Bankless - 72 - The Power of Mimetic Desire | Luke Burgis

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. I'm Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. David, what an episode, really cool lens on crypto, Mimetic Desire. What did we cover today? We brought on Luke Burgess, who wrote this book, Wanting the Power of Mimetic Desire. came on my radar when I was listening to Luke on Hidden Forces, the Hidden Forces podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:43 We had Dimitri Kofrinas on that is a past episode. And I immediately knew that we needed to get this guy on bankless because he's talking about some of these very core fundamental things that we talk about on bankless at times, but in a different lens. And also, I think Luke talks about it just in a little bit more clear and articulate way. The conversation of what mimetic desire is is both important for anyone, anywhere to understand. But it's especially important. in crypto, where some of these assets are particularly valued by reflexivity or by group think or by collective psychology. We all know in the world of crypto, you survive by understanding multiple different disciplines. This is a very multidisciplinary industry. And the power of

Starting point is 00:01:26 memetic desire transcends all disciplines, all academic studies. And it applies to crypto in so many different respects. And so we brought Luke on to talk about and teach the bankless nation, what is memetic desire? How does it impact our lives? And then we frame it in a crypto conversation in the second half of the show. Yeah, David, early on, you know, we've always, since we're starting bank lists, we've known that memes are important to this entire industry. And so early on we did an episode on memes that was sort of interesting. Episode five. But it didn't have like a ton of research. It was just kind of crypto natives take on memes, right? It was just kind of you and I. We've always wanted to return to this concept of

Starting point is 00:02:02 memes. Now, this isn't just memes. because memetic desire is not memes, but it is related to memes. It is almost the energy that propels memes, but oh my God, it's an important concept. Like, again, one of those fundamental concepts that if you don't understand memetic desire, you probably don't understand crypto. You might think you understand crypto, but you actually don't. And I'm just like, this is an episode that I'm going to think about a lot because the implications aren't just, like many things we cover on bankless aren't just crypto implications. These are like life implications and how society is organized implications and like how I'm going to be thinking about this episode

Starting point is 00:02:45 because it's going to be one of those things where I start to see it everywhere. And then I'll have to make decisions with this new mental model framework and see how I'm being influenced, how my memetic desires are being influenced and make more rational decisions as a result. But I think this is going to be a key cornerstone episode for you guys. And it's definitely a key mental model and concept that we're going to keep returning to you on bankless. It is that important. Right. So Bankless Nation, I want you to step into the side of the matrix and get ready to pull that cord right out of the back of your head because that's what this episode feels like. It's one of those things like it feels very much on par with our Vitalik's episode on legitimacy, which we bring up is actually one of the themes of this show.

Starting point is 00:03:29 also felt like the Josh Rosenthal episode where we're really just zooming out and in viewing this thing from a very, very holistic perspective. And that really helps set the foundations to how to operate inside this industry. But like you said, also just live your life. This is just good life information. It just also so happens that crypto is also good life information and it applies to crypto just as well as it does life. David, quick prediction. I think Luke is going to go crypto-native. I think he's going to become a member of the bankless nation.

Starting point is 00:03:58 He's super open-minded about it. You guys should stay, listen to the end. Make sure you hear Luke's comments when we ask them the question of what do you think about crypto. Super insightful there too. All right, guys, well, let's get into the conversation. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. The AVE protocol is a decentralized liquidity protocol on Ethereum, which allows users to supply and borrow certain crypto assets. AVE version 2 has a ton of cool features that makes using the AVEA protocol even,

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Starting point is 00:06:49 Bankless Nation, we are super excited about our next guest. This is Luke Burgess. He is the author of a book titled Wanting, the Power of the Memic Desire and Eighty-Degener everyday life, read his book, so is David. Luke really came to our attention after his appearance in the Hidden Forces podcast. We wanted to get Luke on to explain this mememic desire concept, which is at kind of the base of a lot of things in crypto, maybe a lot of things in life, maybe everything in life, actually, when you dig deep enough. And we want to relate that to

Starting point is 00:07:21 the bankless journey as well. Luke, it is fantastic to have you. How are you doing today? Hey, guys, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on. Man, we have so much to dig into because when David and I stumbled across this concept of memetic desire, we just immediately saw so many things in crypto through which are kind of like different or could be seen through this lens and could help people who are investing in crypto, buying crypto on the bankless journey in general. And we want to kind of divide this into two acts or two pieces here, Luke, if you could help us with that. The first is we want to understand this concept that is core to your book, this concept that you call memetic desire. There's another

Starting point is 00:07:58 related concept around memes that we've talked about on bank lists. We want to talk about those two things, how they're related, how they're different. And then we want to apply the lens of memetic desire to some concepts in crypto. Concepts like money, the social coordination game of money, concepts like markets, concepts like NFT, these concepts that exist in the traditional world, but also exist in an accelerated way in crypto, certainly in a digital way, something we want to understand. So that part one and the part two, game for that. You ready for that? I'm game. Let's do it. All right, man. Let's start with this. Mimetic desire. What the heck is this? What is memetic desire? So it starts with Mimesis is, or Mimetic, is MIM. So it comes from mime or

Starting point is 00:08:47 mimicry. So this is different than meme or mimetics, which is MEM. So Mimetic is just a fancy word for imitation. It comes from the Greek word, Mimistai, which means to imitate. Human beings are, as Aristotle recognized 2500 years ago, by far the most imitative creatures in the world. We are freaky imitators. We imitate language, facial expressions, social norms. In fact, if we're not good imitators, things get awkward really, really fast. So imitation is foundational to what it means to be human. So we are memetic creatures. And that just is to say that we're imitative. What René Girard discovered, he was a French academic who wrote, did most of his work in the 60s through the 80s, is that if we're so memetic and if we imitate all of these other things, it would make sense that

Starting point is 00:09:38 we also imitate the very desires of other people too. So he coined the phrase, Mimetic desire. So humans have these powers of abstraction. So unlike animals, which also engage in imitation, they engage in rituals, like when one gorilla stands up and beats his chest, another gorilla will do the same thing. They imitate at the superficial level, what Gerard calls the level of representation. They can imitate superficial things. We can imitate interior motives and actions and things that go all the way down to the level of desires. Like, we can intuit what other people want, and we imitate them almost always subconsciously. So other people's desires legitimize and give social proof to our own and make things valuable or less valuable. Now, there have been crazy studies about

Starting point is 00:10:29 this, like babies that are 18 to 18 months old, the two years old, can look at an adult taking some action and intuit the motivations or the desires underneath the surface level of the adult's action and then imitate the adult's desire, not the adult's external action. So one of the famous studies with this was an adult goes into a room full of very young little babies, toddlers, and he's got like a toy dumbbell, and he starts to pretend like he wants to pull the styrofoam ends off of the dumbbell, but he kind of fails and he can't quite do it. they leave the room and nine times out of 10, the babies pick up the dumbbell and they know what the adult was trying to do. They just immediately pull it apart. So our levels of imitation go very deep

Starting point is 00:11:15 to abstract desires of other people. And we're constantly reading and taking social cues based on what other people want and allowing that to influence what we want. But that is almost entirely pre-conscious or subconscious. So Gerard identified this memetic nature. of the human person. It's just how we are. We're just memetic creatures. Biologically, this stuff's hardwired in. It's also hardwired in. And we know that our brain has mere neurons in it. So when we see somebody else do something like eat an ice cream cone, the neurons fire in our brain that would be the same neurons that would fire if we were eating the ice cream cone. So, you know, we see external things and it triggers this memetic response neurologically and does things in the same. And does things in

Starting point is 00:12:03 kicks hormones in going. So yes, I mean, this goes down to the level of a biology. It's hardwired into us. The difference between us and animals is that we have these powers of abstraction. So we're talking about things like crypto and lifestyles and career goals. It also comes into play with these things too. And that's where it gets really interesting. I think a really important point. And when Ryan did the intro, he talked about how memetic desire is at heart of the industry that we operate in the heart of crypto, but then also zooms out. It's actually at the heart heart of everything. I think it's a really important point to drive home is that babies, when they are born at day zero, they are geared up to do one thing really above just beyond like living and having a

Starting point is 00:12:45 beating heart is to see what other people are doing and try and distill down as to what their goals are, what their objectives are. And so if there's one thing that babies can do when they come out of the womb is that they can look at other people and understand at a very deep subconscious level, the goals and intentions of others. And that's actually one of the ways that babies and young people growing up, that's the scaffolding that they have to become a human being, is that they use the understanding of other people and what other people want as a model for operating in the world.

Starting point is 00:13:18 And so the fact that it comes out at day one indicates how far down in the basement of the human brain this effect goes. And therefore, naturally, because it's at day one of the human body of the human brain, of course it's in every single thing. thing that we talk about and discuss as adults. And to some degree, it's also suppressed. Like, it's not really a conscious thing that we see as adults. It's just something that we act out. And this is why naturally you came to our radar when you were on the hidden forces podcast talking about the hidden forces that dictate the world. This power of mimetic desire is the substrate that we all live

Starting point is 00:13:53 in. It's the air that we breathe. It's the water that we swim in. Yet we don't really identify it really anywhere. It's the base layer. It's layer zero. And we could talk about that later because I think there are some other layers, and we can't really understand the other layers until we understand layer zero. And two interesting points on that. You say from day one, babies are imitating. It's actually from like T minus three months, we know they're imitating. During the third trimester while they're in the womb, they can hear the intonations of their mother's voice. So the second that they're born, they're already imitating the way that their mother spoke and their cries. So Chinese babies cry differently than German babies because it's a tonal language, and German isn't quite so tonal.

Starting point is 00:14:32 So that's how deep it goes. Even before they're born, they're imitating from the womb, from the womb. And we know that here's another really interesting point about this. Babies imitate facial expressions and follow the eyes of their parents from the minute they're born. But they only do that with humans. They only imitate humans, not robots, not animals. They seem to sense that, oh, these people are like me and are therefore worth imitating.

Starting point is 00:14:59 I think it's a fascinating point that we somehow, like, the media. or mimetic desire is something that actually connects us together as human beings. Yeah, at that point is super interesting. A book we talk about a lot on Bankless's, is Yuval Harari's book. It's called Sapiens, right? And he makes the point that the thing that separates human beings from animals is our ability to coordinate, our ability to share myths, share themes, tell stories, but ultimately our ability to coordinate.

