I had a Bitcoin fan in his 40s tell me IRL that BTC, not blockchain, mind you, is an improvement over the gene. Something about passing information between generations. I could not follow the argument. All this time, banks have been hoarding details about our deposits, withdrawals, balances, transfers, payment and purchase histories that could have been "inherited" like genetic information by our descendents. Even worse, banks could have been making the data public so "tech" companies can collect it for free. You just cannot make this stuff up.

This sounds related to the observation that one of the powers of human civilization is move evolution out of the DNA genes and into culture. We use electricity not because we have electricity-using genes, but because we have the genes that allow us to support a culture that knows how to use electricity.

However it is beyond me to translate that into the blockchain specifically. This seems like yet another case where in the phrase "distributed ledger", the "ledger" is doing all the work and the "distributed" isn't doing much. And there isn't much work being done either; most of our "culture" isn't in ledgers. Even if you take the broad view that I do that a lot of things like our technology are actually embedded in human relationships ("Hmmm, I remember Bob knows how to solve this problem... ah yes, I bet Sally knows the solution to this... I bet Ramash could hook me up with the right part for this problem...") and things beyond just formal transfer mechanisms like "books" and "classes", ledgers still aren't carrying much of that water.

I remember SCO accusing IBM of doing something similar and IBM responding that they did not, because they could not, refute them.

Refuting bad arguments scales better than some think because arguments can be referenced or copied when they come up again and again, whereas the alternative allows BS to stand unchallenged.

Speaking of which, I should copy this for the next time that comes up.