
Crazy Wisdom
In his series "Crazy Wisdom," Stewart Alsop explores cutting-edge topics, particularly in the realm of technology, such as Urbit and artificial intelligence. Alsop embarks on a quest for meaning, engaging with others to expand his own understanding of reality and that of his audience. The topics covered in "Crazy Wisdom" are diverse, ranging from emerging technologies to spirituality, philosophy, and general life experiences. Alsop's unique approach aims to make connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, tying together ideas in unconventional ways.
Latest episodes

Dec 26, 2022 • 1h 8min
What is the relationship between Kundalini and topological quantum computers? - Dr. Jonathan Paprocki
Dr. Jonathan Paprocki Jonathan is a specialist in topological quantum compiling, a Tlon engineer, you can find him on Urbit @ ~Datnut-Pollen Blog can be found at Discordia (http://datnut-pollen.discordja.net/discordja) What is a Kundalini awakening? What do old dusty books say about Kundalini? What is the relationship between Kundalini and topological quantum computers? Can everything be explained by science? How do you deal with the skepticism that other people give you that you used to give them? How much does the flow state come to you when working with quantum computers? Is it very frustrating? What did you learn about Atman after you randomly spoke Atman? Do you think in images? What do you think is the base layer reality now? When did you start studying quantum physics? Who is John Wheeler? What is the participatory universe? He talks about Quantum Bayesianism The idea is that the Universe consists of participants/observers and observations, rules on consistencies of what these interactions guarantee the relationship. What is the study of condensed matter? What is quantum field theory? What is quantum topology? A topologist can't tell the difference between a coffee mug and a donut. Who is Edward Witten, the physicist who received the Field Medal? What are your favorite cognitive hazards? How often do new age thinkers get quantum mechanics right when tying it to spirituality? How important is math to understanding quantum theory? What is quantum theory? Who are the new age mystics who do get quantum theory right? What percentage of quantum theory has to do with the Heisenberg principle? What is the difference between the laws of qualia and the laws of physics? How did you end up at Tlon? What are the differences between Holochain and Urbit? What is a distributed hash table? What is a hash chain? What is naturally inspired computation? What are the aspects of natural physics that are dependent on quantum mechanics? Who is Sam Frank from Urbit? What is the thing that convinces you to pursue incomprehensible projects to the point of comprehensibility? Is doing documentation a good way to learn programming? What is the blog that Jon is writing? What are some differences between writing software for external applications/legacy internet within Urbit versus say writing software in an imperative programming language and navigating Facebook's API? Why did IP addresses not become permanent ways to signify where the message receiver/sender is stable? What does Urbit replace about the current IP address system? What are the differences and similarities between Urbit and Holochain? What is Holochain Scepter? What is Deep Key when it comes to Holochain? How does Urbit enforce global state? What is the data availability problem of the blockchain? Why doesn't adding more blocks make the data processing faster? What is a blockchain? A way to give a clock to distributed system. What is the problem of time in distributed systems? Holochain is a way to run apps on BitTorrent basically (analogy). What percentage of email is spam? What is enforced scarcity? What is the membrane from Holochain? What are all the types of attacks in distributed systems?

Dec 19, 2022 • 55min
What does it mean to build NFT on the BTC blockchain? - Casey Rodarmor
Today we have Casey Rodarmor, a bitcoin developer who is working on building non-fungible tokens (NFTs) directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. NFTs are digital assets that are unique and cannot be exchanged for other assets. They have become popular on Ethereum, but have not yet been implemented on the Bitcoin blockchain. Casey is working on a protocol that will allow NFTs to be natively held in a Bitcoin wallet and transferred using Bitcoin transactions. He believes that NFTs have the potential to be a powerful tool for artists and creators to sell and authenticate their work. Here are some other questions we cover: Where does the name Rodarmor come from? What does it mean to build NFT on the BTC blockchain? Where was the first NFT built on? NameCoin Built for domain names What was the first popular NFT built on? Counterparty ETH was where they took off Why doesn’t Bitcoin have its own NFT yet? Why aren’t satoshis currently transferable individually? Why did you give a satoshi a unique identifier? Do you need a separate bitcoin public key to use these NFTs? Not the case that most BTC wallets have a single public key Why do bitcoin maxis have such strong membranes for keeping stuff they don’t like out of bitcoin? So it matters that people have to adopt the protocol you are using? Do they still point to IPFS? What does it take to change the bitcoin protocol? These are very controversial Why doesn’t Bitcoin have a formal process for accepting changes? Why are democracies so easy to game? What is a system that isn’t easy to game? What is competitive governance? Why is Singapore a good example of competitive governance? Why is it so relevant to have the federal government take income taxes rather than state governments? What do you think of competitive governance within Western Hemisphere? Who is Patri Freidman? What is the history of the Friedman family (of the Milton clan)? Would a nuclear-powered thorium reactor help the seasteading movement? What is the limiting feature of seasteading? What are bitcoin transactions? What are unspent transaction outputs? Why is bitcoin not a triple-entry bookkeeping system? What is the difference between ledgers and bitcoin? What is the difference between a global and local accounting systems? Will individuals use BTC as money? Where does USDC issue stable coin?

