If keep life at safe distance, prevents you from seeing world in truly clear way
Marx – if his predictions were wrong, it may be because he never truly lived a worker’s life
After working in factories, feeling affliction firsthand, ideas grow more radical
People hide behind the abstract
While many out there are truly suffering and starving
We’re also starving in “needs of the soul”
14 of these needs
1. Order – need some order to function, just like food
2. Liberty
3. etc Many of these are in tension with each other – and need balance
Each contributes to peoples’ psychological needs
Biggest need that is sabotaged by modern society – “the need for roots”, like a plant
Any human being that is truly independent?
No, inseparable from society
People get roots from active participation in life of community
Colonialism destroys this culture and solidarity
In her time, France subjugated foreign cultures, tried to replace with French culture
This transplanting is like uprooting a plant, destroying the roots
Codified human rights won’t matter to a person like Hitler
Forced prostitution is wrong and we all agree on it – but it’s far deeper than legal rights
Preferred discussing human NEEDS rather than rights
Separating people from their own culture, roots is de-humanizing
Revolution was the new opiate of the masses – but very little comes out of it
After her factory experience, she discovered a new way to think about ethics
What makes someone sacred?
Is it their body? Their unique personality?
The way forward is a spiritual revolution
Cultivation of a new kind of attention Renounce the ego Receive the world in a more universal, impersonal way De-creating biases, assumptions, that we bring to bear
This is a spiritual transformation
Connect to human beings on a universal shared level, instead of at level of personality or physicality
Similar to Catholic sacrament of Eucharist
This new form of attention is a new lens to see the world
Become an antenna for God to communicate with
An experience to feel closer connection to the universe
Derived from things humans said, but doesn’t always know connections between the things – which can lead to it saying whacky things
Transforms everything into an “embedding space”
It’s pastiche – imitating styles, cutting and pasting, template aspect
Both brilliance and errors come from this
Humans have some internal model – of physical world, of a relationship
Understanding is also about indirect meanings
AI doesn’t have these internal representations
Sam Altman – “humans are energy flowing through a neural network”
Human neural networks have much more structure than AI neural nets
Neural nets like ChatGPT have 2 problems:
-not reliable
-not truthful
Making them bigger doesn’t solve those problems – because they don’t have models of “reliability” or “truthfulness” “They’re just auto-complete” “It’s mysticism to think otherwise”
No conception of truth – all fundamentally bullshitting
It’s a very serious problem
Can use GPT3 to make up stories about covid, spread bullshit and misinformation
No existing tech to protect us from this potential tidal wave of misinformation
People used ChatGPT to make up fake coding answers to put on StackOverflow
StackOverflow had to ban ChatGPT
“Talking about having submachine guns of misinformation”
Ezra – ChatGPT is really good at mimicking styles, but core doesn’t have truth value or embedded meaning
Silicon Valley always good at surveillance capitalism
Now you can use AI to write targeted propaganda all day long
Ezra – this AI will be good for people and companies who don’t care about truthfulness. eg, Google doesn’t care about “truth” but about clicks
One of main AI use cases is SEO copy to drive clicks and engagement
In some aspects, as models get bigger they get better (eg, at generating synonyms); but at truthfulness, wasn’t as much progress
Loves AI and have thought about it his whole life – just wants it to work better, be on better path
Biology has enormous complexity – too much for humans – AI could really help us
Also climate change
Could empower individuals like DALL-E does for artists “Reason according to human values”
Right now we have mediocre AI – risk of being net negative – polarization of society, growth of misinformation
Parable of drunk looking for keys at night around a street light The street light in AI is deep learning
Human mind does many things: pattern recognition, use analogies, plan things, interpret language
We’ve only made progress on a tiny part
We need other tools (not just deep learning)
Fight between neural nets and symbols (symbolic systems / symbolic learning)
Find ways to bridge these 2 traditions
Ezra:
Deep learning – give all this data, figure it out itself, but bad at abstraction
Symbolic systems – great at abstraction (eg, teach it multiplication from first principles), abstract procedures that are guaranteed to work
Most symbol manipulation is hard wired
Kids learn to count using generalized rules
AI hasn’t matched humans in capacity to acquire new rules – some paradigm shift needed
We’re worshipping the false god of “more data”
Believes will be genuine new innovation in next decade
Mitophagy – subset of autophagy
Autophagy is stimulated by fasting states
When body doesn’t have enough food, it hunkers down and recycles dead old parts
Can stimulate through fasting, calorie restriction
Becoming lean and conservative
Mitochondrial dysfunction – associated with many ailments
David Sinclair – Cell journal – mitochondria are unified link in everything we know about aging
Mitophagy – how to get rid of old / defective mitochondria
Most powerful signal is diet – calorie restriction, fasting
Glucose levels in brain need to be reduced
Neurons love glucose – but why is too much glucose bad?
High glucose levels may be a symptom of metabolic dysfunction, possibly mitochondrial dysfunction
Infants – breast milk is most beneficial / healthy food source
If infants have seizures – ketogenic diet can help
Even experts don’t know what causes obesity epidemic
Believes mitochondria is the answer
Maybe epigenetic factors in womb environment
Mitochondrial DNA comes exclusively from moms DNA?
