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Right.

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We are here.

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Did it. Hello. We did it. It's finally happening. This is happening. I'm really excited, man. What are we doing?

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Let's see. Well, do we wanna start at the beginning

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where

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you,

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you know, there's a special moment

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in every man's life when another man asks him if he wants to do a podcast. And it's kind of one of those things that you kind of cherish till, you know, the end of your days and your twilight. As I'm sitting on my deathbed, I'm gonna have that regret of I wish I was doing more podcasting.

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Yes I think that's probably gonna be the number one regret people have.

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Yeah. When they hit the end.

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That's right. You should have been doing more podcasts. That's why I do five. And then Yeah. That's why when this one this particular one

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was on its was on the ropes

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Mhmm. For a second.

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Yeah. So you I will today's 01/11/2026,

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and it was December

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17

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or eighteenth or something. Eighteenth.

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Eighteenth. I'll never forget this day and for a variety of reasons. There you go.

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So

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we were

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oh, that's right. Yeah. So we were

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I was on a road trip.

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Was driving

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basically

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myself, my dog and my family possessions for Christmas holidays while everyone else took the plane.

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And you said, hey. Do you have a minute? And I said, I have twelve more hours of driving today. I have nothing but time. And at this point, I'd already kind of gone through

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a bunch of podcasts just, like driving along the road. And then you and I ended up talking for like two hours, which should have just been its own podcast. We should have just recorded that whole conversation somehow.

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That's a normal phone conversation with me. People are starting to realize.

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Well,

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I guess

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this is what's the name of this podcast now? The Magic Internet Math? What was I believe we went we're going with Magic Internet Math.

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Excellent.

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So do you you wanna set the stage as the torch bearer and the one carrying over the previous

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feed?

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Yes. I would very much like to do that. So first of all, for coming on. Rob Hamilton,

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we are

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magic Internet math.

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And what the heck are we doing? Okay.

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So I think we have a very

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noble

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and yet psychotic ambition.

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Those are the two best qualities of an ambition.

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And

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it is,

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I will just say it's

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to,

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I think reteach math, really re bring math to our civilization,

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newly,

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with newly formed eyes

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and also

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as a liberal art.

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And that's, I feel like we live So I feel like part of like all of our Bitcoin journeys are,

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there's certain skills that we were taught not to get.

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And even if we, you know, we were demoralized

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out of getting them and they're important.

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So like when you think of like, what's the attack surface, everybody like is really on top of their upset.

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Most people are pretty on top of what they eat.

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You know, they're pretty, you know, they their physical fitness, they're fairly on top of that. You know, they can think to themselves, if

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I'm in a jam, I might need to outrun

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somebody or beat them up or shoot them. All

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of these things are like things that people are on top of

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when they think, boy, when we go through this fourth turning,

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what's really the skill set I'm going to need?

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And, you know, it's not like you're gonna have to do a math problem to get through the fourth turning.

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You might. You might have to prevent someone else from doing a math problem.

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But it's more,

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I think where this is really important is thinking through, know the fourth turning isn't going to last forever, and most of us are really,

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most of us, let's just assume we're going to survive it because we've been doing the work, right?

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And I can't think of a sadder thing than doing the work to survive the fourth turning only to get completely

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bulldozed in

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the next era

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because you

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really didn't necessarily think through the complete set of skills you might need.

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It's kind of like playing

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basketball

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and locking down on defense, but you don't get the rebound and they get another possession and you have to go defend yourself all over again.

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So the way I view

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mathematics

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is

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like a core skill set

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in

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a self determined human being.

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A self determined human being needs conviction

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in their own reasoning.

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And this isn't something we think of all the time, right? But

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you have to know when you're right.

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And that's like a big question is how do you know when you're right?

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When it comes to fighting, like I think you know, right? You're like, I got this, you just have this feeling like I fucking got this, right? Then every once in a while somebody really surprises you and you're like, oh, I guess I didn't have it,

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But I understood the conviction. Understood

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what it took to know

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that I was capable of this match.

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With regards to your own reasoning, that gets really difficult.

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And

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we see it in the world in like some of these FUD attacks,

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like that's where I think I really see it on the battlefield.

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Like where does this get people?

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I think something we discussed is something like 98%

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of people who have ever owned Bitcoin have already outlived it.

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Right? That's right. Yeah, and that was I forgot the exact context of the setup of the conversation,

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but I made the observation that most people,

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especially

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if you view it by amount of Bitcoin,

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have already outlived their Bitcoin. If we did an actuarial analysis of like the Bitcoin as a cohort, it would have already Most people, their Bitcoin survives them because they have spent it or lost it all already. Especially when you count it by the numbers when you have

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was it Half of the Bitcoin distribution happened in the first four years from 02/2013,

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half the Bitcoin ever in that will ever exist in circulation were issued.

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Right. I think most of those people don't have their Bitcoin anymore. There's a couple who still do and you the culture and the

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like the

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kind of like the the shared oral history of Bitcoin. We always focus on the people who still have the Bitcoin.

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Yes.

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We call that survivorship bias, and we'll probably talk a lot about that on this podcast. It's funny. The first level, like click you always get with people with like Laszlo and the pizza stories like that idiot sold 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. He must be regretting it. And everyone forgets that Laslow is the guy who came up with GPU mining as a concept.

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Yep. And Satoshi actually tutted him into trying to share some of it because my personal theory is that Satoshi always knew that you were going to be able to use

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graphics cards to do more optimized like operations.

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Right. And that was going to outperform the CPU

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for high end computation,

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and so he knew that was always eventually going to happen.

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That's actually a funny side story. The amount of work the Genesis block has way overshoots and indexes the amount of required work to make it.

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Like, it it surpass I forgot the exact math, but you can go look up the Genesis block header. It has more lead way more leading zeros than you would ever possibly need to make a Genesis block, a consensus valid one. Yeah. So my theory is that like, I think I got this theory from John Seth that

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Satoshi was tinkering with physical hardware and understood how it worked because it was almost kind of like a little artifact for you to realize later, like, wait a second. This guy did way more than one CPU's worth of work.

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Right, right. I guess to pull it back in, though, on math,

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so when I went to college, I actually got a double major in math and economics.

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But I also almost failed seventh grade math.

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So I've always,

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especially later, I've always liked numbers and math. I had a difficulty when I was younger trying to fully grok them and I like getting like my bachelor's degree in math

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and appreciation for kind of like it's the foundational rules of the system, whatever system that you have, whether

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it's how computers work, it's how

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really any sort of concept like right now

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LLMs being the hot new thing, it's linear algebra. It's a bunch of large matrices doing multiplication,

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right? And I've always found that even if you don't have like the full like PhD doctoral level analysis, understanding the rules of the system and being able to have enough tools for self sufficiency to explore

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that system is a valuable skill

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that should be encouraged among everyone and not everyone has to get a bachelor's level of understanding of math. They should be able to at least bread crumb out their reasoning and understanding so they can

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figure out where they want to tap out and stop. Right. And when we talk about this with Bitcoin,

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how many people actually understand elliptic private key cryptography and like finite fields and

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like doing the multiplication

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with to be able to actually do all this stuff and how it all works, right? The asymmetry of public private key cryptography.

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People understand my seed phrase is special

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and it should be kept safe, but they don't understand what actually is going on under the hood. And I think part of this podcast journey is kind of being able to, these are often things that are kind of like glanced over like, hey, go to a BitDevs

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or read this book if you wanna learn more, but there aren't actual conversations around that. And most of the technical

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podcasts,

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the first thing they usually do is

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wave over the theory and talk about like how something technically works, but never getting to the math level. It's like here is the level of technical understanding you need to use this product or service or technology, but it's never like the one level deeper of why is this good technology or why does it work the way it does in a secure way. So I think that's kind of part of our journey here. I think the way when we were on that two hour signal conversation was we want to be able to break it down for like if you're

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at a bit devs and you go to the bar afterwards and you're just talking about stuff, right? This isn't going to be super

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deep in the weeds, but bringing a bar level comp, like

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standing at a bar level conversation of these math concepts to give people some sort of extension

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for them to help them. So like

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an olive branch or some sort of like reaching out of hand to get get you at least into the first level of being curious about these concepts and thinking about them for yourself.

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Yeah. And you might participate in the conversation even if you don't know what the hell you're talking about because you recognize at least a couple of the terms because we

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like, I feel like if you so this this is the second generation

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of

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what I started last year, which was called the motivate the math podcast.

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And I'm gonna leave that RSS up. This is gonna be a new one, but I definitely think people should go check that out because

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that was the really that was like the that was the Genesis block that had way more work than it needed. Like, the the amount of work it needed to basically

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start from a complete noob level and explain what groups are,

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which was sort of psychotic.

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But like, I think that people who went through that have some like kind of sports ball like understanding now

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of

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concepts like closure, inverses,

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identities.

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And these things actually matter when we talk about,

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say, you know, what's the difference between elliptic curves and Schnorr signatures and like those kinds of things like that.

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So like just having sort of the sports ball type

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bar level conversation,

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familiarity with a lot of the jargon, it's like knowing notation

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in a certain way. Right? And there's a great quote, I use it all the time by Von Neumann,

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the mathematician who said, you never really learn math, you just get used to it.

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Being exposed

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to a recurring conversation,

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it's sort of like going to BitDevs all the time. You go to bit devs all the time, you're not so intimidated after like three or four times, you just might not be that intimidated

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talking to a guy like Rob, where he's just like going, he's going a mile a minute, but you're like, wait, I understand

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some of the things he's actually saying, you know? Yeah. And

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I think like related to that, my own journey with Bitcoin

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was I got into Bitcoin in 2013. I had just graduated college

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and

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the actual gateway for me was I had buddies that were like, hey, you're a Ron Paul and the Fed guy. You should check out this Bitcoin thing. I was holding gold and silver and I was kind of like I was technical in that I was always like I was the token IT guy and I understand computers pretty well, but I wasn't a programmer

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And I kind of rolled my eyes. Was like, like,

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like, I think my eyes just glazed over, like too complicated, probably a scam, like baseline heuristics. Right. But then a couple of months later,

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Dogecoin came out and a bunch of my buddies started mining Dogecoin And I download the we're all gamers. We have our graphics cards, right? And I'm setting up and the

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I could see it was all in Comic Sans. I understood Internet culture to be like, Okay, this is satire, right? This is sat But you had to download the client just like you would with Bitcoin Core. You had to run your miners, point your hash rate. I was mining at a Dogecoin pool

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and

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it had me realize I was like sending money around to my friends. Was like, okay, understand this has been a way to thaw the ice and get myself to start grappling with these concepts of what Bitcoin teaches.

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And then I started going to bit devs and there were bit devs New York City bit devs in 2013 was like a dozen, maybe two dozen guys in a room going through C plus plus poll requests. And I walked in, I was like, damn, I am the dumbest person here. Right.

