Crypto makes sense when you consider alternative model of reality
What is Real?
My model of reality is essentially Huxleyan whereby there exists some reality only a subset of which our mind as we know it can process creating the so called “conscious experience” of every day life. But there exists a reality beyond one that we can observe or detect, one we can only access with certain “mind hacks” be it deep introspection practices such as meditation or nature-provided shortcuts aka plant medicine. Books can, were and will be written on this big topic, but for the purposes of this article, let’s just suppose that our reality is not the real thing, it’s an illusion of sorts, it’s a Matrix.
How did we get here?
It’s hard to imagine using our currently available concepts exactly how we got here or why, but we’re beginning to see some patterns. Notice our propensity for creating worlds, worlds that are vastly different from the one we’re in right now. We see it in books and movies, the tales of mystical lands and galaxies far far away, more recently we see it in digital domains where entire virtual worlds are created through platforms like Second Life and with technology enabling more and more immersive experiences through Virtual Reality, it’s not hard to imagine in not too distant future putting on a very advanced VR body-suite that provides signal to all senses and being immersed into one of these virtual worlds. Spending long enough time in that state will make it seem as real as our current reality.
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Fiction vs Reality
One important distinction that we‘ve always had at our disposal is the distinction between that which is made up, fantasy, fiction and that which is real, observable, truth. Yet more recently we seem to have lost that distinction and instead the belief systems are shifting towards whatever narrative one chooses to believe, or whatever narrative one creates for themselves through carefully constructed social bubbles, online and otherwise. This started in political domain which always had a subjective component built-in, which seem to have gotten stronger (ex: “Fake News”, etc) and has now bled into Financial domain where the price of something is no longer determined by some real-life observable, economic factors, but rather by pure belief of market participants, beliefs that are not grounded in anything, they are simply made up. (Yes, I’m looking at you GameStop, Dodgecoin, etc). Of course in some ways this is nothing new, the primary example of a fictional narrative that large portions of population believe in is Religion.
The Next Logical Step?
Combining technological evolution of automation and AI which can take care of most “this world” tasks with more and more believable digital worlds through VR plus our tendency to believe in fictional narratives it’s not hard to imagine that we will one day immerse ourselves into a fully digital world. Of course to us it will feel as real as the one we’re in right now, which brings me to the real question: what makes us think we are not already living in one of these virtual worlds right now? <dramatic pause>
Crypto
The rest of the thesis becomes obvious. Crypto starts to make sense if you consider that the future is digital, not in the “we’re always on our iPhones” kind of way, but in the much more immersive “we’re living in a digital world that is indistinguishable from the world we’re calling ‘real’ today”. Suddenly all the assets we’ve been calling ‘digital’ which don’t seem to make sense to people that prefer ‘tangible’ things, become very much tangible.
The Really Real Question
Above scenario has many variants, another popular one is we’re just a simulation and we’re working on creating another simulation of ourselves. And yes, it’s turtles all the way down with base reality being many simulations away. Which story you pick matters little, as they’re all non-provable from our current limited vantage point, much like the character in a game does not know he is just a character in the game. The really real question is why do we continue to try to go deeper into the illusion by creating more layers that push us further from the capital “t” Truth instead of trying to get back?
