Hacker News Reader

The issue I have here is that someone turning down a request to be on your podcast does not, actually, mean that "she refuses to engage on these topics"; it may seem like a major litmus test for you, but in fact people are busy and we have to make choices about how to spend our time all the time. I'm sure that if she said yes to every crypto-enthusiast who messaged her "debate me!" she'd have no time for her own projects and would be spending all her life on crypto-enthusiast podcasts with people who are just trying to get her to see the light.

Your implication that Molly is uninterested in "real conversations about real issues" because she turned down your podcast is, ultimately, a projection that confirms your priors.

Have you seen her on any discussion ever, engaging with the issues or opposing views? Has she come on someone else's show or something? You're being very generous in your interpretations, not even Molly offered such explanations, she just went silent. The typical interpretation is that there is a reason she'd rather not get into further. And I can guess what that reason is. Her "crowd" wouldn't like it if she appeared there. Many in Richard Heart's "Hexican" crowd were upset that he came on our show, especially because I went right into the issues with him.

Take it for what it is: a biased one-sided blog. As I said, I find those to be more valuable than middle-of-the-road ones, because they do more hard-hitting arguments and research. But you have to balance it out by reading other blogs, such as at least CoinDesk or CoinTelegraph or watching CoinBureau. And many people on HN don't. They're happy to be in a bubble.

PS: All those other people I mentioned are likely far more busy than Molly. Noam Chomsky is for sure, I know that. And he's been on my show multiple times:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/mqfbzk/noam_chomsk...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc

http://davidharvey.org/2023/02/noam-chomsky-and-david-harvey...

In fact, if ANYONE on HN would like to come on our show and discuss why Web3 is not needed, full of scams and is stupid, email me (greg) at intercoin.org. I will make an episode with you and put it up on our YouTube channel.

The entitlement dripping from this post demonstrates exactly why she didn't engage any further with you.

You’re not biased at all.

I am pretty humble but when it comes to engaging on substance, I am rather bold. I am not a professional podcaster and I don’t have millions of dollars or followers. But I have met and had real discussions everyone from Andrew Yang to Tim Berners-Lee to the guys from Stable Diffusion, to top Christian apologists etc. If a topic matters to me, I will go and try to speak with the people who have something major to say.

Sometimes you have to punch above your weight to get quality discussions. I am probably the least well known guy who had all those people on my show and subsequently developed friendships.

I tend to be very polite, try to focus on issues instead of the person. But I do remain intellectually honest, say what I really think, and if that means going against the orthodoxy and braving downvotes then so be it. My HN history is clear going back years. As I said I am open to taking people on HN who aren’t well-known, as long as they sincerely believe the opposite and can argue it well. Because I care about the issues, not celebrities. (Molly isn’t really that famous, if we had to be honest.)

Entitlement? Simply refusal to acknowledge “my place” in this capitalist society and exercising my right to “free association” instead. If someone is publicly putting out biased, one-sided narratives, I could very well reach out and welcome them to discuss. I have said NOTHING about her refusal for many months, to anyone, and totally forgot about it … until this very post where I shared my experience because it was relevant. Basically I think we need better platforms for public discourse.

Molly here.

I went on the Bankless podcast six months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Itd3g23QI. I debated Charles Hoskinson on a panel about "the future of crypto": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5p2gt7htDM&t=998s. I went on the Unusual Whales crypto podcast/Twitter space: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unusual-whales-pod-13-.... I've repeatedly gone on CoinDesk's show — sometimes for more adversarial conversations than others. I provided "The Bear Case for Crypto" on a two-part series by Scott Galloway https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh... (Michael Saylor provided the bull case; unfortunately we were not in conversation directly). I went on the crypto podcast Digitally Rare a year ago: https://anchor.fm/digitallyrare/episodes/web3-could-be-going....

I apologize for upsetting you when I politely declined the invitation to come on your podcast, but it's simply not accurate to say that I don't "engage with the issues or opposing views".

My reason for declining was largely as drewbeck suggested. I also try to avoid coming on shows where I feel I am simply being used to draw engagement and interest in a specific crypto project, which was part of my concern with your specific invitation.

Thanks for responding, Molly. I am glad to have a list of shows you went on, I have not seen you on any shows.

Please don’t think I was upset. I did not think more of it until this thread simply reminded me of it, and I posted it because I thought it was very relevant, and 99% of the text was written by me so I didn’t feel I was revealing anything truly private.

I totally understand this concern, and why someone like yourself might be very sensitive not to seem like they are endorsing a specific project — and it is exactly the concern that Robert Murphy expressed to me this past week, until we spoke. Now he is coming on my show. Because I only care about discussing the substance.

