BTC Sessions - Unpopular Opinions With Bitcoiners: Knut Svanholm EP104

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

Knut Svanholm is the author of Bitcoin: Sovereignty Through Mathematics and Independence Reimagined. You can find him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/knutsvanholm SUPPORT THE SHOW: LEDN offers Bitcoin backed loans – Sign up and get $50 free https://bit.ly/3cWJQ5M Get Wasabi wallet and enjoy your Bitcoin privacy https://wasabiwallet.io/ Buy a Cobo Vault to secure your Bitcoin! https://bit.ly/2GgMFlH Cobo Vault Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnRjvZKulrA Crypto Cloaks: Get the BEST Bitcoin swag out there https://www.cryptocloaks.com/shop/ If you value my work and would like to send me a tip, they are always appreciated! LIGHTNING tips: https://tippin.me/@BTCsessions Looking for an audio-only version of the show? https://anchor.fm/btcsessions Join my Telegram channel! https://t.me/btc_sessions

Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What's up, everyone? I'm Ben with the BTC Sessions. The other day, I had the pleasure of having a sit-down chat with Knut Svanholm. Now, he is the author of Bitcoin Sovereignty Through Mathematics and Bitcoin Independence Reimagined. Now, we got into some controversial topics. This is related to a tweet he made last week, and I figured we'd flesh it out a little bit. Nonetheless, I'm sure there are many, many hot button issues that we talk on in this episode. And they would be hot button whether or not it was related to Bitcoin. So I hope you enjoy this

chat. I sure did. And if it's a little touchy for yourself, let me know. Let me know what you think. But regardless, I really did enjoy this and I hope you do as well. This is another episode of Sips with Sessions. Now before we dive into the interview, I do want to give a shout out to sponsors of the show, leaden.io. This is where you can use your Bitcoin for a variety of different products and services. Now, the first thing that I want to highlight here is their Bitcoin back loans. I've used them in the past and they've worked very well for me. So if you're in a pinch and you need to get your hands on dollars, but you don't want to sell your Bitcoin because one, that's a taxable event and two you're worried about having a buy back in at a higher price point later. This could be for you really simple, basically deposit your Bitcoin, get a loan to your bank account

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And if you retweet that out, I'll be given away one for every episode from now till the end of November. So be sure to check that out. And please do enjoy this interview with Knut, Svanholm. Welcome. How are you, man? I'm good. Thanks for reminding me.

Really good to see you again. So those of you watching that are unfamiliar, Canute, Spanholm, author, twice over. I have them here. We have, of course, Bitcoin sovereignty through mathematics. And when did you release this one? I can't recall. Oh, I think it was like June last year. But it didn't really take off before after Riga, before after, like until after Riga.

Okay. And then this one is more recent. When did this one drop? I can't recall. This is, by the way, those that can't see independence reimagined. Yeah, that one dropped in May, I think. Okay. This year.

No. Is this going to be a regular thing for you? Like now it seems like if you're pumping them out every six months. No, no, no. There's like a year between those two. And now I got a lot of other projects going. Like I wrote a couple of articles for the fantastic Citadel 21 magazine. I love them.

I love them. I'm still waiting on mine. It's taking 800 years to get here. Yeah. And Hodlornat and Katia, They're like the sort of the closest bitcoins or semi-famous bitcoinsers to where I live. Yeah, yeah. Calerosaumbaum is quite close by it as well.

But we haven't really, since COVID hit everyone on Earth, we haven't really had this. We've been planning to do something, but it hasn't really happened yet. Yeah. So I guess I don't know, obviously not many, you know, other than people that I see in person. I actually met you in Riga for Baltic Honey Badger, which would have been about a year ago now, right? Because it was September of 2019. Yeah, I think it's like a year and two weeks or something like that. Yeah.

It wasn't in September. Yeah. And myself, yourself, and BTC Shelling Point had a hell of a breakfast. I was, I don't know about you, but I was super, super hungover at that point. But we just, we just blasted through breakfast and we just talked for hours. And it was like, I got out of that conversation. It was the highlight of my entire trip to Riga. And we just shot the shit for, I don't know how long.

And just, I was so bullish by the end of that talk. I don't know about you. Yeah, same here. And he's such a great guy. as well. Yeah, we shouldn't docks him by Mr. Wizard. I call him Mr. Wizard and I call him Mr. Cat. Yeah, I, I, I thoroughly enjoyed that convo, both of you were great to chat to and really made my trip. So I guess I'll say thank you for that now before we dive in. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I remember you a thermos with all the stickers on it. Yes, yes. I think I need to get a new one

because I dented the hell out of that one. I gotta get in you. But yeah, so, again, we'll show the books at the end. The reason I reached out to you is this, I don't know if it was purposely trollish tweet, but everybody's already was like there was enough drama with the whole stock to flow thing that was already going on with Corey Clipstein and Plan B and all that crap. And then I see you drop you drop this bomb on Twitter. I'm just going to read the tweet here.

So people like, I laughed. I thought it was funny. But okay, here's it says. Really unpopular opinions among some bitcoins. Number one, there's no such thing as God or Judeo-Christian values. Number two, the stock to flow model is deeply flawed. Number three, guns suck. Number four, abortions are good for sustainability.

society. Number five, Lindy tells you nothing about how good or bad an idea is. And you said, don't trust, verify, hashtag Bitcoin. So, I guess that was my inner provocateur waking up. I think so. It looks like it. So, I mean, before we dive in to some of those, let's just, What was the, what was the, what came up that you were like, I'm going to type this and hit tweet. What happened at that point where you're like, okay. You have to read the second tweet because it's a double tweet. And as I suspected, some people didn't get that. Okay.

