Welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Academy, brought to you by the
Plan B Network and Bit Box.
I'm Kwano, and, uh, I'm here as always with Luke de Wolff.
Good morning, Luke.
Good morning, Cano.
Happy to be here.
This is gonna be a fun one, isn't it?
Yes, thi this is our third episode covering the second chapter of
Sovereignty Through Mathematics, a a chapter called Financial Atheism.
Yeah.
And, uh, I know you're excited about this one and it's, uh, certainly
a little bit more controversial, I think, than than the last one here.
So I'm, I'm excited to dive in.
And first I'll just mention that if, if you want to get involved with the
discussion such as, for example, attending the recordings of these episodes live,
uh, check out our Geyser Fund page where you can see all the details
about how to support this project.
And as a reminder, the project is involving releasing all of the
chapters of these books for free on noster, and these video explanations
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So if you, if you get value outta this and want to join the discussion, the
best way to support us is to get involved and join the Bitcoin Infinity Academy.
Absolutely, and you can also get the books on bitcoin infinity store.com.
Alright, This is financial atheism chapter two of Sovereignty through Mathematics.
Don't trust, verify is a common saying amongst Bitcoiners that represents
a sound attitude towards not only Bitcoin but all human power structures.
In order to understand Bitcoin, one must admit that everything
in society is manmade.
Every civilization, every religion, every constitution, and every law
is a product of human imagination.
It wasn't until as late as the 17th century that the scientific
methods started to become the dominant practice for describing
how the world actually worked.
Peer-to-peer review and repeated testing of a hypothesis are still
quite recent human practices.
Before this, we were basically just guessing and trusting
authorities to a large extent.
We still do this today, and despite our progress over the last couple of
centuries, we still have a long way to go.
Our brains are hardwired to follow the leader of the pack.
The human brain is born with a plethora of cognitive biases pre-installed, and we
have to work very hard to overcome them.
We evolve to survive in relatively small groups, and our brains are thus not
really made for seeing the bigger picture.
Bitcoin's proof of Work Algorithm is constructed in such a way that it is easy
to verify that computational power was sacrificed in order to approve a block
of transactions and claim its reward.
In this way, no trust in any authority is required, as it is relatively
trivial to test the validity of a block and the transactions it contains.
This is nothing short of a complete reimagining of how human
society ought to be governed.
The beauty of mathematics governs the Bitcoin system.
Everything that ever happens in Bitcoin is open and verifiable to everyone,
even to those who are not yet using it.
Okay.
Knut, what did you mean by that?
Yeah, that, yeah, that's a big question for a big paragraph.
Uh, yeah, it's, it's sort of, uh, saying that we, we have something
now that is, uh, we, we have rules without rulers, I would say.
that Bitcoin is completely auditable to everyone.
Even the people not using it can, uh, uh, there are plenty of websites where
you can see the, the, the blockchain.
Of course, you need to run the software, uh, for yourself to
actually know that what you're watching is the, the real thing.
Uh, a third party websites can be corrupt.
Uh, everyone should know that.
and so, so running a node is really the only option if you really want
to be sure that what you're seeing is actually Bitcoin and not some clone.
Uh, but yeah.
Uh, the, the, uh, the point about the scientific method, That is something
where, where I'm, my mind has, uh, I've changed my mind slightly about
some of the stuff in this chapter.
one of those things is like the, uh, trust in the scientific method.
Bitcoin has actually made me trust that method slightly less.
Uh, and see the beauty of, uh, the Austrian method, which is, uh, just
deductive reasoning and, uh, uh, coming to conclusions, about the world using a fixed
set of, uh, axiom, uh, irrefutable axioms.
So, which it cannot be called the, uh, scientific method because the scientific
method re refers to empiricism.
And, uh, the Austrian method is different like that because it's
not really empiricism, it's an a prioritized science where, where you
know things without having to test them.
And any testing cannot.
Deny nor confirm, uh, the hypothesis.
So that's, uh, how Bitcoin differs from, from other things.
But we'll, uh, this is sort of setting the stage here.
We're getting into the juicy God stuff later, later in the chapter
Yeah, I was, I was going to say that this sort of has ended up
being, it's just foreshadowing the, the main bulk of this thing.
Right.
So, uh, you're, you're laying the groundwork for, for quite a lot of, quite
a lot of stuff here, I would say, but it's not quite into the controversial part yet.
now.
And, and, uh, Giamo pointed out to us, uh, the day before yesterday when we did
a, a Twitter space as Giamo Soko from the Plan B Network that he would've called
this App Chapter Financial Skepticism.
And, uh, in hindsight, that might have been a, uh, better title.
Even though, uh, financial atheism is a bit more on the nose and a bit
more aggressive, but I'll, I'll, uh, lay out what I actually mean by
atheism later in the, um, chapter.
Perfect.
Sounds good.
Onto the next one.
After the tragic events of nine 11 in 2001, Sam Harris started writing
his book, the End of Faith, which happened to be released around
the same time as Richard Dawkins.
The God Delusion, Daniel Dennet, breaking the Spell, and Christopher
Hitchens, God is Not Great.
Our religion poisons everything.
These books kickstarted what in hindsight has often been referred
to as the new atheist movement.
Even though there has arguably never been anything new about atheism.
Atheism must almost certainly have preceded religion since religious ideas
require the person holding the idea to believe a certain doctrine or a story.
Atheism is nothing but the rejection of ways to describe the world that
are not verifiable by experimentation.
A fly on the wall is probably an atheist by this definition of the word.
Atheism is often accused of being just another set of beliefs, but the word
itself describes what it is much better, a lack of belief in theistic ideas.
It is not a code of conduct or a set of rules to live your life by.
It is simply the rejection of that which cannot be scientifically verified.
Many people, religious people in particular, have
a hard time grasping this.
If you believe that a supernatural entity created everything in everyone's
life, you might not be too comfortable with a word that describes a complete
rejection of what you believe created everything, including the very
atheist that the word describes.
of different religious worldviews that exist is probably equal to the sum of
all religious people on the planet.
All worldviews that reject these superstitious beliefs require, but one
word atheism is not the opposite of religion, but it is simply the lack of it.
Okay.
Not only is, uh, that a big juicy paragraph, it's definitely one
we disagree about quite a lot.
And, uh, well, let's get into it.
alright.
what I would say is, in, in hindsight, it's, uh, if I had written this
today, I probably wouldn't have mentioned that that fucker Sam Harris,
because I really don't like him.
And I think he sort of ex exemplifies what, what the risk of, uh,
rejecting religious ideas might be.
Because, uh, he, in my view is, is someone who replaced the idea, the,
the, uh, belief in, Dogmatic, uh, religious stuff with, uh, uh, just
an over belief in, in the scientific method and in, uh, uh, statism.
So during the lockdowns, for instance, he was, uh, firmly on the, um, on the
wrong side of every debate, uh, and just, uh, thought that the government
should decide everything for everyone.
And this is, this is why, where my thinking is different
on this subject today.
I think it's, I, I, nowadays I view the state as, uh, maybe I
did back then too, but, uh, I view the state as yet another religion.
Uh.
Back when I wrote this, I don't think I viewed it as the, the worst one,
but I'm very close to doing that now.
