Descendants with modifications: Bitcoin’s new and possibly beneficial evolutionary test

Source: Charles Darwin. 1845. "Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle."

The BTC/BCH chain split of 1 August 2017 could add value for holders of the former bitcoin during any period in which the summed value of each coin exceeds the value that the former single coin would have had. Holders of BTC before the split came to hold equal amounts of BTC and BCH after the split, prior to any subsequent individual trading.

Zero “new bitcoins” have been created from a monetary-inflation standpoint. Control of any existing bitcoin unit before the split gave rise to corresponding control of one BTC and one BCH unit after the split. Since this reflected the precise and complete pre-existing constellation of unit control with no alternation for each and all former holders of the single-chain BTC, no redistributive Cantillon effects follow.

This split looks like a better-case scenario, at least “less bad,” than several of the other fork types proposed and discussed over the past months.

At this early phase, bitcoin cash (BCH) trading remains nascent, as exchanges and wallet services work to serve customers in a post-split environment. Potential traders remain limited because many exchanges do not yet offer BCH account crediting or have temporarily disabled relevant withdrawal and deposit options.

Various partisans have already claimed that as soon as normalized trading is achieved the BCH price will either collapse or rally, or some sequence of both. Pre-split futures and post-split exchange data (such as it is) have thus far shown an approximately $250–500 range for BCH. The bitcoin (BTC) price hardly reacted from its recent pre-split range of approximately $2,600–2,800. Either way, relatively wide changes to the BCH price are likely to be the rule until at least some time after normalized trading options come on line and hashrates and difficulty levels settle out to a greater degree.

The summed prices of BTC and BCH have mostly exceeded the former BTC all-time high, hinting at possible net value added from the split. This could be illusory due to the poor trading environment, but this sum could also have been lower instead, particularly if viewed as a network, mining, and trading disruption: the BCH price range could have started lower than it did, the BTC price could have fallen unmistakably, which it did not—or both.

Looking ahead, hash rates and difficulty adjustments are other key points to watch. Although the BCH chain protocol revisions did add certain more flexible mining difficulty adjustment methods, it remains to be seen if this will be sufficient to prevent very long block times over the coming weeks, which, amid price declines, could further reduce mining profitability on the BCH chain for some time. The future allocation of hash power, pace of difficulty adjustment, and price all remain to be seen.

Separate from these temporary and news-oriented issues, in the balance of this article, I will interpret the chain split in more fundamental terms.

Potential net value added from innovation and experience effects

If a net value gain from the split is actually present and does persist, such an outcome would not be entirely mysterious. Innovation proceeds through action far more than talk. SegWit activation (BTC chain) and a substantial block size limit increase (BCH chain), respectively, both promise to partially replace months and years of talk with action and experience, which is, in general, bullish for innovation.

In contrast to action, speculation and modeling are far more subject to partiality, bias, and social and financial pressures in the selection, construction, and interpretation of models. Action can supplement or partly displace hot air. What will happen with SegWit? Watch and learn. What will happen on a live network with a higher protocol block size limit? Watch and learn. This opportunity for the addition of progressive sequences of reality checks on the respective chains might be positive in itself. The “test” this represents is highly imperfect, as discussed below, but is still probably better than unmitigated talk.

The misleading conventional understanding of innovation is that practice follows theory; that “basic science” comes first and then begets technological innovation. The historically far more common process of innovation has very often followed the opposite pattern. Some fundamental innovation attempts occasionally succeed (mostly they fail). After the rare successes, new theory and research come along to try to explain and formalize what entrepreneurs and tinkerers had already done (after the best pontifical efforts of old theory to prove that what had been done could not have been).

Descendants with modifications

The minimum requirement for a process to be called evolutionary is descent with modification. Thus far, Bitcoin has gradually evolved as a single chain with modifications to its software. This split, in contrast, is Bitcoin’s first speciation event. Both BTC and BCH build on and carry forward the Bitcoin chain in a valid unbroken lineage of blocks tracing back to the genesis block.

The best chain in Bitcoin is defined as a chain of valid blocks with the greatest accumulated proof-of-work difficulty. In this model, the validity test comes first, followed by the total difficulty assessment. The software variants behind each chain have recently implemented certain substantial rule changes that are not now recognized as valid on the other chain. The BTC chain, for example, does not recognize the BCH chain’s modified block size limit, and the BCH chain omits SegWit, which recently activated on the BTC chain. Bitcoin block history diverged after block #478558, which is the last “common ancestor” that the two chains share.

The term “altcoins” has been used to denote cryptocurrencies that are not Bitcoin. Both of these chains, however, are valid Bitcoin chains as defined above. From this standpoint, the commonly expressed opinion that BCH is a new altcoin may be viewed as a use of language for rhetorical and emotional, rather than cognitive and elucidative, functions. Sharing almost all specifications and over eight years of transaction history, each is far more Bitcoin than either is altcoin. Some new term may be required. For example, in a public draft article, Daniel Krawisz, a long-time altcoin critic, has quite recently suggested the term "bitcoin child" to specify any chain that traces its history back all the way to the Bitcoin genesis block, a category that now includes BTC and BCH, but no others.

Proponents of each chain will naturally want to claim the banner of “true” succession, much as most religious sub-sects story themselves alone as the one truest representative of the ancient founder’s original teachings (rarely acknowledging the odd coincidence that all of the other sub-sects likewise tell just such a story about themselves). Regarding coin names, it is sufficient if the tradable units of the two chains are named in such a way that those using them now or in the future do not encounter any practical confusion. Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) appear sufficient for this. For continuity, Bitcoin dominance indices might choose to sum the valuation estimates for the two post-split Bitcoin chains, perhaps after trading normalizes and if it appears that both will persist for some time.

