FFS72 - Aleks Svetski

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00]

Aleks: we wanted to Bitcoin model. Bitcoiners have their own style of language, their own sort of model of the world, the way we understand stuff, the and, there's a large corpus of information out there around Bitcoin, from, praxeology, to Bitcoin and mushrooms, to Bitcoin and yoga, to Bitcoin and Death metal, you name it, whatever, right?

It's all out there. And I think that's broad enough for you to be able to, um, build a Bitcoin language model,

this is not something that knows anything. It's just something that reflects. like aggregate of what the Bitcoin paradigm thinks,

Luke: Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn. And today's guest is our friend, Alex Svetsky. You might know him as the co author of the Uncommunist Manifesto. He's also the founder of the Bitcoin Times Magazine, and he's got a really interesting project, the Spirit of Satoshi AI project.

So Alex, welcome to the show.

Aleks: Thank you, man. I thought, I thought you were about to say spirit of Satan, the way you pronounced Satoshi there for a second.

Knut: that's the death metal AI. Uh, Luke is working on that. I think

Luke: got it. Sorry, stuck to [00:01:00] the tongue.

[00:01:00] Spirit of Satoshi - Bitcoin AI

Knut: Alexander, the great welcome. yeah, we'll, Unpack some stuff about the spirit of Satoshi first. So, and you told me a bunch about how this works in Prague and some misconceptions about AI in general. I really love the term you, I think you coined the midwit of Solescence technology instead of artificial intelligence.

So, um, in your mind, why, why is an AI not intelligent?

Aleks: big question. I think, first of all, it's very hard to define intelligence. And from what I at least understand, intelligence seems to have something to do with, agency. I mean, at the very least consciousness, I think is very much got something to do with intelligence. Sorry, consciousness has something very much to do with agency.

And. General intelligence, at least the human flavor of it, definitely has something to do with agency. And I think if we had to... Separate, out machine, quote unquote, intelligence, um, [00:02:00] versus the, the human kind, uh, or the, uh, the alive kind, or the sentient kind, or the conscious kind. Um, I think that's probably the, the central factor.

But beyond just that is the fact that, yeah, intelligence is just a tricky, it's a tricky thing to define, like different people define it different ways. you know, and you have different types of intelligences, um, you know. tell you that a tree is much more intelligent at transforming, you know, sunlight into photosynthesis and growing, you know, and leaves and wood than we are, right?

Um, or that a computer is. So, so like there's, there's so many varied, uh, definitions or domains or contexts. For intelligence that, um, you know, I guess you could argue that machines, uh, intelligent in their specific domain, like obviously a tree can't do what a computer can do. but these things are ultimately fundamentally directed by us.

So I think they're more like [00:03:00] tools than they are, uh, what people conceptualize as, intelligent beings or intelligent agents or intelligent Something, you know, with, with more substance than, um, than what a computer essentially is.

[00:03:13] The Nature of AI

Knut: All right. Uh, so, so what, what is an AI and what does it do then? Uh, and how do you program one? How, and how, how did you get the idea to, uh, to, to build your own and why?

Aleks: So, okay, five questions. Let me, let me start with the first one. Uh, you know, what, what are these things? Um, I think a better definition for, you know, these, these programs essentially is they're probability machines. fundamentally they, you know, you You train them, even the word train is a little bit, uh, misleading, but you, you train them, you, you use the, basically the law of large numbers, to recognize patterns, um, and what we find that is much of the world.

Much [00:04:00] of the things around us have patterns. The problem is that, you know, patterns are infinitely fractal, you know, up and down the spectrum. So you'll never be able to, you know, I believe build something that can analyze all the patterns, right. And, you know, human beings are a unique example of something that is good at both.

like we're good at recognizing patterns across a broad, broad, broad, broad, broad range of things. Um, but we also, you know, combine that with some sort of Fumos or some sort of like internal. drive towards something like, you know, we, we, we have a direction and, you know, an agency, as we were discussing earlier, like we, we have a desire, to go somewhere, but to come back to these machines, like, we have found patterns, not only in mathematics, you know, more recently, obviously with the language models, we found that language is very pattern driven.

and. If we can analyze the patterns, if we can associate numbers or vectors to words and sentences and things like that, [00:05:00] we've been able to build machines which can basically vomit out, strings of sentences, words, paragraphs, whatever, that seemingly represent something intelligent, and You know, this, this is not to say, this is not to talk down and say, oh, you know, these things are useless because they're actually pretty damn interesting.

You can sit there and have a bloody conversation with a computer. That's like wild. Um, you know, this was, I mean, fundamentally, like traditionally, sorry, speaking, this was thought of as the point of reaching general intelligence. Um, you know, unfortunately for the nerds, uh, that wasn't, uh, the outcome of figuring out language.

You know, what we figured out was that language is definitely, or at least the 80 20 rule applies to language, you know, you can get 80 percent of the language, production by, you know, maybe 20 percent of like, maybe what language is made up of, right? You know, um, the other 80%, I don't think will, uh, will ever achieve because the other 80 percent [00:06:00] has, as I said, something to do with consciousness or agency or intent, et cetera.

But we have found a way to use the law of large numbers, uh, to do pretty miraculous things, uh, in the domain of language. And, you know, what these. Probability machines like ChadGPT do is they probabilistically string words together in a basically a sophisticated autocomplete such that it tells you something that is as if a human read it.

Now, not a very intelligent human, not a very creative human, not a very, uh, unique thinking human, but definitely sounds like some form of human built it. And this is where I guess we go into what I call midwit obsolescence technology is that, you know, much of what you'll get out of chat GPT is something that some midwit in some bureaucratic, Institution would have written, you know, someone from New York Times or CNN or something like that, just like fucking a bunch of words that don't actually say or mean or, you know, do anything, but they're just written.

And,[00:07:00] you know, to me, that's really ironic. It's that the, the very people who these models are most likely to replace. are the same kind of people who build these things, um, which to me is, it's quite funny. and that's why I said like, you know, maybe the greatest invention here is the Midwood Obsolescence piece.

So I don't know if you want me to stop there for a bit before we go into what I decided to do in this space, um, or if you want me to continue

Knut: Only one point about that. It's, it's funny how a funny observation is like computers in movies from the seventies and early eighties were doing exactly this. You were talking to a computer. What they didn't predict is that graphics would. outpace this kind of technology. People thought that this would be the thing early on, but, but, uh, we haven't had it until now really that the computers could, could do these things.

Aleks: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's computation. Once again, like if we, if we had to pick what element of [00:08:00] intelligence, you know, we've sort of cracked here is we've, we've cracked the language element of computational intelligence. and, you know, my, my, my understanding, at least that's quite narrow in the broad spectrum of what intelligence is.

are, right, like we mentioned earlier, with like, trees have an intelligence, you know, like the panther has like, incredible physical bodily intelligence, a motherfucking panther can jump from a tree to a tree, good luck, you know, the computer doing that, so, so like, these things You know, very, and it's, it's, you know, it's very easy for us to, you know, human beings are like that.

We, we, our imagination extrapolates things out. Like I remember when chat GPT first came out, they're like, you know, GPT 3. 5, you know, it was trained on the whole internet, which is wrong in the first place, but you know, that's whatever I'm saying. And like chat GPT 4 is going to be an order of magnitude bigger and then an order of magnitude.

And like within 12 months we'll have AGI and you know, like it's all over. And like there was this guy that I was following when I first went down the rabbit hole. And he's, you know, one of the so called the best, [00:09:00] uh, AI engineers in the world. And for the last year, I swear to God, 90 percent of his videos, the thumbnails is AGI around the corner, like months away, months away.

It's just like the same thing around. I'm like, bro, you don't get it.

[00:09:13] Midwit Obsolescence

Knut: Speaking of, speaking about pattern recognition, it's so funny because that AGI is around the corner or a Skynet is coming or whatever. It sounds a lot like Other, you know, tabloid journalism, like, oh, they finally found Life on Mars. That, that's a, that has been a headline in Popular Science magazines for 40 years now.

