Softwar by Jason Lowery: Power vs Sacrifice, Part 5/5

The last summary you need about the 400-page thesis the U.S. Department of Defense didn’t want you to read

40 min readMay 14, 2025

Throughout this final part of the series on Jason Lowery’s thesis, I step out of summary mode and into reflection. While I feel confident that I’ve grasped and laid out the overarching conceptual logic and systemic insight of Softwar as it pertains to its application in cyberspace, I’m not a computer scientist nor a software engineer — and I won’t pretend I can technically validate the credibility of Lowery’s detailed implications. I’ll leave that task to those more qualified.

What I am interested in, however, is where this framework points when stretched beyond the technical and into the philosophical, epistemic, and symbolic. The sections that follow are my own thoughts: what I think Lowery gets right and where I believe the framing falls short.

Looking for Part 1? You’ll find it here.

I’ve divided the final part of this 5-part article series into four key areas:

The Power Ethos
The Sacrificial Ethos
Converting watts into bits (an elaboration)
Abstract vs Physical Reality and Truth value

1. The Power Ethos

At the core of Softwar lies Lowery’s Power Projection Theory, which he uses as the foundation for the entire thesis. The basic claim is this: from single-celled organisms to complex human societies, the ability to survive and prosper depends on an organism’s capacity to project power — defend itself, secure resources, and deter or overcome attacks.

He argues that the very act of being is a form of power projection — that life itself, in its most basic definition, is the physical act of capturing resources in order to hold entropy at bay. To live, then, is to resist decay. And to resist decay is to project force against the natural flow of disorder — even if it comes down to something as “passive” as a membrane (or human skin).

Reading between the lines, what Lowery is really saying is not only that an organism’s ability — or inability — to impose its will on others determines its fate, but also that if someone has the ability to impose their will on someone else, they carry a kind of moral obligation to do so — because doing so, in his view, contributes to the system’s long-term resilience.

From this view, the right to rule is earned through the capacity to assert dominance, which means that all hierarchies are fundamentally power-based.

The power ethos: A society organised around power sees legitimacy and security as stemming from the ability to impose will. The right to rule or succeed is earned through superior capacity to assert dominance.

When extended to human systems, institutions are not guardians of “some other” value — they are structures for distributing force. Social order is not a matter of mutual agreement — it’s fundamentally an arrangement of coercion, temporarily stabilised by the threat of retaliation or stalemates. Within this worldview, “morality” is not a shared ethic but a survival strategy: if it exists at all, it is the imperative to dominate in order to avoid being dominated.

1.1 Pecking Order Heuristics

Lowery’s belief — that power projection is the stable basis for order — is reinforced by how he frames the pecking order heuristics that govern dominance hierarchies (human and non-human).

Earlier in this series, I mentioned I’d return to the idea of pecking order heuristics — and specifically to a critique of how Lowery frames them. In his thesis, he distinguishes between two core heuristics to illustrate why the first one ultimately leads to failure, while the second endures:

First Come, First Served (FCFS): Resource distribution is based on temporal position — those who arrive first get priority. This, I interpret, is supposed to represent a pecking order organising by “some other” quality than the ability to impose will.
Might is Right (MIR): Resource distribution is granted based on capacity to impose will — those who can project physical power are entitled to rule and should.

Image from Jason Lowery, Softwar (2023).

While I understand that Lowery is using simplified models to clarify broader dynamics, I believe there’s a tension he doesn’t fully acknowledge. He critiques FCFS as a kind of “moral illusion” that masks underlying power asymmetries. But in doing so, he elevates MIR into a moral framework of its own.

What ultimately matters — by Lowery’s own logic — is the resulting BCRA, which means that the framing of a heuristic is only as valid as its effect on BCRA — not its alignment with any story about dominance as the only organising principle.

It’s not entirely clear to me that Lowery gives enough credit to the possibility that a FCFS system (or any other more nuanced heuristic), while appearing to neglect CA in his view, might increase it through qualities that are not as immediately clear.

Ultimately, the mistake I think he makes is that he occasionally appears to conflate organising around power with becoming the most powerful — that is, achieving the lowest BCRA. But these are not necessarily the same thing.

1.2 Power vs Authority

To understand what I’m getting at here, we need to distinguish something that many people conflate: power vs. authority.

If power is the ability or capacity of an individual or group to impose their will on someone else through coercion, then authority refers to the legitimate right to exercise power.

Legitimate by whose standards, you may ask. And therein lies the problem: because the best way to undermine that there is such a thing as legitimate authority is to insist that there is no authority but power. Because the moment you do that, authority can no longer arise from anything but coercion — which means any other basis, such as merit or competence are automatically dismissed.

For the same reason we know objective physical reality can’t be faked — neither can the consequences of ignoring something like competence. The world is full of real problems that are better solved by some than others, regardless of how anyone asserts themselves.

Imagine you needed surgery — say, an appendectomy. Would there be any meaningful difference between having it done by someone who could simply impose their will to do it on you, versus someone who was the most competent to perform the procedure?

The answer, of course, is obvious. Authority, as in the legitimate right to exercise power, grounded in objective physical reality — like medical competence — produces materially better outcomes than power alone. You don’t want the most forceful surgeon. You want the most qualified one. And in order to identify who that is, it’s not enough to organise around power — you have to be intelligent enough to willingly elevate other principles in the value hierarchy.

Another example from the animal kingdom comes from the pioneering work of primatologist Frans de Waal, particularly in his book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. Through his long-term observations of chimpanzee social dynamics, de Waal showed that while some individuals rose to the top of the hierarchy through brute force, their dominance was often short-lived. These aggressive alphas were frequently deposed — sometimes violently — by coalitions of other group members. In contrast, it was often the smaller, more socially intelligent chimpanzees who achieved lasting status. By forming alliances, these individuals were able to build and sustain influence without relying solely on raw power — as in one’s ability to impose will through coercion.