Starting point is 00:15:27 That is our superpower. And if you think about memetics and our ability to mimic, that is something that is incredibly powerful. It's given our species the ability to socially coordinate at levels the animals, the animal kingdom does not have. That is the cornerstone of all of our technology, from social technology to like hard technology, to things like the internet, to everything that we've built up over time. This is a superpower for humanity, if you will. But it's also kind of like a, to use Dungeons and Dragons terminology, it's kind of chaotic neutral

Starting point is 00:16:01 because it is a power, but it's a power that can be used for good things, but it's also a power that can be used for bad things, for tearing down. Is that sort of how you see it as it's just a superpower that humans have? We have to recognize it, but like whether it's good or bad is kind of dependent on context. That's a great way to think about it. It's a double-edged sword. I think we have to have like a real ambivalence towards memetic. desire because it can be used for good and it can tend to lead us into conflict and rivalry when we don't realize that it's happened. So yes, it's an incredible power. It's kind of like the sexual powers, right? They can be used for good. They can be used for bad. They can get people into trouble.

Starting point is 00:16:40 Like pretty much most of the human faculties that we have can go in both directions. And memetic desire is the same thing. How come this doesn't show up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs then, Luke? Maslow's hierarchy of needs is interesting. So, you know, Maslow didn't seem to be concerned with the, he was focused on human needs and I don't think he understood the universe of desire and kind of the structure of human desire that René Girard identified. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it assumes like a teleology, right, of like things that a human needs. And we just kind of like, one, Once we knock some out, we just kind of move on to the next ones. And there's this very, like, clean progression as we move towards the top. But in 2021, you know, we live in a world where it's really dominated less. I mean, there's more models of desire, as Gerard calls them, than ever before. So we have to take a step back because I don't think I can explain the difference between Maslow's hierarchy and Gerard's non-hierarchy of desire without understanding, like, the way that that Gerard's.

Starting point is 00:17:51 art said desire works. And by the way, for those that aren't familiar with this, I just bring this up, because this is kind of psych 101 stuff. You know, some of you listening probably learned this in high school as well. But Maslow's hierarchy of needs is like just this triangle. The base layer of the pyramid of the triangle is physiological needs like food, water, warmth, and rest, that sort of thing. And then it kind of scales up to things that are less basic needs and more psychological needs and more kind of, you know, self-fulfillment. But nowhere on this chart do we see memetic desire. and I'm kind of curious why. So continue the story.

Starting point is 00:18:24 Sure. I mean, Mimetic desire permeates every single block on that chart all the way from the bottom. So when we start at the bottom, we're looking at things that are heavily instinctual. So we have kind of a biological, physiological basis for things like thirst and hunger and warmth and security. So those things are the bottom of the pyramid. Think of it as like our body has things like built-in mechanisms,

Starting point is 00:18:47 built-in signals that tell us what we need. So if we're dying of thirst in the desert, our body just has built in mechanisms that tell us we see water, we're going to drink the water, even if we're alone, right? It's very simple. As we move beyond the world of purely instinctual responses into the universe of desires, think about lifestyles and career choices and abstract things like stocks and crypto and just the world of ideas and desires, we don't have the instinctual basis anymore. We lack things. We lack things. fat. So, like, how do we choose one object of desire over another? Gerard's finding, his really important discovery, is that we find them outside of ourselves. We don't have the built-in mechanism, so we have to look externally to find the signals. And we find them in the form of other people or groups that model desires to us and signal to us what is worth wanting and what is not worth wanting. So these are called our models of desire. They basically generate and shape. our desires for us. Now this is very different than the way we normally think of our desires.

Starting point is 00:19:55 We think that I think in our hyper individualistic world and hyper rationalistic mindset, we have this idea that like we generate our desires on our own or we want something purely based on our objective rational analysis of the qualities of the thing itself. And that's denying kind of the social process that we're all embedded in and the way that we look to other people to help us value things. and to understand whether or not they're desirable. Now, when it comes to Maslow's hierarchy, this memetic desire has seeped into every level of it.

Starting point is 00:20:29 So I don't want to pretend that, okay, there's certain needs, and then once we fulfill the needs, then we move into this world of desire. It's not like that. I mean, look at today, water itself, you know, we typically choose the water that we drink, largely based on memesis. It's not just like there's water.

Starting point is 00:20:47 Now there's 50 different brands of water, all marketing like different products, properties, like, how do we know which one to want? So, like, even the things that maybe used to be more, let's call it, instinctually driven, are no longer that way. Like, Mimesis has pervaded every single part of that pyramid. So most of that pyramid are not needs at all. I mean, they fall more into this structure of desire that Gerard was describing. And, you know, if you look at the pyramid, it would seem as if one could move up the pyramid individually without anybody else.

Starting point is 00:21:20 But that's not the world that we live in. We live in a world surrounded by other people, modeling desires to us all the time. So I think that pyramid is not a pyramid at all. It's basically a Pandora's box. After you get past the first two levels, especially, you can just lop off the top, and we've entered the universe of desires.

Starting point is 00:21:38 I think the context of being in a 2000s-era world really changes up the role that Maslow's hierarchy really offers us. Like maybe if we go back 5,000 years and we talk about, like, do you have water as in, like, do you have access to a stream that you can drink water from or else you will die? And then also, if you talk about clothes and shelters, like, oh, do you have, like, the height of an animal on your back? And also, you found a cave. Like, great. Like, you've knocked down those basic things off of Maslow's hierarchy.

Starting point is 00:22:04 In the world of 2021, most of these things are largely taken care of for us at this point. And so now to what you say is, like, no, it's not about having access to a stream. It's now, do you, like, Voss water? Or do you, like, smart water? or do you like to saun me? And then also if we talk about... Carbonated, man. Carbonated.

Starting point is 00:22:21 Carbinated. I'm a Topo chico guy. But then also with clothes on our back, it's no longer just like, oh, I found the height of an animal to keep me warm. It's like, oh, there's a fashion sense that I particularly go for. And fashion changes every three to six months. And hairstyles change. And culture changes.

Starting point is 00:22:41 And really what Mimetic Desire is is this game that we all play is like, oh, you're picking that. so I'm going to pick this. So you're going to pick that. So I'm going to pick this. And all of a sudden, we have fashion trends and hairstyle trends and different, which is what culture ultimately becomes. Luke, does that vibe with you? It does vibe with me. I mean, I heard one person put it like this. For the first time in human history, we're no longer struggling with scarcity. We're having to cope with abundance. Cope with abundance. That's one way to sort of, we're having to cope with abundance. So we're no longer struggling to survive and struggling over scarcity.

Starting point is 00:23:16 I mean, there are still scarce things. And memetic desire create scarcity, by the way. But for the most part, you know, we have most of our basic needs taken care of. And the challenge for us is coping with abundance. And that's where memetic desire really goes into overdrive. Coping with abundance. I love that line. And I think the way that we are coping with that is that maybe mentally humans are like, okay, we have all the 50 different types of water. But what's the most desirable water? What's the most desirable water? What's the most desirable? fashion sense. And so even though we are in this land of abundance, it seems like Mimetic Desire is actually trying to reintroduce scarcity back into abundance. That's a really good insight. Because that's the game. That's the game of Mimetic Desire. I think that's right. And, you know, there's a thousand different alt coins and crypto assets to choose from. It's overwhelming, right? Like, what's the signal through the noise? And Mimetic Desire seems to be playing a more pervasive and a more important role in today's world than ever before because of this very thing.

Starting point is 00:24:19 You know, because we do live in a world of abundance. It's less clear what's desirable and what's not. And the objective criteria, I mean, there are objective underpinnings for, you know, whether things are beautiful, whether things are true or desirable. But we all know from having spent some time, like in the investment world and just as human beings, in our romantic life and in politics, that there are all kinds of other things going on that influence why people want things. And Mimesis is really the hidden force that I think once you understand what Mamesis is and how it works, you start, you can't unsee it. You start seeing it

Starting point is 00:25:00 everywhere around you, especially in the markets. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that's so true. You do start to see it everywhere. And I want to just make sure that this point is underlined, this hidden force, as you say, this thing that underlines everything with, The things that we want individually and desire individually, but also the things that we desire collectively are not our own. So it appears this way. It appears that I like this certain paint color on my wall because I'm the sort of person that likes that paint color. It's my choice. Or I drink this specific water or I buy this specific cryptocurrency. What you're saying, what memetic desire is saying, the theory of memetics is basically like, no, you didn't make any of

Starting point is 00:25:43 those choices. The clothes that you're wearing, the way that you're talking, the accent that you have, everything about you is mimicking those around you. Other humans. We're not individuals in this world. We're part of this society, this collective group of humans that we mimic to one degree or another. And therefore, this is the sobering truth that you're bringing to light, is our choices and preferences and desires and wants aren't really our own. This is what you're kind of unveiling. This is the man behind the curtain. I just want to make sure that that's underlined for folks.

Starting point is 00:26:18 How would you put it? Yes. I would put it like this, that our desires are not individual. Our desires are interdividual. And one of Gerard's collaborators coined the term interdividual psychology. And he's saying we can really only understand psychology at the interdivisual level, like not just as every person is like a standalone mind. We can only understand psychology.

