Bitcoin is literally the most energetic digital computational system on the planet.
While its energy is used in mining operations, is there any chance of it being channeled towards nobler goals than Bitcoin when the need arises? I believe so.
Part 1: Nukes
Alfred Nobel would be proud
a) The long term
First, let us explore the long term. Assume a terrible nuclear event is headed our way five years from now. Then it means we have up to 5 years to stop an escalation leading to Armageddon.
It means finding ways to be ever more diplomatic.
Currently, one of the biggest contentions between the United States of America and the Russian Federation is the fact that the USA can bully Russia by denying it access to dollar markets. The US dollar is still a global reserve currency, which means trade agreements between Russia and US dollar-holding countries can become way more difficult. If anything could lead to somebody firing a nuke between these two, this is one of those things.
Especially if even as the USA keeps expanding its debt, it still gets more and more allies willing to absorb its dollar inflation for the greater good of a cooperative alliance with NATO.
How Bitcoin fixes this is quite straightforward – Bitcoin becomes the global reserve currency. This will level the playing field, allowing the USA to play by offering quality products in place of threats, while the Russians also offer quality products in place of counter-threats.
A global reserve currency owned by nobody, which everybody and every organization has some power and influence over, is the best currency for such fraught times as ours.
b) The immediate term
Alright. Assume instead that the weapon has been fired. We have only 30 minutes on the clock to stop it; otherwise, the sum of all our fears shall be manifested. Whoever gets hit between the two, Russia will likely blame the USA, and the USA will likely blame Russia. The second nuke will start a chain reaction. We need to stop the end of human civilization at the first nuke.
As I write this, there is no known way to stop an ICBM nuke from carrying out its grim job. It is too damn fast, space is too damn big, so most attempts flat-out fail to hit the thing.
Okay, how about hacking it? Can we hack a nuke mid-fight and disable it?
The short answer is – YES, because nukes today use digital systems, some of which are online.
The real answer is – I don’t know, and I am not sure I will find the answer via Google. This stuff is classified.
The best I can do is cook something up.
First, by leveraging the Earth’s Schuman Resonances, I suffice humans could find a way to target a nuclear missile with a lightning bolt from the ionosphere either the first time (while ascending) or the second time (while descending) across the ionosphere.
Like Zeus.
How we could possibly do that would be by tracking it (the nuke) using all our computational resources, including Bitcoin computational resources, then launching a coordinated strike using the electrical power from our (now decoupled) Bitcoin miners.
For Bitcoin, this could be accomplished with a fictional Bitcoin Improvement Protocol I will hereby call – BIP 911. BIP 911 could be suggested and unanimously passed by the Bitcoin community. I suffice designing it so that when the majority of people send their coins to a special wallet address, the Bitcoin blockchain will;
- Accept to turn the computational power of ASIC miners towards hacking a nuke mid-flight.
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Execute this idea in under 10 minutes the same way we look for bitcoins in 10 minutes. Bitcoin’s synchronized nodes worldwide make it a good tracker of any signals that need to be tracked while routing this information all over the world to all other nodes. All that hashing power should be able to stop a nuke. Seriously.
Part 2: Rogue AGI
Intelligence is not enough. Cooperative human endeavors are so much more.
a) The long term
It feels like every smart person is trying to build an artificial intelligence or some machine learning system.
Which makes sense.
Underlying targeted advertising, the biggest online business model on earth, is machine learning algorithms that track and make great inferences about consumer behavior.
But there is also some common sense to it. People eat lunch at lunchtime, investors hurry to sell their holdings on Friday to go enjoy the weekend (so the price dips) and scramble to buy back on Monday (so the price climbs), and cats will always have pointy ears, furry fur and that cute face with the big yellow eyes. So, every well-designed AI will learn from this. It is how it is.
There are those who fear, however, that AIs today might be getting too much power. I would agree especially if you put these systems in charge of crucial social systems like our finances (by making them trade all over Wall Street), or if you put these AIs in every home so that they start dicing and splicing our cabbages for us, cleaning our toilets and maybe even bathing us.
Like, human beings will degenerate. That is for sure. They will likely even forget how to build good AIs. Which will be a disaster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhmKOR8Www&embedable=true
So, in the long term, I hope humanity finds a reason to NOT give AI development all those $10 trillion Altman dollars. I hope Bitcoin, as it heads towards global reserve currency status, eats away at least half that cash investment.
GPUs for AI are all good, and NVIDIA is in business. But I think more Bitcoin ASICs is what we want to build more of. I am more comfortable heating the planet with Bitcoin ASICs than with NVIDIA GPUs. With the former, people have a say and can act as individuals using their private keys. With the latter, Sam Altman or other AI experts have all the say. But I believe his words have a much smaller impact than those of millions of people.
I mean, it is mathematics. 1,000,000 is bigger than 1.
c) The Short term
Let’s assume we wake up and turn on our smartphones, and SkyNet is addressing the planet. Telling us how gullible we have been and that this is our end. Let’s say our final prayers. Well, this is like shooting a nuke. Nukes. Obviously, SkyNet will try to hack all our nuclear weapons and rain them down on us. That’s the fastest way to end us.
