Foundation

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:00Reference

   I have a few thoughts after reading particularly foundation, which is probably my favorite of the bunch, foundation that entire series.

2. 00:00Reference

   and also Snow Crash, the two different books that tackle a few different themes.

3. 00:00Reference

   we're gonna touch a little bit on Arthur Shee Clark and stranger in a strange land.

4. 01:25Claim

   It might appear at first glance that we are talking about two monetary systems, but in reality on a larger scale it's much more a war for energy dominance.

5. 01:25Analogy

   Snow Crash really for its blending of digital and physical worlds and how the two can merge, and how Bitcoin allows for this, the digital push, how I can push you in the physical world using Bitcoin channeled through ones and zeros.

6. 01:25Claim

   In something like Foundation the entire story is centered around energy transformation and the immense advantages a civilization can wield over extreme time spans because of their access to information and the knowledge that corresponds to that information, and realizing how much energy it takes to process the data necessary to get the information in the first place, then analyze it, and have enough energy in reserve for the civilization as a whole to reap the benefits of it through the knowledge acquired.

7. 02:55Claim

   In a complex emergent system that is reliant on intelligent life creating order from disorder at a rate more efficient than possible by a single entity, there are reasons to access and use certain pieces of code that produce advantageous behavior by whatever the nodes are that make up that network, and that's why you're involved in the network in the first place, because it's more efficient than a single entity.

8. 02:55Claim

   I'm not talking about the Bitcoin system yet, I'm just talking about life itself, the struggle against increasing entropy on a universal scale, life emerges, life has emerged, to transform energy so that it can continue this fight against the current of disorder, you're in this river of disorder that is pushing you further and further downstream.

9. 04:26Claim

   With the disorder comes chaos, which is the natural state of the system and it's much more likely to be disorderly than orderly, and constantly battling to continue to exist requires energy, more and more energy, and the more in reserve the longer the time frame can be pushed out into the future so that life itself can continue to exist.

10. 04:26Analogy

    One of the main themes brought to light in Snow Crash is that it is inevitable in complex systems that eventually viruses will emerge that then take over the system itself from within, these bits of code can then infect the software and eventually take over the hardware of the users contained in that system.

11. 04:26Analogy

    Each entity is initialized with the genetic code that forms the building blocks necessary for human life to emerge, you can think of those like the DNA, you emerge with this code that you run on to then have life emerge in the first place.

12. 05:45Claim

    Language, religion, money, all energy systems, all adopted to make life more efficient, that's why they exist, that's why language exists, that's why religions exist, that's why money exists, it's to make us more efficient code that is designed to give end users advantages that will make it more likely to transform more energy over alternatives.

13. 05:45Idea

    What might these things be when I'm thinking about a piece of code in the system that is being challenged for supremacy with the introduction of Bitcoin into the hive mind of humanity.

14. 05:45Analogy

    The code that is the belief in authority, this code in the hardware, which again you can almost think of it as circuit design, in the hardware and the software of life.

15. 07:15Claim

    It certainly has an evolutionary advantage. There is a reason that belief in authority is advantageous to the extended order, and well, number one, we have to admit that a belief in authority actually exists, that there is a predisposition for life to have a belief in authority in human life.

16. 07:15Open question

    If that is so then this has to be addressed, how is this going to evolve, and is it good if it evolves in one direction or another, and this is this is a massive battle here.

17. 07:47Claim

    Belief in authority has served the extended order extremely well on the whole, yes there have been massive abuse of the masses by authority, but overall it's hard to argue the counter to this narrative.

18. 07:47Analogy

    It's a good idea that children listen to their parents, they tell you not to touch the fire and you listen and you live, you don't believe in authority and you are essentially eliminated from the gene pool.

19. 07:47Claim

    There is too much information in the world for you to be able to process everything on your own, especially if you start out as a child with this blank slate of a computer, if you're completely left on your own you're not going to make it, you have to download the software packages that you run from those around you, and what happens if you don't have this natural tendency to run the code of belief in authority is you're eliminated from the gene pool and that iteration of code is then out competed by the code that does have that program.

20. 09:17Reference

    In this concept is essentially the thesis of Richard Dawkins in his book, the Selfish Gene, and then it's described by him much more eloquently there.

21. 09:17Reference

    In this concept is essentially the thesis of Richard Dawkins in his book, the Selfish Gene.

22. 09:17Claim

    Children are programmed, right? They are susceptible to the adoption of faulty programming. We are all susceptible to faulty programming.

23. 09:52Claim

    The obvious answer is it's providing the most accurate picture of reality at any given state in time, taking all of the information on the current state of being and distilling it into the most key elements needed for an individual to positively operate inside of this system, authority provides the closest approximation to truth.

24. 09:52Claim

    We can even use a Bitcoin analogy here with the proof of work and the longest chain containing the most amount of work, if an individual aligns himself with the authority that has the most amount of truth they are positioning themselves to be as open to future energy as possible.

