Hello Philosophy Society!
Discussion 1: Philosophy and Meaning of Life
Our first topic was the concept of Philosophy itself and how the determination of meaning is an essential part of what it means to be philosophical. We then transitioned into the meaning of life. Life itself is a cycle of decay and growth as seen in the biological world. Humans as agents who have self-awareness, create meaning through their identities, society and decisions they make as they live their lives.
Discussion 2: Monad
A monad is how Pythagoras described the fundamental substance of the universe or a ‘unit.’ Monad was also used to describe the supreme being from a cosmological perspective of the totality of all things.
Whatsapp Chat 1: Crypto vs Banking
Chris: know silver, real money....
Dimitri: look into precious metals too, lithium, nickel, copper
Tarek: Bitcoin
Chris: Honestly bro bitcoin is a bad idea. Think of intrinsic value. Bitcoin had none
Tarek: People are using it to exchange value
Chris: What's diff between bitcoin and any other crypto
Tarek: I buy food with crypto
Chris: What else can bitcoin be used for?
Tarek: Exchange value
Chris: And where does it get its value from?
Tarek: It has no other utility. People using it
Chris: Silver has a ton of uses. What stops someone from creating a diff bitcoin? Why is bitcoin diff?
Tarek: No one .... it's like money anyone can create money. 99 percent of crypto will fail. But there is that 1 percent that will grow like amazon
Dimitri: My only issue w crypto is the possibility of cyber attack, taking down the network like they did with Rodgers a couple weeks ago. then no access to $. or the government freezing accounts like they did with the truckers
Tarek: But these issues exist with the current monetary system. Bank heists , credit card fraud ect.
Vicki: The consumer is protected from bank robberies and credit card fraud.
Tarek: U can buy insurance for crypto deposits. The same businesses will migrate. It's the technology that's changing.
Reggie: A bank's raison d'etre is matching borrowers and savers for the purposes of lending. Lending is assessed using personal capacity, and loss ratios (ie. bankruptcy rates) must be factored in. Crypto does nothing to solve for this. Not even defi can deal with this.
The most important thing when lending money is understanding the customer's capacity to pay back the loan. Equally important, if the borrower cannot pay back the loan, the bank needs enough capital to keep itself afloat. This is also why fractional reserve banking is preferred for modern economies.
Put differently... Imagine that full reserve banking was in place and a bank was to lend out ALL the money it had in the vault. If even just one loan went bad, what would happen then? There would be no incentive to issue small business loans. All you'd have are Dragons Dens charging double-digit interest. In other words, interest rates would increase.
Further, let's look at the fees charged for crypto. Why bother? VISA is so ubiquitous and virtually free as long as you pay it back right away.
Vicki: Crypto insurance does not protect against volatility.
Reggie: Crypto insurance is akin to CDIC. But even if fraud wasn't an issue, the major issue is on lending capacity.
Another hypothetical... Let's say though crypto was to pick up. The Big 5 banks would pounce on that like flies on shit, as only the banks have enough capital to withstand any economic downturn (and thus bankruptcies)
Given that silver has industrial uses, how does one determine whether to use it as money or as a commodity? Same with gold: money or jewelry? With fiat dollars though, you don't have that problem. In a democracy, fiat money is the citizenry's money, and its intrinsic value stems from the fact that it is the only method of payment accepted for taxes.
This is why the tally stick was so successful for hundreds of years in Britain. And why the US government was able to confiscate everyone's gold during the Great Depression through Executive Order 6102. Guns determine power, not money. Crypto, as a mere medium of exchange, will not be able to change that.
Last thing: look at the gas price for ETH or time for BTC.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_gas_price
https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_confirmation_time
As a consumer, why would I waste my time when Visa or MasterCard can complete transactions in seconds for free?
Tarek: Crypto is a commodity.
Reggie: How so?
Tarek: Maybe bitcoin .... smart contracts might be considered securities.
