I meant real, quantitative, non-anecdotal evidence. Currently, we can prove with real evidence that a neural-network can form at least the basics of intelligence. The more neurons in the network, the more intelligent and sentient-like the entity will seem.

Humans are (roughly) at the top of the list of animals for their neuron count: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons

There are a few animals with neuron counts similar to ours, and I believe those animals could do everything a human could do and are every bit as sentient as we are.

In the list I linked, you see elephants are one of the only creatures with a higher neuron count than humans. Most likely, they have the mental capacity to build cars, planes, and eventually travel the stars. However, they lack other important biological features, unrelated to intelligence, that prevent them from doing so. For example, their size and the fact they have no hands.... makes it hard to create agricultural tools, or type on a keyboard.

So, yes, cetaceans and squirrels are sentient and intelligent. But their low neuron count make them less intelligent and less sentient. I believe intelligence and sentience scale exponentially with neuron count. As long as there are at least 2 neurons present, intelligence and sentience exists... albeit not to a significant degree. Modern day AI's have the neuron count of something like a dog probably. Would have to look into it more to compare them.

I believe it is 100% circuits and models that make sentience and intelligence.

There is more to being human, I agree. But there is not more to sentience and/or intelligence.

Would love to see some evidence to the contrary, though, if you've got any.

The human brain is a neural network. Digital AI is a similar neural network.

Wet-wear vs hard-ware.

Why wouldn't they be "real" intelligence sense they're literally modeled after our own brains?

Humans themselves are just LLM's which take 10-20 years to train up to the point of "intelligence". By training, I mean just living and learning and going to school. New humans don't even start forming full sentences until they're over a year old at least.

Lightning is partially limited by block-size as well. Kinda defeats the purpose if opening/closing channels costs thousands of Sats and takes months to be confirmed.

With the current block size, if everyone in the world wanted to open and close ONLY A SINGLE Lightning channel per YEAR, it would not be possible.

I'm not arguing for larger blocks. I'm just pointing out that Lightning is already having a tough time in the public eye. Hardly anyone is using it non-custodially as it is.... and you want to make it even more difficult to use?!

It was getting pretty long already, but I forgot I wanted to end with a paragraph saying something like the following:

I think the incentives to use Bitcoin as a medium-of-exchange become exponentially stronger with each new person doing it. Take "Bitcoin Beach" in El Salvador, for example. In that town, if a merchant is not excepting Bitcoin for payment, they are hurting their business. This is because so many people there demand it. There is A LOT of support to help onboard new businesses. People in the US think Bitcoin and Lightning are "hard to use", but that's only because there aren't enough people doing it. It becomes easier when there is more support and usage. Lightning is amazing. We could be using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange TODAY, and it would be faster and cheaper than any alt-coin. And with Core upgrades such as CTV, it will be even easier, faster, and cheaper to use. But these things will only happen if Bitcoiners push it to happen instead of sit around passively stacking. It's not going to happen if Store-of-value is the only way it's used. The idea that Bitcoin might not be the end of central banks should terrify us. Bitcoiners should push for CTV and/or other small upgrades to help Bitcoin scale, and they should want to sacrifice a little by trying their hardest to use Bitcoin for payments more frequently.

I meant to say "At the start of 2024". Very confusing typo for anyone who may have already read this..

At the start of 2025, I decided to try my hardest to boycott fiat-only merchants and to try to live on Bitcoin.

I used BTCmap.org and Oshi. Then, I tried to meet local farmers/ranchers via local Bitcoin meetups, The Orange Pill app, and local farmers markets.

I purposely chose Madiera and Roatan as vacation destinations, so I could get hotels and restaurants entirely with Bitcoin. I'm fortunate to have had a remote job, so I went on "vacation" and worked at the same time. I run my own LN node and manage my own channels. So, when I was half way across the world in Madeira, I could easily spend Sats from my node in the U.S. at the speed of lightning. Non-custodially.

I helped a few local businesses set up their own LN nodes so that I could buy their products without using fiat.

It was great for a time. But, toward the end of the year, I began to lose my resilience. I think it was the lack of community support. Bitcoiners I knew were not living this way.... in fact, they seemed to think I was crazy for trying to. In August, I read Roger Ver's "Hijacking Bitcoin", where Ver argues that BTC has lost its original vision of becoming "cash-like" to threaten central bankers and the fiat system. He argues Bitcoiners today only care about NGU and are apathetic toward the fiat system.

It was depressing... feeling like the only soldier in the war who cared about vanquishing the enemy... Surrounded by a bunch of soft-bellied, NGU fanatics.

I helped a local bar/restaurant get setup with a self-custody LN Node and then worked with my local Bitcoin meetup to move the meetup to this new location that accepted Bitcoin. People were excited to be having the meetup in an establishment whose owner was also part of our war. Until it came time to pay. Only 4 out of 100 people paid with Bitcoin that night. In subsequent meetups, the owner doesn't even pull out the BTCPayServer iPad anymore. Everyone just pays with fiat. EVEN at these massive meetups.

Suffice to say, it's technically better for my stack if I just use Fold, pay with fiat, and get Bitcoin rewards back. There's little incentive for Bitcoiners to actually use Bitcoin as a medium-of-exchange.... except for ending fiat, fighting slavery, and helping put an end to the greatest oppression the world has ever known. But I guess this doesn't matter to Bitcoiners. Using rewards cards and spending fiat first because it's cheaper and easier.... this matters more, I guess. I grew tired of being the only trying to make change happen. I've gone back to using my Fold and stacking Sats like a good little central-bank wage slave.

