NCMT 500-314 -- Bitcoin and Philosophy (8 of 8)

Hello everyone. Welcome to the eighth and the last session of Nick Lanz Bitcoin and Philosophy Seminar. Sorry for being a little bit late. We were sort of like gathering thoughts and putting people together to start the seminar live. So I'm going to pass it on to Nick to begin okay thanks mom and so okay we've reached the buffers so to speak we will have reached the buffers in whatever a couple of hours so and the title I've got for this session which I think if I haven't looked at it, I haven't gone by memory, it's like

time truth and being or something equally modest like that is just to say that this is the final this is the final sink for all of our philosophical quandaries about Bitcoin and the blockchain and these things but also this session is a time all you guys are going to be doing a an assignment and so this is a opportunity to raise any questions relevant to battle make points about what you want to do or get discussions going about the topics that you want to pursue in that um... i'm

draw at uh... what to communicate after we closed down tonight so it's not as if this is going to be the end of life and mat but it's definitely a in terms of getting everyone together a a kind of precious opportunity to trash things out together that you think that you're going to be I'm working on so I don't know whether I should I should do a little spiel because I think as I say this is a special thing but I'll do it very short one and then anyone who wants to jump in at any stage as always but especially today do so.

So if I kind of, if I'm going to hold out on this time, truth and being thing and I think all of these terms are terms that are defensible, if grandiose are defensible in terms of Bitcoin and what we've been talking about, and try to just tie them together. I think the single term that is absolutely sensual and which actually I was talking to Chris a little bit earlier and this came up here is the notion of irreversibility I think that we've come

over and over again to the importance irreversibility to Bitcoin and we've come across it in a mixture of ways some kind of very informal way it's not totally clear that that's what we're talking about others completely explicit. But just to sort of rehearse a little bit, we've seen that from irreversibility, you can very quickly start finding yourself talking about the nature of the contract and the reason that Bitcoin, in terms of talking about incentives and motives and the actual objectives of the system, the reason that it has a relation to irreversibility is because

of the relationship of irreversibility to the contract. That a contract in principle is always irreversible and its value is precisely tied up with its irreversibility and the very notion of a bond in a wider sense than purely a financial institution, in the sense, city of London, self-defining slogan, my word is my bond, is exactly tied up with the notion of the irreversibility of the contract and that Bitcoin mechanizes or automates contractual

irreversibility and that is what gives it its value. And the specific way in which that is manifested within Bitcoin as we've seen over and over again of course is the double spending problem, the solution to the double spending problem which is precisely the introduction of irreversibility into financial transactions. The double spending problem is the notion that you can make a financial commitment, you can give someone money and then you can take it back and which is the same thing seen in a slightly different way you can spend that money again as if you hadn't spent it the first time you can give it to someone else as if you had this person you gave it to so the

relationship between the double spending problem the contract and irreversibility is absolutely locked tight those those are three different vocabularies for talking about essentially the same thing so so the blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin, is a machine for establishing mechanical irreversibility within the sphere of commercial transactions. So that's one aspect of it. We've also seen irreversibility emerging as a cryptographic theme of incredible importance so that the huge historical transition from symmetrical to asymmetrical cryptography upon

which Bitcoin builds is the cryptographic form of the problematic of irreversibility. certain arithmetical relationships that have an innate one-way character. So you can easily go from a private key to a public key, but as in a ratchet, you can't go back from the public key to the private key. The private key is intractable, cryptographically intractable from the and you have this gradient this this problem of or maybe you should say solution

of irreversibility coming in within an absolutely revolutionizing cryptography and this is something that Bitcoin is clearly built upon and then more widely and we see this sort of again quite explicitly discussed is the irreversibility that we get to through statistical mechanics or thermodynamics or the whole science of tensed time of temporal irreversibility where passage from the unlike

classical physics and unlike the mention of reversible time that you get in these Laplacian type models of the universe or even Newtonian models of the universe where you can reverse a physical equation and it doesn't make any difference you can't tell which is the correct direction which is the proper and orbital path of a planet it seems to work equally well in both directions as soon as you move into the era sure make engines I'm work in its thermodynamic sense entropy production you have temporal irreversibility you have time in a strong sense time us in a sense that is not which useful to a spatial I'm dimension

and stand a theme of irreversibility built into the natural sciences and into anything that then draws upon that in terms of our modern discussions of complexity self-organization and all of these kind of themes so I mean I would maybe we'll just call it thermodynamic irreversibility and so we're talking about time already so I don't think it needs any justification to say well what's time got to do with the irreversibility. I think it would be a more

interesting question and I would suspect impossible question to say how could you separate the question of time from a question of irreversibility. Truth is only slightly more complicated because I think that truth is a kind of contract. I think that what is at stake in a specifically commercial context in Bitcoin is the refusal of the possibility of someone saying, I take that back. There is a commitment to a statement, there is a commitment that can't be reversed.

And a lot of the uses already envisaged for the blockchain are exploiting this. The fact that if you make a claim that is of the form of a truth claim, it is structurally isomorphic from a financial or commercial claim. And the problem of irreversibility is exactly the same. If you are going to trust the blockchain as an epistemological engine rather than a commercial engine, you're not changing that much when you get to this extremely abstract level. You want a machine that forecloses reversal, that makes it impossible to go back on something that has been claimed. So the one that really is the abysmal element in

this obviously is being. And this is something that's been there from the start, I think, this whole discussion Bitcoin as ontology and so I think the suggestion that I'd like to sort of float to get things rolling with this really is can we just run are the whole of our on to logical problematic out of irreversibility is there anything at all that we're missing if we're wanting to say that in talking about being and talking about ontology, we're talking about irreversibility.

And the difference between reality and its idealization is a difference that is totally captured by the notion of irreversibility. So if we do a consistent and exhaustive translation of all our ontological problems into the language of irreversibility, then we're, I think, in just one short step in the position where we see the blockchain as an ontological machine

that the blockchain does ontology and it does it probably in a number of ways but it does it in one extremely obvious way by actually producing in a way that I don't think has been really well anticipated by producing artificial and artificial ontology or even I think we could say synthetic being and so I think we're in the quite if if this if I'm not at all suggesting that there aren't going to be a lot of questions up to this point but if people can just follow a in a hypothetical mode up to this point

then the sort of issues that are just natural in terms of thinking about Bitcoin as a simulated artificial metallic currency and we've seen that the way in which Bitcoin emulates foundation in some ways, or a monetary foundation, can be translated into much more wide-ranging philosophical dimensions.

Bitcoin is simulating being as soon as it sets up a blockchain that is an artificial time that establishes a mode of artificiality, sorry, a mode of irreversibility, artificially produced, upon which any kind of complication of time must be built. That it's a, we're not talking about time at all unless we're talking about this foundational irreversibility that is exemplified by the succession

of blocks in the blockchain so the blockchain is an artificial time, it's an artificial history and it's transcendental in the sense it's something beyond or before which we cannot go, it cannot be second-guessed Now this I take to be a kind of, again, claim that has to be contested, because it's so extreme in its implications. But the implications are that the human subject has no appeal to any criterion of ontological judgment that exceeds or transcends or can usurp the authority of the blockchain as an

ontological criteria. That virtually or implicitly, tacitly in the area we're going into, the blockchain is an ultimate ontological criteria and that it that we can expect it will be used in that way we can expect that things will be built on it in such a way that when it comes in any field whatsoever in the natural sciences as well as in in commerce in any human contract or agreement on negotiation that people are asking what without any attribution of trust without having to believe something

without having to take someone's word for it in a way that is conceivably reversible if there is something that we have to be able to assume is real then the blockchain is presenting itself as satisfying that demand. And so what I'm saying is that blockchain, Bitcoin cannot do what it wants to do with certain very specific financial operations. It cannot do those without philosophical claim

of absolutely immense historical consequence. And that claim granted any faculty that is available to the human subject for or to serve as an ontological criteria. That any human decision about the nature or reality of functioning structure of being is now downstream, virtually downstream of the blockchain. So I think rather than just pushing on with greater and greater theatrical emphasis on

this point it would be better to get people to poke what they think is the most unsustainable or implausible parts of this claim and from there. I've got a couple of questions. Me too. Go ahead, you first. No, no, no, you go. My question is more sort of like, I can understand thanks to this amazing seminar, the implications of Bitcoin for say, for economy, political economy, for geopolitics, for philosophy.

say when Nick talked about how this will even kind of like has to or will spread to like sciences or natural sciences, that's where I stop and I go like okay, how but how would it go there and then what will be the implications of it affecting the way natural sciences do their job? Yes, no that's great, I hope we can sort of really pick at this because it's like crucial and and I think it's an underexplored area obviously because people look at Bitcoin as a primarily financial innovation which in some respects it is but I think you have to say well what look at the way science works as an institution

and how it works as an institution is that they have to be scientific statements that are X that that one is expected to trust and what is expected to trust the night evening there are whole series of institutional mechanisms that are supposed to reinforce that trust to do with the reproducible nature experiments to do with peer review I'm good I up the whole notion of kind of experimental verification or if we want to be preparing falsification of scientific claims

but the bottom line with all of this and all of this institutional machinery is there are scientific statements that appeal to, that demand or claim trust. Now as soon as we say that then we're talking about something that is ready for the blockchain because the blockchain is a trust machine. It's the first, it's the huge innovation with the blockchain is that all previous cultural institutions consume trust rather than producing it. they actually assume in some way that there is some existing cultural machinery that allows

trust to be manufactured beyond the stage of that institution itself. And given trust, we can do X, Y and Z. And so you get these statements, as I say, like the one I've already said from the City of London far from an arbitrary one an absolutely I think I'm it pay to me where it says my word is my bond that's what they say that because they know that you have to trust them and they say we have to trust us we're trustworthy honest gov in a that's what it basically well sound to and the Bitcoin in contrast says you don't you don't have to trust us at all you know

