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A | Hey, guys. Welcome to Debrief after our episode with group. Group Greg Lukyanov, who is a fire, I gotta say, going to this debrief, I had a killer migraine for a lot of that conversation, David, so it didn't show up. Well, thank you. I wasn't a sharp. |
B | It only shows up on your slightly dampened tone, like, yeah, you're a little bit less enthusiastic, but in the words, you choose nothing. |
A | Okay, well, I felt really foggy, but anyway, I'm feeling a slightly better now, but this might be a shorter debrief. I was really excited to do that episode, honestly, I really like Greg. I feel like there is a need in the present day that we're in, David, to just go group all of the individuals who value classically liberal values and bring them into a big tent, because I think if you are into freedom, technology, if you're into freedom and classically liberal values, you are also into crypto, whether you know it yet or not. And so I love finding common cause with advocates like Greg and those afire institutions that are trying to protect. They're trying to fight the legal wars and the culture wars for classically liberal values like freedom of speech. And that's so important. In fact, if they're not successful, it's dubious how successful we can be. At the end of the day, David, I want to live in a place where I don't have to worry about getting wrench attacked or thrown in jail from my government for owning crypto property rights and private keys. In order to live in such a society, that has to be a society that supports these liberal lowercase l values. If we lose that, then sure, we have our decentralized, open crypto networks, but I don't know. I'm on the run. We can't have this podcast. We can't talk about things the way we like. I don't want to live in that sort of society. So partnering with groups like Fire and Greg are vitally important. And also, it's an opportunity. Just like, you know, crypto actually stands for something. We get to tell that to him, too, and he gets to experience our community in that way. |
B | Yeah, like a leader, a political leader who's fighting for values, who might not just have any crypto exposure. No crypto friends in his life. I don't know if he has any crypto friends or not. Yeah, but just have being introduced to, like, what I think are two friendly dudes on the podcast, and that's his, like, first exposure to crypto is, like, a great way to do some like trench warfare of like hearts and minds and like other, other valences. |
A | Yeah, I agree. I just kind of want him to have, maybe he already has exposure to like crypto friends and they're into like speculation or something, or like buy bitcoin because it's going to moon or like, I don't know, mother and the Iggy azalea coin. I actually think that another vector of exposure to crypto, and more important vector is for someone like Greg to have exposure to, like, crypto values and why encryption is so important. |
B | See, ethereum is like a values protocol. |
A | Yeah, see ethereum and censorship resistance. What we're trying to do here as like partnered with his mission to propagate and prop up freedom of speech in the US and on college campuses and. |
B | Other places, I think there are like, there is some notion of just like a little ill liberalism baked into the technologies. Like the printing press is a liberal technology. And I also say the Internet is too. And you said we wouldn't be able to do this podcast without freedom of speech in the United States. We wouldn't be able to do this podcast doxxed in the United States. But the RSS is like a freedom of speech technology. It's a permissionless. You can put anything out on RSS feed. You can say whatever you want on RSS feed. Uh, and so, like, RSS feeds as a technology are definitely like scaling out speech as a platform. Interestingly enough, like without like the curation constraints that like a lot of the web two apps have. |
A | Yeah, you're right. I mean, there really are technologies that are liberal, lowercase l liberal, that are freedom technologies. And there are some technologies that take away freedom. There's some that give it encryption as we made the point so many times, is one of those freedom type technology, cryptography, RSS protocols that are incredibly neutral, ethereum, TCP IP, the Internet, all of these are freedom technologies. And getting him in that mindset is good and important too. He mentioned David Graber, which is interesting too. |
B | I didn't expect a David Graber reference. |
A | Yeah, David Graber wrote what debt the first 5000 years, utopia of rules, too. |
B | Which is another good one. |
A | Oh, I hadn't read that. But the debt the first 5000 years was like another lens on money, which I think is an important lens for you, bankless listener to hear. It's very different than the commodity version of money. It's just like the origination of money as debt. |
B | It's kind of like a refutation of that model. |
A | It's a refutation but at the end of the day, I think Lynn Alden synthesizes this pretty well, and both are true in various ways. But anyway, he talks about, there's hints of a bankless theme we talk about, which is you can have money that is fit for a tribe, which might work on debt. You know, David Graber type principles, right? Because everyone knows everyone. You have this, like, ledger of reputation inside the tribe, and there's, like, punishment, staking all of these things. But if you're going to create a more scalable money, you probably need a commodity type money. And if your society intersects with another society, right, then you need a hard money. Like, your commodity money has to be. |
B | Better than their commodity, better than their. |
