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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

• lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
  I truly and thoroughly loved this essay, and am appalled (but not too surprised, unfortunately) by the pearl-clutching comments from a few apparent neoluddites in here.
  • Firmwarrior 3y ago
    Man, I'm really sad at the hundreds of depressed, idiotic, whiny rants dominating this comment section. I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were THIS bad. People are this upset about anyone being optimistic about anything ever. The future doesn't have to be a dreary march toward oblivion. Snap out of it, everyone!
• thrillgore 3y ago
  Wow. So that was a bunch of navel gazing from the man who brought us Netscape. Are we sure he didn't just get lucky? I don't think I've ever seen anything discredit Marc in such a big way since the last time I remember him saying or doing something that discredited him in such a big way, like investing in crypto or claiming India was better under Empire colonization. Also, citing Nick Land (neo-nazi), Filippo Marinetti (co-author of the Fascist Manifesto), Milton Friedman and John Galt (A LITERALLY MADE UP CHARACTER) is a bad read. Yikes.
• pizza 3y ago
  Somehow this reminds me of pre-y2k Nick Land (Meltdown [0] etc.) (Hope that doesn't correlate with the emergence of a 'post-y2k-Landian' Andreesen-Horowitz!) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaWsgtJrNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaWsgtJrNI
  • api 3y ago
    Yeah, I have a soft spot for this kind of thinking but it always goes off the rails. It either gets unhinged and culty or flips and goes hard-reactionary or even luddite. I think the fallacy might be a little too much "magic happens here." Yes you can be optimistic about the future, but a good future is not automatically guaranteed. It requires very hard work and constant vigilance. It's not just a matter of having faith and waiting for the messiah. Both blind optimism and blind pessimism are easy when you're not the one doing the work. Those doing the work tend toward realism.
    • hotnfresh 3y ago
      It’s romanticism that’s afraid to admit it and dresses itself up in dubious “reason” and “rationality”, which is why it always ends up seeming confused and self-contradictory and to be relying on a lot of magic to fill in the gaps. This piece is better than some in that it at least makes the romanticism explicit near the end, but it’s burdened with the same self-conscious need to try to “prove” it’ll also make everything better in any terms one might choose, which is why these are all silly: they want to make believe that there aren’t meaningful costs or trade-offs for their romantic ideal. Nuance and shades of truth can’t be allowed, because they threaten the fake-reasoned rationalization for the romanticism, which romanticism is the point of the whole exercise, so cannot be threatened or alloyed, else they’d lose interest in it.
• deleted 3y ago
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• sph 3y ago
  Techno-optimism manifesto written by a multi-billionaire founder of a venture capital. It doesn't get more dystopian than this. Where have the hackers gone?
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • BobbyJo 3y ago
    You can't buy a crappy house for less than 1mil in SV. The hackers are all on corporate payrolls.
    • shuckles 3y ago
      You sure it isn’t because they just grew up, like the hippies?
      • BobbyJo 3y ago
        By "grow up" do you mean "coalesce"? If so, that's exactly what I'm saying.
        • shuckles 3y ago
          The hippies suited up without expensive housing as a forcing factor. We may agree on what happened, but I disagree with you about why.
      • davidw 3y ago
        I'd love to be free to hack on interesting things. If I didn't have to spend so much on housing, I'd have more freedom. Of course, there are also tradeoffs in that, in the sense that I do not want to live in Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma just to have cheap housing...
        • shuckles 3y ago
          It seems like there is a tendency to become occupied with obligations as you age, regardless of exactly how the discretionary time / money is eaten up.
• hemloc_io 3y ago
  Really more of an e/acc manifesto. Interesting to see a twitter thing slowly leak into the mainstream one step at a time.
  • sph 3y ago
    WTF is e/acc for people that don't live on Twitter?
    • hemloc_io 3y ago
      It's a twitter thing, that was picked up by the more twitter brained VCs. Mostly an AI thing originally I think? (I'm addicted to the site, but don't follow the d list celeb drama lol.) Stands for effective accelerationism, more or less what you read in this Manifesto (Marc Andresson said he identified it a while ago too so makes sense.)
    • batty_alex 3y ago
      It stands for Effective Acceleration, I think
    • serverholic 3y ago
      [dead]
    • bleachedsleet 3y ago
      Original e/acc manifesto [0] [0] https://www.effectiveacceleration.org/posts/4LtypqdAmQ3AgKtJD/what-the-f-is-e-acc https://www.effectiveacceleration.org/posts/4LtypqdAmQ3AgKtJ...
    • lambda_garden 3y ago
      Effective Altruism is a charity / social club / networking opportunity for young STEM types based on pretty extreme beliefs about Utilitarianism and recently AI. The most famous EA right now is probably SBF. Accelerationism is the belief that we should race towards catastrophe so that we can rebuild society in a better way. E / Acc is a (sometimes ironic) amalgam of the two. You won't be surprised to learn that not many in these groups have studied history.
• Longlius 3y ago
  e/acc and its consequences have been a disaster for online technology discourse
• antisthenes 3y ago
  I guess some people have an inherent inability to adopt some kind of middle ground stance. It's either exponential growth forever and colonizing Mars or "why do you want to drag us back to the caves". Having a conversation for the 1000th time with such people who don't recognize nuance is very tiresome and not worth it.
  • api 3y ago
    Social media does not promote middle ground because that doesn't maximize engagement. Everything must be maximally divisive, maximally triggering, and compressible into <200 characters.
    • zzzzzzzza 3y ago
      maybe politics is a support vector machine and the division is the hyperplane XD
      • uoaei 3y ago
        Kind of, yes. All politics is arbitrary line-drawing. There's a bit more to it in that the lines are contextually dependent on what exactly is being politicked about and usually not static.
  • notpachet 3y ago
    > I guess some people have an inherent inability to adopt some kind of middle ground stance Try "almost all people". People crave certainty.
• what-no-tests 3y ago
  Only someone in league with or benefiting from the centralization of power, mass surveillance, wealth, and the use of technology to further the rapid concentration and centralization of such could write such a one-sided piece. Unless they're somehow unaware that, in its current manifestation, technology is a tool that converts knowledge into power. An improved and expanded strategy for -- with articulated tactics to achieve -- the decentralization of power and wealth, a dismantling of hierarchy, and increasing personal agency, privacy and freedom must not be sacrificed in favor of technology for technology's sake. Can we even do this? I don't know.
• Balladeer 3y ago
  > Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon's frequent and regular push toward monopoly power.
  • hemloc_io 3y ago
    Sigh, sad b/c I actually know this, but just a small correction. That's an anonymous Twitter/X account @BasedBeffJezos not the actual head Jeff himself. Founder(?) of the e/acc philosophy
    • Balladeer 3y ago
      Hah! Thanks for the correction / info; I do appreciate it.
    • laidoffamazon 3y ago
      This is worse than the actual Jeff Bezos, who constructed a trillion dollar company that underpins the internet, and is instead just an alt-right NRx troll on the internet.
  • vsareto 3y ago
    Market discipline acts as a challenge, and humans figure out ways around challenges to maximize some reward (money). Market discipline is only enforced by humans and they have weaknesses. This manifesto wants to pretend that the rules enforce themselves by some natural property of the system akin to physics or biology, and not from humans. The manifesto is completely flawed on markets because what requires people to be discriminatory buyers is scarcity, which is opposite of what this manifesto is suggesting we work towards. It has no plans on how to handle technological abundance's (not post-scarcity) affect on market behavior: >We believe markets are the way to generate societal wealth for everything else we want to pay for
  • 3y ago
• edent 3y ago
  [flagged]
• riskable 3y ago
  More like a Techno-Capitalist Fantasy. This part had me laughing out loud: > Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. No, markets naturally culminate into monopolies and cartels. That's just human nature. History has shown over and over again that monopolies and cartels are naturally occurring and that the only successful way to deal with them is to break them up via government intervention. Sure, some monopolies may eventually dissolve due to things like technical obsolescence but that's the type of thing that takes so long that entire generations can come and go, suffering the effects the entire time, before they break up. This manifesto also doesn't seem to have a solution to "natural monopolies" like ISPs or utilities (water, sewer, electricity). It just pretends such things don't exist. It also doesn't have anything at all to say about economic externalities (e.g. pollution/downstream impacts), policing of bad behavior, or "tragedy of the commons" sorts of problems. If you had a technology-oriented country that sends all of its pollution to another country it could be the perfect world envisioned by this "Techno-Optimist Manifesto".
  • caust1c 3y ago
    Agreed. Not acknowledging regulation's role in enabling a sustainable free market economy is navel gazing.
