And so there is some level of large scale conceptual understanding
that I think has to be reached.
Over the long run, if If we want people to hear things like CBDCs and
rather than think, oh, that's what it is now, we use CBDCs, they think,
oh, that's an option on the table.
Because that's, I think, the purpose of Bitcoin is to get to a point where
it's just increasing the optionality of the average person so that they don't
have to be subjugated to tyrannical levels of leverage held upon them by
those who stand to gain from the current structure of the financial system.
So, that's sort of the point of, that was my viewpoint on.
What needs to happen for adoption.
I'm not smart enough to work on the tech stuff that makes it actually
beneficial to people in their lives.
Unfortunately, I would love to maybe sometime in the future if
I spend a lot of time learning.
But on the education side, you know, I think there is a,
there's a potential to make it.
More available to a wider audience in the same way that you would deliver
medicine to people in a epidemic.
I think we need to take the whole modern monetary theory and the sort of zeitgeist
of current financial operations as an epidemic of, of the, at the level
of memes, and not memes, like funny pictures, but memes like the brain things,
and Bitcoin is the medicine to that problem, to the fiat standard problem.
And so if you can't make the information any easier to digest, you're going
to have a really hard job getting a lot of people to swallow it.
And so, you know, communication of any idea or education.
Education is just communication and the communication of any idea is limited in
large part to the medium, used to get your point across and I think video is,
you know, everybody's paying attention to video, especially, you know, the
average Joe that just got home from work.
They might have time for a one minute video.
They're probably not going to read the Bitcoin standard.
so there has to be a solution for those people.
where we are taking into account the fact that if the medicine tastes like
shit, people aren't gonna drink it.
Um, and we need to make the medicine taste a bit better.
And so the whole idea of, of permissionless this agency
that I'm starting up is to make information taste better.
Um, and the way that you do that, I think, is by playing the game of, attention
at the same level as other industries.
And I think at the moment, in bitcoin.
There's some great content being created, by a lot of people, but if
we could increase the production value of that, make it Up to the standard
of creators that are competing in much more competitive domains, such as
just general finance or, or economics content creators, then we should
be able to reach a larger audience by speaking in tones that actually,
sort of resonate with them better.
So, long term, I think, You know, I've got some plans for potential documentaries
and stuff, which would be great.
but yeah, that's sort of where I want to position myself in the whole race
to get people to understand Bitcoin.
Um, because I come from a video background, so it's Sort of combining
the two points of knowledge,
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So, uh, in, in terms of, uh, mimetic, like if, if you try to take the pulse on, on
your generation, do you think we're like.
Where are most people at?
Are they, like, is this, era of wokeness and, uh, just doing what
you're told, is it coming to an end?
Does the, uh, the opposite, like, the Freedom Footprint side of humanity,
is that, uh, are we multiplying?
Like, do you see, do you see that in your life?
Like, what are your thoughts there?
I think, I think definitely, um, just from like the people that I know in my
generation that the, the sort of energy around any sort of conversation, um,
around Bitcoin or, or money in general, five years ago was an investment.
You know, much less, enthusiastic or there was much less enthusiasm to discover more
than there is today, because I think today people are feeling the effects more of the
failures inherent in the current system.
inflation, I think is just the cost of living in general has shown people that.
You know, these problems actually might be a bit more personal than you thought.
You think a lot of people see it as these high level things that occur
at the level of the state and the government and it's not their problem
and they're just subject to it.
but as it starts to burn more, people start to think, am I just subject
to it or do I have some say in this?
Um, and that dissatisfaction I think is beginning to, to be the cause of,
or like the, or provide the activation energy for people to move towards.
Um, more financial literacy and just understanding.
better understanding their own optionality.
So, so yeah, but the wokeness thing, I think vast majority of
people my age, it's just completely, it's fucked, I'll be honest.
the vast majority of people that I meet, from my age, it feels like
they're not using their own brains.
It's sort of like a hive mind, unfortunately.
but I think that's just a product of, um, The amount of time and attention
that is spent on, you know, their social media sort of echo chambers.
Yeah, it's certainly getting promoted, or it has been getting a lot of promotion,
that sort of worldview, like, uh, the last decade and, like, I would say post
Covid specifically, that Disney went really off the deep end now, maybe we'll
see, uh, the pendulum swing the other way after that, uh, South Park episode
about South Park, about Disney being too woke and stuff, I mean, I'm just worried
what the pendulum swinging the other way looks like, because, like, uh, I mean, you
wouldn't want to get into a society where gay people are thrown off rooftops and
stuff, like, that's not optimal either.
So, it's a tricky thing, but it's like, it's this pendulum thing about humanity
in general, that we swing from one extreme to another, in all issues, and
the internet seems to amplify that.
I think from my intuition is that the the pendulum is so far in one direction for
my generation at the moment that for it to swing the other way would require some
catastrophe that deeply burns the model and associates that burn with the current
positioning of the pendulum, if you will.
Um, and I think what will likely happen before that, um, you know, that's
like very much an impact based change.
Something bad happens and everybody swings the other way reactively.
