FFS083 - Volker

FFS83Volker: [00:00:00] If there's one thing that you can take from this very complicated discussion about free will and everything is, you can't really will yourself to do something you don't really have control. so it's, okay to accept that you are a mere observer and if you accept that you're a mere observer, life gets much less difficult.

You can just let stuff happen because you you're conscious you can't influence it. You're conscious you can't influence what you're going to do. You can let happen whatever is happening and just be happy about it.

Introduction to Volker

Luke: Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show, the Bitcoin philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn. And today, our guest is our friend Volker, German Bitcoiner, who has translated a whole bunch of books between German and English. English and German, and is also a translator between nerd and noob.

I'll let him explain that a little bit more. He's the translator of, I think, all of Knut's books as well. So yeah, excited to have [00:01:00] Volker here. So Volker, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show. Thanks for joining us.

FFS83Volker: Thanks for having me. Looking forward.

Knut: Yeah, if you don't know this guy, and you call yourself a bitcoiner, you should be absolutely embarrassed, because Volker is a total OG. And one of my favorite people bitcoin space, for sure. So, a warm welcome to you, friend,

The Concept of Free Will

Knut: so I think we're going to go deep in this one and try to, uh, Put another angle to the whole, uh, consciousness, reality being consciousness reflected back at you, like adding on to the conversation we had with Jeff Booth a couple of weeks back.

I mean, we've been sort of hinting at that for a couple of episodes now, uh, Luke. And, uh, I, I think, Volker, you have some, um, theories about free will, that we can have it, but In order for us to have free, for human beings to have free will, that sort of requires that it doesn't come from the brain, so could, could you [00:02:00] explain that thesis for us,

FFS83Volker: Yeah, it was a, it was something we talked about on the way to the, to Plochingen, right, to the Bitcoin Hotel. so basically, you got to accept. Or if, if you, if you are a rational person, you have to accept the fact that, uh, all your motor nerve, motor nerves, and all your muscles are controlled by your brain, right?

So there's a brain that tells, uh, that tells my muscles how to move. So in order to speak the words I'm speaking right now, okay. Now, if I want to think that I have a free will, there must be something that is able to control the brain so that it makes the right words, it makes, it pulls the right strings on my brain.

Muscles and vocal cords to utter the right words or to do this, the right things, the things [00:03:00] that I want to do, but where would that come from? I mean, what is the substance, the substrate on which that. Will would exist. It would have to be a soul or something like a soul that is not part of the brain, because otherwise it would be subject to the neurochemistry of the brain itself.

So it had to be, it would have to be, uh, independent of the brain, but still able to control the brain. And that's something that's really hard to swallow for everybody, for me, I mean, me included. But there's no way around it. I would, I would be very happy to learn of any way around it. But I don't see any.

Knut: okay, so, so this is based on, on, uh, if I remember our conversation correctly, it's, it's based on some research that I, uh, I read about like 10 or 15 years back about, uh, [00:04:00] experiments with uh, You know, people putting their hand on a hot stove or something and, uh, you know, conscious, the, the brain thinks it's making the conscious decision to remove the thing, uh, or whenever you do something like, uh, Consciousness has been shown to have like a half second lag, so the things that, when you think that you make a decision, you're actually being told by your brain what decision your quote unquote soul made, uh, half a second back or more.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, that's, that's right. So there's a famous experiment. I don't know the name, but the experiment goes like this. So you have a, the subject sits in the chair. And it's told to look at a wall clock, and the wall clock just has one hand, and that one hand makes one rotation per second. Okay, and you put a red button in front of him and tell him, [00:05:00] you can press the button whenever you want.

Just, the thing we ask you to do is, uh, when you decide to press the button, remember the position of that one hand on the clock. Just remember what it looked like when you made the decision to actually press the button. And then you insert an electrode into the nerve that controls the finger, and you measure the exact microsecond when the muscle is triggered.

And you note that down, you write down what the hand said, and then you ask the subject, the hand, at what position the hand was when they took the decision. And the lag is about 300 milliseconds, so the decision, the free will, the apparent free will. happens a quarter or third of a second after the [00:06:00] action has been done.

It's just, you can measure that in, in all kinds of ways. The brain does very weird things with your, with your consciousness.

Knut: so action precedes decision making.

FFS83Volker: So action precedes consciousness. And that makes a lot of sense when you, when you, uh, when you're honest with yourself. and Inquire your own capability for free will. Let's say, let's assume you have a free will, okay? Let's assume everybody has a completely free will. There is no more smoking. There's no more laziness.

There's no more alcohol. There's no more people getting enraged. The world would be perfect, right? Because you have a free will. You can just stop drinking, you can just stop smoking, there's no problem, you can keep your diet. It's not possible. You don't have a free will over what your body does. it is very difficult to talk [00:07:00] about it or to think about it, but it gets much easier when you, when you understand that you can separate the term you into two yous.

Two Yous - Biological and Conscious

FFS83Volker: Okay. So there's, let's define two yous. You have a bodily you, that's the, the, the biomass that your body is made out of, including your brain. Okay. And that biological you, that does have a free will. The free will. Is something that your consciousness often doesn't like, like gets upset and then hits the policeman, right?

Or gets hungry and eats and breaks a diet. Um, that biomass makes billions of decisions every minute, tiny, tiny things that it does, but that's not. controlled by a conscious you, and the conscious you is the other you, and that's unfortunately is the you that you typically talk about when you're talking about yourself.[00:08:00]

Okay, so the biological you has a free will and does whatever it wants. It's just controlled by the neurochemistry and the sensory organs and everything, whatever they come up with, basically by random and genetics and environment. Um, but that's not reflected in your conscious you and the conscious you observes what your biological you does.

Usually gets horrified and then comes up with some explanation for it so that you don't, get, I don't know, you don't turn crazy. So you come up with, explanations for why you did something, for why you're biological you did something. There's another experiment, um, that's, uh, that's pretty good for that.

To understand that, so in that case, you, you connect an, uh, an electrode [00:09:00] to a muscle in the shoulder and when you, so what the electrode does is it triggers the motor, uh, it triggers the muscle That lifts your arm. Okay. So once that is in place, when the, the researcher hits a button, your arm will go up.

Okay. So, and then the two, the, the, whatever the, the, the subject and the, tester, sit, um, opposed, and at one point, the, the tester, the, the researcher presses the button, and your arm goes up, and then you're asked, why did you put your arm up? And you won't say, oh, I don't know, it just happened. You would say, oh, there was a fly I was trying to catch.

Or, um, I had an itch in my head, or something, you will automatically, you always, and even if you do it 10 times in a row, you will always come up with an explanation. [00:10:00] And it's not on purpose, it's because your consciousness automatically comes up with an explanation for whatever you do, even if you know that you're being manipulated.

It's pretty wild.

Knut: Yeah, it's very wild. Like, I'm, I'm thinking about, like, just the conversation we're having now. I mean, we, we, at some point, it feels like consciously put this, pod in our calendars. We consciously made the decision to sit down here and turn on the computer and put on the headphones and whatnot. And I'm sitting here listening to you explain, explaining this and consciously trying to not interrupt whenever the urge to interrupt comes into my brain and all of this stuff.

