Building the Really Real

Sovereign Engineering exists because of one guy: John Vervaeke. Few people know about him, even fewer people can pronounce his name properly, and even though I've been ranting and raving about him and his work for the last 5 years or so, I doubt that more than a handful of people have actually listened to his lectures and ingested his vast body of work. (If this is you, please stop reading this paragraph and start watching "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis," which is probably the best entry point into the world of John Vervaeke.)

Without John Vervaeke, Sovereign Engineering would be a very different program. It probably wouldn't be centered around dialogue. Dialogue in the Dia-Logos sense; Bohmian dialogue, as described and pioneered by David Bohm.

There is a reason why David Bohm's book is featured in our library, along with "The Sovereign Individual," "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," and "Free Software, Free Society." These books are important, as is proper dialogue.

The technological world is changing, and it is changing fast. Established patterns and concepts are breaking down, which means that communication and meaning-making are breaking down as a consequence. The world is getting more confusing by the day. The hyper-fragmented world that the internet brought about (or, more accurately: that the polarization and outrage-machinery that is part of the current social media landscape brought about) makes it almost impossible to communicate between echo-chambers.

And now that LLMs are ubiquitous and sloppifying large parts of the internet, most people aren't even sure if there is a real flesh-and-blood human on the other side. And who can blame them? More often than not, there isn't.

Here is another thing that John Vervaeke taught me: people crave realness. Most people, almost all people, in fact, will prefer an uncomfortable truth over a comforting lie. He often cites the one experiment that he does with his students, asking everyone whether they are in a long-term romantic relationship, a relationship that means a lot to them and makes them happy. Hands go up. He goes on to ask whether those who have their hands up would like to know whether their partner cheats on them, even if it would mean the destruction of the relationship. 95% will keep their hand up. Why? Because they don't want to live a lie. They want the relationship to be real. Really real.

Vervaeke will often point out that realness is comparative, just like tallness is. "Everything is a PsyOp" is like saying that everything is tall. It's nonsensical.

He also talks about levels of realness, and while I don't want to get into the examples he often talks about, I want to borrow this concept and talk about levels of realness in cyberspace, if you will.

Bitcoin is real to me, more real than most things. I think that most bitcoiners, i.e. those who have been around the orange coin for some time and understand how the system bootstraps itself into being, would agree. Bitcoin is not a simulation, nor is it made up out of thin air. It is rooted in and related to physical reality, even though the fruits of the network are ethereal, meaning that they can neither be touched nor held. Nevertheless, it is more real than the paper bills that most people call "money," or the credit cards that we use to pay for our groceries.

Nostr is similar, in the sense that your nostr identity is more real than your handle on X, or Instagram, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube, or TikTok, or whatever the social media platform of your choice. Your handle can be taken away from you, at any time, for any reason. Just like your bank account can be frozen at any time, for any reason.

Why build your digital life on quicksand, when you have the option to build it on a rock? Why rely on middlemen to tell you what is real, what is acceptable, who you can talk to and connect to? Why entrust your digital existence to a central authority? Why view the world through a lens that isn't yours?

Proof-of-work is what brings reality to cyberspace, and web-of-trust does the rest on the social side. Combine the two and add some digital signatures on top, and you have something that's more real, more trustworthy, more worthy of your time and attention than the military-grade propaganda that's presented to you in the advertisement-industrial complex.

Bitcoin and Nostr aren't the only things we care about, of course. The internet is a permissioned system in itself, from ICANN and DNS to undersea cables and now SpaceX. We quickly realized that we had to build an alternative network stack from the ground up, as grandiose as that sounds.

It started with mesh-networked routers that sell internet access for sats, and culminated in a new way to build self-organizing ad-hoc networks. Networks that work independently of the underlying transport layer, whether it be ethernet cables, Bluetooth, LoRa, Tor, direct WiFi, or even sound waves. Without relying on IP addresses, DNS authorities, or any other entity that might be able to rug-pull you. Device to device, self-organizing, peer-to-peer. As it should be.

While FIPS is still in its early days, it is amazing to see that something that was a crazy idea just a couple months ago is now live, with nodes and enthusiasts all around the globe. And the same goes for Zapstore, and Blossom, and Nsite, and Napplets, and many other things that were born out of dialogue with the right people at the right time.

So, what's our secret? Dialogue. That's the secret. The whole program is engineered to maximize dialogue, to get people out of their shell, to get everyone not only into the same room, but into the same mode, on the same journey. We do Demo Days because it's easier to talk about an idea if it is material, if it exists in the world, if there's a prototype that you can play around with, even hold in your hand. We have Beefsteak-style barbecues because it is a wonderful format to have free-flowing conversations about what we worked on this week. No sitting in a restaurant, but standing in small, fluid groups that automatically and organically assemble and disassemble. We go on walks for the same reason: it's incredibly easy to talk to people on a walk, to have a flowing conversation, to have a proper dialogue in the Dia-Logos sense. To talk about something without an agenda, without a goal in mind, letting the conversation - the Logos - take you where it may. We provide some structure at the beginning of the week to properly orient the group, giving plenty of opportunities to share knowledge and have high-bandwidth interactions. Talks, workshops, and of course lots of spontaneous breakout sessions that might happen at the venue, or at a coffee shop, or a restaurant, or a flat, or even a boat. (Boats aren't the best vessels for Dia-Logos, however. Not everyone is seaworthy.)

As I am typing these lines, the eighth cohort, SEC-08, is in full swing. We are blessed to have exceptional people participate once again: returning alumni like hzrd149, Sandwich, gzuuus, Shadrach, gsovereignty, Johnathan, Yo, Arjen, Paul, and many more. And new participants, like Whisperhash and Julien, who are still trying to figure out what they've got themselves into.

My hope is that Sovereign Engineering will spread outwards, inspiring others to do a similar thing. A real thing, an in-person thing. Something with Dia-Logos at the center. Something that has the capacity to birth something new, or rejuvenate something old. Something special.

If you're interested in entering into dialogue with us, to help spread the word, learn more, or maybe even build your own dialogue-based engineering program, don't hesitate to reach out to us. Let's talk. Let's make it real.

There's never been a better time to start building. Cypherpunk future is now.

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This article first appeared on dergigi.com.