Bitcoin Qualia
The Center Cannot Hold: 13
Subjectivity deals with an individual’s conscious experience. A person’s agency, perspective, desires, beliefs, and feelings are all subjective.
Objectivity in philosophy deals with reality outside of subjectivity. Objectivity is the state of all things without conscious bias.
Bitcoin is objective money. Fiat is not. There are no individuals or small groups of conscious experiences at this point in Bitcoin’s trajectory that can affect how Bitcoin operates. A person may have a subjective desire to sell their Bitcoin, but when carrying out that act, they submit to the protocol’s objective nature. In this way Bitcoin objectifies our subjective experience.
You can send Bitcoin on a whim, but you must follow a set of rules to carry out a valid transaction. For example, if you provide a bunk address of incorrect format, you will not receive any Bitcoin there.
If you participate in the Bitcoin protocol according to its rules, you may experience the joy of receiving Bitcoin and watching the confirmations clock in, but Bitcoin is agnostic to your experience of this. In Bitcoin the simple act of possession is the only prerequisite for spending. Not so in fiat. In Bitcoin possession means knowing you can prove you have a secret without revealing what that secret is.
Qualia are one form of secret. Qualia are instances of subjective experience. A common example of a quale is color. Who can confirm two people are seeing the same redness of red? When describing any pain to a doctor, one is describing their subjective qualia. The pain scales often used in hospitals are an attempt to objectify these subjective experiences. Although it seems it is not yet possible to convey our inner state, to measure our qualia and share them in any meaningful way. This