Dec 12, 2022 • 1h 1min
What is the thing about exponentials? - Kenny Rowe
Kenny Rowe is the founder of the Dalten Collective (~sicdev-pilnup), in a previous life he was on the founding team of MakerDAO What is the dalten collective? Collectively own an urbit start together What is a node? What is peer discovery? What is governance when it comes to Urbit? What can you do with a star on Urbit? What is the relationship between Urbit and DAOs? How do groups do sense-making? What is better for sense-making: an individual or the collective? What are the three values for the dalten collective? How many people are in the dalten collective? What is Qurtus when it comes to the dalten collective? What are the differences between software development in Urbit vs the rest of the ecosystem? Dev ops is easier There is a learning curve Runes and ASQII characters are important What is the importance of communication for project management? When do we get to the magical point of really easy software development? What does it mean to be a functional programming language? What is the highest scale has Urbit got to? Ubit network explorer Low 10,0000s What is the thing about exponentials? Does anyone at the FED have any idea of what MakerDAO is? What is the relationship between finance and actualization? Is MakerDAO a eurodollar system? Is Urbit out of the womb yet? What was your first memory of discovering the internet? What is the difference between a functional and performative server? What was the history of computing in the 40s? What is computation? How do you bootstrap a personal server? What do you learn by building a personal server that gives you an idea of what you can do? Are we already in the feudal system when it comes to Facebook owning all our individual data? How do identity politics make the world really clear? What are the tools you need for sense-making? Why do bitcoin maxis immediately think that Urbit is a blockchain when you try to bring it up? How do smart contracts fit into urbit? What is the synthesis between smart contracts and urbit? Where does sense-making within small groups fit into the patchwork age (PaulPublisher on Twitter)? Where do loners fit into sense-making? What is the relationship between the internet archives and urbit? How does urbit prevent shadow updates from centralized media? Will urbit absorb the legacy internet? What does it mean to have a digital CPU? What do you think happens to Amazon cloud in the urbit land? Cable television is a good idea of decentralization How does Moore’s law extrapolate into other areas outside of transistors? What is a functional definition of computation? Why did computers take over the world in 1940s? What is the relationship between computers and war? What is a babbage machine? Why is 0 and 1 is the easiest way to do computation?

Dec 5, 2022 • 1h 24min
How long does delusion traditionally outlast sanity? - Aaron Lowry
Aaron Lowry (https://twitter.com/Aaron_Lowry) Why are you interested in Cardano? Why didn’t you switch to ETH and stay with Classic? What are the main challenges to build decentralized systems? With functional governance? How does verifiability contribute to more challenging programming issues? What was the Ethereum schism between classic and ETH? With the unilateral move to create a new ETH chain we see the first centralization Cardano is centralized in explicit ways through the initial token sale, the corporate structure, and the nodes It starts out centralized but they have a roadmap to get to centralization What are the differences between a proof of work Bitcoin and a proof of stake system? What does a smart contract system need that bitcoin doesn’t? What happened when ETH moved to proof of stake? Why is energy so fundamental to utility? What is the market cap of Cardano? What are the compromises of ETH? What is slashing? How fast is Cardano? What are stake pools? What is trust minimization? Why is it so integral to a blockchain? Does Cardano validate things locally? Will AI make it easier to host hardware servers? What limits peer-to-peer networks? The market seems to always go towards convenience, which compromises so many things. What are those compromises? Can you argue with physics? How long does delusion traditionally outlast sanity? How do you build something that lasts when structurally the incentive is to build something that doesn’t? What is the difference between accountability and scapegoating? How can you reality-check with others while there are contradictions embedded within communication?

