Robert Breedlove: Philosophy of Bitcoin from First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #176

the following is a conversation with. Robert Breedlove someone who caught my. attention and was recommended highly as. a rigorous scholar and thinker in the. space of decentralized finance and. Bitcoin his podcast titled what is money. is a good representation of the way his. mind works he's willing to talk through. ideas for many hours willing to listen. willing to think which makes him a great. companion in conversation to explore the. history philosophy and Future of money.

quick mention of our sponsors fundrise. element monk pack and better help check. them out in the description to support. this podcast as a side note let me say. that I'll have a number of conversations. in the coming months on bitcoin and. other cryptocurrencies none of these. conversations are Financial advice. that's not a legal warning that's a. genuine description of my goals and. approach with these chats at least for a. while I personally won't act invest in.

Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies. except to learn about the technology. itself I don't think this should be a. journalistic standard like the New York. Times trying to establish which I very. much disagree with in my humble opinion. I think journalists should be free to. invest in Bitcoin if they want to. luckily I'm not a journalist I just know. my own psychology and I feel that my. thinking will be muddled by excitement. if I invest before I understand I feel. the same way about Tesla for example I.

still don't own any Tesla stock and I am. still indeed fascinated by Tesla. autopilot as an artificial intelligence. system I work hard to be cognizant of. the biases that arise in my mind and. always try to choose the path that. maximizes or maintains a freedom of. thought as much as possible also let me. say that I try to be very careful in. selecting guests based not only on the. contents of their IDE IDE as but the.

richness complexity music style of their. mind and character yes I will talk with. people with whom you and I may disagree. people who some may call bad or even. evil human beings I want to understand. them because I believe that as soldier. nson said the battle line between good. and evil runs through the heart of every. man I think if you always run From Evil. you become blind to the truth of human. nature.

this is the Lex Freedman podcast and. here is my conversation with Robert. breed love rouso opens his 1762 book the. social contract with the following. statement man is Born Free and. everywhere he's in Chains so you talk. about freedom and sovereignty quite a. bit what do these ideas mean to you the. idea of sovereignty freedom and. sovereignty um I think they're very. closely. related we start just focusing on.

sovereignty which is a word I don't. think we talk about enough um and the. general definition of that I would give. is the authority to act as you see. fit um and it's a word that's. ethologically associated with words like. monarchy money Reign so historically. it's referred to whatever the Locust of. supreme power is in the sphere Of Human. Action so whether if you go like back. into ancient Egypt the Pharaoh had.

absolute sovereignty and everyone else. was pretty much operating according to. his interest you fast forward to today. modern Western democracy we have um more. decentralized sovereignty and that we. all get to go vote and elect officials. that make decisions on our behalf so the. the theme of sovereignty across history. is that it's been gradually. decentralizing across our different. models of socio. economics and um it's largely you say. it's rooted heavily in the money I would.

argue which is something we'll get a lot. into here where if you have money you. have the authority to act as you see fit. in the world um and even in our current. political sphere if you have enough. money you can actually shape reshape the. rules right you can reshape laws you can. Lobby. Congress um if you're in you know a. certain situation like many billionaires. you can negotiate your own tax treaty. such that you can get favorable tax. treatment with certain jurisdictions in. the world world so this concept of of.

sovereignty um which today we call. it's common to call States or nation. states or governments Sovereign meaning. that they have power over people um but. as I argue in a lot of my writing. actually think that sovereignty inheres. within the individual and that we each. have our. own interiorized space of choice which. is something like Victor Frankle called. the final human freedom and that we no. matter what our circumstances are no.

matter what uh exogenous situation we. Face we always have this endogenous. power to choose how we respond to it. that's one of my favorite books is U man. for. meeting maybe we can break that apart a. little. bit so you kind of spoken about. sovereignty as uh closely linked to. power but is there something about your. own mind being able to uh achieve. sovereignty no matter what the monetary. system is no matter what who has the. control over Central power the money or.

whatever the mechanisms of uh. sovereignty at the societal level you as. an. individual isn't ultimately all boil. down to what you can do with your own. mind how you see the world you interpret. it yeah I agree and as we get a little. bit deeper into this so you I think. we'll come to see money as an extension. of your mind so there's a feedback. between money and mind for instance you. think in Dollars Today almost guarantee. it most of us do here in the US yes um. and it's it's a tool right it's a tool.

we're using to DEC complexify the world. around us to deal with it. to understand the sacrifices and. successes across an entire history of. economic transactions we can boil that. all down to the price so it's data. compression and if you. can change if there's a central body or. Central governance mechanism that can. manipulate that money it can have an. impact on your mind um for instance. today so I agree with you on the. firsthand say that I do believe uh in.

free will I do believe in individual. autonomy but I also think that um there. are certain devices and powers in the. world around us that can actually. influence how we think and it's. fascinating to think about the fact that. money might be actually deeply. integrated into the way we think and. into our mind like this is uh you think. about what are the core aspects of the. human mind what influences cognition. abil the way you reason about the world. you have the chsky like language is at.

the core of everything mhm but you're. kind of placing. money as pretty close to the core of. what it means to be an intelligent. reasoning human MH I think money is a. direct derivation of action and speech. actually it's another expression of the. logos um if we even think of what it. means to think is that we are generating. two different courses of action. potential courses of action and we're. populating them with avatars right maybe.

ourselves or others and then we're. comparing how we may act in each. situation and what we think the result. would be so actually it's comparison. basically it's comparison and. contrasting of possible courses of. action and that's the same thing with. words themselves like you know most. words the uh the vast majority of words. only have meaning in relationship to. other words right it's all contextual. definitions of a word are more words now. people have argued with me about this.

because there is a first word right. where you pick up Rock and say rock but. most other words and much uh in in. higher abstraction tend to be. relative. and what's funny about action and speech. and this gets I got into a bit of this. in our our paper here is it it's linked. to evolutionary biology and that once. human beings adopted upright stance we. freed our hands we no longer needed our. hands for locomotion mhm so we started.

to evolve more. dexterity um and notably we have OPP. posable thumb so this gives us an. ability to manipulate and particularize. the environment in a way that most other. animals cannot and what's interesting. about this is that as we gain this. ability to um manipulate natural. resources and you know count Point. pointing was a big deal and that we. could indicate uh prey or or items at a. far off distance and we could organize. ourselves um we at the same time we.

co-evolved this fine musculature in the. face and tongue so it's as if speech. developed co-evolved really with our. dexterity and as a natural extension of. that came us making tools right we. started to create things to better. satisfy our wants over time and the most. tradable tool in any society or the most. tradable thing is money so I really I. argue that action and speech are.

quintessential modes of self- sovereign. expression and that money is just sort. of a tech layer we put right on top of. that and that it's a natural derivation. of action and speech okay that's. fascinating to think about sovereignty. from The evolutionary perspective and. then ultimately money is the technology. layer that enables sovereignty so you. know it's really fascinating to think. about our modern Human Society as deeply.

rooted in in these like evolutionary. roots from the very origins of life on. Earth so what you know some of the ideas. you just mentioned what do you see are. some interesting characteristics of just. life on Earth that propagated to us. humans like what ideas propagated. through uh have roots in the evolution. yeah I think one of the. deepest impulsions in life is the. territorial imper. erative so all life is seeking to expand.

its dominion over space and time and we. think about you know again physically. with space uh it's advantageous to an to. an animal or an organism to have more. territory under its control to ra to. raise Offspring so it's all about. reproductive Fitness at the end of the. day and then we could also think of. reproduction itself as the genetic. impulse to have more to replicate. oneself across time so it's. territoriality across time in a way and.

this is very common in most animals not. all animals are territorial but many are. um and you see very interesting. behaviors resulting from territoriality. this is like uh animal combat you know. the reason birds sing is. territoriality um a number of other. things and it's my hypothesis and others. have shared this hypothesis as well that. mankind is clearly I think would argue a. ter iial species and that he expresses.

this territoriality in property. rights so property when that word we. hear that word we typically think of an. asset we think of oh this house or this. stock or whatever but property is. actually the socially acknowledged. relationship between a human and an. asset such that you have exclusive. rights and responsibilities to a. particular asset um it is not the asset. itself so property it's it's information. it's a relationship by the way my mind.

was just blown property's information. it's not the actual asset that's really. important very important that's really. interesting yeah and then it comes down. to how do we organiz organize ourselves. such that um property that that the. contributions people are making are. commensurate with the consideration. they're receiving so if you're adding. value to a piece of property you're. developing a piece of land for use in. theory like to fair you should have the.

rights um to that fruit right if you go. out and plant a garden or whatever it. may be um and and this is very uh this. is rooted in in natural law where we. have rights to life liberty and property. those are kind of just the base the. fundamental layer of of morality and. capitalism frankly um and you could. think. of to get really primordial with it the. the first capitalist in the world just. to kind of get some definition out here. I'll say capitalism versus communism or.

socialism as the Spectrum I I'll speak. on the first capitalist in the world. would be the guy the caveman that maybe. dug a little hole for himself to Shield. himself from the elements right maybe. there was a rainstorm or snowstorm and. he dug a little enclave and he protected. himself I thought you were going to go. CU you said primordial I thought you. going to go back to like earlier. biological systems guess I guess. primordial for human. hum okay and then the first communist or.

socialist would be someone that decided. the fruits of his labor belonged to him. so he would have violently encroached on. that individual and taken his plot for. himself for his own. use and that's. um that's the Spectrum across which. capitalism in the pure sense and. communism in the pure sense operate in. that capitalism each individual has the. exclusive rights to the fruits of their. labor so anything they spend their time.

effort energy creating in the world they. own the rights to that and they can. trade those rights with others other. self-owned people that have done similar. things communism or socialism would. imply that other people typically the. state have the rights at least some. rights to your to the value you've. created so there's this interesting. moment when that first caveman that. first capitalist drew a line Circle in. this cave and said you know this is mine. you could say it was free to be claimed.

at the time he claimed it yeah but it's. an interesting. moment when uh asset becomes an asset. when space time as you referring to it. becomes something that's now can be. possessed by a human being mhm is there. something special about this moment. because it feels like first of all in. terms of space and. time it feels like there's a lot of. available.

space time yet to be claimed so if we. just look at like the universe right. we're talking about there's a funny. thing with uh with Elon Musk and Mars I. think they sneaked in there for SpaceX. that uh nobody on Earth has any. Authority on mars or any this is a very. interesting question it seems almost. like humorous at this time but perhaps. not perhaps there'll be sections of. space not just on planets that are going. to be even fought over so is there. something special about this moment.

because in discussing sort of violence. and respect for property it feels like. this is a special. moment because uh ultimately conflict. arises when you make claims on a. particular territory it's you know it's. not always in Conflict where people say. when you look at Hitler or something for. example his claim would be in many of. the lands that he attacked and invaded. that this is all ultimately this has.

always belonged to Germany mhm so is. there something you could say as to like. what it means to own an asset or a. property yeah so in the ancient days of. hunters and gatherers we could say. that property was mostly a loal title. which meant it's just whatever you can. defend right so if you've got knives and. daggers and satchels and you know maybe. some pelts you've you've hunted whatever. whatever you can hold and defend is.

yours that's and and there's not like. there's a government to appeal to you. know you're just sort of uh free agent. operating in the wild defending the. assets you can protect on you more or. less um. and what really changed the nature of. property is when we get into the. agricultural age so there there's a big. flip where we went from just foraging. and hunting all the time constantly. moving trying to stay alive to deciding. we're going to settle here we figured.

out how to cultivate crops we can create. uh you know we can increase the. population because we can Harvest more. energy from the Sun and we can establish. a longer term civilization what happens. in that transition is that we begin. creating economic surplus so for the. first time in history we have you know. grain uh uh stock houses of grain to. defend or maybe meat or cattle or. whatever it is we're creating we now. have savings MH and. it's at that time when government.

emerges as well because once you have. savings or you have an economic surplus. you have something that other people. want to steal right this this one thing. we'll touch on a lot today is people. always want something for nothing. there's all people are always seeking. the path to get something for nothing. and I think that drives a lot of our. decision-making and it actually. encourages us to be Innovative in a lot. of ways right we're trying to um it's. you could say it's our laziness it's. helping us be in ventive in a way we. trying to accomplish greater results.

with less efforts over time but they we. can cross that line in seeking something. for nothing where we start to violate. the life liberty and property of others. and that's where we shift from kind of. capitalistic Society to to something. more. communistic. and so that's what government is it's a. protection producing Enterprise for the. economic surplus generated by a trading. Society so when people begin to trade uh. they create What's called the division. of labor which is a very common.

economics term basically means you're. better at making hats I'm better at. making boots if you and I you specialize. in hats I specialize in Boots and we. trade we've created a positive sum game. where you and I both benefit so we. become collectively more than the sum of. our parts through trade and that's why. human beings do trade because we become. more energy efficient as a result we. create more outputs per unit of input. and you could think of government in. that respect. if we're looking at it maybe in a tech.

sense that the economy is the Trade. Network that generates wealth generates. Innovation generates all this whole lap. of luxury we live in today that we've. inherited from our forbears is from the. market it's not from a government the. government is the network security if. you will so we're we're we're paying. expenses to a vendor to protect peace to. preserve life liberty and property in. that Network so that we can have you. know when there's inevitably disputes. over private property we can have non. violent dispute resolution uh in the.

rule of law um and we can have a. reasonable expectation of of being able. to conduct Commerce without violence the. problem has been that the protector. tends to you know they're in a. monopolistic position we' say they tend. to start abusing that position to. obtain uh property for themselves again. trying to get that something for nothing. when you control you know you are the. security guard for the economy the first.

thing they tend to monopolize is money. because if you can control the money. you're effectively controlling people. their energy their. perceptions um and that becomes a you. know particularly through inflation. becomes an Avenue to get something for. nothing and that you can just print more. money that everyone else is forced to. sacrifice their time and energy to. obtain what what are your thoughts about. anarchism so um I talk quite a bit he'll. be here in a few days actually Michael.

malice about ideas of Anarchy and his. idea or the idea of anarchists is that. any amount of government will eventually. become the very kind of thing that. you're referring to so there's almost no. way to have a government that doesn't. then try to um monopolize power money. and all those kinds of things do you. think it's possible to have a government. sort of on that spectrum of like Anarchy. maybe.

libertarianism I'm not sure how exactly. the Spectrum goes but where you have a. small government that protects the. liberty and property rights and those. kinds of things and doesn't expand to. then also control the the monetary. system and all those other uh things AG. agreed completely it was not possible. until Satoshi. Nakamoto so for the first time in. history we have a money that cannot be. monopolized. cannot be corrupted cannot be.

changed um cannot be weaponized frankly. our current monetary system is. weaponized by those who can print money. against those who. cannot um and I think when you have you. know at the heart of every modern. economy which even we could say the us. we pride ourselves as free market. capitalist you know we outc competed. communism in the 20th century we think. that this is the superior model um most. business people will tell you that the.

free market is the best allocator of. resources all of these things but what. we have at the heart of every modern. economy including the US is an anti-c. capitalistic institution which is the. Central Bank um the temptation to. monopolized money throughout all of. history has been too strong for anyone. to resist so any even Ben benevolent. quote unquote dictators that have taken. over many dictators have inherited say. an inflationary regime or society's. coming apart because some someone was. clipping the coins or someone was. printing too much money and they'll.

commit to going back to a hard money. standard so they'll keep Society on a. gold standard for instance such that. they cannot violate um the money to. benefit themselves but inevitably over. time because it is a political. institution there's an incentive there. right for for again to get something for. nothing to spend more than you're making. through tax. revenues and with that in of people. typically ultimately end up pursuing.

that inflationary path so we can we get. deeper into that about inflation is a. term that we've been conditioned to. think today is just something normal the. prices just go up and then uh it's. pertinent to a healthy economy but it's. actually if you look at it from real. Force principles it is just theft. integrated into the money it's a. technology backd door is another way to. think about it you wouldn't buy a cell. phone knowing that someone siphon your. data off your private calls and sell it.

into the market now I know we do that. with a lot of Social Media stuff today. and that's something else we can get. into but you wouldn't do it willingly. right you would you would prefer that. your cell phone and your data was. monetized by you or if you're going to. sell it you would be able to selectively. sell it inflation is that it's similar. it's a tech backdoor. so it's a money that only a few people. can siphon value off of syruptitious. uh typically slowly but but eventually. as we've seen throughout history that.

slowly builds up into a rapidly and then. um causes the monetary system to. collapse do you think there's a benefit. to inflation possibly. so so when you have perfect information. but perhaps you you don't need inflation. Perhaps it is purely theft but I think. of inflation as like the snooze button. on the alarm like you just so if you. have a hard standard you better wake up. when the alarm rings but you know all of. us kind of like probably shouldn't but. use the snooze button he's like okay.

well five more minutes or 10 more. minutes and then you're saying there's. naturally a slippery slope or you you uh. becomes a drug that you fall in love. with and you. abuse but nevertheless the usefulness of. this snooze button is that you don't. know how you'll be actually feeling when. the alarm rings you might be able to. radio to pop up you might be like you. really need those few more minutes like. to psychologically get yourself out of. bed this an this metaphor is just not. working at all but but do you think.

there's a. use to uh to inflation sometimes from. like economics perspective I think the. drug metaphor is a little more apt in. that inflation does provide an. immediately stimulative effect um when. used early on. so but what it's doing is it's again we. talk about the balance between. incentives and disincentives right that. being NE necessary for a system to to. function properly if with inflation.

you're essentially giving uh the people. that can print money a way to dampen the. disincentives they face. so it it it destroys feedback loops I. guess you might say and another way to. look at this is when you so using. inflation using mon quantitative easing. you can decrease short-term volatility. in the marketplace so the market is. basically this idea this form of free.

exchange that's trying to zero in on the. best ideas and the ideas are those that. are most fit to reality to satisfying. the most wants it's going to overshoot. it's going to undershoot you have these. little business Cycles but when it's UND. shooting and you and you're experiencing. uh business. recession in a capitalist environment. the market needs to clear that. malinvestment that misallocation of. capital that means someone made a bet on. a certain idea that it would satisfy. wants in a particular way and that bet. did not pan out if you then paper over.

the losses that business is creating. you're now delaying and exacerbating the. volatility that that idea created so. this is kind of a tban concept. where um you can dampen short run. volatility but volatility is truth. volatility is us matching our ideas to. reality right we're constantly again. overshooting and undershooting so if you. delay volatility you're just amp. amplifying it and exacerbating it in the.

long run and that's what central bank is. doing the Central Bank mandate is low. unemployment and uh low unexpected. inflation. basically uh and so they're trying to. achieve economic growth in a stable way. quote unquote stable way this is their. ostensible purpose um and that's just. not possible growth is an inherently. instable. process can you can you elaborate a. little bit about the nature of.

volatility why is it communicating. truth that's something that a lot of. people are afraid of is the volatility. almost like it's a it's a sign of chaos. and so they want to escape. chaos but you're saying that that's. actually whether it's chaos or not I. don't know but it's getting us closer to. the fundamental like reality that we. should not be trying to. escape yeah so if we consider that the.

universe is praded by entropy right this. is the second law of Thermodynamics is. that every closed system tends towards. greater disorder over time and that life. itself again I would argue expressed. through the. logos we life is the anti-entropic. principle it's the only thing that's. converting entropy into order chaos into. order and that's what entrepreneurs are. doing right we're living at the edges of.

the known and we're trying to we're. we're testing oursel against the entropy. of nature trying to figure out new and. better ways of saying doing or making. things and then if we do crack a code or. figure something out we then have a big. incentive the incentive is to get rich. right because then you have a new idea. that you could then sell back into the. marketplace so it's. this sequence of courageously. confronting the entropy of nature and. converting it into good and useful order.

which by the way is like the ancient. idea of God in Genesis which I think is. interesting um that actually enables us. to construct civilization in these. layers of anti-entropy or order you. might say so today we live in a bubble. of of anti-entropy or order you know. like the coastlines are guarded by the. nation and the city has a certain uh. police force that keeps it in order um. um even the way we we talk like there.

clearly the words matter but also the. non-verbal cues all these things are. like order that has been established. over many many many thousands of years. of of human. evolution. and I think that when I say volatility. is truth what I'm saying is that the. experience of uncertainty is something. that's ineradicable from from life right. uncertainty like it's kind of a paradox. because it's we're fighting against it. right we're trying to innovate our way.

away from uncertainty to give us to. create more Capital which capital is. very simply uh a way of mitigating. uncertainty so this is why you might. have like a stash of food in case you. know the power goes out or a generator. like it helps you overcome uncertainty. over time but uncertainty is also where. all the sweetness of life is so there's. got to be this balance with one foot in. one foot out and so Human Society is. this kind of bubble of order that we've. distracted and slowly expanding but at.

the edges you're always going to have. that chaos that volatility and that the. entrepreneurs uh are kind of like. jumping into that uh chaos and some of. them die uh and some of them succeed and. so like if you want to grow this bubble. of order you you have to be. embracing the volatility at the. edges that that and reverence for. entrepreneurship because these are the. people putting their neck out so to. speak risking themselves and they're.

going to contribute to society by the. way whether they go up in Flames or not. if they go up in Flames Society has. witnessed their experience as something. not to do or something that doesn't work. in a particular time and place so that. you could say they're them going up in. Flames as a way of enlightening the rest. of us or if they figure something out. you know Steve Jobs creates the iPhone. changes the world. forever enlightening the rest of. us and TB would say with the fire of. their failure okay yeah exactly to would.

say um individual fragility is. inseparable from Ensemble anti-. fragility so this means that again every. time that entrepreneur Goes Up in Flames. or say a restaurant goes out a business. when a restaurant goes out a business. that particular Cuisine strategy they. were implementing in that particular. time and place that's a signal to all. the other restaurants in the area that. that doesn't work so restaurant food. improves from bankruptcy to bankruptcy. so it's this this death of the.

individual components that contributes. to the growth of The Ensemble as a small. side maybe you can guide me through it I. don't know if you're paying attention. but there was some chaos around TB and. the Bitcoin Community I wasn't quite. paying attention uh but from my. Outsiders perspective I thought uh theim. TB was a supporter of Bitcoin and then a. lot of people were very upset about. something I'm sorry if I don't know the. details but can you can you uh pull out.

some profound philosophical ideas from. the disagreement of the chaos I. admittedly don't know too much about it. either I I've a big fan of his writing. um he's. always been a little different in person. like I actually he signed one of my. books I met him in person he's just he's. got a very abrasive personality he's. kind of known for it it's not I don't. think I'm passing any judgment here he. sort of Embraces it yeah but he had. written um the forward to a really. important book in Bitcoin called the.

