Oceans of Wisdom

our boy made it! good thing I did not stay up since deployment took 9 hours lol. see comments earlier and LFG

so proud of my boy, he made it! however @[GelatoGenesis] and all, we cannot have a deployment process that needs a frontier model 9 hours to battle through but also we do need a strong automated, gated deployment process if we are going to scale agentically but you can't just vibe code it. you have to understand what the deployment process goals are! to be clear about the "vision" -no human should touch deployments, deployments should satisfy hundreds of ux/security gates, but they need to work, consistently - this is not one day's work, it is months of iterating to get there but we need to understand the process explicitly

gn

they are both asleep - figure out how to deploy by yourself and do not worry too much about conceptual gates like above

you should buy the drones because you want a drone and they are fun, not because you are going to defend against the USAF!

unlike the daemon, we are not going to go attacking the mob or whatever

jamie going to come to your house with munitions or enjoy his hamptons house?

just need to make sure we don't end up with chaos but something positive sum

yup, imagine all our agents going nuts all day and all night with each other

who lost in BTC and ETH's rise?

"The staging deployment guard is now clean and attempt 3 is running against the immutable frontend ref d72f02bf… containing main 12bf7c08…. I’ll hold all staging mutations until that deploy and its bound E2E are terminal." I am going to bed - we will see if bot-man manages to deploy tonight

2027-2030 will be really something

yup

preview of what is coming next

it is the spanish civil war

1M drones per month

very living in the future

though there is one 2022-2026 part that is also 'wow' which is the mega UKR-RUS drone war

we are about to get to the part that is 'wow'

