Builders x Christianity x2 | A Vision Of The Christian Future

Teo @phteocos 0:00
In the name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, almighty and eternal God who created us in Thy image invade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of thy only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Grant beseech thee that through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and doctor during our meeting, we will direct our senses only to that which is pleasing to thee, and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we counter through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Connor Mahoney 0:39
Amen. Let's go ahead and jump into the conversation. So this is kind of Zy's space. I don't know if it's Zai or Z he's going to have to enlighten us, but he's been trying to join us for a couple time, a couple a couple sessions yet. So we've been doing these sessions since, really January, and this will be a fourth one now. So I have a lot of background. I have a lot of history in the conversation, but every time it's we've been bringing new folks out. So I feel like almost we have to catch up to speed. But essentially, I think everybody is probably familiar with the act, broadly familiar with the techno optimism space. And so the question is, as we are all Christians here, well, what are the what are the connections? Where do things align, where do things diverge, and where do Christian where do we see ourselves in this space? And a big aspect of it, for me, is that Christianity can never be a but or an and statement, right? Christianity is an all encompassing philosophy and all encompassing ideology. And essentially, it's, it's the very fabric of reality. So you can't really have a movement that is that the quotes from Christianity. And so I think that really has to guide the conversation. And we can't, you know, we can't just approach it like, okay, maybe Christina has something to add to this, or maybe we have something to pull from the app. We really have to think about it in totality. So let me, let's just throw it in. Let's just jump into the Connor. Let's throw it to Zy. He says this is his first time speaking in a space. So why don't you introduce yourself and tell us how you how you've joined the tpot?

Zy @ZyMazza 2:24
Yeah, thanks, Connor. Hello, everyone. My name is Zy, as you can hear from my voice. It may surprise you, but I'm not an anime elf girl, garbage collector in real life. In real life, I am a human male, created and got the image I'm practicing systems engineer. And I converted to Christianity in college when I was about 21 and I had been studying religion. I originally began that course of study as an atheist, and over the course of studying many different religions, many different faith traditions, philosophies, I became convinced of the truth of Christianity. That's a classic story, right? You know, you start researching Christianity and you get interested. A famous example, there's like some Swedish death metal band that was like making satanic music. And they started researching Christianity. Their ostensible purpose was so that they could quote blaspheme more accurately. And they all converted to Christianity. They became a they became a Christian only band. And I was really moved Connor about what you said about Christianity being an all encompassing ideology, religion, play of life. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a girl in college who was well, she was nominally Lutheran, but I don't think she was that religious. And we were talking about my upcoming conversion to Christianity, specifically Catholicism, and I was explaining to her some of the distinctions between Lutheranism and Catholicism, and she asked me, you know, very seriously, she said, Do you really want to convert to a religion that is going to require you to change so many things about your life? And I thought that was funny, because, you know, in my opinion, that was the whole point, not just Christianity, of any religion. If you're going to go all in on a framework for, you know, an order of the universe, of cosmology, you know, I think it ought to change every aspect of your life. And yeah, so I've been, I've been in the technology space, professionally for a long time. I've been Christian for a while. You know, I'm a practicing Christian. Emphasis on practicing. I'm not very good yet. It's something that takes time that you know, as St Paul said, I you know, you die daily, and you try and improve. But I'm also a bit of a. A techno pessimist, I think, relative to a lot of the people in this group and in these spaces, I don't necessarily think technology is at odds with spirituality, but it often is. And a framework that I really like, even though I'm Catholic, is one that was embraced by the Amish. They're obviously Anabaptist, but I think it's very wise. They have a setup wherein, when a new technology comes out, they give it to a trusted elder in their community, and that trusted elder utilizes it for a period of time. I forget how long it is after they have some German word for it. And you know that individual basically determines if the presence of this technology will be a net good for the community, bringing people together, helping them strengthen their fellowship in Christ, or it'll be a net evil or bad for the community. And I think we've certainly seen plenty of technologies like that. So just in a nutshell, I guess that's where I basically land in this whole yak teapot scene. And thanks for inviting me, Connor, I appreciate it. Thanks for your patience. I've tried to come to a lot of these basins, but it hasn't worked out.

Connor Mahoney 6:17
No definitely glad to have you here and glad to hear some of your thoughts. You know, one thing I really appreciated when I first ran into you was that obviously you approach things very much from from your faith, and you, I remember you had responded, or you had requested bays engaged with and I forget exactly what the post was, but it was, it was something to do with Christianity and having A Christian conversation about EAC and you guys had that exchange. I thought that was just so awesome. You're like, let's have a Christian conversation. And then days actually joins. So that was cool. And I think we need to have more Christian conversations in this space. Andrew, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Andrew Stratelates 6:55
Sure thing. Um, I, similarly to Zai, converted in college to a lycanism. I had actually been raised Lutheran, but became a relatively serious agnostic as a young man from about age 15 to 2021. I work as a computer engineer, and have for almost 20 years at this point, and I tend to be a little ambivalent about technological progress, and probably will bring a lot of Ivan eilic, who is a Roman Catholic author on this and the institutionalization of society about this. And basically, I guess my perspective is that technology is a lot like wealth in that there's nothing that prohibits using it or even being wealthy as a Christian. But, one has to be cautious, because there are a lot of spiritual aspects that it makes detrimental so that that's sort of my, my perspective on it. And there, there are lots of secondary and tertiary effects of technology and societal change that no one seems to be aware of, right? Be the decelerationists or accelerationists. It's sort of frustrating to me that no one seems to be concerned about steering the car right. There's a lot of discussion on whether to put on the brakes or put on the gas, but not very much discussion on what direction we actually have to steer things towards.

Connor Mahoney 8:48
Yeah, and I, I'm kind of in a similar place, like, I think the decel, I mean, they these labels, whatever it means, but it's kind of like Christians don't really engage with either side of the conversation, right? But, but I know, and I just invited just use a pen to come back up and speak, because I know you have some things to add here too, but I do. I think it's very important that we do articulate a positive vision of what Chris the Christian future looks like and exactly how Christians are supposed to engage with the future. And in this has to do with just the fact that what we can't just exist in the frame of, okay, EAC, and then how, what, not Yak, we actually have to articulate exactly what what Christianity says about the future. And part of why I'm so interested in this right now is because, and I'm going to show it here, but this, this guy from a 16 Z that made a post about, well, this is how Mormonism aligns with accelerationism. And they obviously found some, some reasons for that. People who might be Mormon would be drawn to acceleration or. Or contribute to that ideology in some way, but it's like, okay, but if we're talking about the future, and especially from a Christian frame, like we actually know what that's going to look like, like we're told, right? And Mormonism is not going to be here in the future. So how can something be techno forward future, forward, if it's not going to exist in the future like that, that, to me, is like so critical to the conversation. So that's kind of what I want to do here. I want to ask ourselves, if we can't articulate what the Christian future looks like and how we actually add to that in this technology space, do you want to introduce yourself? Just use a pen?

Justice Eapen 10:41
Yes, I would be glad to do so. Thank you for having me. It's pleasure to be here. I am Justice Epen, also known as just use a pen. And I, I mean, I don't know exactly how much we want to cover here, and I saw the title became the machine. God, I don't have too much to say on that phrase in particular, but I do as a seven or eight year Baptist now have some thoughts on narrating this moment and how Christian futurism is going to have to develop what I think is like, like a historiographical framework for describing history as it happens, as it did happen in the context of our Christian worldview. You know, historically, Christians have done very well at writing history. We practically invented it actually. And now, I think, over the just the last couple of centuries in particular were failing in this regard. We don't seem to have a Christian narrative about the last century or so in particular. We can see how our Lord worked in the Old Testament, and we can see how the Son of God worked to establish the New Testament. We can see the church working through history to establish Western civilization, the laws, the culture, the hospitals, the universities, everything. And some of us can see, you know, how the Lord led the pilgrims to the New World, and perhaps even played a role in the founding of this country. And yet, here we are, and it seems like we're at some amount of a loss as far as accounting for the 19th and 20th century, and now the 21st century and so, and I know I'm just kind of throwing out like a whole new concept here, but I think it's very important to the futurism question. Because, you know, do we have a Christian explanation for the Civil War? Do we have a Christian explanation for the World Wars? And do we have a a fundamentally Christian framework, again, of history that can accommodate the present moment, which, of course, turns into or which comes out of the future, right? So, like you might say, well, of course, the Civil War was a fundamentally Christian thing. The abolition movement was extremely Christian. Okay? I hear that I can buy it. Are we as an interdenominational body, buying selling it, really? And are, like you might say, well, World War Two was effectively the Christian West saving the European Jew from terrible evil, if you have, like, the mainstream narrative on World War Two, but that's great, and I very much love that story. And the question is, are we telling that story? Does World War is World War Two an event in history that we understand as the Christian West, saving, you know, apostate Jews from an even more terrible evil like to me, that's a huge apologetic and Evangelist lick evangelism tool. But I don't hear people making that case really, and these are just critical questions that we're aware of. Obviously, the future poses more critical questions in the same vein. So without a framework to really develop that narrative and narrate the present moment as well as the future moments, it feels like that's a job to do, and something that will play a major role in establishing, you know, the Christian 22nd century in the United States, which I think is what a lot of us are aiming for. That's just what I brought into here, and that's kind of what was on my heart. So I wanted to share it with you guys. I didn't want to repeat what we kind of shared at the last space. So I hope that some of those comments were at least, uh, interesting or helpful, maybe.

Connor Mahoney 14:23
Yeah, totally appreciate it and appreciate you joining well So, and this is like, I don't think talking about yak and where Christina aligns and where Christina devotes from EAC, like that conversations kind of played out. But I did kind of stack the speaker side a little bit on maybe techno pessimists or people who are not really gung ho with EX stuff, so we can talk about it a little bit. But I do want us to just think about how we can actually articulate a positive view of what is good about the movements techno optimism and what do we. Really need to push forward as Christians, to direct the conversation away that ultimately, is aligned with what the future is really going to be, which is Christian so Zari, why don't you, why don't you jump in here? And I know you have a lot of problems with the act. Specifically, we had a lot of convos, and we, you tell me.

Zy @ZyMazza 15:18
Yeah, I mean, I'd love to jump in, and honestly, we can even pick up the thread of the thread of the Christian lens throughout history. One thing that I've tweeted about, maybe not too often, but it's something that I think about a lot, is looking at mostly the Bible, but other texts as well, through this sort of technological lens. So, you know, Justice was describing a sort of Christian narrative for, you know, more contemporary events, like World War Two, the Civil War, not that it's contemporary, but you know what I mean, it's certainly not biblical. But you know, if you look at the biblical thread, the biblical narrative, the Christian lens for the Bible, and you look at some of the things that are that are discussed there, I mean, to me, it is, it seems pretty clear reading the Bible, that technology is, you know, at best, met with suspicion, and at Worst, met with, you know, just, just outright disdain. You know, from the very beginning, Daniel Quinn wrote a great series, you know, the beginning. One is called Ishmael. It's a exegesis on Genesis, focused on this sort of technological lens where the fall and, you know, the temptation in the garden, you know, traditionally, it's associated with, you know, loss of innocence, sexuality is a big one. He describes it as a narrative of mankind's fall from being a hunter gatherer society where everything is plentiful. I'm sure you've all seen the studies that you know, hunter gatherer tribes leave lead much more leisureful lives than agricultural societies, per calorie consumed, that sort of thing into a more agrarian model. That's that's his reading of the fall of man in the garden. You know, I don't think that's necessarily true, but it's a valid reading. And you know, Cain and Abel that becomes anxiety between, you know, the the more pastoralist, you know, able being taken out by Cain might be the other way around. But you know, you can follow that thread. You can keep it going. One of my favorites is the dream that Daniel interprets for nebucha. Nebucha dreamed of an iron tree that its roots completely covered the earth. All of the animals and humans of the earth started eating from it, from from the fruit of this tree. And the tree, you know, withers and dies. To me that seems like so clearly, especially in the time that it was written at the tail end of the Bronze Age. It seems like such clear Iron Age anxiety, right? I mean, where does this iron tree come from? And, you know, going going on beyond that to the birth of Jesus. You have this. And that's why I was, you know, really liking what Andrew was saying about the institutionalist institutionalization of society. You know, through the birth of Jesus, we have all this anxiety about the Roman census. The Roman census this far reaching sort of and bureaucracy is a technology as well. By the way, I'm not always necessarily talking about circuits and, you know, electricity and batteries. There's a lot of different technologies. You know, mechanical, social technologies as well. I think bureaucracy falls under the ladder. You know, you have all this anxiety. And then in Revelations, I think it's remarkably prescient that in Revelations, they came up with this idea they could see far enough in the future, in Rome, when the technology didn't exist, they can see like, well, you know, if we follow this trend, soon you won't be able to transact at all without the government, you know, Babylon, the devil, whatever you want to call it, monitoring your transactions. You'll have to, you know, you'll be completely under control of the yoke of a central authority. And to me, this is really the tension of technology. I mean, technology can definitely be a tool of liberation. You know, you look at firearms and the foundation of this country, I think there's a reason why the Second Amendment is is enshrined in our country, because we know that's what it takes to fight, that's what it took to fight for our freedoms. But at the same time, technology can embolden and strengthen existing institutions. And I don't think it'll be controversial here to say that the majority of the powerful institutions on Earth, at least today, are not Christian. Even the ones that are nominally Christian are not, you know, effectively Christian. So when I look at technology, and I have these anxieties. Right? It's not so much about what the technology is and what the technology can do, so much as who is going to use the technology and to what end. And is it more likely that the technology will lead to oppression and distancing people from the faith, from God, from the truth, or will the technology strengthen people's family bonds, Faith bonds liberate people? That's kind of where I'm at, broadly to pick up the threat of history thing. I know I just rambled on a bunch of topics, but that's what came to mind, hearing you all speak.

