LI฿ERTY PHOENIX

Former biomedical engineer. Built a sustainable farming community in Hawaii for 10 years. #Bitcoin

[banteg @banteg]

>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful

>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg

>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality

>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking

>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets

>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future

>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"

>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now

>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner

>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value

>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god

>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete

>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully

>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved

>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical

>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical

>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic

>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign

>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important

>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples

>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me

>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting

>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous

>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field

>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels

>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends

>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment

>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back

>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc

>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere

>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review

>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed

>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly

>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better

>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"

>motte has entered the chat

>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren

>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy

>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored

>tell myself this is impartial altruism

>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"

>silence

>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval

>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"

>stare into cosmic light cone

>10^50 people staring back

>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions

>realize I have invented the perfect constituency

>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@elonmusk @YourAnonOne

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@nickshirleyy @PlanetOfMemes

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@ArthurMacwaters Starship unlocks Project Thor ⚡️

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@dgt10011

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@elonmusk @mark_k @skdh

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@elonmusk @cb_doge Livestream a chess match between @elonmusk & @demishassabis for the culture! ♟️

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@gregory_nico https://t.co/8liN75KnFo undisputed GOAT

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@udiWertheimer Have you tried Buzz? I think that is Jack’s solution for exactly this. I’ve not tried it yet but also Grok Bot might evolve in that direction. Coordination and orchestration are lagging

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@Jason It’s harnesses all the way down 🐢

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@LukeDashjr @21milinfinity @Arthur_van_Pelt

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@Highway_30 Do a podcast with @ZubyMusic for the culture! 🤣

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@TiffanyFong Enjoy the Big Island 🏝️
Aloha Mai Kako

[Adam Back @adam3us]

On the filter fork topic.

I don't usually have time, but this morning listened to one of the twitter spaces from earlier in the week, with some well meaning relative bitcoin newcomers, that humanized them, and their concerns and thoughts for why they thought that made it logical to support 110.

My feeling after listening, is if these are the people with #110 in their handles, I'm sad to see them about to fork off and get disillusioned without understanding why bitcoin rejected 110 robustly.

So here's a more empathetic, constructive higher level version of explaining why not. I hope it's high-level and first-principles enough that everyone can follow.

They seem to want to understand what makes people tick, and are suspicious of intent. So, if someone asked me why is Bitcoin important and what is it, I'd say my (personal) mission and hope for bitcoin is to build the cypherpunk future, that "Snow Crash" was a blueprint, and work backwards from there. Bitcoin I hope leads to fully free markets via bearer unseizable, hard mathematically dependable money. Not everyone is comfortable with that level of freedom, but that's my view. And at this point, I believe that surprisingly, even now many governments have come to understand and value bitcoin's gold-like mathematical assurance, a positive development. Others may have milder views than myself, but still like hard censorship resistant money.

Because of motive suspicion, if it's not obvious: I hate spam with a passion, that's how I came to design hashcash while researching decentralized bearer money with others, and running nodes in privacy related cypherpunk p2p networks nearly three decades ago.

People seem upset about the default op return policy change in bitcoin. I will just assert, there are extremely robust and simple reasons for bitcoin changing default relay policy, and most just didn't do their research, so don't know what those are, or maybe not technical enough to fully understand though there have been 1000s of posts trying to explain in various simplified ways. So that lack of understanding lends itself to shared build-up of false narratives. So here's my back-to-basics higher level explanation.

The decentralization needed to create cypherpunk money has implications a: side effect of decentralization is that you can't impose your views on others. The very decentralization mechanism that helps that, is working against what BIP 110 wants, which at it's most basic is a quest to police other people. I understand supporters don't see their intent like that, but introspect deeper.

You can modify your software, but not anyone else's. Another critical and incredibly robust technical bitcoin immune system is bitcoin can't have people who don't understand technology basics insist on eroding security, decentralization robustness and core properties. That would end badly, fast, and so people will fight you on that.

So the message is Bitcoin respectfully says "no" to what you want. Sorry, and bitcoiners do genuinely understand and empathize that you mean well, have high level thoughts that make emotional sense, and articulate sensible bitcoin-defensive high level ideas, but they are not grounded and without you seeing it, the way you propose to achieve your ideas, hard-conflict with free cypherpunk permissionless money.

My advice is to listen to more experienced people who understand the system and why it works the way it does, to whatever detail you want to understand the grounded reasons for why this is the implication of decentralization and cypherpunk money.