Reggie: Crypto being classified as either a commodity or security is simply to determine how the govt will regulate them. But Bitcoin is not a commodity in the traditional sense, ie. as a fungible economic input used to create other goods. As a commodity, Bitcoin would be regulated by the CFTC in the US; as a security, it would be the SEC.
Ironically, it's the govt yet again who will determine the fate of this 'decentralized' asset/currency lol.
Tarek: Bitcoin is alive and well. Until it's not. Time will tell.
Cordell: none of you are truly know how crypto works do you?
https://twitter.com/montana_wong/status/1556706440726716416?s=24&t=-I7Xr0cyFzOnefM5mF0jlA
Governments can only do what governments do best. Try to get their itty bitty sticky slimy greedy fingers into the roots of everything to tax and oppress the majority and give back to the minority.
Cashless is always going to be on the table because governments dislike people having any power, aka mafias. Removing cash removes mafias. It would take a long time to get there though
Reggie: Sorry but how does the switch to PoS change the game? There have been many fork events in the past. None of them address any of the issues listed above. Governments always find a way. They have the military, they have guns.
Credit cards are cashless, no? And now importantly, how does that change how credit is issued? If you had 100 BTC and I asked you to borrow it, how would you determine whether to lend it to me?
Cordell: Cashless but uses fiat cash and paper trail to be paid off hence it relies on cash. I am not here to argue but to inform, which I hope that twitter post did.
Reggie: The Twitter post simply informed on a mechanism (i.e. a hard fork and some of the downstream impacts re. gas). But in a modern economy that relies on debtors and creditors, method of payment is only a small part.
Zachary: Ponzi schemes. That’s the closest thing it has to an economic case rn.
Tarek: That's people abusing defi. Defi with a solid case can be used responsibly and create value. Look what they did with luna. It was a good project. Then herd mentality kicked in. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. They blew 60 billion in 13 months. It didn't have to go that far. We need freud/nietzsche psychology to understand why people always choose the suicidal path instead of going for a win in the long game .
Zachary: I assume you don’t mean this.
Tarek: Yes this project
Zachary: What was it going to be?
Tarek: No one is getting their money back.
Tarek: It was a new currency created on the back of the crypto bull market. Reached a market cap of 15 billion. Then a bank run killed it in one night
Zachary: Seems a little unremarkable as far as crypto goes.
Tarek: Went to 0. And so did the luna coin. They both crashed.
Zachary: I don’t know, I think the chain just doesn’t do what it’s meant to do yet, fees are just too high and too slow for it to do anything other than buy drugs or run Ponzi schemes. And tbf it’s a very good way to buy drugs.
Tarek: It is being used. Just not by many yet.
Zachary: Yeah but why. Like what’s the case for using it over any other payment method.
Tarek: It's easier and discreet. Value moves at the speed of light. Go back 100 years when jp morgan introduced the light bulb to his father. He yelled at him telling him it's for clowns and children. They used gas for lighting back then. But gas light involves people handling gas and many other things to get to the product "light". The light bulb was a machine that did all that. It's kind of like the same but for money.
Zachary: But you don’t want value to move with currency, right? Right now Ether in particular is so volatile and takes so long to process transactions that the value transferred at the beginning of a trade can be completely different than at the end of it
Tarek: Enter "stable coins."
Zachary: Tether is more fraudulent than a mortgage lender in 2006 tho.
Tarek: Well I am pointing to the idea, not projects. But I see your point .the space needs regulation
Cordell: I feel like many people don’t know about crypto and that they downplay its importance and relevance. The chain is the whole reason it will eventually be cheaper but if you look at history all things tech the rich(er) utilize it for years as early adopters first.
The major issue as always in every type of open market where trading can take place is Whales. People with large sums of money control literally everything. That is one of if not the main issues with all markets, stock markets and crypto markets. The big guys literally can manipulate it while everyone is forced to sit and watch while they make the calls. That is why GME is was so awesome to see
Zachary: I really don’t think so. A lot of the issues with the chain like a lack of consumer protections are built-in to how blockchain works, and the time issues are built into PoW and don’t really go away with PoS, although I suppose that kind of remains to be seen.
