The Future of Bitcoin: the "Poverty Ratchet"

 In zoology and population genetics its a well established fact that small populations are much more vulnerable to extinction than large populations. Its a simple feature of resilience that large populations can survive a much larger mortality event, or crisis than small populations. A large population after all is just a collection of smaller populations and so to make it extinct a number of small populations must go exist. And this ignores any emergent properties from those smaller groups interacting.

And so it is with Bitcoin. The poor are much more likely to go bankrupt in life and need to sell those bitcoin than the rich. And the rich have much more disposable income to invest than the poor and so on average will be the ones who buy up bitcoin. And so, as in Capitalism, as time progresses simply by the laws of probability the wealthy will end up owning all the bitcoin. The only bitcoin held by the poor will be that small, highly volatile subset of bitcoin that are changing hands.

The principles of Capitalism destroy everything and create inequality and poverty in its wake no matter what vehicle is traded.

I'll call this the "Poverty Ratchet."

Halting Problem and SRH are related

Suppose you write this recursive program:

bool DetermineSomeThing(int input) {

    if DetermineSomeThing(input) return false;

    return true;

}

It's a contradiction like "I am false." But importantly it also doesn't halt. The reason it doesn't halt is that it is defined in terms of itself for all calls.

In this case: 

bool DetermineSomeThing(int input) {

    if input == 0 return true;

    if DetermineSomeThing(input-1) return false;

    return true;

}

This will eventually return a value (I'm guessing true if input was even and false if it was odd) because the recursion scans through the intergers and it doesn't recurse for the value 0.

But if all values are deterkined in terms of itself you have an infinite loop and it doesn't halt.

The SRH has a problem with things determined in terms of themselves. Now apparently such hermeneutic circles are not catastrophic. The standard definition of integers begins with the integer '0'. So given an integer you can construct the rest. So actually it doesn't define what an "integer" is only the sequence. And in meaning in general there are no fixed starting points or foundations, you work backwards and deduce starting points from your already embedded position within the system. Being inside a loop or system is not catastrophic, so that to make any move you must use the system you already have.

But under circumstances like above it is catastrophic and you never get out of the system. It never halts.

Now Turing has already proved that there is no fixed way of determining whether a functions halts. If there was you could it to create a contradiction. If Halting maps to SRH then perhaps there is no way to determine if SRH applies or not! You can never tell in advance whether a particular application of self reference will create contradiction. In other words "self reference" remains an undefined bogey man that can always throw up surprises in an undetermined way!

OK quick appraisal:

Wait a second. I was trying to show that SRH is more fundamental than the Halting problem since it is with Self-Reference that the Halting proof is constructed. The contradiction supposes that an algorithm exists and then uses it to create a contradictory input to the algorithm. Since the input function knows whether it should halt or not it can be perverse and just reverse this behaviour. This is like the recursive function above that uses its own value to be perverse altho the looping in Turing proof is not causes by the recursion, it loops after making the decision.

Quick add: not all loops are recursive:

10 GOTO 10

keeps jumping to the same jump instruction. It it not looping because of logic where the result is determined in terms of itself e.g. "I am false" where re-evaluation occurs for ever. Which incidentally suggests that "I am true" should not halt either? Why should we interpret the false statement as an infinite loop and not the true version? Loosely you could say that jumping to an instruction is part of determining the result and if it jumps to the jump instruction then its saying to get the result go here, which says the same ad infinitum. It can be written as recursion:

int GetResult() {

    return GetResult()

}

But are all loops the equivalent of recursion and so self reference? Hmmm how to determine the answer to that?

Fixed Points & Fractals (yet again)

Here is the famous dynamic equation x=kx(1-x) drawn for values of k=[0,4]. The fixed point x=(k-1)/k by simple algebra is drawn in red. There is another fixed point at x = 0 which accounts for the starting part of the graph.

One way to visualise what is happening here is to see the logistic curve with the y=x line. As the dynamic system progresses the starting x value finds a y value through the function, which is then returned to the x axis which is the same as reflecting in the y=x. Using k=2 the start of the path is drawn in green. It will spiral down to the fixed point where the graph meets the y=x line.