Of most practical relevance now is the quality and prospects of the existing chains, as they have actually come to exist, moving from the present into the future. Practical measures of their prospects center on hash rate and unit price trends.

Rather than relying primarily on such ever-shifting market criteria, however, I prefer to begin by examining what defines the respective chains themselves. If we are talking about mining, mining what? If we are talking about price, the price of what? Identification properly precedes evaluation. In this case, a comparative identification is natural given the context of descent with modification, in which common features far outnumber differentiators.

Which chain is the “truer” successor is, in principle, not especially important in direct analytical terms. It might be useful as sociological research into the study of the development and spread of beliefs, or somewhat more useful than that as a source of hints for investors as to likely relative popularity based on belief frequencies in relevant user populations (meme frequency).

Nevertheless, BCH’s critics have taken to consistently labeling it an altcoin (which it is not), and moreover asserting that it is impossibly distant from being any true and proper successor of the one real bitcoin, which they believe the BTC chain unquestionably is. In this context, it should at least be noted in counterpoint that from a strictly content standpoint—rather than a popularity standpoint—BCH is arguably a nearer successor to 2009–2015-6 BTC than a post-SegWit BTC.

First, the BCH chain block size limit functions for the time being as a high upper-end traffic-burst defense, which matches the originally stated role and years-long practical function of this limit. This is more consistent in economic terms with the former BTC throughout the majority of its historical development until relatively recent times. In contrast, it was a significant new development when the particular height of the block size limit began to function for extended periods as an economic output ceiling on the industrywide production of Bitcoin transaction-inclusion services. Regardless of one’s opinion on whether this new economic effect is desirable, it remains that it was a significant departure from most of Bitcoin’s past viewed in functional economic terms.

Second, BCH does not implement SegWit. Again, regardless of one’s particular opinion on the net desirability of SegWit, it will in fact arrive on the BTC chain—but not on the BCH chain—as a significant data-structural departure from the organization of the former Bitcoin’s blocks.

Both BTC (with the new SegWit and some other recent changes) and BCH (with its revised block size limit and some other recent changes) are direct successors of the Bitcoin that came before them and each differs in some substantive way from that former Bitcoin. Against a backdrop of continuous Bitcoin software modification and innovation over the years, this stands out as the first time protocol choice options have elicited sufficient sustained disagreement among participants that a chain split has in fact resulted. For the lower block-size limit camp, the key factor was the limit change being unacceptable to them; for the higher block-size limit camp, it was the failure to revise the limit, and for some SegWit activation as well, being unacceptable to them.

Some observers have expressed concern that this first Bitcoin chain split could set a precedent for additional splits in the future. This seems possible, but somewhat doubtful to me. First, it is unclear the extent to which this first split will prosper, and if it does quite poorly, this might discourage future attempts rather than encourage them. Second, months and years of debate, effort, proposals, and campaigns, all primarily centering around the block size limit issue, preceded this first chain split. This suggests this step has by no means come about lightly. Most importantly, I view the block size limit as quite unique and distinctive among Bitcoin protocol issues and think it unlikely that other issues are likely to rise to the level of sustained disagreement that would be required for another similar split. [That said, the 2MB hard fork already planned for November could lead to another split, but that plan predated the current split and some believe this split might even reduce the probability of the other one rather than enhance it.]

A poorly designed experiment, but all we get

The emergence of these two daughter variants of the former Bitcoin, which diverged from a common ancestor block on 1 August 2017, enables a certain evolutionary test in that both represent descent with modification following a speciation event. However, it is by no means a “clean” experiment, able to test the effect of changing a single variable. Alas, real-life evolutionary tests are usually “dirty,” reflecting the net effects of a complex interplay of context and interdependence. Even a single genetic change in an organism that does have some practical effect seldom has a simple, singular effect, but instead results in a certain cascade of effects, interactions, and adjustments.

As an experiment in the scientific sense, then, this chain split is badly confounded due to the many major variables differentiating the two chains. This includes, at least: the block size limit height difference, the presence/absence of SegWit, the respective quality levels and reputations of software development teams and software testing processes, differences in user traffic, and the extent and stability of relative hashing power. Most of these variables can impact both general user confidence (subjective) and bug probabilities (more objective). A good experiment, in contrast, would seek to change one variable at a time. This development does not do this—not even close.

A reasonable case can be made that the BTC/BCH split, such as it is, may be a net positive for holders of the previous “single bitcoin.” Bitcoin’s evolution continues for the time being along paths that have diverged into two chains differing across a set of multiple variables. This may well bring a certain marginal shift toward more practical experience opportunities and away from talk and modeling, which could in itself represent net value added from the event. Relative hashing power, unit prices, development efforts, and software quality levels are all likely to shift over time to various extents and directions not easy to predict (though always easy to “predict” afterwards). The complex sequence of outcomes to ensue must now be seen in practice and over time.

[Update: The original version used BCC for Bitcoin Cash, but this code was already in use by another cryptocurrency. Since that time the Bitcoin Cash community has clearly shifted to BCH.]

Outlines of a Unified Evolutionary Theory of Human and Environmental Health

Introduction

Healthy food and its production should be possible and mutually compatible. The components of what follows have been developing in the world for a long time, but in obscure corners. Now, aided by the incomparable power of the internet to spread heretical information, these insights are spreading. Evidence is being collected and disseminated in unprecedented ways. Here, they will be presented as parts of a synthesis, in which each part reinforces the others. A page of recommended resources to follow up on each topic is linked at the end.

