Bitcoin and Philosophy (Session 5)

Hello everyone, welcome to Bitcoin and Philosophy's fifth session. It's actually the first session of the second module, and I'm going to pass it on to Nick to begin the seminar. Hello Nick. Hi, thanks Mark. Go ahead. Welcome everybody, it's great to see you all. all. So there is in theory a central topic this week which is Bitcoin and signs and I'm sure that we'll have opportunity to talk about that. I'm going to only say a very few things

about that initially and see what the kind of lines people want to follow up. And in addition, we have, there's three posts from people on the classroom that are all I think extremely interesting. We were introduced to this rather strange innovation called BitchCoin by Dana. That was the first thing to arrive. It comes out of the art world. It's kind of humorous. But I think also it's serious in interesting ways.

And while I'm totally new to it, so I'm not going to put on some authoritative tiara or anything while talking about it, I certainly think there's stuff to be said about that. Then Laura has sent us a set of points about Bitcoin and science focusing on the question of zero. grow. And I think this is a mix of things that I strongly agree with and would perhaps want to even push a little further than Laura has done here in terms of backward. And other things that are really deep and complicated and I think aren't going to be resolved unless

by some stroke of cosmic fortune in this particular session, but we'll see how we go about that. And then the last one to come in, also a fascinating piece, is a connection to a text from... These people I recognize a lot, and they are obviously taking this topic seriously. It comes out of this institution related to Gitt Lobbynke. I think it's based in Amsterdam, but the writer of this is an American academic. And it's called, I don't know whether you'd say provocatively, for me in a stimulating way, it's called Bitcoin can be seen as a technical, oh no, sorry, hang on, the post,

thing is called Bitcoin as Politics Distributed Right-Wing Extremism. And it's also got a lot of interesting things going on in it. I think some of it to me is a little bit confused in the sense of trying to do several things at the same time that don't necessarily gel all that well but I'll see what people think about that. It certainly to me has a lot to recommend it as a discussion topic. So I think I'll just start off a little bit on science. I could say ironically but I don't know whether it would be better to say predictably, that

the whole discourse around signs is absolutely in my massive terminological confusion uh... it it tends to be these different camps with their own specific vocabularies they don't mesh together very well um... it's very hard as i think we'll find trying to talk about it to really settle on an agreed set of definitions for some of this language. And I think that itself is an interesting issue. But I think it's worth starting off with some of the...

There's a tendency of all of these different schools of semiology to want to fix upon a particular aspect of the sign and to try to universalise it and to get every other aspect of similactic reality out of this particular characteristic. And so, for instance, in lots of the, what we might call continentalist type of discourses, the role of the sign as a signifier has been absolutely foregrounded and treated as the basic principle of the sign and everything has been sort of folded into that and and worked in that way and so you get these enormously complicated and and detailed semiotic

discourses that are all based on the life of the signifier and the way that the signifier operates. But if we go back to a point that I think is extremely helpful in articulating things that cross a lot of different traditions. The distinction that is made by Frege between significance and reference, to me suggests that there are these functional axes of the sign that are usefully held apart. And in an absolute nutshell, in applying this to Bitcoin,

I really want to say the following thing, that money historically can be usefully approached by both of these dimensions, and I'll say a very, very little bit about them in a second, but that the monetary sign is not deducible or derivable either from sense or reference. That those two things are at work in the monetary sign, but they do not actually capture or isolate or explain the function of the monetary sign. and that Bitcoin is helping I think

to precipitate a some clarity on this subject and I think it necessarily involves the instruction of third dimension to the sign that is absolutely indispensable for understanding the sign as a currency unit as a monetary sign So very quickly the distinction between sense and reference as Frege, his famous example is obviously to do with Venus where he says you've got ways of talking about Venus where you can call it either the morning star or the evening star

and these things have different sense but in both cases the reference is to the same saying which is Venus so their that language operates on these two levels one is a level to do with significance an association and meaning and the other level is to do with designation and actually indexing some thing and as I say the first of these I think has been much more florid in its development within certainly European influence modes of philosophy the latter

it seems to me is much more helpfully approached as a practical thing because indexing and referentiality in this in this sense is tied up with addresses I'm where the address doesn't have to have any significance whatsoever it simply points you to something else reliably so for instance if you take if you take I'm money as our example we try to stick with that you take an old coin and the coin has

in more than one sense two faces it has two obviously two faces as a as a disk but it has two semiotic faces that you can isolate one of them is saturated with significance there's all kinds of there's all kinds of markings on the sign on the coin to do with dates and pictures of emperors and various words and associations that then followed from that coin all of those kind of things and it also has a reference that's initially to its own Janus faced existence that it tells you that this is a lump of metal of a certain weight and quality and

and so with the coin it really is this Janus facing those two things along together in the mint there is this semiotic fusion of sense and reference in the coin and it refers to itself but also in its circulation and in its social usage it has all these significances and associations some of which are just directly imprinted upon it that the point where it becomes clear that these two things are different is obviously when we get to the stage of paper money and going back as I always do to this to this fundamental form paper money as a warehouse receipt

for a deposit of precious metal now in that case again you can have whatever you like written on the front this at this piece paper and it will probably be extremely ornate and we could maybe have biblical quotes from it and all kinds of all kinds of state sky and brands and trademarks and all these kind of things but there'll be a certain element in it certain semiotic element which just points you to an account um and it will mean that this element this code need have no significance at all it doesn't mean anything will just be a string of identifying numbers

but it means that it actually connects the note to a lump of metal that is not being seen it is not being represented in any clear sense it's just being accessed by an address so this is like a primordial bank account number you know which is also on the same access of reference or and so the point here is just to say it's it's not at all to say we want to just love this sense ref friends language away I mean it's got a very rich involvement in the history of money it's very interesting in relation to money and reciprocally within the semiotic discourse is there is constant

illusion to a metaphorical implication money people say I win all kinds of ways language is like money socially circulates I'm it has certain characteristics that seem to be I'm the just to repeat this with the debt that allude to monetary circulation but when we sort of become a little bit more specific and here again I think a guy coming out of Bitcoin coming out of this whole project is absolutely solidly the reliable threat is the double spending problem this is something nor is talking about in her points too that there are all kinds of ways that you can signify money and refer to money

and use signs in these ways that seem deeply involved with money and are not monetary signs you know anytime someone just speaks about money or in a journalistic article first a money or even in a journalistic way refers to particular council particular deposits other they're using signs obviously in some way to a refer to or or to signify money but none if the signs have monet tree value and the reason that they don't have much I I think is not hard to see is because they are not scarce that

in talking about money one is not sacrificing the future potential to talk about money in exactly the same way so in all of these types of science systems what you are always doing signs is in fact duplication I mean to be super crude about it but I think not unhelpfully or you know I have a message and in using signs you then also have the message you know I am duplicating the message the fundamental semiotic a activity is proliferation duplication so now you also have the message but I still have the message

I have not parted with the message I have lots there's not been any kind of commercial substitution such that you now have the message instead of me and neither neither of Frege's axes capture this phenomenon at all this isn't you can't get from the notion of sense or the notion of reference to the notion all semiotic scarcity or to the notion of the what from in Satoshi Nakamoto senses solution to the double spending problem the solution to the double spending problem being the condition

for the origin of the monetary sign that even if that problem is still lurking away and they're still people counterfeiting money and there's still people clipping coins it always has to be a satisfactory solution that it's he seems in the interim adequate you know hanging a few counterfeiters having some kind of restraint on on on the abuse that can be subjected to coins that allows a society to say that it has a functional solution to up spent it's only in the era the digital side digital money that these kind of I'm compromise solutions become completely inadequate and and double spending problem

become such crisis that it requires a formal solution of the kind that Bitcoin represents so there has to be a third dimension soft and I'm extremely I'm unsure about what is the best terminology for this personally I've been using the word that there is an sense reference and computation the sign has to be commutative which means not in the mathematical sense but in a set it's a substitution that if a monetary sign when past from one party to another party ceases to be available

to the first part that actually has to be an act substitution trade-off and this is something I think that is not implicit or as I say derivable from these other I'm it's a soft one seven me or take formulations at the of the nature of the sign at all. It's something else, something that absolutely needs to be added in order to have a functional monetary sign. I think you can see this in the word that could be extremely helpful except that it's still terminologically very blurry of a token. Because I think when people use the word token colloquially they often mean exactly this. You know, if you have a token

for a gambling machine or a token for a vending machine or some kind of token in some other system of exchange it's implicit in that idea of a token that if you pass over that token to somebody else, if you engage in a commercial transaction with that token or if you put it in the machine, you no longer have that token. It's not like a message that you still have even after passing it on to someone else. It's something else. you have sacrificed that token in exchange for something else. And that is why it works as money, because it's scarce. You only have a certain number of tokens, and therefore you have to make trade-offs between the various ways that you could spend this token.

You could save it. You could use it for A, B, or C, but you can only do one of those things. You cannot do some multiple of those different things, unlike a word that if I use it in one sentence I can in the next breath use it in another sentence. So a token in this sense is a scarce sign. Now I don't think unfortunately that this is by any means the consensus or accepted or generalized meaning of the word token. I think if you look at the way it's used in a lot of discourse is it doesn't yet have that as an essential defining feature and I think it's only going to be useful to us if we can accept that when we

call something a token we're saying it's commutative in this economic sense that it has to be spent to be used I'm now I just I was I will spin a subtle up just I'll just introduce one more actor that I think is is relevance this which I think brings to us all into some of Laura's problems and some of the other maybe even all other issues in these other things that people have sent along which is talking about codes and I think to book him up codes is immediately much more nailed down. I think that it's much easier to talk about codes

in a way that is generally agreed and crosses across different discourses without entering into the same confusions and the same absence of a satisfactory definition. And there are two aspects to a code that I think are really important and are universal characteristics. The first is every code is a mapping between two different series. There is one series of signs that is acting as a code and there is another series of signs that is being coded. And whichever code you look at always has that factor that is mapping two series onto

each other. Whether you're just using it in a modern cryptographic sense, whether you're meaning it in terms of genetic code, whether you're meaning it in terms of machine code, or in terms of this Bitcoin process, an absolutely classic code is a hash function. a hash function is absolutely specifically a set of mappings from one series of signs into another series of signs. So that when you hash something you just map it across from state A to state B according to this exact procedure.