So the second part is equally as important. Yeah. So the second tweet here reads, now before you block me, I didn't necessarily say. that I hold any of these opinions. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. If you want to know more, you'll have to talk to me or read my works. What I can say is that none of them are incompatible with neither libertarianism or Bitcoin. Oh, that's a problem.

That's provocative as well, I guess. Yes. So, what, were you just on Twitter and you were like, I'm going to, I just feel like dropping a bomb or what? No, like, there's a couple of things that led up to this, I think. Now we're making, now sort of rewriting history here, because it's a tweet. It's nothing more. It's a damn tweet. So, but I was, I had listened to a couple of Bitcoin pods and, and this stock to flow thing happened.

I wrote a tweet earlier about the stock to flow model, not believing in the stock to flow model, whatever. that is plan B's model and getting a lot of angry responses to that and like we had I've heard a lot of pods lately with brilliant bitcoinsers but but they all seem to have fallen into this they all like Jordan Peterson a lot and they all seem to be have a like a religious outlook on on Bitcoin and I'm I'm trying to be the Bitcoin atheist's voice. And those things combined sort of triggered this thing. Because, yeah, I'll explain myself point to point, I guess, for the tweets. The first thing is, I don't really think I had the same concept about what an unpopular opinion tweet really means. because just writing, typing the words unpopular opinion into a tweet doesn't mean that you hold that opinion. So I made a, like yesterday or something, I made a poll.

Does unpopular opinion imply that you actually hold that, that the tweeter actually holds that opinion? And apparently people think so. Because if you're right of unpopular opinion, you're sort of categorized into that box. But this was sort of to point at stuff that, like I see humanity, like there are left-wing and right-wing ideas. And there are subtle differences between these things in Europe and the US, for instance. And I think that some of the values that the libertarians in the US hold are not really fully thought through. And probably the same thing goes for European libertarians as well. But I think I have a slightly different outlook on some of these issues.

So would you read the tweet again because I can't remember it? Well, do you want to go into like each, do you want to just, why don't we just start this off with a bang? Point by point. Yeah, let's let's, okay. So I don't, I'll leave it to you whether you confirm or deny that you hold a particular. I already know the first one. But so the first point was there's no such thing as God or quotations, Judeo-Christian values. So do you want to elaborate on what you were getting?

at there and your position on it if you if you so choose yeah like like the tweet says this is these are unpopular opinions among some bitterners they they and a tweet is not enough to to express my position on these things as an atheist i it's not that i think that there is no god that is not my uh that is not my of atheism. The definition for atheism that I use is the same as it is as it was for Christopher Hitchens and it's for Dawkins and Harris and Dennett. And that is I don't buy into any of the religious stories that I've been told so far. I don't buy them. I think they're man-made and I think there's a very low probability of them being true. And like, for instance, have you heard about the flying spaghetti monster religion?

I love pastafarians. Yeah, pastafarians. They sort of put the nail on the head there because that's about as likely as Judaism being correct or Christianity being correct or Mormonism being correct. It doesn't really matter. They're all stories and they're all manmade. This is my belief that they're man. I believe that they're manmade. And I believe that because the evidence points to that direction.

And when I think that Americans have, all the religious groups are tax exempt in the US, right? You have to correct me if I'm wrong here, but they don't pay as much taxes as a business or as other groups in society. And I think that thing skews the view Americans tend to have on religion, because religion has gotten to a place where it's much more respected than it ought to be. And I think that because these organizations have become so much more powerful. but I think that like they are just another at their course they're just another tool for controlling other people just like the state I view religions and organized religions and nation states as the sort of the same entity they were they were this is a alluded to in someone alluded to in sovereign individual right like he he He makes the comparison of the church and their monopoly on violence and how it gradually waned over time and it was overtaken by today's nation state. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't think, like, Bitcoin is a different beast altogether. And what I think that these bitconers have gotten wrong is like just because this, this is, this. This has to do with a misinterpretation of the Lindy effect as well, but just because religion is an old idea doesn't necessarily make it a better idea, or just because so many people has believed in this or that for such a long time, says nothing about the validity of the idea or the truthfulness of it. And there are some great debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and about

all of these topics and some of them are moderated by the great Douglas Murray if you know him he wrote an excellent book uh not too long ago called the madness of crowds and before that the strange death of Europe I just bought Madison madness of crowds I haven't read it yet yeah these are two books that I recommend to all bitcoins it's they are very spot on on what what the problem is right now and what what the problem that or the whole Jordan Peterson being cast out by his university debacle and the Brett Weinstein thing it's all connected to the what what Douglas Murray describes in in the madness of crowds on now where was I the thing is I hear the term Judeo Christian values

a lot and I think this comes from Jordan Peterson like the thing you hear people say that our societies are built on Judeo-Christian values and without that we wouldn't have like private property rights or we wouldn't be sovereign individuals or whatever whatever is and I don't believe this because you can just read like the Old Testament and the New Testament and see what they actually say and from that you can you can see that there the values we we hold aren't really Christian values or Judean values that I mean to begin with these religions aren't like they didn't come from nowhere they they themselves have borrowed lot from different other belief systems that preceded them. For instance, there are about

50 other historical religious characters that have sort of the same traits as Jesus Christ, like for instance, Horace or Ra, like in ancient Egypt and in Greece and wherever these. So it's like all the religions borrow a lot from each other. And like if you read the Old Testament, which Judaism is actually based on, it's horrible and it's awful. And the God in that book is a mean motherfucker. He's just all about vengeance and proving a point by killing everyone or taking away their goats. And masturbators are to be killed. and their families are to burn in hell and stuff like that.

