Suggestion of making a book club

Lately, I saw a group of Bitcoiners discussing “Maps of meaning” from Jordan Peterson, and they could successfully gain the author’s attention. Since Grin is a project based on the narrative than economic incentives (at least in the short term to survive), I suggest using more of the philosophical side in the project.
We all know Grin is different than most of what is happening in the crypto space, but being silent about this fact can make concerns about the durability of Grin in the short term.
I suggest focusing on the philosophy of Grin and Mimblewimble by making a club of book readers to discuss books that can be related to the project.
Bitcoiners like Amous try so hard to link the narrative of finite supply to the libertarian view and that it can be money as well. So it could be a good subject to discuss why any infinite supply project is not the same as fiat and not doomed to go zero.
The first step could be about preparing appropriate book titles and choosing one to read. Then it can be discussed by club members on a youtube channel. It will have more benefits like growing self-knowledge as well :slight_smile:

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J.K. Rowling comes to mind. :))
I don’t have any books to recommend because I don’t really read them. I hope you find people to go through things and expand you knowledge. Even if you don’t, consider yourself early and take a stab at it by yourself. It’s always worth taking the time to learn new things. Grin’s whole emission schedule is interesting to me because of its relation to time. There are probably many things we have never talked about that come as a consequence of the emission (and value) directly mapping to time.

Exactly. This could be the first step to discover undiscovered.

The assistance of a book nerd is so helpful in choosing the right book. So I hope to be able to find one here!

It’s not a book, but well worth the read Shelling Out: The Origins of Money | Satoshi Nakamoto Institute

Nice recommendation!
It worth also much going for cryptographer’s articles alongside holding discussion. Lifting smaller stones are easier than big ones.

Something to read for fun:

Grin is full of references to Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is full of references to alchemical symbols: the snitch, the Deathly Hallows’ symbol, John Dee, Paracelcius, Nicolas Flemming, the Philosopher’s stone. According to scholars, alchemical symbols symbolize psychological transformation.

I can share some recommendations about the Austrian school of economics.
I’m not sure if there would be place for basic economics in this book club. Austrian economics is often used as the framework to analyse cryptocurrencies. I however don’t know how an Austrian economist would view an infinite supply project like Grin.

Personally, I found Austrian economics itself hard to learn at first. People often mention these classic books by the masters and say you should read them. I don’t think that’s a good approach to start, educationally speaking.

In my opinion, these are the books one should read first:

Mises institute has these ‘study guides’ for the classic books. I recommended using those, when you are approaching popular classics like ‘Human action’ and ‘Man, Economy and State’. But I think these should come later on the educational path.

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Mentioning the relation of Grin and Alchemy was insightful for me. Also, starting from an economic point since Grin is aiming to be money seems inevitable.

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@markhollis Nice sources of information. Indeed interesting parallels between crypto and alchemy.
Just some thoughts about crypto and alchemy:

The way I see it, in alchemy there is a ‘wonder’ of the world, leading to the quest to understand it, categorize it and mastering the world. So from chaos alchemist try to distill order, harmony and understanding. Basically move towards science.
However, if you look like the ‘mystery’ introduced by projects like Grin, it is quite the opposite. Out of understanding and science/order/understanding of the beauty of minimalism in crypto, comes a feeling of wonder. Because of this feeling of wonder of how beautiful crypto can be (and because J. K. Rowlings work like Tolkiens work are just awe inspiring), the creators decide to attach a sense of wonder/beauty and mystery to the science, to the crypto.

I just want to point out this distinction since it is a major one. Many renowned scientist fell through science in wonder/love with the beauty and design of the universe. For example Einstein eventually became to believe or wonder about the presence of an architect or god because of the beauty of ‘design’ of the universe, the order in the chaos. So in that sense Grin and probably a few other projects are very much coming from a strict science/crypto background and not from pseudo science. Grin surrounds itself with some mystery because it is fun, because Harry Potter is awesome and (my guess since I do not know the developers well enough) because of wonder with how beautiful well designed minimalism in crypto can lead to beauty/crypto-magic.
I mean, who would have thought 10 years ago that a few lines of code could create both a more private and scalable blockchain like we see with Grin and a few others like Beam and Taproot on the Bitcoin blockchain nowadays.

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