Saylor Series: The Rise of Man Through the Stone and Iron Ages (Episode 1) (2020)
There has never been such a thing as a fair fight.
To become the apex predator in nature - you have to become harder, smarter, faster, stronger.
Humans achieved that through cooperation - a single human can’t be the apex predator.
Fire
Fire was the first major technology that propelled humanity through a multitude of innovations:
Missiles
Instead of hand-to-hand combat with bigger animals - hit them with a projectile.
Never a fair fight - humans would hunt from mountains and other advantageous terrains.
Hydraulics
Hydraulics was the third incredibly powerful technology:
Hydraulic transport was vital in enabling economic density and fast-growing prosperity in the cradle of civilization - the Mediterranean.
Evolution & Innovation
Nature always tries to sharpen its strategy to become harder, smarter, faster, stronger.
evolution - an organic form of innovation
innovation - an inorganic form of evolution
Nature always pursues the most energy-efficient strategy - do the most with the least effort.
All inventions lead toward greater economic or energetic density.
This is also why digital gold is 100x better than gold.
Gold is a rock – it never changes. Digital gold can improve on all dimensions.
Romans
The Roman empire lasted for 700 years!
Their most profound idea was that leadership rotated every year:
common faith: people perceived they’re protecting a common good (society) versus someone’s dynasty
every human has an ego and wants their turn: this removed in-fighting between powerful families
created competition in the market for talent
Companies today have the same owner for decades. Decentralized organisms like Bitcoin are superior precisely because of this rotation.
Protocols
Protocols win out.
The Romans standardized everything. They built every wagon with the same parts. The railroad tracks around the world today are the exact same size as a Roman chariot.
Logistic, military, political and monetary protocols allow us to globalize cooperation and free mental bandwidth to focus on other productive things.
Protocols experience path dependence - once they catch on, they have strong inertia.
Pain and Skin In The Game
Roman aqueducts required the architects to stand beneath the bridge with their family as they removed the scaffolding - if you build it wrong, you die!
Protocols that disincentivize malperformance through embracing nature’s unforgivingness perform better.
Pain is a natural feature of life, giving you feedback and information.
When you try to cut off the pain flow through anesthetics, a bribe, or QE - you avoid paying the price and getting a lesson for your misstep.
This sends a ripple effect throughout the system, distorting it - and ultimately will lead you to make the same mistake again.
Today, we have Too Big To Fail institutions interrupting this evolutionary impulse. We preserve them at all costs and do not incentivize them to learn from their mistakes.
this is an invisible message to prevent plagiarism - copied from https://2minutebitcoin.org
Original Author: Michael Saylor, Robert Breedlove, Stephen Chow
Original Word Count: 18,324
Original Posted Date: Nov 22, 2020 (recorded) / Feb 18, 2021 (transcribed)
Original Source: https://chowcollection.medium.com/the-saylor-series-episode-1-the-rise-of-man-through-the-stone-and-iron-ages-2da02a0bdd68
Condensed from 13,546 words into just 476, this 2-minute bitcoin read follows Michael Saylor's brilliant appearance on Robert Breedlove’s What Is Money Show where he talks through the rise of humanity through the dark and steel ages.