“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.“
Good Morning Everyone,
The concept of truth is far more complex than is generally acknowledged. There is a level of complexity in determining what is true which our monkey brains tend to find difficult. We are often hamstrung by cognitive biases and rush to join a tribe that validates our dogmatic beliefs and provides us with the illusion of safety and acceptance. Given the current nature of life for most, the perpetual acceleration of the hamster wheel, that is the ongoing devaluation of our money and thus the inability to save and store value across time, most aren’t afforded the luxury of time to dive deeply enough into such things to arrive at the realisation that it is less obvious than we would often like to believe.
Wikipedia describes truth as:
“the property of being in accord with fact or reality.”
But what is fact, and what is reality? These terms that once seemed so certain, continue to be exposed as being far more temporary assessments of what we would consider either to be. We’re constantly learning more, and gaining deeper levels of understanding, realising that previously held beliefs, concepts and ideas that appeared to have a consensus acceptance, may infact not be factually accurate and in accord with this thing we call reality.
In an attempt to counter our primitive cognition we developed the scientific method. This process can be much more messy than most would imagine, and the potential for error remains. In 1921 the polygraph machine was invented in an attempt to determine whether or not an individual is relaying the information obtained by them from a point of experience and doing so truthfully - without distorting the information.
Are they “telling the truth?”.
The polygraph machine was created by a Berkeley (California) police officer and was based on a systolic blood pressure test pioneered by a psychologist named William Marston who later become a comic book writer and created the fictional character Wonder Woman. Modern polygraph machines measure a range of physical changes such as pulse and breathing as well as blood-pressure, yet the efficacy of such a device has remained in question almost since it’s inception.
Such a technique depends not only on the actual machine and the capturing of physiological information but also on the analysis of this information. But to go even a layer deeper, the information captured by such a machine depends on the beliefs, values and characteristics of the individuals internal dimension of awareness. A space that we understand very little about.
The idea that this could have been used and accepted to obtain “the truth“ shows how primitive and dogmatic we are capable of being. We are designed to simply ‘want to believe stuff in our search for certainty.
Clown world continues to leverage this deep human desire to believe, whether it be that inflation is good for you, that cow farts are boiling the oceans or that so-called “renewable“ sources of energy are a realistic substitute for the densest form of energy ever known to humans, being that of hydrocarbons.
The entire religion of Keynesian economics is built upon the ability to obfuscate the truth, and change the units of measurement used to determine whatever it is the high priests (economists) deem necessary, and to ensure it aligns and supports whatever political objectives are focal at the time. But now we have bitcoin.
We now have a tool that calls bullshit on this class of rent seekers who intentionally conceal the truth and actively work to gaslight and mislead. A tool they cannot capture. A tool they cannot change the units of measurement of to suit their agenda. A truly decentralized unit of measurement with a supply that cannot be altered. 21m. Never more.
While bitcoin very specifically shows the inaccuracies of monetary information embedded in fiat over time as well as the attempts by specific individuals and groups of humans to conceal such information, it also acts as a mechanism to bring into question many other ideas we may have previously accepted as truths. When you identify bad actors and realise a certain cohort of people are nefarious and their intentions are malevolent, you cannot help but enquire more deeply about what other misinformation has been installed in the operating system of societies around the world.
Having a tool to expose the misinformation in money is just the beginning.
Amplify the signal. Open Networks Win.
Hope you have a great weekend. I’ll talk to you next week.
AK
Published at Block Height: 748018
#130 Monetary Polygraph