We can say that these smaller chimps, through collaboration, were able to summon their collective CA and remove the dominant tyrant— which is true, but that alone misses the deeper point. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not enough to simply assume power; it has to render positive verifiable results in shared objective physical reality (BA and CA) to be considered successful. Which means: if it’s not accompanied by for example competence — actual ability to improve the survival equation to one’s advantage — then it’s doomed to lead to rising BCRA. And that’s why power alone isn’t enough to lead anything worth following, even if it leads to being able to call the shots. Because you also need to call the right shots.

To be fair to Lowery, I don’t think he would necessarily disagree with me on this point. That said, some of his takes on pecking order heuristics — and his ideas on how individuals or groups can practically achieve lower BCRA — come across as overly binary.

My issue here, which bears repeating, isn’t with his framing of physical power projection itself; rather, my point is that it’s not clear to me that adopting a pecking order heuristic which reduces every hierarchy to purely power-based actually leads to being the best at physical power projection.

There are plenty of reasons and examples— both in nature and in human systems — that structures built on the pursuit of dominance are not the ones that end up most resilient. Because, again, the real question isn’t whether a system explicitly organises around power — it’s what kind of structure actually results in the best resilience (lowest BCRA).

1.2 The danger of power for power’s sake

The most apparent flaw in adopting a worldview that every hierarchy is predicated on power is that it treats the capacity to impose will as both the means and the end. In other words, power is pursued for its own sake, rather than emerging as a consequence of alignment with something deeper — such as truth (objective physical reality).

Another way to put it is this: organising around power places more value on one’s ability to assert they are right than on actually being right.

This framing is insufficient for a few key reasons.

1.2.1 Trades dynamism for certainty
First, it’s self-referential and fragile. Power begets more power, and more power justifies greater control by those in power to impose their will on perceived adversaries — whether that’s their own citizens or some other group. For those who subscribe to the belief that the highest aim is the pursuit of power for its own sake, asserting dominance and upholding illusions — if that’s what is required to hold on to power— takes priority over submitting oneself to truth.

The result is that it suppresses the very dynamism it needs in order to evolve. And in doing so, it undermines the feedback loops required to respond to new threats, new conditions, and new forms of complexity. The end result is an increased BCRA.

Lowery has spent 400 pages laying out why subordinating objective physical reality is one of the fundamental fallacies of human organisation. So he likely needs no convincing on that point. What I’d argue, however, is that power for power’s sake fails for the same dogmatic reason as any belief system that elevates something other than truth to the top of the value hierarchy. In fact, the belief that every hierarchy is predicated on power may be one of the most recurring dogmas in history — Marxism, for instance, is built on that axiom.

1.2.2 Zero sum game
Secondly, because the “power ethos” views every hierarchy as fundamentally power-based — and every dynamic as a struggle between oppressor and oppressed — it is necessarily zero sum in nature. While Lowery’s frames the emergence of cooperation as a revolutionary power projection technique that yields a step-function increase in CA (I don’t disagree), it’s ultimately a transactional framing that doesn’t sufficiently accommodate the possibility of positive sum interactions.

One way to address this is by mapping the idea of the subjective value proposition onto Primordial Economics. As it stands, Lowery presents RA, BA and CA as relatively objective or fixed across individuals. But that’s not how value works in practice. Value is inherently subjective, context-dependent, and shaped by individual preferences and goals. What gives one entity a competitive edge in one setting might be irrelevant — or even counterproductive — in another.

Consider a simple example: a person buys an apple at a market. The buyer values the apple more than the money, and the seller values the money more than the apple. The same transaction carries different subjective BA and CA values for each party. The outcome is mutually beneficial — a positive-sum exchange in which both parties improve their position relative to their own goals.

Similarly, the BA for a thirsty antelope to approach an exposed water source is much higher than for one that is already quenched. Using this lens, we can see that Lowery’s framework, with only minor adjustments, can better allow for positive sum interaction to take place.

1.2.3 Ignores other qualities
Third, by predicating every hierarchy on power, other qualities — ones that are demonstrably significant in changing states in shared objective physical reality — are either dismissed entirely or pushed down the value hierarchy. (More about what these qualities are).

1.4 The Luciferian temptation

Before turning to what I believe is a more accurate way to think about how life organises itself — especially in terms of pecking order heuristics — I want to take a brief detour into the theological.

Someone subscribing to Softwar’s thesis might be inclined to point out that referencing myth in this way is a form of subscribing to a belief system — which it is. But it’s also a belief system that has been cross-examined for thousands of years, which by Lowery’s own standard ought to give it significant credibility.

We can observe that certain myths and scriptures have survived — while others have not — because humans lived as if they were true and found some of them extremely useful — evident by the fact that someone survived long enough to tell the story. While this doesn’t necessarily mean they are literally true — as having actually played out in objective physical reality — their symbolic meaning clearly carries a form of truth of that caliber. (We’ll explore this more later.)

Interestingly, the idea that power should be pursued for its own sake is a recurring phenomenon in scripture. It appears most clearly in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, where Satan offers him all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for allegiance.

When Satan offers Jesus power over the world, he’s offering something he cannot actually deliver. He’s lying. What he’s really offering is abstract power in exchange for physical power — he’s asking Jesus to subscribe to the belief system that he can shape the world precisely to his will. But as anyone familiar with Lowery’s thesis should recognise by now, that’s an illusion. Real physical power — the kind grounded in thermodynamics and bounded by the laws of nature — cannot be granted by any individual, not even the Devil. It’s exogenous to belief, including his.

You can’t cheat physics. You can’t bend objective physical reality to your imagination. The only realm that can be shaped by sheer will is imaginary reality. And that’s what Satan is truly offering: not dominion over the Earth, but the reigns of Hell — a kingdom built on illusion, untethered from consequence, destined to collapse.

