“We are powerfully imprisoned in these dark times simply by the terms in which we were made to think.” Buckminster Fuller
For many bitcoins, “bitcoin is hope” and the future looks bright. However, this is not the case for many people who are not Bitcoin at the moment. Despite this, I think both bitcoins and non-bitcoins can agree that our collective experience right now feels submerged in the mud. Our world has rapidly declined to acute polarization, and even in the chaos, fear and confusion of today, most people can easily point out and identify where problems exist. While many of our “leaders” take advantage of the socially prevalent finger vote simply by giving an even more pronounced finger vote, our political bureaucrats cannot fulfill the role of the independent and creative problem solver. We Bitcoin pleasors who see the turmoil and disruption through the Bitcoin lens often try to help by providing an alternative, insightful and analytical narrative while trying to “scroll orange” friends and family. But like the mad aunt in the basement, we are often politely ignored, ridiculed or, at times, completely slandered.
Humans are biologically diverse analogous creatures, but here we live in an increasingly digital world of designs and zeros that are not self-fulfilling. Could this disconnect and non-tuning between the nuanced biological binary and the digital digital be the basis, or at least related, to today’s culturally chaotic time spirit? It’s definitely worth exploring.
The cognitive bias of science, business, and technology has long edited the notion of counting: “If it can be measured, it can be managed.” Others have taken this ethos further and argued that if something cannot be measured and managed, then it has no “value”. And while it may make pragmatic, logical sense for some, the artist in every mind knows the scent of puppies, an act of kind compassion or a spiritual touch of glorious sunset are all the most infinite, precious and memorable aspects of life. The truth is that what is unmeasurable and inspirationally motivating in life paradoxically makes life “equal” to living. The value is subjective and individual unique to each of us. And very important, what we value by nature Motivates substantially us. Basic instinctive impulses and internal motives stem from ancient brain survival centers, and being pre-cognitive, are largely illogical or irrational. If human behaviors are not driven by cognition and mere logic, why not attach more value to the study and development of emotional computational design tailored to how humans are naturally involved? Could it be that falling in love with measurement has prevented engineers from embarking on the “unmeasurable?”
If our world is increasingly absent from what inspires awe and makes us human, and instead enslaves us in body and mind through measured performance through exogenous and standard digital platforms, then we will continue to experience increasing mental illness, disease and social weakness. Mother Nature sends us clear messages. Do we pay attention and listen? Are we aiming for ourselves, for nature and for each other? Or are we running away hedonistically or perhaps angry and cringing at our polarized fear? How do we break our chains of control and claim our humanity and self-sovereignty in an increasingly centralized, binary and digital world where our behaviors and performance are measured and evaluated exclusively through exogenous criteria? Can Bitcoin fix that?
“Conquest of nature should be achieved through number and measure.” Descartes Renee
Our powerful digital computing sits on the shoulders of the 17th century, the father of the intellectual age of Western binary thinking, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). The Cartesian mechanistic view of the material world believed that man is the only dualistic creature, consisting of the separation of body (matter) and mind, while rejecting animals into the lower mechanistic world of the laws of nature and instinct. In 1637, Descartes introduced his “talk” that the world is like a machine, that its parts can be removed and explored separately and then reassembled to see the bigger picture, without sensory inputs. This rational reductionism includes most of contemporary thought and science, including today’s computational science and design / engineering.
Coupled with the industrialization and global scale of mass-produced products and services, the technological results from Cartesian heritage thinking have been nothing short of astonishing. It is not possible to effectively claim the avant-garde Cartesian epistemology and mechanistic thinking that led to these miraculous results as if they did not serve the masses of humanity and raise our quality of life across the globe.
Yet despite all our progress and thanks to the great thinkers and scientists – from the dualistic Descartes to the certainty of Newtonian physics and many others – here we are. We hit the wall. It seems that everything we once knew, trusted and believed as unraveled quickly or falsely. Amidst all the abundance made possible by measurement, science and industrial scale, families and communities are torn to shreds, children are tied to digital devices unable to play freely, and forced obedience to overt and covert central authority erodes our basic human freedoms.
“Totalitarian thought asks us to consider, much less to accept, only one hypothesis at a time.” – Nick Sabo
So how can we as unique individuals transcend the stuck and spend time on ourselves? How can we explore the nuances of uncertainty and recreate ourselves as we seek correspondence and adjustment with emerging distributed systems of distrustful self-government? Can we design for this using Bitcoin?