the whole point of this is to get rid of trust and this machine you can look at its open sourced trust us look at it it's all the software is all open source is all free to be examined everything that happens on the blockchain is publicly recorded in the ledger you can look at it if you don't believe that everything is being public recorded you go back to the open source software you look at it you can see that in fact it has to be publicly recorded so it's not asking for trust so it's saying you know after you've finished skeptic leaks I I mean this to then you can see that this machinery is producing rather than consuming

trust that's what it means by being called trust us so so say I scientific papers no longer no longer need the validity of a reputable journal for them to be considered more valid. They can just be a paper and don't rely on that. I'm sorry, I lost you, Mo, there. I'm saying scientific research papers that are being published no longer need to rely heavily on the brand name of the journal that published them. also the way the footnote system and reference would work will be completely revolutionized in which you basically almost don't have to give any reference because the references are

just built into the essay or into the paper in a way like so you don't have to put numbers and and so like pass on I mean I mean that that's that's what I'm so like on a surface level get a look that the mechanics obviously complicated this but but the basic point you're making its I think absolutely indisputable in that the that transfer of of the scientific model onto the blockchain we will expect as we've seen the systematic eradication of quote for the umpteenth time trusted third parties now in the time in the scientific enterprise there's what are those trusted that but as

you've already started emulating them there's certain journals there's certain names there's certain accumulations of credibility academic brands absolutely absolutely and so blockchaining this would require that there is a direct peer-to-peer route for a claim to be made between anybody within the whole system and anybody else within the whole system that is publicly recorded on the ledger that cannot be retracted and that does not pass through trusted third party to produce its its credibility so so if I may jump in here

on yes your point so for example in a in same medical journal someone is studying antihypertensive a versus antihypertensive B and they found that a is not only non-inferior to be in fact have greater effects on survival rather than submitting it to the standard peer review process of say the Lancet or some other journal this could actually be published via the blockchain process verified and the trust of the veracity of these findings would be generated without

that sort of institutional chain of command. Is that what you're understanding? Absolutely. And Harry is a medical practitioner actually, so he comes from the world of science. But I think it also means that it does not need the third party because somehow the research upon this it claims is made is readily built into the blockchain already. So all sorts of data or like previous experiments themselves are there so you don't need to go through the third party verification or at least that's how I'm reading it which could

be wrong. Well I think this is a very interesting point because if we're using blockchain in order to get the funding for the study itself that could be something that could be generated through a Bitcoin like system. I mean, this whole idea we're talking about is something that could revolutionize this sort of studying and science and all of that, at least in this domain that I'm more familiar with. So this is a very intriguing idea, Mohamed. I think… Yes, I mean… Go ahead. No, no, no, you… No, sorry. No, I was just wrapping that up. you know sorry I was just wrapping that up it's okay I had nothing more to say

really on that I mean obviously the actual specific mechanics of this will be will be packaged in a form that we can protect which is that the suffix coin now is the way that someone produces a set of signs to show that something some particular institution has been placed onto a blockchain system so you know in a in the in the medical sense we would have you know whatever medic coin or whatever it would be and it would be some blockchain based system

that is able to generate a circulation of trusted information within the blockchain and the coins, which a coin is becoming extremely abstract, a coin is basically just a unit of trust that is produced on this thing. And so the credibility of a particular kind of scientific discourse or a certain scientific hypothesis even would no longer be something that would be based on appeal to some higher tribunal but would be intrinsically represented by the currency of this particular system

of coinage. And what it means, coinage in this sense just means this bitcoined circulation. And so the value of the system and the credibility of the system are exactly the same. And if something is functioned as, you know, within, for instance, a medical circle of doctors engaging in certain things and passing information between themselves, then they will have this vibrant economy enumerated within a particular of these blockchain coins. the value of those coins would directly represent the credibility of that information that is being circulated between them without any higher authority being required to evaluate

that information and pass on from on high some judgment about whether that information can or cannot be trusted. You can tell the degree of trust involved is directly manifested by the economy, by the coins. So that is how any kind of blockchain system will work. I'm not going to get into a huge thing, but the intervening stage that is already well underway with this is to do with property title of all kinds. So particular types of coin are involved to, we've already seen I think last week about the authenticity of a work of art.

So these are already developed types of coins that they circulate in order to show that a particular work of art is what it claims to be and is not a forgery or has not recently in some mysterious way appeared on the art market. or more straightforward things to do with say this is in fact my car or this is in fact my house or various other things that you would want to sort of lay claim to in the physical world. So when you're making those sort of claims, when you're saying we can see the system is already protesting and digest, 100% for sure this is my car, you're already only taking

technically distance saying this is this is for sure the doctor that has come out this particular piece of research it's a signature its a coined is a set to see niche to its the just all throughout act you know I have seen this output from a particular machine I have seen this particular set the figures coming out of a scientific study and that that is then material that is circulated on the blockchain exactly the same as a claim to a particular title on a on a piece of stuff in the world

Isn't this not so much an actual kind of technology or verification? I mean I can see how this is really useful and important in stripping ideology out of scientific truth. But doesn't the verification of the truth have to happen outside of the blockchain anyway before its documentation as truth is locked into place? And we still don't get out of that problem of the fact that there's an imperfect verification system going on which has to run through culture in order to become truth. and then we're just going to log it. I can see its use as a referencing system, but surely it's just documentation. And secondly, isn't the whole kind of... I mean, what if we logged

the truth that the world is flat, or the Earth, the whole solar system revolves around Earth years ago. What do we do in order to manifest skepticism or to recreate our edifice of knowledge or whatever? Yeah, that was one of my questions. Yeah, the manifestation of skepticism is implicit in the fact that of the value of the coins. So, like, if there was flat earth coin kicking around would not have a question about is the earth flat or not independent

of the vitality of the now I I can only assume that flat earth coin would be you know without this coming for the sake of it flatlining right now and you know if if it wasn't at lightning if it wasn't at lightning because the bottom line of anything based on the no on a in that this next so that when something is validated is that the majority of computing power applied to the system

accepts this as being valid and so when I when I make sort of extreme claims to blockchain as ultimate criterion it's to say you are not going to find a superior epistemological test than a I sort of mature Nakamoto consensus if you can say I'm that you know I know the work is a flat but the majority of the US computing power thinks that the earth is flat then I think agree you're lost you know you lost and and the power would just be

running us somewhere bad but I think that the the blockchain back is the fact that you caught there is simply no more reliable criteria and then what the majority of computing power applied to the system is going to accept as real right So this is the question. I'm sorry. No, go, go, go, go. Okay. So it seems the issue is that of revision. So instead of the earth is flat, let's say Vioxx is a safe medicine. So you have a Vioxx coin out there that says that Vioxx stops heart attacks

and isn't going to cause you to stroke out. And then sometime later, and say that loosely the way this protocol worked is that everybody involved in the Vioxx clinical testing is assigned party to the Vioxx coins, cryptographically secure their identities, all that sort of thing. Later on, they report that they have had strokes, that some of them have had heart attacks anyway, etc. So you have to have a mechanism of revising the knowledge after the facts. You have to have some kind of attached atemporal structured statements that can be revised. And then you have the question of what happens to those Vioxx coins. I mean, are they devalued? And then, I mean, I guess the idea is that if they are devalued by this change in conclusions,

then MetaCoin in general, we lose a certain amount of confidence in FDA coin or something like that. And so it loses value. But it seems like, I don't know, that's a process that has to involve something besides the blockchain structure as we know it itself, and also something that has to dramatically differ between human sciences, where your parties are both human study subjects and scientists, versus like physics, where it's, you know, faster than light neutrino coin, you know, for example. and maybe I've been reading the blockchain thinking and it seems like maybe the solution here is that we have machines

like the machines that we use for hard science experiments as parties signing parties to transactions that whole issue is talking about the internet of things being enabled machines exchanging tokens and so forth it seems like that has to play a part necessarily in episodes I think that is one extremely interesting avenue for this for sure because you want to get hard data coined up on blockchains as as raw as possible I would have thought that's for sure but let's explore this whole Vioxx thing or whatever I mean we can use any example I mean it stops you to making some claim about

Vioxx and then somewhere down the line saying oh that's not what I meant or you know I'm being misrepresented or you know an attempt to preserve credibility in the face of a kind of outcome that completely destroys credibility. That is impossible on the blockchain. If you produce a certain set of results and it's attached with a certain sort of set of identities that are operating within that system, those identities are then attached absolutely irreversibly to those particular set of commitments that are made.

Which in the case of something like that would be statistical commitments basically, that these measured results support this conclusion with a certain amount of confidence. And it seems like... Yes, no, look, I'm assuming that what you'd want to do is encourage an evolutionary process in exactly the direction that you're saying. This is what I was going to say, sorry I'm jumping in Nick, but I was going to like Sure, sure, sure. The thing is, what you end up happening is like never-ending experiments, a process of eternal data collection on a problem that is constantly generating and expanding the sample

rate or whatever you call of the question it was that was put to test, right? Yeah, exactly. With Vioxx, if you're looking at people's continuing health records over time, and so there's this constant, like, what percentage of these people longitudinally are developing the condition that the medicine was created, was claimed to be able to treat, who's manifesting side effects. So that seems to be exactly where this is merging with the question of datification. And so if we're all constantly generating this stream of health data from our bodies because of these biosensors and so forth, and that's connected to studies we've been participants in, then that's constantly feeding into the blockchain, I guess is the idea. But this only works. It's a whole ecosystem. But isn't that stuff already a form of a computing power also

that has to kind of like, whether it's Internet of Things or like receptors in your body or wherever, that's like translating this reality into a data stream and providing it. In fact, the more Vioxx is discredited in a short term, in a long term, the coin will be actually more credible because it's constantly being verified. It's not constantly being verified, it's constantly being like… That's interesting, yeah, exactly. There's an optimal revision rate for the growing value of the currency. If it's too low, the currency is also valueless because not enough is happening on this blockchain.