And to me, it feels very deliberate what I'm doing. Like, um, I know that there's a process that I can't really handle, which is like the sounds going into my ears and my brain processing what you're trying to say that sort of goes out [00:11:00] automatically. But selecting between different responses feels like a very real thing, but you're saying it's not, uh, I guess, uh, that it's just my consciousness trying to come up with a reason for why I gave you this specific answer and not Just some other random answer.

FFS83Volker: Uh, yeah. So you see how, how often I did this today? I don't want to do that. It just happens.

Knut: No, I, I, I never noticed until now.

FFS83Volker: Okay. But you will notice in the, in the coming minutes, uh, because I keep doing it and I don't know why I would really love not to do it, but. It just happens and I think, I think there's something like an itch or there's just a, an urge to touch it.

I don't know why. It just happens. It's my bodily you.

Knut: For those of you who, who are listening and not watching, Volker is having an [00:12:00] itch next to his eye. And at the same time, I'm twirling my beard here, which I always do. There's the same, same kind of tick. I'd say

FFS83Volker: Yeah, and almost everybody has something like that, right?

Knut: Yeah. Well, so fascinating. So, well, like what it feels like to be a human being, like, it feels like you're, uh, different people have different, levels of, psychic strength or what you will, resilience to impulse so that some people can actually, you know, quit smoking or, or go on a diet or whatever it is.

Because they make a very conscious decision, what feels like a very conscious decision to, to like, be disciplined. You're a Ragnar Deshapred, but you know, to, to, to be able to focus their energy, uh, like that. And what, what do you, what, what do you think? Do you think that's real? Or do you think that's just an illusion too, [00:13:00] that people have this?

Ability to, to focus that makes them, uh, more resilient to impulse and high time

preference,

FFS83Volker: No, it's real. It's real. It's just not controllable. It's a result of their specific neurochemistry. It can't be anything else.

Knut: can it be anything else? If, we presuppose that there is such a thing as a soul or something outside of the brain that controls the thing.

FFS83Volker: yeah, then it can be, but only then.

Knut: Huh?

FFS83Volker: But it's much more reasonable to assume that, that, uh, different brains. develop differently and they have, so that you have different genetics, you have different environment, different upbringing, different education, different experiences. So of course the brains are all different and, um, your brain learns over time what you want to do.

What outcome to expect from what kind of action, and if it's learned [00:14:00] at an early age, hopefully, um, that for instance, things like smoking or other short term oriented behavior is not a good thing, and maybe the brain is of the type that is oriented more towards the long, um, uh, long term, so low time preference brain, basically, then It will take other decisions.

It will take the decision to eventually stop the smoking thing or just somehow the urge will be repressed because that part of the brain that dominates the long term thinking will suppress more of the urge to do something short term oriented. And vice versa. But it's not something that you come up with independently of your brain, because you are your brain.

Knut: Hmm. And you are your bitcoins, since they're in your

FFS83Volker: And you're hyperbitcoin, right?

Controlling Your Thoughts

Knut: [00:15:00] Yeah. So, so like, from, from what I've learned, uh, about meditation and from meditating, uh, the thing that you, if there's one thing you actually can do to your brain, it's noticing when a thought is Pops into your head, like you can, you can deliberately sit down and, and focus your attention on not thinking.

And then when, whenever, uh, a thought enters your brain, you can notice that it did so. So, uh, so if I'm, I'm sitting down and like focusing on my breath and doing this meditative stuff, uh, all of a sudden I realize like, oh yeah, I should call that guy today. And I can notice that. That thought popped into my head.

I, I can't control what thoughts pop into my head, but I can notice that they do. So do you think that is false as well? Does that also presuppose like [00:16:00] something outside of your, of your neurochemistry?

FFS83Volker: It's not false. It's just that you're attributing your urge to meditate to something that is outside of your brain. When in fact, the brain takes the decision that now it's a good idea to meditate. And then your consciousness observes that. And tells you that you just had the idea you want to meditate and everything else.

I mean, the, the idea that, um, you just observe your thoughts and let them come to you and don't try to do anything. It's from your brain being upset about all the, all the, um, the signals coming in. And it's trying to shut down as much as possible of that, and it has learned a way to do that, which is to sit quietly in a [00:17:00] quiet room and not move and then observe, but it's not, it's not a willful decision.

Something that happens. Again, you can always, you can always just go back to. Whatever your, the, whatever the muscles do that make you do something or say something. These muscles are controlled by the brain and there's nothing that controls the brain. Where, where would that thing be that controls the brain?

That would be the soul.

Knut: In the notification settings on your smartphone, probably.

FFS83Volker: Possible. But there's an interesting twist actually. So, um,

why did we develop consciousness? why, not just act, um, what's it called? By, intuition. Why doesn't, why don't humans just act on intuition? [00:18:00] we developed a consciousness so that we could Make plans. We could, I have to explain by an example. Sorry, it's hard to abstract it. If you, as a caveman, approach the lion from behind carrying a medium sized stick, you die.

Okay? If you think of yourself doing that, So you, project your virtual eye, your virtual self onto a situation that looks like the situation at hand, then you only die virtually, you have just virtualized yourself. And that's useful if you are not an apex predator, which humans definitely aren't. I mean, we, when we get lost in the woods, we die.

Okay. So we had to come up with something that would let us virtualize ourselves, which is, which is. [00:19:00] our Consciousness. But then that consciousness observes what we do and it gets difficult because it observes that we are doing things we don't want to, okay? And then it comes up with these explanations. It's just that it's a kluge to enable the consciousness to exist and not become crazy over time.

And, when language popped up or when we started. To be able to communicate complex thoughts among each other, then the whole thing became, became 10x or a hundred or a thousand x more powerful because now we can exchange, we still cannot control our own brain, right? But we can exchange. Virtual experiences with each other, so brain A can formulate in [00:20:00] language what it has experienced or what it decided to do stupidly and how stupid and bad the result was and it can communicate that to brain B and that will actually alter the state of brain B to maybe think a little bit differently and create a little bit different with each other.

Neurochemistry to make the decisions a little bit better.

Knut: Yeah, it's, yeah, it's clear. It's why, it's why Bitcoiners are growing in numbers and Ethereums are shrinking in numbers.

Free Will

FFS83Volker: And, and it's also why it does not make you un culpable for bad deeds. So you could come, you could say if, uh, if you, if you argue that you, there is no free will. The first question that pops up is, okay, why do we still have prisons? Because people aren't culpable. It's not their free will. It's not the free will of the guy who spat in the policeman's [00:21:00] face, right?

It wasn't his free will, it was just his brain chemistry. But you have to, you have to give the feedback so that that brain won't do that again. And that's, that's guilt, right? Guilt and punishment.

Knut: But hang on, like, if we have no free will, the prison would have been built anyway, you know? That was not a conscious decision either, like, none of it is. There can't be a dichotomy between bad decision making and other, like All the decisions are made not from free will then, but I guess it's like some type of mechanism that helps us self regulate as a species, I guess.