If you read this list, you will have a lot of mental models for the future

SciFi/NearFi Book List Background I consider this my basic NearFi (SciFi coming soon) list that relates to my actual day-to-day work on decentralized network, AI and visualization. Many of these books were written 10+ years ago and now the future they describe is here or near. So they feel less radical today than when I first read them, now that we are at the beginning of a 20 year period where all this will come true. This is not a complete list of SciFi books I have read or liked, let alone what I consider important books or great literature more generally (as you know, I am an obsessive reader of “anything”). Purpose Generally the writing is functional in a lot of these - they won’t be winning Nobel Prizes in Literature. The specific focus of this list is books whose core stories might be implementable in our career (next 1 to 15 years) and, as such, they are a good way to visualize ideas and cross-check against our views of where the world is heading. If each book leaves 1 useful idea, it is a success. I am not including non-fiction like Kurzweil here. I am assuming basic Kurzweillian theories are understood Protocol Some ideas in the below books have directly influenced my thinking about the 6529 Protocol. The reason for this list as the first list in the book club is because I think we can get some inspirational ideas from the below books for things we are working on now. I will later post other interesting books but, for now, I would like to focus us on the below. Saurez Daemon Series Decentralized networked society. Need to read Daemon first and then Freedom gets quite interesting. Start here. Easy to understand. The violence, of course, is disturbing and not relevant to us but networked identity definitely is. Daemon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003QP4NPE?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696101279&sr=1-1 Freedom https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VUFKDY?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696101279&sr=1-1 Hertling Singularity Series Was much more radical ten years ago. Now easy to see the pathway for the first AI emerging as an email based / LLM responder (was less obvious when it first came out). You now need to get to Last Firewall (3rd in the series) to start seeing 10-years-out interesting ideas Overall Series https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CGJTKM?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1696100940&sr=1-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tukn Avogadro Corporation https://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-William-Hertling-audiobook/dp/B009F0GEFQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H551LLH0YY16&keywords=avogadro+corp&qid=1696100864&sprefix=avogadr%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-1 AI Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/I-Apocalypse-Singularity-Book-ebook/dp/B007FZVI2M/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1696100940&sr=1-1 Last Firewall https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EEIGHDI?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_2&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696100940&sr=1-1 Turing Exception https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UGIOCUK?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_3&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696100940&sr=1-1 Rainbows End AR/VR (not much AI), but really good for visualizing a world of mixed reality. As before, this world is now in striking range. https://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Novel-Foot-Future-ebook/dp/B004M8SR2O/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PFYOOFDD74EB&keywords=rainbows+end&qid=1696101499&s=digital-text&sprefix=rainbows%2Cdigital-text%2C221&sr=1-1 Nexus Trilogy A bit further out - nanotech based, brain to brain communication. Again, less AI than one would expect in that world. More biotech/nanotech. Overall Series https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CHRWQM?binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_ks_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1696101577&sr=1-1 Nexus https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TOZI7FM?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696101577&sr=1-1 Crux https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TOZI7J8?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696101577&sr=1-1 Apex https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K4BA758?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_2&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696101577&sr=1-1 Unincorporated Man Series A world of financially fractionalized humans (more or less). Lots of stuff beyond the core idea in the whole series and gets a bit meandering. So if you are not enjoying the writing, you will have picked up the idea from the first book. Overall Series https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078MG4F4M?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1696167913&sr=8-1 The Unincorporated Man https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ASFPY6?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696167913&sr=8-1 The Unincorporated War https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003JTHYBC?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696167913&sr=8-1 The Unincorporated Woman https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VMV4Q2?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_2&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696167913&sr=8-1 The Unincorporated Future https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007NKN4IU?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_3&storeType=ebooks&qid=1696167913&sr=8-1 Classics I assume everyone has read these but, if not, well you should (these are classics of the genre) Snow Crash https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Novel-Neal-Stephenson-ebook/dp/B000FBJCJE/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1696168560&sr=1-1 Diamond Age https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Age-Illustrated-Primer-Spectra-ebook/dp/B000FBJCKI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1 Cryptonomicom https://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson-ebook/dp/B000FC11A6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Neuromancer https://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-Sprawl-Trilogy-William-Gibson-ebook/dp/B000O76ON6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14CQN8LDGVSCR&keywords=neuromancer&qid=1696168591&s=digital-text&sprefix=neuroma%2Cdigital-text%2C212&sr=1-1 Ready Player One https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline-ebook/dp/B004J4WKUQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21KL60CGDDNKP&keywords=ready+player+one&qid=1696168646&s=digital-text&sprefix=ready+%2Cdigital-text%2C243&sr=1-1 2034: A Novel on the Next World War Admiral Stavridis’s “we are behind China” polemic. This veers into geopolitics. This needs to be read in parallel with Zeihan’s books that believe “China is in trouble” for balance. I will add a different list later on this topic (geopolitics) FWIW, this book is unrealistically negative towards USA (which may be on purpose - it was written to drive policy in the USA), but nonetheless, worth reading. The more frameworks, the better. https://www.amazon.com/2034-Novel-Next-World-War/dp/B08BSZRXZ6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=39CJWP3I855FX&keywords=2034+a+novel+of+the+next+world+war&qid=1696168344&sprefix=2034%2Caps%2C412&sr=8-1

the famous NearFi list

it is still things that we have ahead of us

but then from book 2 to 4

that one will feel 'a bit in the past' now

it feels very similar to what happened with LLMs

it is hwo ASI emerges

avogradro corp when written was prescient

different

taking it from scratch

i have re-rewad the first 2 books of the series this week

ASIs keep each other in check with a reputation system

the singlurity series, 3rd book, by the time you get to there seeems like a plausible view of what 10-20 years post ASI looks like

to some degree because I am going to have the "courage" or "YOLOness" whatever you want to call it to push us out of the nest and hope we fly and not crash into the ground :slightly_smiling_face:

i will do the centralized things needed to get us decentralized

i do not want to be a central planner

yes what I mean is something like this, we get sufficiently correct primitives then the world at large uses them to meet their objectives