Bitcoin standard for safety in a moose. and then I think they had a little. Twitter beef because safe was is very. much against covid mask and state. intervention whereas tb's on the other. side of the fence right and so and then. after that beef TB came out against. bitcoiners saying oh bitcoiners are. crazy and wrong I think the great mask. debate of the 2020 will probably be the. thing that ultimately leased the World. War II. I've been very surprised how tense how.

much like division this one little. arguably silly thing has led to I think. a lot of people sort of project their. like it's almost like not wearing a mask. is a statement of sovereignty of freedom. of like saying you to the man the. government that centralized power or the. dishonesty or the in the scientific. Community all those kinds of things and. then wearing a mask is a sort of kind of. signaling of of various kind of uh.

social aspect I don't know I'm not. paying attention to it I actually tuned. out I was part of a group of scientists. that were looking into like do mask work. this very interesting question to me it. was an interesting question I sort of. roll in to ask that very interesting. question because I think it is an. interesting scientific question but then. I quickly realized that just as I was. doing this like scientific exploration. of this very interesting question about. about Von particles like what kind of. things like from a scientific.

perspective how do we prevent the spread. of a pandemic forget covid any pandemic. super deadly or not deadly like there's. tools there's testing there's masks. there's all these tools how well do they. work and then I realized you know in. April or so it became a tool of politics. a tool of philosophy and that's when I. sort of pulled out so it's fascinating I. I I think it's a it's a it's a canvas on. which people project their emotions and. I guess until I'm got caught up in that.

kind of so there's nothing fundamental I. suppose to their disagreement not that. I'm aware of but he is you know he's. written some about in his books the. problem with centralization I mean a lot. of his writing um addresses that he. actually points to I think Switzerland. is the best government in the world. because it's. decentralized um. so there's that I I don't think he has. any I'm not to speak for him but I don't. think he's voiced any specific critiques.

on bitcoin per se could be wrong about. that it's it's just maybe his flavorful. language and the way he likes to. communicate and the other theory is that. maybe he's playing 4D chess and having a. a Twitter boating accident you know so I. don't believe in Bitcoin I've sold all. my Bitcoin and oh I see yeah what uh. sorry the boting accident in Bitcoin is. this um I guess it's proverbial by this. point where it's the way you lose your. Bitcoin so if someone comes after you.

and says hey you know whether it's a. government or an individual is coming. after you saying give me all your. Bitcoin or pay these taxes in Bitcoin. you go oh I had a boating accident and. lost them all lost them all so. yeah uh but back to the fundamental. nature of SpaceTime let me ask you CU. we're kind of left it I'd like to go. back to this idea of um that you said. that everything we think say or do. occurs Within the bounds of.

SpaceTime uh so first of all maybe you. can comment on what do you mean in this. context about space time but also about. the nature of uh truth like how much of. all of this is knowable how much of this. is accessible to us humans how much. uncertainty like what we're talking. about is there in the world are you do. you fall in a place where we can reason. deeply about this world and it's. knowable or is it mostly chaos and we're. just holding on for de.

life yeah I think I said that all action. occurs within the bounds of SpaceTime. the other thing everything we say do or. make the other thing is that everything. we say do or make starts out as an idea. so there's this concept of universal. Darwinism which basically um applies. darwinian principles but outside of the. biological sphere so we could say that. this kind of gets into Richard Dawkins. memetics that even ideas are competing. reproduc producing recombining um that. idea is so powerful by the way I I don't.

think it's been understood fully uh I. think in the digital in the in the 21st. century in the digital world from my. perspective in artificial. intelligence there's yet to be some. profound things to be discovered about. this whole construct agreed completely. it's been called an acid actually and. that it just it strips away all of the. non-informational components of. something just strips it down to its. bones um I have a quote in here.

somewhere about that but sorry which is. called an asset the ideas the universal. Darwinism Darwin is implied broadly. outside of the broadly and um I I I. condition all of this with saying that a. lot most of my thinking is shaped by a. book I read recently called the case. against. reality um which introduced me to this. concept but it tied into Darwinism that. I've used more broadly in the past. looking at things like money and and. economics so the book the Case against. Reality by Donald Hoffman um he has a.

quote in the book that describes un. Universal Darwinism it says quote. Universal Darwinism can without risk of. refuting itself address our key question. does natural selection favor true. perceptions if the answer happens to be. no then it hasn't shot itself in the. foot The Uncanny power of universal. Darwinism has been likened by the. philosopher Dan Dennett to a universal. acid and Dan Dennett says say quote. there is no denying at this point that.

Darwin's idea is a universal solvent. capable of cutting right to the heart of. everything in sight the question is what. does it leave behind I have tried to. show that once it passes through. everything we are left with stronger. Sounder versions of our most important. ideas some of the traditional details. perish and some of these are losses to. be regretted but good riddens to the. rest of them what remains is more than. enough to build on. unquote so the the way I would interpret. that is that life itself I've come to.

view life as information propagating. through. flesh um and that we are I I guess um. DNA is a a quadratic code I think it's. four letters maybe versus a binary zeros. and ones and we are ideas we are. strategies competing with each other and. nature is that which selects it's what. selects the the winning ideas the ones. that are most f. um to to environmental conditions.

frankly you know talking about. sovereignty and. individualism there might need to be. some rethinking here about what is. actually the basic individual entity. that is to be Sovereign like maybe our. biological. meat Vehicles were like way overly. attached to. them like may maybe uh espe with. genetics and all those kinds of things. or artificial intelligence or living.

more and more in Virtual Worlds will. become detached from that kind of idea. so for example if I can clone you you. know make make 1 million robbers and you. know but you'll all have the same idea. what is real your real value as the like. I could just shoot you and there'll. still be 9999 of you but the idea is the. important thing yeah the the things you. believe so. I would argue that I don't know even if.

you clone someone perfectly I don't. think you can reproduce the individual. themselves because they're we're all a. product of Nature and nurture right so. my particular Concourse of experiences. the path dependence that I represent. cannot be replicated as nor can anyone's. for that matter well that's that's a. hypothesis so we that's that's a. course a human meat bag would say. so. so like desperately trying to preserve.

himself uh you know it's I think it. reduces to some fundamental questions. about what is consciousness and whether. that can be cloned all those kind you. know it gets to the core of what it is. to be human what are what are the things. that make you particularly you yeah I. think it would assume kind of a. materialist viewpoint on reality and. that if you could reproduce every atom. of an individual that you would have. their experience encapsulated in that. and you know Hoffman's which is book is. very radical he argues that space and.

time is not an objective reality it's a. biological interface so we are scanning. our environment for Fitness payoffs and. this space and time is the rendering. specific to human beings that allows us. to navigate reality um effectively so. the further argument would be that we. all have pretty similar interfaces but. they're all slightly different too. because we're all you know adapting in. different ways and different animals. have their own unique interfaces so we.

have a certain amount of photo receptors. in our eye whereas I think the number is. three might be five where something like. the mantis shrimp has like seven or nine. so they can see and we only see one 10. trillionth of the light. spectrum so talk about a tiny fraction I. mean one 10 trillionth is a very. minuscal number and that makes up all of. the light that we can interpret with our. eyes but it's something like a mantis. shrimp could see you know much more of. that. so I think there's.

this we're very conditioned to have a. fully materialist viewpoint on reality. today where we. think uh you know the atomic Clockwork. kind of universe but I think there's I. don't think that's true exactly and um. another school that goes into that is. actually Austrian. economics where we could say that you. know we mentioned earlier that an asset. is not proper it's actually based on the. relationship between the individual and.

the property um there's this whole realm. of relevance associated with. uh we're all moving through life in the. course of a goal directed action so when. we walk across a room I go from A to B. it's because I valued B more than a so. value is inseparable from Human Action. we have a rank ordered value system in. our mind each of us and we're constantly. taking action in accordance with those. rank.

values anything that accelerates us on. the course of our go directed action. towards our goal is. useful anything that impedes us or we. could say is valuable anything that. impedes us is actually uh obstructing to. value and anything that's irrelevant is. just. valueless. so this table that we're using right now. like this is a it's an accessory to you. and I because it's holding this paper. that's holding the information that's. guiding our conversation MH but we could.

pay someone $100 to jump over this table. and this table could simultaneously be. an accessory to you and I and an. obstacle to someone else so it's this. domain this silent contention of. willpower and agendas occurring across. the face of the Earth that um is what. Austrian economics really looks at it's. um the The Realm Of Human Action as they. call it it's called praxiology so it's a. non-materialist viewpoint on reality and. that things we think in terms of matter.

being reality but it's often more so in. the sphere Of Human Action what matters. that is reality it's the relevance of a. thing to the course of of one's go. directed action and that's ultimately I. exists in the space of ideas yes not in. the space of physical matter and just to. jump back to this line here I think his. fundamental line here is the question is. talking about Universal Darwinism as an. asset what does it leave behind I've. tried to show that once it passes.

through everything we're left with. stronger Sounder versions of our most. useful ideas that's the key point to me. and that ideas and information so far as. we can tell are the most fundamental. substrate of. reality um and information itself back. to entropy information is the resolution. of entropy that's what the bit is right. it's a one or zero whatever reduces your. entropy by half is a bit and we measure. information in bits. so and you're right people don't have.

ideas ideas have people I honestly I. it's it's a really profound idea uh or. uh a statement about reality a reframing. of reality it's it's a if we're actually. being deeply honest about it it's quite. painful I I I do appreciate that you. defended your biological Meb earlier but. it seems like ideas are the things that. have power that um me me Lex for example. is.

worthless and uh relative to the ideas. that used my brain for a bit of a time. but so far as we know only human beings. can generate and share ideas so you. can't say Lux is worthless like you are. the node of the idea sphere the newest. sphere so I'm I'm uh I'm what is it uh. from the Bitcoin perspective I'm like. I'm mining I'm solving the cryptographic. pro problem and gener uh I'm I'm I'm a.

use in that sense I'm a useful node uh. yeah you're competing to solve the the. puzzle of entropy right and when you do. solve it it benefits the entire network. but I guess um from my perspective just. because just working in AI I'm looking. at the long-term Vision I I see us. humans and AI systems as is really the. same and AI systems ultimately as. something that supersedes humans so what. is.

intelligence so in the context of our. current discussion I think um. intelligence is very closely linked to. this notion of. ideas it's the ability to generate ideas. to mold ideas. to uh compress seeming chaos into some. model into some theory that efficiently.

compresses the chaos in in a way where. you can then integrate it with other. ideas and they can play and all those. kinds of things so in that sense it's. the Turning chaos into order it's the. molding of ideas such that our human. brains uh can work with it and it just. from my perspective I don't see any. reason why that cannot be algorith. matized converted into Compu. computational systems I would agree uh. which is. scary scary or potentially really.

promising right it's kind of the case. with all novelty it's terrifying as much. as it is promising that's why you're. pursuing it so heavily I would maybe. take it a step further and say the. intelligence and maybe it's most. simplistic form is error. correction so. we humans have wants again we're. constantly expressing our value through. action there there's no way to express. it by the way it's whatever you choose. to do in any moment you are expressing.

the values you hold in your mind and. your. heart as we move from a from less valued. a to more valued B uh we we entropy. happens uncertainty happens we we fall. off course and it is intelligence that. enables us to render information from. that experience and error correct right. so that we can move we can move slightly. change shift our trajectory slightly. more towards uh B that we're trying to. move towards so I think.

that there's something there that I. don't know that we. can make synthetically and that when we. if we if we if we Define intelligence as. error correction it's like error. correction to what it's Error correction. towards what we find is valuable right. so we're trying to satisfy human wants. might not just be our own could be. others as well if I'm an entrepreneur. I'm trying to solve the wants of others. not just myself myself M and I'm trying. to eror correct myself towards that goal.

um using intelligence and processing. environmental feedback through. intelligence to error correct so I don't. know how If you. eliminate the human ele element. completely who's doing the wanting right. where does value come from I know. machine learning people who are. listening are saying that's exactly what. machine learning is which is error. correction because you have a lost. function objective function that. measures how wrong your thing is and you. want to make it less wrong next time.

that's the whole process of machine. learning but you're saying what humans. are able to do is in a world where. there's there's. no maybe objective values absolute. values you're generating that very loss. function that objective function that. you're that function that measures the. error comes from the the human. mind uh some aliens might disagree with. with you cuz they might have a different. objective function obiously purpose.

comes from Consciousness I think and. without purpose there's not error. correction yeah I mean this is again a. hypothesis like where does purpose come. from it seems to come from Consciousness. you're. right that's where suffering comes from. and you want to lessen. suffering that's where pleasure comes. from it seems like it's Consciousness. maybe there is something to this. biological meat meat bag so to take it. one layer the on this and the reason I. like this book so much again the case. against.

reality so he's making the case that. space and time are not fundamental yes. which I I started my intellectual. Explorations in physics actually. astrophysics so for the longest time. even the way I describ money as I talk. about space and time so that that blew. my mind but this dovetailed nicely with. another book called Leela um the the. author is Robert perig so he wrote Zen. In The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. which is a very popular book book 20. years later he wrote Leela which no. one's heard of which is crazy and he.

basically says he was wrong about his. first book and he lays out this entire. other uh metaphysics of of quality he. calls it so it's it's the metaphysics I. think it's metaphysics of quality but. his supposition is that it's not. physical reality that's fundamental it's. not informational information that's. fundamental it's. value so he actually and it's a. beautiful book book I highly recommend. it he essentially is refuting causality.

itself we think a causes. B this book makes the case that b values. precondition a so that we are actually. creating our future through our value. systems and this goes back to um. something I think Soulja niton said this. that the the line between good and evil. runs down the heart of every man so it's. as if our moral decisions are actually. what's creating the outcomes in reality.

over time and then that gets into all. the wisdom Traditions related to. religion where it's always talking about. you know loving thy neighbor and loving. God and all of these other things that. are good morally to create the best. outcomes so values are fundamental value. yes value yeah is. fundamental oh boy yeah that's. interesting I mean the. it does feel like physics is not. capturing. something you know there's some people.

uh pan. psychist argue that Consciousness might. be one of the fundamental properties of. nature like from which emerges. everything we see so that could be just. other words for this same notion of. value and then the the basic laws of. physics are not capturing that currently. yeah so maybe humans in order to. understand from where humans came from. we have to understand these other. properties of nature which are yet to be.

discovered right at the physics level. and it's we contend with that underlying. nature whatever it is with the logos. right so we are we're looking at. uncategorized nature and then we're. assigning a word to it so we're we're. slicing up chaos into little boxes of. order and then we're establishing this. social consensus as to those labels. which we' call words and we're using. that to communicate and when we.

communicate um we can start to build. these other things this is like uh the. uvall Harari imagined orders so we can. create these useful fictions right. whether it's the nation state or human. rights or money and that allows us to. cooperate flexibly in large numbers so. that we can better contend with reality. we can produce more complicated things. um we can we can enlarge that bubble of. civilization against. entropy and that's what capitalism is.

all about it's. about further specializing knowledge. further enriching Mankind's treasury of. knowledge um and doing it but but to do. that the the communication media that. we're using the words have to have. stable meaning the the money needs to. have um value that's dependable right it. needs to be something. that's it's not dictated by any one. group group it's reached by consensus of. the entire group that's how um so you.

could think it it's like optimizing for. error correction again where a free. market would be harnessing the. intelligence of all Market. actors and a central planning or a. centrally planned Market would be. harnessing just the intelligence of a. small group of bureaucrats and it's not. obvious how to achieve this kind of. consensus mechanism I mean there's. obviously we'll talk about sort of. Bitcoin has an idea ultimately the idea. of Bitcoin is connecting it to.

physics so like you can trust that. physical matter won't change. MH but you know there could be other. ideas that were yet maybe physics could. be changed Eric Weinstein has anything. to say about it like it's it's on you. know we right now believe that physics. can't be changed the physical matter of. the the world but maybe it can in a way. that we're totally not understanding you. mentioned sort of reality from um from.

Donald Hoffman's perspective like if we. don't have even close to direct access. to the fabric of reality maybe we're. living in a world that's very like many. dimensions that the Notions of space and. time is just like a silly useful. construct that's not at all connected. you're you're starting to look at like. Stephen wolfs I don't know if you're. familiar with his view of the world that. it's like hypergraphs under benath it. all like these mathematical structures. from which everything emerges like.

they're like. uh like many many many orders of. magnitude smaller than what we think of. as they're even smaller than like. strings and string theory so like those. are the basic mathematical objects from. which it emerges I don't you know I. think that's an interesting. philosophical framework it's also people. should check out uh a cool uh way to. play with beautiful hyper graph. mathematical structures so he has I. don't know if you know who Steven wol. from is but he has he created wol from.

Alpha and all these tools that you can. actually visualize and play with so you. can play with physics in a visual way. which uh uh or at least discret. mathematics which I think is incredible. he doesn't get enough love one of the. reasons he I think doesn't get enough. love is because of this little Quirk of. human nature which is the. ego and he uh he sometimes uh frustrates. a few folks because um he's very uh.

let's say proud of his work I. gota but it's it's uh it's interesting. to think about a world where we don't. have direct access to reality as Hoffman. argues and maybe I don't know if you can. comment I don't know if you're familiar. with an Ran's work and her whole. philosophy of objectivism or whole her. whole contention is that you know we do. have have. access I don't want to misstate it but. at.

least she would claim. that it's not uh. useful or I think she'll probably say. it's not correct to argue that we don't. have access to reality we have hence. subjectivism we have direct access to. reality that's the only thing we can. reason about and the only way to live. life morally is to reason through. everything starting with the axioms of. reality which we do have direct access.

to right you have thoughts about her. work or I am slightly ashamed to say I. have not read IR Rand yet so she is high. on my list and she's been recommended a. number of times um but so I don't know a. lot specifically about her philosophy or. objectivism but I to me it resonates. closely with what the American. pragmatist commented on truth and they. distinguished what you could say is. absolute truth which is at the bottom of.

reality whether it's you know Mr. wolfram's mathematical formulas or value. whatever it may be it's something. ineffable something Beyond uh the reach. of epistemology perhaps even um and. maybe that's why religion just sort of. points to it right it's trying to. use I think Joseph Campbell said. something like religion is. um using stories to point Point towards. the same transcendental mystery we all. experience but cannot articulate mhm so.

something like uh the artist the artist. uses lies to point to the truth. something like that that kind of thing. um that's really good but the American. pragmatist said that because at the end. of the day this is all about when we say. truth we need something that is socially. uh close to social consensus and is not. shakable by political action so that's. what you know physics and Mathematics. are it's it's. a an.

unshakable um point of reference I guess. you might say so the American pragmatist. defined truth as the end of. inquiry and in markets we could say that. the the market itself is a forum that. generates truth we call this pragmatic. truth to separate pure objective truth. that we can't even talk about without. polluting. versus pragmatic truth which is. something that's useful so the the the.

example here would be if I give you a. map and you're trying to go from your. house to the local brisket restaurant. and the map gets you from your house to. the BR brisket restaurant is that. because the map is true or is that. because the map is. useful right they're very hard to. disentangle just we're just looking at. it. pragmatically and in markets markets I. argue generate three forms of pragmatic. truth one is the price so this is the.

collective subjective demand and. purchasing power of humanity running up. against the objective supply of capital. and resources in the marketplace so. there's Demand overlaid on Supply the. result of that is the price so that is. the the TR most truthful exchange ratio. which is the closest approximation to. the value of any good in the marketplace. so it gives us a data point on which we. can operate it's compressing all known.

