Gatherer

Wow… 50 countries worldwide have a higher life expectancy than the US.

It was only 20 years ago that we barely understood the importance of a biological function as basic as sleep. We still don’t know why such an extended and vulnerable state of being is necessary to our evolution. Dolphins can go a month without sleep after giving birth, or sleep with only one half of their brain at a time (unihemispheric sleep). Meanwhile plants follow circadian rhythm. We do know that sleep evolved before brains did, a primordial remnant of when all living things synchronized rest with the day-night cycle? Maybe that cycle could also be part of the reason why brains evolved. So that animals could be able ignore sleep and decide for themselves when they are clear of predators and can rest.

One thing I think people maybe don’t take advantage of enough and it’s because we don’t grasp the power of it is that we have access to an immense amount of information online to educate us on things like nutrition, physical fitness, the importance of sleep, circadian rhythm, and so on. AI makes that information easier to access. I wanted to follow this peanut dressing recipe but I didn’t have the exact ingredients so instead of asking a generic AI, I “made” a Nutritionist AI with expertise in the culinary arts as a Gem. I knew following an AI recipe was risky but the dressing turned out great so then I started to talk to it about meal planning to achieve the macros I want while still only eating 3 meals a day so I can consume the scientifically correct and balanced amounts of fiber, protein etc for muscle gain and overall health. I was never going to do the math myself and figure out how to eat healthy but the AI is a lot better at this when you have it make giant spreadsheets and force it to verify that the information as well as the sums and totals are accurate. I remember all the memes of AI giving people recipes that were nonsensical just a year or so ago. That’s why I know I have to remain hyper vigilant and constantly push back on the AI, forcing it to question its assumptions. I know that interacting with the AI I am also training it. “Google uses conversations, feedback, and uploaded data to train and improve its machine-learning models.” I just think democratizing nutrition and health information is worth it. I wish I knew in my teens what I know now about food, cooking and nutrition over a decade later. We shouldn’t ever take what the AI says as medical advice or quality (of food) advice but if we keep pushing the limits maybe one day the AI will get much better and that could change. In theory it would be so valuable if everyone could get that kind of information for the cost of building and running some data centers.

Work Tokens: Money That Measures What We Build By Gatherer Bitcoin perfected digital scarcity—it’s digital gold, the ultimate savings account. But what about the checking account? Bitcoin is neutral money—it doesn’t care where the energy came from, a coal plant or a solar farm, or if you use energy to power a hospital or heat an empty warehouse—Bitcoin doesn’t distinguish. That neutrality is what makes it incorruptible: no one can debase it, politicize it, or claim some bitcoins are worth less than others. But it creates a gap: We don’t always want neutrality. How do you build money that measures things like productivity, quality, computation capacity, and efficiency? In the age of automation and robotics, economies need to grow productive capacities, not just secure a ledger. Bitcoin proves you burned energy to solve a puzzle. We need a complementary work token that proves you used energy efficiently to produce a result. One secures a ledger; the other secures civilization’s infrastructure. Bitcoin doesn’t care if the grid is 10% efficient or 90% efficient—a work token would. Here’s how it could work: build a power plant with 1000 MWh capacity, issue tokens proportional to that capacity. Upgrade grid efficiency by 10%, issue tokens proportional to increased output. The same principle applies to upgrading compute, improving logistics or manufacturing output—if verifiable infrastructure is added, proportional tokens are issued. This has built-in inflation controls that fiat lacks. Work tokens can only be issued when actual productive infrastructure is added to the economy. You can’t print work tokens without literally building something measurable. Unlike past fiat currencies that could expand money supply through a central bank, work tokens have a hard constraint: no infrastructure, no tokens. You can’t fake building power plants, that wouldn’t be possible since the measurement of outputs & inputs are needed to determine efficiency. Unlike fiat—work tokens would involve governance over what counts as productive infrastructure, while issuance remains algorithmic based on verified capacity. Infrastructure operators—power utilities, data centers, logistics networks—cryptographically attest to capacity they’ve added, with standards set through an amendable process and cross-verification preventing fraud. The money supply grows with real economic capacity, creating controlled inflation that enables growth rather than Bitcoin’s deflation or fiat’s arbitrary expansion. This allows governments to fund infrastructure by issuing tokens backed by the productive capacity they’re building—not debt that needs repaying, but money backed by the thing being built. This requires a different trust model than Bitcoin: federated verification by infrastructure operators with cryptographic proofs, not pure trustlessness. It requires a metering infrastructure layer that automatically tracks productive output in real-time. This eliminates billing departments—work done is automatically verified and tokens calculated instantly. It also means workers who are faster and more productive can get paid proportionally more, immediately, instead of waiting for performance reviews or negotiated raises. That’s the tradeoff for measuring real-world productivity and maintaining control over economic priorities. Bitcoin remains the reserve—the ultimate collateral. Work tokens become the medium of exchange, tied to what we actually build. This is what a post-fiat monetary system could look like if we want to maintain an industrial civilization at scale. I’m happy to hear people’s thoughts on this! I always thought of #Bitcoin as the beginning of a #Post_Fiat_World which requires embracing and designing a technological economy that actually works for people.