Hacker News Reader

Comment by blobbers | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for sharing! I'll give it a listen on my long commute.

Generally speaking, I find the 'intellectual dark web' to be a bit repetitive - they seem to have their talking points and they just keep hitting on the same things. It'll be interesting to see how this podcast develops.

View on HN

Yeah personally I think Eric Weinstein has bought into the idea a bit too much and it is boring to listen to the same thing over and over, but when he talks about other things it is pretty interesting. Hopefully he is able to branch out with guests.

I'm not sure I'll like Thiel much, I've found recently that the more I hear him talk the less I like him, and I think his political views are pretty bad, but I'm sure he's a smart person generally speaking. Hopefully they don't spend too much on politics or religion.

I've listened to all but the last 20 minutes of the podcast now. Thiel I find interesting and his ideas provocative even when I don't agree with him on some points. Weinstein I didn't find very interesting at all. He appears (at least in this interview) to just be trading on his association with Thiel. I have also previously found his labeling of 'the intellectual dark web' pretentious and the composition of the group suspect, including charlatans (to use Taleb's word) such as Pinker, Harris, Shermer, Peterson and Molyneux. I won't be listening to future episodes; Thiel was the attraction here.

I disagree that Pinker, Harris, and Peterson are just pretentious charlatans. I do agree that Weinstein wasn't particularly interesting in this podcast. I agreed with Thiel's evaluation of our current technology and culture situation and found him to be quite interesting to listen to. Weinstein didn't really dig deep at all on Thiel's specific politics, which are more where I diverge from Thiel, despite this being a pretty long podcast episode. Hopefully get ups his interviewing game and doesn't just turn into a Dave Rubin 2.0 where he asks softball questions and lets the guest dodge controversial topics or steer the conversation however they want, and just focuses on the same tired topic every time.

as opposed to what? the much more homogeneous mainstream web?

'intellectual dark web' is a smear of ideas that are to be kept outside of the overton window.

Have you ever heard Eric and Peter in a discussion together?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com