And the second thing about a code that I think then brings us into a lot of these issues is that a code is um... if not with this with the same universality as as a as being a mapping with a very high level of universality a code is a set of instructions or I think you need to put a bit more work and take a sec marks so again I mean the two most I think important codes and in terms of that she at the core of everything that is happening on this planet is

I think the genetic code is precisely wet DNA doctor just a series of signs that containers them quantity information when you when that goes from simply a string of and science to be a code the genetic code it's when it actually becomes a set of instructions where it produces proteins so the genetic code it's not just that we then have a mapping of one thing onto another in this case we have a mapping of DNA bases organized DNA bases onto proteins but we have a set of instructions for the production proteins

similarly obviously with machine code and that what we have a machine code rather than just binary data at the point where we actually are chunking that data in a way that will produce reliable instructions for a machine and a ball of things that might be critical at this one that I think this really gets us onto the double spending problem and and a I say the issues a lot of people bring up here she is that as soon as you have a college set of instructions you have the opportunity you you first of all have a certain kind of elementary

value and this is shown let's take the biological example in in the example of DNA because there is a genetic code because just certain and length of DNA will actually instruct a cell to produce proteins then something else let us say non randomly because it's the most significant example a virus can hack into that code and use it chip in this case use the cell as a factory to produce bars this is obviously watch this man note out lots of different and discourse we could pursue this in the one I'm most familiar with this is

is the is discussion surplus value code at interlust what are I'm the most elementary example is the virus and as I've sort of mentioned a briefly before I think already with this state a discussion we have to stop spending we have to double spending problem because once we've got this very elementary coding and semiotic apparatus we have a machinery that is worse capture that a virus does not need to produce a body for itself or true so my all it is is a little packet instructions because it can take a body from somewhere else

and use that body to produce viruses and it can do that because a surplus value code because code is instructions because as soon as you have the genetic I'm the cell will obey someone feeding the right string of codons into it and telling it what to do. So if a virus tells it what to do rather than the cell nucleus telling it what to do, it will still do that thing. It will still produce proteins in the order that have been requested. I take Deleuze and Quartel is my famous example of this, which is this example of this, they say the wasp an orchid. Now this is I think relevant because

it's when they talk about signs this is the thing that they always really want to go back to. They want to treat this as the model. If you can understand what's happening here they think you're really understanding what signs are about. And the wasp and the orchid they say is also an example of surplus value of code. How is it working in that case? well it's working because a flower has a certain relationship to insects and like the virus it wants to hijack a body it wants to hijack the body of the insect in order to not have to waste resources on its own intrinsic reproductive organs so rather

the flower finding some way itself to invest expensive resources in transmitting pollen from one flower to another it uses the insect was a in this example was to do this for it and just like in the case of the virus the way it does that is it finds a code a very specific code in this case which is the code with it the wash that tells it to respond in a certain way to a certain pat pattern that it will that will activate its sexual response to this flower think if you have a certain hatter on the flower the wasp will treat that flower as a wasp

of the opposite sex and and goes through sexual behavior with the flower in such a way that it's covered in pollen and and when it flies to the next flower it will spread that pollen and act as the flowers reproductive organs. So there too, the crucial thing is that the flower is operating, the strategy of the flower, the reason there are flowers are tall is because the flower has, as part of its environment, this coding system belonging to another species, it can hack that code and produce a set of instructions for the wasp that the wasp will obey and therefore act as an organ for the flower.

And so obviously just rushing through to the most recent stage of this, computers obviously also are susceptible to viral attacks in exactly the same way because there is machine code. There too, if the computer receives a certain set of instructions, it will do what those instructions are telling it to do. And if those instructions have come from a computer virus, it will do what the computer virus tells it to do, rather than what the operator or owner or whatever of the computer is telling it to do. So the point of all of those examples of surplus value of code is that they're all examples of duplity in the

specific sense that the double spending problem is addressing. The code, the signs that actually activate this process, the behaviour that is being activated is expensive and so you're getting that expensive behavior cheaply by rather than building up the entire system you simply produce the code to hijack the coding function of some other system whether it is a cell, a wasp, a computer, it's the same thing in its semiotic essentials that is happening in all of these cases and it's I think directly addressed by this question

of the double spending problem because just to get back one more time to the origin of all this, in all of these cases the original code is not securely tokenized whether in the cell, whether in the WASP, whether in the computer, it accepts this code which is not tokenized. That means it can be spent multiple times. It's obviously most clearly exemplified again by the virus case where it can just massively replicate billions of viruses without any kind of limit. And all of those viruses can then infect other cells

and turn those other cells into virus factories as much as you like because the code that the virus is reproducing doesn't have any integrity as a token. The virus is not sacrificing anything or very little to reproduce that code. And so this is what any monetary system at a higher level obviously is, its condition of possibility is that it excludes inadequately tokenized sign systems.

If a sign system is inadequately tokenized, it's vulnerable to exploitation by some other system which will be able to exploit the surplus value of code of that system. In the monetary case it would obviously be catastrophic almost instantly. Like if a particular loose sign of a bitcoin could access all the resources that money would normally be able to access without scarcity, without commutativity, so that it would see as a sign you could just replicate the sign and every time you replicate the sign you would access the resources appropriate to that site then the collapse of the monetary system is

almost and automatic and extremely high-speed so obviously I in this way and this is as I say I this is why I think like Laura talks about I'm the double spending problem going back to the origin of paper money and perhaps before I think it goes back to the origin replicating molecules I mean I think it's like the fundamental semi logical encoding problem is all fast generality because wherever you have a problem surplus value code you have a application for

the double spending and so its seems to me it's a a foundational constituent up any general semiotics that wants to include money as part of its topic and but I will I will pause at that point at least and see a whether there's points of them the people wanted go off particularly on this question about Bitcoin and signs will be whether one if these three and topics that we've been sent by by Donna Laura and Alex is something that people want to

a want to interest Nick I have a question Dr. Sure. My question has to do with, I'm just going to address the very last little bit you brought up, which was about the problem of duplication and money going back to biology, right? Dr. Yeah. I wonder how does this map onto the question of crystalline and crystals? How does that work when a crystal is formed from a very, very big, much more basic than

biology right right the set of instruction that causes causes crystals to come to shape or to existence yes it's obviously an interesting challenge I mean my sort of immediate response is then to say well can we find any points application for the surplus value of code in the case of a crystal. Yes. Like, is it possible for one system to hijack instructions in some process of crystallization,

or is that not possible? Because it seems to me that is the threshold at which we can then, you know, once we can say that this system is simply consistent in the sense that the energy input required by the system is directly tied up to the product of that system. So there's no way that the energy input can be accessed externally and the code, cheaply produced, can just be translated across and accessed to energy resources in some other system. So I'm not then dogmatic about the response to that question. I would really want to know a lot more about crystal chemistry to know whether that is

something that imaginably can happen. Thank you. I have a couple questions. One of them is really, I'm trying to find, I wrote down exactly what you said, but it It had to do with this, I believe you used the term scarcity of, and I think it was with reference to the inverse of something I've been thinking about a lot. So without getting lost, I'll just say I've been working with some people and doing some research on a certain trajectory, a continental trajectory of, I guess you could say semiotic theory, for lack of a better way of putting it, that sort of begins with Levi-Strauss

and the notion that there's an excess of signifiers to the signified. And so you get Levi-Strauss, you get Blanchot, you get Foucault. To some extent, some people might put Deleuze in this category. It's a certain trajectory of continental thinking, which appeals to this what has been called empty square, this excess that sort of perplexes and troubles writers like Foucault and Blanchot when they think about language. And what I thought was really fascinating was I think you were saying the opposite, which is rather than there be an excess of signifiers to signifieds,

you have a scarcity of signifiers to the signified when we talk about the monetary unit You certainly have to produce a scarcity for it to be money yes that would be I mean look one direction I think we should go in at some point because it goes directly into this I'll the paper that Alex sent us it's by people probably haven't had a chance to recent some of this it's by David Columbia I'm and it is interesting and he but he particularly talks about deflation

in this which is obviously an extremely closely related issue you know if we're talking monetary terms inflationary and deflationary dynamics directly address this I mean it might be too one-dimensional for you want to say out at mmm but one could certainly say that the at least in the monetary sphere the phenomenon of that excess all the up to some quote marks but in the air here signifier I'm is inflation you know and obviously dramatize maximally by hyper which where you've got a wheelbarrow full of monetary signs desperately searching

someone who will part with a loaf of bread or a packet of cigarettes in exchange for this psychotic profusion of signs so I mean maybe I should just ask you whether you think that that is I mean to what extent is that latching onto the same problem Yeah, I'm not sure. I have to think about it. So if I'm understanding you correctly, the very notion of inflation itself when we're talking about money, you're suggesting could latch on to this, what I'm calling, and I realize I haven't unpacked this or explained it at all, but the empty square, this excess of signifiers.

but it will it seems to me initially very close but I'm definitely open to correction if I'm jumping too quickly into this you know getting too concrete too fast about it then I can easily imagine that's that's happened obviously you working on this this topic these these particularly monetary examples are the ones that come to mind for me first I mean do you Are there any particular examples of this empty square phenomenon that you think helped? I wish I had the people I've been working with with me because they're much more articulate about it. But I don't know if it does only because it's really, the essence of it is the notion of a negativity. Because when you talk about inflation, the excess still always refers to a token.

Or maybe it doesn't because when you talk about, yeah, it does. I mean, there's always a token, but because, of course, I'm thinking about language now, not money, what I'm talking about. So this notion of an excess does not refer to a token. It is, in fact, the empty space, the pure symbolic, the purely negative. And it's so present if you look at sort of Foucault's philosophy of language or Blanchot or Levi-Strauss. And this excess somehow sort of drives or is the impetus for language itself as if there wouldn't be meaning if there wasn't this negativity. So this is, I don't want to belabor this idea because it might be way too tangential.