Old conclusions aren't being changed by new experiments. Yeah, totally. And you know, with the regular scientific test, you have like the experiment, like set its scale and its limits, they do it and then they publish it. And then for 10 years, people will refer to that very small or particular set of questions or tests until somebody comes and goes, oh, that was wrong actually. This is causing this and that. You know what I mean? And then you have an update of knowledge, right? Whereas with this, what you have is like it's just constantly updating itself. So Mo, to further riff on the point you were making, we're now getting to the point where big data is being generated with regard to health parameters, say in medical care.

So entire dynamics of population health, rates of obesity, regional rates of obesity versus other regions, blood pressure, blood sugar control, all of those things. now developing sensors in wearable technology that can upload those data points and we were discussing yesterday in Nick Srinicek's paper on cunning automata, the speed at which these data are transmitted in financial networks, we can now assume that algorithmic power is going to be necessary for real time monitoring of, for example, population health, statistical

production within scientific studies, those sorts of things. So I think if I'm understanding this conversation correctly, that's the direction we're moving and also to a more democratized form of analytics rather than those being the wheelhouse of, say, specific universities or research groups, that these data would be more democratized. I don't know. Any other thoughts on that? I mean, this language of democracy is complicated because, I mean, And what we're talking about is the power in the system goes to the predominant computing

power applied to the system. And so, I mean, people can or cannot, you know, I can see why people would see that as democratizing or anti-democratizing. a lot of room for political maneuvering and strategies for sure. But what it is that these traditional institutions of credibility are subtracted systematically from the system and and their previous function is supplanted by knock come after my two consensus is just the fact that blockchain has to update

itself in such a way that is consistent that has no double spending problem at double spending problems we've seen us extremely wide a means basically that there is no abuse of signs taking place in this regime so and I think that in to claim here is that if you have a combination data feeds onto the blockchain combined and with the Nakamoto consensus selection mechanism you can X become eliminate all of the existing apparatus of institutional credibility that is involved in the street it's so yeah

for sure I mean people can and are saying that's democratizing ice I'm also sympathetic to people who which be concerned about what it is that is making its station so really the process of democratization may not even be irrelevant it may become irrelevant through these processes archaic perhaps yeah I think it's the power is going towards the if if you want any agency wants to have ontological power to decide what is real and that and the blockchain and is their channel for that then the route to that

is by accumulating computing power and the computing power will not do what you ask it to do it will simply decide the Nakamoto consensus on its own but I mean And as we've said, power is almost a euphemism for capital. It becomes commoditized and standardized and the technologies here become more mature than that becomes ever true. That seems like one aspect of a more general way that if anything is seizing onto

ontological power or there's any spreading of ontological power, it seems from humans to machines. So we talked about how this reality criterion supersedes anything that the human subject can appeal to, but it seems to me almost more like it represents machines excluding those sources of human verification that machines themselves don't have access to or are specifically human privileged. so that there's a final reality criterion that... Absolutely. That's what I was trying to get at. Absolutely, man. I agree with you. Yeah, sorry. Whether it's the autonomy of smart contracts

of software entities that can't be contested by humans saying, no, no, no, wait, tear up the paper, black out the signatures, like this is done, we're not actually doing this. or whether it's, or whether with this sort of data thing, whether it's in terms of not being able to appeal to a fact like, hey, I'm a human standing here, look, the world isn't fucking flat, and the machine says, you know, unless, like, machines have registered data, which according to machine protocol algorithm says that that is the case, you can't make that phenomenological appeal. Yeah. So it's not just an ontological, but also a machine ontology. That's crucial, absolutely crucial. Yeah, absolutely crucial. I think the notion that there is some human access to reality

that has leverage over the Nakamoto consensus is the question. And this is not one that I would like us to resolve now, because I think this is going to be this huge argument that breaks out in society as this stuff develops. and the natural thing is of course to think well you know we somehow know what is or is not real why are we listening to the machines I a as mediated through the Nakamoto consensus why do we care what they think and said the question for sure as well what really

what is our access to reality that pit, let's say legalistic informally and into a sort of you know us against machines, what are we saying we are able to do or what access we have that we are pitting against this machine consensus and I think the whole bitcoin phenomenon is that we just don't have anything that finally we're busted flash in this and there's no you know that there's no way that we have a authoritative access to reality that we can persuasively counterpose to what the Nakamoto consensus says is the

reality of any situation that has been blockchained. Well it seems like that's just all a question of data you know of the given and of understanding our sensory datum and the machines datum as coming from a common base. And so how do we weigh two different kinds of entered data? And if we view ourselves, I mean, we have to view ourselves as machines just in order to begin answering this question in a way that isn't arbitrary. But I think part of that is already being slowly eroded because in terms of like a human, global human worldview, we're moving towards people more and more realizing that their own data collection, the historical ways in which human phenomenological relationship to the world has built our understanding

is eroding. And people are more and more understanding that the machine's ability, the network machine's ability to do this work is much more actually reliable and much more complex in terms of telescoping this data or like overlay overlaying it for different kinds of like truth extraction or like whatever whatever the right word is right right I mean these mountains of data are not human readable that's the other is too much we produce more information than we're capable of analyzing that I have to say not put an objection here that I don't I think this trend of the conversation now to say this is just about data is not right I mean you know that the the the blockchain when it the blockchain validates a block I don't

think it's talking about data primarily it's not it's talking about the fact that this this set of transactions on have not been double spent that their original what what's being validated is not a certain quantity of data it's a it's a set of commitments and so of course data comes into this I'm not saying data is irrelevant but but it's not data is not a good stand-in for the thing that's at stake here or what the blockchain is doing when the blockchain edits out all realities in which double spending has happened it's not because the blockchain is able to manage data better than humans or any of these things.

It's because the blockchain cannot engage in duplicity. You can see that the blockchain cannot be duplicitous by software engineering, the open source thing is there. Duplicity is impossible on the blockchain. We know it's not impossible for us and that's the difference. It's not a difference of data versus something else. Well, is that, I mean, if we take data, it's not just meaning like quantitative, you know, like binary input, but as data has been given, right? Isn't that precisely saying that the transactions given in and to the blockchain are raw and atomic given, right? Okay, I think that's great. No, that is great.

That's great. And I think if we're prepared to rethink fundamentally what we think data is, then absolutely I will then turn around 180 degrees and sign onto this. That's absolutely what's happening. Nick, I was going to make another provocation, which is the way in which the word and the concept of algorithm has entered sort of like the culture, and now I'm using culture the way Amy uses the word culture, right? Culture is sort of like there's a problem with it, which is a stand-in for human or a stand-in for human intelligence, right, which is going to mediate or somehow still sort of, I mean it doesn't say directly that that's what it is

but most of the time when people provoke or sorry, invoke algorithm, what they're really trying to point to are the smart human programmers who are writing these things, right? And I think with this hypothetical move to Bitcoin actually there will be a deflating or de-emphasization of algorithm, of that type of what algorithm means, right? It has to because you know what I mean and especially the way sort of like you know like Nick and Alex talk about algorithms in like algorithms in a cunning automata, sometimes I feel like they're also kind of use it in that sense. It's like a ghost of the human. is the ghost of the man that still tries to sort of like, that's still in charge of the

machines. Whereas I think what we're discussing here is like, it's like, okay, okay, if you're talking about like cinema, it's, it's the difference will be, the difference will be between the ex, ex machina and the automator, the two, two movies that came out like recently that deal with artificial intelligence. In automator, you're dealing with this very simple machine that's actually very much like Siri on two legs and its development into sort of like an independent type of artificial intelligence and then in Ex Machina which you're dealing with this like trauma of the machine not being fully accepted by human or all this sort of stuff that happens around like the humans are still sort of like the

masters yeah it's an interesting question it's it's it's interesting how little algorithm comes up in this Bitcoin discussion is that it's a word we've hardly used over the last eight weeks the the word that stands in for it is protocol and protocol interestingly is at least as much on the economic side as it is on the technical side I mean it's a protocol in the sense is a piece of software but it's also a protocol in the sense is a certain kind of economic arrangement and I think I mean my worry about over investing

the language of algorithms is that it sounds as if you're involved in something that is purely technical in a way that can be stood over against something else. I think that why this language that has already emerged and established itself of a protocol is one that seems to me much more satisfactory is that when talking about the commercial and economic and contractual side of Bitcoin, it seems completely natural to be also used using the same language, that the Bitcoin protocol is a piece of social direction as

much as it's a piece of technical code. So I don't know, it's interesting. I had a question about going back to the beginning, basically when I was saying that the blockchain works as an ultimate ontological criterion, right? So my question was like, maybe I even asked this question already, I don't even remember, What about the fact that this ultimate criterion or ontological criterion comes from a monetary technology?

Does it say anything about reality? The structure, the operative logic to validate reality comes from an economic mode of evaluation. Yes. I'm sure that you can dig very deeply into this question. So I certainly don't want to kind of shut it down by whatever I say about it. I mean, it's tied up with this question about what is happening semiotically with this new uses of the word coin. One of the things I think we've hardly seen yet, but we're going to see hugely, is that the word coin is going to totally change its sense.

And the old sense of coin to do with bits of metal circulating around as cash is going to seem like archaic and quaint and a bit irrelevant. And a coin is going to be something that instantiates any system of exchange on a blockchain. And the reason to bring that up is I think that when we talk about a monetary technology, Initially for sure, and I have no doubt there are good reasons for that and also reasons that are questionable in all kinds of ways, Bitcoin begins as a monetary technology in a narrow sense and that's its latch and that's its attempt to kind of immediately motivate

people. And obviously economics is the primary zone of incentives. So if you want to motivate people, you go economic automatically. You know, I mean, every other way of trying to kind of guide or engineer or organize people's motives is either, it seems to be in some sense regressive in relation to the economic mode. You know, you can threaten them with guns or you can try and seduce them or whatever, And if just in a way that is just technical and publicly admissible, you want to kind of motivate people in certain directions, you're already involved in an economic question.