Aleks: Yeah, the sea levels are rising. We're all going to die. You know, like the it's, you know, it's blazing hot in Europe. Everyone's going to burn.

Knut: so, so, but, but, but the, the pattern I recognize here is that. Journalism sort of cracked that code as well, like, by, by, by being deliberate midwits, they created an analog AI before [00:10:00] AI was invented, because like, AI is totally, like, replaces journalism first, right? Because it's so easy to write some bullshit about some other bullshit, it's, it's, it's literally parroting.

Aleks: This touches on an interesting point. So like, one of the things we've realized with these models is that they're essentially mirrors of what you train them on. And I think fundamentally, because most of the shit out there on the internet these days, it's just been written by the middle of the bell curve midwits.

Like, think about like the average blog, It's, you know, it's, it's in the word it's average, you know, like think about the average, you know, newspaper, the average, you know, write up from a journal, like all of stuff. So that makes up the corpus of data. Think about Wikipedia, like, you know, if you want to think what mid is like, go read Wikipedia.

Um, and, you know, you sort of get a sense of this stuff. And this is what a lot of the models are just trained on, like whether they're open source or closed source, it doesn't matter. Like the, the, the kind of corpus of data that these things are trained on is pretty similar. [00:11:00] Like, you know, Falcon, Lama, ChadGBT, you name it, you know, the new competitors, all this sort of stuff.

It's all very similar. You know, maybe arguably the only one that's substantially different at this point is Elon's one that he's messing around with because he's got Twitter data in there and Twitter is like, you know, definitely a different DataSource. but you know, we'll, um, you know, we'll sort of see where this goes, but yeah, you touched on an interesting point, which is if the majority of stuff, if 80 percent of the stuff that's out there that's been written by midwits, then, you know, the model is obviously going to sound like a midwit. Which is essentially what it is

[00:11:34] Building the Spirit of Satoshi

Knut: So, so you told me that when, when you built the spirit of Satoshi, that in order to train it, for lack of a better word, you need to rewrite everything into questions and answers,

Aleks: once again, depending on the outcome, right? So like if we want to, um, so this is the mirroring that I just mentioned before is if you want a model to answer questions, you need to train it with question and answer pairs. So you basically need to give it examples. Um, there's [00:12:00] no point in getting big chunks of paragraphs from books and feeding it.

Because there's no example of a question or an answer there. So these things, as I said, this is actually a perfect segue from what we were saying, is like they're mirroring machines. So they, they, you know, the patterns that you give it enough times, uh, it seems to be able to reconstruct that, back at you.

And this, this is why we wanted to Bitcoin model. Is because, you know, Bitcoiners have their own style of language, you know, their own sort of model of the world, the way we understand stuff, the way we perceive stuff, and, you know, there's a large corpus of information out there around Bitcoin, you know, like, I mean, there's everything from, you know, Bitcoin and praxeology, to Bitcoin and mushrooms, to Bitcoin and yoga, to Bitcoin and Death metal, you name it, whatever, right?

It's all out there. Um, you know, later we'll talk about Bitcoin and Nietzsche, which is something that I've started to write about. So there's like, there's, there's all sorts of stuff out there. And I think that's [00:13:00] broad enough for you to be able to, um, fingers crossed, uh, build a Bitcoin language model, which is not something like, I want to be very clear.

This is not something that knows anything. It's just something that reflects. Uh, what some, you know, you could guess like aggregate of what the Bitcoin paradigm thinks, like it could reflect, uh, elements of that and you can almost think of the reflection almost as a, like, it's not like a straight mirror, it's kind of like a Yeah.

You know, like a cracked mirror. So depending on how you prompt it, it'll reflect a different element. You know, you could ask it, you know, tell me something more like Seyfriedine or more like Breedlove or Jeff Booth or Knut or whatever, like, you know, it adapts. So it's like a, it's like a simultaneously high fidelity, but multi faceted reflection.

And that's, that's very interesting. Once again, like, I don't want to sound like I'm Completely bagging out AI. It's, it's obviously, you know, humans are really funny. Like, [00:14:00] two years ago you would have said like, Oh, you can talk to computers. You'd be like, get the fuck out of here. And then all of a sudden you can talk to computers.

Everyone's like, Oh my God, it's going to take over the world. And then a year later, everyone's like bored. And, you know, onto the next current thing. Right. So it's like, it is miraculous. It is very, very interesting. But, you know, the, the question for me becomes, okay, cool tool. What do we use it for? Do we use it to, like, basically entrain everybody on the planet to become, midwits?

Uh, and make more and more people midwits, or should we attempt to like fork off and you know, build a version that, you know, represents a different concept of the world?

Knut: the ubermensch, the remnant, the remnant.

Aleks: Yes. I mean, I wanted to call the business Remnant AI at one point.

Knut: This is so interesting that you use the word mirrors, mirrors consciousness, because that's, that's one of the deeper points we got into with Jeff Booth the other day about, um, how reality. is a mirror of your [00:15:00] consciousness, and we got into this, talk about, you know, the quantum mechanics and the double split experiment, and to which extent the mind creates reality, and the, the, the tweetable quote from the episode was that, uh, reality is a mirror of your consciousness, so we're, this is sort of a life imitating art, art imitating life type of deal that the AI is actually The more you train it, the more it becomes like a mirror of what we are.

Uh, yeah. And also, yeah, I was very impressed by, by Spirit of Satoshi's, condensed version of the chapter from my book, like, and, uh, it, it came up with its own word, uh, quantum money, which sounds. Like a tabloid term, but, but it explained it very thoroughly and got the points and yeah, it was really cool.

Aleks: Yeah. I mean, mind you, that wasn't entirely the AI though. So that's like, we use the AI plus ourselves internally. So I just want everybody to [00:16:00] know that full disclosure, you know, so when they start using, spirit stations, like, Oh, I didn't produce this. Well, no, like it's, it's still a work in progress, but yeah, there's, uh, there's some interesting insights and some nuggets that can pull.

And this is once, once again, it's like human beings. Well, you know, where we innovate is when two or multiple ideas kind of like clash, right? And somewhere in that Venn diagram, we're able to extract something we're like, Oh, you know, is something fresh, something new. And, you know, to, to some degree, these models, uh, may offer up a way to do that sometimes, but I think it's almost like a lottery, right?

So most of the times, like, you know, you'd be like, regenerate, regenerate, regenerate, it's not gonna produce anything useful. And then all of a sudden, like, it'll Plop one thing out, you'll be like, oh shit, that's actually kind of cool, quantum money. and you know, you, you roll with that. So, you know, once again, it just reinforces the fact that these things are tools and it's, it's up to humans to use the tool.

Um, you know, it's not like, you know, I just, I'm [00:17:00] sick and tired of people just running around being like, oh, you know, AI is going to take over everything. And it's like, like, it's no man, like. Just like computers automated a bunch of things, like, we don't sit there and draw spreadsheets on a piece of paper anymore, like, Excel does that, but you need to use Excel, you know, the same thing with these tools, like, you just need to act, you know, you need to use them intelligently, and the intelligence in using them comes in two ways, like, number one, finding things that you can do, that you can ideally, like, Automate, but also not automating to the degree that you become stupid and can't think anymore.

Like I know people that sit there and they use it for all their ideation. Um, or, you know, they get it to write stuff for them. Like there was apparently some Bitcoin book that the dude wrote with, um, using chat GPT primarily. to me, that's, first, it's an abomination, but, um, second, like, I'll clarify, it's an abomination to get an AI to write your book and then say you wrote it.