But it's different because you're looking at language from, crassly speaking, the analytic perspective when you talk about Frege and the sort of history that's created. and then but then there's this sort of continental trend too in the philosophy of language which often times analytic thinkers don't contend with I think whether that's a good thing or a bad thing I make no judgment but so I just have that in mind and if I can be more articulate later or in another session I certainly will I mean I'd only say on this analytic continental thing that I think you know I don't can correct me if if you think this is not right but I think the

I'm continental aspect tends to be on the sense side of this sense reference distinction which is then vastly elaborated you know and obviously then that cannot the absolutely killer all of cesurian linguistics in that and the whole that whole system about systemic production significance in it which I I'm not trying to to to to foreclose out this whole I mean I think it is one I think predominantly one side what is now a three a three-side a three-sided kind of set semiotic preoccupations and all of them

are definitely relevant. For one thing, again I should restrain myself from going too far down this particular avenue, but if you say, on these strictly Caesarian grounds, that the meaning of the sign is based on this differential relation which it is in relation to all the other signs in the whole of the language. So haunting any particular sign is all the other signs that determine it by their absence at any particular moment. Now, obviously, there is a sense where you could try and apply that sort of model to Bitcoin in a way.

In that it is purely quantitative. it's not it's not to do with significance in the same sort of way it doesn't provide any meaning except that the total global production coin ever you know this magic 21 million is obviously absolutely crucial to what anyone Bitcoin me like if you're saying strictly speaking what is the meaning of the Bitcoin on that access you're saying it's a 21 million of all bitcoins that will exist you know that's what it yes and you can't get to a sort of more basic significant bit then that fact that it is

this particular fraction of the whole entire stock bitcoins either now or ever will exist so it's not it doesn't seem to me that there's some sort of cultural gulf that's preventing some kind of translation activity taking place between these two things. Mm-hmm. Yep. Great. So possibly taking a slight step back, but I don't really think so, in terms of bridging the gap between Ian, which you were talking about with the empty square, and this sort of hyperinflation in general as mapping to the excess of the signifier,

I mean, I'm just spitballing here, but could we understand the loss of value in a currency as that kind of pure negativity you're talking about? If by pure negativity we mean something that's kind of, to some extent, of a different ontological regime than the signifier than that which there is an excess of, because pure negativity is not a signifier among other signifiers, right? If we understand that, because in, I mean, at least in traditional theory, is that inflation is what necessitates the continued circulation of money rather than it just being saved or hoarded or whatever his goal might be, at least in principle. And so if we understood this proliferation of signifiers as dropping all of their value in the sense of ability to uniquely refer

or substantively refer to some signified, and by that means then drives production of new ways of referring to it and transformation therein. I mean, I don't know, maybe that's kind of a mapping where this continuous inflation of signifiers by just sort of invention of new ways of referring to things is what drives the exchange of those for new signifieds understood as that which you can purchase with money. Commodities, something like that. I guess you know I also take a step back let me also take a step back in relation to that because you know without wanting this to become some sort

dogmatic principle of everything here if I can just stick with it a minute and just hypothetically say that we need minimally for all the things we're going to want to talk about in terms of science these three different axes and let's say because the termological questions are so pressing that we can talk about signifiers if we're talking about the Frankie and access a sense we talk indices if we're talking about problems with reference and we talk about tokens if we're talking about monetary style and so that my question then is can we really deal with this hyperflate inflationary problem and it will let's do that love and just inflation because it's nicer and more

dramatic can we really talk about that helpfully in terms of six files I mean you know it seems to me if we talk about tokens it all totally makes sense tokens should be scarce and here you are with your wheelbarrow full of Deutsch marks that clearly the scarcity constraint has completely collapsed they are not scarce and therefore they're ceasing to function as money and it all is coherent you know whatever you then want to say about it makes sense but I'm not even really sure whether we can think about a wheelbarrow full of signifiers I mean I don't know whether that's just a metaphor or what really I would without again knowing really

without pretending to any kind of full grasp of the topic that Ian is raising here it seems to me that something different is going on if one is talking about excess of the significant oh sorry you've gone silent Jake wait say again? cyber the prefix cyber and it's sort of enormous over usage right now and there's been various articles written about it and there's a you know a Twitter account that attaches cyber to everything you know a comedy account and yeah if that's understood and I think something that it is as driving a need for more and more specific more you know finally differentiated or expressive you know prefixes and adjectives to

describe various things that we're using cyber for sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you that just occurred to me as an example no no no that's good that's that that's very helpful that's very helpful it seems to me that that is you know because we're talking about significance and and so there was a certain kind of proliferation that is about meaning and as you say you you stick cyber in front of anything and there's no there's a kind of inflationary phenomenon at the level of significance or meaning definitely you can see happening but it but it's on another access to the barrel full of money is that because Because every Deutschmark in your wheelbarrow is completely redundant in terms of significance, isn't it? It's like whatever you agree is the sort of function of a Deutschmark as a signifier,

if you've got a million of them in a wheelbarrow, you're not in any way actually augmenting that significance in the slightest. You know, there might be then new significations that come in because it is in a wheelbarrow and all of these kind of extraneous factors, but there is a certain kind of semiotic replication and proliferation in the monetary sphere that doesn't seem to be tractable to this semiotic analysis at the level of the signifier that just seems to be operating so much on another dimension that you don't get any purchase by taking that as primary. Yeah, no, for sure, taking it as primary.

I was just kind of trying to work out a possible way of connecting them. But yeah, fair enough. I understand what you mean. Yeah, just all cards on the table. I think this idea of, first of all, the empty square for me, it doesn't identify with necessarily an excess. Rather, it's a kind of zone of indistinction to use a kind of Agambenian type of language. and and one could say for example in Derrida it's a it's a zone where the signifier and the signified is just in in distinct that they're indistinguishable but I just wanted to say in response to Nick that yes Nick I completely agree with you and this is what I mean by all cards on the

table that maybe this language this is what's so fascinating to me that this trajectory whether we're talking about Foucault or Derrida or or Gambin, maybe doesn't map on to what we're talking about. And to me, that's really, for lack of a better word, profound. And I think the more we can look at the biological, the more we can look at the computer as a kind of analogous biological mechanism, the more we may be able to push forward with the way in which actually we need to develop something else. So, yes. Yes. I mean, I think there is a particular, without wanting to localize this too much we're obviously on one level talking about the academy as an institution

at least as being involved in this and it has a certain position in relation to signs that is interestingly specific and is perhaps one where the sign as token is going to be systematically under emphasized I mean there's sort of really crash sociological things you could say about it but there's a certain notion about the kind of the the kind of symbolic position of that of the intellectual and professional intellectual that puts them in a certain

relation to the token as we're understanding you know that your usage of science in that in in that role is expected to in a certain sense be generous that these notions that it somehow a who governed by hard rules of scarcity is a kind of implicit ethical issue is not I mean it's like people would not necessarily have said anything specifically about it but I would guess that it is always actually tacitly their sense and there was a set of tacit comparisons being made between different social institutions in relation to their relations signs in which

a either the lack of the the non-centrality of the token in the academic sphere is actually an extremely crucial symbolic factor and a form of social identification. I mean I don't know whether I'm being a bit too elusive and vague about that. But, you know, I mean again, let me just for a minute just go totally crass and just say, in the sense that the professional intellectual doesn't think of themselves as a banker, Which I think, and I'll go further and say, at every minute of their life they are not thinking of themselves as a banker with a certain kind of positivity.

It's not just that they, if asked, they would say, well, no, actually I'm not a banker. They would say they would actually in their continuous function as a professional intellectual be not being a banker as something that's actually positive and in a way almost conspicuous. precisely because they do not have the tokenistic in this particular sense relation to signs. There is a certain way that you could construct the figure of the back where every usage of signs was economised. Every word they said, every document they produced, every semiotics exchange is integrated

into an economic fabric that was ultimately regulated by these token systems. And the academy is kind of, as I say, sort of overtly not that. And therefore it seems to be natural that it's the regime of the signifier and not some other semiotic dimension. Nik, can I jump in? Of course. In all of this conversation, one name is missing, and that is Pierre Bourgeois and language and symbolic power, right?

Because he also has an account of how symbolic economy functions. He, as most of the people here might be familiar, he's completely against like a Sothorian type of understanding of language, right? Right. emphasizes this institutional setting as an element that you basically, I mean, you guys are familiar with what I'm talking about, right? Just vaguely. Just vaguely. Pardon me? Just vaguely. So continue. Yes. For Bourdieu, like these semiotic operations

should not only be looked at from inside the language, and should be looked at like how Nick was a . Sorry, I've lost you there, Mo. Are you still? I've lost you as well. Can you hear me? Yeah, now, yeah. You're back. I don't know how far could you guys hear me but basically for Bourdieu also like Nick, it's like the institution.

Yeah, that's most gone again, has it? Oh no, yeah. That gives them their, of how, how fields of knowledge sort of have this autonomous but related, currency issuing power that they bestow upon those who hold certain like a whole certain position of within the field yeah actually I'm sorry to interrupt no go ahead well I think it's a very good a very good change to introduce it because I think what you is really interestingly in the middle Gary search

I think he's operating weirdly on this boundary between these two different a angles on on the side and if you take a notion of say symbolic capital you know you can see that it's really on this boundary in a really interesting way. On one level you can incorporate it to some extent into this, maybe you can very crassly say language of the signifier. You know, and you get someone like Derrida, who's definitely on, I would say, that side of the fence, very happily using these sort of notions of symbolic capital,

of that somehow you you there are these processes of accumulation there are certain forms a well some power that can be stocked up in sign systems I'm so it it does operate in a way that I'm not entirely clear about so the mechanically on that level and then on the other level on the other side it connects with things that I think are much more unambiguously economic like credentials. I mean credentials are tokenized if they work at all don't they. I mean if someone says you know I am a professor then you're in a

a set of questions to do with trust and credibility and all of these things that are made for the blockchain I mean it's a if it if people believe that someone is a professor it's not anything to do with a number of times they call themselves a professor it's not a pro proliferation of the signifier it's because of the fact that there is a a system of scarcity tied up with the credential and the credential which is just being indexed by the statement. You say I am a professor but your actual credentials as a professor are scarce. You were only issued your professorship on the basis of certain very specific social processes having been

fulfilled and there's a limited set of professorships and they can't be minted or proliferated or subject to all of these forms of semiotic inflation. And it seems to me that Bourdieu is between these two sides, there's a Janus-faced aspect to it, that on one level it lends itself to saying, well, what is Bourdieu really saying in terms of, you know, can we formalize it as an economic process? And the other is more on the level of significance and giving this new dimensions to significance to do with a way that that produces social distinction and symbolic hierarchy and these forms often prestige