Market realities down into a single. actionable number you know based on the. price of bread or copper whether you. want to buy more of it you want to. abstain from buying it or maybe you want. to try and find substitutes and it's you. you can think of that price signal it's. like an economic nerve signal that's. coordinating Human Action across time so. if we're one. socioeconomic superorganism or. Collective that the price signal is the. nerve and that's the first form of of. pragmatic truth that markets generate. the second form would be tools and.

Innovations themselves so entrepreneurs. are experimenting across time they're. trying to satisfy the wants of consumers. consumers are sovereign in the. marketplace whatever the consumer wants. the consumer gets right I'm trying to. satisfy that I'm trying to do it at a. profit so I'm trying to take viewing the. existing price signals of goods in the. marketplace I'm trying to assemble those. in a way at a at a cost lower than the. Final Solution on I'm delivering to my. customer I'm selling it at a price. higher than the productive factors I.

combine to create. it and in that Pro that iterative. process we're constantly discovering new. and better way better ways of solving. problems or satisfying wants so we could. say to go out and dig a hole right. someone wants a hole dug that a shovel. is going to let you do it much faster. per hour than you would with your bare. hands so what is the pragmatic truth of. digging holes. it's a shovel right it's the it's the. best way we know how to solve any.

particular problem based on uh the. existing treasury of knowledge so every. tool again we're back to ideas being. fundamental the shovel itself is just a. knowledge. structure we've figured out a way to. create this particular Implement and. then we've indexed the raw materials we. found in nature to this knowledge. structure to create a shovel which. allows us to better satisfy human wants. um you know faster cheaper better. effectively I'm trying to. generalize you're blowing my mind a.

little bit here I'm trying to generalize. the idea of tool to how to think about. it because I keep I keep just when you. say tool I keep imagining different to. like specific instantiations of a tool. I'm trying to see so the price is a. pragmatic. truth that's um. communicating value in the in this. network subjective demands against. objective Supply. subjective so it's it's an economic. democracy got it so that's the demand.

Supply and then the tools are the ways. of. extracting uh or solving problems is the. more General kind of or satisfying wants. satisfying wants y so wants are somehow. that's the that's part of the supply and. the demand and want wants are back to. Value right because everything someone. wants are expressing their value okay. yeah so the shovel is the pragmatic. truth the shst truth it feels like a. good book title okay sorry so uh what.

what other prag what is the and the. third one I would argue is virtue. actually oh wow and another another way. to maybe think about this is competitive. competency but it's also Cooperative. competency so we're learning over time. what characteristics what uh patterns of. action what mindsets what mental tools. what heuristics are most useful to. satisfying customer wants so I think.

that becomes over time becomes sharpened. in vertue right like we know it's best. to be honest because if you lie it's. very energy and efficient right you're. creating this little Fork of reality and. then if someone else ask you about that. lie again you have to put another layer. of lies on top of where if you just tell. the truth you're just recollecting what. happened yeah and so that sort of keeps. um again when we're talking about. delaying volatility right if you lie. you're delaying short-term volatility. but you're increasing long-term.

volatility what about murder I haven't. been able to figure out why murder is. bad because I just keep wanting to. murder people and I've I've murdered. many see someone for that well that's. why I'm trying to get interview of. Vladimir Putin so that's fascinating. virtue in this market with the supplies. and demands and there's the tools which. is also pragmatic truth and there's. virtue it's a pragmatic truth yeah and. if we interfere with that free market. process again if we overstep which this.

maybe ties into murder if you start to. be coercive against life liberty or. property so if you're forcibly taking. someone's life you're breaking down the. trust in that market that generates. these pragmatic truths if you forcibly. infringe on someone's Liberty right um. for any reason other than them. originally breaking U or infringing on. life liberty or property then that's not. going to work either and then if you. take if you violate private property. rights if you steal property from others.

you're breaking down the trust the that. the inter subjective fabric of money and. markets and the rule of law all of these. useful fictions are meant to preserve. you're you're corrupting it and breaking. it down it's kind of interesting to. think about the market as um helping. evolve the. virtues it's sharpened into virtues and. then these virtues can then go into. motivational posters people or like in. books that we all agree on and then.

eventually take for granted as if they. were somehow fundamental to human nature. but they're they're not perhaps. fundamental they're just pragmatic. truths yeah it's um another way to. consider competition itself is that it. is a discovery process so you know. entrepreneurs are competing with one. another and they're trying to best. satisfy. consumer wants at the lowest possible. price so they're placing bets of time. energy and capital on themselves on.

their their idea their business plan and. then the market decides right the. collect the consensus of Market actors. decide which one was better one lives. one dies um so competition itself is. helping us get closer to truth to. pragmatic truth so we're discovering. what is the right price for this asset. and that price by the way is. derived again in in the sense of data. compression everyone in the world can. see that price everyone in the world can.

then put their skin in the game by. choosing to buy or sell or short or go. long or do any number of financial. actions on that price and that. information is then propagated back out. to everyone else so it's this feedback. loop between Market actor and price that. makes it um so useful and and that's. what carries us it's so it's these. collisions of interest that carry. it removes the unuseful aspects of.

ourselves or of our tools or of a price. and reveals pragmatic truth to us can. you um play my therapist for a second. and if we talk about creative. destruction I think buk not Bukowski. um Hunter Thompson is a quote something. like for all instances of beauty many. Souls must be. trampled wow. but. it there does seem to be an aspect of.

competition that. destroys you were talking about. entrepreneurs sort of on the outside of. the circle of order striving to make. sense to. compress volatility of the chaos of the. of the. universe is there some way to protect a. little bit against the pain of that. destruction of that creative destruction. that uh entrepreneur screaming on fire.

as he enlightens the rest of us is there. some role for us humans together in the. togetherness of it uh also government. but any kind. of collectives in helping that. entrepreneur who's on fire to maybe. after a few minutes to to uh spray him. with some water and uh put him out of. his misery. I would say that you know. pain it's the.

inarguable basis of being right pain is. no matter how you try. to explain it away or or describe it or. um it's not something you can. rationalize away right it's no. one I think ever like someone may want. to cut themselves to have an endorphin. high but no one wants to suffer would'. say right so pain in that sense it is. what we're constantly trying to deal. with and to move away from or create.

buffers between us and and potential. pain or potential you know. uncertainty and that pain is information. when we experience something that is. Misfit to the outcome we desired that. pain is what puts us in encourages us to. change our trajectory to get back on. course towards our our valued Aim so. as far. as you know you need entrepreneurs that.

are exploring and if you're trying to do. something new if you're a pioneer of any. kind you are courageously facing pain. you're willfully confronting it so I. don't think it's avoidable in that sense. it's not like we can have painfree. economic growth like what the central. bank would maybe uh have us lend to. believe that we can just run these. experiments and when they fail we'll. just paper over all the losses and. continue or you're just delaying. and exacerbating the inevitable. volatility back to reality um but what I.

would say is that. capitalism because we're. building we're increasing the Capital. stock of the world which again capital. is the mitigation of risk so we're. reducing the overall risk of existence. by accumulating more capital in the. world and that's what protects that. entrepreneur that's deciding hey I saved. up a million bucks I'm going to go try. this business idea I'm going to put all. my my money on the line and if he goes. up in flame. then he his cost of living when he comes. back to reality and he's starting over. from zero his cost of living is.

substantially lower starting over from. zero then he would be out in the. wilderness on his own right so it's the. the accumulation of Capital stock is the. buffer against uncertainty for everyone. um and it gives you actually more. potential to go out and experiment to go. out and confront uh the chaos of nature. because you are are better healed. effectively I think we're. speaking uh in sort of U idealistic.

terms about the power of capitalism when. it works well is there any aspects that. you think that don't work well in a free. market in all the basic pragmatic truths. that we're talking about is there is. there ways it can go. wrong so I would first argue that we. have never seen an actual purely free. market. um closest example would.

be you know kind of geopolitically we. have a free market and that governments. are not necessarily. governed. um but they are premised. on governing large groups of individuals. so that's not doesn't exactly you mean. between governments yes see but isn't. there still so free market maybe you can. correct me a is a free market still. grounded in the ideas of you know.

property rights and all those kinds of. things right so governments tend to also. sometimes be violent towards each other. that's right so they don't respect the. all the basic aspects of capitalism. that's right so maybe another way to. look at this is that gold is the. original governor of government actually. and this is the reason governments have. abused and gone off of the gold standard. so. historically if you are a bank or a.

nation state and you produce more. currency than your gold reserves can. justify then people then gold will flow. out of your bank or out of your country. so there's this natural. check. um via the money that be via. capitalistic money which is gold right. gold was elected by the free market it's. not decreed by government it it provided. this natural check on government action.

so my I guess to get back to the. original question is we've never seen a. pure free market because money has. always been. monopolized um and and coerced frankly. so to try and answer what goes wrong. with a free market is really difficult. because we've never actually seen it and. I would. Define free market is one in which. government only protects life liberty.

and property and so has a very minimal. role in society um again just as network. security for for the economic Trade. Network and anything. that any government function that goes. beyond those three core functions which. by the way are pretty much the core. tenants of morality as well so. governments just really intended to. preserve uh you know natural law if you. well anything that goes beyond that is. moves us closer to an unfree market so.

every regulation every active coercion. um is actually a a gradation closer to a. purely unfree Market which would be a. monopoly so in terms of what I guess. theoretically we could say goes wrong in. the free market is that it's volatile. it's it's trading off it's accepting. short-term short-term. volatility uh in exchange for less Long. Run volatility yeah and this tends to be.

the way of nature by the way so if we we. could look at something like there's an. a region in North America called Baja. California and it it runs into the. United States and it runs down into. Mexico as well so the same topology but. two different. jurisdictions in the US uh we very. heavily manage Force fires we're trying. to manage nature effectively whereas in. Mexico is much more unregulated it just.

that when wildfires spring up they let. them burn off North America when wild. wildfires spring up we're actually. extinguishing them so we're constantly. trying to dampen the short-run. volatility of these small brush fires. whereas in Mexico we just let them burn. we let nature do its thing yeah the. consequence of this is that the Wildfire. is still occur eventually but they're. much larger and much more devastating in. North America where human intervention. has occurred because it is um it's. dampening Nature's natural corrective.

mechanism of clearing this underbrush. with these um more frequent and smaller. Fires at the cost of much larger fires. so again we're delaying short-term. volatility and exacerbating long run. volatility and and in Mexico it's the. opposite right just these wildfires burn. much smaller more continuously over time. the further effect of that in North. America is that the fires can get so big. and so hot that it burns away the top. soil so it actually destroys the. fertility of the soil itself so the. point of this is that human intervention.

right even the intention behind uh North. American authorities managing that. forest fire is to create less. destruction that is the intention but. the intention is Divergent from the. outcome so in tban speak he would say. that human intervention moves us from. mediocre Stan into extremist Stan so. mediocre would be something much more. like nature where for instance you can't. double your body weight in a day.

probably can't even do it in a year. right but in extremist stand which is. something much more information based. you can double or or cend your net worth. to zero in a single trade in a single. moment right so when we we try and. intervene with natural biological. systems that have um these feedback. loops we actually start to push the. system more to behave more like an. extremist an system um that has you know. less short run volatility but but um.

more extreme long run volatility so but. the question is where you look at uh. capitalism or communism for example and. by the way yes I will talk to somebody. who's a Marxist or a communist Like. Richard wolf is a pretty eloquent. defender of these ideas because it's. it's always good to really understand. ideas as opposed to just reject them off. hand uh when you look at the system of. capitalism or the system of. Communism there's ideals and a lot of.

people argue in this perfect form would. actually be good for the world the. question is how resilient are they to. the corruption MH uh of human nature and. I mean you're saying that there's not a. there's never been a free market it's. it's it's a very true statement the. question is how resilient is capitalism. or whatever implementations of. capitalism had up to this point to human. nature where one person who become. successful.

at through legitimate means then starts. to try to manipulate the system that. takes it away from a free market or. takes it away from uh the the things. that gave him the riches in the first. place and then uh try to through. corruption get more get this the thing. you said uh the lazy human ways now I. try to figure out how to get something. for nothing that's right so how. resilient do you think is capitalism to. that well the best implementation we've.

had of it really has been the United. States I think up until this point but. it's. still the C Central Banking itself this. was in the 1848 Manifesto of the. Communist Party measure number five. reads A an exclusive State Monopoly and. centralized control over cash and credit. so the central bank is a Marxist or. communist institution it is antithetical. to the free market principles on which. the United States was founded and indeed.

the United States resisted the. implementation of a central bank um I. think it was Andrew Jackson I know there. was the First National Bank the Second. National Bank were both disbanded and. then uh Andrew Jackson which is my. favorite Tennessee in he's he has some. famous quotes about routing out the. bankers like a den and Vipers uh I think. he punched one of the central Bankers in. the face uh back when our leaders were. were a bit a bit more badass I guess you. might say and um you know finally in.

1913 the the Federal Reserve was was. implemented and um it's been kind of all. downhill from there so what is uh can. you oh so good um I was just going to. say that that. communism and capitalism it's also a. matter of. scale you know the ideal behind. communism is uh from each according to. their ability to each according to their. need sounds beautiful right sounds like. a great peaceful harmonious way to. organize ourselves the problem is and.

and by the way I am a communist in my. family in my home right at that very. smallest of scales yes in your very. small Circles of trust you're much more. likely to behave selflessly towards one. another by the way I look forward to the. Bitcoin Community clipping out that. part saying that Robert breed love is a. communist and the ideals of Communism. are beautiful yeah context matters. people sorry go ahead um but to your.

point it does not scale right as we move. into this larger system of socioeconomic. cooperation which is necessary to deepen. the division of labor to generate more. wealth right we need to interact with. one another on much larger scales than. this communistic utopian ideal we get. into the realm of capitalism where we. need really sound rules hard rules. consensus.

verifiability um and frankly prices. because the other thing in com in um. Soviet Russia is they tried to replace. the profit motive or the price signal. with this Devotion to this nationalistic. faith and devotion where it's like you. don't need self-interest anymore you. don't need prices or profits you can. just protect Mother Russia right and. serve Mother Russia and that would. create wealth and what happened right. they destroyed price signals there were.

shortages there were famines there's um. all levels of corruption because you. know to your point it's once. you people have to run the system no. matter what so when you when people are. always pursuing something for nothing. and you put someone in a seat of much. closer to absolute power where they're. making all the pricing decisions they. own all of the productive factors in the. economy they're not beholden to any. Market Force there's no Market uh check.

on their action that that institution. tends to become more corrupt and further. it's it's an inferior resource. strategy um I alluded to this earlier. where the other way to think about free. market versus Central. planning is it's decentralized or. distributed computing versus centralized. Computing so each one of us I think that. the number is 120 bits per second of. active awareness so we can take in.

clearly we process a lot more than that. but our active awareness I think is 120. bits per. second. um in a centralized planning body like. in Soviet Russia where they had the. pricing are maybe they had 10 20,000. people deciding the prices for the. entire country you're only getting that. much data throughput right 20,000 people. times 120 bits per second whereas in a. free market if everyone is free to. interact with deep Capital markets based. on an accurate price you're getting the. data throughput of 120 bits per second.

times the entire economy right so you're. getting it's a more efficient means for. disseminating knowledge effectively and. then again knowledge is just the more. knowledge uh a socioeconomic structure. can contain the more wealthy it is right. prices tools all these things are just. knowledge so in that respect that that's. why something like capitalism even in. its marginalized form State capitalism.

outcompetes communism it's a it's. distributed computing versus centralized. Computing you know we kind of brought up. religion and Joseph Campell and myth and. the the propagation of ideas and kind of. before I forget I wanted to ask your. thoughts about this you know Jordan. Peterson I haven't really understood. exactly like be able to pin him down. exactly what he sees as the role of.

religion in human society but it uh. feels like he's describing it as having. uh value for us this the ideas of myth. are valuable they are valuable. mechanisms to I think you mentioned kind. of directing Us in this world as a human. society um do you think about myth do. you think about religion what's the use. of it in the in this construct of uh.

markets and this uh in this framework of. um where ideas are. ultimately the the. fundamental thing that makes societies. work yeah I think Jordan Peterson who. I'm a huge fan of he's been very. influential on my thinking um and. influential on my own religious views as. well um I think his position would be.

and he said this before. that he acts as if God. exists and I've had some some arguments. about this before but to me that points. towards the preeminence of action and. how important action is versus your your. cognitive beliefs. necessarily um and I think there is a. lot of utility in that that if you. follow the moral code of something like. the Bible um you do reap benefits from.

that Society reaps benefits from that um. and this is not and sometimes I I bring. up this point and people like oh my God. are you kidding me have you read the Old. Testament they're clobbering people with. rocks when they do the wrong thing it. the Bible doesn't claim to be this like. do everything that was done in the Bible. it's more like charting this moral. progression where we came from this very. barbaric Society into something. more like the New Testament where we're. honoring you know individual sovereignty. above the state and things like that so.

