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What I’m thinking about is the relative value of increasing how connected we are with existing bitcoiners vs the value of adding new bitcoiners.
There probably are quite a few goods and services that we could source from each other, if we knew what our options were.
It really is a thing about perspective and ownership, I think.
belief
Why would I trust someone else's beliefs, especially if they go contra to my own experience? Yes, bots can do infinitely better code than a year ago, or half a year ago. But 99% of it is still bad, for me. Perhaps even worse because it is harder to understand.
vibe-review
How many times have you decided to not run a particular software, a particular update or have you patched vulns the bot found or at the very least decided to stop using a particular function of a software because it is a shitshow you don't wanna touch with a stick? Because that's the metric of how effective your review is. If you have low standards, you'll probably abandon or patch half of what you use. If you have high standards... welcome to my world, I guess. I run exactly 1/5 of my high requirement apks unpatched at the moment, and that is only because they patched a bug and released it quicker than I could patch it up myself.
trust
I also operate on trust. Devs I trust to take things seriously get a vuln report or a patch. I've given up on everyone I don't trust - which is nearly everyone - as most devs have gone completely retarded now. They don't get a report from me anymore and if tomorrow they die then the only difference is that there is a very insignificant drop in demand for GPU ticks. I most often just stop using their software or library, or otherwise I patch it[1].
I do use LLMs to fight the declining quality of their output against ever-rising gates - the bar goes up on the daily. I have to because there aren't enough hours in the day for me to read all the slop that gets released. But I created a process based on a couple of decades reviewing other people's code and I'm continuously monitoring and optimizing it, and the bots aren't doing the judgement. Reviewing traces of what the bot did (I have a process for that too now) and tuning instructions, templates, sporadic skill files. Developing a new process takes me months, but when it's there and I maintain it, it goes well. Every process is hybrid, nothing runs without my request (it's literally me assigning a task by dragging it on my screen though.)
Would you use a vibe-coded node even if you were the vibe-coder?
Yoloboi vibecoded? Nah. I don't do that really. This morning I had Opus code me some stuff for a tool I use. I then went into my editor and implemented it for real. Threw away the bot code. Now I own it. If I merge that Claude code I won't know what the fuck is going on in my own systems. Might as well run closed source software then. If it were an inconsequential tool I wouldn't care, because then I can just replace the entire thing for peanuts[2], but this is for one of the tools that I use for tracking defects across an n-dimensional reality so it is important that I can rely on this even when there is no bot to help me figure out my own system - the same goes for my Bitcoin node, but that is something you can ultimately turn off and be okay (as long as you don't need it to power your LN node.)
But then, I do own the prompt of any self-vibecoded software. So even if I wouldn't do any actual reimplementation or even review, my slop > someone else's slop. And there is nothing anyone or their bot can do about that. My slop is sovereign and it stays with me, it empowers me, until it doesn't then I change it. Their slop is the enemy, it transfers my power to them, I have no control over it until I replace it with something of my own.
I'd suggest that from Rearden's perspective, this is absolutely grand, I am very happy for him. For me, the exact same software is meaningless and I'll stay away from it.
edge cases where my node will not implement the exact same block validation rules as other nodes.
Or just bugs. Because they're rather hard to spot, simple mistakes, scope misinterpretations or tiny hallucinations, perhaps a context window compression at exactly the wrong time removing something important from the conversation... are causing bugs that may cause real issues when still no one has read the code 2 years in. Same like with humans; some pretty insane linux kernel bugs are being found lately. There is no difference between bot and human output other than that people actually believe that bots are infallible as if it were a calculator, whereas for humans it is widely understood that they make mistakes.
For example, I've written a 3-liner patch a few weeks ago that neutralized not only an upstream vuln itself, but 3 other subsequent vulns that happened upstream in subsequent patch releases afterwards. All that was Fable 5.1 vibe coded by them (because FOSS devs get free LLM credz.) So I don't really believe that bots fix anything. You still need a great engineer to get great code. The only difference that can be is how much of it is typed out. ↩
Anything vibed is a commodity, because LLM generated code is a commodity, just like the sloppy text, pictures and videos - literally anyone can produce it, especially if it is sloppyvibed (i.e. (near-)zero effort) - which most stuff out there is. ↩
currently sitting as a PR for LDK Node (https://github.com/getAlby/ldk-node/pull/115)
I'm scared about mining centralization, but think we're better off with bitcoin than anything else right now. So it definitely serves as freedom money currently, but the future of it looks grim.
As far as normies getting it, my experience is that they usually get it when we do a proper job outlining the problems with the current financial system in a winsome manner. Then again, many don't see the need at all, and sometimes really discouraging things like this happen:
This was a tough pill to swallow given these are my real friends/coworkers who have real families, real jobs, real lives, and definitely view bitcoiners like crazy people.
It's not optimistic. The tribes are consolidating. The leaders grabbing all they can get their fat little fingers on; power, money, pussy. The masses are enslaved to convenience, they wont change anything. They wouldn't recognize freedom as anything beneficial to them at all. They don't need it and they don't want it. Pearls before swine.