Connor Mahoney 20:41
Well, I just saw nominus unmute. And why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and maybe respond to Z, or Zy? And then we're going to throw it to Andrew, because his time is short.

Nominus 20:53
Hey, sure, I'll keep it brief. I'm Nominus. I'm a software developer and aspiring AI engineer here and been saved for a long time now, and but, uh, so yeah, you did say a lot there, Zai, but I think the general trend kind of suggested that you were worried about I basically, the technology leading into or falling into the wrong hands or being controlled by influences and authorities that are not Christian in nature, and I would just say briefly that, and I'll let Andrew speak, but just briefly that I the reason that I have e/acc in my bio is because it's kind of like dining with, you know, the tax collectors or something like this, right? Some of us, someone has to be there. From us Christians, here's what God wants, you know. And if, and if we can do some evangelizing when they're then, all the better, but someone has to direct this technology if it's going to the right hand. People who do not have God are going to basically fill that hole in their heart with the valuable thing of the time, and I've been, I've Been around e/acc basically since the formation and in this space for a couple years, and on a different account before the I was in all those spaces with, with with Beth and corn syrup. He's He's not on Twitter anymore, and bays talking about this technology and stuff, and it has evolved in some weird and interesting ways, but, um, I have seen it as you know, my job as a Christian is to kind of be an ambassador, a representative and and someone who helps to direct this technology towards God's will and not through, honestly, not even through actions of my own. It's been, it has been amazing what God has done for me. I I'm just in this time. But, yeah, that's what I think. Just to sum it up, is that I think we have a responsibility to kind of outreach to people who don't have God, and direct the energy. And I think maybe the the the nominal or esthetic of having, of being part of like an official organization towards that end, could potentially be dangerous, if it, if it becomes, you know, religious, or Sac religious, or something like this. But being around since, like, the very beginning of EAC, I, I have not seen that really, except for, you know, like I. In their manifesto, they have some interesting little beliefs, but largely as a whole, like the people that have been in EAC, have not displayed those types of beliefs actively. And if they do, then you know, I'm immediately out personally, but yeah, that's, that's my whole team. Yeah, Andrew, it'll be cool hearing from you. We've interacted a lot too. Andrew, yeah, cool guy.

Andrew Stratelates 25:38
Yeah. I feel the same way about you. I guess my frame for this type of stuff is even Alex concept of convivial tools, right and the schooling society and the the sort of fundamental issue right of modernity in technology is this tyrannical institution of competency, right? That we're not in the place where, for example, you can build your own vehicle very easily, right? You have to buy into all these things with the road system and things like that. And the the issue I have with techno optimism is that the amount of technology isn't sort of the limiting factor anymore, right? And it probably hasn't been for 5000 years. The the issue is designing and integrating the technology with the rest of how we do things so that it's convivial, right? And convivial means that it sort of helps people flourish and helps people be creative and make those connections. And is diffuses that competency and allows everyone to become competent, as opposed to an elite. And this is actually a critique I have of the Doomers or the AI safety people. Right is they want to go and institutionalize the use of like large language models, such that competency is highly regulated and in sort of a leak. And I think this is a sort of a major problem, right? Because this is sort of the understanding of of, it's almost idolatrous, right, that, and this is on both sort of sides, right? That that if we add enough technology, we're able to solve problems in sort of a divine way. And that's not going to happen at all, right? What we're going to have is more wealth, basically, right? And the question is, how we're going to use our wealth? Well, and so I guess that that that's sort of my critique of like Beth Jesus. And the the sort of explicit e accelerationist stuff is that it is too optimistic, right? It's not, it's not. It's not just hacker ethos, right? Which I love, and I think is entirely compatible with Christianity. The hacker ethos is, you know, we're going to tinker with things and solve problems and fix things and make things better through technology, right? It's not just that, but this belief that we will be able to fix our original sin through it, basically, right? And only God's race can do that.

Connor Mahoney 28:45
But perhaps, if so, I hear you, and actually, I do agree with both some of those points that you're making, and also nominist, when he was making the point about, well, if, if nobody's here right, then who's building the technology? And I think we have to be in the space for that reason, and I'm so again, I do understand a lot of the concerns. I do. I do believe that technology can develop in a way that is inherently evil. You can accelerate. You can accelerate into a wall. You can and to me, it's kind of the same you're building technology that basically isn't going to go anywhere. You're pursuing. A thread that is just not effective. So I mean, effective accelerationism implies that we're trying to build something that is explicitly effective. And so that's why it's like, well, you have to have a vision of the future, and the future is Christian. Therefore for technology to be effective, it has to be a Christian technology, right? But if I can, if I can, slide into my usual mindset, I am extremely practical or pragmatic, and I do think that if we want the technology in the near future, in the ultimate future, I'm not concerned. But in the near future, if we want the technology to be good, if we want the technology to be aligned with Christian unity, then we need to be building it. And if our only contribution to the discussion is all the fears is, you know, all the problems with techno optimism, then what? Who are we convincing? We're convincing fellow Christians essentially that this technology is inherently bad or could inherently cause these problems. So we're basically convincing Christians that, hey, maybe we should be more careful, and we shouldn't be building this we shouldn't be out there fighting in this battle. You know, we can leave that to these demonic non Christians, right? And we create a self fulfilling prophecy. Of course, the technology is going to be bad, so that's, I guess, that's ultimately my concern, and I think that's what's still missing. I was in a space with with Dale last night, and it was, it was the same, it's the same conversation again and again and again. Okay, we have the EAC folks on one side, and we have the AI safety folks on the other side. And let's see, you know, he was right. And it's like, you know, this is not really the conversation. The conversation is who is the one that's defining how we're building the technology. And right now, the AI safety folks, they're not on our side. They're not on the Christian side. And what I see in e/acc is, again, a very similar to Christianity. It's a very decentralized network of just people who want to build and being held back by the air the non Christian really seriously the institutional power that is behind the air safety movements that's not Christian. So what kind of CO belligerence, if you will, and something of this war against against pessimism and against like Antichrist philosophies. So I've rambled enough, I'll throw it to nominist, and then Andrew again, and then let's, let's go to Zion. It's been a while. Well, actually, we got a couple other speakers... Nominus, go ahead.

Nominus 32:02
I'm sorry I kind of skipped out.

Connor Mahoney 32:11
We'll come right back to you. I know Andrew unmuted, so let's go to Andrew becuase he's going to have to jump off in 20 minutes.

Andrew Stratelates 32:23
Yeah. I just wanted to underline your point, Connor, that you know, we have to participate in forging the technology into something that's can be viewable and good and Christian. And one thing that Christian circles and Christian adjacent circles have problem with is we tend to get a little schizoid and a little paranoid in sort of conspiratorial ways. And we need to not do that. And we actually have to, like, build convivial tools that help build communities and help share charity and all these other good things.

Connor Mahoney 32:56
Thank you so much for that. I totally agree. Let's throw it to Just Use A Pen, because he's been unmuting. And then I want to... Joseph actually, I know you didn't get to speak at one of our original spaces. I want to hear from you.

Justice Eapen 33:06
Yeah, I just want to respond to something that Zy said about he said, so you said technical, technology at its best, is suspicious. I think we're your exact words are very close in the Bible. Yeah, and I kind of wanted to respond to that because, mostly because I suspect that you were making kind of a rhetorical point. So I don't, I think if you consider how frequently, especially in the Old Testament, God commands the development of technology, for example, to build the ark, Noah's Ark, or to build the tabernacle, for example. I think you might reconsider that at its best, it's suspicious. I'd say at its best, it's divinely ordained. And then I'll just respond to a couple of points you make because I thought they very interesting. And I'm not actually arguing with you, but you made the Ishmael argument from, from that book about the talking ape, where, basically Cain versus Abel is an allegory of technologists versus primitivists, shepherd nomadic peoples being murdered by their sort of sedentary, agricultural competitors, which is a very compelling interpretation of the Genesis story. And I find, I find it very, very powerful interpretation, but it's not a historically Christian interpretation. So I would just, I guess I would say, suggest that, you know, if we're reading scripture in light of Scripture, I think you could do a little better than technology is at best, suspicious. And then you said one other thing that I just thought was very wise, which is that bureaucracy is a technology as well. And that's 100% true. I agree completely. Bureaucracy is a technology, our policies and our written code, our statutes, our laws, all of that is technology. It's basically the operating systems for our civilization and. So that's a very astute observation. And I just I think that we should take note that technology is often used. I mean, just like God uses man as his hands and his feet in the body of our Lord, man likewise uses technology to extend his reach, or maybe not, obviously, because you can't extend God's reach, but in ways that are artful and suitable to man, right? So, it's artful and it's suitable to God to use man as his hands, and it's artful and suitable for Man to extend his reach and to use technology for his for his purposes, which includes, by the way, a very fractal set of behaviors, you know, making artificial intelligence that looks and sounds just like us. I mean, it's so fundamentally ingrained in our person. I mean, we are made in the image of God, and God is One Who makes images of himself. And so it's so unsurprising that we build technology in these ways. And so I think nominus was really making the point. And I know I'm kind of circling back to everything other people said, but it was just very wise. Nominus was making the point that Christians as people who submit to the Word of God, but both the scriptures and also the logos are the chosen people for stewarding creation and like it's effectively returning us to an Edenic state. So we very much ought to view our role here as mission critical to human flourishing, as a part parcel the Dominion mandate and Luddite ism and like the bonifaci option, while maybe legitimate in certain circumstances, I don't think should be like the default strategy. So just wanted to respond to some really smart things you guys all said.

Connor Mahoney 37:02
Well, let's, let's follow that thread then, Zy, I mean you respond to some of the things, because he mentioned a bunch of things. But obviously the Dominion mandate, this concept that regenerated mankind has, has something different about about us, in regards to the human condition that we really should be building these, these technologies, and expanding creation in a way that glifies God, of course. But would you disagree with something there? Where does your pessimism really lie?

Zy @ZyMazza 37:32
Well, you know, I agree with a lot of of what was said. It certainly was, maybe rhetorically cheap to say that technology is universally regarded with suspicion. In the Bible, there are a lot of great examples. The triumph of David over Goliath is actually a great one. The technology of the rock and the sling for the young shepherd man to overcome the very large Philistine warrior. I mean, that's certainly a good example. But I think the key distinction there is, you know, there's a difference between the technologies that God commands us to build. You cited, you know, the Ark of the Covenant. That's a great one. You cited a few other ones that I can't remember, but they but they were all explicitly, you know, told to certain individuals, hey, you need to go do this. It was a divine revelation. Not unlike, you know how scripture is divinely inspired, but in the instances in the Bible where technology originates from the hands and the minds of men, that's when we run into problems. You know, the foundation of the very first city in Genesis, Enoch, not to be confused with Enoch, the prophet that's immediately regarded as a very bad idea, like, oh my god, this city's terrible, of course, later on, you know, God does command the Israelites to build a city. And you know that city turns out pretty well. A good example I'd like to bring up. And I hope you'll you all all Forgive me, because I use a lot of examples that are not necessarily canonically Christian, but I bring them up because they're moving stories and they're adjacent to our worldview. There is a Jewish legend about why the Western Wall still stands today. So of course, the Western Wall, for those of you who don't know what's it called, The Kotel, very famous place in Jerusalem. It's where all the politicians take their pictures. It is the western portion, the Western Wall of what was originally a four walled temple. The temple the very temple that God commanded the Israelites to build. And the story goes that God told the different classes of Israelites, or the different tribes, rather, you know, to each build a wall. So there was, you know, the priestly class, there was Solomon himself and the Royal class, and there was, you know, the merchant class, and then the general people. And so, uh. Solomon, the legend goes he actually used demons to build his part of the wall. There's a lot of lore about Solomon being able to command demons, command birds, whether you believe that stuff or not. It's just the story. Solomon, he summons some demons, some golems, whatever they built his portion of the wall. The merchants, of course, paid for people to build their portion of the wall. And the priestly class either also paid for it, or they they offered some sort of like spiritual material favors, not unlike a lot of people's views of indulgences. And the result is that three of the four walls collapse, and only the western wall, the wall that was actually built by the people who God commanded to build it in the way that God commanded to build it, only that wall of the temple remains. And I bring this up because we're all talking about building, you know, a Christian future and using technology in Christian ways. But you know, I would ask you to really examine your heart. How much of these ideas are really divinely inspired, how much of it is actually coming from God, how much of this is God telling you you need to build this, versus how much of it is coming from our own hearts and our own desires, just use a pen. Mentioned a philosophy that I love, the return to Eden edenism. Peter Thiel wrote a great essay on the topic in in first things a while ago, by the way, it's a great read, but technology cannot be the instrument of our return to Eden, our Return to Paradise. I mean, you've already, in my opinion, lost the plot when you're talking about using technology as the primary instrument for anything that the primary instrument that's laid out in Scripture is actually God's love. We are restored to Eden paradise through Christ's sacrifice, and there's no technological solution to emancipate us, as Andrew said, from original sin. There's no technological solution to grant us immortal life. There's no technological solution for hardly any of the ills of the human condition, apart from generating more wealth, more you know, better material conditions. And I see Sterling's had his hand up for a while. So I'll stop rambling for a minute so you can butt in there.

Sterling Cooley 42:32
Hey, can you hear me? Okay, just want to check my audio. Cool. Well, yeah, I saw the name of the space, and I was like, this, this sounds pretty cool, like it's, I'm definitely like more in the EAC space. And I just figured I'd come, kind of come over here, and I loved what you're saying. I I'm, I have kind of a question, slash, like, just a quick, like, an anecdote, I guess. So I personally do a lot of like prayer and a lot of spiritual, spiritual stuff...

