How Bitcoin Makes the Law Optional – Coinmonks
Ludwig Wittgenstein had one book published during his life — Tractatus — a series of self declarative statements designed not to advance insights too quickly; and a posthumous publication Philosophical Investigations, considered one of the best philosophical works of the 20th century, introducing the notion of language games.
In this way, grammar regulates the conventions and customs in which language games work — mediating reality [and language] as a result.
And in a similar fashion to how Nash equilibrium doesn’t assume participants possessing full knowledge of the game framework — learning by doing, instead — language games are acquired by observation, practice, application, trial, error, induction and repetition:
Like the non-cooperative game, the language game is played because we have to play it: we don’t wish to be excluded or lose — and language is used accordingly, for example by not embarrassing or ostracising ourselves from peers.
For Wittgenstein, philosophy was a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language: philosophy couldn’t solve puzzles or answer questions, other than clarify our use [of language] to see the connections between words and their usage afresh — establishing the difference between sense and nonsense.
This approach also discounted the idea of abstracts or transcendence — there are just language games.
In respect of the law, the enterprise of legal theorising was an optional practice for Wittgenstein because it attempted to resolve illusory problems created from confused use of language — law is made by language along with providing for authoritative dispute resolution — and had to account for the possibility for disagreements over meaning.
Indeed, if there were perfect determinism in language, courts wouldn’t be required at all. A parallel to be drawn with Central Banks and their use of language games in inflation targeting:
Wittgenstein observed that following a rule or legal principle is analogous to following an order, whereas following a grammatical practice or obeying a linguistic rule is almost unconscious — more of a casual intuition.
A further parallel can be drawn with John Nash in respect of an agencies method for modelling coalitions and cooperation in games: Nash came to think one player could simply accept the “agency” of another player or existing coalition of players — to take them at their word, rather than be wary and “hassle” for more information than otherwise needed in participation?
Nash also noted in the same modelling, “attorney agents” acted strategically, rather than cooperatively: principals can set the conditions of the game, and in the setting of a law court, arguments made persuading the trusted entity to the cooperation in legal consensus — ie, attorneys play their own game.
In this regard — and with Bitcoin — at the computational base settlement, there aren’t any principals: it’s without a mediating party between players.
There isn’t a market maker setting out a “language game” in the conventional way and it appears Satoshi Nakamoto created a self declarative principle in the Tractatus sense — for which he didn’t have time to explain, as Wittgenstein couldn’t explain what a language game actually was — where hashing recursions brutishly move it toward equilibrium:
Nietzsche’s diachrony toward Wittgenstein’s synchrony and a virtual market for dispute resolution without the middleman on a global standing where exists the possibility of a dramatic language evolution.
And this is how the dollar is now pricing stability: as a de facto litigation standard.
Published at Sat, 22 Jun 2019 16:45:09 +0000