    • sanderjd 3y ago
      Yeah I'm equally annoyed by people who can see absolutely nothing of value in competitive capitalist markets and people who can see absolutely nothing of value in regulation of those markets by society. Both things are good, and both things are bad. The goal is to seek the best balance that maximizes the good parts of each while minimizing the bad parts of each.
  • lsiq 3y ago
    Every monopoly that exists (and has ever existed) does so because of some combination of government granted monopoly rights. Mineral rights, patents, intellectual property, and all other regulatory barriers to entry. There is no "natural" culmination into monopoly, monopoly is THE ANTITHETICAL END of the market. Where monopoly exists there is no longer a competitive market floating prices. The state itself in then in control of all production or in affiliation with a stagnant racket that controls all production. There is no market anymore, because the state (a monopoly of its own) has ceased to enforce a market. It is a choice for the state to make. The contrast between the choice between a market and monopoly is as stark as the contrast between South Korea vs North Korea, or Norway vs Venezuela.
• chaps 3y ago
  Not a single mention of "privacy", so I'm going to assume that this is a manifesto written by someone who just wants everyone's private data. Reminds me of the spirit of "Data for Good", which has become a whitewashed phrase to avoid ethical scrutiny (see: shotspotter, Wejo, palantir)
  • next_xibalba 3y ago
    That’s one explanation. Another might be that for non-tech insiders (ie the majority of the world’s population), the formulation of privacy and its claimed harms that is so often championed(desired state)/decried (current state) here on HN is just a total non-issue. And thus, it goes unmentioned.
    • chaps 3y ago
      Ever see the movie Don't Look Up?
• onion2k 3y ago
  For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more. Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the first ten thousand or so years has been the improvement of the human race and to win in the struggle to survive. Those were definitely noble goals. Compare that to the past 200 or so years and much of the progress has been about the consolidation of power and wealth in the hands of a few extraordinarily rich people. The technological gains have been spread widely, sure, but they've come at a high cost. That's different to the past where the gains have come with very little cost. We could transform society to benefit everyone using technology if we wanted to. I suspect we won't though. We'll sell a few AI powered gadgets to the masses, and that will cause power over everyone to coalesce in the hands of a few people. That's not really much of a win.
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    I think that's wholesale falsehood. The wins in the last 200 years are so dramatic for the average person, especially in the West. Infant mortality rate and the chance of survival to adulthood alone are such glorious victories against Death that I would gladly vote for any system that would give us those wins and create a trillionaire. All that wondrous science has come from this system. No. Evidence is evidence. This thing works, and works dramatically well. We live like Gods compared to people of the 1800s. My wife and I noticed this the other day. They fought wars back in the day for a fraction of the spices that I buy ethically today. No retvrn. Forward only.
    • acjohnson55 3y ago
      At the scale of 200 years, you have some absolutely staggering human atrocities, fueled by technology. Colonialism, modern warfare, carpet bombing/nukes, industrialized genocide, truly ghastly urban factory life. We can maybe look at the past few decades as the point at which most of the world finally began to enjoy the effects of the industrial revolution. Although the cost may be the collapse of the carrying capacity of the earth for humans and many, many other species. There's maybe a world in which we select for the biggest wins for human lifespan, like modern medicine, and filter out the parts that are destructive. But that's not the world we live in.
• ahub 3y ago
  I'm very skeptical of anyone trying to fit history in a single narrative. This whole text sounds like an over simplification. It also presents the usual contradiction that any neo-liberal argument is "not a political argument". The author states : > Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. Then proceeds to glorify the techno-capital (their term) and shun communism. How is that not political ? While I do like technology and optimism, I prefer a more honest view. I think I'm glad this manifest exists: I disagree with almost every item of the list, but it's useful as a reference of the views of rich techno-advocates capitalist and everything wrong with it.
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Honestly, I felt this post just shows how delusional the people are who made out with billions during the tech boom of the past 25 years. I was a huge techno-optimist in the late 90s and early 00s. If anything, my opinion has totally switched over the past 10-15 years as I increasingly see technology ripping societies apart, and benefits only accruing to those at the very top. So excuse me if I gag a bit from a post from newly minted billionaires saying how those crowing about the downsides of tech are just a bunch of Debbie Downers. Tristan Harris, who was featured a lot in The Social Dilemma documentary, was on Bill Maher recently, and I totally agreed with this point he made: we have to forget all the optimistic stories we tell ourselves about tech, and instead just look at the incentives. With social media, we told ourselves all these stories about how it would bring us closer together and keep us better in touch with friends. But the financial incentives that exist for social media companies is solely based on stealing more and more of your attention: what keeps you scrolling to the next block. And it turns out nothing grabs attention like outrage. Tristan's point was that with newer tech like AI, we're likely to repeat the same mistakes if we just tell ourselves the same stories about all the good that can come from AI and ignore the incentives of those top companies speeding ahead as fast as they can. And if you look at those incentives, I don't think it bodes well for the rest of the 99.9% who won't control major AI systems.
  • uoaei 3y ago
    > we have to forget all the optimistic stories we tell ourselves about tech, and instead just look at the incentives I like how people keep coming up with dialectical materialism independently. Just don't drop the M-word and no one will get triggered.
  • NoGravitas 3y ago
    Right — the technology we need is not the technology that is incentivized and produced by the market. Indeed, the market is tending to block the development we need.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  I think one big thing I agree with is that folks are making themselves miserable by adopting this "woe is me" narrative about how life is so hard now and so on and so forth. Life is pretty good. I remember as a child being awed by what I thought then was the rate of progress and now it's even faster: AI, Space, and just appliance tech. I'm pretty anti-pessimist so many of these things appeal to me. Ultimately, though, it's hard to care that much because I know that Marc Andreessen is just content marketing here. His efforts to literally stop building homes in his town after publishing a work titled "It's time to build" really tarnishes everything he says and makes it obvious he's a bullshitter.
• botswana99 3y ago
  This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh Go to the source materials. - Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley - The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker - Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg - the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg - Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann - Factfulness. Hans rosling Or, just look at the data http://ourworldindata.org/ http://www.gapminder.org/
  • greenie_beans 3y ago
    > the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world pretty crazy they'd put a fallacy in the title of their book
    • botswana99 3y ago
      read the book. Overall, since the 1990s total global inequality (inequality across all individuals in the world) declined ... In 1990, 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, this number had fallen to 9.2%. It's not a fallacy ... it's reality
      • greenie_beans 3y ago
        what is the source of this data? the fallacy is that global free markets are exclusive to capitalism. we're trading with china, and aren't they supposed to be socialist? and i'll add to my reading list to challenge my bias!
      • NoGravitas 3y ago
        And most of that elimination of extreme poverty? In China. Now, I suppose you can consider Dengism capitalism, if you ignore the fact that it's markets and capital under controlled conditions being used to build up industrial capacity for the transition to communism, but hey. Whatever definitions let you sleep at night.
    • goatlover 3y ago
      How is it a fallacy? Do you know that it won't?
• the_snooze 3y ago
  This is a profession of faith for tech bros so devoid of meaning and humanity in their lives that they have to worship "progress" to justify their existence.
  • joekr55207 3y ago
    touche`
  • dang 3y ago
    Can you please make your substantive points without snark or name-calling? Perhaps you don't owe the devoid of meaning and humanity in their lives 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
  • Supermancho 3y ago
    > We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.” This killed it for me. Humans did just fine in isolation for a very long time...until others forcibly moved them or killed them. Growth, in the terms being described, is religious and juvenile.
• michaelleland 3y ago
  > We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits. Interestingly, nearly every sentence begins with "we believe," a fundamentally religious statement.
  • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Well, it's a manifesto. That's kind of what a manifesto is - a statement of your positions. If your manifesto is not going to devise those from first principles, then "we believe" isn't a bad way of putting it. (And even if it does devise them from first principles, you still have to justify your first principles.) That's not a "religion" by normal definitions, but it's perhaps a religious way of stating it. (It could in fact be a secular religion, but the wording of the manifesto isn't enough to show that it is.)
  • FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    This guy is telling me that capitalism has denied the world its next Buddha or Christ, and that that's a good thing?
• m0llusk 3y ago
  "We believe ..." Modernity requires reasoned argument and evidence.
• salmonfamine 3y ago
  Argument is invalid; r > g.