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But that gave me the opportunity to sit there and think and listen and start my own exploration and journey that with Bitcoin. And I think maybe our goal a little bit is for those that are in Bitcoin and kind of always kind of pushed off on the technical understanding of things to be able to

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take that step for themselves right have a friendly environment

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for them to hear people who are grasping with the concepts themselves

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and being able to start their own questions and start building their own foundational understanding through their own reasoning, right? Like you and I are not experts that should be taking directly at our word for any of this,

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but we're trying to

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bootstrap and start up people kind of thinking about these more

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technical mathematical concepts for themselves and start trying to connect concepts and ideas and how it relates to Bitcoin or their life and being able to kind of have fun with it.

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Yeah. And to be clear, anyone who listened to the first iteration, Motivate the Math knows I'm not a mathematician.

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I am not even I don't even have a college degree in math.

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I was an actuary, which is what mathematicians called morons.

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You know, oh, you can use a five function calculator and you just make a bunch of money working for insurance companies. That's great.

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So like an

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actuary is typically if you like, you know, if you're inside and like

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the math scene,

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right, at companies, they're considered like too dumb to do the real math. I ended up quitting being an actuary and becoming a quant. I had to self teach myself basically, to get to calculus, differential equations, all of those things. And I think that's a big part of how I ended up here.

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That's a long journey that I think is worth sharing at some point. But, you

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know, college degree is in something that is like very simplified. I never would have made it through like a lot of the hard math classes. My oldest daughter is a math major.

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She's already took a couple of real analysis classes that I never like, I would have got like, I realized like I would have learned everything, but I would have gotten Fs on all the tests.

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And that's sort of how and that's like, I accept that that's how I am,

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right? I can learn things and I can explain them, I probably won't do well on an exam.

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But

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I am the

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strongest

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at the moment person applying for the job of teaching people this. So

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I'd

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say

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if you're a better mathematician than I, jump

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in the ring and start teaching

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and when that happens,

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find that guy.

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I will also say like the contextualization.

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So for me, the big thing is

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the

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context. The context is like decisive

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And

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I believe I probably have a very unique world view here in wanting to teach math as a liberal art. And I think that is super important in having

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children. So I have, again, my oldest daughter, she's 20. She's a junior in college, pure math major. And,

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you know, I didn't know I didn't know this is how it would happen, although I wanted it to happen.

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She had a liberal arts education her whole life, and that was really important to me. It was I actually thought

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I thought there was a pretty good chance she would study math, and it was really important to me that she had humanities,

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that she like understood people, she had art.

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So like they go to Waldorf schools, which is really focused on art.

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And like why do they focus on art is because

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art actually builds will.

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So when you like struggle with an art medium,

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like copper

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or

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blacksmithing or

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a canvas,

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you are at the mercy of that medium.

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And you have to figure out how to dominate that medium into

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and into what you're trying to get it to do. And you you know, that is like that that builds will in a child and in a person. And when you talked about math earlier,

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that's what I was hearing. I was like, is

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another medium.

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And it's appropriate in some places. It's inappropriate in other places.

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Meaning like,

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LLMs are dominated by linear algebra.

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And like one of the reasons I have very one of the reasons I'm pretty confident in the world of LLMs is because I have a lot of conviction that it's really hard to fuck up when your entire world is a vector space. Now we can talk eventually about why I would say something like that. Right? But like linear combinate the world of linear combinations is really hard to fuck up, meaning it's hard to find

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like, I feel like if there's aliens on a planet somewhere else that their linear combinations work the same as ours. Like that is like one of the base atomic

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units of how we think.

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So like, I have a lot of confidence that that is probably gonna work. Right? Whereas I don't know that the physics that people have mastered,

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sorry, the math people have mastered in physics, I don't know that that applies in other mediums necessarily.

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And I think when I think about Bitcoin and cryptography,

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a lot of the danger we run into is

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just these notions of equivalence.

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Like we, I feel like as human beings, we project equivalence onto things all the time.

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And it's not always

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correct. In fact, most of the time it's not correct. And we are,

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you know, we're subject to a knowledge system that actually wants us to make incorrect

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projections of equivalence,

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you know, and this is why we have stupid things like,

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name you name the stupid thing in the media, right? Like,

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woke shit, whatever it is.

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Slop.

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We have a lot of slop and a lot of it is just because we're being told that A equals B when it doesn't or A projects to B when it necessarily doesn't necessarily.

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So like the when you when you start studying like abstract algebra,

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you get a rigorous,

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it's like a really a rigorous

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approach to like, when do you get to say something equals something else? And sometimes two things that don't look alike

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can sort of equal each other because they preserve the same mathematical operations. And we got a lot into this in the first iteration of the podcast.

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So like that's kind of thing like I feel like in you, so why that's why it matters like humanities,

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like understanding

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math as an art

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is like, is this medium appropriate for the kind of math you're trying to do?

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And does it makes like, this is something that human beings, there's a certain math that human beings will try to do without knowing it's math, which is, you know, I think all of these types of people are the same.

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Something like that, right? Where we do these

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projections

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that are totally, and then we take it for granted, right? We, they're like, we treat them like theorems in our brains and we build off of them. And

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I'm kind of like the messenger who you might want to, you might not like very much to say, hold on a sec, right?

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We need a rigorous framework

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and you don't have to study math, you don't have to have like, you don't have to have been this gold star student and you know, through this. That system was designed to make people not learn it.

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That system was designed to just sit to actually keep you from having a reasoning

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base that you have conviction in because they want to be you wanna they want you to have conviction in their reasoning.

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Right.

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But, like, I've seen this meme going around that, like, people oftentimes aren't actually engaging in rhetoric. Like, well, they're engaging purely in rhetoric, and they kind of view words as spells,

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and they're just trying to use their spells on you to persuade you because they're not grounded in any sort of, like, deeper truth.

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They just have, like, a spellbook of catchphrases and things that they say in rhetorical tricks and framings and how to almost short circuit your reasoning.

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And

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the idea here is to kind of

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understand things from a deeper principle. I think we should talk about kind of like our larger ambitions for the podcast. But a perfect example,

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while you were just talking, I was battling with chat GPTs and this is a perfect example.

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I made an offhand comment earlier about how the Genesis block

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had all of this extra work in it. And I threw in a chat to see like, can you verify for me that the Genesis block had extra work in it? And I've been wrestling with it

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for about five minutes now. And it's like, well, the difficulty

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of the Genesis block was one. So there really wasn't any extra work. And I was like, that's not how this works. I was like, the solution to the proof of work, look at the block header.

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There are extra So

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Genesis

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block has, if everyone's familiar at a high level with Bitcoin mining, you prove about like how many

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leading zeros you have in your number to show how much work you've done because you've succeeded the target, right? So if I pull up the current,

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for context here, if I pull up the current Bitcoin block, the amount of leading zeros in the block hash is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty leading zeros in hexadecimal,

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which is base 16.

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Right?

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So you have

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16

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leading zeros when you have 16 options. Right? So you have

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you're taking 16

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possible

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like options and you're saying that at 16 times, you're always picking your one out of sixteen, sixteen times in a row. Like that's a very like difficult thing to be able to achieve. The Genesis block has

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one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

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It has 10 leading zeros.

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Block number one, on January 9, the first block that Satoshi made. My personal theory is that Satoshi put out the code and the Genesis block and the client and was waiting for someone else to do something with it. So there's a provable observable gap of basically almost a week, like six days,

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where

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Satoshi was kind of like taking a step back and see if someone else would take it. And eventually he's like, okay, I'm going to start mining blocks.

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This is like because everyone knows Jan three was when he hit the button, but the block wasn't mined for

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So the Genesis block was mined. That's where you get the times in

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the Coinbase output. He says, you know, chancellor on the brink of second bailout bank. So he wanted to prove like, hey, the network started on this date because I took the morning paper. But the next block that built wasn't on top of

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for six days. Right, that's right. So the whole network didn't do anything for six days.

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And the

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thing known in Bitcoin is you actually cannot spend the money in the Genesis block. Like the actual initial 50 Bitcoin. You can't spend that.

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But just to go back here, there's 12345678910

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in the Genesis block. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

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in block number one.

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So

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you have two less leading zeros, which means a lot less work was done to do that. And ChatGPT is adamant. It's like, no, the difficulty

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was one for block zero and block one is identical. I was like, you're not I'm not asking what the network difficulty was. I'm asking how much effort was put into making the Genesis block versus. And so this is all just like a little bit of microcosm to say, especially in a world with LLMs where it's like very eager to very quickly give you an answer.

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You're going to take this stuff as baseline fact.

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Yep. If you don't understand and reason this stuff more. And I think our mission

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and like what we're doing this for

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is to provide

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a safe entry level point for someone who is not technical to talk about how math intersects with Bitcoin,

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life, technology in general. Like we could probably do multiple episodes on just linear algebra to explain like what a vector database is and like how context works with LLMs,

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right, to understand how to get more and more insight out of them. They may not always be Bitcoin related, but I think the goal here is to provide

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a casual environment

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for people to start exploring and playing with these concepts for themselves.

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Yeah, and I think what, so now the resources

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that we have to offer people listening to this are in a just a different stratosphere from what they were in the first iteration of the podcast. So

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if you want, so I have a website now.

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So this is why December 18

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was such an important date. December 18 is the Jan three of magic Internet man.

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Because that's when

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Rob came to my meetup and decided to interrupt his long long drive.

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That's right.

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He introduced he introduced me to a

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not to vibe coding in general, but a particular the particular skill that we've all been obsessed with. I wonder how this episode is going to age just because of the time it's being released, right? Things you know so quickly that we're gonna laugh at ourselves. It's gonna be seem very antiquated a year or two from now.

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He basically reached his hand out and brought me into the wave of Opus 4.5

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and Claw Code. Yes. And with that, I stood up this magic Internet math website, which I'll put in the show notes. I wish I could tell you it's magicinternetmath.com,

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but it's not and we'll hope to get there one day. But I'll put the website in the show notes, but there are

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there's like 30 courses now on there. And so one of them is this basic cryptography class. So the first

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thing I put in there is a

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total drill down. If you want to get good at converting from binary to decimal to hex and all that, It's the first page in that in the cryptography class.

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So you can basically just go in there and you can click a button and pop up a little calculator and there's a bunch of quizzes. And the easy quizzes are multiple choice, but the hard ones you actually got to put the right answer

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in.

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It's really good thing for like, if you wanna know like,

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if you're an adult and you kind of like fucked off in math your whole life, you're like, what could I do?

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Well, like learning your times tables is probably a good thing to do. And then learning how to convert from just natively from binary to hex and decimal, being able to do that is

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a really good idea. And I've gone through like I've spent hours on that one page just doing the quizzes and

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I think it's worth

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doing and I'm probably going to create a game off of it

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that

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know, just these certain things that I really want to drill down. So anyway, so like the ability to do that, there's also there's three linear algebra classes on the site now of varying,

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you know, of varying

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difficulty.