Starting point is 00:26:43 in a relational context, right, to bring other people into it. So like if a husband goes to a psychotherapist, the psychotherapist can really only understand his psychology if he understands the relationship with the wife, right? So it's where it's individual psychology. Here's one way to think about it. What, what gravity is to physics, mimesis or memetic desire is to psychology. That means that it is a, this relational force that, that desire, that desire, is sort of generated in and through relationships in the space between people, not like

Starting point is 00:27:18 X and a helo from ourselves. And that's a really important point. So I think you said it very well, that desire is social and desire is generated and takes shape through a social process. Now, one of the first questions that a lot of people ask me is like, I'll frame it in crypto terminology, blockchain terminology, okay? Then what's the Genesis block here? like is it is it turtles all the way down is it memetic desire all the way down um jack butcher

Starting point is 00:27:47 and i actually put out an nfts called memetic desire all the way down um just like poking fun at this concept um so i guess if you're a theist you would say that the genesis block of desires got um if you're not a theist then the genesis block could come through some stage of evolution right um you know 2001 a space odyssey like sort of depicts in the beginning of that like there's this like innovation and and so we could admit that like yes some people can do things that are then imitated or copied but it seems like desires are kind of spread and passed down through the ages through some process of imitation their derivative you can even see how that works in a family right like the desires of the parents very often get passed down to the children

Starting point is 00:28:32 so that's you know it's a little bit mysterious but i think we can just look at our own experience. And if we look at a lot of the things that we've wanted, if we look hard enough, we can usually find some hidden model, somebody or something that gave us the idea or planted that desire in us in the first place. And we can see animals having memetic desire. We've brought this up so far in the conversation. But animals just have a much more blunt version of mimetic desire. And so you could theorize that when we were apes, and we still are apes, large to a very significant degree, that we were participating in the same memetic desire that we were participating now, it's just that now that the human brain has grown so much more complex,

Starting point is 00:29:13 we are able to dive into much more nuanced levels of memetic desire. So perhaps mimetic desire goes back down to life itself, right? And maybe it's an interesting time to bring up the subject of memes. But before we do that, I'll give you a chance to add in any thoughts, Luke. Well, I think this is a great time to actually talk about genes and talk about biology and the difference between genes and memetic desire. So I think layered thinking is really important. And I think the best way to understand this is looking at a few different layers. So let's just start from the beginning just real quick. Like, what is a gene?

Starting point is 00:29:45 A gene is a self-replicating unit of biological information that is stored inside of a chromosome. And it replicates. It's got some code. It's like, make more of me. That's a gene. So a meme, this is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in 1967 in his book, The Selfish Gene. He coined the term meme intentionally riffing off of the biological. gene. And a meme, he's trying to find like an analogous situation for ideas and

Starting point is 00:30:16 non-organic things. And he coined the term meme in that book. Susan Blackwell expounded on it in the 80s and 90s. So what is a meme? Well, a meme is not a unit of biological information. It's a unit of cultural information that is stored in a human mind or in a human brain. actually where it's stored now is really interesting, right? Because we have like second brains and extended minds and memes can be stored on the blockchain. You know what I mean? I literally have a folder called memes on my computer. Right.

Starting point is 00:30:48 So it's just, I have purchased some memes occasionally. It's a unit of cultural information that is stored somewhere and is self-replicating, right, and it's passed on. So what's common to both of these things is like the role of replication or imitation in the way that they're spread. And they both have to do with information, right? So a meme is about like a stored unit of information. So information on its own doesn't really have much meaning, right? Think about it. Like if I would have said the meme Brexit to you 10 years ago, you'd be like,

Starting point is 00:31:20 what the hell does that mean? I mean, it's like, is that like a K-pop band or something? Like it wouldn't have, it just wouldn't have meant anything to you, right? But like Brexit is a meme that represent, think of it like short code, like shorthand. It represents a bunch of desires. It represents rivalry. It represents a culture. It's a very compact unit, too.

Starting point is 00:31:42 Like, even like MAGA, right? Make America Great Again. That is a very compact unit of like four words that just contains so much culture, four letters, excuse me, that contains so much culture. Well, that's a really important point. CRT, meme, okay? Like these things are like what a meme does is like concentrate memetic desire and concentrate people. It's like a, it's like what a laser does to light. Like a, like a meme is incredibly powerful,

Starting point is 00:32:09 right? It represents this whole complex set of desires and things and rivalries. So my point is that memes emerge from, from, like, from culture. So there's like a, there's a level before this, like memes that this is not the base layer. And what I propose is that the, the, the base layer is memesis and like human desire is like the base layer layer zero right before there was language people were wanting things there was desire there's this social process out of which culture emerged so so culture and memes are kind of like layer one but you can't really understand that without understanding layer zero which is memetic desire and the social hidden forces like we know this We know that prelingual babies are, are, I have memetic desire.

Starting point is 00:33:02 They, they, they do gaze following, joint visual attention with the mother. The mother looks at something. They want something to, right? So this is, that's the base layer. Layer one would be culture when the memes come out of the culture and they don't make sense without it. They don't have any meaning. And then layer three, I would say, is like the app, like an application layer, right? it's like the way that that we apply memes and various things to bring about outcomes.

Starting point is 00:33:30 So like there are application layers in politics where like memes are created to represent a certain group. And then that meme is either attacked or it's boosted. And so those in my mind, I mean this is kind of complex. I have to like write a substack about this. But those are the layers in my mind. Yeah, I always feel like you're like, so the app layer is something that we would refer to on bankless that you're talking about. It almost becomes like the institutions, right?

Starting point is 00:33:54 Like some of these memes end up in like legal code and institutions. And like, you know, technology like money is maybe an app layer on top of layers of memetic desire and then memes. I was trying to get my head wrapped around this because it's difficult because memetic desire and memes, they're spelled differently, right? And they're kind of related, but they're also different. So I was wondering if you'd agree with this, Luke, when I was trying to wrap my head around, what's the difference between what you're talking about,

Starting point is 00:34:23 memetic desire and memes, and, like, what are some of the similarities? So a meme is that unit of information, that idea or that unit of desire, but it's memetic desire that really gives the meme life. That's the social force. That's like the energy that propels a meme into existence. And without memetic desire,

Starting point is 00:34:46 the unit of information that you have, the idea that you have this encapsulate, in a meme just dies. Doesn't get propagated, doesn't get pushed out through society. It just kind of is out on its own, has no energy, and it dies. But the successful memes are really propelled and pushed through the energy that is like memetic desire. That's what pushes it.

Starting point is 00:35:06 It's almost like memes are the what, but memetic desire is kind of the who. The how. Yes, and the how around this. Yeah. Well, I think that memetic desire is the missing part of fully understanding memes. I think they complete each other. I think it's really important to understand the relationship between memes and memetic desire. I totally agree with you that memes are like the what.

Starting point is 00:35:27 They're like the information, but they don't describe the how, like the behavior, the energy that actually does anything. And Dawkins himself was not, I don't think he really articulated how it happens. I mean, meme theory, by the way, is like it's sort of controversial. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that hasn't really been figured out. And I think one of the missing pieces there was memetic desire. Like humans are the carriers of memes. And humans have memetic desire. We're memetic creatures.

Starting point is 00:35:59 And understanding how the behavior of humans gives life to a meme and allows memes to spread is really important. Here's another important distinction between memetic desire and memes. Mimetic desire is the imitation of desire. It's not the imitation of a desire. thing. It's the imitation of desire. So we're imitating people. So we're not imitating like a what. We're imitating a who. And that means that memetic desire is more volatile. If the, if the person, so we're imitating their desire and their desires could change. And since we're imitating the person and not an idea as their desires change, our desires change too. So this is another

Starting point is 00:36:42 difference is that we're talking the difference between information and imitating and replicating information and then imitating desires. And that's where memetic desire is in a way more chaotic and more volatile. It's like it's like looking at a flack of starlings, right? And like it's still mysterious like how they change direction, like the murmuring, how it happens. And we know like it's probably due to the seven starlings closest to one of them is what determines how they move. but we're still not entirely sure. So the movement of desire, I think, is just there's far more complexity in that system than there is in just looking at memes as discrete units of information.

Starting point is 00:37:27 Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying the episode thus far. This was really a mind-expanding episode and really happy we were able to talk to Luke about some of these subjects. In the second half of the show, we get into the subject of Cryptopunks. After we're done, parsing apart the biological relevancy to what Luke is talking about. We get into crypto punks and NFTs. We bring up our old episode on legitimacy with Vitalik. And overall, talk about how market forces are largely an effect of mimetic desire

Starting point is 00:37:54 and all the other topics of conversation about how the crypto industry is impacted and relevant to the conversation of memetic desire. All of that is coming in the second half of the show. But before we get there, we have to take a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Guys, we've entered a bull market. Now is the time to start building your crypto. Empire and you should do it on Gemini. You already know Gemini is the world's most trusted

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Starting point is 00:39:32 which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswop ecosystem is the Uniswap grants program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. Dow's have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswop Dow, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

Starting point is 00:40:01 Just look at the size of the Uniswap treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap Dow? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a unigrant at unigrantz.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless, and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap for sponsoring bankless. So to keep on going with this metaphor, people's genes are largely dormant.

Starting point is 00:40:34 And we have way, way, way more inactive genes in our DNA than we do active ones. And depending on what environments that we put ourselves in, some genes will deactivate while some genes will activate, right? The reason why we have so many dormant genes is that when we go into our particular novel scenario, we have the genes that are ready to help us adapt to that novel scenario. We just have to activate them. And so when it comes to this game of memetic desire, which is largely a game being played at the psychosocial level, like it's your brain, connected to my brain, connected to Ryan's brain, connected to the people that we engage with, these brains as like a mesh network, this coordination game of who is, everyone's looking around is like, who is wanting what? Like, what do you want?

Starting point is 00:41:18 Well, what do I want? Do I want that thing? And all of a sudden, the activation of a specific meme or gene or whatever is activated by this psychosocial game of memetic desire. And so we have all these potential, there's infinite level of memes out there. Like Ryan said, all a meme is is a little kernel of information. there's infinite levels of kernels of information, but it's the mimetic desire that actually decides to activate one.

Starting point is 00:41:44 And the reasoning for why something gets activated is largely kind of just like a complete mystery, which goes back to the whole murmuring metaphor. It's like we don't know how or why starlings change their path or behavior, but they do, and they do it in a coordinated way when you look at it from a bird's eye view. Another metaphor or anecdote that I have is I was watching a YouTube video, I shared it with you, Luke.

Starting point is 00:42:06 you know what I'm talking about, about the ways that the universe just sense to, like, sink up some way, shape, or form. And there was a video of people in some concert hall, and they were clapping at the end of a show, just random clapping, as random clapping does. And at some point in time, it just flips into synchronized clapping.

Starting point is 00:42:24 And so everyone was a complete chaotic mess, and then all of a sudden everyone's clapping on the same beat. And it just happened completely organically, completely randomly, no rhyme or reason, no one coordinated this. All of a sudden, the human brain, the psychosocial layer just synced up and all of a sudden we're all engaging in the same pattern of behavior because that's what humans do. Yeah. And we see this at, you know, like at raves and like there's certain circumstances where like people just seem like really in sync with

Starting point is 00:42:51 each other. And that's why I kind of like to describe the way that desire like moves between person to person. It's not really a rational process. It's more like an energy. It's more like it's caught by contagion. You know, the word contagion really comes from. from the Latin root of the word is contact, right, to be in contact. So when we're around somebody, it's sort of a function of proximity. So absolutely. I mean, this is not to say that there's not some objective qualities to things that are out there. You know, I think like I think of like NFTs, right? And like I think some I can look at and I'm like this has some objective value. Maybe it's tied to a physical asset or it serves some purpose or like it funds some like social good or whatever.