Nick Sabo, a cryptographer, early Bitcoin developer and brilliant polymath, suggests we practice “quantum thought” and write in a 2012 blog post:
“… Quantum thought … requires us to simultaneously simultaneously consider contradictory possibilities. Thinking and presenting arguments of only one party gives its thought and prose a false patina of consistency: a failure in thought and communication … whether you are unable or not Willing to think in such a quantum or academic way, it is much less likely that your thoughts deserve the consideration of others. ”
Sabo’s ‘Quantum Thought’ celebrates the value of seeing things from different perspectives. It is based on human thought, on consciousness itself, perhaps the central means of potential creative results.
In contrast to quantum thought, binary thinking simplifies complex ideas or concepts and throws them to one side or the other. It ignores and Depreciation The gray area, the obscure nuance in the middle. Binary thinking may seem to provide certainty in uncertain periods and may provide required approval or a sense of belonging to a group. However, binary thinking can reduce us to a stuck dogmatic rigidity that can quickly lead to polarization and conflict.
Consider the dialectic or the Venn diagram instead. This is the middle area, where one idea or concept converges or overlaps after another, where the true value is. This seemingly chaotic and often uncomfortable gathering of ideas and concepts is where the Holy Grail of creative potential resides. This is the game exploratory pursuit from which creative growth and change emerge. Game, as defined here, is the first principle of self-created, self-motivated and self-sustaining involvement design, while behavioral games and design are not.
“I linger in the possibilities.” Emily Dickinson
Are you starting to see the whole of how gaming and bitcoin are intertwined?
The premise of chaos and awakening theory is that as systems present more entropy and become more chaotic, complexity patterns begin to appear and organize themselves. As Nietzsche once said in insight, “A person must be a chaos in himself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
it’s early. But the signs indicate that we are in “birth pains,” giving birth to the new, decentralized, unmediated “quantum age.” The advent of Bitcoin is one clear and interesting indication. Cartesian thinking and Newtonian heritage work and provide us with certainty until we do not. Thus, if we want to engage with boundaries beyond certainty — the gray, unmeasurable, nuanced, and inaccurate realms — we must play. If humans want to explore the paradox universe and hold two or more different and conflicting thoughts or concepts without going crazy, we need to start looking at the role of to play Otherwise and with eyes open and softer.
In doing so, we will discover that play is really the means by which human beings develop psychological and individual self-sovereignty. The game is the basic and first principles of nature for creating involvement, and so nature signals to us whether we are in harmony with ourselves and our environment, hence the game measures and promotes our sustainability. By looking closely through the lens of game science, which I have been doing for over 13 years, one can see in the game a meta-instruction and reward of nature. Those who play, adapt, create and thrive are rewarded with countless health benefits. Those that do not become rigid, embarrassed, unadapted and inevitably replaced by naughty creative innovators. Game drives evolution. It is not optional or trivial. Knowing what is a game and what is not, is the basic to authentically engage in this world and recreate ourselves.
Although there is still a lot to discuss and research about gaming in our emerging quantum age and designing bitcoin applications, please let me cut the chase and end by leaving some original, controversial insights I wrote and published years ago, which you may now ponder with further thought:
“A game (in itself) may serve as the strange ‘attractor’ that organizes itself the growing complexity within the chaos. The game resides in both Newtonian and quantum systems as evidenced by the adjustment (deep involvement of one with some ‘other’ – person, object, activity Etc.) and entanglement (wave-particle superposition). Continuous research on the game may find in the game a strange fractal attraction factor and an organizing principle for both adjustment and entanglement. Ionic / multi-universe.It seems to be ‘appropriate’, because play is the creation of creativity (no creativity without play), it is iterative and elegant in the simplicity of its creative design.Really, only by being naughty can we even begin to understand the paradoxical nature of the universe . ”
A deeper understanding of the game and the different patterns and situations of the game will have direct applications in the development of distributed, non-intermediate, peer-to-peer Bitcoin engagement. I boldly argue that gaming is essential to self-government, identity and unmediated social media and bitcoin game design. By incorporating universal “game mitzvos” that all people already understand in a substantive and intuitive way, we are approaching a time when we have not only “submitted human technology,” but returned humanity to what it means to be human.
This is a guest post by Kristen Kozad. The views expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
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