• PaulRobinson 3y ago
  My main bugbear with this is that - similar to many American screeds on free markets - it conflates "free markets" with "capitalism". You can have one without the other (employee co-operatives, partnerships), and vice versa (monopolies, cartels). Free markets are about letting the market set the price. That requires multiple providers who are not allowed to engage in extreme anti-competitive behavior that prevents new entrants from becoming providers. Capitalism is about being able to own shares in an organisation (you provide capital), where others do work and you get a share of the profits generated from that work proportionate to the size of share you own. A lot of people say "I'm a capitalist", who go to work each day and get paid a wage. These are not capitalists. They're employees. They are normally an expressing an opinion that is pro-free market, and think that investment can drive more opportunities for work for themselves. They may own shares, and hope for it become a primary income source one day, but the majority have to have jobs. It is reasonable to be optimistic about technology, and to make the case for free markets. It is not reasonable to suggest the only mechanism to make this happen is capitalism. Capitalism drives the fly-wheel of what Cory Doctorow has called "enshitification". There is a constant need to service ever growing numbers in order to sate the appetite of truly pure capitalists, because it's the only thing they care about. This means we see the slow, painful death of multiple products we care about, because the things that make them something we care about are nothing to do with shareholder value, but functional value (even if that function is "fun"). I earnestly believe that technology firms need to start looking away from all forms of external investment - including venture capital - and to alternative economic models and structures of ownership. If you want to build a unicorn, they might get you there, for a while. But it you want to build something that really lasts, that you get to enjoy running and owning as a career (and why would you want to build any other kind of company), there are other models. And those models will eventually win out, because they are fundamentally, foundationally, impossible to "enshitificate". This paragraph in particular made me laugh: > Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences. A bunch of VCs whose only work is taking pitch meetings and allocating capital to who they think will win and who will lose, sat down and wrote this. Think about that. Go start your big idea now with friends and family and people you like, making sure you build it in a way that is resistant to capitalism, but open to exploiting everything the free market offers. Technology is brilliant. But these idiots have all the gear and no idea - they're about to be found out, and their beloved copies of Ayn Rand books aren't going to help them.
• intended 3y ago
  > When market discipline is absent, there is no limit to how crazy things can get. That is... really putting absurd amounts of weight on the term "Market Discipline".
• laidoffamazon 3y ago
  There's a lot of this that I agree with wholeheartedly and aggressively. One of the worst modern impulses is techno-pessimism in my opinion, but some of it is somewhere between strange and frankly downright stupid. Take the "patron saints of techno-optimism". It includes "BasedBeffJezos", a pseudonymous Twitter account that subscribes to NRx ideology, and Nick Land, the progenitor of elitist, bigoted NRx ideology. How exactly do these deserve to be on the same list as great Americans like John Von Neumann? Likewise Thomas Sowell, Mises, the fictional John Galt? This isn't a serious manifesto, and I say this as someone that would love to see techno-optimism pushed further into the forefront of politics and culture. This is Twitter inside-baseball, not designed to convince anyone that isn't already following a smattering of e/acc accounts that spend 1/3 of their time posting racist memes.
  • tootie 3y ago
    It's the very definition of sophomoric. A lot of half-baked intellectualism from someone who doesn't actually understand (or pretends not to) any of the actual principles. Surely any Econ 101 student could tell you that Economics isn't the study of capital markets. Things like a clean environment, a vote or personal safety follows the laws of scarcity economics. Addressing the environmental costs of industrialization is absolutely part and parcel of free market economics and the agitators for a clean environment are just trying to get those costs priced in. Declaring them as being opposed to growth because they oppose technological advancement is facile at best and a deliberate straw man at worst.
• fassssst 3y ago
  [flagged]
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    [deleted]
• carapace 3y ago
  Gosh this is weird. So many of the points here seem really good and important, yet many of the other points here are so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable. It reads to me like bad religion. E.g. he knows about the Aral sea and yet argues against the "Precautionary Principle"!? (It seems strange to me to mention the Aral sea as an example of Soviet ecological incompetence, which it surely is, but then fail to mention the Salton sea, a similar disaster perpetuated by non-Communists.) The biggest problem I have with this manifesto is that there's nothing actionable in it. What are we, the little people who aren't techno-elite billionaires, supposed to do now? Just wait for techno-Jesus to save us?
  • zzzzzzzza 3y ago
    i have some spiritual practice suggestions: 1. maintain and improve your emacs&nixos configurations, 2. create a personal database and add new capabilities to it (for example you could start by making a database to track github stars that could for instance store hashes of specific commits) 3. with your newfound data model and programmable/configurable environment, slowly integrate AI into your life
    • carapace 3y ago
      I think you may have replied to the wrong thread? Your comment is non sequitur.
      • zzzzzzzza 3y ago
        "The biggest problem I have with this manifesto is that there's nothing actionable in it. What are we, the little people who aren't techno-elite billionaires, supposed to do now? Just wait for techno-Jesus to save us?"
        • carapace 3y ago
          Ah, that makes more sense, thank you. FWIW, I'm going to be using Guix on my next computer.
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• new-poster-453 3y ago
  It has been quite interesting to observe Marc Andreesen's idealogical arc over the past 5 years. An article from a mainstream VC citing Nick Land and Nietzche definitely points to a "vibe shift" occurring, with new ideas gaining hold after a long period of stagnation.
• intended 3y ago
  I appreciate the optimism, and sometimes its great to put out a manifesto filled with hope. But this part: [The Enemy] Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas. This is true - but it really doesn't engage with how the Enemy operates, and why many Bad ideas do MUCH better than good ideas.
• LindeBuzoGray 3y ago
  > Markets > We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us > We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral There's many things off with this. The USSR from the 1920s to early 1950s had enormous economic growth - particularly in the 1930s when so-called free markets in the West had collapsed, by the 1950s and early 1960s it was sending satellites and men to space - before the West. Also, the PRC had enormous economic growth from the early 1950s to late 1970s (and afterward as well). Also, the US economy is centrally planned. Billions are flowing to military contractors for Israel right now as they were to the Ukraine before - the US is pumping over $800 billion (really over a trillion) this year into this centrally planned economy, and it also de facto plans for the giant medical sector. The Internet we type on was built over decades with government money. But most importantly, as these are more minor issues - it is a false comparison. The Soviet Union had markets selling radishes for rubles, just like the US does (for dollars). So both had markets. The difference is the USSR from the 1920s to mid-1960s made production decisions based on the general welfare, the desire for a space program etc. Workers on collective farms made their own decisions, with perhaps some government quotas. In the US decisions are made to benefit the heirs who own companies as opposed to the workers who do the work. But that is a minor point. The point is that both had markets, little different from one another. But the distribution portion of the economy for the US is compared to the centrally planned production if the other economy. It makes no sense. The US production controlled by and for the benefit of heirs is unmentioned. The USSR-like market identical to to the US market is unmentioned. We compare US production to USSR-like distribution. The comparison makes no sense. Purposefully.
  • nickpp 3y ago
    Of course, people in USSR were starving while free markets were making Westerners fatter and fatter.
  • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    There is a lot wrong with your statement. The US economy has parts that are centrally planned. The PRC had enormous economic growth - and also a famine that killed millions of people. It was a centrally planned absolute catastrophe. Then in the 1970s, they realized that central planning wasn't going to keep working, so they moved to more of a free market approach - not totally, but much more than they had. And growth continued for several more decades. > But the distribution portion of the economy for the US is compared to the centrally planned production if the other economy. It makes no sense. Where are you getting this from? Certainly not from the parts you quote.
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I'm really a bit shocked this was flagged. A blog post (marketed as a manifesto no less!) from the founder of Netscape and one of the biggest VCs in the business about the future of technology. I understand its potential for flame wars, but how could this not be on-topic for HN?
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • new-poster-453 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • greenie_beans 3y ago
      it seems that your peers flagged this and not the platform. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28456793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28456793
    • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      OK, let's stop with the "censorship" nonsense: 1. There is no cabal of moderators waiting to censor posts. This is not Reddit. There is pretty much just dang as the primary admin. 2. Posts are just flagged by other users who feel it is off-topic, or not likely to lead to productive discussion. I'm guessing that users who flagged this thought it was "not likely to lead to productive discussion". While I may not agree with that point of view, I certainly don't think it is some sort of "censorship".
      • Dig1t 3y ago
        I mostly agree with you, but sometimes it's not "not likely to lead to productive discussion", but instead just "I disagree with you". Which I do wish we had less of.
    • deleted 3y ago
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• leotravis10 3y ago
  Keep in mind that they changed the header in this, so thankfully Erin Kissane shared the original header for the record: https://mas.to/@kissane/111245487051384089 https://mas.to/@kissane/111245487051384089 Talk about a falling off the rails type of piece, this is it.
  • kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Can't believe they didn't put a ring on the leftmost hand.
    • spiralx 3y ago
      I'm sure the author considers himself a giver :)
  • hackermatic 3y ago
    A fitting rebuttal to Andreesen's manifesto is Erin Kissane's recent series about how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar. "Trust and safety" as enemies, indeed. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
• bilsbie 3y ago
  Why was it flagged?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• volleygman180 3y ago
  Someone should hand Marc Andreessen a copy of “The Technological Society” by Jacques Ellul
  • panic 3y ago
    Ursula Franklin’s “The Real World of Technology” as well.