But then there's also just like the, the chronic dissatisfaction.
with the status quo on the majority of issues that is leaving a large
portion of people my age feeling very alienated and without a place.
And so, you know, unfortunately, I think you do see that with people like the
rise of Andrew Tate in the past year and stuff, where it was like, everybody
just needed to latch on to some sort of, you know, thought leader that could
provide them an antidote to, to the sort of bullshit that they have to deal
with from the opposite end for so long.
And then instead of like.
You know, using their own brains and finding the middle ground,
people just go, oh yeah, it's become slightly more socially acceptable
to say XYZ instead of ABC now, so I'm just only going to say XYZ.
Instead of saying YZAB, just having some middle ground, people sort of
just want to fly the other direction and I think the agency, the agency
of the individual is probably the main point that needs to be fostered.
In order for there to be like a, just a better society in general, because to
me it just feels, when I speak to a lot of people my age, it just feels like
there's very little agency there when it comes to opinions and perspectives.
It's more, it's almost like they do some sort of subconscious cost benefit
analysis of Saying things that are tied directly to their reputation because
there's no North Star after God died.
Everything stops at the skull.
It's just like the ego and then nothing above.
There is no like guiding principle that makes people want to actually
consider anything in their lives to be more important than reputation,
status and material acquisition.
So then, yeah, the, the, the game of opinions and stuff.
Stopped speaking about, well, what matters to me, what do I believe, and
more just like, what's going to keep me my job, and what's going to get me the
social approval of my immediate circle, and it just doesn't go beyond that.
Oh, it's, it's so, uh, it's so true.
It's like, we all do this cost analysis thing.
It's just that we come to different conclusions about it.
And, uh, like more people should, uh, like just liberating
yourself from stuff in general.
It's such a ob it's, to me, it's such an obvious life goal to
have like the, the, the fewer sh shackles you have around your feet.
The, the, the faster you can move and the more things you can do.
Like it's, it's, it's pretty obvious.
But, but people don't seem to, to, uh, see things that way.
No, and it's also that, I think it's just a, uh, you know, when you do, you're
right, everybody does do the cost benefit analysis before they say anything, really.
Um, especially when it comes to You know, you're at a party with your friends, or
you're at the bar with your friends, or you're at the kitchen on your lunch break
with your co workers, and somebody brings up a relatively contentious topic and asks
you your opinion on it, and everybody in that moment does a cost benefit analysis
of what they should say, and oftentimes there is what they actually believe,
what they think people want them to say, and then they find some middle ground,
and I think the degree to which they sway towards what they actually think
versus what they think the people around them want to hear, I think is a good
proxy for understanding, what principles orient that person in the world.
So if, for instance, freedom is a very strong orienting principle, then
saying something closer to what they actually believe is going to be more
likely because freedom of speech, right?
You should be, you should be able to say these things and, and sort
of just let it ride out on the, see how it unfolds after you say it.
but then if reputation is much bigger or pride is much bigger,
then yeah, they're going to want to sort of play the part more.
Um, and I do think in the incredibly secular world that we're in right
now, it's going to be hard to get people to see much as more important
than, what John Vervaeke says is the success on the horizontal axis.
So he posits this idea that in life, there's two axes of success.
There is the horizontal, which is, you know, you're here and then you're here.
And on the other side of it is money, fame, respect, uh, family, kids, um, stuff
that's external, nice house, nice car.
and then you have the vertical axis, which is you're here, you know, maybe
you're insecure because you had a stutter when you were younger and now you find
it slightly harder to speak in public.
And then up here is like, you don't have that issue anymore.
You overcame it.
And then up here is like.
Now you're a great public speaker and you don't have any self consciousness
with regards to your interactions and up here it's like you only say what
you believe to be true or something.
So there's a vertical axis of self transcendence that is only sort of, you
can only make progress on that axis by doing like deep work, internal work,
but you can make progress on this axis.
much quicker in a sense, or not quicker, but you can make progress on that
axis without having to confront the demons that actually scare you, which
are oftentimes on the vertical axis.
And so, people use success on the horizontal as a proxy for, success.
But I think the actual success is done vertically, and so people are more
concerned with being seen as successful than they are with being successful,
and a lot of people don't even know what that means to them, and so when
a question arises, you know, what do you think about XYZ contentious topic,
people are more likely to choose whatever just fits their social group,
because they don't have, they're not oriented vertically, you could say.
I butchered that whole explanation, but you get the point.
No, no.
It's, it's beautiful.
But I, I, I, what I have a hard time with is, is how it's connected to secularism.
because to me, uh, this is More akin to organized religion behavior,
where virtue signaling is everything, showing that you're a good christian
or a good muslim or whatever.
It has turned into, since the state has so much control now because of
fiat, It has turned into an organized religion where, like, signaling that
you're a good statist becomes the main virtue signaling mechanism instead
of maybe a hundred years ago when, yeah, I go to church every Sunday.
Like, it's just another religion replacing the old one.
So secularism in my mind is what freed us from the shackles of the old paradigm,
but then that we've been hijacked again by basically by fiat, because that's
the underlying mechanism that makes the state so big and so influential
and the propaganda is so strong.