While Jesus could have theoretically accepted the trade, the result would not have been power over the world, but power over a dominion built on precisely the same kind of illusion that late-stage abstract reality constitutes. It would have been the same trade Hitler made, and the outcome is always the same: the illusion eventually falls, and the system collapses under the weight of its own abstractions and falsehoods.

Jesus doesn’t make the trade because he understands exactly what Lowery is putting into words: the crucial distinction between abstract reality and objective physical reality. He refuses to accept power that isn’t grounded in physical reality — because he understands that any dominion built on illusion, no matter how grand it appears, is destined to collapse.

But it’s not just that the offer lacks grounding — it’s that Jesus understands the difference between power and authority, and more importantly, that real power can’t actually be granted at all. Not in any lasting or meaningful sense. Real power must be earned — through demonstrated capacity to affect the physical world, to act in ways that others can witness and verify. Anything less is performance.

1.5 Stopping Entropy

Before we go on, I think it’s vital for us to first stop for a moment and ponder about something Lowery offers insight into early in the thesis we he says:

“What specifically is the function of life? This is impossible to know. Perhaps it is simply to countervail the entropy of the Universe.” (Softwar, p. 91)

This line, while brief, reveals a deeper layer of his thinking — and it deserves attention. From the laws of thermodynamics, we know that entropy is always increasing in the universe. In other words, left to itself, everything tends toward disorder. Systems decay. Structures collapse. Heat disperses. What we call “life” is, at its core, the act of pushing back against this drift — of capturing energy and maintaining internal order in a world that naturally moves toward chaos (which lays the foundation for Lowery’s theory).

Another intuitive way to grasp why the natural state of things is increasing entropy — something my chemistry teacher used to say — is this: You never come home to find your apartment has cleaned itself. Things don’t spontaneously move from disorder to order. Without effort, organisation unravels. Order requires energy. Maintenance requires work.

As alluded to in Part 1, if the Universe naturally trends toward ever-increasing entropy — toward greater chaos and dispersion — then life is the temporary defiance of that trend. It is the force that gathers, encloses, and organises through creativity, to hold entropy at bay for the brief miracle of a lifetime. Humans, as well as animals, is in this sense entropy-counting agents.

But with that understanding, what does it actually take to counter entropy (a term we can substitute as a conceptual stand-in for lowering BCRA)? What does it take to create order — to build? Well, it requires effort directed at an act in the present, but done for the sake of an outcome in the future. Countervailing entropy — lowering BCRA — , in other words, is a sacrificial act.

2. The Sacrificial Ethos

In his thesis, Lowery uses the example of honeybees to illustrate effective power projection. When an intruder threatens to steal the colony’s nutrient-rich honey, a worker bee responds by stinging the attacker — an act that results in its own death. Lowery interprets this as a form of physical power projection: a costly deterrent that inflicts pain on the aggressor, raises the Cost of Attack (CA), lowers the hive’s BCRA.

“Honeybees quite literally represent nature’s chosen solution to the exact same honeypot security problem that agrarian sapiens face with their irrigated land, or whatever other valuable resource they want to protect (e.g. bits of information transferred across cyberspace). The fittest solution to a honeypot security problem is, without a doubt, to maximize everyone’s ability to sting the attacker — to impose as much severe physical cost as possible despite the risk of personal injury.” (Softwar, p. 186)

I think this is indeed an excellent example of physical power projection in action — but I also think it’s an excellent example of the kind of pecking order heuristic that leads to the lowest BCRA.

One way to frame the fact that honeybees are programmed to sting when an intruder show up at the door is to say they’ve adapted a “power-based” pecking order heuristic — one that has elevated “aggressiveness” up the value hierarchy and explains the behavior as a form of “dominance”. While the interpretation may hold at first glance and isn’t without observable merit, I believe it collapses under closer scrutiny as overly superficial.

The honeybee that stings gains nothing individually from attacking. It dies. There’s no reward, no rank, no reproductive payoff. It doesn’t act on orders from a hierarchy. It acts because it’s biologically hardwired to sacrifice itself for the group. The demonstrated behavior is voluntary self-sacrifice. An embedded biological ethic that says: the group ultimately matters more than me.

The sacrificial ethos: A society organised around voluntary self-sacrifice views legitimacy and cohesion as emerging from willingness to suffer or give up for the greater good. Here, the moral authority doesn’t stem from brute power over others, but from restraint, discipline, and service — often modeled by individuals who could dominate but choose not to.

The self-sacrificial ethos, in other words, revolves around the willingness to voluntarily give something up — whether time, energy, or the humility of being proven wrong — for the sake of something greater. It’s an ethos that places truth at the highest level of calling, to which everything else is subordinate. And while truth can certainly be hijacked, distorted, or weaponised into something it is not — as Lowery spends 400 pages warning us — no one truly owns it.

As such, I believe a pecking order that prioritises voluntary self-sacrifice — when exercised in the right measure and for the right purpose is ultimately the most resilient of all.

2.1 Scaling the sacrificial ethos

What makes this ethos compelling is that it scales fractally across all levels of human (and animal) organisation. When we speak of the sacrificial ethos, you may ask: what are we sacrificing, and for what? The answer, more often than not, is that you’re sacrificing yourself or the present — in service of something greater than yourself, such as your future self, your family, a community, but most importantly, truth itself. Admitting you’re wrong, for instance, may come with short-term repercussions, but it aligns you with reality — and that is perhaps the most meaningful sacrifice one can make.

On the individual level, self-sacrifice might mean delaying gratification — choosing to eat healthy, stick to a training regimen, save money instead of spending it, or take on student debt to invest in one’s future.
On the parental level, it could mean investing time, energy, and resources into raising a child, often at the cost of personal ambition, in service of the next generation’s growth.
For companies, it could take the form of reinvesting profits into long-term development, rather than maximising short-term shareholder returns.
At the level of the nation-state, self-sacrifice might involve accepting short-term costs — such as opening borders to immigration despite near-term strain — in service of long-term gains like social vitality.