1. Evolutionary health perspectives

Technological progress has many benefits. Yet some aspects of older styles of life, including patterns of sleeping, eating, and moving, and also aspects of food production, may have been healthier for people and environment alike than typical modern versions. Rediscovering and re-engaging some of these could raise health and well-being today.

The principle of evolution by natural selection revolutionized biology. Evolutionary theory can also help sort out the deeply confused and corrupted modern field of nutrition, though not on its own. There are several lines of evidence to go with it: biochemical pathways and interactions, controlled nutrition experiments (not epidemiological studies, which are both commonly performed and mostly useless), and archaeological and anthropological investigations of hunter-gatherer groups.

The illusion in hunter/gatherer mortality statistics

Inupiat Family from Noatak, Alaska, 1929, by Edward S. Curtis.

One line of evidence is research on hunter/gatherer populations conducted prior to their taking up modern practices such as eating sugar and grain and sitting around a lot and snacking. Some of this research was conducted by Weston Price. These groups were found to be either free of or far less subject to the “diseases of civilization,” including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, cognitive degeneration, and chronic joint and tooth decay.

A popular image of hunter/gatherer groups is that their lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Quoting statistics on low average life expectancy among such groups is a favorite maneuver of casual critics. But such numbers conceal more than they reveal. Non-dietary factors in pre-modern life collapse the averages. These other factors include rampant infant and childhood mortality, death of mothers in childbirth, predators, prey fighting back, fights and battles among rivals, accidents and resulting infections, and infectious diseases. The overwhelming factor behind improved average life expectancy in modern times is the alleviation of such tragedies as these, above all, large numbers of babies dying before age one. Changes in such data tell us of the effects of modern hygiene and medicine. However, they tell us nothing about what we are investigating: What are the effects of nutrition and lifestyle on health and long-term degenerative conditions?

Evidence suggests rather that hunter-gatherers who survived the diseases and battles of youth tended to live long, with high awareness, robustness, and capability and little to no sign of the many and varied degenerative diseases afflicting moderns. The simplistic idea that they did not develop these diseases only because they died too young to suffer from them does not hold—the ones who lived long did not develop them either!

To The Primal Blueprint and beyond

Although I had been interested in healthy eating since my teen years, and spent a number of years as a vegetarian, the book that marked a sharp shift on my path of research and personal experimentation was The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson, which I read in October 2010. This book presents a blend of open attitude, systematic information, and a balanced, principled approach that goes beyond nutrition to exercise and other lifestyle habits viewed with an evolutionary lens.

Other works soon informed my perspectives through phases. I transformed my approach to nutrition and exercise step by step based on new information and experiences. I, like quite a few others, have passed through trying primal and paleo approaches, LCHF, and fasting. I have now moved on to a largely zerocarb approach.

Beyond these many food and training changes over the years, I also took steps such as using software to alter computer and phone screen color temperature according to the time of day, switching to a standing desk for some types of work, using a sunrise-simulation alarm clock, and limiting smartphone reading in the sleeping area (audiobooks allowed). I think such measures helped improve sleep quality and reduce eye strain. Finally, I have discovered important insights into agriculture and environmental issues that connect these personal themes to larger-scale issues.

2. The Metabolic Power of Not Eating

Some key insights about nutrition come from surprising source: the practice of not eating sometimes, or fasting. A recent puzzle piece fit for me and many others has been to reduce “eating windows” and more consistently practice intermittent fasting (IF). It turns out that a positive health-promoting intervention is to just not eat for various periods, for example, 16 hours, 23 hours, or 35 hours, with occasional longer stretches (each person should consult with professionals before doing this, especially if already on a medication that might have to be adjusted).

IF can be done intentionally. However, many practitioners of very low carb and zerocarb diets report spontaneously not being hungry for long periods. In this case, IF becomes partly an outcome of the eating strategy, not just an intentional practice. That said, being consciously open to IF allows one to more easily capture natural fasting opportunities that arise when hunger is absent.

Fasting traditions have been around and recognized as health promoting for at least thousands of years worldwide. However, a contemporary challenge for the practice is that no one is positioned to profit from promoting and supporting it—except the person doing it. There is no special food to order and no special drug to consume. There is no product to be hyped and promoted as the wonder cure. The cure is what is not consumed. Via negativa.

Already being fat-adapted and in ketosis makes fasting easier. There is a certain freedom from always being locked into having to have that next meal or snack. While adaptation is required—anywhere from days to weeks and beyond—once adapted, myself and many others have reported consistent benefits from nutritional ketosis, fasting ketosis, and their interplay.

Fasting may be viewed as a way to intentionally replicate a "bad-hunting day" from the paleolithic past. Of course, no self-respecting paleo hunting group would have decided to have a bad-hunting day, but they would have had some anyway. Our metabolic systems would have adapted to these periodic fasts, would have come expect them. Yet today such pauses are largely missing. Moderns in search of optimal health may have to take steps to reintroduce them, this time on purpose.

When a bad-hunting phase lead to hunger, one should expect our bodies to send the following message: get out there and hunt, and hunt more effectively than lately. That means: more energy and enhanced concentration and attention. It does not mean getting cold and depressed in the cave, a path to non-survival.

The modern approach to dieting—reducing calories while still eating the same regular meals, just smaller ones—has a set of effects opposite to the positive affects of fasting, Dr. Jason Fung argues in The Obesity Code (2016). With chronic low-calorie dieting, metabolism sinks, energy and concentration fall, hunger is constant, and one feels colder. This is the opposite experience from fasting (especially after adaptation). However, it is this “eating less,” as opposed to true fasting, that is the one doomed constant in almost every failing modern “diet.” A central reason for this difference is now understood from controlled trial and biochemical research, Fung argues: the two conditions have completely different impacts on the key phenomenon of insulin resistance. Fasting improves it.