But I think even though Bitcoin starts off as an economic technology in this narrow sense, what it does is actually means that we realize we don't even understand what money is. And, you know, that a coin becomes a question mark. It becomes like, what can we turn into coins? When we turn something into coins, there is a, and I don't want to dismiss this because I think it could be developed very interestingly, but ultimately I'm skeptical. There was a kind of immediate possibility of a certain left-wing argument that when you slap a coin suffix on something, what you're doing is economizing it in a way that we understand. you know you're reducing something to the economy and they've got all these different types of coin

and what you're doing simply reducing them to some understood substrate economic activity I will I'm don't think that is right even though as I say I'm sure it can be developed in an interesting way I think it's much more that we don't know what a coin is we don't know what money is and you know Bitcoin is Bitcoin is gonna make all our previous understanding of what money is completely obsolete we're gonna seem it as the prehistory Bitcoin is gonna be seen as the first money that actually understands itself in this kinda conceptually you said I'm and it's gonna do all of this other stuff

I'm so that's my sort of response to I I think yeah it's monetary but but it turns it turns money into a question in the kind of works perfectly into something I was thinking about earlier which was on bitcoins Bitcoin as being as this token which has you know an empty but positive value or requires values that can be traded for more things you know in the sense that the copula I'm one sort of like ray fighter turned back and looked at can stand in for all different kinds of reality relations or differentials between what is and what isn't and so forth. And then on the other hand, also I've been trying to wrap my head around for just the

past 20 minutes or so, which is in one of these epistemic blockchains, you know, what would you be compensating and what would determine the value of these coins? Are you compensating participation, contribution of data, the processing of verification of these data or how they relate to previous conclusions and invalidate or support them or whatever. And yeah, it definitely seems as if coin is just becoming a question mark. So like, medical data, question mark, is this valid data? I don't know. Yeah, but certainly that epistemic blockchains would have to have more than one kind of coin because more than one level of question as to the validity of a scientific conclusion

claimed to be registered to the chains and that it does seem to be standing in for the circulation of Ta'an, of the being of things and of the differentiation of more and more ontic regions. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously one sort of whole zone on this is the relationship. What is the relationship between ontology and trust? because the most direct route into a the block chaining of anything is that if there's a trust problem involved the blockchain is already trying to getting at this point I know

and obviously it seems to me that there has to be there has to be a relationship between these two things as to say that that trust must be an ontological problem at some level its you know it's that what is what is real what is being all things that I'm and introduce question of credibility of of that at some level this is something that you have to you have to accept and when I say you have to accept it's not that you have to accept as a

just to Trump close down a question and say you know we just have to accept it is to say that to carry on there is a there is a continual acceptance taking place and therefore you might want it to be formally automated in a in a way that doesn't depend upon certain traditional institutions and that given given that that is going to be a necessity that there is an economic requirement for reproduction of trust take place all the time that you know just in this you know everything that isn't erroneous kept his everything that isn't you know I have no

in idea whether if I step into this track extreme why step off this clear its or I and stick this shotgun in my mouth and pull the trigger I have no way of knowing one way or the other whether this is gonna harm me or or not harm me or something I want to do or something not to if you're in this totally peronean state and who at where people say he was being steered around by his friends because he was in such a state of pure, sceptical refusal to lend credence to anything that didn't deserve it, and he would simply have stepped off a cliff if his buddies hadn't, say, tugged him the other way. If you're not in that Peronian state, and I'm going to assume hypothetically that no one is, then there's

this trust economy that you're involved in all the time anyway. And so when you get onto these medical questions of the kind that Harry has kind of been introducing, you know, it's easy to say, okay, it would be kind of mad to step off a cliff because you don't know really whether you can trust that your perceptions are accurate or whether the scientific principles of gravity and the properties of falling bodies can be trusted you know it seems simple but when you'll get into a whole set of things to do with lifestyle and diet and you know things that high medical consequence of course people are trusting in things that are far more controversial and open to

dispute and you know have total life and death consequences but are deep in these this jungle of unresolved trust issues and that's why it seems to me the blockchain is already got its foot in the door you know it's it's no good saying we just don't need trust obviously we don't we're using it all the time and it's no good saying it's the status quo is is acceptable I think that you know So maybe people can or cannot accept it, but certainly they're not making life or death issues on the basis of philosophically rigorous foundations.

So there is an appeal to a criterion implicitly. Why do we, you know, what is our machinery of trust here? There's already a machinery of trust. It's just an informal one. And blockchain is saying, well, let's formalize that. let's actually work out what people are doing here and be rigorous about it and then test commercially and this is commercially in the same sense as money commercially just meaning in a sense that is being sociologically validated so let's let's validate these systems of trust that we're already engage in all the time and and kill people every day

one way or the other I was just gonna say or mentioned briefly I think there's a striking parallel to on purses system the continuum and the blockchain and I'll like through and through from the in existential graphs the the beta cut being a line that's irreversible a along its point and then to the greater cuts being those of contingency but all being through action reaction processes literally blocked or like sedimented in this continuum.

And so you could think of a, I think, Bitcoin exchange as a contingent breach in a sense that is then anchored, but it was making me think about all this talk of contingency and derivatives coming out of IHA's work and Nick and Alex's and Sohail's as something that is just a different beast. know I don't know how it back could be registered but but I think the parallel is very interesting versus system I just wanted to share that I don't know if

anyone else thought it's not like I disagree but I paid my just purchase on PS is not up to me making a kind of even plausibly productive response to that I would just have to go look at it yeah to school look a month more or not to interrupt but I I have to go to work guys unfortunately Surely I couldn't negotiate any going in any later than this. So this is my last hurrah. Goodbye. It was good, everybody. Thank you. Okay.

Cool. Great. Well, yeah. Well, I think we need to be in touch at some point. So, but you, everyone can, there were channels of communication, aren't there? Yes, and the classroom is there. We're not going to close the classroom. And everybody who was in the class, whether like enrolled or audit or members, who showed interest will all have access to classrooms, so is unique for, that's our own blockchain. We have like a small system. Okay. Enjoy work, Jake, for sure. Ha! You kidding me? It's Mother's Day. Fuck this shit. Goodbye, guys. Thanks. Bye! Thanks. Well, I guess I raised that because

if this ontological system, as you put it, is as tight and trustworthy as I would agree it seems to be, what could be a contingent discontinuity for it? You know, I mean, we saw how, what's it called, crashed. But, you know, what threats do you potentially see? I think we could definitely get onto this and as we know it's already there in the Bitcoin paper this discussion, this security question this is also something we haven't, it's come up a few times but if we could have run this whole course

as a course about security for sure, it's huge but I just have to say I'm not at all wanting to say it's trustworthy I want to say only that it's ultimately trustworthy in a sense there is no higher there is no superior tribunal of trustworthiness that we can appeal to so so it's like if you don't trust the Nakamoto consensus there is no way you can run to that is credibly superior in its you know there is no salvation if you're gonna go into a kinda a Heidegger mode it of only a god can save us you know there is there is nothing that you're gonna find

that is going to give you leverage on the Nakamoto consensus so that's my stops on that and I think anyone who pushed anything harder than that it goes into snake oil territory quite fast and obviously some other Bitcoin stuff does today you just shouldn't worry about it of course it's totally fine there's nothing the much going wrong boom boom boom boom boom boom that seems to me to get it completely wrong and the the whole point if this is it comes out a critique and it's all that is left after you have engaged in systematic critique of these trusted third-party institutions that have up to this point asked us trust that and Bitcoin says

don't trust any of those guys you know they are inferior to the Nakamoto sense just as a trust machine and I think that that's for me it you know take one step further beyond that and you are as I say then you're trying to you're trying to sell some belief to people that is goes beyond what is credibly supported by the technology can I just say that law at some point post this thing no one knows what a coin can do can I just say that is just like absolutely what this out as far as I am just randomly

re-quoting it. I mean, that's totally right. That's totally right. That's it. That's what... I'm not trying to steal it, although I have used a sentence almost exactly the same actually in this book that's coming out, but it's like this is what this course is about as far as I'm concerned, for sure. And it's totally right. You know, the question of ARK has come up a few times as an example, or like a good example,

a bad example of Bitcoin. But I think just like how we talked about the implications of Bitcoin for, say, medical science or for other fields, I think there's more to how a Bitcoin approach can transform artistic production. and like change the way art is received, exchanged, understood in the art world and then as a sort of like a trickle down outside of the art world. One of the smallest examples I can provide, smallest, would be a bitcoin style register.

