Dabidoe

Crypto is first and foremost a secure decentralized technology platform. Currency is a store of value. The idea is to bridge the two, not necessarily make a get rich scheme. The thing that fucks people up about cryptocurrency is they see it as a lottery ticket not a piece of technology. If you study the origins of it the people who make it (the real ones, like Vitalik, Hoskinson, Nakamoto white papers not the douchebags trying to scam with a 30 minute built shitcoin) they care first and foremost about expanding the functionality of digital transactions - not some ballooning value get rich scheme. We all pay for tons of shit online using credit cards and banks that do all sorts of goofy shit like fractional reserve banking and worse and yet when someone wants to try and do something to take power back to individuals away from these greedy centralized institutions they get lambasted, It's going to take time but cryptocurrency as a technology is going to be very influential, whether or not the value of current coins goes to 0. Bitcoin is king of secure decentralized store of value, garbage as a transaction tool. Ethereum is the most functional decentralized store of value can initiate smart contracts - trustless blind contracts, build NFTs etc... Cardano is the interesting one that's putting $ into helping build secure digital infrastructure in Africa but small fry comparatively. People have to see the value of the technology and ignore the whole $ value which the creators of it were less concerned about.

I think the book "The Power of Belief" has a lot of ideas that play into being a successful visionary. It's not enough to see and think you have to have the belief and conviction to put in the effort to bring it to life. It takes a lot of pain, sleepless nights and hard work to really bring something incredible to life and the only way I know to do that is to see your vision, believe that it's possible and then bust your ass to make it through the drudgery and pain.

@Dodo I've seen the movie Pi, I get the whole fibonaci shit but realistically when you put $ down you're putting energy ($, time, power) into something. If I buy Ethereum it's because I believe in the idea that digital money can be put to work. If I buy Cardano it's because I believe that logic and governance and future governments could be founded with crypto currency. If I buy whatever the fuck shit coin I have no idea who I am giving money to.

I think a lot of nuance is lost to the "when moon" crowd of crypto. If you're looking for a slot machine then you rightfully should be mocked and derided. The 10,000 mutant douchebag apes are not what crypto art is all about. They are worthless as shitcoins and I completely agree you might as well buy stocks. They are a bastardized slot machines and any idiot who just throws in 5000$ into them hoping to get rich off the next idiot putting in 10000 deserve to lose money. It's a fucking nasty game and fuck all those pump and dump douchebags. @Leo Gura I will push back that actual NFT artists exist and provide value intrinsic to the technology platform that they are creating on. There are real artists who put their heart and soul into creating art digitally and deserve to be respected and earn money just like anyone else. They are doing it on a new platform that allows them to make $ directly instead of money going to the platforms that control and exploit them. The artists making unique digital artwork the same as any other artist chosing to mint their artwork on the blockchain providing a public way to display and share artwork is not stupid. They are creating things that are of value to the world as same as any artist making something on paper. What people don't understand is the digital artist has been brutally exploited by these centralized platforms. What's a way for an artist to make money besides putting out thousands of hours of free art on centralized platform like IG and hoping that someone might buy a fucking t-shirt and maybe make 10$ after dropshipping fees or hope that an overpriced gallery will pay attention them and take 50% of their prints. Crypto has value but the whole community-social aspect is fucked. I don't know the realistic value of a token but the realistic value of currency isn't as real as people think either. It's a very dicey game to put $ into crypto because the entire valuation is socially derived and thus pegged to the idiotic pump and dumpers who bring in the masses who bring in the dollars. I believe that crypto as a techonology platform has value but beyond that the price of a token is up to the masses and that is a ridiculously complicated game where the biggest winners are those that cash in on the people looking to get rich who don't know what the fuck they're doing.

I agree. We are so quick to laser in on this detail as the end all justification when the truth is the United States has done far worse with a 1/1000th of the scrutiny. While Saddam was no angel we went in and destroyed an organized society and replaced it with this idiotic notion that a bunch of warring tribes are going to just stick their thumb in blue ink and all problems will be solved. The atrocities the united states has quietly committed across the world have paled in comparison to the very scrutinized "war on terror" going on in Gaza. While I think they have failed to live up to the world's standards and should be scrutinized they have at least put in nominal effort to try and protect the civilians at least more than Hamas who are literally killing their own people.

I think we can all be more visionary but I do think there's a certain personality type that is especially visionary. I'd rather be the best version of me than try to emulate something I'm not suited for. Personally I very much value individuality and vision but I would rather be realistic to my limitations than charge ahead and call myself the new Elon Musk.