  • Thrymr 3y ago
    Almost any decent book about history, economics, philosophy, science, or technology, really. This looks like a sequence of autogenerated tweets from a libertarian technobot.
    • lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
      Here's a great list of books about exactly those subjects.[1] I have enjoyed many of them. [1]: https://x.com/pmarca/status/1577365972469489665 https://x.com/pmarca/status/1577365972469489665
• Barrin92 3y ago
  Okay one thing I had to laugh out loud about in this piece is the "Techno Capital Machine" section: "Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine[...] We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us" Mark might find it fashionable to quote Land but I'm unsure if he's actually read him. Here's what Land had to say on the techno-capital machine working for us, from Fanged Noumena: “Machinic desire can seem a little inhuman, as it rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities, and hacks through security apparatuses, tracking a soulless tropism to zero control. This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources.”
  • thrillgore 3y ago
    Not to mention that Nick Land is an avowed Néo-nazi.
• theyinwhy 3y ago
  ... that reads like a conspiracy theory.
• noneeeed 3y ago
  This isn't a techno-optimist manifesto. This is a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist manifesto with a sprinkling of 1960 tech boosterism so that they can point at people who disagree and call them luddites. I'm a massive techno-optimist. I think science and technology has self-evidently bought vast improvements to the human experience. I think it's an absolutely essential part of solving many of the problems that plague the world right now, and will do so in the future. But I whole-heartedly reject sizeable chunks of this teenage-political-science-student level manifesto. If that somehow makes me a luddite, then pass me an iron bar and point me towards the nearest cropping frame, because apprently I have some wrecking to do?
  • nerpderp82 3y ago
    I think a TO would be how can we make the whole world more democratic, more self sufficient, more distributed with the lowest possible impact on the environment. And to do that, we would need to educate the world's population to never before seen levels. Technology is a byproduct of an educated population. 1/10th of everyone who has been alive is right now. This is a huge resource we are wasting with the subjugation of the classes.
  • maccaw 3y ago
    Which parts do you reject?
    • noneeeed 3y ago
      Well, essentially the libertarian anarcho-capitalist bits. TBH, I can can just strongly disagree with people like that, but what got me worked up about this pile of high-school grade political science was the way it conflated all that libertarian anarcho-capitalism with being pro-tech, and implying that any concern for the negative effects of developement (or of the economic system) therefore automatically puts you on the "enemies" side of things. It's a frantastically offensive false catagorisation that I strongly reject.
• tootie 3y ago
  Very poorly reasoned. How is advocating for quality of life in terms of environmental or social responsibility anti-growth, anti-development or anti-technology? It's none of those things. It's anti-greed. It's against GDP as a proxy for prosperity. It's the true essence of free market economics that hasn't been captured by narrow-minded capitalists. And his entire opening statement is straw man after straw man. "They told us" a whole load of things that represent the opinion of a handful of people through the lens of a person who personally dislikes them.
• motohagiography 3y ago
  What makes that post necessary is the sentiment has been largely anonymous so far and there hasn't been any way of connecting people who share these ideas to each other. I admire their enthusiasm. Have fun storming the cathedral!
• CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  First, ignore the boiling planet like a good frog, technology will solve all the problems technology caused if you just believe hard enough. Second, get high on the idea of hardcore Randian Objectivism because you're definitely just a temporarily embarrassed billionaire sitting on the next unicorn. Third, keep billions in poverty and precarity for your own ends/amusement before tossing them to die in the inevitable resource wars that will spread by 2040 (2030 imo). /savedyouaclick
• po7b 3y ago
  [flagged]
• scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
  Like, I see myself as a techno-optimist. But this whole manifesto sure does remind me of a Dr. Bronner's label.
• klntsky 3y ago
  > We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us. This assumes that only human agency is possible, I doubt that.
• lxe 3y ago
  I agree with the premise, but why does this read like a tech bro and his finance/business major buddy in their early 20s got high and wrote it with the help of an LLM trained on /r/iam14andthisisdeep?
  • fullshark 3y ago
    Because (successful) venture capitalists don't actually know everything and aren't worth listening to on every single subject because they made a few brilliant bets.
  • kromem 3y ago
    I'm guessing that it having a "meaning of life" section could have something to do with that impression?
• zemo 3y ago
  > The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein "if you democratize power, the powerful will hate you for it" and "if you play with powers beyond your ability to control, they may backfire" seem like really different myths to me > We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. huh, I don't know that I've ever been told this > We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system. I love how intellectually shallow the power of this reasoning is. Oh, a person who is drowning will pay more for a gulp of air? Wow, what an amazing conclusion, how could we have ever figured that out without the beautiful Divine Glory of The Market? > Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone; centralization will starve you to death. ... Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism. centralization is bad, collectivism is bad, only markets and individuals are good... yeah, this is anarcho-capitalism. Like at no point do they recognize that under this line of thinking, people with a lot of money may be incentivized to cause harm to people without a lot of money, gee I wonder why they might not be so keen to acknowledge that? > Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. ah yes that's why the market produced the Sherman act. oh, wait, shoot, that was statist action motivated by collectivist goals. > We believe there is no conflict between capitalist profits and a social welfare system that protects the vulnerable. I dunno man, thought experiment here, do you make more money by curing someone of a sickness or by keeping them sick and charging them for treatment forever? > We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits. yeah the idea that everyone wants to be either a murderer, cult leader, or billionaire is ... a totally normal idea that totally normal people have. Beyond being a deeply problematic worldview, the existence of the military-industrial complex challenges the notion that "if if weren't for markets people would do war". Marvelous logic on display here. > To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.” he's quoting the Futurist Manifesto here, which ... pretty weird move, my dude. The Futurist Manifesto paved the way for the Fascist Manifesto, and if you're going "that's a reach", the guy that wrote the Futurist Manifesto cowrote the Fascist Manifesto with Mussolini. Yes, THAT Mussolini. > Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. brave to make a bunch of sweeping politically-motivated generalizations and then to say it's not a political philosophy. Ok, if you say so!
• nerpderp82 3y ago
  I could see one being a techno-optimist and also not be a capitalist, but this strikes me more of a half-baked libertarian manifesto with some technology sprinkled in as a garnish.
• jhp123 3y ago
  It's alarming to see this particular blend of ideas without any historical acknowledgment. The mix of Nietzsche's ideas about the superman, a messianic belief in the transformative power of industry, and a paranoid fear and hatred of "wreckers" who would deny and destroy greatness all have an awfully dark history.
  • zemo 3y ago
    yeah he quotes the Futurist Manifesto further down the page, also with no historical context, which ... I dunno, that's gotta be a dog whistle, right?
    • hotnfresh 3y ago
      The part that gets me is the insistence on technology-as-purely-good-and-beneficial and an obsession with population growth (if you’ve not read to the end: yes, the population-growth stuff drops off a little in the middle, but by the end “obsession” is definitely a fair characterization) without ever addressing that technology is the reason population growth is leveling off. I disagree with basically all of what he was getting at with those things, but the pointed failure to even note the tension there was downright funny by the end. Putting aside my material disagreements with the whole thrust of that argument, it’s just comically inept on its own terms. “Technology is one of three ways to increase production, and another is population growth… uh, actually, I just noticed, as the alert reader may have, that that whole bit was dumb, it’s just technology… also population growth especially is very good… what do you mean, ‘and why is population growth declining’?”
      • TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        What's funny about this is that another way to increase production is to improve conditions for working class people - free college, free medical care, protections against speculation on housing to allow for affordable housing, better transit options and urban design... these political choices would dramatically improve our operational abilities as a country, but wealthy people like Andreessen tend to oppose measures like this in favor of laissez faire policies. This ultimately limits his ability to serve as the visionary he clearly would like to be.
• jrm4 3y ago
  Can't recall too many pieces of writing that fail this hard at what they're intended to do? I mean, if you've never read any other technology-related writing ever, there's some stuff in here I suppose. I think though, it best highlights what's missing from a lot of visible technological aspirations -- which is a sense of fun?
  • davidivadavid 3y ago
    I think this will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of Silicon Valley when people woke up from a collective slumber and realized most people hailed as great "visionaries" and "technologists" actually had nothing whatsoever to offer in that department. It will be seen as hilariously ironic that those very people in fact had no idea what technology even is — a means to an end, not an end in itself, and that they had literally nothing to offer for what to do with all the technology they built. It's a conceptual dead end, sprinkled with badly digested sophomoric references. Truly embarrassing emperor has no clothes moment.
• llamaimperative 3y ago
  I agree with the overall thrust of this, or should be easy to convince, but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” > Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences. Really? Does an uber-wealthy capital allocator publishing a social manifesto seriously not see that this comment at least justifies a half-assed explanation as to why it doesn’t apply to the author? Maybe something like, “my personal chef Instacarts my dog’s peanut butter from Whole Foods, just like everyone else, so I am not totally detached from reality!”
