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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.