[00:18:00] Like if, you know, maybe you write a book and just say that AI wrote it. That's kind of cool. But, um, you know, to, to do that, I think what it does is it actually weakens your own muscle of writing and thinking. And, I don't know, there's a couple of threads we can pull on there, but,

Knut: Yeah. On that point, I, I just heard today about some court case where, where someone was sued for, for using text from chat GPT and trying to cop, uh, copyright it. So you can't really write a book and copyright it. I mean, I think copyright laws are bullshit anyway, but in the current legal system, you can't copy paste something from, from chat.

tpt and, and release it under your name under, without, uh, being at least at risk of getting sued by, by someone.

Aleks: Who sued him in the end? That's, that's interesting.

Knut: don't know. I, I mean, I, I, um, I just heard this story briefly from a couple of people I talked to today and I, I don't know the intricacies of it. So, [00:19:00] uh, well, but it sounds like something interesting to look into, because like this is, this is one of the reasons why I don't like intellectual property laws.

It's like, how can you copyright words? Like, how can you copyright? It's like Orange Pill App got sued by the company Orange, the mobile service provider Orange in, uh, uh, Europe, because the word orange is apparently patented, which immediately made me think, okay, who's got the word black, like,

Luke: There was this artist who copyrighted or patented a formula for the deepest black you could make. I think it was called Vantablack or something like that. And it was that he was the only one who was allowed to use this color of black in art. anywhere just similar insanity and i think some people did some uh made uh like counterfeit versions of that or something and and and used it to to devalue it it was it was some fun stuff but

Knut: it's so retarded. I mean, black is just [00:20:00] the absence of light. That's what it is. But apparently it can be patented.

[00:20:05] Bitcoin and Nietzsche

Knut: so on to Nietzsche. This is very interesting. You, you, you just showed us an article here that you're working on for, or have written for, uh, for an upcoming issue of, uh, the Bitcoin Times, it's about Nietzsche and Bitcoin and this, this old, uh, you've dug up the old idea of the uber bench, which I find interesting and how The urge for power is not necessarily a bad thing, so, uh, and that power, this notion that power corrupts is off because it's so diluted by, I guess, this was my interpretation from just skimming through the article, but that I agreed with a lot of the points, like But, uh, money does not corrupt if the money is not corrupted itself.

Like you need corrupt money in order for, for money to corrupt [00:21:00] us all. So, so can you unpack the article a bit for us and tell us what it's about?

Aleks: I think, I think we are, um, we are drowning in a, in a world full of like, Marxist, leftist, French revolutionist, platitudes, like things like, oh, power is evil. And, you know, like, we are all in this together and, you know, the average man and all this sort of stuff. And I think what we've done is we've, Devolved society into this, um, praise of the peasants, you know, like, or the, the, the praise of like the average man, like we, we've, we've shunned, uh, excellence as an ideal. We've shunned, you know, greatness and like, we've, we've forgotten that there was fundamentally extraordinary, incredible men throughout history.

We literally changed the course of. The course of everything. Um, and, you know, there was this, uh, recent, uh, article written about like, uh, Napoleon, right? Like the, the new [00:22:00] movie. And I think something about the article in the headline was, um, no matter how much we progress as a society, we still can't get away from the stupid idea that, these great men who influenced the world.

And like, you know, it was one of those classic New York times, Midway articles. Right. And, you know, there's like. There's like a, a deep level of like resentment, envy, in that kind of thing, right? It's like you see someone, who has fundamentally done more than you and is therefore better than you. Like, you, you immediately need to sit there from your shitty little computer and just like write out.

Uh, something about how, uh, you know, Napoleon was short and fuck him and, you know, yeah, fuck every great person. Like, that's basically what their, um, what their stuff amounts to. And, honestly, like over the last couple of years, I've, I've started to really question this narrative. Like, you know, question the pleb narrative question, like The kind of, even like the [00:23:00] word we are all Satoshi kind of pisses me off.

We're not all fucking Satoshi. Satoshi did something greater than all of us did, so shut the fuck up, you're not Satoshi. Like, all of these things sort of like grind my gears the wrong way. and I think it's about time that we recognize that the biggest problem, I think even more, more great than the money being broken, is that people's relationship to life.

the will of life to vitality to excellence, I think that's broken and I actually think that's what preceded bringing us to, the state where, we decided to debase the money. Um, so, so in fact, like I've come to this realization that it's, you know, the money is not the root cause of all the problems.

There's something upstream, which leads us to the point where we are willing to debase the money as a civilization. And then. Things accelerate downwards, um, so like the decay sets in much earlier, and I [00:24:00] think for our western modern world, that decay started with the French Revolution, not, uh, not in 1971, um, so it started, started behind that, but

[00:24:09] Legacy of the French Revolution

Knut: No, but the, the, the French revolution is, is, um, interesting here because they, they killed a lot of, uh, monarchs and Lords during that, right. And that's the, so, so I, I guess your point is that. The envy drove that revolution,

Aleks: 100%, 100%. You look at what, you know, Rose Pierre, what was he? He was the, he was the genesis of communism. Like that's where it all started. Like Karl Marx emulated his thing on Rose Pierre and said, no, we need to do this a bit better. And he found, um, the, the, the right class and the right message, to really drive.

leftism, liberalism, and all these sort of ideals, and since then the world's been suffering.

Knut: but the revolution wouldn't, it doesn't, it didn't come [00:25:00] out of nowhere. These people were pissed off because the people in power were abusing it to some extent, right?

Aleks: To some extent. So there was, there was a bit of, um, there was a bit of bad luck and a bit of lack of strength from the monarchy and the leadership at the time. I believe it was Louis XIV that got guillotined or was it XVI? I always mix up the numbers. It was 16, right? Yeah, okay. So yeah, 14th was Louis the Great, right?

Like the guy who, yeah, he was the based one. So like, if Louis the 14th was around, um, I don't think the French Revolution would have happened. 16th was a bit of a pussy.

Knut: Okay, so, so, okay, let's get the names right. Louis the based and Louis the debased.

Aleks: Yes, exactly. There we go. Done. so Louis the Debased was, uh, was a bit of a pussy. He, he... Basically preferred just, keeping as private as possible, like reading his books and all this sort of stuff. So he had a, he, he didn't have a, like what, you know, Nietzsche might've called like a vital soul, right?

Or he, he wasn't a [00:26:00] strong man, you know, in that cycle, strong men, uh, good times, good times, weak men, et cetera. Right. So. He had kind of inherited this, uh, this powerful, fundamentally, um, well formed, uh, society. And then there was a couple of players like your, um, your Benjamin Disraeli, your, um, your, like there was a couple of the aristocrats who started at some point promoting the idea that, uh, we need to give, uh, more rights to common people, et cetera.

And there was a, there was a series of like, unfortunate events at the time. Now, like it's been a couple of years since I've really dug into the French revolution, but there was some losses out at sea. there was some bad luck, uh, with. the sugar imports and all that sort of stuff.

There was some bad luck with famines. Like, uh, I think there was a drought or flooding or something like that, where there was, you know, back to back, I think a season or two [00:27:00] of like lack of wheat and grain. And people started looking for someone or something to blame. And Louis the 16th, instead of solving the problem, basically abdicated his responsibility.

And the, the interesting thing about the French Revolution is that there was no like call to kill the king in the beginning. That kind of got fermented over time. Like there was, you know, there French wanted

betrayal. The new wealthy that had come into the aristocratic class that were more from a merchant class. They weren't from the old feudal class. They were more from, you know, they were, they'd kind of like made money as the traders, you know, the money changers. And they came in and they started, you know, fomenting this like, uh, idea of, Hey, you know, we need something new because it's.

It's all the king's fault, it's all the monarchy's fault that, um, these famines are happening, et cetera, et cetera. And like, as, as we know, things don't [00:28:00] happen overnight, right? Like the Nazis didn't start killing everyone overnight, like things happen step by step by step by step. And all of a sudden, you know, like, uh, inch by inch, a year later, you're in a completely different place.