Drawn with Desmos Calculator

When oscillating or chaotic behaviour starts it is always spiralling around the fixed point. As far as I can see (with my extremely limited knowledge of this) it is the fixed points which always set up complex dynamic behaviour.

A quick analysis of the differentials should be done as this will probably reveal the reason why certain values never find the fixed point. TODO.

Above is an analysis of the first iteration or Order 1. The Logistic equation for the second iteration is :

x = -k^2 (-1 + x) x (1 + k (-1 + x) x)

And this has 4 fixed points. The original 2 from the 1st Order and two new fixed points:

x = 0

x = (-1 + k)/k,

x = (k + k^2 - k Sqrt[-3 - 2 k + k^2])/(2 k^2)

x = (k + k^2 + k Sqrt[-3 - 2 k + k^2])/(2 k^2)

Drawn in red here:

It can be seen that the Order 3 accounts for the next 4 fixed points. Now interesting things happen after this as chaotic behaviour slips in. No idea why the dynamic system deviates from the fixed points and is unable to locate them. Note that this graph throws away the first 20 points to allow the system to stabilise before drawing.

Recent note on the fractal nature of the brain. Its an interesting analogy that the self is very much the fixed point around which our chaotic lives orbit.

Starting into our own eyes in a mirror and trying to fathom that "what we are seeing is doing the seeing" or more abstract in Descartes "what is doing the thinking is the thinking" these kinds of mental operations are just dynamic systems where the output maps at least to the input. I say "maps" because obviously you cannot see "the self" anymore than a camera can take a picture of the image within the camera, or that you cannot see light until it falls on your retina. The fact that there is "only one way" to be "in the picture" is the key to self. No one can share your experience is the key to the dynamic system. There is no leakage. Consider mirrors exactly facing one another. It is possible that a photon of light gets trapped and bounces back and forward. Being trapped between the mirrors is the experience of a human staring directly into a mirror and seeing "them self." But this "self" is a mental process deduced from the situation. A camera taking a photo of itself in a mirror does not get this experience, just the human looking at the picture so taken. Its an isomorphism that is set up in the thinking mind. What I am seeing, maps to "me." Now that thought is a dynamic system with a fixed point that is "self." Interestingly you never get to "self" it is just the fascinating possibility around which you orbit. And soon like Descartes the orbit ends, and we escape the meditation. But like Descartes we realise that we can get that same experience looking at anything as long as we set up the isomorphism. He ended up realising that he didn't need to just meditate on thoughts of doubt, but any thought would do and eventually any perception was proof of existence. He was back where he started after spinning down almost to the fixed point. I wonder whether Tat Tvam Asi is similar. The realisation that the Atman and the Brahman are the same. What you see in the mirror (the world) is the same as what is looking (the self). Certainly there is only one process really, its not like you are jumping between outside and inside when looking in a mirror there is just the way things are. But there is conserably spinning to begin with.

Now all this crazy speculation here is not seeking to discover anything!! The point is to show that all possible mental processes like this go no where. What we are really trying to do here is to let go and just see mental processes and what they are. Not seeking to come to an end point and discovery. Mankind has been thinking and discovering for millennia. There is the belief that it is all going somewhere and one day we will come face to face with God; the library will be complete and mankind will know everything. We will be complete. Existence will have laid bare all its secrets. But surly we sense the problem here, that whatever we find will just raise yet more questions. Why for instance was there a limit to knowledge at all? Thinking never ends until you end it yourself! Not that we become a corpse but we let go and let the world just be. But thinking still exists, its useful, its what our brains do, so we don't become a stone either. But we realise that the "self" at the heart of our enquiries into the world is a phantom. And the Hindu's would add that the idea of a fixed soul to the Universe is a phantom too.

Theological detail. The Hindus wouldn't say this actually, its the Buddhists. But by the time the difference is important the point has been made. 

More on Freedom from Self

 The West is a weird place. It's possible that the idea of self has existed for thousands of years but its only in the West that it has become such a dogma. Every aspect of Western life glorifies the individual. I have just argued with someone who claims that private property is freedom. Not realising that their boundary fence is also a prison. The same for self. What seems like freedom on the inside is a prison when viewed from the outside.