This section has suggested the importance of not eating sometimes. Next, when we do eat, what should be on the menu? What should humans eat to thrive?

3. The Zookeeper's Dilemma

An inverted Zoo. Which are in better health? (Photo CCBY Greg HewGill)

Imagine you are a zookeeper. A clear and pressing question about each animal is: What do they eat? To maintain healthy animals, the first priority is to try to replicate what they eat in the wild. Feeding carnivorous lions rice cakes and herbivorous zebras fish cakes will lead to sick and eventually dead animals on both sides of the fence.

One sign that something is very wrong with modern human diets was expressed by Dr. Barry Groves. He pointed out that although we observe a great deal of chronic and degenerative illness among modern humans, this is largely unheard of among wild animals. However, it is seen among captive and domesticated animals, specifically, animals that are being fed the wrong food.

So what do humans eat? Are we likewise being fed the wrong food?

Well, we eat a great many things, but that does not really help our inquiry. So what is the next question?

In caring for animals, one would ask: What do they eat in the wild?

But again here, with few exceptions, humans today no longer live "in the wild" in any helpful sense, so this kind of information is also not easy to come by. Nevertheless, it is possible to investigate what ancestors of modern humans ate when they much more nearly lived "in the wild" during long, evolutionarily formative periods, say, 50,000–100,000 or more years ago.

Answers to another question would also help: What kinds of foods do we thrive on? Humans are able to eat a wide range of food and survive doing it, but what would be ideal? This shifts the emphasis to what foods humans do best on indefinitely versus merely what they can manage to stay alive on for some years.

This is a subject of extensive medical research. Sadly, much of it is flawed due to over-reliance on study designs that are incapable of demonstrating causation. Such often confounded and poorly designed "studies," however, are far cheaper to fund and then use as the basis for getting another paper published. They also form endless fodder for journalistic articles summarizing such papers, gathering clicks while further distorting what the research itself can legitimately be said to support (usually not much).

Thus, another "evolutionary" influence on the field of human nutrition is "publish or perish," both for researchers and journalists. "Arrive at the truest answers and explain them accurately" is far down the list of priorities in this system. Another angle is "follow the money." Much of it traces back to funding from pharmaceutical and "food" companies with, respectively, overpriced pill bottles and boxes of cheap food-like substances to peddle.

Highly meat-leaning

Balancing a number of different lines of evidence, I have arrived at the view that humans are basically carnivores that can also survive on plant foods as a fall-back. That is, they can survive on plant foods even for long periods, but cannot do so without suffering degenerative harm. Feeding humans primarily—and especially only—plant foods causes them to become gradually malnourished, to sicken in a variety of ways, to "fail to thrive."

This tends to be obscured for two reasons. First, such degeneration can take years and decades to progress. Second, moderns who move toward vegan diets often report feeling better, so those diets must be good, right? Third, a few people seem to do well on vegan diets even over quite long periods and these are cited as counter examples (while most of the others just suffer through or quietly quit).

On examination, however, new vegans are quite often reporting feeling much better after moving away from something rather specific—modern diets of processed foods. They are not moving away from an ancestral diet rich in fresh fatty meat, which is also already free of processed foods. After a few years of veganism, however, with some exceptions, many find their health and mood deteriorating and are forced to quit.

Just because something is better than something else by some measures, such as feeling better or losing weight, this does not necessarily mean it is also ideal or even good. It might just be less bad than something else that came before it. A conventional processed-food diet is quite bad indeed from a health standpoint. Almost anything could be an improvement over it. As for veganism itself, with some exceptions, a typical long-term vegan is both thin and sickly and will soon list up their many and varied health challenges, which they hope in vain that the next concentrated plant supplement might fix. Actions, and diets, must be judged by their results, not only their intentions.

It may come as a surprise to many that tens of thousands of modern humans have eaten meat exclusively, some for many years, many swearing by the dramatic health benefits of the change. Many only arrive at this protocol after having tried all manner of other methods that did not work as well for them, or that even worsened their conditions. We may not yet understand exactly how or why this works so well for so many, but the accumulating number of case studies leaves little doubt that this must be investigated far more carefully than it has been to date.

4. Best for people and environment

If it is true that meat eating is the best human diet for health, another question follows. How could large-scale meat eating possibly work for a modern society? Tiny populations of paleo hunters could do it, but they were working with massive roaming herds, and many of those species went extinct! Besides, isn't meat production already bad for animals and the environment, even without being expanded further?

That they are is a clear impression given in the popular press as "settled science," so "settled" in fact, that no one even bothers to call it settled. Questioning it would be a pure heresy of the worst kind. So let us proceed to do so.

Although the belief that meat production is bad for the environment has become quite popular, the balance of evidence I have seen indicates that this view is severely misguided. To explain this, we must turn to some still different perspectives and sources not directly related to nutrition.

The view that fatty meat is the healthiest primary food for Homo sapiens—that we are basically carnivores that also have a nifty ability to fall back on plant foods in a pinch—raises a wider issue. If this were true, how could modern food production possibly shift from serving carbohydrate-centric to animal-fat- and protein-centric eating patterns on any large modern scale?