thank you not to belabor this I'll make this quick but it is interesting in the context of Lacan's whole university discourse, problematic, and his own method of punctuation in the analytic setting. Because I think in a sense, you know, when someone said something that he thought resonated with whatever gulf was in their ego, and then he just like walked out the door and slammed it, in a sense, they were like giving out a token that he did not return, you know, And he got paid. So in a funny sense, that's I think one way the token manifested itself in the whole signifier

chain or its breaks. Yeah. I mean that is an extremely interesting whole zone that obviously people have delved into to some extent before is the fact that psychoanalysis is in this zone of intersection. and someone like not con absolutely extreme because he's at both such intensity on one hand its paid services that there's a flow of money going to the analyst in return for some service and you're totally in an economic register you know I expect as a certain amount of time or attention or I mean it's an interest question exactly what you're paying for. But I mean, it's an economic transaction that's

taking place. And then on the other side, obviously Lacan was being one of the vast masters of the signifier and entering into these kind of public philosophical languages. So yeah, hugely, hugely important. If I could just add to that, I have a friend who's a rather, a Lacanian expert, I'll say, and he once said to me, he goes, you know, it's absolutely crucial that you take your patient's money, and not only that, you charge them absolutely as much as you can. So the reason I'm mentioning that is because you pitch them as being separate, and like, but in not you're my friend it's it they're totally tied it's absolutely

prerequisite of the therapy yeah cost more pretty much as much if not you can actually afford yes no I was not clear value yeah yeah totally no I was definitely I it's the junction yeah yeah yeah and the fact that you do have this overcrowding that is open to all kind of readings I mean obviously there's a super cynical reading that is too obvious to to even lay out and then on the other hand there's a reading that is a sophisticated theoretical reading I have one wants to say that where exactly as you say I'm accepting money but only because symbolically and at the level of the seeking by parting with your money is is is part of this

therapeutic exchange as part of the transference and all of these you know so there's a kind of layering of the process at the level of the signifier over the process at the level of the token mmm array that is open to this kind of multiple interpretation yeah don't don't mean to derail but it's it's fascinating someone talking stumbling upon insecurities the wrong word but the issue and to have him just terminate the session and leave them with that signifier. Like, he got it, they had it, so I guess that exchange happened, but he leaves the money and they get stuck with the signifier. But anyway. Yeah, no, it is totally fascinating.

But what is fraudulent at the heart of that transaction is the fact that the money paid by the patient to the analyst is sort of like a reverse engineering engineering way of substantiating the value of the doubling that happens by the analyst, right? That is built into it as a way of sort of delaying the question of blockchain and the

actual transfer, right? So that's what's fraudulent at the heart of that monetary transaction at the end, right? Right. I just think it's funny yes I mean I think the thing is that the the language of fraudulence belongs specifically to the tokenistic side of exchange I mean there's this interesting asymmetry to it that obviously if we look there this is crude but but but sometimes crudities necessary and ever I can just divide the whole world into bankers and academics and and and Lacknell is in this role

all of the intersection let's say his his fortunate after a banker at as his as Anna and Ali's and and at any point he can say oh you're not getting what's happening here you're just being a banker you know I am gonna dramatize that to such an extent I'm just going to walk out of the room after two seconds and prove what a hopeless banker you are. Because I'm on the academic side and I know it's all about signifiers. And the fact that I'm only spending two seconds of my time rather than an hour of my time is not at all an economic issue for me. It's totally to do with significance. My analytical process with you is all hopping at the level of the signifier.

there's no echo economy to and i'm doing this i'm leaving after after two seconds in order to and ordered a break you from your bank renaissance and and and it juice you into the superior order of the signifier now obviously that's at that point at the bank is likely to say that's for jim's you know i mean but but but because of the fact that the language is is doubled in these two different registers, there's no resolution possible. There's not a common... I mean, Lacan just refuses to credit the tokenistic language of the banker as having any kind of authority in this situation at all. And will always translate it back into saying, oh,

you're not understanding the significance of what is happening here if you're going to use this language. And in fact, there's a certain sort of interesting kind of sadomasochistic aspect of Lacan, where he's just wanting to actually say, I will break you. I will break you out of this banker mentality you have and force you into the rapture of the signifier. And if that means you pay me for a full session and you get two seconds, then that is fine. That's a sacrifice I, as Jacques Lacan, will make reluctantly in order to help you to escape your bankery limitation. Yeah. I think it was meant to be Zen, but I'm not so sure it is in the end.

Anyway. I had a question, Nick, about the aspects of the code that you were talking about. Specifically the second one, the algorithm or set of commands, as so understanding that set of commands to be either the first series understood as a set of commands that produces the second series, or the set of commands that defines the encoding and decoding, so that operates between them. Like, how do I get ciphertext from plaintext or plaintext from ciphertext? You know, that set of instructions, you know, take your A's and replace them with this and then multiply by that. is a different set of instructions, concretely speaking, than the ciphertext as literally each sign of that ciphertext

being a set of instructions for producing, you know, from which you get the plaintext. And sort of what I'm trying to do is to understand this set of commands that determines the mapping and its decomposability from, you know, one command. This plaintext means this ciphertext or vice versa. into several commands that then have a functional access as being the basis for the surplus value of code. And so I guess, I don't know, what I'm asking is where you see what set of instructions you were talking about. Yes, I think that this is the relation between cryptography, which is also the relation of these hash functions in general. Some hash functions are obviously cryptographic, but some are not.

some are just to do with a certain kind of them database economization because when you use a hash function you basically take an X number of units and put them into a more restrained she or on the other side yeah there is a codec would be a pressure sure so so when I said that a this aspect of the code that it is instructional is actually have a lower universality than the instruction some mapping is precisely I think because a this I mean is it gonna be a non-linearity in this obviously there will be a set of instructions or all of these operations hash functions cryptograph punches all of

these will in require computer instructions but but them mapping itself is not something that is giving you a surplus value of code until it is actually giving you control of the machine I mean I think all I think I can say with confidence that any example of surplus writing code there must be machine control whether it's the foot the cell being controlled by the virus the wasps being controlled by the flower the computer be controlled by the computer bars and less unless you're actually operating at the level way you actually have effective control over machine this that effective control over the machine that is the value

in the surplus value of code and so in principle when I'm in a monetary system in a system values you could have any number displacements any number of codings and decodings and encryption that just simply displaced the the signs between various levels of plain text and ciphertext but until you get the level that is actually machine control you don't have the level that such a generating value that can be hijacked by some external system right and so I mean I use plaintext and cypher text just to start I don't know what I thought it was the simplest which to me is the most straight for level but so I guess a better example for what we're took with surplus value would be viruses so with viruses your

your subdivisions of the instructions for encoding our proteins or the transcription of proteins. So I guess what you're saying is that the base pairs that the virus is able to transcribe into the genome only gain surplus value of code to the extent that there are decomposable protein translation instructions in that encoding, which have a functional value which can then become the surplus value of the RNA or the DNA. Yeah, totally. yeah the payout is in protein so the code it's only it's only at that point you actually get the economics about yeah

I know it's the same obviously with money like even though Bitcoin is a self-enclosed semi-autic system in a way and that as we've been to over and over again you go through the become paper and it's purely about the scarcity all bitcoins without specific reference that commercial application but once again a bit calling fraud or if anyone was able to it in any way hijack bitcoins the payout would be in what bitcoins actually able to a perform as instructions in some let's crudely say like energetic media that's what you were actually get in terms of you know drugs or Silk Road or whatever that's the payout

Can I ask you one question, just to clarify this point so basically you're saying that the blockchain or Bitcoin as a machine prevents the formation of a surplus value right? Yes. OK, cool. And another question. I mean, can I just say this? I'm not sure it might be that you would want to rephrase that because the potential surplus value of code is huge. So it prevents it definitely being hacked, yes. The hacked would be the double spending, and that would be an exploitation of the surplus value of code,

that you're right is being blocked by the protocol. Yeah, that is the solution to the double spending problem. Right. OK, thank you. Because I had another kind of question. Because you said before that the double spending basically goes back to the duplication of cells, so the origins of biological systems, right? Yes. I just had this thought, like it's perhaps, I don't know, quite silly, but I was just thinking because, so basically, right, economy, if economy is effectively modeled upon physics, right, and like, I don't know, like, well, yeah, physical systems, so the question just

occurred to me was like why would we eventually want to abolish the double spending instead of perhaps harnessing in different ways than I don't know the system of the single cell that duplicates the cell. I don't know I'm thinking about the selfish chain and this sort of like I don't know accounts of biological evolution and these kind of things because obviously, I don't know, in the system, right, like composed by a wasp and the orchid, this system, I mean the surplus, right, the orchid hijacks the wasp, but at the end of the day no one really loses anything, right?

Right. I don't know. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just, I don't know. No, to be honest, I mean, this, I think, is like, he opens some doors on this question, and it definitely becomes really deep and complicated. I totally agree with you about that. I mean, like, there's a crass level, like if you just go back to a viral example, which is just raw exploitation, it seems, you know? But then you actually go into these bacterial systems, and they use viruses to communicate with each other. I mean, you know, it's very hard to get to a point, and I would say probably naive, to say that you just can sort of isolate something as a phenomenon of raw, unambiguous exploitation

in the system. And I agree, when you get to the stage of like the wasp and the orchid, it's extremely difficult to do that. you know, and then wherein, I mean, all modern biotechnology is just pure surplus-fablit of code ransacking of the natural world, and I'm not meaning that moralistically, I mean, you know, it's like, at least potentially, an incredibly positive thing, but that's what it hits, you know, there's all these sets of instructions and machining capabilities lodged in these biological systems that biotechnology is just systematically trying to hack and get cells to produce motor fuels or to produce useful drugs or all of this kind of thing.