I had this experience in Scotland once. Within the confines of the Lord Castle it looks like paradise. But then you leave their grounds and walk into the wilderness and looking back from the hills what they have seems so small and irrelevant within the landscape and the walls of their paradise are just a prison. 

Well so it is for the self. Have been thinking some more on this. So attached are we to the self that we can't conceive of ever being without it. Its very easy to read things on the non essential nature of self, the fact that we can live without it, and still not quite identify what they are talking about. What is this non-essential part of us that we are so welded to that we overlook it all the time, and confuse it with the essential? As argued before its actually all that stuff that has our name attached, the stuff we "think" is us that is actually not us.

I realise that we can read the 1st Chapter of the Shurangama Sutra and start to gain non attachment from the objects of mind and yet it remains "my mind." The weird thing for beings attached to self is not so much where we are in the universe, but that we are not! And that "not" is not oblivion and darkness bur rather we are "no where." We always try to anchor our self in the world. Perhaps this arm is mine, or these fingers that do the typing, or perhaps these words, or these ideas. Or perhaps this computer. We go searching everywhere in a massive cosmic game of pin the tail on the donkey. Yet why are we playing this game. Why does anything need to be mine or me?

It's Descartes all over again. Descartes observed the contradiction in thinking there are no thoughts. That is a thought and so contradicts itself. René Magritte did the same in a picture, although its very telling he needed to add text to his picture to cause contradiction. You cannot paint a contradiction, its purely a textual thing!

But Descartes at no point needed to mention the "self." There was no need to own those thoughts and claim that "he was thinking" nor that "he existed." As Bertrand Russell commented he need only have said "there are thoughts."

Now I don't think Russell realised the full significance of what he was saying there. All we can ever say is "there is x." At no time do we ever need to invoke a self! And that's the bizarre thing, we can live our whole life without ever "sticking the tail on the donkey" in this world in fact donkey's don't have tails. Humans do not have selves! There are humans, there are individuals, there is everything but a self. And its not like the donkey even notices whether you pin the tail on or not. Its completely extraneous.

Tho actually we do notice when we pin a self. Life starts to become very difficult as we look at everything from inside the "mothership" of self. This mothership of a body becomes "us" and suddenly everything that happens happens to "us" and everything becomes really personal. And we respond by being very "personal" to other people cos they are now different from us. We try and stick tails everywhere. You did this; I did that. This is yours; that is mine etc etc. But we can live without sticking  a tail on.

This is most obvious when we consider death. Death will happen, that is a fact. But what we next want to know is when I will die. This is because I have a tail pinned on this body and what happens to it happens to me. But actually this body will die like all other bodies and that is just a fact. It has no great significance that it is my body that dies or whether it is another.

This is why morality occurs. When we have no tail pinned on then we treat all people equally and we are no longer biased to our self. To outsiders this looks like morality. But to those free from self its just obvious.

There is all kinds of metaphysics to try and tie us to the body. Belief in Souls that somehow inhabit bodies and make them me. But then even if this is true, why is that Soul mine? Its just another soul like all the others.

The root problem explained in previous posts is reflexivity. A self appears to be more interested in its reflection than in other selves. That reflection of a self back to itself seems to create a special type of attachment. We are all vulnerable to this narcissism. But actually when we see our reflection it is just another person, there is nothing special just because we are reflecting back to our self. It is true that only I can look into my eyes in a mirror and think that is me looking back. This is true, this makes me unique to myself. But this is like a fixed point in maths. Given that people have eyes and can see each other, and given that mirrors enable us to see reflections of anyone then it follows that we MUST be able to see our self. It would be a very weird world if we couldn't. And indeed sometimes we do look at our self. But like Descartes thinking his thoughts of doubt this does not need to involve a self. When we look at our self we are just using eyes to see a person who happens to be us. It could be anyone it just happens to be us now. There is no need to invoke a self. No need to try and own anything in this situation. Just see it for what it is, someone seeing another person who happens to be them self. It could just as easily be someone else.