And it's just quite an awful book. And the New Testament is, it goes easier on things, but it's quite obviously incoherent and written by a bunch of different people. And it has obviously been rewritten and for how many times we can't really know because these things happened 2,000 years ago. and there aren't really any good evidence to pointing to even the existence of Jesus Christ. Now I'm a blasphemer again here. But I don't believe that, like I say in the book, Independence Reimagined, we're all chained to the unforgiving arrow of time,

and we can't really know if the scientific method and everything that has happened during the Enlightenment was because of that we had a good moral ground in Judeo-Christian values or if Judeo-Christian values actually just hindered the whole process for all these years and I I have a sneaky suspicion that the latter is more true because they burnt Bruno Galileo's student and they threw Galileo in jail for for saying that that we have a heliocentric solar system and stuff like that. And these things are so bizarre. And like the Catholic Church's official apology for disagreeing with Galileo and throwing him in jail came like 1993 or something like that.

Do you think that? I hate organized religion. That's the thing. People can believe whatever they want. But like look it up. What if it's manmade? Just think the thought. What if this is manmade?

What? There's a Bitcoiners in particular. Sorry for going on here like this. Bitcoin is in particular. We're so good at pointing out what's wrong with the state. And like this is a lie and the Fed is a lie and this is a lie. But still so reluctant to see religion as the same thing. It's a bunch of lies.

When a barbaric civilization is in its infancy, you can see that their borders expand very rapidly as soon as they invent ceremonial burial. And why is that? That is because you have invented a ritual that fools 18-year-olds into thinking that there's a life after this life. And if you can fool them that there's a life after this, you can send them to war and you can send them to kill their neighbors and the neighboring tribes and take their stuff. And like religion is a tool for really mean psychopath leaders in order to fool people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, which is always a war crime or two. And I don't see why people are so reluctant to see this. I guess it is because no one wants to admit that they've been brainwashed.

But sorry, you are. Until you see everything, the bullshit in everything, you aren't really, in my view, you aren't really libertarian yet. I remember. That's rant. Yeah, no, that's. I'm sure there'll be comments. So I remember a little while back, actually, I saw a similar thread. I was in it.

I had to mute it after a while because the other person in the thread would not relent. But I had said something to the effect of like, and you obviously chimed in, but I had said something about, I was a little confused as. to, because I see obviously there are, there are a good number of religious Bitcoiners, not religious about, well, yes, religious about Bitcoin, but I'm talking about like actual prescribed to organize religion while also being a Bitcoiner. And myself, so I grew up going to Catholic school, but early on, I kind of, it just wasn't really for me. I questioned a lot of stuff and then I kind of just shifted out of that.

So I haven't been, if I ever really truly was religious, if you can say that, I haven't been since I was like 13. And so I guess the question that I was asking on Twitter back when this other threat happened was I wasn't quite sure the why that. linkage was there with a group of people that proclaimed don't trust verify. Yeah. It was just a weird disconnect for me. And like, again, like somebody wants to believe in God, like, snow sweat off my back.

I don't, I don't really. Go believe whatever you want, but it has nothing to do with Bitcoin. And this is what I wouldn't say it pisses me off because I think the whole, the whole thing like viewing Bitcoin as a religious and me taking the other side and being like the no no no this is financial atheism I can't like that to be honest and I think the other side likes it too especially Gigi anyway but but but but I think there's a danger to to well not a danger because honeybedger doesn't give a shit but but like I think hyperpicanization will take long long longer if Bitcoin is sort of promoted to be a new religion.

Because I think that's confusing at best. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of the... It will not help people. I'm not a big fan of the religious Bitcoin movement, but I did want to ask one more question on this particular line of thought. Do you think that religion

did help contribute to lower time preference, at least initially? Not necessarily, no. I believe it stole a lot of time from a lot of people. I mean, I love Robert Breedlove's work, like the number zero on Bitcoin and the masters of slaves and money. It's some of the best writing in this space, and I'm a bit envious. But this is the thing here. In Mass and Slaves of Money, he comes up with a number of how many hours that have been stolen from us.

And like it's sort of an arbitrary number. But anyway, I would like to do a similar calculation, but with the hours spent praying or doing some other religious ritual, because it's basically the same thing. you're controlled by a psychopath on top who tells you have to do these things, you have to pray or whatever you have to do, religious ritual. And all the people do that and all the people making money out of it or gaining power from it, love it. So therefore we have Christmas, for instance, where every family in the West gives each other a lot of Chinese bulls,

crap and we complain about the environment and we have container ships with loads and loads and loads of crap so we're we're really we're really thinking about the environment every day except except christmas because then everything is allowed and we have lights everywhere and everything is i love that you said that i've literally got a box of Halloween decorations outside of my office door but i'm about to like it's october 1st that shit's going all over the house and on november first, it will be a vomiting of Christmas everywhere all over my house for two months solid. But again, like, I just, I don't know, I definitely get your point. My house will be a winter wonderland. Yeah, yeah. November, December. I don't care. But thinking,

thinking about these things, just a couple of more points. People, the thing is, I have a family and I live in a society and everyone seems to like these traditions and the rituals that they have and I'm forced to participate in them. To me, I would much rather have like every day be worth the same and do whatever I like each day and like not have to hang my, categorize my life into this is Christmas and this is Easter and whatever. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I lost my train and thought, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about, I guess, the way we segued into this was time preference and kind of. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Got sidetracked again by another thought. This is ADD working or something. And I visited a place called the... Suriname once. You know, it's country in South America. Okay.