Good stuff! Share some links curious to see what you're up to.

Great advice thanks!

Has anyone taken the leap and made their first hire for their business? I run a video production company which is doing OK but I've hit my breaking point as a "solopreneur" and I need some help shooting some videos. I don't have any big projects in the pipeline at the moment but have a lot of personal projects I'd like to work on and feel that hiring someone/looking for an intern would help me stay motivated and complete tasks. I don't want to exploit intern labor but realistically can't afford a fulltime salary and would rather offer studio time usage, share gig $ and more. Anyone have any experience in this have any advice on hiring/growing beyond the "one man band"?

This false equation is not productive. Putin nor Netanyahu are "good guys" both are corrupt and run countries with militaristic populations and expansionist ambitions... but if you pay attention to the details it's clear that one is engaging in far more ruthless barbarism under far less valid circumstances than the other. Netanyahu is no Putin. Nor is he an angel. I think it's sad that people who never gave a shit about the Middle East dogpiling on Israel because it's the new cause du'jour are the same ones who rattled the saber for Ukraine to march into a buzz saw. The Ukranain people (my ancestors) have been annhilated and have nothing to show for it, it was a battle that they never would have won and all our $ just led to more slaughter. We have to be adults and stop moralizing and judging how countries do things. This "interventionista" thinking is pointless.

The reality is what we call "AI/LLM" is just a tool built around a massive spreadsheet and graph, not an "entity." It's closer to a parlor trick just mimicking human knowledge, despite how convincing it is. That said it's a fucking amazing tool and parlor trick or not it's revolutionizing how we interface with computers. No code programming is a vast improvement on traditional coding and nobody in their right mind would spend the years learning BS jargon if it weren't necessary to execute the goal of programming which is taking thoughts and translating them onto the digital world. When you compare the "compute / watt" the human brain is about 10 watts of power compared to the hundreds of thousands of watts of power required to power these mega-models. We are a long ways away at the moment from being anything close to human level intelligence (generally speaking, less so on specialized tasks) Ray Kurzweil predicted 2029 for what we call "AGI" and that seems about right. I don't think the AGI will be anything that different from the current iteration of chat GPT in principal but it's capabilities are going to vastly dwarf humans. The thing I find most interesting about what makes computers "smart" is the ability to exist outside of spacetime. They can gain experience non-linearly and achieve experience laterally thousands of years of experience (albeit through "brute force.") Using massively expensive and power-hungry GPU clusters they are not bound to our spacetime limited "one minute at a time" existence. So even if computers have the intelligence of a toddler they have the added benefit of being able to gain infinite experience if you have enough $ to throw at it. It will be a super tool and the real danger is what asshole is going to use that supertool to try and destroy humanity...

I think focusing on the here and now, what you like doing today, what you're interested in is going to be more fruitful than pondering on your greater impact. Building skills is always a fruitful activity, even if it doesn't "Make sense" for what you think you're goals in life are. The act of being in the moment putting your all into something you're engaged in is a great use of time and will help you feel better. You never know when your collection of mini skills will build on eachother into a "talent stack." I've gone through periods of life (and going through a bit of one now) where I don't really know what the hell to do next. I think getting caught up in the thought storms can be very painful and make you question everything about your life. The solution is to act in spite of feeling, not living in fear. I made my first linkedin post this week and it made me realize "what the hell was I afraid of"? I no longer really give a shit about getting a real job (I'm an "entrepeneur", run my own video production company and do some fix 'n' flip stuff for $) so why not just stop giving a fuck? All the ideas in the world about making your epic impact are cool and all but realistically everything begins in the here and now, the doing. By flexing the muscles of "doing" rather than just ruminating on possibilities you will be more effective into achieving a grander purpose. Just live your life one step at a time and give yourself some self love and permission to just draw kitty cats or screw around if you're enjoying it!

I think this is just yet another example of people who take themselves too seriously failing to attempt humor. It's got some moments but humor + lectures don't mix well. He seems a little off his rocker just full on culture warrior, would be nice if he came back down to earth instead of right-wing radical thought leader.

It's clear given the state of the world that people are self organizing into smaller and smaller factions with increasing amounts of hate towards one another. Do you think the internet has just shoved too many "different POVs" that before the internet would have had a geographical limiting factor? It seems that the extreme right/left are citing the worst case examples broadly onto larger less extreme POVs that they otherwise would not have. A good example of this was the comments section of Lex Fridman's interview with Jared Kushner. A lot of people were culturally programmed to have one POV on the guy (as the son of satan) and were surprised that he wasn't a raving lunatic and could string together a few sentences with clarity and thoughtfulness. Assuming we can understand hatred and division what do you think is the solution? Is it an immutable part of the world that we divide and fight or just an ugly blip in history?