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So there's a I don't know that there's like a super true blue beginner linear algebra class, but there's a basic algebra class anyone can start with.

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And they're like, it literally starts with like what is a field which is just like the very properties of like

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when you're adding two numbers, it's you have commutativity

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meaning the order doesn't matter like that kind of stuff, associativity like that very basic, very, very basic stuff that gets you into eventually what we call linear algebra.

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I

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like to just call that vector space, the math of vector spaces where

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it's linear combinations

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of items. Strictly

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like

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ax plus by equals

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something,

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where a and b are like integers.

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And

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so we have this website that definitely

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is

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you should check out.

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Got a map URL, put it in the show notes. URL will be in the show notes. It's all public. It's all free.

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Everything's free at the moment and it probably will stay that way for a while.

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So yeah, that's so like we have some we have some tools now also that like, so we want people to be comfortable. I think when you brought, when you said you showed up, you've told me the story before too. And I've had the same reaction when you talked about going to the bit devs and feeling like you're the dumbest person there. Like,

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are the

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things I seek

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all the time in life. Like, I seek to find myself in those situations. Now a lot of people are very uncomfortable in those situations, but this podcast

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could be such a situation where you don't have to look anybody in the face

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and

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see them later and be like, hey. I remember when you were dumb. I remember when you were the dumbest guy here. Right? You can just listen to the podcast

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in anonymity,

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right?

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And

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I

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would definitely say stick with it because this is worth doing,

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00:30:35,175 --> 00:30:38,535
right? But it's not it might not feel good. You might not feel

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not feel like you're making a lot of progress necessarily.

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But again,

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the website, I have a beginner section on the website. And like,

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you probably don't realize this, but you can learn like calculus

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as

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you know, as a basically as a noob. You can start learning it you know, the only reason they teach it so hard and stupid is to make you hate it. I

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00:31:02,315 --> 00:31:03,675
know that sounds like slop,

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00:31:04,700 --> 00:31:12,539
but I do have a strong belief that the powers that be don't want people to don't want people good at math. They don't want people building a bomb

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against them. Right? That's they don't, you know, they don't want another Manhattan project of a bunch of people. So, like, even so like they rigged the system to demoralize people. And you know, some people were really good anyway and survived this system.

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Some of them got PhDs in physics and then they basically just put them on things like strength things that don't matter, like strength theory so that they would never do anything significant. Like Satoshi was a fucking mistake

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in their system.

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He was lab leak. He's a lab leak. That's right. Sort of like and I like to think of us as lab leaks. Like, are errors in the system trying to and then we're trying to essentially

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select

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and find people who wanna be errors.

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00:31:53,085 --> 00:32:12,645
Right? Because it's gonna take an error to like really win on the frontier. Like if you really want to be out there with what is going to be bombarded at you, like the FUD attacks, like I talked about the FUD attacks before, like maybe like the first FUD attack, which is parabolic price of Bitcoin. That's like what unlocked, like that's what's what got most people to sell their Bitcoin. They're like, oh,

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00:32:13,125 --> 00:32:32,210
look how much it look how much it's gone up. It's two x, three x. You know, I bought it at $2 and now it's like $6 Fuck, dude. I'm a genius. Right? That's the first understanding the concept of market cap and that when it went from 2 to $6 it went from like a 20,000,000 to a 60,000,000 market cap and you think that's the total addressable size of this market

400
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is 60,000,000

401
00:32:34,050 --> 00:32:34,370
right?

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00:32:34,855 --> 00:32:40,695
So the first like kind of, I call it FUD attack, it's very passive. It's just like let people, let people

403
00:32:41,495 --> 00:32:45,894
get rid of it naturally because they don't understand how valuable it is.

404
00:32:46,455 --> 00:32:48,215
Then they started to get

405
00:32:48,190 --> 00:32:51,950
these flood attacks, they started hitting things like socially,

406
00:32:51,950 --> 00:32:56,670
right, that you're a psychopath, you're a loser, you're a power consumer, you're all this shit.

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00:32:56,910 --> 00:33:00,590
They try to make you feel bad about it. And a lot of people I think

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00:33:01,045 --> 00:33:07,684
said it wasn't worth it and said said, you know, I don't know. And it's again, it all comes down to not knowing really the value.

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And then, you know, like this past year, we had the fucking

410
00:33:12,165 --> 00:33:30,014
node stupidity that really I I feel like really, I don't wanna get you going and get act people activated, but like the reality is I think, oh, this leads I think the reality is a lot of people had a problem with the realization that they were second class citizens, that they this realization that they had they didn't have the power

411
00:33:30,335 --> 00:33:36,414
to really affect this thing. And they got it you know, they got really worked up and scared about it.

412
00:33:36,894 --> 00:33:37,854
So, like,

413
00:33:38,894 --> 00:33:41,294
know, this is where, like, I saw very clearly

414
00:33:42,070 --> 00:33:53,590
that first, I saw that technical people sidestep this thing, like, pretty beautifully, and it was really the nontechnical people that got really caught up in this. But, you know,

415
00:33:54,355 --> 00:33:58,354
but, like, I don't wanna talk about that issue so much. I just wanna say that, like,

416
00:33:58,755 --> 00:34:06,595
these things these these attacks are gonna get better and better and better. Meaning, like, they're you know, it's not gonna be so easy. The bar, I think, for

417
00:34:07,090 --> 00:34:10,850
your own conviction in yourself is going to be is gonna rise

418
00:34:11,010 --> 00:34:17,170
more and more and more, and it's almost like your ability to hold your Bitcoin is going to be like a big fucking tournament

419
00:34:17,490 --> 00:34:20,690
that you just keep going through every round, hope you survive every round.

420
00:34:22,155 --> 00:34:22,875
Yeah.

421
00:34:22,955 --> 00:34:24,075
No. I agree.

422
00:34:25,195 --> 00:34:28,875
To be I'll work backwards and be concise and say, one,

423
00:34:29,595 --> 00:34:35,755
this is where the biggest like, in that whole discourse and debate was this isn't a technical debate. This is a philosophical debate.

424
00:34:36,210 --> 00:34:37,650
And that was a

425
00:34:37,810 --> 00:34:41,890
basically Jedi mind trick to have you be ungrounded from reality.

426
00:34:42,849 --> 00:34:45,410
We can just leave it there but saying like oh this is philosophical,

427
00:34:45,410 --> 00:35:01,625
this is not technical when Bitcoin exists as software in the world and it must operate as software. You have to contend with the reality of how the world works in a distributed system. So I'll just say that, like, that was like the first, like, obvious, like, slight of hand of being like, Ah, see, you don't have to learn technical things. I can just

428
00:35:01,865 --> 00:35:10,650
do rhetoric and you should listen to me because I have rhetoric. It's an instant it's trying to remove your sovereignty. But it's an instant like just switch of like, don't think for yourself,

429
00:35:10,970 --> 00:35:16,089
don't do the hard work of understanding how things technically work, just listen to the rhetoric.

430
00:35:16,809 --> 00:35:20,009
But I think the messaging that's important to take away from this,

431
00:35:20,835 --> 00:35:24,915
this is what I took away at least and I think this is what I would want people to know is that

432
00:35:28,915 --> 00:35:30,995
bitcoin is a protocol driven,

433
00:35:31,155 --> 00:35:33,395
it's a protocol and if you're all in,

434
00:35:34,070 --> 00:35:47,750
like, on your life and your life savings and you're, you know, you're even close to all in, you think you've got really got skin in the game. And I know a lot of those guys had skin in the game, and this was, I think, part of why they had such a problem with it. Hold on. If you're all in, you had skin in the game,

435
00:35:48,535 --> 00:36:05,430
You are not a you're just not a first class citizen if you don't really understand the thing. And I don't really understand the thing. I don't even know if you really do. Like there's only a few people that do. The question, right? So what do we do about that? So this is what we were talking about on that car trip, right? Is that like

436
00:36:07,349 --> 00:36:08,470
the libsecp

437
00:36:08,470 --> 00:36:09,270
library,

438
00:36:09,510 --> 00:36:10,950
the actual library

439
00:36:11,269 --> 00:36:19,105
that secures the Bitcoin. It started when Satoshi initially wrote it. It was 500 lines of code and now it's like 50,000.

440
00:36:20,465 --> 00:36:21,345
And

441
00:36:21,345 --> 00:36:38,720
the amount of people that could walk through and understand that entire code base maybe gets to two hands, but it doesn't go much beyond two hands. At the upper bound, we're talking 20 people, right? Deeply, intricately, like understand all of those mechanics. I want to say that this episode

442
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:45,795
is special because we're just kind of doing this cold to get the momentum going and not over plan and just get something out there to start the conversation.

443
00:36:46,595 --> 00:36:55,155
These future episodes, I think our goal is to either have those people on to be able to ask questions and just have a good conversation, or you and I are just going to pick

444
00:36:55,555 --> 00:36:56,835
something like

445
00:36:57,470 --> 00:37:03,630
linear algebra and how it intersects with LLMs, and we're just gonna spend two hours talking about the math around it. Right? Like, we're gonna

446
00:37:04,269 --> 00:37:05,390
this is like a

447
00:37:06,269 --> 00:37:15,515
unique one in the capsule because this is just us getting the momentum going, getting started, and kind of at a high level talking about the thesis of what we're trying to do here.

448
00:37:17,035 --> 00:37:18,155
So like that,

449
00:37:18,635 --> 00:37:32,290
our goal is to get the people who write the Lipsch P library on to actually talk about what they're working on and like the work that they did. Like how does it go from a 500 lines of code that Satoshi wrote to the 50,000 lines today? Like what does that journey look like? How does that all work?

450
00:37:32,770 --> 00:37:40,290
And you and I doing a little bit of like poking around and research ahead of time so we can ask some good questions and getting into all of that and all of the different things they have to think and account for.

451
00:37:41,905 --> 00:37:48,545
You were talking about like being able to listen to this podcast is like an anonymous person and being able to

452
00:37:49,905 --> 00:37:54,200
being able to like without like putting yourself out there like

453
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:57,560
learn clumsily along the way. What I'm actually looking forward to

454
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:08,680
is people calling me out and checking my math and improving my understanding. I'd like to actually learn publicly and have like an open dialogue, have conversations because the way my brain works

455
00:38:09,125 --> 00:38:31,240
is I I just have a bunch of axiomatic principles of like how things work. And then whenever I'm thinking it's improv jazz assembling concepts and building on top of those axioms. So whenever someone like says, actually, this thing you thought was true was not true. I'm like, amazing. Thank you. I can now iterate and improve all my understanding of how math or Bitcoin or life or anything else works, right?