FFS83Volker: yeah, it's, it's really interesting because, it's super complex because, um, so the, the initial question is complex enough. Many people have trouble understanding that, that you don't have a free will, even if you know that you have a free will. I mean, [00:22:00] subjectively, everybody has a free will.

I have the free will to just do this right now. It's my free will. I can do that. Only, it's not my free will. It's the free will of my body or my brain that decided that that would be a good Explanation for showing that I have something like free will. It's just what happened. Okay. So it's, it's, it's a difficult thing and, and it gets much more difficult if you, if you, um, uh, take into account the, interdependencies of individuals.

So when brains communicate with each other, or when larger groups communicate, or when group A communicates with group B, or individual A communicates with group C, and so on, it gets incredibly complex. And

that's what makes me extremely, skeptical [00:23:00] about any fixed rational framework for every, for anything or for everything. Something like, okay, well, all we need to do is say that, uh, you can't, um, so the only principle we need is a non aggression principle or something like that. Yeah, that's, I think.

Given the enormous complexity of actual life, it's not reasonable to assume that humanity can come up with rules that work in all circumstances. But the only thing we can actually do is rely on the deepest, most honest intuition that we have, because that's That encompasses all of human evolution. You go [00:24:00] back to what you really, deeply know is good and positive.

and Not evil, and that you do that, that that is the rule set that you need. And even if you try to create a rule set, for what is good and bad, some, some kind of morality, a rationally created morality, you would have to evaluate the rules. Like is that, is that proposed rule a good or bad rule? How would you evaluate it?

You would have to evaluate it based on your intuition. And your intuition is what encompasses all of humans. So you can cut that out. You can just go, no, do your intuition. That's it.

Praxeology and Free Will

Knut: Yeah, and I mean, the thought of there being no free will is [00:25:00] scary, but I also think it's very comforting, because it means You know, feeling sorry or bad for anything is completely pointless, like, because you can't do anything about anything, you can just enjoy the ride and, uh, and die, basically. Uh, so, so I'm trying to think how this maps on to praxeology, and I'm trying to come up with, like, devil's advocate arguments for why it doesn't.

But I can't really do that, because it maps on perfectly to praxeology, regardless of if you have free will or not. Because action follows the same laws anyway, and the decision is made by something to prioritize one act over another. So when you waved your hand there before Something in your brain thought that that was the correct, uh, the, the most precious thing to do at that moment, like there's no denying that because you did it.[00:26:00]

So, so it still maps on to that, and from the praxeology, we can derive these principles that are as objectively as possibly, as possible, uh, Ethically correct. So, which sort of contradicts your point about that we can't make up an ethical or moral rule that is true for all times, but the whole right to be left alone principle, or non aggression principle, sort of is that, it is Uh, based on logical deduction of an observation of how human beings function.

Uh, if, then if you call it ethics or, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it, doesn't really matter, but it's still an irrefutable. Axiom, uh, or, or do you, do you disagree?[00:27:00]

FFS83Volker: No, I don't disagree. I just think it doesn't encompass all your need because what it encompasses is it explains the actions, but it doesn't give you a framework of what to do, right? It just explains why you did things.

Knut: It does give you a framework for what not to do, and in a sense, uh, you know, science can't derive an ought from an is, it's impossible. It's a philosophical conundrum that has been bothering thinkers for centuries.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, I was, that's what I was trying to, trying to get to with the stuff I said before, but it's, you said it better. You can't rationally detect a moral framework.

Knut: Yeah. So you can't derive from an ought from an is, but what you can do is. You can, you can reason yourself to saying that a, uh, an [00:28:00] argument is self contradictory. So if you argue against argumentation, for instance, or if you argue against that, if I saVolkerer, you control your own body. You can argue against that, and by you, I mean, like, either your biological you or your soul you now, like, something, something, something connected to the word you is controlling your body.

And if you claim that you don't, as a rebuttal to my argument, you prove my point, because you need to use your body to make the argument in the first place. You know, are we onto something here? Is there a novel thought here somewhere to do this map onto one another or is it just a word salad?

FFS83Volker: No, it's not word salad. It's just, um,

I don't think it's very useful because it's just a point of explanation. You're explaining [00:29:00] one particular thing and it's not a, a rule set of any kind that you could use to, to tackle the complexities of, of, uh, society, for instance, I mean, yeah, you, you, you just explained that you, there is A sentence that you can say that I cannot disprove, because by disproving it, I am proving it, or by stating the opposite, I am disproving it.

That's basically, it's just a paradox. It's just a semantic paradox. I don't think it's particularly valuable from a philosophical standpoint,

Knut: So, uh, okay. We've concluded that the word you is, is hard to define because you either mean. The biological you that has its own free will, if you will, and that we can't control, [00:30:00] and the other you that thinks it has free will, but we have no idea if it does.

FFS83Volker: Well, no, no, When you, when you say you, you are speaking of consciousness. You're speaking of the conscious you. When you address any you or I, what you're talking to is your consciousness or somebody else's consciousness. And you, you or everybody else thinks. They have their free will, but the conscious you is not the one with the free will.

The unconscious, the biological you is the one that has the free will, but you can't control it.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I was uncareful with my words there, but you're absolutely right. Yeah, so, but another word that you just used in the last argument. A string, uh, was the word society. So if I'm referring to you, your conscious, you, [00:31:00] when I use the word you, what the hell does society refer to except for human beings interacting with one another?

FFS83Volker: Good question.

Knut: And when I, when I say society, do I refer to the bio biological brains interacting or to the consciousness, consciousness, eye of, of, uh, the group.

FFS83Volker: Uh, it's probably the emergent behavior of the, of the group, because, um, if you put several brains together and have them interact something. of new quality appears because of the, because of the mutual interactions. Um, and that's, that's, it's so random that it's not predictable or controllable and that will be society basically.

But it's, it's really hard to define that.

Knut: Could you give an example of such an [00:32:00] emergent property?

FFS83Volker: Soccer games, people, people at soccer games. Reacting completely differently from the normal behavior when a goal happens or when your, when your home team wins or when your home team loses, it's completely, irrelevant. It's just a, a digit on a, on a counter board that goes up or down,

Knut: It's like an election.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, but it turns people into, into, uh, wildly, uh, partying, happy people or into absolutely rabid monsters in a split second or in a second, that's, that's an emergent behavior.

Luke: Alright, you might have noticed that we've recently partnered with AmberApp. After our episode with Izzy, their CEO, and our close friend, we knew we would have to partner with them in some way, If you haven't seen our episode with Izzy, definitely go [00:33:00] check it out, you'll see why it's such a great fit, and honestly, they're following the orange glowing light like Izzy always says, and that's exactly what we try to do here at the Freedom Footprint Show.

The big news about AmberApp is that they're going to be launching their version 2. I've seen some of the screenshots and it looks fantastic. They're going to be including a non custodial on chain wallet, an anonymous lightning wallet, a fiat wallet, And finally, it's going to be an exchange, of course. it's going to be just this super app, They're also going to be launching globally.

