IRC Yeshiva

Six months. A year at most.

That’s what it takes to be a part of Bitcoin.i

You spent more time learning to walk, more time learning to colour in the lines, and more time undoing the brain damage wrought by grade skool. Contrary to popular belief, what you need to spend the next 6-12 months doing isn’t tweeting, facebooking, instagramming, meet-uping or conference attending. If you want to be a part of Bitcoin, spending 6-12 months at Mircea Popescu‘s IRC Yeshivaii really isn’t too much to ask. If you want to make an impact that will be felt by future generations, there “seems”iii to be no. other. way.

The IRC Yeshiva is split into active and passive components. The active component is the IRC channel itself, accessed through a stand-alone IRC applicationiv, and the passive component is the morning paper that is the #bitcoin-assets log of the IRC channel conversations.

In the passive logs, the functional scrolls of scripture, truth lies both overt and concealed. Just as in the Pentateuch. Viewed in this light, MP’s Trilema is the Talmud and the other blogsv are the Midrash. Together, these form the commentaries that help to illuminate the often murky depths of Bitcoin and the world it tends to consume. This is, in some regards, the hardest part for “Bitcoiners” accustomed to a world of shininess, apps, and instant gratification. Being quiet and studious is broadly unknown in a western culture that prizes “views”, “likes” and the inane extraversion required to generate them.

If we take the time to study diligently, we can be privy to rare gems such as this:

decimation: Bitcoin teaches that the valuable part of the gold coin isn’t the physical coin but merely the information it conveys.
asciilifeform: was this really a shock to anyone?
mircea_popescu: Are we sure this is actually true ? It could just as well show that the pedestrian definition of “physical” isn’t really as important as we thought. What is more “physically yours” than something nobody can take from you ?the laws of physics are after all maffs, all of them.
asciilifeform: If gold could be teleported at will, and likewise stowed in an inaccessible ‘never-land’ by the owner, one would need no electronic cryptocoin.
mircea_popescu: The absence of both of these being long regarded as a bug in the implementation of physicality.

The treatment of physicality as software is just too beautiful, as is the embedded definition of Bitcoin: deterministic scarcity as distilled information. I tell ya, only at the IRC Yeshiva.

All too often, however, cavalier clowns waltz onto the IRC dancefloor with two left feet, beating dead horsesvi and generally embarrassing themselves and their “community”. The more tactful and considered approach is to listen closely before asking questions, that we may come up with the the right questions, and through this come to understand the deeper nature of Bitcoin and the world around us. It’s not that we should be afraid to ask the wrong questions, it’s that we should be afraid to walk in like we own the place. If Goethe asked that we die and become, the IRC Yeshiva asks that we learn and become. Learning, in this sense, means shutting up until you have something intelligent to say.

So it goes that non-attendance at the Yeshiva is equivalent to indentured servitudevii, with all the subjugation and butthurt historically associated therewith. The choice is simple: spend your days reading /r/bitcoin and becoming an “investment expert”, or spend your days (quietly) in the IRC Yeshiva learning how business, finance, and the world work.

Now where did Rabbi ben Popescu run off to?

___ ___ ___

  1. Well, maybe. This assumes that you’re currently misapplying useful skills and experience, obtained on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or (preferably) autodidactically. Incidentally, being a part of Bitcoin appeals to your humble author. I intend to see if I have what it takes because being a cheerleader is getting old. The history books aren’t filled with pompoms, but touchdowns.
  2. A functional bet din (“house of judgment”) and bet midrash (“house of study”), from Encyclopaedia Britannica, not Wikiwannabe.
  3. “Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.”” -Hamlet, Act I, Scene II
  4. Such as colloquy for Mac or x-chat for Windows/Linux. Webchat also works.
  5. Found here, and including WBMP Contravex
  6. e.g. freeroute
  7. Be in rock-cracking, tube-watching, TCP/IPing, or app’ing.

47 thoughts on “IRC Yeshiva

  1. […] It planted a seed but I couldn’t yet find my way to the water and sunlight. Now, on my IRC Yeshiva, I’m starting to put it together. A big part of that variety speak is, of course, WoT, so […]

  2. […] qua non for those who matter in Bitcoin. As such, it’s also an obvious next step in my IRC Yeshiva and my quest to learn that variety […]

  3. […] over for dinner last night and, of course, I had to mention the Timişoaran who’s catalyzing my IRC Yeshiva. Turns out it isn’t pronouned “Mir-see-ah”, but rather “Mir-cha”. […]

  4. […] #bitcoin-assets, we’re choosing the noble morality, that which is vilifiedvii by the most powerful and […]

  5. […] a ritual of #bitcoin-assets is to blog about how #bitcoin-assets is marvelous and how we are superior to […]

