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152 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 24 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 2 bitcoin
I wish technological determinism received even more direct treatment from Lyn. It implies that understanding the arc of technology is understanding the future of money. Most historical accounts of money focus on human needs but there's a huge gap between human needs and modern money and Lyn is hinting at the nature of the gap.
Yes, mostly when I consider technology accelerating. If a ledger can't meet technology's needs, then we'll all shift to the ledger that does. It implies technology is primary and ledgers are secondary.
I personally don't share that worry, because to me, the technology has a terminus: it has been attempting to serve the function of human coordination, and it seems that btc has achieved that in its purest form -- it is pure coordination, distilled to its absolute essence. Once you arrive at that essence, technological advances have nothing more to offer. Once you invent zero, no need to invent super-zero; and in fact, the concept is ill-posed.
You will not have missed that I've made a giant assumption there, basically, that atomic exchange between individuals or aggregates is the ultimate form of coordination that we require money to effect. But is that right? Could we find some new variant that is somehow not a transaction, and therefore, that demands a pseudo-money with different properties?
I can't imagine such a thing, but at the level of abstraction we're talking about, my failure of imagination is not as comforting as I'd like.
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I'm not actually worried. But when I force myself to worry, I worry that we only ever see technology's local terminals.
Once you invent zero, no need to invent super-zero; and in fact, the concept is ill-posed.
Bitcoin is much like zero in that it represents something abstractly true. Nature is conservative and transactional on the basis of energy and you can imagine nature being an energy ledger. Yet, especially in the context of this book, which focuses on humans using ledgers, might human abstractions in some way be human-only?
We might as well assume we know what's true. But, if I want to worry, we don't1. And we certainly don't know everything that's true - even abstractly - yet.
Maybe machines will always be subject to human-like abstraction needs because we made them though.
btc has achieved that in its purest form -- it is pure coordination, distilled to its absolute essence.
I'd argue it isn't exactly pure even if I'd agree it's as pure as we've ever had and maybe pure enough to meet all future human-like needs. Bitcoin the Idea is a digital ledger grounded in nature's ledger of matter and energy. Yet, nature isn't Bitcoin the System's only dependency.
In my attempt to worry, I worry Bitcoin the System is not pure enough for machines.
Footnotes
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I'm channeling Donald Hoffman if it weren't obvious. ↩
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Yet, especially in the context of this book, which focuses on humans using ledgers, might human abstractions in some way be human-only?
That is an evocative question. I think we have to reserve some probability mass for not-knowing? Which is an uneasy thing to consider.
Yet, nature isn't Bitcoin the System's only dependency.
Great point! I hadn't considered that, from the perspective of an AI, they might think that the non-nature (e.g., the non-purely-technical) aspect of btc adds too much noise. And that seems like a fair point -- certainly, right now, squishy human relationships, persuasiveness, etc., can have a massive influence. That's a giant negative from an AI perspective.
Or is it? Imagine the game changing from _breaking bitcoin-the-sytem to influencing bitcoin-the-meta-system. Spooky.
In my attempt to worry, I worry Bitcoin the System is not pure enough for machines.
You've converted me to worrying your way. Super, that's what I needed.
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Spooky indeed!
I think we're also guilty of anthropomorphizing machines more than we deserve to. Many sci-fi novels depict intelligent machines behaving more like intelligent ants than humans. If machines aren't game theoretically human-like, all bitcoin bets are off. The only reason machines would terminate at human-like coordination is that it's optimal or because we force them to. Do we know if either is true/possible?
I'm trying to look so far in the future, it's purely an exercise. This potential spookiness will maybe be relevant long after I'm dead.
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