Bitcoin Is The Psychedelic To The Default Mode Network Of The Internet

Good Morning Everyone,

I got reminded recently of a powerful analogy I heard from Michael Pollan originally, that provides a lens to think about the effect of psychedelics on the default mode network of the brain.

The default mode network is a region, or network in the brain that is understood to handle many internal tasks when one is not focussed on the outside world.

ScienceDirect explain the default mode network as follows:

“The DMN is a set of brain regions that exhibits strong low-frequency oscillations coherent during resting state and is thought to be activated when individuals are focused on their internal mental-state processes, such as self-referential processing, interoception, autobiographical memory retrieval, or imagining future.”

This is the area of the brain that is operating when you are worrying about something, or when you are being self-critical and judging yourself or ruminating on past events, or imagining about the future.

Whats super interesting about this section of the brain is it seems to develop very sticky patterns of operation, and once these patterns are established they can operate in the background of the operating system very unconsciously and in a way many people simply are not aware of.

He explains it something like this…

If you imagine the default mode network is like a mountain covered in snow, and over time you have ski’d down the mountain over and over many times, and you have established clear tracks from doing so leading you to tend to opt to ski the tracks that are well known and established as opposed to going into unknown territory.

He explains the effect of psychedelics on this part of the brain like a dumping of fresh powder covering all the old tracks, and installing a new fresh state on the mountain, that provides the opportunity for you to establish new paths, and form new patterns and modes of internal operation.

In a recent conversation with Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey explains:

“If Bitcoin existed before Twitter started, i think we would see completely different business models. I don’t think we would be as dependent on an advertising business model. I think there would be a much healthier balance between multiple business models at once instead of this over dependence on one. I think we’d see a lot less of the issues that advertising systems can bring up in terms of privacy and everything we’re seeing around surveillance capitalism as well.

So the fact that the internet didn’t have this mode of transport and didn’t have this protocol and didn’t have this currency forced [it] into very traditional models that became massive at scale and then can become quite dangerous at scale as well so i’m very excited to see the new models that emerge, because we now have bitcoin, and we’re now the closest we’ve ever been to a native currency for the internet. Which to me, changes everything.”

“There was a time early in bitcoin's history when there was less of a focus on bitcoin as a currency aspect and just as a transport, and more on the blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is amazing but the network's power is what people do with it and the use cases, and the use case for the internet to have something like is i think as fundamental as tcp/ip or http or smnp, which is a mail protocol.

These open protocols create companies, they create projects, they create entirely new cultural and societal shifts that i think ultimately lead to more trust and more transparency as time goes on and and diminishment of all these barriers and boundaries that we've erected”

As Jack explains, Bitcoin is likely to facilitate to the internet, what psychedelics do for the default mode network of the brain.

I believe Bitcoin is going to usher in a tsunami of new businesses, new models and new ways in which those businesses operate as a result of a fresh coat of powder on the previously well developed and clearly carved out incentive structures of the legacy framework.

Just like It was impossible to envision how the internet would fundamentally change society 20 or 30 years later, it’s equally difficult to imagine what impacts this open, decentralized protocol will facilitate in a similar time frame, but i believe Jack has a clear line of sight toward these potential futures, and is absolutely right in saying it leads to more trust and more transparency over time.

That’s a future i’m here for, and I’m going to do whatever I can to move us toward it.

Onward and Upward!

Hope you have a great finish to your week, and I’ll speak to you on Monday.

AK

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