Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

Many of those who participated in the Bitcoin bubble can attest that a bubble completely warps one’s sense of chronological time, a feeling captured by a viral meme that likens experiencing the bubble to the experience of the two protagonists of the 2014 movie Interstellar when they arrive on a planet where a few hours correspond to a few years in

Energy is another field that possesses the potential for technological transcendence. This is most apparent in the field of nuclear energy, which has been indelibly linked with the imagery of salvation and damnation. As early as 1908, a popular book titled The Interpretation of Radium suggested that harnessing nuclear power, which promised a limitl

Unsurprisingly, the Human Genome Project also exhibited a bubble dynamic, driven as it was by an ambitious vision and characterized by excessive government overinvestment.

Bubbles are simultaneously technologically deterministic and socially constructivist in nature. They only work if the new product is physically possible, but they also rely on discrete choices by specific people.

In contrast to mere imitation, which refers to the positive effects of copying someone else’s behavior (which facilitates learning, for example), mimetic desire—desiring the other’s desire—opens up a deeply violent dimension.

“When I see a bubble forming, I rush in to buy, adding fuel to the fire.”

computational power required to solve problems ratchets up as the hashing power of the network grows. It’s as if a country managed its gold standard by randomly destroying gold mines every time a more efficient mining process was invented.

It’s the rare asset that has been called too expensive at $1 and too cheap at $65,000 without significant changes in its fundamentals.

In the case of fracking, the negative emotional reactions associated with fossil fuels have often outweighed geopolitical considerations about energy autarky, leading to fracking bans in Vermont, New York, Maryland, and Washington.