456
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:43,665
I think And they will. They They will. Gonna mutually benefit from this. It's not just we are we are far from a priestly class explaining to you how math works. We're going be clumsily stumbling along with you guys,

457
00:38:44,065 --> 00:38:50,740
and it'll be a great opportunity for everyone to learn, whether it's listeners calling in or getting someone

458
00:38:51,060 --> 00:38:59,380
who's like a cryptographer on and correcting our misunderstandings of how things work. Right? I think that's the missed opportunity is that whenever you get these people on podcasts,

459
00:38:59,620 --> 00:39:03,540
it's from a marketing angle of like, here's this new product thing and whatever,

460
00:39:03,620 --> 00:39:04,740
but it's never like

461
00:39:05,285 --> 00:39:21,740
the math. It's never the actual like logic of it all. Right. We're like, oh, Frost is here. So the cool thing about Frost is you can do off chain key rotation and you can do a two of three and make like a single stick. It's always like the end product marketing bumbling. And it's not why is that safe,

462
00:39:22,220 --> 00:39:23,340
how is that secured,

463
00:39:23,500 --> 00:39:33,420
right? And that's I think what we want to do is we want to kind of zig where everyone else is zagging and we want to kind of go deeper in that side and not run away from those technicalities because we think there's a lot of beauty

464
00:39:33,765 --> 00:39:40,645
in being able to find things like that and how it enriches our lives and I think it just gives us all a better understanding of how things work.

465
00:39:41,605 --> 00:39:44,885
Yeah it's so funny man. So you mentioned libsecp

466
00:39:44,885 --> 00:39:47,125
library. That's the whole that's

467
00:39:47,125 --> 00:39:52,579
the reason I'm here and I exist I think to anybody listening because my

468
00:39:52,579 --> 00:39:53,220
story

469
00:39:53,619 --> 00:39:54,339
is,

470
00:39:54,900 --> 00:39:56,420
you know, I got into Bitcoin

471
00:39:57,460 --> 00:39:59,859
pretty much almost four years ago to the day.

472
00:40:00,819 --> 00:40:01,380
And,

473
00:40:02,099 --> 00:40:05,225
know, the first thing I did when I came in here was

474
00:40:05,865 --> 00:40:08,345
start verifying, which is what they tell you to do.

475
00:40:08,905 --> 00:40:09,465
So

476
00:40:09,785 --> 00:40:11,865
I spent the entire year reading

477
00:40:12,505 --> 00:40:13,385
books.

478
00:40:15,385 --> 00:40:18,505
You know, I found base 58 and that was amazing. So

479
00:40:19,740 --> 00:40:23,740
transactions. I got really good at decimal hex and all that stuff going through all that too.

480
00:40:25,100 --> 00:40:28,220
Didn't know what endian meant and all that stuff. That was really cool.

481
00:40:30,060 --> 00:40:30,940
Got into

482
00:40:31,180 --> 00:40:48,235
Jimmy Song's programming Bitcoin book which I that was like the first time I think I even ever got introduced to a finite field and I almost put the book down after a day and then at some It's chapter one. Finite fields is chapter one of that book. Yeah. Chapter one and it didn't click until it did and then I was like, oh my god, this is wild.

483
00:40:49,730 --> 00:40:54,130
The other like, I always shout that book out because it's one of the few programming

484
00:40:54,130 --> 00:40:56,770
books where if you go on the GitHub, the code still works.

485
00:40:57,170 --> 00:41:00,609
It's so many books you'd think it just doesn't. So

486
00:41:01,010 --> 00:41:03,970
shout out programming Bitcoin, great book, people should get it.

487
00:41:05,994 --> 00:41:12,555
You know, I go to the Bitcoin GitHub once I start knowing what I'm doing, and then I go I look at all the formulas.

488
00:41:12,875 --> 00:41:15,195
It all makes sense. Things are nice.

489
00:41:15,835 --> 00:41:19,595
And then I said, okay. Now now it's time to check out LibSec,

490
00:41:20,230 --> 00:41:24,230
the libsec library and I go on there and there's no formulas.

491
00:41:24,310 --> 00:41:25,990
There's just nothing but like

492
00:41:26,470 --> 00:41:29,750
what looked to me like millions of hard coded numbers

493
00:41:29,910 --> 00:41:31,350
separated by commas.

494
00:41:31,990 --> 00:41:39,224
And that was truly like I was already so I already like spent a year getting myself like all in here with Bitcoin.

495
00:41:39,625 --> 00:41:57,220
And and I'm like, I'm starting to I'm like, oh, I'm gonna validate everything. This is gonna be great. You can validate it. Everybody says you can validate it and I'm doing it. And so I'm building a big foundation and then I hit this libsec library and I just panicked. Was like, oh my god, this I'm never gonna validate. How the fuck am I gonna validate that? What what is this?

496
00:41:57,954 --> 00:42:00,115
What even is this? Okay?

497
00:42:00,355 --> 00:42:03,235
Am I really dependent on understanding what this is?

498
00:42:03,875 --> 00:42:04,915
And, you

499
00:42:05,234 --> 00:42:12,194
know, I bought a cryptography book because, like, I guess I'm gonna have to do that. I'm gonna have to learn what cryptography is to figure out the hell is in this thing.

500
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,200
And that was the beginning. So in the cryptography book,

501
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:17,800
I've

502
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:20,760
I'll attach it here. I think it was the

503
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:22,600
Par Impelzl,

504
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:31,525
which is a pretty good mathematical cryptography book. Parm Parmpazil, p a a r and p e l z l. We'll put it in the show notes.

505
00:42:32,565 --> 00:42:37,924
That showed me all of, like, the abstract algebra and the number theory that goes into cryptography.

506
00:42:37,924 --> 00:42:41,204
And I was like, oh my god. I never learned any of this before. This is crazy.

507
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:50,440
And that began this rabbit hole that I'm in with fully with math because it's like, you don't just you don't just get a book on abstract algebra. I mean, I'm I'm

508
00:42:51,319 --> 00:42:57,625
I am on my eighth book now and I'm still like, just still barely, still barely,

509
00:42:59,224 --> 00:43:01,305
it's like mixing glue, but

510
00:43:01,785 --> 00:43:06,105
like with moments of like, oh my God, algebra, abstract algebra, number theory,

511
00:43:07,619 --> 00:43:09,539
all of these things, it's

512
00:43:09,539 --> 00:43:14,900
a beautiful thing to be engaged in. But I'm not sure how much closer it has gotten me to

513
00:43:15,140 --> 00:43:15,940
validating

514
00:43:15,940 --> 00:43:17,619
this LibSecP library.

515
00:43:17,779 --> 00:43:23,059
So maybe also one of the subconscious things I did was start this podcast with Gary

516
00:43:22,655 --> 00:43:27,375
only to bring it forward a year to them to now be here

517
00:43:27,695 --> 00:43:38,940
to actually start having these guys on the podcast so we can say, hey, what the fuck is going on in that library? How do we begin? How can you help us? Because here's the thing. Okay? If you can't validate everything,

518
00:43:39,020 --> 00:43:41,420
you are gonna have to trust somebody. And,

519
00:43:41,980 --> 00:43:45,820
you know, there's going to be I really do believe there's gonna be some

520
00:43:46,220 --> 00:43:52,585
some potential threat attack where we have nothing to go on except like Andrew Polster tells us it's okay.

521
00:43:53,464 --> 00:43:54,105
Right.

522
00:43:54,265 --> 00:43:56,585
And, know, I I've I've met Andrew.

523
00:43:56,825 --> 00:44:07,970
I actually I believe he's sincere, and I believe he's I I'm very impressed with his caliber, but I don't wanna be I really don't like the idea of not being self determined fully.

524
00:44:08,130 --> 00:44:08,690
And

525
00:44:09,090 --> 00:44:14,050
I don't know if that's an attainable goal for my life, but I'm going to I am like literally going to spend my life

526
00:44:14,450 --> 00:44:15,650
building myself

527
00:44:16,065 --> 00:44:17,265
to have a chance

528
00:44:18,305 --> 00:44:20,305
at being that. And maybe

529
00:44:21,025 --> 00:44:24,625
it makes a difference for like a thousand people in the world who

530
00:44:24,865 --> 00:44:30,270
look to me for the answer and don't want to trust Andrew Bolster and maybe 50

531
00:44:30,270 --> 00:44:34,030
more people like me start podcasts and start decentralizing

532
00:44:34,030 --> 00:44:35,230
this effort.

533
00:44:35,950 --> 00:44:41,390
But like you got to start somewhere and this is where we are. And I think so I think we're in a great spot

534
00:44:41,715 --> 00:44:46,515
to start getting some answers and to start really moving the needle on this. It took three years.

535
00:44:46,835 --> 00:44:49,635
Yeah. This was the this was one of the key

536
00:44:50,595 --> 00:44:56,755
load bearing ideas in that conversation we had that is like the podcast, like why to do the podcast is that genuinely

537
00:44:57,030 --> 00:44:58,630
there are many parts.

538
00:44:59,030 --> 00:45:01,030
Anyone who is involved in Bitcoin,

539
00:45:01,750 --> 00:45:07,750
I'll say this, anyone who has exposure to Bitcoin, even if you're buying the ETFs, you're you're believing this stuff, right? That the idea

540
00:45:07,990 --> 00:45:13,545
that you can keep money safe in a certain way. And for most people, they just say

541
00:45:13,785 --> 00:45:15,465
someone told me about it.

542
00:45:16,505 --> 00:45:18,185
They're good with computers,

543
00:45:18,185 --> 00:45:19,545
the end. That's my,

544
00:45:20,105 --> 00:45:27,290
know, little Tommy always helps me fix my Windows computer when it bugs up and he said Bitcoin's cool. And because of that,

545
00:45:27,850 --> 00:45:30,730
I think Bitcoin's cool and the tech works on

546
00:45:31,210 --> 00:45:34,490
a distribution scale. That is over 90%

547
00:45:34,490 --> 00:45:42,065
of people who do anything with Bitcoin is for sure. They have one person and that's their that's who they are delegating

548
00:45:42,065 --> 00:45:44,865
and outsourcing all of their thought process to.

549
00:45:45,425 --> 00:45:45,985
Yep.

550
00:45:47,265 --> 00:45:47,665
It

551
00:45:48,224 --> 00:46:06,890
doesn't scale to have every single person go super deep on all this stuff, but there needs to be a path for people who want to be self determined to be able to walk down it and understand it. And I think tools like LLMs and the ability to have like a custom tutor at a moment's notice explain things to you is a great way to flatten that curve of difficulty.

552
00:46:08,265 --> 00:46:10,585
But we want to be able to have more people.

553
00:46:10,825 --> 00:46:13,625
And I experienced a lot of this in building

554
00:46:14,025 --> 00:46:14,905
AnchorWatch

555
00:46:14,905 --> 00:46:17,225
just in, Okay, I understand.

556
00:46:17,785 --> 00:46:24,880
Yeah, you know, you have BIP 32 and you have your private key and your public key and you have your seed phrase, which kind of encodes your master secret

557
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,480
and kind of walking through this whole thing and

558
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,040
okay, like I'm going to now build a wallet.