Everyone's going to be able to use it. we're really excited about all that. Stay tuned with us and you'll hear all about it. And for now, check out their website, amber. app and the episode with Izzy to find out more.

Society and Civilization

Knut: So what's the difference between society and civilization?

FFS83Volker: I need more preparation.

Knut: You know what you signed up for, man.

FFS83Volker: I was hoping for [00:34:00] Drunk Knut and Drunk Luke.

Knut: well, you can't book the show at two o'clock in the afternoon. Well, so, okay, uh, I'll give you my explanation. Civilization, to me, is You know, civilized behavior. It's very connected to civilized behavior and civilized behavior sort of is free market behavior as opposed to it's catalytic competition as opposed to biological competition.

I mean, I know you read the book because you translated it. Uh, so it is, uh, consensual interactions rather than forced interactions. So, well, if we say society, that's a much harder word to define because it sort of includes like everything from, you know, drunk football hooligans to, to, you know, religious ceremonies or, uh, [00:35:00] elections or, uh, you know, all sorts of courts and justice systems and all sorts of stuff that is not necessarily legal. Catallactic nor biological competition is just behaviors that make sense to a certain group of people and less sense to others. But civilized sort of means not forced or not coerced. Do you agree?

FFS83Volker: in part, yeah, I think there might be civilizations where force was used effectively and it worked. I think civilization is basically that type of society that has Uh, that has managed to stay in place for a long time. So something like a self, self feeding or self accelerating, [00:36:00] um, type of society that has worked and continues to work and is sufficiently able to adapt to changing circumstances, which always happen.

And, there is, there are types of behavior that that, um, accelerate or that, um, contribute to civilization, which is typically, uh, low time preference behavior. So delayed gratification, delayed satisfaction, you, save up in order to build something that is more, a more powerful tool for the next cycle.

And then you have this in the next cycle, you have this more powerful tool and then you get greater rewards, greater gains, and then. You delay the gratification of by not consuming these gains in even in that cycle, but instead create even more powerful tools and so on and so on. And that's what you wrote in the, [00:37:00] in the Praxeology book, right?

Uh, so you start with, uh, Catching a fish by hand every day and then one day you said, okay, today I won't eat. I will build a fishing rod and then next day, from next day on, you catch two fish a day and so on. And then you say, okay, I won't eat two fish or I'll save, I'll save both fish and build a fishing net and so on.

So you get more powerful tools and you end up with a trawler. That's something that creates civilization or at least. This lays the base for civilization, the technological base, um, and the short time, uh, preference, uh, behavior typically destroys civilization because it consumes the productive capacity and in the end, everybody is poor, but the technological base isn't sufficient for society because, I mean, you look around, look around [00:38:00] the world as it is right now.

We had Basically paradise in the 90s. And in the early 2000s, the world was in the West was nearly perfect. We were rich. We were healthy. We had, we had everything we wanted and now it's all coming down. It's not, it's nothing technological. Society is tearing itself down and it's not free will either. I mean, nobody wants that.

It's just an emergent behavior.

Subjectivity of Better and Worse

Knut: Okay, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here again, because I don't, I don't fully agree. Like, I think we had a lot of problems in the 90s and early 2000s as well. And there were a lot of problems that needed to be solved. And some of those problems are solved, like video conferencing, for instance, wasn't available in the 1990s, nor the early 2000s.

We couldn't have done this 20 years back, because the technology simply wasn't good enough yet. So that has [00:39:00] solved a lot of problems and allows for people to communicate across borders way easier than was possible in the early 2000s. So on a technological front, I think we've liberated more and more people.

Uh, but at the same time, it's like the, the tools for mass control and population control governments and, and other criminal organizations have today are, are way more powerful as well. So, so for people who are willing to try to break out and be sovereign to a larger extent, uh, the world has Uh, become worse, but for people who have found the tools and who were early Bitcoin adopters, for instance, and early adopters of any, uh, new technology that empowers them to be more, more akin to a, a sovereign individual that can, that doesn't have to worry too much [00:40:00] about whatever political thing is going on, for that person, the world 90s and early 2000s.

So I think it's very, uh, I think we're, maybe we're more polarized right now, but I think also this notion of better and worse is, at its core, very, very subjective, and some people are very much better off now, and some people aren't, and, uh, To me, the generalization that everything is worse now than it was, it's like sort of missing, missing the optimistic side.

I mean, there, there are a few, there's less poverty now than it was back then, even though we have the, like, despite all the inflationary currencies and stuff, I guess when it comes to wars, I think the number is about the same. It's just that we, we get to know about the wars faster now. I mean, when I grew up, there was the war in, in, uh, [00:41:00] old Yugoslavia in, in the nineties.

And if you compare that to the war in Ukraine today, like nobody in Sweden gave a shit in the nineties about Yugoslavia. Everyone gives a shit about Ukraine today. There's a difference, like, because we're closer, we're more interconnected than we've ever been before. So, so yeah. Thoughts on that stance.

FFS83Volker: Yeah. I guess what I, what I was trying to get to is, um, that, um, you're right that, uh, some people are better off and some people are worse off, so it's subjective and it's, it's a very, um, uh, it, it concerns 8 billion people, so obviously some are better off and some are worse. Um, what I'm saying is, um, You know about these, um, these, four generational cycles, the strong man create good times and the fourth turning [00:42:00] um, the, the first generation makes money. The second, uh, commands, uh, or the second, um, controls the money. And the third studies or maintains the money and maintain the first makes money, the second controls their wealth, the third studies art history, and the fourth is completely bankrupt, something like that. So, and then it restarts. That's what I'm saying. And what we are observing right now, we had this. Fourth generation. Uh, so the, the generation, uh, so I was born in 63. The, the next generation ro roundabout, the nineties, I don't know what, what you call them, millennials or, so gen, gen X, Y, Z, something.

Luke: Yeah, the nineties is millennials.

FFS83Volker: I think gen, gen X is, I think Gen X started two years after myself.

Something

Knut: Yeah, yeah, I think [00:43:00] I'm a

FFS83Volker: between Boomer and

Knut: Yeah.

FFS83Volker: and, and the generation that was born around the nineties are the generation that studies art history, right?

So now everything's crumbling and it's not crumbling in China, but it's crumbling where it was. Where it was, um, blossoming the most before. So instead of continuing to blossom and just go up, up, up and up even more and up even more. Why doesn't it do that? It doesn't because, well, for my own personal feeling.

You get feelings of guilt when you see how incredibly wealthy the place is where you live, and you didn't actually contribute a lot, and then at the same time, you see that other places and other people are less well off, so You [00:44:00] study art history and try to find out why, and you invent thousands of genders, and you come up with all kinds of weird ways in which you make yourself guilty for something that you didn't do, like invade America 250 years ago and kill the natives.

It's this anti colonialism. A lot of that is just because people can't bear the thought. That they are in a very good place, but haven't actually, but don't actually deserve it. I think that's where a lot of that fourth turning comes from. You climb up the ladder and at one place, at one echelon, you just say, Oh, wait a minute.

