Chapter 8 ends with a flourish, declaring Bitcoin the perfect bubble. Just a reminder, this is supposedly a book diagnosing why science, technology, and culture have stagnated in the past couple decades. Their answer, somehow, is “HODL.” I’m pretty sure they forgot the question along the way.
Do you have a hotkey assigned to paste this GIF?
I really should
It might be the most broadly applicable & insightful TV quote for our era
Chapter 9, “the metaphysics of progress.” Looks like this chapter is where they get faux-profound, talking about “the metaphysics of markets, bubbles, and technology more broadly.” Guys, you can’t clearly define what *a bubble* is. I’m just not gonna take your metaphysics puffery seriously.
So much Rene Girard. Dare I say… TOO much Rene Girard? (Girard is Thiel’s favorite philosopher. And these guys are huge Thiel fanboys. This is not a difficult code to crack.)
oh boy! can we self-exteriorize our violence by sacrificially expelling Trump? That would take my mimesis way way down
dare we say the biggest attribution to Girard is his fan boys all imitating each other.
I just read the phrase “markets — these sublime machines that synthesize beliefs and aggregate them into prices — instantiate a secularized version of the sacred.” …I’m pretty sure this a The Ring-type situation, and I will die within a week unless I force other people to read this cursed bullshit.
oh brother good luck with that
Baal wept with joy
Oh, man.
Oh cool now they’re quoting Nick Land because of course they are. These authors absolutely never interact with anyone capable of looking them dead in the eye and asking “what the fuck are you talking about?”
Thank you for sifting through the sludge!
So where does the last 40 years of biology fit in with their model? PCR, CRISPR, mRNA? In the 70 years since structure of DNA was discovered I'd count multiple revolutions, and the spending on this field is a rounding error for LLM "research". (And medicine, and material science, and...)
It doesn’t come up on their book. (Presumably because they didn’t invest in it.)
Figured as much. It also doesn't support their thesis very well, does it?
I’ve now come to suspect that their actual thesis is “Peter Thiel will you please be our best friend?”
Cryptocurrency contributes NOTHING to economic productivity. And its data centres are significantly warming the planet. Crypto traders are UNPRODUCTIVES.
The final chapter is a haze of quasi-religious mumbling. They want us to get pumped about some exciting new bubbles. Those bubbles are like AI and space travel and fusion energy… basically the standard VC dreamboard of the past decade or so. They end with yet another ecstatic Thiel quote.
My final thought is something I mentioned upthread: this book’s sole value is as a sociological artifact. It is interesting to the degree that it reveals what the tech-rich sound like when they are trying to impress one another. It really has no other redeeming value though. 🤦
if there's anyone left in 300 years it'll be a useful primary source
Thank you for your service.
Whoa. I am pretty sure this entire thread is a bubble. Think about it, won't you?
A case of narapoia katie.rivard.org/woodv/narapo...
... do they explain at any point in what way they think Bitcoin will make the world a better place or do they expect their readers to take that as a given? This is reminding me of assertions that self-driving cars are a climate solution w/out any mention of how, let alone a compelling argument.