It's important to see the trick that happens here. There is nothing different between looking at our self and seeing someone else. In both cases we are just looking at people with their own internal worlds and lives. Just in one case it is us, and in the other case it is someone else. Yet that is just the difference between a camera photographing itself in a mirror or another camera, there is no magic or anything special here. Or if there is magic it is true whether we look at our self or another. This very much is the magic of Love. When we Love someone we start to see them with the same fascination that we see our self. They become us in the mirror.

I wanted to add something here on suicide. When you up anchors and stop trying to own things in the world and try to find our self our there. When we are happy with just seeing everything as it is, without trying to add selves to it then the world becomes fundamentally simple. Whatever happens just happens. We no longer have thoughts like "this doesn't happen to other people", or "that is unfair", or "I can't take this any more", or "I don't deserve this", or "I hate myself" etc we may feel unhappy, disappointed, depressed, unable to cope, overwhelmed, alienated, abandoned, unloved, hopeless or anything but its just there its not "ours." Things happen both good and bad, but since they are not ours we don't have to push them away. They are no where near us because we never put a "tail on the donkey." If we are no where then how can anything ever get close to us? But for that matter how can anything be far away from us. Things just are. This is what Buddha is trying to say to Ananda that identifying with "things" in this world steals us from our true place in the world, which is just to not get involved and not go looking for our self anywhere in the world. So what is there to run from? And what is there to run towards? We are no where! So what does the suicider hope to achieve? They are already going nowhere so suicide actually changes nothing. But suicide does suggest that the person got embedded in the world and got confused that they were a thing and existed, when in fact they should have just let go and not owned what was happening to them. Imagine it is happening to someone else to start with and that you are free is very close to the truth already. Then realise that trying to pin the tail on other people is also a mistake so that neither you not anyone else owns anything and all are free already! That appears to be the right way to see these things. Then good and bad things become the same: just experiences that sail past as we watch them from the safety of shore.

I've heard people describe the experiences of the mind like watching a movie from the safety of the cinema and I've never liked this because it suggests a hiding and removal from the world, like recluses or people who get stuck in habitual lives cos they are too afraid or can't be bothered to engage with life and try something new. But this is what happens if we try and take the self out of the world. The self doesn't get to the safety of a cinema, the other shore (Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate) or a heaven, it doesn't hide: rather we step outside the self, there is no self there in the first place! We give up on self. That is the other shore, it is the realising that the ocean is the world with a self pinned on it. Unpin and the world becomes the other shore!

In Buddhism they say that the Bodhisattva looks forward to difficulties in life because these are the best ways to learn. How do we really know whether we have taken up the anchor of self and set ourselves free if the world doesn't turn unpleasant. A pleasant world is the kind that encourages us to own it, we want to be part of it, we like it, we are happy to settle and start to take up ownership of things. All goes well until the storm blows and our world gets shaken. Then we wish we hadn't taken up ownership so permanently. A skilful can let what is going go without struggle. But the tightly bound who believe in self, they struggle and this is suffering. (That said its a fine dividing line: no wise person goes looking for trouble, they just embrace what comes and see the value in difficulties.) 

Perhaps the storm blows so hard that we cannot think, we lose direction, we get confused and we just want it to stop. It has blown so long we forgot what it was like before. On one hand this is the perfect time to learn to let go, but if we are confused and emotions are stirring our brain we won't be able to see this so clearly. But struggle tho we may, the truth is trying to get in and uproot our attachment to the world. We are trying to be taught the lesson to let go and realise we don't own anything here, we need to disown this world and step out of the vehicle of self. It's no where else either is what is confusing, we are not stepping from one world to another, but just not trying to stand at all. We don't need to stand to exist, we already exist and we can abandon standing. Let bodies do the stand that is what they do. We don't need to do that. Let things be what they are. Let all struggles take care of themselves. None of it is ours!

What is the point of pay rises?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-mp-salary-peter-bottomley-b1933668.html

Here is one of the great mysteries of the world. What is the use of a pay rise? It's an established psychological fact that money only works to bribe manual labourers. People who work in creative fields that require their brain do not respond to pay rises.