This, I don't belong here. It's not, I didn't, I didn't climb that ladder. My [00:45:00] ancestors climbed the first. echelons And now I just do one step and why am I in paradise? That can't be. And then your brain, not you, not your consciousness, your brain comes up with stupid ways to normalize the whole thing and bring it down to the level that's reasonable.

And that's when everything crashes. That's how my brain explains it.

The Role of Fiat on Consciousness

Knut: So how does fiat affect that? Like, what role does fiat currency and, you know, going off the, next time going off the gold standard in 71 and all that, how does that play into that?

FFS83Volker: I'd say, so for every, uh, characteristics that a brain can have, you have basically something like a Gaussian distribution. And one of the characteristics is, uh, the time preference. So you have a few people that have extremely high time preference, and a few people have an extremely low preference.[00:46:00]

Extremely low time preference, and most of the people have some medium time preference, okay? Now, Bitcoiners typically, as a group, tend towards a high time preference, uh, sorry, low time preference side of the Gaussian distribution. But most of the population does not. Most of the population wants to consume sooner than we would, okay?

And a nice way to consume, is to consume stuff before you actually deserve it, before you produced it, by taking credit from your future generations and consuming what they are then supposed to produce and, uh, which is what fiat does, right? And the gold, a gold [00:47:00] standard has inhibited. So, um, to please the masses, basically to please the, the center of the GOs curve, you have to detach yourself from the fixed standard and just allow production of money.

Knut: Yeah, and it's a vicious cycle because you have to please the masses if you're a politician, right?

FFS83Volker: Exactly. Mm-Hmm,

Knut: you lose.

FFS83Volker: And you probably have to have politicians because you need the illusion. The group needs the illusion that somebody's in charge. Because otherwise they get scared and anxious. So you need some instance to be there that causes all the brains to think that they are safe because some good guy is in charge.

But then that good guy doesn't have the, the, the good, uh, the guy in charge [00:48:00] shouldn't have a lot of power, should have just minimal power, but should appear as having a lot of power. That's probably the ideal setup.

Knut: It's usually the other way around, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was, like, one of the, uh, ancient Greeks, uh, Socrates or someone who said that, uh, Or even Plato who said that, uh, when given, given the option, people will vote for the baklava salesman and not the surgeon that they need. Uh, like, it's, it's very hard to get people, people to vote for, for, for hard pills to swallow.

Like they, they will always vote for, uh, for something that sounds good regardless of if it's actually possible or not.

FFS83Volker: Yeah. At least most people.

Knut: Yeah, most

FFS83Volker: mean, there are some that do it right. Let's say, [00:49:00] what is right? I don't know. There are some that do it the way we would do it, right? The long term, civilization building way.

Knut: yeah, how do you define right? I mean, the left isn't right, and there's no right left, right?

FFS83Volker: Nice. Does it work in Swedish, Stolten?

Knut: uh, no it doesn't. Links and rechts, does it work in German? Uh,

FFS83Volker: Almost. It's a recht. If you substitute recht for rechts, then it

Knut: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what was it, uh, oh, that lyric from the Queens of the Stone Age song? It's, uh, you can't always do right, but you can always do what's left. I love that one, too. Yeah.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, that's nice.

Volker's Translation Experiences

Next up WasabiWallet. The privacy by default, open source, non custodial Bitcoin wallet with CoinJoin built in. It's the easy to use, comprehensive, affordable way to make your coins private. And [00:50:00] the best part is, they've been making huge improvements to the app.

They're really focusing on the user experience, adding advanced features for power users, they just keep getting better. You send your coins to your Wasabi wallet, and they get combined with loads of other coins using the Wabi Sabi protocol, so they're private on the other end. Your tracks are covered so you can work on expanding your Freedom Footprint without worrying about your privacy.

So, check out wasabiwallet. io and download Wasabi today.

Our newest sponsor is Geyser. They are the portal to the creator economy on Bitcoin. On Geyser, creators can monetize their work through their communities in a social and engaging way. And supporters can send sats to their favorite projects. Geyser has also recently integrated with Zapps and Podcasting 2.

1. So every Zapp sent to a Geyser address shows up on the Geyser page. We have a Geyser fund ourselves. It's the best way to support our show directly with Bitcoin. So whether you're a creator or a supporter, check out geyser at geyser. [00:51:00] fund today.

Knut: I mean, I love the, absolutely love this. Luke, curious to hear what's on your mind at this point as it is in the conversation.

Luke: Yeah. Kind of as usual when, uh, these deep conversations go this direction, super deep. Uh, nothing, I, I, I'm not bringing anything else to the table on this specific discussion. I, I think, uh, I think I'd just like to hear more about your experience with Bitcoin and the, the translation and, and what got you into that Volker.

Can you tell us a little more about that?

FFS83Volker: Yeah, sure. Oh, well, uh, Knut got me into that. So we met in, um, Riga in, I think 2019, was it, or 2018? Knut, do you remember?

Knut: 2019.

FFS83Volker: 2019. there was a, a pretty boring presentation. So I was strolling around in the conference, uh, area and there was this lonely guy, uh, on a table [00:52:00] At a table with a lot of books, , uh, with a big Bitcoin, uh, word on top, um, on the, on the front.

And I just strolled there and looked at him and said, Hmm, those your books? And says, yes. I looked inside the book, read one paragraph. So well, okay, open different page. Read another paragraph. I did that four or five times. Read a few paragraphs. Then I shut the book, looked him in the eye and said, you get it, right?

I mean, you get Bitcoin because it was, it was really good. That was the Sovereignty Through Mathematics book, his first book. so I bought it and uh, then I wanted to translate just the important parts of it to hand off, to hand out to my, um, orange pillies, the friends and family and neighbors. So I decided to translate.

[00:53:00] Parts of the book, maybe two or three pages, and just the important part. So I started and everything was important, couldn't reasonably leave anything out. And since it was only about a hundred pages, I just kept doing it. And, um, then I sent it to you, Knut, and you uploaded it to Amazon and like 30 minutes later, you could download it as an ebook.

That's pretty wild.

Knut: Yeah. Oh, what a, what a journey like this. It's so beautiful how all of this comes full circle in this. Yeah. And thanks for your kind words, by the way.

FFS83Volker: Uh, I wasn't overdoing anything. Um, and then, in translating your book, I came on the, your, what you call this, the thanks department, where you say thank you to, to, um, Kalle Rosenbaum because everything, all the technical [00:54:00] details you had from Kalle's book, uh, Crocking Bitcoin. Oh,

Knut: no, uh, he hadn't, Grokking wasn't done yet at that point, I think. No, uh, so I just, uh, I think he was working on it and had announced it. I think it was done when we were in Riga, but not when I finished writing the book.

FFS83Volker: Oh, okay. But anyway, the, the books, you said that every, everything, you know, is from, you know, from Kalle Rosenbaum.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, he helped me a lot with whenever I ran into like a technical, I had to do a technical explanation of something. I, uh, Kalle advised me on that because I, so I basically had him proofread it, technically proofread it, and then coming with suggestions.