Yes!

This is the attitude we need if we actually care about Bitcoin and aren't just larping.

Boycott companies that practice UTXO discrimination. Boycott companies that offer and/or support altcoins of any kind. Coinbase, Casa, Ledger, Bitrefill. Bitcoiners should NOT be using these services. Boycotting and demanding a higher code of ethics should be one of our defining qualities.

Eventually, I'd like to add to that list: "Boycott any company accepting fiat." But I know this is kinda difficult at the present time.

"That's the way how one should orange-pill people. Not even trying, just living it around them"

Kinda hard when most Bitcoiners only hodl Bitcoin while living a life of mostly fiat. Can't show normies how much better our world is if we aren't even living in it ourselves.

I congratulate you OP, for actually having a LN wallet and using it every chance you get.

What about the fact that Bitcoiners still tend to use fiat over Bitcoin, even when they're patronizing a business which accepts Bitcoin? Kinda makes it a tough sell to the next merchant who'd prefer not to go through the effort of setting up a whole new point-of-sale system only for people to not use it.

The number one reason merchants aren't adopting Bitcoin is because Bitcoiners are not demanding it. No one is boycotting business who only accept fiat. Not only are Bitcoiners generally not demanding it, they seem to generally not care at all. So, of course businesses don't care either.

btw, sorry to vent my frustrations out on you. I wasn't replying directly to you in my mind. I was talking to any and all Bitcoiners.

I'm incredibly frustrated by this community's larping about bad fiat is and "bitcoin fixes this", while they continue to happily use fiat and put barely any effort into using Bitcoin for anything other than hodling. I'm literally sick about it.

It's one thing to say "we need more merchant adoption".....

But when I see business accepting Bitcoin, and Bitcoiners STILL USING FIAT at these businesses... I lose my fucking mind.

Sure, but aren't most of those payments similar to each other whereas Bitcoin usually requires them to move to a different tablet, pull up a separate app (BTC PayServer), generate a Lightning invoice....

It's a lot more steps for an employee. Sure, they aren't hard steps, and if they did them daily they would remember. But they forget the details when they don't do it often.

Yea, except 99% of these people don't pay with Lightning even though they could. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. The average hodler spends fiat. It is infuriating.

Then, these businesses wonder why they even went to the effort to setup a Bitcoin point-of-sale. Employees forget how to use it, because they only get 1 customer per year trying to pay in Bitcoin. So, then it becomes a headache for the employees. This just creates a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

I've personally onboarded a few merchants to use Bitcoin, and this is always their experience.

I remember being at a huge Bitcoin meetup at a restaurant where the owner was a Bitcoiner running his own Lightning node to accept payment at his place. There were over 100 Bitcoiners there that night, ONLY TWO paid their tab with Bitcoin. The rest pulled out their slave-plastic to swipe.

The reason it's like this is because Bitcoiners, in general, are not angry enough about how the fiat system works. They seem to PREFER spending fiat. Even many in this forum will argue "spend the weak money first". Fuck that. I say spend and replace.

The problem with the hodler mentality is that they don't understand how it's negatively impacting Bitcoin adoption. They don't realize how much effort went into setting up a Bitcoin point-of-sale at these merchants. They don't appreciate the fact that spending dollars is supporting the dollar system. They'd rather be lazy.

Did you check the LND logs?

This past week I set up a new Start9 node, and LND would NOT connect to any peers to sync the chain. A full week went by and it just kept giving the same log error.

I finally resolved it by manually adding it as a peer to my primary node. Once LND had one peer to talk to, it was able to sync within a few hours. Simple.

Maybe it's the same issue you're having? If so, you can add my node as a peer if you want. Just DM me.

Also, I had tons of issues with LND syncing when I was using one of Start9's raspberry Pi nodes from a few years back. It was not powerful enough, and the Start9 team told me so straight up. That's probably why they stopped selling those low powered machines. Can you imagine if we were trying to run BCH nodes?! Fucking nightmarish.

Just for the sake of my own curiosity.... did you ever get things straightened out?

I agree with @DarthCoin about this being a bad chart because if economic activity is not happening with Bitcoin, then the Creature-from-Jekyll-Island continues to dominate and rule. The more movement there is, the healthier Bitcoin is. Hodling being the dominant use-case is not I want to see happen.... and it's certainly not what Satoshi wanted to see happen. We should be USING Bitcoin.

On the other hand.... I agree that hodling is also important. We need an escape from the Creature's system. Showing that people are hodling instead of buying dollars with their Sats, even when they can get $100k for 100M of them, is a sign that Bitcoin's SoV proposition is working.

Also, 90% of the Sats I spend are done via Lightning. Those Sats will show as "not moved" in on-chain data until the channel is actually closed.... which is usually many years later.

What is the global ratio between trees being cut down and trees being planted? Sure, we can cut down more than are planted.... to a point. But I imagine there's a point at which the ratio becomes unsustainable.

The high polyphenol content in blueberries makes them an incredible longevity superfood.

But, a recent Dr. Rhonda Patrick video taught me that bananas are polyphenol killers! She claims that blueberries and bananas should be eaten hours apart, and never together.

It sucks cuz they taste great together.

I updated everything on mine about an hour ago. No issues.

But if I'd seen your post first, I probably would have waited a bit longer to update!

Hope the re-install fixes you up.

I absolutely love this.