FFS77 - Angelo Morgan-Somers

[00:00:00]

Intro

Angelo: On the education side, there's a potential to make it more available to a wider audience in the same way that you would deliver medicine to people in a epidemic. Bitcoin is the medicine to that problem, to fiat standard problem.

if you can't make the information any easier to digest, you're going to have a really hard job getting a lot of people to swallow it. the whole idea of Permissionless, this agency that I'm starting up, is to make information taste better

Luke: Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show, the Bitcoin philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn. And today we have another returning guest, Angelo Morgan Sommers, He's the author of Do Bitcoin and now he's running this new video agency called Permissionless. That we're going to talk to him about. So, Angelo, great to have you on again. Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show.

Angelo: Incredible to be back. Thank you.

Knut: Yeah. Good to have you here, Angelo. Um, so what has this year, last year been like for you? Like what, what are the main takeaways and what are, what are you working on at the moment?

Angelo's Past Year

Angelo: so yeah, it's been [00:01:00] a, it's been a year. Um, it's been busy, busy, busy. I sort of spent most of the time, working on, on the YouTube channel for, for FastBitcoins, um, so I was producing educational videos, which was great experience for me to, to sort of get better at my, my video stuff, because that's always been my main hobby on the side.

but also just to like rack your brain a little bit and try and find new ways to explain things. And a big, I think it was, was it Sigmund Freud that had that quote, if you can't explain it to a five year old you don't understand it, or something like that? that's the approach I try to take with learning anything, and so when you're producing videos that are aimed at like as wide a net audience as possible, it really makes you have to sort of Think how you can take these complex ideas that often hide behind highly jargon like language and then try to one, visualize them in the medium of video and also just explain them in words that the average person will understand.

So I was doing that for a while. Um, and yeah, of work. It's really fulfilling as well because it's Bitcoin. and so [00:02:00] yeah. What about you guys?

Knut: Well, we've been doing this amongst other things, but is, is the fast bitcoins, uh, channels still up? Can we still still see the videos?

Angelo: Yeah, the channel's still up, um, the video's still there. The company isn't, unfortunately. I don't want to yap my mouth on too much about that. I don't know what I can and can't say, so I'd better shut my mouth. Um, but yeah. The channel is still there, and so the videos, like ghosts, still exist on the internet and you can still watch them.

So that's, uh, that's good.

Knut: Yeah, they're highly recommended. I love those videos. I mean, you're a really good explainer and Yeah, you do it with eyebrows. That's how I'd explain it. There's some hidden humor in all of it, and I love it.

Angelo: Yeah, yeah. gonna say, I had somebody message me the other day. Um, an old friend who I was trying to To orange pill for ages and convince him that, um, you know, he should sell all of his, his crypto tokens and everything. And he just wasn't hearing it. And then he just messaged me after not [00:03:00] hearing from him for months.

Like I sold all of my Ethereum and all of my crypto and put it in Bitcoin. I was like, what, finally, great. But why? Like, how, how come you've suddenly had this? He was like, it was your proof of stake video. And I was like, yes. So that's a win for me. I've, I've, I've converted one person. So all of the efforts were worth it as far as I'm concerned.

Knut: You probably converted way more than one. I mean, we can never know how much impact these things have, but I suspect they have more impact than we can imagine. And if we orange pill someone who becomes something later on, then Well, there you go. Uh, that's network effects, education, or whatever. so, so you visualize the ideas first.

Visualizing Bitcoin

Knut: So, so if someone asks you, what is Bitcoin? How do you visualize that and explain it to them?

Angelo: All right, that is a very awkward question, um, because almost, so the Bitcoin, it's like, how would you visualize [00:04:00] Bitcoin? The network is very different because that's quite clearly. You just have a network diagram, but then how do you visualize an actual Bitcoin is awkward because, you know, the only reason you see things is because there's some substance there for light to reflect from, but, uh, Bitcoin is like an endpoint of information of Of matter because there is no actual Bitcoin.

You can't highlight the line of code of one Bitcoin. You could highlight A-U-T-X-O, but the UTXO isn't actually the Bitcoin, it's the unspent transaction output of a Bitcoin transaction. So all you have are Bitcoin transactions. You don't actually have any Bitcoins. So if they were something to be visualized, like wouldn't , like wouldn't reflect off them.

So it would be hard to to have something visual that represents it, because then you are placing it in the realm of. the existent, but bitcoins themselves aren't existent, they're like an emergent property of the way in which a certain system functions, rather than an actual, but I guess you could argue the matter is the same, but I don't know, I haven't thought about that yet.[00:05:00]

Knut: Yeah, I'm asking because I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm toe dipping in this part of the rabbit hole when trying to explain why ordinals are bullshit. And like, the first thing, like, how do you explain the difference between a Satoshi and any other data? And the way I see it, the Satoshi is something more than just data.

All the numbers and all the information can be copied, but a Satoshi can't. Like, the Satoshi is attached to the secret someone is keeping.

Angelo: ordinals are one of the things that I, I just, I haven't looked into so much, I've been sort of since that whole thing exploded, I was like knee deep in creating videos on the bits that I did understand fully. So I don't want to say I'm an ordinals expert at all. From what I can gather, it was an experiment that sort of slipped under the radar and some people call an accident that, you know, led to the ability to store actual data on the [00:06:00] Bitcoin blockchain.

Uh, such as NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain rather than IPFS links, which are used in, in Ethereum. So everyone got super hyped up about the fact that, oh yeah, we can have NFTs on Bitcoin now. and the sort of like Bitcoin as a platform above all else was sort of what had a lot of people excited about it.

and I can, I can empathize with that position because I know that, you know, the, The desire for humans to try to control the development of complex technologies based on their preconceptions of the final purpose that they will serve can have negative effects on the natural occurrence of truth discovery when technologies are emerging.

So I can understand why people would be hesitant to say no to something that could resemble innovation. However, Bitcoin is a different case because it did have, from the very beginning, a very specific purpose in mind to which it was supposed to serve, and so any straying [00:07:00] from that could be seen as a tarnish to the original purpose, especially when you start to have these issues with, you know, the block size and transaction fees, which I think is causing issues with Lightning as well, if I'm not mistaken, um, that, you know, if the idea of Lightning is that we can use it for small transactions like coffee and stuff, but, um, if the transaction fees on normal on chain settlement transactions goes too high then, uh, you know, the transaction fees to actually resolve a dispute that occurs on the Lightning Network would be higher than the actual value of the transaction being made.

And so it's sort of, um, due to the increasing transaction fees can pose big questions about whether or not Lightning would be able to actually serve the purpose as a payment layer or whether it, um, I've heard it said on, um, the Um, Guy Swann's podcast the other day, he thought the final, actual [00:08:00] layer, the Bitcoin main chain will just be more like a court, and that payments will occur on lightning, like bigger payments, and then for just like your coffees and stuff, solutions like FettyMint could be in place.

Um, so I don't know if it would work out that way. But yeah, I can, I can see the danger of it. I'll say that.