FFS83Volker: Yeah. And so I Googled Kalle and hit the Grokking Bitcoin book and I contacted him and said, um, uh, I heard from Knut that your book is [00:55:00] supposed to be really good and can I translate it? And he said, sure. It's, it's open source anyway. It's on GitHub. We can just. Download it. It's, it's even prepared for translation.

Um, so you can just download it into Transifex and, and, uh, translate string by string and it will keep track and everything. So I decided to just translate it because I wanted to absorb everything that this guy wrote. And if you, if you just, if you buy a book and read it, especially me. My free will cannot force my eyes to stick to the pages, right?

I cannot force myself to read a book back to back to back or front to cover, front to back. but if I have to translate it, then I have to read every word, right? I mean, everything. So I [00:56:00] forced myself to commit myself to translate it.

Luke: You know, a really, a really funny thing here is that I read all of Knut's books originally in translation as a language learning aid, basically. I, I, I read all of his books in Finnish before I read any of them in, in English. And, I mean, that's really part of how this whole I got connected with Konsensus Network who had facilitated the translation into Finnish of all of the books.

Next thing you know it's me and Knut here and this is going to be something like episode 79 or 80. So we've had a lot of fun, but the translations is what enabled all this. And I think I'm in the minority that I read a book in translation. As a language learning thing, but I, I, I still really have a, a soft spot for the translations.

And I, and I love what, what you do ker and, and what anyone who's, who's doing these translations does, because it just spreads the, [00:57:00] spreads the message even further and makes it our, our, our friend Birn, uh, t here says that, that, uh, something like it is just much better to read in your own language Right.

As opposed to, to a different one. So I do it on hard mode, but I think for everyone else, they, uh, They, they, they get the message a lot more, uh, easily, right?

FFS83Volker: Yeah, cool. I didn't know you were learning Finnish. That's pretty cool. So you want to get rid of the pseudo.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I live here now. I've, I've lived here for a few years and, uh, trying to, trying to get better at Finnish all the time, but it's a hard one. It's, uh, everyday life is okay now though. So

FFS83Volker: It's not related to any language that you normally know. I think it's pretty close to Hungarian or something like that.

Luke: yeah, Estonian and Hungarian are the only major relatives basically. So yeah, no, no, no, uh, um, connections there basically. But if you live in Finland, it's pretty useful. So.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, I guess.

Luke: But the pseudo will stick [00:58:00] until, uh, until I'm, uh, well, I, my wife says that, that I'll be pseudo no matter what, even if, even if I get citizenship, I'll never be a full Finn, but, uh, we'll see, working on it.

FFS83Volker: You'll never stand outside the club on a Friday night at minus 20 degrees in a t shirt.

Luke: I, I could, I could do that and then go get a, go get a meat pie and, and drink a long drink, uh, out on the street and everything. Yeah, I, I think I fit in pretty good here.

FFS83Volker: That's pretty impressive.

Luke: Yeah, thanks.

Knut: Yeah, Luke takes his live roleplaying seriously. Like,

Luke: That's true. That's true.

FFS83Volker: And you auto social distance by three meters or so at

Luke: when the corona distancing rules were let go, everyone was so relieved that they could go back from, uh, to the default, uh, instead of 3 meters, they could go back to the default of 5 meters.

FFS83Volker: Yeah. Okay. [00:59:00] That's a good one.

Luke: Anyway, back to the translations though, it's just, it's always this connection here. I really, really appreciate the work you do to make these translations happen and, uh, well, glad that the connection happened because I, I think, uh, if you've heard the story here and there, that that was really Knut's big, uh, coming out party, right?

Like 2019 Riga, that's the one, right?

Knut: yeah. That's like the first time I made a somewhat public appearance.

Luke: And then look where we are. It's four and a half years later. Barely. And

Knut: Yeah.

Luke: look, look where we are. It's

Knut: Yeah. So,

FFS83Volker: Yeah. Everybody's lives have changed, right? And it's just Bitcoin changed every one of us. It can change so many people.

Knut: yes. And so to such a large extent, it's just, it's just absolutely. Mind blowing when you think, when you think about it. Absolutely.[01:00:00]

How Bitcoin has Changed Volker

Luke: Any other ways that Bitcoin has changed your life? Volker

FFS83Volker: Ooh, let me think. Yeah. Yeah. It gave me hope for humanity. It's basically the essence.

So it gave me hope for humanity. I was observing the deterioration of our civilization and our values. And now everything went towards the crapper or down the crapper more and more and there was just no stopping it. There was no, I didn't see anything that could slow it down or stop it or even revert it.

And then Bitcoin came in. Like a wrecking ball basically and saying, okay, here is something nobody can mess with. How about that? [01:01:00] And all you need to do is just hang on to it and cling to it and not let go. And that'll slow it down and then it'll stop it and then it'll revert it. And that's our chance.

That's what it did for me. And that changed a lot in my life.

Knut: Beautiful way of putting it. This is a wrecking ball without Miley Cyrus on top. You know, it's beautiful even without her.

East and West Germany

Knut: So, you told me a story once about the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the story we've all been told is that East Germany was liberalized, and started to adopt West German values, or Western values.

Western values in general, and now they're a free market economy, and communism is gone forever. But you had a, uh, uh, what people leave out [01:02:00] is a different perspective. Can you tell us a bit about that, please?

FFS83Volker: Yeah. We absorbed these, uh, I think it was five new, um, uh, countries or states or what you call them, uh, with, I think, 11 million people. We had about 74 million and, uh, we thought that, we would bring them. Western democracy and free market, uh, uh, behavior. And instead they brought us communism in a, in much bigger proportion than, than the proportion of people.

Um, so much more than 11 over 74. Uh, and the way it happened was, they were so used to everything being taken care of by the state that they couldn't accept the free market. It was like in the, in the old, um, states of Germany. [01:03:00] If you wanted your child to be, um, taken care of, you need daycare for your child.

Well, you can buy a daycare, no problem. It's about 300 euros a month or so, uh, German, Deutschmark at the time, 300 Deutschmark a month. And you get. Take care. No problem. You can buy it. And then there are some churches that do it for less, maybe 180. But you have to pay for it. But in the East, it was all state run because the state wanted to indoctrinate the kids at the earliest age possible.

And they also wanted, or needed, Everybody to work. So every woman has to work because all people are the same. So there is no motherhood. There's just giving birth and then going back to work and leaving your kid at the state owned indoctrination institute. So they were used to that. And now suddenly they have to pay for childcare?

That's impossible. So they had to keep [01:04:00] the free child care. And then the people in the West said, wait, where are they getting free child care? We are not getting it. Okay. That's just one example. So they kept their state privileges or the state kept being in charge for everything. And the Western part of German, Germany saw that as a freebie and they wanted the same freebie.

So they demanded that. And no politician will ever say no if a large group of people demand something because then they can give it to them and then get reelected. Only they can't really pay for it. And they can't tax the people more to pay for it. So they will just print more money, right? I mean, just go deeper in debt.