So, I mean, some religions are really wacky, but, but
statism is a very dangerous one.
Putting your belief in that there will be some savior here on earth, uh, regardless
of it's a religious savior or a political one is super, super duper uh, dangerous.
So, so my stance has always been think for yourself, do your own thing.
Like the, that scene from Life of Brian where we're all different,
uh, that like, that's what I want, people to, to get away from this.
Like, there is a way to live your life.
setting your own rules.
Also, I would say that there are a priori arguments against God, but
that's, uh, another thing I, I think for instance, since all action is a
product of, uh, or all human action is a product of a human feeling slightly
uneasy and seeing something in the future that might make that future,
uh, better for that human, where the EAs, uh, uneasiness is, uh, relieved,
uh, that that's what triggers action.
And any omnipotent being that governs everything and knows everything,
would never feel uneasy about a anything and thus never do anything.
So if there is a, a, uh, um, deity, that deity is, uh, completely, uh, ha
never has an incentive to do anything.
So, yeah, that's, that's another thought there.
Uh, curious to, to hear what you think about this look.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks Knu.
And well, no, no, and, and actually, uh, first I'll just say like, uh,
I, we don't disagree about a lot in, especially in the perspective of that.
Yeah.
Religion.
Modern religions have many of their own problems.
And, and knowing what this all ties into, I think is, is
kind of the, the point here.
This sort of financial atheism thing.
Uh, I don't want us to get bogged down in the atheism of
the financial atheism topic.
I wanna talk about the financial atheism, but, but there are a couple of things that
specifically I'll, I'll, um, address here.
O one is, I, I think you, you can't avoid mentioning Sam Harris because he
is one of the so-called four horsemen of the, whatever they called it.
Like, it's, it's a specific group you mentioned.
That's why you mentioned Daniel Dennet, who I think you've, you've mentioned
this is he's underappreciated, but he is the least, uh, uh, prolific
or the, the lowest profile of the, the four, uh, notwithstanding that
Christopher Hitchens died, but he was very high profile while he lived.
Yeah.
And Christopher Hitchens, by the way, is the, the guy among this
group that I'm most influenced by, uh, closely followed by Richard
Dawkins, who I think is very un uh, underappreciated too in the Bitcoin space.
I mean, the man coined the word meme for, uh, for Christ's sake.
Uh, so yeah.
Yeah.
And what, what, what's funny is that I think he, he had a point where he could
have embraced meme, different meanings of the word meme, but ba basically
he's, he stayed pretty in his thinking, although I think he, he has gone on.
Is it, is it even a couple of Bitcoin podcasts?
Was he on what Bitcoin did?
Um,
No, he was, he was on, yeah, he was on the What is Money show?
Yeah, yeah,
even though they, they, they didn't like nowadays, like,
like Dawkins is old, right?
And he refuses to touch certain subjects, economics being one of them,
uh, and which is both good and bad.
I, I would love to hear his ideas about it since he's been a, a bit
of a status too, uh, and how that aligns with the atheism thought.
Uh, but.
I, I can understand that he doesn't wanna be, uh, you know, pigeonholed.
I, I, I think he wants to stick to talking about biology and that he has
dropped most of the, uh, religion versus non-religion stuff, uh, because he, uh,
simply, simply doesn't want to go there.
He wants to spend his time talking about biology.
Right.
No, and, and that, that's understandable for him, but I think he's, he's, all
four of these guys are, are influential and, and I understand why these guys
and their ideas kind of, they really set the tone for a certain decade,
uh, or, or even couple of decades of, of thought, and especially thought
that was in opposition to primarily the evangelical Christian right.
In the United States,
Yeah.
And, and I, I really think, I really think the thing here
I, no, I wouldn't say primarily I would say, uh, primarily against Islam.
I, I'd say like, uh, but maybe packaged in a way that made, uh, the, uh, uh,
evangelical right in the us uh, take offense, but, but, uh, I think like the,
what triggered these books to be written was mostly, uh, nine 11 and Islam.
that's interesting.
I, I, I mean, uh, I, if I'm remembering part of the cultural milieu at the time
though, what happened after nine 11 was that the Evangelical right was ascendant
in the United States for a while also.
And those were the people that they were primarily bashing heads with.
You didn't get a lot of, um, Dawkins or, or Hitchens or Sam Harris debating
Islamic Scholars, for example.
No, but, uh, they si uh, they, they sort of promoted people like Ayan, Harshi
Ali, uh, and, uh, other, uh, people who had escaped, uh, Islam and, and pointed
out that the, the underlying problem of, of, uh, is Islamist terrorists
is Islam itself, and how, how the text, the, the texts are written in
a certain way and which can't really be interpreted one way or another.
And like pointing out that some ideas are really, and some cultures
are really worse than others.
And there's, there's no, there should be no shaming in saying that.
And, uh, yeah, I, I agree with that very much.
is a spicy one.
Definitely.
But I, I think, I think the only part that I actually disagree with here,
because it's not a disagreement, it's just more like they, they found
themselves bombarded on all sides really.
The, the, uh, the neo atheists, uh, they, they got it from evangelical
Christians, they got it from Islam.
Maybe they were primarily targeting Islam, but they, they definitely got
into their, they got into lots of arguments with, with, uh, or debates.
Some of them were actually sort of debates with, with evangelical Christians.
And, and actually this is, this is the one thing here too, is that I think you
use atheism as sort of the, the absence of the, uh, Judeo-Christian Islamic, God,
Uh, no, uh, the, the, the absence of any deity.
Uh, so, so including like Zeus and Thor and all of that.
Uh, so I'm using the same definition as Richard Dawkins uses
in his, uh, uh, the God dilution.
That's, that's where I got the, the it from
But I'm saying your example you used is you're, you're basically
counteracting specifically the, the Christian and the Islamic God, the
this omnipotent, omnipresent thing.
Many of the others don't do that.
Oh, well, that, that was not in my, uh, definition of the word atheism.
That was in my, uh, like why I, why I personally don't think that
there's an omni potent being.
Sure, sure, sure,
So, so that's the definition of that.
And, uh, but the word itself, it's, to me is atheism.
It's, it's safe self, uh, explanatory.
It's a rejection of, uh, theistic beliefs.
And here I agree with Christopher Hitchens that, uh, uh, extraordinary claims,
uh, require extraordinary evidence.
And I haven't seen any such extraordinary evidence of the existence of any deity.
So, so, so until I do, I remain a skeptic and not a theist.
There we go.
And, and actually I think when you said the term rejection here,
this I think is important because I think many are uncomfortable,
myself included with I identifying or self using the, the term atheist.
And I think it is a, actually a proactive term.
You, you say you're an atheist because you have intentionally
rejected all of the other things.
There's something else that is sort of the, I don't care, which
is more, more where I'm at.
Like I don't care, I don't, I don't actively reject the other things, but
I, I, I don't really believe in anything specific, but I don't particularly
care either enough to consider myself or identify with the term atheist.
and, and, uh, uh, the word has been somewhat tainted, but to me it's, it's
a word that is, uh, similar to the word liberalism or, or, or any other
word that has been sort of hijacked by political forces or religious
forces in the, in the, in the, uh, uh, talking about the word atheism.
