The Emergence of the Hive Mind

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:31Idea

   And I am calling it the hive mind of humanity, the idea that we can come together and communicate in a 100% truthful environment because the protocol dictates that every transaction, every piece of information, which is the price of things, all of that has to be true because of the way that the Bitcoin protocol operates. In doing that, we unlock a superpower that we didn't know that we had or that humans didn't have access to before.

2. 01:02Claim

   It's about how Bitcoin is updating the software that society runs on, that human beings run on.

3. 01:43Open question

   I'm going to do another episode in the future about how the Bitcoin software is doing the same thing on an individual basis. So to every human in society, how is it affecting it, right?

4. 01:43Reference

   This is referred to in the low time preference ideas that Saifedean (Ammous) has put forward in the Bitcoin Standard and the Fiat Standard.

5. 02:59Claim

   The thesis is the Bitcoin is updating human beings by enabling the hive mind to grow and more efficient.

6. 03:52Claim

   Energy reserves is why we act, right, we are constantly on the hunt for energy reserves, to find out how we interact with energy... we are trying to unlock energy that was previously required for something else, and we do that through the process of work.

7. 03:52Analogy

   Easy way to think about this is like dolphins, right, when dolphins cooperate to unlock more energy when they hunt, if they're rounding up a pool of fish, right, they work together to be able to round up as many fish as they possibly can, they hold them in a big bowl, and then they take turns going through it, that allows them to access more energy that would not have been possible on their own, right, through cooperation comes access to more energy reserves than if we were to operate individually.

8. 04:38Analogy

   Just imagine if they were talking to each other, and they needed to know the position of a specific fish inside of the group, if all the dolphins participating in that network knew that there could not be any false information, there couldn't be any false signals... well then you eliminate a vast amount of energy that would have gone into verifying that truth had it not been the case that the protocol was built only for truth.

9. 05:38Reference

   That idea of Gigi's, which is, you know, so beautifully stated, that the map is the territory of Bitcoin, right, for the first time ever, we can infer what happened in the real world simply by looking at the map, simply by looking at the transactions that happen on the ledger.

10. 05:38Quote

    The map is the territory of Bitcoin.

11. 05:38Claim

    We can turn that data set into information, which now that we have eliminated the option to manipulate that information, we know that is the pure signal, we have removed 100% of the noise, it is a 100% signal... now we actually don't have to spend any amount of energy verifying ourselves, right, the network can spend time doing that because that's what the protocol calls for.

12. 06:55Claim

    All participants of the network are going to benefit from the upgrade, right, more energy is made available to the entire network as we become more efficient at communicating where to best allocate energy, so every one of the participants wins.

13. 08:10Claim

    The outsized advantage here goes to individuals who can recognize that Bitcoin is a better unit of account, because as soon as you start using Bitcoin as a unit of account, your worldview changes and the signal to noise ratio of the marketplace goes from who knows how much noise to zero noise.

14. 08:10Quote

    The signal to noise ratio of the marketplace goes from who knows how much noise to zero noise.

15. 09:29Claim

    Everyone wins in that, everyone, even individuals that are not participating in the network, right, they are winning by a smaller ratio, right, the percentage of which they are experiencing the benefits from that increase in energy is less than people that hold Bitcoin.

16. 09:29Reference

    This has been made popular recently by Jason Lowery from Space Force... this idea of kinetic power projection versus electric power projection.

17. 09:29Analogy

    This is the idea of the hash wars, right, versus the mutually assured destruction of a kinetic war... as miners now are in this epic struggle to harness as much hash power as they possibly can, they need electricity to do that and with the ability to generate electricity into the network itself, electricity becomes cheaper and cheaper and cheaper because more and more people are out there doing it, and even if you are not participating in the network, you are now gaining access to more energy, whereas the opposite is kinetic power projection or a war where you are having to defend property with kinetic power, that's a mutually assured destruction, right, you end up blowing up factories, blowing up electrical power plants... the goal is to get rid of those, to put your enemy at a larger disadvantage.

18. 10:44Claim

    In terms of who is the winner from humanity being able to leverage the Bitcoin network to filter the noise from the signal, everyone wins even people that aren't participating in Bitcoin and owning a piece of the network itself.