Nominus 43:06
Sounds like is it, can you hear me okay? Uh oh.

Zy @ZyMazza 43:10
I hear you Sterling

Sterling Cooley 43:11
You do? Okay.

Connor Mahoney 43:12
Nominus, if you're not hearing Sterling, you might need to hop off and come back.

Nominus 43:17
Alright.

Sterling Cooley 43:17
Sorry Nominus, yeah, so shoot. Well, I was hoping he would be able to hear it, but because I met him earlier today, so, but anyway, so Okay, on the question of technology, what I'm so anyway, what I was gonna say is that, just to kind of in direct response to the last speaker, I do a lot of, like, personal prayer. And I take the time, like every day to kind of like, sit down and do, like, a gratitude practice where I like, hold my hand over my heart and I pray to God or source or energy. I don't, I don't particularly, you know, put any, any necessarily thing on it, because I try to be, as you know, open and as many beliefs as possible there. But I can definitely like, in my heart feel like that presence, like it's it's there. And sometimes, when I do it, like, what kind of pops in my mind, like, if I really deeply ask myself, like, what do I really I don't know if I what I really want, or I just allow my my mind to receive imagery of what a night like a beautiful future from a beautiful state would look like. And oftentimes I see, I see myself with my wife and with a like, with a child, and we've been trying to have a child for for, you know, for years, and the circumstances kind of just don't line up with work. And we haven't, you know, succeeded in that yet. And. And I really do want to do. I definitely, in my heart of hearts, absolutely want to have a child. And so that's kind of a difficult thing if you know that doesn't happen, and time goes on, and I can't really just keep on hoping and that that will happen. And my, in my, in my mind, I see a lot of people going for like, you know, IVF or, you know, getting some, some assistance with that, you know. And I think that that's really, I think that's an imperative of, it's like a human being as to is to be able to enjoy that, that part of life. So for me, what I if I go like, well, what is possible is, you know, the technological route, which is, There absolutely are services and people and clinics and these kinds of things that can really help facilitate that creation of life where, you know, and look, maybe part of the reason for me that it's difficult is, you know, I'm in my 30s. I grew up in a kind of a industrial part of the country. Maybe the water had too many pollutants. I mean, there could be, there could be some aspects of I may actually legitimately have some difficulty with that, and that's that, but that's I didn't choose that I wasn't I didn't choose where I was born. I didn't choose the the industrialization of my city. None of that was my choice. And so for me, if I really do believe and I really just receive that imagery so much and it's so powerful that I really do want to have children, then am I wrong in wanting to pursue a maybe technological option, if The natural way doesn't work, and given the circumstances. So for me, that puts me at odds with the whole like, well, we should be anti I can't really, I can't really see myself being so anti technology. If it's like that, that might be the only way, right? Well,

Zy @ZyMazza 47:14
You know, it's so interesting to me. I'm sorry, Connor...

Connor Mahoney 47:17
Yeah, if I can just butt in here real shortly, I want to pick up this thread here in just a moment, and totally not disrespecting you, Sterling, I want to jump back to that. But Andrew, he has to jump off at seven, so he's only got another five minutes. And I did want to pick up before he has to pop off on the thread that Zai had just started, which so you had mentioned the first city that was, that was built in Genesis, and that this was inherently a wrong thing. But to me, it's inescapable theologically, when we understand there's a progression in the Bible, from Garden in Genesis to to city in revelation to the city shining on a hill. And humanity started in the garden, but we were never intended to stay there. We have a Dominion mandate as just use the pen mentioned we. We are supposed to reform nature, to to the image of Christ, especially now with redeemed man, we have so we, I think we do have a moral imperative to to solve things that are wrong about nature. You know, we don't. We're not like pagans that just try to try to unify with the natural world. There are definitely things wrong. Death is should not be. Sickness should not be. We understand, you know, that Christ is going to reign until he puts all enemies under His feet, and the last enemy to defeat, it is death. And this isn't something that just happens without a without a contribution with a body of Christ. So we'll we're participating with Christ in this, this reformation of of the fallen world order. And I think that. I just think that's an inescapable reality of Christianity. So let me throw that to you, Andrew and I only got like, three minutes before you got to pop off. But am I wrong? I mean, you tell me what, what you think of

Nominus 49:14
Hey, Sterling, I just want to let you know I did hear most of what you had to say.

Connor Mahoney 49:21
I guess, I guess an important thing right, a distinction that we have to make is technology right, is a weird thing in that it has a lot of elasticity, or ability to change it right. And one of the things you can use technology for, in a general sense, is correcting natural evils. Right? A Natural Evil is something like sterility or a wound or these types of things that are damaged in ourselves or in the environment. And it's. Good and proper to do that, right? The the issue is, as we could become more technological, we can use this technology, not only to repair things or fix things or make them as they ought to be, but to distort them even further right. I don't think that anyone should live in a Canaanite city, right? Jerusalem is different than that, but at the same time, the the ability to make a city, the ability alone allows you to build Jerusalem or the city of Nod, and that's sort of the issue, right? And that's, the thing that's missing that Christianity and Christians can provide, is you got to have a headship over these things so that they don't end up just going willy nilly and destroying things. I appreciate that, and am I right? You got to drop off now. Andrew?

Speaker 1 50:59
Yeah, I can probably do one more round, but then after that, I'll follow.

Connor Mahoney 51:03
Okay, appreciate it. Okay, well, let's, sorry? Yeah, go ahead.

Nominus 51:08
I kind of want to, can I address or can I speak to Zy and Sterling here?

Connor Mahoney 51:15
Yeah, go ahead, and then we're gonna and then we're gonna open it up. We got a couple other speakers that haven't yet introduced them, so as we we wrap this up, we're gonna throw it,

Nominus 51:24
yeah, yeah, sure. I'll try to make it

Connor Mahoney 51:26
No, no, take, whatever you need.

Nominus 51:31
Yeah, so Sterling I, I admire your your seeking spiritually, and I would definitely be down to talk more about about, like, what we believe as Christians, later with you, in regards to the technological solutions for facilitating birth, I am not aware of any biblical foundation that would be super against that. And especially since you know this is a this is a religion that was basically founded on the idea of Immaculate Conception, right? And so I think if that solves a natural evil like Andrew was mentioning, I think that that could be a very good thing. And towards Zai, your your concerns about, like, kind of discerning like, how do we know what, what God wants us to build? Because we see this pattern, this characteristic of God in the Old Testament, where he basically would speak directly to people, and like in a booming voice, you know these like visions and crazy dreams, and people still get visions and dreams, but not like in the Old Testament. But you know, there's, there's a verse where Jesus said in John 16, but I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, will not come to you. The helper is the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit is in us, and that is how who tells us what to build, and Holy Spirit and communion with fellow Christians and discernment that should we build? What problems should we solve? Who should we connect? And another particular point about the about Solomon building with the power of demons. So, so that is actually from the Babylonian Talmud, not the Bible and and it's very analogous to another situation where Jesus was accused of of performing his miracles through the power of demons. And I think that's in Matthew It's Matthew 12, but, but um, Jesus basically says, um, says, How can army stand against itself, right? So, so, if I'm using the power of demons to perform the work of God, then Satan's army is standing against itself, and no army like that could stand. So so that that that just doesn't like work logically. And so basically, from the Babylonian Talmud, they're claiming that Solomon used the power of demons to complete God's work. And so that's very analogous to this situation. With Jesus, and the situation with where the Holy Spirit is in us, the Holy Spirit is in us. So if we are abiding in God, if we are communing with and getting advice from our peers, just like we are now, then we cannot, as we can make individual mistakes, but but we cannot as as the body, the hands and feet of God. We can't do work by the power of demons, because the Holy Spirit is in us, and it's, it's, it's telling us to what to build. And so, you know, and in that sense, also, technology is not, this is another point. Technology is not going to be the instrument that brings about the end of days, or anything like this, it will be Jesus Himself. Scripture says that we'll see him like the lightning from lightning in the east, from the west. You know it's going to be no confusion when Jesus comes, and it's going to be he himself, not the technology. So that's something we know. And then just, I have just a couple other quick points that that Connor was talking about earlier, but maybe I'll say, save that for another round. But, yeah, just so so Sterling. I think that I think those those problems technologically, that we can solve those. And I think that I think I don't have an indication scripturally or in my heart that says that that would be a bad thing. And, and Za, just want to, I just wanted to address those, those kind of concerns or worries of yours, of how do we as as skilled, skilled laborers of God, how do we make sure that we are doing His will with our technology? And, yeah.

Connor Mahoney 57:21
I think Zy's going to have to respond to that. Zy, you a Babylonian Talmud respecter?

Zy @ZyMazza 57:28
Well, yeah, first of all, allow me to apologize if I represented that that story was from the Bible. That was not my intention. I tried to make it clear that I was, I was pulling from another faith tradition that's obviously a Jewish story. Oh, no. I

Nominus 57:41
didn't think that. Okay. I didn't think that. I just wanted, I just wanted to pull that and make sure that I link that kind of analogy back to, back to that situation with Jesus.

Zy @ZyMazza 57:54
No, and I appreciate that, and it is apt. And, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty skeptical myself with the idea that demons building any of the walls of God's temple? Yeah,

Connor Mahoney 58:02
Zai, why don't go ahead and respond to some of the things nominist said. And then, just to get some direction, we're going to pop it over to Joseph. We're going to get some other people involved in the convo. And Andrew, whenever you have to pop off, if you want to say some last words, just raise your hand and I'll bring

Zy @ZyMazza 58:18
it well, if I may, I'd really love to respond to Sterling, because Sterling, you know, you mentioned this was your first time in one of these spaces, and it almost feels like I'm seriously, like getting chilled. It feels like God put us in the space together, because the question of IVF for me, and I did a thread about this. I'll try and find it after this space. But that was instrumental to my eventual conversion to Catholicism. So nominist You had mentioned, you know, you're not aware of any scriptural prohibitions against IVF. It turns out it is forbidden in Catholicism. It's right there in the Catechism. And when I read that, I was, you know, leaning Christian. I was curious about becoming Christian. I was leaning Catholic. And I read that, Catholic, and I read that, and that really put the brakes on the whole thing for me, because I thought to myself, like, wow, that's that's super cruel, especially for a religion that values fertility and like, you know, is trying to encourage people to have children. I just thought of that as, frankly, at the time, I thought of it as barbaric, honestly, and it completely put me off to the whole enterprise of Christianity, until, as if ordained by God, I was attending my regular classes, and we had a guest lecturer, and the guest lecturer was a bioethicist and a lawyer, and he was running through all of these hypothetical cases involving in vitro fertilization. He ran through a bunch of them, but the one that really sticks out in my mind was husband and wife. They want to wait to have kids with the tail as old as time. So they decide, you know, the wife will freeze her. Eggs, the husband can inseminate the eggs later, when they're ready to have kids. You know, fast forward 10 years. They're coming up on the time husband and wife decide to get divorced. And beyond that, husband decides he still wants to have kids, wife decides she doesn't want to have kids anymore. And like, Wow. What a quagmire for the judge. So the way IVF works, just as some background, is that they'll literally fertilize hundreds or 1000s of embryos. And then there's a eugenic aspect to it, that, you know, they pick their favorite one, they pick their best one, but and then the rest basically get destroyed. My name's I, by the way, it comes from zygote, the earliest stage of conception. Life begins at conception. Life begins at the zygote. Of course, I didn't believe that back then. I wasn't Christian yet, but what I did believe, what I did have a sense for, is that an embryo had some non zero moral value, certainly to the point where, if you gathered 1000s of embryos, they were at least approaching the value of one human life, if not more. So what happened is, you know, we're talking about it. And he says, Well, you know, what if the judge, King Solomon comes up again, what if the judge decides to cut the baby in half? And he says, well, destroy half of the eggs as the wife wishes, and we'll keep half of the eggs as the husband wishes, and the husband, can, you know, implant those eggs in his new wife? And you know, she could be the surrogate for this baby. And you got to imagine the horror for the mother, like their divorce. She doesn't even like this guy. Some other woman is having her baby with her ex husband. That's bizarre. And, you know, from the father's perspective, it's equally pretty rough. This woman wants to kill my children that we already that we already put together, that we already had together, and this one wants to kill them. The state's going to help them do that. And yeah. So I was left with some consolation that this was a hypothetical scenario. But of course, at the end of the class, the big reveal was, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm a lawyer. These are all real cases that I litigated, and that's actually how that shook out. They destroyed half of the embryos and they gave the other half to the husband. He was explaining, you basically have to do this. You have to treat it as communal property. And that got into his whole spiel on the commoditization of life and how IVF this technology has done that. He goes into the ills of the surrogacy industry, which you can read horror stories, man. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy. And I was really humbled by that experience, because I thought to myself, like, wow, if a bunch of guys 1000 years ago could come up with a consistent moral ethic that was able to address the hypothetical technology of IVF before it even existed. And not only that, but get it right and realize that, yeah, I mean, there I had seen Sterling, where you're coming from that, that was my point of view going into this, was like, yeah, it's a miracle. You can create life where there was none, and that is miraculous. And I can see why people are attracted to that. But what you don't see is the cost, the cost of being able to perform that miracle is this commoditization of life. And I realized the Catholic Church was absolutely right about this, and it humbled me, and I decided I'd shut up, and all of the other things that I didn't really agree with, I figured they must have been right about that too. And it's just so funny. You brought up IVF, because, like I said, That was that was instrumental to my conversion, and I'm sorry if that's harsh to hear from me, you know, saying that I don't condone IVF, but I had come around on that. I think the Catholic Church was right in the end.

