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Interview with Marc Andreessen on learning to love the humanities, and RSS
- kyoob 4y agoGood on Tyler for pressing on the advantages of Web 3.0 for artists. I didn't really find MA's answers satisfactory.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoThere are few actual good use cases for NFTs in ways that actually matter, buuuut... even in the case that a highly talented but unknown artist hits it big one day, there's nothing that is going to prevent the current owner from selling the art without going back to the NFT to compensate the artist. That's a pipe dream outside of the purely digital space.
- 121789 4y agoWhy do people always use art as an example? Couldn't you do it with something like cars (where the car doesn't start until you prove you have the NFT)? I'm completely unfamiliar the with the space
- pavlov 4y agoWould the NFT-locked car require a live blockchain connection and refuse to open its doors if it hasn’t been able to sync its node after a certain time? So you’d get locked out of your car if mobile Internet goes down? If it doesn’t do this, then you can steal the car by selling the NFT, simultaneously disabling the car’s Internet connection, and driving off. Now the NFT is held by one person but the physical car is held by another.
- Jarwain 4y agoWould likely require a form of NFT that's a little different and probably more complex than the current forn. Something about having the car key also be a cryptographic key, and transfers of the NFT invalidating keys or requiring rotation.
- AlexandrB 4y agoWhat is it with NFTs and solving theoretical problems in extremely complex ways. Car thefts at at 1/3 of what they were in the 90s, and the existing mechanisms for buying/selling cars work just fine. Why do we need to introduce car DRM with brittle, distributed access control systems? You're more likely to get your tires or cat stolen - no NFT is going to prevent that.
- davidgerard 4y agobecause then a16z can get a cut of it
- nostromo 4y agoYou could shape the NFT in the form of a metal rod with notches on it. When placed inside a slot and turned, the car could validate that the right pattern of notches exist on the NFT and turn on. If you want to sell the car, simply hand off the physical NFT to the new owner.
- woojoo666 4y agoWell crypto allows for trustless digital transfers. Like selling a house halfway across the world, without having to fly over to hand off the keys.
- kareemsabri 4y agoSo the person halfway around the world can immediately start enjoying their house?
- woojoo666 4y agoI assume it would be something like, the door lock is tied to the current owner as defined by the blockchain. No need for intermediaries, and no physical key.
- Vinnl 4y agoI think the point of an NFT would be that everybody else can also see that you control the token, which doesn't really seem relevant to starting a car. You could just ("just") have a privately controlled public/private key pair, and the previous owner could tell the car that your public key should now be the only one able to open the car; no need to announce that to the world. (I also know nothing of the space, just engaging to build my own understanding.)
- Liron 4y agoI clipped the 3 minutes where Tyler pressed Marc on a specific Web3 use case: https://twitter.com/liron/status/1537186589486460928 https://twitter.com/liron/status/1537186589486460928
- mellosouls 4y agoGreat interview. Nice to read a tech leader with more cultural hinterland and intellectual diversity than the normal marketing/coding/mountain biking dreariness.
- smohare 4y agoYou really drank the Kool-Aid huh?
- tomcam 4y agoIs that the way you would like your own posts responded to?
- titanomachy 4y agoIt is actually kind of interesting to me that he grew up somewhere where it was unusual to have a passport or leave the state for college. It's not a perspective I'm very well-acquainted with.
- dang 4y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing that a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. You may not feel you owe VC billionaires (or whoever) better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wittycardio 4y agoMarc made up facts and couldn't come up with a coherent argument half the time. Very unimpressive
- xcambar 4y agoI'm confused. When MA talks about "humanities", I feeel like he is only describing "behaviorism" and "behavior psychology", which would be, at the very least, intellectually misleading.
- HillRat 4y agoThe fact that Andreessen is becoming a humanities autodidact through Burnham (the later arch-conservative Burnham, rather than the Marxist Burnham, I assume) is ... well, it's an interesting choice, I suppose. About the only thing that's stood the test of time as anything more than a curiosity is "The Managerial Revolution," but as socioeconomic analysis Chandler did it later, and better; and as geopolitical theory Mahan did it first, and better. I have a hunch he's going back to "Suicide of the West" and its bloody-minded anti-liberalism (in the "western liberal democracies" sense of "liberal") which Carl Schmidt did first, and better (using that word advisedly). All in all, it's an idiosyncratic self-education that's mired in a very specific far-right midcentury worldview.