And, and that's kind of a similar thing that happened, uh, In the French Revolution, but from that, you had these characters stem like Roche Pierre, um, who was, you know, the, the big, uh, sort of, you know, the, the leader of the, the liberal, uh, the, the Jacobins basically at the time, was the leader of the Jacobins?

I think so. Um, and the Jacobins were the original Marxists, the original communists, like they wanted to strip everything from the monarchs and give everything out to everybody. And I mean, you know, that ended in like the terror. Uh, you know, basically they started killing everybody and like surveillance, community surveillance, dobbing on your neighbors started in the French Revolution.

It was the first time that kind of stuff was done. Like they went and they encouraged particularly, particularly, particularly, particularly the women to dob on, [00:29:00] their husbands and to gossip and to spread that information. And I went and started like killing everybody who dissented, um, you know, for the good of the average man.

And, um, and then the thing became so deranged that they all started like killing each other because, you know, it was just like, you know, classic communism, right? Inaction. And then in the end, uh, Rose Pierre got, uh, guillotined. So it was just this big fucking clusterfuck where, you know, There was more bloodshed, um, during that period of quote unquote, you know, revolution and liberating themselves from the oppressive patriarchy that they absolutely like France was the most powerful nation on the planet by orders of magnitude.

And they basically decapitated themselves out of their own stupidity. And then that's when England, uh, took over, became dominant, et cetera, et cetera. And then like France has been downhill, uh, ever since.

[00:29:58] Building Dynastic Wealth

Knut: Yeah, it's quite [00:30:00] something, like the, the, speaking of greatness and monarchies, my mind goes directly to Austria Hungary, that empire, which was made out of small cantons with lords and stuff, and small kings, and the brainpower that came out of that in the late 19th century, It's just staggering. Like all the big names in philosophy and music and you name it like this.

Some, we're doing something wrong now that we can't produce that kind of, that kind of folk.

Aleks: A hundred percent because like what you get when you build a dynastic wealth, for example, and you, and you basically, and people don't like to talk about this, but like what the, what the aristocratic and aristocrat just means the best, like, you know, aristocratia is like, uh, the, uh, rule of the best.

Uh, so it's made up of two words, uh, in, in Greek and. what it meant was, like, selectively choosing, [00:31:00] you know, who you want it to breed with, you know, fundamentally and training your children, your offspring to be the best so that they could carry on the family's wealth and continue that. And what you got after generations of doing so is, yes, sometimes you got like, Pathetic, entitled little shits, um, but more often than not, you got the Wagners, you got the von Mises, like, you know, Ludwig von Mises was part of a, a, um, a cultured, like, count aristocratic class.

Like, you get people who have the space to think. And to create and to produce stuff instead of being, you know, just like we are today. Like we don't know which way to turn. Inflation's fucking climbing. We can't, you know, feed our families. You know, the wife and the husband have to work. The kids are fucking neglected.

Like it's a disaster. Whereas when you have the capacity to, to pass down wealth, you can actually build culture. And, and, if there's one thing missing, [00:32:00] like really, really, really, really, really deeply missing from the modern world is like, It's culture. Like America was probably the last place where we got a dose of culture, you know, between like the sixties and the, and the nineties.

and you know, that was like, like one last hurrah of like, you know, America did create its own, like, you know, there was Hollywood blockbusters, you know, there was like cool music or all that sort of shit. And now that's like dead, finished, gone. There's no

Knut: Robocop was actually the peak of American culture, I

Aleks: Probably Robocop or, you know, one of those like around then. And, you know, We ain't got shit anymore.

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[00:34:20] Bitcoin and Power

Knut: This ties in beautifully to your article because like, uh, I've, I've been thinking about this for years that, uh, Bitcoin actually, what generational wealth means is that we're all, uh, uh, potential feudal lords now because we can actually plan for generations ahead. And some people will, and those people's grandchildren will be in positions of more power when they grow up.

So, so like, how does that tie into your article and what's your thoughts about that? Yeah,

Aleks: the biggest, like, uh, unpopular opinions in Bitcoin, right? Like Bitcoin, Bitcoin is generally like to talk about, [00:35:00] you know, banking the unbanked and all this sort of stuff. You say the word feudalism and they have an allergic reaction. They're like, Oh my God, he's, you know, he's a fascist.

and you know, they, they sort of run in the opposite direction. Uh, I actually think, as you just said, you just really hit the nail on the head, one of Bitcoin's most fundamental, benefits or the, you know, the fundamental impact that it's going to have on civilization is that it'll allow certain families, certain holders to preserve their wealth across time to such a degree that it becomes generational wealth and the generations that, That are most able to continue sustaining that wealth. So it's almost like a meritocratic feudalism, right? And this is what I think is like peak civilization, right? Is that you can have the wealth passed down to you and you can be a complete monkey and squander it. or you can actually build on that by.

Breeding by building a family by training your [00:36:00] kids, like all of that sort of stuff that the traditional aristocrats did. Like that's what the kings and queens and the aristocratic classes did. They put, they put a shitload of effort into thinking about who do I not only just strategically Mary with, but who is, you know, the right person, you know, that like, that is going to help me breed the best kids, et cetera, et cetera.

Like all of that sort of stuff was the kind of thinking we had. We kind of lost all of that in the last few hundred years because now you can't say anything. Otherwise you're a fucking eugenicist.

Knut: so what people need to get is that this does not automatically mean that we all become Tywin Lannister. It means that responsible people will be able to be feudal, because feudalism had a lot of problems, because you could acquire wealth by force way easier than you can on a Bitcoin standard, I guess.

Aleks: well, there's that. Yeah, there's that. And I think the, the piece about Bitcoin that, you know, is very, very special here is the. one, it's much harder to take it by force. So you need to be more [00:37:00] intelligent about how you take it. But also number two is mistakes have a real cost. Um, so you can't print your way out of, losing your Bitcoin.

and, and, and that's what that is. That's the hack that has happened in the modern world. Is that a small percentage of like. Absolutely ugly, disgusting, you know, vile people have figured out they can pay for every single one of their mistakes with somebody else's money, uh, by printing it. And therefore they are not the best.

They are the worst of people because it's kind of like when you go watch a sport, right? And you, you know, someone cheats, nobody likes the fucking cheater. And, and, and that's the game sort of that we're playing at the moment is like the people winning are the people who, who are cheating. Like they have MBAs, they like have PhDs in how to cheat and avoid either getting busted [00:38:00] or, you know, even if they do get busted, still make you feel bad about it or blame it on somebody else.

It was like, it was him that did it, not me. So it's like, You know, the, the, the, the consequences associated to poor decision making and irresponsibility, uh, literally shared amongst everyone. And this goes all the way back to, once again, the French Revolution is the French Revolution. When you put the power in people's hands and allow everybody to vote, then everybody simultaneously becomes responsible for everything.

Whereas when you had a feudal class, there was different responsibilities at different levels. Um, you know, the peasants were not responsible for protecting the territory. It was the knights. And when the Knights, like they're the ones who went and fought, right? So like everybody had a different, uh, responsibility and now everybody's responsibility is intermingled.

Therefore, nobody's responsible for anything except the fact that you're responsible for being. Born a male, being white, and for the weather, right? They're the three things we're all responsible for.

Knut: Yeah. And [00:39:00] on that note, if, if it's true, like the, the things we taught, we've been talking about a lot, a lot lately, that the reality is a reflection of your actions and your consciousness and your conscious decisions to do this or that, the, uh, rise of, uh, the transsexual athletes winning women's sports is exactly that.

It's a reflection of, uh, of this bullshit going on on top when cheaters can win the game of money.

Aleks: Exactly. That that's so, so we, we, we, uh, yeah, we're sort of, you know, we were way like manifesting all of the ugliness that is like inherent in our thoughts. We are, we are manifesting all the average, you know, we are manifesting like, like we're tearing down anything that Is reminding us of like the beauty that we're able to create because like inside we've become ugly, we've become envious, we've become resentful.