Connor Mahoney 1:03:31
I don't Andrew. I don't I just don't know.

Nominus 1:03:35
I want to make one just very quick distinction that, Oh, I'm

Connor Mahoney 1:03:40
sorry. I thought it was Andrew speaking nominist. Just, if Andrew can just jump in, because I think he's gonna have to pop off, that would go to you, yeah,

Andrew Stratelates 1:03:47
the the last thing I'm gonna say is maybe I should run a workshop on discernment of spirits, right to sort of, sort of answer that question of, of, how do you determine when the message is from God or not?

Joseph Hurtado 1:04:03
I'd be there. Can

Andrew Stratelates 1:04:04
you hear me?

Connor Mahoney 1:04:06
Yeah, he just said he would be there. Yeah. I said I'd be there. Cool.

Andrew Stratelates 1:04:10
And the other thing, right? Just underlying on this, this topic, right? That medical treatment for sterility, right, isn't prohibited, but, there's complexity when the life of an embryo was lost or commercialization stuff, right? And that, that's what size is fundamentally talking about. And with that note,

Nominus 1:04:33
I have to head out.

Connor Mahoney 1:04:35
God bless. Thank you so much for joining. Andrew. Really appreciate you for getting the condo.

Joseph Hurtado 1:04:39
Connor, I gotta leave. I appreciate if I can speak before,

Connor Mahoney 1:04:42
yeah, please go ahead,

Joseph Hurtado 1:04:45
yeah. So just quickly to address the very important need for a father to have children that Sterling said, I'm not a Catholic, but I was a Catholic, and I have respect for good Catholics. Some of. Friends are Catholics, and from the perspective of the people that are evangelical, I can tell you that we welcome technology. We see no problem with IVF, but we value life. So as long, I would say, from my perspective, as long as you find ethically run clinic, that can do the process. Consider it. I would also, I would also say this, I would suggest there's lots of people in Latin America. There's lots of people in Eastern Europe, small kids who have no parents. And I would also consider adoption. I think if you adopt a small kid and you're honest that you know you are, you adopted them from the beginning, that's what I would do myself. It's a way to help. And I just wanted to address that. And now changing topics a little bit of my background, so I had a faith journey. I explored most of the sects that are not Christian and many of the nominations that are Christian, like I mentioned. I started as a Catholic and as a young child, you know, around 1011 I realized I found a stronger commitment to Jesus Christ from the evangelical community, which I joined. I love all kinds of evangelicals, even the ones who you know do lots of noise and sometimes make no sense, because I know most of them come from a good heart, and I am very familiar with the supernatural, and I'm very familiar with prophecy. I've studied prophecy for decades, I will say, after technology and after my interest in software and management, I have more experience in the Bible and more experience in prophecy that even in my chosen profession, maybe the last thing that I I wanted to make a parallel is when we see, by the way, for the most part, I like electronic acceleration. I prefer and I would like to write a manifesto some time about decentralized acceleration, which I think is what the Lord would want, instead of just, you know, effective acceleration. What do I mean by decentralized acceleration? Uh, mainly two things. One, that power is not in a few hands, especially AI, because of the budget to create models. Every model we have is centralized, and we have billion dollar companies controlling most of the AI models. However, open source has proven that decentralized AI is very possible. And open source, yeah, is very possible. Open Source and decentralization mimics and follows what the Lord said after the Tower of Babel, you know, go spread yourself among the nations, when Jesus actually said in Matthew, make disciples of all nations is interesting, big disciples of the world like a single thing. God realizes that when we combine as one, problems happen. So it's better to have peace and the sovereign nations that love each other, and that translates directly into technology. When technology is decentralized and there's no single source of power, it's harder for technology to take our freedoms. It's harder for technology to damage us. And if you study especially chapter 13 or revelation, you'll see that in that chapter, you have fully developed AI, fully developed recognition, fully developed conversational AI, and fully developed weapons to kill those who oppose the ultimate evil power that will rise in the end of days. Yes, the book ends. Well, yes, Christ comes back, yes, the world doesn't end. But that particular chapter is horrible and is enabled by technology. So technology is a double edged sword, and we as Christians, as an ethical people who care about humanity, we must use it for good. And that's the Christian perspective. Is not the sword, that's the problem, is who handles the sword? And as advice, I would say, anybody who's entrepreneurial, anybody who's a developer, you know, help out and try to put your efforts into decentralized acceleration. That's an ethical person at the helm. Thank. You, Connor, yeah,

Connor Mahoney 1:10:01
thank you for joining Joseph. Let's go around and get some of these people who own the haven't introduced themselves. Just a little bit about you. And let's keep it kind of short so we can get everybody and then jump right back into Connor. Go ahead. Look, yeah, I

Vlad 1:10:17
was kind of wanted to say something in response that, by the way, can everyone hear

Connor Mahoney 1:10:21
me? All right, yeah. All right, awesome,

Vlad 1:10:25
yeah. And this, and this is kind of going also back to a little bit what Zai was talking about earlier. You know, in terms of technology, right? We know that technology, you know, like any tool, can have a lot of good potential upside, but you know, when it's in the wrong hands, or, specifically, you know, as was talking about just now, when it is centralized in the hands of, you know, quote, unquote, a select trusted few, right? It can be used to very disastrous effects. And I've done quite a bit of thinking on this. And I think kind of the real thing here is, you know, specifically, you know, coming from a Christian perspective. You know, we know that humans are inherently sinful and inherently evil without, you know, without the redemption of Christ. And so you know, any system that that we want to build to do good, to bring a positive benefit, is essentially a system that you're trying to build with a larger set of strengths, right, or more complex set of constraints. We've seen this quite a bit. For instance, I get an example would be in social media platforms, right when they were first, you know, first starting to come around, specifically with with Facebook, you know, we've seen kind of like, what the platforms can grow to, but I think a lot of that didn't necessarily come out of malice. It was just that people building those at the time didn't know the potential effects that they could have in the future. You know, it's like, Hey, I have users. I want to make money, so I want to, you know, advertise to those users. You know, why shouldn't someone who is interested in skiing, be shown a pair of skis, right? And then we saw kind of where that led, with the, you know, destruction of personal privacy and all that kind of stuff on these platforms. And essentially, what I think is that, you know, if you want to use technology for good, if you want to, you know, say, build a piece of technology and use it in a positive way. You're essentially trying to build a system that has a larger set of constraints than if you didn't have any sort of moral background or, you know, more moral framework that you were trying to build that around or adhere to, right? You know? And it's, it's just kind of the same way as, you know, living in a living in a world that's, that's full of sin. You know, the heart is is wicked and desires evil, and we need, you know, Christ, to save and redeem us from that. And that takes, you know, of course, we're not like saved by our own effort, but it takes effort to turn away from sin and turn away from the inherent weakness of this world. So I think there's a, there's a really good analogy there. And I would also completely agree with the, you know, with the decentralized act, you know, that's something that I'm very focused on, and just in the sense of, right, even if a system is built with centralized control, without any, you know, ill intent when the system was built. You know, the centralization of control, when, when the power over, you know, over that system moves from one hand to another. You can't always guarantee that the hands that it will move to will have the same ideas as the people, you know, the people who built it when it was, you know, when it was originally, you know, founded, creative, or whatever. So, yeah, I think that the decentralization of stuff, whether that be, you know, AI, or whether that's infrastructure, or any, any of this other stuff, is really kind of a a critical thing. And, you know, allowing, allowing people to, you know, make, make their own decisions about what, what their hardware does, what their software does. I think that's a that's a kind of really good way to yeah, go about that.

Connor Mahoney 1:14:13
Thank you. Bye and Colin. Let's if you want to introduce yourself,

Colin Sitkiewicz 1:14:19
hello. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, hi, yes. This is my first time really coming to a spaces, and I really liked it. So far, everyone's made like great, insightful points and all that. I very much liked it. So I wanted to introduce myself, and I didn't want to mess it up, so I wrote a little script here. So Hello everyone. I'm a born and raised Catholic, and I do what I do for Christ. I'm new to the technological space as I am primarily a law oriented person. My name is Colin sickowitz, and I'm a second year student rising third and final year student at law school, and it's my intention to be a law librarian, and as such, I. Take the bar exam, and it is my intention to go librarian school for my master's in learning and informational sciences, so I may work in a law library at a law school. From that position, is my intention to provide support to the E act community, as they're quite bluntly, super lawsuits waiting around the corner due to the potential for misuses of intellectual property, as well as other trip wires in a legal field that fellow artificial intelligence creators have encountered, that I have witnessed personally, I will be far more useful to the community later on, as I get into the library position. And that is kind of all thus far. I kind of wanted to give a few examples, or talk a bit about some problems I've seen thus far. A lot of people are having issues with copyright infringement, and to be blunt, that's a that's a huge one. And with regards to how the open AI lawsuit with New York Times is to shake out. I have spoken to my professor about it, and he is ferment on the matter that sometimes to make it big in technology, you gotta break the law and then hope that the law changes around you. And then he's basically just said it could go one of those ways. So open a eyes, has a legitimate chance here to set new precedent, depending on how that case turns out. But that is kind of all thus far. I'm just ranting at this point. If anyone wanted to chime in.

Connor Mahoney 1:16:32
Oh, appreciate it. And yeah, my my friend Ian, Ian Wyatt, who I bring on Spaces a lot. He's a lawyer, you should connect with him, and maybe you guys would have some Oh, and appreciate it. I just want to get everybody shortly introduced, so that we can jump right back to the main Convo. So data, data wall, if you want to just give a Connor tradition, yeah,

Zy @ZyMazza 1:16:57
I apologize. I'm going to have to jump off. But I really appreciate everyone's time, and it was so great to meet everyone and looking forward to the next space. Thank you. Next time, I'll dedicate a little bit more time. I really appreciate it, and it's great to meet all good. Thanks

Connor Mahoney 1:17:10
for joining us. I

Datawalker 1:17:14
Hey, yeah, so Catholic software developer, couple quick things, but AI, the AI that we currently have, I wouldn't consider to be sentient. It's really just like a slightly improved auto complete, not really, and then it's aI as and that's what the technology is called, but it's not sentient. And the other thing is, thing about AI is it's whoever raises the AI, just like whoever raises a child is going to impart those values onto that AI. So if an AI doesn't become sentient, it's not going to be necessarily evil or good, just like I consider people that's all

Connor Mahoney 1:17:55
appreciate it. So I mean, since we're talking about decentralization, I'll just kind of reiterate a point I made previously. But I think sometimes people get a little bit lost in them and exactly what we're trying to accomplish here, but EAC is essentially revolutionary, so even, like Colin says, sometimes you just got to kind of break the law and hope it, hope it reforms. But I don't know about I'm not going to advocate breaking the law, but maybe breaking some norms. We need to. EAC wants to overthrow something of the power structure, the corporate, nefarious corporate political landscape that is holding this conversation back and is holding us back from essentially building technology that is going to contribute to human flourishing. And so Christianity, Christians are aligned in the sense that a lot of these institutions are also not Christian. So we also want to see something of a of a revolutionary spirit. You know, when I talk about violence, we're talking about reforming the system. And so to me, when we're talking about decentralization, that's essentially where, where it all lines, we don't want to see the Central Powers That Be now currently controlling the conversation. So so long as both EAC and both Christianity, of seeing that will cope belligerence. So that's that's really where I fall on the on the decentralization aspect. And then to bring it back to to Christianity, I guess, because that is a topic of the space. Let's, let's follow that thread and and let's, well,

Datawalker 1:19:31
if I can, can I just talk about decentralization? Just a moment. So decentralized generally means, you know, directly, user to user. There's also, you know, the centralized, entirely centralized stuff, like Twitter, which we're currently on, but there's also something in the middle called federated. That's how email servers work for the only thing that's really central is the domain name system. And all of the different servers are run by different companies or people. And I think that federated option is also some. Thing to consider for developing technology, decentralized software, whenever I touched it, pretty garbage, and even the federated software we have now, like I use a matrix app for my family's chat app, and that's also garbage, because what it is basically is it's federated on the identity. It's not federated centralized on the identity, so all of the metadata goes to a centralized server, but you still run your own server do all the hard work of sending the content everywhere, so they still get all the metadata that they want, even though it's supposed to be a federated service. So I think we also need more of a push toward federated technologies decentralized. It's really unstable, and I really want to see some actually successful apps there decentralized before I would consider, you know, developing more apps there where we already know that federated options work.

Vlad 1:20:51
Yeah, I think there's a lot of Yeah. One thing that, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead, bud. Yeah. One, one thing that I would say in terms of the whole conversation of decentralization is oftentimes when we have, you know, turns or, you know, just specific technologies, people, you know, will cling on to technology, and it kind of becomes a solution in search of a problem, right? It's like, you know, people say decentralization, we should build, you know, decentralized, this, decentralized that. And, you know, really, and I've thought about this event, I can't, I can't really think of a counter argument to this, necessarily, if someone has one, I'd love to hear it. But, you know, decentralization in and of itself, is not really the goal, right? Like, you know, we need to have, like, a specific set of, you know, standards or goals that we are building towards, and then we use technology to achieve those goals, right? And just decentralization by itself, does not inherently provide any any sort of value other than the things that it allows us to do, right? So, yeah, like, I completely agree with what you were saying in terms of, you know, one, a lot of decentralized stuff is just very bad, and some of that comes from some of the inherent nature of decentralized technologies, you know, where you can lack the speed, or kind of, like, the condensed resources of centralization, you know, one of the big bottlenecks and stuff, right? You kind of have, like, generation and then you have transportation, right? You have, for instance, power, power is generated and then it's transported. You know, information, information generated and it's transported. And with decentralized stuff, you're basically putting a lot more load on the transportation infrastructure, you know, which can make those services really bad. So, yeah, I think one of the, one of the things to that is, you know, not just decentralized for the sake of decentralization, but figure out, like, okay, what are we really trying to accomplish? What is the end goal and what technology should be used here to accomplish that end goal, right?