19. 12:04Idea

    If we think about it in this structure as the hive mind of human beings, well each human is a node in the network, it's a neuron in the hive mind and it can happen at different intervals, doesn't all have to happen at once. Humans are forced into upgrading by the increased efficiency experienced by others that have already made the switch.

20. 12:38Claim

    Their advantage in operating via that system, it becomes, well the whole system becomes more decentralized and it becomes more permissionless and more censorship resistant and accessible 24-7... energy reserves then increase which leads to more decentralization, which leads to more permissionless, which leads to more censorship resistant, all of these things continue to grow and the flywheel gets quicker and quicker and quicker.

21. 13:16Prediction

    This will force the hand of individuals looking to maintain their energy reserves... the advantage will become so outsized and the benefit of operating on a Bitcoin standard will become so much greater than the legacy system that you will not be able to ignore it.

22. 14:26Claim

    This is Hayek in the use of knowledge in society who made this idea popular in that the price mechanism is the greatest distribution system of knowledge in the world, right? And we know what knowledge is, knowledge is organized, understood information, information that we can take, then we can examine the patterns that emerge from it, that becomes the knowledge, the knowledge is then when applied becomes the intelligence, applied knowledge is what intelligence is, and that is how we are creating artificial intelligence.

23. 14:26Reference

    This is Hayek in the use of knowledge in society who made this idea popular in that the price mechanism is the greatest distribution system of knowledge in the world.

24. 15:04Idea

    There is only one way to get Bitcoin, you have to exchange energy that you have unlocked in the real world with someone that is already holding Bitcoin... The only way to get it is to find a willing trading partner and trade with them. Your energy, you give to them, they give you a portion of the TASOE, right? The total accessible supply of energy, which is Bitcoin, which is what the 21 million units of Bitcoin represents.

25. 15:49Claim

    If we think about the idea that the price mechanism is the greatest distribution system of knowledge in the world, well then a perfect price, a price that cannot be corrupted, that cannot be manipulated is the truth, is the sole truth in the market.

26. 15:49Reference

    This is a Parker Lewis idea from gradually then suddenly, which when that is manipulated, when the prices of things... when that is manipulated over 30, 40 years, that results in massive imbalances in the underlying economic activity, which is exactly what we find today.

27. 16:39Claim

    We have the energy allocation is so poorly managed that we can't, nothing can be trusted... How many of those companies that are being propped up in the S&P 500? How many of those are zombie companies? How many of those are actually unlocking more energy than they are consuming? Well, we don't know because our denominator is being manipulated.

28. 17:11Claim

    The beautiful part about Bitcoin is that there is a constant, the first economic constant, which makes our equations significantly simpler. It's much easier to do the math if we have a constant, because now we have one less variable to even worry about.

29. 17:46Quote

    It's much easier to do the math if we have a constant, because now we have one less variable to even worry about.

30. 17:46Claim

    Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million essentially means that it is the solution to the problem of how do we have a reliable pricing mechanism in the world, which means how do we have the greatest distribution system of knowledge? Well, it requires a pricing mechanism that cannot be manipulated in any way. Bitcoin supply cannot be manipulated in any way. There is only one way to get Bitcoin.

31. 18:18Prediction

    Individuals and corporations or sovereign nations that adopt Bitcoin as their unit of account, they will experience vastly superior knowledge. And with that knowledge, they are able to better apply it, which means their intelligence increases their ability to allocate energy in the world becomes better.

32. 18:49Prediction

    Just how outsized that is going to be is yet to be determined, but it is large, significantly larger than you think.

33. 19:22Claim

    If price is the information which forms the foundation for all action with poor information through data manipulation and interference from the outside world, we are leaving efficiency on the table. The crazy thing is we don't know how much efficiency we have left on the table... because we've never experienced it, it's never been possible before.

34. 19:57Claim

    There is only one way to gain access to Bitcoin. You must exchange energy with a willing trading partner. They have Bitcoin, you have energy. No one can access Bitcoin otherwise. So for the very first time ever, we can know the state of the physical world simply by examining the map, aka the transactions on the network, which become the price information.