559
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:41,785
All right, so if I'm building a wallet, I need to understand. And that was a whole process of I understood these things abstractly, but writing software to actually do that thing brought a new level of

560
00:46:42,185 --> 00:46:56,200
evaluation and understanding. And not every single person's going to build a wallet and get super deep into the details. But the idea though is that you shouldn't have to take that level of a swing to have a path to understanding this stuff better. And I think these conversations and

561
00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:01,640
the concepts we're going to dig into and the people we're going to have on is going to provide a nice way for people who

562
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:03,560
wish to learn more

563
00:47:03,845 --> 00:47:06,805
and have a approachable rung up the ladder

564
00:47:07,045 --> 00:47:10,005
to be able to start climbing it for themselves.

565
00:47:11,365 --> 00:47:12,244
Yeah. I

566
00:47:14,085 --> 00:47:17,845
think less and less people that run Bitcoin wallets

567
00:47:17,570 --> 00:47:21,010
in the future are gonna have any any idea

568
00:47:21,010 --> 00:47:22,930
about the math at all.

569
00:47:23,490 --> 00:47:33,115
You know? And I say that just because of how good the vibe coding is now. It's only gonna get better and only, you know, the more if you look at a pie chart of today of people building

570
00:47:33,595 --> 00:47:36,155
in Bitcoin, they're probably pretty mathematical.

571
00:47:36,155 --> 00:47:37,115
They're

572
00:47:37,115 --> 00:47:40,075
not in the priest class and that's why we're hoping

573
00:47:40,714 --> 00:47:43,980
to at least try to get us all closer

574
00:47:44,220 --> 00:47:44,780
to

575
00:47:45,100 --> 00:47:45,900
not

576
00:47:45,900 --> 00:47:53,100
fully trusting the two or three people that really understand it. However, that pie chart is gonna go much, much more

577
00:47:54,460 --> 00:47:55,500
into the

578
00:47:56,115 --> 00:47:57,955
you know, non mathematical,

579
00:47:58,435 --> 00:48:02,035
having less and less mathematical ability. And when I and like,

580
00:48:02,195 --> 00:48:09,010
even like people who do like object oriented programming understand like abstract algebra a little bit. They have to, because

581
00:48:09,410 --> 00:48:12,369
you're just understanding that you're preserving certain operations,

582
00:48:12,369 --> 00:48:14,369
you're preserving certain qualities

583
00:48:14,690 --> 00:48:15,970
in different objects.

584
00:48:16,369 --> 00:48:20,210
That's just going to go it's just going go by the wayside and the thinking. And so

585
00:48:20,815 --> 00:48:23,935
what I really so there's the podcast,

586
00:48:23,935 --> 00:48:26,015
which is a support beam for the

587
00:48:26,335 --> 00:48:27,775
overall Math Academy,

588
00:48:28,095 --> 00:48:28,815
which just

589
00:48:29,375 --> 00:48:36,335
aims to be a structure for people to continue to learn math, even though their avocation may not naturally

590
00:48:37,380 --> 00:48:39,780
be building that anymore. And you're going to

591
00:48:40,180 --> 00:48:44,740
probably teach yourself how to code or teach yourself how to build things and without going to

592
00:48:45,700 --> 00:48:49,940
college and having to even go through basic any real basic math classes.

593
00:48:50,180 --> 00:48:53,275
We're going to create a structure here that really helps

594
00:48:53,675 --> 00:48:54,875
not only like

595
00:48:55,355 --> 00:49:03,035
it's not just like, oh, I need to understand certain math to implement this thing or to apply it this way. It's a way of life.

596
00:49:03,835 --> 00:49:06,635
Right? It's like caring caring about

597
00:49:07,299 --> 00:49:08,260
being right,

598
00:49:08,740 --> 00:49:17,460
but not just like not caring about being right like as an identity or identity politics or anything. Caring that you know you're right, like caring about that and being curious

599
00:49:18,260 --> 00:49:19,460
is a lifestyle.

600
00:49:19,925 --> 00:49:20,645
And

601
00:49:20,805 --> 00:49:23,365
dude, I know people want this. Was

602
00:49:24,405 --> 00:49:26,245
at the Bitcoin John last week

603
00:49:26,724 --> 00:49:28,565
and which you presented at

604
00:49:29,605 --> 00:49:31,045
and Matt let me

605
00:49:31,685 --> 00:49:34,805
gave me ten minutes to present the math website

606
00:49:35,180 --> 00:49:35,820
And

607
00:49:36,780 --> 00:49:39,820
the response I got was so it was the most enthusiastic

608
00:49:39,820 --> 00:49:42,140
response of anything I've ever gotten.

609
00:49:42,540 --> 00:49:48,220
Last year, wrote a book and put it out and I got to go speak at a bunch of conferences about it. But nobody's

610
00:49:48,540 --> 00:49:49,900
nobody really gives a shit.

611
00:49:50,655 --> 00:50:00,335
You know, like nobody like, you know, even like things that people think will help like Bitcoin adoption, people like like that. But I didn't get I got a different sense of enthusiasm

612
00:50:00,335 --> 00:50:02,335
from the math from this math effort.

613
00:50:04,290 --> 00:50:07,090
My off the cuff theory on this is that

614
00:50:07,330 --> 00:50:17,570
we've had five years of bitcoin content creation of people writing books and putting their own spin touch and flavor on it. And I think the introduction of these tools like LLMs

615
00:50:19,065 --> 00:50:20,345
raise the bar

616
00:50:20,744 --> 00:50:22,585
of the level of effort

617
00:50:22,984 --> 00:50:25,225
that's required to get people's attention now.

618
00:50:25,785 --> 00:50:30,425
Like when your book came out, it was like the it was probably like the thirtieth like institutional

619
00:50:30,425 --> 00:50:38,440
Bitcoin narrative or maybe like 20. Right. But 20 or 30. But people haven't actually done the effort of building out a website yet, and that's way more approachable now. Yeah.

620
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:44,600
And you want to find new modes and mediums for being able to interact and

621
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:47,015
reach people and something

622
00:50:47,415 --> 00:50:49,975
reading a book, like an audiobook, maybe it's passive.

623
00:50:50,455 --> 00:50:53,895
If you're sitting down reading, it's a little bit more of your active, your full attention.

624
00:50:55,415 --> 00:50:55,975
But

625
00:50:56,215 --> 00:51:19,025
it's a very democratizing thing. I think many people who did not write software are now going to write software and people who are already writing software are going to level up their own. Like everyone's kind of going one step up the curve in their own ability, the accessibility to kind of step up one level in their sovereignty and their understanding and first principles thinking for everyone, everyone's taking one big leap up. So people who probably

626
00:51:19,105 --> 00:51:20,465
may have been bashful

627
00:51:20,705 --> 00:51:57,070
a couple of years ago about going through a coding website now realizing, wait a second, I could take this and a little bit of something else and I can kind of keep leveling up. I think it's an interesting development. Think building out the website is what you're doing now is going to be like every single person, instead of releasing a book, going to release an interactive website and they're going to start leveling up like the consumer experience for all of this stuff. I've been thinking about that myself for starting a blog. And the one thing that helped me off was like, yeah, even if I get the words down, I don't want to half ass it on a medium blog. I want it to be interactive. I want it to kind of like tell a story or using it. I'm realizing, wait a second, now I can write the blog and I can make it own interactive website pretty trivially

628
00:51:57,150 --> 00:51:59,790
and kind of kick something off. So I think that's you're

629
00:52:00,110 --> 00:52:12,015
sensing where the trend is going be going in general for people that are putting out content. It's going be putting a higher level of effort and making it bespoke to your voice and getting your mission across, which in your case is, you know, in leveling people up in their understanding in math.

630
00:52:12,415 --> 00:52:15,295
For sure, yeah, and you know to that end, I don't know if I've told

631
00:52:15,695 --> 00:52:18,415
you this, but one of the things I've built now for

632
00:52:18,815 --> 00:52:19,615
the website

633
00:52:19,775 --> 00:52:20,815
and in general,

634
00:52:21,215 --> 00:52:22,495
I built a NostrilBot

635
00:52:22,580 --> 00:52:23,460
of me.

636
00:52:24,660 --> 00:52:25,380
I have

637
00:52:25,780 --> 00:52:26,900
I uploaded

638
00:52:27,460 --> 00:52:28,260
180

639
00:52:28,260 --> 00:52:30,500
podcast episodes that I've done. My

640
00:52:31,620 --> 00:52:32,260
book,

641
00:52:32,980 --> 00:52:35,940
all of my Nostril Twitter and LinkedIn posts. Yeah.

642
00:52:36,785 --> 00:52:39,745
And now I'm starting to test it out. And it's like,

643
00:52:40,705 --> 00:52:41,425
feel like,

644
00:52:41,905 --> 00:52:48,945
because again, like I just made a website of all these courses and I'm like, yeah, you know what, in six months, everyone's going to have a website with a bunch of courses on it.

645
00:52:50,385 --> 00:52:56,859
What's I feel like for this like it's us, it's the context. That's why when I say the context is decisive,

646
00:52:56,859 --> 00:53:01,580
I still think I'm probably the only person who cares about teaching math as a liberal art.

647
00:53:01,900 --> 00:53:09,255
And I think that's super important and I think people want that And that's so I'm going to continue to find ways to do that.

648
00:53:10,135 --> 00:53:10,775
And,

649
00:53:12,375 --> 00:53:16,375
you know, like this podcast is such a it's such a key support beam.

650
00:53:19,030 --> 00:53:25,270
Because you can't talk, you can't have humanity. I don't think you can really get humanity across

651
00:53:25,349 --> 00:53:28,070
in any other way than conversation between two people.

652
00:53:28,869 --> 00:53:31,990
Well, think that just goes to like

653
00:53:31,095 --> 00:53:38,135
our sapien OS. I heard someone use that term recently like our monkey brains like oral history long before our ability to

654
00:53:39,895 --> 00:53:46,320
even write. We've always had conversation and I'm blanking on the exact context. It was something I was listening to.

655
00:53:48,720 --> 00:53:57,599
It's going to kill me now, but I don't remember the exact reference, but basically that there is a higher people place higher trust on people who they listen to rather than read words from.

656
00:53:57,839 --> 00:53:59,760
And it's you kind of

657
00:53:59,925 --> 00:54:05,445
it's why podcasting is such a powerful medium is that you kind of pass like the monkey sphere barrier

658
00:54:05,445 --> 00:54:16,400
and you seem like a real person if it's audio, whereas if it's written word, you understand like your brain's able to associate that it's like something distant. Whereas if you hear two people talking and having a conversation, it's an acceleration for

659
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:19,760
building trust in relationships,

660
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:26,320
even if it's a one way thing because you're putting the content out there and there's always an asymmetry from listeners versus actually producing the content.

661
00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:28,319
I think

662
00:54:28,985 --> 00:54:31,225
for what you're working on with generating

663
00:54:31,225 --> 00:54:32,665
all this math content,

664
00:54:33,865 --> 00:54:45,240
it's your way of getting like this big force multiplier and the podcast is part of that distribution to be able to get that idea out there further because people aren't going to organically stumble across a coding website unless they follow your feed.

