The Nobel Prize behind Bitcoin (I): Prigogine and the theory of dissipative structures

Source: Liu Jiaolian

The recent awarding of the new Nobel Prize has caused some heated discussions and even criticisms. In particular, the awards for physics and chemistry were both given to AI, which made people say that they couldn't understand it. Some people say that Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, should be awarded a Nobel Prize. Jiaolian believes that even if the Nobel Prize Committee gave him this award, Satoshi Nakamoto would not be interested in receiving the award.

"Bitcoin is the realization of David's B-money proposal in the cypherpunks in 1998 and Nick Szabo's 'Bitgold' proposal."-Satoshi Nakamoto, July 20, 2010. The History of Bitcoin Chapter 8, Episode 30.

Obviously, from the above statement by Satoshi Nakamoto, it can be clearly seen that his attitude towards the new invention of Bitcoin is extremely humble. He did not even call it his own "invention", but only a "technical realization" of the theory invented by his predecessors.

The more I study Satoshi Nakamoto, the more incredible it seems to me. What kind of person with lofty aspirations can do all of the following at the same time: keep his name secret, not seek fame; work voluntarily, not ask for a penny of funding from others; participate in mining fairly, but lock up all BTC holdings that could make him the world's richest man, not sell any, and give up all the wealth; complete the invention and creation with his own efforts, but very humbly attribute it to David and Nick Szabo and other cypherpunk pioneers, without seeking any credit; before leaving, he asked his successor Gavin Anderson not to emphasize the image of Satoshi Nakamoto, but to attribute the achievements of Bitcoin to the vast number of community developers who participated and contributed, not to seek any worship or nostalgia, and would rather disappear in the dust of history and be hidden among the masses;...

Our understanding of Bitcoin is still too superficial to judge why it should be awarded. However, in the study of BTC, Jiaolian has increasingly realized that some of its underlying principles are very consistent with the theories of some Nobel Prize-winning results. Some of them have been written into the book The History of Bitcoin by Jiaolian. Here, Jiaolian has opened a series to talk about the Nobel Prize behind Bitcoin. Jiaolian hopes to use this series to illustrate a problem, that is, Bitcoin may not be a theoretical achievement worthy of a single Nobel Prize, but as Satoshi Nakamoto said, it is a practical product protected by several Nobel Prize-level theoretical achievements.

In other words, Bitcoin is the jewel in the crown of the Nobel Prize. In the future, more Nobel Prize-level achievements may be born through the study of Bitcoin.

As the first article in the series, Jiaolian will talk about Prigogine, the winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and his dissipative structure theory.

In the sixth chapter, chapter 22, "Dissipative Structure" of the History of Bitcoin of the Teaching Chain, a brief introduction was made to the relationship between Prigogine's Nobel Prize achievement and BTC:

The paragraph in the book has clearly stated that if the Bitcoin system is understood as a dissipative structure, then we know for sure that Proof of Work (PoW) is the source of the spontaneous order of the system.

The product of spontaneous order is the orderliness of transactions recorded in the Bitcoin block ledger. This orderliness means a single history of order, that is, a clock, a globally consistent time.

The starting point of the invention of Bitcoin is this clock. Therefore, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in the first sentence of Section 3 "Timestamp Server" of the Bitcoin white paper: "The solution we proposed starts with a timestamp server."

It is no exaggeration to say that the invention of Bitcoin is essentially the invention of a clock. This clock has a globally consistent time, a new time.

Why does everything start with redefining time? Because in order to achieve the orderliness of global transaction data, Bitcoin cannot rely on any clock and time in the outside world for sequencing. The clock of each computer may deviate, which will cause disputes about the order of time. What's more, people who deliberately do evil can easily forge and lie about the time when they sent the transaction (external world time).

The so-called Byzantine Generals Problem and the FLP Impossibility Theorem in the distributed system theory that have plagued the computer science community for decades are essentially just problems and inferences caused by the inability to define a globally consistent internal time.

Therefore, Satoshi Nakamoto actually solved a meta-problem that is more basic and fundamental than the Byzantine Generals Problem. He did not even mention these problems in the Bitcoin white paper, nor did he cite any literature in this regard. But he was not unaware of the problem, because he clearly explained in his interaction with netizens that proof of work is the solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem. For details, you can read Chapter 7 "Byzantine Generals" of The History of Bitcoin, which will not be repeated here.

The problem of Mount Tai is as light as a feather in front of Satoshi Nakamoto and is not worth mentioning.

In short, proof of work determines time, time determines order, and order determines value.