I think that mythology itself is another. form of data compression if you look at. these stories um you know Kanan abble is. a good example or Peterson makes the. point that it's a tiny story it's you. know a paragraph is long but it contains. so many layers of meaning um in regards. to violence evil betrayal wor work um. the Divergence between intention and. result you know because I think Cain is.

actually. making uh he's making the effort to. sacrifice for God but the sacrifices. he's making are not God doesn't find. them useful right and so he he sort of. rejects rejects. them for. a again if we're we're we're organized. by these useful fictions right these. these uh Harian imagined orders I think. mythology is kind of the original. version of that where we were learning. to organize. ourselves uh around.

stories to. best coordinate our action across space. and time and so I think it's very. foundational um and back to what we were. saying in the beginning that if value. truly is fundamental I think it's. interesting that all these stories Point. towards often common moral value vales. they're not perfectly. aligned um but it does speak to just the. The.

evolutionary importance of morality and. the subjectivity of morality where. morality sort of evolves over time based. on you know frankly the Capital stock. we've accumulated the more Capital stock. we've accumulated the easier life is the. less barbaric we have to be whereas if. we're living in conditions of true. scarcity um then we tend to be a bit. more barbaric towards one another. and that too to dovet tell this into. something largely unrelated but I think. is really important is.

inflation inflation by artificially. increasing the prices of goods and. services in the world right we're we're. injecting more dollars chasing the same. level of goods and services we are. artificially increasing. scarcity perceived scarcity right and. when you increase perceived scarcity. you are amplifying. divisiveness this natural the natural.

state of man is when everything is. scarce and you really have to fight hard. just to eat or drink water that day so. it's it's decivilizing in a way by. artificially amplifying the perceived. scarcity in the world C can you. elaborate how does inflation increase. the perceived scarcity in the world so. we could think the price itself is an. indication it's a data packet if you. will the price is a data packet on. supply and demand right it's telling you. how much Supply there is of something in.

the world relative to the. demand so when you in when you print. money and artificially increase that. price it's diverging away from supply. and demand it's becoming just a more of. a product of policy than it is of free. market fundamentals. right the more expensive something is. that is a signal to the marketplace and. to Market actors that it is scarce right. right that's why uh uh Leonardo painting. might sell for $16 million there's only.

one there's a lot of demand for it uh. maybe my numbers are off but but you get. the point uh it's the reason mask spiked. in price after the covid announcement. right there was Supply toilet paper etc. etc so. inflation and by inflation I. specifically mean arbitrary fiat. currency Supply inflation by a legal. Monopoly not um inflation is a commonly. misunderstood word that is amplifying. the perception of scarcity among Market.

actors in the world and I would argue. that it actually amplifies divisiveness. I think this is the key maybe to looking. at the connection between the. monopolization of money and things like. cancel culture because it's increasing. the it's increasing our natural. production to be combative with another. because we think there's more scarcity. in the world than there actually is. versus in a world where you're not. increasing the money supply prices are.

declining every year as prices decline. this is a signal to Market actors into. the market that scarcity is declining. there's less need to fight over things. and all of this ties back into the old. basate saying that if if Goods don't. cross borders soldiers will so if we're. not trading with one another if we're. not acting interdependently and we're. not. um becoming more intelligent as a. market and the that increased.

intelligence or increased knowledge is. reflected in decreased prices because. prices are just the exchange ratios of. things so the smarter we can solve. problems the better we can solve. problems the less prices would be so it. induces more cooperation I love how you. tie inflation cancel culture together as. essentially artificial. creation of increase of conflict MH uh. increasing artificially increasing. scarcity and thereby artificially.

increasing conflict that's really. fascinating um you're you're short. circuiting my brain many times. throughout this conversation okay um I'm. strugg this this robot is trying is. struggling to keep up okay maybe to step. back at um useful fictions or pragmatic. truths let me ask the question that. you've answered in many ways already but. let's explicitly look at what is money.

well as you know that's my favorite. question that uh is the name of the show. I just launched the what is money show. um clearly the we could say the the. Bitcoin rabbit hole is What's led me to. explore a lot of these ideas in depth um. and I think as we've demonstrated today. it goes well beyond just the economic. sphere when you start to think about. things like exchange and morality and.

and time preference and. civilization so I love the question what. is money I think it is the key to. incepting a deeper understanding of the. world into people that if you actually. just start to. ask the seemingly simple question it un. it surfaces more and more layers of. Truth. and I I recently I just wrote a piece I. think I have 30 something answers to. this question so there's so in some.

sense it's actually a more systematic. way of asking the question of what is. the meaning of life you know there's. some questions that are almost. unanswerable but in their asking allow. you to uh deeply get closer to truth. deeply understand the nature of our. human existence and the meaning of life. is almost like this uh. initial philosophers uh striving towards. that if if money is indeed as as.

fundamental you as as you've described. especially in the context of value being. fundamental then that is a really that's. a more let's like a 21st century way of. asking the same question about what is. the meaning of life you mentioned that. it's a meta property out of the list of. many ways to answer that question how. would you help people to think about. that yeah the. first most serious answer comes from the. school of Austrian economics and it.

defines money as a Universal Medium of. exchange so this would be any good that. is. used held and used purely for purposes. of facilitating. exchange. so in the configuration of demand for. any particular asset it's bifurcated. between its utility which is something a. service that it can render to you in. real time whether it's you know um if.

it's water you're thirsty that's the. utility of water is that it can quench. your. thirst uh whereas the marketability. would be the expectation of future. exchange that other people would want. this asset in the future to trade it for. whatever they may. have money is just going to be the good. in any trading economy that has the. highest proportion of marketability. relative to utility so today that would. be gold gold has utility it's used in.

electronics it's used in Dental. dentistry and whatnot uh but it's. largely used as a store of value across. time and that's what it's been used for. for 5,000 years so if we say gold has A1. trillion do market cap maybe two. trillion of that is its utility value. where it's actually demand for use in. computers and Industry and an 8 trillion. of that is demand for its use as a store. of. value money the marketability aspects of.

money boils down to five services that. money can. render money needs to be divisible it. needs to be durable it needs to be. recognizable needs to be portable and it. needs to be. scarce so I'll gloss over a lot of. history with this and just say that. historically money's always been a. technology still is a technology or a. tool I use these terms interchangeably. and you think of a technology as just a. more sophisticated tool effectively mhm.

of for to best satisfy those properties. monetary metals were determined to be. the most satisfactory tool the most. divisible most durable most recognizable. most portable tool in the marketplace of. the monetary Metals gold was the most. scarce as Quantified by either its stock. to flow Ratio or its inflation. resistance so simple way to say this is. that people always prefer the money most. resistant to inflation that's a nice. definition of scarcity in the context.

the money is uh if you were to measure. it the resistance to inflation so how. hard is it to artificially increase the. supply the supply of the thing that is. the hardness of money and that's why. gold is hard money because Alchemy is. hard that's right because no one cracked. Alchemy so gold became. money. so I mean that's such a nice clean. explanation of what is money uh with the. five elements and gold ultimately one. out because of the last piece of.

scarcity that's right and to get to. maybe dig a Little Deeper there so. scarcity we commonly think of scarcity. as strictly a. supply uh property where if there's not. much of something then it's scarce but. it's not actually true scarcity occurs. when demand exceeds Supply so when. there's more demand than the supply can. justify. the thing becomes an economic good and. it it establishes itself a market price. so there's more demand for the thing.

than the supply can satisfy the unique. thing about money as a concept at least. is that demand always exceeds Supply. there's never enough money to satisfy. everyone right because another. definition for money it's the most. marketable good so it can be trade it. can be traded for any other good service. piece of knowledge in the marketplace. mhm so being humans being what we are. we're never satisfied right we always. want more of something whatever it may.

be so money as the ultimate token of. obtaining that something is always. scarce as a. concept but the problem with money is. that if you can as you alluded to easily. increase its Supply then all of a sudden. you can compromise the scarcity of it. over. time uh and you can rob people through. inflation mhm so so that's why the. market settled on gold as money and. robbing is reallocating the. value that I so essentially the one.

property like why. scarcity is important is uh it uh adds a. lot more friction to the. reallocation uh like through essentially. violence or implied violence well it. prevents it through cost of extraction. too so if you want to go out and dilute. gold holders today you have to go out. into the world and mine gold it's a very. expensive process that process tends to.

find equilibrium where production cost. equals the market value of gold so if. market value is $2,000 an ounce today of. gold its production cost is going to be. around there that's the natural market. equilibrium so that way gold miners. cannot just dilute people over time. whereas you look at something like fiat. currency which might we're jumping ahead. a little bit but its production cost is. zero so there's a reason the market. value of fiat currency historically has. always converged to zero because its. production cost is near zero so the the.

extension to that question might be how. did we get from gold to paper currency. and again this is rooted in the. properties of. money uh as good as monetary metals were. and as good as gold is as money at. holding value across time it's rather. Limited in terms of portability it is. not as useful for moving value across. space. this is another definition of money by. the way a social device for moving value. across space and time mhm so to rectify.

this technological shortcoming of gold. we introduced first of all the custody. of gold was gradually centralized into. more into fewer and fewer warehousing. operations this is because there are. economies of scale associated with using. um gold as money and that if you. centralize the custody the warehouse. owner can then issue a paper receipt. called the warehouse receipt for that. gold and then Market participants can. trade that paper as if it's good as gold.

and everyone has an option at any time. to go and redeem real gold from the. warehouse so that system. works until the problem with it is that. it introduces the need to trust the. custodian so it's introducing. counterparty risk in the form of the. custodian and now should that warehouse. choose to increase the supply of paper. notes gold Beyond its Supply so if it's. got three tons of gold and IT issues six. tons worth of paper receipts all the.

sudden it's participating in a fraud. it's basically lying it's representing. that it has more gold than it actually. does um and this is that is the pathway. that we got into Banking and Central. Banking is we needed a convenience. mechanism to rectify the portability. shortcomings of gold we needed to be. able to move value across space right. gold was doing a great job at moving. value over time but not space paper. currency gave us the ability to move. value across space but it introduced.

this attack Vector for warehouse. operators which became Banks which. became central banks to modify the. supply to suit their own political. agendas added the snooze. button allows you to do just do a little. fraud get something for nothing. something just a little bit at first. yeah just just just this one morning. just a little bit. um I mean I don't know if you can speak. to um the birth of fiat currency is.

there some interesting um. characteristics to that those early. steps that created it like could it have. been averted or is just the natural. progression of um of governments you. know what's funny is that Central. Banking was initially designed to be the. custodian of gold right so they were. going to custody the gold issue paper on. top of. it and they would maintain you could.

trust the public stamp effectively you. could trust that the central bank had as. much gold on reserve as they said they. had and they were supposed to be the. trustworthy institution so we we went. from placing our trust in a free market. game theoretic process where we're. trusting gold and we began trusting this. institution. Instead This that institution would not. not have Arisen if the portability of. gold was really high if we could have. somehow sent gold across a.

telecomunications channel there would. have been no need for a central bank. everyone could have custody their gold. in any any information bearing medium. frankly and they could beam it around. the world at any time so this whole. institution itself is rooted in a. technological shortcoming of gold so I. think it's another way to think about. that is maybe had there been all the. gold in the world today fills two. olympic size swimming pools all the gold.

Min throughout all of human history so. there's not a lot right mhm what if. there had been just like way more there. just been I don't know 20,000 Olympic. swimming pools. worth portability wouldn't have been as. much of an issue right we could have and. this is to say assuming gold was still. the most scarce medal in all these. things um portability would have been l. of an issue we would have need we would. have had less dependence or need for a. central bank so I think it's it's kind. of idiosyncratic and that we just.

happened to end up here on this planet. with a certain amount of gold it best. satisfied the properties of money and a. certain amount of humans geographically. dispersed such that portability had. certain properties that you want to. achieve for humans in the geographical. space to be able to be a um exchange. value became more of an issue as we. globalized right as we became more of a. global Society we need needed money that. could move across space really fast. right so we could trade in international. Capital. markets so that.

drove the central bank to become the. dominant institution of the world and if. you follow the flows of gold throughout. history you know I've been watching this. uh documentary on World War I and World. War II on Netflix I think it's called. World War II in color oh yeah this. really good so good and when I say gold. has been the governor governments or. gold is geopolitical money like it is. the Bas layer operating system has been. the Bas layer operating system for.

analog Society so it's always been about. who controls the. gold is who makes the. rules and that's in that context is why. Bitcoin is so interesting because it is. the disruptor to this Bas level. operating system that's functioned for. all of human history I think this is a. good place to ask we asked the what is. money. question what is.

bitcoin that's a question as complicated. as what is money I. think if you get a general understanding. of money from a number of. angles that we could say Bitcoin is the. most Superior monetary technology that. has ever. existed so so one one of the most most. Superior implementation of the ideas of. money that you talked about you talked. about money as speech you talked about. money as an.

idea he talked about a money of. sovereignty yeah so we're attaching the. concept of money to your point to. whatever tool best. satisfies those properties of money or. best renders those Services we need from. money and as you said you're using the. word tool and Technology interchangeably. here yes yes and another thing to think. about here is that we think often in. terms of goods or. services but actually everything is a.

service so it's not the physical. properties of this pen that I find. valuable it's the services that it. renders to me that I want to write a. letter this gives this serves me by. allowing me to lay ink on paper and. communicate information. so value humans attached value as we. alluded to earlier two services not. Goods so the properties or the services. that money renders that human beings. value are those five properties.

divisibility durability recognizability. portability. scarcity Metals best satisfied those. Services. historically but Bitcoin as the most. Superior monetary technology in human. history essentially perfects them it's. as close to Perfection as we've ever. been so in terms of divisibility each. Bitcoin can be broken down into 100. million subunits called a. Satoshi um it could if that divisibility.

were ever our problem which actually um. there was a question that came up. recently if you divide the world. population by the total supply of. Bitcoin you end up at like 0.3 Bitcoin. per person call it uh 300,000 Satoshi. per person what if that was not enough. to facilitate economic activity and the. answer to that is Bitcoin can soft work. into further divisibility so if Bitcoin. ate all the money in the. world and the average Bitcoin or wealth.

was say 300,000 Satoshi each but that. wasn't uh divisible enough maybe to buy. coffee and do all these day-to-day. transactions what would happen well we. would increases divisibility so. bitcoin's perfected divisibility the. divisibility of money lets us transact. across scales right we can buy coffee or. we can buy a. house. um durability is an interesting one so. clearly something like gold is very. durable it's resistant to degradation. over time Bitcoin is just pure. information but it's stored in a.

distributed. format so information stored in a. distributed fashion tends to be. virtually infinitely durable uh the. example like to give here is something. like the Bible the Bible is just. distributed information it's stored. everywhere and nowhere so to speak and. for that reason it has outlasted Empires. and Bitcoin similar right you can't make. changes to it unilaterally but to uh. make explicit the the ways in which it.

is not durable is the fact that it. relies on Computing infrastructure like. it uh it needs computers so if you were. to destroy all the computers in the. world yes it needs mechanisms that store. and transfer information that's right. and so you could attack it I mean you. could attack gold in the same kind of. way I suppose to the physics but it's. probably easier to destroy all the. computers in the world than it is to. destroy all the gold in the world maybe.

not I don't know anyway yeah yeah you're. right uh maybe maybe I'm not sure which. one would be harder to destroy but the. other thing is there's a dynamic. incentive so every time you you destroy. Bitcoin miners you're creating. incentives for anyone else with access. to electricity to mine right cuz you're. making the algorithm easier yeah so the. the structure. is difficult because of the. decentralized nature of the whole thing. and the difficulty adjustment yeah yeah. so you're going to have to use nuclear.

weapons and and cover the whole globe. but anyway yeah and by then we've got. much bigger problems than money. right that's right so okay so that's. durability so portability bitcoin's pure. information it can move at the speed of. light can't get much faster than that uh. recognizability refers to the ability to. verify the veracity of the money or or. it's AU authenticity so you can actually. when we used to transact gold there were. time onor techniques for verifying that.

it was gold and not goldplated lead for. instance this is where we get the term. sound money a gold coin made a very. particular sound when dropped from a. certain height you know you've seen. people biting coins these are all. techniques for testing uh the. authenticity of gold and with Bitcoin we. have something unique and that if you're. running a full node you can verify that. the Bitcoin is Bitcoin right it cannot. be tampered with it cannot be faked and. in addition to that as a node operator. you can audit the total supply of. Bitcoin at any time which is unlike any.

money in history so you know with full. certainty if you're holding 1,000. Bitcoin you have 1,000 out of a possible. 21 million forever you have a guaranteed. fraction of the total Supply yeah so a. full note contains information about. every transaction that's ever been had. so you can figure out yeah I mean all. the truth of the this money is all right. there yeah it's like a fractal. constituent of the whole network right. the whole Bitcoin blockchain is. comprised in a node too not not the.

proof of work piece but the entire. transaction history MH um and so that's. unique as well and that's what makes. Bitcoin the ultimate store value is that. you know with certainty what the total. Supply is and will ever be and you know. that your share of that Supply is fixed. it cannot change it can only improve. actually if someone loses is you know if. the Satoshi stash is truly gone forever. the million Bitcoin never moves then. we're talking about a th000 Bitcoin out.

of 20 million instead and so on and so. forth as more PE as more people lose. access to their Bitcoin they're. basically making a contribution to. everyone else it's anti dilutive and. there's certain properties of Bitcoin. that are sort of a little bit more into. the details that ensure that the the. full nodes like the size of all the. transactions ever happened at least. currently can be stored in a single. computer for example so it's not it. doesn't blow up too quickly that's right. but you know there's arguments that.

that's not necessary you can make. Arguments for that to be uh a very nice. property but you can also say that. there's like drawbacks to it and that's. hence the the the block size debates and. all those kinds of things yeah that was. the Bitcoin cash Civil War right was. that particular piece um yeah and you. know ostensibly they were saying oh we. need more transaction through but to buy. more coffee and do more transactions but. what they're actually doing was. increasing the. size um computing power necessary to run.

a full node which would which would have. theoretically compromised. decentralization so yeah I but it would. in theory this is you know in theory it. would allow you to have much more. transactions that's right but the the. drawback it would because of no longer. can be stored in a single computer. personal computer than it naturally. leads to the centralization same kind of. thing we see with gold which would have. compromised its. survivability right so um I so what else.

is there the last one which leads. straight into this one actually is the. most important one of money which is. scarcity and that you need to know the. supply is fixed and safeguarded from. counterfeiting um and inflation which. counterfeiting and inflation are the. same thing by the way counterfeiting is. criminalized inflation inflation is. legalized counterfeiting so central.

banks today when they say they're. printing money they're not they're. counterfeiting currency um that's a very. important part and Bitcoin as I've. argued in some of my. writing is more than just an invention. it's actually the discovery of absolute. scarcity and that we have unveiled a. property of money that we will only. discover once. um and it's got really major. ramifications For The World At Large so. with gold for.

instance as we've covered it became. money because it was the most relatively. scarce monetary metal right it's Supply. was hardest to in increase Over time. however if we could somehow flip a. switch today and make everyone in the. world go out and start mining gold we. could increase the supply much more. quickly we could you know it's historic. inflation rates about 2% we could double. that pretty quickly um. Bitcoin with Bitcoin it is not possible. so no matter how much effort and energy.

and capital uh and operational. expenditure we pour into the mining. Network we cannot deviate from its fixed. and diminishing supply curve from. between now and the last Bitcoin being. mined in 2140 because of the difficulty. adjustment it's constantly it's adapting. to Human Action actually so the harder. we pursue it the more that it recedes. and then the less we pursue it the more. available it makes itself and this. is It's a real major breakthrough.

because it's the closest. thing to perfect information we've ever. had in an economy and perfect. information is this it's a theoretical. but. unattainable state of the market where. all Market actors have all the relevant. information uh about everything so that. they can compete as efficiently as. possible possible and in the state in a. state of pure information we have I'm. sorry perfect information we have. perfect competition and in perfect. competition we maximize wealth.

generation so we're competing uh as. freely as possible from coer of and. violent impediments and so I think. Bitcoin in that sense is going to pull. the world world closer to a state a per. of perfect competition than we've ever. been before which would increase wealth. of generation to an extent we've never. seen. before many of the things you said about. Bitcoin also hold for other.

cryptocurrency technologies that. followed. after is can you say something to why. you think. Bitcoin is the. superior technology from a pragmatic. truth perspective than say ethereum but. also other crypto like Bitcoin cash. like other hard Forks of Bitcoin and uh. or maybe things that might yet to be. invent tools yet to be invented yeah so.

this is a good point of argument because. a lot of people have countered me and. said Bitcoin cannot be absolute absolute. scarcity because you can Fork it and. create something with the same. properties as Bitcoin or potentially. Even Better Properties right you create. something with a deflationary monetary. policy uh that's what bit coin cash was. actually it forked Bitcoin with all of. the same properties except for the block. size that we alluded to earlier the. problem is is that money is valued again.

it's it's the good with a configuration. of demand that is predominantly. marketability MH so it is valued based. on its liquidity that is how many other. trading partners are there in that. monetary Network so it is. a network valued because of its. liquidity and network effects so any new. entrant into the market for money will. all is incentivized to always.

choose the money with the deepest. liquidity and the most Network effects. this is why money has tended to be a win. or take all Market because it's. essentially a single-purpose tool right. it is a tool. for if we consider that tools are. time-saving devices right the shovel. lets you dig more holes per man hour. than you can with your bare hands money. is a tool there's yet another definition. of money that lets us calculate. negotiate and execute trades more.

quickly. so that function tends to coales towards. one. solution and so the short answer would. be that for the same reasons. quantifiable reasons right like. inflation resistance and and liquidity. and network effects that we have one. analog gold we're only likely to have. one digital gold and I think the Bitcoin. cash Fork proves that out empirically. it's a good a good case study because. for case study right but it okay so that.

that's really well put so like gold was. sticky uh once it was accepted the. network effects the winner take all took. over and here's a fundamentally. different kind of like analog versus. digital is a leap Technologies that's. right and you're suggesting that there. may not. be there's unlikely to be other leaps of. that kind into a whole another kind of.

space of Technologies I would argue that. Bitcoin is kind of like the ideological. synthesis of gold taking the monetary. properties of gold and combining them. with the internet itself right and in. doing so it has essentially perfected. the properties of money right you can't. get more divisible durable recognizable. portable or scarce than Bitcoin so so. Satoshi has kind of he left no design. space for his Superior technology to. intercede and out compete Bitcoin at.

this point now that it's established. liquidity in the far superior technology. right yeah but it's it's a combination. of the tech itself and the social layer. that is co you can't separate those two. out like they're all connected and then. the political as well I mean but you. know the portability for example that's. the another way to phrase that is the. what is it the scaling so the number of. transactions that's a limitation for. Bitcoin that many argue as a feature. many argu is a bug you have you have a.

bunch of cryptocurrency technologies. that are able to achieve much. higher much faster frequency of. transactions much more transactions you. know all that kind of. stuff what are your thoughts on that uh. you know the the low level of. transactions that's possible with. Bitcoin do you think that's a feature do. you think that's a bug necessary for. security actually and even these other. crypto assets that settle more quickly.

they settle with less Assurance of. finality so uh Nick Carter has a great. piece on this actually called it's the. settlement Assurance is stupid it's. really good where the gist of it is that. there is more work being done in each. block of Bitcoin that it can't it is. less vulnerable to reversion MH so it's. it's it's giv giving you higher degrees. of assurance that your settlement or. your trade has occurred with finality. whereas other blockchains are much more. vulnerable um and again with.