So then like we take all these things for granted.
That the state is our friend and it's taking care of us, and
that becomes the new religion.
but so, so, so why secularism?
For exactly that reason, because when religion, or when God died, it left a
power vacuum, in a sense, uh, that needed to be filled by something, and, and
like you said, when you see the world as or less figured out by science that
there was some, spontaneous chemical reaction that happened on accident and
now you're supposed to call that you.
you become a brain floating around in a weird box that's sort of piloting this
meat machine, that has no real purpose because it's all an accident and nothing
really matters and you, you devolve into nihilism and when you devolve into
nihilism, the lack of meaning, I think.
I think a symptom of the lack of meaning that people have in their lives is a
redirection towards hedonism and I think hedonism is a driving cause of a lot of
these sort of unvirtuous virtue signalers.
I
Yeah, but the cure to that is not going back to some play pretend thing, right?
Like, uh, if, if you're just pretending that you know what happened, then
that's just as bad in my mind.
don't think it's about pretending that you know what happened, I think it's it's
more at the level of your interpretation of The world around you, like the way
the, like it's at the, the kernel level, if you will, like the way in which
you actually interface with the world.
How are you, how are you prioritizing things?
and a large part of the question of of how are you prioritizing things is based
on, on the context and in large part to, to prioritize is to serve a purpose.
When you make a prioritization, it is towards a particular
purpose and so devoid of purpose.
This is Mississian.
Human action is purposeful behavior.
That's the first axiom of praxeology.
Exactly, and human action, but even human perception as well is an act of
prioritization, and so when there are these acts of prioritization, they are to
serve a particular purpose, and without any larger purpose than self, all of the
prioritization is based around self, and then you have, well, like you see in the
US, massively rising rates of narcissistic personality disorder, more antisocial
personality disorders are, are increasing massively over the past 50 years.
it's all sort of heading backwards in a sense because there is
nothing greater than self anymore.
And if there's nothing greater than self, then why should you say what you truly
believe if it's gonna get you fired?
Yeah, it's still, the, this Ties back to our conversation with Jeff
Booth with, uh, about how, uh, the main takeaway I got from that is
like, reality is, uh, reality is a reflection of consciousness back at you.
So, like, you create your own reality to a much larger extent than you think.
Like, what you focus on becomes your actual reality because everything
else isn't there for you subjectively.
So to me, like the, this scientism, uh, the, the, the, the bla basic flaw of that
worldview is that it, uh, it rejects, other types of science than empiricism.
To me, it's just this, this, uh, notion that empiricism is the answer to, to
everything when there's, uh, an equal or greater amount of a priori knowledge.
That is even better at explaining reality than the empirical sciences can ever be.
This is from my favorite Hoppe book, The Economic Science and the Austrian
Method, where he explains how even the statement that empiricists make that
All knowledge we can have, we can, we, we use the scientific method to get
empiric, empirical testing and so on peer review to get into to a better
and better approximation of the truth.
But there is no such thing as an, uh, as an absolute truth.
Uh, but what he points out is that that statement in itself.
presupposes that there is an absolute truth because that's an axiomatic,
that's an axiomatic sentence.
It, it does state that something is absolutely true, that
there's no absolute truth.
So, so it's, it's contradictory in that sense.
So I think there's a priori knowledge is what's lacking
from, from, uh, from reality.
So we were like a substituted, you know, the old religions with something.
that wasn't really fit for replacing that, and that is like, okay, so now,
uh, now you know that there is no proof that God exists, so you go to school
and you learn all these other things that are, that you just take at face
value and accept them to be true without questioning them, and that's, you're,
you're, you're making the same mistake over again, so, so, um, you know.
Yeah, there's something missing for sure, but, but I don't think like
going back to some, some old, some old system is, that's not the future.
I mean, forwards is forwards and backwards is backwards.
I was just gonna say, like, for yeah, backwards is backwards in some sense.
Um, if you know exactly what Backwards is, um, you know, like you said about
second, third, and fourth order effects of things, it's hard to know exactly, which
direction is forwards and which direction is backwards if you're not Um, what is it?
Omnipotent?
What's the one that knows everything?
Omnipotent?
If you're not omnipotent, then, then yeah, good luck saying that you know
which, which, which is forwards and backwards, which goes back to the Chinese
proverb of the, the farmer, right?
It's like everything, you might think, oh, your kid broke his leg.
That's bad.
Sure.
But then it's like, but again, you're not taking into account the
larger picture and there is some.
Acknowledgement that has to be made by every human of the limited scope of their
understanding and of their perceptions.
And so, so yes, on that point, there are elements that you would not like to
reinstate about the old way of religion.
However, using myself as a personal case study, I would say over the past three
years, I have become more religious, but I haven't subscribed to any religion at all.
Um, but I've just noticed the way that I perceive The reality
that I live in, and like, like you say, the axioms upon which I.
And, um, I base the rest of my, understanding have vastly changed.
Five years ago, I was incredibly, incredibly nihilistic, um, and believed
that there was little to be done in the world, of much meaning at all.
