Erebor, Erewhon, Stablecoins, Zizians and The Dark Enlightenment
Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, and Joe Lonsdale have just announced the new institution that is set to take advantage of the stablecoin world I described in my last Substack - Erebor. Their idea is that new ventures and existing firms will increasingly raise capital by bypassing the banks and VC/Private Equity folks and instead tap into a larger retail and professional investor market through stablecoins. They will tokenize instead of issuing traditional shares and bonds. Their new venture is tellingly called Erebor, which refers to The Lonely Mountain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels, home to great treasures and beauty for hobbits and dwarves alike. Samuel Taylor Butler describes a similar mountain in his novel Erewhon, published in 1871, which was the first piece of literature to address AI and machine sentience. Butler describes a mountain in Erewhon, an anagram of nowhere, as a place in which AI and machines are prohibited because they have wreaked havoc with society in the past. It’s an interesting contrast because Erebor is going to facilitate the financing and deployment of a modern AI-led society. Erebor is poised to disrupt the social contract and society, empowering entrepreneurs and new ventures while disintermediating Wall Street and the traditional banking system. Erewhon serves as a cautionary tale about what happens if Erebor succeeds and vice versa.
Butler Erewhon describes the protagonist’s journey to a distant mountain range (based on his own experience in New Zealand) where he finds a land that has been ravaged by AI (mechanical consciousness) and machines. The lessons of the disaster are kept in their sacred “Book of the Machines.” Butler writes, “There was a time when the earth was to all appearance utterly destitute both of animal and vegetable life, and when according to the opinion of our best philosophers it was simply a hot round ball with a crust gradually cooling. Now, if a human being had existed while the earth was in this state and had been allowed to see it as though it were some other world with which he had no concern, and if, at the same time he were entirely ignorant of all physical science, would he not have pronounced it impossible that creatures possessed of anything like consciousness should be evolved from the seeming cinder which he was beholding? Would he not have denied that it contained any potentiality of consciousness? Yet, in the course of time, consciousness came. Is it not possible then that there may be even yet new channels dug out for consciousness, though we can detect no signs of them at present?” He then says, “There is no security” — to quote his own words — ”against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. A mollusc has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time. Assume for the sake of argument that conscious beings have existed for some twenty million years: see what strides machines have made in the last thousand! May not the world last twenty million years longer? If so, what will they not in the end become? Is it not safer to nip the mischief in the bud and to forbid them further progress”
Erebor aims to nourish the growth of AI and machines in an effort to get humanity to the safe haven and magical kingdom of riches. Erewhon worships beauty and nature and aims to keep AI and machines locked out to create a safe haven and magical kingdom of natures riches. Everyone in Erewhon is beautiful. The power of a man is measured ny his horsepower or ability to lift things. In Erebor power comes from gold and jewels and wealth. As we all know, Hobbits and dwarves have their own style but they are not known for their beauty but for their courage and bravery. The choice is stark: rich and ugly or poor and beautiful.
It’s interesting what Apple argues in their very recent paper, AI The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity. They basically say AI and it’s offspring, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is not just a long way off. It’s not happening. Erebor’s bet is not that it is. Erebror’s bet is that today’s AI is plenty good enough to radically transform not just the business models of every firm we know. It enough to kill them and make way for a new generation of ventures. It is enough to reunite hardware and