You couldn’t have known this, but frankly, I reached out simply because I wanted to have a conversation. I believe that a blog which exclusively lists everything bad in web3 is useful, because it does one part of the job. But also, people who put together such things are exactly the best people to have a conversation with because I truly do believe that if the crypto and web3 industry doesn’t step up, the much worse centralized ecosystem of Big Tech, Big Government will keep encroaching with their National IDs and CBDCs and centrally controlled financial systems (just like they have in countries from China to Sweden). As a libertarian, I see things getting a lot worse and I have spent over a decade of my life and a ton of my own money building solutions, so naturally, having discussions with people in the space something I do. To be honest, it is my guilty pleasure - I enjoy being able to engage with people and battle-test my views, and actually realize that they have blind spots too.

It is the same feeling, I suppose, as a chessplayer who gets to play games with people rated higher than them. From a purely market point of view, I guess I am engaging people who are “out of my league” in terms of the size of their audience — disregarding this has worked well for me, thankfully, but I guess it comes up in some ways, like this.

I have another channel, https://youtube.com/QbixPlatform which has nothing to do with crypto and is about an open source Web2 platform. The invitation still stands, of course. To me the issues are more about decentralization vs centralization, capitalism vs gift economies, smart contracts vs trusting specific humans, open source vs walled gardens, funding projects with equity vs utility, etc.

Let me know if you’d like to engage in any way that would scrub any mention of Intercoin (company, project etc) and if so I’ll email you and we can set it up.

I don't understand your logic - you specifically target someone who is highlighting all the scams that is being uncovered in the crypto world. You ask them to come on your show to talk about crypto (generating content for you and increasing your viewership) and then you think that because they aren't interested in helping you out your specific interests that somehow equates to she isn't interested in broad conversations?

You want to bring her on the show to generate your own clout under the guise or maybe honestly finding solutions and are airing personal emails to tarnish their reputation.

I don't think that's the greatest way to treat potential guests.

I personally don’t need her to “increase our viewership”. Or even post it publicly. Could have a private discussion. Like I had with Ben Shapiro for example, about his “Jews in Name Only” thing. Or with Warren Mosler.

As I said, I care about substance. The people who publicly espouse one view day in and day out are some of the best people to discuss with.

It’s sad that you think everything is about grift. It’s like how many Russians cynically think everything US does has no goodwill behind it and must be about power politics and screwing others. Certainly a lot of it is, but I guess it is easier to assume that all the time when you have a cynical view.

By the way if you think Molly White would give me clout then I am a little bit surprised. I had no idea she was that famous or well-known.

Richard Heart got us the most views of any video on our channel. And so what?

Oh yeah… here is proof that you’re wrong. Most of my Noam Chomsky videos were posted on youtube as UNLISTED and got maybe a couple hundred views over the years. If I was chasing subscribers I’d post them publicly !

My position stays the same - nothing you have said has change my perspective:

1. Airing private conversations in an attempt to make someone look bad isn't the best look especially if you are trying to get other people on your podcast.

2. There are a million reasons not to engage on a podcast - because someone doesn't does not imply any of your viewpoints or mean that they can't have an engaging conversation about it.

3. When I read your comments it looks to me like you wanted to duke it out in a battle about Web3 - someone who doesn't like conflict probably wouldn't want to spend their time doing that.

4. Just saw that Molly responded directly to your claims. As someone who hosts a podcast do your Due Diligence FFS before you spout off.

Engagement is not always easy. You've had other public figures, but they want to be public figures. There could be a myriad of reasons for her turning you down from not caring, being busy, not liking you personally, not wanting to be more public than she already is. That she has posted something about the topic is not a compelling argument that she must take it further. I think you posting about it and posting the email was disrespectful. Although it has given us some insight into your mind.

I agree, and I could be wrong. After all, there can be a myriad of reasons for why I would want to have her on the show yet people on HN assume it is out of my desire to somehow become famous or advertise my coin or do a scam. They can’t imagine someone being genuinely in it for the tech and improving people’s lives. Or maybe they say those assumptions to “fit in” with what’s cool on HN right now. In any case, given how totally off base and provably wrong most ad-hominem comments here have been about my motivations, I would say the “insight into my mind” is completely off, and your assessment of how insightful the insight was, should be reevaluated.

She didn’t “just post something”. She literally runs a blog where that is all she posts.

It is reasonable to reach out to someone running a systematically anti-zionist blog and invite them to discuss things at any time of their convenience. They are doing the equivalent of standing on a street corner with a megaphone, for all the public to hear their thoughts, so of course they should expect someone to politely approach them and engage them.

I didn't say anything about what the insights are, I guess it's up to each person. However, you haven't done yourself favours with long rambling comments. If you had originally just said "I was interested in interviewing her on my podcast [link] but she declined." That would have been fine, folks would draw their own conclusions. Then there would be no look of disrespect on your part or people thinking you're trying to "call her out" or whatever it is you're doing.

> They are doing the equivalent of standing on a street corner with a megaphone

It's revealing you find it that in your face. Most people discover it via a link on hn, read, have a chuckle, move on.

> expect someone to politely approach them

Well indeed. And hopefully not see them splurge all over the place when they refuse to engage.

Hopefully. But I think “the place” is a thread about this very blog. And refusing to engage is pretty relevant!

