I'm always super stoked to see other people discovering or discussing Dr. Levin's work online... the only thing that makes me feel a little down about it sometimes is that there's been no big updates from his lab in a few years on the bioelectric mapping software he mentioned in some lectures, and the insane (in a good way) experiments on the flatworms and voltage manipulation of the map in tadpoles were several years ago now.

I know that they must have built off of those breakthroughs in some really interesting ways by now, I just wish it were possible to know how. When I understood the implications of what they found, it totally changed how I view existence.

What font is that? 👀

Do you have any alternatives you trust? Just good ole gold and silver?

Yeah... I think the black market aspect would likely be true, but I think it would end up how you described, total organizational chaos that's more harm than good.

Are you certain that the USA would be the main dominant force in this bleak future though? Is their level of control and reach just that great that people would just roll over and let them have it? I agree that's what seems likely, it just makes me sad.

Your comment really got me thinking and curious about the implications and impacts of that scenario, so out of curiosity I asked Claude about it and I found the output pretty interesting:

If all miners were coerced into only including KYC-verified transactions in Bitcoin blocks, there would be profound implications:

Short-term effects:

Immediate fragmentation of the Bitcoin network as some miners comply while others resist

Sharp decline in transaction processing capacity and significant backlogs

Price volatility as markets react to fundamental change in Bitcoin's properties

Potential hard fork creating two competing versions of Bitcoin (KYC-compliant and non-compliant)

Long-term societal and technical impacts:

Bitcoin's fundamental nature would change. The censorship-resistant, pseudonymous design would be undermined, transforming it from a permissionless to a permissioned system.

Black market for non-KYC transactions would emerge, with certain miners operating illegally in jurisdictions beyond regulatory reach.

New mining technologies would develop to circumvent restrictions, potentially using decentralized mining pools that make enforcement difficult.

Wealth redistribution as KYC requirements exclude billions without formal identification or banking relationships.

Privacy implications as Bitcoin transactions would become directly linked to real-world identities.

Alternative cryptocurrencies focused on privacy and censorship resistance would see massive adoption increases.

Geographic redistribution of mining operations to jurisdictions with fewer restrictions, potentially concentrating power in fewer countries.

This scenario highlights the tension between the original cypherpunk vision of Bitcoin and increasing government desires for financial surveillance and control.

Yeah, unfortunately we pay the cost, it's a tax America is imposing on itself. I believe the new administration is doing a massive disservice to American citizens by allowing Trump to make it sound like foreign countries will be paying these tariff costs. Most people (myself included) never really had a need to learn what tariffs were, but if you look into it a better name for it is just "import tax".

A tariff definitely can be an economic tool to foster growth and competition of American companies against foreign producers, but the way Trump is wielding them so heavyhandedly across the board is not the right way to do it. They should be applied strategically in certain industries where it makes sense, but he's using them like a threat/bargaining tool to try to force other countries to do something. I hope Lyn will make some comments on this because I'm just a random person who studies this stuff for my own curiosity, but I think using them that way is the wrong way to go. All that does is further intensify trade wars which are really not good for anyone in such an interconnected global economy.

It'll make goods more expensive for everyone unless people decide to start buying the more competitively-priced American-made versions of what they were used to (assuming those cheaper versions even exist in the first place). If we import some version of the good from another country that isn't tariffed, that would also theoretically become more appealing. I guess it's all relative based on the import costs of each type of good.

Can you explain what you mean by MX and CA having to pay 25% more? A tariff is an import tax paid by the company doing the importing. So American companies that were importing those goods will now have to pay a 25% fee on top of what it previously cost to import them, which means that they will in turn raise the prices of their products to account for this new loss that they unexpectedly started incurring. The end result of that is that by raising their prices, us normal American citizens will have to pay more for those goods.

Foreign countries don't pay tariff costs. We have no way to enforce that, nor does it make sense for them to do so.

"How did China get so far ahead?"

https://insideevs.com/news/748875/deepseek-china-evs-ai-analysis/

Since you were apparently annoyed enough that I reacted with a downvote to go and make a random comment on one of my old notes, I'll just reply to you here.

I felt like you deserved a downvote simply because what you wrote was fucking rude and stupid. Rather than explain any kind of position, you just wrote... that. So I downvoted you because I disagree with it. No matter if you agree with her views or not, obviously nobody can defend the stance that she is not smart. In fact, I'm quite confident in assuming she's way smarter than you.

If you were being sarcastic/trolling/messing around/etc. then you shouldn't be so surprised that there will be people who don't understand that just from what you wrote. But I'm pretty sure you weren't.

🤣🤣🤣 the irony of calling me a clown in a reply like this

🤣🤣🤣 has me legit cackling out loud

Fucking disrespectful asshole host who kept interrupting him. Let the man speak 😤

Well said, I completely agree. For as much as the Bitcoin and Nostr communities preach freedom, you’d think they would be a little more mindful of the echo chamber they’ve still formed and the unwillingness to be receptive to any sentiment that doesn’t blindly fall in step.

This morning the White House issued a National Security Memorandum declaring that "AI is likely to affect almost all domains with national security significance". Attracting technical talent and building computational power are now official national security priorities.

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1gb6j9v/this_morning_the_white_house_issued_a_national/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/10/24/memorandum-on-advancing-the-united-states-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-harnessing-artificial-intelligence-to-fulfill-national-security-objectives-and-fostering-the-safety-security/

This video was useful to me, thanks for making it. I had heard the power law mentioned a few times but hadn't taken the time to specifically research it yet.

"Releasing buggy code is exactly how you find those bugs."

Why wouldn't testing prior to release be the better method? I'm genuinely curious to know your logic on this. It's inevitable that bugs will still occur after release, but why don't you think that as many as is feasibly possible should be eliminated prior to release?

I suppose you think all forms of product reviews that exist in the world should be illegal unless the person reviewing has created an equal or better product themselves, right? Nobody is allowed to say anything is bad unless they prove that they can do better first in your mind?

Maybe you should provide an example of some software you wrote first that we can use as a benchmark to gauge if your responses here have any merit. If you haven't written something better, how is it fair for *you* to ask someone else to provide that?

You just stupidly and ignorantly assumed I was replying to you. Clearly shows how much of an imbecile you are. Just because I replied to your comment, it doesn't mean shit. Stop choosing to assume my position. Not everyone who replies to you is speaking to you, smooth brain. You should take that shit energy back to Twitter and stop making assumptions about people.

By the way, I love the irony of how you say "ask questions" yet can't be bothered to respect others who do the same 🤣 we're done here. Comrade.

You replied to a post with a purposefully vague statement just so you could be a fucking dickhead to people in the comments. This is clearly just bait.

Do you go into a store and just point in a random direction and say "I want that" and let the employees waste their time figuring out what your dumb ass means?

Learn to communicate better, *comrade*.

Well said. That's my biggest issue with content creators like her... we can identify what's wrong all day long, but if nobody bothers to even make the slightest attempt to provide some form of actionable information or useful plan or idea for what to do about it, do we really gain anything? Usually they give some lukewarm "just be prepared" type of sentiment at the end of a multi-hour doom and gloom discussion and it's just like 🤷‍♂️