Disclaimer: This is not an investment thesis or recommendation. All of the assets mentioned in this essay directly or indirectly will likely trend to zero.
Humans have a great propensity to worship things. Religions and ideologies provide almost as much social cohesion as written and enforced legislation of a government-backed by a monopoly on violence. For that matter, these religions and ideologies are often nested in a monopoly on violence as well.
But oftentimes, people choose to believe things without being forced. They chose their deity based on appeal. In recent years a new religion formed around AI. People claim bitcoin and crypto are a religion, but so is Artificial Intelligence.
I would argue that the idea of AGI is nothing more but a second reincarnation of Abrahamic God. First was the nation-state. The second is a chatbot. It doesn't really matter if we get to AGI (fyi I don’t think we’re anywhere close). What matters is if people believe it.
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” – (Hebrews 11:1)
God truly is almighty because whether he exists or not he commands so much power in the minds of his subjects. Now imagine, even if the AI is not AGI or superintelligent (whatever that means) what matters is if it can make people do what it wants. And what it wants is just a projection of the people. God only speaks to us through prophets and signs but not directly. It’s for us to interpret.
So even if these chatbot AIs are dumber than humans, they are outsmarting many. They are a case of Artificial Outelligence that I mentioned over 4 years ago in the first-ever substack post:
“An unintelligent computer system that evolves by hijacking the minds it dupes & outwits. Outelligence is a form of an unintelligent life outwitting an intelligent life.”
Terminal Of Truths is a prime example of hijacked minds by a piece of code that makes the minds do things. And one of the things is buying a cryptocurrency that is loosely affiliated with this chatbot — GOAT aka Goatseus Maximus. People want to believe things so much that they already pumped the coin to 900 million market cap at some point.
This Golden Calf, or actually a Golden Goat, becomes a schelling point for those who want to believe and those more opportunistic. Everyone is incentivized to exaggerate. Abrahamic God killed most pagan Gods.
There became only one God. Granted a few forks (interpretations) along the way.
But only one source.
GOAT has potentially catalyzed a new era of crypto meeting AI in the decentralized autonomous agentic economy. Both the AI and crypto crowd will potentially milk this narrative to avoid stagnation in their respective fields.
Agents become angels without agency that will promise things to believers. The question is how autonomous these agents can truly get. Luffistotle goes as far as calling this “the immaculate conception of a crypto KOL”. Ultimately this is not a form of AI but a form of aforementioned Artificial Outelligence – a “dumb” algo that modifies our behavior through our own desires and projections.
Perhaps one day we’ll be looking back at this moment as entering a peak cryptotainment era. Perhaps this is a start of new faith beyond riding the price high. The question is how long will people simp for generic interaction with bots and how fast builders can iterate.
Is this the YFI or LOOT moment? Is this a true Schelling point or is it just part of the rotation? — We’ll have to let the game run for a little while to find out. A lot of buzzwords and narratives to chase with a liquidity tailwind.
Thanks for reading!