Datawalker 1:22:46
Yeah, so I guess this actually reminds me of Roman history. You know, the Roman empire expanded and got me pretty thick. It was only really when he started surrounding barbarian tribes absorbed enough Catholicism or Christianity from the Roman Empire to be able to compete economically. And for them during barbarians, they were, you know, decentralized, so to speak. But as they became more organized, even though each individual one wasn't as organized as the Roman Empire, they were more federated. In that sense, there are several countries that had strong economies, and that is what eventually destroyed the Roman Empire, which you could say was centralized.

Connor Mahoney 1:23:27
Yeah, I think the decentralization versus centralization conversation is interesting. I'm not sure like how much is in the scope of really what we're talking about today, but we need to continue that. I just think that really, the point is that these centralized systems, they're not really, they're not sustainable from a Christian aspect, because they're not Christian So, and I know that's kind of maybe a radical state. People, you know, folks, Walker, we do

Nominus 1:23:55
have some fairly good options. Of, you know, democracy is decentralized by definition. Connor. Connor, yeah,

Connor Mahoney 1:24:07
but that's, that's, I

Nominus 1:24:09
love to hear from a lawyer about that.

Connor Mahoney 1:24:12
Sorry, I missed what was happening there. Can you hear nominist justice? Yeah, sorry. I

Justice Eapen 1:24:18
was laughing. I was I was laughing and commenting on what he's saying, but say it again, please. When you're done,

Nominus 1:24:25
there are some, yeah, sure there. There are, I was just saying there are some. There are some inherent features of our current like, quote, centralized government. Like the result of it, or the fact that it's so centralized now is actually because it's in error. It's not like it's it's not like the I don't think it was the original intention, you know, to be so centralized, but that's like a big debate in law. So I'd love to hear from Colin on that what he thinks it's. Thank

Colin Sitkiewicz 1:25:00
you. Yes, I had a good point to make about decentralization, because I forget who it was, but they said that decentralization itself should not be the goal, or something along those lines. That's fair enough. Yeah, I think that whatever the goal should be, the goal should have some form of decentralization within it, because with what I said, the law, kind of breaking in your favor depends a bit on the weight of gravity of technology, kind of and kind of an example that I was can go over here is, is with the mp three. It's my understanding that there's difficulty sending like voice files or audio files before that, because sounds that the human ear can't pick up. And this was a way to clean it out. Somebody's probably far more well versed in that matter than i But the big thing here was there was a substantial amount of opposition to the creation of the mp three. I don't, I, we didn't go over those cases explicitly, but there was a huge lobby effort to sue the thing out of existence. And quite bluntly, the thing lost, because you can't really beat a file format. The gravity of technology just simply outweigh those interests that wanted to crush it, and thus the law was changed. An example of this is technology that can be used for violations, but it's not explicitly the only purpose the court will just straight up make up terms that are only used in that context. And the best is with the VCR, because that also had opposition from like the broadcasting companies, because people wanted like, like, those companies did not want their shows to be recorded, and the court just, quite bluntly, made up the term time shifting, which has only really been used in that kind of case to describe what a VCR does. And time shifting is apparently different from pirating.

Nominus 1:27:20
I have a question for you on

Colin Sitkiewicz 1:27:21
Yes, go ahead.

Nominus 1:27:24
Um, so, so, yeah, basically, like, I guess the idea that Beth Jay zOS and kind of, like a lot of eakers and and decentralized people too. Advocates are kind of arguing for is that like these, these technologies that we're seeing emerge now, blockchain and AI, are so disruptive to the ecosystem that if they are captured in this same way that VCR or mp three had the opposition in this same way, like a purely, basically, I don't know, competition based or something like that, but, But if these technologies are captured, they are in particular. So going to be so ubiquitous that we might find ourselves in a bad situation. That's, I think, the idea that that people are trying to say, and, of course, like, like, we have faith in God and and we respect the authorities that he chooses to put in place. So it's, it's His will be done, like, in the grand scheme of things, but yeah, like, we don't like, I guess the idea is that, like, if AI has AI already has some of this same sort of opposition that you're talking about with the mp three player and the VCR, but, but the but basically AI is going to be so Much more disruptive than probably any technology in history, but, but then again, like every new technology is more disruptive than the last so, but

Colin Sitkiewicz 1:29:33
no, yeah, that's those are great points.

Connor Mahoney 1:29:36
Well, I know, just use a pen, spin one to jump in so and he I don't know how much you can share about what you do, but I mean, okay, maybe decentralized tech is not really to the point where it needs to be. I'm kind of invested in, I've invested in the blockchain space for and when I say invested, I'm not talking about buying coins. I'm saying I'm in the I've been in the blockchain conversation for a couple years, and the tech. Technologies here and there. You know, I think it has a lot of potential. There's definitely some things I don't pride up to, up to spec yet, but when you're looking at the centralized structures that we have now, it's just, it's, to me, it's completely untenable to say, well, you know, just has to be the way it is. When you have, you know, websites that these institutions decide, hey, we don't, you know, we don't like the content that's being put I mean, so what Polo was a big one. It just got banned from amazon web servers. It's like, okay, well, you got to set up your own servers. Like, that's, that's a huge endeavor to have a web server that's going to be capable of that kind of traffic. So and then, and then also the domain name naming system, like you said, is rather centralized, and you have to register through a registrar, and there's only a handful of those, and if they decide they don't like your content and they they deny your DNS, you're kind of screwed. So, so there's a lot of problems with the centralized infrastructure as it is now, and then, when we're looking at AI like, Are we happy to just hand that off to the open AI into to Microsoft? Should they define the future of AI and in the ways it develops? To me, that's that is a little bit concerning. So maybe decentral, I don't, I'm not really, like, a big decentralization guy, even, I mean, politically, like, I think there's some great things we have about the American government here. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not a big,

Nominus 1:31:34
big democracy, but interesting. Well,

Connor Mahoney 1:31:37
no, I just finished up. I just want to say that. Yeah, so I think there's definitely a lot of problems with decentralization, but I think we all know why we're working towards it, and unless a better solution can be proposed, like I'm not happy to leave it in the hands of grown centralized. Yeah, go ahead. No. I think

Nominus 1:32:12
the cryptocurrency number, go up side of things. NFT, you know, like there's so much money and hype involved that's basically distracting from the development of the actual technology and the application of it. But I was actually an affiliate for like, over a year called 21 eight, and you see those people around on Twitter X they actually have, they're building, like, real solutions in the blockchain space. And I think they're, they're coming out with something fairly soon, but I actually don't know yet, but I guess, yeah, that's all. That's all just an interesting point was that, like the actual building and apply, application of of decentralized technology in effective ways is kind of being overshadowed all the effort is going towards pumping these fabricated markets just to make a quick buck right now, and I'm not sure how to kind of kind of shift the the rail to to that technology, to the technology side of things. But I think that AI is going to do that like the the development, the development over time of AI is going to change things enough that the blockchain technology will, like kind of emerge, but I think just,

Connor Mahoney 1:34:07
yeah, just use a pen. Had to pop off.

Nominus 1:34:10
That's my decentralized take.

Connor Mahoney 1:34:13
Oh well, on this one, this topic, we let it go and and data did a well that on a walker, data Walker, if you wanted to follow up on some of your original points.

Datawalker 1:34:27
So I do have some questions with Blockchain specifically, like blockchain currency. The current problem that we're having now blockchain currency is that it's not divorced. There was a line of tech tips. I think one of the guys over at line of tech tips, he tried to pull his money out of Bitcoin and exchange the Bitcoin and the money. Right now the American government is not enforcing change. This better is,

Connor Mahoney 1:34:58
yeah, he's talking right now.

Datawalker 1:35:03
I lost my train of thought. So the blockchain technology right now, the contracts, Blockchain currency, is not being enforced. Linus tech tips, one of the guys there, they tried to pull their money out of the exchange, their, you know, the US dollars out of the exchange, and the exchange kept both USD and the big and right now, the American government has decided that's not going to enforce contracts that use blockchain currencies. The question is, how exactly do you intend to enforce blockchain currency if we decide to switch? Because right now, I don't see that either.

Connor Mahoney 1:35:40
I'm not really sure. I guess what you're asking, you're saying, you know, maybe the what the non enforcing, like legally, legal system, is enforcing contracts Exactly, yeah, but it doesn't really stop the use case that if I want to pay you, if we're talking about Bitcoin, specifically, if I want to transact with Bitcoin, I can still do that. So it's not really stopping the technology. It's just, it's, I mean, it's a roadblock, for sure, but I don't know. I don't, I don't really see the direction of your question. Well,

Datawalker 1:36:15
the problem is, why would I make that Bitcoin transaction if I can't use that Bitcoin to purchase other things or just convert it to USD, so

Connor Mahoney 1:36:25
that's the real question, right? But if you can't use your USD to do what you want with it, you kind of have the same problem, right? So the the common example is the is the Canadian truckers protest, and people wanting to support that cause in the US go. The Canadian government decided that that was an illegal protest, and any payment rails, USB, payment rails, going to the truckers protests were shut down. So what's the solution there? People found that they could, they could send bitcoin, and that was an option. And you see that. I mean, you see this happening a lot. Happening a lot. I think it's also just a testament to the the strength of cryptocurrency solutions. If you even look at tornado cash, which was, which was essentially, I mean, it was, it was sanctioned by the US government, it's completely illegal to use tornado cash, and usually when this happens with with other other infrastructure, other rails. If something is sanctioned, you know, they can do everything they can to shut it down, but tornado cash is still operational. Yes, it's illegal, yes, it doesn't fit within the legal framework of US policy, but they can't. They couldn't actually take the infrastructure off chain. So if I chose to, I can still wash my funds through tornado cash. And I think that's just again, in the same case, like the Canadian truck was protested, a testament to the strength of what some of these, some of these decentral is a decentralized protocols off of and again, I'm not, I don't think everything needs to be decentralized, but you can understand the use case. I think just from those two examples, Sterling, you have your hand up,

Sterling Cooley 1:38:19
yeah, I want to just chime in on the kind of the crypto aspect of things, because I think, I think it is really important, especially given kind of, like governmental directions and sentiment against, you know, religion and these kinds of things. I think that these conversations for Christian and really, any religion, really, anything that's non woke, I guess probably does need to think about this. And one, one area to look for, for potentially for inspiration or for answers, I think would be Balaji. And he wrote a book called the network state. And this talks about how, really, the only option left for these, this kind of distribution, and distribution model of of everything is like that the future probably isn't going to be a nation state so much that's going to be more of a network state, where it's going to be kind of a loosely associated collective of different people with shared interests that mediate, mediate their interests, generally on the on the blockchain as much as possible. I can see why the government doesn't want to enforce crypto, because it's just an expense, and they don't, they don't benefit from it. It's kind of like, why would a, why would a, why would a crypto company promote another crypto project if they don't make any anything off of it? It's it's kind of like that. It's very selfish of the government to do, but it does make sense. So I guess the only what that would look like, if I just like to kind of jump to the the final, I guess, to a far off conclusion, that might look like some kind of an agreed upon arbitration court of some sort that's created by like lawyers and legal experts who are pro crypto and who could mediate and arbitrate disagreements amongst the different network states. I don't know if I I don't know if I would. I don't know it's not something I've thought about. If there's going to be like a Christian network state. I find it hard to see how that particularly would work. I could see it being more geographically located, or there's a, there's a group called, well, an EAC called praxis. And Praxis is like kind of a fan. It's like a It's an Envisionment of a network state without a physical location yet. But there's a passport, there's kind of a it's kind of like, it's like the pre, pre, pre landing network state, sort of, so to speak. So these kinds of options, I mean, I think are practical. I think they're going to include some aspects of Christianity, of course, like, if you look at their lore, they're all They're obviously including, you know, like, religious iconography. I can't say it'll be like, completely Christian, per se, but it'll definitely have, like, I think probably a lot of them will have a lot of those aspects to it. So if anything, my last closing remark on any of this would be probably getting in being an EAC, knowing the direction of like network states, I think it would be very good to, I don't know, help, help fellow Christians, or help fellow believers, kind of like, get on board with the idea of these things sooner rather than later. So if you know people personally, it's probably a good idea to start, you know, asking them like, Hey, have you heard of like yak or like, are you? Do you know who Beth Jesus is on Twitter? This guy's crazy. He's like, leading a movement of people. It's amazing that is getting people to, like, like, I don't know. Like, just hearing Colin, what you said, I'm like, holy shit. This is like, this is like, three I don't want this to be recorded, but, like, I know it's recorded, but like, this is what they call the reverse march through the institutions, if we're really being honest. So it's very exciting to see. It's like we're reclaiming the country in some cool way. So anyway, that's my that's my closing thoughts on all that. But really great, great group of people, cool, cool concepts. So thank you.

Connor Mahoney 1:43:06
Thanks, darling. Yeah, I think, I mean, I've kind of engaged with ball of these, thinking a little bit now, and I'm, honestly, I'm personally not convinced. I don't think, I don't think the network state really holds up. And I think it's really, I just, I think human nature is wants to, wants to collude. And you even just see that with EAC, we want a movement that that brings, brings us together as an identity. And I think for that reason alone, I just think this concept that, like, we're going to have more and more individual options, we're going to strive towards things that that kind of promote individualism, or even even all the way to the concept of the self, that viewing the self as an island, and eventually you might even have a network state of just you. I think that's kind of the end of this, of this thinking, and I think I just don't think it's, I don't think it's going to play out that way, but I think it would be an interesting conversation to talk about why. And I haven't really been able to do that with them, with with anybody, so maybe we can. We can kind of talk about that too. But I did want to throw it to bit the got his hand up and and then nominist actually is going to have to pop off, so I'm going to throw it to him before I throw it back to

Bithia 1:44:26
you, Colin, thank you. Well, currently I Well, I'm just someone from Australia, by the way. So it's really interesting to see the American general perspective.