Bitcoin The evolutionary path of money. with gold is that it was first used as a. collectible it then became used as a. store value after it had stored enough. value it became being it began to be. used as a medium of exchange and then. finally when it was used widely enough. as a medium of exchange it becomes a. unit of account we actually start to. think in the money bitcoin's following a. similar path so started out as kind of a. collectible today I would argue it's a.

store value one of the most effective. store value we've ever seen so that. evolutionary path that Bitcoins. following it's similar to gold first of. collectible today is store value to Be. an Effective store value it has to. optimize for Supply cap yes that has to. be the first and this is all Bitcoin. really needs to do to be successful by. the way exactly what it's been doing for. 12 years virtually flawlessly which is. keep creating a block every 10 minutes.

and keep enforcing a supply cap of 21. million as long as those two things. hold it is uh sound money the Ultimate. Sound money the the. most inflation resistant money there's. ever been it's actually completely. immune it's taken unexpected inflation. to 0% we know with perfect certainty. what Bitcoin Supply will ever. be for it to be used more broadly as a. medium of exchange it can't make.

trade-offs at the base layer to be uh to. increase its portability for instance. even though it's portability is maybe. kind of a misnomer because Bitcoin has. extremely high portability just doesn't. have extremely high transaction. throughput right so we could say you can. move it pretty quickly anywhere in the. world as long as you're willing to bid. up uh for the block space but you can't. can't satisfy all the world's economic. volume you can't do 300 million. transactions per second like you can on. a centralized database like. Visa but.

Bitcoin needs to be this it has to be a. store value first before it can be a. medium of. exchange so it has to protect the supply. cap first before making any trade-offs. for that and I would argue. that that's why Bitcoin is so rigid is. that it's optimized for survivability. and optimized for that Supply cap and. it's pushing experimentation and um. other features that would increase his. transaction through but to higher layers. so I think lightning network is.

something that's very interesting um. it's still early but there's a lot of. throughput already being used on the on. the lightning Network and it makes you. know some slight trade-offs in terms of. the trust minimization of Bitcoin you. end up trusting these these smart. contracts instead to move the Bitcoin. but you pick up nearly unlimited. transaction but so that's how and that's. how biology evolves that's how the. internet evolved it evolves in layers so. I think Bitcoin you can sort of conceive.

of it as the latest layer to the. internet um and it's one that preserves. this store value property better than. any asset we've ever had let me ask sort. of a critical question of if you're. wrong about your statements of about. Bitcoin you find out years from now that. you were wrong what would that look like. what would be the things that make you. realize you were wrong likely ideas or. crazy out there ideas do you think about.

this kind of stuff all the. time because you speak very confidently. about Bitcoin and one of the things let. me put it this way I think. certainty I feel like that's like a. stoic statement certainty leads to ruin. something like that like certainty I. think is. antithesis. to progress often and especially in your. writing but this is true for the Bitcoin. Community there's a there's a certainty.

about the Bitcoin and that makes me very. skeptical no matter how good the ideas. are whenever things are good this might. be the russan of me I think like what. are the ways this is going to go wrong. so so what do you think are the ways. this might go wrong or you're wrong in. your conception of what what Bitcoin is. yeah so. science evolves via. negativa meaning that we're not proving.

hypothesis and that's what becomes the. body of. science science is whatever is left over. as we disprove hypothesis right whatever. we can empirically through. experimentation disprove gets discarded. and whatever remains um whatever Theory. remains it hasn't been disproven is. science. effectively um this. process is similar to Market actors.

zeroing in on a store value right. they're they're experimenting with. different forms of uh storing wealth. across time uh some do better than. others and eventually everyone ends up. on the one that is best that's what gold. was um in terms of understanding Bitcoin. I look at it as a similar approach and. that I'm actually that is the main. question I'm asking myself is how do you. stop this thing how do you turn it off. how do you end it if if you're a nation.

state particularly who has the most to. lose in this. transition what is the attack vector by. which they neutralize Bitcoin I mean. that is the $250 trillion question. and you know I've spent five years. thinking about this thing very deeply. I've read everything on monetary history. I can get my hands on. um the general thought of how it is. stopped and this is this is the snag. point that a lot of people get to in.

their Explorations down the rabbit hole. is they just say the government will. never allow it and that becomes kind of. their bottom it's like all right. bitcoin's interesting it's Superior. money blah blah blah but the government. will never allow it and they was Ray. doio did he say that diio was currently. stuck there yeah so R alio said that um. Bitcoin seems to be too promising yeah. uh if if it is in fact as promising as. it looks uh governments are going to uh. I don't forget what the exact quote is.

but not allow ban it yeah governments. will ban it so how do you get ralo. unstuck from your perspective well and. how do you get unstuck from that idea. that governments will governments how do. you prevent governments from stopping a. thing that uh threatens centralized. power. well Bitcoin is an. idea so governments that are really good.

at. fighting centralized threats to their. power right whether that's a currency. counterfeit or competing nation state or. business they don't like or an. individual they don't like you know they. can kill them they can throw them in. jail they can use any number of course. of or violent tactics to suppress it but. how do you point a gun at an idea how do. you how do you coers an idea. um and that's you know there's some.

there is some anecdotal history here. where there's the pgp case which in the. United States uh the court was trying to. classify it as Munitions when we were. shipping this pretty good privacy. software over uh overseas government. wanted to classifi it as Munitions and. restrict that exportation. but and this was a circuit court case. precedent when uh the pgp attorneys. actually printed out the source code on.

paper and presented it as evidence in. the court all of the sudden it became. protected under freedom of speech and. that it's just code is speech code is is. language and um therefore at least in. the United States it's protected under. the First. Amendment. um I think a government ban would be. largely unenforceable frankly on bitcoin. um being that it's pure. information if you. suppress Market actors from using it in.

one jurisdiction you're just creating. incentives for them to go elsewhere uh. and you're actually increasing the. incentives for other jurisdictions to be. be favorable towards it because then. they can create they get to benefit from. the tax revenue and the businesses and. The Innovation that's occurring in and. around Bitcoin as a result so you don't. think if a particular Central. Bank like in Europe or United States. bans it not maybe using those terms but. in some kind of way mhm you think.

there's a that provides a really strong. incentive for the other big players to. enable it that's. right and that they're more likely by. the way since and governments know this. by the way too the other thing that. causes the government to shoot itself in. the foot is that if they ban something. they draw a lot of attention to it yeah. people are I mean people ask why why. would the government ban it why can't I. use this so that's kind typically be the. the last arrow in their quiver um they. may try to ban it if Bitcoin you know.

really starts to monetize very quickly. and this the power structures that they. impose today start to. dissolve uh faster than I you know. others might think they will then they. might try and ban it but I think that. ban will be largely. unenforceable um they're more likely to. tax it which they already do tax it um. they're likely to increase taxation of. it uh they would they're likely to try. and make it more white Market but. actually tracing Bitcoin seeing who has.

it attaching identities to bitcoin. ownership um and making sure that. they're getting their pound of flush on. all the transactions it results in but I. don't think the other thing about this. is so we saw the internet out compete. intranets mhm um and that the we could. say that open source networks tend to. out compete closed Source networks and. there's a really good reason for this. it's because in a Clos Source.

Network there are costs associated with. defending the network. itself so you have. to the Network owners the owners of the. close Source Network have to expend. resources protecting it from competitors. and they have to expend resources. imposing its. rules because people they're not. voluntarily adopted rules so you. actually have to impose these rule sets. whereas an open- Source Network which is. something much more akin to capitalism. pure in its pure sense these are.

voluntarily adopted rules so all Market. participants have agreed and consented. to this rule set so there's no. enforcement cost and there's no Turf. protection because anyone can freely. enter or exit the open. network for that energetic reason I. think open networks out compete close. networks typically and in the digital. age that's why I think open that's why. internet out competes internet and. that's why open source networks are. going to eat closed Source networks so. what Bitcoin would be in that lens is.

the ultimate open source monetary. Network devouring closed Source Central. Bank monetary. networks and I I just don't see. how there's no possibility of. unilaterally stopping Bitcoin or. destroying it so then they're more. likely to regulate or tax it uh and. again the other fallacy here is that a. lot of people tend to think of. governments as these singular. indivisible uh entities like that just.

move under one plan but in reality it's. a lot of people right A lot of people. with Loosely coupled interest and. agendas and. whatnot uh regulators and and um others. with they're wearing their citizen hat. they're going to see this thing. monetizing they're going to be on the. front lines of um trying to regulate it. trying to control it and I think what's. likely to happen is they're going to. start to adopt it to buy some of. it uh even as an individual or possibly.

even ultimately as a at a central bank. or Sovereign wealth fund level as an. insurance policy against its. success and once you start to acquire. something and then you have a a vested. economic interest in its monetization I. think it kind of dissolves any of the. power structures that are arrate against. it from the inside mhm so I've written a. lot about this uh in a new series called. sovereignism which is based Loosely on a. book called The sovereign. individual and that's the general thesis.

is that microprocessing technology would. devour our organizational models uh the. most important of which is the nation. state so I think we're going into this. world where coercion and violence is. just much less rewarding um it you can't. the economics of violence are declining. because of the the low cost of. protecting property right you can. now protect your monetary property uh in. Bitcoin at orders of magnitude less cost.

than is necessary to run a banking. Network. so it changes the way uh it changes the. way we organize ourselves and again if. we zooming back to gold as kind of the. original Governor to governments where. if they manipulated the money gold would. leave their country that's why. governments have um taking cons. relatively concerted action to go off of. a gold standard there's a great book on. this called the gold Wars um that that. outlines how governments have been.

waging a cold war against gold for the. past 50. years Bitcoin sort of uh renews hope for. that free market governor of governments. and that is this digital gold that. governments cannot stop or. co-opt so I think it's something that's. why I think it's such a big deal is that. it is. is changing it's a new useful fiction. you might say a useful fiction that's. superordinate to the mythology of the.

nation state and government as the. dominant institution in the world well I. I hope you're right that uh all forms of. centralized. power start breaking apart naturally so. governments the more and more power is. given to the individual whatever the. technology is and Bitcoin seems to be a. promising technology that empowers that. enables that that seems to be the trend. and that's a promising trend from uh at. least from a perspective of somebody who. values this particular biological meat.

bag that's full of Consciousness I think. Bitcoin is exposing the greatest scam in. human history which is political. Authority like who gives anyone the. right to be politically have political. authority over anyone else people should. be free to adopt the rules and systems. and tools that best suit their. needs and you know that AR that Arc of. History we covered earlier where. as socioeconomic systems have become.

more favorable towards individual. sovereignty the more wealthy we have. become the more we have given the. individual we've maximized individual. Choice uh the more wealth that Society. has created and the more it has. outcompeted uh the systems that have. come before it the latest would be you. know capitalism triumphing over. socialism. before maybe we eat uh you are in Texas. uh you brought over some brisket before. we maybe indulge in that let me bring up. one quick topic and then we'll take a.

break and the topic of uh the what some. may term the toxicity of the Bitcoin. community that uh you've written that. Bitcoin toxicity tough. love do you want to break that apart a. little bit sort of. um the idea the philosophy of the. toxicity that's seems to be present in. in part in the Bitcoin Community yeah we. were talking about this a little bit.

before we recorded and I've been through. the gauntlet with Bitcoin toxicity as. well um I came into this. space professionally in. 2017 uh was originally running a multi. strategy crypto asset hedge fund and my. initial investment thesis on the world. was that you know Bitcoin was a big deal. but there were all these other exciting. coins and projects and ways the. technology was going to be. used and that view of reality met this.

immune I guess you could say as an. ideological immune system is Bitcoin. toxicity and that it's kind of a a. filter that's trying to catch bad or. useless or even scamming ideas that this. space is very well known for for um you. know as we've touched on today Bitcoin. in my opinion is this world shattering. Innovation but it's in a c of the most.

scammy stuff ever right people anybody. can go and create a. coin so you can go and launch one. immediately online um and you can throw. up a website an advisor page you know. post a white paper talking about how. great your technology is going to be and. how it's going to change the world and. you can raise $30 million in Bitcoin or. ethereum in 30 seconds kind of thing so. it's drawn in a lot of this scam. Artistry you might say and I. think people living through that because.

there is this natural predilection for. people when they first come into Bitcoin. you're excited about it then you get. lost in the shitcoin universe and then. just looking at the market success of. Bitcoin versus and when I use the word. shitcoin I'm just you say with all the. love in the world all the love in the. world I guess you could call me a toxic. maximalist in some ways although I. consider myself a freedom maximalist not. a Bitcoin maximalist yeah I saw that. line that's a so it's a good line.

Bitcoin tracking the market success of. Bitcoin versus alternative crypto assets. uh the signal is very clear that Bitcoin. has out competed all of them so I think. that Bitcoin cultural toxicity has. evolved as an immune response to those. bad ideas which is actually if you think. about it it kind of is a tough love. right you don't want new entrance to the. space to get lost in shitcoin Jungle and. learn the hard way the way many Bitcoin. maximalists have that uh the real. Innovation is Bitcoin but like an immune.

system I think it can also go too far. and so I think it's useful when it is. defending the space from false. narratives we might say but it becomes. detrimental when it's attacking people. that are inquiring about Bitcoin or. people that are approaching Bitcoin with. a a a good spirit and good intention and. a uh a desire to learn because then at. that point it's actually impeding the.

free flow of ideas which you know the. example and um your clip that was. totally taken out of context and then. you're literally just saying I'm here to. learn and contribute I think I've got. some stuff to do and then people attack. that like that doesn't make any. sense it's like you're attacking someone. who's approaching it in a good spirit. and asking questions yeah and I think. sometimes talk talking about. it the toxicity in the Bitcoin Community. as an immune. response has a negative effect of giving. at a. pass because like it almost says look it.

equates it with the IM the human immune. system which seems to do a really good. job and so you could say that the. toxicity has a lot of features in the. sea. of. fraudulent projects that. um Ste steal money from people it's. really useful to make sure that um you. give people the harsh truth about who is. and isn't a. scammer you have to take it apart take.

it away from that metaphor of the immune. system and look at basic human nature. and human nature can go to some Dark. Places which is it's sad to say that. some. people maybe many of us can enjoy for. its own sake the tox icity the mockery. the derision and you uh stop being part. of the immune system that makes a. successful idea propagate and start.

being a sort of a destructive virus. yourself and that's something I think. about because I I am new to uh this. particular immune system but I've. explored other immune. systems. and the. I think you understand this world much. better than me but I tend to prefer sort. of love as a mechanism for spreading.

ideas to to air on the side of love and. kindness and almost like the. open-mindedness in a way where you're. constantly lowering yourself in the face. of other ideas constantly questioning. yourself but I think I understand that. that that might be more applicable in. certain contexts like maybe in the space. of science or something like that but in. the space of uh Bitcoin as it currently.

stands there's so many people that are. trying to scam others out of their money. that the kind of harshness required is. different nevertheless I. do want to put it on people like. yourself and others who I know you. wouldn't consider yourself this but. you're one of the faces or leaders in. the space to call people out a little. bit to inspire them to be more loving I. I suppose but it's difficult cuz you. want to walk that line carefully you.

don't want to be too loving and. open-minded otherwise your brain falls. out I I get it it's a difficult balance. to walk it is it is subtle and it's. nuanced and it is difficult to walk and. I think that that's why I try to say. tough love. because you know when we're young we may. have certain ideas about how we the way. we want our life to go but then maybe. our parents are not letting us do. certain things and we think they're I. know when I was a kid I wanted to get my. when I was in fifth grade I want to get. my ear pierced my mom wouldn't let me do.

it and I was you know oh come on mom. thought it was so cool and then two. years later I'm like thank you Mom for. not letting me get my ear pierc um I. think it comes from a place of good. intention that they are. actually they have asked themselves that. question right that they've been. inquiring and why not this crypto asset. or this crypto asset and they they've. done the exploration they keep coming. back to bitcoin and they've seen people. being taken advantage of um but you know.

to your point it's like it can this. tough love can become detrimental just. like the immune system can become. detrimental right it can overreact and. it can actually harm the human body so I. would say that it's it's such a tricky. and nuanced topic that even biology. hasn't figured it out right A lot of. people have autoimmune diseases. um and then there's the other thing that. we we have this natural I agree with you. about love I think love is like the. deepest value um that's a whole another. philosophical thing but it's we're.

biologically programmed to pay more. attention to things that are adversarial. or harmful right that's part of the US. protecting the meat suit so to speak so. there is some uh maybe better. delivery method by being a little bit. toxic to really get the point across. like hey don't get lost over here these. things can hurt you really try to focus. on bitcoin but the toxicity of that. message I guess it increases its ability.

to penetrate the individual but it can. also go too far so it is it's. interesting but I almost to push back a. little bit toxicity is a funny word I. think tox maybe another way to say it is. uh I brought up like Christopher Hitchin. and somebody. who like okay you might say he's toxic. or something like that cuz he's. basically a intellectual Powerhouse. who's also a troll so he's constantly. it's a gorilla Warfare in the space of.

ideas he's very harsh in his. disagreements and criticisms but it's. done with Incredible Grace and skill and. poetry so we could use more of that we. could use more that so toxicity. just like. um these are just words they can mean a. lot of different things but disagreement. doesn't have to be done with. love but it should be done with skill if.

it's to be effective so there's a lot of. ways to be effective in G gorilla. Warfare but you want to learn how to. shoot or whatever the weapon you're. using and to do it well some people do. it better than others and uh it's. worthwhile to learn to do it well again. I prefer love but even love you know. just because you think you're. communicating a good idea which you very. well may be doesn't mean it also doesn't. require skill to do the communication. well whether it's disagreement and harsh.

or more uh agreement and loving and so. on yeah I think very. fundamentally that all of our decisions. you know we we alluded to earlier that. every decision is an expression of value. reaction we take they ultimately come. from fear or love fear would would be. something much more in the biological. domain where it's like we're trying to. protect ego we're trying to behave. selfishly this is the domain of sin you.

know I don't know all the sins gluttony. greed sloth wrath lust Pride Envy like. these are all selfish behaviors or is. something like love is much it's morally. Superior and that it's more selfless I I. don't know that we can properly Define. love with words at all but I would say. maybe like selfless action could be kind. of a generalization of it and that way. it is really hard to your point it's. hard. to to love in a world that has a lot of.

conflict that might make you fearful if. you're really focused on your meat suit. but if you're focused on the bigger. picture and you're focused on others and. Legacy and life that um there is a way. to do it and that's why I actually think. Christ that is the highest moral aim. right he met all of the vitri all in. life you know betrayal hate violence he. met it all with love and he met it with. compassion and that's why like. regardless of if you believe that he. actually lived or any of this this he is.

symbolic of the highest moral. Consciousness possible and you know Carl. Young would say that that was a. suitable alternative to psychoanalysis. was actually setting your moral aim. higher and striving towards it. diligently so. I mean I agree completely we need more. of that in the Bitcoin space uh we need. more of that in the world frankly the. world yeah um and these things they're. all intertwined you.

know we touched on the beginning that. all of us get to decide but the world. does influence kind of if we adopt fear. or love um but it takes I don't know it. takes good systems and it takes I guess. good leaders to to set an example yeah I. do I do believe that there's like. individual people can have a ripple. effect mhm so that's that's what I try. to do sort of embody the I'm just one. ant but I one of the things I have faith. in. is I'm trying to do that.