- soSadm4n 4y agoMarc rides on the coattails of better thinkers and engineers who came before and had less to build on. At this point he’s a contemporary American elite grifter who relies on the small government meme despite being of a generation that benefited from a social safety net. Seeing Gen X tech leaders as great thinkers when they’re riding the wave of the world rebuilding after WW2 is so bizarre to me; none of Marc’s work is fundamental to anything these days. Thousands of others understand these systems at the same level. It’s a LARP, it’s propaganda. It’s taking intentional advantage of quirks in lizard brain biology. He’s smart but he’s not owed fawning deference. I just can’t under people with deferential behavior towards people like him anymore. Not that you putting it out there like that. Just saying; to keep it’s all a rise and fall of biology. The spiraling rambling they put on is a show for people who don’t know better.
- missedthecue 4y agoMarc grew up in the rural Midwest during Reagan's 1980s. Not sure what you mean that he's some great beneficiary of direct social welfare.
- smm11 4y agoI guess you just had to be there when we'd hold our breath for Netscape nightlies.
- unicornmama 4y agoGreat fluff piece for the ponzi and fraud GOAT.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoWho is?
- dang 4y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing that repeatedly, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. You may not feel you owe VC billionaires (or whoever) better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fsckjannies 4y ago
- unicornmama 4y agoDone.
- willsher 4y agoHumanities - history, geography, politics, religion and partially are economics, are our legacy; what we are and therefore what we can become. They are arts not sciences. Oral and written tradition for generations before technology & science. Of course this is important to humans, and as a species we should embrace it. Computers should augment us, not replace is.
- farnsworth 4y agoThese topics are incredibly important, and yet it's extremely difficult to make a living studying them, and people are routinely mocked for attempting to do so. One day we will realize that an entire society made up of engineers and managers is not a healthy one. How can we fix this when "stuff that people will pay for" is pretty much the only meaningful measure of value?
- zdragnar 4y agoPeople get paid for engaging in them- i.e. doing them. Studying the arts will not, however, make you an artist. It will make you, at best, a keen observer. Some people can make a living writing books about their observations and assertions formed from them. Most, however, will not. How much extra value does one more person writing about Locke or Rawles really give society? It depends entirely on how many we already have.
- willsher 4y agoThere is a value that transcends money. Value to society as a whole. Sure people need to live and have basic needs met, but to transcend finance is perhaps a necessity. One can make do with a lot less when the soul is enriched, when we take solace from the learning of humanity.
- farnsworth 4y agoAnd how much do you think artists get paid?
- 4y ago
- borroka 4y agoHe is a smart person, but not as brilliant as I thought he was (and I am not getting this impression just from this interview, I have been following him for a long time). And the same is true for many other VC types, who, if it were not for the fact that founders and companies need their money, would have the same intellectual and "lived-life" weight of your run-of-the-mills 9-to-5 office worker. He speaks way too fast which gives the impression is "throwing up" words instead of making a point. Chill. It is an interview, not a slam poetry the-quickest-wins contest. He is asked how to identify talent and after working in VC for 15-20 years he gives a made-up answer on the spot. I don't think he is guarding some secrets, it appears he has not developed a theory. Which is fine, or the theory is implicit, he is looking for "vibes" more than "hard" traits after all the necessary boxes are checked (smart, persistent, able to articulate thoughts). Hard to disagree. If there were a secret, it'd be out there already found. But the made-up answer was not impressive at all (a videotape of when they were kids? Come on). He talks about web3 and he comes up with ways of monetizing, say, podcasts with proposals that you would expect from a teenager. At the end, he basically admits he has no clue and the future will take care of itself. He has watched many movies, but he doesn't have a favorite one. He seems unfazed by selection biases. Peter Thiel is a great at recognizing talent, he says. How many would be recognize with 1/1000th of his money and how many he did not recognize? He repeats "insights" and "talking points" gotten from twitter, social media, the usual playgrounds that myself, a total nobody, could repeat with more flavor. He had a few interesting insights (saying they were "brilliant" would be quite arrogant on my part), surely. Not enough to be considered "brilliant".