I, I think that, one can shun these words or use them as they were once
intended, but, What I'm trying to do here in this chapter is just, just
explain a opposition, like, and, and it's, it's not really a chapter about the
debate of the existence or non-existent of God or anything, or your de or
Christian values or anything like that.
It's about Bitcoin, and we're getting to that
There we go.
Which, which is, which is why I'm not going to, uh, prolong this for
much longer, but I, I, I will also assert one more specific disagreement.
Uh, or at least a, at least a, a light, um, shall we say,
maybe semantic difference.
Uh, I think it's not actually necessarily true that atheism
must have preceded religion.
Uh, or at least, the, the, the idea that that humans never had ways of
explaining that which was unknown.
There might've been this kind of inkling of a time before
consciousness kicked in, like, we don't really have an idea of that.
We have biological homo sapiens, and did we have consciousness in
the same way that entire time?
But it's extremely likely that as long as we had what we call
consciousness humans were using stories of some kind to describe, for
lack of a better term, the unknown.
And those weren't necessarily religions originally, especially
not when humans just lived in little tribes of 20 people and stuff.
But they did have what you might call a mythology.
They had ways of explaining the world.
They, they.
Passed down the lessons of society to each other in ways that could be considered
the beginnings of religion or story.
In other words, that's mostly to say I don't think atheism was ever
like a conscious thing until we intentionally rejected it through thes
the discovery of the scientific method,
Yeah, I mean, I mean the, the word atheism cannot exist without there
being such a thing as theism.
So, so I would say in the beginning there was nothing.
Then there was religion and then there was atheism.
The rejection of it, like, because a rejection of something, something regret.
Is that something to, to exist first?
although there likely was a state where, where humans existed without having some
concept of God or, or even some concept of even things that you might call Gods.
Uh, but, but now we're getting into like way where, where we're
way, way too far off the path
Yeah, yeah.
We're going off on a tangent here, but I kind of like this one.
I mean, the, the, we have observed chimpanzees, uh, performing, uh,
and Bonobos, uh, performing re what looks like religious, uh, rituals.
And I, the way I see it, you can interpret that two ways.
Either chimpanzees and bonobos also know that God exists, or this idea of this
proto protos scientific method that is religion exists in other primates as
well, because what I think it is, is like trying to explain the world, uh, to
oneself by, by trying out different ideas.
And it might, it might take a long time before you, uh, are wise
enough to reject the specific ideas.
And some of these ideas may have, uh, a very long lifespan.
Well, and, and I, I think I would assert that you don't necessarily need to reject
them, you just need to make them useful.
And also, uh, I don't like it when religious people try to push
their religious beliefs on others.
And those religions that have made that a central part of their
religion, uh, sometimes they can be a bit of, they can be jerks,
uh, when, when, when applying that.
So real, real, real goofballs.
And this applies to all religious people, including governments
that, uh, kidnap kids and put them into schools for 12 years.
Yeah.
Live and live and let live.
Definitely.
And, and I, I know and respect many Christians.
Uh, I Christians specifically.
I don't actually, I don't really know many non non-Christians, religious, non.
you know a handful of Jews, don't you
Don't die.
Yeah, yeah.
yeah.
Yeah.
We have, uh, many you Jewish friends and I think we have some Muslim friends too.
I think so.
And, and live and let live.
As long as, as long as they're not saying, you know, convert or die or
convert or go to hell, uh, we're good.
And, uh, the government basically says that with, uh, uh, convert
as in, you know, take the jab or, uh, be ostracized from society.
So it's all the same thing.
Right.
Yeah.
Alright, good.
Here we go.
Next one.
In 2008, another subculture movement of unbelief was born, let's call
it financial atheism, the rejection of unverifiable value claims.
With the invention of Bitcoin, a way of rejecting fraudulent expressions
of a token's value was born.
Those of us fortunate enough to have been born in secular countries all
enjoy not having the ideas of religious demagogues dictating our lives.
On a daily basis, we can choose which ideas to believe in and which to reject.
What we still have very limited means of choosing, however, are the ways in
which we express value to each other.
We're told to use a system in which we all have a certain number of value tokens
assigned to our name, either as a number on a screen or as digits on paper notes.
We all live in the collective hallucination that these numbers
are somehow legit and that their authenticity is not to be questioned.
A Bitcoin balance assigned to a certain Bitcoin address might seem just as
questionable to a layman, but if you have a basic understanding of the hashing
algorithms and the game theory behind it, it's not at the time of writing.
The hash of the latest block on the Bitcoin blockchain
begins with 18 zeros in a row.
These zeros represent the proof of work that ensures that this
block is valid and that every transaction in it actually happened.
If you can grasp the concept of a hashing algorithm and if you have
an intuition about mathematics, you realize the gargantuan amount
of calculating effort that went into finding this particular hash.
It's simply mind blowing.
To forge a false version of a hash beginning with 18 zeros just
wouldn't be economically viable.
Of course, you can never actually know that a 51% attack or some other attempt at
corrupting the blockchain hasn't occurred, but you can know that such an attack would
require more than half of the network acting against our own economic interest.
Bitcoin is not something to believe in.
You don't need to trust any authority because you can validate the plausibility
of its authenticity yourself.
It's the financial equivalent of atheism or unbelief.
Satoshi wasn't Jesus.
Satoshi was Brian of Nazareth telling his fathers to think for themselves.
I wonder how many people know that reference.
Yeah, if, if, uh, if you don't know the last reference there, I highly
recommend Monty Python's life of Brian.
It's one of the best comedies ever made, in my opinion.
anyway, this is, uh, this is the view.
I, I somewhat still hold, or, or not somewhat.
I, I still hold this view.
Uh, Bitcoin is a way to, uh, verify everything like the, the only way you
can know that no one is counter-fit.
Uh.
The more units of the money you are using is to know every single
transaction that happens and that ever happened in, uh, in that system.
And the only way to do that is to run a Bitcoin node and
actually verify it for yourself.
So, so, so this, in this sense, Bitcoin is the, the first
skeptics money or atheist money or whatever you, uh, word you prefer.
the, the only one that doesn't require belief in the central
bank and the politicians behind the money printer to be ethical.
Uh, and this, this is what intrigued me about Bitcoin in the beginning.
There's, there's a, a reason that this is a quite early chapter in, in
my book series here, because this is one of the most mind, uh, was one of
the most mind blowing things to me.
And I know many other people, this is what's so funny about the whole,
um, atheist versus religious people thing in Bitcoin because I know just
as many people that came to Bitcoin from a, uh, a religious worldview
and that view it sort of as a cult.
I view Bitcoiners as the, the ones leaving the cult, not the ones in the cult.
So, but it's fascinating to me how you can end up with, uh, loving
Bitcoin for so many different reasons.
And there are so many different paths to the same, um, group of insights.
So this, um, and this is my path and uh, what I've tried to explain in words here.
On this section, we are in complete lockstep.
I, I, uh, I completely agree with you here.
It's, it's definitely a spicy take.
I, I, yeah.
It's a spicy take, but I agree with it.
all the other money requires some kind of trust or belief and yeah, I, I just,
I just, it's one of those things that once you get it, you get it, right?