Transaction fees could potentially go down but the rest of the issues are pretty built in to how the chain works.
Cordell: the chain is secure though these blockchain companies spend their entire days working on counter cyber warfare and basically are on constant alert, i wouldn't worry too much about that.
Zachary: Well then how do you explain all the fraud that happens in crypto today? The chain is very secure against man in the middle attacks but not against far more common kinds of fraud like phishing or Ponzi schemes. The only way to implement consumer protections in crypto spaces so far is to negotiate with validators to institute a rollback, which barely ever happens unless the stolen funds are in the millions.
Cordell: Money laundering and abuse where anonymity exists is unsurprising and obviously going to happen. You can't stop people wanting to take others' money fraudulently because people are uninformed. The more informed you are the less likely you'll fall victim to fraud. credit card fraud happens daily to new immigrants to canada who have know idea its normal to get spam calls daily... What's the difference?
Zachary: The difference is that private banks and the Canadian government have strong consumer protection laws; if I steal your credit card it’s relatively easy for you to get the charges rolled back. If I steal the keys to your wallet or drop a smart contract into your wallet that steals your funds, you have literally no possible recourse other than maybe getting the stolen tokens delisted on marketplaces.
Cordell: Ehhh no because the majority of the fraud happening the money is moved and untraceable by the time the investigation begins but maybe that's just from my experience with knowing about these types of situations.
In this case you are correct. So there's room for that. Make some sort of service or technology that utilizes the BC and does just that. It's an infant market with infinite possibilities to capitalize on.
Zachary: But the point of blockchain is that you can’t roll it back, that’s the entire USP. You can’t make such a technology unless maybe all the validators were incorporated into one corporation but that defeats the purpose of decentralization
Reggie: I would add... With a credit card, getting charges "rolled back" actually means that the bank makes the customer whole, and the back is then left to deal with the issue. Banks can do this because they have the size and scale to absorb the loss.
And keep in mind: with a credit card (ie. not VISA debit, etc), that is actually debt. Again to my point above, crypto is a solution for transactions; defi on its own is insufficient for dealing with credit/debt. There needs to be something else to adjudicate the capabilities of a borrower
Zachary: Is that how debit works as well or no?
Reggie: For debit, you need to have the funds in your account. If you don't have funds, then the transaction will be rejected. So basically, it's like a prepaid Visa.
Zachary: Yeah I know that I’m asking how fraud prevention works.
Reggie: Yes, it's the same. All the banks are subject to similar escalation procedures (i.e. ombudsman, etc) to deal with these things
https://www.obsi.ca/en/consumer-complaint-process.aspx
Cordell: this usually only happens when they bust down the operation which rarely happens. The person scammed can be waiting quite some time unless it was no fault of their own (they didn't click an email, or actively[give credit card info cuz they won a cruise on a phone call] fall for a scam is what I mean.)
Zachary: I don't think that’s true actually, I’ve had fraudulent charges placed on my credit cards and the bank rolls that back immediately.
Reggie: Depending on the amount and circumstances, it can be targeted straightforward at times for the banks to determine whether a transaction was fraudulent. That said, scams that involve phishing emails, or wiring money through Western Union, those are typically know reimbursed.
At any rate though, let's say that fraud wasn't a concern for crypto, and that ALL transactions were always 100% perfect. There are still a plethora of issues that need to be resolved. I mentioned lending above, and determining if the borrower is creditworthy. There's also the underwriting function when corporations look to issue equity and/or debt. Typically that happens through a syndicate of banks. Crypto cannot replace that. What about international trade when money is held in escrow, or a banker's acceptance (basically a short term loan) is issued prior to goods being received by the buyer?
In the first case, you need a counterparty to hold the funds in escrow. I suppose you could use some kind of blockchain solution; however, you would need to convince all companies/parties to agree to the same mechanism. This rarely happens in business today, especially when they are in different jurisdictions.