The emergent properties of all these examples can be seen as aligned with Lowery’s Strategy 3 because the sacrifice (required to increase the CA) always precedes the potential long-term gain (raising the BA). In that light, the pecking order of voluntary self-sacrifice maps directly onto this survival strategy — it’s about placing the group’s interests (its BA) above one’s own, by being willing to sacrifice personally in ways that raise the group’s CA, should the need arise.

This ethos also helps illuminate the evolutionary logic behind qualities we often call “moral” — such as mercy, humility, restraint, honesty, and forgiveness.

For example, when someone chooses mercy — refraining from imposing their will on another, despite having the power to do so — it can lead to unexpected outcomes that strengthen both the individual who showed restraint and the group’s resilience, far beyond the immediate moment.

Similarly, demonstrating humility — such as admitting your own incompetence rather than masking it —will foster better solutions. Showing forgiveness, too, can break destructive cycles of retaliation, as demonstrated in tit-for-tat dynamics within game theory.

These so-called “moral” behaviors are far from naïve or soft; they carry real strategic utility.

Does this mean there’s no limit to how much mercy, humility, or forgiveness one should extend — no point at which these virtues become liabilities? That the voluntary self-sacrifice heuristic is immune to failure? Of course not. It works to the extent that it succeeds in countervailing entropy (lowering BCRA). That is the metric by which it must be judged.

2.2 Softwar invalidated?

So, the big question then is: Does this critique of mine invalidate Lowery’s overarching theory of Primordial Economics from my point of view?

No — it refines it.

The sacrificial maps very well onto Lowery’s own assertion that an organism’s willingness to resort to physical power is what determines its resilience. No change is needed. Enduring injury — especially when done willingly — is a form of sacrifice.

The overall framework can remain intact, but “might is right” should be replaced with something aligned with the sacrificial ethos outlined: a heuristic where an organism’s ability to thrive and prosper isn’t defined by its capacity to impose its will on others, but by its willingness to engage in sacrificial acts for the benefit of a higher-order purpose (future self, group, truth — lowering BCRA!). This might, very well, mean being ready to storm the beaches in Normandy — but just as well, it could mean being willing to admit one is wrong, and step down from power voluntarily.

And it most definitely means refusing to trade physical power — like your autonomy — for abstract power, no matter how attractive the short-term reward may be. Such a trade is the very opposite of sacrifice. It’s not an act of resilience — it’s an act of short-term gratification at the expense of long-term stability.

Take a simple example. Imagine two empires: One lives by the heuristic that the most competent leader should serve, and that the pursuit of truth — no matter how uncomfortable — sits at the top of the value hierarchy. The other clings to the belief that power must be held at all costs, that stepping down is weakness, and that force occupies the highest rung of value.

Now ask yourself: which empire is more likely to unlock the full potential of its people? Which one will adapt faster, evolve stronger, and emerge more physically powerful should conflict arise between the two empires?

2.3 Coercion to voluntarily acts

While my revision here, on the surface, may seem like a small refinement, it actually carries significant implications. It’s effectively saying that coercion is not the foundation upon which resilient systems are built — voluntary acts are.

This is because restraining from exercising power or asserting dominance, despite having the ability to do so, qualifies as a sacrificial act. While asserting power might offer immediate benefit to the power projector, it may come at the expense of the group’s long-term stability (as it may surpress competence, truth, etc). Choosing restraint, then, is a voluntarily trade-off on the part of the power projector— forsaking short-term personal gain to preserve the resilience of the system as a whole.

In this view, true power (authority) really isn’t something imposed — it’s something that emerges. That is, being the most powerful is not the sole result of dominating others, but the side effect of being the most aligned with the task of competitively leading — or elevating the most competent to lead. This is very much in line, I believe, with the idea of being “physically constrained”, as in connected to objective physical reality.

And having read Softwar, I find myself asking: isn’t this precisely what Lowery is trying to demonstrate — despite occasionally drifting from this logic? I believe it is. Time and again, Lowery emphasises that the resource control system he calls “Physical-Power-Based Resource Control” is built on egalitarian and merit-based decision-making.

“One of the most useful yet underappreciated functions of physical power in nature is providing living creatures with a basis for settling their disputes, managing their resources, and establishing a pecking order in a zero-trust, egalitarian, and permissionless way.” (Softwar, p. 59)

The entire point of controlling and distributing resources in a “zero-trust, egalitarian, and permissionless manner” is to ensure that those who demonstrate consistent alignment with objective physical reality — that is, truth — are the ones elevated within the power hierarchy. In other words, those who have shown they can make decisions that lead to the mutual benefit of the group should be the ones entrusted to continue making them — until someone better comes along and proves they’re better equipped.

And the best way to ensure that this dynamic is preserved is to make it impossible — or prohibitively costly — to cheat reality. Because what would naturally emerge from such a constraint is the most competent actor.

The refinement I’ve made is this: for that logic to truly hold, it’s not power for the sake of power that gets elevated within a successful species’ power hierarchy, but rather truth and the resilience of the group. When reality can’t be cheated, everything else naturally submits to that higher order — which means that any species that survives must, by definition, have aligned itself with physical reality, not with some arbitrary pursuit of dominance for its own sake.

“Power that survives is not power for its own sake — it’s power that serves something real.”

2.4 What history tells us

The sacrificial behavior of humans can be traced back tens of thousands of years, to the dawn of abstract thinking. Human history is cluttered with horrific examples of people sacrificing even their own children in ritualistic ceremonies. But what were they really doing when they pursued such acts? While it may seem incomprehensible to us now, there is a way to map some logic onto what they may have been attempting. The emergence of abstract thought marked the beginning of self-awareness — and with it, the realisation that actions taken today can have material consequences tomorrow. With that realisation, it’s only natural to ask: what is the highest possible sacrificial act that might yield a future result outweighing the cost of the sacrifice itself?