All is good. It's like Justin says: if / when the normies truly come, Bitcoin cannot be freedom money. Then it will be as regulated, mediocre and boring as your dollars are today. You'll need to ask for permission to send coin. p2p dies. P2P is not some larp though, it's what we have today. So enjoy it while it lasts. Before it gets taken from you.
It might not fully be freedom money at present, while also not needing much further development to become such.
I’m increasingly expecting us to entrench more than expand, building tighter connections amongst those who already get it.
Galt’s Gulch is the relevant analogy.
Would you use rbitcoin as the backend for your wallet?
Nope. If I wanted a vibed bitcoin consensus layer, I'd vibe my own. Slop authors were obsolete before they even put in the first word of the first prompt. Sunk token cost isn't a moat.
Apparently the Federation will be footing the bill. But I don't know where those ~600 BTC ultimately come from.
Do you think it is leading you to expect less from orange-pilling efforts, or to abandon such efforts in general?
Nope. I had a short-term friendship about this time last year with a guy who's sister had been trying to send money to their mother for seven years with no luck. I taught him how to use lightning, that night he taught her, the next day she was finally able to do what she wanted (send to mom) with the money that she had worked for all that time. Stuff like that puts getting made fun of in the group chat in perspective pretty damn quick.
...thanks for asking. I'm suddenly in a really good mood. lol
It is the other way around: there is no reach of the normie financial system because there aren't many normies. Or in fact, there are already too many normies.
The best thing is when there are no normies. Then you can be free. Free of the normies and their rules. Free of their whining. Free of their mediocrity. Free of the endless boredom that is regulation.
Normies sleeping on it may be the strongest argument for it being "freedom money" currently
I don't follow this. Is it that normies being oblivious to Bitcoin is evidence that it truly is outside the reach of the traditional financial system? Or is there a different argument here?
Building our separate economy and withdrawing from the normie economy #1596972
Bitcoin may already be freedom money, but I definitely feel that we have not built the parallel economy I'd like to inhabit. But that's a much more difficult task, I think: demanding to be paid in bitcoin and offering to pay in bitcoin.
Was wondering about making new territories/making new SN nyms... what's the talk/take on the OG stacker scene? Good bad idea?
Is there a benefit/additive to have different nyms?
- on the one hand, there's some informal trust and people zap knowing a given nym is a real person with real thoughts rather than a newly spun-up AI/troll account
- on the other hand, posts on completely different topics (yoga; books/published material; ranty daily news econ things; serious e.g., book clubs or econ articles or thoughtful remarks) don't all fit into the same Den persona.
Those all fit neatly into me, real-life Den. They don't fit neatly into how people interact with Den on SN and the separate things I do here.
Random things end up spamming the territories/timeline...
certainly annoying to switch accounts... definitely not a good idea to zap from different accounts (for the rewards pool, no?).
I dunno. Do the smart peeps here have an opinion? @Undisciplined @k00b @Scoresby @BlokchainB @SimpleStacker ?
Not to put words in Rearden's mouth, but it seems like he has some belief that AI-written projects will shortly be more secure than projects with predominantly human written code.
Currently, my only way to evaluate any software I use is vibe-review or some sort of web-of-trust evaluation (do people I trust also use this software). If I think that vibe-review contributes to the security, don't I have to extend the same belief to vibe-code?
I don't buy such a viewpoint, and I stubbornly insist on relying on my web of trust + vibe review approach to software, but I'm trying to figure out how I should evaluate all the vibecoded stuff that comes across my radar.
I'd vibe my own
Would you use a vibe-coded node even if you were the vibe-coder? In my ignorance, I assume that vibing something as complicated as a node will result in lots of weirdly-shaped corners around which I cannot necessarily see -> edge cases where my node will not implement the exact same block validation rules as other nodes.
100% profit boost on parlay so I took a swing for the 76ers vs Knicks game.
The endless boredom that is regulation
this is such a good way to describe regulation. Hannah Arendt got it wrong: it's not evil that is banal, but rather banality is evil.
To be free of the great deadweight that is regulation is a very optimistic vision of humanity.
Bitcoin is already freedom money, anyone can access it and use it.
But it has grown stagnant, both from a technical standpoint and general adoption:
- There's only been 1 soft fork in the last nine years, whereas the prior six years, we had 8 soft forks.
- The lightning network has completely failed to achieve scale, and to be honest, ark will be similar
- We grew from 0 to $20k in the nearly eight years from inception to December 2017; in the almost nine years since then
- The adoption is now coming in the form of custodial options like ETFs, highly leveraged corporations (MSTR, ASST), or derivative financial products (STRC). The ethos of "not your keys, not your coins" is dying.
Worst of all, the community has turned toxic and insular. Everytime I've voiced concerns privately, I get nothing but ridicule or apathy.
In its current state, I'm not very optimistic about bitcoin's long term prospects, unless there is a dramatic shakeup and re-invigoration of the technical process (merging multiple covenant proposals, drivechains, and so forth).
https://www.satflow.com/runes/NAH%E2%80%A2SOVEREIGN%E2%80%A2DIAMOND