Oddbean

Of the questions you reference about reality, digital space (cyber reality?) and what is at the core of Bitcoin (time?), can you help me understand what core question Bitcoin solved? It makes sense to me that money is a store of work. It doesn’t make sense to me that money is a store of time. My professor told me that slow workers think work takes time. The definition of work is the actualization of the possible. How quickly that occurs - with every change. Yet as with instantaneous velocity, we also make up words for instantaneous change (big bang?) Nevertheless. It seems to me that if the blockchain were allowed to operate as intended, we would have a different outcome than otherwise. I can’t rule out the set of {otherwise} being null. #bitcoin #asknostr

It isn’t helpful to go fly lower than 10,000 ft on this one ✈️: Only 2 truly finite resources in the universe… -energy -time BTC is the monetizing (read:encapsulating) of energy and time. The (near) perfect encapsulation of the finite is something like immortality (read:timelessness). To be timeless is so be pure (energy). 🤝

In my experience, I have run into many more finite resources than time and energy - breakfast and whisky being only two. You also say, on the one hand, that time is finite, and on the other hand, you seem to say it is unlimited, without border, timeless, immortal. I can’t reconcile this. Can you help? Energy, from the greek, ‘energeia’ is activity, being at work. As a first principle, we can accept energy might be limited, but that doesn’t prove it. Imagining a world completely actualized, with no remaining potential for actualizing, might be best for one with a theology other than mine. Aristotle taught that God, the unmoved mover, was also pure energy. It too is a lesson for one with a theory other than mine. Do you believe that change itself is limited? In my understanding the concepts of potential and nothingness remain related and muddled - pure potential being nothing actual. In the grand scheme of things, I believe I am too, in my being, encapsulated within time and change. On the one hand, does not give me a sense of immortality, while sometimes I wonder. #bitcoin #asknostr

There’s a lot there. So I’ll speak to part of it. Again, 10,000 ft remains helpful here ✈️: “You also say, on the one hand, that time is finite, and on the other hand, you seem to say it is unlimited, without border, timeless, immortal. I can’t reconcile this.” Time is finite. But if you can put it into a perfect vacuum it lasts forever ♾️. That’s the idea. There’s no creating more time or energy, there’s only the potential preservation of what is. A small amount of “time” (near) perfectly preserved for a very long time (read: infinitely ♾️) is “something like immortality.” ^I chose those exact words carefully in my original message, and I stand by them. We aren’t arguing semantics. Those are two very different distinctions. 🤝

The concepts we use for time might be different. I think of it as a medium, the means of expressing, work or change. When you say it is finite, it seems to be more of an assertion than a proof. I don’t know the truth of it, but if I assume is is finite, then I get to prove different things with my deductions and observations than if I assume it is not. Would a small amount of time be a duration wherein little change occurred? Or would it be some arbitrary quantity of a crystal’s vibrations? I think they are experienced very differently. An that experience makes them fundamentally different. I understand the world as change more than as time. #bitcoin #asknostr

Ill be clear, I’m not a quantum physicist. I suppose I should have said *as far as I can tell* time is finite. “As far as I can tell is” is something like “truth that’s pragmatic and applicable.” There’s plenty of theoretical truth that I have no interest in because it isn’t useful (that doesn’t make it untrue, it just makes it unproductive) I’m not “assuming” truth is finite. *As far as I can tell* based on my lived, experiential reality, my time is running out 🕰️. That feels finite, and that’s enough for me to treat is as such. 🫡

I am an old man too. And there does appear to be an encroaching limit to the things I can experience, but I don’t call that a limit on time. Nor do I understand it as a limit on change that may or may not continue thereafter. But I am sure there is a limit to my understanding.

Im not saying there’s a limit on time. I’m saying there’s a limit on MY time. Those are two very different things. The first is theoretical and generally not useful. The second is something useful and extremely consequential. That’s the idea 💡 The finite and the limitations are the key to a life lived conservatively (referencing the law of conservation of energy). This applies to both that which can be observed and that which cannot be observed. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭16‬:‭6‬ ‭ 🤝

I would say the core problem bitcoin had solve is how to establish digital scarcity. Something cannot be scare if it is represented directly as information because everything can be copied => you need a ledger. Something cannot be scarce if a person controls the ledger => it needs to be decentralized Something cannot be decentralized if you have to trust someone. But there is no absolute time => you need to create your own arrow of time. Information cannot speak authoritatively about reality. There is no direct link between the two => you need to have proof of work. That’s why bitcoin is different from a whiskey, a piece of art or anything else which is physical and scarce. Bitcoin is pure information.

Pure information as a concept for what informs material reality is an interesting subject. But in a which came first scenario, the individual or the species, I still opt for the individual. We are all working as individuals with the same arrow of time. In my understanding, Bitcoin is using that arrow, not creating it. The shared reality of digital scarcity that Bitcoin permits is most interesting to me. But reality changes in ways I don't understand. #bitcoin #liberty #libertarian #asknostr