Like, we've talked about this before in terms of that, that there are just
parts of the Bitcoin thing that once you understand the implications, it,
it, it's definitely not a good thing that all of the rest of the money in
the world requires verification, right?
Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit here.
I, I might be able to go and make the argument that there's some purpose for
religious systems and, and people can find meaning in that, but no one finds
meaning in the fiat monetary system.
No.
And, uh, regardless of if you find meaning or not, like to actually know whether
something is true or not, you do, you need the don't trust, verify mentality?
Uh, so, so sure you can derive value from a story.
I, I, I buy that, but that doesn't necessarily make it like true in the
sense of this is objectively true.
So, so in my view, Bitcoin is built like, uh, skepticism is at the
very foundation of what Bitcoin is.
Don't trust, verify is skepticism.
Yeah.
And well, uh, I think, uh, I think another interesting thing here that
you, that you include in the book at, at the time of writing, that the, the
amount of work that goes into verifying each Bitcoin block, it was 18 zeros.
This was back in 2019 though, right?
It's, it's way more than that now.
So it just keeps getting, it just keeps intensifying right.
Yeah.
And, uh, uh, and uh, I think that like the, the very core concepts of, of,
uh, Bitcoin are here in, in this text, uh, that it's, it's expensive to try
to cheat the system that's, that's at, it's more expensive to try to
cheat it than to just follow the rules and that that's what makes it great.
Shall we continue?
Absolutely.
Alright.
The first law of thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy
states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.
The second law states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.
And the third law states that the entropy of a system approaches a constant value as
the temperature approaches absolute zero.
In the Bitcoin network, participants known as miners compete for new Bitcoin
in a lottery with very fixed rules.
The more hashing power, computing power a miner contributes to the network,
the higher his chances of winning the block reward a a specific amount of
Bitcoin that is halved every four years.
The difficulty of this lottery, in other words, the minor's chance of winning it
is recalibrated every 2016 block so that the average time it takes to find the
next block is always roughly 10 minutes.
What the system produces is absolute scarcity.
The amount of Bitcoin in existence at any moment in time is always predictable.
The more time that passes, the slower the rate of coin issuance and the
block rewards slowly approaches zero.
By the time it does around the year 2140, the individual miner's incentive
to mine for award will at least theoretically have been replaced by an
incentive to collect transaction fees from the participants of the network.
Even now, the sum of all fees make up a non-trivial part of the miner's revenue.
Yet from a user's point of view, the fees are still very low, and as the network
scales up using layer two solutions such as the Lightning Network, they're expected
to remain low for quite a long time ahead.
So another connection of Bitcoin to physics, right?
I.
Yeah.
Um.
Not, not directly tying it to physics here, uh, which is good.
Uh, but yeah, uh, there, there's, there's a wonderful meme going around,
uh, about, uh, it's a Venn diagram.
Uh, and in one circle there's people who, who, who are against
Bitcoin or Bitcoin's opponents.
And on the, in the other circle are people who can, uh, accurately explain
the difficulty, uh, adjustment algorithm.
And in the middle, in the cross section are people who don't exist.
Uh, be because you cannot, you cannot be against Bitcoin if, if it clicks for you
the difficulty adjustment algorithm and how, how amazing, uh, a discovery that is.
Uh, it maybe, it would be fair to say that the group of people in
the middle are liars and con men.
Yeah.
But that means that they're either.
They either are Bitcoin proponents that they just pretend to not be,
or, or they simply don't understand the difficulty adjustment algorithm.
Or they're fans of Ethereum?
Yeah.
Uh, so, so yeah.
So they are fans of Bitcoin then because the only purpose of
Ethereum is to make the founders of Ethereum earn more Bitcoin,
yes, there we go.
That's, that's a, that's, yes.
Very good point here.
No, and, um, and I like the explanation here.
This is just intensifying, like these first two chapters of this book.
Just, just speaking, um, from the, the level of reading these both
together, like someone reads this as the introduction to Bitcoin.
I don't know exactly who's doing that, but you know, if you were,
you're getting hit with, I. Big ideas right at, right off the bat.
This, this isn't for the faint of heart, but, but they're big important
ideas that, that really underpin what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin is about.
And I, I never thought of sovereignty through mathematics as a, as a beginner
book, but in a lot of ways it, it does explain a lot of the, the concepts that
are important to know about Bitcoin.
Just, just not in, in one of these structured ways that, that
sort of handholds, you know?
Yeah.
No, I, I, I view it as a beginner's book, um, uh, as very, maybe a
very specific type of beginner.
Uh, is there a, like you said, faint of heart there.
Is there such a thing as faint of brain?
Oh yeah.
Uh, I know some people like that.
Okay, good to know.
Let's get on with it, shall we?
Okay.
Absolute scarcity is a concept that mankind has never encountered before.
Arguably this makes it the first manmade concept to ever be directly
linked to the laws of physics.
Everything anyone does requires a certain amount of energy.
The very word doing implies that some kind of movement, some type of
energy expenditure needs to occur.
As mentioned earlier, how we value things is entirely subjective.
Different actions are of different value to different people.
How we value different things is also inevitably linked to
the supply of those things.
Had the trapped under ice winter diver mentioned in chapter one, being equipped
with a scuba tank, he probably wouldn't have thought of his next breath.
As such a precious thing, the price, a person is willing to pay for a good.
In other words, the sum of one or more person's actions can be
derived from two basic variables.
The highly objective demand for the good and the always constrained by time
and space supply of that same good.
Note that if supply is sufficiently limited, there only needs to be
a minimal amount of demand for a good for its price to increase.
One could argue that no one needs Bitcoin and that therefore Bitcoin
would have no intrinsic value.
One could also argue that there's no such thing as intrinsic value.
Since demand is always subjective.
In any case, there will always be a cost to mine Bitcoin, and the more mining power
in the network, the higher that cost.
This cost insured by the Bitcoin network's proof of work algorithm is probably
as close to a pure energy cost as the price of a human activity will ever get.
Once the mining rig is in place, a simple conversion process follows
energy in scarce token out.
Should the cost of production exceed the current price of the token, the miner can
just choose not to sell, thereby limiting the supply of Bitcoin and circulation
even more, and eventually selling them for other goods whenever he sees fit.
In this sense, Bitcoin is a battery, perhaps the best battery ever invented.
Now I know you have some things to say about this section.
Yes.
This is about how every action requires energy.
So, so it's, it's sort of about how physics and, uh, uh, the, the.
Objectiveness of physics and the subjectiveness of
ology are linked together.
Like we, we, we link the two realms.
Uh, I mean, I believe that the dichotomy of subjective, uh, objective
is somewhat false, but we're, we're not going there just yet.
That comes in clown world way next year.
So, but, but the thing that links the two worlds, so that bridges
the two worlds is human action.
And, uh, in Bitcoin, this is, this is very clear.
What, what, what, what's going on?
You're, you're sacrificing a very specific amount of actual energy.
Duals even, uh, for a, a slice of the world's, uh, only
digital pie, like the only.
I, I, I use the word absolute scarcity here.
Uh, a lot.
If I'd written this book today, I would say that Bitcoin are not absolutely
scarce, but absolutely finite.
Uh, scarcity is always, uh, contextual.