And it was all sort of accidental and just do whatever because
you're going to die anyway.
And I tried to convince myself that it was optimistic nihilism, but failed in that,
um, because it made me very pessimistic.
and, I think it just.
It fosters bad behavior in a sense, um, and I think the, at the core of that it's
not that now I think that the only way I can sort of explain it visually is this,
like before, it sort of, there was some sort of hierarchy of importance, and it
would stop here, where the ego is, and I think there is nothing beyond that,
because there is no guiding principle, there is no larger narrative, it's all
just accidental, anything can happen, you just Take what you can get before you die.
That's not a very good attitude to have about the world.
And so I think when you shift away from that, and shift towards Uh, being
more principled or actually virtuous, like if you believe truth is something
that should be prioritized and so you do your best to say that, to speak the
truth at the cost of all else, that is a more religious act because it's, even
in cases where you're going to incur some immediate, uh, costs to speaking
the truth, you still do it on faith.
It's still the right thing to do, and that over a long enough period
of time, that is the best way in which you should live your life.
So, it's maybe not, maybe using the word religion and religiousness sort of
Taints it with a lot of previous stuff.
is that better?
Spiritual, again, yeah, that works, but it's also been tainted as well.
I think just, just,
Yeah, I
general.
I'm, I'm really curious, Knut, if you don't mind my, uh, I just have one very
specific question, Angela, because I'm, I'm really hearing a lot of parallels
to, to, uh, something specific here.
How much Peterson have you read, Jordan Peterson?
Oh, quite, quite a bit.
Yeah.
Maps of Meaning?
No, I haven't read that.
Is it good?
have to, you have to.
Oh man, everything you're saying about the perception stuff is just, is just
absolutely coming straight out of that.
I think you'd love it.
I mean, to me, the book is entirely about finding meaning in the absence
of nihilism and explaining, sorry, in the presence of nihilism and
explaining how meaning develops.
Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of a series on Maps of Meaning
with Rob Breedlove right now, so check that out if you like, plus
the literature series and stuff.
I will.
And if you're into that type of conversation as well, I'd
recommend one to both of you.
There's a guy called John Vervaeke, who did a series, a lecture series called
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
Definitely check that out if you haven't, and all the listeners as well.
100 percent check that out.
that, but I couldn't get through it.
I did watch his series on Breedlove as well, though.
He was also on Breedlove, I mean, and I watched the Vervaeke series.
He has a lot of interesting ideas.
Absolutely.
And yeah, I think I speak for most You know, passionate Bitcoiners,
when I say that, uh, with, uh, our journeys are almost always like from,
uh, nihilistic to virtuous, if you will, or nihilistic to finding more.
Meaning in our lives and something to, something to live for.
and I've been thinking a lot about that too.
And like, there's a lot of talk about finding noise, uh, from
finding signal in the noise.
And to me, Bitcoin is not the signal, but it's the greatest noise remover ever.
Because it removes all the layers of noise, uh, from your life.
So you don't have to worry about the noise anymore.
All of a sudden, you can see this, what you were talking about before, the x axis
and the y axis of, uh, where you want to, what you want to do with your life, and
then you can see more clearly, hang on, there's another axis here, that is even
more fulfilling to climb up, than to just walk sideways on this materialistic thing.
So, absolutely,
I think one of the best ways that I can tie that into, the Jordan Peterson
thing, Jordan Peterson had a quote, um, I think it was a Jordan Peterson quote,
I'm not sure, but it might have been something from, I don't know, but it
said, Something along the lines of one of the most, uh, it was a posit of a
potential ultimate purpose, which was, the pursuit of truth in the service of love.
and I read two interesting, sort of definitions of, of both
truth and of love recently.
and while I'm explaining this, keep in mind the idea of money as language.
so the definition of, truth was.
that is the inverse of deceit, right, and so you think the fiat system is deceit, by
printing more you're playing God, saying that you can add resources by adding the
measurement of resources, um, silly stuff, but that's deceit, and so bitcoin would
be truth, so the pursuit of truth could be transposed as the pursuit of bitcoin in
the service of love, and I heard another interesting definition of love, the other
day, which was the generous interpretation of the actions of others, and If you
are talking on like a conversational basis, that might be, you know, somebody
doesn't, take out the trash and instead of thinking, oh, it's because they're
evil and they don't, do anything good ever and they suck and they don't like
me, it could just be they had a bad day.
Maybe they're just not feeling it.
I'll just do it now.
So that's sort of like the generous interpretation of the actions of others.
But economically, um, the generous, the way in which you interpret Uh, the
value of the actions of others is with the compensation that you give them
monetarily, and so the pursuit of truth in the service of love, uh, as an ultimate
purpose, materially instantiated in the development of Bitcoin could look
something like the pursuit of Bitcoin in the service Of generous economic
interpretation of the actions of others, which sounds a hell of a lot to me, like,
you know, deflation, um, as Jeff Booth frames it, which is prices actually,
begin to come down and there becomes more value is exchanged, per hands, there's
more win win, transactions that occur.