665
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:49,000
The podcast is a different angle of getting that distribution out there.

666
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:54,360
I also think it's really dangerous to train to give people the skill in math without

667
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:58,360
the humanity. It's sort of like training psychopaths, know, it's like training

668
00:54:59,755 --> 00:55:02,555
giving somebody military training without any,

669
00:55:03,115 --> 00:55:04,155
you know, without Well, any

670
00:55:05,835 --> 00:55:07,595
it's so or

671
00:55:07,995 --> 00:55:13,520
everyone who works for all of the tech companies who just implement their code to

672
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:15,840
who implement algos that

673
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:28,935
are kind of destroying humanity, right? Right. Like who would willingly do that? I don't think anybody would willingly do that, I just think that you have peep that you know, this goes back to people train themselves in math and they need jobs and this is who hires them.

674
00:55:29,175 --> 00:55:30,455
Yep. And

675
00:55:32,775 --> 00:55:33,815
what you get,

676
00:55:34,295 --> 00:55:37,655
right, what you get is a world that is devoid of,

677
00:55:38,609 --> 00:55:45,650
you know, is devoid of humanity and you get really psychopathic implement and really good targeted implementation of things that are probably bad for civilization. The

678
00:55:46,609 --> 00:55:54,485
perfect example of this is Chamath when he was leading a group at Facebook, right, when they're privately held it was a small massively growing company. He doesn't let his kids use Facebook,

679
00:55:55,925 --> 00:55:56,645
right?

680
00:55:56,805 --> 00:55:57,925
He understood

681
00:55:57,925 --> 00:56:09,190
the neural pathway and like the brain hacks for the growth and the engagement and the activity but knew it was corrosive so his own children don't interact with it. And I think we're going to probably see our own version of this with LLMs and bots. I think

682
00:56:09,750 --> 00:56:24,765
I think the idea of an AI tutor is a really powerful concept. Like, if I was back in seventh grade failing math and I was able to have my own conversations and work my way through this, I probably would be able to accelerate my learning. And there's definitely utilization of this, but just unrestricted, ungated

683
00:56:25,325 --> 00:56:26,285
LLM

684
00:56:26,285 --> 00:56:28,045
image generation access

685
00:56:28,045 --> 00:56:31,085
like in general is going to be pretty

686
00:56:33,325 --> 00:56:37,890
corrosive for developmental age, right? Yeah. You don't want to be like

687
00:56:38,530 --> 00:57:11,800
learning your own because it goes back to this conversation I'm having with GPT about the difficulty. It's finally copped up to me and said, well, probabilistically for Satoshi to find a block with this level of hash is is a zero point four percent chance that he randomly at first glance found that. And to me, I say zero point four chance technically possible. Yeah, one out of two fifty. Sure. Like it could have technically happened, but I'd like to like I'm able to construct my own understanding of this knowledge and kind of piece these things together. Whereas if I took the first answer, I would have shut down an entire line of inquiry. So you need to have your own metacognition

688
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:15,560
and your own first principles thinking as you wrestle with these tools. And when you're really little,

689
00:57:16,335 --> 00:57:30,690
that's what you're doing as a kid is you're learning like it's the scientist in the crib. Like when they're playing, they're understanding how the world works either socially through play or physically with I take my bucket of sand and I make a sand castle and I add war and it falls apart. They are learning

690
00:57:30,930 --> 00:57:52,905
by grappling directly from a first principles basis their sense organs, how the world actually works. And if you just curate it, here's all the answers immediately, don't think for yourself, you're going to short circuit and fry brains. So I think we're just like with Facebook, people like we're going to have to wrestle this technology and find a way. And that's what we're trying to do here is have people actually grapple with the difficult first principle things for themselves.

691
00:57:53,065 --> 00:57:56,185
It's challenging and taxing, but trying to give them a pathway to

692
00:57:57,119 --> 00:58:00,320
explore these concepts with their own kind of metacognition intact.

693
00:58:00,799 --> 00:58:02,320
Yeah, it's funny.

694
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:04,400
In Waldorf education,

695
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:05,760
when

696
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:14,525
I started my kids in it, this was 2015 when I started sending my kids to Waldorf schools, and actually the reason I did it was I was I was reading a lot about

697
00:58:15,244 --> 00:58:27,645
Silicon Valley executives not wanting their kids to use their devices. And I was like, that's interesting. And then they're like, and then they're like, they send their kids to these Waldorf schools where they don't allow these devices. Like, that's really interesting. I started looking into,

698
00:58:29,870 --> 00:58:32,670
know, there's a strong, first of all, there's the

699
00:58:32,750 --> 00:58:34,430
literature in their pedagogy,

700
00:58:34,590 --> 00:58:49,225
if you go back to like Rudolf Steiner and this is an extraordinary, he's an extraordinary thinker and he left a lot to, for us to learn from, but like even just the idea of teaching something to a child, like teaching them how to read is an

701
00:58:49,945 --> 00:58:50,985
injury and

702
00:58:51,225 --> 00:59:00,780
there's an age appropriate time to do it And it's like, I never I never thought my my older sister taught me to read when I was three because she wanted me to be dominating

703
00:59:00,780 --> 00:59:02,620
this other girl across the street.

704
00:59:03,420 --> 00:59:04,060
And,

705
00:59:05,260 --> 00:59:06,620
you know, it was like,

706
00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:11,175
that's just how that happened. But like, you know, according

707
00:59:11,175 --> 00:59:13,815
to, you know, Steiner's world, it's an

708
00:59:13,975 --> 00:59:17,815
injury to actually teach somebody the word for something.

709
00:59:18,055 --> 00:59:22,615
It's been like, so there's a certain idea what that you just let them live

710
00:59:23,079 --> 00:59:24,600
and experience life

711
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:30,120
for themself up until certain ages where you then say, you know, this is a chair.

712
00:59:30,839 --> 00:59:32,200
Right? This is

713
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:36,680
and you know, like that it's like a break. It breaks.

714
00:59:37,335 --> 00:59:40,295
There's something there's a there's a certain self

715
00:59:40,295 --> 00:59:44,935
that actually gets injured. It's not your physical self. You don't bleed. You don't break any bones.

716
00:59:45,895 --> 00:59:47,095
But there's a certain

717
00:59:47,655 --> 00:59:51,494
aspect to a self that does get injured when they when you learn something.

718
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:58,360
And that's I think that the powers that run our knowledge system are well aware of this, right?

719
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:03,240
And there's certain you know, I think we all are all fairly broken people

720
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:04,360
that

721
01:00:05,625 --> 01:00:07,625
you know, we're taught a bunch of things.

722
01:00:07,865 --> 01:00:10,665
And I say this all the time, like my parents

723
01:00:10,985 --> 01:00:12,025
parents lived

724
01:00:12,505 --> 01:00:18,265
in an eighty year cycle where if they just trusted everything the government told them, for the most part, they they won.

725
01:00:18,970 --> 01:00:20,730
They won and they didn't have to

726
01:00:21,210 --> 01:00:25,770
really think that hard about it. Now it turns out my dad was a PhD in electrical engineering and

727
01:00:26,170 --> 01:00:27,050
you know,

728
01:00:28,250 --> 01:00:37,075
taught me a lot about doing hard things, just the value, you know, a lot of a lot about it. Didn't teach me much about, like, necessarily the humanity required, but

729
01:00:37,795 --> 01:00:50,590
instilled strong value still and that, you know, like, he would he would really tell me a lot about what it was like to have to get a PhD in electrical engineering. Like, why, you know, like, it's difficult, like, how hard it was and how much

730
01:00:51,230 --> 01:00:55,150
you know, how beat down they get and, you know, how humble that you have to be.

731
01:00:56,109 --> 01:01:02,015
You know, one of the, I think, things that I think is interesting is if you look at, like, math students at Harvard versus MIT,

732
01:01:02,414 --> 01:01:04,815
you know, at MIT, like they all think they're shit.

733
01:01:05,375 --> 01:01:10,734
At Harvard, they all think they're the greatest thing in the world, but like who actually who actually does things? Who actually,

734
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:16,400
you know, who adds to the body of knowledge in mathematics, it's the

735
01:01:16,800 --> 01:01:17,760
MIT guy,

736
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:20,880
right? And they all, they're just told they're absolute shit,

737
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,640
and you know, there's a reason for that, right? Like

738
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:27,840
for us too, it's like there's no high priest class, you have to be hungry

739
01:01:28,215 --> 01:01:28,935
to

740
01:01:29,415 --> 01:01:30,535
and desperate.

741
01:01:30,695 --> 01:01:32,935
I would consider myself hungry and desperate

742
01:01:33,015 --> 01:01:38,935
and that's what I want to get across to people, like if you're in Bitcoin and you're not hungry and desperate to understand

743
01:01:38,935 --> 01:01:45,200
some of the things that really your your livelihood is going to depend on, like I want you to kind of think about that.

744
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:48,560
Right, I'm hungry and desperate

745
01:01:48,720 --> 01:01:55,280
because I've based my I've literally put my life savings beneath the protocol that I don't fully understand and can't verify.

746
01:01:56,545 --> 01:02:01,905
I would echo and agree with that compounding with not only my life savings

747
01:02:01,905 --> 01:02:05,425
but also building a company around all of this stuff, right? Like I am

748
01:02:05,985 --> 01:02:17,390
fully in. Like there is no Yeah. It's right when I started the company it was the idea of burning the ships. Like there was no going back and to make this actually work, it had to be done with full force of effort and concentration

749
01:02:17,390 --> 01:02:22,670
and being desperate to make it work. Because I think that going back to MIT example, I think

750
01:02:23,515 --> 01:02:24,155
being

751
01:02:25,195 --> 01:02:30,555
privileged in the sense of being told that you're special and you're great isn't going to derive greatness.

752
01:02:30,795 --> 01:02:33,195
Like as with any art form,

753
01:02:33,515 --> 01:02:36,635
the constraining of the canvas is the domain in which you make the art.

754
01:02:37,990 --> 01:02:39,190
You need to be

755
01:02:40,470 --> 01:02:41,590
pushing yourself

756
01:02:42,070 --> 01:02:47,990
with a survival instinct of sprinting forward for a chance to achieve greatness.

757
01:02:49,430 --> 01:03:04,445
That is ultimately what is required of anyone in any domain or field. They're not going to just like passively roll out of bed one day and be like, oh, I'm awesome, I'm great, and I found 10,000 new innovations, right? Like you have to have this constant panic sense of driving you forward of if this doesn't work, I'm dead.

758
01:03:05,340 --> 01:03:11,180
Yep. And, you know, if if you haven't, like, delved at all into the cryptography,

759
01:03:11,660 --> 01:03:14,860
it is like it's as ruthless of a medium as,

760
01:03:15,900 --> 01:03:20,700
you know, whether or not when you sit on a stool, it holds you up. Like Right.