Nov 28, 2022 • 54min
What are the downsides of having everything become easily accessible? - Noah Kumin (Mars Review of Books)
Noah Kumin Editor In Chief of the Mars Review of Books, publish at machinewar.substack.com ~librex-dozryc on Urbit What is the mars review of books? What is the relationship between collapse and urbit? How did you get involved with Urbit? What are the downsides of having everything become easily accessible? Do you think that Urbit will take all the good parts of the old web but keep the beauty of decentralization? What are the data storage aspects of urbit? Why is it confusing when people say Urbit is like your own computer? Why were computers originally people instead of machines? Will Mars Review of Books get into hosting planets or is it already do it? What is the relationship between Tirrell and Mars Reviews of Books? What is eternal September? The only people who were getting What would a university look like for Urbit? Why is it that when people learn norms, things become boring for divergent people? How did Scientism creep into the Silicon Valley industry, and how did that affect the current online networks? In what ways is the development of Urbit centralized like Ethereum development is? Urbit’s value is that there is no spam whatsoever What is the future of print in the age of post-internetism? Print allows for blockchain like verifiiability A bit of something like a vinyl trend for print books What is the future of serious literature in the age of internet? What is the diversion value of VR-porn? How about Nuclear Fusion? Can man live on VR-porn alone? If you don’t give a young kid a smartphone are you weakening their virtual immune system? What does it mean to outsource your intelligence to the crowd? Why is that becoming an insider in a fragile society requires so much BS?

Nov 22, 2022 • 45min
How are CNC routers changing woodworking? - Steve Heckathorn
This episode was meant to fulfill a personal curiosity of mine about CNC routers for wood working and how they are changing a very old skill. I wanted to see how it fit into my thesis of decentralized manufacturing and how it relates to additive manufacturing. It gets a little technical so you will like this episode if you already have some knowledge about building physical things. Here are some questions we cover: What is CNC? What is a CNC router? WHat is the difference between making and designing things for CNC routers? What is a tool pathing? What are the applications for CNC routing? What is high density urethane? How did you get into CNC routing? What are your favorite materials? What is slat wall? Steve Heckathorn Owner operator of NC3 Fab (https://www.facebook.com/NC3Fabrications)

Nov 15, 2022 • 1h 13min
The Nuclear Physics of Spiritual Growth - Nicholas Faulkner
Nicholas Faulkner chemistry and physics teacher, former nuclear engineer, author of the upcoming book “Angelic Physics” How do you ascend to the next level of consciousness? What does it feel like to have an out of body experience? What are your thoughts on the future of nuclear power? What are the physics of nuclear power? How long will it take to feel the benefits of nuclear power if we start building massively? What is the waste of solar versus the waste of nuclear? What is the deal with getting uranium from seawater? Why does uranium float in seawater? How is uranium traditionally harvested? Two isotopes (235 and 238) of uranium What does it feel like to have a different path? What is autism from an energetic framework? What is the relationship between being autistic and recognizing vibes? What is it like to live in an angel producing simulation? What is the relationship between quantum mechanics and nuclear physics? How many people are hypnotized? What is the relationship between certainty and the simulation? What is a miracle? What percentage of people who are being trained to be angels? 1.7% What is the nature of the leap that the planet is in right now? What is the relationship between quantum mechanics and karme? What is the angelic roller coaster? What does it mean to have your soul evolve? What is the relationship between THC and conspiracy theory? Do you think we are headed for a bifurcation of humanity into two species? What is the definition of an angel? Is a starseed actually angels? What does it feel like to be touched by an angel? What are the two teams of the simulation? What is a good way to describe the demonic? What does it feel like to have inability to tell truth from falsehood? What is the timeline for the next couple years for nuclear power? Is nuclear power the way to colonize mars?