And this was, this was Nietzsche's big sort of lesson out there for [00:40:00] humanity. So like, if we orient ourselves around you know, resentment for greatness and praise of average and praise of equality. we are going to create a civilization that, uh, devolves into what he called the last man, right? And the last man, we today would call it the lemmings or the NPCs, um, or, you know, the peasants, whatever you want to call them.

Right. But

[00:40:27] Schooling for Average

Knut: yeah, okay, uh, I had so many thoughts here, like, uh, one of my favorite sentences from one of my own books is a sentence I stole directly from Daniel Prince, and it's about schooling.

Uh, you know, he's talking about homeschooling all the time, and it's this, if you're a straight A student, you excel, uh, at being average.

Aleks: Interesting.

Knut: And it's so true. So I was helping my son with his maths homework today and yesterday and the day before that, because he has [00:41:00] homework every day, which totally takes the fun out of learning. Yeah. And the way maths is still taught in schools, uh, is You get these problems that you need to solve and the teacher looks at how you solve them and not the result you get.

So to me, math is all about understanding the world and getting the correct result in the end and how you get there. is none of the teacher's fucking business. You should just get the fucking best, you should, can I solve the problem or not? And if, if a, a type of solution is suitable for my brain, then I should use that solution and not some forced fucking bullshit.

Aleks: Formula, right? Yeah.

Knut: yeah, so it's all, that is calculation. It's not mathematics, it's calculation. Mathematics is about understanding this shit. So, and so even from this, Uh, from this early age, like he's 12 now. So, but, uh, [00:42:00] it's still baffles me that this is the way we, public schools teach children how to do stuff.

And of course it makes sense when you see that they don't want obedient, obedient slaves and not thinking people on the other side, it rewards obedience more than anything else.

Aleks: Yeah, I mean, this is the plague of the last man, man, you just flashed me back to, um, to my high school years, because that was one of the things like, and this, you know, I was a kid, this was long before I read Nietzsche or understood Bitcoin or Agnostic or anything like that, but I used to argue with teachers all the time, they'd make us memorize formulas.

And I was like, I don't give a fuck. Like, I'm going to work it out myself. And, you know, I'd, I'd always have brawls and dude, I was the best mathematician in our class, um, by far, I, I went to the, to the exams without a calculator and I whooped everyone's ass, um, because I just had a way of like working out the problems and that's exactly what I did.

And that's how I got through high school, that's how I got scholarships and all [00:43:00] this sort of stuff. Um, and it was all because I went and solved problems and I didn't, I didn't have this language for it. I didn't know what I was doing. Like, I didn't know that I was doing something different to calculational formulas.

I just like hated this idea that everyone in the class was just like following a formula and just like, yeah, here's my formula. Copy across. Okay. Now I just like put this into a calculator and I get the answer. I was like, you didn't fucking learn anything. You literally didn't learn anything. You fucking moron.

You just like typed in some buttons on a calculator. What the fuck?

Knut: And this week of helping him with his homework, it's been taking me back to my school years and how much I hated them. I remember in, yeah, I was around 14, 15 maybe, and my English teacher Downgraded me when I thought I had, uh, performed well and that I would get the highest grade. Instead, I got an even lower grade than I got because, uh, and I came to her with like the, oh, I, I, uh, I, I scored top points on this national test or [00:44:00] whatever.

So why are you downgrading me? It's because you can tell by the way you do your homework that you, uh, you write synonyms instead of the words I want you to write. Yeah, but that means I know more English like, uh, so, but, but this is, these are just two examples of, or three of how, uh, how fuck that is. So okay.

Back, back to, okay. Back to Nietzsche.

[00:44:25] Quality and Equality

Aleks: Back to nature. Uh, I mean, I, I just pulled up the article cause I wanted to like pull on a couple threads here. So like One of the, uh, I guess sections in the essays, uh, quality over quantity. And I think this is like one of the big misconceptions, in the modern world as well. Like there's a, like, it's funny, man, etymology is such an interesting, you know, etymology and philology and just like playing around with words is so interesting.

Um, like you look at. equality and equality, like, are almost, like, diametrically opposed. When you get equality, you get the [00:45:00] opposite of quality. You get mass, you get quantity, you get numbers, um, you know, you get, ooh.

Knut: So should we use the, uh, term A quality instead or instead of E quality?

Aleks: Uh, no, we should just, this, we should get rid of equality and just like stick with quality. That's it. That should be the focus. Because like, you know, I explored this in the essay and like, I've actually got a dedicated article about quality versus equality for Bitcoin Magazine that'll get published in their last edition of the year.

But for this, I touch on it in here and I kind of, let me, let me pull that next excerpt from here. So I say, you know, second, Bitcoin is money with a high degree of quality. The quantitative element is fixed and predetermined, making it something with an increase in quality and therefore value over time.

That which has quality has weight and energy. Bitcoin, like gold, like has gravitas, like it's got some sort of substance. It means something because it is scarce. The quantity... [00:46:00] is finite. When you hand someone a gold coin, you can feel it. There's something visceral about it. You know, and Bitcoin carries a similar charge, despite only having existed for 14 years.

Um, and then I also like imagine the charge that it will carry after another half century. It's the same reason a mountain Uh, has presence, you know, something that has been there for a long time, something that has presence, has gravitas, has weight and, you know, the next paragraph I want to read this is contrast that with fiat money, the abstract, flimsy, promissory note that can be created out of thin air.

And change it on a whim. It lacks both weight and substance. It is conceptual and theatrical in nature. Even think about the term quantitative easing. You know, what does this process mean? Like quantitative easing is the process of increasing the quantity of the money by making it easier to produce. This of course occurs at the expense of its promise and the quality.

And makes money easy or soft, so therefore people rightly do not trust [00:47:00] it like they do a medal, and even less so when it's digits on a screen. Uh, this is why fiat money is in the death spiral. It is hollow and devoid of life force. It carries nothing but the empty promise of a group of bureaucrats. So like, I think there's, you know, this, this quantity or quality, uh, discussion is really, really important.

And, I mean, it perfectly ties into Nietzsche because Nietzsche's whole philosophy revolves around quality. Vitality, energy, power, as opposed to the quantity oriented philosophy of equality, democracy, the masses, the vote, and all this sort of crap.

Knut: Yeah. Quantitative easing is qualitative difficulting or decreasing. Yeah. Yeah.

Aleks: exactly. So it's qualitative destruction, basically. Quantitative easing is qualitative destruction. Yeah.

Knut: so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That, that dichotomy is everywhere in Bitcoin, like

Aleks: Yeah, it really is. So, and, and the, um, I mean, you, you, you see the opposite, like, [00:48:00] this is one of the things that I love about Bitcoin. And I've said this on a couple of different spaces before is we live in a, you know, in a world of like mass media, mass plastics, mass fucking, you know, The, we now have 5, 000 friends on, you know, on Facebook instead of like, we used to have, you know, 50 friends in the community, like everything is mass oriented, like mass food, mass seed oils, mass fucking production, mass GMO, like all of this stuff we have, like everything is becoming inflated.

Like even chat GPT and AI is like, now we're going to have more blogs and more words and more content and more data. And more websites and more tools and more fucking everything. And like the, the entire focus of the world at the moment is on quantity, not on quality. And that's why nothing works anymore.

It's like, you know, you, you, you buy something, it breaks and you just buy the same plastic shit again and you just keep buying shit [00:49:00] versus having a focus on quality. And I think this is, um, I don't know, it's, for me, it's a big takeaway for people to, you know, stop and think like, we need. Like, if you make the North Star of your civilization quantity or equality, for example, they sort of sit in the same bucket, you'll absolutely eradicate quality.