I know it's an idea that I literally just had, so I'm still sort of winning it out,
but I think there's something in there.
absolutely, sounds like you're onto something.
But like, it's not only about finding better and more truthful
transactions, it's also about removing unnecessary, deceitful transactions.
Like, I think that's, that's an equal or larger portion of what this is,
because Bitcoin sort of incentivizes you to not spend, and to live a
more Humble life, if you will.
At least that's, that's where it's, the direction it has taken me.
I mean, I mean, I, I wasn't ever very materialistic, but they kind
of sort of pointed out that, you know, striving for more material
wealth was It was just as bullshitty as I expected it to be all along.
It's just that it's good to have a pile of money to feel safe, and to know that
you'll be alright, and to know that, okay, I can do what I want with my life now, and
then start thinking about what that means.
Yeah, for sure.
I wonder if, um, you know, the freedom and safety are often put
as opposing motivators today.
Oftentimes, you know, especially in, As it relates to the state, the state often
tries to buy your freedom with safety.
They, you know, they claim safety as, as something you're getting
in return for your freedoms.
you know, give us your freedoms, in return you'll be safer, we promise,
because we know best, type thing.
Um, but like you said there, having a big sack does make you feel more safe.
Um, but it also makes you more free.
So I was like, hmm, isn't freedom, freedom then something we could actually
use as A metric to measure safety, um, because sure, you could be safer
from damage if you were less free.
By being less free, if it's not really your actions, if actions are being
imposed by fiat upon you, um, then it, is that safety or is it just A is that
someone else's safety being sort of transposed onto your life by decree.
Oh, it's false safety.
It's the illusion of safety.
So this reminds me so much of this Benjamin Franklin quote that I love.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety.
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Uh, I've heard that paraphrased as, uh, deserve neither and will lose both.
And I love that because, like, they're, they're very connected.
And, uh, yeah, the founding fathers were, were based.
I mean, they knew what they were talking about, especially Franklin.
But, uh, so there's absolutely a connection between freedom and,
uh, between liberty and safety.
And it's not what people think it is.
You gotta be free to trip over some things and scar your knee every now and then.
I think, um, if you were to be forcefully wrapped in bubble wrap your
whole life and sent about your way.
would you call that safety?
Well, it's damaging in and of itself.
It is an act of damage to restrict oneself to that degree.
So, I think if you only see damage as, or danger even, as the risk of
the loss of resource, then sure.
But again, that goes back to the vertical axis things.
Um, if resource is the most important, or resource accumulation
is the most important thing, then sure, you'll feel safer.
Um When you're less free, um, but yeah, I think it's an axiomatic thing.
there's this, there's this great scene from this movie Paon, uh, where, uh,
it's about this, this guy getting sentenced, uh, getting a life sentence,
sentence on the Salvation Island.
So he's in a prison on the Salvation Island, uh, salvation Islands, and, uh,
In one of his fever dreams, when being trapped in the cells for decades, he's
crawling in a desert, and there's a jury in the desert, and he crawls up to the
jury, and if I remember correctly, the judge says the jury deems you guilty,
and then he bangs his gavel, and the guy says, Steve McQueen, by the way, says,
um, well, I'm not guilty, I was innocent.
No, you're, you're misinterpreting the crime, you're guilty of a wasted life.
And, and to me, like, uh, that scene was profound, like, it's, it's just, I have
the image in the back of my head every time, because like, uh, all of the time,
because my greatest fear, I realized, is It's a mundane life that leads to nothing.
Like, uh, just doing what you're told and sitting in the same house
all your life, never going anywhere, having the same job, and then just,
that to me is the scariest thing.
The scariest thing, like, never exploring anything, never
getting out of your comfort zone,
Yeah, the best quote that I had, I used to do a lot of parkour when I was younger.
I think I went over my story with you when I first got on, um, about
the parkour accident, which led me to Bitcoin funnily enough.
So I guess the quote is even more true, but there was a, a quote that
I always used to say when I was doing parkour, which was, um, uh,
a ship at shore is a safe ship, but that's not what ships are built for.
It's like, sure, you can have, if you've got a ship, it's supposed to be out.
Incurring the, the cost of large waves and, uh, and the
tides of, of the real world.
If you keep it at, at shore, sure it's safe, but like, again, safety
becomes paramount if you lack purpose.
The purpose of the ship is to be out at sea.
Um, if you keep it locked up in a warehouse or, or stowed at sho.
Then sure, you can get your safety, there's a greater cost that is
alluded to by the, by the judges in the, in the desert there.
And I think if there could be some shift,
Yeah, the other quote is, uh, calm seas never made any good sailors,
Right.
same thing, basically.
Yeah, and I think, like, the The best safety net you
can have is life experience.
Like, the more life experience you have, the safer you are against, you know,
things turning sideways and things not going the way you thought they would.
If you have life experience, and if you know yourself, and if you know if
you can control your, your feelings to some extent, and uh, you know,
know your mind, then you're better equipped to deal with uncertainty.
Uh, which is what it's all about, I guess.