The confusing thing is that if you remove proof of work and rely on external world time, you can also sequence and then pretend to determine the value. However, this value is completely different from the value determined by proof of work.

This requires a little thermodynamics.

As we all know, the universe we live in has a definite evolutionary direction at the thermodynamic level, which is the increasing degree of chaos. For example, food will spoil if left for a long time, cars will break down if driven for a long time, rooms will become more and more messy if not cleaned, things will become more and more disorganized if not organized, and so on. The degree of chaos is called "entropy" in thermodynamics.

The direction of the evolution of the universe is the increase of entropy, and the end point is heat death, that is, the destruction of all ordered structures and falling into a state of complete chaos.

There is an exception, that is "life".

Life is an abnormality in the overall entropy increase of the universe. Life creates entropy reduction in the local space-time of the universe and forms an ordered structure, which is called a self-organizing phenomenon.

Does the entropy reduction of life phenomena violate the law of the overall entropy increase of the universe? It does not violate it. Because life can only exist in local space and local time, and for every entropy reduction it creates, it must create two points of entropy increase in its external universe. One point of entropy reduction, two points of entropy increase, overall it is still entropy increase, or destruction.

In order to maintain its own survival, life is destined to demand more destruction from the universe as the price. In essence, every person, as long as he is alive, is causing greater and more severe damage to the universe.

The universe injects "negative entropy" into life at the cost of bearing greater entropy increase, allowing life to obtain entropy reduction within itself, obtain self-organized order, and obtain the continuation of survival.

This is what physicist Schrödinger said: "Life feeds on negative entropy."

Later, scientists discovered that there are some non-living things in the universe that can also continuously absorb "negative entropy" from the surrounding environment, at the cost of causing damage to the external environment, to obtain self-organized order within themselves. Such systems include cities, countries, companies, and so on.

For example, a company constantly recruits young college graduates to join as "fresh blood", and at the same time constantly eliminates personnel and sends older employees to society to maintain its vitality and survival. This behavior is actually very similar to people eating and excreting every day - although, thinking this way, it feels very sad for everyone who is eaten and abandoned, but this is the instinct and cruel truth of the company's Leviathan to maintain its own vitality.

The above systems, including life, that can maintain their internal self-organization and order by absorbing negative entropy - especially open systems - are named "dissipative structures" by Prigogine.

The research results that Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for are precisely his research on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and complex systems. The "dissipative structure" theory he proposed helps us understand how systems spontaneously form ordered structures under conditions far from equilibrium. This helps us understand and describe the self-organization phenomenon in open systems, which is of great significance for understanding many natural and social phenomena.

Obviously, the Bitcoin system is also a perfect "dissipative structure". It is a decentralized, open system. Miners consume huge amounts of electricity, release huge amounts of heat to the external environment, emit a large amount of entropy, look for proof of work, absorb "negative entropy" into the system, create internal self-organization order, emerge time and order, and ultimately form value.

If the system loses decentralization and openness, it is equivalent to sewing a person's mouth shut with thread. Then abandoning proof of work is equivalent to removing a person's stomach and intestines, and the system will not be able to absorb the food (negative entropy) that is eaten.

Whether it is losing food or losing the ability to digest and absorb, people can no longer continue to absorb negative entropy and fight against entropy increase, and they will inevitably rot internally, heading towards destruction and death.

BTC abandoning proof of work is equivalent to a person removing his own digestive organs. The end result is starvation.

The stupidest idea is to abandon proof of work.

After Ethereum abandoned PoW (proof of work) and turned to PoS (proof of staking), it was equivalent to performing surgery to remove the stomach and intestines, and from then on began to consume the fat and nutrients stored in the body to survive. So they successfully embarked on the road of "weight loss", and the effect was very significant (LoL)! At present, it seems that the most urgent task is to rebuild the digestive system before starving to death, not necessarily PoW, but other forms of digestive system.

Proof of work may be the most decentralized digestive system that humans can find so far. All other solutions that can digest and absorb "negative entropy", Jiaolian speculates, must be more centralized than PoW.

This means that any other solution that abandons proof of work must have a lower degree of decentralization, and thus, its security value is lower, which is destined to be impossible to compete with BTC in the dimension of value storage.

Humans cannot break through this limit, because humans have not yet been able to break through Prigogine's dissipative structure theory. Humans cannot break through the limitations of thermodynamics, just as humans cannot currently create a perpetual motion machine.

The difficulty of trying to abandon the calculation and mining energy consumption of proof of work and replace and challenge BTC should be roughly equivalent to inventing a perpetual motion machine. This is the conclusion that Jiaolian has interpreted from Prigogine's Nobel Prize results.