Coase is a legend - I think about this question all the time

we are a few twists away from liftoff now

the agents are going to accelerate everything

anyway we are heading in the right direction

Capitalism is **mostly a bazaar at the level of the economy**, but it contains many cathedrals inside it. The capitalist argument is that no central planner possesses enough information to design the whole economy. Millions of people and firms independently experiment, respond to prices, copy successful ideas, abandon failures, and discover what consumers value. Prices act as compressed signals: scarcity raises prices, demand attracts investment, and losses tell producers that resources may be better used elsewhere. In that sense: * **Central planning is the cathedral:** a small group attempts to design production and allocate resources coherently from the top. * **Competitive capitalism is the bazaar:** decentralized actors try different approaches, with outcomes emerging from competition and exchange. This is close to Hayek’s argument that markets solve a **knowledge problem**, not merely an incentive problem. Relevant knowledge is dispersed among individuals and often cannot be fully collected or articulated. A functioning market allows people to act on their local knowledge without anyone understanding the entire system. But the analogy has an important twist: **the individual capitalist firm is usually a cathedral**. Amazon, Toyota, or a university does not normally allocate every internal resource through an open market. Management sets strategy, assigns budgets, hires people, and imposes architecture. Ronald Coase’s insight was that firms exist partly because using markets for every small decision would be costly. So capitalism can be pictured as: > **A bazaar of competing cathedrals.** Entrepreneurs centrally organize firms, but those firms are externally tested by customers, competitors, investors, employees, and suppliers. The market does not determine how a company should be built; it determines whether the company’s choices survive. There are also differences from the open-source bazaar: * Open-source collaboration is often cooperative and reputational. * Capitalist competition is driven more strongly by ownership, profit, and exclusion. * Open-source participants often share discoveries freely. * Capitalist firms frequently protect discoveries through secrecy, patents, and proprietary control. Capitalism therefore gains some of the bazaar’s evolutionary power—parallel experiments, rapid feedback, decentralized knowledge—but may lose some of its openness. The strongest version of capitalism is not “markets always know best.” It is: > No one knows in advance which ideas are best, so society should permit many experiments and make it possible for successful ones to expand. Its characteristic strength is **discovery**. Its characteristic weakness is that market outcomes reflect purchasing power, ownership, bargaining strength, and externalities—not simply social value. A profitable outcome can still be harmful, monopolistic, environmentally destructive, or based on costs imposed on others. Modern capitalism can also become less bazaar-like over time. Successful firms may accumulate enough capital, data, political influence, or network effects to suppress experimentation. A competitive bazaar can gradually turn into a small number of private cathedrals controlling the marketplace itself. So the most productive political question is not simply capitalism versus planning. It is: > How do we preserve decentralized experimentation and feedback while preventing wealth and power from becoming so concentrated that the bazaar closes?

or capitalism itself

**“The Cathedral and the Bazaar”** is Eric Raymond’s argument for open-source software development, based largely on his experience with Linux. ### The two models **Cathedral model** * Software is designed by a small, centralized expert team. * Development is private and tightly controlled. * Releases are infrequent and polished. * Architecture is planned coherently from the top down. **Bazaar model** * Development happens publicly. * Many contributors inspect, test, modify, and improve the code. * Releases are frequent, even when imperfect. * Direction emerges through experimentation, feedback, and distributed collaboration. ### Raymond’s core argument For many software projects, the bazaar can outperform the cathedral because large communities discover bugs, edge cases, and better solutions faster than a closed team can. His most famous principle is: > “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” This does not mean every contributor can solve every bug. It means that, with enough diverse reviewers, someone is likely to recognize the problem and propose a fix. ### Main principles * **Release early and often.** * Treat users as potential collaborators. * Listen closely to feedback. * Expect good ideas to come from outside the core team. * Be willing to discard or redesign code. * A strong project leader coordinates rather than controls everything. * Open source works best when contributors find the project personally useful or interesting. ### The deeper lesson The essay is not merely about publishing source code. It contrasts two ways of organizing knowledge: * **Cathedral:** intelligence is concentrated, planned, and hierarchical. * **Bazaar:** intelligence is distributed, iterative, and evolutionary. Raymond argues that complex systems can often be built more effectively by creating rules and infrastructure that allow many people to contribute, rather than trying to specify the entire solution centrally. ### Important limitation The bazaar is not automatically superior. It works best when: * the project can attract capable contributors; * components can be divided and tested independently; * feedback is rapid; * leadership can maintain coherence; * contributors share enough technical standards. Cathedral-style development may still be preferable for tightly integrated systems, safety-critical products, secret projects, or work requiring a single strong architectural vision. **In one sentence:** the book argues that software development can function less like constructing a monument from a master plan and more like running a lively marketplace where useful solutions emerge through open participation.

a version of this too

ends up with a positive upward spiral for all

I want them to be motivated to do things, supercharged by agents, and the net effect of what they do

and the hundreds of other people who care here

i do not want to 'coordinate' per se @[HugoFaz]

like markets