Nov 7, 2022 • 49min
How is additive manufacturing (3D printing) changing manufacturing? - Stephanie Bonfiglio
What type of additive manufacturing machines does the company you work for have? What is the role of proprietary legal stuff when it comes to additive manufacturing? What is an EOS machine? Has Germany always been an additive manufacturer superpower? Is China taking over from them? What is a service bureau? Contract manufacturing How many interactions with a client on a particular part do you usually do? 2-3 generally between when the customer needs to test it 10 builds total over 1-2 years What is the key thing for helping a customer understand the difference between designing for 3D printing versus traditional manufacturing? What is 3D printing opening up in terms of novel designs that additive manufacturing opens up? What is the famous engine fuel nozzle that 3D printing opened up? What is the difference between consumer 3D printing and custom/industrial 3D printing? How much does a 3D printing machine for industrial purposes cost? What does it mean to qualify a part? What are the machines that have more stability across different service bureaus? What is a concept laser? Bellow? These are companies that produce machines How many people work at your company? How many competitors do you have? 2-3 similar service bureaus What are all the niches for these competitors? Automotive Energy Aerospace Medical What type of employees are you using? What does a lab tech do? How big are your machines? Who specializes in larger parts that are produced by 3D printing? What are the types of geometries that are novel to 3D printing? How did you get into this? What is connector manufacturing? Do you enjoy this field? How do you work with a customer who has propriety clauses? What companies are doing the rapid prototyping for consumers? Exometry Goprodo Prodolabs How did the supply chain crisis from COVID change your business? What are your thoughts on bringing manufacturing back to the United States? The materials that you use, how much of it comes from other places in the world? What types of powders? 16 different metals Where is it manufactured? Finland What is the relationship between software and hardware when it comes to 3D printing? What is the support removal? What is AS9100?

Nov 1, 2022 • 1h 16min
What is the fundamental process behind decentralization? - Mike Townsend
What is it like to compete against square? What is it like to charge people to come on a podcast to interview them? Is podcasting like a press organization? When did they invent paper? What is the fundamental process behind decentralization? Is it good nor bad? Is bitcoin a money revolution or a technological innovation? What is the thesis, synthesis and anti synthesis cycle? Is the BTC volatility based on price discovery? What was the significance of the luna and celsius collapse? In 2021, everything in crypto was leveraged against itself. What is the significance of this? Is Tether actually a truly audited stablecoin? The non-transparency behind Tether actually saved it What is the difference between a financial attack and a technology attack in crypto? What is the relationship between being a savvy technologist and an economic technologist? Where does regulation come into this? Can we actually have a decentralized stablecoin? What is the importance of the fourth turning book? What is a saeculum? What is the relationship between chaos now and potential in the future? What about employment in crypto? What is the remote work part of the question? How is Twitter like a feudal lord for the internet? What is the role of the autist in this great splintering that we are going through? What layer is Stewart in? An information gold digger What is the multilayered problem that global mental health represents? Is Buddhism the first therapy? Why is the western world so inspired by materiality? Where does 3D printing fit into decentralization? What is the relationship between global narratives and being prepared for uncertainty? Is it the main driver behind the seeking of global narratives?

Oct 24, 2022 • 50min
What happened in China with the recent sanctions on microchips? - Michael Tauberg
Michael Tauberg Hardware and software engineer with over 10 years of experience in firmware, systems validation and test automation What happened in China with sanctions on microchips, particularly on Oct 7th 2022? What is the goal of the US government with these moves? What hasn’t been allowed for awhile? What is new restrictions? What is a microchip? What is ASML? A dutch company that makes the equipment that makes chips Extreme ultraviolet is a new technology What has been done on the AI front in terms of sanctions? Why are graphic cards better for AI? Where does economic growth come from? What is the difference in automation in physical space versus virtual space? What is the move for capital expenditure from the government? Will the US be able to bring back the chip industry to the US? What is the difference between design, production, and manufacturing? Are kids starting to cheat using GPT3 at school? Who should I interview about robotics in manufacturing? Former tesla employees How did Airbnb, Uber etc come from innovations databases technology? Why can’t you have walmart without databases? What is potential of AI? What is easy to predict? What is not? Finding and exploiting patterns How will AI change material science? What about drones? How are drones changing warfare? Why are the iranians the ones producing these new cheap drones? Will the drone wars move over into civilian casualties? What is drone defense and how will it change? How will aircraft carrier economic change wth the drone equation? The missile equation? What does it mean to win a war in 2022? What are the two things that China has not caught up with the west? Advanced semiconductors and aerospace