And then the joke's on you because you'll eradicate the quantity as well, because everyone will start dying off from starvation and irrelevance. but if you make. The, the focus quality, you'll push the bounds, you know, you'll raise all other boats and you'll actually make room for quantity, and life can continue to prosper.

and it's just, it's just so interesting to me that, you know, we have made quantity the focus or equality the focus, and in the process we're destroying, like. We're destroying both the quantum side of things and the, uh, and the qualitative side of things. and it's just [00:50:00] so, I don't know, it just becomes so evident after a while.

You're like, man, what are we doing? What are we doing?

Knut: Uh, it's like . The, uh, the only way to reach equality in a society is through natural disasters such as, you know, a volcano or, or, uh, a flooding or, uh, a tsunami or, uh, an earthquake or communism or socialism, like. Because they're all natural disasters, uh, some of them designed to, to, to, to deliberately trying to make people equal.

That's extremely evil at its core. The only way to do that is, you can't make a person better. From a position of power, you can make them worse, you can give them the tools to make themselves better. But you know, it's like, teach, give a man a fire and warm him for a day, and set the man on fire and warm him for the rest of your life.

Like, that's, uh, uh, maybe I got that wrong.

Aleks: That one's great. [00:51:00] I'm going to use that one. That one's fantastic. Um, well, let, let me. Thank you.

Knut: quote, yeah.

Aleks: I love it. Um, man, I've still, I've still got to start listening to his book. I actually, I downloaded the other one, God's Guards, that you mentioned. So it's sitting there. Um, I've got to get to it. I was just finishing up another Wilbur Smith book.

Eight books in.

Knut: Yeah, I started one, uh,

Aleks: you start the Lion Feats?

Knut: yeah, I did. And I really like the language. I really like the words, but I don't really like fiction. Like, I just realized I can't read fiction. Like, I don't have the time or, like, I would need to, to, to, to read that all in one go. Like, I, because I can't focus.

Aleks: Chuck it on two times speed and just like chill out, relax when you're traveling or whatever, and just like follow the story. Trust me. I mean, it's a muscle. It's a muscle. You got to like, you got to build it.

Knut: flight to Australia or something.

Aleks: Okay. Yeah. Deal. Or come to Brazil.

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[00:53:49] Equality of Outcome vs Equality of Opportunity

Aleks: there was something I wanted to say about what we were just talking about before. , oh yeah, actually that, uh, equality, equality of, um, so, people go on about like, oh, you know, equality of [00:54:00] outcome is obviously evil, what we should be focusing on is equality of opportunity, and, you know, I, When you actually think about what that means is equality of opportunity, like equality of outcome is fundamentally evil because it's just like, it's, it's about as fucking dumb as you could possibly get.

You have to be either, yeah, you, you have to be born with your brain in your asshole or something like that to actually think that that's a good idea. Um, but equality of opportunity is just the stupidity. Or a fantasy, because like, people throw it around like, oh yeah, we need to give everybody the same opportunity, but that is fundamentally impossible, because as you said, unless you, like, you set every volcano off in the world at once, and like, melt everything, and just like, Start the world from scratch, basically confiscate everyone's parents, um, like wealth.

So that way everyone starts from scratch and you then also give everybody the same genetics and same brain and same predispositions and same everything. You're just [00:55:00] not going to have the quality opportunity. Like it's, it's a scam.

Knut: It's as evil as equality of outcome, because what it does, it removes parenting from the equation completely, because the only way to do it is by grave robber tax, like inheritance tax. That's the only way to get anywhere near equality of opportunity. Fortunately, it doesn't work with Bitcoin.

Aleks: Yeah. I mean, Grave Robber's text and like. Some sort of territorial homogenization and like, it's, it's all these things. It's

Knut: But there's a thing that it's, it's, uh, if you believe that, then, then what that implies is the outsourcing of responsibility for the next generation from the family to the state. That's what it does. That's what it effectively means. So you put everyone in the same indoctrination camp and you steal all the parents money.

Except for the lunchbox or something. And, uh, and then you, uh, and then you mold everyone into [00:56:00] the same fucking, I mean, I, I hate, I hate the term because it gets thrown around all the

Aleks: as if it's some sort of virtuous pursuit. Right. Yeah.

Knut: yeah, yeah, yeah. We should strive for equality of, uh, opportunity instead. No, heck not. We shouldn't, we should, we should strive for, uh, for whatever the fuck we want.

And I should strive for what I want and you should strive for what you want. Uh, what you want. Like, that's it. Equality of, uh, yeah, I don't know. Equality of non interference. That's, that's what to strive for.

Aleks: this is where it's like, you know, I just think we just burn the word equality altogether and just like focus on, fairness and excellence. Like they're the two things, because like, you know, at the end of the day, If I want to be, excellent and you want to be average, like I'm going to pay the price for being excellent, which is I'm going to work my ass off.

I'm going to sacrifice time, energy, [00:57:00] you know, effort, money, whatever I'm going to do to be that, but then I'm going to reap the rewards for it. You know, if you want to pay the price for being average, it's a very low price, you know, because average is. You know, cheap, don't do anything. You'll be pretty average, uh, but you'll also reap those rewards.

And, and this is, I mean, this has, and always will be the rule of life and the, the bunch of bumbling average fools, um, or, or, you know, maybe Mostly like the parasites who saw an opportunity to lie to the average peasant, the average monkey, and teach him to like, feel like he's entitled to something that the excellent person produces has created a world in which like, you know, the, the, the lemmings are weaponized against those who are truly.

Fundamentally great or excellent or productive or anything like that. I mean, this is the Ayn Randian, uh, reality when she, she described it. And like long before she did, like Nietzsche just basically warned about this, um, [00:58:00] and said that this is exactly where the world's going, uh, at a time when nobody would have thought that, like it was, you know, Pre 1900s, you know, Europe was at its peak, all that sort of stuff.

And he sensed that this was coming. This is why I think like he's one of the greatest prophets, uh, of all time in terms of like thinking he, he really, he thought outside of, the box fundamentally and outside of the paradigm within which he lived. Like we, we all talk about this stuff today because we, you know, live in times of The greatest madness, but he, he sensed all this.

And I think, Bitcoiners don't read enough of people like him, which is unfortunate. And I'm going to hope to change that with some of the stuff that I'm writing coming up soon.

Knut: Yeah, and, uh, to make a devil's adv slight, somewhat of a devil's advocate point here, On a, in a functioning world, on a soundbunny standard or whatever, pick one, uh, being average, there's nothing wrong with being average. Most people are average. That's where the word come from. [00:59:00] And it's not, there's no wrong in having small goals for your life and not taking on too much, but living a relaxed life, uh, where you don't have to, you know, use your brain every microsecond of the day, like, and, uh, because becoming.

Becoming excellent has a high cost if you want to, if you want to outperform people, you need to, you know, you can't have as much time with your family. You can't have as much procrastination time. It's just impossible.

Aleks: You, you, you pay the cost both ways. That's the thing, you know,

Knut: where we're not, we're not, you know, picking on average people here. We're just saying that the system right now, rewards. not even averageness, but, but worse than that is midwitery or whatever you may call it. Like it incentivizes you to, to be unproductive and to not strive for anything greater.

Aleks: yeah, I mean, the [01:00:00] life's like a, like a spear, right? And the, the, those who are, who choose to pay the price of being excellent, they're like the tip of the spear. You know, the, the, the, the sharpest, tiniest little point, you know, they, but they're the, they're what pierces, the target and then, you know, the, the rest of the inertia that, um, that drives it through.

So, you know, you fund, as you just said, you, you fundamentally need excellence, but there's a price to it. And not everybody can be Alexander the Great or Napoleon or Julius Caesar, et cetera, like that. They are, they are fundamentally different because to get to that echelon, like to be an Elon Musk be a Peter Thiel or whatever, like you need to.

That didn't just happen, like it, there has to be, an act, that there needs to be an energy and a, you know, once again, a vitality of striving for excellence, some sort of, some fuel fire inside of you that like pushes you to get there. it's not just gonna happen because. You sat [01:01:00] on the couch watching Netflix all day.