Knut: Yeah, so this layering thing is interesting and also, like, Bitcoin's gonna do what Bitcoin's gonna do, and we can mostly just observe it, and it takes a lot of time and effort to influence any decision making or make a change to it, so I guess we'll have to just adapt to what it is, and, I think a lot of people have this conception that they know what it is and what it's going to do and therefore they get disappointed when it behaves in other ways than they expected it to behave.

I think that was the cause of the blocksize wars in the first place, like the main underlying [00:09:00] cause that Bitcoin started behaving differently than they expected. Uh, because People have, Bitcoin is different things to different people, right, so we all have these

notions about what it is, and then it turns out that Bitcoin is just Bitcoin and it's going to do whatever it does.

Bitcoin's Nature

Angelo: Yeah, that was sort of what I said at the beginning, which is like, um, yeah, when you try to control or sort of enforce preconceptions on the way in which a technology should develop, you risk averting, like, the actual process by which accidental great discoveries are made, like the, the whole thing with gunpowder originally.

And Rubber, I think, was an accidental discovery. Like, lots of things are accidental discoveries, just from throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Ordinal is another case of that, where people think Uh, let's see if we can do NFTs and then it ends up being used for something else, which is actually kind of cool, um, beyond [00:10:00] cat pictures.

Maybe, maybe not. I think to say that you know for sure is hubris, and they're already there. And so I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not something that can be undone at this point, is it?

Knut: Well, it could be undone by a soft fork even, I think, if I'm technical enough to explain this, but the op return The size of the op return could be reduced, uh, so that you wouldn't be able to attach arbitrary data to a transaction in the same way. Uh, because, like, the way I see it, the, the Satoshi is, uh, different from all other data on the, on the time chain.

Because this, the Satoshi is more than just data, it's, uh, it represents the ability to which the user is able to Change the, uh, the time chain, because you can move the bitcoins and this [00:11:00] is all done by, by keeping a secret, uh, I, uh, knowing a private key, and the, the, all the other data isn't, it just isn't, it's, it's there, it's visible for everyone, and it's not attached to the Satoshi in any way, it's attached to the Coinbase transactions, to the Coinbase transaction, but not to the actual

So they sort of just pretend that it is like a serial number on a dollar, but the serial number leaves the dollar as soon as it moves. And if someone ends up coin joining that Satoshi, for instance, you can't backtrack it to the Coinbase transaction and see where it came from. So the whole thing is just a charade, in my opinion.

Angelo: Yeah, yeah, that would be a soft fork. I'm pretty sure if it, because it's constricting the rules, right? If you're reducing the size of the operator and then, yeah, that's a constriction, so it would be soft.

Luke: This, this actually doesn't have to be a fork necessarily, and this is what Ocean [00:12:00] is doing and uh, Luke Dash Jr. 's uh, Bitcoin Knots implementation. He just doesn't relay transactions that have this opreturn higher, right? And so, and so, lower opreturns are still in consensus with the rest of the network, right?

And so Theoretically, more people could just adopt to not relay transactions that have higher than this opportune limit. But I guess, I guess the idea would be that if you say, from now on, the opportune limit has to be smaller than I, then I think that's a, that's a fork. But right now, right now it's happening with, without a fork.

Knut: Yeah, which is even better because, like, all forks are, there's a danger to forks in general, like, changing the rules is sort of missing the point, like, with, there's a good argument to be made for never changing the rules, Bitcoin conservatism, if you'd like, there are good arguments to that because we, it's hard to foresee [00:13:00] second and third order effects of changing anything in the protocol.

but I guess, yeah, if you're running a node, put your spam filter on so you don't have to see this, uh, things if you, if you don't like people scamming other people. I mean, to me it's like buying a star in the Andromeda Galaxy. Like, it's there, but it's not really yours, is it? It's, anyone can see it, you can't do anything with it, it's just there.

Angelo: So that kind of solution could only take place at the, level of the mempool though, right, like, in terms of what actually gets, what transactions get relayed before confirmation, because once one's actually been confirmed and a block has been mined with one of these transactions, you can't ignore it, right, unless you want to split the chain.

Knut: now the transactions that have already been made are there forever, uh, unless we hard fork and censor and stuff, but still, they're only in the Coinbase, as, as, to my knowledge, I should, uh, this is the [00:14:00] disclaimer here, but to my knowledge, they're only in the Coinbase transaction, and they don't follow the Satoshi anywhere, unless you copy the data and do it in the next transaction as well.

But What's the point of doing that?

Angelo: Yeah, I think definitely anything that poses a threat to the fungibility of Bitcoin I'm, like, staunchly against, because I think that could be, some, like, uh, an actual sort of death sentence over the long run, but yeah, what you're saying about being hard, it reminds me of that, um, Chinese story, you know, the one about the guy, uh, whose son, um, well, he's, he's out in the wild and he finds a bunch of horses and, um, the whole village says, Oh, nice.

Well done. You found some horses. And then he goes, Oh, we'll see. And he brings them home and then his son's riding on one the next day and falls off and breaks his leg and the whole village goes, Oh, you're so unlucky, you know, wish you didn't find all those horses, your son wouldn't have broken his leg.

And he says, Oh, we'll see. And then the next day the army's coming around and they're, they're drafting everyone into a new war. And, and his son doesn't get picked because he's got a broken leg and the whole village says, Oh, you're so lucky your son didn't get picked. [00:15:00] And he says, we'll see. And I think the general point of that is.

With Bitcoin as well. Um, if you say don't change the rules, we'll see, you know, that the, there was a change in the rules that happened in the block wall, block size debate, and that led to, you know, Segwit, for instance, to be able to enable the, utilization of the Lightning Network, and then, for that to be able to go to taproot, which does have massive, massive, privacy benefits.

it's hard to say exactly. You can't really get like a full, bird's eye view of the entire board to see what the best move is. And I think to, as a general principle, restricting moves is dangerous because you have to have such a high level. And comprehensive understanding. It almost becomes totalitarian if you believe you'd have, if you believe yourself to have the total understanding of what's best for the progression of the technology.

Knut: Yeah, [00:16:00] absolutely. I absolutely agree. And that's why, why we love the system. Because it doesn't have leaders. We all have to come to a consensus of some kind. But like, this is true for everything in economics, by the way. That you, you live in the timeline you live in. You never see the alternative timeline.

You never, you can never tell what would have happened if things had played out another way than they did. And we are living through this phase, whether we like it or not. Uh, just as we live through the block size wars, w whether we like that or not. Uh, and the conclusion as always is study Bitcoin. Uh, it'll change you more than you can change it then.

That's a good thing.

Angelo: Yeah, strap in.

Angelo's Bitcoin Education Work

Luke: Angelo, maybe on the, on the note of studying Bitcoin, can you tell us a little bit about what you've been up to, to further Bitcoin education?

Angelo: Yeah, so, um, so I'll say I was working on the YouTube channel project, for the past year, but, um, that's [00:17:00] sort of stopped now, um, and I think while there is definitely, um, the need for, for more education, that suits a wider audience, because at the end of the day, this type of conversation, it's hard to get people And I think one sort of axiom that has to be taken as true when considering how to get Bitcoin adoption is that the majority of people just don't care and won't, they won't care about the technology or why it exists or who created it or what Satoshi means, what Nakamoto is.