And that's what they did. So we end up with the state being responsible for everything. People getting all kinds of free shit [01:05:00] and we're pretty much in debt. I mean, much less than many other countries still, but pay a lot of taxes. And, uh, we got socialism instead of them getting free markets.

Knut: It's funny how you never hear about that, and I love this, um, politician's way of using the word free. When what they actually mean is, uh, a lot more expensive because of a lack of free market competition, but they promote it as free.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, well, it's free for a certain time, and that appeals to the brains that have a high time preference, which is unfortunately the, is probably not a majority, it's probably Well, I would say the majority certainly has a much higher time preference than the typical Bitcoiner and I'm even, I'm [01:06:00] not even sure uh, that's a good thing.

I mean, you could say, you could say it's definitely Civilization building. So it's good as long as conditions are stable and building a civilization is worth it, but it's not good if conditions are unstable and you are under threat of life every year or every week or every day Then you better consume immediately because everything else would be a waste.

So you can't really objectively say that high time preference is bad and good time preference is good. Low time preference is good. It's just good for certain circumstances or a certain environment. And we happen to live in an environment where low time preferences Low time preference [01:07:00] behavior would be good because it's pretty stable here, but for instance, Russia, it's all high time preference.

Latin America, high time preference. Consume before the drug mafia kills you. It's not so easy. You can't just say, uh, high time preference is bad. It's just, it is bad for Europe. It's bad for highly developed countries, but it's not generally bad.

Time Preference and Free Will

Knut: Yeah, the word good and the word bad are kind of hard to define too, since they're so subjective in their very nature. So, yeah, I guess it's a, uh, correlation is not necessarily causation type, type of problem to define what, like, what a low time preference. When it's useful or not, sometimes the high time preference is there because of [01:08:00] the circumstances, or more often than not I would say, and not the other way around, it's not like people in the civilized world just decided to adopt the high time preference all of a sudden, it's like there is a correlation to the money printing and You know, uh, being incentivized to want free stuff, uh, being incentivized by, by mass media and, and indoctrination to, to crave these things because the politicians want their votes, right?

FFS83Volker: Yep. But they too don't have free will. So they only react to the, they only react to the environment and they, they follow a strategy that their brains. Tell them is, uh, going to be, uh, successful and sometimes they're right. And sometimes they're not. And the outcome is whatever the outcome [01:09:00] is. I mean, there's the one thing that you can, you can take.

If there's one thing that you can take from this very complicated discussion about free will and everything is, you can't really will yourself to do something you don't really have control. So what, so it's, it's okay to accept that you are a mere observer and if you accept that you're a mere observer, life gets much less difficult.

Life gets much easier. You can just let stuff happen because you can't, you're conscious you can't influence it. You're conscious you can't influence what you're going to do. You can let happen whatever is happening and just be happy about it. And that's very Taoist view of the world. You are your surroundings because they define what you do [01:10:00] and you just let it happen.

It's very comforting.

Knut: But hang on, wouldn't that be a conscious decision, to do

FFS83Volker: No, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be conscious. It's just Uh, if I, if I say that to you, if I tell you that, that influences your brain so that it might try that out and it will find that the feedback gets better and then it create, hopefully creates a feedback loop that will make you do that more often in that way, my brain influences yours.

Using language, but it's not something that I came up with because you, you cannot have an idea just as you cannot have will. I didn't come up with it and I don't want it to happen. It's just, it popped up in my brain because my brain thought [01:11:00] in air quotes. It would be a good idea to tell you that

Knut: Yeah,

FFS83Volker: what it leads to.

Knut: and you're happy that it did, I assume. Which I can never know, but I assume so. And, uh, it probably worked.

Mirror Neurons

Knut: Did you hear about mirror neurons, by the way?

FFS83Volker: Oh yeah, sure.

Knut: I find that that's probably very connected to this stuff, that when you do something, even if I just wave my hand like this, uh, you, there are parts of both your brain and Luke's brain, who's seeing this right now, that, uh, can feel What it's like to wave your hand like that, or like, who, who, you cannot help but imagining what that would feel like when you see someone else do it.

FFS83Volker: There's a, there's a better way to, uh, illustrate that. It's, uh, whack yourself with a hammer on the head or, or watch, watch somebody [01:12:00] getting really hurt, getting hurt really bad. If you watch someone banging their head in, you hurt.

Knut: Yeah. So yeah, that, with the hammer, I mean, that's what movies do, right? They create mirror neurons all the time. but you're actually not watching, uh, you're watching a recording of what a human being did and not an actual human being who has that neural pattern in his head at the moment. I guess watching a recorded actor is, is different.

It's not really a mirrored neuron. It's a neuron reacting to something on a screen. Not exactly the same, I guess, but the mirror neuron thing is, uh, that there's actually the same pattern going on, and they've detected this in chimpanzees and bonobos and whatnot, as well as all sorts of primates, and yeah.

It's fascinating.

Free Will Paradox

Knut: I think it's hard though, with this free will discussion, to not end up in a paradox, [01:13:00] like, it, it, I can't properly explain it, uh, but it feels so paradoxical, because the words want, uh, and, you know, desire and what not, if I want to do something, it's not really me wanting something, it's just my Just my body saying these words, and my consciousness fooling me that that's the case.

And it's my body that wants something. but that feels very weird, because the want, the feeling is still there, right? So even if, even though if, if it's not in the driver's seat and if it's, if it's not controlling the impulses, if there's a constant stream of the, uh, a certain emotion, so like, I really want that woman, or I really want that car or whatever it is, uh, that is a driving force in, [01:14:00] for your bodily you, but you're still feeling it all the time as your conscious you. So, uh, even if the conscious you is the observer and not the, uh, decision maker, they are interconnected. Like they're, they're, uh, they're not separated. It's not two. Different things. Is the dichotomy even real? Like, how would we even know?

Consciousness and Perception of Time

FFS83Volker: No, it's not, it's not, uh, separated at all. It's just that, um, the body is in charge because your brain, your neurochemistry and your sensory organs and, and, uh, the biome in your gut and everything, they define what's happening. They create what you do. They create what you feel and what you think. And that's the bodily [01:15:00] you, the biological you that we never talk about, but that's in charge.

And then the you that we talk about feels like it's in charge, but that feeling is false. Because it's not in charge. It only explains what already happened by the biological you. So it's, it's not a dichotomy. It's just a reverted arrow, right? It's not, I want something and then the body does something.

It's the body did something. So I'm explaining that to my consciousness or it explains it to my consciousness as, or it pops up in my consciousness as I want that. And you also get this wonderful time delay. It's, it's just great. so if you, let me explain a few more experiments, or at least one. You have a certain time that, uh, nerve impulse [01:16:00] Needs to travel a certain distance.

Okay. So if you, if you poke your finger on a needle, if you poke a needle into your finger, it takes, I don't know, a fifth of a second or so to reach the brain. If you poke a needle in your neck, It's almost instant. And if you poke a needle in your, in your toe, it takes half a second. Let's say half a second.