There's one of the ports we sailed to with the, with the toll ship I used to work on. It was Paramaribo Surinam. And this is a state that had seven state religions. Instead of being a secular state, that seven state religions. And the lonely planet guide to that place just said, don't go here.

But Paramaribo was a beautiful, beautiful town and it was quite calm and not very violent when we were there. But they told us about that they had to respect every tradition of all of those seven religions. So I guess it was like Judaism, Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, like Islam, Hindu, Buddhism, Buddhism, whatever, probably a Rastafari. So they had like 183 days off every year, because every religious holiday of every religion was a holiday. So they never worked. So they were all shit poor and all the stores had bars, barred windows. And yeah.

I would like to celebrate. Festivus. I don't know if you ever watched Seinfeld, but where it was George's dad, he literally just puts like a metal pole instead of a tree, and they all sit around the metal pole and tell each other what they hate about each other, all the problems that they have with each other. It was pretty great. So any old Seinfeld fans, we love that. Okay, so let's wrap the religion thing. anybody that has comments about religion for Canute, you can find him at Canute Spanel on Twitter. Yeah, come on to me.

Now, stock to flow. So your quote here, the stock to flow model is deeply flawed. This, again, in the context of it's an unpopular opinion amongst Bitcoiners. There was some drama the other day. Corey Clipstein was talking about he's not a fan of Stock to Flow. thinks that the math is bunk and then there's some back and forth he accidentally dropped information that that you know was semi-doxing some people said anyways he took it down yeah especially the guy that got doxed plan B who posted proudly posted I've been doxed

this is how it went like very strange debacle all of it yeah yeah so I mean I whatever. So I'll give you kind of, like for me, the, the model itself, I don't know. I haven't looked into the map of it. You know, I know looking back, it's kind of has been around those levels, but I'm not saying that it's going to follow forward. I agree. People say that it's copium. I know that. I mean, Bitcoin itself. Most of Bitcoin Twitter is opium the entire time. So, and I am having said that. Yeah.

Having said that. So my issue is is getting mad about it. So I don't see a reason to get mad about it in that. No. I don't think that it'll, I think I tweeted out something like if Stock to Flow is flawed and is super wrong. and the price doesn't do what stock to flow says, I don't think it's going to be any more damaging to Bitcoin

than Tom Lee going on CNBC in 2018 and saying 50K by end of year. No, it doesn't happen. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter. How about you doesn't give a shit? Yeah. So what is, you know, in tweeting this, what's,

I kind of already know your position, but like what are your thoughts on stock to flow? My thoughts on stock to flow is like, well, the underlying theory is excellent and I love how Safedin describes how Stocktoflow works in the Bitcoin standard and I try to do it in Sovereignty I believe and that's that's the part that I had to edit quite a lot because I yeah I I found it hard to explain it in a in a good way But the thing is with Austrian economic theory, if you read human action, it rightfully says that you can't really make accurate, like, mathematical models of economic effects.

it's not really a good thing and it's sort of it it it's sort of lures people into believing that something that seems to be true is true and it's not really true and the thing is I'm just I'm just not a big fan of I think I think these technical analysis and everything of around this and people's like trying to to time markets and stuff it's not very productive in the long run and it's not very it doesn't really add anything of value to the greater economy that people are trying to play it i can see why they try to play this game and why why they try to buy low and sell high of course but but to me that is that is not the interesting part about bitcoin and and the thing with the stock to flow model uh i i think it was my tweet

that called it hopium another tweet earlier on the same week and and a bit of bad wording there because i i i don't necessarily mean that it's it's too it's too bullish because i think i'm even more bullish than the stock to flow model from from time depending on depending on my mood. You sound like a Preston Pish where you say it's going to be invalidated to the upside. Yeah, yeah. And I can definitely see a scenario where it does get invalidated to the upside. Like the beginning of hyper-bitonization, whenever that happens,

because I believe it's inevitable that it will happen. But I don't know if it will happen in four weeks or four-hundred. hundred years. But when it when it does it would be weird. And and this is this is the thing. I'm still because Bitcoin has Bitcoin supply is extremely predictable. Bitcoin's demand is not, it's not predictable at all. Like Trump could say something or whatever that that turns the whole narrative on it. Bitmex could get cracked down on. It's funny. That happened earlier today right before I was getting paid and I was like, oh, fuck yeah. Extra sad. That's awesome.

So, yeah, it's, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anything can happen. But having said that, I tend to agree with Piero Card a lot, but not about the stock to flow model. and there's a great debate from the value of Bitcoin conference, which I was a part of, that happened digitally this year because of COVID. I was planning to go there, but unfortunately got canceled. But there was a great debate there between Eric Vall and Piero Card. Eric Wall is another swede that is a bit too shit-coinery type of guy for my taste,

but he was right about the stock-to-flow model. He had made a rainbow chart saying, no, no, no, the rainbow model is the right model. It was a bit pastafari-ish in his approach there, in debunking the theory. Fair enough. But the thing is, plan B seems like a nice guy. Some time will have to pass before I see who's the villain

in this one bit of Corre eclipse. versus plan B thing. Corey has always been nice to me and he's a great guy and his brother too. Like, I think there's there's a lot of misunderstandings in Bitcoin and people tend to be a bit too easily offended and it's a bit social justice warrior to be offended by stuff, right?