They just don't have the time or energy to even, be learning anything outside of the job they do to pay their way. And so. you know, I was speaking to Obi, and not this, uh, last Amsterdam, but the one before that, and when he was explaining his whole project with FEDI to me, he made the point that, um, until it's actually, profitable for these people to use it, until it actually benefits them in some [00:18:00] material way, the utilization won't be there. and so I think there's two approaches to the adoption. There's one which is like just make it work for people so that it benefits their lives. And if it's, reducing the costs, um, or increasing the outputs of their labor in some way, they will use it because it's just like the thermodynamics of it.

It's become it. Adds leverage to their life. They put in their works for labor and it stores that energy better. so there's that approach. And then there's also the approach of, well, the thing is an idea. And if we want people to grasp the magnitude of the idea, then they have to get the idea. and the problem with Bitcoin, it's not something you can hold in your hand, right?

It, is something that is conceptual to its core. And so there is some level of large scale conceptual understanding that I think has to be reached. Over the long run, if If we want people to hear things like CBDCs and rather than think, oh, that's what it is now, we use CBDCs, they think, [00:19:00] oh, that's an option on the table.

Because that's, I think, the purpose of Bitcoin is to get to a point where it's just increasing the optionality of the average person so that they don't have to be subjugated to tyrannical levels of leverage held upon them by those who stand to gain from the current structure of the financial system.

So, that's sort of the point of, that was my viewpoint on. What needs to happen for adoption. I'm not smart enough to work on the tech stuff that makes it actually beneficial to people in their lives. Unfortunately, I would love to maybe sometime in the future if I spend a lot of time learning. But on the education side, you know, I think there is a, there's a potential to make it. More available to a wider audience in the same way that you would deliver medicine to people in a epidemic. I think we need to take the whole modern monetary theory and the sort of zeitgeist of current financial operations as an epidemic of, of the, at the level of [00:20:00] memes, and not memes, like funny pictures, but memes like the brain things, and Bitcoin is the medicine to that problem, to the fiat standard problem.

And so if you can't make the information any easier to digest, you're going to have a really hard job getting a lot of people to swallow it. And so, you know, communication of any idea or education. Education is just communication and the communication of any idea is limited in large part to the medium, used to get your point across and I think video is, you know, everybody's paying attention to video, especially, you know, the average Joe that just got home from work.

They might have time for a one minute video. They're probably not going to read the Bitcoin standard. so there has to be a solution for those people. where we are taking into account the fact that if the medicine tastes like shit, people aren't gonna drink it. Um, and we need to make the medicine taste a bit better.

And so the whole idea of, of permissionless this agency that I'm [00:21:00] starting up is to make information taste better. Um, and the way that you do that, I think, is by playing the game of, attention at the same level as other industries. And I think at the moment, in bitcoin. There's some great content being created, by a lot of people, but if we could increase the production value of that, make it Up to the standard of creators that are competing in much more competitive domains, such as just general finance or, or economics content creators, then we should be able to reach a larger audience by speaking in tones that actually, sort of resonate with them better.

So, long term, I think, You know, I've got some plans for potential documentaries and stuff, which would be great. but yeah, that's sort of where I want to position myself in the whole race to get people to understand Bitcoin. Um, because I come from a video background, so it's Sort of combining the two points of knowledge,

Luke: Alright, you might have noticed that we've recently partnered with AmberApp. [00:22:00] After our episode with Izzy, their CEO, and our close friend, we knew we would have to partner with them in some way, If you haven't seen our episode with Izzy, definitely go check it out, you'll see why it's such a great fit, and honestly, they're following the orange glowing light like Izzy always says, and that's exactly what we try to do here at the Freedom Footprint Show.

The big news about AmberApp is that they're going to be launching their version 2. I've seen some of the screenshots and it looks fantastic. They're going to be including a non custodial on chain wallet, an anonymous lightning wallet, a fiat wallet, And finally, it's going to be an exchange, of course. it's going to be just this super app, They're also going to be launching globally.

Everyone's going to be able to use it. we're really excited about all that. Stay tuned with us and you'll hear all about it. And for now, check out their website, amber. app and the episode with Izzy to find out more.

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Fighting Wokeness

Knut: So, uh, in, in terms of, uh, mimetic, like if, if you try to take the pulse on, on your generation, do you think we're like. Where are most people at? Are they, like, is this, era of wokeness and, uh, just doing what you're told, is it coming to an end? Does the, uh, the opposite, like, [00:24:00] the Freedom Footprint side of humanity, is that, uh, are we multiplying?

Like, do you see, do you see that in your life? Like, what are your thoughts there?

Angelo: I think, I think definitely, um, just from like the people that I know in my generation that the, the sort of energy around any sort of conversation, um, around Bitcoin or, or money in general, five years ago was an investment. You know, much less, enthusiastic or there was much less enthusiasm to discover more than there is today, because I think today people are feeling the effects more of the failures inherent in the current system.

inflation, I think is just the cost of living in general has shown people that. You know, these problems actually might be a bit more personal than you thought. You think a lot of people see it as these high level things that occur at the level of the state and the government and it's not their problem and they're just subject to it.

but [00:25:00] as it starts to burn more, people start to think, am I just subject to it or do I have some say in this? Um, and that dissatisfaction I think is beginning to, to be the cause of, or like the, or provide the activation energy for people to move towards. Um, more financial literacy and just understanding.

better understanding their own optionality. So, so yeah, but the wokeness thing, I think vast majority of people my age, it's just completely, it's fucked, I'll be honest. the vast majority of people that I meet, from my age, it feels like they're not using their own brains. It's sort of like a hive mind, unfortunately.

but I think that's just a product of, um, The amount of time and attention that is spent on, you know, their social media sort of echo chambers.

Knut: Yeah, it's certainly getting promoted, or it has been getting a lot of promotion, that sort of worldview, like, uh, the last decade and, like, I would [00:26:00] say post Covid specifically, that Disney went really off the deep end now, maybe we'll see, uh, the pendulum swing the other way after that, uh, South Park episode about South Park, about Disney being too woke and stuff, I mean, I'm just worried what the pendulum swinging the other way looks like, because, like, uh, I mean, you wouldn't want to get into a society where gay people are thrown off rooftops and stuff, like, that's not optimal either.

So, it's a tricky thing, but it's like, it's this pendulum thing about humanity in general, that we swing from one extreme to another, in all issues, and the internet seems to amplify that.

Angelo: I think from my intuition is that the the pendulum is so far in one direction for my generation at the moment that for it to swing the other way would require some catastrophe that deeply burns the model and [00:27:00] associates that burn with the current positioning of the pendulum, if you will. Um, and I think what will likely happen before that, um, you know, that's like very much an impact based change.

Something bad happens and everybody swings the other way reactively. But then there's also just like the, the chronic dissatisfaction. with the status quo on the majority of issues that is leaving a large portion of people my age feeling very alienated and without a place. And so, you know, unfortunately, I think you do see that with people like the rise of Andrew Tate in the past year and stuff, where it was like, everybody just needed to latch on to some sort of, you know, thought leader that could provide them an antidote to, to the sort of bullshit that they have to deal with from the opposite end for so long.