Surely after a pay rise you get the same money for less work, so you are inclined to do less work?

It got me thinking: what is the point of pay rises for non manual labourers. Answer: there is none!

Never-the-less lots of people like pay rises: can they explain why? My best guess goes to the heart of conditional/relative human existence. We only want a pay rise so we can be better than our neighbours, and they the same so it enters into an arms race. One of the oldest pieces of text (~3000BC) is a cuneiform letter from wife to husband complaining that the neighbours have just put up and extension, so where is theirs? That's the real reason for pay rises. But how sad are these people to be defined in relation to their neighbours rather than by what they really want. On that account they should not be given pay rises and the public system should get the money for democratic collective spending to avoid me vs them time wasting.

High-level cognition during story listening is reflected in high-order dynamic correlations in neural activity patterns

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25876-x

Fractal dimension of brain scans increases when creating meaning! What amazing research. Have my own thinking on this. So fractals are created when you have systems that work upon themselves and that implies fixed-points too. Fractals build up around fixed points. Now totally crazy speculation but what is thinking other than running internal models against themselves. And the holy grail of thinking is the concept of Self where we try to process ourselves. And at its limit the self-existing self independent of outside input "I think therefore I am." I've reckoned for a while that Self might represent the fixed point of thinking, perfectly introverted brain processing a la Descartes. Get volunteers to think Descartes should get the highest order fractals... altho its also meaningless! And what is the practice of meditation other than undoing all this. Fractal dimension of people in jhana next please.

Has North America really done "better" than South America?

Niall Fergusson essentially says that the North did better cos it adopted the Hegemonic View. 

"The reason North America’s ex-colonies did so much better than South America’s was because British settlers established a completely different system of property rights and political representation in the North from those built by Spaniards and Portuguese in the South. (The North was an ‘open access order’, rather than a closed one run in the interests of rent-seeking, exclusive elites.)"

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/excerpt-niall-fergusons-msna37090

I've argued at length in this blog that the Hegemonic view did not prevail cos it was better but quite obviously on the back of global warfare where the West fought virtually every people on Earth to impose its view. After gaining control of the oceans and all trade routes the UK was able to command every people on Earth. Unfortunately we will never know what would have happened had the Spanish or Portuguese won the Imperial Wars. Surely had the Spanish or Portuguese controlled world trade South America would have done better than North?

But that aside another huge difference between North America and South America is the genocide. North Americans cleared the native humans off the land, killing the majority and pushing the remaining ones into reservations. In contrast in the South the natives were allowed to continue living their traditional ways of of life. Contrary to Niall Fergusons entirely Hegemonic view South America is the success from the perspective of the original inhabitants. Europeans Property rights did not drive them off the land and did not lead to their almost complete extermination in an American Holocaust.

So we know that both North America and South American native populations suffered heavily from the import of European diseases but clearly not enough because in the North the settlers began a long and difficult campaign to remove them entirely. Washington at one point was offering $1 per scalp to encourage people to kill Indians. And to finally rid the plains of Indians, Buffalo Bill almost completely eradicated the buffalo on which they depended. No such Holocaust occurred in the South. As we compare Holocausts to get a sense of the gravity, it is worth remembering of the Nazis Holocaust that a major killer was disease also.

Very hard to calculate the scale of this Holocaust just as it is hard to do the same for the Nazis. But a random graph off the internet suggests over 95% of the global population of American Indians were exterminated by Europeans settlers in the North making it one if the worst Holocausts in Human History. To put that in some context the Nazis at most killed 63% of European Jews and far less of the global population. But worth noting the decline in American Indians was over centuries not years!

The current population of North American Indians after a huge recovery in recent decades is 6.79 million. By contrast the population of Indigenous people in South America is currently 32 million.

North America covers 24.71 km^2 while South America covers 17.84km^2. This makes South America only 3/4 the size of North America. Yet South America supports almost 5 times as many indigenous people as North America. This very much rejects Niall Fergusons assessment of the success of North America, and rather suggests that in fact South America is the success story here.