“Unequivocally no”
Mitochondria encoded in 36 genes – but majority of proteins that comprise mitochondria are encoded in nuclear DNA which is inherited from both parents
Diet, drug, alcohol use (including THC), lack of sleep – all impair mitochondrial function
Alcohol disrupts how brain uses all kinds of fuel – including glucose metabolism
If alcoholics switch to ketogenic diet – less alcohol craving, better brain metabolism, reduced brain inflammation
Rats on ketogenic diet – much more responsive to alcohol (“cheap dates”)
5x higher BAC levels!
Hypothalamus – involved in motivation and craving
Brain metabolism deficits can be corrected in short term with ketone supplements (eg, liquid ketone esters / ketone salts)
Ketogenic diet isn’t just about ketones themselves – also lowering glucose levels, ramping mitochondrial biogenesis
If metabolically healthy, ketones themselves *could* have benefit
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Started 1:08 in
L-carnitine – oral only absorbs 10%
Increases androgen receptor density
Vitamin D – optimizes testosterone if deficient
Free testosterone should be ~2% of total testosterone – reference range is 1-4%
Longjack – up regulates several enzymes
Tongkat – helps synthesize testosterone; 300-1200mg/day; be careful with standardization
Andrew takes it early in day, has stimulant effect – increases free testosterone for him
No reason to cycle it
Can increase DHEA
Fadogia – increases LH (luteinizing hormone), stimulates production of sperm / testosterone
300mg / day as a safe dose or 600mg / every other day
1st trimester pregnant ladies have high HCG levels in urine
Growth hormone / IGF-1 – usually don’t need to optimize it, but sometimes in diabetics it can be dysregulated
Amino acids before bed can help with growth hormone release
Some weight training regimens can increase growth hormone
Helpful to avoid eating 2 hours before bed as general health protocol
While fasting increases growth hormone release, downstream effects are mitigated so not significant net effect
Guest: Nick Johnson, ENS lead dev
Kiwi; Lived in New Zealand, Ireland, the UK
Goal never was to launch DAO, goal was maximally achievable decentralization — at that time there was only “The DAO” and not a lot of examples or playbook
Launched purely as governance mechanism – what to do with funds raised from registration fees?
Started with generous ETH Foundation grant
ENS is public good, non profit, goal is to leave as much value behind for users as possible
Believes protocols should all be public goods – things like ETH, L2, infrastructure
“If you want people to innovate on your platform then your platform should be open”
Makes exception for apps eg, DeFi, DEXes
Grew up with internet in 90s – open governance at the time, thing that everyone can improve on, left big impression on him
In 90s AOL didn’t succeed because it was walled garden, too much friction, extracting value that wasn’t re-invested in ecosystem
Attitude in web3 that working in nonprofit / charity gets paid badly and need sacrifice — totally reasonable to pay market rate
ENS token
-best tool we had available, but have shortcomings – eg, tendency to plutocracy
-intentionally launched as governance token, not a profit-accruing token
-wrote ENS Constitution explicitly states that revenue will not return to token holders – instead used to re-invest in ecosystem
ENS didn’t launch as a DAO – felt DAO ecosystem, tooling, examples weren’t there
What changed – use of OpenZeppelin contracts; human control of ENS had been reduced
Can be frustrating to run DAO – differing visions
Lots of parallels to corporate governance, but built more like a co-op than a for-profit Delegation is still necessary – you don’t want token holders voting on every single decision
What if VCs buy a lot of tokens? “Probably our biggest risk”
Defenses are social (lots of tokens given to long-term contributors, core team) and financial (would need to spend too much relative to value of $ in treasury)
“Constitution as friction mechanism”
ENS Labs is centralized, get budget and is “hired” by DAO
Hope to see other development orgs funded to help ENS (besides ENS Labs)
Quadratic voting is elegant but only works if you can solve Sybil problem (prove it’s a real human, not bots)
Imagine a good ID system, can still offer $50 to stranger on street to use their ID
Voting escrow tokens (lock tokens to get more weight or just participate in voting) – provides way to show long-term commitment to organization
Tough to design token economic / voting systems that can’t be gamed
Cares about financial privacy
KYC doesn’t reduce money laundering but does reduce financial privacy
Tornado Cash is great example – the devs actually built in compliance mechanisms – but OFAC / Dutch prosecutors ignored that and still charged them with money laundering
Optimism is public benefit corp – very encouraging
More skeptical of StarkNet (raised a lot of VC)
Just share the code, even if its messy – so many benefits from open source
Need more DAO tooling for day to day governance, a unified platform
Helpful to have OpenZeppelin’s version of the governor contractor – based on Compound’s – ENS DAO was one of first to use it
Will see more professional DAO delegates
What excites him
–see DAO move to long-term vision, setup an endowment to last 50-100 years
-integrating with DNS
-offchain names – names w/o reg fees
-happy to see Ethereum hasn’t fallen into trap that Bitcoin did which resists any change
–
