Escaped the fucking sofa, barely

My job now, I realize, is just to say what needs to be said.

With Twitter becoming a video platform and long form writing platform and Substack hosting podcasts and video and notes, and essentially all these platforms offering everything, you only really need one. Something that you control, push out to all of them at once. Maybe Nostr ends up being this meta platform.

Something is a little off about Twitter of late. Maybe this was always the case, and I’m just feeling it more now. Like Elon Musk is smarter than the woke scolds who preceeded him and will corral everyone into the pen, then move in the fences imperceptibly, a little here, a little there. You content is there, you contacts, your businesses. The only game in town.

Think maybe that experiment would fail because the fiat-ness would be too out in the open, i.e., it would be too obvious that the govt was printing willy-nilly, and inflation might be even higher than that. I said they only do it for control, but they might also do it to perpetuate the illusion that the money is real and comes from the taxpayer.

I would not trade freedom of speech for freedom from invoiuntarily tax because soon you would have neither (if no one could object to future encroachments.)

The first amendment is a foundational right, so if that’s removed, democracy is a sham. It would be the trappings of democracy without an actual one.

Taxation is a tough one. I would rather the government light my money on fire than use it the way they do now, but in a fiat system, they don’t really need to tax you except as a means of control. I think involuntary taxation as it’s currently administered is a scourge, but that would be so in any form of government.

1. As long as they’re making the decisions individually, and it’s not the public square itself censoring them, it’s still free speech. People shouldn’t be forced to listen any more than you should be forced to shut up.

2. I’m not following — you mean if you wanted to buy something illegal?

Well if 100 percent of the people want to kill you, there really isn’t much recourse you have irrespective of the type of government. So the key would be to create rights that would take a very large majority to overcome such that they would survive for at least 250-odd years.

The rights + democracy create a barrier to forcing you on the fundmentals. This is arguably a higher barrier than say in a monarchy where the king can just violate your rights at a whim.

So I don’t disagree that violating rights is wrong, regardless of whether the violation comes from the ballot box, but democracy with rights is probably the best way to protect yourself. And there must be some way for people to express conflicting preferences.

I agree which is why I said “constitutional” democracy with a Billl of Rights. The majority can impose its will, but only within limits, i.e., it can’t arrest you without due process or prevent you from expressing dissident ideas. A democracy without rights would be a disaster.

You could consider constitutional democracy a base-level virtuous system itself.The trolley problem has a central decision maker, but democracy is more like a market.

Whenever I go to the fridge to get the steaks out, this opportunist shows his face:

Learning to enjoy the unscratched itch

LOL

AI might be a game changer, but if it is, I think it’ll be more like the steam engine or the horse than the internet or the printing press.

Yes, it has to be 256 bits, or 64 hexadecimals or 24 words out of something like 4,096. But is there some fundamental reason you couldn’t expand the words to include the entire English language (you can do this with passphrases already)? In which case, my idea would be to create sufficient entropy out of personal items/facts someone already knows.

Had this idea when I was younger that maybe photons have some infinitesimal mass, but not exactly zero, and that’s why they travel at the speed they do.

Because anything with mass when accelerated toward the speed of light takes on infinite mass and hence has to slow down as there’s not enough energy to propel it.

But if a photon’s mass was 1/infinity, then 1/infinity * infinity might equal light speed. Anything bigger than 1/infinity can never reach light speed.

Maybe it’s a dumb idea to those versed in these things, but I’ve had it for a long time and figured I’d post it.

What’s the upshot in relation to my suggestion?

Suggestion for #[0]​ for bitcoin scaling:

TLDR: figure out a way for a person’s private key to be information he already knows that no one else could guess, or information hidden in plain sight. Something he would not forget the way a person who grew up in a city would always know its streets and avenues, even decades later.

The biggest hurdle to self-custody IMO is the terrifying prospect of securing one’s keys. Everyone has much much more than 256 bits of unique knowledge that, barring brain injury, they would never forget. Solve that piece, and solve the scaling problem.

https://chrisliss.substack.com/p/the-adoption-dilemma

Writing about sports or posting on social media is easy. Writing long-form posts on important matters is hard.

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I really don’t get the “conspiracy theory” trope. Powerful people do in fact plan malign deeds in secret! It’s been so since the beginning of human civilization!

Why is it considered savvy not to believe powerful factions are conspiring in the present? How much more evidence could you possibly need?