And then instead of like. You know, using their own brains and finding the middle ground, people just go, oh yeah, it's become slightly more socially acceptable to say XYZ instead of ABC now, so I'm just only going to say [00:28:00] XYZ. Instead of saying YZAB, just having some middle ground, people sort of just want to fly the other direction and I think the agency, the agency of the individual is probably the main point that needs to be fostered. In order for there to be like a, just a better society in general, because to me it just feels, when I speak to a lot of people my age, it just feels like there's very little agency there when it comes to opinions and perspectives. It's more, it's almost like they do some sort of subconscious cost benefit analysis of Saying things that are tied directly to their reputation because there's no North Star after God died.

Everything stops at the skull. It's just like the ego and then nothing above. There is no like guiding principle that makes people want to actually consider anything in their lives to be more important than reputation, status and material acquisition. So then, yeah, the, the, the game of opinions and stuff.

Stopped [00:29:00] speaking about, well, what matters to me, what do I believe, and more just like, what's going to keep me my job, and what's going to get me the social approval of my immediate circle, and it just doesn't go beyond that.

Knut: Oh, it's, it's so, uh, it's so true. It's like, we all do this cost analysis thing. It's just that we come to different conclusions about it. And, uh, like more people should, uh, like just liberating yourself from stuff in general. It's such a ob it's, to me, it's such an obvious life goal to have like the, the, the fewer sh shackles you have around your feet.

The, the, the faster you can move and the more things you can do. Like it's, it's, it's pretty obvious. But, but people don't seem to, to, uh, see things that way.

Angelo: No, and it's also that, I think it's just a, uh, you know, when you do, you're right, everybody does do the cost benefit analysis before they say anything, really. Um, especially when it comes to You know, you're [00:30:00] at a party with your friends, or you're at the bar with your friends, or you're at the kitchen on your lunch break with your co workers, and somebody brings up a relatively contentious topic and asks you your opinion on it, and everybody in that moment does a cost benefit analysis of what they should say, and oftentimes there is what they actually believe, what they think people want them to say, and then they find some middle ground, and I think the degree to which they sway towards what they actually think versus what they think the people around them want to hear, I think is a good proxy for understanding, what principles orient that person in the world.

So if, for instance, freedom is a very strong orienting principle, then saying something closer to what they actually believe is going to be more likely because freedom of speech, right? You should be, you should be able to say these things and, and sort of just let it ride out on the, see how it unfolds after you say it.

but then if reputation is much bigger or pride is much bigger, then yeah, they're going to want to sort of play the part more. Um, and I do [00:31:00] think in the incredibly secular world that we're in right now, it's going to be hard to get people to see much as more important than, what John Vervaeke says is the success on the horizontal axis.

So he posits this idea that in life, there's two axes of success. There is the horizontal, which is, you know, you're here and then you're here. And on the other side of it is money, fame, respect, uh, family, kids, um, stuff that's external, nice house, nice car. and then you have the vertical axis, which is you're here, you know, maybe you're insecure because you had a stutter when you were younger and now you find it slightly harder to speak in public.

And then up here is like, you don't have that issue anymore. You overcame it. And then up here is like. Now you're a great public speaker and you don't have any self consciousness with regards to your interactions and up here it's like you only say what you believe to be true or something. So there's a vertical axis of self transcendence that is [00:32:00] only sort of, you can only make progress on that axis by doing like deep work, internal work, but you can make progress on this axis.

much quicker in a sense, or not quicker, but you can make progress on that axis without having to confront the demons that actually scare you, which are oftentimes on the vertical axis. And so, people use success on the horizontal as a proxy for, success. But I think the actual success is done vertically, and so people are more concerned with being seen as successful than they are with being successful, and a lot of people don't even know what that means to them, and so when a question arises, you know, what do you think about XYZ contentious topic, people are more likely to choose whatever just fits their social group, because they don't have, they're not oriented vertically, you could say.

I butchered that whole explanation, but you get the point.

The Importance of Secularism

Knut: No, no. It's, it's beautiful. But I, I, I, what I have a hard time with is, is how it's connected to secularism. [00:33:00] because to me, uh, this is More akin to organized religion behavior, where virtue signaling is everything, showing that you're a good christian or a good muslim or whatever. It has turned into, since the state has so much control now because of fiat, It has turned into an organized religion where, like, signaling that you're a good statist becomes the main virtue signaling mechanism instead of maybe a hundred years ago when, yeah, I go to church every Sunday.

Like, it's just another religion replacing the old one. So secularism in my mind is what freed us from the shackles of the old paradigm, but then that we've been hijacked again by basically by fiat, because that's the underlying mechanism that makes the state so big and so [00:34:00] influential and the propaganda is so strong.

So then like we take all these things for granted. That the state is our friend and it's taking care of us, and that becomes the new religion. but so, so, so why secularism?

Angelo: For exactly that reason, because when religion, or when God died, it left a power vacuum, in a sense, uh, that needed to be filled by something, and, and like you said, when you see the world as or less figured out by science that there was some, spontaneous chemical reaction that happened on accident and now you're supposed to call that you.

you become a brain floating around in a weird box that's sort of piloting this meat machine, that has no real purpose because it's all an accident and nothing really matters and you, you devolve into nihilism and when you devolve into nihilism, the lack of meaning, I think. I think a symptom of the lack of meaning that people have in their lives is a redirection towards hedonism and I think hedonism is a driving cause of a [00:35:00] lot of these sort of unvirtuous virtue signalers.

I

Knut: Yeah, but the cure to that is not going back to some play pretend thing, right? Like, uh, if, if you're just pretending that you know what happened, then that's just as bad in my mind.

Angelo: don't think it's about pretending that you know what happened, I think it's it's more at the level of your interpretation of The world around you, like the way the, like it's at the, the kernel level, if you will, like the way in which you actually interface with the world. How are you, how are you prioritizing things?

and a large part of the question of of how are you prioritizing things is based on, on the context and in large part to, to prioritize is to serve a purpose. When you make a prioritization, it is towards a particular purpose and so devoid of purpose.

Knut: This is Mississian. Human action is purposeful behavior. That's the first axiom of [00:36:00] praxeology.

Angelo: Exactly, and human action, but even human perception as well is an act of prioritization, and so when there are these acts of prioritization, they are to serve a particular purpose, and without any larger purpose than self, all of the prioritization is based around self, and then you have, well, like you see in the US, massively rising rates of narcissistic personality disorder, more antisocial personality disorders are, are increasing massively over the past 50 years.

it's all sort of heading backwards in a sense because there is nothing greater than self anymore. And if there's nothing greater than self, then why should you say what you truly believe if it's gonna get you fired?

You Create Your Own Reality

Knut: Yeah, it's still, the, this Ties back to our conversation with Jeff Booth with, uh, about how, uh, the main takeaway I got from that is like, reality is, uh, reality is a reflection of consciousness back at you. So, like, you create your own reality to a much larger extent [00:37:00] than you think. Like, what you focus on becomes your actual reality because everything else isn't there for you subjectively.