  • hotnfresh 3y ago
    Also: a leader and beneficiary of various enormous centrally-planned economic units that only made him rich by carefully and deliberately avoiding competitive market forces (this is practically the only way to get rich—hypothetical perfect markets drive profits toward zero, you make the big bucks by ensuring you experience as little competitive pressure as possible) claims without qualification that central planning can’t beat market signals. It’d sure be interesting if he took his own idea seriously and tried to apply it to the companies he has a major stake in. If his stated hard-line position is correct, it should make his companies do much better. If he actually believes it, he’ll surely try. Right?
  • rainsford 3y ago
    It's also a little hard to square that enemy with the earlier enemy of "...anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness." So we're opposed to credentialed experts in favor of "the real world" but also opposed to those who don't care about merit or achievement? Are credentials and expertise not a reasonable measure of merit and achievement and aren't excessive appeals to the wisdom of the average textbook anti-merit populist nonsense? I'm actually a fan of the overall idea of techno optimism. But it's hard to get behind a version that starts out with the premise that we should exclude experts who've spent their lifetime focused on getting really good at knowing WTF they are talking about presumably in favor of billionaire VCs who can speak to the "real world". Don't get me wrong, if we're going to become a galaxy spanning civilization or whatever, we'll certainly need large and regular doses of reality. But we'll also need a lot of credentialed expertise.
• tech_ken 3y ago
  I think this needs a close reading by a historian or something. I'm certainly not qualified to do it but still there are so many lines that even to my layman's understanding seem like just obvious, fortune cookie horseshit (ironic, given how aggressively the author is touting "truth-seeking"). The Nietzsche stuff reads like something a stoner freshman engineer would post on /r/atheism. > Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences. Coming from the mouth of Andreeson-Horowitz this is...beyond rich. Didn't they just hand Adam Neumann a massive stack of cash (and to do nothing but extract rent from urban economies, no less)? Their entire milieu does nothing but play god and dick around with abstract theories. How is The Precautionary Principal delusional but cryptocurrency not "a luxury belief"? This whole post smacks of a god-complex masquerading as a commitment to rationality. Clearly Marc Andreeson knew what he was doing at some point, but if this is representative of the current thought leadership in Big Tech I think we're heading towards some dark years. Victory has defeated us.
  • hotnfresh 3y ago
    Between the times the piece twists itself up in knots of self-contradiction or is just, purely internally, gibberish, plus the amount of it that’s, as you rightly call out, “fortune cookie horseshit” and is best ignored, it’s a challenge to even reach a point of beginning to address and critique its substance.
• slibhb 3y ago
  What if technology has worked out as well as it has because of techno-pessimism? I.e. what if it's because we're suspicious of change that most change has been positive? Maybe filter out the bad ideas through a slow but necessary process.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• winphone1974 3y ago
  Not sure how optimism in technology translates into raging free market libertarian in a few sentences, but then this guy's never been very subtle or aware. I'm sure his 30-year-younger self would want to kick his today's ass.
• RandomLensman 3y ago
  It's way too long and at the same time skipping over crucial human traits like kindness or compassion. Might be better to stick with Adam Smith.
• beloch 3y ago
  I used to have a similar worldview. I read about the consequences of technological advance in the past always with the present firmly in mind. Who cares if there were initially some unintended consequences and collateral damage? Things got better. Advances in technology have usually increased the size of the pie. It's easy to ignore the bumps in a trendline that's steadly headed skyward. However, when you look more closely, it's not just technological advances that keep things headed in the right direction. Social advances, critically those that help divide the pie more equally, are also responsible for the bounty we enjoy today. e.g. The industrial revolution is typically credited with a great leap forward in quality of life for the average citizen, but it actually did the opposite at first. Workers crowded into dirty, unhealthy cities and started to live shorter, nastier, more brutish lives. Initially, many English workers were legally barred from seeking employment elsewhere. If you didn't like the wages you were getting at one job and tried to take another, you could be sent to jail. It's hard to ask for a raise or even safety equipment when the alternative is jail! It was the concentration of workers in cities that allowed labor movements to form and demand changes that granted more people a fairer share of the pie, such as the right to change jobs. Technological advance is generally a good thing, but it's social advances that harness it for all. Be wary of philosophies that ignore part of the equation. If we want to avoid bumpy periods where life gets worse for the majority of us before getting better again, we can make conscious choices about how to use new technologies.
  • suoduandao2 3y ago
    Fair but… I think the last hundred years should have also taught us to be wary of believing in any novel social system too fervently
  • helboi4 3y ago
    Absolutely. People act like we can't or shouldn't seek both technological and social advancement. Social advancement is the key difference between a dystopian and a utopian technologically advanced future.
  • mindslight 3y ago
    I wouldn't say I "used to" have a similar worldview. In fact I find myself agreeing with most every passage in the manifesto. Agreeing with "yes, but..." - because while we can assert our "belief" in things, when those beliefs are taken for granted while not lining up with actual reality, they form their own oppressive dogma! For example it's quite rich for a VC to make assertions about free markets while simultaneously having drastically altered their investment strategy due to government ending the decade long feeding trough of near-zero interest rates. Hence the general criticism of being out of touch. Your comment is a good synthesis point. In fact one might say the amount of criticism and nay-saying is directly related to the inequality, either economic or social (dis)enfranchisement of lacking purpose. So pushing in the opposite direction isn't really helping the cause of growth, but rather causing that gulf to widen and the criticism of "techno optimism" to grow. The fundamental problem I see is making sure governments pass productive laws that encourage computational wealth to remain distributed, as opposed to authoritarian laws that actually cement routine corporate control while reserving ultimate control to the state. The latter approach basically only works with quantifiable monetary wealth, in that the state can collect taxes and then convert them into material welfare. But this approach doesn't work with non-fungible liberty, where the distributed structure must be preserved rather than ever being centralized to begin with. eg GDPR vs TikTok hysteria. Or antitrust enforcement to end this anticompetitive bundling of software, services, and hosting, versus "eliminate sec 230".
• zetazzed 3y ago
  Andreessen always argues for "growth" and declares "time to build," but as soon as someone tries to build an apartment in his town of Atherton, he's going to fight it: https://fortune.com/2023/02/23/atherton-steph-curry-marc-andreessen-housing-yimby-nimby/ https://fortune.com/2023/02/23/atherton-steph-curry-marc-and... Atherton is prime silicon valley real estate that could allow engineers and startup founders to live there at a reasonable price and fuel growth in the tech economy. But if it's going to inconvenience Marc or compromise his nice views, growth is no longer important to him.
  • tomhoward 3y ago
    I don’t really know Atherton (I’m from outside the U.S. and have only visited the main centers un Silicon Valley) and I have mixed feelings about Andreessen’s rhetoric in recent years, including the tech utopianism expressed in this post. But this kind of attack is just a classic cheap shot. If the argument was accompanied with evidence that it was feasible and economically optimal to build the infrastructure (transportation, retail, local services) in Atherton that could support a dramatic increase in the number of residents in the area, then sure, you could have a reasoned debate about it. Without that it’s just a sneer, and it does nothing to refute Andreessen’s argument that there should be more development in areas where it is logistically and economically practical.
    • davidw 3y ago
      The only thing stopping development in Atherton is a raging case of NIMBYism.
• JamesLeonis 3y ago
  The whole thing reads like the Nicene Creed from Roman Catholicism [0]; a series of statements of belief. If you put 1-5 (Agree/Disagree) below each paragraph, it could also be a personality test. [0]: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed
• sillywalk 3y ago
  I think anybody endorsing this should be forced to work in a rare-earths mine for a couple of weeks beforehand, especially Billionaires.
• elihu 3y ago
  > We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well. Let's not do that on Earth please. If you want to build a planet-sized solar concentrator in space for reasons, knock yourself out. In fact, until we figure out how to not rely on fossil fuels, I think we're better off reducing energy use. We can do that and get more useful work done at the same time by using energy more efficiently. In many respects that will be the natural consequence of electrification of formerly fossil-fuel technology. EVs are far more efficient than ICE vehicles. > We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power. [citation needed] Even if true, about half the CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution happened in the last 30 years or so. The path we're on is one that leads to environmental and economic devastation and misery.
  • hotnfresh 3y ago
    Assuming the CO2 stat is even true (that stood out to me, too, so I did a search, but couldn’t find a good source either way) I 100% guarantee it’s sophistry: carbon produced in the US per-capita is perhaps down—that’s not impossible, at least—but I’ll eat my hat if carbon released due to US consumption is down.
    • volkandkaya 3y ago
      "I’ll eat my hat if carbon released due to US consumption is down." Markets will figure out how to do more with less to reduce costs, and this includes energy.