It's all surplus value of code. But yes, and then on the other side I think that your question connects up a lot with this other side that you know we get in with high intensity in this paper that Alex sent us because it's for instance let me just try and very quickly just onto this because it ties back to this question of inflation or deflation like Alex actually quotes some of this paper and it says the most dangerous kind of value fluctuations the deflationary spiral you know which world currency is currently experiencing the most dramatic

deflationary spirals anyone has ever seen Bitcoin itself the existential threat to the liberal nation state so it's basically saying quite rightly that this project of the production of a sign system that is immune to the surplus value of code can be translated without too much difficulty into this question of inflation and deflation and in that question of inflation deflation is an extremely tractable although complicated and extremely ambiguous political economic dilemma you know it's very what you're saying about the sales or the wasps is actually formally and

theoretically extremely close in its sort of abstract principles to these questions about deflation getting raised in this political economic sphere where people would say isn't the political task actually to finesse the social control over inflation, deflation rather than to try to exterminate it through this algorithmic mechanism I think this is what this guy ultimately would say I mean, I need to look at it more carefully. But I think it's a position... Not many people are thinking about this yet, not enough in my opinion, but when they do, the dominant left of centre widespread critique of Bitcoin

will be that it will be on these lines. It will be that inflation is being, in some sense, intrinsically, algorithmically demonised and instead it's a social potential that we need to maybe adjust our relationship to even in fundamental ways but not to disempower. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I haven't read the paper yet, the Columbia paper. Thank you. So could we understand biotech and Bitcoin both, and then so various other examples, and I just sort of typed this up real briefly in the group chat,

as systems learning to integrate or exploit, like in the sense of taking out of the surplus and into their own pool, the surplus value of code. So in the sense that, you know, I mean, over the history of infiltration by viruses, organisms have, I mean, at least there's a lot of research and speculation lately in this regard, learned various techniques for securing against mutation and also redistributing and sort of directing the effect of mutations and, you know, manipulating the translation process of their own genetic code in ways that produce more novelty or more, you know, conservation over deep time. Similarly, biotech is a learning to take advantage of the surplus value of this genetic code by living things themselves, us, and then the things that we create as well.

And then in the case of the blockchain, Nakamoto or whoever, we've learned all of this about the problems created by trusted third parties and then by the ways that people exploited earlier hash cash to pay themselves and pay somebody else at the same time. and then this taught, or this led to the creation of the blockchain paradigm as a way to eliminate those problems and to reintegrate I don't know, to reintegrate the surplus value into a new encoding mechanism or set of them I'm intrigued

by this line line of talking about it. And I mean, my initial structure of understanding here would be different just because the most straightforward way of constructing it is that Bitcoin systematically eliminates its own vulnerability to hijacking by some other entity extracting surplus value of code. Or in other words, it's impossible that Bitcoin is constructed in such a way that it does not produce surplus value of code to extrinsic parties. But having said that, I'm again not wanting to just dogmatically exclude or deny what you're saying about this.

And, you know, there is obviously a question, well, if you're thinking about Bitcoin as a new code system, is it extracting surplus value of code? And from what, I mean, I'm not at all eliminating that possibility. It's something I'm not yet seeing, but, I mean, it's something I'm open to. Well, what about exactly what we started out talking about, which is to say ontological functions of monetarization. So if we think of Keynesian economics as an exploitation of the surplus value of monetary code in order to, I guess, like impose temporal trends or to execute temporal operations on the economy, that the way Bitcoin establishes a history for itself and a new code for constructing consensus or consistent paths for the economy,

reintegration of that function that I mean not just Keynesian economics as just an example but the various manipulations of the currency we're able to accomplish in terms of an ontological effect. No I'm definitely open to persuasion about this. I think if you pan out to the most abstract level if you've got any system that is accessing energy inputs purely through the production of signs you have to suspect that there is surplus value of code. I mean, Deleuze and Qatari would probably poke you with a sharp stick and say you have to be utterly confident that you have surplus value of code. And so, obviously set out on that level of abstraction, it's hard to deny Bitcoin is doing that. You

know, when you see these Bitcoin factories, they obviously have massive energy inputs that were not going into this thing before. It didn't exist. And now, you know, human and energy and technical resources are being pumped into this thing of producing and maintaining and running the Bitcoin system. So what has and in what way has this energetic, pre-existing coded energetic structure been hijacked by Bitcoin? And so I'm saying, without wanting to answer this because I'm not able to answer it yet, I'm just saying I'm extremely open to that being a productive question and it seems that there has to be a way of going

down that road and answering it you know like otherwise how could Bitcoin exist how could there be a Bitcoin mining industry you know something has been without closing the abstract in the concrete yeah and it works in kind of the political as well as thermodynamic area as well because you know it closes the gap between, let's see, what am I looking for? Verification and voting, I guess. You know, there's all of this sort of talk about using the blockchain for digital democracy and, you know, consensus about data, about IP rights and so forth. And you could, you know, maybe in this vein start to see that as a consequence of the narrowing of the gap between economic and political activity, which has also been exploited

by various monetary authorities in the past. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yes. I mean, this is, again, really close to this... Sorry, I keep forgetting the guy's name. This Columbia paper. And the whole way we think about the relationship between the political and the economic Mick is obviously being thrown into a really potentially productive crisis, productive on a theoretical level. People could lament it or be appalled by it, but in terms of actually forcing us to think about how these things are articulated, it's definitely extremely productive.

And he is appalled. And the way he's appalled is really interesting, because what he's appalled about is something that goes so much to the core of what modernity is about, the very notion. I don't think he uses this phrase, I'd have to see, but it seems to me what he's about is the politics of depoliticization. So he's saying, and this is the fundamental cognitive orientation of the left, I think, in general. It's the most abstract thing, is to say depoliticization is itself a political strategy.

And when he says, he's talking about the extreme right, I think that that's what it means is by the extreme right it means a actually concerted politics of depoliticization if we're putting it from his side or sort of at its most extreme epitomized by the notion of algorithmic government the notion of a complete extermination of the political which of course from this other side the side of left critique. Of course that is intrinsically, massively political. You can't tell us that you want to exterminate politics and then say that that isn't itself a political gesture.

Is that actually something that the algorithmic governance people argue with or find problematic? I mean, at least, I don't know, what exactly is the argument against that being a politician politics or a political choice, even if it's the very last one. Right. I would expect there would be some diversity about it, but I think part, to me it's interesting, the term extreme right, you know, what is being said there. And I think if we sort of have our, draw our sort of political spectrum, again super crudely, got extreme left left right extreme right and how do you pass in both of these

directions to the extreme you know and I think the extreme is the place where certain things would be explicitly said on both sides that would not be said on when you're in the middle zone. Like on this example, he complains about when he says, for instance, let me just give a quote from the speaker. He says, Enthusiast demand we understand Bitcoin is a welcome political intervention, but when pressed for details about the political intervention, its advocates unfailingly turn back to technical and engineering matters.

Now, this isn't exactly, this isn't the perfect quote for this point, but it's related, is to say that this responsible evasion of the issue seems to me to be non-extremist. I mean, the extremist is the position which is to say, yes, the goal is algorithmic government and the death of the political. That's the extreme position, surely. And the moderate position going in that direction is one that is encouraged by those trends and supportive of those trends, but is for purpose of realistic political compromise,

not making then a firm statement. And then as you migrate left to that, it's a tendency to oppose those same processes but a willingness to compromise with them that then passes out on the other edge into the extreme left by an absolutely uncompromising denunciation in the name of the political of anything that would compromise with the tendency to algorithmic governments or depoliticization and I think Bitcoin…

Sorry, I don't know what people can hear at this point. Sorry. Yeah. Bitcoin compels a crisis, this is what is interesting about it. I mean there's no there's absolutely no doubt about what its doing which is to eliminate politics from its own commercial sphere entirely and that people can then in a supplement say well it's got all kinds of political potentials that are missed by that and of course this this bitch coin thing if we I don't know again whether people have seen that

would be an extremely interesting place to look to for that kind of thing. But in terms of the intrinsic Bitcoin protocol itself, it's straightforwardly, simply, unambiguously depoliticized money. And of course, I agree that to say that, you know, to pretend that there isn't a politics of depoliticization is utterly evasive, of course. Did anyone get to see this strange Bitcoin paper?

I followed it, I followed it, and I'm kind of like looking at it, purely from the art side of the... Right. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was extremely interesting. I mean, one thing is that there is a... It's not a very developed argument, but if you're trying to split up people's positions on this, I've already done this kind of ultras, mainstreamers distinction, and it adds an angle to that.

It's not quite orthogonal, and it's certainly not perfectly aligned. It's at a slight angle to it. is a distinction that's tied up with this question of these altcoins and I say it's at an angle because the mainstreamers tend to be sort of sympathetic I mean they're trying to invest in a Bitcoin infrastructure they like all kinds of economic activity in the area Bitcoin they tend to play down the centrality of Bitcoin itself as a currency to the development because all of these things place them in a certain position in implicit sympathy with all coins whereas the altars are more inclined to say Bitcoin is so revolutionary

that anything that just distracts from it or interferes with its accumulation network effects and delays the point where it goes head to head with these fiat currencies and wipes them out and I've already used this I think fantastically interesting term hyper Bitcoinization which I think I'm attributing correctly to to Daniel Kravitz and he he's says that this is hyperinflation as it affects fiat currencies in the face Bitcoin and he he glosses it to saying your money is not wanted anymore so it's just like the guy with the the real barrel full of money you know he's got as many George much as you could conceivably want to throw anything and people are

just saying we just don't want that stuff anymore you know it's its I'll but that absolute where which hype inflation is tending to where this simply no I'm now of the currency that has any value anymore it's becoming absolutely worthless and so Kravitz is is anticipating this in this Bitcoin world he says you know there's a certain point where simply the only thing the notion that you're gonna accept US dollars in exchange for bitcoins will be upset you know you'll will simply be exchanging a real real money for

useless fake money that everyone is trying to bail out as quickly as possible no I'm not arguing for the credibility of that or although certainly not the time scale that but it's just to say that because of that position he hates all kinds he thinks that they're just delaying this they're just distracting people that that Bitcoin is the story and anything distracting from that is getting in the way but then there's another trend that's obviously very pro altcoin and sees this as this ecological efflorescence coming off blockchain technology that should be welcomed and all these interesting things could happen and maybe if the Bitcoin model is that it's just being

driven by network effects to this position of being like a singularity where it's the only global currency then the opposite extreme is an all coin economy where everyone has their own all calling or maybe several you know and that all coins are just something that you get massively proliferated and we're in this strange monetary world where there are you know countless money systems so rather than being concentrated onto this Bitcoin Bitcoin catastrophe where instead being pushed into this strange new world all these currencies being produced

in a as in this couple as an art project I mean that am that people have the capability to do it the kind of software is there and you can just produce a whole currency as something tied up with a particular project you're trying to undertake, as a certain artwork in itself, as a certain form of sort of self-economization. I mean, it's hard to kind of quite get a purchase on what this kind of weird, tropical, feverish economy would be like but this is certainly an extreme example

that you know whether rather than asking people for money not then engaging in art commerce in a traditional way she just juices a whole new currency that is her artistic value monetized on the on on this blockchain technology so I thought I thought definitely that's pretty interesting This picture that you just painted then, the thing that I've been worrying about was something that I think Laura brought up before, this idea that there is a kind of rigidity to the blockchain as a signifying system, as a production of temporality. It's hard to see where novelty can arrive if you can't have mutation. And it might work in terms of tokenization, but