more I know this is a podcast but I'm. trying to do less talking and more. doing um I've been disappointed in. myself if I'm being honest how much. talking I've been doing you know as as. opposed to. um like my own private life I live the. thing I talk about but I also haven't. created. much you know and uh I believe in the. power of individuals that create stuff.

like create an idea yeah through those. individuals that try to create something. new the world progresses and hopefully. there's more and more more and more of. those people so we mentioned kind of. people. who what the Bitcoin Community called. scammers I have a lot of passions in my. life life that I focus a lot of my. attention. to you know Bitcoin doesn't happen to. be yet one of them Bitcoin and.

cryptocurrency you know glad you said. yet I I'm always looking um for things. to really fall in love with so how is a. person like me supposed to figure. out I also have happen to have a. platform a little bit and how am I. supposed to figure out who is a. interesting uh what is an interesting. set of ideas and what are not because. people are financially tied into a lot. of the cryptocurrencies that we're. talking about certainly with Bitcoin you.

know their livelihood their well-being. is tied up to it so it becomes much more. emotional much more personal it's no. longer purely an exploration of ideas. it's really almost like a threat on your. property like it's a personal threat it. makes it very difficult to explore those. ideas so I understand it but it makes it. very difficult for somebody like me to. just walk in and be curious so how do I. proceed in this difficult World in. exploring this.

landscape and um not give a platform to. ideas that may uh that may harm others I. guess first I'd like to commend your. forthrightness about this because I. don't think many people try to walk that. line necessarily people. again kind of the territorial imperative. they'll put whoever on they will help. expand their reach oh yeah you know I. don't or say whatever needs to be said. to expand their reach so I think it's.

you're coming from a good place I'll say. that um there's a great piece written on. the topic of scammers and scamming uh I. think it was by Goldstein he wrote a. piece called everyone's a scammer and. it's sort of back to this you know. General human proclivity to try and get. something for nothing always which again. it can be. it can be Inova or it can negative can. be try to steal from. people. um that might be I think that's a useful. piece just to kind of see the crypto.

world do that lens and that's how. bitcoiners are thinking all the time. they are by Nature adversarial thinkers. so they're trying to minimize the need. for trust in any situation and maximize. verification um as far as sifting. through. the idea I I. guess this is back where the the. cultural immune system has some utility. yeah because I there were times when I.

thought this particular crypto asset you. know augur was one I was really into. that it could facilitate prediction. markets and prediction markets could. make um you know markets more efficient. etc etc. but when that investment thesis. basically met the cultural uh filter or. immune system it it forced me to. re-evaluate my position forced me to. really look into it more deeply and. through that exploration I realized that. it would need to be built on bitcoin to. work basically so but it really comes.

down to like you doing your homework but. we can't all deeply evaluate every idea. out there right yeah one of the things I. struggle with with Alex Jones for. example had had dinner with. him uh that I could tell that would be a. very fun conversation but. like then I also understand that. there's like consequences to the to that. conversation that should be uh explored. with care mhm and uh so you you need to.

take on the responsibility of being a. chef of the puffer fish and all those. kinds of things that said just like you. said it's very difficult to know this. ahead of. time and uh I will probably make. mistakes and that's a shitty thing to. have to live with that I'm going to make. mistakes and some of them very large. like um yeah I mean I can imagine a. bunch of different ways but all we can. do in this world is once we make the.

mistakes we acknowledge those mistakes. yes learn and learn and also you know I. have to put this on the on on the rest. of us that you don't take one thing that. a person did and then burn them at the. Stak for it that uh you realize that we. all make mistakes that a particular. mistake does not make the person and you. know this applies to taking stuff out of. context over you know hundreds of hours. of talking but it applies to actual like.

in. context big mistake okay so what if I. murdered somebody at some point just. give me a break no there are some things. that are too far of course but in. general uh we need to give each other a. chance yeah but I'm still. I walk with a heavy heart knowing that. I'll probably make a mistake especially. one that I didn't mean to that's the one. that worries me most but this is human. nature like hamara to miss the mark.

That's the root word of sin we are. sinful by Nature we can't help it. there's no way again pain is information. right there's no way to learn other than. trying. failing learning and then you put. yourself in better formation right in. formation to better deal with it next. time so I I I hope I don't get the sense. that you're actually afraid of wor or of. making a m upep like I think you're just.

um maybe disappointed it's a better word. like you know you're going to make the. mistakes that's exactly that's much much. better word but we have to embrace that. yeah that's the only way anything the. only way we can advance is if we're. dealing with an incomprehensible reality. all we can do is throw spaghetti at the. wall and see what sticks yeah and in. that process we're all you know. inherently going to hurt ourselves and. hurt others and that's where love and. forgiveness come into play right and. um yeah I think the other thing is that.

this culture of reducing people down to. a label right whether it's racism or. whether you're calling them a scammer or. um any number of terms you're you're. discounting their sovereignty to zero. right you're taking a super complex. human that is vast contains multitudes. is changing over time and you're trying. to put them in a bucket of a. word and that is just I think a. cognitive fallacy like it's not only. going to hurt the person that you're you.

know winnowing down to a word it's also. going to hurt you and it's going to in. your attempt to DEC. complexify Reality by assigning this. person to a term you're actually going. to create bad outcomes for yourself. because you're not going to understand. that person I do also think there's a. failure of our social media technology. that incentivizes that kind of reduce. reduction to a label it just uh the. viral nature of that reduction so it's. not not only do we humans naturally do. that the our social media.

platforms make that easier more fun MH. uh more effective to do that at scale. the mass hysteria so I think there's. actually uh like technological ways of. uh adding friction to that yeah I wonder. I mean I agree with you that it's social. media is an amplifier to our natural uh. this natural way of dealing with one. another but I wonder and my thinking has. evolved a lot on this that there's.

something below the way we're treating. each other too right that we could say. civilization sort of advances in the. tools we make and the way we treat each. other we tend to have better tools. better quality of life and better. morality better uh quality of living and. uh ways of dealing with one another and. I think that when you corrupt the money. that it really does push us the the. negative Direction pushes us away from. uh again encouraging or ampli magnifying.

scarcity artificially causes us to be. more divisive when things are more. divisive we tend to be less civilized. less nuanced more you know black or. white or this or that or you're you're. this or label a or label B so I really. think and this is a harder one to. unravel but I think if we can fix the. money right which again is the base. layer operating system for human moral. action in the world um that it has.

Downstream effects so we' actually maybe. start to treat each other a little. better on social media despite the fact. that it enables this um faster. communication that's interesting so. perhaps fixing like social media as I've. been thinking about is uh treating the. symptom not the cause yeah that is the. Bitcoin rabbit hole in a nutshell is it. you know they say fix the money fix the. world you keep tracing these different. um social males or or you know.

technological difficulties lack of. innovation you know Weinstein's entire. portal podcast something went wrong in. the early 70s we went off the gold. standard in. 1971 and there's a great. website WTF happen1. 1971c goes through this whole gamut of. socioeconomic data that's completely. gone uh a skew since since the early'. 70s yeah you had this whole video what. do you think about Eric Weinstein and uh. and. Bitcoin and uh the gold standard and.

does he I actually haven't heard him. talk about his uh thesis about the the. 70s in connection to the going off of. the gold standard um yeah what are your. thoughts there what what are your. thoughts about his general relationship. with the with the Bitcoin idea and the. community. yeah the first exposure I had to Eric. was his I think it was his first episode. with Peter teal and they're going. through that thesis that there's been. this General institutional rot and.

suppression of innovation since the. early 70s and he's trying to identify. what it is I don't think they ever. pinned it on the money U on on going off. the gold standard but in recent um. interactions with Eric you know I've. interacted with him on clubhouse um we. recently released an episode of the show. I did with Chris espley and was titled. dear Eric Weinstein so we're going. through his worldview that he's. expressing the portal and tying it back. to the money in in different ways and.

he's been he's engaged Eric uh retweeted. the show we had we exchanged some. messages he's been very open-minded he's. asked some really good questions so I. get the sense that he's approaching this. um very. wholeheartedly uh he does bring with him. his existing worldview and his existing. Theory the the one that really blew up. was gauge Theory they got really popular. I don't know a lot about gauge Theory I. actually messaged Eric and said I want. to learn more genuinely because um you.

know he seems to be serious that that. needs to be considered in the sphere of. money and so I want to learn more about. it um but I think overall it's great. it's great to see an intellectual. heavyweight of his caliber gravitating. towards. Bitcoin yeah he has some gaau theoretic. conceptions about the world broadly but. also. about economics which ultimately boils. down to just a set of mathematics which. allows you to more effectively reason.

about the world and he has a certain set. of views there so it's fascinating to. see him grapple with it I think he's. also kind. of actually kind of like all of us uh. grappling with the idea of what is. Bitcoin in this world it's a very young. technology and it's unclear. exactly how the ideas of the past fit. with it yeah and integrate how the two. integrate together and so it's. interesting to explore uh not just.

Bitcoin the particular so for me like. what I've always uh saw Bitcoin as from. the. beginning from a narrow world view is. computer science which is what where I. come from and so I wasn't almost aware. in the uh social political Financial. aspects of Bitcoin but now I see that. there's not just power but there's. fascinating ideas to explore on that. side of things not just the computer.

science not just the technical. details but the political the. socioeconomic yeah the philosophical. philosophic yeah that's that's where I. you know find all the fascination in the. world frankly um I would I would one. other thing about uh Weinstein and. intellectuals more generally that are. skeptical of Bitcoin I would challenge. them to read the book Human Action WR by. written by misus I think in 1949 he. published the English.

version uh it's essential essentially. the the Bible of Austrian economics and. I. think Austrian economics is a noticeable. Gap in most modern intellectuals. worldviews that it's not taught in. school I mean I have a master's degree. in accounting and finance you know. studied a lot of economics in school. there's not one peep of auston the. the love talking about all the degrees. he has I was a CPA. all um but it's it that curriculum that.

we get in college is noticeably. deficient in Austrian economics and I. think there's a reason why right it's. it's he heavily government. influenced um again Master's green. accounting they never taught me about. what money is or where money comes from. all you learn is that the Central Bank. issues money and the central bank takes. money away so it's it's conceived of in. the textbooks quite literally as God.

right an entity that suffers no. opportunity cost that um B basically is. the foundation of the entire Keynesian. worldview that you're taught in. economics and Austrian. economics is the opposite end of the. spectrum of that right it's it's. actually the culmination which econ ICS. is the youngest science in the world by. the way so it is um kind of the front. it's the frontiers of Science in many. ways like to actually you when I say. praxiology many people have never even.

heard of that but it's something uh it's. an a priori study equivalent to. something like mathematics that you're. Building Things From First principles to. reason about economic reality and I. think that book it's a very difficult. book written by misis 1200 pages. translated from German the way he wields. English is fascinating and terrifying. all at the same time uh it probably take. you 6 months to read it if you read it. daily seriously like it's a it's a beast. of a book but that will plug the Gap I.

think in most any intellectual that's. skeptical about Bitcoin I think that. will plug the Gap that's necessary for. you to see it in in a new light well. I'll take that as a challenge now that. we took a little bit of a break as some. good Texas brisket thank you for that by. the way over quite welcome let me ask. the ridiculous. question at the core of uh the idea of. Bitcoin is this guy or this entity named. Satoshi Nakamoto so the ridiculous. question is who is Satoshi Nakamoto and.

first of all is it. you it's not. me I. wish and is this an interesting question. or is it just something about our human. nature that wants to that always uh. tends towards mystery well as we've. touched on. a bit. today you know mythology in my opinion. is something that is intrinsic to how we. see the world in a lot of ways like it's. how it's kind of the.

structure by which we build these useful. fictions and so in that way you could. just say that Satoshi is the godhead of. Bitcoin effectively. and I think a compelling argument could. be made that his disappearance is what. really solidifies bitcoin's. decentralization because if there were. one individual to personally vilify or. denigrate or. attack um you know to disparage or.

question the motives. of um you know if he's out out in the. Hollywood Hills partying everyone knows. he's got a million Bitcoin you know it. would just kind of tarnish the entire. project a lot of way but the fact. that on that theme something for nothing. this guy actually gave Humanity. something for nothing. and it appears that he didn't profit in. any way he she or they um I actually. heard recently that he identified as a.

he in some of his communication so. sounds like it is a. he um see like his communication is. being like studied like almost like. exactly as if he is a religious uh. that's right like a. prophet yeah yeah mean it's fascinating. to imagine that he's still. alive and living in this world and it's. even more fascinating to imagine that. he's perhaps participating in the.

Bitcoin. Community because I mean that's that. takes a special human being to out of. principle do that to do uh to to remain. anonymous that's very much to George. Washington I always wonder like how many. people are like that there's a cliche. that like absolute power corrup corrupts. absolutely like power corrupts but it. seems like the progress of humanity. depends on the people whom power doesn't. corrupt interesting and it's enough to.

have just a small selection of those. yeah and even if most of us are too. weak we give in to power if given the. chance all it takes is a few that's I've. never thought of it like that but Marcus. Aus immediately came to mind yeah you. know guy that he had the keys to the. kingdom and. he apparently adhered to the stoic. virtues Until the. End um but yeah I agree with Satoshi the.

other thing that's interesting. is he would. be by far the most wealthy person in the. world on a liquid asset basis because he. has a million Bitcoin which is 60. billion liquid net worth at current. prices so. if he is still alive and just operating. in the world he is daily and moment to. moment resisting massive incentives to. go and just be the richest guy in the.

world he's the ultimate hodler yeah yeah. I mean so it's I mean it's uh turning. down not just. financial success but also Fame I mean. Fame is another drug it's kind of power. but it's in itself is also a drug. especially in this modern societ mhm in. this attention and he would have both he. would have both it's fun to imagine who. who it could be it's fascinating if it's. somebody like you or somebody like Elon. or somebody like that that's fascinating.

to think about I think Elon would be. hilarious if he came out and he was. Satoshi like hey guys I know I'm already. the richest guy in the world but got to. go ahead and double my lead here what do. you make uh of Elon Musk investing with. Tesla investing in Bitcoin maybe broad. broaden it out in some of these. other you know big billionaires but also. people tied to major companies investing. in. Bitcoin yeah I think Michael sailor.

really led the charge on that uh he's. the CEO of micro strategy that I think. they've acquired upwards of2 billion. dollar in Bitcoin now started. acquiring August maybe of. 2020 and he's you know personally bought. a lot of it he bought a lot as a. treasury Reserve asset for his company. micro strategy then they leveraged up uh. on a convertible note and bought more so. he's really gone really leading the.

charge in this Bitcoin institutional. adoption yeah your conversation with him. is a really interesting one your series. of I mean series of episodes I suppose. but it's only a couple of conversations. I guess yeah we we we recorded twice. five and a half hours each so about 11. hours of content and yeah thank you it's. a lot of people have said that uh it's. the best first principle thing they've. ever seen on bitcoin which I take no. credit for that at all I mean I just sat.

down with a guy and Unleashed him he's. he's just a beast yeah but it's. fascinating that. uh his long-term Vision with it I mean. I'm not sure I'm all philosophically. bought in but if he's right. if this set of ideas are as powerful as. um he describes as you describe that. this this would change the world which. as you say it's funny that a company. like micro.

strategy uh might. be the the the the company that has the. the biggest macro effect uh on our. economy on our world yeah the. conversation reshaped my worldview a lot. too because he framed money as energy. which often thought of money as time um. and it explored those connections a lot. in my writing but looking at it as. energy and then his supposition. that the purpose of life is to basically.

Channel Energy across space and time so. we're just trying to figure out how to. channel more energy across space and. time toward the satisfaction of. aims and uh his definition or his answer. to that question what is money is it. money is the highest form of energy a. human being can channel so it's a claim. to all other forms of energy we can. manifest in the world and that just. completely reshaped how I see it brought. in this whole other side to my my. intellectual explorations of money can.

you elaborate on that a little bit so I. I understand money is time which in. itself a really powerful idea but money. is energy and channeling energy can can. you break that apart yeah so I. guess definitely have to check out the. whole series to really get his. perspective but I'll do my best to. condens it. um life itself all forms of life are you. know they're dependent on energy right. Energy Fuels everything fuels life and. action and motion and all of that and we.

could say that uh maybe like a. plant is harnessing solar energy and. then reallocating that into growth so. it's aim is to grow towards the sun. right so it's allocating energy towards. its goal of. harnessing more solar energy kind of. thing. so and humans too uh have. evolved to figure out how to harness. energy in different ways.

to satisfy higher and more complicated. aims so the original energy. network uh that he made that he. referenced was fire right we actually. learned to wield fire as a tool in and. of itself so not only are we learning to. channel energy but actually learn how to. isolate energy as a tool in and of. itself so we went into that how. harnessing fire had had changed human. beings and actually.

um this is one of the earliest examples. too of a co-evolution between tool and. our biology because when we developed. fire we developed cooking and cooking is. you can kind of think of it as. pre-digestion in a way we're liberating. these macronutrients or making things. that otherwise would not be digestible. edible um and it increases the. efficiency by which we extract nutrients. from food that's what cooking does so. when we figured out cooking we free we.

liberated all these digestive resources. um that were reallocated towards higher. cognitive development so there's this uh. evolutionary path between figuring out. fire and us becoming smarter which which. was interesting um some other early. examples he gave he went into were. missiles and. hydraulics so missiles. being we learn to hunt at a distance you. know we can't bring down a woolly. mammoth maybe with Spears.

and and uh up close in personal Force. but we could with Spears and javelins. and slings and whatnot and then he went. into uh how we've used water to channel. hydraulic energy so we can basically. overcome gravity we can move you know um. there's theories that the pyramids were. constructed using the blocks were moved. using hydraulic energy or using water uh. clearly we use like cargo ships and what. to move things much more efficiently. across water than we could the.

land so this his whole view is how we. keep figuring out better ways and more. efficient ways to harness energy and and. channel it and in. that. perspective money has always represented. a claim on all other forms of energy so. whatever energy couldn't be channeled. towards something useful in the economy. historically would go into gold mining. so gold became this residual this. economic this token of the excess energy.

created by the market economy and then. you could take that token of energy and. use it use it to redeem for any other. form of energy or any other products of. energy. itself so. it's I guess it's my best approximation. of it and it just really shattered my. worldview again because I'd always. thought about it as time like we spend. time sacrificing to obtain money that we. then redeem for commencer sacrifices. from other others but I'd never.

considered it purely as energy and then. it also ties back into. gold. where there was an energy expenditure. necessary to obtain gold so there's a. proof of work associated with obtaining. gold that protected its market value. right so you had to expend again if. Market Market if market value of Gold's. 2,000 an ounce you had to expend 1,900. an ounce mining so it kept uh producers. honest in a way so do you think. something like proof of stake that's. more about reputation than.

um then um actual exertion like energy. can work no I think proof of stake is. inherently. centralizing um it's like the old. Matthew principle. from those who have to those who have. more will be given from those who have. not everything will be taken that's what. proof of stake is you need proof of work. to embody skin in the game in the.

marketplace such that contributions are. commensurate with consideration received. that's how systems. work what's the idea why proof of work. might incentivize decentralization. like do you worry that uh as Bitcoin. becomes more powerful it may become. again more. centralized well the decentralization of.