system for the works of art by artists to be registered. So if it's not registered, it's not even art. It doesn't matter how many people can say that, oh no, that was actually like that famous artist who made it. I was there on his studio. I saw it. If the work does not get registered, it just, so basically it can eliminate the possibility of any fakes entering the system because somehow it's verified through this form of like machinic or human mediated registry you know what I mean yeah at you did done that three months ago my you you'd now be a multi-millionaire but I'm afraid I think you missed the boat you missed the boat on your art registry use of the blockchain so you fortune will have to come

from another direction but yeah that's totally right totally right yeah yeah but go on sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you so let's go to number two because that's what your first example absolutely is gonna happen and is being implemented at this minute but you know you know another thing about about money that we never we never sort of like are discussed is that and this is some some conviction that's been with me it doesn't come from reading political economy or doesn't come from reading like about the history of money is that the reason why we will never get rid of cash is because cash allows for a certain level of criminal activity to be built into the underground

of any system. If you eliminate cash then in a way you are eliminating a lot of illegal economic activity because if everything was based on a credit card system, everything would be registered, right? So then you can't, like, there's no app to order your cocaine, you know what I mean, that charges your PayPal. But the anonymity of Bitcoin actually could allow for both legal and illegal economic activity to coexist, right? Am I wrong? No, no, you're totally right. and that's why it says in that the title when the the titles we know of the Bitcoin paper

is the first definition of Bitcoin that we have appears be electronic cash sister and then so and cash doing exactly what you're saying and I'm I and obviously been the first sort of theatrical history of this being a silk road and the fact that the first people to really start getting into this in a big way are people who want to engage in these underground economic activities cash cash transactions so this different ways you this conversation can go obviously among all the kind of cypher-punk types and and

guys who are really attached this national cash that the conversation they want to have is why is the blockchain not stronger a on ask cash you know and they feel in some ways betray and they worry that people can actually trace these transactions that the system doesn't protect anonymity with anything like the seriousness that they had expected it would I guess they still wonder quite how the Silk Road got taken down by the FBI and so that's one whole line of conversation that you can go the other I guess or wanna I mean among several alternatives

is is then coming from the other side of people saying well how can we let this innovation unfold if it's going to be a godsend to criminal activity and allow people to engage in always activities and so them you know what I've been calling that mainstream types the market reasons these people actually been saying I'm unit to the powers that be if you go with this you can use the public lecture to actually regular eyes financial transactions to a huge degree and you will end up laughing at the libertarians rule Lee and look for something better

sad this is all pitched in a way to kinda low conceptual level political economic at concrete mass but she's about one really be a Bitcoin if that's how it's praying right it won't be a true Bitcoin well it its as we've seen the Bitcoin gives up entirely a Bitcoin totally a displaces to the line all anonymity so so that with cash I'm the actual transaction

is completely cry for potentially you know you go and find your truck dealer you hand them cash no one can see that unless this video cameras on the walls its untraceable then the back notes all do have serial numbers on them but no one's following those numbers around and where every time there's a commercial transaction with a bank note it remains unregistered so you know you've got some serial number banknote you've got no idea where as you say you don't know where it's being cat and with Bitcoin is the opposite you you totally know where it's been every single moment in which that Bitcoin has passed from a to be no date be to see to T is is recorded on the blockchain the FBI or

NSA or whoever is your paranoid agency of choice could look at the blockchain record without any problems whatsoever and follow a Bitcoin through its entire path from its original genesis in a mining activity through any number of transactions to its current wallet. What they cannot know is what the real identities are corresponding to those wallets, to those Bitcoin identities. So anonymity now lies between your Bitcoin avatar which is a which is an economic agent or wallet existing in the book Bitcoin system and you as a real-life person real-life we can ironize

to whatever degree we like and so depending how you look on that we then get a weekend then get all of these conversations and other ones you know like that original implication of the Bitcoin thing is oh that's totally secure you know because your Bitcoin you have a Bitcoin identity an avatar in that Bitcoin system that can then do anything you like and it can't be traced back to you no one knows who is actually the real person behind this Bitcoin account and this must be what all the Silk Road guys and everyone over them was totally counting on and but unfortunately

you can do a lot of forensic work with computers and these transactions can in fact be traced back to particular computers and particular operations being conducted at times a particular ISP addresses and whatever. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to try and be an expert on this thing at all. Absolutely, clearly not. But I think that there was a certain naivety in the original thing about what these police, internet police powers could do to reconnect Bitcoin transactions to real computers and then I think once you've got a real computer then

that jump to a a real-life social identity is not a particularly demanding one Hey, so Nick you mentioned before, and I really like this because it answers a lot of my previous questions about the temporality of the blockchain. The complications of time have to be built upon the foundation of asymmetrical time or entropic time. So I wanted to ask about the time that builds the blockchain. I mean, I'm assuming that you see this as some kind of pocket of negentropy.

what happens to this external time when everything disappears into blockchain temporality and then how these, I don't know, how you might envision these temporal anomalies that could arise out of blockchain time manifesting I'm just trying to get my head around it a little bit yeah, well levels of entropy in this yeah I think it is there are so many tempting avenues to explore in this way like them the most straightforward let me put on my most sensible possible hacked and not with just the understanding there are some the slightly less sensible hats that could be put on its that

limit most sensible possible hat would definitely see the whole thing as nested so that your outermost level is the most is in the most deep and unproblematic compliance to thermodynamic normality. That's to say that it's engaged in continuous entropy production. So at this level, at the outermost level, one has a continuous decline in order or increase in entropy. within that we know already from the whole at the complex dynamics things is that you can't have a pocket

within that out most level way you can have normal ass negative entropy production which is then everything is based life and technology and history and all the best stuff and so when you're saying the blockchain would occur within that and the blockchain is then either part of that pocket or a pocket within that pocket or is somehow nested within a kind of entropic cosmic backdrop. And so if you then say, as I've been asserting, that it's an ultimate ontological criterion, when it's only in the same way that philosophy or some other human cultural institution would

have claimed to be an ultimate ontological criteria. It's obviously nested within or enveloped within a larger economy that is running in the opposite direction and is not in any way subservient to it. Now obviously, if you want to then start putting on weirder hats, you then get into kind of simulation argument type thoughts, like, because everything we know about this outer, wider, entropic economy is modelled within our narrow, negative, entropic

enveloped economy and the same with Bitcoin what web what is ultimately under production coin is a substrate for techno intelligence serving as the ultimate criteria now reality and its relationship to these I mean what it well ultimately think about these kinds of simulation dilemmas I think is a week something we can only speculated speculated about quite wildly yes man I'm whatever it thinks about ok of itself being inside simulation I think what ultimately count

I given everything that I pretty committed myself to it would have to be taken more seriously than anything we decide now about the probability of that intelligent system being inside a simulation because it's have I sort of totally evaded your question now? I sort of feel I have a bit I've taken some elliptical orbit around it that's kind of avoided you answered it in just the way I wanted you to but I'm a little bit confused about So we've got our nested levels of entropy, nested pockets of negentropy. How do we get from that to the simulation argument?

Can you just clarify that a little bit? Because I'm really interested in this. Well, I think, okay, how do you get to it? The easiest way would be simply to retrace the route people have up to this point got the simulation argument from that because like you know Nick Bostrom who obviously didn't invent the simulation argument but is by far the most sort of authoritative promoter and popularizer of the simulation argument I'm assuming with some confidence would not call into question really anything that I've just said until we get to the blockchain of which I've not heard of him

make any statement whatsoever so as far as he's concerned the whole human technology and leading to simulation technologies would be part of a natural history that would naturally take place inside a and and in tropic cosmos and he doesn't expect people to think anything else and yet at the point where he she then force people to raise this time I like if an advanced simulate an advanced civilization and survives values what equals ancestor simulations and has the capacity

to produce that step simulations then almost certainly we are inside a simulation and so everything that gets to that dilemma has come out of just mainstream on problematic uncontroversial science is nothing he's not asking you to make any assumptions and now suddenly he asked you to make these three assumptions or least you these there there are these three off-ramps and but if you obviously then say well where insider simulation our model of the external entropic outer cosmos is completely unreliable

I mean it's simply it's simply the model with inside inside our simulated reality of the outside of our entropy pocket inside that simulation but it's not the what it's not a model it's not pretending to be a model and it couldn't possibly be a model all the of the and entropic outer cosmos in bedding our simulation because because that outside the absolute outside isn't modeled at all inside our simulation we don't have a model so if you are some thermodynamic cosmologist

to tell you about what the universe like they're not telling you about what's outside our simulation they're telling you about the outside of our pocket of order within our simulation so I'm not necessarily being very clear about this but I'm just saying it's not the the absolute outside the absolute outside that is transcendentally introduced by the simulation argument is not a theme or topic that is I'm that is identified or that is under any kind of discussion within the natural sciences as they exist within

any simulation K this I'm sure I'm being really obscure about this I am I'm trying to be clear but it's it is a slightly is is the fact that once you cross over to saying that maybe you're in a simulation then everything that your natural sciences are about is about the inside of that simulation not the outside that's you know even though it sounds is what makes it misleading is it doesn't sound like because obviously you know you follow follow the argument through again it starts you know start with a natural universe life exists civilization exists it builds simulation it sounds like you're talking about the universe and then working your way

to talking about simulations but as soon as you cross the line of saying well maybe this is a simulation then those sciences that you're talking about before are no longer anything that you've ever had access to within the simulation that you're embedded within. I'm just slowly because I'm trying to reconcile the account of technological development that leads to simulation technology as negentropy then being discounted by its ability to simulate its own creation. And I don't know where I want to take this actually

because it's been something I've been thinking about for a while and I've lost all of my thoughts on it all at once. Oh really? Yeah, I've got like diagrams of the book of my wall. Yeah, you could have really helped us out here and in fact instead you've had some kind of weird brain spatter. I have indeed. I'm kind of sick as well. I'm more on a bunch of medication which might be part of that. But, yeah, maybe just let me try and get my thoughts back together on this for a sec. Okay, this is a different thought, but isn't then positing Bitcoin as a sort of negantropic, or the blockchain as a negantropic, the result of a negantropic process?

Or protocol. Yeah, whatever. What? I said, yeah, or protocol. Continue, I'm interested. still then just retreating further and further into the simulation and losing all purchase on the absolute outside well I mean we have I don't know we have no purchase absolute outside until we can first envisage the absolute outside.