    • rgmerk 3y ago
      US embodied carbon imports are not nearly as large as is sometimes assumed, apparently in the order of 7% of total emissions: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-carbon https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-...
• tern 3y ago
  From the original "[...] Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics" from 2013[1]: > 7. We want to accelerate the process of technological evolution. But what we are arguing for is not techno-utopianism. Never believe that technology will be sufficient to save us. Necessary, yes, but never sufficient without socio-political action. Technology and the social are intimately bound up with one another, and changes in either potentiate and reinforce changes in the other. Whereas the techno-utopians argue for acceleration on the basis that it will automatically overcome social conflict, our position is that technology should be accelerated precisely because it is needed in order to win social conflicts. [1] https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics/ https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-mani...
• woodruffw 3y ago
  This was deeply depressing to read, and indicates that the trend of disengagement between VCs (and SV tech culture, more generally) and our larger society is continuing apace. Rather than doing anything else, a man worth approximately $1.8B[1] is posting screeds wherein he churlishly tells the rest of us to read Internet-poisoned reactionaries. No sane culture would be optimistic about any system or scheme that produces such results; we do much better to run screaming in the exact opposite direction. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/profile/marc-andreessen/ https://www.forbes.com/profile/marc-andreessen/
  • Def_Os 3y ago
    Hear, hear. I was especially appalled by seeing aforementioned reactionaries listed alongside thinkers that likely would've pulled this manifested to shreds (e.g. Bertrand Russell).
• Liron 3y ago
  This is decent as a "rah rah techno-optimism" piece, but it continues Marc's pattern of cheapening the discourse when opining on the topic of AI existential risk. It's easy to mistake this piece as making an argument for accelerating AI development by touting the virtues of techno-optimism. It's not, though. The claim that "AI has a high risk of becoming unaligned & uncontrollable in our lifetimes", if sufficiently true (e.g. 99% confidence), implies that the current speed of AI development is unwise, independent of how much one likes techno-optimism in general.
• survirtual 3y ago
  In a world where abundance reigns, the old structures and the leaders who champion them fade into obsolescence. The energy that once went into seeking more begins to flow into sharing, nurturing, and sustaining. In this transformed landscape, resource hoarding and centralized control are not just out of place; they become barriers to the collective human journey toward wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. When everyone's basic needs are met effortlessly, the focus of life shifts from surviving to thriving, from acquiring to becoming. In such a world, market mechanisms and venture capital don't just lose relevance; they begin to feel like vestiges of an era defined by limitations that no longer exist. The skills once lauded for amassing resources lose their sheen when the quest becomes one of meaning, connection, and collective wellbeing. The hearts and minds of people turn toward unlocking human potential, fostering creativity, and deepening relationships. In this new reality, leaders who can guide us toward spiritual and emotional enrichment will supersede those who have mastered the art of material accumulation. In this context, the prominence of individuals like Andreessen, along with constructs such as markets and money, would naturally diminish into insignificance. The irony lies in the fact that such a manifesto would even be conceived, indicating a profound disconnect from the emergent realities of a post-scarcity world.
  • jpadkins 3y ago
    really well written reply, much I agree with. Except one part about markets. I think even in the Age of Abundance, market forces will still be present. But I think they will be more like how trees grow to the light, or roots to the water. We will still need signals for efficiency and regrowth. Hard to say the same about money. I can't see a world without value, and I can't comprehend a system with value but no means to exchange value (money).
    • survirtual 3y ago
      In envisioning a future landscape, I see energy—both its generation and consumption—as well as human attention serving as the core currencies of value. These measures transcend the limitations of material wealth, opening avenues for a more holistic understanding of worth. The question of whether this will manifest as a 'market' is less clear, but what is certain is that it would be fundamentally distinct from the systems we navigate today. The incentives driving such an ecosystem would be radically different, to the extent that calling it a market or associating it with money, as we currently understand them, would likely be a misnomer. In this envisioned system, the nature of transactions could also change fundamentally. Currently, transactions are exchanges that often end relationships; you pay for a good, receive it, and both parties move on. In a framework centered on energy and attention, transactions could become cyclical or ongoing, fostering long-term relationships and community engagement. This extends the concept of "value" beyond one-off exchanges into a more interconnected, perhaps even symbiotic, system. Just some thoughts from a nobody on a tiny glowing screen.
• spacecadet 3y ago
  DNF. Seems like this thread has more supporters so I'll just say it again for fun. Put your money where your mouth is Marc. So sick of you and the geezers lies, haven't you and that monoculture ilk extracted enough wealth over that juicer shaped head of yours?
• pphysch 3y ago
  Why does he include "John Galt" in the list of (real) authors to read, but not Ayn Rand? What am I missing? Indeed, in the spirit of Rand using an agreeable term "Objectivism" to label her confused hyperindividualism, A16Z uses the agreeable "Techno-Optimism" to repackage the same. I'm highly optimistic about technology, but not whatever this blog post is about.
  • lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
    The list is labeled "Patron Saints" — only a following sentence mentions "reading their works". Many listed aren't really "authors" at all. And Ayn Rand would have enjoyed having "John Galt" listed in her place, I think. And this post is definitely about technology!
    • pphysch 3y ago
      > And Ayn Rand would have enjoyed having "John Galt" listed in her place, I think. What a bizarre ideology!
• JakeStone 3y ago
  Get a load of this clown.
• rafaelero 3y ago
  Looks like a lot of people got triggered by the message. I think the manifesto is descriptively correct (by assigning to technology and markets the wealth increase of the last centuries) and prescriptively sound (just keep doing what we know it works).
• Kye 3y ago
  >> 'Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.' I wonder how many of these terms were focus grouped and promoted by him or people in his cohort.
• Zolde 3y ago
  What ideas pop up in your head about someone who deems their enemies "trust and safety" or "risk management"? Especially risk takers should manage their risks. Someone who complains about risk management when taking risks is usually not an innovator, but an opportunistic liability to progress and shared benefits. You are free to take risks where negative downsides of unchecked technology are taken by you, but AI will impact everyone ("playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences."). It is precisely because the potential and power of AI are so impactful and transformative that AI developers have more responsibility to not squander this and mess this up. Being optimistic about the benefits, should make one pessimistic about the risks. So, yes. Promote benefits. Build, create, fail, refine. Focus you attention fully on it. Ignore risks and risks management and trust and safety. But don't label these an enemy when these speak up. Doomerism has hurt AI safety discourse tremendously. Unrealistic and restrictive risk management hurts progress and reasoned debates. Roko and Yudkowski get way too much attention and dominate and control the public debate, pushing out moderate and careful arguments. The e/acc crowd similarly hurt AI safety: almost like these don't believe that either technology can be dangerous, or that such danger is to be accepted, or even required, to make progress. Maximize benefits, while minimizing risks. Both can work. One without the other won't. Don't try to launder your Waifu-generators as decentralization or progress. Don't damage AI safety by making everyone disgusted at the thought, because you just had to talk about existential threats of nano-bots, not the current and very real risks associated with (generative) AI. The problem with the current debate on AI safety, is that AI ethicists are too enthusiastic to come up with many rules to bind AI and stifle progress. While the AI acceleration have trouble to come up with just one rule we could put to a democratic vote. If you really can not come up with severe and avoidable negative consequences from computing, then maybe you should not have strong opinions on computer safety. Accelerate benefits, reduce risks. We owe it to the future we are building right now.
• tjmc 3y ago
  So the Economist reported today that Tuvalu is planning for its disappearance as sea levels rise [1]. What a great opportunity for Msrs Andreeson, Thiel, Musk and all the other neo-Rand true believers to step in and create their seasteading utopia. They could cast this manifesto in gold at the entrance. Years from now, when we visit their brave new world below the waves I'm sure it will have worked out great! [1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-its-own-disappearance https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/10/12/tuvalu-plans-for-i...
  • m-ee 3y ago
    I would caution against encouraging the billionaires to get into coastal engineering https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/fiji-surf-wars https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/fiji-surf-wars
    • spiralx 3y ago
      Surely this is the more apposite link when talking about libertarian tropical island paradises? :D https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/michael-oliver-republic-of-minerva-history-libertarian-micronations-tonga.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/michael-oliver-r...
• simpaticoder 3y ago
  Externalities of progress are very real, and the speed with which the modern age has arisen, and it's brevity, should give us pause every time we assert that it is all good or all evil. It is certainly both. The great problem of our time is the unrestrained accumulation of wealth. Tech wealth is the product of both innovation and making that innovation artificially scarce. Without the former there is no demand, without the later there is no profit. The techno optimists always seem to forget that second component! Once you've earned Enough, either drop the artificial scarcity and share freely, or give someone else a turn to earn their own Enough. Don't keep hoarding it all for yourself and lying that your wealth is proportional to the value you created. No. Especially in tech. It's proportional to the value you captured with the 1-2 punch of innovation and artificial scarcity, and that itself required a functioning society to which you owe your success and your allegiance.