So to me, like the, this scientism, uh, the, the, the, the bla basic flaw of that worldview is that it, uh, it rejects, other types of science than empiricism. To me, it's just this, this, uh, notion that empiricism is the answer to, to everything when there's, uh, an equal or greater amount of a priori knowledge.

That is even better at explaining reality than the empirical sciences can ever be. This is from my favorite Hoppe book, The Economic Science and the Austrian Method, where he explains how even the statement that empiricists make that All knowledge we can have, we can, we, we use the scientific method to get empiric, [00:38:00] empirical testing and so on peer review to get into to a better and better approximation of the truth.

But there is no such thing as an, uh, as an absolute truth. Uh, but what he points out is that that statement in itself. presupposes that there is an absolute truth because that's an axiomatic, that's an axiomatic sentence. It, it does state that something is absolutely true, that there's no absolute truth.

So, so it's, it's contradictory in that sense. So I think there's a priori knowledge is what's lacking from, from, uh, from reality. So we were like a substituted, you know, the old religions with something. that wasn't really fit for replacing that, and that is like, okay, so now, uh, now you know that there is no proof that God exists, so you go to school and you learn all these other things that are, that you just take at face value and accept them to be true [00:39:00] without questioning them, and that's, you're, you're, you're making the same mistake over again, so, so, um, you know.

Yeah, there's something missing for sure, but, but I don't think like going back to some, some old, some old system is, that's not the future. I mean, forwards is forwards and backwards is backwards.

Angelo: I was just gonna say, like, for yeah, backwards is backwards in some sense. Um, if you know exactly what Backwards is, um, you know, like you said about second, third, and fourth order effects of things, it's hard to know exactly, which direction is forwards and which direction is backwards if you're not Um, what is it?

Omnipotent? What's the one that knows everything? Omnipotent? If you're not omnipotent, then, then yeah, good luck saying that you know which, which, which is forwards and backwards, which goes back to the Chinese proverb of the, the farmer, right? It's like everything, you might think, oh, your kid broke his leg.

That's bad. Sure. But then it's like, but again, you're not taking into [00:40:00] account the larger picture and there is some. Acknowledgement that has to be made by every human of the limited scope of their understanding and of their perceptions. And so, so yes, on that point, there are elements that you would not like to reinstate about the old way of religion.

However, using myself as a personal case study, I would say over the past three years, I have become more religious, but I haven't subscribed to any religion at all. Um, but I've just noticed the way that I perceive The reality that I live in, and like, like you say, the axioms upon which I. And, um, I base the rest of my, understanding have vastly changed.

Five years ago, I was incredibly, incredibly nihilistic, um, and believed that there was little to be done in the world, of much meaning at all. And it was all sort of accidental and just do whatever because you're going to die anyway. And I tried to convince myself that it was optimistic nihilism, but failed in that, um, because it made me very pessimistic.

and, I think it just. [00:41:00] It fosters bad behavior in a sense, um, and I think the, at the core of that it's not that now I think that the only way I can sort of explain it visually is this, like before, it sort of, there was some sort of hierarchy of importance, and it would stop here, where the ego is, and I think there is nothing beyond that, because there is no guiding principle, there is no larger narrative, it's all just accidental, anything can happen, you just Take what you can get before you die.

That's not a very good attitude to have about the world. And so I think when you shift away from that, and shift towards Uh, being more principled or actually virtuous, like if you believe truth is something that should be prioritized and so you do your best to say that, to speak the truth at the cost of all else, that is a more religious act because it's, even in cases where you're going to incur some immediate, uh, costs to speaking the truth, [00:42:00] you still do it on faith.

It's still the right thing to do, and that over a long enough period of time, that is the best way in which you should live your life. So, it's maybe not, maybe using the word religion and religiousness sort of Taints it with a lot of previous stuff.

Knut: is that better?

Angelo: Spiritual, again, yeah, that works, but it's also been tainted as well.

I think just, just,

Knut: Yeah, I

Angelo: general.

Parallels with Jordan Peterson

Luke: I'm, I'm really curious, Knut, if you don't mind my, uh, I just have one very specific question, Angela, because I'm, I'm really hearing a lot of parallels to, to, uh, something specific here. How much Peterson have you read, Jordan Peterson?

Angelo: Oh, quite, quite a bit. Yeah.

Luke: Maps of Meaning?

Angelo: No, I haven't read that. Is it good?

Luke: have to, you have to. Oh man, everything you're saying about the perception stuff is just, is just absolutely coming straight out of that. I think you'd love it. I mean, to me, the book is entirely about finding meaning in the absence of nihilism and explaining, sorry, in the [00:43:00] presence of nihilism and explaining how meaning develops.

Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of a series on Maps of Meaning with Rob Breedlove right now, so check that out if you like, plus the literature series and stuff.

Angelo: I will. And if you're into that type of conversation as well, I'd recommend one to both of you. There's a guy called John Vervaeke, who did a series, a lecture series called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. Definitely check that out if you haven't, and all the listeners as well. 100 percent check that out.

Knut: that, but I couldn't get through it. I did watch his series on Breedlove as well, though. He was also on Breedlove, I mean, and I watched the Vervaeke series. He has a lot of interesting ideas. Absolutely. And yeah, I think I speak for most You know, passionate Bitcoiners, when I say that, uh, with, uh, our journeys are almost always like from, uh, nihilistic to virtuous, if you will, or nihilistic to finding more.

[00:44:00] Meaning in our lives and something to, something to live for. and I've been thinking a lot about that too. And like, there's a lot of talk about finding noise, uh, from finding signal in the noise. And to me, Bitcoin is not the signal, but it's the greatest noise remover ever. Because it removes all the layers of noise, uh, from your life.

So you don't have to worry about the noise anymore. All of a sudden, you can see this, what you were talking about before, the x axis and the y axis of, uh, where you want to, what you want to do with your life, and then you can see more clearly, hang on, there's another axis here, that is even more fulfilling to climb up, than to just walk sideways on this materialistic thing.

So, absolutely,

Angelo: I think one of the best ways that I can tie that into, the Jordan Peterson thing, Jordan Peterson had a quote, um, I think it was a Jordan Peterson quote, I'm not sure, but it might have been something from, I don't know, but it [00:45:00] said, Something along the lines of one of the most, uh, it was a posit of a potential ultimate purpose, which was, the pursuit of truth in the service of love.

and I read two interesting, sort of definitions of, of both truth and of love recently. and while I'm explaining this, keep in mind the idea of money as language. so the definition of, truth was. that is the inverse of deceit, right, and so you think the fiat system is deceit, by printing more you're playing God, saying that you can add resources by adding the measurement of resources, um, silly stuff, but that's deceit, and so bitcoin would be truth, so the pursuit of truth could be transposed as the pursuit of bitcoin in the service of love, and I heard another interesting definition of love, the other day, which was the generous interpretation of the actions of others, and If you are talking on like a conversational basis, that might be, you know, somebody doesn't, take out the trash and instead of thinking, oh, it's because they're evil and they [00:46:00] don't, do anything good ever and they suck and they don't like me, it could just be they had a bad day.