Virtually unquestioned conventional wisdom insists that not only health, but also "the" environment dictate lower, not higher, reliance on animal products. The truth, as is surprisingly often the case, may be the exact opposite. Indeed, even separate from human nutrition issues, properly managed large herd animals might be the only way to halt and reverse the large-scale environmental destruction caused by modern plant agriculture and poor land management. Moreover, whatever environmental destruction caused by grain agriculture for feeding ruminants cannot be blamed on the cattle. They naturally thrive on grass rather than grain. And they can eat grass all by themselves; that's just how they roll.

The key insight is that large heard animals and vast stretches of grassland coevolved over geologic time. They came into existence and thrived as part of a single ecological system. One of the last modern examples of this was the unending sea of bison encountered by the early European explorers of North America (before some of the pioneers systematically exterminated the animals, also further undermining cultures that had long subsisted on them).

Decades ago, Allan Savory set out to answer some pressing ecological questions. He arrived at the view that the most important and underestimated global issue is the mass desertification of grasslands. And he argues that there is only one way to effectively alter the process.

Savory's breakthrough was to discover that desertification has not been caused by “overgrazing,” as is usually thought, but by mis-grazing. Earlier effects of mis-grazing were then reinforced by misguided herd reduction or removal, which made the problem still worse, not better. More animals, properly managed, not fewer, would have been the solution. Today, he and his institute teach methods of using proper management of herd animals to recover desertified land and transform it into far more biologically productive pastures using know-how assembled under the heading “holistic planned grazing.”

Holistic planned grazing, in my view, constitutes an evolutionary approach to land management. It recognizes and builds on the ancient co-evolutionary interplay between grassland flora and large fauna. Large herds kept themselves moving across grasslands—fertilizing and tilling along the way—while staying grouped tightly to defend against predators. When they moved on, the land and flora had plenty of time to recover and regrow. The right know-how on the part of herd managers can replicate these dynamics without relying on predators to shape herd movements.

As Savory's methods have shown, such properly managed pastures naturally retain rainwater through the grass, soil, and other life that grows there, all in an evolutionary dance with the same types of animals those grasses themselves co-evolved with. Vast surfaces of the earth were once covered with thriving grasslands occupied by roving herds of untold millions of beasts. Holistic management provides a way to recreate habitats that mimic essential elements of this past in an efficient modern way. A fundamentally biological problem requires a biological solution, Savory argues, not a chemical or an industrial one. On this basis, by the way, we can already suggest that "lab-grown meat" would just further contribute to environmental problems that a vast resurgence of real animals, properly managed, could help solve.

This would happen to produce a large potential population of animals thriving in environments quite natural to them. They might then also contribute a major, nutrient-dense, modern food supply. Dr. Michael Eades arrived at a similar view after a thoughtful review of Savory's ideas and critiques of them (2 Jul 2017). He provides an exceptionally clear description of these practices. Moreover, it is politically notable that herding can be more decentralized and distributed than mass grain agriculture, enhancing local self-reliance and independence.

White Oak Pastures in Georgia, USA provides one inspiring example of transformation of a formerly conventional ranch. Using multi-species holistic management, it has not only recovered burned-out agricultural land, but has also breathed new life into a town that had been nearly deserted.

Healthy grasslands, herds, and nutrition

The foods most destructive to human health have one thing in common. They are mass agricultural crops. Sugar, wheat, and corn top the list. All of them are subsidized by governments. All of them are promoted by official dietary guidelines. All of them are highly profitable for “food” companies.

And all of them kill and maim. They just do so insidiously through their contributions to chronic systemic inflammation, excess weight, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, depression, suicide, and the modern conditions of cognitive degeneration. They are central to feeding an endless supply of sickened people into modern "healthcare" (sickness management) systems. Chronic, degenerative conditions provide much of the business for the highly profitable pharmaceutical and healthcare industries year after year. Sick people, flowing money. Who wins and who loses? You lose.

Both anecdotal and increasingly also formal evidence continues to build for beneficial roles of fasting and very low-carb and zerocarb eating in treating, and especially preventing, the entire spectrum of modern chronic ailments. However, the interests that can gain from such practices—at the strictest baseline, sellers of meat and water—are far more dispersed. Their influence pales in comparison to the concentrated financial, media, and political resources of big food plus big pharma. Billions go to conglomerates selling cheap carbohydrates mixed with toxic plant-derived oils. Billions more then go to companies selling all manner of drugs and aids, which seek to manage the chronic damage accumulating from the consumption of such alleged food.

Nevertheless, from outside of this sorry system, an unexpected larger picture is emerging, one precisely opposite the popular hypothesis that mass agriculturally based vegetarianism is best for both human health and the environment. This is the hypothesis that distributed, holistically managed grazing and carnivory are best for both human health and the environment.

The low-carb/high-fat and paleo-oriented nutritionists on the one hand, and the ecological herders on the other, have independently arrived at different pieces of a single puzzle. The synthesis of these streams of thought and practice has profound implications. The results suggest a food system based around a modern planned pastoralism enhanced with holistic management practices that mimic the co-evolutionary conditions of grasslands and herd animals.

Summary claims of a paleo-carnivore/holistic management synthesis

1. Humans tend to live best mainly on a blend of fatty acids (fat) and amino acids (protein) derived from animal products. Animal products are the best sources of energy, structural materials, and highly bio-available micronutrients for humans. In contrast, eating large amounts of carbohydrates, especially processed ones, and artificial industrial foods such as seed oils, produce gradual metabolic derangement, foremost chronic insulin resistance and its many associated degenerative conditions. Even vegetables, generally considered the unquestionable banner of good health, lack much usable nutrition at all per unit of weight and carry a range of irritants and anti-nutrients (chemicals that block the absorption of nutrients), evolved in a chemical warfare strategy to protect them against being eaten by punishing those who eat them.