@Basman That's interesting. So do you think that hate is fundamental a tool for survival? Would hate be lessened in a post-scarcity world or would people find different resources to hate one another over?

A video about the techniques, theories and warnings about discovering and connecting with your true self and develop a clearer self awareness of your self as a whole (how do you know what's real vs. ego/imaginary?.) I would like to know specific meditation, contemplation and journaling practices for connecting with and finding my true self. Not sure how much of this is covered in the life's purpose course as I have not done that. How does one properly write one's "life story" and what should one focus on? Emotional memories, objective (ie: in third grade I did...) and what through lines do you focus on to write the narrative? How can you use this self-discovery to forge a stronger self-identity?

This seems antithetical to your expressed identity of being good and moral but go with peace my brother.

I agree. There is very much a negativity bias. Child poverty is down, internet is creative a collective consciousness while very rough on some levels is universally a great thing that's uniting humanity. Facts matter, what are you Ben Shapiro? Does bias matter? Are you really saying ugly people are naturally more hateful of hate or hate makes people ugly? Based on the mind body connection I suppose the latter makes some sense but looks are genetic no? Shell Silverstein isn't exactly Brad Pitt but the guy wrote some beautiful poems and childrens books, not quite Jihadi.

I'm not necessarily interested in awakening in the way others are describing it to be honest. There seems to be an airy-fairy self important vibe that doesn't appeal to me. I greatly cherish my moments of deep insight and understanding, but communicating them seems to be like pissing in the wind a bit. I don't have the right words and seems to fall on deaf ears. In my truly introspective moments I am able to see my "self" as a construct, a set of experiences and DNA behaving semi-autonomously outside of what I guess others are describing as consciousness which I think I mislabeled. That said you are still stuck being your "self" right, you don't awaken yourself out of having to walk to the bathroom correct? On Psychedelics and deep meditation I suppose to use the parlance of the group "My consciousness sees my lower self" and I have an intuition that the consciousness while invisible on some levels is also a universal force that's tied to love. That said I do not want to have conversations with 99.99% of people about this as it seems to diminish the truth behind it trying to explain it to people who seem to have no idea what I'm talking about.

I'm sorry, can't really understand this message. Is it intentionally vague?

Sure. Can you imagine how boring Star Wars would be if it was Yoda and Obi Wan sitting in the council talking about how chill everything was?

According to Huberman Lab the negative effects of weed start at over 2/month. That said, as someone who abused the hell out of weed my whole life and paid for it (age 14-36...) I completely agree with the statement below

Thank you for saying this. I think a lot of people get a little huff of what "higher perspective" could be and start waxing poetic like Moses on Mt. Sinai. The movie Silence is probably my favorite meditation on this subject. Portugese missionairies go to feudal Japan to help persecute christians and are horrified by the cruel religious persecution and "question God's silence." God can't speak, but does he influence the world? Who knows, we can only just have faith that if we are good in our own lives it will help the world. Personally I think that "evil" has a purpose the way light creates shadow etc. It might not be pleasant but in the grand scheme of the world the purpose of evil can be a lesson to inspire greater good. The same way that suffering creates joy, by contrast "sunny days wouldn't be special if it wasn't for rain" to quote the honorable prophet 50 Cent.

Succinct!

I uh, have no words for this lol, but my intuition is hate is a little more than skin deep. After all Che Guevera isn't on a bunch of t-shirts because of his ideology and that guy sure lit up a lot of people. There are some great points in this thread but I think it's clear the lowest hanging of fruit is starting with your own behavior and beliefs. It seems that pain, isolation and hate are all fruit of the poison tree. We conform to groups even though those groups seem to isolate us from the broader humanity. I'm a jew that has friends in Israel and it took me reading hundreds of comments of people saying awful things, true things and more to make me realize there is good and bad in both arguments and that the real enemy is people of all sides behaving like pieces of garbage. Would a resource-rich future (post-scarcity) help solve this? It's feasible that we can build enough robots to build enough homes for every human (on this planet or beyond) and grow enough food... but will we destroy ourselves before we get there? Either way, I just want to find peace within myself so at least I don't get all triggered and annoyed unnecessarily at the unavoidable stream of hate and lunacy dominating the "zeitgeist."