I mean, like, if you take the simulation argument as an example, it's only with the thought, which I agree is, in one sense, extremely archaic. I mean, I'm not saying that I think the simulation argument in its modern form originates with Hans Moravec, And it would be quite wrong to say that that argument was, in any radical sense, new, of course. It's like it's a kind of, quite reasonably, it's a kind of neo-Gnosticism, it's as archaic as human culture as far as we know it. But in its modern form and its modern formulation, there is no notion of the absolute outside

until you get a clear sense of what it is meant by being inside a simulation. And the only way to a rigorous sense of what it is like to be inside a simulation is to to follow this line through computer science and the actual concrete production of simulation technology, to then envisage that our own ontological situation is embedded within a simulation. What do we mean when we say insider simulation? If we mean anything at all now, we mean it's inside some kind of computer run program in

which all the features of that system are internal characteristics of some program run on-site a computer system and and so it's so that's the worst FMS crappy has definition simulation probably history of human species but but what I'm trying to say it I sling company is that is that there is a kind of very very sensible and problematic uncontroversial definition of what computer simulation and it's only by getting following step by step in a way that any computer science

department would completely accept and that when Bostrom then says and so we're inside a computer simulation everyone knows what that means you know what what they what they think it means is based upon that very very definite clear sense of what a computer simulation is as ultimately defined by computer science so you could finally you could have a you could have a a do it out in code in some particular programming running our program in this particular computer language we might not know all the details of it but it's something that in principle could could form a a text

in the form of a written in a computer language and and just sort of at least normally we know how to fill all of this in and therefore have a completely concrete specific understanding what it meant to say we were inside a computer simulation now so that's the same sense that I think this blockchain thing is being invoked you and to unless you comment this problem through history it means nothing or it means something of such mystical obscurity you can't get any purchase I mean we could regress into an old Gnostic language and say and you know all good go to

kinda India 500 BC or something and say you know this Maya or whatever this is a this is a a dream of fish news and you know there's any kind of language types language we could say that this is not true reality and there was an absolute outside that we have no access to because we're inside some particular systematic unreality what the simulation argument does as it makes that systematic unreality a utterly deaf and and and and I'm wanted uncontroversial of course you can say of course you know you can say we're not inside a computer simulation but you cap but it's not controversial what it would mean to be inside a

computer simulation no say I don't even on someone saying we could be in a computer simulation everyone now knows what it would mean to be a computer simulation in a way that I don't think is comparable to these other things like we're inside a fake reality produced by the demiurge you know I think if someone said what the hell do you mean by that at least they could spin out the argument a little bit but I think if someone said what the hell do you mean inside a computer simulation I just don't think that would even get started now because we know what a computer simulation is So I think that's the reason why one takes that route.

Yeah. Alright, I'm going to keep thinking on this before I say anything completely silly. Well, no, I would say something completely silly. Risk it. Risk it. The thing is I don't know what that thing is going to be. Even though it will be recorded in the Libraspace Rangers. I don't know what it is yet, so I actually can't say it. There are a couple of, yeah, I don't know, things I like to think out better before I do throw them into cyberspace. Yeah. Yeah. Too late for me to take that line now. Sorry. Sorry. So if this ultimate trustworthiness or this irreversibility, you wouldn't consider this

within the realm of entropy, dissipation or dissemination. Did I misunderstand that? Did you suggest? it's it's actually the reason that Amy is having a kind of brain spasm and I am also having a brain spasm simultaneously if not exactly the same one one that's by some strange entanglement logic connected is that this is a very all to loop that gets introduced at this point because obviously F all the building blocks of thought that get you to this question simulation are completely

consistent with mainstream common sense scientific understanding I there's nothing really problematic about it this technical details that but in terms of the basic narrative structure its utterly uncontroversial and every step people can be basically just pushed along without any prospector serious resistance and then you get to this point of way really to cross into what I'll call for sure the simulation arc but when you cross that threshold everything changes because then the what is your

what is your okay let me just take one step back with this because look at what an entropy argument is about with an entropy argument there's always something that is the equivalent of Boltzmann's value W that's to say there's the system that is being defined in terms of its most expected probability state and that expected probability state of that system is your baseline of which everything else is then built so we have the universe which consists of a certain let's just simplify and just deal with particles which is obviously

Boltzmann's things, atoms. There's a certain number atoms in the universe and so therefore we have a kind of probability distribution based on all the different way those atoms could be arranged and you know the sort of the max entropy state if that system is one of those a that in terms of the macro state of the system are overwhelmingly most probable distributions in which you cannot significantly distinguish these distributions from each other some actually there's a kind of not infinite but she massively large number distributions that are all different but

in terms of their macro problem from properties are indistinguishable from each other that is just a hissing more or less homogenous distribution of Adams and in space and so when you move towards macro distributions that are I'm distinguishable and have certain features you're then moving into great and greater states are improbability and therefore you have declining and should pay by the declining and should be all of that kinda calculus wrench can negative entropy that you're working with is has as its fundamental unit calculus this this this

a value W which is based upon the universe and and to it the existing total number of atoms that exist in the so many quintillion atoms there might be in that universe and so you're building on that building on that building on that to you get to you know our planet within that system and the fact that the this to be smart on the planet this way far from homogenous entropic case and you can put a value on that on that distance and that is the naked make entropy are system and not us our local system is and importing make it eventually an exporting HP and therefore

able to move itself further further away from disorder now when you think So this is the whole system you've been working with. This is your scientific consensus picture of reality and everything that you're doing in terms of complex dynamics and more and more elaborate, sophisticated models of negative entropy dynamics within sort of an evolutionary systems are all internal to this. So the outside in this has already been given a value. It's this W. It's the max entropy state of the universe. you follow up this path on earth, this particular thread of negative entropy through civilization, technology,

computers, simulation technologies, through to bang this threshold where you then got the simulation argument. But at that point where you then say this hypothesis this is a simulation the outside of that simulation is not W it's not Boltzmann's universe atoms because that universal atoms is a particular model with it in in the city let you on now it visiting you know the whole universe as was be used to construct your whole argument is now simply internal

to the simulation that you are now in position so the absolute outside and by that I just simply mean the outside all what effort is running that simulation whatever ultimate substrate that simulation which has to be distinguished from the and thermodynamic substrate that is particularly being run so you're not talking about the energy and matter and everything they your computers are running on as far as you've understood up to this point where you cross into the simulation. You're talking about now an absolutely external substrate that you don't even, you have no internal representation of at all within your simulation.

It's like, you know, this is why it crosses into transcendental philosophy. It's like this Kantian X. It's the thing in itself. You know that this is a, this is the appearance of something. this is a phenomenon that is run on something absolutely other but there's no representation at all of that absolutely other within the system that you have access to and in fact instead you have this fake simulated ultimate reality that is just simply the bedrock narrative a nation that you're inside but I have a question about these negative or

negantropics because if we understand thermodynamically time as tied to the flow of energy decay or disorganization right and we're talking about negantropics Are we talking perhaps about effects on time and eddies in time where potentially processes may even reverse or go through reverse flows of time? Conceptually, I mean, that would necessarily have to be a part of a negantropic state. Yeah. I mean, actually, it's interesting that Chris and I were just having a conversation about exactly this before. and and I would have

totally agreed with you on what you're now saying Harry what Chris said to me is well do you really want to use the word reversal for this you know like it which is the word I have used you know in terms of I think is extremely close if not indistinguishable from exactly the way you said it in terms of yes it is a time that were negative entropy trend strictly speaking is a reverse time flag and and then yes okay Chris raised issue well given this whole question about irreversibility and and sort of the the attempt to actually

base ontology on irreversibility do you really want to say that neck and shp is time reversal which I stalled and said oh let's talk about this later in the classroom where everyone else and now here we are and and honestly I think I'm I'm tormented by this question a little bit because it's there's a strategic element to it and I'm not sure what's the I have something to say about the about the about a simulation argument, which is sort of a context. It's like, you know, for the philosophical Philistine out there who reads this kind of stuff in newspapers or like in Vice magazine and stuff, right?

For them, and this is because I've had conversations with people who are not really interested in philosophy or think of it as something important. For them, this usually means the exceptionality of life on the planet Earth compared to the rest of the world outside of Earth, which is just like dead. It immediately identifies Earth as a simulation, not necessarily. So that's why the mileage that this argument gets usually in the popular imagination is because of the exceptionality of the Earth. And then easily, the logic sneaks itself through the exceptionality of the Earth. And people go like, oh yeah, it makes sense. Earth seems like what we consider Earth is a simulation in a larger universe.

So you know what I mean? I just wanted to add that as sort of like a qualification for why these things have popular appeal, maybe. For the turbo back to scenes. yes yeah actually I'm not I'm can I absolutely fully got this point to be honest you you're saying that people say I'm people say the what don't can can you just try to to rephrase that people people identify with a simulation argument not because they follow what all of its ramifications to the end but because they go like oh yeah earth is so exceptional probably life on earth is a simulation

maybe earth is a computer right yeah I can see different ways people can go with this like because it connects up with this some with another fascinating chunk of stuff which is the all this Fermi paradox great filter question Sorry guys, I just need to I just need a one minute rush to the bathroom I didn't really get what you were saying, Mu about the Earth being a simulation No, I'm not saying... I don't think Earth is a simulation

but I'm saying it this the type of like the simulation argument hijacks the popular imagination because of the earth's exceptionality to the rest of the known or unknown universe so easily you can say oh oh that's what it is that's why your life on earth is so different than the rest of the universe because it's a simulation is not really real this colorful world with the blue sky and all this all go to a highlights last because reality is all like black and like what space what I'm sure I'm in the conclusion don't don't get you it was just a good note

it but there is an interesting way this works which is that people try and use it to explain why we seem alone in the universe like is one answer to the this Fermi paradox thing but I'm they use the simulation argument as an explanation to say that I'm you know we're not we're not dealing with other forms of intelligent life in this universe because because this is a simulation and you know it's a simulation that's an experiment or study of our particular our particular lineage or

or you know we are the the lab animals at this particular simulation and therefore I'm it's mistake to I start I'll you can by for Kate in different ways either it's a mistake to to even expect that there's going to be other civilizations accessible the other civilizations on out there in space out there on the absolute outside I'm all you could have a more catostrophic catastrophic nation that the kinda way that these questions start getting raised is a I am is a crisis in the simulation and that at the point where and simulated civilization starts

asking these Fermi paradox types questions is the time that it starts banging up against the edge of the simulation and the whole thing is beginning to fall apart because I wouldn't want to I would want to speculate but I'd want to speculate multiplicitously on this but what about on on one line at this speculation there's something going wrong with the simulation at the point that simulation starts taking itself seriously as a simulation and the Fermi paradox might be this edge that it bumps again that starts kinda de-realizing itself as a simulation

but sorry I've gone a bit of this but the point that I was trying to stick to was Mo's point about this thing about the earth and the special character of earth and the fact that this could you know Mo's saying oh this is like a sad and confused anthropo- or terror-centric error and I'm sure it can be that but it can also be something else thank you Nick said okay

without wanting to preempt the fact that people aren't following this stuff, which would be great if they did, but I just remind people that everyone ends up writing something for this. I've been sort of talking to the guys involved, our hidden Tibetan masters behind this seminar. And so everyone ends up writing something, which of course I'm hugely excited about seeing. So this is an opportunity to talk about that if people want to and the kind of things that they think they might be doing. While people are putting their thoughts together,