• leshow 3y ago
  Riiight, please ignore the existential planetary destruction we are hurtling towards, trust these ubermensch to decide what's best for you.
• jonstewart 3y ago
  I just don't understand how you could, in good faith, start off a manifesto in favor of techno-optimism with a quote from, of all people, Walker Percy.
• mola 3y ago
  Oh my, he actually quoted Italian futurism. We live in sacry times.
• marcus_holmes 3y ago
  Open question (I don't have an answer and I'm curious): I have a friend who is an extremely talented musician. They get by, they're not starving or anything, but it's very hand-to-mouth. I have other friends who are massively less talented at other things, but those things are more commercially rewarded (selling, coding, management, etc). Why does our system (and this manifesto) reward one set of talents and not the other so differently? Related: are we really, as a society, going to push our most talented musicians/artists/creatives to do other things because of this? If you were born with a gift for music but could also write some software (not badly, but not at the same level) shouldn't we as a society push you to make great music rather than average code?
  • deleted 3y ago
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• Animats 3y ago
  The big problem is the "Markets" section. The author assumes that free markets just happen. But what we see today are monopolies or oligopolies. The end state seems to be 1-3 big players who tend not to compete on price. Price competition doesn't seem to happen until there are 4 or more roughly comparable players. Margins get much better as competition disappears, which produces a huge pressure towards consolidation. Why this is is another discussion, but it's very clearly the case in the US.
• kemitchell 3y ago
  Following A16Z's RSS feed has gotten weirder and weirder, even mostly just reading headlines and leads. Anecdotally, I feel there was a turn when they went "all in" on blockchain and started having people drum out constant "ecosystem-level" booster pieces. Then there was a turn in how I took it all after the new-hotness AI post, earlier this year. It's all intuitive, but I get the distinct feeling they took a big decision toward conscious reality distortion at the top. Not just to shore up credibility of their investment theses to LPs, but to will the very success of their investments into being. Maybe that's just natural for equity flippers on a particular time scale with enough management fees and brand rec: grease both sides of the two-sided market you turn in. Envelop as many minds as you can. They route systematically important gobs of capital. I guess I just keep watching the space, to note the content and timing of their big investment-theme announcements. Stick to headlines and leads. I do wonder who the other 5,000 words are for.
• sidcool 3y ago
  I am a techno optimist and love to see the rise of it, even if there are risks associated with it. But I also see the sky rocketing rates of mental health issues and suicide rates in the most techno developed nations. I don't now if there's a correlation or causation. But would like to understand. Is humanity built to be simple and at the mercy of nature?
• sidcool 3y ago
  It has the hall marks of Ayn Rand philosophy. Not bad per say.
• ericzawo 3y ago
  "Love doesn't scale" is crazy.
  • lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
    Incredibly good line.
    • carapace 3y ago
      It's beyond stupid. Literally we have families and children out of love. It's the foundation of everything else in human society.
      • lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
        You're wrong on the basics: many people on earth are arguably most of the western world until the 19th century had families out of a sense of pragmatic and religious obligation to continue their line.[1] This is not love. But worse, nobody has built a city out of love, or completed a major research project backed by love alone; these kinds of projects require an entirely different kind of force that scales. Money and force are the blood of megaprojects. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1260022.The_Ancient_City https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1260022.The_Ancient_City
        • carapace 3y ago
          > You're wrong on the basics No, friend, you are. Money and force are both powered by love. Do you know of the "Five Whys" technique? It turns out there's a psychological version. Without going into a long thing about it, it turns out that all human motivations follow a chain of desired outcomes the eventually terminate in one of five profound states: Love, Bliss, Oneness, Okayness, and huh! I forgot the fifth one. (It's not important for the sake of discussion.) All human actions are attempts to re-engender these deep and profound states, just with more or less yak-shaving. - - - - As an aside, thanks for the book recommendation, that looks really interesting. I believe the ancient Greeks and Romans were not strangers to love, though, eh?
• mtraven 3y ago
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• davidw 3y ago
  I think Ezra Klein and Jerusalem Demsas are far better writers about the 'abundance agenda', without some of the bizarre baggage from this guy. This is a good critique: https://www.threads.net/@alex.stamos/post/CyeBy06PZGw https://www.threads.net/@alex.stamos/post/CyeBy06PZGw Also, wasn't Andressen's VC fund the one that sank all that money into crypto?
• sleepybrett 3y ago
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• lobochrome 3y ago
  Sitting on the Board of Facebook must really mess with you...
• zapw 3y ago
  This was strange and disappointing thing to read. Why such a conspiratorial tone ("we are being lied to", "we have enemies", etc.)? Since this is written by Marc Andreessen, I did a search for "crypto" and "web 3", but no results came up. Isn't that strange coming from someone who was so prominent in promoting and advocating for a crypto-based future? I guess that one didn't pan out… "Our enemy is the ivory tower" is a bit rich coming from a billionaire who lives in one of the most exclusive California communities (and vociferously opposes any development in that community, despite loudly proselytizing to others that "it's time to build"). Looking at the "Patron Saints", after skipping the meme-posting pseudonymous Twitter accounts, I am pretty sure university professor is the most common profession. The ivory tower is the enemy indeed. And it does seem distasteful to use the names of dead scientists and intellectuals like John Von Neumann and Richard Feynman to burnish the image of this polemic.
  • chx 3y ago
    The Patron Saints section is where the truth is laid bare because it contains Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He was quite in the business of writing Manifestos. Check which one he co-authored in 1919.
    • jpadkins 3y ago
      I never read (or studied in class) the fascist manifesto, your comment inspired me to look it up. The Wikipedia summary is a hoot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Manifesto Politically, the Manifesto calls for: * Universal suffrage with a lowered voting age to 18 years, and voting and electoral office eligibility for all ages 25 and up; * Proportional representation on a regional basis; * Voting for women; * Representation at government level of newly created national councils by economic sector; * The abolition of the Italian Senate (at the time, the Senate, as the upper house of parliament, was by process elected by the wealthier citizens, but were in reality direct appointments by the king. It has been described as a sort of extended council of the crown); * The formation of a national council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made of professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a general commission with ministerial powers. In labor and social policy, the Manifesto calls for: * The quick enactment of a law of the state that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers; * A minimum wage; * The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions; * To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants; * Reorganization of the railways and the public transport sector; * Revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance; * Reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55. In military affairs, the Manifesto advocates: Creation of a short-service national militia with specifically defensive responsibilities; Armaments factories are to be nationalized; A peaceful but competitive foreign policy. In finance, the Manifesto advocates: * A strong extraordinary tax on capital of a progressive nature, which takes the form of true partial expropriation of all wealth; * The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor; * Revision of all contracts for military provisions; * The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.
• malthaus 3y ago
  i can't take a16z seriously ever since they were a major driver of all the pump & dump crypto crap, publishing a grandiose manifesto doesn't really help with the perception of being bullshit merchants. stop listening to people just because they have money, it's not a measure for greatness and definitely not as reason to give them any credibility outside of their expertise.
  • tim333 3y ago
    I was thinking that, especially having just read the book Number Go Up. Andreessen's firm put a bunch of money into the Axie Infinity play to earn ponzi which ended up taking money from thousands of hard up Filipinos and then the company was then hacked by N Korea with the money likely ending up in some weapons program. I'm a techno optimist and a believer in markets but regulated markets where the worst effects are mitigated. (some from the Number Go Up author on Axie https://youtu.be/THdU00jutvo?t=1864 https://youtu.be/THdU00jutvo?t=1864)
• shadowgovt 3y ago
  When writing a manifesto about embracing the benefits of change through technology, maybe don't use as your first analogy an animal whose gross anatomy hasn't changed in 450 million years.
• deleted 3y ago
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• throwaway9274 3y ago
  The problem with Marc’s exposition is that it mixes up techno-optimist ideas with personal right wing ideologies. More fission reactors? Yes. Massively accelerate technological progress, and reduce the barriers to doing so? Yes. Is AI “extinction risk” overblown to the extent of being an obstacle to progress? Yes. But markets aren’t self-balancing and do not prevent monopolies or cartels on their own. “Experts” generally know a lot, even though there’s gate keeping and credentialism. The ESG paragraph probably should just focus on the fact that making policy through finance is anti-democratic. Beff Jezos, who Marc is cribbing here (and who is partially cribbing Nick Land) is pretty openly to the right. In a document that’s being framed as capturing all of techno-optimism, these arguments are out of place. Without addressing the validity of the arguments themselves, they should have sanded off the explicitly political edges to maximize effectiveness.