As disturbing as it sounds, it’s not hard to imagine that sacrificing one’s own child was possibly seen as the ultimate offering — a misguided attempt to influence forces beyond immediate understanding. And while such rituals ultimately failed to produce any real change in shared objective reality — and therefore died out — they do shed light on the early human mind and reinforce the sacrificial ethos laid out. After all, navigating the future — whether you’re a sub-cellular bacteria, prehistoric human or a modern-day tech entrepreneur — has always been a process of trial and error. What seems obvious to us today might not have been ten years ago, let alone a hundred or a thousand.

3. Converting Watts into Bits

Throughout the thesis, Lowery frequently uses the phrase “converting watts into bits.” It has become a kind of shorthand for his core thesis — but also one of the most controversial and misunderstood aspects of it. Which is exactly why I think it’s worth taking a moment to unpack it in more depth. Some of what follows may echo points we’ve already touched on, but it offers a slightly different vantage point — one that sharpens the core argument.

“Proof-of-work protocols […] may represent the discovery of a programming technique that simultaneously changes the physical state of the physical environment outside of computers as well as the physical state of the transistors inside computers […] With this capability, the abstractions we use in cyberspace can reshape our surrounding physical environment and then import the real-world physical properties of our surrounding environment (properties like physical cost, physical scarcity, and physical decentralization) into cyberspace. This can be done by simply building the infrastructure needed to convert watts into bits [of information].” (Softwar, p. 326)

He goes on:

“Physical cost function protocols (a.k.a. proof-of-work protocols) are simple: they convert watts to bits. When people utilize computing networks like the Bitcoin network, they take watts as their input and convert them into proofs-of-watts as their output, which people then abstract as if it were the same as any other type of abstract object instantiated by software.” (Softwar, p. 325)

So what does Lowery actually mean with the claim in bold — and is it valid? Before we can make any judgment, we first need to take a step back to understand what a “bit” actually is.

A bit — short for binary digit — is the smallest possible unit of information. Just as a meter measures distance and a second measures time, a bit measures information.

But so what exactly is information then? At its most foundational level, information is a reduction in uncertainty. This definition, first formalised by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, is at the heart of information theory. In this framework, information is not the message itself, but the degree to which a message reduces uncertainty about some aspect of a system (such as the world). It’s what turns a question mark into a period.

Information constrains possibilities. It collapses a wide field of potential outcomes into fewer — or even a single — knowable state.

Information, then, is what makes rational behavior possible. Without it, we are flying blind. Every meaningful decision we make — whether personal, political, or economic — depends on reducing uncertainty about a given situation.

3.1 Applying information theory

Now, let’s bring this back to Lowery’s concept of the planetary computer to determine whether, in any real sense, deploying energy (watts) for hashing (or abstaining) reduces uncertainty. Because if it does, then the claim that it converts watts into bits of information would carry real explanatory weight.

As described earlier, Lowery argues that Bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocol doesn’t merely run on the global power grid — it is an operating system that transforms the physical environment into a state machine, where the “1s and 0s” are constituted by the pools and deficits of energy distributed across the Earth.

Before the invention of proof-of-work, energy — whether spent or unspent — carried little to no global informational value. The decision to burn or conserve electricity in one region had almost no signaling effect on any other. There certainly was no mechanism by which these thermodynamic choices could be expressed, validated, or responded to in a trustless way. There was no incorruptible feedback loop — only disconnected events.

But in a world where watts can be spent on proof-of-work — and where there is a crystal clear incentive to do so under certain conditions — something profound happens, regardless of whether they are spent or not. Either outcome triggers a physical state change in the planetary computer. An unspent pool of energy is one state; a consumed deficit is another. And that distinction — pool or deficit — becomes a signal. These updates aren’t inconsequential 1s and 0s like the fleeting flips of electrons inside a microchip — they are 1s and 0s defined by material changes in the form of energy expenditures or conservations across the thermodynamic landscape of the macrochip we call Earth.

Note that Bitcoin (as in the “coins” themselves) are not the state mechanism. The underlying state changes are physical: the pools and deficits of energy across the planet. The Bitcoins are simply the receipts — the verifiable, unforgeable outputs of interacting with that mechanism under real cost constraints. What matters, in relation to the state mechanism, is not where the receipts end up — but how the energy was expended, and where it altered the pools and deficits across the planet in the process. While the distribution of receipts certainly plays into the picture too (we’ll talk about this soon), it is separate from the state mechanism itself.

Any software built on top of this state mechanism, then, reacts directly to those changes. To understand why this process constitutes the conversion of watts into bits of information, we need to examine the conditions that determine a particular state change.

Remember, in a microchip those state changes are happening at near infinitum and at virtually no cost. But in the case of the planetary computer, the state mechanism has been intentionally reverse-optimised. So what governs those changes exactly? What dictates whether a given pool of energy is spent or not?

In a very real sense, the availability of abundant energy drives Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment, which in turn determines how much energy is required to mine the next block. That sets a moving threshold for what electricity prices are economically viable to mine at — defining where on the planet it is attractive, and where it isn’t at any given point.

From there, each local actor is faced with a decision: is mining the most rational use of a particular pool of energy — or is there a better alternative?

To understand the answer, we must zoom out to a satellite perspective. Since it’s only natural that Bitcoin (the PoW receipts) also has a use case as money (because they can’t be faked), the decision-making extends beyond the act of mining.

In a world where Bitcoin is monetised, it functions as the global “risk-free” benchmark — the base layer against which all other investments are measured. In this role, it effectively serves as the world’s “piggy bank”.