The second case is similar to the lender-borrower problem. For international trade though, usually the buyer would need to post collateral for a banker's acceptance. Now collateral comes in many different forms. How does one adjudicate and appraise that collateral? Crypto can't do that.
But let's say there were other solutions/technologies that could solve for adjudication, underwriting, etc. How much money would a company be willing to invest to transform their billing/payments infrastructure? Keep in mind that many companies have spent millions $$ on systems and consulting services. All of that would be a sunk cost just to cut out the middleman.
There needs to be a business case where a company will realize significant benefits by switching over. I suppose one could go after the mass market (ie. average people). However, you would need to make it fast and easy to operate. Right now, it isn't. Could it be in the future? Perhaps. But how much faster and easier can it be than with Visa/MasterCard/Interac?
Cordell: The current system we rely on is what the richest people manipulate and have for generations twisted and construed pathways and methods for them to remain at the top and in control, world wars were started/staged to enable changes to banking systems in times of "emergencies " much like our govts made changes during "unprecedented pandemic times."
Reggie: To what extent did communism rely on the banking system to terrorize the population? Every system has pluses and minuses, elites and untouchables.
Cordell: It isn't meant to replace it and that's why it hasn't but it IS meant to provide opportunities like what you're describing it lacks in, to be launched and in some way facilitated using this new technology. It's different and it ultimately can be the standard one day but it requires adoption. I speak of how the elite used the wars to control the majority of the banks that they had yet to control.
Reggie: Perhaps, but perhaps not. There's something to be said for people refusing to adopt new technologies. The classic example in banking is the introduction of the ATM and banking apps. Yet there are still tellers in branches.
But perhaps an even more interesting and recent example is the adoption of apps like Zillow. You'd think that with housing prices being so high, more people would buy and sell through an app rather than pay realtors 3-6%. And yet, realtors make tons of money. Similarly, many people can apply for mortgages online. Yet the majority of them are issued through humans -- third party mortgage brokers or bankers. You have to think, why?
To me, I think the richest people simply never waste an opportunity. Many monarchs looked to the rich to fund their wars, so in that sense, they were enablers. But the people who would've sent thousands/millions to their death in the battlefield -- governments did that.
Communism is a perfect example of how power does not require money or capitalism. In a democracy such as ours, fiat currency is the citizenry's money. The fact that there is inflation etc is the result of government spending.
Unlike the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, as a Crown corporation, is nationalized. All Canadian banks are regulated by the Bank Act. And OSFI. Therefore, Ottawa has the final say. If Canadians choose not to hold the government accountable for reckless spending and poor regulation, well that's on us. We get the government we deserve.
Pointing the finger at banks is the same as pointing the finger at multinational corporations in any sector -- oil and gas, telecom, food, etc. You think Lockheed Martin and Raytheon aren't making a killing from the Ukraine-Russia crisis? Or that Pfizer and Moderna are overcharging for their mRNA vaccines, current AND future? Yet we point to banks, why, because they gave us credit cards and mortgages? Lol
I remember when Zeitgeist came out some years ago, and thinking, "Wow, those fucking bankers. They really fucked the little guy." But then you realize that it's not just the bankers. It's simply those who have extraordinary wealth and institutionalized power.
Another thing with crypto... Do any of us know who the whales are that own like 50% of all BTC? Imagine if BTC became mainstream. You don't think those whales would try to open their own crypto banks? Or at the very least, corner the market?
The Hunt Brothers did that on Silver Thursday back in 1980. At the time, they owned about 1/3 global silver supply. Then the government came in and crushed them. On Silver Thursday, they got crushed.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/silver-thursday-hunt-brothers.asp
Money is a very interesting topic, for a variety of reasons. But to be sure, there is no such thing as "God's money", "safe money", etc. Crypto is no different. It can be manipulated/cornered by individuals, and it is not immune to government decrees.