Yeah, that's the whole idea of the vertical axis thing I was talking
about, which is like horizontal might be, okay, how far did you sail?
But then vertical is how good of a sailor did you become?
and so, yeah, the focus on becoming a better sailor, I think is something,
a shift that needs to happen.
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fund today.
I do have one more question, by the way.
I was listening to your Jeff Booth thing, um, and he started talking
about free will, and I didn't quite get to the bit where you sort of gave
your point on free will, but I think we're gonna have an interesting little
five minute, discussion on that.
So what, so do you think you have free will?
This is a great question.
I like, I always answer that with one of my favorite Christopher Hitchens
quotes, which is, of course you have free will, you have no choice but to have it.
It's because it's such, because it's such a, such a lovely conundrum.
Doing an interview with Volker soon, I think, Luke, and he wants, he really
wants to do a deep dive into this subject, so it's, it's fun that you took it up,
because, uh, that you brought it up, because there's, there are studies,
uh, of how consciousness works and the consciousness has a lag of like half a
second or something so when you think you make a conscious decision the decision
has not already been made by some other part of your brain and consciousness is
just like the movie playing up for your mind uh like rationalizing what happened
in hindsight so Falker's conclusion is that you can have free will but you
have to presuppose that There is some, there is such a thing as a soul that,
that, that lives outside of your brain because how you run into some, some of
these catch 22s with like, okay, so, so you think you control your mind?
Well, you can't really, you can't really control what thoughts come into it.
Like, I guess you can control to some extent what, what thoughts you choose to
be, I, I have a suspicion that you can choose focus, like you can choose what
thoughts to focus on and what thoughts to discard to some extent, at least, but
that, I'm not basing that on anything else than intuition, um, but like a
world where free will doesn't exist, That's, to me, deterministic and boring.
I know that free will couldn't exist without entropy.
If the universe was predetermined, and you could figure it all out, and
we didn't have unforeseen things, then free will couldn't exist.
It's just impossible.
So, something is going on somewhere, and I don't know what it is, but I act as if
free will exists, if that makes any sense.
To paraphrase Peterson.
Yeah, I think it's, um, it's interesting.
You could probably have an answer that sort of Check both boxes.
Um, if you just realize that there's, there's more than one way to ask
the question, right, because so you can say you have free will,
but, but what is you in that?
Like, what are you referring to when you say you?
Yeah, that's, that's the conundrum.
Right?
Yeah.
So if you don't even know what you are, then why, why are we getting ahead of
ourselves with questions of free will?
And I think this is an interesting, like, you, um, It presupposes a separate
entity that can impose, for there to be free will, there has to be a
separate entity that can impose upon another separate entity, like the self
can impose upon the other, and there is the assumption in that that that
separation is, is a separate entity.
True, but I'd say if you get rid of that assumption that there is a separate entity
called Knuts, or a separate entity called Luke, then the question of free will
becomes paradoxically, yes, there is free will, um, but there is no you to have it.
And then you can join those studies which say that there is that the decision
happens before the conscious awareness of it, with the, and retain your, your
sense of free will at the same time, because you're, you're, you kick the can
back one level of analysis, to the point of the actual, axiomatic assumptions
about the nature of self and other.
That's very, very interesting.
Did you ever hear about the meme theory of everything?
Nah,
Which is like trying to connect, uh, like the big one in, in, in,
uh, the natural sciences to, to connect the theory of, uh, general
relativity with the quantum theory.
And this guy, uh, had a good explanation.
It's an article, it's on Medium.
So you can check it out, like the meme theory of everything.
And he argues that reality is where our consciousnesses, uh, collide.
So, uh, uh, where our memes Sync, so to speak.
So, uh, you know, I, I can see Luke on my screen here and you can see Luke on
your screen here and our consciousnesses have a similar, idea of what that means.
So, we Collide, and that becomes reality.
I should have maybe made another example.
The table behind Luke is a better example than Luke himself, because
he's a conscious being himself.
But the thing is, this theory,
know that for sure.
I'm, uh, now I, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, uh, , uh, I'm not too familiar.
I don't remember it too well.
So I'm trying to do A-T-L-D-R on something I, I don't completely understand.
But the, uh, there were some takeaways, like, it, it would explain
the Fermi paradox because it's, uh, we couldn't syn with minds.
Uh, that we're too far away from the earth.
So like, uh, so reality on other stars don't mix with our reality
simply because of the equivalent of a hash horizon in Bitcoin, you know.
you can't sync a node on Mars because Mars is too far away most of the
time of the year and you definitely couldn't sync a node on Uranus.
Well, uh, and so, uh, so this is where the meme theory of everything sort of,
A UFO or a signal, rather a signal from another galaxy that we cannot interpret
as anything else than another civilization trying to talk with us would debunk the
theory because it's simply too far away.
But yeah, it's just a theory and just a thought, but I found it intriguing.
So Bitcoin's quite cool, eh?
Absolutely, because there's so many, so many parallels, parallels between how
it actually works technically with all of these, uh, exciting, um, theories
about reality and consciousness and stuff like this, like syncing time in
this, uh, intra subjective way instead of having this illusion of objective
time when there's actually no such thing and, time goes, Let's Time
flows at different speeds depending on where you are in gravity and stuff.