Starting point is 00:43:40 And I think I can make some distinctions there. So it's not to say that this is totally random, but there will be a first mover. And if the right people sort of move second and third and fourth and fifth, memetic desire has, let's call it like an amplification effect in terms of, which almost shapes the perception of value. I mean, value is largely, it's subjective, right? Value is subjective. So like the memetic desire shapes the perception of value and then initiates a positive feedback loop, a reflexive process through which the more people join this, the more the value increases. Luke, can I like, so I don't want to jump into Act 2 yet before we're ready, but can I just like illustrate this point with? Because NFTs are just such a perfect example of memetic desire that I know our listeners would be familiar with.

Starting point is 00:44:32 Have you ever heard of a Cryptopunk, Luke? Yes. You know what these things are? Yeah. Okay. So these look like, when they first came out, I thought these were just stupid, like, to be honest, right? I mean, it's just like pixels of a face. Like, okay, cool.

Starting point is 00:44:47 I could buy that, but like, who cares? But my model of Cryptopunks has completely changed probably within the last two years. And the reason is, is because Cryptopunks are being used more and more as sort of a social status signal in a culture that I am a part of and that I like. So large, you know, venture capitalists or people who are in defy circles, defy Dgens or like crypto natives that I respect and I like and I appreciate hanging out with and that listen to this podcast, they have these crypto punks, right? Jay-Z just change his profile shot to a picture of a crypto punk. And my worldview on these things has completely changed. They've gone from like insignificant like pixels to oh my god, I want

Starting point is 00:45:38 this. Like I don't want a Rolex. I don't care about that. I don't want a Porsche or a Lambo. I don't care. But I want a crypto. I want my own cryptopunk. And how much will I pay for that? I don't know. But this is what you're talking about is this is not something that I natively want that came up through my Maslow hierarchy of needs biology. Like, yeah, I just thought that suddenly one day I woke up and I wanted a crypto punk, I'm doing it through mimicry, right? It's because I want to copy all of these people that I like and respect and that are part of my social group. So is that right? Is this just like memetic desire happening in crypto world? Yeah, I mean, what are they going for these days? There's like some astronomical price, right? $35,000 each for one. Yeah, I think that's a floor.

Starting point is 00:46:23 They differ, right? Like depending on the qualities of the crypto punk. So if I understand them right, there are some objective qualities that, you know, are part of the narrative about why some some cost more than others, right? Right. But, yeah, each one has their own property. Some of them are smoking a pipe. Some of them are aliens. Some of them are zombies.

Starting point is 00:46:39 Each one has their own property list. And each one can have like two properties or six properties. And there's this very much this coordination game as to like there are some properties are just more valuable than others. The beard is valuable. And there's no rhyme or reason as to why. Right, right. So, I mean, in this case, I think, you know, it's pretty easy to see that memetic

Starting point is 00:46:58 desire, the imitation of desire, has created the scarcity that has driven up the price of the crypto punks. Like they wouldn't be, the fact that the pixels on the screen, we consider extremely scarce goods that very few people can afford is itself a product of memetic desire. So there's like objective scarcity. There are things that are objectively scarce in the world, right? Like water in some places is objectively scarce. And then there's subjective scarcity.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And I would say subjective scarcity is usually the product of memetic desire. It's only scarce because we want what other people want. And I think it's an important distinction to make. Luke, I think it's about time that we get into act two of the show because we're already starting to dabble with it. But first, the last topic that we need to cross off the list before we get there is the concept of rivalrous desire, because that's where I think we really introduce the topic of scarcity. Can you walk us through rivalrous mimetic desire? Is that what happens when David and I want the exact same crypto punk?

Starting point is 00:48:02 Is that what happens? That's exactly. That's exactly what happens. Yeah, so Girard thought that, you know, rivalry was at the heart of the human condition, was a fundamental principle of human behavior that we don't acknowledge enough. We don't like to think that rivalry is pervasive throughout the world. But when you realize that rivalry is largely a fruit or product, of memetic desire. You start to understand why and you see how much rivalry drives decisions

Starting point is 00:48:32 and can be explanatory for decisions that on the surface, like, aren't rational or don't make any sense, right? Like, why would this political party, like, do something that doesn't seem to benefit anybody? Well, the answer might be because it hurts their rival while also hurting them at the same time. And that's, like, a satisfying thing, right? So rivalry. So how do we get to rivalry? And, like, what does rivalry have to do with memetic desire? It's pretty simple step. So rivalry is like stage two of Gerard's memetic theory. And it's like memetic desire is at the heart. It's the fundamental nature of human desire. So humans look to other people to understand what to want. And we imitate their desires. We want something because they want it. That's an important distinction to make,

Starting point is 00:49:17 too. It's not like we both happen to arrive at the same object randomly. We are arrived at wanting that object because another person wants it. Okay. And it endows that object with some like almost magical sacred value. Like you can imagine the settlers going out to the west. You got two guys that like come on Nevada for the first time. And one of them just runs over to a certain plot of land and is just fascinated with it and thinks it's just the best plot of land he's ever seen. The other guy's got the whole state. But because that other guy who might be five or 10 years older than him and is really good at what he does, really thinks that this one is special. Because of that, the other guy becomes fixated on it, even though if you just turned around,

Starting point is 00:50:03 he'd have, you know, 100,000 acres to play with. I've ever watched, like, babies, like, play, like, you know, it's 12 months old or so to 18 months old. They'll be, like, sitting in a circle. There'll be, like, piles of toys. Kids have tons of toys, right? All these toys. And they'll pick one up.

Starting point is 00:50:19 And immediately, the baby's sitting across from them, the little kid sitting. across from them, with all of these toys on the floor that they could pick from, they don't want the toys on the floor. They want the toy that the other child just picked up, right? That's what you're talking about. This is the hardwired biology that's with us from, like, birth, even before birth. That's what you're talking about. That's the rivalry. I only want this thing because you have it. Yes. I mean, if you look at it, the classic Gerardian example of this is a room full of toddlers that have more toys than any of them could possibly play with. And the minute one of the children picks up a toy and shows enough fascination with it, without a doubt, a second child will all of a sudden forget about whatever he cared about before and become interested in that toy.

Starting point is 00:51:01 And because there's now a second person who desires it, there's definitely going to be a third kid. And then the third kid makes it easier for the fourth kid to want it. And before you know it, they're fighting over the same toy, and they'll have a hundred all around them. Now, why did that first, you know, cute little girl pick up the red fire truck? in the first place when she didn't have a model. Well, it could be because her dad is a cool fireman. So, you know, he's her model. Or it could just be because the color red, like, really made it stand out because all the other toys are dull, right?

Starting point is 00:51:32 It's like why certain birds are attracted to certain flowers, right? So there could be some fundamental base, like even a biological basis for that. But once that happens, the mimesis kicks in. And Metic Desire just naturally leads to rivalry if you think about it, you know, because we're imitating what another person wants, we've naturally made ourselves rivals to them in the sense that they're now an obstacle for our possessing it because we want the same thing. So if the fundamental nature of human desire is memetic, then there's some principle of rivalry at the very heart of the human condition, especially because we normally don't realize that we desire things like

Starting point is 00:52:13 this. And we kind of just go through life perpetually. We're kind of like, obstacle addicts, okay, in the sense that if somebody else doesn't want something, we begin to doubt whether it has a lot of value. So we kind of are always looking for people to want things. And that just causes us to have, you know, to kind of constantly be looking for new rivals, right? And if we don't have one, it's an uncomfortable place to be sometimes. Okay. So we've established memetic desire. I think we have a firm understanding of that. We've talked about rival risk desire. Now, here's the bridge from Act 1 to Act 2 that I think is important before we get into

Starting point is 00:52:53 the crypto concepts. That is this. We now have this new technology that is called the Internet. Crypto is kind of Act 2 on the Internet, we would say. But Act 1 in and of itself is a communication protocol. Now we have social media. We have this global communication platform. We have influencers on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and all over the place.

Starting point is 00:53:17 what impact did the internet or does the internet have on our memetic desires? Does it accelerate it? Is it like a steroid for them? I think we're still kind of figuring that out. And I would say the answer is kind of ambivalent. I think it both helps and hurts memetic desire. What do I mean by that? Well, the internet has given us access to more models of desire than ever before. You know, if you lived 100 years ago, if you lived in a small town, the total number of people modeling desires to you could be like 15 or 20 people like in your in your school. Now we have smartphones. We have mimetic machines in our pocket that allow us to see like what everybody else is wanting at like all hours of the day. We have billions of models. So in a sense, it's amplified and exacerbated mimetic desire because

Starting point is 00:54:04 it's just all around us all the time. And I think the pandemic probably accelerated it too. As we were kind of cooped up, I mean, I scrolled social media probably more than I ever have. And, you know, you see people with different lifestyles and doing different things and quitting their jobs and getting dogs and, you know, moving to Austin and all in Miami, you know, and it's like, memetically, I might add in most cases. And it's like this amplifies memetic desire. Like never before is like have humans had access to so many memetic models. And I don't think we quite know what that's doing to us. Like I don't know if we have the, I don't know if like the, the, the human development is kept up with the technological development, right? Like, like in terms of

Starting point is 00:54:44 virtues, morally speaking, I don't think we know quite what it's doing to our desires. There's a lot of talk about what social media is doing to us neurologically, the dopamine hits and the addictiveness of it. I don't think that enough people are talking about what it's done to memetic desire, what it's done to the way that we desire. The flip side of that, the one way that social media might be diffusing memetic desire, even as it amplifies it, is that we can now sort of distribute and diffuse memetic rivalry across billions of people and bits and bytes and nodes. So, you know, you can swap out models for another one very easily, whereas before two people that were kind of in a memetic rivalry in a town, they just go to a duel or something like that, right?