Maybe they're just not feeling it. I'll just do it now. So that's sort of like the generous interpretation of the actions of others. But economically, um, the generous, the way in which you interpret Uh, the value of the actions of others is with the compensation that you give them monetarily, and so the pursuit of truth in the service of love, uh, as an ultimate purpose, materially instantiated in the development of Bitcoin could look something like the pursuit of Bitcoin in the service Of generous economic interpretation of the actions of others, which sounds a hell of a lot to me, like, you know, deflation, um, as Jeff Booth frames it, which is prices actually, begin to come down and there becomes more value is exchanged, per hands, there's more win win, transactions that occur.

I know it's an idea that I literally just had, so I'm still sort of winning it out, but I think there's something in there.

Bitcoin and Incentives

Knut: [00:47:00] absolutely, sounds like you're onto something. But like, it's not only about finding better and more truthful transactions, it's also about removing unnecessary, deceitful transactions. Like, I think that's, that's an equal or larger portion of what this is, because Bitcoin sort of incentivizes you to not spend, and to live a more Humble life, if you will.

At least that's, that's where it's, the direction it has taken me. I mean, I mean, I, I wasn't ever very materialistic, but they kind of sort of pointed out that, you know, striving for more material wealth was It was just as bullshitty as I expected it to be all along. It's just that it's good to have a pile of money to feel safe, and to know that you'll be alright, and to know that, okay, I can do what I want with my life now, and then start thinking about what that means.[00:48:00]

Angelo: Yeah, for sure. I wonder if, um, you know, the freedom and safety are often put as opposing motivators today. Oftentimes, you know, especially in, As it relates to the state, the state often tries to buy your freedom with safety. They, you know, they claim safety as, as something you're getting in return for your freedoms.

you know, give us your freedoms, in return you'll be safer, we promise, because we know best, type thing. Um, but like you said there, having a big sack does make you feel more safe. Um, but it also makes you more free. So I was like, hmm, isn't freedom, freedom then something we could actually use as A metric to measure safety, um, because sure, you could be safer from damage if you were less free.

By being less free, if it's not really your actions, [00:49:00] if actions are being imposed by fiat upon you, um, then it, is that safety or is it just A is that someone else's safety being sort of transposed onto your life by decree.

Knut: Oh, it's false safety. It's the illusion of safety. So this reminds me so much of this Benjamin Franklin quote that I love. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety. deserve neither liberty nor safety. Uh, I've heard that paraphrased as, uh, deserve neither and will lose both.

And I love that because, like, they're, they're very connected. And, uh, yeah, the founding fathers were, were based. I mean, they knew what they were talking about, especially Franklin. But, uh, so there's absolutely a connection between freedom and, uh, between liberty and safety. And it's not what people think it is.

Angelo: You gotta be free to trip over some [00:50:00] things and scar your knee every now and then. I think, um, if you were to be forcefully wrapped in bubble wrap your whole life and sent about your way. would you call that safety? Well, it's damaging in and of itself. It is an act of damage to restrict oneself to that degree.

So, I think if you only see damage as, or danger even, as the risk of the loss of resource, then sure. But again, that goes back to the vertical axis things. Um, if resource is the most important, or resource accumulation is the most important thing, then sure, you'll feel safer. Um When you're less free, um, but yeah, I think it's an axiomatic thing.

Knut: there's this, there's this great scene from this movie Paon, uh, where, uh, it's about this, this guy getting sentenced, uh, getting a life sentence, sentence on the Salvation Island. So he's in a prison on the Salvation Island, uh, salvation Islands, and, uh, In one [00:51:00] of his fever dreams, when being trapped in the cells for decades, he's crawling in a desert, and there's a jury in the desert, and he crawls up to the jury, and if I remember correctly, the judge says the jury deems you guilty, and then he bangs his gavel, and the guy says, Steve McQueen, by the way, says, um, well, I'm not guilty, I was innocent.

No, you're, you're misinterpreting the crime, you're guilty of a wasted life. And, and to me, like, uh, that scene was profound, like, it's, it's just, I have the image in the back of my head every time, because like, uh, all of the time, because my greatest fear, I realized, is It's a mundane life that leads to nothing.

Like, uh, just doing what you're told and sitting in [00:52:00] the same house all your life, never going anywhere, having the same job, and then just, that to me is the scariest thing. The scariest thing, like, never exploring anything, never getting out of your comfort zone,

Angelo: Yeah, the best quote that I had, I used to do a lot of parkour when I was younger. I think I went over my story with you when I first got on, um, about the parkour accident, which led me to Bitcoin funnily enough. So I guess the quote is even more true, but there was a, a quote that I always used to say when I was doing parkour, which was, um, uh, a ship at shore is a safe ship, but that's not what ships are built for.

It's like, sure, you can have, if you've got a ship, it's supposed to be out. Incurring the, the cost of large waves and, uh, and the tides of, of the real world. If you keep it at, at shore, sure it's safe, but like, again, safety becomes paramount if you lack purpose. The purpose of the ship is to be out at sea.

Um, if you keep it locked up in a warehouse or, or stowed at sho. [00:53:00] Then sure, you can get your safety, there's a greater cost that is alluded to by the, by the judges in the, in the desert there. And I think if there could be some shift,

Knut: Yeah, the other quote is, uh, calm seas never made any good sailors,

Angelo: Right.

Knut: same thing, basically. Yeah, and I think, like, the The best safety net you can have is life experience. Like, the more life experience you have, the safer you are against, you know, things turning sideways and things not going the way you thought they would.

If you have life experience, and if you know yourself, and if you know if you can control your, your feelings to some extent, and uh, you know, know your mind, then you're better equipped to deal with uncertainty. Uh, which is what it's all about, I guess.

Angelo: Yeah, that's the whole idea of the vertical axis thing I was talking about, which is like horizontal might be, okay, how far did you sail? But then vertical is how good of a sailor did you become?[00:54:00] and so, yeah, the focus on becoming a better sailor, I think is something, a shift that needs to happen.

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Angelo: I

Bitcoin and Free Will

Angelo: do have one more question, by the way.

I was listening to your Jeff Booth thing, [00:56:00] um, and he started talking about free will, and I didn't quite get to the bit where you sort of gave your point on free will, but I think we're gonna have an interesting little five minute, discussion on that. So what, so do you think you have free will?

Knut: This is a great question. I like, I always answer that with one of my favorite Christopher Hitchens quotes, which is, of course you have free will, you have no choice but to have it. It's because it's such, because it's such a, such a lovely conundrum. Doing an interview with Volker soon, I think, Luke, and he wants, he really wants to do a deep dive into this subject, so it's, it's fun that you took it up, because, uh, that you brought it up, because there's, there are studies, uh, of how consciousness works and the consciousness has a lag of like half a second or something so when you think you make a conscious decision the decision has not already been made by some other part of your brain and consciousness is just like the movie [00:57:00] playing up for your mind uh like rationalizing what happened in hindsight so Falker's conclusion is that you can have free will but you have to presuppose that There is some, there is such a thing as a soul that, that, that lives outside of your brain because how you run into some, some of these catch 22s with like, okay, so, so you think you control your mind?