2. The best single source for the nutrients humans thrive on is large herd animals. Seafood is also a good resource, though generally lower in fat (a con, not a pro). Early Homo sapiens and some of their cousins may have contributed to the extinctions of many of their preferred larger, higher-fat species long ago, such as paleo elephants and mammoths, but we still have cattle and buffaloes, which work reasonably well. We also now have property rights (to some degree), which defeat tragedy-of-the-commons overuse issues. Notice the word commons in the phrase "tragedy of the commons." It is there for reason: the tragedy happens when legitimate property rights are too poorly defined and defended.

3. The best way to halt and reverse mass desertification and alleviate related water crises is to manage large herds in ways that sufficiently mimic the natural movement patterns of their original evolutionary contexts. This is also so independently of food production and human health issues.

4. Humane and holistic ranching practices provide ideal living environments for herd and other animals. Compared to their evolutionary contexts, animals on holistically managed multi-species farms are protected from random and violent death from predators. Their supplies of food and water are reliable and secured.

5. Mass grain agriculture practices lead to mass destruction of wildlife and long-term soil deterioration. Some of this grain is fed to animals. Grain feed-lot methods are associated with poorer health and living conditions for animals. The grain system replaces multi-species environments with monocultures, which are vulnerable to disease and soil degeneration and require constant attention, often including irrigation and farm machinery, to prop up. In contrast, cows eat grass all by themselves and grass grows all by itself (a little help from holistic management better replicates natural herd movement patterns that co-evolved with predators to support natural grassland water retention, even in dry climates).

5. Implications

A concluding summary must be far, far shorter than the journey itself. For understanding of food production: biological/ecological problems require biological/ecological solutions. Understand where plants and animals have come from and how they co-evolved, then apply that understanding to modern practices. This includes herd animals, grasslands, and people too! For personal use, the principles are: eat meat, drink water, lift heavy, sleep, play, and sprint once in awhile. These are quite reminiscent of Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint laws, but the ones on food are further specified.

These practices appear to have dimensions beyond physical pragmatism. Many who have tried a plant-free diet for a sufficient period to transition (30 days is often recommended for a trial) have reported profound health and well-being improvements, not only in a range of physical conditions, but also in psychiatric and emotional difficulties. One practitioner in 2009 described the improvement in emotional state after starting an all-meat diet thus: "The noise has stopped and the music has begun."

Many also report a profound sense of freedom from former obsessions with food. All of the decision fatigue associated with whether to eat this or that, when, and how much, vanishes. Former cravings decline and eventually fade. Faced with foods that one had previously considered objects of craving, it is hardly possible to believe that one actually ate those things regularly in the past.

Hours formerly spent on food can now be spent on engaging productively with the world and pursuing one's missions. As Dr. Shawn Baker put it, “If you look at any other animal on the planet, they aren’t looking at a menu and scratching their head.” As human animals with oversized brains and imaginations, we all have better things to do than spending inordinate amounts of time managing and balancing a long list of plant addictions. Freedom from them is possible. The power of being human can be unleashed from the travails of plant-consumption/plant-addiction management.

Hunters act and act smartly. Human hunters have thrived to an apex level through our wits and ability to work together. The "apex diet" is both the origin of this capability and continues to support it today.

I kept references in the text to a minimum for readability. The following page provides links to some of the best resources I have found on these subjects, including papers, blogs, articles, and lectures. To follow up on the many topics and perspectives in the foregoing synthesis, continue with Evolutionary Health Resources.

[This article was revised from its original version, mostly shortened and revised for clarity, on 2 July 2018].

SpaceX can get there, but biology a probable Mars residence limiter

SpaceX chief Elon Musk laid out a long-term vision for regular interplanetary transport and colonization in a 27 September presentation at the International Astronautical Congress. Details and vision alike were further steps along the path SpaceX has been pursuing for years, as it repeatedly counters naysayers by taking up the so-called impossible—and getting it done.

Yet while Musk concentrated on engineering, propulsion, efficiency, and finance, the toughest limiters on long-term Mars habitation may well turn out to be biological. Could life evolved on Earth, especially more complex organisms such as ourselves, thrive there indefinitely and across generations?

Musk’s aim is to make humanity a multiplanetary species. He envisions a city of a million people on Mars that could become “self-sustaining.” In other words, if Earth becomes uninhabitable, humanity would have a second home, and avoid extinction.

Most of the technical issues with Mars habitation can be addressed with technical means. Radiation can be shielded against. Water, air, and regulated temperatures can be produced, and chemical plants such as for ship propellant can be built. Psychological and other factors in long-term, small-scale hab confinement have already been under study both in space and in remote desert sims.

The gravity of the situation

However, the harshest sticking point for a colonization plan could be something that Musk mentioned, but characterized only as a source of fun—38% Earth gravity on Mars. He presented images of jumping high and lifting heavy things with ease.

The possible problems would only appear, as they so often do, over the longer term. Research on the health effects of low gravity has already begun to suggest a quite unfavorable pattern. Much of this research as been done in zero g, but long-term exposure to 38% Earth gravity—Mars g—could well produce many similar effects along the same spectrum, just more slowly.

Zero g has been found to produce not only the expected muscle atrophy in astronauts, but a host of other health issues, which isometrics and exercise bikes can only partially limit. Research on both astronauts and lab animals point to falling bone mineral density and circulatory issues, including impaired heart health.

Limited research to date thus already suggests negative effects on three major physical systems. Yet muscular, skeletal, and circulatory systems are hardly footnotes to transporting brains; they are most of what a complex organism consists. Moreover, there is no reason to expect nervous and reproductive systems to get free passes either, especially over years and decades.