761
01:03:21,605 --> 01:03:24,725
It's either, you know, the door opens or the door doesn't.

762
01:03:24,805 --> 01:03:25,285
And

763
01:03:26,005 --> 01:03:28,965
I like to think of cryptography as digital physics.

764
01:03:30,244 --> 01:03:36,085
Interesting. So this is something we haven't discussed yet. Yeah. So it's like, in other words, what is the force required to open the door?

765
01:03:36,750 --> 01:03:38,030
And it's

766
01:03:38,350 --> 01:03:41,070
now it's measured really is measured in

767
01:03:41,390 --> 01:03:42,510
force, sort

768
01:03:42,830 --> 01:03:45,070
of brute force CPU cycles. And

769
01:03:45,550 --> 01:03:47,790
we live in an age where analytics

770
01:03:48,350 --> 01:03:48,910
can

771
01:03:50,430 --> 01:03:51,885
like there's certain

772
01:03:52,685 --> 01:03:58,765
things other than total brute force that can lower the threshold for opening that door. And people think quantum

773
01:03:59,165 --> 01:04:00,445
might be one of those things.

774
01:04:00,765 --> 01:04:01,565
If

775
01:04:02,365 --> 01:04:03,085
you go back

776
01:04:03,549 --> 01:04:11,550
knowing that, you know, it's like you go to your first cryptography book, like knowing the letter E is the most common letter is one of those things that like, okay, maybe I

777
01:04:12,349 --> 01:04:14,270
can make some inferences that lower

778
01:04:14,349 --> 01:04:16,349
the requirement a little bit for, you

779
01:04:17,390 --> 01:04:22,985
know, to get this door open. But the reality is you still ain't getting that door open unless you got the kick.

780
01:04:23,545 --> 01:04:24,265
Totally.

781
01:04:24,505 --> 01:04:27,465
No, I think that's an interesting way of like

782
01:04:27,785 --> 01:04:31,705
physics also just being the rules that govern our physical reality. Cryptography is what

783
01:04:32,200 --> 01:04:35,960
regulates the rules and constraints of operations for the digital world.

784
01:04:36,360 --> 01:04:38,440
There have been examples of this over time

785
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:40,360
where

786
01:04:40,680 --> 01:04:42,440
entropy is a perfect example.

787
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:46,600
If you're using cryptography you need true random numbers and what does it mean to get a true random number?

788
01:04:48,355 --> 01:04:49,234
This guy,

789
01:04:50,434 --> 01:04:53,395
Alex, his Twitter handle is

790
01:04:54,515 --> 01:04:57,315
raw underscore avocado, Alex Walz. Oh, yeah.

791
01:04:57,875 --> 01:04:58,835
Has this great

792
01:04:59,234 --> 01:05:00,115
he hand

793
01:05:01,875 --> 01:05:02,674
wrote out

794
01:05:03,260 --> 01:05:06,540
all of the ways Bitcoin Core derives entropy

795
01:05:07,099 --> 01:05:07,900
for

796
01:05:09,579 --> 01:05:11,260
making your initial secret.

797
01:05:12,700 --> 01:05:15,579
And that came through a disciplined

798
01:05:15,740 --> 01:05:23,695
yeah. Like, there's four different parts. Low level processor instructions, entropy from the operating system, dynamic events and static events. And he wrote out this like color coded

799
01:05:23,855 --> 01:05:25,135
entire tree.

800
01:05:26,655 --> 01:05:40,160
And the reason I'm talking about entropy is that entropy, if you it's garbage in garbage. If you have shit entropy, you're not actually securing anything. Right. And that's kind of one of these foundational rules of how the world works in when it relates to cryptography and digital security.

801
01:05:40,480 --> 01:05:52,525
And the reason why quantum is this like topic du jour right now is says, what if we can reinvent physics? Is basically what that question is. It's like, wait, if we can take all of these fundamental assumptions and we can discard them, could we do something better?

802
01:05:54,045 --> 01:05:54,765
And

803
01:05:55,005 --> 01:05:57,565
I think it's

804
01:05:57,565 --> 01:06:02,640
interesting within Bitcoin right now because all of the existing people that are in Bitcoin working on development

805
01:06:03,280 --> 01:06:06,400
don't think it's a nothing burger, but they think it's something that like,

806
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:08,720
one, we have time to respond.

807
01:06:09,040 --> 01:06:15,425
The compute isn't there yet, and they're working on contingencies now. But like a lot of big institutional investors

808
01:06:15,665 --> 01:06:18,625
just walking down the street are just like, what about quantum?

809
01:06:18,865 --> 01:06:19,265
Right.

810
01:06:20,545 --> 01:06:22,785
Quantum going back to this

811
01:06:23,985 --> 01:06:25,985
mental model I had earlier that some people

812
01:06:26,670 --> 01:06:29,950
aren't thinking from first principles. They have a spell book of sayings

813
01:06:29,950 --> 01:06:36,350
and that allows you to kind of shortcut independent reasoning because you just say these words like rhetorical words like spells like you're a magician.

814
01:06:36,829 --> 01:06:44,715
Quantum is one of those things because no one who no one who is saying that quantum is a threat to Bitcoin understands how the digital elliptic curve cryptography works today,

815
01:06:45,115 --> 01:06:48,715
nor do they most of them really even understand how the quantum stuff works.

816
01:06:48,955 --> 01:06:51,595
They just get to have this like magic spell and say, ah,

817
01:06:52,240 --> 01:06:59,760
what I've been able to do by saying quantum is a threat, I get to take the entire cumulative knowledge base and understanding of how web system security works,

818
01:07:00,160 --> 01:07:03,840
and that will become irrelevant. I don't have to understand it. It's now irrelevant.

819
01:07:04,160 --> 01:07:15,915
And you're able to just say the word quantum and you're able to kind of like wave your hand and just throw out any of the independent reasoning and thought process that built this cathedral of how cryptography works and say, but I can break it hypothetically

820
01:07:15,915 --> 01:07:24,230
in the future. And it's its own version of like, I think quantum is like a legitimate thing to consider and think about in the development of Bitcoin, but it is slop. For You

821
01:07:25,430 --> 01:07:27,270
just say the word quantum and say,

822
01:07:27,670 --> 01:07:38,415
shut up, nerd. I don't have to understand how all of this like math and entropy and public private key cryptography works. I just say the word quantum and I say this magic word quantum as a spell and everything you've said is irrelevant because quantum.

823
01:07:38,575 --> 01:07:45,535
I don't understand physical qubits. I don't understand logical qubits. I don't understand Shor's algorithm. I don't understand the asymmetry in this of PNP

824
01:07:45,535 --> 01:07:58,490
equal NP. Like, I don't worry about any of that. I just say the word quantum. Right. So I think we'll probably do an episode or two over the coming year on just quantum stuff and probably starting with libsec p and how the thing works today. Then we could talk about

825
01:07:58,890 --> 01:08:01,610
the emerging tech and kind of where these assumptions start to break down.

826
01:08:02,575 --> 01:08:11,935
Yeah. It's a good example. Because it comes down to how strong are your legs when you are faced with a conversation. And so we're not gonna we're not skipping leg day here.

827
01:08:12,335 --> 01:08:15,055
That's all. And we're we think we can

828
01:08:15,700 --> 01:08:23,300
really start doing some deadlifts here to show you have a leg to stand on. That's really what this is all about, right?

829
01:08:23,860 --> 01:08:24,580
We're

830
01:08:25,140 --> 01:08:27,140
too invested in this thing to have

831
01:08:28,655 --> 01:08:31,775
a lot of smart people run away over

832
01:08:31,775 --> 01:08:33,135
a conversation that

833
01:08:33,775 --> 01:08:40,989
honestly, they just listened to a podcast for a couple for a few weeks would hang in there a little longer. Yeah,

834
01:08:41,550 --> 01:08:42,429
absolutely.

835
01:08:42,429 --> 01:08:48,749
Yeah. And I'm looking forward to getting into this stuff because I think it's going to be the first time in a public domain I'm going to be

836
01:08:49,150 --> 01:08:49,789
using

837
01:08:50,429 --> 01:09:00,355
large language models to like draft out like the concepts and the script and peer reviewing it too because just like I just before with the interrogating GPT about the Genesis block,

838
01:09:00,675 --> 01:09:10,915
I'm going to have to use it to maybe accelerate the template, but I'm still have to interrogate it and get in there to get like a nice tight script for a conversation and making sure I understand things and I'm not taking things for granted.

839
01:09:12,079 --> 01:09:24,079
I think it's going to be a really good I think we're going have a lot of fun with this. I think between us picking random like things that we're interested in and going off and building conversations around things that maybe aren't directly related to Bitcoin.

840
01:09:24,559 --> 01:09:31,875
And we were just talking about graph theory the other day. Yep. And this is like maybe a small tangent. This is a small little nugget of a future episode.

841
01:09:32,275 --> 01:09:32,755
But

842
01:09:33,315 --> 01:09:41,635
the way large language models work is you have this large matrix. We'll go to this in more detail later. But when you like upload a document to chat GPT

843
01:09:42,190 --> 01:09:49,869
and what it'll do, it'll do what's called vectorizing. It'll take the text and make it into numbers so it can be put into this large matrix

844
01:09:49,950 --> 01:09:51,230
multiplication.

845
01:09:51,550 --> 01:09:54,990
You're dealing with high dimensional space, but once you start adding

846
01:09:55,455 --> 01:10:01,934
over, I think the number is like once you get past 10,000 documents that you want to document within your like LLM AI work,

847
01:10:02,175 --> 01:10:21,050
the model starts to break down because they all start to compress and seem very similar to each other. So at that point, the large language model is just guessing what context is relevant. And what they're finding to be really impactful at the moment is graph based knowledge. And think of graph based knowledge, not quite like a graphing, like a like a a like a a equation,

848
01:10:21,610 --> 01:10:24,170
but the idea that I've I have a node, it's called Bitcoin.

849
01:10:24,250 --> 01:10:35,014
And then on that node Bitcoin, maybe I have keys and then maybe I have like network operation. Right? And then in the key section, have public private keys and you can kind of I know I'm visually doing this and this is an audio only podcast,

850
01:10:35,415 --> 01:10:46,490
but the idea is that if you have concepts and those concepts directly are linked to other concepts, you can kind of view each concept as like a circle and then each link is aligned and you can get this like web of different ideas.

851
01:10:46,730 --> 01:10:52,250
LLMs are becoming way better at this graph based knowledge using things like Obsidian

852
01:10:52,330 --> 01:10:54,810
and the Obsidian Model Context Protocol, MCP,

853
01:10:55,255 --> 01:11:03,975
to get more complicated concepts because rather than it making a random like dice roll guess because it's seeing this cluster of numbers in like a vector database,

854
01:11:04,215 --> 01:11:05,495
it's organically

855
01:11:05,495 --> 01:11:09,735
navigating a knowledge system the way humans think as they think about related concepts.