It just doesn't

Knut: No, I, I, I think that's a must quote. If, if you're reading self help books and like success books, it's probably not for you anyway. Like,

Aleks: that's it. That's

Knut: and I, I, yeah, I don't remember the exact quote, but it's somewhere wrong. And. For those of you who don't know, life is not a box of fucking chocolates, that's for sure.

Like, you can know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get, you're gonna reap what you sow. That's, that's it. It's, yeah.

Aleks: By and large, exactly. I mean, you can't take luck out of the equation

Knut: No, no.

[01:01:35] The Role of Luck and Circumstance

Aleks: yeah, that's like the one, that's like the one phantom thing. And in many ways, I think luck is You know, it sits in the same realm as like consciousness and agency. It's like this thing that is like, you can't define, you can't touch, like it's ineffable, et cetera.

Like, you know, you could call God luck in some sense, right? It's this thing that you just like, it's the variable that you can't take out. Like, it reminds me of, um, the [01:02:00] matrix and the architect, right? He's like, you know, we designed everything perfectly, you know, I gave you guys everything and, you know, you still fucked it up somehow.

It's like luck. The human element, the, the, the piece of agency, the whatever is in there. It's like the spark of life. And that is different. That is irreplaceable. And, you know, you can, predict a lot, but, you know, the element of luck is, um, irreducible.

Luke: Could, could I double, could I double click on, on that a little bit though?

The, the luck, the luck thing, I think this gets misunderstood a lot because luck is, is another word for circumstance, whatever circumstance you're in, right? And yes, there, there is an element of chance in every micro, Interaction, right?

Hit by a bus being probably the, the stereotypical example there. But, but luck is also a, a, a longterm thing. Someone born in a Western country is in a much better position than someone [01:03:00] born in a poverty stricken neighborhood in South Africa or Brazil or wherever, right? But the thing is, their parents are And all of the, the background to them is what has put them in that position.

It's not in a vacuum. It, it's not that some soul got plucked out of the air and was put into a random body. Maybe there's people who believe that. Right. But, but it, it, there, there is a lineage to this. So, so it's the, the choice is going back generationally and I think that actually ties back into that your actions matter forward. Your actions matter maybe a long way into the future, right, and so I, I think luck is just something that, that, my point is that it gets misunderstood, uh, I think that, that yes, there is sort of a random chance aspect to things, but, but it can't be used to, to explain the way that, uh, people born in different circumstances,

Aleks: Yeah. A hundred percent. [01:04:00] I mean, It's, this is one of the things, you know, why it's so, um, ineffable and indefinable. It's there's, um, like the mind boggles at the amount of things that have to like happen in order for you and I to be born, you know, as who we were born as, you know what I mean? Like it's just, I don't know.

Like sometimes, for example, I, um, I think about like me and my brother, like we're basically Irish twins, you know, we're born. 12 and a half months apart. I guess I didn't make the Irish twins, window, but close enough. Right. And like, I don't know, like when it comes to cognitive comprehension, the guy's about as smart as this bottle of water here, like, and drives me fucking insane sometimes.

but, you know, he's, uh, you know, he's, he's more unique in other ways. Like, um, I don't know, he's been endowed with this, like, ability to, abstain from [01:05:00] things. Like, so, like, he, he trains like a machine. This little shit, like, he's fucking. Abdub, he's never touched a single supplement or like steroid or anything like that in his life, but he looks a hundred times better than people who sit there and like inject themselves with testosterone and a million other things and like, but he's just got this like weird, like when we were young, my dad used to call him a donkey because he was like stubborn, like a fucking donkey, like when there was something that he wanted, like whether it's for the good, for the bad, whatever, like he just, Do that and that's it.

Like, it was almost like those, you know, those old bunnies where you like wind them up and you point them in a direction, like, you know, that's where he goes. so, you know, he, he and I have a real like difference there. And, you know, is, is it luck that we turned out differently, you know, genetically even being so genetically sort of similar, like.

I don't know. I don't know how to, how to explain this sort of stuff, but there's that, when I think about luck, that's what I mean. Like it's this, it's this thing, like it's [01:06:00] almost like the fucking roll of the dice, like what made us fundamentally different from, from kids, from babies. Like I started speaking at the age of eight and like, uh, you know, I remember my mom and sorry, age of eight, sorry, eight months, fuck's sake, eight months.

Luke: I was thinking that, yeah, you're pretty good for, for starting that late.

Aleks: Yeah, no, I'm not that retarded. but yeah, no, I started speaking at eight months old and my brother didn't start speaking until like two. Um, but he started walking, um, you know, almost 12 months early. Why? I don't know. And that's the kind of stuff I throw in the, um, in the bin of luck.

Knut: I would throw that in the bin of luck as well, but I would not throw like, that there are so many other things like risk management, there should, there should be a word like luck management, because, uh, because you can, you can, like I am lucky to know you, Alex, and to know another, uh, a whole bunch of great people, but it's not luck primarily.

It's [01:07:00] that I actively seeked out people to, and, uh, got to know them. And like, the, there's, the, there's an element of luck to it. I mean, You never know what's going to take off, you never know what people are going to notice of your work or anything like that. So there's an element of luck to it, but just like Bitcoin mining, which is also just guessing a random number, and that's, so proof of work and luck are very tightly connected.

Here's, uh, here's the thoughts.

Aleks: totally, totally. That is, yeah, that's like, it's, it's, it's pay to play. That's the thing. Like you, you, you're not going to be, you're not going to win if you're

Knut: No, freemium, freemium isn't free, and proof of work is luck management, basically.

Aleks: really is. Yeah, that's, um, yeah, that's a really good way to frame it. okay. Uh, do you want me to pull a couple other things, maybe to piss some people off before we finish this?

Knut: Yes, for those of you who don't know, haven't figured out yet, [01:08:00] I mean, uh, Alex is the, uh, contrarians contrarian, so, so, please, Alex, piss people off for us, we'd love to hear it.

Aleks: I'm gonna read out a paragraph. So it says, uh, most people think that Bitcoin's greatest contribution will be to lift the masses up and help the weak. Um, and I say, while that will likely occur. And not for the reasons you think it will. It's my unpopular belief that the more important contribution and impact to mankind will be that Bitcoin makes the strongest, stronger, the best, better, and the more, the most powerful, more powerful.

Um, and then I sort of subset that by say, I can already feel you squirming as you read that line. So please read it again, allow me to clarify why this is a good thing and of utmost importance. And then I kind of like going to, you know, You know, first of all, I think we can agree on you get more of that, which is rewarded if you reward theft, uh, you'll get more theft.

San Francisco is a perfect [01:09:00] example. Participation awards in school reward average students, not those who excel. ESG and, you know, DEI or whatever in the workplace results in hiring for politics that are competent. And giving people money for staying home results in more people staying home, getting fat, lazy, and less productive.

So I'd say the converse is also true. When we reward people for doing a great job, they not only feel recognized, but they feel a drive or a will to do a greater job. So all of that sort of culminates in a simple formula, which is strong individuals equal strong society, weak individuals equal weak society.

So if you want a powerful meritocratic society, you must encourage. Powerful people and reward them for winning, i. e. for merit, not for cheating, not for lying, not for stealing, not for quitting, not for participating, but for achieving. And like, I think this, this year is sort of to tie it back to the, obviously the line that'll piss people off, like making the strongest, stronger, and the best, better.

Most powerful, more powerful is that Bitcoin, like any good [01:10:00] technology, like, I mean, money is a force multiplier. and you know, if you have a functional, sound, incorruptible money, it is going to multiply, you know, people who, who are fundamentally the best. Uh, whatever, what they, you know, like your definition of the definition of best matters here.

It's like someone who is the best kind of manager or the best business owner, the best product owner or the best father or the best, you know, builder or whatever, like they will get better. Um, because they're not being perhaps, I mean, that's a, that's an interesting one. Um,

Knut: I couldn't resist.