Whatsapp Chat 2: Geopolitics
Serge: hard currency money as being gods money is nonsense because historically speaking specie money was always used by warlords and empires, and was usually extracted using all kinda of ungodly means like slave labour, especially since 1500s till now.
Dimitri: The issue is currencies or crypto that isn't backed by anything, the US petrodollar is on its way down, especially when China and Russia announce their new currency backed by the 140 billion $ of gold Putin has bought on his own.
Reggie: No way. Not a chance. Many have been predicting the fall of the USD for years. China is about to experience a demographic collapse thanks to its foolish one child policy. Russia is already experiencing population decline.
Dimitri: They've been printing money like no tomorrow, and I believe Saudi Arabia agreed to accept the Yen instead of the US dollar. The US has also had a steady decline of birth rate since 79.
Reggie: Nah. The US has positive immigration. All demographic projections point to stable growth in both Canada and the US.
Dimitri: I meant on a global scale, that's the biggest issue, no one is having babies.
Reggie: Right, and America is in the best position because of immigration. How many people are struggling to immigrate to China and Russia? Lol The political risks in either China or Russia are too great for investment flows to move there. As for Arab Saudi, where are they getting their weapons from? There are massive capital inflows from the House of Saud into the US.
Meanwhile, China has various domestic issues to deal with, eg. property crisis, zero COVID, etc. The US Federal Reserve remits all profits to the US Treasury. America's neo-conservatives fucked up the Middle East, but it's not like it wasn't already fucked up before that. Sykes Picot was British and French. Iran-Iraq was all about the commies. Remember that Russia got crushed in Afghanistan too.
As a philosophy group, we should be thinking critically about these conspiratorial theories. Noam Chomsky said about 9/11 conspiracies that it would impossible for such a conspiracy to be maintained for this long
Geopolitics is a very sophisticated endeavour, with many players around the world. As a first step then, we should try applying logical tools before assuming the existence of some omniscient group of old white men with puppet master powers
Many people think that China (and Russia) will somehow overtake the West in influence, wealth and power. Allow me to name drop two individuals with opposing perspectives on this
First, Niall Ferguson discusses the six killer apps which has allowed the West to prosper and flourish. Ferguson recently wrote a biography on Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most consequential Secretary of State in US history
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/civilization-west-and-rest/killer-apps/
Serge: Russian gdp change 2008-2018 is -1.25% and they just threw hundred thousand of their youngest and strongest men into a meat grinder and completely crippled the economy while doing so. Last 20 years putin and buds spent plundering their own country. China does have potential to rise but Rus will just be resource exporter to china.
Reggie: Second, Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical strategist who convincingly argues that the international order is about to change as the US removes itself from global affairs, coupled with population decline in China, Russia and make other countries. He recently did a Sam Harris podcast with Ian Bremner (another geopolitical analyst)
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ozrX1ACLtHgPHmjDJgc7D?si=Kne0rfVBSqSR6vVjhqDEIg&utm_source=copy
You only need to look at Japan to see how demographics can negatively impact economies. Now, the reason why Japan has remained afloat however is because it continues to improve its economic productivity. With China, a major driver for it's economic growth has been the move towards urbanization.
Dimitri: What do you think about ETH 2.0 and the impact on Eth. I think you were talking about crypto Reggie if I'm not mistaken.
Reggie: You mean the switch to PoS? I think it's a great move for ETH. I own some PoS coins. But that doesn't mean that crypto as a future solution is a foregone conclusion by any means. From an engineering perspective, switching to proof of stake will greatly reduce the effort required to validate transactions. It should also help with all those other apps and defi solutions built on ETH.
To me, blockchain's main use cases center on secure transactions between multiple counterparties. Things like insurance contracts for example, or land titles. But as a currency, no fucking way. Western governments would never allow that to happen. And Xi would never allow China to adopt anything other than a "people's currency" lol. But to be sure, China is investigating how blockchain could be used to facilitate its social credit system.