So like, uh, it's, it's not, uh, as it's not describing Bitcoin as well, I think,
so they're, they're not absolutely scarce.
Well, they are too.
But first and foremost, there's absolutely finite, which is what
creates the absolute scarcity afterwards or the scarcity of them.
Uh, scarcity is not absolute.
It's always, it always fluctuates.
Uh, and it's always in the eye of the beholder, which finiteness is not, I would
say scarcity is, is scarcity, is, uh, subjective, somewhat subjective, while,
uh, being finite is something objective.
So, so it's still, uh, this hearkens back a lot to the, the, the last chapter
because this is all, all about the.
Uh, demand being subjective and, uh, supply being objective.
How, how this, uh, how it links the objective and the subjective.
and I think that's very, a crucial thing to understand when trying to understand
Bitcoin and the problem it solves.
I.
Absolutely agree and well, you know, I think, I think I'm still
more of a proponent of the battery analogy than, than you are here now.
Uh, but I, but I still think it's, it's useful.
It's, it's a really useful, analogy here because, because the, the idea
that a miner, a bitcoin miner can expend energy and get Bitcoin back
anywhere in the world, thereby, being able to capture stranded.
Energy sources or, uh, more difficult to, to access, but, but maybe not as
expensive to access something like that.
It, it is a way of, of taking energy from somewhere and converting it
into something that can be then sold for other goods and services.
So the battery analogy, it's not, it's not a literal battery,
it's not a literal battery in the sense of an electrical battery.
It's not a way of taking that energy and storing that energy for further
use in the literal energy sense, the physical movement of something.
But it is it is, it is a battery for battery for well in the sense that, that
you, you can hold some of that value.
You can capture that value and move it over the internet and use it later.
So in that sense, I think the battery analogy still works.
It's it.
If you will, subjective energy, uh, which is a very weird term, and it's
like, so, so the physics nerd in me prevents me from, from using the term,
uh, like using the analogy anymore.
I, I, I'm not a super fan of it, but not only because it doesn't link to
physics, but because it's sort of under appreciates Bitcoin because more
than it's, it's more than a battery.
It's an amplifier too, because as long as the total economic pie grows over time,
the, the, the energy store stored or the value stored, it's not only staying
the same, but, but growing over time.
So it buys you more the, the longer you wait.
and uh, another part of not using the, uh, um.
Digi the Bitcoin is a battery analogy anymore, is that I don't like the
term digital energy because I, I think digital to begin with, uh,
is not anything crucial to Bitcoin.
It, whether it's digital or not, doesn't really matter.
and the energy metaphor omits that a Bitcoin miner is not the asic that
some, uh, that is plugged into the wall or the hangar full of them.
It, uh, the computers involved.
It is the, the, the actual miner is the guy who owns the asics and decides
to run the, the code, uh, which we explain further in, in clown world too.
Uh, so, so I think all, almost all metaphors and analogies in Bitcoin are
somewhat, uh, insufficient to describe what Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is so
much more than the sum of its parts and it's very hard to isolate one or.
One thing or another that it is when it's, when it's so much bigger, uh, than that.
So, so, so every, every single metaphor is underwhelming or insufficient in some way.
I can agree with.
That on the one hand, while on the other saying that each of these metaphors is
a way to maybe get into someone's brain
Yep.
and, and it only takes one, right?
I think that's, that's one of the points of Bitcoin is that once, once one thing
clicks for you, you suddenly discover all the things and then everything clicks.
You take the orange pill and suddenly you are a toxic Bitcoin maxi.
Something like that.
Uh, so, so the battery analogy is useful, uh, uh, in, in that sense as, as being a,
a way of propagating an idea that might take hold with some people, especially
those that value, or, or actually, especially with those who think that
Bitcoin mining is this evil thing and don't understand what it's actually doing.
And the, the real world effects that I really, really doubt that Satoshi could
have ever envisioned for, for bitcoin.
the effects that, that bitcoin mining, chasing down all of the, the cheapest
energy in the world actually have.
No, he probably didn't predict that.
Like, uh, one thing I thought of now when you're talking about that it
might have a usefulness, is that.
That's akin to the religious stories, right?
So, so this is, uh, Bitcoin as a battery is, might not be literally
true, but it might have some, some, uh, storytelling value.
Just as you know, the meek shall inherit the earth or, or some religious
thing, uh, that you can interpret in a way that has value to you.
And that's how I view, uh, metaphors for what Bitcoin is
in as one aspect or another.
I love it.
I think we will touch more on mining plenty, uh, over the series.
There's gonna be way more on that, but, uh, it, it's an important area and, and.
A lot of the opposition to Bitcoin that is, that is really hung up on
that, that bitcoin mining uses more energy than Norway or something.
Uh, those, those arguments are unfortunate and, and probably are holding back some
people from taking a close look at it.
And so I it, in, in one sense, I really do think it's important for us to f bust to,
to really directly take out those ideas.
And so, um, discussions of mining and, and, uh, even things like talking
about it like a, like a battery, I, I think are important for those reasons.
Yeah.
And, uh, there, there is at least one chapter about environmentalism in,
in each and every one of these books.
A about, uh, FD busting the energy.
Uh, stuff.
So, yeah, and like I can just throw out the little thought
nugget here that is also going to, uh, come back in this series.
And that is that miners do not create bitcoins.
They get paid in Bitcoins by the users of the network that actually create the
Bitcoins Miners, uh, create blocks and they create block space by finding blocks.
And they, we allow them to, uh, make a Coinbase transaction to themselves,
thereby getting newly into Bitcoin.
But it's not them that, uh, they are the slaves of the users or
the, the no runners and the, the economic incentives of the network.
They are not the ones creating the Bitcoins.
Now this stuff is important.
This stuff is definitely important, and two things can be true at the same time.
Here again, uh, one, it can be true that these metaphors are
useful for people to understand it.
But the other thing too, I think, and I, and I think, I think every.
Thing that we dig into.
And that the reason for going all the way down to, uh, the root and
really finding what's true about things is that it's also important
to know what is actually the case.
And, uh, and, and I, I think it's, it's always, it's always good to,
to be precise and to understand what's actually going on here.
Use these metaphors as ways of explaining to your normie friends what happens
with Bitcoin, but, but understand what's really happening at the core.
That's important.
And yeah, I, I think we, we strive for both those things in some kind of balance.
I.
Absolutely.
I mean the, the books about Bitcoin I've written were easier to write in the sense
that I could throw words around more than I could when I wrote the ology book,
because in ology when writing about that subject, you need to be super precise.
Every word needs to be 100% defined and used only in the
context that it was like in the way that it was supposed to be used.
Uh, here I can say things like Bitcoin is a battery and stuff more easily.
So the the, it makes these books maybe not as precise, but it
makes them more colorful, I think.
And, uh, maybe that's, uh, can orange pill a person or two if it just, if
my books only orange pill one person I'm, I, I still view them as a success.
Perfect.
I'm, I'm sure they have orange peel more than one person, but
let's, let's keep going, shall we?
Storing and moving electrical energy around has always
been costly and wasteful.
Bitcoin offers a way of converting energy into a small part of a specific number,
a mathematical battery, if you will.
It is important to remember that it does not convert energy
into value directly, but rather electricity into digital scarcity.