Studies of zero-g animal embryonic development raise even greater concerns for long-term Mars colonization. Reproduction among spacefaring rodents has gone quite badly. Experiments with mice on a Space Shuttle mission resulted in normal embryos for the earthside controls and no growing embryos in zero g. Rat groups sent into orbit produced some weightless pregnancies, but with no resulting births. The pregnancies spontaneously terminated—all of them.

Evolutionary and developmental processes could always assume 1g

Simple organisms such as bacteria are the least likely to be bothered by gravity changes. The more complex the developmental process, however, the more likely that aspects of this process will be fine-tuned to happen in 1g. That said, Mars g could well be better for development than zero g because it would at least supply developmental processes with some vertical orientation, an up and a down, albeit with a much weaker signal.

The plans encoded in DNA for growing an organism are completely unlike engineering plans. They are decentralized developmental instructions. Each cell responds to its immediate environment. It takes cues from the type of cell it has become, from the types of cells around it, and from the specific chemistry and hormones in its blood supply. The so-far unquestioned constant has been that all earthly life has evolved in 1g (with very tiny variations) and every embryonic developmental process has evolved to take place in this 1g.

What about adaptation? As powerful a force as evolution by natural selection is, it tends to require extremely long time scales, on the order of thousands and more generations, especially for larger-scale adaptations. Too great a change—or an entirely unprecedented type of change—and a species will simply not make it.

Adaptations to something so pervasive and otherwise constant as gravity would have to proceed in steps. If a hypothetical planet’s gravity were to (somehow) shift to 38% of its former level, but do so over several million years or more, then life there would have a decent chance of adapting because any given generation would only be subject to minute changes. However, by the time gravity reached 95% of its former level, organisms then would already tend to be optimally adapted to that new 95% level. Checking in again a thousand generations later, organisms would tend to be well adapted to the newly current 90% gravity, and so on as gravity crept down. In contrast, evolution copes far less well with sudden large jumps, which tend to be associated with mass extinctions.

Temperature variation is a variable to which earthly life is widely adapted, both across species and to a lesser degree within each organism. Temperature has changed remarkably and continuously throughout Earth’s 4.5 billion year history and it also varies starkly with season and geography. Temperature adaptation therefore has a vast range of evolutionary precedent. Atmospheric composition, pressure, and radiation levels have also changed back and forth over geologic history.

What earthly life has never had to do, not even once, is what a Mars relocation would ask of it. Low g is something that evolution has had no opportunity to tackle. One of the few rough constants throughout the 3 billion or more years of earthly life has been 1g.

This still does not make some degree of individual gravity adaptation impossible now, but it does suggest that this could be a very serious issue for colonization and a potential deal-breaker for both indefinite stays on Mars and natural reproduction of future generations there.

The probably need for artificial gravity and how to produce it

For long-term extra-terrestrial colonization, artificial structures capable of producing artificial gravity that approximate 1g seem more promising. One concept involves large cylindrical spacecraft on axial rotations. The interior surface of the cylinder can be built to a size and given a rotation to approximate 1g over a large habitable interior surface area. That would be another huge engineering challenge. Yet SpaceX’s work in interplanetary transport, along with advancements in asteroid mining, would help lead to a future in which this too could become more feasible.

Given the grave potential health and reproductive risks of long-term exposure to zero g and/or Mars g for Earth-evolved organisms, those interested in space colonization ought to assign a high priority, alongside ongoing engineering work, to low- and zero-g health research. Critical for colonization are three research areas: effects of Mars g on the health of Earth-leavers, likely health of long-term Mars residents upon potential return to Earth, and effects of low and no g on embryonic and childhood development.

Getting people to Mars is an engineering challenge. Musk, SpaceX, and collaborators are up to the task and well on their way. But the length of time that hopeful new Martian arrivals can expect to live there, in what state of health, and with what likelihood of producing healthy offspring, are critical questions in need of serious research and consideration in relation to any developing colonization plans. Early animal and astronaut studies combined with an evolutionary perspective suggest that shorter-term Mars visits are likely to be far more feasible from a health perspective, that natural reproduction among colonists might well be out of the question, and that the development of spacecraft and stations with artificial gravity is likely to be a biological priority for any future long-term extra-terrestrial residents.

This provides a more realistic base scenario from which to refine the engineering details of an early Mars transport and habitation system. It may well be that 1g environments would have to be available at least part of the time to support health longer term. The most realistic approach to creating artificial gravity is a rotating habitat, but this could well prove easier to achieve in space than on a planet with gravitational and atmospheric resistance, albeit both much lower than Earth’s.

At minimum, it should be clear that lab mice and rats ought to be the first serious colonists on Mars—and this for quite some time. Their mission: to live where no earthly creature has lived before. Godspeed to those pioneering rodents; I suspect they’ll need it.

"On the origins of Bitcoin," my new work on Bitcoin and monetary theory

Linked below is a new work I have just written on Bitcoin and monetary theory. It addresses in a more systematic way than I have before issues relating to the interpretation of the origins of Bitcoin in terms of the monetary regression theorem and the application of some central integral-theory principles to monetary theory.

Bitcoin has arisen as an entirely new and unexpected market phenomenon deserving of fresh treatments. Its arrival also provides opportunities to dig deeper into theoretical fundamentals themselves. While this work can be viewed as part of a much larger project in progress, I also have the sense that it can stand alone.