Starting point is 00:55:31 So in a sense, like the internet like, you know, like diffuses the tension, right? it like diffuses the things that would have escalated to extremes, right, in the wild west or something. Now like the, it diffuses memetic violence is probably the way that Gerard would say it, because there's always another model and we can't, we can't easily become fixated on one. We just go find another one. So it's this weird paradox. And I think Peter Thiel has sort of described the technology in the same way. Like, it's both exacerbating and also.

Starting point is 00:56:07 It's also a weird mechanism for diffusing some of the negative consequences of memetic desire. Like in ancient societies, they just have to sacrifice somebody or something like that, right, to diffuse mimetic tension. With technology, we can do all kinds of things, right? You can, I don't know, you can cancel people. You can go just go do. You can block them. You can meet them. There's all different.

Starting point is 00:56:35 Exactly. It's relatively quick and painless. and then everybody moves on. So I think it's both. It's a double-edged sword. Super interesting. All right. So this is really the bridge of where we are.

Starting point is 00:56:44 So we've got this thing that is baked into us biologically that undergirds everything. It is the base layer of everything. And that is memetic desire. Now we have this communication technology that amplifies memetic desire, propagates it for the good and the bad, but certainly makes it digital as well. This seems to us to be like act one of the internet. But there's also an act two of the internet. And this tease up the conversation around crypto.

Starting point is 00:57:10 So what we always say on bankless is like, crypto is a technology that adds scarcity back to the internet. In the internet, the communication technology, everything was a button. You can copy and paste every GIF and JPEG. But crypto is a scarcity technology going back to what David was saying. And so if the internet as a communication protocol was about propagating our memetic desires, crypto is about valuing our memetic desires, turning them into property that can be bought and sold. And so this affects money. This affects markets. NFTs are an example of this, collectibles as well.

Starting point is 00:57:45 So we want to go through all of those things. Maybe let's start with money. I don't know, Luke, if you've given much thought to like what money is. But we think a lot about it on bankless. And we think about the base layer of what money is a lot in crypto in general. In fact, like, Bitcoin is a project to kind of redefine, reinvent money. And it's built from the bottom up. It's almost built through memetic desire. Why do I want Bitcoin? Because so-and-so has Bitcoin, right?

Starting point is 00:58:15 Billionaires are buying Bitcoin. So maybe I should go get some Bitcoin. Can you talk about money, if you've given this any thought? What is money through the lens of memetic desire? I think that money is probably one of the... the best ways that we have to measure memetic desire. It's not that, you know, money is the exclusive measurement of memetic desire, but I think that money is probably the most objective one that we have. And, you know, I don't know, if I ever start some, you know, study for

Starting point is 00:58:46 memetics and culture someday, it's going to have to focus on the markets and on the financial markets, right? Because it's just the best proxy that we have to like understand what's going on. It's a way of keeping score. It's a way to measure these things, especially debt. Debt is really interesting. If you want to find out how much memetic desire somebody has, look at how much debt they have, right? That's a pretty good, it's a pretty good indication, right? Mimetic desire that exceeds their ability to pay for it. So I think that, I mean, there's some interesting questions around, you know, like what George Gilder would say, right, that like, you know, money is basically a function of, of, like, time. And I've given some thought to that. I mean, I'd be interested to hear, you've had a few days now to

Starting point is 00:59:33 think about this. And I'd love to hear your perspective on it. One of the interesting things with memetic desire and memetic rivalry. And I, you know, I think about, like, monetary maximalists and things like that is memetic desire very quickly untethers things from any kind of objective criteria. I guess that, I mean, that can be good and bad. But it can completely sort of like untether pursuits from the thing itself, right? Because the focus of attention begins to be the rival or the model rather than the thing itself. The things can be swapped out, the relatively interchangeable. What becomes important is the rival.

Starting point is 01:00:16 Now, whether the rival is the federal reserve system, whether the rival is like an alternate cryptocurrency, I don't know. But this is a fundamental feature of like mimesis and memetic rivalry is that as it continues, it usually is untethered from any kind of objective criteria. And I find that pretty interesting. So like trying to separate or like I think mimesis falls on a spectrum. I think it falls in a spectrum and that's a good way to think about it. So looking at like to what extent are things becoming supermimetic and to what extent

Starting point is 01:00:52 Are they grounded in something, right? Like something real. Maybe that's just an understanding of like how money and scarcity and the time value of money works. Or is there a cryptocurrency that's solely, solely a meme and solely about marketing? And that to me is really interesting. Luke, you had some word choice. I thought that was really, really interesting that reminds me from a number of conversations I've had with Bitcoiners and other people who've thought about money at a deep level. You use the word measure as in money is like a very very important.

Starting point is 01:01:22 very strong measure of memetic desire. And Bitcoin proudly has a 21 million hard cap because it offers a measuring stick for value. And it's supposed to have this really strong ability to measure the value of other things because it has this, you know, stable supply that never, ever changes. And then the other thing you talked about is that, like, the whole concept about money is that the object itself, what that object is, is not important. It's more about the fact that other people want it. So to me, to answer the question of like, what is money through the lens of memetic desire? It's some random object that humans have collectively decided as to be the instantiation of rivalrous mimetic desire in the first place, as in money is the object

Starting point is 01:02:10 that everyone wants because everyone else wants it. And some monies are good and bad, right? Like some monies can be minted by some central party and that ruins the game a little bit, right? because it's easy for one party to get their hands on money and it's hard for another. And so Bitcoin has been this exemplar asset that has actually specifically been trying to push out all use cases of the Bitcoin blockchain that aren't using Bitcoin as money. And Bitcoiners who have often talked about one of the flaws of gold is that you can actually use it in industry as an objectively useful resource. And that's a flaw of gold, not a benefit of gold. And Bitcoin, we want to push out all utility out of the Bitcoin blockchain that is not using BTC the asset as money

Starting point is 01:02:55 because BTC the asset is supposed to be the instantiation of mimetic desire. It's supposed to be the one thing that everyone wants in the world because everyone else wants it and because it has this very flat topology. There's no issuer. It's just a protocol. It's fair. It's a game that everyone can play and participate in mimetic desire without having that game be like tainted or ruined by some sort of like central party. That's my like lens,

Starting point is 01:03:24 how I've added, you know, view of memetic desire and money. So Bitcoin is the instantiation of mimetic desire as the new object. Yes. That is fascinating. And so if that's the case then, I mean, it's this, it's a relatively abstract thing then that has become the object. So is it then, is it important that there's a fixed, that there's a max limit of Bitcoin that can ever be mine, Is that then become important as a way of either, well, I'll stop there. Like, is that an important feature when it comes to the memetic desire part? I think so. And we can talk about many cryptocurrencies follow this model, but the Bitcoin or narrative

Starting point is 01:04:02 is that like the hard cap really puts the steroids into that game of rivalry. It makes you really, really want that Bitcoin because of its promise of scarcity, right? So if this is a rivalrous game where we are all trying to compete to, get as much money as possible, which is largely what most people spend most of their decades doing. That game is really souped up when we are talking about a hard-capped asset. There's a law in economics called Gresham's Law where you spend your bad money and get rid of your bad money. Bad money drives out good money.

Starting point is 01:04:35 No, good money drives out bad money. Right. And so Bitcoin as like a theoretical good money is going to just have, it's going to have the same like demand as money as other monies, but people will want the Bitcoin money more than like the U.S. dollar money because the U.S. dollar is being printed, Bitcoin's not being printed. And so the game of rival risk desire is just stronger. Yeah. So it's almost like a bet on rival risk desire in a sense, right? It does, it does better the more memetic rivalry there is. And like, I guess like, you know, that's a moral question,

Starting point is 01:05:06 right? Like whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, right? But it's certainly good for Bitcoin. There's no doubt about that. I think what, you know, one of the things I think about is I find people becoming a little nihilistic about money, you know, like when people can become extremely rich or extremely poor overnight and it doesn't seem to be sort of like tied to any kind of like real world, you know, value creation or something like that. Like, and I've had companies I've started that have created a tremendous flash valuation and then like gone away overnight, which made me fairly nihilistic about money for a while, right? Like it makes, it makes it hard for you to like put your hand to the, to the metaphorical plow and like do the hard work when you know that you could like

Starting point is 01:05:46 make a trade or invest in something and blow it up. So I think that the relationship between value creation and new money creation or the creation of value and the creation of money and the way that money is exchange is an important discussion. I haven't quite worked it out yet, but I think that the cap of Bitcoin, I've thought about it in that particular context. Yeah, I'm curious what you think about this too. It's like, take the example of gold, right? So how did gold come to be a money? Right. Like just we don't. We don't. know that's lost to history like there's no record of how gold like first started being valued by humans right we have maybe some kingdoms that are you know based on gold we have some records there

Starting point is 01:06:26 but like if you were to think about it through the lens of memetic desire does that provide a clue and this is why i think about like you know cryptocurrency right so you know you turn on tv i you know i grew up with like Scrooge McDuck who's diving into a pool of gold like cartooner and I'm young. I'm older. You see rap videos and like we're wearing the bling. We've got the gold chain. It's all about the gold. What's interesting about that is like gold is just a, what is gold, man?

Starting point is 01:06:56 It's just a rock. Like who cares? It's, you know, it has some properties that make it difficult to duplicate, of course, and impossible to duplicate. But so does cryptocurrency. So does Bitcoin. If these rap videos and these Scrooge McDuck cartoons started projecting memetic desire in the form of like Bitcoin or ether, some other cryptocurrency instead, and that was imbued into our social consciousness, like that could easily become a money. And that's kind of what, like if you were to think about run through the thought exercise, Luke, of how does a money become a money if it's not top down pushed from a central government, right?

Starting point is 01:07:39 And it seems to me like the lens of memetic desire is kind of an answer to that question. It's somebody buys it. We've got rivalrous competition. Start talking about how much you have, how much it's worth. Price goes up. This is a ground up new money being born and new asset being born. And it's almost like a microcosm of what we're just talking about with the NFTs. And what's interesting to me is like you got Act 1, which is the internet accelerator propagation, right?

Starting point is 01:08:07 And now you blend that with Act 2, which is we create scarcity. We can value Mimetic desire on the internet digitally. And then what do you get? Well, you get, oh, my God, Cryptopunks, in five years, created a little GIF that is now worth 32K each. Right? And like, how fast did that happen? And why did it happen so fast? It's because of this confluence of internet technologies.