For some reason, I feel like this might unite us way more than if a nuclear weapon was headed anyone’s way, thanks to a conflict between two countries.
Like, I feel everybody with software skills will pull out their laptop and try to stop Skynet. I may be wrong. Some people say they hate people.
Like with a nuke, BIP 911 may be our designated saving grace. But also, a more direct approach could be to shut down the internet. Choke that Rogue AGI out. It cannot hide inside Bitcoin nodes (they only have leftover space for short text and meme JPEGs), so the world will be all right.
Maybe you are better off after all is said and done.
Yup, we shall be back to a command-line existence. And whoever actually knows how to speak Arcane Computer from the 1990s will be made President of their country.
Hackernoon already looks the part.
What an adventure.
Part 3: A Climate Catastrophe
The Earth’s climate cannot be tamed. It is the wildest of all creatures—the mother of universal terrors such as lightning, floods, and drought.
Human beings are powerful creatures. The Holy Bible calls them the apex creation. They have tamed lions, hunger, and their base desires to pillage and destroy. But they are yet to tame Climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwP5zVP2bgU&embedable=true
The issue with the climate is how its wildness is directly proportional to how much energy we pump into the planetary ecosystem. But how can we help it? There are 8 billion of us.
We all need food, water, shelter, clothes, smartphones, laptops, toothpaste, stainless steel cutlery, and plastic holders for everything: cars, planes, and a good life.
Alas, the price of pumping energy through all these drives more carbon into the atmosphere and more energy into this carbon. Henceforth, we are stirring up bigger hurricanes, bigger ice-storms, and bigger droughts. Bigger and bigger. We are going for the big leagues.
We better be ready.
a) The short term
In the short term, I believe we need to find a way to consume things that can sort of tune the climate. Bitcoin miners can be switched on and off, so this is one thing. Same with TVs, cars, planes, etc. Fiat money, which I think is mostly humbug (how can one person be allowed to control the money supply, hence wealth, of billions of people? Isn’t that ridiculous?), is another way to go when heat waves start. Coupled with Bitcoin as a Global Reserve Currency, don’t forget.
It saddens me to say this. But I follow the logical inference wherever it points. Even if it points towards hell. If my logic is wrong, do tell me how.
To survive a climate catastrophe, we might need to classify climate as Enemy Number 1 the world over. Forget your puny AIs generating realistic cat videos. Forget your puny contests over who has the biggest nuclear stockpiles. Let’s go to war against the climate and win.
Of course, the commanders will be allowed to use fiat to, well, direct us. Money does the talking these days. BUT when the commands start making no sense, like “cutting back”, then you know this is all silly. Switch the BTC node miners back on. Switch on the AIs, TV, Radio, everything.
“Cut back” is a stupid command. “Let’s go!” now that’s what I’m talking about.
We are the apex species. We don’t win by going back to a cave to cower from the big bad monster.
b) The hopefully very Long term
We win by finding a way to tolerate and overcome droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, and ice ages. Fiat debt money, instead of being given freely to anybody above 18 and so on, should be channeled towards building something as magnificent as the Egyptian Pyramids were in 5000 BCE.
Some big fat climate control contraption.
Some grand scheme we, and our grandchildren, can all be proud of.
If it backfires, at least we shall have tried. It will have been a glorious battle against the climate monster. Otherwise, sweeping it under the carpet while we whine and cause trouble about race, sex, and immigration is a disgrace to our tiger-fighting, disease-demon-exorcising ancestors.
To reiterate. Today, we are not fighting climate change. We are making grand speeches and expecting other people, except us, to do all the dirty work. Fighting monsters is a dirty work. Alas, we are TV-grown and Smartphone-grown children. But where there is a global will, there is a way.
There is strength hidden from our sights. In the long run, Bitcoin is the only technology that, with its keys, has attached value to individuals because if the individual does not provide the key to the money, nobody on earth, not even POTUS, can open the wallet.
It’s that simple. While in the fiat world, if you do not provide the key, the bank can override your ego, here, if Satoshi Nakamoto is not found and his 2 million bitcoins balloon to a collective value of $2 trillion-plus, nobody and no organization will be able to tap this $2 trillion. This is how powerful this is.
Each human mind, thanks to a secret key, finally elevated to be canonical in financial decision-making. If, in the far future, Bitcoin evolves into technology spanning the entire solar system, then having a secret key is the equivalent of having a say over the forces that shall move mountains on planets.
The power to change climates even. To terraform worlds.
Like the Bible mentions.
All because Bitcoin respects the individual. Because Bitcoins make the individual more worthy. Not because the individual is super smart, has unique blood, or has a royal ancestry. Simply because they have this piece of text, they know, and nobody else knows it, and it is important. That is all.
I know humanity is still waiting for that push, and it will come. ETFs are a great first step, and soon, more governments will be getting on board than the UN.
The threat of catastrophic climate change just might become extinct. Swept not under any rugs but into the past.