Weren't we supposed to be the ones who were thick-skinned and not offended by stuff? Like, yeah. Yeah, it's, yeah, I think, I agree. I agree with that. Yeah, you made a model. I don't believe in it. So what?

That's the matter. Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, obviously, I would very much like to see Stock to Flow play out. I won't have my feelings hurt if it does not. again like the the underlying idea of of you know with sustained demand and that's the unknown there that that the diminishing flow of new bitcoin onto the market would have an impact sure but yeah you know there's some unknowns there obviously the the danger is that it might might drag the reputation of the underlying the underlying mechanism the actual stock to flow and the name of that and like how how that

how that works might be overshadowed by this this guy who's chosen to call his theory the stock to flow theory and does that make any sense maybe it's yeah yeah might be a bit far-fetched Yeah. It might be a bit far-fetched. Yeah. It sounds like both of us are somewhat indifferent. Yeah, to tell you the truth, I'm indifferent. People make economic theaters all the time. Mises says they don't work. I'm leaning towards Mesa's point of view.

Fair enough. All right, let's move down the list. We're making good headway here. guns suck. Yeah, they kill people. Of course they suck. Should people be allowed to have them? No, the thing is, people shouldn't be allowed or disallowed anything.

A government can't ever give you a right. They can only take away stuff. So that's beside the point. And I wrote guns suck because I don't believe in any prohibitive laws or anything like that. Not really. Like I have to say I do in Sweden. But anyway, the thing is, guns suck because they kill people. And the whole fetish about guns in the Bitcoin sphere and that, oh, you need to have a shotgun because that's going to save you.

from an army or like i think it's like if if you're libertarian you're basically a pacifist you're like you're you're for a non-violence principle this is why this is this is a large part of what i like about bitcoin because it it it's it sort of obsoletes violence if you have a population and they can all have 99% of their net worth in their heads and no one can't no one can never know what that net worth is if they've taken the enough privacy measures and stuff. Then there's no real way of extracting that wealth by other means than providing something of value to that person. You can't any longer take it. You can't take it by force any longer.

You have to provide something of value to that person and exchange it. This is what Bitcoin does. And I think there's one of the most fascinating aspects. It's like you can't really be violent to people. You can't, well, of course you can be violent. But it's much harder, much, much harder to extract the wealth, extract something of value from that person by being violent to them. Right now it's easy.

It's funny, I've got to say, like being Canadian, I was never into guns. You know, we really like don't. There's definitely less of a fetish around guns in Canada. I was never big into them. I do have to say since, since, and maybe this is just like the culture of many people around Bitcoin,

but over time, I've become less averse to firearms. And do, I don't want to say, I wish we had better access to them. You do have access to them. But I think watching, like, the U.S. right now, I definitely understand more of the idea of somebody being like, just in case I would like to have one.

I'm curious in your stance, in a world where there was no. such thing as like a police state or, or, you know, like law enforcement was relegated to, I guess, provided by the private sector. Would you lean towards, would you see guns differently in that type of a world, or would you be more likely to own one? I don't know if you currently do, I'm guessing from the sounds of it, no, but like, would that change? I'm fooling everyone. Not like, like, this was the sort of the trolleous part of the tweet because a lot of Bitcoiners enjoy having guns and enjoy shooting their guns and posing with their guns and good on them.

I have nothing against that, really. For me personally, I don't, having having a life where I have to focus on self-defense and a gun would suck. Yeah. Obviously, you're not seeing it prescriptively. It's more of like, it's descriptive of yourself and you wanting to be in, like, in a place with lots of guns. I mean, there are other means of protecting yourself from violent acts. Like, for instance, I think becoming famous might be both pose a risk and be somewhat, you might be protected by that in a way.

You know what I mean? Like, of course they're weirdos, like that guy who shot like John Lennon or Dinebecky. there it's like of course you're you're exposed in another way but that might also that might also save you from violence because because no one really wants to kill a famous guy that everyone likes and I just said the counter example is that with John Lennon but it's very rare like imagine a huge rock star like Bonn or like James Hedfield from Metallica or someone who plays to like millions and millions of fans every year

and he's to my knowledge never had any trouble with anyone trying to be violent to him recently. You think that's because of their private security though? Like they're obviously, they've got like walls around their homes for sure. To add to this, I didn't. I slept too little last night. I slept really badly. So I might be really fucking stupid right now,

and I might be just saying the wrong things. I don't really have that much opinions on guns. I wrote that in the tweet to be provocative, I guess. Yeah, but you just don't personally want to be around guns a lot, I imagine. At the time I wrote it, I couldn't predict an interview. view happening where I was stating my stance on guns. It's like I should have had Ragnar on here. Yeah, yeah, Ragnar would hate me, I guess. Okay. Let's just keep going, because this next one is a doozy. And okay, before I say it, there's an interesting book,

and I don't know that I agree with everything in the book. I read it a long time ago, so I'm probably like in some way misquoting it. Let's see if you think about the same one here. Are you thinking of Freakonomics? Yeah, that's the one. Okay, so I know exactly where you're coming from there. I'll let you elaborate on this.