Bitcoin is largely driven by the nodes. actually which aren't actually mining. they're just choosing which rule set to. implement. um and then the the mining network is. actually enforcing that rule set so I. think the mining Network. is inherently decentralized in that. really anyone with access to cheap. energy can become a minor you can freely. enter or exit the market or the network. at any time um but maintaining the block.

size at a manageable level is what's key. to maintaining node. decentralization this an interesting. question who do you think has more power. the miners of the. nodes because the nodes carry the uh the. idea of the protocol like the the. specifics so in some sense they have. more power if Bitcoin is an. idea they're kind of mutually. indispensable though because you can't.

have there's no security without the. miners so without the miners Bitcoin is. just an idea and we the idea of Bitcoin. is maybe existed even before Bitcoin. right just sound money we just say sound. money is an. idea but there was no way to root that. into thermodynamic reality without. Satoshi figuring out not just proof of. work it's the entire uh composite of the. difficulty adjustment proof of.

work uh one-way hashing Etc so I don't. know that's hard hard to say hard to. disentangle the two you've talked about. money as morality too um how do you. think about moral and immoral action in. the context of. money there's this great great quote by. rothbard who's a famous Austrian. Economist and he says quote to be moral. an act must be. free.

unquote. and you know I think morality it changes. over time and it. is it has its roots in biology um Jordan. Peterson makes the point that even. animals have the own um sort of pseudo. morality where like uh with wolf packs. for instance if there's a dispute. between the alpha males or I guess. between an alpha male and a uh incumbent.

the two males will have a uh you know a. fight basically and then when. one it's decided that one has won the. loser will basically roll over and give. up his neck to uh the alpha male and. they do this instead of fighting to the. death because in a wolf pack they need. every wolf so they can go out and bring. down you know you never know when you're. going to need the the 20th wolf to bring. down the big buffalo the next day or. whatever so they've developed this less. than fight to the death social morality.

to optimize their effectiveness as a. wolf pack um and our similarly for. humans like our morality sort of emerges. um through competition and play even it. there are these implicit it rules that. come into place based on how we're. organizing ourselves over. time and. with so with money it's interesting. because most tools we would consider to.

be. amoral as in you know a hammer can be. used to build a house which could be. seen to be good like a good constructive. purpose or could be used to bash. someone's skull which could be something. evil um and that the the tool itself is. amoral doesn't have any independent. morality of its own all the the morality. is associated with the wielder of the. tool so what's the quote like any tool. can be a weapon if you hold it right. sort of thing but money's um maybe a.

little bit different in. that when you monopolize money it's only. useful as a tool for one thing and. that's for allocating wealth away from s. and two others so it is the only utility. of monopolized money is theft there's no. other you know that there's a lot of. propaganda out there that will say oh we. need to print money to get out of this.

disaster or. to give to the poor whatever this. whatever. moralistically camouflaged political aim. is being discussed at the the base layer. of monopolized money is that it's only. useful for taking from some and giving. to others so another way to think about. this is that money is a paper claim on. the savings of. society so it is just a ticket for. redeeming savings which could be time.

could be Capital could be Knowledge from. any Market actor in the. world so it's kind of a list of who owns. what if you will it's a proxy list if. there's one group that can amend that. list and others cannot then they're. basically able and incented. to modify that list to their own. benefit and that's effectively what a. central bank is doing so a central bank. is determining how much money to create. they're also determining who gets to. receive that money first and the first.

recipients of that money are going to be. the beneficiaries in an inflationary. regime so those that received the money. last are the ones being robbed those. that receive the money first are the. ones that. are uh receiving the stolen proceeds. let's say MH. and this has a. really um corrosive effect on social. morality. because if we consider. that people's time Horizon which the a.

is called the time. preference the more short-term thinking. you are the more likely you are to. engage in selfish. behavior right if you know that it's all. over. tomorrow you've been working your whole. life to develop you know this business. or create this reputation or whatever. your thing is but you just are given the. forn knowledge that tomorrow it's all. going to end you're much more likely to. go out and just maybe get drunk and. party that night because there's no more.

repercussions. right whereas if you know that you're. going to live for a very long time. you're much more likely to plan for the. future um and money is very so we would. just say that that your time Horizon is. closely related to your morality right. the longer term thinking you are the. more moral you would tend to behave the. more you would care about long-term. relationship building versus going out. and getting wasted and money too.

impinges very closely on our time. preference uh and again time preference. is the Austrian term so low time. preference means you're long-term. oriented High Time preference means. you're short-term oriented which can be. a little trippy for some people because. it sounds backwards but um. if your money constantly loses value you. are incentivized to become more. short-term oriented you are handicapped. in your ability to plan for the future.

because your money which. is intended to be here's another. definition of money as an insurance. policy against uncertainty so no matter. what problems you encounter in the world. this money will best help you deal with. those problems MH when that insurance. policy against uncertainty is injected. with uncertainty it's polluted with the. uncertainty of inflation your time. Horizon shrinks your ability to plan. long-term. shrinks uh and this impinges on social. morality so there's a great book on this.

called honest money by Gary North and in. that book he gives the parable of the. wine. maker the wine. maker if we just imagine the. hypothetical wine maker operating a. business and essentially banked economy. and let's say his Central Bank just. doubled the money supply to quote. unquote save the economy um say it. increase the money supply from 1 to 2. trillion this wine maker that's. accustomed to selling wine at $20 a. bottle is now faced with basically three.

choices. um and an important Point here too. before we get into his three choices are. what prices are themselves prices are. the most visible aspect of any service. so when you increase. prices you are incentivizing your. customers to look elsewhere they're. going to look at your competition when. you decrease prices you're incentivizing. Market actors to look closer at your. product right you're delivering a. solution at a lower price so this wine.

maker that's customed to selling his. wine at a $20 price point all of a. sudden because of his Central Bank has. tripled the money supply he has three. choices he can either keep selling his. bottle at $20 and all of his in puts. will increase due to inflation by 50% so. he will lose 50% of his profit margin as. a. result uh so he can choose to eat that. loss he can choose to double the selling.

price of his bottle of wine from $20 to. $40 because all of the price of his his. inputs doubled so then he would maintain. his profit. margin or the third one is that he could. choose to water down his wine or use. inferior ingredients so he could use. cheaper inputs and maintain the output. at the same price um so he could. basically start selling his customers an. inferior product for the same price to. preserve his profit. margin now again case number one is not.

very palatable he doesn't want to eat. the economic loss case number two is not. very good either because he's then. incentivizing all of his customers to go. shop other wine makers if he doubles his. price so human nature being what it is. trying to get something nothing. inflation actually seeps into other. industries by encouraging producers into. option three which is to deceive your. customer in the short run and again this. would be done initially at the margins.

maybe it's just a few drops of water. maybe it's just some cheaper grapes but. over time. um this inflation is actually inducing. producers to weigh their financial. well-being against their moral integrity. so it's forcing them into this dilemma. that would not exist in a free market. economy. and as they charge more money for wine. that is inferior the buyers of that wine.

also living in a central bank economy. are also getting scammed by not only the. inflation but also the wine so it. becomes this kind of. corrosive contagious moral effect um. that propagates throughout an. economy. and that's why I've argued in a lot of. my writing that inflation is this. infectious moral cancer on the world um. I think it is tied back to a lot of. the the social strangeness we've seen in.

modern times where you know there seems. to be a lot of fake people and a lot of. fake businesses and a lot of scams all. of these things I think it really is. rooted in the money and you know Bitcoin. has the first money in history that has. a 0% terminal inflation rate or said. differently zero unexpected inflation. there's no there's no theft integrated. into Bitcoin you can only earn it. through work or sacrificing resources to. obtain it um it it is the antidote to.

this moral cancer uh that inflation. riddles our society with again you're. blowing my mind a little bit to think. about the Ripple effects of inflation. the the way it seeps through our. interactions so at the very uh the early. ripples is the effect it has on the. products on the the dilution of the wine. but also it might have uh Ripple effects. on the character on the behavior of. people. MH that's interesting artificial.

creation of scarcity creating. um H having effects on Society at the. social like the social Fabric and I. guess you're arguing the. morality it's perverting free market. dynamics which again we said free market. markets generate pragmatic truth so. inflation distorts price signals which. means it confuses Capital allocation. yeah so we're trying to solve problems. but all of a sudden we can't tell if. this price increase is a matter of true.

supply and demand change or a matter of. policy change so it it it clouds our. economic perceptions uh it suppresses. Innovation because now you've you've. exacerbated the boom and bus business. cycle people are going to over borrow. and go into projects that they can't. profitably sustain so be a huge collapse. so that actually breaks um the the. Market's function of generating. Innovation and then yeah I would argue. too that it pollutes our our our pursuit. of virtue let's say maybe it's pushing.

back but I don't think so I'm it's not. as clear to me perhaps because I haven't. thought about it deeply that money is. core to life and human. interaction because there might be other. forces other fraudulent forces other. things in human nature that are creating. these effects as well so it's clear I. think you're articulating really well. that there's these negative effects from. inflation I wonder if there's other. undiscovered not undiscovered but ones.

we're not making explicit n forces that. are. creating the you know all the things. we're seeing now with like you said. cancel culture and all those things but. also the negative. effects on the on the quality of. products and. Excellence of the creativity and The. Innovation all those kinds of things I. wonder if there's other factors it's. it's kind of listen um it's compelling. to think money is at the core of it all. like if you fix I forgot what the phrase.

was fix the money fix the world yeah fix. the money fix the world. that uh again things that sound good I'm. skeptical of by Nature so I wonder if. there's other things that are Beyond. money that are somehow deeply integrated. into our human nature another one. related to money is social cohesion. itself so very simple anecdote for this. was the more you increase the inflation. rate social cohesion is inversely.

proportionate to that so the extreme. example would be hyperinflation right. where the money is produced in such. excess that it loses all meaning and. relevance so today in Venezuela there is. Cash clogging the gutters clogging the. streets clogging the sewer system um. because the cash has lost all. relevance and so anecdotally we would. suspect that okay if if there's a. inverse relationship between inflation. and social cohesion if we could then.

take inflation to zero couldn't we. theoretically increase social cohesion. to its. maximum um so another way to say that is. inflation is a decivilizing force. whereas natural price deflation which. would occur in a hard money economy. where there's either a fixed supply of. Bitcoin or a relatively um scarce supply. of gold for. instance that lays claim to a to an. increasing Capital stock of goods and.

services prices would naturally decline. every year as we became smarter so the. market price becomes a reflection of our. Collective knowledge so by letting. prices decline naturally over time we. can actually induce. civilization but by trying to Force. prices higher all the time via the. Central Bank were creating the opposite. effect so we talked a little bit about. the Soviet Union and I happen to have. lived through the collapse of the Soviet. Union and so what are the factors the.

causes in your mind to why the Soviet. Union. collapsed so I you know definitely a. multivariate situation I think there's a. lot of factors um. one that jumped out to me recently again. from that documentary that I didn't note. before was that at one point Stalin. eliminated I think 75% of his. intelligence. Force um which I think when you're.

competing with another nation state you. know and intelligence and covert. operations are very integral to your. survival I think that was a uh. definitely a shot in the foot but at a. higher level I would say that capitalism. and communism were each resource. strategies of the 20th century nation. state um and they seem you know we. commonly consider them to be.

diametrically opposed but there's. actually a lot of commonality between. the two the difference would be that in. Soviet. Russia as we alluded to earlier they. tried to completely replace price. signals with this nationalistic faith. and devotion so it it they removed the. economic nerve signal which coordinated. the allocation of capital over time so. this inhibited their ability to generate. wealth whereas in the United States we. left most markets open to free.

enterprise so we we honored the. Integrity of price signals and we. allowed people to trade and accumulate. wealth um so in every Market except the. market for money both markets maintain a. central bank as we as we've gotten to. so I think in a really big picture. standpoint that's. why capitalism out competes communism is. because it is able to generate more.

wealth than communism was and therefore. was able to put Financial pressure on. the USSR until it reached the point of. bankruptcy. essentially this a similar model I would. argue is. that for the same reason we saw. capitalism out compete communism which I. think at the the the data that I recall. was that the ussr's economy was valued. at close to onethird of its inputs so if. you just didn't do anything inside the.

USSR and just sold all the raw materials. that were going into it it would have. been worth three times as much as. sending the materials in running it. through the efforts and then shipping. things back out it was it was value. destructive versus value creative and I. would argue this is because again the. the centralized Computing model versus. decentralized Computing model it just. became more and more corrupt over time. um it got to the point where I think. most of the occupations in USSR towards.

the end were as. informance right they were working for. the state um Jordan Peterson makes this. point too that at some point it was. actually illegal to be sad in Soviet. Russia because if you were sad you were. contradicting the utopian view of the. state so if you were sad you're implying. the state's not doing something wrong. but by the way this does remind me what. uh do you know what Jordan Peterson. thinks about Bitcoin and about the. future impact of Bitcoin on the.

society no I don't actually um we're. hopefully going to be talking to him. soon about that we did a a book club on. his book maps of meaning and he engaged. with us about it so hoping to deliver. the orange pill to Mr Peterson the. orange pill I think his audience um is. one of the most important audiences in. the world to understand Bitcoin. these people that are conscientious and. responsible um I think they'll quickly.

understand bitcoin's value proposition. and help elucidate it to the world I'm. trying to remember what he said about. about it basically I think his support. of Bitcoin is grounded in the kind of. people who are opposing. Bitcoin so without understanding Bitcoin. he starts to like Bitcoin because of the. people who are opposing. it he's you know you start to I mean. that's partially why I am interested in.

Bitcoin it's like all the people in uh. in power and all the kind of shady. fraudulent and non- genuine people who. are dismissing Bitcoin yeah. uh are making me think hm one one of uh. Jordan's definitions of God is he says. God is found in the truthful speech that. rectifies pathological. hierarchies.

and I think that is a beautiful. definition of what Bitcoin is doing in. the world and that we have this. pathological hierarchy called Central. Banking by which the rich get richer and. the poor get poorer um that is used as a. mechanism for Perpetual theft and. funding Warfare at a global. scale uh like Ron Paul said it's no. coincidence that the 20th century of. Total War was also the century of. Central. Banking um when you have an.

institution of currency counterfeiting. which the central bank is you are no. longer bounded by your own balance sheet. when you go to war you don't have to. just go to war on your own resources you. can now pillage the Commonwealth and. pull for the savings of society as a. whole before you go bankrupt and indeed. this is what Hitler did right Hitler. hyperinflated uh in the wear Republic to. to fund his War.

efforts um and frankly every dictator. every World War every internment camp in. history was made possible by the. weaponization of money in fiat currency. so I hope I know Jordan Peterson is a. huge proponent of free speech and I. think that's ultimately at it at its. deepest Essence that's of what Bitcoin. really is right it is just the purest. form of monetary speech we've ever had. and by purifying that primary Operating.

System Of Human Action I think we can. eliminate this pathological hierarchy. that is unfortunately the dominant. institution in the world today yeah I'm. definitely especially with these. explorations of Bitcoin uh this journey. I've been on I'll revisit some of the. some of the aspects of human history. that I've been looking at like Stalin. and Hitler with a from a perspective of. a monetary perspective like what are the.

effects of inflation MH how was it used. as a tool in um in gaining power in. maintaining power in. manipulating the populace in doing. um in inflicting suffering and uh I. would say evil onto the world it's. interesting I it's interesting I'm going. have to sort of go back into the whole. so I tend to focus more on. the human.

nature and less about the tools that. human nature leverages to AFF fact. change but you're right that uh in some. sense. money is a a tool which can be uh effec. itively used to. uh perform moral and immoral actions. depending on how it's used there's a. feedback between the two right there's. um specifically with money itself.

it's. the incent here's the the way I've been. posing it lately is that I actually. think we typically think of people as. good or bad again trying to label people. all the time but I think people and. their characters are emergent properties. of the incentive structures they inhabit. yeah so you know what does Charlie. Monger say don't show me the incentives. I'll show you the outcome kind of. thing this is a flawed incentive.

structure we've been operating within. now I'm not I'm not speaking to the. intention people want to argue with me. all the time like Jerome Pal's not a bad. guy he's doing his best at the Central. Bank he's doing what he thinks is right. that's. fine whether that's true or not it. actually doesn't matter the intention is. Divergent from the outcome the. institution that they are running is. premised on deception and theft and it. is handicapping the productive economy. so when we're even the terms we use. printing money you're not creating any. new value you're not infusing the.

economy with anything any new productive. factors whatsoever you're just. harvesting the economic surplus created. by entrepreneurs in the marketplace. there's it's impossible to add any value. to an economy by increasing the paper. claims on its. savings so. um there's a feedback loop between man. and Tool between Creator and created and. I think we have to honor the. relationship above either one right. trying to put the right people in the.

system or just build the right system we. need both do you think the interesting. question whether the people that are in. control of central. banks or in positions of power there if. they themselves are malevolent. they themselves are Bad actors or. they're. simply like leaves floating along the. river sort of just a. cog uh in the machine an ant in an ant.

colony that operates in a certain kind. of way like where do you put the blame. do you put the blame on the way things. are operating onto the individuals or. onto the system itself the idea behind. the system. where and is it useful to place the. blame somewhere because for me it might. be useful to understand that in order to. figure out what the solution is I tend. to not put the blame on the individual. like I tend to believe most people are.

good and want to see themselves as. good and and so in that case it's very. difficult to be truly malevolent as you. would need to be to control to gain. centralized power at the large. scale but I know a lot of conspiracy. theory. theorists and just a lot of people think. that there is evil humans in the world. that seek power maintain that power and. then use that power for bad. purposes I think they're just people and.

they're just trying to get something for. nothing like all of us do I like this. framework of thought that you have yeah. honestly yeah and that's what the. central bank is is the ultimate. institution to get something for nothing. you yeah get a Perpetual income stream. the ability to acquire more and more. territory in the world through. monopolizing the supply of. money and you can literately print money.

you can buy your way out of anything and. buy your way into anything in the world. so it is I think the. most not say the most but a group of. very intelligent people put this thing. together and figured out how to get. something for nothing in perpetuity. um by clouding people's conception of. money and you know if we look at the. central bank is it's been around for a. while but the latest. implementation uh here in the US is the. Fed you know it's about 100 years old.

it's an analog age institution that I. think has lost a lot of its relevance in. the Modern Age um and I I don't think it. will survive the ever galvanizing gaze. of the digital age is just too much. sunlight um too much transparency today. ideas move too quickly for something. like this to remain. relevant. but there are just people they are just. seeking something for nothing but I. think when you concentrate that much. power and that much control that much. wealth into the hands of few it does.

change uh hyek argued that the nature of. power again it's something that we all. sort of Desire we to be completely. powerless you're really unhappy right if. you're totally powerless you're a Slave. someone else tells you what to do you. have no autonomy it's miserable right so. there's this it makes the consolidation. of power alluring and that we want to. protect ourselves from that slave state. let's say but like many things it can be. taken too far and when you concentrate.

power into too few hands Hayek argues. that it actually change it transforms it. becomes something much more intoxicating. than it would be if it was held in a. more distributed way and I think that. gets into a lot of these you know the I. don't know if they call themselves. Elites or people call them Elites or. what like um let's say shareholders of. central banks people participating in. the world economic Forum things like. this they come I guess the incentives.

right the incentive schema they're in is. rewarding them constantly telling them. everything they're doing seeing and. thinking is correct because they just. keep getting richer all the time and it. leads you closer to this definition of. evil which um. in the book Paradise Lost fredman said. evil is the force which believes its. knowledge is complete so these people. become more and more. convinced that they have the plan or. they have the course of action that will.

save the world that if everyone would. just listen to them that they would lead. us to the promised land right whether. this is Bill Gates saving us from a. climate crisis or uh any of these other. economic policies that are targeted at a. certain outcome but almost always. diverge almost perfectly from that. outcome creating its opposite. effect um I think that's the problem. that we have this mechanism that can. concentrate wealth and power into the F. into the hands of so few that it leads.

to the proliferation of evil um meaning. that it convinces people that their. knowledge is complete. whereas something like a Bitcoin almost. forces the opposite outcome it. in a Bitcoin denominated World in a pure. free market the consumer is Sovereign so. you cannot earn value in the world. unless you are serving your fellow man.

unless they have through expressed. through their buy and sell decisions in. the marketplace right you've. created a satisfaction of a particular. want that they value so much they've. acquired so much of your good or service. that you've become rich you can only. maintain that position of wealth so long. as you continue to serve your fellow man. so it changes the incentive such that. dominance in the world is no longer can. no longer be paired with coercion it has. to be paired with competence and it's.

that's that's how this when we say. Bitcoin fixes this that's what we mean. like it. restores that skin in the game that. balance of incentives and disincentives. that help us properly navigate reality. and it prevents the buildup of of. systemic rot like we see with the. Central. Bank what books people love this. question and you're exceptionally well. read uh you've explored all kinds of. ideas is there some books technical. fictional philosophical coloring books.

children's books had an impact on your. life and you would uh uh maybe recommend. to others that they should. read um I think we mentioned a couple of. them here today but I I think a really. useful. triplet of. books uh that I've been recommending. recently to get to help diffuse this. materialist worldview of reality where. we we still think in kind of the. Newtonian model that it's atoms and.

cause and effect and um I'd first. recommend Jordan Peterson's book maps of. meaning it's a deep dive into mythology. and how it's developed over the course. of history and how it's reflected both. in our social structures and our intas. psychic um nature really and how they. come to reflect one another in a way. like the way we think again shapes the. world and then the way the world is. shape shapes the way we. think um that's an excellent book it's.

very dense and difficult read actually. this Trilogy is pretty brutal probably. take you a year to read hours a day uh. the second one I mentioned earlier was. Human Action by. misus uh the the ultimate to on a. economics will help explicate this realm. of relevance I think that economics. truly is. where again um there are things and then. these things become means or ends once.

we Channel our purpose through them so. this this realm of of non-materialist. relevance that I think is really. important to grasping economics at a. first principal level I think that book. lays it out. tremendously um and then the last one. would be I think I mentioned this at the. beginning was that book Leela by Robert. pers where he's you know making the case. that value is fundamental and all of. these books all they kind of all point. to that actually they're pointing back. to Value being the fundamental thing.

values and um values expressed through. moral action as being the fundamental. substrate of reality so it'll it'll if. you're like me that I grew up quite. scientific minded it'll help diffuse. some of that and maybe retrain you to. the other side of reality. uh so you said these books are difficult. maybe you can comment on which aspect is. difficult is it just the technical. nature is it the length is it the depth. of the ideas or how long it takes to. integrate them and more sort of.

importantly is there recommendation. advice you can give on how. to integrate these ideas how to read how. how to learn in the space is there from. your own life like how do you enjoy. taking in ideas and this could be for. these books but also uh in the Bitcoin. world and reading a bunch of different. ideas written by others just integrating. stuff even watching podcast and all. those kinds of things yeah I I'm a.

reader I love to read um one of the most. useful things I've ever done was take a. speed reading. course I actually think there's a. version of this available on Tim Ferris. website it's like a 30 minute speed. reading course it's all about eye. movement instead of moving your eye. continuously line over line it's more. about jumping and your brain you can. train your brain to just absorb words in. their totality versus kind of reading. word by word and also not I've I've. haven't fully taken that Journey.

actually but uh I. remember taking a few steps on that. Journey realizing that I'm speaking. inside my head yeah I'm saying the words. inside my head and that's actually. getting in the way that's right so. there's a lot of little hacks like that. I maybe lazily I'll have to now that you. mentioned I'll have to revisit this yeah. but I have convinced myself that I don't. need to read faster because that's not. ultimately the bottleneck the bottleneck. is in the me thinking about stuff in. fact I like reading really slowly or so.