I was going to ask a very quick question, and completely unrelated question about how this, what happened, you know, like the CCRU book went online and then it went offline and then it went online again, right? Is it like there was an update or something? Yeah. It went online. Okay, I think the quickest route, even though it's a little bit boring, is to actually tell the whole story, so I'll tell it really quickly, which is that I don't know whether people know this Calibre thing, which is an e-book publishing system. So, the book was put together in Word, moved onto Calibre. Calibre was translated into this software called AZW3,

which is the e-book editing software. And then, in that language, we did a table of contents. This is the first time our little press has done a table of contents or anything. And so we did it. It worked all great and fine. And then we wanted to upload it to Amazon, but you can't upload an AZW3 file to Amazon. You have to translate it into Mobi. So we went back to Caliber, translated it into Mobi, put the Mobi file up on Amazon. Everything's great except that the Mobi file, it copied off the RTF Word file that was still in the Calibre system, not the AZW3 file. So it didn't copy the Table of Contents across.

So we then had to go back, cut out the Word file from Calibre, actually pointlessly redo the Table of Contents, which wasn't necessary, but we didn't realize that, and then reload it onto Amazon with the Table of Contents attached. So that's the whole rather tedious story behind that. I was really confused because I tried to buy it, but then the link was dead. And then I know that people posted it again. Yes. The one up now, I think as far as I'm concerned, is working fine. It went crazy on Facebook for a while, but with the dead link, which was a shame.

I saw it being shared a million times. Yeah. You still got one of the top-selling philosophy things on Amazon for like a second there. Yeah, for a second. It was a nice second, that second. I will treasure it always. A reversal. One reverse a second. So just so you guys know, we have about 15 minutes left of, because we started 20 minutes late, so we have about 15, 16, 17 minutes left of the classroom. If you guys want to utilize this to talk about your papers or ask questions from Nick, go ahead. Okay, I have a question.

I don't know if this is what I'm going to write about, but going back to the, I don't know, to this idea that, I don't know, no one knows what a coin can do or this, I don't know, potentially this economic logic of reality. Would this go back, would this relate perhaps to an idea of like a general economy? Like, I don't know, going back to Bataille, Derrida, Laruel as well. So, I don't know, I'm just trying to think through this concept of a general economy and I'm not sure if I completely understand it. Yes, I think it's difficult because I mean I've obviously now a bit skewed by this conversation that we've just been having with Amy about the simulation argument but you know it really

is difficult to hold on to a univocal an uncontroversial notion of a general economy as soon as you have this potential transcendental threshold of simulation involved like what unit it's totally fine if we just carry if everything that we were talking on with Chris and all this about out a you know if you if you can start with balsam's w if you can start with the universe Adams then yeah you've got your general economy you know you can nest within that and you have restricted economies within that structure no problem but

as soon as I am you have these fundamental transcendental catastrophes even as possibilities ban the notion of a general economy I think becomes really complicated, I'm not saying impossible, but at least complicated. But for instance, I don't know, like in a way the idea of like the simulation argument somehow, I don't know, to me kind of reinforces the idea of a general, I don't know, thinking about it, if the word or reality is somehow

a computer simulation, there is an economic element or an economic, like, perhaps tradition in computing as well, right? So even the idea of entropy and again, what you were saying before, import and export of entropy, it kinda I don't know maybe even more about it that yeah I don't know no no sure there is always going to be a a general and betting economy I think that's like I I certainly think that is on and but the trouble is you don't know a what transcendental level that embedding you occurs at you know so there's a there's a there's a totally fascinating

detailed rich complex dynamics narrative that would have as your ultimate X out a reaches of your general economy would be if the entire ocean elementary particles in the us and and no one could diss the grandiosity of that story it would be extraordinary but even but that is not your general economy as soon as you succumb to paranoia about a simulation argument because all of that is then just simply narrative narrative filler within a particular

simulated order and the actual general economy is what is running that simulation and what is running that simulation is not accessible within the simulation yeah but then perhaps it would become not as much of an ontological argument but more of an epistemological argument I mean even the market isn't like the market like an epistemic like I don't know entity perhaps in the sense that relates to circulation of information and knowledge more than what actually this information knowledge is, or even what money is, no one knows really, right? So we've been talking about money as like a seniority, like, I don't know, element. So I don't know,

I'm not really sure, I'm just trying to think like through this idea. But yeah, definitely, like, potentially, I don't know, if the universe or simulation, the actual economic agents would be beyond that, I guess. Would be beyond. Well, I mean... I mean, I don't know, we've approached this... Beyond the simulation, beyond the simulation, right? Yeah, beyond the simulation. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yes. I mean, the fascinating thing about this is that obviously, on one level, the simulation argument is preposterous.

I mean, I certainly don't want to pretend or suggest that it should be treated as kind of some norm for discussion. And yet, on the other side, it's absolutely mandatory because in talking about Bitcoin, we've seen before this transcendental empirical difference between the avatar and the economic agent is an unavoidable just completely colloquial reality of the functioning of that system. So you have this, let's just say the simulation argument is actually these two things operating these two different levels one of which seems to be a kind of extreme hyper metaphysical

speculative venture of thought and open to derision on that account. It's not like I would deride it but I think equally I think you have to be open to that, the fact that it's tempting to reach out and and on the other side it's something that is so basic to people's everyday social practices now that is beyond any kind of real question I mean everyone just works with avatars everyone knows that they enter a system operate within that system and are not themselves actually fully integrated in that system and exist outside it and that that they can therefore have artificial identities operating within that system that they do not

themselves like I don't want to say enjoy I don't know what to do with an identity like that if you coexist with it but so that to me is a sort of interesting thing about this that you're sort of or you are kind of already inside this simulation argument as this inextricable element this discussion just simply by the fact that we've seen the way these online machineries work now and obviously that's why the simulation exists now at this time in history it's not an accident it exists because it's it's it's intuitively plausible to people because they know what it is to to operate avatars

Yeah. I don't think you guys are waiting for me to say something, right? I'd say I was sort of like looking at Luca here everyone can see a little thing like what's running the simulation isn't accessible inside simulation sure as long as the code and I'm just sort of trying to get a sense of what really quite has been

suggested here I mean I think yeah it's intriguing at least I think I would be tempted to go all the way with what's being suggested in that but at the same time I would I wouldn't think they're doing so one was in fighting psychiatric intervention yeah I can invite also on you know like acid-head hacker realism. Yeah, I mean, I guess the suggestion there is just, you know, at least if we're taking kind of a broadly computational model for simulation,

then at the bottom layer, there's no essential difference between the code and the data. It's just a matter of how it's allowed and how it's passed around. And almost anything reasonably complex, unless it was sort of cobbled together absolutely perfectly, there's going to be moments where you can kind of trip it up and, you know, cause some data to be taken as instruction. And so that's just like... Right. You know? Yeah, you can get a glitch in the system. Right, and with this glitch, you can get, like, you know, some foothold into it. But, yeah, this is kind of just me playing around a bit with the analogy. Yeah. Where, yeah, I'm not sure how to go about doing that for... you know I'm I'm tempted to say that this

this I if you're gonna see this is a project then that is capitalism rigorously comprehend is there is the high ambition that from glitching in the simulation code you can gain detailed high bandwidth information about what is running the simulation. Yeah, there's something to be said there, just that, you know, sorcery is basically an attempt to inject shellcode into reality. Yeah. I could ask, if I might, I don't want to derail anything,

anything but a general question about the transcendental, transcendent framework. I'm afraid to ask it only because we've gone over it so much. I maybe need to just go ahead and look back at the other classes. But the question has to do with the transcendental, transcendent, sorry, I kind of just woke up, the transcendental, which you spoke of in the beginning of this seminar with regards a time, and you said a beyond, or a before and a beyond time, an irreversible time. But throughout the entire eight classes, since we've been using this language, I've been trying to think how far do you yourself, Nick, want to go with deploying this Kantian framework?

Is it sort of a model to help us think about Bitcoin or is it somehow really epistemically and maybe even ontologically, is this transcendental notion of time and any other transcendental categories applicable here really the condition of possibility for some kind of machinic blockchain experience? Right. right I'm just you know really I really kinda wanna think through it and not just think of it as a metaphor like oh yeah language no definitely I think look I'm sorry to keep referring back to this conversation with Chris but but just before this we we were having a chat about certain things and and one of the things that came up there was this

question about a set of different elements and to what extent are they actually integrated on what to and to what extent I think three axioms now now this wasn't a example but I think it works very well like this like is a particular claim about at the most abstract level the Kantian model if critical transcendental philosophy a free axiom in this whole discussion and I think it's always safer as I was saying to Chris I think it's always safer to treat it as if it were but I would at least make the supplementary claim that

it's really for us not free it's not a disposable assumption and that philosophical modernity in an in a way that is inescapable short of a kind of I'm in principle unintelligible catastrophe is structured in this way you know so so I don't think it's possible to over emphasize the degree to which this fundamental framework the framework critique is something that just is a extends to all our horizons.

