Essay

An operational epistemology I am not going to argue for anything. On the question of whether human beings can know the world, I have argued many times, and I have learned something uncomfortable: I am weak on that battlefield. The lines I was proudest of — the ultimate truth is faith, human beings cannot know, the world is not built on logic — each has a true first half and a conclusion that does not follow. ...

Prelude: Two Voices On January 3, 2009, someone whose identity no one knows wrote a rule into a piece of code: For every 210,000 blocks produced, the issuance of new coins is halved. The rule gives no reason. It doesn’t explain why 210,000, doesn’t explain why halving rather than some other decay. It simply exists, like an axiom. Seventeen years later, on some night in 2026, I sat in front of my screen and wrote down a rule of my own: ...