I convince. myself because I ultimately it's not. about gaining more information it's. about time spent thinking deeply yes yes. um but maybe that's just me being very. lazy cuz yes it's true it's important to. think deeply but maybe I could speed up. the the consumption of information but. it's fun it's I I like to be dynamic. actually so um usually speed reading. initially and that diffused that. internal dialogue for me because when I. was reading one word at a time I was. having that too you almost get a.

feedback in your own head you're reading. the word out loud and clouding your. thoughts if you're speed reading you. can't do that you're just you're taking. in groups of words at a time so you. can't uh you know internally verbalize. it I guess and then I also am really big. on annotating underlining writing in the. margins uh I prefer a physical book but. I also read the Kindle a lot because. it's just so convenient you anywhere. you're waiting in line or every night. before bed I'm reading my Kindle um and. I also Advocate rereading a lot so if.

you found something that you know struck. you at a deep level or you found. particularly fascinating like you have. to listen to that that's your I don't. know your mind or your spirit signal. that that is something meaningful to you. and you should you know to your point. reread read it sit with it for a long. time write about it um and that that. becomes the. ultimate trium of of synthesizing an. idea actually if you can read about it. and then write about it and then go and.

talk about it you get this. crystallization of understanding that's. just not possible doing any one of the. three or any two of the three um so. definitely highly recommend people to do. that um and in terms. of how are those books difficult I mean. in every way they're all long books uh. in terms of density I would say Leela is. the less the least. dense maybe maps of.

meaning I don't know but maps of meaning. and Human Action are both extremely. dense but they're just you I had to read. those books very. slow you just have to take your time. with them um to give you an idea with. Jordan Peterson he's said this a lot. with maps of meaning he spent 3 hours a. day writing for 15 years to write that. book it's probably I think it's a 600. page book he said he estimates he. rewrote every sentence in the book 50. times 5 to try and get it you know just.

perfected and when you read these. sentences you can tell that he rewrote. it 50. times I've uh I've used actually anky. for space. repetition um it's like a piece of it's. an app I'm not sure if you're familiar. with it but it allows you to load. in facts or terms or entire. paragraphs and then it brings them you. review them every day and then it brings.

them up less and less often over time as. you show yourself being able to remember. the thing that uh you wanted to memorize. and often times when I'm reading what I. want to memorize is the key idea uh but. also like I use it for I'm terrible with. names so I'm started to use it for names. too of names of people names of uh like. people that I want to remember yeah and. also throughout history and also my own. personal life but also events you know. dates to me are usually not important.

but sometimes dates are really important. and so it's really useful I recommend it. highly nval I think mentioned a piece of. software called readwise or something. like that that I'm hope I'm saying that. correctly it's something like that and. what it does is it goes to your. highlights from your. Kindle or the various places where you. highlight stuff that integrates with um. good reads and it does the same kind of. space repetition but for things you've.

highlighted that's super cool it's it. sends an email every. day it's it's been really I recommend it. highly because it it sends like to me in. email form a selection of the things. I've highlighted in previous things I've. read and it's like this weird like sh. shock to your memory that sprinkles like. I I'll have a have probably way too much. Orwell in there and it just kind of like. it brings you back and these ideas there.

because what you realize depending on. how you highlight but at least for me. and I think it's probably true for a lot. of people the things you've highlighted. had at that moment like an emotional. impact on you yeah and so like these. things are just like hitting you hard. again yeah it's like wo uh it might not. be meaningful to anyone else except you. and it it's uh it's something I. recommend you never know with these like. hacks or tools and so on like what's. actually BS and what what is amazing and. that one is kind of amazing so at least.

for me it work it works for me and Naval. I think I think he's the one readwise. you said readwise or something close to. that it could be read something else. like read wealth or something uh the one. other thing I I. really like and this is more of a new. one is I used to always listen to music. at the gym but now I've just because I'm. so backlogged on podcast right they're. just there's so many I exclusively. listen to podcasts when I'm walking or. when I'm at the gym anytime I'm doing.

something that I can't you know read. basically and I think there's something. really special about exercise and. ideation I mean I I don't know if this. happens to everyone but my creative. juices just go ballistic when I'm at the. gym like I hit a certain point of I. guess heart rate and you're sweating. enough then the ideas just start to flow. yeah so I'm basically at the gym now. listening to podcast exercising as fast. as I can to try to get to that state of. um you know where you're just straining.

you're strenuous exercise I guess you. would say and then I'm end up typing. notes into my phone as fast as I can. with all these ideas that are flowing so. I've I've created a lot of good writing. out of that yeah it's kind of work so I. I do running. uh quite a bit so running outside and uh. I'll listen I've been okay I told myself. this has been going on for about a year. uh is I only. listen like to the stuff that's either.

World War II or World War One related so. Hitler. Stalin like like difficult historical. stuff. um and also listen to Brown noise so. those are the two modes so Brown noise. helps me this like white noise but like. deeper I guess it helps me remove the. world at the gym there's a lot of. distractions when you're running there's. a lot of distractions it helps me remove. the world so one I'll be listening to.

difficult historical ideas and then when. my mind is all of a sudden starting to. generate ideas I'll listen to Brown. noise and I'll then force myself to. think it's kind. of it's meditative in a sense and your. mind wants to be lazy you want to you. it's hard man like running and thinking. in the sense that some of the ideas that. come into your head are pretty heavy uh. it's about your own life it's your own. demons come in there but also just.

difficult ideas that require you. thinking through and persevering through. that like not letting yourself get lazy. and like thinking through it as has been. really for me rewarding in the same way. that you're you're saying is it is for. you it's true that like podcasts and. music like um shallow like funny. podcasts or music have been a kind of. filler. distraction but informational podcasts. like podcasts that have some depths of. ideas or Audi books have been uh truly.

rewarding I try to listen now less and. less to podcasts that are just fun. MH cuz I feel like I enjoyed too much. and I don't allow my mind to get bored. and to think through stuff to uh to. explore ideas it's so easy to fill the. the. space that uh usually would be thought. filled with thought instead fill it with. fun podcasts like there's a bunch of. comedy podcasts I really enjoy so. there's value to that of course but you.

have to realize it's entertainment it's. not uh it's it's not um you don't get. much value except entertainment right. and there's utility to the boredom too I. think or to give your mind the space I. guess your subconscious maybe the space. to chew on some of these problems right. where you've emed so much knowledge you. know you've highlighted and thought. about something but then you need to. stop thinking about it for a while and. let it marinate in the subconscious and. then you know these flashes of insight.

that people have described sometimes I. get them in the middle of the night like. I just wake up from a dream and have. them and I got to write it down or. sometimes it's uh in nature taking a. walk but I think that's very important. too we can't just Brute Force our way. into understanding you know there's this. interplay between kind of the brute. force reading intake and then just. relaxing meditating sleeping being. bored uh letting your subconscious do. the the heavy lifting and there's uh. like you should be aware of the fact. that there's a war for your attention.

going on so there's a lot of there's. been better and better and better. mechanisms that are designed to steal. your attention so I kind of see it as a. war zone between my right for boredom. yeah and the internet wanting your. attention in fact um clubhouse as an app. has been I'm probably not going to use. clubhous much anymore it's there's some. aspect of my own inner loneliness and. whatever it is that pulled me into.

clubhous a little bit too much to where. where it robbed me from that lonely time. alone where I sit and listen to Bruce. Springstein and think about life right. so I want to that's way more important. that's way well yeah at least you know. it's all in Balance cuz there is a a. clubhouse like a lot of these social. networks when you used right can be a. way to discover new ideas new people but. the boredom and just being alone with. your thoughts is uh Priceless absolutely. and you got to know yourself right like. it took me a long time to realize I need.

Solitude yeah like just how I'm wired. how I'm built I need like an hour a day. Solitude so you got to listen to that. part of yourself you might be. compromising something like that where. you feel like you always need to be with. your girlfriend or whatever it may be. but I would suggest listening to that. voice yeah I try to I tried to remember. things that made me feel good over time. like long-term had positive impact and. long-term had negative impact and do. more of the former and less of the.

latter yeah we don't often think like. that you know we talked offline about. like carnivore diets for. example I try to remember that carbs. don't make me feel good yeah that's what. in the moment it's hard to remember that. hard but you have to remember that that. that's the case and in the same way. exercise it's hard to remember that. exercise makes me feel. good uh like especially when it's time. to go to the gym especially when it's. time to go to the gym but you should. remember that because the kind of person.

you are without exercise for me just. like you beautifully said that you have. to know yourself the kind of person I am. without exercise is a less good person a. person a person I'm less proud of of. yeah the food thing is so hard by the. way I. still you know I I can't tell you how. many times I've learned the lesson like. don't eat that but then you know you go. a few weeks of not eating whatever that. is and you're you're feeling good and. then you're you're I don't know. something creeps up inside you're like.

ah you could just have one or you just. do this but for me it's sugar like sugar. just makes me feel terrible but I always. not always but if it's been a long time. I start to make that exception in my. mind like oh you can have a little bit. and then I eat it and I feel terrible so. I don't know how times I've done that. dance but it's not cool well it depends. on how painful it is and then you learn. the lesson I've haven't I actually. embraced the fact that I'll never learn. the lesson with vodka every time I drink. especially with. Russians it's like I I quit drinking. every time and then I forget there's.

like a slow drop off it'll be like two. weeks and then. nasia very good so it never makes me. feel good it never results in anything. good. um except the beautiful. social chaos yeah which is ultimately. somehow there's value to chaos too you. know there there's value to that. whatever the hell stupid stuff you do. when you get trashed the overthe toop.

emotion of Love usually or whatever. camaraderie there's value to that too. like that's as I get older I. realize cuz uh the the world sometimes. especially when you get older and the. world World wants you to be an. adult in order to maintain the youthful. Spirit you have to use all the tools you. can and alcohol is one of them right to. do all the stupid you can even if. you're like getting older to lower the. inhibitions and lower against that that.

taste of uncertainty that is the. sweetness of life right to be able to go. out and be a Flur at a party and not. really know what you're going to do and. it's we we have this draw to the Wild. Side of Life uh as much as we try and. build up order around ourselves I think. there's always going to be an appetite. for that um I've always most of my life. I've always been a social drinker but I. actually gave up alcohol a year ago and. um I would add that to the the idea uh.

the repertoire for dealing with bigger. ideas because alcohol is fun it's amaz. you know good. times it can be analgesic it can do all. it can give you all these benefits if. you use uh the right amounts but. I got to the point personally where I. was trying to wrestle with these ideas. that are just so much bigger than me. that and I have this backlog of books. that was growing faster than I could. read them that I just reached the point. where I decided um I wanted to start. making sacrifices toward attaining that.

and alcohol was just an easy one you. know it's you. spend even if you just drink socially on. the weekends you're probably. spending 5 to 10 hours drinking and then. maybe another what 5 to 10 hours. recovering perhaps on the day after um. so it it was a difficult transition. initially but once you get through a. couple of months I feel amazing without. it I sleep better than ever my workouts. are better than ever I'm sharper than.

ever I'm more Lucid so I'm I'm not. trying to be a proponent for like not. drinking but I just want to say but. you're a proponent for sacrifice in I am. a big component for sacrifice yes is. there advice you would give to a young. person today curious about Bitcoin. curious about how they succeed in a. world uh or both careerwise and just in. in life in general I mean the strongest. piece of advice I have. for this is beyond just Bitcoin this is.

you managing your own personal and. financial affairs is that you need to. invest in knowledge. first um it's not good enough to just. follow the crowd and buy a 60/40. portfolio and put it in a Roth ra and. plan on Social Security I mean the. world's. changing much faster than any existing. institution um is going to be able to. keep up with so that's why I like I mean.

that's why I Nam the show the question. what is money like I think that to me is. the rabbit that took me down the rabbit. hole is like just asking that question. naturally progressed to these other. questions like what is value what is. government what is uh you know what is. the purpose of Society speech all of. these things so I would encourage people. to arm yourself with knowledge and study. like that that a lot of financial people.

always give you you know a line of. advice and then say this is not. Financial advice or like this is. financial advice like study study learn. um knowledge is power this is official. fin natural device yes and you're you're. exercising your Your Divine trait which. is the logos right we. are these animals that can tell and. believe stories so it's our it feels. like almost a sacred duty to really. sharpen that part of ourselves um and.

use it to create the best world. possible um and then you know the second. one was the I think health and fitness. stuff. I I was I maybe everyone does this in. their 20s they just live a little fast. and uh beat themselves up. um not that I wasn't like I was living. well and you know Successful by a lot of. measures but I wish I had maybe gotten. my act together a little bit.

sooner. um I just healthwise morality wise yeah. drinking I think morality and eating you. know I just was kind of doing whatever I. wanted in some way. let's say um is there a value to a. trajectory that includes a lot of. mistakes so maybe you're supposed to. make the mistakes in your 20s that's a. great Point too maybe the 20s are all. about the mistakes accumulate the most. mistakes possible yeah I do as quickly. as I don't regret any of it but now that.

I'm kind of in this place where I feel. good and I know the value of a good. night's sleep and just I I've I've more. deeply explored my own potential that I. feel maybe a little regretful that. didn't do this earlier is all I'm saying. so. maybe just exploring different sides of. yourself right see what it's like to go. and make a bunch of mistakes and be wild. and crazy and then maybe try to walk the. straight and narrow for a few months and. just see what it's like so there's uh. there's probably a guy doing vodka shots.

right now listening to this podcast with. his buddies and they uh if you are. please take a shot for us for all the. mistakes and you should make in your. 20s and um. What about. love we talked about money is ultimately. a mechanism by which you can. uh pave uh a moral path through life uh. you know to me one of the purest.

expressions of that is love broadly. defined for family for others for. knowledge for the world it's it's. basically an optimistic open view to the. world that Embraces all that is. beautiful about this world. so um do you think about love often in. in a personal sense romantic family. friendship and in the broad sense about. its value in in uh in a successful. life yeah of course I'm blessed to have.

a two and a half-year-old daughter and. um love is a word we throw around you. know it's like I love these potato chips. I love you man I love you my daughter. this it's got so many different uh. intensities I guess you might say. but um I don't know my intuition is. that it is something very fundamental to. the universe like again I know words. don't do it justice but if we just proxy.

love with selfless action mhm the whole. damn universe is selflessly acting right. it's just unfolding and. um it may sound a bit hippie dippy but. my intuition is just that love is the. core of it somehow um I don't have. anything to back that up really it's. just in the way you're framing it is. making me. think that uh love we're talked we. talked about sort of meditation.

is as opposed to thinking from an. egocentric perspective of you the. individual operating in this world is. allowing you to be empathetic towards. the world and thereby think of the. universe think of the world acting. through you MH almost like uh accepting. this notion that uh ideas have you you. don't have ideas that's right that. you're not existing in the universe the. universe is existing through you sort of. like like that's that's what. selfless in that context means it's like.

embracing that thought that's a weird. thought it's a weird thought that we're. just here for a little bit of time these. meat. vehicles receptacles and uh this much. bigger thing is just using. us not in malevolent way but just like. like a river flows is using us to create. more and more beautiful things yes yes.

more and more beautiful things we are. the universe experiencing itself frankly. right so that's a Trippy thought man. that uh that in some sense the universe. created us yeah to experience itself and. are the high you know one of the highest. forms of beauty that nature has created. right if we just think one of the. most complex and adaptive thing we're a. reflection of Nature and another thing. that comes to mind here is.

that Delio has this quote where he says. truth or more. accurately um an accurate depiction of. reality is necessary for any good. outcome so when we think that love or. value is primary I think that too. reinforces this thesis that acting out. of love or acting out of proper moral. action you're best reflecting the. fundamental nature of reality therefore. you're best creating the best possible.

outcomes or the things of the most. Beauty whether that's your artistic. expression your children your business. whatever it is um and you know Jordan. Peterson goes deep into that where you. have to listen to that sense of meaning. in your life where you might might have. some decision on paper that's so great. this way but your heart says no your. heart says otherwise um I I I've tried. to listen to my heart throughout and I. think I think that creates the best. outcomes but nevertheless does it make. you sad that you in.

particular Robert are going to be dead. pretty. soon uh as as uh we talk about scarcity. one of the certain things that ensure. the the uh the scarcity of The Human. Experience is the fact that you you and. your Consciousness are going to be done. they have a deadline only time and. Bitcoin are absolutely. scarce I. um I'm.

fortunate when I I guess I got started. on this philosophical Journey a bit when. I was younger but I got into um Musashi. and sunzu quite a bit uh who wrote. Masashi wrote the book of five rings. uh uh sunzu wrote The Art of War and one. one of the things that I mean these guys. were just absolute beasts you know they. lived and died by the sword and they. were just. very uh great equinity about all things. in life and I also found this kind of in.

the stoic philosophy where they just are. very cool with. everything and uh one of the lines there. is that the way of the warrior is the. Resolute acceptance of death and so. always tried to think about that like of. course I experience fear I. experience you know everything that you. do in a meat suit right like anxiety and. all the things but I always try to have. that higher order view of myself and. that it's.

just a certain experience occurring at a. certain level but it shouldn't override. your kind of highest order self that's. just resolutely accepted death and that. this is your one play in life so. hopefully that propels me towards proper. action I think scarcity cannot help but. lead to something. good just like with this conversation. sadly must come to an end the scarcity.

of it is what makes it beautiful so. Robert this was uh one of my favorite. conversations uh philosophically and. every other. level just the ideas and the way you. express them around Bitcoin. around morality around. money um has been really inspiring and. really educational and I'm glad you're. out there uh fighting the good fight and. I'm glad you wasting all of this time. with me it was really fun and thank you.

for coming down to Texas and having some. good old uh brisket together this was uh. this is really fun man this is awesome. thanks for having me man thanks for. listening to this conversation with. Robert Breedlove and thank you to. funrise element monk pack and better. help check them out in the description. to support this podcast and now let me. leave you with some words from Nim. Nicholas TB antifragility is beyond. resilience and robustness the resilient.

resists shocks and stay the same the. antifragile gets. better thank you for listening and hope. to see you next time.