304 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 16 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 4 bitcoin
If modern humans are naturally more goblin-like, then retarding goblin-like behavior with gnome-like money might lead to net-fewer pathologies.
I get the sense that humans are normally more gnome-like but turn goblin-like when populations are dense (or hyperconnected) - much like grasshoppers that swarm.
At the very least, we seem to have been more goblin-like over the last few decades which correlates to pronounced abuse of fiat ledgers. Goldilocks wouldn't choose the goblin or the gnome so hopefully Satoshi hasn't either.
There's a "cycles of history" argument to be made about this -- that gnome > goblin > gnome transitions are functions of generations and demography. I'm still forming up my take on this branch of work, which I find mostly sloppy and ascientific; but there's something plausible in it even if it's oversold
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We're probably drawn to thinking in cycles because it's the laziest way to predict the future. Cycles have even more lazy powers than plain old historical determinism because the predictions extend to infinity.
there's something plausible in it even if it's oversold
Agreed. There have to exist natural games whose final state is nearly the initial state. Fiat money certainly seems to play out this way.
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And there really are cycles that act on the world with inexorable force. Since the dawn of time the seasons have induced rhythms that cannot be resisted that everyone in a giant geography deals with simultaneously. The consequences propagate like falling dominoes. Higher frequency tidal and waking / sleeping cycles are so real and powerful that we don't even think about them.
But what if you added them all together? Of course that's going to manifest in a bunch of ways, at every level. I don't think it's impossible to get at some of the principal components, even if you can't parse out their emergent consequences. But, as you say, most thinking about it is too lazy to bother.
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But what if you added them all together?
Yes! The 2D version of this is really simple, but when you're predicting things like cultural norms there are so many more dimensions.
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