Luke: Did Knut out provocateur you, Alex?

Aleks: uh, maybe,

Knut: I do my best. Yeah,

Aleks: He, he might have just won this round.

Knut: no, but I totally get that. Like the, uh, the, uh, that, that, that thing about incentivizing the bad behavior is straight out the hopper, [01:11:00] like hopper's literature is full of that. Like you get what you, what's your reward? Like, like, if you pay for something, you're going to get that. It's a minimum wage laws.

It's, it's, it's literally paying for people to stay home.

Aleks: Yeah, but see, this is what the left ads and like, a lot of the bitcoiners just don't get, or they don't wanna admit, right? Like, they just have this fantasy in their mind like, oh, you know, it's gonna fucking unbanked, the banked and all, whatever. De banked, banked the unbanked, or what? Like it's just, it comes from a place of like, I know that they, they miss this fact, like they miss that, uh.

Knut: Yeah, it's the equal opportunity thing

Aleks: Yes, it once

Knut: That's where it comes from. It comes from this notion that people are, have, could have equal opportunity, which is, which is utopian in every way. And, and there's nothing wrong with it. You know, producing more great people, because that's also true. Like if you incentivize being great, more great [01:12:00] people, like I know people with an IQ of 155 will work in fucking hot dog stands, you know, that could have done something way better with their lives, but they don't because they live in fucking clown world, like, like, and you're going to see less of that on a Bitcoin standard, I think.

Aleks: Well, I hope so. yeah, like it comes back to the orient, the optimization and orientation we spoke about before, when you, when you optimize, when you make your North Star a quality, um, then you, you, you sacrifice quality. And when you make it quality, uh, and excellence, you'll, you'll get.

Uh, something there for the quantity, uh, as well, in fact, you'll increase the quantity of excellent because life is this thing that wants to expand and life can only expand if there's some layer of frontier of life pushing, you know, the, the, the frontier and that, that is like, if there was a different, like, I mean, uh, etymologically speaking, like the word excellence, um, you [01:13:00] know, excellaire, uh, which is the, you know, the roots of it.

Okay. Have to do with separating oneself or like a mountain or a peak, like it's a, it's a protrusion out. Um, that's essentially what, uh, excellence means. It's like, it's to, it's to push the bounds, it's to climb the mountain, it's to separate from the, the levels from the, you know, from the, from the masses.

And like, that, that is fundamental. I mean, even if you conceptually think about what growth means, like, you know, if, if this is your sphere of influence, growth demands that you step outside the sphere of influence and you expand it and grow it. Like, so all of like, literally the very nature of life is the, is the expansion into, uh, you know, bringing light into darkness.

It is the, you know, it's the, the opposite of entropy, right? And I mean, this is precisely why I wrote this article for the, um, for the energy edition of the Bitcoin Times. So everyone else like in the Bitcoin Times, like, you know, wrote about [01:14:00] nuclear and, uh, you know, Marty Bent, you know, bashed, uh, ESG. Um, there was one in there about like power lines, one in there, uh, about like Simon, what's his name?

Julian Simon, who spoke about like. Like there's no such thing as, uh, basically he said all energy and resources are infinite. The only thing that, uh, the only limitation is human ingenuity. Um, there's one in there from Jerome from about entropy, but I took obviously this different tack. I said, okay, what, what does this mean?

for kind of the human spirit or, you know, the, the, the, you know, and this is what, this is, this is where people misunderstand Nietzsche, like his idea of the will to power. And, you know, I love Jimmy's song, but he gets this completely wrong. You know, he always talks about how, you know, the world is evil, you know, because of our desire for the will to power.

No, no, no. Will to power is another word for like spirit or animating force of the human. And when we try and [01:15:00] neglect that, or downplay it, or, uh, diminish it in any way, what we do is we lose touch with the very excellence that makes life possible, the very excellence that pushes the bounds and continues life expanding and growing, and, I mean, that's, you know, in our neglect of that, We are producing nihilism, emptiness, equality, grayness, basically on the planet, like we, we getting, we, yeah, the, the leaders are Klaus Schwab and Gavin Newsom instead of, you know, Napoleon and Alexander the Great, very different quality.

[01:15:38] Wrapping Up

Knut: Alex, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on to our show, and I hope to continue this conversation, both recorded and unrecorded, so we can be really contrarian in the not too far future.

Aleks: You know, we will. Um, can I show some people some things to check out?

Knut: Absolutely, we [01:16:00] were just going to ask you, I mean, uh... Lukas is the one to ask that. So where, where can we direct our listeners to find more, more Alexander the Great stuff?

Aleks: Okay. All right. So first thing is an ask is anyone who's interested in the AI stuff? Um, I would love them to go and check out spirit of satoshi. ai. And what we're essentially looking for, and a big part of this is it's a community project. So we need as many Bitcoin as possible to watch live. Help us train the model.

And when I say train the model, like it's, it's really a bunch of like putting your proof, putting your knowledge to work. So it's kind of like proof of knowledge. You get paid sats for, uh, basically answering questions as if you were the model, um, and validating whether questions that other people have answered are good or bad.

And, you know, in doing so, so there's like validation tasks and there's content creation or curation tasks, um, you participate in those and you basically earn sats. [01:17:00] So it's a little bit more profitable than yelling at people on Twitter. Um, you know, depending on, you know, what you sort of, uh, want to spend your time doing.

So that's number one. Then number two is. If you had interest in what we discussed with the Bitcoin Times, so as I said, this year's edition, uh, like, like last year's was the Austrian with, uh, with Saifedean and Pierre and Goldstein and Rahim and all that. And it was like, we did the big launch last year, but I think this year's one follows on with energy.

And I know I'm, I'm. I know every year I say I'm most proud of this one, so it's really hard to say whether I'm more proud of this one than the last one, but like this one definitely is special. And if anyone ever read the Remnant piece that I did like two years ago that, you know, ruffled a bunch of

Knut: I did.

Aleks: Thank you. Yeah. Um, this, this Nietzsche piece, I think does a similar sort of job to [01:18:00] like really pushing people's, um, notions or conceptions. I know, Knut, you picked up something in the thing, which might be worth like mentioning here. Yeah.

Knut: Yeah, it was the, uh, how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how that's only true if the money is not sound somehow, because it's not absolute power, it's not power itself that corrupts, it's the corrupt money that corrupts, that allows corrupt people to get into positions of power. was somewhere.

Aleks: Yeah. So power. Yeah, that's right. So where did I say? It's not power itself, but those who wield it. It's not that power corrupts, but that the corrupt can attain power. And

Knut: Exactly. I love that.

Aleks: shifts that people need to make in their heads.

So yeah, if people want to read that, uh, bitcointimes. io and I will, um, I actually, fuck it, I'll give you guys a code. Uh, if you use the code energy, you'll save 40, 000 stats, which is about 10 percent off the, um, [01:19:00] of the publication.

Knut: All right. Wonderful. Uh, one last question. When are you going to write the fascist case for Bitcoin?

Aleks: Uh, I wrote it just under a different name.

Knut: All right. Yeah. Great having you on, Alex. Um, take care. Have a nice rest of. Oh, the rest of your life.

Aleks: Yeah, thank you sir. That's, that's scary because you're about to say the rest of the day. I feel like there's going to be a drone coming to bomb me now

Knut: no, but it's, you ever thought of that? That, uh, have a nice evening is pretty evil. Like, why don't you want me to have a good time for the rest of my life as well? Like, why, why limit yourself to a nice evening or a nice weekend?

Aleks: I mean, yeah, okay, that's cool. I mean, the way it

Knut: Low, low time

Aleks: have a, have a nice evening. I mean, I mean, I mean, rest of your life. No, I really think we're going to get killed.

Knut: Getting tired in the brain here.

Luke: Yes, exactly. Knut's getting tired. So [01:20:00] thank you again for coming on, Alex. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.