A | It has to be a better technology, more durable. Right? Lessen, like, ability to, like to copy it, more censorship, like, more resistant to. What am I trying to say? To, like printing forfeit. Yeah, exactly. All of these things, right? And so that. But anyway, he was doing that in the context of when I asked the question of when did freedom of speech come about? And he was like, oh, we've always. We've had it. David Graber talks about this. We've had it in small tribes. So it's not like it's this new concept that we just sort of discovered and propagated in the 16 hundreds and onward in the age of enlightenment, it actually existed. And, like, it exists at my dinner table. Do you know, like, with my family, I just like, hey, be open. Like, let's talk about things. Let's not. How was your day? How was your day? Right? And then it exists at the tribe level. The challenge with all of these things is how do you scale it? And the first amendment in the constitution was one answer to how you scale it. Well, if everyone agrees to this document, this piece of paper, this code called the constitution, and then we set up a rule of law to enforce it with the balance of power across three branches of government. Right. Then maybe we have a shot at scaling out this concept that we had at the tribe level of freedom of speech. And if we do that, there's lots of benefits. People are more literate. We can make wiser decisions as a society. We can have truth propagate and do science, be more innovative, outcompete other societies. And that is a good thing. That's kind of how it was born. It's all about, I guess, scaling something. That's what we're trying to do with money, right? It's not enough to have a money that works with a small tribe. You have to kind of, like, scale out to create social coordination. Anyway, freedom of speech is a social technology in the same way that money is a social technology and the art is making it scalable. |
B | Yeah. I think a common thread with the things that we're fighting for in crypto and the things that he's fighting is that, like, different technologies come about and then different generations also come about. Like, it was interesting to hear him say that, like, millennials and zoomers aren't into freedom of speech. |
A | Yeah. |
B | What do you think? As boomers are? But then also, just, like, there's more threats to freedom of speech as more technology comes about. Right? Like, the Internet scales speech, but it doesn't scale free speech culture. It just scales speech itself. And so you still need to preserve free speech culture. And free speech law, as the technology set around these things, impacts the way speech manifests, because new technologies is always a new injection point for laws to come in and say, okay, we like freedom of speech, but on the Internet, it's a new rule set. And then Greg is be like, no, no, no, it's not a new rule set. We still need freedom of speech. And so, like, every single generation, every new, like, turn of the wheel, there's, like, something new that, like, we have. Like, right now, what we're doing in crypto is, like, we are fighting for encryption inside of the form factor of cryptocurrency. We've already fought for encryption in web two, and, like, previous, uh, previous battles, previous form factors, but, like, we have not fought for the form factor of encryption when it is integrated with, like, uh, like, money and finance and smart contracts. So we're still fighting for that same thing. But now we have to free litigate that same fight because, like, people are taking that opportunity to quell it because of the new context, because of the new technology. |
A | That's another learning lesson from Greg and his experience. When you say fight, David, like, he. He knows this, it's a fight on multiple fronts. All right? So, like, it's not just a fight on the legal front in the court system. That's certainly where you need to take the front. We need to take the fight there on crypto, too. But it's a fight on the culture side of things, too. It's a fight for hearts and minds. And if you don't win the culture, you're not going to win the legal cases. And if you win the legal cases without the culture, you won't really have anything that's durable, that won't erode away. And so this is just, like, so important for us to hear as well. Like, as we're thinking about trying to win crypto as a freedom technology, say, in the United States or in whatever jurisdiction. Yeah, you, bankless listener, kind of represent. It's a battle on multiple fronts, not just the legal side, but also hearts and minds. We have to win people over into why this censorship resistant money system is good not only for them, but good for the world, good for society, good for their economy. It's a battle for hearts and minds. He sees it. He also sees an erosion. I wanted to ask you about that. He said that millennials, as you just said, and Gen Z are. They care a lot less about freedom of speech than older generations. I wonder if you have any reflections on that. Have you seen that? Do you think that's a thing? It's basically. |
B | Do you think it intuitively makes sense? |
A | Why do you think that is? Why would that be? Do you think it's something to do with the populism? It's kind of like boomers going one way and that the system has kind of failed us. |
B | I think maybe it's like, the extremism of the margins, because I think the mar. Like, the left is more left and the right is more right these days, and I think polarization. Polarization. And they each see, like, the silencing of the other as, like, a valid move that they can make on the chessboard, to which, like, greg will say, like, the whole, like, poison gas metaphor, where it's like, sure, you make that move, but then you open up that move to your. To your competition. So, like, that's dumb, but, like, yeah, so, like, I see, like, the extreme left and the extreme right as more or less kind of willing to make any move necessary to win, and that includes, like, silencing their opponents. |
A | So extremism is one possible, like, just, like, polarity. Increased polarity. You know, one other thing I think might be true. Again, this is just a thesis is just, we have been born, like, millennials and Gen Z into a time of unparalleled freedom of speech. We don't have. |
B | Or unparalleled scalability of speech. |
