We're big fans of getting back to basics here at the Ƀent and when this tweet from Tuur Demeester flew down my TweetDeck yesterday I thought it would be an interesting topic to touch on this morning. So here we are.

In a world that finds itself in the midst of a historical paradigm-shifting inflection point predicated on the technological innovation and productivity gains afforded to us by the Internet and the tools it enables, it is easy to get lost in the sauce of the hyper pace of change. Things are changing at a speed which our monkey brains have never experienced at any point in human history. We have hit warp speed, going from a fairly disconnected world in which access to information and certain communication channels were luxuries afforded to people in power to a hyperconnected world that allows billions of people to connect, interact, and conduct commerce with incredible relative ease at an extremely affordable price.

This change has affected us in such a profound way that it seems as though, to me at least, we have found ourselves in a very confused state. Attempting to describe something unfolding in a way that no one man or woman could ever coherently articulate. Some are becoming so confused that they think this change and new tech presents an opportunity to rewrite/rearchitect millennia of compounding effects created by social evolution anchored around certain ethics and natural laws that we have historically come to agree upon so that our societies maintain social scalability. I believe it is of the utmost importance that we understand the history of humanity, the conversation around natural law and ethics that has been evolving since the time of Socrates. One can learn a lot from the lessons of our predecessors and the ongoing conversation that has led us to this point.

Ossifying principles like the right to private property, the concept of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", freedom of movement and thought, and the importance of the triumph of merit and logic over feeling and force has allowed us to get to this point as a random species on this grain of sand floating in the open universe (if space is real). As the pace of change continues to go parabolic it is important that we attempt to inject these boring principles into the technologies we build and use.

Extrapolating this to Bitcoin (you had to know I was bringing it here), I believe having certainty that it will one day get to a point of relative ossification, serving a very specific function very well with as little change as possible, is something we should be (and are) striving for. This will give us the best chance of scaling this system to the masses because it provides the most certainty. Instead of focusing on adding the latest bells and whistles, Bitcoin is committed to providing a service with certain levels of guarantees in regards to security and privacy that are sufficient for a scalable native digital money.

Final thought...

That took me a lot longer to articulate than I expected. Not even sure if it makes sense.