Well, you can't really, you can't really control what thoughts come into it. Like, I guess you can control to some extent what, what thoughts you choose to be, I, I have a suspicion that you can choose focus, like you can choose what thoughts to focus on and what thoughts to discard to some extent, at least, but that, I'm not basing that on anything else than intuition, um, but like a [00:58:00] world where free will doesn't exist, That's, to me, deterministic and boring.

I know that free will couldn't exist without entropy. If the universe was predetermined, and you could figure it all out, and we didn't have unforeseen things, then free will couldn't exist. It's just impossible. So, something is going on somewhere, and I don't know what it is, but I act as if free will exists, if that makes any sense.

To paraphrase Peterson.

Angelo: Yeah, I think it's, um, it's interesting. You could probably have an answer that sort of Check both boxes. Um, if you just realize that there's, there's more than one way to ask the question, right, because so you can say you have free will, but, but what is you in that? Like, what are you referring to when you say you?

Knut: Yeah, that's, that's the conundrum.

Angelo: Right? [00:59:00] Yeah. So if you don't even know what you are, then why, why are we getting ahead of ourselves with questions of free will? And I think this is an interesting, like, you, um, It presupposes a separate entity that can impose, for there to be free will, there has to be a separate entity that can impose upon another separate entity, like the self can impose upon the other, and there is the assumption in that that that separation is, is a separate entity.

True, but I'd say if you get rid of that assumption that there is a separate entity called Knuts, or a separate entity called Luke, then the question of free will becomes paradoxically, yes, there is free will, um, but there is no you to have it. And then you can join those studies which say that there is that the decision happens before the conscious awareness of it, with the, and retain your, [01:00:00] your sense of free will at the same time, because you're, you're, you kick the can back one level of analysis, to the point of the actual, axiomatic assumptions about the nature of self and other.

Knut: That's very, very interesting. Did you ever hear about the meme theory of everything?

Angelo: Nah,

Knut: Which is like trying to connect, uh, like the big one in, in, in, uh, the natural sciences to, to connect the theory of, uh, general relativity with the quantum theory. And this guy, uh, had a good explanation. It's an article, it's on Medium.

So you can check it out, like the meme theory of everything. And he argues that reality is where our consciousnesses, uh, collide. So, uh, uh, where our memes Sync, so to speak. So, uh, you know, I, I can see Luke on my screen here and you can see Luke on your screen here and our consciousnesses [01:01:00] have a similar, idea of what that means.

So, we Collide, and that becomes reality.

I should have maybe made another example. The table behind Luke is a better example than Luke himself, because he's a conscious being himself. But the thing is, this theory,

Angelo: know that for sure.

Knut: I'm, uh, now I, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, uh, , uh, I'm not too familiar. I don't remember it too well. So I'm trying to do A-T-L-D-R on something I, I don't completely understand.

But the, uh, there were some takeaways, like, it, it would explain the Fermi paradox because it's, uh, we couldn't syn with minds. Uh, that we're too far away from the earth. So like, uh, so reality on other stars don't mix with our reality simply because of the equivalent of a hash horizon in Bitcoin, you know.

you can't sync a node on Mars because Mars is too far away most of [01:02:00] the time of the year and you definitely couldn't sync a node on Uranus. Well, uh, and so, uh, so this is where the meme theory of everything sort of, A UFO or a signal, rather a signal from another galaxy that we cannot interpret as anything else than another civilization trying to talk with us would debunk the theory because it's simply too far away.

But yeah, it's just a theory and just a thought, but I found it intriguing.

Angelo: So Bitcoin's quite cool, eh?

Knut: Absolutely, because there's so many, so many parallels, parallels between how it actually works technically with all of these, uh, exciting, um, theories about reality and consciousness and stuff like this, like syncing time in this, uh, intra subjective way instead of having this illusion of objective time when there's actually no [01:03:00] such thing and, time goes, Let's Time flows at different speeds depending on where you are in gravity and stuff.

So, uh, the thought of intersubjective time and an intersubjective time chain is also very Yeah, it opens up a whole plethora of other rabbit holes to deep dive into, doesn't it?

Angelo: Yeah, intersubjectivity is, is, is interesting one because it's, sort of at the core of, like you were saying, the prioritization of perceptions back when, normal religions were the main thing. Everybody agreed. that God was real, and that the stories of the Bible, uh, it happened, and so everybody acted as if that was the case, and because everybody acted as if that was the case, in some sense it became the case, and, uh, I'm not smart enough to understand Nietzsche at all, but I think When he said God is dead, to some extent that was an acknowledgement of the fact that whilst everybody had the intersubjective consensus that it was the case, [01:04:00] that he was there, he was there in some other way.

but then once that, um, consensus died, so did he. And the same applies to Bitcoin. Bitcoin only exists because everybody believes that it does. There's no actual thing. and in a large part the same applies to the monetary premium of a 10 pound note or a 10 dollar note, because, the belief in the value is what actually makes it true that it is valuable.

so it almost, it goes back to the prioritization of perceptions again. prioritize things that have value to you. Um, I think this was sort of covered on the There's a guy called Mike Hill, another good series on Breedlove that's worth taking a look at. the Mike Hill series was really good, he touched upon this a lot.

Knut: yeah, he's great. Uh, uh, he, his series about is about the hero's journey stuff, right? Or one of the series with him. I think,

Angelo: of them was, yeah. But in general it was about value.

You Are Your Bitcoins

Knut: this reminds me of two [01:05:00] things. Uh, first, uh, book recommendation Small Gods by Terry Pret, where, where this is actually the case that the gods become more alive, the more people believe in them, uh, in a fantasy world. Uh, uh, and yeah. Uh. My big thought on this and related to Bitcoin is that Pascal's Wager actually provably works with Bitcoin.

So if you replace the word God, like, Pascal's Wager is like, if you You have this binary choice, you can choose to believe that God exists or not exists, and if you choose to believe that God does not exist, you risk eternal damnation in hell and burning forever and stuff, so why not just act as if God exists, and then you mitigate that risk.

The problem with Pascal's Wager as is, is, uh as I see it, is that it discards all the other 5, 000 religions that have a different notion of what the [01:06:00] word God means. But if you do it with Bitcoin, if you act as if Bitcoin exists, you actually help it materialize. In a very real and direct way, so if you take Bitcoin for a real thing, and not as most people think it's funny money, and that it's a scam, and it's a pyramid scheme, and whatever.

And They don't contribute to Bitcoin's existence, but those who live this thing, and act as if it exists,

actually make it come into being, in a very real sense. so, I find that insanely fascinating, that, it's actually a, provable substitute for God.

Angelo: Yeah, it's It's the same with Bitcoin right, if nobody, if there were no humans to interpret the binary strings that make up the Bitcoin network, then there would be no Bitcoin network. It's the interpretation, it's the imposition of [01:07:00] meaning onto those binary strings that gives it its existence.