Starting point is 01:08:33 Anyway, any thoughts on that? I think that Mimetic desire as part of the genesis. of why we have legitimate money at all is really fascinating, right? Like money in some sense is a product of specialization. Like we need money to exchange. And why do we want to exchange? Because we want what somebody else has. And why would we want what somebody else has if we weren't memetic in some way, right?

Starting point is 01:08:55 If memetic desire didn't exist. So, I mean, to sort of riff off of Paul Graham here, when he says, like, well, what you want is not money. What you want is wealth. Like, you know, you could have, if you had a machine that. could make anything that you wanted and do everything that you wanted, then you wouldn't have any need for money, right? It's like wealth, you know, it's like somebody that lives somewhere and has everything they need, perfect family and home. And they're not, let's say they're not exposed to

Starting point is 01:09:23 anybody else, right? So they have no memetic desire. They have wealth, right? Like wealth is what you want. And it's not always the same thing as you're as the money that you have, right? They're not always equivalent things. You could have a billion dollars and be in the middle of Antarctica and you wouldn't be able to buy anything or do anything with it. Right. I mean, let's assume you're not on the internet. Right. So like it wouldn't it wouldn't matter. Right. It would be so like in other words, you know, Paul says like wealth is what you want. Well, I think about this with memetic desire. Like wealth is what you want. And I could be like wealthy in terms of like I have everything I want. I have my home. I have my children. I have all the food that I need of self-sustaining. But I look around

Starting point is 01:10:05 And I see other people that want other things. And through mimetic desire, I begin to want them. We need a medium of exchange, right? And that's why we need money, right? Because, like, you don't want my, you know, two ducks and I don't want your two apples or whatever, right? So we needed something. And, yeah, maybe why we landed on certain things was largely random. And there's a whole connection to sacred here.

Starting point is 01:10:32 Like a lot of money, the earliest money was always found near, like, like, say, sacred temples of worship because one of the first reasons why people needed money was that they needed animals to sacrifice and they needed to buy the animals. So it seems like encorted to René Girard, the first systems of exchange happened for the purposes of religious sacrifice, but we get totally sidetracked by talking about that. So I think that memetic desire is probably responsible for the genesis of money. I'm just talking off the cuff here, but I think that that's probably a whole book that I'd have to, you know, somebody will have to write someday. Or maybe start with some substack posts.

Starting point is 01:11:08 You got a great substack, Luke. Thanks, man. We'll link to that in show notes, by the way, guys. Well, let's talk about the next, I think, item that relates very closely to crypto, but also has, obviously, a rich history in traditional world, which is markets. As we talked about money, to quote, you know, Peter Thiel, again, Peter Thiel says, money is the bubble that never pops, right? And, of course, in financial markets, we have all sorts of,

Starting point is 01:11:33 different bubbles that come and go. And of course, we have crypto, which is kind of creating markets out of everything as much as possible at the speed of the internet. Let's talk a little bit about bubbles and markets like tulip mania or dot com bubble or even read a recent post that you authored about like meme stocks being kind of a bubble. Are these all products of memetic desire? Is this why we are buying these stocks and these assets and taking part in these bubbles? What's your lens on that? I don't know if memetic desire is the sole reason, but I think it's impossible to understand the extreme volatility in any market without understanding memetic desire.

Starting point is 01:12:16 And I just look at like analysts after analyst on CNBC and these pundits. And they're just like, you know, this is lacking in all objectivity. This is irrational. They hate it. Yeah. It breaks their brains. Yeah. And it breaks their brains.

Starting point is 01:12:30 And they're just like looking for just like this fundamental analysis. And they're never going to find it, right? This is like what René Girard calls the romantic lie. And it's this notion that there's always a one-to-one or a direct line, like this rational basis between people and the things that they want where we're not rational. I mean, we are rational creatures, but we're also memetic creatures. And I think that memesis trumps rationality like almost all of the time. especially in markets. Like, we don't live in a rational world.

Starting point is 01:13:04 We live in a memetic world. And if, like, if the guys in CNBC could just understand this, it would just make their lives a lot easier, I think. Because, yeah, I mean, like Gerard said that the stock market, well, he wasn't really, he died in 2015, so he didn't really see the rise of crypto. He'd say the same thing about crypto. He said the stock market is the most memetic institution, the most memetic institution. And, you know, he said, like, when Alan Greenspan uses, like, ridiculous phrases, like, irrational exuberance, he's just, that's just Greenspan speak for, like, out of control, like, mimetic desire. And it happens on the upside and it happens on the downside. And it usually happens faster on the downside even historically than on the upside. Like, once people start abandoning, everybody wants to abandon because there's, like, some fear involved in that, too. So, I don't think that I'm not a memetic desire maximalist.

Starting point is 01:13:59 where I think like everything is explainable by memetic desire. There's fear. There's fight or flight. There's all kinds of things. But I just don't think you can understand GameStop meme stocks. Some of the crazy parabolic rises in crypto without understanding memetic desire because there are people that got in without, they didn't know like a damn thing about GameStop, certainly not about the fundamentals or about crypto, but they want in because other people want in.

Starting point is 01:14:28 And then when you want in, like the game then becomes to generate as much memetic desire as possible after you're in because you then profit from the new memesis that you generate. So in a sense, it's like create a meme, generate as much memetic desire as you can. And, you know, that's certainly becoming kind of the game and some know how to play it better than others. But without an understanding of a memetic desire, I think it's harder to play. David has some GME. Why'd you buy? David, did you buy it because of memetic desire? I bought it to stick it to the man.

Starting point is 01:14:58 But maybe there's a memetic desire. So that's memetic desire. That's called mimetic rivalry. Yeah. Well, what you just said, we see a lot of in the crypto space. We got the Link Marines. We have the XRP army, the Cardano army, even like the Bitcoin maximalists. And even to some degree, we do this in the Ethereum side of things as well.

Starting point is 01:15:17 We all try and, like, you know, rewrite elaborate, like, medium articles or substack posts as to, like, my valuation thesis for ether or ether is a triple point asset. ether's and ultrasound money, chain links going to the moon. These are all competitions for attention in order to trigger memetic desire. These are all communities that have all, and one of the, I recently wrote a post talking about this frog like meme, they're talking about them with the traditional meme, and the chain link army, they're full of frogs, and they're very homogenous. And that's really the crazy thing about them is like there's this headless brand, this headless movement of all these frogs and they all chant the same chance and they all say the same thing.

Starting point is 01:15:57 and they're just a very homogenous cohort of people that are all shilling this link token. And it's completely aside from the fundamentals of the project. Like the team is building chain link and doing chain link things. And the link marines and its frog army is just this homogenous headless brand of just like mimicry, mimicry, mimicry. And it's one of the most fascinating like social experiments I think that this space has to offer. Yeah. I mean like the way that mimesis forms culture and contributes to group cohesion. is a whole other aspect of all of this, right?

Starting point is 01:16:30 Like the foundation of culture through Mimesis. In crypto, in politics, in towns and communities, this happens all the time. And I think that that's why you see tribalism, right? You know, you see Mamesis, you know, forming ideas and forming community. There's always an out, there's always an inside and an outside. You know, and Girard says, you know, this is probably too much to get into here. But he said that, you know, Mimetic desire always leads to some conflict. that's resolved through some kind of a violence, right?

Starting point is 01:17:00 So, you know, when I look at Ethereum, right, and it basically says there's a founding murder or some founding conflict in every sort of strong culture. So in Ethereum, like, maybe that's like the Dow Fork, okay? Like, I don't know. But like it probably contributed in some way to like stronger, like, cohesion among the people that were on board,

Starting point is 01:17:22 probably more so than before. So it's actually like a fascinating part of like Gerardian culture. analysis where he says that there's always some kind of like founding thing, founding mechanism that happened that resolve some memetic conflict that actually contributes to the social cohesion, where other people are looked at as the rivals and it reinforces the group identity. That kind of feels like a snake binding its own tail if we take that out and extrapolate that to the very, very end because the community becomes more and more coherent around a specific group or specific ideology. And if that gets too concentrated, it can start to just be too circular,

Starting point is 01:18:02 too fast. And I'm also starting to speak off the cuff here. But like, what happens when Mimetic desire just goes to its nth degree to the logical conclusion? Like, what happens then? Does the thing explode? What happens at the end of the logical conclusion of Mimetic desire? Well, Gerard's answer is that there's a scapegoat. The only way that the out of control Mimesis, that feedback loop, is resolved is through a scapegoat, right? It's like somebody is randomly chosen, right, in ancient cultures, the way that that, it was prevented from imploding, was to find and expel or kill a scapegoat, right?

Starting point is 01:18:40 So it's the idea that, you know, doing violence to somebody else saves us from the internal violence. It's complicated. I do think it's relevant to the discussion. I think we live in a culture that's like a scapegoating machine, but we make little scapegoats, right? Our scapegoats are usually not like we don't have extravagant rituals anymore, but we make little ones all the time.

Starting point is 01:19:01 So that's the last and most complicated part of memetic theory is that memetic desire leads to conflict and the way that humans have resolved conflict, memetic crises throughout history. Because I think you're right, it is like a snake biting its own tail, is through the scapegoat mechanism, but the scapegoat mechanism only fuels just more violence

Starting point is 01:19:22 and more conflict. So I think we get off track with that, but I mean, that is Gerard's answer to the question, though. I just have a quick question for you. This is like just some advice. So people come into crypto and they're always like, oh my God, it's so tribal. Why is it so tribal?

Starting point is 01:19:35 And like David and I, our answer to that is because humans are tribal. And guess what? Crypto at the base layer is composed of humans. But I have a question for you. So a lot of cryptocurrencies, many people would say, in fact, we would say Bitcoin and Ether are kind of competing for to be a money, to be a world reserve asset, essentially.

Starting point is 01:19:54 You could think of them as rivalrous in a way. Like, what's your advice for these communities to avoid conflict? Because I think in cryptocurrencies, like, the aim of cryptocurrencies really to decrease humanity's reliance on centralized parties, right? Centralized institutions. We don't want all of the eggs in those centralized baskets that can control us and restrict individual community freedoms, right? But we also don't want to go to tribal wars,

Starting point is 01:20:26 one cryptocurrency versus another. And yet there is this rivalrous thing, which is like market cap, like total value of the thing. Do I buy Bitcoin or do I buy ETH? No, you should buy ETH because XYZ. What's your advice for these somewhat rivalrous tribes? Is there a way to step away from that rivalry?

