50th post
Going to my friend Erik's today to fuck around on his computer and try to figure it out with him. We co-host a podcast together. We are seeing if we can get it set up for the podcast or at least see what we are working with.
Went to hot yoga last night. It was tough.
Wrote a good blog post yesterday. Made me cry.
Having coffee now. Reading about Monero.
I’ve been following Monero for ~5 years now, maybe longer. I can’t quite remember when I was first introduced to it, probably around the time I was introduced to bitcoin.
I really like Monero because of its anti-surveillance ethos. I think my libertarian upbringing and inherited distrust in authority makes me quite amenable to its adoption as well.
I guess I just think that the dystopian reality we are living in, i.e. a world were corporations and governments know more about the individual than the individual knows about the corporations or the governments, should be fundamentally reversed.
The whole premise of “The West” or “liberal democracy” or “free nation” is protection of the individual and their liberties. And that if a government is given the chance it will fuck your day; so don't let it.
My Kantian “ought to be” is that individuals should have more information about companies and “the state” than companies and “the state” have about them.
“Information Asymmetry” is when one party has more or better information than the other in a transaction.
An example of this, would be buying a car. The car salesmen typically has a lot more information than the buyer. Not just on the car, but also information on car selling and negotiation, different classes of buyers and their behaviour, information to look for that could lead to an upsell or an opportunity to drive a higher price, etc. General idea: car salesman probabilistically has much more info than the typical person buying the car.
An other example of this would be walking up to an immigration officer at a passport checkpoint at an airport. They scan your passport and the typical person has no idea what kind of information that officer is reading about you. The sum of a vast government data collection and information apparatus has distilled all relevant information and is presenting that to the border officer to make a decision if you should be allowed in, denied, or further questioned. The average traveller does not have a vast government data collection and information apparatus at their disposable. It’s an asymmetric negotiation.
The phone and internet evened out this playing field at their advent into society; giving individuals much more information and in a lot of cases better information than any company or state. However, in recent years institutions and companies have adapted and that "evening" of the information asymmetry has once again moved in the direction of the state.
“Customer Relationship Management” Software or CRMs as they are commonly referred to are a good example of this. At an early stage in their existence they kind of sucked or relied on a skilled user to input and maintain the information they had on customers. So at scale the information asymmetry was not that bad. Emails would be outdated, spousal and income information way off, buying history wrong. Enough info to sometimes be right about a customer but mostly wrong.
But as time has progressed they have become increasingly sophisticated, easy to use, maintain, and even predict.
I read a book a few years ago called weapons of math destruction by Cathy O’Neil (just looked it up it came out in 2016, so things are probably exponentially worse). In her book she describes how companies and governments data processing has become increasing able to observe, track, predict or influence the behaviours of people they track.
A memorable example from the book was Target knowing that a man’s teenage daughter was pregnant before he did. Another example was good vs. bad loan advertisements being shown more frequently dependent on a persons zip code, blindly systematizing better or worse economic opportunities, compounding historical injustice and inequality.
There were many examples like this in that book. And I think it has come home to roost in a lot of gross and nefarious ways.
The optimist in me thinks as more millennials and gen Z get into decision making roles, corporate or official, there is a chance at a reversal based on exposure and literacy of these problems. The nihilist in me thinks that these systems have given corporate and official positions a lot of power; and giving up power is not a very human thing to do.
That’s why I’ve been mining and buying Monero and telling people about it. As far as I’ve been convinced, it seems like it is the most viable option out of this weird state/corporate sponsored digital panopticon we live in.
Essentially, try to siphon as much wealth from that system as you can before its capital controls become so restrictive you leave, or can hold safely until the storm passes if you can't leave (i.e. see China or Europe during WWI/II).
A good scene from a book that illustrates the horrors of war and state restriction to movement was the difficult border crossing to Switzerland of characters Catherine and Fredric in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Reading that made me really reflect on the nature of the state apparatus and how much it depends on people staying in it and participating for it to survive; and the lengths it will go to ensure people do.
Another piece of media is the classic film Casablanca. A great watch. What it illustrated to me that in times of war or conflict or state restriction to movement, only the rich or connected (and sometimes only the rich And connected) get to move. So make sure you have money to bribe the border guard.
the next day
I think I care about this stuff because I feel little control over the world and systems that exert there control over me. It makes me feel helpless and these ideas help me at least feel like I am doing something to regain some semblance of control.
It's an interesting psychology.
I spend so much time ruminating on these kinds of ideas that it probably leads to lost opportunities within the current system that would make my life better in the ways I think the system is taking away from me.
I published this yesterday with a link to my monero address asking people to hack it. I've taken that down because I think that came from a place of being on my computer all day and feeling the deep emptiness and craving for real human connection and attention that comes from doing that.
Modern life is interesting. It proposes situations to one they'd never think to be in.
Take care.