> relying on centralized entities which clearly is a problem

More or less of a problem than out and out scams?

> Web5

Did I miss web4?

Overall your complaint would be similar to if I complained that Bryan Krebs was one-sided in his coverage of cybercrime, in that he's never pro-crime.

We used to call it Web4, in fact.

Jack Dorsey was the reason we went back and renamed everything to Web5. I was always thinking how 2 + 3 = 4, but then Dorsey went full 5 and we wanted to make sure when people google "Web5" they find us. Our soft goal is to have Intercoin rank higher than Bluesky for "Web5".

> relying on centralized entities which clearly is a problem >More or less of a problem than out and out scams?

Probably more. The societal impact and problems from centralized social networks are documented in many places, including the Social Dilemma documentary, the breakdown of society, record levels of sadness in teenagers, having social network addiction be classified as a disease in many countries including China and now USA, states like Utah trying to protect children from it, and much more more.

I have been documenting just the loneliness part here for a decade: https://qbix.com/investors/articles

https://rational.app goes further into the breakdown of society due to these centralized, closed-source Big Tech oligopolies

I guess you like having public forums being privately owned by tiny groups of people, but the world needs open, decentralized alternatives. Sorry if HN doesn't think so anymore, but they should embrace the "hacker ethos" instead of stockholm syndrome shilling for the corporate VC world.

> The societal impact and problems from centralized social networks are documented in many places...

But hold up now, is a decentralized social network dependent on a decentralized currency/token/Blockchain? Mastodon for example is a robust decentralized social network has absolutely nothing to do with whatever web2+n you're touting. The idea that you need to rebuild currency in order to build a new kind of social network reminds me of the common gamedev trap of writing a game engine in order to write a game (and shipping neither.)

> I guess you like having public forums being privately owned by tiny groups of people

When you said centralization I didn't think you meant social networks specifically since generally crypto talks about disrupting banks and governments and I think (with some obvious exceptions) I prefer those to, what would you call it... the anarcho-kleptocracy represented by the Crypto space.

That depends. Currencies are used for paying each other and accounting for usage. Sites like HN and Reddit have a "currency" like Karma. If Wikipedia operated its own currency, it could reward helpful contributions and make vandalism costly (you'd lose 10-50% of your currency if you were found to have vandalized a page, etc.) You can see a quick overview here: https://intercoin.org/communities.pdf

Also, micropayments are essential for a truly decentralized market. I suggest you read this: https://qbix.com/ecosystem

Xanadu used to have the idea of micropayments. You can do those with trustlines which settle eventually on a decentralized ledger.

We're not the only ones working on this. Stefan Thomas (I met him when he was CTO of Ripple) left Ripple to work on his true love, Interledger Protocol, and started Coil. A few years back, Mozilla joined forces with Coil to offer a $100 Million dollar fund for Web Payments (that don't need the banking system): https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/100-million-investmen...

The creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich, left and started Brave Browser, which had a currency for monetizing people's attention, instead of the Surveillance Capitalism economy that's pervasive in all the centralized walled gardens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

BitTorrent (the largest decentralized network by traffic) launched the BTT token, to help incentivize traffic.

The IPFS folks (who are helping decentralize the Web and ) did a $200M ICO for their coin, which helps pay for storage.

The guy who started AngelList, Naval Ravikant, launched CoinList and helped them do it, in a legal way, and involved many Web2 VCs participating in that ICO.

You're going to have to hate a lot of Web2 greats in order to carry out the hate of Web3 to its logical conclusion. Perhaps HN is wrong to simply hate the idea of decentralized currencies?

> Sites like HN and Reddit have a "currency" like Karma.

Karma isn't a currency, it's formalized reputation to surface good content and gamify writing good content.

> If Wikipedia operated its own currency, it could reward helpful contributions and make vandalism costly

The transaction scale (Wikipedia has two edits oer second) required would put it out of the reach of a crypto though. A centralized Wikipedia-buck would work just fine. Wikipedia itself is centralized.

> (you'd lose 10-50% of your currency if you were found to have vandalized a page, etc.)

This is exactly the type of thing that Crypto was built to avoid!

> micropayments

Due to scalability problems (ie gas fees) aren't cryptos much better suited to macro payments?

> Perhaps HN is wrong to simply hate the idea of decentralized currencies?

You haven't really shown that decentralized currencies are required for a decentralized social network.

You also haven't shown how your preferred networks will avoid the misaligned incentives that have created human misery out of existing social networks if they're still going to be for-profit (and the presence of a coin certainly suggests a profit motive.)

> If Wikipedia operated its own currency, it could reward helpful contributions and make vandalism costly (you'd lose 10-50% of your currency if you were found to have vandalized a page, etc.)

Who decides what "vandalized" means or how helpful any given contribution is and why wouldn't such a system be gamed if money is involved? This seems like a great way to turn Wikipedia completely toxic since now there's a potential financial incentive to engaging in bad faith. Even on Reddit - where Karma is not exchangeable for money - this is a problem[1].

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ox8ptp/what_is_k...