#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin In the digital age, power projection is not just about physical strength, but also about understanding and employing technology. The author delves into the reasons behind human societies engaging in physical power competitions, and how this understanding can help us grasp the potential value of Bitcoin as a digital warfighting protocol. The main challenge is understanding why people would want to project power and impose physical costs through cyberspace. To improve cybersecurity, we should focus on physically constraining computers rather than solely relying on encoding logical constraints into software. This approach could help combat the current hacking epidemic. An open-source internet protocol and infrastructure that physically restricts computers via the internet would offer a new level of cybersecurity, allowing society to protect itself against cyber threats in a more effective way.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin The rise of the digital age and the metaverse presents an unprecedented opportunity for the creation and exploitation of abstract power hierarchies. As human societies become more reliant on computers and digital platforms, they become increasingly vulnerable to manipulation and control by those with the knowledge and ability to exploit these technologies. This is reminiscent of the past, where god-kings used abstract power and storytelling to control resources and entire populations. While the technologies may have changed, the underlying dynamics of power and control have not. As people immerse themselves in virtual worlds, they risk losing their grip on objective reality and becoming susceptible to those who wield abstract power within these digital realms. In the past, physical power served as a counterbalance to the dysfunctionality of abstract power hierarchies; however, the digital age presents new challenges for the application of physical power in this context. The lessons from history are clear: human societies must find ways to impose physical constraints on the growing and unimpeachable abstract power presented by the digital age. Decentralization, checks and balances, and the continuous fight for individual rights and equality are essential for preventing the exploitation and abuse of abstract power hierarchies in the metaverse and beyond. To secure their future, people must learn from the past and adapt to the unique challenges of the digital age, while not forgetting the importance of physical power in maintaining a balance of power and control.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin The rise of digital technology and software has resulted in the formation of new abstract power hierarchies, where the technocratic elite exercise significant control over people's data and digital resources. Software developers and administrators have become modern-day god-kings, similar to the rulers and clerics of the past. The immense abstract power they hold over digital resources makes the population vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Moreover, this emphasizes that people's increasing reliance on digital technology has led to an exponentially growing benefit for those seeking to exploit them. The current state of affairs is reminiscent of historical systems of control, where rulers would use complex language and storytelling to establish abstract power over their subjects. As a result, society now faces a significant security problem, as people have forgotten the lessons of history and are increasingly exposed to the whims of software developers and network administrators. In this new era of digital-age resources, people must become aware of the potential for systemic exploitation and the need to find ways to impose physical costs on those who abuse their power. Bitcoin, as mentioned earlier, provides one such example of a technology that seeks to impose physical costs on potential attackers. By understanding the nature of abstract power hierarchies and the lessons of history, society can hope to protect itself from this new form of digital oppression.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin The connection between abstract power hierarchies, warfare, and software is significant because, in the 21st century, software has come to encode the world's largest abstract power hierarchies. The rise of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Amazon has given a select few people immense abstract power and control over digital information, which has led to various forms of systemic exploitation and abuse. The ongoing centralization of digital information and resources has brought forth a new type of technocratic ruling class, which raises concerns about digital oppression and the erosion of individual rights. Consequently, finding ways to secure our digital information and infrastructure has become increasingly important. Bitcoin, with its underlying proof-of-work technology, offers a potential solution to this problem. By allowing people to project physical power (in the form of watts) to secure bits of information against exploitation, Bitcoin demonstrates the possibility of a zero-trust, permissionless, egalitarian, and decentralized control over digital information. Bitcoin, therefore, is not merely a monetary system, but a new system for securing any and all information in cyberspace. By using physical constraints instead of logical constraints, Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize the field of cybersecurity and even transform the field of physical security in general, including national strategic security. In this context, the adoption of Bitcoin and similar technologies could have profound implications for existing power hierarchies, including nation-states, as people begin to build dominance hierarchies based on physical power to protect their digital information and resources.