Okay, so your... So cool that you read that. Yeah, it's... And we thought of the same book, yeah. Oh, man. And what the conclusions that they come to in that book, are they're tough to grapple with because there's data behind it. But I'll let you elaborate a little bit.

But your point here, and again, whether or not you hold that opinion is interesting. But the point is that you wrote, abortions are good for society. Yeah. So let's dive down that rabbit hole. Yeah. And that sort of connects to the first tweet there about you, the Eucharistian values and stuff. I sort of like making fun of people who take religious stuff too seriously.

But I think the abortion, it's a lot different here in Europe because we're not as religious, so abortion isn't really a big deal. And like the book you mentioned for economics, like you said, it looks at a lot of data. and it talks about a time where some of my favorite movies were made, like Robocop, for instance, the end of the 80s. And that was sort of a, America had sort of a dark outlook because there was a lot of violent crimes going on everywhere, right? Particularly New York, it was quite.

Particularly in New York. And all of these dystopian movies came out. at that time and they predicted a pretty dark future. And then all of a sudden, or quite suddenly, the homicide rates and the violent crime rates dropped. And nobody knew why. And these guys who wrote free economics, they try to explain it because they look at the data.

There was an assumption I should point out that people assumed that it was based on an uptick in, in like police presence and everything like that. But when they look back and look at the data, the uptick in all of these protective measures and policing and everything came actually quite a bit after the downtick in violence. And there was another reason. So I'll let you keep on.

Yeah. You probably remember the book better than I do because I read it quite like 10, 15 years ago or something like that. But the thing that the writers of that point, point out, I think there are two writers, right? Or maybe just one. Yeah, yeah, two writers. Is that around 20 years earlier, like in the beginning of the 70s, a lot of states passed a abortion is okay law. Like abortions were prohibited everywhere until then.

And then a lot of, the theory is that a lot of unwanted children never, never got born. They were never born. And a lot of unwanted, and that this has like, so the the would have been murderers were never born. And that's basically what the book says, right? It's, it was, yeah, I remember reading it and I, you know, if that's, if that's, if that's, that's the supposition of what they're saying. How do you present that as data to the public? How do you say like, because like the implication is like a lot of people that, so what they were trying to say was that people that people that grew up in broken homes that that the women would have perhaps had an abortion ended up having the kid. The kid was abandoned or broke, grew up in a terrible living environment or went through foster homes or whatever and gradually descended into a life of crime and those yeah and and so what they were saying is that

when it was passed and and people were allowed to have abortions uh more people did meaning that less of those kids with terrible upbringings actually even existed and that's a pretty it's it's a pretty rough thing to even like dis it i find it difficult discussing it because it's basically saying like well we'll just kill them before they exist but at the same time like you you'll kind of look at the data and it's and it's a little wild to see there and it's staring everybody on a cold and gray chicago morning a little hungry boy child is born in the Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I think of Eric Cartman from South Park singing.

Yeah, yeah. So, like, a little higher pitch. But, yeah, like, it's, yeah, you go ahead. Okay, my stance on abortion. The thing I think, like, people who are anti-abortion, they see it as murder, right? And they see conception as the point in time where life begins. And that's like their life begins there when the sperm and the egg hit hit each other.

That's where life begins and after that's murder. That's that's the basic theory, right? And libertarians are very much like everyone should be entitled to their own, do what they want with their own bodies and like except for pregnant women because there's another body in that pregnant woman and that has rights to. So that's that's some how it goes. But the thing is, this definition of life starts here and a human life starts here, that's not reality. That's a construct of the human mind.

We tend to box things in. And we say that this is life, this is death, this is a round shape, and this is a square. And maybe those are bad examples because they are kind of obviously easy to make. verify or easy to define. But like we say, this is a dog and this is a cat. All of these things are, are like maybe not as easy as they seem at the first glance.

Like biology has proven again and again to be more complicated than we first thought that it was. And the Bible doesn't mention DNA once or anything like this. And the thing with a fetus, There's no real biological difference except on a very, very, like, on a cellular level, the chemistry is slightly different. But there's no real difference in the organs or anything in a human fetus and a dog fetus or a pig fetus or a monkey fetus for quite some time. I don't know. I'm not an abortion expert.

I'm not medically trained. of course not but but the thing i have a problem with is this is this black and white thinking about when the sperm hits the egg that's where life begins why why is that so why is that so black and white i i don't really see that and up to a point i i think that a woman should have a right to her own body and like it's it's very easy if you're anti-killing a fetus after conception but you're not anti-like condoms and all what's I'm a brain stop I'm losing the word head prevent yeah contraceptive of course yeah yes a bit embarrassing well some religious people are against contraceptives as well and I think there are a lot of

bigger problems here like like circumcision for instance which is which is obviously very violent and very vile and evil and like so the abortion thing yeah I guess my stance on it is that it should be up to each and every family. And like, it's so difficult to, to talk. So here's in general, when I'm looking at stuff like this, I think a lot of it does tie back into whether or not you're a religious individual, too. right because if i'm not mistaken um then you know there's there's a a human life is is obviously

elevated above other types of life because like a fetus and or like a you know that freshly um uh you know a newly fertilized egg is you know doesn't have a brain it can't think yet there's no it can't feel anything. But the importance is placed on what it will become. Yes. And so it's, you know, if you're not,

you're not looking at what is currently there. You're looking at the potential of what it could one day become and preventing that from happening. But I think people that are, that lean towards, allowing for abortion in any form, they're looking at what it currently is versus that potential.