- no_butterscotch 4y agoWhy is MA doing the podcast interview round? I opened up YC to browse while listening/watching his interview with Michael Malice, also from today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elXWle3JNrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elXWle3JNrI.
- LewisVerstappen 4y agoBalaji's book I think
- paulpauper 4y agoI wish they had this in 2.5x speed not fast enough
- rsanheim 4y agoCan't listen to anymore interviews w/ Andreesen after the rambling, self-serving podcast he gave on Econtalk (https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-software-immortality-and-bitcoin/ https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-software-immorta...), which is normally one of my favorite podcasts. Unfortunately Roberts (the host) barely pressed Andreesen on his visionary love-fest for NFTs and crypto, which barely surpassed the typical nonsense spewed on twitter from NFT nuts who just so happen to have a lot to gain from folks buying in to their latest crypto site or NFT marketplace. Lots of talk of decentralized data and the power of people owning their own data, and ignoring the reality that 1) this idea has failed before and 2) it has always failed in the face of massive corporate greed, convenience, and walled gardens. Andreesen was right about "software eating the world", I just wish he (or any VCs with his money and power) would try to grapple with or even acknowledge the negative consequences that have come from it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kareemsabri 4y agoWhat do you think are the primary negative consequences from software eating the world?
- maxlamb 4y agoIncreasing wealth disparity
- kareemsabri 4y agoThat's interesting. What sort of examples do you have of software leading to large scale wealth disparity increases? I would venture the primary cause of the increase in wealth disparity from the 1970s to today is the outsourcing of labor overseas paired with financial engineering.
- rchaud 4y agoThe primary negative consequence is driving ungodly amounts of capital towards ridiculous businesses that at best create nothing except a layer of rent-seeking and at worst, use up the same amount of electricity as economically beneficial initiatives like domestic manufacturing. Just look at the ridiculous indulgences VC funds have propped up over the past decade: - social media apps that can only make money with ads and tracking - exchanges where you can trade dog money - office rentals, but at a made-up $50bn valuation - "homesharing" rentals (don't call it a hotel because regulations) - "ridesharing" (don't call it a taxi because regulations) And let's not forget a key logistical challenge for human society -- food delivery.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- statuslover9000 4y ago> I don’t know, for me — and this is probably I’m too much of an engineer — it’s like, what is AI? It’s math. It’s basically elaborations on linear algebra. I have a hard time getting worked up about linear algebra. It’s math. We’ll be able to keep the math under control. I’m not as worried about that. What a shockingly shallow and irresponsible dismissal of AI-safety concerns by a man who has the means to know better.
- justsomeguy123 4y agoIndeed. We also kept chemistry and physics under control. Biochemistry too. Nothing can harm humanity.
- rchaud 4y ago> We’ll be able to keep the math under control. Hope A16z is loaded up on algorithmic stablecoin investments.
- brailsafe 4y agoIdk who this humpty-dumpty guy is, but the actual humanities are vastly more compelling of an intellectual pursuit than most machine-oriented stuff.
- rob_c 4y agoUnfortunately no, the humanities need to be strongly defunded so academia can get back to the matter of academic research and not wearing time arguing about hurt feelings
- gone35 4y ago"Empires — fun historical fact: The Roman Empire was not run out of offices. They ran the world, yet there was no office. There was no office building. The Roman aristocrats worked out of their homes, and then they went to the Senate, and then [laughs] they went to their country house. There was no office building for administering the Roman Empire." Is this "fact" correct? Edit: It turns out utterly not. The Basilicas, for instance, were office buildings for public administration. Why make up something like this?
- flappyeagle 4y agoMost CEOs and investors I’ve met are intellectually quite dull, uncorrelated with their professional success. This shouldn’t be surprising. They didn’t get rewarded by the market for being interesting, unlike, say, the interviewer. MA continues to talk his book when it comes to crypto/web3 which is fine but that’s like a goldbug talking up gold. It’s boring.