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Nikola Tesla, over a century ago, had already predicted the eventual shift from kinetic warfare to electronic warfare as a means to achieve lasting peace between nations. In his essay "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy," Tesla identified the kinetic power projection paradox and foresaw the need for an alternative to minimize loss of life and destruction. Tesla believed that the way to ensure lasting peace would not be by building more efficient kinetic power projection technologies but by providing nations the means to engage in non-kinetic (i.e., electronic) global warfare. This would allow nations to continue to compete in global-scale physical power competitions while reducing the lethality and destructiveness of these conflicts. According to Tesla, the key to achieving global peace is to replace some of society's kinetic warfighting technologies with electric warfighting technologies where it would be effective to do so. This would lead to a new form of warfare that is non-lethal and less destructive, allowing for the possibility of lasting peace on a global scale. In summary, Tesla's predictions align with the idea that a shift from kinetic to electronic warfare could offer a way for societies to maintain their security and settle disputes without resorting to the destructive and potentially catastrophic consequences of kinetic warfare. This shift could lead to a more stable global environment and the possibility of lasting peace, as nations would engage in non-lethal competitions that still allow them to establish their pecking order in a zero-trust, permissionless, and egalitarian way.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Non-kinetic power competitions, such as electric power or cyber warfare, could enable mutually assured preservation by providing an alternative to the destructiveness of kinetic warfare. In a world stalemated by nuclear warheads, societies are vulnerable to exploitation through their belief systems, as physical power is no longer a viable option for settling disputes and establishing pecking order. The solution may lie in non-kinetic forms of physical power projection technology that allow for global-scale physical power competitions in a zero-trust, permissionless, and egalitarian way but non-lethally and non-destructively. This would enable societies to continue along their path of technological evolution without worrying about hitting a kinetic ceiling. In this future, nations would rely more on "soft" forms of non-kinetic power projection, such as cyber and electronic warfare, while still maintaining the kinetic stalemate. This would allow societies to secure themselves against foreign invasion and domestic exploitation by making it impossible to justify the physical cost of attacking or exploiting them, regardless of their power projection technology's efficiency. The future battlefield of national-scale warfare could be an electro-cyber battlefield where nations impose severe physical costs on each other electronically rather than kinetically. This approach would enable nations to continue evolving their power projection capabilities without encountering the limitations and destructive consequences of kinetic warfare.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin A stalemate to war, such as a strategic nuclear stalemate, may represent a god-king's paradise, as it would create a vulnerable society prone to systemic exploitation and abuse. In this scenario, people would lose the ability to use physical power as a zero-trust, permissionless, and egalitarian basis for settling disputes and establishing a pecking order. This would lead to a trust-based, permission-based, and inegalitarian society where a ruling class has unimpeachable control over the ruled class. A stalemated society would have no means to physically constrain and decentralize abstract power hierarchies, making it vulnerable to global-scale exploitation and abuse by a single, tyrannical ruling class. This would require the global population to adopt a single abstract power hierarchy and grant extraordinary amounts of abstract power and control authority to a single ruling class. The population would have to trust that the ruling class would not exploit them, as they would be physically powerless to stop it at a strategic level. In this situation, an oppressed populace would be trapped in a system where a ruling class must always be trusted not to exploit their abstract power since the population is otherwise physically powerless to counter them. This would make it too impractical to fight civil or revolutionary wars within nuclear-armed nations, leaving people vulnerable to systemic predators.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin A kinetic stalemate, such as the strategic nuclear stalemate, does not necessarily bring lasting peace but rather creates significant systemic security hazards. By focusing on the idea that strategic stalemates are good for society, it ignores the core concepts of natural selection, human metacognition, and the differences between abstract and physical power. The belief that a stalemate is good for agrarian society depends on the misconception that humans can live in a world without predators and entropy. This implies that we can rely on our imaginations and belief systems to entrust people with power, without the risk of exploitation or abuse. However, history has shown that abstract power hierarchies and logical constraints encoded into rules of law are not sufficient to maintain security and prevent warfare. Peace is temporary and fragile, often disrupted by the dysfunction of abstract power hierarchies. Believing that a kinetic stalemate represents lasting peace is unreasonable. Instead, it is more likely that such a stalemate signifies a significant systemic security hazard. To address this challenge, it is crucial to recognize the limitations of abstract power and seek innovative solutions that balance efficiency, security, and the potentially destructive consequences of conflict.

