Muse 002: Interpretation

Origin Story

In Greek and Roman mythology, a muse referred to each of nine goddesses, the daughters of Zeus (god of sky and thunder) and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory), who preside over the arts and sciences. The above is, of course, the definition of a muse as a noun but it can also be used as a verb. That can be defined as “ to be absorbed in thought” or “say to oneself in a thoughtful manner”. I like all of this as it relates to what I intend these writings will to be for both myself, as well as, anyone who finds value in them.

Interpretation

The definition of this word is the act of explaining the meaning of something. We are all interrupting things constantly throughout our lives. Modern communication has increased the velocity of messages but has opened up much more interpretation due to the lack of a multitude of things. Think about conversations between friends via text or email, many of these conversations must be interpreted without being certain of the original intent. Whereas with face-to-face communication, we get the body language tells coupled with the verbal language to come up with a much more complete interpretation. Still yet, via either medium, we cannot be sure what message is being conveyed. This was one of the beautiful aspects of the gold standard. Hearken back to 1912 when John Pierpont Morgan testified to Congress that, “gold is money. Everything else is credit.” This was universally known and there was no ambiguity or interpretation needed. The problem arose when, due to various circumstances, central banks aggregated the gold supply and issued paper claims on those holdings. Still no ambiguity. Then, the fateful day of August 15, 1971, when President Nixon temporarily (nothing more permanent than a temporary government program, eh) closed the gold window thus introducing a massive amount of interpretation into the valuation process that is being unprecedentedly exacerbated today. Things like what did Jerome mean by that or what color was his tie when he increased rates? Pure chaos and anarchy for determining the prices of goods and services, which is the inverse of why humans settled on gold as money thousands of years ago. Want to know a language with zero interpretation needed? Mathematics. Wouldn’t it be something if we could build a currency system with the following attributes? Immaculate conception, fixed supply schedule, the process of creating new supply contingent upon doing work (i.e., mining versus ctrl+P), cheap and easy to run a node¹, and be able to spend/hold said money without a trusted third party, among other things? Like Satoshi said, “it might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.” 

¹ a point at which lines or pathways intersect or branch