Volition
Daily Ramble
I used to believe in free will. Now I believe in volition. Why?
Because when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? — John Maynard Keynes
While listening to this podcast on free will by Sam Harris, I started to suspect he was right. Sam walks listeners through an exercise of choosing three movies. Any three movies. He then goes on to ask why the three movies you chose weren’t “A Clockwork Orange,” “Gone with the Wind,” or “Citizen Kane.” (Ya got me, I made those names up because I didn’t want to listen to the podcast again…)
Now, if you chose one of those three movies in the milliseconds between reading sentences, then my gig is up, and I’m busted. But if you’re a relatively normal human being (whatever that is), what you realized is that those movie titles didn’t even reach your rational mind to consider. Why not? Why did certain movie titles come to your mind, but others did not? Did you consciously choose to forego considering those other movie titles? If not, were you actually freely choosing the movies you considered, or did something else make that choice for you?
Sam Harris posits that the thing sitting before our rational mind feeding us the set of choices to chose from is our consciousness. Others might call it our spirit, the universe, or god. I don’t know and don’t claim to know. But, I know that there is something ahead of our rational thoughts that scopes in the potential options for any decision we can choose from. Good or bad, it just is what it is. So, while we have a periscope into the universe of information, something limits what we see through that periscope. And I’m glad for it — without it, I’m sure I’d suffer from information paralysis and be unable to make a single move in life.
That brings me to my new favorite word: volition. Volition is the idea that I’m able to use my will to decide amongst the options provided. I own the ability to make the choices for my life, but only after whatever precedes my mind reduces those options from the infinite options available. And the decision that I make from that set of choices do impact my life. So volition is not a tale of disempowerment. Instead, it’s a recognition of the humility of living a life where something larger than my rational mind is in control. It’s bowing down to the enormity of life and the infinitesimally small role I play in it.
Like a friend mentioned to me, if someone asked him how he ended up in his station in life, he’d be hard-pressed to answer. Sure he made choices along the way, but was there a clear intention to find himself where he is now? No. I suspect if we could speak to a salmon swimming in the ocean, it’d give us a similar answer. 1
Things That Make Me Go Hmmm… on the Interweb
Correlation is not causation, but the data-driven thread is worth reading.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekend: $28.5k - $33.2k
Today: $29.8k - $31.9k
Tomorrow: $28.8k - $32.7k
I’m starting to sound like a broken record claiming that volatility is incoming. Really, it is. Even if I first started sounding the alarm two weeks ago, the odds for a highly volatile move continue to increase. I’ll be shocked if we go through another week without the move happening. At the moment, I’m firmly on the bearish side of the breakout when it happens. Why? A combination of on-chain fundamentals showing weakness and the chart showing tremendous weakness from the bulls. At some point, the price will find a set of buyers that will cause the market to bottom and start ascending again, but given how many times we’ve tested $30k, it doesn’t seem likely that $30k is the place.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: Can governments stop Bitcoin by prohibiting access to apps that use the Bitcoin network? 2
A: No.
Governments can shut their citizens off from accessing apps that use the Bitcoin network. While that would ultimately hurt their citizens, it would only slow the adoption of Bitcoin. The best analogy would be BitTorrent, the decentralized data streaming service, which accounts for as much as 3.3% of internet traffic. Although governments have made it more difficult to access Torrenting apps (much of the data is copyrighted), it has not gone away.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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Thanks, Howard S for the inspiration for today’s Ramble.
Thanks for the question Adam R.