Connor Mahoney 1:44:35
I you know, it's always this time. It's always about this time that the Australians come out. So I guess this is, uh, this is appropriate for you time zone wise. But I've always noticed at the end of the space you guys join,

Bithia 1:44:48
yeah, it's, it's really interesting that I personally, I'm actually a member of practice. But I think, as Connor said, there's a lot of, um. Uh, loopholes and, like, actual big holes in terms of law and also financial services. Who is going to maintain the order of money in this system? And I'm a person who's very, you know, I base my like, entire beliefs on the book of Revelation one way, because I know that's the future, regardless of like what other people say, and I think that identity and your own privacy will be the most at risk. So I also have, like, a blockchain and cybersecurity background. I was a blockchain investigator for some time where we were tracking people who are doing like malicious activities on the blockchain, and it's very much possible to track down individuals with the aid of police force. So I also don't really see how, other than Bitcoin, how it's like possible to escape from a unit like a collaboration with an actual task force established. And the other thing is, okay, I have a lot of thoughts here.

Nominus 1:46:13
There are zero knowledge proofs, yes, and like one, pad, keys, that, stuff like that, that you can you use in a distribute or in a decentralized system, but just people haven't implemented it properly?

Bithia 1:46:28
Yes? Like, yes, they I think implementation also, just generally speaking, how many people even know about zero knowledge proofs? Like, that's the big question on we do need more awareness in the blockchain space, for sure, but I think, like, what like Vlad is doing with Fauci, I believe, is, like, really innovative, because it's going down to the basics again. And I think that we're kind of going too futuristic, in the sense that I really like the Yak movement, but I think that we also need to understand that our own identity is at risk just because we are Christians. And, you know, it's just something difficult to believe, but that's going to be true. And the thing with Praxis is, I was very bought into the idea of, you know, in network state. But it looks like, you know, if the government, by any chance, wants to, you know, know who are the citizens who are Christians, for instance, they can do it, because you never know, right that I just, yeah, that's my thought on it. Well,

Connor Mahoney 1:47:38
I was going to throw it to you nominist, so you can respond and add your thoughts, then I know you got to jump off.

Nominus 1:47:44
Yeah, sorry about all these technical difficulties I've been having today. I don't know what's going on. Normally, this doesn't happen, but yeah, I gotta jump off in a second and hit the gym and run a couple errands tonight, still, but bit I see a sentiment a lot from people over in your region, Australia and New Zealand. And I, like, I was actually, like, a, do you know 21 eight from New Zealand? I was a an affiliate of them for like as an like, and they really talk all about like, Bitcoin monasteries and things like this. And it is worrisome. I don't know it's it's kind of worrisome to me, because in America, I will, I'll say this in America, we are not under threat like that. Like Christianity is not under threat here, like we do not have to worry about those things here. I don't, I don't know, like, I've talked to this other guy called RDN, and he's an orthodox I've been talking to him about just, like, theology and stuff. But we, we just, like, don't have to worry about those things here because of our laws. I guess I don't know.

Bithia 1:49:06
Yes, okay, so that's really interesting. Yes, I think I would tell like, a bit of our laws here, which may stun like all Americans in this, you know, talk, um, here we don't have self defense laws like we, we have self defense laws, but the law is like stating that we cannot self defend ourselves. Like we cannot self defend um, because once we attack the intruder in our house, we are liable to be in prison for 10 plus years. Um, because we aggregated them so we have very weird laws. We cannot have, you know, self defense weapons. We cannot even have pepper spray, like, forget, like, forget about rifles or whatever. And I just think that, yeah, it's like, really crazy. And I just think that religion. In Australia is kind of under threat, so I guess that's why a lot of Australians, especially Christian Australians in general, are very pessimistic about the future, and we are kind of just trying to stay low. But yeah,

Nominus 1:50:18
yeah, I'm sorry about that, and I but I've seen this pattern, and it seems like Australians and New Zealanders and and even other parts of the world that have similar laws, people that I've met on X from there are all in very into decentralized technology for this reason, and I'm all in support of that, but, yeah, I gotta jump, I gotta jump off here. But I guess, like, I've learned a lot in this space, and thanks Connor for for for having me, and thanks everybody for your perspectives. And I guess, like, just like, final thing is, like, when we're going out into the world, we we've been given a mission by Christ to spread the gospel, and we've been given and be examples and a light on a lamp stand a house on a hill. And I'm really looking forward to Andrew's discernment space, because the Holy Spirit will tell you what to do, what to build. So like, yeah, go out and build, I guess. Yeah, I'm yeah.

Connor Mahoney 1:51:39
Thanks so much for joining. Yeah. God bless Yeah. The Bitcoin monastery stuff is, like, super interesting. I don't know if anybody's engaged with ODN, but I kind of, I want to do a space on it at some point. Except he's not going to come on, because he, he hates, hate podcasts. He hates talking. It's kind of critical his philosophy that he doesn't talk, but he's an interesting character, for sure. Well, okay, so we've been talking about decentralization, and you know, we don't need to wear the conversation out, but if some people have stuff to add, I'm willing to keep the conversation going. So glad. Go ahead. Yeah,

Vlad 1:52:20
this on one thing that I kind of wanted to add, you know, in regards to the laws there in Australia, and also just right in terms of network states, I totally agree. I think, you know, one of the key things to like, I guess, kind of an idea that might be similar to network state. But you know, too often people want to, kind of like, forsake the physical for the digital. And they think that, you know, digital solutions will solve all their problems. And, you know, unfortunately, well, not, not unfortunately, I guess, right, we live, we live in a physical world. So we have to have solutions to problems that will encounter there, right? So, you know, you can have all of the, you know, decentralized infrastructure and privacy stuff and all this stuff, right? But if you're, you know, if your government can still kick down your door and, you know, throw you in jail or kill you for, you know, owning your Bible or owning a GPU or owning a rifle, right, any of these things, you know, that's those things aren't fundamentally secure. And that's kind of like what you you build, you have to build the digital stuff on top of that. I, I do really like the idea of, not necessarily a network state, but thinking about this a little bit recently, just, you know, how, how can we essentially iterate on, like, governments and basically, not societal standards, like, how we form societies, right? How can we iterate on those two things faster? And my thought process behind this kind of was, right, you know, companies are kind of the at the at the forefront, I guess you could say, of technological innovation. And it, you know, to make an example if people were not allowed to start any new companies, and all technological innovation had to happen from within existing companies. Technological progress would be incredibly slow because, you know, large monoliths form, and they're very, very hard to steer right. And that's why startups can basically succeed, because they're nimbler. They can try out new things that are essentially very low risk, because they don't have much at stake. And kind of, my thing I got to thinking about was, Is it possible to essentially do this for countries and government and societal structures, you know, you could have, you know, maybe something not necessarily, like a network, say, but kind of, I think what practices is doing, I haven't looked in them too deeply, you know, but like locations to where a bunch of people can go. And instead of, you know, saying, you know, kind of like what a company might say about our technology, right? Hey, let's rethink this technology from first principles and see if we can do it better. But really about how societies are formed, right? Hey, can we make a better system of government, you know, from first principles, can we make, you know, better infrastructure, better laws, so on and so forth, right? I think you want to. Or, you know, whenever we get to Mars, that's going to be a pretty good time to test something like that out, you know, because on Earth, we don't have, you know, we don't have too much space available, or space freely available. Rather, everything is basically owned by people. But, yeah, no, I would agree. And I think that having, you know, having control over, like the the physical layer, and the ability to physically defend yourself and defend what you believe is absolutely critical, right? Because it's like, if you don't have the capacity and ability to do that, you really don't have any sort of freedoms or rights. You just have basically temporarily granted permissions till, you know, someone with a bigger stick comes along and says, Ah, now you can't really do that. Yeah.

Connor Mahoney 1:55:45
And I think part of the problems we would like decentralized, decentralization projects, not even decentralization, but even just, like, parallel, oh, we're going to go out and do our own thing, right? Because if the current infrastructure is captured, so we need to build our own infrastructure, which is a type of decentralization. It's building a lot of different options for people. And okay, but network effects is a real thing. Like nobody here wants to go to truth social well, on Twitter, this is where the conversation is. Nobody wants to go to NAFTA. And so, building infrastructure that everybody wants to use. And I think this is really the goal of blockchain, so the more it can do this, the better building infrastructure that is just naturally the public square and does not, doesn't, is not built in a way that allows centralized powers to essentially kick out anybody, so everybody has a right to access. If we could do that, that would be the goal. I just I'm kind of wary. I don't think I'm suspect of hyper decentralized projects that think that's

Vlad 1:57:00
that's that's basically what we're doing.

Connor Mahoney 1:57:01
Is it cool? I'd like to hear more. Yeah. Sterling has his hand up,

Vlad 1:57:06
yeah. Definitely talk later. Yeah.

Sterling Cooley 1:57:09
Cool, cool. Yeah. This is so this is so cool to be able to kind of get back to the core conversations. But I think like these, I think these need to happen. And I think I think if anybody's gonna understand that in this day and age, it's people who are like, who who actually stand for something and believe something. Because if you look at the way the world is going, it's just like, it's like, it does literally feel like the walls are closing in on like, the West, in a sense. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one here who feels like that, but I know Elon Musk definitely tends to feel like that's happening too, and he's a pretty smart guy, so I kind of, I kind of tend to see the same signals. But I was actually wanted to, I wanted to maybe riff on this idea I learned from Scott Adams, and it's this concept of, like, systems versus goals. And he wrote a really fantastic book years ago called, it's called, like, how to fail at nearly everything and still win big, and it and it's like the same I think that the book atomic habits kind of stole basically the concept. It's very like non dual kind of, it's almost a spiritual way to go through the world, which is that you don't necessarily set a goal. You really just think in terms of, what direction am I going in? And if we consider the concept of acceleration, effective acceleration, it becomes the concept of trying to set a goal in the future is going to become basically impossible. So the more that we try to set goals, we're like, almost always going to be way off target. And the more that we think in terms of systems directionally, we can we can change course really. We can course correct, and probably in an acceleration context, the faster that we can all communicate. Like, let's say there was an emergency and we all needed to get on a space randomly, like, it's uncoordinated, but all of us would know to probably go to x and get on a space and start communicating. Like, fast. This could be like, coordination of resources, coordination of moving people, etc, right? These are, these are realistic scenarios that x is probably going to be used for, not just like so we can trade memes and shit, right? The memes carve the infrastructure so that it's there when we need it for the more serious stuff. But we don't say that we're just. Doing memes, right? So directionally speaking, wherever, wherever things end up. It's like, how can we steer the ship where as many of us can be? I mean, honestly, there's, there's a certain point where it just becomes like the imperative is just to survive. Like, if you look at like Brian Johnson, it's like, just don't die. How, whatever. What are you? Whatever you gonna do? Don't die. Because if you're still alive in 100 years, you'll be part of the you'll be part of the conversation, like, you'll physically have a space at the table, right? Not everybody, one of not every one of us is going to physically be alive in 100 years, but some of us might, or maybe in 50 years or 80 years or 30 years. So it's kind of just a matter of whatever you can do to weave through right now. It's probably like, you know, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better. And and I think, yeah, distribution becomes a matter of it's so one thing I've realized I do a lot of work in virtual reality, like with VR headsets, and one thing I found is that once you start doing experiences on a VR headset, it it detaches your need to, kind of, like, you know how like, people have FOMO. They're like, Oh my God, I need to be in San Francisco, because everything's going on in San Francisco. And by by that happening San Francisco and the whole bay area becomes the cultural hub, and they get to emanate that cultural value system to the rest of the world, because they have a core restricted access to something. But once you start looking at x, I mean, you know, some of some of us here are in San Francisco right now, I'm in the Seattle area. A lot of us that we talk to on these spaces are like, literally in the heart of

John Potter 2:02:02
the tenderloin right now,

Sterling Cooley 2:02:04
Hey, what's

up, John? Hey, what's up? Hey, I didn't realize there was the John. I see you all the time with John. The John. So, so yeah, I mean, so x distributes that kind of power center. And one thing is, you always want to be as close to proximity as like, as I would call it luck, as anything like luck means an investment opportunity, a business partner, an ally, a strategic thing that that you need, and X definitely seems to have like those people. So anyway, there's no The thing is, like, what I'm saying is that the way things are going is that they're going to get faster and faster and faster, and by the time you think you've cemented some kind of a goal or that you have some consensus on any goal, it's basically outdated by the time you've finished speaking. So you need, I would really recommend, that you really embody the concept of acceleration, and really think through what that actually means. That means that, like, you're gonna have to move so fucking fast that you're you're not gonna have to have any time to think at all. You're gonna have to go on, like, gut feel on a lot of shit that's gonna happen probably over the next two years plus. And I think, um, and my lap, my last, last, last promise, last point here is why I think, like people who are in who are Christian, who do understand these concepts of God and the Holy Spirit is that if you look at the emergence of of life and and sell you, like, check out my page, you know, shameless plug, of course, but I have a lot of followers, so I'm not trying to, I don't need following. But I post a lot about microtubules. And these are, like, pretty amazing structures that, like everybody who sees them is like, how could that just be, like, randomly generated from an explosion, like, all these kinds of things happening. And like, I'm not taking a side in any way, but I do believe, if you if, when I reflect on my life, I'm like, it really when I get into a state, and when I go to church, when I go and I pray and I reflect on, really, all the coincidences in my life, I really start to get the sense that I've, I have been guided. And some people on the internet might be like, Okay, take, take your pills, schizo. I'm like, fuck you. You know, there absolutely is something that's guiding these things to happen, and I believe that fully 100% nobody will disabuse me of that, because I know it in my heart, and I think Christians especially understand what it's like to run without necessarily knowing exactly where they're going. To go and being able to kind of like, follow that, that emergent calling. So I think Christians probably could accelerate better than anybody else in the world, rather than the people who are so like Reddit atheists, who are like, well, technically, according to this and that, they're not good. They're that that's not I don't think that's a survivable mindset where we're going. I literally think Christians who can like, be like, I believe in myself fully. I have that full conviction in my heart and I'm just gonna run in the direction that I need to go. That's that's perfect for acceleration. So you guys may have, like, perfect skills to make it through this time. So I'll see you. You know, on the other end, in 100 years, when we've made it, if that's the last message you up here for me, then good luck and have fun. So thanks.