35. 20:28Quote

    The ledger cannot be manipulated. It can't lie. Therefore, the data is the truth.

36. 20:28Quote

    Humans can outsource trust to an immutable ledger.

37. 20:28Claim

    The energy that was locked in establishing trust and verifying trust can now be used elsewhere. Think about how vast that amount of energy is that now goes into verifying trust and to establishing trust. This is a phenomenal step function inefficiency.

38. 21:00Claim

    The value of the signal in the price communication system allows us to identify and allocate energy where it is most needed and most effective. So this leads to improvements in unlocking energy. We get the most bang for our buck.

39. 21:33Quote

    Would it be better if they couldn't lie to one another?

40. 21:33Analogy

    If the dolphins are gathering fish or forming their plan of attack, would it be better if they couldn't lie to one another?... Now turn that on to human beings and our quest for energy reserves... there are some dolphins operating in a trustless ecosystem and some that are not. Who is going to be more efficient at resource allocation and therefore energy reserve acquisition... Some of the individuals within that pod are operating on a Bitcoin standard, right, where they do not have to think about the verifiability or the truthfulness of the messages that are being relayed while they're hunting. And there are some in the pod that are not operating on that standard... all of the entire pod is going to receive benefit, right, everyone, even the people that are not using that system are going to receive benefit, because the pod together will become more efficient.

41. 23:50Claim

    The improvement of the others, right, if they want to remain a member of the pod, someone that will contribute the amount of energy necessary to be a valued member, it's in their best interest and the pod's itself for them to adopt the new system, right, because they are being out competed at every level.

42. 24:28Prediction

    Bitcoiners, or people that use Bitcoin as their unit of account, will out compete others. The removal of the truth verification process in the communication of energy requirements across the network, that is human society, will make them more effective. Bitcoiners will be more effective at unlocking energy than people who are not Bitcoiners. Over time, the results will be too great to ignore.

43. 24:28Quote

    Bitcoiners will be more effective at unlocking energy than people who are not Bitcoiners.

44. 24:58Claim

    We should reward those individuals that have the ability to spot that because those are exactly the kind of people that we want to be putting in charge of the precious energy reserves that we have gone through the trouble of unlocking.

45. 24:58Reference

    Hopefully this has demonstrated how Bitcoin updates the hive mind of human beings. Really, in essence, sort of an Elon Musk idea that it can be the boot loader for artificial intelligence, something that wasn't possible before.

46. 25:35Claim

    Bitcoin allows this to emerge because it allows this communication to happen at a speed and a veracity that was not possible before... If the data can't be manipulated, then that means we have perfect information, 100% signal, 0% noise. And if we have information, which is perfect, which is derived by organizing that data, right, that becomes the price. And then with that information, we are able to use it to recognize patterns inside of that price to know best where to go, that becomes the knowledge.

47. 26:12Claim

    And then as we apply that knowledge, that becomes the intelligence. That is the artificial intelligence that wasn't possible before... So those energy reserves that were previously allocated to that task can now flow elsewhere... the truth will lie in the price and energy will be allocated significantly more efficiently, which will again lead to more reserves, which leads to a lowering of time preference, which leads to a better society as we have more energy reserves, more energy for all, better life for everyone.

48. 26:12Quote

    More energy for all, better life for everyone.

49. 27:08Open question

    I've seen it talked about a few times, but never sort of laid out in this idea of exactly how it's going to happen on a global scale... we'll talk about in future episodes, hopefully, go over the idea of just what Bitcoin at an individual level to make this a reality, right, to separate the network from the incentive models that occur to individuals who decide to join the network.

50. 27:56Claim

    For humanity as a whole, for the world as a whole, to move up the Kardashev scale of energy, really, it's understanding Bitcoin from the unit of account side of things, and to see how greatly that is going to improve life around us.

51. 28:46Prediction

    It will get to a point where it's self referencing, like it will, it will continue to happen so much so that you will not be able to separate the results from the network. People will just assume that if you join the network, you will get those benefits because it has happened so many times in the past... it will become second nature that that is the obvious reason for why these people are becoming so efficient.