Great discussion on BRICS on today’s All In Podcast. Very informative and complementary perspectives by Chamath and Sacks. They mention bitcoin (in a positive manner) just briefly, then seem to forget about it even as they proceed to make a powerful case that BRICS should adopt bitcoin.

Our hope is that the dystopian qualities of legacy social media are consequences of centralization and will be ameliorated by nostr’s decentralization.

Will our hopes be realized? Or is it wishful thinking?

they ever associated with any strange smells - like not sure if they’re real or part of the memory?

I figured you may have already done that, 5 seconds after I clicked send 😅

Maybe start out with “I think your food is amazing and I hate to hear that you’re having trouble.” A little flattery goes a long way, especially when it’s genuine! 😊

Are they soliciting feedback in any particular format? Like asking you to email them? Or are the owner / manager / whoever around so you might engage them in a convo? I’ve always found that the most important first step is to feel out the mindset of the person you’re talking to. Gotta tailor your pitch to the audience.

I like that status on Damus can be set to expire 👍🏻

Are there any bitcoiners who have written about the abstract concept of proof of work as a central component of human interactions? Example: conspicuous spending as a signal of one's wealth. Or advanced degrees as a signal of one's intelligence and abilities. One might argue to categorize these somewhat differently, perhaps proof of "burn" rather than work, but there is a unifying something going on here. The challenge is to figure out what exactly the unifying concept is and how to put it into words.

The purpose of PoW, or proof of burn or whatever, is to signal something to somebody. To signal what? For the sake of this post let's just call it "virtue." Virtue signaling, by its inherent nature, perhaps by definition, must incur some sort of expense. When we look at it that way, our usual reaction is to deem it a fundamentally wasteful thing. But perhaps the desire to obviate the need for virtue signaling is inherently misguided, in the same sense that the desire to replace PoW with proof of stake is misguided. It's like trying to make a perpetual motion machine: it simply goes against the laws of physics.

But perhaps what can be done, and what should be pursued, is the "optimization" of virtue signaling. What does that mean? I would argue that sub-optimized virtue signaling means work (or effort, or burn, or whatever) that is intended to prove something, but which is done in a way that is not perfectly provable. Maybe only a small fraction of the work is provable. Or maybe it's provable, but inconsistently so. Or perhaps the intended recipients of the signal simply don't know how to interpret the signal, i.e. don't know how to verify the proof; like using a language the recipient does not understand.

Arguably, this is what bitcoin achieves: an optimization of PoW. Perhaps in the broader perspective, it is "virtue signaling" in its purest form. It may still have stuff to teach us about the human condition from a broader perspective.

Primal shows me Trending notes but i can’t tell whether these are trending from my perspective or trending from Primal’s perspective.

Exactly 👍🏻

The thing that troubles me about things like Popular Posts, Trending, etc is the unstated presumption of a single frame of reference, one that represents “the community.”

We need to reject this presumption. Every user is a unique frame of reference. And we need to do it explicitly, in a way that users can feel the difference.

spasmodic dysphonia

It will def be interesting to see how relays evolve over time, and whether they take on a big role in data curation. Part of me hopes that they don’t. Ideally, it should always be easy for anyone to spin up a relay and make enough revenue to cover costs, with no need for branding, complicated specialization, etc. Just plug and play. Because that’s how we avoid centralization and censorship. And yet it’s hard for me to imagine relay operators not at least experimenting with some sort of specialization / curation as you describe.

Using follows as a proxy for “trust” (and mute lists as a proxy for “no trust”) may be better than nothing, but at some point WoT needs to be more sophisticated in a number of ways. For one thing, “trust” needs to be contextual. For another, we need tools to allow us to make explicit trust attestations so we don’t have to rely upon frequently flawed proxy indicators. E.g. Alice trusts Bob to curate content on topic X (but maybe doesn’t trust for topic Y).

The question is how to develop those tools gradually. Using proxy indicators, flawed as they are, may be a useful part of the roadmap.

I find Primal’s use of the phrase “caching service” to be confusing. Who’s providing what service, and to whom? My understanding is that the service allows me to store data locally in sql, for my own use. But talk of providing a “service” would seem to imply that primal is storing the data for me in a central database, which is not the case. (Right?)

Perhaps there needs to be a discussion to define the difference between good and effective filtering on the one hand versus “censorship” on the other.

I submit that the difference depends on how easy or difficult it is to be immune from / route around filters that you don’t like or agree with. To craft your own filters that find the content you want and block the content you don’t want. Ideally you won’t need to be a tech giant or even a dev to do this.

One of these days I’ll write an article or put together a talk to flesh out the idea that decentralized reputation / WoT is analogous to a nuclear reaction.

Y’all seen Oppenheimer? Remember the scene when he describes two things: 1. high energy neutrons, and 2. atoms. Neutrons hit atoms and split them apart, and then the atoms produce neutrons. If 1000 neutrons ==> 999 neutrons, then it fizzles out. But if 1000 neutrons ==> 1001 neutrons, then BOOM.

For decentralized WoT, we also need two things:

1. We need platforms, ontologies, etc that will allow us to pose any question of interest to our WoT.

2. We need to ask out WoT how to build and maintain the aforementioned platforms, ontologies, etc.

The goal should be to build both of the above and to establish a positive feedback loop, analogous to the one between neutrons and atoms, so that each one sustains and grows the other. Up until now, all attempts at WoT have been disappointing. Always seem to fizzle out. What’s the problem? We haven’t achieved critical mass.

To achieve critical mass, we need to build 1. and 2. (above), we have to build them well, and we have to build them in the midst of a permissionless system of social interaction with lots of users, which is what nostr provides.

Once we achieve ignition, it will be like the ignition of a star.

You think bitcoin is world changing? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

🌟 ⭐️ 💫

In my view one of the greatest things about nostr is the opportunity it provides for different people to experiment with different ideas for WoT. WoT has been a seemingly unachievable holy grail for decades. Nostr is the playground where we’ll eventually get it to work.

Fiat economists often make arguments that only make sense if you ignore certain elements of the bigger picture. Example: the (flawed) argument that new technologies, like the cotton gin, are net bad for society bc they cause unemployment. This argument is flawed bc it ignores the fact that in the long run people shift to new jobs. If this were not the case, we would have observed unemployment rise every time new technology is introduced into society over the course of human history. Which means that after thousands of years of innovation, we should be at 99.99% unemployment by now, lol. Obviously this didn’t happen.

The inflation-is-inherently-good and deflation-is-inherently-bad arguments are similarly flawed. Yes, people will be less likely to buy frivolous stuff and more likely to save. Yes, that means some people who produce frivolous goods and services will lose their jobs. But no, that does not mean the unemployment rate will go up and stay up forever. Just like the situation with the cotton gin, the economy will adjust by shifting employment into more productive endeavors.

Think of it this way: under steady state conditions, inflation acts like a force to shift economic activity towards less productive endeavors. Deflation, on the other hand, shifts economic activity towards more productive endeavors. Which is better for society? Obviously the latter.

How long will consumers delay purchasing? Until the day we die? We can’t wait forever. Time is our most precious commodity.

To put it another way: i can’t wait until tomorrow to buy my food. I need to eat today. The same reasoning applies to lots of other things: I need a place to live today. I need clothes today. I need transportation today. Etc.

Even frivolous things: I want entertainment today. The alternative would be to make frivolous purchases … when? Never?