Starting point is 01:20:44 Or is this just how it has to play out? Well, I don't know what your opinion is on how it went. I mean, I guess if you're kind of a maxilist, like it has to end with one currency taking over and being like the global standard. And I think that if that happens, then I don't see any way out. Like if the goal is for a currency to become like the worldwide adopted standard, then I think that the conflict has to happen and will inevitably happen. If, however, and I'm not necessarily even saying that that's like a bad thing, right? I'm not implying that that's bad. I'm just saying that there's no way around it.

Starting point is 01:21:23 Somebody has to win and the others will have to lose and there will be conflict along the way. I think there's another scenario. And again, I'm not making a value judgment on it where there's a place for more than one. And, you know, each one carves out and defines a specific purpose for that currency to solve some specific problem. So, I mean, I'm kind of fascinated by like micro currencies. like there's like places in Africa that have like people have been like dropped coins and it's helped them create little micro economies. And I think the only way to prevent the rivalry is if you don't have the same goal. And if your goal is that everybody wants to become the new global standard, then there will be.

Starting point is 01:22:02 If people can sort of define a specific use case and if there's room for more than one and they solve different problems, then I think that that can be avoided. I mean, this goes back to the way that Peter Thiel said he solved conflicts at PayPal. He made sure that, you know, people had clearly defined objectives and paths forward. So, like, that was just on a human career level. And I think the same is probably true on the level of currency. Like, if you have, like, a one specific problem that you're trying to solve that nobody else is trying to solve, then you're going to avoid that. If you want to be the one true global currency, then you're going to have to duke it out with, you know, with Bitcoin and Ethereum. and, you know, I'm not quite sure how that ends.

Starting point is 01:22:45 That's an interesting approach because it really aligns with, I think, two kinds of approaches that people have when they come into this space. Like usually people come into this, the crypto space, and they immediately resonate with monetary maximalism. And they're like, oh, yeah, I'm a monetary maximalist. I'm going to purchase the thing that I think is money. Usually those people decide that it's either Bitcoin or Ether, and then that's the game that they play.

Starting point is 01:23:08 Or there's like these what I kind of call polychainers or, you know, many, many blockchains, many, many tokens, which goes a little bit closer to what you were saying in the latter half, which is, you know, each token can find some way to instantiate its own value for its own purpose that's non-competitive with money. And I kind of have actually think that that's more or less the Ethereum app layer, right? Like we have the Uniswap token, which governs over the Uniswap Exchange, we have the compound token, which governs over the compound money market. And these are, I wouldn't call them currencies. They are definitely not fighting to fight the whole monetary IMA money token. But,

Starting point is 01:23:43 they are building out something useful of value that is what they are for. And it's also still leaving the game of monetary maximalism to be played. Right. And so to some degree, I think the concept of monetary maximalism is talking about the concept of mimetic desire before people even knew to call it that. But people generally had this gist that like there was going to be one single shelling point of money no matter what. And I actually think both sides of what you just said,

Starting point is 01:24:13 are both happening at the same time. Like one is more or less the Ethereum app layer. These are capital assets that govern over protocols. And then there's the money that undergirds this whole entire thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so you made one really good point. And it's that like everybody knows about memetic desire,

Starting point is 01:24:29 but most people don't have a name for it, right? We're just like naming, giving something to name that exists. And we know that it exists. And I think that the app layer of Ethereum is a really important thing because that solves the problem. I mean, I've talked to some folks in the crypto space, like I think at Bankor, for instance, and there was this idea that, like, we're all going to be walking around with, like, 10,000 different currencies on our phone.

Starting point is 01:24:53 And, like, we walk in one place and, you know, we pay with this and there's real-time exchange. I just don't see that happening. I mean, I think, like, the app layer of Ethereum is a far better solution than that. And I think it's tackling similar things. Luke, I want to backtrack really quick because we've touched on this subject a number of times, but I really want to just drive this point home. We've talked about how memetic desire is with us from birth. Like it's in our DNA.

Starting point is 01:25:16 It's in our genes. It's in our brain. And we also talked about market bubbles. I've recently read this book called Devil Take the Hindmost, which is basically a human history of market bubbles. And my naive young self, I kind of thought that there was the tulip mania, there was the dot-com bubble. And then there was like the ICO mania of 2017. And those are like the big bubbles that I know about. No.

Starting point is 01:25:37 No, no, no, no. market bubbles go as far back as recorded history as possible. And to the point, and I was talking to the guy that even recommended me the book, and I was doing a little debrief with him after I read the book, and I told him, again, even before reading your book, like, it's crazy how market bubbles are just written into our DNA. They just seem to happen. And like reading this book and listening to the stories of these market bubbles that happened in the 1400s, in the 1500s, in the 1500s, in the 1600s, They're the same story of the ICOM mania in 2017. They're the same story of DeFi Summer in 2020.

Starting point is 01:26:11 Like, I resonated with every single part of the story. Like, I felt myself part of that story. And I feel like the only logical explanation is that because market bubbles are 100% mimetic desires and the humans will follow the same path, the same narratives over and over again because it's built into our DNA. Have you thought about this? I mean, I couldn't agree more. I mean, like, so long before,

Starting point is 01:26:35 there was social media, people still look to other people to know what to want. Social media just exacerbated it, right? And before there were financial markets, there were still bubbles in all sorts of things. They just weren't in financial assets, right? There were like rises and falls in people's reputations, for instance, right? In all kinds of other things, right? So, like, the point is that we're like memetic creatures by nature. we almost always like overshoot because the nature of memetic desire is is to be untethered from the

Starting point is 01:27:12 from any kind of objectivity eventually especially the longer and longer that it goes so there are bubbles in all kinds of other areas in life in politics in dating in fashions in and in like in all kinds of things and what financial markets have done is just given humans a very easy way to see what already happens in everyday life all the time. Like, there's freaking bubbles in high school, right? Like, you know, like with people. So I think markets basically hold up a mirror to Mimesis and hold up a mirror to our humanity and see the way that we are.

Starting point is 01:27:50 And it's not just like that only in financial markets. We're just like that all the time. We have Mimetic desire. That's super interesting. I don't think I've thought about it that way, Luke, that like, markets are just a mirror for Mimetic Desire. that markets, there are markets for everything, like markets even for ideologies or specific types of music or specific types of art or fashion. You also brought up in your book this concept

Starting point is 01:28:13 of reflexivity, right? Is that also what we're talking about? How if, you know, a certain amount of people want a specific asset in a market and drive the price up, then people see that price, and they're like, okay, well, price going up, I better get in. They pile in. You gave this example, I think, from your book of Tesla stock, right? And I was just visually picturing this. And you said that when Tesla stock was pumping, someone who went to the Google search and they type in, you know, should I? With like, you know how Google kind of auto fills with all the suggestions?

Starting point is 01:28:50 The number one suggestion at that time was, should I buy Tesla? Right? This is memetic desire as expressed through Google algorithms. How weird is that that algorithms are maybe now programming humanity's memetic desires, and yet this is the world we live in. Oh, gosh. That's dystopian. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about reflexivity then and how that applies to markets.

Starting point is 01:29:13 Yeah, well, I mean, the scary thing about the Google example before I talk about reflexivity is like, think about it. What Google did is basically suggest a question and suggest a desire to somebody before they even knew the right question to ask. Yeah. It's not just that they suggested a question. They suggested a desire. They're fanning the flames, right?

Starting point is 01:29:34 They're absolutely fanning the flames. So the principle of reflexivity was articulated really well by George Soros in his book. I highly recommend it, the alchemy of finance. And he talks about how financial markets are always reflexive and that expectations shape reality and then filter like a feedback loop, right? like investors' expectations affect their decisions. We're sort of guessing what other people's expectations are, which affect our expectations, which actually cause us to make real world decisions in the financial markets, which then change expectations, right?

Starting point is 01:30:14 So one of George Soros's, you know, first big trades was basically taking advantage of this fact, right? It was a huge currency trade. People were trying to figure out if a currency would collapse. and by taking aggressive action in the market and causing some price action, he changed the expectations that the currency would collapse. So, like, we can affect through our actions, expectations, which then affect other people's actions. And reflexivity just means that the market is constantly reflexive and never static.

Starting point is 01:30:47 It's completely dynamic, right? It's like two people on a trampoline. Like, if one of them jumps, the other person is going to have a force exerted on them, which affects them. and their movement. So we're all kind of enmeshed in this web. And what I try to do in the book is connect that to memetic desire, saying like, you can't be in a room full of people having a discussion about anything without having your desires affected in some way. You might not think that they are, but memetic desire is reflexive, especially at the level of markets.

Starting point is 01:31:18 I think the interesting implication, perhaps the scary implication of this, is mimetic desire is like a, it's like access, having root access to the firmware of our brains. And not just our individual brains, but like our collective brains. And what's scary about that is one thing if it happens kind of organically or naturally, right? And like the toddler likes the red toy because her dad's a fireman. That's one thing, right? Okay, cool. That was supposed to happen, maybe. But it's another when you have outside forces or third parties who know about this and are using it, using this firmware level access to like program society. And what's ultra scary about this is when they can automate it through the use of information technology at the scale of the

Starting point is 01:32:10 internet using algorithms. Right. So that Google autofill example, like guys, that happens in your Twitter feed, in your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, right? And it's not even individual human beings that are programming the propaganda. They've actually just taught algorithms to do this. And a tweak here or a tweak there can totally change the memetic desire outcomes of a society. That is some power that I'm not sure that we are ready to deal with. And it's very scary to think of that level of power being completely centralized by Insidious actors. Anyway, this is like an implication, I think, of what you're saying. Yeah. And people who understand memetic desire well that understand that this is a fundamental feature of how human beings come to want and desire

Starting point is 01:33:02 things. People can hack into that desire. And I think the big tech companies are already doing it. I mean, I think they understand memetic desire very well. But we have to be aware of this. And like awareness brings some level of freedom and agency over it. And the last thing that we want are a few sort of oligarchs and centralized government pulling the strings of Mimetic Desire. I tell the example in the book about Eddie Bernays, who's basically the father of public relations and propaganda, who basically understood Mimetic Desire enough to engineer a campaign to get most of the women in the 1920s to start smoking because he gave them. the right models of desire. And they just didn't understand, right, that their desires were