Agrarian society, in its pursuit of replacing physical power to resolve disputes and manage resources, seems to have hit a "kinetic ceiling." As humans become more efficient at imposing physically prohibitive costs on each other, it can lead to a point where it's no longer practically useful for ensuring security against systemic exploitation. Strategic nuclear warheads exemplify this paradox. While they offer the ability to project immense power at a relatively low cost in terms of size, weight, and resources, they simultaneously pose an existential threat to humanity. The irony lies in the fact that, by making kinetic physical power so inexpensive to project, it has become too expensive in terms of potential destruction and lives lost. In the quest for more efficient national security, humans have inadvertently created the most inefficient capability—strategic nuclear warfare. This paradoxical situation, where increased efficiency in power projection leads to greater inefficiency, is termed the "kinetic ceiling." To overcome this challenge, it is crucial to find innovative solutions that strike a balance between efficiency and the potentially destructive consequences of conflict.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Warfare can be seen as a predictable, self-reinforcing feedback loop driven by flawed human belief systems and abstract power hierarchies. This cycle consists of phases of peace and conflict, reminiscent of a blockchain, where winners write history as a distributed ledger of resource control and ownership consensus. Despite countless warnings from past generations about the limitations of these belief systems, humanity's hubris has led to the belief that abstract power can replace physical power in establishing order. By distancing ourselves from nature and avoiding physical conflict for moral or ethical reasons, we have created increasingly dysfunctional and destructive situations. This has backed humanity into a corner where resolving major disputes and issues has become too costly in terms of energy, destruction, and injury. To address this, it is essential to recognize the importance of physical power and its role in maintaining a balanced and functional society, while also finding innovative ways to minimize the destructive consequences of conflicts. Chart showing the cyclical nature of war as a blockchain

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Throughout history, wars have been driven by imagined beliefs and abstract realities, often leading to devastating consequences for humanity. As people become deeply invested in these belief systems, they willingly engage in intraspecies violence, driven by concepts like "good" and "government." Warfare, despite its numerous downsides, contributes to the formation of larger cooperative structures and the accomplishment of significant achievements, such as winning world wars or space travel. However, this also leads to increased opportunities for exploitation and the perpetuation of a cycle of self-destruction and conflict. The predictability and cyclical nature of war is tragically evident. People are willing to accept bombing cities based on the belief systems of others, believing that there is a viable alternative to physical power in resolving disputes or allocating resources. Unfortunately, these beliefs often make societies even more vulnerable to exploitation and violence. To break this cycle, it's important to recognize that there may be no replacement for physical power, but we can strive to replace kinetic power with electric power. By finding a non-kinetic, non-lethal form of warfare that enables global strategic power competitions, we may be able to move beyond the destructive patterns of the past. This is where innovative technologies like Bitcoin come in, offering a potential solution for zero-trust, egalitarian, and permissionless global-scale power projection.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Sapiens, with their abstract power hierarchies, achieved unprecedented resource abundance but inadvertently set the world ablaze with warfare, leading to the potential for another mass extinction event. Ironically, the belief systems designed to avoid war often become the cause of it, as attempts to prevent small-scale disputes escalate into large-scale conflicts. Some agrarian populations become so self-domesticated and ideologically driven that they cannot protect themselves against invaders, leading to exploitation and oppression. Many people wrongly believe that laws and abstract power can protect them from systemic abuse, often entrapping themselves in inequality and oppression. Societies that survive are those that recognize their vulnerabilities, organize better, cooperate at larger scales, and employ innovative technologies to fight off threats. Ultimately, war is the same power projection game, regardless of its label or context. The primary difference lies in the stories and abstract thoughts used to motivate people in organizing and imposing physical costs on one another.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap #Bitcoin Nation states, as a concept, may be relatively new, but the fundamental dynamics of security they embody have existed for billions of years. To excel at national security, a nation must be better organized, cooperative, and innovative, finding increasingly clever ways to project physical power against neighbors, increase CA (cost of attack), and decrease BCRA (benefit-to-cost ratio of attack). Like any organism, nations must continually evolve to ensure their security against predators and entropy. Sometimes, organisms struggle to find effective power projection tactics and become trapped in a "bounded prosperity trap." The Great Oxygenation Event, caused by cyanobacteria's discovery of photosynthesis, is an example of such a trap. However, life found ways to innovate and cooperate at higher scales, eventually escaping the trap through the evolution of multicellular organisms. Considering the concept of bounded prosperity traps, the author suggests that humans may have entered another such trap by creating global-scale agrarian warfare and the looming threat of nuclear extinction. This hypothesis is grounded in various theoretical concepts from biology, psychology, anthropology, political science, game theory, and systems security theory. It remains to be seen if humans can innovate and cooperate at a higher scale to escape this potentially devastating trap.