Digital scarcity that can be used to express value.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system as the first
law of thermodynamics clearly states.
Bitcoin can express how much energy was sacrificed in order to
acquire a share of the total sum.
You can also acquire Bitcoin by buying it rather than mining it.
But in doing so, you also spend energy.
You somehow acquired the money with which you bought the Bitcoin, You or someone
else sacrificed time and energy somewhere.
Bitcoin lets you express that you see that there's a connection between value
and scarcity by letting you sacrifice effort to claim a part of the total sum.
I thought when I started reading this paragraph that, that maybe we had already
kind of covered the, the point of it, but, but no, I, I think the, the actual point
of this section that, that you always expend energy somehow to get the Bitcoin.
That's, that's, that's a different nuance than what we were talking
about and an important one.
Yeah.
Uh, and it's absolutely true.
Like you have to expend some kind of energy to get something back.
Like this is a, this is a completely voluntary system.
You can't just threaten someone and say, give me all your money.
Like, uh, that.
You need to provide something of value to the other person, whether
that is mining or providing a good service, that's another discussion.
But this is the point of the system.
It's like an isolated system where, uh, people have to provide something
that the other person values in order to get a part of, of this finite pie,
and that's what makes it so beautiful.
Yeah.
And, and this was one thing that just didn't click for me earlier
on in my crypto journey, so to say, like, I, I didn't really understand
what was the purpose of, of proof of work mining kind of generally.
uh, and the, the proof of stake stuff, those, those, those folks were
making like really serious arguments, especially back when Ethereum was
thinking of dropping the proof of work.
Um.
Understanding things like this, that, that no matter what you do, you, you
always are expending energy somehow.
Uh, I think somehow that what that did was, was get it so that
the mining isn't actually doing anything different than anyone else.
They're, they're performing the function for the network, like we talked about
earlier, the, the, the block creation.
But no matter what, someone is performing energy somewhere, uh, or
maybe a even better way of describing it is someone is doing something of
value to someone else to get a nice token in exchange for that value.
It just, it all comes, it all comes back.
Uh, everyone is doing something in order to get these value
tokens that we call money.
And Bitcoin is no different.
It's just, uh, it is just perfectly finite.
So I, I don't know, uh, the, the overall point is the un understanding.
This one, I, I think this one was really quite important to
grok what Bitcoin actually is.
And, uh, uh, it also highlights why proof of stake, like we're
living in proof of stake.
Now, the Federal Reserve is a proof of stake system.
the, the, the ones with the biggest piles of cash, uh, can afford the
biggest guns and therefore set the rules for everyone else in the system.
And, and if they have a money printer, they, they win that race.
And, uh, especially if the, the world's reserve currency.
So, uh.
Proof of proof of work is so different and Bitcoin in particular because you
can't just copy proof of work, then that sort of takes away the point
of proof of work, uh, in that, uh, this is the, the costliness thing.
So it's, it's sort of you.
Computer.
Up until 2009, computers had been used for copying stuff.
Everything on a computer is a copy of a copy of a copy.
Like when you send an email, you, you don't actually send it, you copy the
data and put it on the other computer.
Like, so, so everything, uh, is a copy and we can flip that on its head.
Like, how can we use computers to, to, to create something that cannot be copied?
And it's by flipping the script completely and expanding as much
computing power as possible rather than as little computing power as possible,
which is true for all, like, which is what programmers strive to do, uh,
in every other aspect of computing.
But this is just like, you just flip that on its head and you get
something that you cannot copy.
And uh, yeah, I just love that I.
Uh, love it too.
All of this stuff, uh, all of this intricacies of mining and why it works.
Stuff super fascinating.
Uh, not a tangent exactly.
'cause I don't think we'll spend much time on it, but I, I really enjoyed,
uh, uh, when we visited Slovenia, the, the Nice hash conference and got
to have lots of good conversations about the, the mining stuff and deepen
our, uh, understanding of, of that side of things always interesting.
Yeah, super interesting.
Okay, let's continue.
The excitement we so-called Bitcoin Maximalist feel about Bitcoin does not
come primarily from the enormous gains that those who hopped early onto the
freight train have been blessed with.
Nor is it because we're in it for the technology as can
often be heard from opponents.
Those of us who preach the near divinity of this invention do so above all,
because we see the philosophical impacts of absolute scarcity in a commodity,
the idea of a functioning solution to the double spending problem in
computerized money is an achievement that simply can't be ignored by
solving the double spending problem.
Satoshi also made counterfeiting impossible, which in turn makes
artificial inflation impossible.
The world changing potential of this invention cannot be
understated, not in the long run.
The more you think about it, the more the thought won't give you any peace of mind.
If this experiment works, if it's real, it will take civilization to the next level.
What we don't know is how long this will take.
Right now, debates in the Bitcoin space are about Bitcoin's functionality
as a medium of exchange and its potential as a good store of value.
We might be missing the point we cannot possibly know if a type of monetary
token for which you're completely responsible with no third party protection
will ever become a preferred medium of exchange for most transactions.
Nor can we know if the price of Bitcoin will follow the hype cycle path that
we all want it to follow, so that it can become the store of value that
most maximalist claim It already is.
we've been focused on the wrong things all along.
Maybe Bitcoin's greatest strength is in its functionality as a unit of account.
After all, this is all that Bitcoin does.
If you own 21 Bitcoin, you own 1000000th of the world's first
absolutely scarce commodity.
This might not make you rich overnight, but it just might have something to
do with the opportunities available to your great-great-grandchildren.
Yeah, this, uh, I used the word divinity here in the beginning and it makes
me think of like how, how all these wonderful paradoxes, gigge made a talk
about this once, uh, like how Bitcoin is, uh, fuck you money and love at the same
time, and how Bitcoin is, uh, financial atheism and a religion at the same time.
And I, I. This is one thing, one thing I've thought about in, in terms of like
religious stuff and, and Bitcoin is, uh, Pascal's wager, which says that
you might as well the, the, the TLDR on Pascal's wager is that you might
as well believe in God because, uh, if you do, you may go to heaven and if,
if you don't, you, you can go to hell.
Uh, the, the problem that I have with Pascal's wager as a concept is
that it, it, it simply doesn't take any of the other 5,000 religions out
there into, uh, into account at all.
But with Bitcoin, Pascal's wager, AC actually works because if you believe in
Bitcoin and if you devote your life to the God that is Bitcoin, you actually make.
Uh, the likelihood of this coming true and this, this utopia here
on earth be, uh, is closer.
The more, the more in in time, the more you believe in, in the
concepts, uh, and the more, the more you devote your life to it.
So Pascal's wager works, but only if by God you actually mean Bitcoin coin.
It's so funny.
It's, it's, it's such a, uh, it's so funny that the wager actually works like that.
And I mean, it isn't something that people are necessarily going
to take up, uh, automatically.
And, and actually maybe this pascal's wager framing is
actually going to make some people viscerally oppose that somehow, uh.
But, but I think it's a, it's a good, uh, a good analogy that, that, uh,
if this is going to work, it's either gonna go to an infinity or to zero,
basically, uh, being on the side of getting some piece of that pie.
And again, this comes back to the, the absolute finite pie of what Bitcoin is.