But it doesn't seem particularly interesting, philosophically, maybe. And the picture that you just painted then was interesting because you get this kind of, like you said, this sort of tropical feverish patchwork of money ecology which makes you start to think of Bitcoin as collapsing back into a kind of centralisation. I wonder if that's, I mean that just occurred to me then, but I wonder if there's anything in that, that it can then be returned to, I mean if these kind of hardcore Bitcoin ultras have their way, you just end up with another kind of very rigid limited money system. Well, I mean it would be, if they had their way, it would be an almost perfect simulation

of gold in an economic in a it ultra hard money gold-based system so you know part whatever positive and negative she wants to put to that I don't think it's particularly unimaginable I think we can imagine it extreme with high fidelity because it is such a high fidelity simulation of gold I mean this it's like gold beyond gold really and so whatever gold looks like this is more than that and and but

it seems to me hard to imagine in the short term that you could really realistically project this singularity where the only money accepted of value anywhere in the world is Bitcoin. I mean, this is what some people are seeing, for sure. And it's like, I mean, I don't know. Is it? It's a, obviously there's a certain haziness in this question about what one is asking for in terms of a mutation and these kind of things, isn't it? I mean, money, even the most sloppy fiat type of money, it kind of mutates in certain

ways, but it doesn't. I mean, unless I'm – you should speak for yourself about that. I mean, do you think that the kind of mutations we're seeing within the fiat money system are attractive, creative mutations because they would die. I don't know enough about it. Yeah. But I'm just concerned about where this kind of theoretical vision of the blockchain is going. I mean not in terms of it being particularly positive or negative, but just that it shuts down a lot of possibilities. And it seems to kind of lead into a space where nothing much can happen.

I mean, and then what happens when you mine your 21 million bitcoins? This is actually something, I mean, maybe I should just go do some more reading and figure this out. But, yeah, when those 21 million bitcoins are mined, how does the circulation keep going? Do people keep mining to get transaction costs for the transactions they are performing for the people who have the Bitcoins? And does that keep redistributing? It's supposed to be built in that a certain type of servicing, transaction servicing, will then be routinized that will guarantee people enough Bitcoins from that to maintain

the incentives that the system requires. And honestly, I mean, I couldn't say with confidence how much credibility I put in that. I mean, you know, it's obviously a serious question what happens at this point. I think the date is 2040 where there's no more Bitcoin mining. And so whether it's produced a new stable incentive platform, because the one it's got is so beautiful to my mind maybe that's a kinda highly questionable aesthetic vision but to my mind this basic loop of incentives between the miners and the system production is just absolutely exquisitely beautiful and that will end and something that I think

is going to be more messy by necessity is going to have to replace it so I don't know we've got 25 years. As you mentioned in another class, Nick, you said that essentially Bitcoin, I think you mentioned the term, the framework of game theory. Basically, it's not in anybody's favor to have the majority of Bitcoins, to use a really stupid analogy on my part. It's not like Monopoly. You don't want to get to the point where you own all the money otherwise the game is over and it's not in your interest to win the game yes yes it's very complicated

and obviously it's such a new world that people are just stabbing at it with these very speculative theoretical models but that does seem to be working out you know just by the sheer fact that it would be so like again going back to this this article that I've been referring to that I've sent And it's got this thing where it says, in December 2013, half of all Bitcoins are owned by approximately 927 people, such as Fight the Power Revolution is sarcastic, obviously, as the Winklevoss twins of Facebook infamy among them. Now, obviously, 927 people owning half of all the Bitcoins is a sort of small number, but it's not that small a number.

it's half and it's 927 people and the whole Bitcoin economy is worth three billion dollars I mean I imagine there's any number of those 927 people who could arbitrarily increase their investment their stock of bitcoins you know what I mean so I think there's demonstrable self limitation happening here you know like this the game theory and then there's the historical fact and the historical fact seems really clear that people are not exercising an option to massively accumulate I mean if you've got 927 people

only half of the world's bitcoins so half the world's bitcoins worth 1.5 billion dollars let's say you divide that by hunter it's not it's a tiny stake as nets we're talking like something like a 15 million dollars mmm as being a unit chunk or whatever and some of them maybe have a few more few let's say at the max a few tens of millions of dollars you know in a world of 10 multi tens a billion dollars plutocratic fortunes we're definitely on that social level not seeing anything at this kind in the in the Bitcoin ecology so that to me strongly

suggests that this complicated type of economic game theory is is is working well and as is producing a kind of distributional ecology which whilst by no means radically egalitarian is nowhere near the kind of monopolistic outcomes that would be easily envisaged, given the scale of it. Yeah. I wanted to respond to the first point of Amy's couple points or questions about the notion of mutation. I don't know if there's much that I could add to the question, but I do think it's interesting

to think about another notion I've been thinking about is the notion of an epi, I believe the term is epigenetic. Yeah, epigenetics. Epigenetics, yes. And the idea that the DNA, so to speak, can be there but in the way in which there is growth from out of it you can have unexpected potentialities realized which are not necessarily determined by the DNA. But with the block train of course we don't want mutations in this sense. We don't want epigenetic processes. We want it to do exactly what it's supposed to do, which is protect, right?

Keep its traces perfect. So where we want mutation is in the non-linearity and the complexity of the economic system outside of the blockchain. Yeah. I agree totally with what you're saying here. I think that one very useful analogy of this is to the internet. The basic internet infrastructure is fairly simple and extremely consistent. system. So these few basic protocols that govern all Internet traffic are, you know, you could just put them on a few sheets of code. I mean, they're not elaborate, they're hopefully not mutating, you know. No one wants HTML or IP or any of these things to sort of

start going on a random walk because then the system will fragment in a way that is like non-communicate it will just simply go into isolated packets and you can't build complexity on top so this notion that there being a few very stable rules as a condition for this complication and elaboration at another level I think is really crucial cool things But on that analogy that could be the blockchain as a system and then a complete economic ecology

of different alternative coins. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean that's why this coin thing has become the suffix, hasn't it? I mean this is one of the things I wanted to introduce in this whole science question. The word coin, that word coin has been thrown back into instability as a sign. It's itself an extraordinary thing. It's this old, apparently extremely determinate word. Everyone thought they knew what a coin was. You know what I mean? It's almost a kind of example of a banal, unproblematic word. And now, literally, what is a coin?

In this blockchain sense, it's become a complete boundary of the unknown, what a coin is and can be. And this is where all this proliferation, variation, experimentation, all of this happens in the fact that no one knows what the limits of a coin are or what it can do or all the different things. you know just example like we now have bitch coffee I mean okay I don't honestly know exactly what it's doing but I'm in its the fact it exists is this is this fact that this the what a coin is is now radically been reopened it's all

well it's equity isn't it I mean as long as like you you add the the fact that in principle you can exchange the right 25 square inches of print for equivalent money whatever it's worth. I mean you're buying equity in her future production. So it kind of circumvents the whole no credit functionality in Bitcoin problem by narrowing the field of exchange down to one person that you can evaluate trust with without going through third parties and then for that gives you temporal extension. Yeah. Well, from the position of the art, I think Bitcoin is even more problematic than what

you were describing, Jake. I think it's a way of gesturing towards, it's like one of those desperate attempts by a contemporary artist to make the production sort of like legitimize it and make it relevant to larger social economic political are happenings the a you I know this isn't necessarily the left altar response that it but just out of curiosity you you saying that in a critical my

no just or just descriptive I mean descriptive I mean I'm pretty common of course description can can be interpreted as critical, right? But really, there's nothing to critique because the Bitcoin mode of artistic production does not even have the ambition to take over. Like it doesn't propose itself as an alternative to the way art is sold or bought or symbolic value is produced in the art world. It just offers itself as another way of an artist's career being evaluated in this whole art world symbolic economy.

Right. Yeah. Well, right. But, I mean, it also, you know, in principle, extends far beyond just the art world. I mean, unless, you know, that's not necessarily true depending on how we define the breadth of the term art world, obviously. But, you know, as we move, as a lot of people think, and one of them think that we will, you know, away from this idea of careers and professions that most people have, you know, at least in sort of the educated, technologically enabled sectors of society, to more, you know, multidisciplinary project and contract or contract work oriented. you are a personal corporation that acquires capabilities and does various things and has a value this could apply to anyone

what is the value of an hour of my time on an average over a year or ten years yeah I mean there was a trend that got a lot of attention at one point of people they tended to be kind of already established celebrities releasing bonds based on their own career potential. Oh yeah, maybe Bowie did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. There was at least him, yeah, for sure. So you could buy a Bowie bomb, yeah. Already in that, but I think this is going to be much more, again, to use the same word,

a word, a kind of feverish process because it's so much more dynamic. It's following a certain trend in the world of art, isn't it? Where the artist and the boundaries become very uncertain. And, like, what is the art in Bitcoin? I mean, is the art simply, if we're going to use this signified, signified language, which falls apart at some point but has some mileage, I mean, is the art the signified and the Bitcoin just the signifier for that, or the Switchaxe is just index for it? Or has the art, you know, crept out into this whole thing? So it's monetization has become the art.

That it's kind of auto-monetization is now the art. and actually the kind of initial material, the initial artistic material is just a pretext for a certain kind of weird economic commercial performance art that Bitcoin itself instantiates much more highly than the actual original inches of artistic material that I supposedly backing at. Well, then we are kind of at the distinguish between... Sorry, go ahead, Mel. No, I was going to say there's this, but what you're saying, Nick, is from the point of view of the outside of the art world, like literally and figuratively, right?

