Big Ideas From Balaji

Bitcoin, Indians, Optimalism and much more

Hello hello,

This newsletter is all about synthesizing big ideas from various knowledge sources and breaking them down into simple, 5-10 minute reads. Last time, I summarised a long-form podcast by the legendary Naval Ravikant (read here) and it was quite popular.

Today, we’ll be talking about some thought-provoking ideas by another fascinating mind- Balaji Srinivasan. Engineering Ph.D., founder, VC, technologist, thinker, crypto builder- he’s done it all. It’d take me 7-10 lives to even attempt all of that, leave alone get successful in each area.

Here are 7 big ideas from his 3-hour pod with Tim Ferriss. Trust me, there’s a lot to unpack:

Mr. B bamboozling the host with obscure book recommendations

👓 AR glasses: When asked about one tech that’s going to blow up in such a way that 10 years later its ubiquity will seem obvious, Balaji brought up AR glasses. With all the hype around the metaverse, it might not sound like a surprising-as-hell response, but it’s insightful nevertheless. These would be just like our regular specs but equipped to help us tune into high-fidelity virtual worlds and get out of them with supreme ease. They’d also give us a terminator view where essential features of the real world would suddenly get animated in our view- measurements, data about objects we’re seeing, and all sorts of information we might want to know (through Google or Wikipedia) right on our glasses! All voice assistants have been trained on immense data and may act as perfect companions to such tech. Moreover, mobiles make us look down (which probably produces negative biochemical feedback and sprained necks), while these glasses would allow us to look up and move about without having to get distracted with those endless downward gazes. Logical progression, it seems.

🦾 Optimalism: Staying on that thread for a bit, another big piece that’ll become quite big is this drive to extend our lifespan and augment our bodies/minds with newer substances/devices aimed at pushing our limits. But transhumanism- the catchphrase for all such ideas which aim at transcending our delicate monkey biologies, gets a bad rap because it’s seen as an evil attempt by the ultra-rich to become all-powerful and do even worse things. While such extrapolations of what billionaires could achieve aren’t so off the mark, the branding of potential new ideas as evil and unworthy may not be the right stance. That’s why Mr. B proposes the term ‘Optimalism’. This is a nice example of a Russel conjugation being deployed for a good cause. By changing the positioning of activities operating at the bleeding edge of scientific research, we can develop a better attitude toward trying out things that help us ‘optimize’ our lives. With gene editing, lifespan research, and many other areas, I’m excited to see where we reach by the 2030s.

🌐 Network State: This is really the big idea of this podcast. In fact, he has written a new book about this concept which I shall read and summarise in this newsletter very soon. But what the heck does this word even mean? Put simply, it’s an upgrade to the idea of nation-states. We use that word because ‘nation’ and ‘state’ are two different concepts that we often conflate into one. Nations are groups of people with a common identity and shared history/culture/norms. The state is the governing body that basically rules over those people and establishes things like law and order. The idea of the network state is built on the fact that because of this mind-boggling thing called the internet, people with similar identities, interests, and worldviews can now easily congregate and form communities- and that you can literally build a country (loosely used here) online. A common question to this idea is “But don’t you need some land and resources and boundaries to start one?”. Those are actually the last things you need, by virtue of the very definition of a nation. So the network state can be built by online communities that can slowly start by agreeing on some common values and gradually go on to acquire diplomatic status. His one-line def for this idea is: “A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states”. Given that the traditional idea of nation states is long overdue for an upgrade, we must definitely discuss and debate such unique ideas.

🔱 God, State, Network: What’s the most powerful force in the world? What’s the higher power that people appeal to and place their undying trust in to settle issues and arrive at a consensus? Framed this way, those three words start making sense. 300 years ago, almost everyone trusted God. Believing in God’s punishment was a good way to ensure moral behavior at scale. Gradually, people started believing in the power of the state and its ability to decide what’s right and wrong, enforce laws and govern everything. People started having full faith in the concept of states. But today, we’re seeing the crypto-anarchists exit the system and turn to the network as the ultimate source of truth. For them, truth is on-chain, and value is confirmed via decentralized consensus, not some middleman that we need to place our trust in. We’re already more aligned with our online communities vs our physical neighbors. Encryption will soon subvert state violence. As the crypto adoption cycle runs its course and killer use cases onboard the first billion users, we’ll see the shift from State to Network. And once networks are ubiquitous, the idea of Network States can really take flight. These societies will be subscription-based with easy opt-outs (unlike governments- you just have to deal with them). Can’t wait for this new model of SaaS- society as a service!

₿ Bitcoin Maximalism: Mr. B says that this is the most important political ideology in the world right now that people don’t know about. The maximalists have become a real force and are exerting significant lobbying power in the US to get more and more support for their movement. He even goes on the posit that the Fed may have to lower interest rates again for the 2024 elections which might be the final straw that breaks the US’ back as inflation ends up spiraling out of control and Bitcoin moons. At such a point, Bitcoin will be THE hard money that the government would need to pay back its debts. This could lead to a Bitcoin-seizure scenario, not unlike the executive order that saw all gold held by Americans getting seized by the government in the 1930s. In fact, the people who believe that a dollar-devaluation scenario is just not possible are the polar opposite of the maximalists- their views aren’t grounded in logic but faith- they place complete trust and surrender to the idea of the State (as discussed in the previous point) and can’t imagine it failing. After all, who can ever imagine their God failing? We can expect a big Dollar Vs BTC showdown in the coming years.

🤯 Wokification of Big Tech: The US establishment hates tech rebels and does its best to fight them. Unfortunately, many of these firms have succumbed to the wokes and we can expect them to turn into mass surveillance machines. But the degree of influence that they can extend is really very subtle and scary. There’s this apocryphal story that the Spanish talk with a lisp because they saw the Spanish king do it and ended up copying it. Similarly, when tech leviathans nudge us in an ever-so-subtle manner, it’ll gradually mold our thoughts in the directions they choose. Here’s an example- Google Docs now completes your sentences for you and suggests edits for the things you write. It flags words like ‘landlord’ as bad and nudges you to change it- which shows how it’s being programmed to drive our minds in certain directions! The power to shape the thoughts and language of billions of people is a daunting idea- and will be the terrain for bigger social wars as they try to control more tech founders and what their businesses do. For me, this sounds like yet another reason we need to move away from companies that are becoming so powerful that their reach and influence can be weaponized and used to change the fundamentals of human society.

🇮🇳 Bullish on Indians: We have some encouraging words to end this piece. Balaji is super bullish on Indians (the global desi network, basically) and modestly bullish on India as a country/economy. The data he cites on the fast development of roads/infra and rapid roll-out of 4G is something we have witnessed- but it is much more observable (and surprising) to the intermittent visitor as to how quickly India has developed. A fascinating thought is that in a decade or so, most of the English-speaking internet will be dominated by Indians- and this fact and its implications don’t seem to have been priced in. One such possibility is that India could have a shot at being a media superpower (apart from being a tech superpower, which isn’t that new given our annual production of one trillion engineers). Just like the last century saw the US and USSR clashing in the cold war, the next big confrontation in the 2040s could be between the Decentralised Dharmic Network and the Centralized Sinic State (just a dark horse projection though, don’t bet the farm on it or get too excited).

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That’s it for today folks. If you like thinking about big ideas and learning from diverse fields like history, science, philosophy, business, and humanities, get onto the email list right away.