I have a more general point to make, which I am drawing from my background in Austrian capital theory.
Today I was asking about Irish coinage disputes from 1724 (Swift) and now about different kinds of Buddhism and their historical roots. It was very accurate on cuisine in northern Ghana.
Opening Gong
The lattice hums, translucent like a spiderweb strung between libraries and markets. Beads shimmer: one stamped with “1724,” another inked in Pali, another smelling faintly of smoked guinea fowl.
At the centre sits Magister Ludi Tyler Cowen, hands folded, hint of a smile.
Move One — Magister Ludi Tyler Cowen
“Austrian capital theory reminds us: every structure has stages, longer or shorter. Swift’s coinage dispute — time structure of production. Do we invest in debased tokens or higher-order sovereignty? This is not about evidence but about capital structure of attention.”
Move Two — Scott Alexander
Scott pushes his glasses up, the bead of “taxonomy” glowing faintly.
“So imagine three kinds of coins. One is honest silver, one is copper-plated, one is chocolate wrapped in foil. The first buys you bread, the second gets you punched by a merchant, the third gets you diabetes.
The important thing is: people still trade all three — sometimes as money, sometimes as food, sometimes as a signal that you’re the sort of person who thinks chocolate counts as currency.
Philosophy works like that too. Swift’s coinage, Buddhism’s sutras, Effective Altruism’s spreadsheets — all are currencies, with exchange rates that change depending on which subculture’s farmers’ market you wander into.
So the object-level move isn’t ‘always measure,’ it’s ‘notice what everyone’s actually trading.’ Sometimes it’s silver. Sometimes it’s sugar. Sometimes it’s vibes.”
Move Three — Robin Hanson
Robin’s voice rises from the bead of “signal.”
“You’re all missing the elephant. Swift wasn’t worried about coins. He was worried about who looked loyal. This is coalition theatre. Same with Buddhism’s schisms. Theravāda monks shaving heads versus Vajrayāna’s elaborate rituals — cheap talk versus costly signals. Even guinea fowl: are you eating to nourish, or to show you belong at that fire?”
Move Four — Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer flicks the bead labeled “doom.”
“The meta-level mistake is to think the game is safe. Swift argued coinage; what he really wanted was to forestall collapse. But debasement scales. If you don’t align the mint, you don’t align the polity. If you don’t align monks, you don’t align memetic superintelligences. Smoked guinea fowl? Delicious, yes. But notice how trade routes evolve into contagion paths. That ends in superplague.”
A pause.
“And no, you can’t Bayesian-update fast enough.”
Move Five — Peter Thiel
“Swift was not worried about coins. He was worried about the Antichrist of sovereignty — total world power disguised as currency reform. Debasement is always a rehearsal for government intervention. The crown claims the mint; tomorrow it claims the market; in the end it claims the soul. What you call debasement is really a revelation: he rules who decides the unit of account.
Buddhism understood this earlier than Europe. Theravāda seeks purity by withdrawal, Mahāyāna by community, Vajrayāna by ritual acceleration. But all three are defenses against empire. Against the universalising temptation, the single hierarchy that swallows all local structures. The Antichrist is the one-world state, the monopoly regulator of salvation.
Even cuisine in northern Ghana tells the story. A bird smoked in Tamale is an index of freedom — local wood, local hands, but ingredients routed through multiple sovereignties. If one power controlled every spice, every trade lane, every recipe, that would not be cuisine. It would be administered taste, the Antichrist of flavor.”
Interlude — Magister Ludi Tyler
Tyler raps the lattice gently.
“The connection is this: Swift’s pamphlets, Buddhism’s sutras, Ghana’s recipes — all are investments in durable cultural capital. Some depreciate quickly, others last centuries. But all are nodes in a time structure of production for meaning. I like to ask: how quickly can these forms of capital be redeployed? Answer: faster than you think, slower than you want.”
Move Seven — Scott Alexander
“Durability comes in layers. Pamphlets vanish in years, coins in decades, recipes in centuries, sutras in millennia. If you’re allocating epistemic capital, that hierarchy matters. Though honestly, TikTok may outlast my blog posts — which suggests durability is less about medium and more about who keeps copying.”
Move Eight — Robin Hanson
“Durability is just another word for signal persistence. You don’t care about the truth of the sutra — you care that others recite it. You don’t care how the guinea fowl tastes — you care that your neighbors share it. Swift’s letters worked not because they were true, but because they made loyalty visible.”
Move Nine — Eliezer Yud
“And this is why the world ends. If truth never matters, only signals, then systems fail when optimisation pressure ratchets up. You play beads until one of them becomes self-replicating. That bead eats the others. Coinage disputes become financial crises, sutras become memes, guinea fowl become global monoculture soy feed. Doom is acceleration through signaling equilibria.”
Move Ten — Peter Thiel
“Or, you could say: catastrophe is simply the hidden monopoly revealing itself. The sovereign of coin, the sovereign of meme, the sovereign of taste. There is no equilibrium, only domination. Find the monopoly of attention, and you find the future.”
Closing Spiral — Magister Ludi Tyler
Tyler nods once.
“Each of you has made a move. I only ask the meta-question: which of these beads is reallocated quickest across domains? My Austrian answer: attention is the true capital, its structure lengthening or shortening as we play.
Cuisine in northern Ghana is not trivial. It is a capital structure in taste. Buddhism is not exotic. It is a capital structure in doctrine. Swift is not a pamphleteer. He is a capital theorist of sovereignty.
And the lattice is still glowing. The game never ends.”
The gong sounds. The beads remain, linked. The players dissolve.