And there are only two ways to acquire it:

You mine it, by deploying energy to perform proof-of-work.
You earn it, by deploying energy to produce something of value that someone else is willing to exchange for it.

Both paths require energy. Both are rooted in physical effort. But which one makes sense depends entirely on the circumstances.

Mining is only rational if the total energy cost of producing one Bitcoin is lower than its market price at any given point (otherwise, it’s more rational to simply buy it). Whether that’s true for any given actor depends on local energy conditions (whether energy exists as a surplus or deficit) and the opportunity cost of using that energy for something else.

Bitcoin’s market price, in turn — or rather, the degree to which the protocol is monetised at any given moment — is itself a function of the opportunity cost of all other possible investments in the world.

If prices denominated in Bitcoin receipts are going down, it means the world, in aggregate, is using its resources more efficiently. That’s the deflationary signal of a scaling civilisation. As Bitcoin’s purchasing power rises — precisely because productive endeavours are being pursued — Resource Abundance (RA) grows for anyone owning it.

If prices in Bitcoin receipts are going up (or slowing their decline), it suggests we’re consuming more than we’re producing, at least temporarily. The closer the risk-free rate of return (the purchasing power growth) gets to zero, the more investments with an expected return above that threshold will be incentivised.

Now, mix all of these factors together. Every decision to spend or conserve energy — and every movement of proof-of-work receipts — shaped by countless variables, individual preferences, and real-time observations grounded in physical reality, becomes both a response to and an input that shapes the future.

What emerges is a bi-directional feedback loop between cyberspace and the external state of the surrounding physical environment — a dynamic, living process that continuously reduces uncertainty by aligning human decision-making (what happens behind the eyes) ever more closely with what’s actually unfolding in front of them.

3.2 Bits as mutually beneficial coordination

To boil this down to its most essential point, imagine a simple scenario: a planet with just two people — one on each side of the world. They don’t know the other exists. They don’t know if it’s safe, wise, or worthwhile to cross the distance between them. Uncertainty is very high.

Now imagine each is given a satellite phone. Suddenly, they can signal one another. Their information state has changed. They can coordinate. They can make rational decisions based on new knowledge.

From an information perspective, proof-of-work is like that satellite phone — but instead of applying Boolean logic to radio waves for information exchange, it relies on a unique set of incentives that make it rational for disconnected and distrustful actors to contribute (or withhold) energy (watts) into special purpose hashing machines when certain conditions are met. By then applying Boolean logic to these two distinct states, you get a kind of communication device in much the same way — only one with radically different properties. And as it scales, it collapses uncertainty for everyone as it codifies objective physical reality into a humanly actionable language (bits) that serves as a shared basis for mutually beneficial coordination.

High uncertainty vs low uncertainty. Image by myself.

In doing so, you’ve arguably converted watts into bits — but not just any bits. These are unreplicable bits of information that cannot be derived by any other means. Because unlike the satellite phone, where false information can be sent at virtually no cost, the planetary computer makes lying prohibitively expensive — because every state change is connected to real-world energy costs.

If we swap the two humans with satellite phones — who could trigger state changes via radio waves at no cost — with pools (1s) and deficits (0s) of energy that can only change state through real physical expenditure, we can see how this forms the state mechanism of the planetary computer Lowery describes.

We can think of the distribution of energy pools (1s) and deficits (0s) — in this example, only two — across the planet as forming the given control state of the planetary computer. The range of possible control states, expressed through shifts in this distribution, is both a result of past energy availability and a driver of future behavior — shaping how the system processes information and interacts with real-world conditions.

A (1) signals that new hash rate is being added — i.e., new energy is being deployed into mining. This shift from 0 to 1 doesn’t happen randomly; it means something in the local or global environment is making mining profitable enough to justify the physical cost of adding more hash. This can be explained for one or a combination of three key reasons:

Cheap energy: Local surplus energy is available at low cost, meaning the cost of mining one BTC (in electricity) is lower than the current market price. Mining becomes the most rational use of that energy. This has the effect of developing infrastructure around energy abundance, not population density.
Bitcoin’s purchasing power is rising (supply-side deflation): The world is producing more with the same or fewer resources. Bitcoin becomes more valuable relative to real goods and services. As profit margins widen, more miners are incentivised to come online.
Bitcoin’s purchasing power is rising (demand-side inflation): Fewer people are spending Bitcoin on consumption. Instead, they’re saving it — maybe in response to perceived future uncertainty. Bitcoin’s price rises, making mining more attractive.

As new hash rate is added, Bitcoin’s difficulty adjusts upward in response — tightening margins across the network. As a result, some miners will be priced out, and previously viable energy pools may flip from (1) to (0). The system self-corrects, ensuring that energy deployment (whether toward mining or elsewhere) constantly reorients itself toward the most valuable and least wasteful use, given current physical conditions. Or put more simply: energy flows where it does the most to counteract entropy.

In contrast, a (0) signals that no new hash rate is being added — i.e., the local or global conditions no longer justify deploying additional energy into mining. This doesn’t necessarily mean hashing machines are being shut off (most remain on once deployed), but that no new hash power is being brought online. That, too, is a signal — one that can occur for one or a combination of reasons.

Energy scarcity: Local electricity prices have risen above what the current Bitcoin price can justify. Mining is no longer the most rational use of energy, as that energy is now in demand for more valuable uses elsewhere.
Bitcoin’s purchasing power is falling (supply-side failure): Civilisation is producing less with more input. Bitcoin buys less relative to goods and services. Margins shrink.
Bitcoin’s purchasing power is falling (demand-side deflation): More people are spending their savings — either due to hard times or because other investment opportunities are more attractive.

As hash rate stops increasing, Bitcoin’s difficulty gradually adjusts downward — widening margins across the network. This reopens opportunities for previously unviable energy pools to become profitable again, flipping some (0)s back to (1)s. The system restores equilibrium by renewing incentives where conditions allow.