856
01:11:09,895 --> 01:11:10,615
And so

857
01:11:11,070 --> 01:11:14,909
it's a very funny thing because it's the way the human brain works.

858
01:11:15,230 --> 01:11:15,949
Also,

859
01:11:16,429 --> 01:11:22,510
it's something that has really high impact if you're leveraging these tools, and it's all because of understanding math. So by understanding math, you

860
01:11:23,150 --> 01:11:23,869
can understand

861
01:11:24,315 --> 01:11:38,635
how to better leverage these tools and systems, whether it's Bitcoin, LMs or anything else. And I think like we could do we easily could do a two hour podcast just on graph theory and the vector database and like this little thing I just did. We usually could do a two hour thing and everyone could walk away with a better understanding

862
01:11:39,050 --> 01:11:49,770
of why the magic box that you type into and gives you answers works and how you can better leverage it for your own sovereignty and your own thought process to empower your own metacognition

863
01:11:49,850 --> 01:11:57,235
and not just being one shot by the LLM. There's a lot of people who say I've had conversations where people are like, well, per chat GPTX,

864
01:11:57,235 --> 01:12:04,755
and I'm like, that means nothing to me. Like, you might as well just say per TI-eighty four calculator this. Like, I don't like,

865
01:12:05,235 --> 01:12:17,370
you need to get you need to show your work. It's just like in math class. You need to show your work. I'm not just gonna give you full credit for showing me the answer, you need to show me your work, and I think that's kind of, this whole podcast is an effort of us showing our work.

866
01:12:18,010 --> 01:12:21,210
Yeah. And navigating the concept for yourself. I'm so tempted to not

867
01:12:21,784 --> 01:12:22,744
say anything

868
01:12:23,145 --> 01:12:28,985
and let this hour and twelve minute thing end. But I do want to say one thing. Go for it. I have to. Okay.

869
01:12:29,465 --> 01:12:30,025
Because

870
01:12:30,344 --> 01:12:33,945
I think a lot of so I think it's important to understand learning

871
01:12:33,945 --> 01:12:35,465
in addition to the machine.

872
01:12:36,010 --> 01:12:38,409
Sure. And so I would

873
01:12:39,130 --> 01:12:46,170
the first thing I was going to say was the this like first generation of LLMs, when we say it was vector based and linear algebra,

874
01:12:46,409 --> 01:12:47,689
it's also probability.

875
01:12:47,690 --> 01:12:50,730
And so I think like we got to like we we want to be able to understand

876
01:12:51,185 --> 01:13:01,025
just sort of, and that's like, you know, I know I sold actuarial science short, but this is probably really where that education sort of shines and being able to understand probability based outcomes.

877
01:13:01,345 --> 01:13:06,899
But when it comes to learning, right, what you were describing with the big vectorized

878
01:13:07,699 --> 01:13:08,739
databases

879
01:13:09,139 --> 01:13:10,499
was one,

880
01:13:11,619 --> 01:13:14,019
are at least two big dimensions in learning.

881
01:13:14,420 --> 01:13:20,894
First one is pattern recognition and that's pretty much all these things ever did for a long time. Pattern recognition,

882
01:13:21,614 --> 01:13:25,295
that's linear algebra and probability and that's

883
01:13:25,295 --> 01:13:29,695
really where your LLM is just a more advanced version of your TI-eighty eight calculator

884
01:13:30,190 --> 01:13:34,750
in terms of it does, it's thinking a little bit more about what's

885
01:13:35,390 --> 01:13:36,590
the likely answer,

886
01:13:37,070 --> 01:13:37,630
but

887
01:13:38,350 --> 01:13:40,270
nonetheless, it's still doing pattern

888
01:13:40,750 --> 01:13:41,630
recognition.

889
01:13:41,630 --> 01:13:42,909
So the other big

890
01:13:43,310 --> 01:13:45,070
piece of it is

891
01:13:46,375 --> 01:13:47,975
what I call intelligence,

892
01:13:47,975 --> 01:13:50,055
but it's more of concept

893
01:13:50,055 --> 01:13:52,455
connect, like connecting disparate

894
01:13:53,095 --> 01:13:53,815
fields

895
01:13:55,735 --> 01:13:59,015
of pattern recognition together to get some sort of orthogonal,

896
01:13:59,600 --> 01:14:01,360
orthogonal meaning unrelated,

897
01:14:01,360 --> 01:14:03,360
completely unrelated new information.

898
01:14:04,000 --> 01:14:05,679
And that's so like, there's a

899
01:14:06,080 --> 01:14:10,320
back to the website, there's a class called the introduction to statistical learning,

900
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:17,395
and that is based on probably the book that anyone who learns machine learning uses.

901
01:14:17,795 --> 01:14:23,955
It's actually the intro book. There's a second book that's really the seminal book that people use, but this is an intro book.

902
01:14:24,355 --> 01:14:28,755
I made a class out of it, and I only say this because you can go to that first page and there's

903
01:14:29,210 --> 01:14:30,969
a sort of canonical

904
01:14:31,210 --> 01:14:33,530
illustration called the bias variance

905
01:14:34,090 --> 01:14:35,690
trade off. And

906
01:14:36,650 --> 01:14:41,930
what it tells you is that no matter how you tune a model, right, even in the most optimal sense,

907
01:14:42,695 --> 01:14:46,135
you're basically at best going to be 40%, 50%

908
01:14:47,015 --> 01:14:47,575
signal

909
01:14:48,055 --> 01:14:49,015
at best,

910
01:14:49,335 --> 01:15:03,130
right. If you really tune it between like what do you want to trade up, you want to trade off bias or variance, best still you're going to have a lot of noise. And that's why when you say it gets to a certain size, the noise is overwhelming and it just can't it hits a limit of what it can

911
01:15:03,770 --> 01:15:07,290
of how much new information it can actually allow

912
01:15:07,290 --> 01:15:10,170
into the system. And that's really where then this jump.

913
01:15:10,570 --> 01:15:15,915
And that's when people talk about like intelligence, I believe they're describing this jump

914
01:15:17,035 --> 01:15:18,235
where now

915
01:15:18,795 --> 01:15:23,515
because they've this jump where they're allowing new information into the system

916
01:15:24,555 --> 01:15:27,675
has now, you know, sort of reset the base camp

917
01:15:27,969 --> 01:15:44,545
for what they can now pattern recognize again on, and it just expands it. This is like, you know, if anybody listens to my other podcast, Rock Paper Bitcoin, and I said that I wanted to 10x myself as a podcaster last year, but I knew it wasn't gonna be by doing 10 x more episodes.

918
01:15:44,945 --> 01:15:48,864
It was I I created this term called orthogonal divergence.

919
01:15:49,185 --> 01:15:53,665
And I said, well, if I do a bunch of disparate podcasts, like a math podcast,

920
01:15:54,110 --> 01:15:55,229
that's 2x.

921
01:15:55,630 --> 01:15:58,269
I do a fish podcast, that's another 2x.

922
01:15:58,590 --> 01:16:06,909
And then a coffee podcast, say that's another 2x, right? And this is like how, like this is how you, you know, it's not just from overwhelming

923
01:16:06,989 --> 01:16:14,015
10 x ing the amount of thing that you're already doing. Right. It's creating a new dimension, right? It's creating a new axis,

924
01:16:14,575 --> 01:16:24,095
right? And that's how, and that's so to me when you're thinking of learning, right, the pattern recognition is typically the thing that is always what people consider learning.

925
01:16:24,750 --> 01:16:26,989
And that's what you're taught all through school,

926
01:16:27,310 --> 01:16:30,670
you're taught, this is what you're taught to do, recognize patterns.

927
01:16:31,630 --> 01:16:32,750
And then it's these,

928
01:16:33,150 --> 01:16:37,949
but it's like the ability then to bring in these, to create new dimensions,

929
01:16:38,110 --> 01:16:38,510
right?

930
01:16:39,525 --> 01:16:43,685
Yeah. That is really exponentially

931
01:16:45,925 --> 01:16:48,565
expands what your learning capacity is.

932
01:16:51,700 --> 01:16:54,100
There's a quote and I'm making sure

933
01:16:54,660 --> 01:16:57,540
isn't there I'm

934
01:16:57,540 --> 01:16:58,100
gonna

935
01:16:58,420 --> 01:17:05,380
just attribute it to I think it's an Einstein quote that basically like showing mastery in something is being able to explain it to a six year old

936
01:17:06,595 --> 01:17:10,515
And that's actually deep knowledge because you can't just straight pattern recognition,

937
01:17:10,515 --> 01:17:13,235
all these complicated concepts and explain it to like a child.

938
01:17:13,715 --> 01:17:18,915
Actual intelligence is transposing all of that pattern recognition into a new field domain

939
01:17:19,579 --> 01:17:24,379
and being able to explain it to someone who who doesn't have a Ph. D. In physics. Right. And

940
01:17:24,460 --> 01:17:31,980
I think that is actually like I used to be a math tutor and that was always one of my strengths was taking a complicated concept and recontextualizing

941
01:17:31,980 --> 01:17:33,500
it in an entirely new domain.

942
01:17:34,065 --> 01:17:35,345
And that is not

943
01:17:35,825 --> 01:17:53,159
like that is a form of intelligence to your point. Like there's pattern recognition, understanding that piece. And I agree with you that most of the education system is trying to fill out the worksheets and understand the patterns and get to the next checkbox so you could do the next thing. But the actual intelligence is being able to like orthogonal divergence sounds like a version of that, right? Being able to take

944
01:17:53,800 --> 01:18:01,959
Newtonian physics or like Einstein relativity and transposing it into an entirely different domain and being able to explain it from those principles.

945
01:18:02,360 --> 01:18:10,604
And I think that's a sign of a good educator. That's a sign of someone who actually deeply understands the concepts because they understand where the rules are and when to bend and break them and where it still makes sense.

946
01:18:11,724 --> 01:18:16,125
So I would I would concur with that. And I think that's part of our journey here is we're trying to transpose

947
01:18:16,510 --> 01:18:20,750
all of these abstract mathematical concepts into a new field of domain

948
01:18:20,990 --> 01:18:26,030
so that people can have a conversation, hear a conversation over a podcast and maybe

949
01:18:26,430 --> 01:18:36,125
act as a way for them to be as a stepping stone to building out their own knowledge base for themselves, to think for themselves. That's ultimately what we're all looking for here is people just thinking through things for themselves

950
01:18:36,365 --> 01:18:38,925
and not being intimidated by the math and understanding

951
01:18:39,005 --> 01:18:45,085
that it is a foundational part. I think I agree with the liberal arts experience and being being human is to understand math,

952
01:18:46,659 --> 01:18:50,899
and we're just trying to provide a new form factor for people to be able to level up on that.

953
01:18:52,900 --> 01:18:53,699
Love it.

954
01:18:54,260 --> 01:18:56,579
Got it here. Awesome. Peace.