A | Yeah. And we don't have the historical context to just be, like, I've never lived in a closed society where I can't post whatever the hell I think on the Internet or say whatever I want, what I want. And so growing up in that kind of environment, maybe I just don't appreciate it as much. I mean, like, 1940s was just fascism, 1950s red scare type stuff. Those were more censored time periods, certainly, and the world got to observe what it looked like to be. Yeah. And maybe in the west, we've kind of just grown up and we just don't appreciate it as what we have as much. |
B | Yeah. Well, that's when he cited the whole fourth turning thing. Like, the younger generation just haven't experienced the first principles as to why we have freedom of speech. |
A | Yeah. When he was talking about that, it was also foreboding. It's just like we're about to go through some bad shit. We didn't dwell on that. But I already have that feeling. |
B | I don't want any more of that. |
A | Yeah, I don't know if you have that feeling, but, like, I just feel like the next couple decades, I do. |
B | Have that feeling, but I also kind of think that it's also happening in slow motion. So it's never going to be like a cataclysmic event. It'll just be like. I mean, the world has gotten increasingly more chaotic ever since 2016, so maybe that's what we're. That's the whole fourth turning. Yeah, yeah. Ever since Harambe got shot. And so, like, maybe the fourth turning is actually just like one long decade in slow motion rather than being like an event. |
A | What do you think? Another thing I was thinking as he was describing freedom of speech and its kind of competitive advantages. You know what? Freedom of speech is very much decentralization technology, isn't. It is like pushing power to the edge nodes and kind of compute and. Yeah. |
B | Like leveling the place. It's level playing field technology. |
A | Yeah. If you compare it to monarchy that had licensing of all the printing presses. Right. And then you go and you have this, like, radical enlightenment ideas that just like. No, everybody is their own printing press. Everybody has this enshrined ability to, every note is valid. |
B | Yeah. |
A | Print whatever they want, say whatever they want, and then we'll have another truth consensus mechanism to just like, figure out in this marketplace of ideas what's true and what's not. But what it's doing is it's decentralizing. Like it's pushing power to all the edge nodes and kind of like equalizing the playing field. That's what freedom of speech is really, a technology. It's like a decentralization technology, a soft technology, not a hard technology for organizing societies. And it's brilliant. I'm like, super glad we have it, and I'm appreciative of it, and I'm glad it's been enshrined in the us constitution over the last 250 years. But enshrining in the constitution is not enough. You also have to embed it deeply in the culture. |
B | You have to talk why it's important. |
A | Yeah. And it's, you know, I don't know. I see crypto as very much a successor to that type of idea. That's why I love crypto. It's just like, the money's cool, the tech is cool. I'm also kind of just here for the lowercase l values, liberal values, though. |
B | I put this excerpt into our show notes into the agenda that we had, but we never actually got a chance to brought it up. So maybe I'll bring it up here. This is a story that I like to bring up every once in a while. |
C | In early April of 2018, eight chinese students at Peking University filed a freedom of information request for records related to Gao Yan, a student who reportedly being sexually assaulted by a professor two decades ago and subsequently committed suicide. The university refused to disclose information, but a friend of Gao shared her story online, sparking national outcry and demands for action against sexual assault and harassment. In response, censors suppressed online discussions and removed an open later by Yu Xin, one of the students behind the request from WeChat. Despite censorship, a supporter embedded Yu's letter in the tamper proof Ethereum blockchain. To preserve and share it, the anonymous activists sent themselves zero ether on the platform and embedded the text of use open letter in the transaction. Metadata transactions on a blockchain are irreversible, so the information cannot be altered. Furthermore, transactions generate distributed copies of themselves within the network, which ensured that useletter would end up permanently documented in the public domain and accessible to any user who looked up the transaction. |
B | So the idea is like, if you put the thing into a transaction, all the ethereum nodes, all the full nodes. |
C | Download the letter and have it on their computer. |
B | And so I think it's just a pretty cool, like, resistance technology. If you have your authoritarian, like, censoring nation state, you can make a transaction. |
C | On Ethereum and put text into that. |
B | Metadata or anything you want, and then all of a sudden, all the entire network of nodes that are pretty damn decentralized are downloading and saving this text. I think that's pretty cool. |
A | It is cool. And that's the point of protocols like Farcaster and even ens. You think of something like ens, let's say a government takes issue with your domain name, your davidhoffman.com dot, and deactivates your DNS name. They can't do that with David Hoffman eth they can with davidhoffman.com dot I don't think we've maximized it in crypto yet, but when you have, because we've maximized maybe the money use case or that's moving towards maximization. But there's also just censorship resistant communication that's embedded inside of crypto at some of these key, like, weak points, like domain names, or even just, like, adding data like this on chain, and it being public for everyone to see. That's cool. I mean, back to the basics. That's kind of why we're here in crypto, right? I mean, freedom to transact, freedom of speech, censorship resistant protocol. That's really what we're building here, so. |
B | Totally. |
A | That's why we did this episode. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed it's been the debrief. See ya. |