You're outside of the art world. but from the inside of the art world what and that there's another operations happening that it's equal if not actually from that standpoint of the inside of the art world is make probably more more operational or more important which is this artist is the first one or among the first group of people who's actually monetizing Bitcoin in the symbolic order of the art world itself so she's the one or he's the one who's bringing this into the art world and therefore extracting value for being the one who's bringing the whole discussion or like a practice a bit going into the art world yeah

yeah I mean that's a good that crosses a whole bunch of things we've been talking about today sure like if we were gonna look at those would you categories in this term yes extremely complicated as matter what's what's happening here I there's a certain as you say symbolic prestige originality that is somehow then built into this yeah I can start with back to scarcity again right we're back to scarcity again in the sense that not everyone can be first yet because Because in the art world, when I talk about art world, we're talking about the kind of virtues and practices that inform the world of art's worldview today, right? In today's

art world, it's only the first person or the first group of people who do these practices that count as art. If this actually becomes a prevalent mode of artistic production, then not art it's craft it's kitsch it's just like you know what I mean it's like yeah it's like it's like all the other people who copied bang Banksy they're not gonna get like they're not gonna get shows Banksy will get shows because he was the first person who kind of like or he was among the first group of people who basically thought about like street art as a medium of intellectual like serious intellectual exchange or something. Yeah. The rest of the people are just copying Banksy. Yeah. They're like, we're back in the same stuff that we talked about, right?

They're just like making doubles. Yeah. No, totally. In fact, there's a very nice systematic progression from the basic Bitcoin protocol where only the first transaction is real and the blockchain is a machine for systematically selecting out all non original transactions as not being recorded on the blockchain and therefore being exempted from reality as defined by the blockchain so there's that first of all absolutely fundamental orientation to originality at the heart of the Bitcoin protocol to then Bitcoin as a currency having as its

only claim to superiority over all these other altcoins is its primary again. Bitcoin was the first blockchain currency and that's why it's Bitcoin and this whole discussions about Bitcoin and philosophy and not Dogecoin and philosophy or Litecoin or philosophy or any of these other things. Just by being first it's in this extremely critical position and it's really hard to overemphasize how important that simple priority is in a world that is totally in this structure of war with double

spending because anyone can just clone the protocol and set up a cryptocurrency. There's nothing about it that it has other than its path dependency, its originality, its primarity, the fact that it's dated first and therefore has these network effects and is able to build initially this power of incumbency is all it has against these competitors. And then and then third as you say and missed artistic appropriation that exactly on the same you know replication at the same pattern as to do with originality whether the only the original

has has value and so it's in that way extraordinarily suitable project act you know that that sort of that issue with the of the primal on the original is just then cuts through on these different levels right right back thank you so that seems to kind of connect to Laura's, your comment, you know, about Brian Rotman and the function of zero as enabling, but I guess also kind of in this case, preventing double spending.

I mean, okay, that's actually too much. But so this establishment of a firstness which is independent of cardinality, because, like, double spending isn't just two, right? It's really to the end. So it's the ability of something to proliferate and duplicate endlessly, and this firstness function preserves something that's independent of all of that and gives it priority over the whole quantitative proliferation of what it otherwise is to begin with. I'm not sure how that relates to the function of zero, because I also haven't read the Rotman book, and the comments were kind of attenuated. But Laura, do you see those as being related? What I, I mean, yeah, actually, I think, as you say, it's true, like the zero sort of

establishes a firstness that pre-exists any material sort of foundation. But on the other side, the way that I saw it is kind of the opposite, is that the zero itself kind of produces this doubling of the subject. Rotman refers to obviously mathematics, but also to arts and aesthetics, so starting from the like, this, I don't know, this development of perspective, I don't know. Yes, it's really good actually, isn't it? The vanishing point. Yeah, exactly. Starts from the vanishing point and then with the evolution of mathematics,

of algebra and also of paper money in fact. Paper money that is by itself not backed by basically already, I think in the late Renaissance, I guess, so late 17th century or something like that, I think he was recording too. So basically even in like, Rodman was sort of like mapping this parallelism in between the development of, for instance, a perspective in which at the beginning you have the vanishing point which is external to the painting and And then you have the vanishing point becomes internalized, so the perspective becomes internalized

and that's when you have paper money which reproduces itself and then you get to the last stage that Rodman analyzes which is the sort of, I guess that book was written in the late 80s, so he was talking about like Euro dollars and basically financial currency, how what it calls Xenomoney, how this money creates its own value by the possibilities of its own future. So in itself, I guess, I mean, what I think the book is pointing towards from my understanding, my interpretation of it, is this idea of like double spending or like doubling becomes more and more radicalized, like the doubling of identity, the doubling It's an identity and a doubling of a subject that in a way works by itself.

It's automated really in a way. I don't know whether this really answers your question because I guess what it's pointing towards really to me is this kind of automation of a doubling process. but I don't know. That definitely makes sense because that's exactly what happens in the construction of digital numeric representations. Having zero allows you to double count all the other numerals. That's a form of compression versus Roman numerals, for example, which is what allows algebra to work. I'm trying to take this further and relate it to firstness.

and I'm not quite there yet. Yeah. I need also to do some more digging. I mean, I really enjoyed Rotman's Zero book a lot, but this whole Zeno Money discussion is something that is not there for me at the moment, so I definitely need to spend a week having that. I'd just read it as well, but yeah. We have about 15 minutes left from the session, if you want to be exact with time.

And not double it. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. I actually had a question, but I guess I'll wait for Laura. Do you mind if I ask it quickly? No, yeah, go, go. Okay, so this relates to like much earlier on, right? And, you know, like the way, Nick, you were talking about language, it totally undermines and destabilizes. So like the first order of cybernetic thought of information exchange, right? And because we moved away from the conversation, it's hard to kind of like remember what part of it I'm referring to. So I have to like make a little reference is the fact that so if by communicating with

you I pass on the like you know what I mean the way first order of cybernetic theorized what is the nature of information, the ontology of unit of information. totally not like the way we are talking about it in terms of money. Because of how communication and I read accounts of it that people who were discussing how this should be theorized they did not agree with each other, right? But Norbert Wiener's account was the one that adopted, right? Which basically separates the body less immaterial information about

something and that thing as being the sort of like a prior or some kind of a given, right? And that way they kind of like basically by adopting this they did not have to deal with the issue of proliferation because if communication is just sort of like a reference to the like a thermo that if electromagnetic signal is just a reference to a thermodynamic reality, I'm just like using like, then it's okay because it's not doubling. Dr. Right. Dr. Because that thermodynamic reality always stays outside of this information network and it's always kind of like out there and this sign can go around and everybody in the world can update themselves about this thermodynamic reality through this electromagnetic

signal and then everything's going to be fine. we are learning now that it's not going to be fine. Because this doubling has ramifications. Ramifications that, like, the first order of cybernetic did not really comprehend or, like, adopt. If I'm reading it right. No, I think that's totally right. I think that's totally right. I think that the Deleuze-Quattari critique would just be about organicism. Don't you think, Mo, that, like, for Veena, the objects of study whether organism or machine is treated as this organic unit that is involved in some kind of semiotic non-linear process for its own stabilization

but the notion that it's within some hybrid system in which code is being hijacked and redirected and overcoded is completely outside that Yes, totally. So Laura, sorry I stole the mic from you, but you can go ahead. No, don't worry. I just had a very simple question. I actually went back to have a look at the Columbia paper and I realized that I was starting reading it, but I think I got up to page three and then he gives his definition of money that to me was totally, I don't know, not correct, so I kind of left it.

But anyway, so basically, okay, Goldumia defines money as, okay, a medium of exchange, a store value and a measure of value. Okay, I don't think that as far as I understand it and as far as I don't know even Wikipedia goes, money is not a measure of value properly but a unit of account. Right. This is why the open ledger is a great innovation because it allows for this system of accounting that is in fact open and transparent. But I was wondering about how does the function of money as a store of value that could also

be questioned eventually relate to the surplus of value that we were talking about before and the function of money as a store of value. Or perhaps it's not like, I don't know. Yes, it's an interesting question. I think if you come at it backwards from the most monetized contemporary forms of money, it's easier to answer. And then the question is how systematically we'd move that back. Because I think in the recent form, it's precisely immunization against these forms of hijacking that allow it to function as store of value.

That's the way the logic goes. And were it possible that, you know, because in a way there's this virtual store of actual machinic value. if you if you have a store of value it's because you can make a certain number of things happen in the world if it's just people giving you food and services or simply or you know through with large stocks of money to fast industrial products projects that that the world can actually be subject to a system of machinic commands by your wealth and so if that can if that can be extracted by some external party then of course

you've got a bad store or a party you know you wouldn't you wouldn't store that machinic potential in a form that was open to being rated by these various other parties and now if you then want to try and move that back you know through monetary history and down into these more cake semiotic systems I think it would be you know I don't have a kind of formula that will allow that happen straightforwardly but but just to say it relation I think is is clearly there because the fact that it works so clearly in the final stage

yeah kids I've been thinking I don't know, in the Nakamoto paper for instance, it never really refers to value in terms of like economic value, it refers to value in terms of the hashing value, algorithmic kind of value. And I know that there are some critiques, for instance, of this definition of money as a store of value as well. these Italian economists, but also Greg Scott who writes a sweet possum, he had a little post not long ago about one of these myths about money that needs to be in fact that

money needs to function as a store of value. So I was kind of, I don't know, I'm just trying to understand if there is any relationship. Could you just like very briefly give me a sense of how this critique of the idea of money as a store of value proceeds? I mean is it to simply say that you can do everything you need just with the notion of it as a medium of exchange or what's the… I guess I don't know, yeah I guess this kind of critique works in the direction of yeah money is a medium of exchange and a unit of account in a sense that obviously if I give something, if I give you something, we have a transaction, you know, needs to be recorded somewhere, we need both to have like a token eventually that says, but especially Brett

