This article talks about similarities between blockchains and human life. This is largely a literary piece than it is a technical document or a guide. This is not absolute but is relative/subjective to each person.
We understand that time is irreversible, at least until now.
There does not exist a methodology today for us to go back in time and perform the same actions or in a similar fashion again.
The passage of human existence or individual life spans, is a one way function.
It progresses in one direction.
Reversing is hard to the extent, it is deemed impossible.
Every event, instance and moment synonymously is a one time occurence.
Provided there is another opportunity to do something else again, there are multiple dynamics around it that have changed.
It is absolutely not the same instance that is recurring.
From my brief reading of Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s book, “Fooled by randomness”, it is to my understanding that this is indeed very much a world of chaotic randomness out of which we tend to absolve into activities that have a higher probability of eliciting the same or similar outcome.
It is not exactly rocket science , but certain things done a certain fashion has a probability to deliver a certain output.
Anything we consider to be predictable is simply by optimizing this probability factor and its preceding logic sequence to obtain this outcome.
In life, we repeatedly perform same or similar activities such as eating food or pooping or certain activities(could be playing sports or watching TV), but it’s it’s not exactly the same in the sphere of reference such that you’re adding on to your list of activities performed in your lifetime such that the set of logic sequences would result in a similar activity amidst a constantly moving flux(the rest of the world).
If we observe the nature of blockchains to be append only, passage of life is very much of a similar data structure.
If birth were a genesis block, every activity you’ve performed until date is a list of activities that’s passing through a one way function (time).
This implies that time acts as a one way function towards appending new activities performed throughout the course of life.
There is no going back from this.
However, anyone can make a blockchain.
Similarly, anyone can(has ?) take birth.
It is to my belief that consensus makes a fairly huge difference.
The interactibility between a human and other coexisting humans to include within their individual blockchains of a lifetime, activities such that they can sum up their lifetime of activities is the equivalent of the worth a blockchain project.
Blockchains that provide value is worth more and is highly regarded.
Activities within people’s lifetimes that provide value is worth more in comparison and his highly regarded.
It is not to say that people without previous history are worthless, it is just that there exists a pattern amongst activities that they’ve done that gives us a better insight of the potential value they could provide as is the case with blockchains.
Mid life crisis:
Sometimes people tend to lose the focus of their goals.
Blockchains exist for accomplishing certain tasks.
Life in its very essence is a wholesome experience.
If, there exists a mission that a person loses focus of and delivers his priority into a different mission altogether, then we can consider this a fork.
The original mission of the blockchain is forked into the new mission and the previous version is orphaned.
People undergo this phase when they experience emotions of different sorts that cause them to undertake this action.
I wouldn’t be the best person to talk to on this subject, but I’ve seen it happen.
Interoperability:
If each person were to run their own blockchain(for purposes of this article, they do) interoperability makes an insanely huge difference.
Trade is impossible if the other person does not recognize your/your token’s worth.
People must be able to communicate, collaborate and henceforth execute actions in agreement to be able to produce actual value.
In the actual cryptocurrency bitcoin world, this is termed as atomic swaps.
Imagine a world where nobody spoke to each other, it’d be a shitty world.
There wouldn’t be value built, we’d be killing each other.
Blockchains and humans are very much alike.
Consensus defines how we choose to operate amongst other individuals.
Every moment, every second of our life is a part of a blockchain if it were recorded.
How different would your life be if you realized that, you can/would read this article only once in your lifetime ?
The second time you read it, you’re appending it to your lifetime of events.
In psychological terms, this is called reinforcement.
Human brains, mine at least, I doubt is equivalent to a computer.
I forget a lot. You don’t see that happening often in computers.
I forget a lot and must hence expend greater resources to retain through reinforcement, however this could be different in each person’s lifetime of a blockchain.
The patten still exists.
For the year of 2017, I put my whole calendar on public domain, including my showers and breakfasts to all the work I did everyday.
After watching the Snowden documentary, I took it off but it’s more or less the same.
If the government has a copy or not, if we ourselves do not realize that this is a one time occurence, what difference does it actually make ? (rhetoric)
I’m all up for privacy and understand its need, but I also stress on being self aware of the time that’s passing by.
The rice and sambar I eat every day passes through different cycles and different phases of my body.
Each day its at a different place.
Each second its at a different phase.
The body has aged within the timespan.
Gross, but if you can capture that and metricify it, after realizing that it happens just once, it’d make lot more sense.
This article isn’t written to freak you out, but bring to light of how much our life is similar to the blockchain and being aware of every passing moment is the true essence of life.
Cheers!
These are exciting times.
There is so much left to be unraveled that it sometimes scares me.
Right until when euphoria takes over.
— Prahalad Belavadi