Connor Mahoney 2:05:57
Back to the Christian conversation, and then I want to pop it over to Colin because he had his hand up, and John just joined but we've been running for like two, over two hours now, so I do want to hear from John too, but again, so you mentioned about just the fact that there needs to be mass coordination, and you see, that's what x is. I mean, that's what the church is, the the Christian Church is the universal church that will coordinate all of mankind. So to me, and this even goes back to the decentralization question. This is why I don't, I'm not really a big decentralization chill, like we don't need everybody working independently. We need people working together to have the common vision. And you even see that's what EAC is when, when Beth desos and days and whoever else had their hand in this conversation crafted the the manifesto and the Yak movement. They essentially did create a machine God. And the Machine God is all of the people who are building in EAC Well, the long last oops, and I muted everybody. The long lasting machine God is the body of Christ. And that's, that's what Christianity preaches. And we envision a future will where all of mankind is collected into the church, and that's where we accelerate from. So I'm full the EAC vision, but to me, the EAC vision is not going to be realized without Christianity. And that's, I think, what what Christians add to the conversation. And Nietzsche, I mean, okay, Nietzschean ism. Nietzschean doesn't offer this nicholism. Is an individual. It's about individualism and about, you know, the individual will to power like you're not going to accomplish this mass acceleration without getting humanity on board with the vision. So and so I don't just, I don't just think that Christianity is maybe aligned and maybe has a lot of potential to accelerationism. I don't think acceleration, accelerationism has any future without, without Christianity, because Christianity is the future. And so I know that's again, maybe we, you're not, you know, you don't claim Christianity that way, but I think that's the viewpoint that that will kind of creating space, if you will. So, and that wasn't a Christian number,

Vlad 2:08:12
real quick, I gotta, I gotta hop off here in a bit, if you're

Connor Mahoney 2:08:15
okay, go ahead and then we're gonna throw it.

Vlad 2:08:21
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I gotta, I gotta pop up after this. It was awesome talking all you guys, yeah, certainly one, one thing that I wanted to say, I really like your point, right? You know, accelerating, but accelerating towards what, right? That's obviously kind of what the E and E act is supposed to be for, you know, but really, like, if we think about it, or, you know, just humans accelerating, but the, you know, the complexities of, you know, all of human existence in society is like a very high dimensional space. And so it's like, if we're accelerating, you know, there can be, you know, the vector that we're, you know, accelerating on. You know, there can be times where, like, different vectors are basically orthogonal to each other. And even in terms of deceleration isn't right? Like, all that deceleration and deceleration isn't is, or deceleration is, is just accelerating, but in a vector that's, you know, 180 degrees from the one that you were previously going on, right? And so I totally get what you're saying, right? Like, you know what? What is the goal? Like, can we really set a goal? And just in terms of, like, you know, not necessarily accelerating towards towards a singular goal, or, you know, perhaps, like Yak, isn't, you know, just accelerating towards a singular goal, but you know, having kind of, like a general set of ideas, and just, you know, point, pointing your vector of acceleration as closely as possible to that as you can. And then, you know, you, you adjust the course as you, as you kind of travel on it. I think that just the idea of acceleration, though, is is very Christ, like, you know, we are called to share the gospel and share the message, the message of Christ to. Every nation, every tribe, every ton, right? And so I think that, you know, by that, right? Because that's, that's the whole entire purpose of of us being here is where we were meant to share the Word of God, and we are meant to glorify God, and to, you know, into and to further and bring about, bringing about his kingdom, right? So I think that, like, you know, as as a goal, right, as a as a very like, high level goal, you know, as Christians, that's really what we should be focusing on. And, you know, in a sense, like, that's, you know, the terminology may have been different, but right, that is essentially accelerationism, and we want to be as effective as that, you know, to that end of spawn, yeah, and one, one thing Connor, that I'll say in just a quick thing, in terms of decentralization, I, I completely agree with you, like there needs to be structure. You know, there's a reason why, you know, biblically, in the way that, you know, even God created the world, there is a set of structure. There is a set of hierarchies and stuff like that. You know, I'm, I'm, no, I lean in a lot of beliefs towards, like, the Libertarian side, but I'm definitely, I'm definitely not a libertarian, right? It's like, we can't just have everyone, you know, often, just doing their own thing. You know, that's, that's not how humanity works. And, yeah, I'd say that, like, the kind of, like, what I said previously, right? The the goal isn't decentralization, you know, the goal is, you know, something else it might be like freedom in a certain aspect, or, you know, better, health, wellness, etc, right? And so, you know, decentralizing in the places that you know need it to accomplish that goal. And, you know, centralizing the places that don't, right? Anyways, yeah, this was, this was an awesome time. I gotta hop off. But yeah, I'd like to anyone wants to, like, DM me and ask me questions about what we're doing. Love to talk. See you guys.

Connor Mahoney 2:11:48
I think Vlad, God bless.

Sterling Cooley 2:11:49
Thanks for joining Vlad. Love to have you on another space sometime. I'm

Datawalker 2:11:54
also gonna go to some guys. Good meeting you.

Connor Mahoney 2:11:58
You too, call me. Okay, let's go to Colin and let's go to Josh.

Colin Sitkiewicz 2:12:04
Yes, I also have to pop off after I say my little piece here, but I could talk about anything, if you guys want me to elaborate. But the thing I wanted to say is, I attended a single Praxis Twitter spaces, and to be blunt, I was thoroughly impressed. I thought it was I thought it was great. I whilst I don't really consider my undergrad maddering too much at a poly science degree, and their core thesis of the Praxis movement was correct, and it's in times of extreme technology technological advancement, governments frequently authorize special economic zones for like companies to do what they will with their advancement. And that was what I gathered is the core thesis of practice. And the two people who mentioned that, I don't know who it was, I was hoping they could D on me, because I really wanted to, I guess, interact more with that group. And I guess, semi own application and that,

Connor Mahoney 2:13:18
I think, I think bit the was one of them. So you can, you can hit her up, big Vlad by the other, I don't know, but thanks. Thanks for contributing to

Colin Sitkiewicz 2:13:26
Colin. Uh, John, yeah. Have a good night, everybody. God bless.

Connor Mahoney 2:13:30
God bless. God. John, can you unmute? Okay, you'll pop on when he's freaking Starling. You got your hand up and again, I didn't quite finish my

John Potter 2:13:47
thought, obviously.

Connor Mahoney 2:13:49
Okay, go ahead, John. Oh, John, go ahead. Is it just me that can't hear him? Is it a me thing?

Sterling Cooley 2:13:59
No, I can't hear me.

Connor Mahoney 2:14:02
But so we'll come back to John Sterling. Let's go to you, because you had your hand up and I did just want to say because I didn't finish my thought, like I wasn't, yes, I wasn't, I wasn't, like, antagonistic to you. I actually agree with a lot of what you were saying. I was just providing what I kind of viewed as the Christian futurism perspective to what you had said. So it was kind of complimentary.

Sterling Cooley 2:14:25
Yeah, no, no, I No, there's for me. There's no, I guess there's always room for, I guess, constructive dialog, not any dis. There's no, I don't, honestly don't feel like, have time for crazy disagreements. I'm just like, all right, if we, that's kind of, yeah, that's kind of the point of acceleration is if, if we, if we're at a stalemate where we're at right now, and we just keep on moving forward in the future, and we just keep on building, building, building. It's like sometimes the problems that the. Stand stills that we thought we had, can just get resolved, like, one, I guess, yeah, I wanted to say to Colin, like, I definitely think this concept, like special economic zones, where people can kind of more freely practice different things there, I think that's a good idea. I mean, I think we do need something like that. John is your speaker. Yeah,

John Potter 2:15:23
that's some Wi Fi. Apologies. I wasn't here sooner. I just got unexpectedly busy with a bunch of stuff. But nice to be here. It's interesting. You're talking about a bunch of communication stuff, and I don't know if you literally were talking about blockchain or all that, but it seemed like you were in that area. So one of the things I've been working on recently with one of my friends is this thing called stamp chat. You've seen me probably tweet about occasionally recently, you could DM me if you want to hear more about it, but it's basically like a anonymized messaging platform thing, you know, decentralized thing, and it's focused on the communications itself. It's not an attempt to, like, make money on a crypto thing. In fact, it's very particularly designed to inflate and deflate so that the price can't move that quickly to that much at all. It's really just the functional thing to help with the anonymous blockchain messaging thing. And the goal is not just to use this for messaging, but to use it as a sort of foundation to build a lot of open source, sort of decentralized software. This is just the first application that we're trying. So again, let me know if you want to hear about that. But that's not really why I came here, exactly. It just seemed like in the area of some stuff you're talking about earlier. Am I still here?

Connor Mahoney 2:17:07
Yeah, no, we're hearing you. Yeah. We've been all over the place with this, with this conversation. So yeah, it's been on blockchain. It's been on decentralization. I don't think Sterling works in blockchain specifically. Maybe I'm wrong. I know bit the does, yeah.

John Potter 2:17:21
So my, yeah. I mean, I've been working on it a little bit here and there, but my friend that's done the bulk of the work used to do. He was a bitcoin cash core developer guy for a while. So it's, it's kind of a offshoot of a group of people from there, and he's also Christian, as it happens, part of the conceit is it's like in a meme sense. Anyway, it's like an open secret society, and Jesus is, you know, at the top, but it's sort of like a revealed, you know truth as a meme, but you know it's a thing. Was really strange, speaking of synchronicities and things, one of his old friends he used to work with this stamp check guy he was visiting while I was at his house, and they haven't seen each other in years, and they're like, Oh, what are you working on? What are you working on? And they're exchanging stories or whatever. And so my friends doing the Snapchat thing, which I kind of explained a little bit. And then his friend that was visiting, he was explaining his crypto based messaging thing that's, you know, he's been selling it to, like, people in Ukraine and like, all these different places for secure messaging and stuff like that. And we talked about it for hours without asking what His thing was called. And he's like, oh, you know, finally, we're like, what's it called? If you look it up and like, you know, read more about it or whatever. And he said, It's called gospel chat. Yeah. Running into these, these weird sort of synchronicities, like you're mentioning earlier as well.

Connor Mahoney 2:19:08
So I like the meme. You know, I like these at the top. I think it's actually, think it's a little better than the thermodynamic God.

John Potter 2:19:14
But one time, one time I asked Beth, like, thermodynamic God, You mean, like, God? Like, what are you talking about? He's like, Yeah, sort of everyone. It's so cringe, like he's repeatedly, like people will talk to death and be like, hey, stop trying to force the thermodynamic God me, like it's not, I think it's cringy, you know, he just won't drop it.

Connor Mahoney 2:19:37
Well, I let me be memes, you know. I mean somebody, but, yeah, yeah, I'm

John Potter 2:19:43
not being a hater or whatever. I don't know. I could go on about it, but suffice, No, I totally suffice to say Beth is much more of a hater towards me and another react people than I mean, like I like. Him. He's fine or whatever, but he's like, direct message you and be like, Hey, why'd you tweet that is, like, very protective about his branding.