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap Nation states, though they feel like they've been around forever, are a relatively new and untested concept in the grand scheme of human history. For most of our existence, humans have not lived in nation states or believed in them. Abstract power hierarchies have been present for thousands of years, but not at the scale and level of asymmetry found in nation states. These nation states have systemic security flaws, inheriting the issues of abstract power hierarchies and magnifying them. People with significant power and control authority over valuable resources have a history of exploiting and abusing their power. Despite this, modern agrarian society has scaled this belief system, entrusting the control of resources to a few individuals. The adoption of large-scale abstract power hierarchies is necessary for survival against neighbors with similar hierarchies. This leads to the question of whether nation states are a good long-term idea for agrarian society. Nation states only emerged in the last 0.1% of our anatomically modern time on Earth, making them practically untested belief systems. Although there is insufficient data to determine if nation states can function properly at this scale, there is enough data to conclude that smaller-scale abstract power hierarchies are highly prone to exploitation and abuse. The human tendency to live according to abstract thoughts and imaginations makes them vulnerable to psychological exploitation within belief systems. In the past 200 years, nation states have enabled both some of the best and worst examples of human achievement and destruction. Ultimately, the effectiveness and long-term viability of nation states remain inconclusive, with their true impact on human survival yet to be determined.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap In agrarian societies, national strategic security depends on managing the benefit-to-cost ratio of attack (BCRA). Nations face two primary vulnerabilities: foreign invasion and internal corruption. To address these vulnerabilities, they need to impose severe physical costs on attackers. BCRA is determined by the benefit of attacking (Ba) and the cost of attacking (Ca). Ba depends on a nation's resource abundance and control authority, while Ca relates to a nation's ability to impose physically prohibitive costs on attackers. To prevent hazardous BCRA levels, nations must either shrink their economy or grow their capacity to impose costs on attackers. Increasing Ca is the preferred option. Pacifism can pose a security threat, as it raises BCRA levels and makes a nation more likely to face invasion or corruption. Long-term survival requires maintaining a BCRA level lower than the hazardous level of the surrounding environment. This creates a prosperity margin, which indicates how much a nation's BCRA can rise before it risks being attacked. As a nation's economy grows stronger and more resource-abundant, its Ba and BCRA increase, making it more vulnerable to invasion or corruption. This dynamic challenges nations, as their success simultaneously increases their vulnerability. Additionally, nations cannot accurately assess their prosperity margin, as the hazardous BCRA level is a probabilistic phenomenon dependent on neighboring nations' capacity and inclination.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap The US dollar serves as the world reserve currency, backed by the US military and the abstract power of the presidential republic. The value of USD, however, depends on the faith people have in it, making it critical for the US not to abuse its control authority. If the US were to devalue the USD, deny people's access to it, or become systemically exploitative, the world could counterbalance US power by simply not valuing the currency. The US made itself susceptible to this risk when it switched from a gold-backed currency to a fiat system in the 1970s. This transformed the USD into an abstract belief system without any physical constraints to secure it against exploitation. The value of the dollar and the abstract power of those who control it rely solely on faith, which can be lost at any time. This precarious power dynamic emphasizes the need for discipline and care in managing the USD. Similar principles apply to any valuable resource, like diamonds, which could lose value if people stopped valuing them. However, essential resources like food, water, and oxygen cannot be devalued, and controlling their ownership and chain of custody can result in physical power struggles, such as wars.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches #zap The relationship between abstract power and physical power, particularly in the context of historical monarchies highlights that abstract power relies on the belief of the people and the support of physical power projectors, such as militaries or knights. As societies have evolved, many monarchies have become ceremonial due to people losing faith in the abstract power of kings or countering their physical power. Physical power is seen as superior to abstract power since it can enforce and legitimize laws and actions. The cooperation between abstract and physical power projectors is crucial for maintaining control authority. However, if physical power projectors choose to stop supporting the abstract power, the control authority of the ruler is lost. This dynamic showcases the dependence of abstract power on physical power for enforcement and legitimacy. Its important to note that when a ruler asks physical power projectors to enforce laws they are creating a false positive correlation in the minds of the ruled class to make it seem like the abstract power projector has actual physical power. As many rulers have learned the hard way over many acts of mutiny, physical power projectors can and often do choose to stop enforcing or legitimizing their ruler's abstract power.

#grownostr #plebchain #zap GM #Nostriches! I will be continuing on my journey to summarize key points in #thethesis today. Join me as we move down this path.

#grownostr #plebchain #nostriches Midjourney has absolutely no clue how to make a galaxy... 🤦‍♂️

Ok #nostriches I'm done posting summaries from #thethesis for tonight. Will continue my journey through the #nostr jungle tomorrow.