And I think, yeah, I don't know. That's kind of what I gather. That's the, this is another issue with the religious point of view, because in the, according to the Bible, animals have no souls, I think. I'm not an expert on the Bible either, but I know some stuff about it. And which means that you can be as cruel as you want to any other species than a human. And like you said, an unborn fetus or a full-grown chimpanzee, which life is worth more? I'm not so sure.

I mean, I'm perfectly seeing a chimpanzee suffer from violence, I feel empathy for that thing or that being. Of course, seeing someone, like I saw some horrible pictures from the Wuhan markets when COVID started. Like someone frying a living dog. What the hell makes people do that? Obviously, I believe that other species aren't worth as much as us. And I don't mean to become all left-winning and vegan and stuff like that, because that's not my point. But my point is that these things are not black and white and there's a gray area here when it comes to morality. And it's not as easy as we might think.

And therefore, I think, like I said, in the next suite, these are views that are perfectly compatible with libertarian values. It should be up to each and every family. And, well, no one else should force that moral decision upon you. because like what will happen if say for instance you have a sort of a society where where you forbid abortions what happens then well probably the woman will go somewhere where abortions are illegal aren't illegal and that place might be a bad place to do an abortion and she will have a higher risk of hurting herself while while killing the baby anyway, like, or whatever they, the phrasing. And or she will do what they did before abortions existed, which is like she'll have the baby and drown it in a river somewhere.

Like, is that better? I don't know. Or I do know. It's not better. If you're going to get rid of it anyway, why not do it? directly. I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's move from abortion to the next one. Yeah, yeah. Like here we are discussing all these things from a slightly two trolly tweets. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, but it's, yeah, nonetheless interesting.

I'm sure there's going to be so many comments on this. Oh, my God. The thing is, Ben, like if I was arguing with someone, it would be easier to to like come up with good arguments. But you seem to, well, I wouldn't say you agreed with me to 100%, but you're polite and you don't really disagree with me in anything either. So I don't really get fired up.

Yeah, my goal isn't to like. Debate me. Yeah, my goal isn't to debate you. I just kind of wanted to like have a general. I don't think there's enough of just discussing ideas and not getting angry at each other. No. And this is sort of my point with this tweet. We're supposed to be the thick-skinned ones.

We're not supposed to be the social justice warriors that play the victim card all the time and get upset by what other people say. That shouldn't be us. We should be the ones that allow ourselves to discuss things and to be open to no ideas. Yeah, fair enough. The last point, the last point that you have here kind of, I guess, beckons back to everything else that you previous, all the previous points, because it kind of has, you know, you can project it onto any of them. But the point was, uh, the Lindy or the Lindy effect tells you nothing about how good or bad an idea is. So maybe if you can just quickly say,

for anybody unfamiliar, what the Lindy effect is, and then, I guess, elaborate on what you were saying there. The Lindy effect talks about like an idea or a technology, and it states that the average expected lifetime that the idea or technology has left is exactly proportional to how long it has existed before that. I think that's the Wikipedia definition. It's talking about the longevity of an idea.

If it's been around for a while, it's more likely to continue existing. Yes. And this could be connected to the survivability of the idea. Nazim Taleb talks a lot about this in the Black Swan. not the blacks one, the other one. Skin in the game, of course. Skin in the game.

Yeah. And skin in the game is a book that had a lot of impact on me because of the basic theory about having skin in the game. And that's why I choose to use my real name and do all these things, like this interview with you talking about dangerous subjects, which might get me into a lot of trouble, but at least I didn't push out. yeah well yeah

I can definitely say that and writing the books goes hand in hand with this as well but he talks a lot about Lindy and Lindy's like impact on society I think Lindy is

Lindy is an overrated concept because while it can predict the lifespan of certain things it doesn't really say anything about the validity of that thing or the truthfulness of that idea or if we ought to spend our time doing anything else doing something else so in that sense i think the lindy effect

has it's it's misinterpreted by a lot of people who think like religion is a good example because people think that oh christianity has a shit long lindy therefore it must there must be something there and it must be really powerful I mean, so did the Greek gods. Yeah, so did the Greek gods and like, so did Egypt way before. And like, I guess the Norse gods had a long lindy as well. And bad ideas have a long lindy too. Like socialism, for instance, is really lindy.

And it's everywhere. And it has been. and it's like it lives on and so the lindy effect slightly overrated i guess i think there's a very good debates between sam harrison and jordan b peterson about this uh there's a very good debate about uh they they get into a debacle i i heard it live the first podcast podcast where they talked about what the word truth actually meant. And then they sort of got stuck and they did another one where they get a bit further.

And the thing is that Jordan Peterson talks about metaphorical truths a lot. And while I think some of Jordan Peterson stuff is brilliant, like his debate with Kathy Newman, I believe her name is on Channel 4, that was excellent. And like a lot of things he says makes a lot of sense. But I tend to agree with Sam Harris. He has like 80 to 85% really brilliant. But the rest is completely bonkers and Jesus smuggling a lot.