So, uh, the thought of intersubjective time and an intersubjective time
chain is also very Yeah, it opens up a whole plethora of other rabbit
holes to deep dive into, doesn't it?
Yeah, intersubjectivity is, is, is interesting one because it's, sort of at
the core of, like you were saying, the prioritization of perceptions back when,
normal religions were the main thing.
Everybody agreed.
that God was real, and that the stories of the Bible, uh, it happened, and
so everybody acted as if that was the case, and because everybody acted as
if that was the case, in some sense it became the case, and, uh, I'm not
smart enough to understand Nietzsche at all, but I think When he said God
is dead, to some extent that was an acknowledgement of the fact that whilst
everybody had the intersubjective consensus that it was the case, that he
was there, he was there in some other way.
but then once that, um, consensus died, so did he.
And the same applies to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin only exists because everybody believes that it does.
There's no actual thing.
and in a large part the same applies to the monetary premium of a 10 pound
note or a 10 dollar note, because, the belief in the value is what actually
makes it true that it is valuable.
so it almost, it goes back to the prioritization of perceptions again.
prioritize things that have value to you.
Um, I think this was sort of covered on the There's a guy called Mike
Hill, another good series on Breedlove that's worth taking a look at.
the Mike Hill series was really good, he touched upon this a lot.
yeah, he's great.
Uh, uh, he, his series about is about the hero's journey stuff, right?
Or one of the series with him.
I think,
of them was, yeah.
But in general it was about value.
this reminds me of two things.
Uh, first, uh, book recommendation Small Gods by Terry Pret, where, where
this is actually the case that the gods become more alive, the more people
believe in them, uh, in a fantasy world.
Uh, uh, and yeah.
Uh.
My big thought on this and related to Bitcoin is that Pascal's Wager
actually provably works with Bitcoin.
So if you replace the word God, like, Pascal's Wager is like, if you You have
this binary choice, you can choose to believe that God exists or not exists,
and if you choose to believe that God does not exist, you risk eternal
damnation in hell and burning forever and stuff, so why not just act as if God
exists, and then you mitigate that risk.
The problem with Pascal's Wager as is, is, uh as I see it, is that
it discards all the other 5, 000 religions that have a different
notion of what the word God means.
But if you do it with Bitcoin, if you act as if Bitcoin exists,
you actually help it materialize.
In a very real and direct way, so if you take Bitcoin for a real thing,
and not as most people think it's funny money, and that it's a scam, and
it's a pyramid scheme, and whatever.
And They don't contribute to Bitcoin's existence, but those who live this
thing, and act as if it exists,
actually make it come into being, in a very real sense.
so, I find that insanely fascinating, that, it's actually
a, provable substitute for God.
Yeah, it's It's the same with Bitcoin right, if nobody, if there were no
humans to interpret the binary strings that make up the Bitcoin network, then
there would be no Bitcoin network.
It's the interpretation, it's the imposition of meaning onto those binary
strings that gives it its existence.
If there was no observer, it's kind of like that double slit meme that you
shared the other day, where the guy's looking away and it's the wave and
then he looks at it and it's the thing.
If nobody's looking at Bitcoin, if there's nobody to interpret, I'd say humans are
a part of the Bitcoin network because we are the end point interpreter of the code.
We're the only part, we're the only part of it.
All the numbers ex, uh, predated us.
Like all the numbers were already there, mathematics was there along.
It's just the perception.
Uh, like we, we are literally the Bitcoins.
We are literally the network.
All the computers are just fancy calculators who help us.
Don't trust verify.
Uh, so we are the thing, like, and that's why a Satoshi is not just data,
it's, it's information for like, no, like, yeah, so, so there's a definition
of the word information, which is like, it's the data that makes sense to you.
To, to a person.
And, I would say it's Satoshi's even more than that.
So it's, it's, it's literally a part of you and me, and, it cannot be
copied like other data can be copied.
At all.
It's the ability to move the satoshi that is the satoshi.
The information about the asset is the asset, and so on.
Yeah, I wrote an article when I was working at FastBitcoins.
That was, had a similar point, which is that, um, the only, if the only
fun, if, if Bitcoin doesn't exist while it's static, if the only function it
has is to move or to change hands, to change addresses, um, then it
only sort of, it's like an emergent property that comes into existence at
the point that it moves, um, because it's the only function that it serves.
It can only move.
and so while it's static, it's gone.
and the only thing that when you say I own two bitcoins worth of UTXOs,
you're just owning optionality to bring those bitcoins back into existence
at the point at which they move.
if you, if you're seeing it as we are the bitcoins, then they could
exist even when they're not moving.
I've never seen, I've never seen it as that way.
I say that they do because of a thing that Mises points out
about money is never idle.
Money Always serves a purpose, even when it doesn't change hands, because,
because it, uh, provides its owner with a sense of security and, uh, uh,
more optionality to do more stuff, and, uh, therefore lower time preference.