There's, there's so many layers to this, but, but really that's the
core of what did it for me once I understood well, I mean, okay, what
really did it for me was, I, I got that there's no inflation to Bitcoin now.
Okay.
Ignoring that it's still technically inflating until 2140, but it, it's,
it's not though, like I, I, I got immediately that it's 21 million of
these things and you get a certain amount of that, that's, you've got
that piece of that pie forever, right?
As long as you can maintain control of your keys, which isn't trivial,
but, okay, let's pretend it's trivial.
But that one thing means there's a, there's now a fixed denominator.
You can put a fixed denominator on the economy.
That's the unit of account part, basically.
And if you do that, GDP growth is literally, should mean that
prices are, are deflating.
It's just that the, the denominator keeps increasing.
At the same time also, this constant, this constant chasing of GDP growth
is actually saying that, that, uh, there is more in the pie as a whole.
And so prices should be deflating.
It's the Jeff Booth hypothesis.
Uh, which, which we have talked about how you also have similar,
um, takes on, on this, I think later coming up in this book.
Right.
We'll, we'll touch on this more.
Yeah.
And, uh, uh, especially in the next book, independence Reimagined.
That's is, that's is all about that.
So, so I have a couple of other things to say about these two paragraphs
and, and this book in general.
I, all of my books, like the primary reason or what I want the reader
to take away from them is just, I want, I want them to trigger a
thought in the brain of the reader.
So, so they're not like, I'm not advocating for one
thing or another, really.
Uh, these are meant to be thought nuggets.
That's the, the Pascal's wager thing is a brain fart.
Everything else in here is sort of brain farts that are, and if, if, if you,
uh, happen to sniff on a particular part of your, uh, of your liking,
then uh, I have succeeded like that.
You, you.
That is, that is what the books are, are all about.
Uh, another thing to mention about these, these two paragraphs in particular is the
word bitcoin Maximalist, which is a dero.
It was intended as a derogatory term and invented by Vitalic
Butrin, the creator of Ethereum.
To, to sort of, yeah, to promote his shit coin basically.
And, and tell every Bitcoin believer who didn't also want a Ethereum, that
they were not open-minded enough.
But as Terry PR said, the problem with an open mind is that people
would come along and try to put stuff in it, stuff like Ethereum.
So, uh, uh, well, the Bitcoin, the Bitcoiners took the term to heart
and, uh, uh, wore it as, uh, as armor.
Instead.
We are proud Bitcoin maximalist, the whole point of Bitcoin is
that there can be only one.
It's uh, Highlander money.
No, absolutely.
And, uh, yeah, as funny as the term is the, the origins of the
term Bitcoin maximalist, it, it's not just a badge of honor.
It's, it's an actual correct term, I think.
And, and it's, it's important to say that, yeah, you, you, I don't
think you can really be a Bitcoin or if you advocate that other
cryptocurrencies, shit coins are.
Any good at all?
Um, because you, once again, it's just the whole case of once you see the thing, once
you get Bitcoin, that's it, and you're not really there if you still think the other
cryptos or the, or fiat currencies for that matter, still have value of any kind.
I think we still carve out a little bit of, a little bit of, um, uh, space for
stable coins as a, as a good intermediate measure, uh, a good way of bridging the
gap between the fiat system and Bitcoin.
But it's, um, that's not the same thing as, as a, as a token that exists solely
to separate, uh, a fool from his money.
No, I mean, stable coins are a tool, uh, to use in the fiat system that you
are still forced to use to some extent.
Uh, it's important to remember though, that.
All fiat systems are pyramid schemes, uh, uh, as any other shitcoin
like there, there's, uh, I think I go into this in a later chapter.
I, I was, uh, I view them as cryptocurrencies, which are the
cryptos and K cryptocurrencies, which are the, the fiat tokens.
They're all designed to enrich their issuer.
Bitcoin doesn't have an issuer.
This is crucial to understand.
Uh, and, uh, I don't remember where I was going with that.
That's okay.
I think we'll cover it more later.
And I think now, now let's, uh, let's sum up, I think, we'll, we'll take the,
the last couple of paragraphs here.
Okay.
Throughout history.
Whenever a prehistoric human tribe invented ceremonial burial, that
tribe began to expand rapidly.
Why?
Because as soon as you invent belief in an afterlife, you also introduce the
idea of self-sacrifice on a larger scale.
People who held these beliefs were much easier for a desperate to manipulate and
send into battle with neighboring tribes.
Religious leaders can use people's fears and superstitions to have them
commit all sorts of atrocities to their fellow man, and they still do so today.
Belief in a greater good can be the most destructive idea that
can pop up in a human mind.
The Nazis of World War II Germany believed that exterminating Jews was
for the greater good of their nation's.
Gene pool belief in noble causes often comes with unintended side effects,
which can have disastrous consequences.
Religious leaders, political leaders, and other power hungry sociopaths are
responsible for the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed.
Namely Wars.
Europeans often question the Second Amendment to the United States
Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms whenever a
tragic school shooting occurs on the other side of the Atlantic.
everyone seems to forget is that less than a hundred years ago, Europe was at war
with itself because its citizens had given too much power to their so-called leaders.
The Nazis came to power in a democracy.
Never forget that our individual rights weren't given to us by our leaders.
We were born with them.
Our leaders can't give us anything.
They can only force us to behave in certain ways.
If we truly want to be in charge of our lives, we need to find the tools necessary
to circumvent the bullshit ourselves.
Chapter.
Yeah, this is, um, the, the Road to Hell is paved with good intention comes to mind
that, that saying that this is basically what this, uh, this says, uh, and.
Comparing the Nazis of World War II to religious sacrifices.
That's another thing.
I mean, the, the, the point here is that no man has the, uh,
inherent right to rule another man.
Uh, uh, it's basically the non-aggression principle I'm alluding to here, and, uh,
basic libertarian philosophy that, uh,
the le the leaders of the world, whether they're religious or political, They,
they have no inherent right to call themselves that and to, and to take
your stuff and to tell you what to do.
Uh, and the sooner you realize this, the, the, the more fulfilling your
life can be because you can reclaim the driver's seat and start, um, start
taking your life to where you want to take it and, and not wear some power.
Hungry sociopath, which is the word I use here, uh, tells you to take it.
Yeah, the, this conclusion somewhat is a little disconnected from the
rest of the point of the chapter.
And, and I, I, I mean, I, I, I think we'll come across that as this, this was
more your, your writing style early on.
Nothing, nothing wrong with that.
It was just that the, the, um, many, many of these conclusions were ultimately
tangents to a certain extent, um, in the, in, but in, in this case, it's not, it's
not that it's totally unrelated at all.
The, the, the self-sacrifice part goes back to the financial atheism generally.
And, and this is, this is again, where it's sort of, I, I think,
I think that's one aspect of the, the self-sacrifice thing.
But, but we touched on this in the, in the.
The first episode here, the first chapter.
That, that the, the self-sacrifice thing is also what enables
society to grow generally.
Right?
It, it is double-edged sword or two-sided coins.
In all cases, advancements always lead to increased productivity
or prosperity somehow, or else they wouldn't be advancements.
But there's, there's downsides.