Scott critique I think is related to the fact that value anyway, it's like a socially constructed a socially constructed and it resides not in the object that is exchanged but in this belief eventually that this object has a certain value that the token is able to equate it I don't know I just find it interesting I mean obviously to get back to the kind of hyperinflation question the easiest way of understanding what's happening there is that money collapse it is as a store of value so that when

money is is loses that function you simply want to move it out as quickly as possible because holding onto air is a form of extreme economic sacrifice so I mean I'm open to the possibility that you can run that another way but it it certainly seems intuitively plausible that the fact that money has a value is a store of value is the only thing that would ever incentivize people to hold on to money rather than get eliminated well I mean time preference just like wanting to have the ability to exchange in the future, you know, just like taking as a given that your ability, your point present

ability to produce value to exchange varies over time is not certain. Then, I mean, it just seems as if there's no intrinsic problem with projection into the future of medium of exchange as a grounding function. But isn't, if money has the reliable future function as a medium of exchange, is that not a store of value? I mean, I can't, it seems to be simply, I'll be interested. If you've got links to this stuff, Laura, I'll definitely be interested to have a look. I'm not getting it at the moment, because it just seems, I can't imagine money not needing

to be a store of value, but be interested to see. There is this really interesting talk about this Italian economist, Massimo Amato, he's been working on this form of money that he calls utopic money with an EU topic. He's into local currencies. I've been thinking about the possibility of extending his logic to perhaps something like global universe, like a blockchain system. He has this really great talk. He's in French. I don't think there's that much material in English as obviously. things in Italian, but I post it, I don't know. Like it's, and it's really interesting in the sense that it draws on the system of exchange

of the fares in the Renaissance or something like that, I don't remember well, but it's based on this idea of like a form of money as a medium of exchange and a unit of account that doesn't necessarily need to be like a store of value. And again, I don't know how that could eventually be implemented in practical terms, but I just find it a really interesting concept because again, the moment that money doesn't need to represent the value, an economic or store value, we wouldn't have problems such has inflation, inflation again, right? And we wouldn't have, like, issues of, well, obviously, I don't know, accumulation, because

why do you need to keep it? Right? I don't know. I'm just... Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just find it interesting, like, this possibility out there. Yeah. It sounds fascinating, but I can't pretend to have got to first base with getting it Yeah, that's it. Nick, going back to a term used from the very beginning, but we haven't really hit much, which is transcendence. Right. So would you understand, like, the value that is stored in money, which is also the surplus value of, you know, of everything that people might have that anybody else wants as,

you know, it's exchange value as a surplus value of objects. as commodities, would that be a kind of imminence of all these things to each other? Is that which constitutes, or could we describe, the surplus value of things, which becomes the value of money as imminence, or money as a transcendent representation of the actual imminence or radical imminence of all the things that enter the economy to each other? Um... Well, now, what's the best way of approaching this thing? I mean, OK.

I think in deciding how to apply this language, obviously one is applying a whole machine of critique to a certain problem. So if you were to say, if you were to formulate it in the sense that you've just done, then that would be a critique of money, structurally and formally speaking. So if I can sort of translate what you're saying, it would be to say, wouldn't a critique of money go like this, you know, that there is this field of eminence represented by these by these stores of energy and all of this kind of thing.

And money is the transcendent element in that arrangement. Because as soon as you say that, you're saying that you're already configuring it. So the bypassing of money is in that way implicit. now therefore I think it's of course that is something that could be explored and I will I'm sure there must be people who have explored you know and their good that a kind of a program based upon the abolition of money there there must be days things must exist and some of them at least must Lee try to construct themselves as a rigorous critique

so I'm sure those things are both I didn't mean really I guess I kind of misused the language a little bit I didn't really mean in terms of attempting to bypass money I mean certainly not practically and not really even theoretically either but to understand what Bitcoin is doing as a purification of transcendence and moving from trusted third parties as identifying transcendence with these particular parties that are not transcendent they don't execute perfect trusted behavior, they're entities in the world, to Bitcoin, which is a more purely sort of concrete existence-less, both in terms of decision-making and reliance on concrete decision-makers

over its transaction function and so forth, and that this corresponds to that transcendence as Bitcoin's transcendence as I guess more direct isomorphy to the imminence of things to each other, of things that we might want to exchange? Well, I think that the most straightforward way of doing this with the paper is to say, you could certainly say Bitcoin is transcendental in the sense that it's the actual formal system for this whole projected commercial but what is transcendent in this in this model all

the third parties that any in calling something transcendent within the whole tradition critique you're saying it can be subtracted those two things are exactly the same you're already implicitly projecting its subtraction so I think I'm done told the transcendent Yeah, I think so. So, but then, so prior to the monetary critique of Bitcoin, then we would describe the trusted third parties as transcendental, right? Which is kind of what I've been assuming all along. Transcendent, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess my main question was about just, I guess, the eminence term, because that hadn't come up yet.

But would you agree that sort of function, that is, I don't know, I guess, I'm non-problematically can be slaughtered and to this framework we've been using this terminology yes totally I mean that that imminence is the compliment of the transcendent in in that it's defined by survival after the subtraction of transcendent so in the in the Bitcoin paper the plane of imminence is defined by these peer-to-peer this fabric of peer-to-peer relations obviously whose monetary code is now Bitcoin and and those peer-to-peer relations is everything that remains after

at least in theory the subtraction of all of these third-party institutions so if you want to you know that actually is a definition a sort of practical definition of the imminent economic field as it as it is a planned out in this in this paper it's what it's what's a five the subtraction transcendence and so everything that is left after all of these intermediary third-party institutions as swept aside at least shelved in theory is is your imminent like wouldn't just is that transcendental or imminent

and that's also sort of another question with the differentiation between the field of people engaging in transactions and the network of people yeah well the trans the church that the transcendental is is co-extensive for the imminent and there's that and it's that part of imminence that is is always already present in it at in any I'm using language that various stage the transcendental tradition has discarded but it but it's the ineliminable element of the a of the imminent field so say for instance like what's transcendental in the peer-to-peer relation,

all those things that are essential to the peer-to-peer relation universally and necessarily under any circumstances. Transaction announcement, block mining. Yes. I mean, it will be interesting to exactly define it. Obviously, in the Bitcoin terms, in the future, it's projecting. it's basically the Bitcoin protocol with the elements that it necessarily needs to introduce the notion that there are agents, there are Bitcoin accounts, elements that whatever the particular transaction would always be involved. And as I say, abbreviating that to the Bitcoin protocol itself is basically fine.

So the Bitcoin protocol itself is the transcendental element that is therefore always operative in any particular relation. But then any particular agent is part of this, operates on this imminent plane, but it's empirical rather than transcendental because it can be deducted without problems. Like any particular node can be gone, any particular account can be shut down. you know, bitcoins can actually just be vaporized into hyperspace. So any of these particular elements that are flat, peer-to-peer elements, they're not transcendent elements, they're not third-party elements, but they're deductible just because

they're empirical. It's like if you go back to the Internet and take this, it's crude, but it's not unreliable, basic thing, coming out of this military technology designed to survive a nuclear war. So you have this original ARPANET and DARPANET sort of security infrastructure for military communications under conditions of extreme military stress, nuclear attacks. Now the transcendental element of that is the whole system itself. It will be protocols, protocols transmission protocols and the the fundamental specifications of the network as such which would apply universally necessary to all the nodes

network but any particular command center or or node on the Internet is empirical because it can be taken out by nuclear strike and the system will still carry on functioning So this is the material construction of transcendental philosophy that you get in all of these networks. Any sort of true, flat network system is a critical system in a philosophically recognizable sense. So, just one last final thing is just to say Bitcoin is very much like this internet for money in that you can nuke any nodes out of Bitcoin.

It's designed, like he says, it's loosely organized. There are no components of the network that are indispensable. Right. You can obliterate a whole bunch of accounts and the Bitcoin system will still keep functioning just like the Internet after a whole bunch of military command centers have been nuked will still keep functioning so that so that's how though that's how the transcendental and empirical side the plane of imminence are distinguishable from each other alright that was that was a really useful explanation and it also had kind of a surplus usefulness because so does that imply that the so the invention of ARPANET and the origin of the internet is a form of critique itself

within communication and that it was sort of spurred by the subtraction of physical, reliable physical means, non-digital means of communication by nuclear extinction the virtual reality or the threat of nuclear extinction yes I'm absolutely sure that there are there are elements of the pre internet system that strictly are isomorphic with the metaphysical as it is defined as it can or these transcendent elements that are deducted and they would take the form of indispensable control nodes anything positioned as an indispensable control node

i.e. one that if removed from the system will prevent the system functioning is now defined I does a metaphysical element that has to be deducted from the system for the system to take on the kind of robustness that is required by this military imperative and that's why the Internet is obviously decentralized and why that you know it poses at the very least problems to central centralized control however much people say well that's been a emphasize it's at least when when you get this famous comment I'm the internet interprets censorship

as damage and roots around it that is nuclear war speaking you know that's it's like that statement is purely rooted in the same logic that the military application the internet was rooted in. And it's to say that it bypasses any element that presents itself metaphysically as an indispensable transcendent authority, because from the military point of view that's an unaffordable vulnerability. Okay, and this is another just like slight left turn, but are you familiar with Singularity Sky by Charles Strauss with the festival? Yes, yes. I am, yeah.

So that takes it a step further where it's not just censorship, not even just extinction, but is like the void of space or the non-contact of things itself the festival views as a metaphysical element that has to be routed through or routed around. Yeah. Stross is always, I mean, I wouldn't say I have no problems with him, but he's always very interesting, that's for sure. You've read, obviously, Accelerando. Oh, of course. Yeah. Like changed 13-year-old me's life. Right. Okay, so we're well above the seminar time,

10-minute overtime, which is perfectly fine. The conversation seems to be sort of like flowing. but if you guys have last questions or if Nick has last remarks maybe we can kind of like wrap up also I have a I have a request to to make and that's for someone who's been in the room or in the hangout from the very beginning because I had to leave and come back a few times because I had internet problems and every time I do that I lose the sidebar text so if someone has been in the room consistently, maybe they can select, copy, and paste the whole thing. Yeah, I got you, Mo. If you can do that, that would be lovely. Because I usually do it, but I didn't get a chance. I can do it because I left and came back.

Sure. Thanks, Jake. That's great. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, is everyone okay with the with the trajectory where on him and if I if I treat it that we're going some weird diagonal line between our preset agenda and stuff people put up on the classroom in time to me to see next week I'm everyone's cool with that or let me just put it this other way if anyone has course suggestions time course in the navigational sense just stick them on the on the classroom you know took things that you think we need to talk more about all that

being neglected or come true too fast or any such such things yeah sounds great thanks every day that was great this was a great class man yeah extremely I have to go back and listen to it several times yeah yeah like same yeah but unbelievable. Okay, thanks, everybody. That was... I really enjoyed that. Awesome. Thanks, Nick. Bye. So thanks for copy-pasting the notes, and see you guys next week, Sunday, same time. Yep. Bye. Super exciting. Bye. Bye. Thank you, Eric. Bye-bye.