So, so it's always serves a function, a function for its holder, and especially
when, when they're a part of you.
So like, I wrote an article about that and I had a talk
about it and everything and the.
The way I see it, the, the miner is not the asic, it's the guy who decides
to buy the ASIC and plug it in and run the code, because without that
action, the, the, the ASIC is nothing.
And the, and same thing with the nodes and all the bitcoins rec
reside within our heads because it's all about keeping secrets.
That all, all the private keys are kept in a head somewhere,
in someone's head somewhere.
There is no private key that is So the location of a hardware
wallet, the location of a seed phrase, that's also a secret.
It's also in someone's head.
Right, in this, yeah, in the same way that like, numbers exist in your head,
you can write them on a whiteboard, but you're like, you're drawing symbols,
but the actual numbers aren't on the whiteboard then, it's the interpretation
that gives the numbers their, their meaning, or the symbols their meaning, so
the numbers only, same applies to Bitcoin.
And here's the fun, this was told to me as a joke, but I love it so much.
Bitcoin has always existed.
It's just that the hash rate was zero before 2009, which is provably true.
All the numbers were there.
So it's absolutely 100 percent true.
In that case, what, what, so AI cannot become conscious then, right?
If it's just the interpretation of symbols that exist only within your side,
there is sort of a, what if the blank canvas of reality is an interpretive,
like a drive on a computer that interprets whatever material world is,
and that's what gives rise to the human experience, but then humans develop
their own interpretive structures.
That give meaning to, things like numbers and binary, and then through
the increasing complexification of that binary code, it then begins to
resemble the humans that interpret it.
But if it's just, if it only has meaning in the same way that Bitcoin doesn't
exist, if you take the humans out, if you take the humans out of the AI, then
the AI isn't, doesn't exist either.
It's the interpretation of it.
I don't know why I've got balloons flying up,
Love it.
But yeah, artificial intelligence, like, in my mind, it's, it's not intelligence
at all because it lacks agency.
It, it doesn't have free will and therefore it's not intelligent.
So it's, it's good at guessing what word comes next.
It's really damn good at that, but it's, it's, I don't see it ever developing
a, a mind of its own, uh, not anytime soon anyway, and, uh, I, I think we're,
If we truly want to make a sentient AI, I think we're looking in the wrong
direction, like, I think we're searching in the wrong place for that, because
I think it has so much to do with felt uneasiness, and why you perform actions
at all, why you feel an urge to do something, it's because you You imagine
a state of the future in which you have done a thing, and that state is preferable
to you, to what you live in right now, and how can a computer ever do that?
Uh, how could, how could an algorithm ever do that?
I just don't see that happening.
but how do you know that you're doing that if you can't define you?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Because pain is, again, a relationary thing, and if you can't define you or
can't prove that you is something separate than other, it could all be illusory.
And therefore pain is just a consistent pattern rather than an actual thing.
Absolutely, all these dichotomies might be false at the, on a very basic
layer, but they can still be useful.
I, I can still, like, use the term you and use the term felt uneasiness
in a context that makes sense.
And like, I'm, I'm just trying to Like, explain why I don't think
that AIs will ever become sentient.
It's because of this motivating factor that acting human beings
have to do conscious things.
To do, to engage in purposeful behavior rather than just acting on instinct.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
I don't know where it comes from, but I do think it's real.
Hey guys, maybe to bring this back into a more, uh, concrete side of things because
Boring!
been, this was great.
Enjoyed listening in.
Um, but hey, Angela, maybe you could talk about what are
your plans in the near term?
Like, I know you've mentioned your video agency, but what
are you trying to do with that?
And what are your goals in the near term?
Well,
So in the near term, it's just, um, I'm bootstrapping it, uh,
myself really, so it's just getting initial cash flow and stuff so that
I can get out more into the world.
Um, I think, um, I'm looking forward to Madeira.
Um, that should be fun.
and going to some conferences next year, hopefully, I want to get
to Nashville as well, but I don't know if that's happening yet.
but yeah, that would be really good.
And then, and then, yeah, just, just working towards the idea of a documentary.
I want to, I haven't spoken to him yet, but I want to get in touch with, um,
Gladstein and the Human Rights Foundation and eventually, like, might sort of My
mid to long term plan is to do some sort of documentary piece that brings the
idea of the currency caste system to a form that is digestible to most people.
that is something that I would love to do, uh, longer term.
I know you asked near term, but, but yeah, everything that I do near term
is sort of to work towards that.
So hi, Alex, if you're listening.
Fantastic.
Um, yeah, I think this is a good point to wrap it up, , so any
way you want to direct our, our listeners to Angelo, like, um.
Where can we find you on the internet if we want more?
so my Twitter is My, my Twitter's at Angelo underscore Summers, spelled S O
M E R S, and the, the website is, um, for the agency is permissionlessltd.
com.
so I don't know when this is going out, but the website
should be up and running by then.
and yeah, that's just about the only two I really want to direct anyone to.
Okay, this has been the Freedom Footprint show.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and brush your damn teeth,
and see you next time, folks!
Thank you for having me.
Cheers, guys.