Desire, instrumental pleasures, P2P learning, and DeFi

Hi nerds -

I salute you from Panama City.

Today we're gonna be talking about some geekier ideas than usual, so no time for a cute intro. Let's get down to it. 💡

​

3 brain farts

👯‍♀️ P2P: One of the fastest ways to pass information from one server to another is through the Peer-to-Peer protocol.

You've used it in Zoom calls, torrent file-sharing, or when doing P2P trading on a crypto exchange platform like Binance.

• P2P Platforms are more affordable, since they don’t rely on a central server

• They're dependent upon bandwidth (will be as stable as peers' internet connection)

• And are often ran on a hybrid model with other protocols to increase reliability.

Interestingly enough, one of the fastest, most effective knowledge transfer strategies is also Peer-to-Peer Learning.

Pair-programming, internal corporate trainings, and colleague-to-colleague revisions of work are some of the most efficient knowledge retention strategies.

• They’re more affordable, because they don’t rely on a single specialized instructor to lead the entire discussion.

• They’re dependent upon the peer’s bandwidth (how much peers know about the topic).

• And to increase reliability, they’re often better set-up via a hybrid model with a knowledge head designing the curriculum and facilitating the discussion.

​

✨ Desire: When we think of desire, we usually think of an individual feeling. Yet, after studying Mimetic Theory in political elections, I realized memeism is everywhere.

Coined by René Girard, mimetic desire means that “we desire what others desire because we imitate their desires” - and it has evidence found as early as in recently born babies.

This mystical connection among humans is what allows us to fall in sync with other people’s thoughts, intentions, and behaviors and allow us to build complex products. It’s how we learn languages, decide who to vote for, choose a partner or buy NFTs.

This is so wide-spread that breaking away from mimeism requires having self-awareness, discernment, and courage.

💰 The DeFi vs TradFi War: The antithesis of Centralized Finance (or Ce-Fi as the crypto geeks call our current financial system) is De-fi.

Decentralizing the financial system defies the entire structure of how we’re used to running business.

Banks and lawyers’ main role is building trust-bridges between strangers so they can transact with one another. But - add blockchain to the mix and we get cryptographic trust and open ledgers enabling transactions to run faster and without intermediaries.

De-fi is fascinating because it's an entire financial system built on top of the crypto world, selling products like loans, credits, derivatives, insurance, etc. And even though it’s just getting started, there are already companies with market caps of over 11 billion dollars.

​

2 intellectual goodies

“Unhappiness is the deficit between said and done.”

~ Jack Butcher​

​

“You can’t ever make yourself irreplaceable, you can only make yourself a single point of failure.”

~ David Guttman, From Junior to Senior​

​

1 funky audio

The songs selected within this playlist follow 3 rules:

1. Must not contain any words or singing

2. Must be made using mostly instruments

3. Must live on the upper beat side

Perfectly curated for reading afternoons or deep work sessions. You can expect pianos, guitars, tambourines, some trumpets, drums, and the occasional maracas.

Thank you for reading.

As always, feel free to connect by hitting reply and sharing a juicy thought 💡.

We all help the curious community grow 🧠.

​

Best,

Jules 🤸🏻‍♂️