How each participant interprets a given state change is inherently subjective — shaped by their individual context, preferences, and knowledge. But what’s undeniable is that their choices unfold in direct response to what every other participant is doing — and how objective physical reality is, in turn, responding to all of them. The emergent properties of this setup simply cannot be replicated by any abstract system.

“By utilizing large quantities of energy drawn from the environment as a state-changing mechanism and running computer programs on it, this would cause software to have a highly path-dependent and irreproducible “realness” to it that ordinary computer programs running on basic computers simply cannot replicate.” (Softwar, p. 314)

Let’s now examine what various control state combinations might represent in relation to the diagrams below.

[1,1] — Both regions are adding hash — energy is abundant in both places, and Bitcoin’s purchasing power (from productivity or increased savings demand) justifies it. Coordination is incentivised, infrastructure grows around surplus, and security increases. But difficulty will rise soon, likely pricing out weaker margins and rebalancing the system.

[0,1] — One region is adding hash while the other isn’t. Local surplus or favorable conditions make mining profitable in one place, but not the other. This asymmetry signals opportunity and may attract capital, people, or infrastructure to reallocate to where resources are used most effectively.

[1,0] — The inverse. Mining is viable in the other region now. Whether due to cheaper energy, a dip in local opportunity cost, or broader deflationary trends, incentives have shifted. The signal is dynamic and guides resource flow accordingly.

[0,0] — No region is adding hash. This could mean energy is scarce, or Bitcoin’s purchasing power is falling relative to other opportunities. It may reflect a temporary contraction, redirection of energy toward other productive uses, or simply that savings are being spent.

Of course, this is a simplification — real-world pools and deficits are numerous, fluid, and constantly shifting in both scale and distribution (like below). But even in this simplified two-node model, we can begin to see how different control states encode distinct global conditions — and how those conditions shape the incentives and decisions of participants on a global scale.

To understand Lowery’s statement of “converting watts into bits”, then, is to absorb what has been laid out here — with some interpretive liberties taken on my part to clarify what I deem are the fundamental mechanics — and assess its validity.

Lowery isn’t suggesting that proof-of-work merely converts watts into bits in some arbitrary, metaphorical sense — it does so in the most literal, functional sense imaginable: by applying Boolean logic to physically grounded state changes that cannot be replicated by any other system configuration, and building software that runs on top of it, uncertainty is reduced by inserting a physical sensory input into cyberspace — thus creating a foundation for humans to determine what is real.

4. Abstract vs Physical and Truth value

The last point I want to make, which is something I’ve touched on briefly earlier, is about the relationship between abstract reality and objective physical reality in regards to truth value. This isn’t meant as a critique of Lowery’s thesis, but rather as an additional insight that builds on his foundation.

Lowery places a strong emphasis on the idea that abstract reality exists solely in the non-physical domain, whereas objective physical reality is measurable, observable, and grounded in thermodynamics. I agree with this framing. However, I believe it would be a mistake to assume that this automatically means objective physical reality always carries the highest truth value.

But before we go on, we must first define what we mean by truth.

What is measurable in objective physical reality?
What helps you survive over time?
What resonates with your deepest experience?
What gives you meaning?
Or… is it all of the above, depending on the context?

It’s not entirely clear to me where Lowery stands on truth. At times, he leans toward the idea that whatever has survived is, by definition, true — which suggests he sees truth as a function of evolutionary fitness: if it persists, it must be valid. At other times, he takes a more empirical stance, implying that truth is whatever can be measured and observed in the physical world. Often, these two perspectives overlap. But not always.

Take, for example, an act that brings immediate gratification — say, economic growth achieved by depleting natural resources. In the short term, it may register as a positive change in objective physical reality: higher GDP, more jobs, increased consumption. But over the long run, it may degrade the very foundations that make survival possible — ecological stability, social trust, or intergenerational resilience.

In this case, the physical indicators of success point to one thing, while the deeper, long-term truth value points to another. So if we define truth purely in terms of what survives or what’s measurable in the moment, we risk mistaking transient signals for enduring truths. And that’s a dangerous error — especially in systems where feedback loops are delayed or hidden (which I’d argue is the rule rather than the exception).

Lowery is right to emphasise the need to anchor systems in something physically real. Without that, we deprive ourselves of any genuine feedback mechanism. We end up in echo chambers of belief systems that can’t course-correct because there’s nothing real pushing back. But I’d argue that the problem isn’t abstraction itself. The real danger is unanchored abstractions — belief systems and ideas that float freely, detached from cost, consequence, or constraint.

However, with the right feedback mechanisms — what Lowery refers to as cross-examination — the abstract domain can become a powerful tool for navigating and understanding the physical world. I’m not suggesting Lowery denies this, but there’s sometimes a subtle tendency to frame “fiction” and “fact” as polar opposites on a horizontal axis, as if one is inherently false and the other inherently true.

In reality, I’d argue they are vertically aligned, with truth value distributed along a spectrum of abstraction. The highest truth isn’t necessarily found at one end of that scale — but anywhere along it, depending on the structure, clarity, and coherence of the abstraction in question.

Before going on to explore examples of how truth value can exist across the spectrum, it’s important to point out that any scientist or systems theorist has already accepted at least three unspoken axioms before they even begin:

That there is a right and wrong answer (i.e., objective physical reality exists).
That the right answer is intelligible to sapiens.
That discovering the right answer is useful — for survival/prosperity.

These are not scientific claims. They are metaphysical starting points. Science rests on them, but cannot prove them. You can’t use empiricism to justify empiricism.

