| | | | | Scary MathA couple of weeks ago I finished up Snow Crash.
It’s a dystopian-esque sci-fi written by Neal Stephenson. And for anyone interested in thinking about how political power could reorient itself without nation states, it’s a must read.
While you’re at it, read his book Cryptonomicon too. The plotline involves cryptocurrency but was written a good 10 years before Bitcoin.
Anyhow, there’s a character in Snow Crash – Raven. And the very idea of this guy blew my mind (spoiler alert).
Raven was a sovereign. A nation unto himself. But that’s not what got me.
To preserve his sovereignty, he rode a Harley with a nuclear warhead sitting in the sidecar. The bomb was somehow linked to his vitals. In the event of his death, the bomb would go off.
To boot, he wasn’t a nice guy. He pissed a lot of people off, some of whom wanted to kill him. But whenever he was in town, the cops (they were a private corporation), would do anything to keep him safe simply so the bomb wouldn’t go off. He could do whatever he wanted, and cops would still protect him.
I’ve never considered this line of reasoning. It’s Mutually Assured Destruction logic (MAD) taken to the extreme.
Scrolling through my newsfeed a couple of days ago I came across a line of thinking that also threw me for a loop.
And pushed the realm of possibilities a little farther than I ever managed to take it on my own… | | | | | |
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