DAO provided meaningful outlet for community to contribute eg, small grants program
“Giving them permission to be involved”
Often low participation is because people have selected themselves out of it – you don’t have to be prominent to make a contribution
2022 accomplishments: PoW>PoS reduced energy consumption by 99%
faster, more consistent block confirmation times – every 12secs
ZkEvms – multiple implementations with mainnet launch in 2023
Sign-in with Ethereum adoption (Farcaster, Lens)
Russia invasion of Ukraine – crypto proven to be useful
Continuing adoption in LatAm (eg, Argentina)
Crypto as international payment system for philanthropy
Post-peak price is often when major innovations launch (eg, Ethereum itself, Uniswap, PoS transition)
MtGox was, in a way, FTX of first cycle – but Mark Karpeles has proven himself a responsible actor in aftermath unlike Su Zhu and Kyle
But back then, MtGox implosion felt like existential crisis for bitcoin, for legitimacy
2023 will be year of rollups, Ethereum in its “scalable era”
Crypto no longer in 0.1—>10% stage Now it’s about 10%—>70%, requires new strategies – eg, can’t keep losing $5B in hacks
Esperanto is failure case
A constructed language in 19th c – easier to learn because simpler spelling, more regular grammar
Hope for path to world peace, everyone can speak same language
Didn’t succeed – just enthusiasts, niche community
Beautiful technical properties – but adoption went nowhere
Linux is middle case – kind of succeeded, kind of hasn’t
Linux desktop is mostly a failure – very usable but low adoption
But lots of backend adoption – eg, Android and many servers run on Linux
Internet is big success case
Will Ethereum / crypto end up as Esperanto, Linux, or the Internet?
Probably not Esperanto but possible that it’s between Linux<->Internet
Possible that adoption bifurcates between developing and developed countries
If good people are passive, the things that win will be drama queens of the world – we need to drown out the drama queens
Vitalik intentionally using the word “crypto” less and “Ethereum” more
Crypto is ungovernable commons with no barriers to entry – but just because you’re “crypto” doesn’t mean Ethereum is your partner or ally
IOTA, XRP – still completely centralized, but they’re still on Coinmarketcap
XRP wrote documents to US government accusing BTC and ETH of being China controlled
Cosmos ecosystem – deeply respect it
One of few genuinely trying something different, modularity, different design space, have a technical vision, have not been pump-and-dumpy
DH: even though Terra / Luna was built on Cosmos, no one blames Cosmos for its failure
2022 lessons learned:
-crypto at its most honorable when it takes core principles seriously (decentralization, self custody, transparency)
-some apps that grew quickly tried too hard to integrate w/ mainstream, and compromised their values
-what’s succeeded: Uniswap (DEX); Rai (stablecoin); ENS
-privacy tech hit a speed bump
5 use cases that excite Vitalik:
1 – Money – charitable donations; investing in startups; crypto as frictionless international money
Even if CBDC is adopted, likely hard to use / transmit across borders
In developing world, crypto is easiest way to send money home to families, to store value
Developed world activism or industries at risk of de-platforming (eg, adult content)
Make a wallet that 1B people use
2 – Defi – most important are the most simple use cases eg, stablecoins, DEX, prediction markets (stuff that’s been around for longer)
Newer stuff is very complicated, yield farming, high APR/APY, short-term focused
4 years ago even the ponzis were more honorable; now there’s a lot more obfuscation going on Make a stablecoin that can survive USD hyperinflation
3 – Identity – authentication; attestations; domain names; ENS; proof of personhood Don’t think identity focused blockchains will work
RSA: Identity is emergent, a byproduct of what you’re building (eg, Facebook is useful and ID emerged, same with Google / Gmail)
ETH wallets vs PGP keys – PGP used to be strongest cypherpunk meme, now ETH wallet just works and is being adopted and is public/private key pair – possible bc big username
Standards emerge over time – eg, POAP as attestation protocol
Crypto is not just product, but also a community
4 – DAOs – set to replace things other than corporations (which are big and need the infrastructure);
Where DAO makes sense -Quickly spin up multi-sig of 7 people -Setup a truly decentralized org that is resistant to attacks
Less bullish on DAO as VC fund
How to setup non financial governance? How to resist 51% attack from token holders?
eg, Maker has 7B in capital (TVL), but governance token is only worth 500M mcap – could buy up token and get access to capital
5 – Hybrid apps – partially onchain; more centralized services
eg, Centralized exchanges with proof of reserve attestations, or games / social media that post occasionally to chain
DH: similar to L2s post data to L1 that forces them to play by set of rules
DH: Blockchain is a check on human folly
How do we achieve this?
-continue interacting with regulators
-give grants to enable builders working on important problems (eg, self custody wallets)
What is Vitalik’s role in 2023
Helping projects, explore app space, ETH protocol stuff, push EVM in good trajectory, connect with various ETH communities around world, helping ETH ecosystem be stable and self-supporting
Rumor that he wants to turn “gas” into “mana” – he even proposed splitting gas into several types of gas, and naming one of them mana