In this sense, the entire substrate of reason rests on a belief system — consisting of these three axioms. That doesn’t invalidate science. But it does mean that science is not exempt from faith — it’s built on a disciplined form of it. If we want to get edgy, we accurately say science is a form of religious practice; the pursuit of truth through empirical inquiry. As we’ll get into in the end, it’s the exact same truth that someone praying to God in a Church is searching for.

4.2 Examples of truth value across abstraction layers

Let’s now go through some examples.

“Are you okay?”

We can determine the truth value of a given abstraction by acting as if it were true and observing the sensory and physical feedback it generates. If there is a positive correlation between the abstraction and objective physical reality — if acting on the idea produces coherence, stability, or survival — we can say the abstraction has high truth value. If, on the other hand, the feedback loop is destructive, misleading, or misaligned with reality, then the abstraction carries a low truth value.

In this scenario, the highest truth value is not found in the literal physical expression (“I’m fine”), but in a higher-order abstraction of it. The person says “I’m fine”, yet the real answer is “No.” Even though language itself is an abstraction, existing only within shared abstract reality, notice that the more abstract interpretation carries a higher truth value. This highlights an important point: truth does not correlate directly with how “physical” or “concrete” something is. Sometimes, the more abstract rendering is more closely aligned with what’s actually true.

If we’re unsure which interpretation holds more truth, we can imagine the friend asking the question acting as if either version were true — taking “I’m fine” at face value, or responding as if “No” were the real answer. By observing the emotional, behavioural, or verbal feedback that follows, we test which abstraction has the higher truth value.

Art

Many times, a surrealist painting or poetic metaphor can carry a higher truth value than a documentary. This is especially true in repressive societies, where truth-telling with low levels of abstraction becomes dangerous or easily co-opted.

Take, for example, East Berlin during the Cold War: artists who attempted to speak plainly often found their voices censored or rendered obsolete. But those who abstracted — who used expressionism, metaphor, and distortion — were able to embed truth inside symbols, smuggling meaning past the censors and reaching those who knew how to read between the lines.

In these cases, abstraction didn’t dilute the truth — it preserved it. The more measurable the form, the more vulnerable it was to distortion or suppression. The more abstract the form, the more resilient the message. Abstraction can be used as a technique for encoding truth — sometimes more powerfully than any direct representation could.

“Did Jesus walk on water?”

How do you cross-examine to figure out what the truth value is of that statement? You live as if Jesus walked on water (even though you may understand it is an abstraction) — which is to say, you live by his teachings, his example, his ethic. Then you observe what happens.

Judging by the empirical fact that billions have done this over centuries — and built families, cultures, institutions, and entire moral frameworks around it — to say the statement is “not true” or carries a “low truth value” simply because there’s no physical trace of him doing so is to miss the point entirely.

In this case, both statements — “Jesus walked on water” and “Jesus brought down corrupt leadership” — carry a high truth value even though one is arguably more abstract than the other.

“Is fiat money?”

How do you cross-examine? You and your society live as if fiat is money and then see what happens.

What happens is that you get massive exploitation, misaligned incentives, and distorted price signals — because the system becomes manipulable and detached from physical constraints. The abstraction starts to diverge from reality, and the feedback loop breaks. Is sound money an abstraction of direct bartering? Yes. But is it a lower abstraction in terms of truth value?

I’d argue no — because while bartering is closer to the raw economic interaction, it’s impractical at scale and fails to effectively communicate value across time, space, and preferences (which has a second-order effect of more abstraction). Sound money, while abstract, provides a better correspondence to objective physical reality — anchoring real demand to real supply in a more truthful way.

God, Science, Mother Nature

How do you cross-examine? You act as if Newton’s Laws are true and observe what happens. Turns out — they produce highly accurate predictions at the human scale. Rockets launch. Bridges hold. Objects fall as expected. That’s a high truth value.

But does that mean they explain everything? No. They break down at the quantum level. Newton’s framework was never “wrong” — it was just limited in scope. It’ll only take a scientist so far in terms of uncovering the truth (which is quite far, I’ll add).

The final analysis

This brings us to the final and perhaps most important point: that what theologians call the Divine and what scientists refer to as the logical nature of the universe are, in the final analysis, one and the same thing.

This realisation challenges the binary view we often inherit — fact vs. fiction, science vs. religion — as if they were opposing forces existing on a horizontal plane. But these are ultimately just flawed abstractions, mental containers we use to sort things that are, at a deeper level, already intertwined.

Now, while we may endlessly debate what is morally right, we intuitively know that morality isn’t just personal taste. We just don’t always have the tools to measure it in the present. But morality isn’t subjective in the final analysis. When someone asks,“Is this morally right?” what they’re really asking is:

Will this pattern of behavior lead to the long-term prosperity of our species?

And while we may endlessly debate — each from the standpoint of personal conviction — whether a particular act contributes to that outcome, there is an answer to that question — whether we see it clearly or not.

While there is certainly a case to be made — as Lowery does — that pacifism for example is immoral because it appears to fail his “survival test”, the counterargument might go something like this: But what if the goal isn’t personal survival at all?

What if the person in question dies for the sins of everyone else?

What if that person is Jesus? What if it’s the man in Tiananmen Square, standing in front of a tank? What if it’s a monk, setting himself on fire in protest?

From an individual survival standpoint, these acts make no sense. They clearly don’t optimise for personal preservation. But that’s precisely the point. These are not failures of strategy — they are acts of deliberate sacrifice, often initiated to reveal a deeper truth, to shock the conscience of a society, or to expose deception embedded in a system.

So what does that kind of sacrifice do to a civilisation? Should it be dismissed as weakness? Should it be judged as a failure simply because the individual didn’t survive? Or is it something else entirely — a kind of detonation, seeding long-term transformation?

In the end, what is “morally right” isn’t a personal opinion, symbolic, or subjective. It’s not separate from what is logical or empirical. All of these domains — moral, symbolic, physical — collapse into one and the same in the final analysis.