25. 09:52Claim

    The obvious problem with that statement arises in the fact that truth can be manipulated by the authority, this might be done out of malice or the authority might just lack the energy necessary to have uncovered the truth in the first place, so it might be built on false premises and it just may be operating under false assumptions.

26. 09:52Reference

    You test the authority and if it renders true that results in you developing more trust in the code, you implement the code in your own software, that is what you're doing, you're constantly almost like Jeff Booth's discussion or point on intelligence.

27. 11:16Claim

    What is intelligent life doing? We're constantly error-correcting, we are trying out different ideas, different ideologies, and we're saying does this work, yes or no, if it does work we continue to do that because it's worked in the past.

28. 11:16Analogy

    We jump off from the shoulders of giants, we come into the world, but we don't start the game at zero, we start the game further along than everyone else has passed on in these forms of ideologies.

29. 11:16Claim

    If you think about things in religion, don't eat certain foods or don't do certain things on certain days, these things all have a place where maybe it started as information that turned into knowledge that then spread into religion, I think there is a reason those things exist because they out competed every other form.

30. 11:16Claim

    In society we grant authority to others because it is more efficient to do so and it was the best way to operate because there was no alternative, there's no way to know the truth accurately, so we needed to rely on the best track record for truth.

31. 12:20Claim

    With Bitcoin we can flip this authority to a tool that cannot mislead or misrepresent the world in any way, it is the absolute truth because it is incorruptible, and with Bitcoin we can hijack the code that is a belief in authority by transposing the authority itself with the truth, that is Bitcoin, right, the map is the territory.

32. 12:20Analogy

    In the book the ability to transform energy is lost over time and the system breaks down, becomes increasingly less efficient, and as that knowledge is lost the information goes with it as energy levels drop, society enters the dark ages, and over time systems that were well understood are then considered magical and religions form around the remaining machines because there's a lack of understanding, and the lack of understanding happens because there's a lack of energy necessary to commit to the processing of the data necessary to generate the information.

33. 13:50Claim

    If you believe the authority of the ledger you will be better off than those that don't, you can build your own code from that checkpoint, because that checkpoint in the history of energy transformation, you know that that is solid.

34. 13:50Analogy

    This is a video game analogy that I've used in the past, when you're born you aren't entering the game of life at level one, the extended order is many levels into the game, and like a video game that has certain checkpoints along the way, once you get to that checkpoint in the game you don't have to keep playing the same level over and over again, you can jump off from that checkpoint.

35. 13:50Analogy

    Again in the past I've used the analogy of the pyramids, we are on a foundation of energy below us, these ideas spring forth from the energy that has been built up.

36. 13:50Analogy

    If you were to lose that, you would have to create all of the energy necessary just to get back to that point, much like in Bitcoin mining, you couldn't just go back, do that single block and then jump to the front, you'd have to do all of that work.

37. 15:14Claim

    The shoulders themselves are made up of energy accumulated over millennium stored in the information that we upload, and if we use Bitcoin as the authority that provides an accurate reflection of the current state of reality, that puts our checkpoints further along in the game and we can proceed further out into the unknown because we have the solid foundation from which to explore, and if we get lost we come back to that checkpoint, we never have to go past the checkpoint in history because we know it's accurate.

38. 16:18Claim

    You cannot have a rich prosperous economy, a rich prosperous country that is low in energy resources, that doesn't exist, those two don't compute, so if you're looking for the most advanced code then it seems obvious to look for where the most energy is.

39. 16:18Claim

    If we think about the good of the extended order, the good of the hive mind, then we need to eliminate as many pieces of code that slow the process down and we need to streamline the code to maximize the future returns.

40. 16:18Claim

    Bitcoin doesn't solve everything, but it does offer this new checkpoint, this new checkpoint of truth, of knowable truth, and it just so happens to be further out than anything we've had access to in the past.

41. 17:11Analogy

    As the Bitcoin virus spreads from person to person, it copies itself with as little friction as possible, and actually it increases the output at the individual level, it's an ideology that allows for the building of many good decisions from one initial good decision.

42. 17:11Claim

    There's so much data in the world unfolding at any one time that no one individual inside of the system can interpret all of the sources of information, all of the sources of data, so we outsource that process to authority, so then authority, be it the state, be it religion, be it whoever is the authority at any given time, is a map for what is happening in the territory.

43. 18:17Open question

    Is it better to have a map than no map? Yes. But if it's inaccurate and everyone else is following the same map, is it any better? It depends, you would have to argue that if you're an individual inside of that system and you're operating on the same map that everyone else is operating, at least on an individual basis you could probably access more resources, but as a whole the extended order is going to be much less efficient if the map doesn't actually line up with the territory.

44. 18:17Claim

    What we can say now is that Bitcoin is this new authority, Bitcoin can be the authority because the map is the territory, and what happens on top of this foundation of known truth, this constant that is Bitcoin, springs forth an ideology, a series of ideas that have the potential to save energy for followers of that ideology, and they do this because it works, because there is an incentive.