Starting point is 01:33:48 being shaped and molded by somebody that understood that they just needed the right model. And if they were given the right model, that they would take up smoking, right? Powerful, very powerful. So it's like if I was to start a cryptocurrency today, imagine. And I went and I paid like 10 or 12 really powerful models in the cryptocurrency space to get behind it, to influencers say is another word for models they're basically influencers right and then I and then I told them to just pretend that they stumbled on it objectively and spontaneously came to the conclusion right that this is a good investment while while paying them or whatever so we've seen this we've seen this a thousand times a thousand times right so this is the problem right like so many layers of of mimesis they're all

Starting point is 01:34:34 underground they're hidden and we only see the surface right and so much of life takes place under underground, deep underground. And we've got to be sort of aware of that, right? And just like get under the surface, kick the tires, find out what's happening. Because desires are being modeled to us all the time. And it's often disingenuous, right? Like this is the name of the game for influencers. Yet people keep paying influencers a lot of money because it freaking works. Like, you know? Luke, we talked at the beginning of this show about how memetic desires kind of this chaotic neutral force. It can have good outcomes. It can have negative outcomes. And also, if bankless listeners have been paying attention to bank lists, they'll know that sometimes Ron and I bring up the topic

Starting point is 01:35:19 of mindfulness and the importance and role of mindfulness as you go through crypto markets. You know, markets go high. We get euphoric. They go low. We get depressed. Being mindful really helps you navigate those waters. And overall, Sam Harris talks about this a lot with his waking up app. And mindfulness and mindfulness meditation can really allow you to step back from your own psyche and actually start to like label memetic desire and the forces that are impacting your perceptions that you forgot or didn't realize or are doing that. And so an action item for listeners is to, you know, take another look at mindfulness because it is the thing that allows you to start to become immune to memetic desire when you want to choose to be immune from it

Starting point is 01:36:01 and also allow you to tap into it and leverage it when it works for you. And that brings me to us to I think our last conversation because we started off saying how there's good memetic desire, then there's memetic desire that can be used for evil. We recently had Vitalik Buteran on the bankless podcast to talk about this concept called legitimacy. And I actually think to some degree we're also talking about the same thing instead of labeling it legitimacy. We're actually now calling it memetic desire. In that podcast with Vitalik, he talked about how legitimacy is largely only defined what people collectively agree to be legitimate. As in there's no basement or foundation for what establishes legitimacy, it's only in the psychosocial level, the brain

Starting point is 01:36:43 mesh network level of the humans that are around you. Things are only legitimate if other people, other humans also think them to be legitimate. And so this is, in my opinion, mimetic desire for good, because what is legitimacy other than a good thing to have or a good property to have for something that is legitimate? Do you see memetic desire as like a creation of legitimacy, a creative force? Yeah, I do. I think that it absolutely is. Like other people wanting what we want gives it a stamp of legitimacy.

Starting point is 01:37:15 So again, this can be good or bad. You know, there are societies where child sacrifice has been legitimate. It's been legitimized. You know, it's a fascinating concept, right? And I think it's fundamental to understanding money. It's absolutely fundamental to understanding a lot of things about social life. One thing that Vatalik said, I listened to the episode and I watched, I read the paper, he basically says it's the outcome of coordinated effort and I think describes a lot of intentionality to it, right?

Starting point is 01:37:47 We talk about game theory. So there seems to be a coordinated effort to create legitimacy. I think where Gerard would differ from that when he sort of like looks at the way that memetic outcomes happen through crowds or through large complex systems that we often. often don't understand that the legitimacy is often the product of non-intentional mimesis, right? Like things that are happening at the unconscious level where something has arrived at as legitimate without a lot of like conscious thinking about it. That is just just a tension that I would introduce into the discussion.

Starting point is 01:38:30 And I think we can we can introduce more or less coordination. But Gerard would say that oftentimes when a memetic process takes hold, it's hard to know who like the first mover was and who the real models are. It's kind of like looking at the flock of Starlings, like which one is moving first, right? It's hard to know. So I'm curious as to like how that actual process works in the context of legitimacy and markets and in social life. I mean, I don't have an answer. I'm just going to throw out the Gerardian perspective on there. And I think that the intentionality is good, right?

Starting point is 01:39:08 I think it's really good to have that, but also in a decentralized ecosystem, to what extent are things arrived on that might be the product of mimesis more than rationality? So there's this constant interplay, right, between objectivity and mimesis. I do think that, like, just one observation on that, Luke, is like, I do think there are a ton of hyper-rationalists and engineers and cryptographers. and brilliant people in crypto, like that just don't fundamentally understand why Bitcoin is valuable as an example or why Ether is valuable, right? Like, they just don't understand because I think they don't approach this space from a

Starting point is 01:39:45 memetic desire meme theory perspective, right? Like, so, and that can allow them to draw incorrect conclusions. Like, why is Bitcoin worth 30K, right? Like, if you look at just the technology level, it's a peer-to-peer, you know, transaction network and only seven to eight transactions per second, I mean, Visa can do thousands already. And we already have something like that. But why is it worth 30K? I think it's because of this hidden force of subconscious, memetic desire that sometimes the technologists and the people of the rationalists among us and the really smart people with huge cerebral cortexes, like they kind of miss that piece of it. Well, exactly. And as smarter you are, like the better you are at justifying things after the fact with all kinds of really smart arguments. And like why I love crypto so much is that there are so many absolutely brilliant people that are thinking really hard about these questions. I mean, I got an undergrad degree in finance a while ago. I graduated in 2004. I've learned more about finance in the last three years than I have in my entire life because of crypto. And I think a lot of people can say the same thing, right? It's fun. It's exciting. And there's brilliant minds thinking about this stuff.

Starting point is 01:40:57 But legitimacy is really important to understand. One thing, I pull the quote from Batalik, and I want to read it because this gets to the heart of what I'm saying. He made a, I'm quoting him verbatim. He said, if people do something different, I think they worry, if they do something different, they'll only create conflict and suffer or at least be left in a lonely, forked ecosystem all by themselves, right? So he was talking about legitimacy and like the fear that people have of like breaking away from the legitimacy. And I would say that people would rather be wrong than be alone. And this social force of memetic desire and mimesis can cause people to do things.

Starting point is 01:41:41 They might think they're rational, but people would rather be wrong than be alone. And I think there's a powerful social mechanism at work. There's fomo involved. There's all kinds. There's memetic desire involved. But I would push back a little bit on giving me. legitimacy in overly rationalistic, like, explanation. I think there are many things that we consider legitimate in our society that we haven't

Starting point is 01:42:08 given a lot of thought about or that there wasn't some centralized planning system that thought about it. I mean, I believe in free markets, okay? And I think that, like, in general, like we arrive at, but they're not always good things. And sometimes we step back and we realize that through, certain circumstances in an era or certain forces that were at work, certain things gained legitimacy that lose legitimacy a decade later. And that is what we've been talking about in this entire podcast, right? It's like how memesis, like, gives value to things and takes value

Starting point is 01:42:46 away from things. There's definitely an aspect of, like, another book you could write, or at least a substack article for us, Luke, is like generational memetic desire and how that changes. things because that is one thing we're seeing in crypto is like millennials and zoomers are not buying gold man like they just don't value it the way their grandparents did but they are buying crypto but we've taken so much of your time luke and this has been super insightful for us i got to kind of end maybe with this question is what's your take on this crazy thing that we call crypto like you've got kind of a i know you know about it right like you've been following the story all along you probably hold some crypto assets, but you're not like deep into the culture necessarily yet. Maybe we'll be in the

Starting point is 01:43:30 future. What's your take on what's going on here? Yeah, I want to be deep into the culture. I told you guys before we went on the air. The only reason I haven't been is I've been hard at work writing a book for the last couple of years. And so I couldn't spend as much time as I would have liked or I would have wrote a really shitty book. My take is that crypto is probably the most important thing happening in the world right now from a geopolitical standpoint, from an economic standpoint, from the standpoint of like human evolution. We're learning all kinds of things about ourselves, right? It's causing us to like ask questions, like fundamental questions that you would think we would talk about more, but they're so fundamental that we forget to ask them, like what the

Starting point is 01:44:14 heck is money? Like what is money? Like most, you don't learn that in school, right? It's just like, you know people because people grow up and they've just never asked like fundamental questions but like we're all asking the question right now and i think it's a tremendously positive thing um you know i'm very bullish on on ethereum um i think that i think that there's a aside from the exciting things that it could do to um the global economy and to people's lives i think there's an educational aspect to this that's that's really important that's going to have spillover effect way beyond crypto. So like crypto is not just about crypto. Crypto is about like what it means to be human. And I think I sort of as as somebody that's interested in like interdisciplinary questions,

Starting point is 01:45:00 I think that it will it will shed light on everything from politics to just social relationships to like the way that cities operate. And those, I think it's going to take us a very long time to to figure it out. But the speed at which this is all happening is really, really exciting. And I'm just glad that now that I finally finish writing the book, I can begin to dive in the way that I wanted to a couple of years ago. And thanks to your show and your substack, it makes a little bit easier. Look, man, we're super excited. We would love to have you. Come on down the rabbit hole with us. Let us know what you think, because you've got an exceptional lens on this stuff. And it is interdisciplinary. It takes philosophy, it takes sociology, it takes psychology, it takes all

Starting point is 01:45:41 anthropology, all of these things together is what forms crypto. So glad to have you, Luke. And what we want to do is we would love to have to have. have you on in the future after you take a tour down the rabbit hole, you know, six months a year, and come back on, let us know what you think of things. But Luke, it has been such a pleasure having you on bankless. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. I'd love to come back on. Action items, bankless listeners, Luke did not write a shitty book. He spent two years and he wrote a fantastic book. It is called Wanting the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. We will include a link to it in the show notes. Action Item 1 is go download that on Audible or something or go pick up a

Starting point is 01:46:18 copy of it, read it, it's fantastic. Also, subscribe to Luke's substack. It's called anti-mimetic. This is a field guide to Mimetic Desire. We will include a link in the show notes to that as well. Risks and disclaimers, ETH is risky, crypto is risky, DFI is risky. So are bubbles. So is Mimetic Desire, it seems like. You could lose what you put in. We are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

Bankless - 72 - The Power of Mimetic Desire | Luke Burgis

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