😏

Binary logic the*

Ok, putting Gödel aside.

How many blocks do you need to realize discrete time is real?

Would you agree that the formalism breaks down *IF* time is discrete and quantized?

How do you propose we solve the unverifiable axiom of continuous time? Because that is the binary logical their entire discussion depends on.

The axiom that time is continuous cannot be settled by attempting to measure Planck time from within the physical system, and this follows from the same structural limits identified by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Gödel showed that any sufficiently expressive formal system cannot fully prove the axioms that make reasoning within that system possible. In particular, a system cannot use only its internal operations to establish the consistency or foundational structure upon which those operations depend. This is not a limitation of technology or precision, but a consequence of self-reference.

Physical measurement is structurally similar. All measurements of time are performed by physical processes that themselves unfold in time. Clocks, experiments, and observers do not stand outside the temporal framework they measure; they presuppose it. Time, in this sense, plays the role of the underlying formal structure that enables measurement at all.

Planck time is defined as the scale at which the concept of time itself is expected to break down or become discrete. Attempting to measure it requires using clocks and causal processes that are already governed by the same temporal substrate. This creates a Gödelian self-reference: one is attempting to resolve the fundamental unit of the system using only operations that depend on that unit’s existence.

As a result, measuring ever smaller intervals of time can refine relative durations, but it cannot empirically decide whether time itself is continuous or discrete. That question concerns the structure of the system, not a parameter internal to it. From within time, the continuity axiom is therefore not falsifiable by measurement alone, it must be treated as an assumption or addressed via a meta-theoretical framework rather than an internal experiment.

Bitcoin changes this because it constructs time instead of assuming it.

Block time is a discrete, indivisible ordering produced by irreversible work and consensus, not by measuring continuous physical time. You cannot subdivide a block without breaking causality and finality. This bypasses the Gödelian self-reference: Bitcoin doesn’t try to measure the substrate of time from within it, it defines a new, external, discrete time standard that is empirically verifiable.

Bitcoin doesn’t need to change, Bitcoiners (the people) need to change. What’s required isn’t a protocol upgrade, but a BIP for the mind. It starts with a physical understanding of what the protocol already is, a completed understanding of time as Bitcoin instantiates it. Only from that grounding can protocol changes be justified by objective necessity rather than subjective preference.
@nevent1qqs...

Lol 😂 2nd to slab is dihedral for me. I love stemming and climbing corners. If you have good stretch you can cruise. If you’re gonna be tall/lanky, you have to be able to stretch into the “box”

Funny enough my wife got me an antislab shirt (I wanted the anti-slab slab club version), but I still wear it to the gym regardless for my love of slab.

Just ask him this simple question. He’s literally trusting an unproven axiom, one that Bitcoin openly falsifies.

@nevent1qqs...

Make slab great again (it always has been great). I agree with Ondra here.

https://youtu.be/fnkPyHx92_E?

Where is your proof?

Gödelian limits already explain why this axiom cannot be settled by measuring Planck time from within the system. Physics cannot falsify its own temporal assumptions internally. Bitcoin sidesteps that limitation by building time as an object. If continuous time were truly fundamental, the system would not work.

Bitcoin gives us something physics cannot: a physically instantiated state machine where time is constructed, not assumed. You cannot subdivide a block temporally without destroying causality, finality, determinism, and non-contradiction. Bitcoin simply does not function under continuous time. If discrete time were not fundamental, Bitcoin would be impossible, yet it runs, globally, verifiably, every day, every ~10 minutes a new block of time is constructed.

Bitcoin is my proof you are wrong. What is a block?

Answer the question Will.

If time is quantized and discrete, what happens to the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and quantum theory?

If time is quantized and discrete, this is simply untrue and you know it.

You will not admit it, you’ve trusted an axiom that Bitcoin openly disproves. Go and verify it for yourself.

That’s not actually true. The entire threat model rests on a single, unproven axiom: that time is continuous and infinitesimally divisible at the physical level.

If time is instead quantized and discrete, the mathematical formalism collapses at its foundation. You cannot take derivatives over indivisible time. Continuous Schrödinger evolution ceases to be fundamental, and the meanings of superposition, decoherence, and coherence structurally change. Superposition becomes potential between ticks (blocks), not a persistent computational substrate; decoherence becomes an intrinsic consequence of the tick (block) itself, not a gradual dynamical process. Bitcoin literally shows us this already.

Bitcoin forces this axiom into the open. Its ethos is don’t trust, verify, and Bitcoin gives us something physics cannot: a physically instantiated state machine where time is constructed, not assumed. You cannot subdivide a block temporally without destroying causality, finality, determinism, and non-contradiction. Bitcoin simply does not function under continuous time. If discrete time were not fundamental, Bitcoin would be impossible, yet it runs, globally, verifiably, every day, every ~10 minutes a new block of time is constructed.

Gödelian limits already explain why this axiom cannot be settled by measuring Planck time from within the system. Physics cannot falsify its own temporal assumptions internally. Bitcoin sidesteps that limitation by building time as an object. If continuous time were truly fundamental, this system would not work. The fact that it does is the empirical challenge to any model of physics that assumes continuous time (all of it).

Don’t trust, verify.