The title, On the origins of Bitcoin: Stages of monetary evolution, acknowledges the inspiration of the classic 1892 work, On the origins of money by Carl Menger, a landmark in the development of the market-evolution account of the origins of media of exchange and money. This “Austrian school” or “Vienna school” approach contrasts with what I dub the state-creatationism theory of the origin of money. It also contrasts with the tempting but unsatisfactory view that money is merely a “social illusion.”

In a nod to the software world out of which Bitcoin has arisen, I call it a first public beta, meaning that, while refinements are always possible and likely, I think the central intended functionality has been implemented. Revised versions and formats may follow.

Update

Link updated from 23.10.2103 version to revised and expanded 03.11.2013 version

Download PDF:On the origins of Bitcoin: Stages of monetary evolution (03.11.2013)

REVIEW | Law and Revolution II: Religion, law, and economic transformation

I just finished Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition by Harold J. Berman (Harvard, 2003), published 20 years after Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard, 1983).

The two Law and Revolution books are indispensable to the list of must-reads for becoming truly educated, taking oneself beyond the usual state-supportive propaganda found in textbooks and standard-issue academic output.

Berman is no ideologue, but he has great respect for the power of ideas. His agenda is to provide us with his best take on legal history based on a tremendous grasp of the historical and theoretical material. He also wants us to ask questions about where the Western Legal Tradition has come from and where it is going.

The level of depth, detail, clarity, and organization of this book is high. The author was a true teacher and clear researcher and thinker, and his deep knowledge of and reference to the original sources are both impressive and easy to follow. His conclusions are not merely things he wanted to say anyway; they are thoroughly informed by the patterns documented. He does not merely state his case; in good legal form, he makes his case.

The biggest takeaway for me was the power of ideas in shaping institutions. He argues that the German and English revolutions included comprehensive changes to legal philosophies, legal science, and substantive and procedural law (though all ultimately staying within the broad Western Legal Tradition) and that many of these changes were not only in harmony with the theological doctrines of the major Protestant reformations of the period, but were in some cases literally authored by some of the Protestant leaders, especially in the German case.

In contrast to Marxian and Weberian perspectives, Berman shows religious changes bringing about legal changes, which then ultimately brought about economic development to the extent that the changes enabled greater predictability and security of property and investments. Thus, Protestant "ideology" was not merely an "apology" for economic changes, but was among their driving forces. Also, Berman argues that the impact of Protestantism on economic law came not primarily from an alleged "individualism," as in Weber, but rather from the communitarian elements of Calvinist belief. For example, wide participation in subscriptions to the new format of the joint stock company was understood by many of the people actually engaged in it as form of mass action for the betterment of the world. This illustrates one of Berman's wider and refreshing (in modern academia) approaches: to take seriously what the people who were involved actually stated they were doing and what their own objectives were.

Another key point that I derived as I read was the degree to which these legal changes in the 16th and 17th centuries in Germany and England constituted the establishment of theocracies. Berman's own thesis is that much more than a "secularization" of the formerly spiritual jurisdictions, as many historians would have it, these periods were characterized by a "spiritualization of the secular." Indeed, the "secular" authorities took on, through their new laws and administrations, the religious tasks of enforcing religious morality and forwarding their view of what was needed in the secular world for the greater promotion of salvation, according to their Lutheran or Calvinist belief systems.

In the event, the felt need to have one state religion or another led to a couple of centuries of horrific religious warfare, with genocides, massacres, terrorism, the whole package. The idea of "toleration" during this period of the idea's early development was to grudgingly refrain from burning at the stake the adherents of a few approved select denominations, even though they were not the state religion at the time.

As I read, I connected the theocratic character of the legal changes of this era with the genesis of what I call do-gooder government, which thrives to this day. The Reformations provided strong impulses in the direction of using the powers of the state to "do good" for people, to try to make them be better in a particular religious context, to explicitly reform society in a religiously inspired image. [Update: For a brilliant sci-fi film treatment of do-gooder government in action, don't miss Serenity.]

I would add that while these religious changes certainly inspired legal changes, there would also still have been a certain process of selection of viewpoints. In other words, not just any set of new religious ideas, at least in their relation to state power, could have had the same influence. The princes had to take up these changes to some extent. I would submit that only those religious belief systems that would serve certain power interests, particularly those powers positioned to help incubate the systems while using them to their own advantage, could have been taken up in this particular story. Other ideas would have been ignored or worse.

In other words, though these were revolutions, the parasitic apparatus of the proto-state was doing some evolutionary selection of the ideologies leading the revolution. I do not take this to mean that these religious/legal innovators did not believe what they were teaching (in the way that cynical Marxians inevitably discount people's own accounts of their own motivations). Indeed, one of the disturbing things as I read Berman's accounts of original sources was sometimes the realization that these figures actually did deeply believe in many of the things they were writing! My point is rather a metaphorical application of the anthropic principle: the religious traditions that grew and survived also had to do so in the given power context. To become part of a new state religion, for example, a religious opinion would certainly have to be supportive of...well...the state. Just think of all those anti-state religions that were adopted as official state religions! (Well, Christianity, perhaps, but it had to shed its initial anti-state character well before it could serve as state religion).

As was the case in the first Law and Revolution book, Berman again notes numerous instances throughout Volume II in which the presence of legal competition of various kinds in Europe tended to improve the quality of legal procedure and content over time. For example, the competition for cases among the various courts in England, each with different sets of both substantive and procedural law; or the competition of German princes to hire a limited pool of qualified civil officials and judges, each of whom was free to work for any of the various German states.

There is so much detailed richness from the past in this book. So many personalities, legal cases, stories, come to life. It just has to be read to get the full effect. Don't miss it.