Now obviously that in itself is a controversial claim, a hugely controversial claim, and the whole history of modern philosophy in a way is a negotiation of that claim and a challenge to that claim, and you know as we've seen before Hegel in particular is a kind of condensation of opposition to that claim and to say you know that the fundamental problem that can sets us is something that has been has been solved and that sort of Hegelian historical thinking is post Kantian and has completely absorbed

digested and resolved the problem set by Kant so what what I was talking about earlier up at the transcendent conversation with Chris is a beyond is in the absolute outside of this conversation was was about I'm the absolute outside and the fact that that is a and anti-hegelian or count a K a concept essentially I was Chris asking what really out if you were to say really why what is in okay vacation outside I think that what's involved in ultimately is is is saying no to Hake

because with Hakeel and the absolute outside is at dissolved and he sees that he would see any invocation at the outside set says as a failure to understand the speculative the speculative relationship, the historical speculative relationship between the phenomenon and the in itself or however that's going to be articulated in the in itself and the for itself so to invoke an outside as we've done in a different context with this simulation argument which is a radically transcendental argument is obviously profoundly anti-hegelian

so yeah I mean sorry this seems like a little bit of a drift and a kind of digression from the original question but it's just to say it's just to say to go back to your initial question to what extent am I proposing that we are captured or sort of that we have as our horizon this transcendental critical problematic is to say yes that is something that I'm proposing but I realize in saying that that there's a kinda a gay and antagonist in the wings that would refuse to yeah that's great

to keep head on mind. Let me rephrase it in one question, which is to say, how important is it to keep thinking about the transcendental as the condition of possible experience then, in the traditional Kantian sense? As the conditions, it's what makes experience possible, it is the conditions of possible experience. Does that kind of drop out? I think it's interesting. It drops out for me a little bit because I think that it just leads into phenomenology and I think this is a wider problem launch say for instance if I will if talking about block chatting we're talking about that the transcendental a system is the is that Bitcoin protocol and the empirical element

is the commercial events that are happening within that registered upon the blockchain now I don't find it helpful to translate that transcendental empirical difference into a discussion about conditions of possibility or experienced you know I mean what is or is not being experienced on the blockchain is to me massively secondary marginal issue I mean if other people that's not the case and they want to do a sort of phenomenological reduction of experience a blockchain activity then I'm not trying to brick that all and it's dealt that I'm positively saying I've got some reason to see the blockchain obstructing for non-watch access or making some positive

claim in that sense it's just to say the phenomenological vocabulary is not to me helpful in understanding that it really useful helpful machinery here which is transcendental empirical difference so so but objects and the condition of objectivity seems to be extremely helpful experiences and conditions of possible experience I just personally don't think is is taking us anywhere that helps a lot but but make there's a way to I mean I'm not trying to like at all are challenge you because I completely agree with you But faced with this question, maybe a way to respond to Ian would be to say,

all blockchain does is it limits, it puts a limit or deflates. Deflates transcendental, doesn't destroy it or doesn't replace it. it call like what's limits on it or become the arbitrator arbitrator so I know what when you see it I just like lost you a little bit puts limit on this area six a very and the transcendental the phenomenology to try and it's all experience it put limits on it you don't replace it it doesn't negate it and it it just

limits it it makes it more kinda like it makes it more responsible but my only problem here is what what really is experience doing that is helping us here I mean it's like I can easily imagine that someone would construct things in a way that would make it a positive argument some kind but at the moment I'm I'm not seeing why a a sort of reference to experience is something that is that is that is helping us get this like the the blockchain is engaging these commercial transactions I'm and let let's just say for the sake of almost fully helpful to bring in this

ethereum stuff say say that we've randomly got some of our agents in the blockchain system some of our wallets are these digital autonomous corporations and they have developed a kind of insectoid level of intelligence that again just for the sake of argument say has no phenomenological characteristics whatsoever and we're mixed together with these agents engaged in various kinds of commerce and it's impossible from looking at the ledger and looking at these transactions to see which of the transactions are involving agents that have some kind of phenomenal phenomenological dimensions them in which involving agents have no phenomenal school and dimension to them and so it given that

possibility which I don't think is particularly far-fetched how is a reference to experience helpful Perhaps only in the period of transition. Perhaps only in bringing things down to the community of humans that are still kind of like outside of it. I'm just being a little bit like using what people who interpret sellers talk about. You know what I mean? Like things have to come back to the manifest image. or there has to be a mediation or overlapping between the scientific and the manifest image

for it to make sense or have ethics in the human world, right? And also in a period of transition, if all people still know and understand is the phenomenological and the transcendental, you need to somehow sort of like link to that in order to get out of it. and perhaps these arguments will only be needed in that transition period. I'm just trying to be sort of like the devil's attitude on the side of Ian a little bit. Well, I mean I think my position probably is on one pole of this kind of possible spectrum but my sense of it a bit is this whole you know that old sort of about on the internet

no one knows your dog I mean on the internet no one knows you whether you're a DAC or human or a robot or a zombie I mean I say it just seems to me that for someone to then sort of invoke phenomenal logical authority is something that just doesn't get gain any purchase in this domain because we can't possibly tell which if the agents or avatars engaged in any particular commercial interaction have relevant phenomenological dimensions to them and so so what you know how do you actually get that leverage to work

in that situation I guess I'd want to to try and make it as concrete as possible and we're talking about experience in Bitcoin by saying or just suggesting is it useful to think what is the sensory apparatus of the blockchain I mean it has an input and that input is I guess when a transaction takes place something is added to the blockchain and what is added is the quote unquote experience of the blockchain because it is what it... No, it's not the experience. It's the record. But what other input-output sort of thing is there, right? Like, what else?

Experience is being able to take in, make sense of, organize. I'm just throwing out some terms. Well, I think it's just like if you think, obviously someone engaged in neurobiology of non-human animals and writing papers about it in scientific journals would I think happily talk about sensory inputs they would be extremely reluctant to invoke the language of phenomenology and I would imagine people I mean I personally for whatever superstitious random reasons don't doubt for a minute that rats have experiences of certain kinds. So it's not like I'm denying that.

But I would imagine that if you were engaged in behavioral psychology of rodents and you started talking about the experience of rats in your scientific papers, that it would not be well received within the circles that those papers are circulating, precisely because there's no scientific validation mechanism that can help you decide these questions about rat phenomenology at all. You're just simply invoking hunches or translating this language of sensation into a language or experience of phenomenology without any gain in scientific insight by doing that.

and so it seems to me it's the same with this if you're using like when you talk about the sense sense or I am the blockchain then I would say you of course you know and I can see how that would be cashed up very rigorously very quickly if you if you're talking about the experience chain that seems to me a much more complicated think to be doing. Absolutely. So, in a sense, I could say that you are suggesting and have been employing the critical apparatus, the apparatus of Kant's critique without the phenomenological side. Yes, I think it's completely independent.

I think transcendental empirical difference has no dependency at all on phenomenological categories. So, yeah. But the epistemic side is still important in the sense... I'm asking myself this question right now, and how about the notion of reason then? Critique as being that which places limits on reason, or at least it discovers the boundaries, the place where reason ends. I mean, maybe is that language also kind of can be dropped out? Well, I think it's all very intrinsically determined. So if reason is just meant in Kant's sense, as processes of cognition that can proceed

without reference to experience in his sense, and in experience to his sense meaning to the understanding, to sensation, then I think that there's an internally defined set of terms there. I mean I look I've in in talking to you I've used the notion experience and in in in counts and counts times as a boat and I guess implicitly what I have to be saying it's be to consistent is that it seems to me there's a cantine usage of the term experience that doesn't necessarily require deep phenomenological commitment at all its its basically just way of saying that you're dealing with the understanding and with and with sensation

and not with curies great I think I'm I'm a little bit clear now everyone that that is the last class and something I'll keep thinking about yes I mean I think there's a task that I know I happen at all done for this which is a systematic translation at the language of canton critique into the language of long I'm the Bitcoin protocol and I'm sure you know I that there's a lot of sort of rich a detail that can that can go in there and I don't for a minute doubt the experience could be translated

into it I'm as as long as it is used in a strictly critical technical sense but and also sorry I this is got Amy saying no I don't know that's scary I have to check out all this Amy's no Peter Wolffendale's virus spreading Right, right. I'm being flippant. Oh, yeah, yeah, this is the... What do you mean? Are we... I don't know where to stop with this. Are we on Nagor at this point? What is it to be like to be a... What is it like to be a... Oh, my God.

That's a... I've just seen a pun here that's going to take me several hours to recover from. So, as you know, We're also like 10 minutes overtime. So if there are more questions and comments, maybe we can take them all to the classroom. We also kind of started with like off live for about, and we talked for about half an hour. Then the class started at 10.20. And then now we're 10 minutes extra. So I think maybe it's time to wrap it up, if you guys don't mind. Yes, sure. And yeah, let's use the classroom as a coordinating platform.

So I'll make sure that I keep up to date with what people are saying there. And if people want some other opportunity to thrash things out or discuss it, it's definitely something we can arrange for sure. So. Great. So Nick, will you keep checking the News Center email that's posted on the platform? Yes, I will, yeah. Okay, awesome. Okay, cool. So thanks, everybody, not only for tonight, but for your stimulation throughout the whole thing. I really, really enjoyed this and found it extremely productive and educational and interesting. So I'm very appreciative. Yeah, and I wanted to thank you, Nick.

It was a very amazing experience to have you teach this seminar. And I'm sure for months and months to come, people will be enjoying the archives. And lots of good conversation will be generated from what we did here. And thanks to everyone. So I'm going to end the seminar. And thanks for being with us for the last eight weeks. Bye-bye. Great. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. I can copy the sidebar notes. They're all in the classroom, too. Great. OK, cool. Bye.