AI is one of these things that we might be dealing with quite a lot
here, but automation, ai, all, all this like, uh, greatly increased
cognitive, um, advancements, but maybe, maybe there, there's an over alliance
on technology and, and, uh, less jobs to go around for people, right?
And this, this self-sacrifice thing is another one.
The, the, uh, very concept of these sort of proto religions are, are
also coincided with adoption of.
Organized hunting, organized agriculture, the beginnings of civilization.
But, but of course the, the downside to that is that civilizations can
be, can be weaponized somehow.
And, and I don't think we've ever gotten around that, that charismatic
people who, who want power can persuade others and, uh, uh, having those
people being also in charge of the money printer is probably also a very
bad thing, not probably, definitely.
There's nothing wrong with humans organizing themselves in groups.
We need that for survival, and we need intersubjective belief systems
like language to, to, to get anywhere.
Uh, it's just that, uh, when, when these belief systems come at the
expense of the individual, uh, their, their object objectively bad,
or I at least I view them as bad.
So sacrifice is a, a, an interesting word.
Uh, what what you really want is not sacrifice, but delayed gratification.
So you want, you want something, you, you want to give something up in the
now, uh, to, to get something later.
Uh, the, the afterlife belief in an afterlife, uh, analogy is
because, uh, yeah, you, you can clearly see this, that when, when
ceremonial burial is invented, then.
Civilizations grow.
But that's not necessarily because ceremonial burial was a good thing.
Uh, if aliens saw that, they would probably, uh, view us as idiots.
Like, why are you digging dead bodies into the ground and
putting stones next to them?
Because, uh, more so than good for the individual who is already dead,
the, the ceremonial burial is good for the leader who can tell you that
if you do this and that in this life, you'll get a better life, uh, next
time you're reincarnated or whatever, or in heaven or something like that.
So there, there's a potential that these things, uh, can be used by,
by people who you don't want to use these tools to, to make the 18 year
olds go and kill the other tribe on the other side of the river.
Uh, in, in my opinion, I. Civilization happens when we trade with one
another, not when we kill one another.
So it's basically a war cry for individualism versus collectivism
like everything else in these books.
Well, what's funny here about this, and, and I, I certainly agree with that.
But, but I, I think maybe you, you overemphasize like possibly
I underemphasize the, the or, or overemphasize the opposite.
The, uh, I, I think you, you overemphasize the top downness of religion.
Uh, uh, I, I think there's ample evidence that that's not really how
religion works most of the time.
It's
No, no, I'm, I'm not saying that it's, uh, mandated, top down.
I'm saying that the psychopaths use the, the fact that other people have
this set of beliefs for their own gain.
So, so it, yeah.
And that's very important to set, uh, to, to clarify, I don't think that some
psychopath came up with the idea of God, that's, that's not what I'm saying at all.
Or the concept of heaven and hell or anything like that.
I, I'd say that, uh, there's a risk involved that these people will
use these ideas against people.
Uh, uh.
People's best interests.
There we go.
And I, I full, I fully agree with that.
And, and, and you know, I, I think the meta thing that if, if I can sum up my
thoughts about this, this whole thing, that, that Bitcoin becomes a tool for the
individual to safeguard against others, being able to use money against them.
But that's also sort of all that it is, the, the entire rest of the, the coin
here is that responsibility still lies with the individual to do with it, what
they will and, and the risk of the.
World going to shit irrespective of what any of us do.
That's, that's always going to be present.
But we can now do things, we can do one specific thing to take back some
of that control and live life, how we want to associate with the people
we, we want to, the community that is cropping up around Bitcoiners is a, is
a pretty awesome one and it's, uh, it's a lot of fun to be involved in that.
Um, so yeah, bi Bitcoin is financial atheism.
We might have a couple of disagreements on, on semantics of,
of the word atheism or, or of the term sacrifice or whatever it is.
But, but broadly, broadly, uh, I think it's, it's a very astute observation
and, and it's not atheism in a way that means to antagonize religious people.
It's, it's really the, the concept of money that that does not need to be
believed in, which is extremely important.
Yeah, no, you can, don't trust, verify is the, uh, the TLDR of this chapter?
Perfect.
Is that, is that, uh, where we'll leave this chapter?
I think so.
I have many other thoughts, but, uh, we have plenty of time to
discuss them in later chapters.
So, so don't trust, verify people, uh, like, subscribe, run
a node and brush your damn teeth.
Yeah.
Uh, I'll echo that exactly.
And, and, uh, uh, now that we're at the end of the chapter,
let us know what you think.
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Share the episode.
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Come join the conversation.
Anything more to say about that Knut.
Yeah, just one thing I thought of.
Uh, we are posting these on highlighter.
The every chapter is posted on highlighter for free every week, so you can go to
highlighter, uh, and highlight stuff and, uh, uh, share it on, uh, over noster and,
and use all the perks of highlighter.
So I hope that, that, that becomes a thing too.
So highlight your favorite quote.
Yes.
And, and if you have comments or questions after the fact here, we'll
address them in the, the next episodes.
Uh, definitely we, we will see them if you're in the Miro Atium group and
you ping us there, but we'll, we'll try to stay on top of any comments
on Noster or Twitter or, or wherever.
So.
I think, uh, I think the, the last thing is just to, to mention that, uh, uh,
thank you again to Plan B Network for really enabling this, this series enabling
us to release these, uh, the chapters and the episodes for free for everyone.
And, uh, it's, it's great to be partnering with them.
They're, they're really trailblazing in terms of Bitcoin education and, and this
initiative is just a, a perfect fit.
We were on a spaces with, with Zuko just, uh, just the other day here.
And, uh, uh, I think I, I, I just, I just see nothing but, but positives
from, from this collaboration and, and they're doing great things.
So go to Plan B Network, uh, and you can check out some other great
Bitcoin education resources and, and on their YouTube channel.
There's also gonna be condensed versions of these episodes, so when we go on these
really long tangents, we'll, we'll maybe cut those out a little bit so it's a
little more direct and accessible for, for people who just want the, the information.
So really excited about this partnership.
totally echo, echo what Luke said about plan B. It's a, it's a great,
uh, uh, a great initiative and there will be plenty more to come there,
uh, uh, going into the future.
Looking forward to all of it.
Absolutely.
And, and finally, we, we also, uh, are, are happy to be, uh,
also supported by Bit Box.
Big, big shout out to them.
And, and thank you for, for continuing to support these initiatives here.
They're, they're also a sponsor of our, our main show.
They've, they've really been a great partner.
They're our favorite hardware wallet.
It's easy to use and they're right on top of the, the latest
in, in bitcoin security here.
So go to Bit box.swiss/infiniti, check out the Bit Box zero two Bitcoin only edition.
And yeah, if you need a new hardware wallet for yourself or, or you know,
a, a new Coiner who, who needs a hardware wallet, go to Bit Box and,
uh, they'll have what you need.
So, uh, thanks again to Bit Box.
Alright, Knut, this has been an awesome episode.
Uh, I really enjoyed this one.
Financial atheism.
Looking forward to the release and we'll be tackling another episode in a week.
This
Yes, next week's episode is the About the Gullible Collective.
See you all then.
Take care.
has been the Bitcoin Infinity Academy.
Thank you for listening.