I guarantee you the developer and protocol ecosystem shares and exceeds your views on bearer hard money (and dislike of spam). You may not agree with individual developers choices, views, way of expressing themselves etc, BUT you also need to understand the IETF-like decentralized technical consensus process creates a protective change resistance, that is highly effective at protecting bitcoin mission. The implication of which is no developer can change anything without technical consensus from hundreds of other developers and protocol observers who are pedantic and extremely knowledgeable clever people who won't let any unaddressed technical question past. The protective change resistance is robust and decentralized in an amplifying way because of this technical consensus.

And the many highly technical mainline developers' cypherpunk mission mindsets are probably far more determined than you can even handle on clarity of understanding and views about freedoms on permissionless networks, as many of you are probably still subconsciously inured by the matrix, where they have transcended that, and grew up immersed in it decades ago. They think natively in this space, while you are just grappling with the surface. Many wont have internalized or have the experience to know how this internet physics works, where there is no policeman, no policy authority, just mathematics, free market and hard money. That has implications for your views also, unfortunately.

Now the tough pill, which is unfortunately true: If you won't listen to reason, educate yourself, learn, the same radical freedom applies to you: your permissionless recourse is to club together and create a fork. But bitcoin won't be joining it. (With respect and no sleight intended.)

Please rejoin bitcoin now, or later if you're not convinced and need to experience 110 forking off and fizzling for yourself to start that journey of introspecting and learning. It would be sad if bitcoin lost people disillusioned due to simple lack of understanding of what's going on there, we're all trying to defend bitcoin and keep it on mission. Including btw the 110 technical promoters, just they wandered off plot somehow.

Join the cypherpunks on bitcoin, come cypherpunk summer🌞 in a few weeks.

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

250 years ago a bunch of treasonous anti-regulation extremists created America.

Happy Independence Day, may we some day create it again.

🇺🇸

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@BigSeanHarris @DavidFBailey

[David Bailey🇵🇷 $2.0mm/btc is the floor @DavidFBailey]

It’s incredibly bullish for Bitcoin that the hostile takeover attempt known as BIP-110 failed.

This attack was a multi-year campaign of information warfare led by Bitcoin’s most eccentric developer. It involved launching a mining pool, a competing Bitcoin client, a coercive UASF, an unprecedented 55% activation threshold, a network-level Sybil attack to manufacture the appearance of node consensus, anonymous sock puppet accounts, brigading official Core communication channels like the mailing list and GitHub, vicious and libelous attacks on industry figures, selectively edited videos used for character assassination, cancel culture, fabricated Epstein/Rothschild conspiracies, boycotts, legal threats, CP allegations, and an especially disgusting targeted campaign against Core developers that resulted in at least one Core developer resigning and several others stepping back.

Even with such an intense coup effort, the attackers have yet to gather even 1% of the hashrate.

While BIP148 proved that miners cannot diverge from social consensus, BIP-110 proves that economic weight shapes social consensus and that Bitcoin governance isn’t determined by “plebs,” but by an agglomeration of all users: individuals, miners, industry, developers, and everyone else with a stake in the network.

While it’s comforting to know that consensus is not easily manufactured, the attack also revealed that Bitcoin Core’s coordination layer is very vulnerable and in need of better solutions than Twitter. This was the first attack on Bitcoin that was also widely powered by AI slop, and to be honest, it’s extremely difficult to combat. It creates confirmation bias, hallucinates away essential nuance, and a single low-effort prompt can consume 100x more effort and time to refute. I don’t know how we address that long term.

Beyond demonstrating Bitcoin’s resilience, the BIP-110 attack was also a massive drain on the community’s time, energy, attention, and cohesion. I’d wager that more than a million human hours have been wasted on this.

Once BIP-110 forks off, that resource drain ends. The 1% of users (if that) who align with BIP-110 will have destroyed their credibility and effectively filtered themselves out of the network. It leaves Core positioned to be more effective and reminds a new generation of Core developers that technical merit always trumps virtue signaling.

I also think the industry needs to wake up to its role in consensus and become more engaged with Bitcoin Improvement Proposals going forward. All stakeholders need to tango, or we default to ossification.

There’s more to be said on the topic, but this is already too long.

Keep doing your thing, Bitcoin.

[fejau @fejau_inc]

im sorry what did you call them

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@GoingParabolic 58k gang gets its last laugh perhaps

[LI฿ERTY PHOENIX @MarcusSpallek]

@natbrunell PVP infighting is a bottom signal as losses get transmuted into anger and self doubt is expressed as lashing out at others that remind people of the decisions they regret making… TLDR inverse euphoria is a good signal for future price action