I don't know exactly how much it is, but it's a significant amount of time. Okay. Now the experiment is this.

You poke a needle into the toe and the neck at exactly the same time. How do you perceive that? It's perceived as synchronous, but the nerve impulse takes a lot longer from the toe than it does from the neck, but still the brain perceives it as happening at the same time because it, [01:17:00] it, it knows about the time delay.

And your consciousness is not aware that the brain knows that and it's not aware that the brain recalculates all this stuff. It's really wild.

Knut: Yeah, it is. that kind of error correction is necessary for this movie we call our consciousness to, to, to function, right? Because we couldn't really have a brain that functioned differently, that felt the needle in the neck and the needle in the finger at different times.

It would be very weird.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, we're living time shifted and it's, it's, um, the time shift is different for different body parts, but it's the most. Uh, drastic or has, can have the most drastic impact on your life, especially if you're a motorbike fan, um, and you, you, uh, think that you're [01:18:00] living in the present, but you're actually living in half a second past.

And you drive, uh, so, okay, let me, let me scroll back for a few seconds. Your visual cortex, that's the part of the brain that processes what your retina receives, okay? Your retina gets all the visual, uh, impact from the photons hitting your eyes. Okay, the retina absorbs the photons, creates electrical currents that trigger the neurons.

And then there's a neuron from each retina leading away from each retinal cell, leading away to the visual cortex. And the visual cortex takes about seven steps of seven layers of neurons to create the perception of a picture. [01:19:00] Okay, so initially you get something like, um, uh, uh, brightness, brightness information, and then you get something like dots, and you get something like lines, uh, curved or straight lines, then you get something like blocks, and then you get something like shapes, and then you get something like a scenery.

Eventually you end up with something like a scene. Okay. But that takes at least seven layers of neurons and each neuron takes about 50 milliseconds to process it just for the action, the action potential to travel along the dendrite and trigger the synapse at the other end, it just takes a few milliseconds so you can prove biologically your reaction time to it.

A to an arbitrary picture, not something like a red flash or something trivial, which, which can shortcut a few of these neural layers, but something [01:20:00] like a complex scenery, like when Michael enters the bathroom. The room from the left. Then do this. Okay. Something like this. You have to understand the scenery.

This can never be less than 500 milliseconds because the neurons just take so much time to create that image. Okay, now I'm coming back to that. So I got that part

Knut: yeah, it's my internal frame rate, right?

FFS83Volker: right. Your internal frame rate is I think 350 to 500 milliseconds. It varies a little bit between people. but the thing is you can't go below 350 or so. And now coming back to the motorbike rider. I was on my motorbike like 15 or 20 years ago. I was accelerating pretty hard onto an autobahn in a curve.

So, just onto the on ramp, right, the on ramp was an arch curve. I was [01:21:00] pretty low on the street and accelerating and always looking as far ahead as 50 meters or so, and I'm in complete control because I have my bike under control and I've 25 years, so I'm a very, very happy driver, accelerating. And then there was a huge patch of sand.

And I recognized the sand when I was past it. I mean, in retrospect, of course, my eyes continually fed me the scenery, but the, the, um,

what's it called? Der Schreck? What's Schreck in English? The

Knut: Yeah, it's, it's a green ogre animated.

FFS83Volker: no, no, no, it's the [01:22:00] negative surprise. The shock, the

Knut: Uh, yeah, the skrek, skrek, uh, yeah, the shock, the shock.

FFS83Volker: the shock hit me when the visual cortex actually presented the pictures to my consciousness. And that was when the sand was way gone. I was 20 meters behind the sand. Luckily, nothing happened because it was a small enough patch and the bite was stable enough that nothing happened.

But man, that was the moment I recognized that this visual processing time is real. And from that time on, I always kept a larger distance to the car in front of me because you think that you see whatever happens. But in fact, it's already happened half a second ago and you had no chance of doing anything.

Knut: absolutely. Like, and sometimes, like, it feels like you're even better at, you don't, [01:23:00] you're not truly good at any, anything, any specific skill before how you learn to do it with your, just with your intuition that you, that you can turn your brain off while doing something. So it's just your subconscious doing the thinking, and you don't even have to, like, put in the effort, so you're done your 10, 000 hours, basically, and you're sufficiently good to just relax and observe yourself doing the thing.

It doesn't matter if you're playing guitar or writing an article, even. Like, all of that can be done with the subconscious part of your brain. You don't really need to be, To have this illusion of being aware and in control of all of it. Uh, uh, and I feel like some of my best work has come from that type of position where, where I know that I don't have to be, you know, be conscious all the time of all that's going on.

I can just, the more [01:24:00] relaxed I am, the better it becomes basically.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, I agree. Your consciousness gets in the way more than it helps. Consciousness helps when you need to, uh, to interact with other brains. So you have to, you have to express. Language or dance or whatever, uh, to communicate with other, to communicate to other brains what you think is going on. That's when you need the consciousness.

And for everything else, consciousness typically gets in the way. mine.

Knut: Uh, fascinating stuff.

FFS83Volker: You can also just drink wine. It helps too.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, but then you have to make a conscious decision to do so, and that's impossible, so,

FFS83Volker: Comes automatically.

Knut: yeah, at least don't whine about it, like,

FFS83Volker: Nice.[01:25:00]

Wrapping Up - Closing Thoughts

Knut: well, uh, Luke, do you have any more questions for Folker, or do you think, I'm making the conscious decision that this is sort of a good moment to wrap this thing up, at least I'm telling myself that I am,

Luke: Yeah, I would agree. We've, we've, we've really dug into a few excellent rabbit holes here. So I think this has been a fantastic episode. So Volker, can, can you just, uh, any last, tell us any last thoughts on your mind and where our listeners can follow you if they would like to see more of what you do?

FFS83Volker: Oh, yeah. Thank you. I liked it a lot too. It was a nice, uh, nice podcast. It's always fun talking to Knut and also to you. Well, if you want to follow me or see whatever I'm doing, you can follow me, uh, on Twitter at uh, x, uh, I'm Volker BTC or on nostri. My P key [01:26:00] is N one PUB, capital A 4 0 8 8 9 C oh, forget it, uh, just for b, d, c there too.

Uh. And, uh, not much else, I think. Is there anything? I'm not good at that.

Knut: Just go and follow Folker on both X and Nostr because he's a great follow, he's an excellent shitposter. Yes, often the humor flies over my head, but when it clicks it's fucking awesome.

FFS83Volker: Over your head or under the radar? Either one.

Knut: Yeah, my head is, uh, I'm trying to make a head level radar joke here, but no, I can't consciously do that, so I'll skip it.

FFS83Volker: Okay. Let's wrap it up then.

Knut: Alright, thanks a lot, Folker. Looking forward to seeing you on Madeira next time, I guess.

FFS83Volker: Yeah, [01:27:00] sure. I'll be there.

Knut: fantastic. See you there.

FFS83Volker: Okay. See you. Bye bye.

Luke: Yep. Thanks Volker. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.