Accounting & the Metaverse
- February 4, 2022
Virtual world of the Metaverse is all bytes and weightless information. Duplication is effortless. Traversal of the space requires just a little mental effort. Constraints are virtually unlimited. It’s closer to pure imagination. The real world is all carbon and energy. It’s a highly constrained place with a real cost of duplication and translation.
I see two bridges between the worlds. Bitcoin with proof of work which bothers the Luddites and logic. The logic is constructed out of axioms and abstractions and grounded in a science that exists by the power of negation. We find no absolute truth with our real-world experiments but we do demonstrate what is untrue. To discover a truth, I must first get you to accept my axioms and abstractions before we can agree on the nature of that truth.
Accounting axioms have been born in a material world. Gains & losses. Mine & yours. Any accountant who does not consult the great Rota is not worth his salt.
The Metaverse is constrained by the real world in some sense. Our reality must map to embodied mental maps otherwise it’s unintelligible. Yann Lecun discusses the difficulty of recognising intelligence here. If the alien does not have your axioms, he will struggle to see your signature hence the dark matter analogy.
Accounting fits perfectly well in the virtual world, though I’d imagine that things like weight, length and energy lose their meaning there. Tokens traverse the real-world and the virtual with ease. And since the virtual world depends on the energy of the real world, value will remain grounded in kilowatts. Even if it’s just to run a barebones physical entity running wetware exploring the output of hardware in a fantasy realm.
I see two bridges between the worlds. Bitcoin with proof of work which bothers the Luddites and logic. The logic is constructed out of axioms and abstractions and grounded in a science that exists by the power of negation. We find no absolute truth with our real-world experiments but we do demonstrate what is untrue. To discover a truth, I must first get you to accept my axioms and abstractions before we can agree on the nature of that truth.
Accounting axioms have been born in a material world. Gains & losses. Mine & yours. Any accountant who does not consult the great Rota is not worth his salt.
The Metaverse is constrained by the real world in some sense. Our reality must map to embodied mental maps otherwise it’s unintelligible. Yann Lecun discusses the difficulty of recognising intelligence here. If the alien does not have your axioms, he will struggle to see your signature hence the dark matter analogy.
Accounting fits perfectly well in the virtual world, though I’d imagine that things like weight, length and energy lose their meaning there. Tokens traverse the real-world and the virtual with ease. And since the virtual world depends on the energy of the real world, value will remain grounded in kilowatts. Even if it’s just to run a barebones physical entity running wetware exploring the output of hardware in a fantasy realm.