Defi is a fascinating way of linking borrowers and lenders. The problem though is that it doesn't solve for credit underwriting -- determining whether or not someone is creditworthy. Today in Canada, we have credit bureaus like Equifax and TransUnion who gather information about us from financial institutions, cell phone companies, etc.
Those bureaus combine that information with other data points like salary information, demographics, etc to generate individual ratings. Banks then take that data to determine whether or not to lend. Could all of that be automated? Theoretically yes. But every company in the US that has tried to do this has failed.
Crypto/blockchain can help facilitate the mechanism, but ultimately the problem is one of having enough personal data. Whether you sign any kind of terms and conditions, your are very likely giving permission for companies to take your data. Those companies will then sell that data. If that data was to live in a blockchain, suddenly there's no money being made.
There are so many ways to look at cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. But to me, it will be very difficult to bridge the gap between secure, decentralized transactions and financial underwriting. That's why I don't think banks will disappear. If anything, they will evolve with the times. As for China, blockchain is just another way for the PPC to fuck the people. I think they're building their digital yuan on ETH. So PoS will definitely help them lol.
Ferguson also wrote "The Ascent of Money" for those interested in financial/economic history. He talks about the very first network verified peer to peer payment system between England and Italy in the 14th century. He also makes the argument that you don't need money to conduct business transactions/make payments. Rather, you simply need a network-like mechanism and trust. So to Ferguson, he loves the idea of crypto and smart contracts. I don't agree with him, but he does make a strong, passionate case.
Another one of Ferguson's insights was when writing about Henry Kissinger: the problem of conjecture -- taking action to prevent a potential but uncertain disaster. Let's say you were to go back in time and murder Hitler, Goebbels, and other Nazi leaders as babies. Knowing what happened during WW2, this would be seen as probably a worthwhile action. However, those who lived in that time wouldn't have known anything at all about the future. As such, you'd be seen as a serial baby killer.
In a way, it's tough to know whether Bush and Cheney made the right call in the long run to invade Iraq. Think of all the American soldiers that died, never mind Iraqi civilians. That said though, when was the last time we as a society talked about terrorism and Islamic extremism?
As a historian, one of Ferguson's favourite methods involves the use of counterfactuals to understand historic events. For example, if we had more effective contact tracing like in S Korea, perhaps we would've done a better job managing COVID. Or if Stephen Harper defeated Trudeau in 2015, maybe we wouldn't have as much #Justinflation. The use of counterfactuals, when supported by scholarship, is a great way of understanding events.
Sagar: I can’t help myself, but partake in this sparkling conversation about new technologies, I don't know much about Bitcoin, but I do remember running into it, while I played some online poker a while ago.
As for constructing decentralized systems, one can account for and give back the benefit of doubt to users in the name of hindsight, however foresight will remain incomplete. I don’t intend to sound “cryptic” please pardon the pun intended. Put in simpler words, thieves will get caught, once they err, else they won’t.
Chris: Don't all the bitcoin scarcity arguments fall when there are tons of crypto that do the exact same thing ? If it was a government enforced crypto fine but that basically fiat with more control.
Reggie: Online gaming would be a natural place for crypto to flourish. I think everyone should try using it: get a wallet, deposit some money.
When you have competing currencies, given enough time, Gresham's Law applies: bad money drives out good.
Zachary: Hey also while we’re complaining about crypto it’s worth pointing out that there’s a substantial difference between criticizing the banking industry and naked antisemitism and when you start bringing up George Soros and the Rothschild family out of nowhere it’s pretty clear which side of that difference you fall on.
Sathvik: About the Hitler erasure thing, Rather than killing them as babies, why not go back in time even further and prevent their parents from getting together. You wouldn’t directly be committing murder and the only thing you’d be destroying is a relationship.
Reggie: Perhaps that would be more effective. I only used that crude example though to demonstrate Kissinger's problem of conjecture. I'm not saying I agree with him. Just that using counterfactuals can be a useful tool in analyzing a situation. It's akin to the but-for test used in tort law when trying to determine proximate causes.
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