If there was no observer, it's kind of like that double slit meme that you shared the other day, where the guy's looking away and it's the wave and then he looks at it and it's the thing. If nobody's looking at Bitcoin, if there's nobody to interpret, I'd say humans are a part of the Bitcoin network because we are the end point interpreter of the code.

Knut: We're the only part, we're the only part of it. All the numbers ex, uh, predated us. Like all the numbers were already there, mathematics was there along. It's just the perception. Uh, like we, we are literally the Bitcoins. We are literally the network. All the computers are just fancy calculators who help us.

Don't trust verify. Uh, so we are the thing, like, and that's why a Satoshi is not just data, it's, it's information for like, no, like, yeah, so, so there's a definition [01:08:00] of the word information, which is like, it's the data that makes sense to you. To, to a person. And, I would say it's Satoshi's even more than that.

So it's, it's, it's literally a part of you and me, and, it cannot be copied like other data can be copied. At all. It's the ability to move the satoshi that is the satoshi. The information about the asset is the asset, and so on.

Angelo: Yeah, I wrote an article when I was working at FastBitcoins. That was, had a similar point, which is that, um, the only, if the only fun, if, if Bitcoin doesn't exist while it's static, if the only function it has is to move or to change hands, to change addresses, um, then it only sort of, it's like an emergent property that comes into existence at the point that it moves, um, because it's the only function that it serves.

It can only move. and so while it's static, it's gone. and the only thing that when you say I own two bitcoins worth of UTXOs, you're just owning optionality to bring those [01:09:00] bitcoins back into existence at the point at which they move. if you, if you're seeing it as we are the bitcoins, then they could exist even when they're not moving.

I've never seen, I've never seen it as that way.

Knut: I say that they do because of a thing that Mises points out about money is never idle. Money Always serves a purpose, even when it doesn't change hands, because, because it, uh, provides its owner with a sense of security and, uh, uh, more optionality to do more stuff, and, uh, therefore lower time preference.

So, so it's always serves a function, a function for its holder, and especially when, when they're a part of you. So like, I wrote an article about that and I had a talk about it and everything and the. The way I see it, the, the miner is not the asic, it's the guy who decides to buy the ASIC and plug it in and run the code, because without that action, the, the, the ASIC is nothing.

[01:10:00] And the, and same thing with the nodes and all the bitcoins rec reside within our heads because it's all about keeping secrets. That all, all the private keys are kept in a head somewhere, in someone's head somewhere. There is no private key that is So the location of a hardware wallet, the location of a seed phrase, that's also a secret.

It's also in someone's head.

Angelo: Right, in this, yeah, in the same way that like, numbers exist in your head, you can write them on a whiteboard, but you're like, you're drawing symbols, but the actual numbers aren't on the whiteboard then, it's the interpretation that gives the numbers their, their meaning, or the symbols their meaning, so the numbers only, same applies to Bitcoin.

Knut: And here's the fun, this was told to me as a joke, but I love it so much. Bitcoin has always existed. It's just that the hash rate was zero before 2009, which is provably true. All the numbers were there. So it's absolutely [01:11:00] 100 percent true.

AI and Consciousness

Angelo: In that case, what, what, so AI cannot become conscious then, right? If it's just the interpretation of symbols that exist only within your side, there is sort of a, what if the blank canvas of reality is an interpretive, like a drive on a computer that interprets whatever material world is, and that's what gives rise to the human experience, but then humans develop their own interpretive structures.

That give meaning to, things like numbers and binary, and then through the increasing complexification of that binary code, it then begins to resemble the humans that interpret it. But if it's just, if it only has meaning in the same way that Bitcoin doesn't exist, if you take the humans out, if you take the humans out of the AI, then the AI isn't, doesn't exist either.

It's the interpretation of it. I don't know why I've got [01:12:00] balloons flying up,

Knut: Love it. But yeah, artificial intelligence, like, in my mind, it's, it's not intelligence at all because it lacks agency. It, it doesn't have free will and therefore it's not intelligent. So it's, it's good at guessing what word comes next. It's really damn good at that, but it's, it's, I don't see it ever developing a, a mind of its own, uh, not anytime soon anyway, and, uh, I, I think we're,

If we truly want to make a sentient AI, I think we're looking in the wrong direction, like, I think we're searching in the wrong place for that, because I think it has so much to do with felt uneasiness, and why you perform actions at all, why you feel an urge to do something, it's because you [01:13:00] You imagine a state of the future in which you have done a thing, and that state is preferable to you, to what you live in right now, and how can a computer ever do that?

Uh, how could, how could an algorithm ever do that? I just don't see that happening.

Angelo: but how do you know that you're doing that if you can't define you?

Knut: Yeah, that's a good question.

Angelo: Because pain is, again, a relationary thing, and if you can't define you or can't prove that you is something separate than other, it could all be illusory. And therefore pain is just a consistent pattern rather than an actual thing.

Knut: Absolutely, all these dichotomies might be false at the, on a very basic layer, but they can still be useful. I, I can still, like, use the term you and use the term felt uneasiness in a context that makes sense. And like, I'm, I'm just trying to Like, explain why I don't think that [01:14:00] AIs will ever become sentient.

It's because of this motivating factor that acting human beings have to do conscious things. To do, to engage in purposeful behavior rather than just acting on instinct.

Angelo: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Knut: I don't know where it comes from, but I do think it's real.

Angelo's Video Agency

Luke: Hey guys, maybe to bring this back into a more, uh, concrete side of things because

Knut: Boring!

Luke: been, this was great. Enjoyed listening in. Um, but hey, Angela, maybe you could talk about what are your plans in the near term?

Like, I know you've mentioned your video agency, but what are you trying to do with that? And what are your goals in the near term? Well,

Angelo: So in the near term, it's just, um, I'm [01:15:00] bootstrapping it, uh, myself really, so it's just getting initial cash flow and stuff so that I can get out more into the world. Um, I think, um, I'm looking forward to Madeira. Um, that should be fun. and going to some conferences next year, hopefully, I want to get to Nashville as well, but I don't know if that's happening yet.

but yeah, that would be really good. And then, and then, yeah, just, just working towards the idea of a documentary. I want to, I haven't spoken to him yet, but I want to get in touch with, um, Gladstein and the Human Rights Foundation and eventually, like, might sort of My mid to long term plan is to do some sort of documentary piece that brings the idea of the currency caste system to a form that is digestible to most people.

that is something that I would love to do, uh, longer term. I know you asked near term, but, but yeah, everything that I do near term is sort of to work towards that. So hi, Alex, if you're listening.

Wrapping Up

Knut: Fantastic. Um, yeah, I think this is a good point to wrap it up, , so any way you want to direct our, our listeners to Angelo, like, um. [01:16:00] Where can we find you on the internet if we want more?

Angelo: so my Twitter is My, my Twitter's at Angelo underscore Summers, spelled S O M E R S, and the, the website is, um, for the agency is permissionlessltd. com. so I don't know when this is going out, but the website should be up and running by then. and yeah, that's just about the only two I really want to direct anyone to.

Knut: Okay, this has been the Freedom Footprint show. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and brush your damn teeth, and see you next time, folks!

Angelo: Thank you for having me. Cheers, guys.