David Hoffman

of what I was trying to do, which is make me uncomfortable and squirm in my seat.

And it wasn't enjoyable by any means, but a critic, I think, would have enjoyed that.

When I was reading some of your work, T, I kept on just thinking of Plato's allegory of the cave over and over and over again.

Whereas like, you know, maybe just to recap the cave, we haven't talked about it well in Bankless.

It's like, it's this idea, this thought experiment from Plato where you're in a cave.

Right.

Society is collectively inside the cave.

And then there are the social elites, the governors, the leadership of society.

They are casting shadows on the wall using the fire that is in the cave.

And they point at the shadows on the wall and they tell society, this is reality.

This is what real is, is the shadows on the wall.

But really, they're the ones making the shadows.

Right.

And then, you know, the whole point of the cave is you're supposed to escape the cave and you go out into the daylight where you actually learn what real society is when you are out of the governance of the puppet masters, the people casting the shadows, the people producing the game.

And, you know, reading some of your work, I was like, oh, like what T is doing is he is expanding like Plato's allegory of the cave into like this game metaphor where like the game is...

the shapes of the hands that are casting the shadows on the wall.

Like you're creating in this environment where you get to dictate what reality is.

And the whole, but the difference here was with Plato's allegory of the cave, it was like the whole point was like, it's noble to get out of the cave, like aspire to leave the cave, escape the cave and get out into reality and then write your own rules.

But I think what you're kind of saying is like, oh, you know, at times society really enjoys going down into the cave and creating their own shadows, like kind of creating their own game.

Well, I think maybe one of the points of like what you're writing is like, let's make sure that people know about the cave that they're in.