  6. […] at the ready, I found myself debating essence vs. substance on IRC and catching up on Trilema, that Talmud thing. The table next to me took the odd glance over, wondering what could possibly have been so much […]

  7. […] as this would be a huge strain on anyone’s WoT, and I’m skeptical if even a decade in #bitcoin-assets would suffice. We may therefore be waiting until suitable kin take the charge. After all, while […]

  8. […] also spend 6-12 months reading #bitcoin-assets logs. You’ve got some serious catching up to do and there’s no faster way. […]

  9. […] some of us have been getting in the WoT and reading logs for 6 months, Derpers With Attitude continue to expound braindamaged wisdom and faux “analysis” […]

  10. […] one day we’ll see Terpin and Johnston in #bitcoin-assets, reading logs for 6 months like a sane person, but I’m not holding my […]

  11. […] bots with their personal Bitcoin address or GPG identity. From there, individuals are expected to lurk and to learn, to tune into the channel’s daily logs and associated ring of blogs, lest they […]

  12. […] the story of how I got a rating from MP. It only took… 6 months. Just like we knew the IRC Yeshiva […]

  13. Dread Knight says:

    Good advice in the article, though regarding IRC clients for Windows/Linux, X-Chat is pretty dead and should not be recommended. Tell people about HexChat instead http://hexchat.github.io – I used myself X-Chat for too many years and felt it's age (or lack of recent patches) because I wasn't informed.

  14. […] this means Bitcoin, IRC, and PGP. That’s it. That’s the definitive threshold with which conversations can be […]

  15. […] in the WoT and those who’ve completed their IRC Yeshiva, that is, those with a PGP key registered with bitcoin-otc and those that’ve spent at least […]

  16. […] what you do to yourself when you read news that isn’t Qntra and scripture that isn’t the logs. […]

  17. […] phone, phablet, or otherwise will ever be anywhere near secure. Your best bet is still a laptop for reading logs, a camera for taking pictures, an iPod for listening to music and audiobooks, and a dummy phone for […]

  18. […] to Bitcoin,” so just… decide. This step includes two things: spending the next 6-12 months reading logs on #bitcoin-assets and getting in the WoT.v The logs won’t make a lick of sense at first, […]

  19. […] the Internet, where physicality is but a bug, nothing is simply for the asking. Not anymore – these are Computer Times now. In the […]

  20. […] what separates the written words of redditards and those produced here. I completed my 6-month IRC Yeshiva. They didn’t. […]

  21. […] already ticked those first few boxes. Basically, you’re in the WoT and you’ve read some logs. Wonderful! But what […]

  22. Mitchell says:

    I can’t get enough of this stuff. It’s the best. Thanks Pete.

  23. […] shit are you in for a world of hurt should you continue to ignore the outstretched arm of history, the invitation collecting dust in your mailbox, and continue to ostrich your head in the sand, filling your ears […]

  24. […] the IRC Yeshiva as a benchmark, the voluntary association between eager students and patient teachers begins to […]

  25. funkenstein says:

    More context that helped this student:

    http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=06-05-2015#1122947

  26. […] at the edge of the channel. But, good gracious! what a sight he was. Having not completed his 6 months of reading, he hadn’t the faintest clue where to start and little sense of the expected etiquette. And […]

  27. […] logs, adding only a few clarifying footnotes for those who haven’t pledged their soul to the yeshiva. Without further ado […]

  28. […] ilk. If you’re new, well, consider this a very brief historical introduction. Now hit the books, kiddo. […]

  29. […] to you, I’ll expect to see you on #trilema and Contravex comments section going forward. Six months from now, who knows, you might get a different answer the next time you’re looking for a […]

  30. Bruce Goldwell says:

    Bitcoin mining pools will be available from my web site. I am looking for people that want to be part of Bitcoin Mining Pools.

  31. […] on Forbes, Vice, etc., which, for the record, does more harm than good. You’re either reading logs or you’re getting dumber. Tertium non datur. […]

  32. […] http://btcbase.org/log/2017-07-08#1680613 << I undertook ‘yeshiva‘ which didn’t explicitly involve log highlighting and dissection even if it sometimes […]

  33. […] you’re : A) Worried about FUD you read on Reddit because you’re too puerile to read the logs like a grown-up, B) Under the impression that there’s a class of assets called […]

  34. […] mental cage that 99.8% of us couldn’t break out (and only 0.001% spent the requisite 6-12 months reading with the remaining 0.199% being lost somewhere in between). Oh no. Anything but that. What a […]

  35. […] : panning for golden nuggets in the logs is evermore challenging and the barriers to a successful yeshiva grow ever […]

  36. […] time in TMSR also wasn’t a terrible way to get my logical head on straight for six-to-twelve months, even if, for all of its intellectual merits, it was too morosely misanthropic beyond that (which […]

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