Haven’t been online much these days, but something I firmly stand by, but see very little discussion of, inside/outside of nostr, is bitcoin used as a human verification layer. It’s the best antidote to slop cannons i can think of.

Nothing novel here, just reiterating what we all know, but needs to be repeated: Pre-AI, digital information output was a function of energy involving humans. Post-AI, digital information output is a function of energy that does not involve humans. It’s pure energy/compute. As tokens/inference/compute gets cheaper, slop will only get worse!

If internet activity was paired with micro transactions, the costs would be ~0 to the avg person. Bad actors wouldn’t be so fortunate… Bitcoin is the best form of “digital proof of energy expenditure” we have, which becomes expensive at scale to any bad actor deploying agent swarms. The incentive to pump the internet full of slop, propaganda, etc at a meaningful enough scale is low to an individual, leaving these tasks to nations/states/regimes/organizations who have the financial means. This could make it very easy to spot coordinated efforts as well, or at least REDUCE such efforts to whatever is humanly possible (Russia/china have been doing this already for years). Again, my focus here is on human verification, not verifying how “genuine” the activity is. Humans make slop too, just in lower amounts.

Perhaps we don’t even need to “force” these transactions, and they could be made voluntarily, attached to our activity. Proof-of-work literally becomes proof of work. I’m proving I did this work, I’m proving I produced this information. Not including such transactions in digital activity could become a negative signal, a “bad actor” signal, or simply just low-status, which could be the most impactful of all. (Would this be the first time a btc user would ever be considered high status to the general public? Lol, you get the point)

But yeah, we sure don’t need a “world ID” where a private company scans my retinas, that for sure I know. Micropayments cut the low-margin slop (not all!) and add a traceable cost layer. They do NOT stop agent-driven persuasion/scams/ etc (those have real ROI here).

Who’s the recipient? No idea, maybe this only works on nostr. I need to think more about that - very important - part. But I think this is a good discussion nonetheless

Trying to make sense of this chaos.

Staying offline for the time being.

Max Sheler put into words a feeling I’ve had about the world, but could never quite explain myself.

When you understand his description of Ressentiment, you see it everywhere.

Gen Z male return to religion taken from a Kierkegaardian perspective:

If “levelling” in 1846 was the press manufacturing the public, these algorithms are far worse, as they level one’s identity into a feed of rapidly changing content with zero internal standard

It makes sense to see young men, raised in an algorithmically “leveled” society, turn towards more disciplined forms of Christianity

Experiencing performed opinions and constant “dunking”, with nothing at stake, is the feat of dialectics we see in skill and cleverness replacing courage, decision, and action.

What’s interesting is the return is inherently “levelling” itself via the same driving force of algorithms! “Traditional masculinity” and religious content are levelling mechanisms themselves. If a rivival runs through podcasts and short form content, it can’t be different from “the public” - it’s just a new “crowd”, which can create another condition of “reflection” without action (true belief/faith).

A new “feat of skill” that looks like passion from the outside

I don’t have clear takeaway from this, and I’m not as well read as I’d like to be on the topic, but I was reading “The Present Age” and this parallel came about

Who am I even talking to anyways? this is a notes app