And the thing is with he when they talk about truth, they have an example with a quill bore. And like if you were to believe that the quill, quill-bore could shoot his quills and that they were poisonous, you would have a higher chance of surviving an encounter with a quill-bore or something like that. So there's a metaphorical truth to believing that quill-bores can shoot their quills. And this is Peterson's side of the argument. I'm paraphrasing here. but and Sam Harris argument is that yes but that that that isn't really truth because

it doesn't matter if the human you like for instance if we know the truth of how to make an atom bomb and won't we all kill ourselves and like is truth the goal to strive for and so that's and Sam Harris point in this discussion is that that's a different that's a different topic if if we should strive for truthfulness or not it's a different topic but but the word truth needs to mean one thing and it needs needs to mean actual truth and not a metaphorical truth and there's then there's another one with when he uh he Jordan Peterson talks a lot about the metaphorical truths in the like the same different sections of the Bible and what those stories mean and the hero's journey and all these you can find

ancient stories that have meaning and because of this and this and sam harris does the same thing with a cookbook and he shows that this is this is just mental gymnastics and you can you can do this with anything you can do with harry potter and you can do it with like the movements it doesn't matter you can you can take any story and find meaning in it if if you want to so uh But where was I? I was talking about Lindy. Yeah. Again, like I definitely, I get where you're getting at here. I think, yeah, I mean, I think Bitcoiners like the idea of Lindy effect because the longer Bitcoin sticks around.

It just like it doesn't, again, doesn't, like you said, doesn't necessarily talk, speak to whether an idea is good or bad. But Bitcoiners like that with each passing year of Bitcoin's existence, there's a better chance that it will continue to exist. And being Bitcoiners believing that Bitcoin is a good thing, they like to see it continue to exist, obviously. Yeah, but it doesn't say anything about where on that line you are, on that timeline you are. Yeah.

So it's, well, and it's sort of a, I mean, the theory is appealing, but it's not necessarily a hundred percent accurate about everything. I mean, it's it's a kind of a strange meta theory. It seems akin to no matter how long it's taken for a block to to actually be confirmed, you can always assume the next block will come in roughly 10 minutes. Yes, that's a good example. That's a good like, but you can't be sure. Yeah. And like, like, If the block hasn't come for 40 minutes, the likelihood of when it's going to come is still 10 minutes from now. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, odds.

A lot of people misinterpret the aspect of Bitcoin, by the way. Yeah. And so I guess Lindy, yes, the idea is if it exists for a long time, it has a better chance of existing longer. But it doesn't mean it's going to happen. Like we were talking about the Lindy effect of the great gods proliferating and continuing to be like, one of the main religions was sure, the Lindy effect worked until it didn't. Everything always works until it doesn't. And there are more interesting concepts to focus on than the Lindy effect,

because it's like E equals MC squared is a beautiful equation. The Lindy effect is sort of, what is it? What can you really do with it? I don't really know what you can do with it. Like what can you actually predict with using the Lindy theory? Yeah, I don't know. The answer is nothing. I don't know.

And this is a fun conversation because I will, I think people will be more upset about me this like dissing Lindy than the dishing the abortions. Well, I mentioned the Stock to Flow thing. Yeah, I think, I think in general, what I've kind of taken from this conversation is that, you know, I think it's nice to, again, converse and kind of, my goal here wasn't to agree or disagree on any of the points, but more kind of like tease out what you were getting at with some of the points and maybe draw more conversation from this. Yeah. I think that it's, you know, I think it kind of proves the point. You know, a lot of Bitcoiners adopt...

Think these are unpopular opinions. Yeah, well, exactly. Like, a lot of, I know a lot of Bitcoiners will adopt whatever the popular opinion of most other Bitcoiners are. Right? Like, you see a lot of prevalent like, okay, Bitcoiners are all libertarians who love guns, who eat exclusively meat and believe in God. but that's not the case in a lot of instances and there's a lot of diverse different ideas there are socialist bitcoiners out there believe it or not there are there are like like which

I but yeah good luck with that yeah good luck with that but there are there's a lot of different opinions in in Bitcoin and I think um you know certain opinions rise to the top because of like the, I don't know, what's the word for the loudness with which those opinions are stated, but there are opposition to some of those opinions too. So like I guess my main goal here was to say that if you're a bitcoiner and you have opposing views on whatever the issue be to lots of other bitconers, there's, that doesn't fucking matter. You know, if you find value in Bitcoin but disagree on other points with other Bitcoiners, who cares you both enjoy bitcoin i i think that's kind of the main point i'm going for here yeah

no i agree totally so like like i said we're we're supposed to be the thick-skinned ones exactly so i i think i'll let you kind of uh wrap up your thoughts yeah yeah well as i said the tweets describes opinions that are unpopular amongst bitcoiners they're not necessarily my opinions. I think these points are, I'm happy to discuss them. I'm not 100% sure on where I stand on each of these bullet points. So that's why I found it funny to like bring them up. I think that's great. I think more people need to do that, even if they're unsure on a topic, it's interesting to discuss without screaming at each other. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry if I've been like, if I've been doing this too much, like taking too much time to think through whatever I want to say next.

I think it's, I think it's fine. I think it's good. And I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Always good to chat with you. If you guys want to check out Canute's books again. sovereignty through mathematics and independence reimagined what's the best place to grab them canoe well they're on amazon or you can dm me if you want to buy them for bitcoin beautiful awesome and yeah you can find canute at canute spanholm i'm not going to spell that right now but he's on twitter i will link to that in the show notes and then dude as as always also talking with you and let's have another Bitcoin breakfast sometimes soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't wait for that. All right, guys. I so much want to see every one of you in real life again. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, guys, well, thanks. Thanks for being here, Knewk. Yeah, thanks a lot for inviting me, Ben. So good to see you again.

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