Nostr Web Client

I’m not shifting the discussion to physics arbitrarily, I’m pointing out that Bitcoin gives us an empirical instantiation of quantized time, something physics has never been able to produce.

Objectively, Bitcoin constructs its own timebase through a thermodynamic process of energy and entropy, and that timebase is discrete, quantized, and irreducible. That means we finally have a working model of temporal evolution where state updates occur only in discrete, energy-backed steps. No one has ever built a physical system that exposes time so transparently.

Because of Gödelian limitations, continuous time can never be falsified from within a universe composed of Planck-scale intervals. Any measurement of time must itself use time, so continuity remains an unfalsifiable assumption. Bitcoin stands apart because it creates its own time rather than measuring a substrate it is embedded in.

This matters because once you observe quantized time in practice, a time-first ontology becomes explicit: physics, space, and all dynamical formalisms emerge after discrete temporal structure is defined. If that architecture is closer to reality than the inherited continuous-time assumption, then much of the current formalism especially in quantum mechanics and computation is describing a mathematical idealization, not physical truth.

I’m not denying the hashing discussion. I’m simply pointing out that Bitcoin is the first system in human history where time is not assumed, but it is constructed from thermodynamics. If that observation is taken seriously, it has deep consequences for how we model the universe and the validity of said threat.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 3w ago 💬 1

i'm just trying to be nice here. some things actually boil down to economics and human needs (hash functions are produced by devices that have to be demanded for this use). some things boil down to the algorithm or state machine or distributed system. everything does fundamentally start with two ingredients: energy and materials, and below that level, you start to have matters relating to known and as yet unknown ways to reduce either energy or material costs, and thus lower (and by Jevon's paradox, increase demand).

i would love to hear what you write after you read Human Action. the quantum state and time questions are interesting when you are examining the fundamentals of how to produce things, but understanding the why, the human motivation, is far more generally applicable and interesting for solving problems.

i get it, that the quantum fud is extremely specious. but that isn't solving any problems, and solving problems is the whole purpose of asking the question in the first place.

in my opinion, it is more likely someone will break a pubkey with a supercomputer than a quantum computer.

you are letting the fudsters get under your skin

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Jack K 3w ago 💬 1

I’ll have to put in on my list.

Generally I don’t think many people have observed bitcoin as time, nor have applied that ontology of time to QM since continuous time is the axiom underpinning literally everything. Continuous time is the Tower of Babel for QM if they are wrong.

We are literally watching the construction of time and we can see both sides of the *computational* event horizon since we are the constructors of the time (only our influence is in the network) and we have the ledger of time events.

My mind goes to thinking if we can ever get total network hash to 1 hash per unit Planck time and what that means. If we are objectively constructing time in bitcoin from thermo, what does it mean to be constructed from time? What is light since we are composed of light?

What is the relationship of light and time?

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 3w ago 💬 1

ok, then i'll suggest that maybe you have a look at writing code to demonstrate the principles you are talking about so much. i have done quite a bit of it myself, with difficulty adjustments, varying the hash functions, difficulty adjustment regimes, a former manager, used to be a physics researcher, explained PID controllers and that's very interesting and relevant. bitcoin is P only, i developed one that used integrals as well, and found it was REALLY good at accurately adjusting to sharp changes in hashpower (and this illustrated the way that if you can't predict how fast hashpower can change, you should not use a clamp).

i agree with you, in the principle that the model of time can't be continuous, and thus most of quantum theory is bunk. computation is much more accurate in understanding it, and the hard fact that you can't measure planck time does mean that you must use probability and algorithmic logic to understand the behaviour of matter, and everything that is made of matter. it's just a practical reality of programming, they have made the time window down to nanoseconds and that is still an eternity compared to the time precision you need to understand stuff like even, how to build computation devices.

Jack K 3w ago

From my perspective Bitcoin is the demonstration. We don’t need to write more code to illustrate the principles, Bitcoin already shows them operating at planetary scale. Difficulty is the resistance mechanism that governs how fast the entropy surface can be collapsed. It scales the search space relative to most recent behavior of hashpower and hardware efficiency, and the heat released is literally proportional to that resistance. That keeps Bitcoin anchored to human time, but it doesn’t change the deeper point: the block itself is atomic time to the ledger.

I’m more broadly looking at the architecture of time that Bitcoin exposes. It is the first system where we can externally observe discrete, irreversible temporal quanta created by a thermodynamic process. That alone makes it the most valuable open-source laboratory for understanding time we’ve ever had. I don’t need more code to speculate; I can point directly to Bitcoin and invite falsification.

I think you’d agree on this: we live within a singular timechain (universe) of transformations originating from a verifiable genesis. That structure is ordered, irreversible, conserved, and finite. It is not just how Bitcoin works; I would extend it to how any coherent universe must work. Bitcoin just makes it visible to us, something we can point to as proof.

My language and understanding is still developing and changing.

Time precedes physics.