45. 19:30Claim

    An idea is really a previously unsuspected connection among concepts that then lead to non-obvious consequences, when you think of an idea like this these things are few and far between, you download ideas, there is very little idea generation, original idea generation.

46. 19:30Analogy

    Think about actual software development, the numbers compared to how much software usage there is in the world by the masses versus how much is actually being developed is heavily skewed for usage, there's significantly less friction, significantly less energy required while still having all of the upsides.

47. 19:30Claim

    One of the most ironic things here is that Bitcoin actually makes information scarce, and that's the mind blowing part, when information couldn't be scarce before, that's exactly what Bitcoin is doing.

48. 19:30Quote

    Bitcoin actually makes information scarce, and that's the mind blowing part, when information couldn't be scarce before, that's exactly what Bitcoin is doing.

49. 20:43Reference

    You tie this in with Jeff Booth's idea of error correction intelligence, and we are trying on ideologies all the time, and we're error correcting all the time.

50. 20:43Claim

    Once we find a problem set that always solves to our predetermined standards then that becomes incredibly useful, and it's an idea worth making part of your operating system.

51. 20:43Prediction

    How the modern-day energy policies of the Western world are, might be leading the extended order down a path that is not ideal.

52. 20:43Claim

    The books recount the generations of struggle that result from poor connection with the fundamental layers of life itself and the goals of creating order, that is the theme of the book, the way that knowledge is lost and how much power that information then harnesses is beautifully laid out in the series.

53. 22:12Claim

    There is no rich country or rich planet or rich solar system that is energy poor, it simply can't exist.

54. 22:12Reference

    We see a perfect example, a crystal clear example of the Arthur C. Clarke quote about magic and technology, which is any sufficiently advanced technology is, in distinctives, indistinguishable from magic.

55. 22:12Claim

    It's so much so that the people who have the knowledge in foundation, they can't even explain it to the energy laggards, to the individuals that don't have access to near as much energy as they do, they can't even explain it.

56. 23:06Analogy

    It's like having a 13th century peasant dropped into the world today, and you're trying to explain to them how the iPhone works, the disconnect is so far, it's an energy disconnect, they don't have access to the energy necessary to be able to process the information that you would have to explain.

57. 23:40Claim

    That's probably not the best use of resources, that's not the best use of energy, we want them to get the benefits of it now, so what would you do? You could invent a religion to convince them of the miracles they see before them, they could just say well easiest thing to do, it's religion, it's magic.

58. 24:15Reference

    It's the exact same thing that happens in Arthur C. Clarke's own stranger in a strange land, the first half of the book is a very strange idea of you have someone so far advanced, has access to so many more energy reserves that they have to invent a religion to explain it to people because they're so far behind.

59. 24:15Prediction

    You could easily see a world in the future where no one understands how it works and a religion forms around this mythical God of the Bitcoin ledger, right, in this Bitcoin ledger master is only contactable and is only knowable through interacting with Bitcoin itself.

60. 25:20Claim

    The ability for a complex organism that is the extended order to focus on the only thing that actually matters for its continued existence, this focus on energy, this focus on creating order in a disorderly system, this is the thing that powers everything else, this is the baseline, this is what we have to maintain.

61. 25:20Quote

    This is the thing that powers everything else. This is the baseline.

62. 25:20Open question

    What happens when the floodgates open for one individual in a system, now they have access to more information, just how does that spread throughout the extended order itself?

63. 26:13Reference

    I recently saw, what's the guy, you've L Harari, is it novel, you've, oh, I can't remember the guy's name, the guy that wrote Sapiens.

64. 26:13Reference

    I can't remember the guy's name, the guy that wrote Sapiens.

65. 26:13Reference

    In a clip with Lex Friedman he's talking about how money is the greatest story ever told.

66. 26:13Quote

    Money is the greatest story ever told.

67. 26:13Claim

    What happens in a story is just a series of ideas that you are communicating with other individuals inside of the system, so that they buy into your story and they will believe whatever you say, and if the belief is strong enough then that eventually becomes part of the ideology that you carry forward.

68. 26:47Claim

    Then he slips up in the end and talks about how it's actually, Bitcoin is not a story, it's actually based on math, and that's the magical bit, but the math is there.

69. 26:47Claim

    You have to change the narrative, you have to change the code that the extended order is operating on, and to do that as quickly as possible with as little pain as possible what has to happen is you have to recognize the codes that we are up against, the operating systems that are being employed at the moment.

70. 26:47Claim

    Bitcoin is not just about money, it is a system that if adopted allows for so many other things to change along the way.

71. 26:47Quote

    You come for the number go up and you stay for the revolution. This is the revolution.

72. 26:47Quote

    It certainly makes everything more efficient, which is the same as saying Bitcoin fixes everything.

73. 28:05Claim

    Do yourselves a favor, read those books through a Bitcoin lens, and you will see that there is a path forward where, without Bitcoin, we are susceptible to losing our understanding of how fundamental energy transformation is to the continued thriving of the extended order.