Bitcoin Will Advance Science and Technology
The Center Cannot Hold: 7
The etymology of the word digit is Latin. Digitus: Finger, toe. Humans have been using their digits to count for thousands of years. It could be the case that our modern decimal system, or base ten number system, an extension of Hindu-Arabic counting systems, arose from counting on ten fingers. There are other base number systems, such as the Roman numeral system which uses an intermediate base of five. Digits are composed of and used to represent data, they are a way of gathering and organizing data from physical and hypothetical worlds. The important thing to remember about the evolution of digits is that all measurement requires interaction.
Similarly, Bitcoin is a way of gathering and organizing data from digital and hypothetical worlds. It must be stressed that before Bitcoin, it was impossible to associate events with points of time in decentralized systems. Bitcoin reunited money as symbol to its referent: work. It is this work that tethers Bitcoin the digital asset and energy with the physical world. (Although one could argue that the physical world and the digital world are from a certain vantage the same, this is a discussion for another time.)
Since its advent, we are still learning the full implications of the first terminally scarce form of property and energy that can be stored indefinitely. The important thing to remember is that Bitcoin is the only monetary measure, or system of accounting that is both decentralized and ungovernable. This means that as an economic measure, and store of value, Bitcoin is the least corruptible. It is the only form of ungovernable money, energy, and property at once.
For centuries our best explanations of the physical world were severely limited by the empirical fallacy. That is, our methods of measurement and understanding were limited by what we could immediately observe and experience. It wasn’t until the 15th century that Copernicus evidenced that our solar system is heliocentric, rather than geocentric. Still, without this knowledge many people today live with the empirical misunderstanding that the observable universe appears to rotate around the Earth.
Think of the empirical fallacy as a faulty frame of reference. We know in fact that our solar system and our sun are moving and rotating around the Milky Way, which is itself involved in complex motion. Everything that is, is moving. Although, with a limited frame of reference, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Imagine dragging files from your computer desktop into the trashcan icon. You observe it to be the case that you have thrown those files away, though this is by design. It’s an empirical error of observation. There is a better explanation, and it’s found on the back end of the user experience. Our knowledge about our environment at large is always limited in such a way.
All centralized systems are subject to the empirical fallacy. While centralized systems can be…