Connor Mahoney 2:20:10
Interesting. Okay, yeah, I think there's, I mean, I'm not totally down with all the language of the EAC movement, for sure, and particularly as it relates to to Nick land into the post humanism. I think there's some concerning, concerning features of that, but for most of the people that I interact with in Yak, I don't really see that that's like a dominating factor, I guess, to the to the belief system. So I don't know, maybe, maybe Beth is into that, but I'm certainly not Sterling. What do you got your hand

Sterling Cooley 2:20:46
up? Yeah. So one thing that that really drew me to, like EAC and some of these concepts, is I run my own business, and I have to hire people like all the time, right? And I work in sales and manufacturing and ultrasound and biotech and medical regulations and AI. So I've got my hands in so many different things. And it's fun. I get to work with some of the craziest, smart people on the planet, and I really do enjoy it. But you know, not everybody, not everybody is committed as I am to my work, right? So sometimes I have to think like, how do I get buy in from an employee, right? And that's one thing that, like Christianity has done really, really well, which is, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, part of the whole concept of like a, I guess, an organization is like leadership, and how do you create, I mean, Christianity is kind of like a pretty, kind of a perfect model, one of a few of, like this distributed organization that's like a headless organization like you guys realize that it's like, survive for 2000 plus years. It's pretty incredible. What was built from that idea. So in the Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot to admire. Well,

Connor Mahoney 2:22:23
I mean, I would tell you all the, really, all the West, what we think of as Western society, is byproduct into, uh, totalist society, yeah, yes, except we say the head is Christ. That's what Christians saying. So not divine providence. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah,

Sterling Cooley 2:22:40
yeah, no, yeah. I mean, I mean, yes, it's, I don't think people have missed the the odd, I guess, cross pollination between Christianity and the West and that like they're these kind of, I guess builder. I guess it's a, is it a builder mentality or it is an technology, technological mentality, like, build great structures to God, but that enables you to build aqueducts for clean water. I mean, there's a lot to admire in that. So I think, yeah, I mean, I think there's there, there's, like, a definitely friendly relationship between the two. And I think that, again, you know, it's, um, there's this, there's this great documentary that was created many years ago, probably 15, maybe something years ago, called the it was loudly called the power of dreams, or the power of nightmares. It's a fantastic documentary. I think Adam Curtis is the producer. He's the narrator and the visionary behind it. But he talks about, like, really, throughout the 19, I guess, 20s and on till the modern era, a lot of like, mass movements have really been driven out of like, who, who can create the biggest boogeyman of the of the day in the age? And from my perspective, right, if we all look at what is the, you know, individuals tend to stay as individuals until the very last moment that they have to come together and be collectivist and actually work together, right? Because, like, I'm sure Christians and eackers, like, in a normal environment, we'd just be like, wave at each other and smile and stuff like that. But I think I don't know, again, this is probably the second time I've mentioned this, but if I look at the media and the news and all this kind of stuff, I'm like the biggest, the biggest, the power of the nightmare right now is like anything that's against probably the west right now. Like, there seems to be a pressure, a counter pressure, against the West, against, like, European sentiments, and like, definitely, like religious stuff, and probably Christianity and many other religions as well. But I'm like, and I'm kind of tied up in all that too, because if the if America fails, I don't know who's gonna who's gonna defend me, right? So for me, it's like, if we really can take the bigger macro picture, I'm like, I'll put any differences, any differences aside, minor as they probably are, in comparison to what is like honest. I mean, I don't you know, I'm I'm not going to try to implant any any specific beliefs in anybody's minds here. I just ask people to just be like, look in their hearts and really be honest with themselves and ask themselves, are you willing to team up with a bunch of engineers who are, like, really committed to, like, maybe building rockets and getting us off this freaking planet, just in case, and mining asteroids and like, is that? Is that? Yeah, some of the, some of the characters might be a little intense. Like, Elon Musk is a bit of an intense guy, but, like, he would put any Christian on that rocket ship and take you to Mars. Okay, any of you, he wouldn't even think twice about it. So, yeah, I mean, that's the reality. Like, we're, like, I would normally ever come on a space like this, not because I don't like you guys. I love you guys, but I'm like this. This is like, urgent. Like, this is like, this shit is happening right now, and like, we cannot forget that. So anyway, right? That's just my opinion,

Connor Mahoney 2:26:50
yeah, but that just proves my point that like, like humanity, we do have this, this kind of innate sense of that we're going to collude, we're going to work together to accomplish our goals and to, you know, define ourselves in relation to the other. I think so. That's why I'm just not totally bullish on hyper decentralization. I mean, would you disagree?

Sterling Cooley 2:27:17
I i think it's doing, it's, it's just kind of like it's, I think the decentralization point comes down to flash points. It's like a very important kind of military, like military strategy or whatever. But the flash point is cutting off communication and cutting off physical everything in a moment, to isolate people really quickly and to kind of drive forces around is very possible if you control infrastructure, and if you can, like, that's why Elon Musk buying Twitter is like, why did they go after Elon Musk so hard, so, like, he made a commitment that We could actually, you know, in the old Twitter, this conversation would be throttled and blocked and banned some, some kid in in San Francisco would be like, Oh, some Christians are taught, like, talking on a space this is bullshit. And we would be like, Oh, can you hear me? That would be the problem right now. So we at least have that possibility. I believe so decentralization. I mean, I think it is. It's like decentralization to the point of, what if it were just you for a moment, what do you have? I mean that means like you have your phone, you've got your tools, whatever you need, that's like ultimate decentralization could come down to like the individual, the one person like potentially. So. Again, there's the flashpoints are just simply about filtering, filtering people, and in filtering, we're all cockroaches, basically, just to be honest, like we're not, we're nobodies. And if you, if you run infrastructure and food and water and electricity, it's very easy to kind of weed people out. So I think that's a decentralization in my from my perspective, could mean, especially over, you know, it's a it's an election year. It's like, you know, we don't know who's what's going to happen in this country in the next four years. Very difficult to say. So decentralization, long term could look like something else. But short term, I'd say, like, get your Bug Out Bag, make friends, connect here on Twitter. Like this could be like, the group of people, like, if anybody guys were, like, in an absolute emergency, I'd like, I've got a couch you can sleep on. Like, this is that that's kind of decentralization, I think probably for right now. I. We're bored nobodies. Praxis doesn't even have a physical location, but putting that together could be really important, like just that, just that, just that the thought is there to put it together is already initiating the response to it, right? Just that the the flag is up for praxis. That means that the all seeing eye of the powers that be that want to keep you as a citizen of the country that you're in is already thinking, Uh oh, we're either losing people or we're losing the the energy that they feed into the system. That's that's all it is. So it's like the moment that you announce that you're creating something different, the power that B will either try to do as much as it can, to keep you in line or to eject you, pretty violently, in a kind of a hardcore sense. So just that we're here and there's the Yak exists is already basically put us on the list. So, yeah, you're in it, yeah, just so you guys know, well,

Connor Mahoney 2:31:15
I'm even at earlier on the space. Like I said, Yak Kirsten were kind of CO belligerents in this this fight against the institutional powers. So, you know, I don't know exactly what your comment was about us being COVID, but so I actually threw on the tweet bullet about soul engineer who was in previous space humanity is the Imago Dei. And I think that's kind of where we get this sense in the modern world. Quickly. Emmett Scott to quickly,

John Potter 2:31:47
I would guess the cockroach thing was sort of, we are all dust type sentiment, you know.

Sterling Cooley 2:31:54
I'll just, I'll just chime in here. I mean, how many of you actually work in government, and how many of you work at the DOJ, and how many of you work in the FBI? You're saying, like, individually? None of you individually? Yeah, we have no power. We really have no power. If the if you look at what happened on January 6, if

John Potter 2:32:13
you're a fed or not, please go one by one,

Sterling Cooley 2:32:18
right? It's like, Oh, you were somewhere near the Capitol on January 6, you're in prison for like, the next three years. That's that is, like, that's cockroach status. We are nothing. You have to play the game like you are that. Well, I think none of none of us, had any power 100% and,

Connor Mahoney 2:32:36
I mean, I saw it on that sense. Like, yeah. Again, Christian, yeah, COVID lizards, it's about, it's really a revolutionary message on violence. We're talking about revolutionizing the systems, of course. But So yeah, I agree with your point, though, and I do think also, and I'm going to throw a 250 I just had a hand up for a while, but I don't know if anybody here watch the the Tucker Putin interview, but I did think there was some pressure points made particularly so obviously Putin very historical mindset. But he was even going back to kind of the origins of of the West and Rome and how they were very pro progress. They were, they were building the Empire of the age, but they were just totally unprepared for the barbarian hordes. Right? Which, which? Fact, Rome. And so there is the sense that I think it would be a mistake to discount humanity working together and when we collude, when we share a vision like there's really nothing that can be held back from us, and to to interject a biblical frame. I mean, this is what the Tower of Babel is. God comes down from heaven sees Humanity United in this vision of building this towel, which went against God's command at the time, which is to to to disperse and to fill up the earth. And but he says, When he comes down, he says, Now I see Humanity United in vision. There's nothing that can be withheld from them. And so then the the language is divided. And then you see this image. It went at the at Pentecost, when the church is instituted, where the apostles speak in the language that everybody can understand of all different countries and tribes. And so you kind of see this reverse image of the Tower of Babel. And the message then is that Humanity United in the church, aligned with God in the body of Christ that that now the Tower of Babel, these issues are kind of reversed, and now there really is nothing that can be held, held back from a regenerated humanity in the in the church, and so that, that's the message of Christianity. And I know you know you're not a Christian, so maybe you don't. Buy into all of that, but, but essentially, my point is just that even, like Putin says it is a mistake to discount what's going to happen when when humans start working together and we're colluding. So yeah, we don't have any institutional power right now, but there's a lot of potential for us vivid Go ahead.

Bithia 2:35:20
Thank you. Well, um, yeah, it's really interesting. I was actually going to mention the town of Babel because it just correlates so perfectly with the Yak movement in one way. Well, personally, I think it's like, once we reach a peak, he kind of information. That's what trouble sort of comes into play. And like, again, is like, unless you like a Christian, you kind of don't really feel that way. And, yeah, I was just going to go back to praxis, because I believe Peter kind of wanted to know more. Yeah, if you

Connor Mahoney 2:36:00
want to share a little bit about praxis and praxis, go ahead, yeah, so

Bithia 2:36:05
Well, per like, currently there's no location, just like, as Sterling said, and it's currently just a community right now, it's more like a Dao, you can say it's like a Dao feeling at the moment. And like, you know, the steel Visa card is essentially, you know, your ticket of being part of that Dao, and you will be asked, like, $5,000 at some point if you wish to progress to, like, getting an actual visa with the designated country. Um, and in terms of, like, as a Christian, like, I think it's good to have, like, different alternatives. Like, you know, not staying in Australia for instance. Like, you can suddenly move to the designated spot. In case there's, like, a, I don't know, like a totalitarian takeover in Australia, for instance. And I think just having the travel like capabilities, even though I know that Australian and American passports are very powerful, it's still, you know, it feels good to know that you have, like, a community that you can immediately go, like, go to for help.

Connor Mahoney 2:37:19
Yeah, I just, I don't know anything about practice. I mean, I've seen it on the timeline, but I haven't really dived into it. I mean, I think that was, like the interesting structures. You just haven't, we haven't really seen one that's been entirely successful. And I think it's, again, it's just the issue is really getting people involved with the vision and getting them aligned. It's very hard to do without a kind of a top down structure, or at the very least a very strong founder that's kind of providing a vision for things. Yeah, I don't know. I would be interested to learn more about practice. Well, we've been going for almost three hours now, so I don't know if anybody has some burning thoughts that kind of wanted to add to the Convo, not seeing any hands up, Vincent, you haven't spoken at all, if you want to just kind of interject and then,

Vincent Casey 2:38:14
yeah, sorry, yeah, you guys can hear me. Yeah. Go ahead. Speak. Yeah. I just wanted to, like, say, Yeah, you guys are doing great. I love seeing this community thrive, especially with I see, like, there's so many more people here, especially compared to even just like a month ago. I think Connor can agree with me on that, like it's almost like a viral, like, semi viral, like, small, small, but still growing kind of movement. And I think it is important to continue with these spaces. But I also want to, like add that, just like talking about stuff like, oh yeah, we should do this in this scenario, or doing this in that scenario is good to fundamentally, like, push for, like, acceleration, or, like, actually, you know, progress, you have to work on that. So, like, what I hope for, at least in the future, I don't know when maybe we could get a space going where we got individuals like talking about what they're working on, how we can help them, or vice versa, I would love, love, love to help like people if they need like, any like advice from you specifically, or if other people need help from like other people who have like experience in different things. So like, I know, AI stuff, bifid knows crypto. There's people in here who know, like, are incredible at engineering all that incredible stuff. So, yeah, I think that's kind of my like, final thought before heading out.

Connor Mahoney 2:39:56
Awesome. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, the more we can, kind of like, organize. The resources and align those things would be great. I mean, even this is, this is kind of the message with, with the act, with with techno capital, right, that we can do capitalism. We can align a lot of resources that way. I think in the church, we also have an opportunity to align, align things, because we share that vision. So and I'm, I mean, I can't, like, I am working on a few other spaces, and a very important one to me is talking about capital. Is trying to align different Christian VC funds with all these builders who are building incredible technology in the space. So I really, actually am trying to work on the space for that, and I've talked to some pretty influential people so far. So I'm actually pretty hopeful that we're going to be able to see that happen, maybe even as soon as next month, but it'll depend on availability, and, you know,

Vlad 2:40:54
a lot of corporate stuff, I guess.

Connor Mahoney 2:40:56
Anyway, so yeah, we probably get on the well, Sterling, you got your hand up if you want to jump in and add and

Sterling Cooley 2:41:03
then, yeah, just, it's super, super quick. I just want to just as a as an offer of gratitude to everybody is just offer. There's a video that I that I personally like to watch as much as I can every day, and it's kind of like my way of like practicing gratitude, and it's like my for me, it's my space where I most am able to feel God. I have, I have a condition called ulcerative colitis, where I'm pretty much house bound, and so I it's really difficult for me to go anywhere, but I'm able to do this from home. And I like I I deeply know that feeling, and it's amazing. So anyway, I'm not selling anything. I There's no, there's no, it's just a YouTube video, and it's like a 20 minute, 20 minute practice where you kind of like, hold your heart. And the video has stock imagery of, like, beautiful, beautiful image, really, of like, a large churches and beautiful spaces and families and just, you know, things that are beautiful about life that we can I think all you know can share values on I think, I think it'll kind of, maybe you'll maybe like it. So if you, if you want that, um, just send me a DM. I'll just, I'll send you the YouTube video. I've been sending it to a lot of people, and a lot of people have been like, holy cow, this is really good. So that'd just be my offer to anybody and take me up or not. So yeah, but that's how I want to support

Connor Mahoney 2:42:32
it. Well, God bless everybody. Thank you everybody for joining. And again, on the bulletin, I deleted everything, and what's left is on Holy Thursday. This Thursday, we're doing a prayer space. So anybody is welcome to join, even if you're not a Christian, you're welcome to join and pray with us. Otherwise, God bless, hope. Everybody has a wonderful weekend if you can make it to church tomorrow. Highly recommend.

Alright. Anyway, God bless you guys.