• mempko 3y ago
  We are not pessimistic about technology, just the few who own and control it. Markets? Literally everything was developed in the public sector. The two leading drivers of technological development in the 20th century was the US government and soviet union, none of it relying on market forces. If anything markets are local optimizations with the wrong loss function.
• danjac 3y ago
  For anyone trying to engage with this nonsense seriously: this is just a man with a fragile ego who is annoyed that the public no longer take his brand seriously after the collapse of crypto and other SV-adjacent grifts and wants to keep his latest AI grift going on as long as possible. Honestly reads like an essay written by a 15 year old who has just got introduced to Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand.
• m463 3y ago
  I used to be completely optimistic about technology. A Personal computer! what a wonderful concept. It was mine, and enhanced my abilities. But there was a change when businesses connected and became anti-customer. They learned to manipulate, surveil and control their customers and products. sigh.
• atoav 3y ago
  The relationship between technology and society is one filled with complexity. A statement like: "We had a problem with darkness so we invented electrical lighting", isn't representative of the real thing. If we think for example about the printing press it should be clear that there are certain forms of society that would make the invention of the printing press more likely — namely ones where books played a big role and literacy became more desireable. But on the other side the invention of the printing press had huge impacts on the societies that adopted them and branched them off into a totally different timeline. The relationship between a society and a technology is always dialectical: society changes technology and technology changes society. Part of our role as technologists is to be aware of that — if we care about where humanity is moving at all. Now if you jump back into the beginning of the last century a lot of the promises made by modernity were about automation making our lives easier. One could say: "We had hard labour so we invented automation" — only that the fruits of these automations haven't reached those whose jobs got replaced. Somebody working an average job 40 years ago could easily sustain a family. That is no longer possible. Technology got nothing to do with it, where the money flows does. A household appliance 40 years ago would last you decades. Today you are lucky if it lasts you 4 years. Technology, again, got nothing to do with it, where the money flows does. Endless growth works till you hit saturation. All growth requires external inputs in order to work. And in an finite world those inputs are finite as well. You can't put a mic into a loudspeaker and get infinite loudness because that would take infinite energy and all components in the circuit would have to be able to handle that. There is no free such thing as free lunch — also not with economic growth. There are many things that can look really great if you are good at selectively ignoring a big chunk of it's systemic in- and outputs or handwave them away.
• mempko 3y ago
  Everyone needs to read The Limits to Growth and then come back to this piece for a laugh. Donella Meadows is far more profound and intelligent then the vast majority of non-system thinkers who stumbled into the halls of power.
• mempko 3y ago
  Techno-optimism? lifts hood hey, it was techo-feudalism all along!
• junon 3y ago
  This is a super bizarre read coming from a16z.
• zecg 3y ago
  > We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet. Is this real life
• raskelll 3y ago
  This aligns well with the Cyberparadism aesthetic: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberparadism https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberparadism > Cyberparadism is a subset of Cyberprep and therefore of Post-Cyberpunk. The word is an amalgam of the prefix "cyber-", referring to cybernetics, and "paradism" as in paradise, meaning that a paradisal aspect has to be present within the cybernetic part of the aesthetic. The paradisal aspect can either manifest itself in literal terms as it would when representing a derivation of a Garden of Eden or the Elysian Fields, or alternatively in a more abstract way as a reflection of a utopia state of things. > > It differs itself from Cyberprep insofar that not only the positive benefits of technological progress are a central tenet, but that said technological progress has reached a level of sophistication where the principles of economics and conventional labour are fundamentally transformed in such that the subjects at hand can and are likely to pursue higher goals of scientific, technological, civilizatory and/or spiritual fulfillment. There’s also a manifesto for Cyberparadism: https://github.com/zarazinsfuss/cyberparadism-manifesto/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/zarazinsfuss/cyberparadism-manifesto/blob... > We believe that technology can be a powerful force for good, when used in a responsible and thoughtful way. By harnessing the power of technology, we can create a world of abundance and prosperity, where all individuals have the opportunity to thrive and reach their full potential.
• d1l 3y ago
  Man does not live by bread alone. If you want to make technology and the standard of living a god, that might be rational, just as communism may be an earlier rational attempt in the same vein. But I believe these ideas are naive. The central idea seems to be “eliminate enough of man’s animal suffering and cater to his animal wants and you’ll have paradise” but I think these schemes undervalue the human need for freedom, love, self discovery, and meaning.
• tim333 3y ago
  I'm a tech optimist but this isn't my manifesto. I'm good with the tech but then he mixes in: "The Enemy": “social responsibility”, “tech ethics”... "Patron Saints": John Galt which it quite a different thing. You can be tech optimistic without being Randian.
• nojvek 3y ago
  While I love the article and premise, he doesn’t make any points on preventing monopolies, rent seeking and regulatory capture. Like the “It’s time to build” article, it’s great VC porn but a16z is still mostly funding SaaS companies instead of hard tech. Have they brought down prices of food, healthcare, housing, energy, infrastructure? Since the beginning pandemic, things are heading in the wrong direction for the median American.
• kromem 3y ago
  I dunno man. Kinda feel like the true Techno-Optimists were the people collectively hacking together solutions under open source principles, and that quite a lot of the libertarian-eque mumbo-jumbo here invisibly stands on the shoulders of those giants. The free market is arguably more aligned to a product that allows a monkey direct access to its dopamine center than one that lets a monkey rule the stars. While I agree that technology growth is one of the most important metrics for the future health of a society, the idea that optimal growth necessitates uncontrolled markets or a whole host of the other things piggybacking on that core here is a bit silly. A more narrowly scoped manifesto that was essentially just "tech accelerates beneficial progress; there's an opportunity cost to delaying tech" would likely have had better legs than an umbrella of rhetoric that tries to cover all bases and as such alienates everyone other than the author and the sycophants in their circle. It's frustrating, as I agree with a lot of the broad sentiment and have been extremely disappointed in the tech pessimism I've been seeing grow dramatically over the past few months and years - but I really don't feel this manifesto speaks for nor to me, as optimistic about tech as I might be.
• mold_aid 3y ago
  >Our enemy is the ivory tower Cool, so I guess our enemy is you
• deleted 3y ago
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• davidgerard 3y ago
  The real message here is: "subscribe to my bad ideas if you ever want funding."
• hinesfiftyseven 3y ago
  Marc Thank you for taking the time to so carefully lay out your philosophy on how technology will save humanity. I think it would have been simpler and to the point if you just posted a hand drawn picture with you in Superman costume so people could really understand what a hero you are. Truly, it is tremendously selfless of you to advance society with your investments designed explicitly to maximize your returns. What a massive coincidence that so much of your investment over the past 5-6 years has been so focused on web3 and crypto - many, many alt coins that you have successfully committed securities fraud with by dumping them on unwitting retail investors who then eat the loss. Progress! We, the commoners, are so so grateful that you have enlightened us with your incredibly deep take on how the world will advance specifically through technological ideas that all have one thing in common: they all are explicitly designed to line your pockets first and foremost - societal benefits are an afterthought. Oops, I must have gotten that backwards. At this point in my essay I will quote a philosopher to sound very very deep and contemplative like you - somehow I bet you are a fan of Ayn Rand and objectivism so I'll use her. In the Atlas Shrugged version of the world, this worldview places you as the modern day John Galt. We are all oh-so-grateful for your ability to save the world by exclusively investing in tech projects that give you massive returns. We are all so grateful that the modern day Galt's Gulch is not a humble valley disconnected from society where honest men work together, but rather a $155 million dollar coastal property in Malibu from which you command your minions. It is literally the most expensive property in all of California. A home befitting the god that you are, reigning on high over all the peasants who don't understand or appreciate your benevolence. Don't change a thing, don’t listen to anyone who says you have delusions of grandeur. Thank you for saving the world and meagerly only asking for a few billions of dollars and an insane amount of international power and influence in return. You truly are the most selfless and deep philosopher of this age. What a hero.
• simonebrunozzi 3y ago
  What worries me most is that this guy is supposed to be the inspirational leader of many startup founders and technologists, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Reading this made me really sad. It's actually hard for me to conjure the strength to write and share an appropriate response, and explain why. Let me just mention one of many thoughts. Mark Andreessen cites a number of Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism, "In lieu of detailed endnotes and citations, read the work of these people, and you too will become a Techno-Optimist." One of them is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. This is what FTM writes in his Manifesto of Futurism [0]. (original Italian first, then English translation). ""Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra - sola igiene del mondo - il militarismo, il patriottismo, il gesto distruttore dei liberatori, le belle idee per cui si muore e il disprezzo della donna." "We will glorify war - the only true hygiene of the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchist, the beautiful ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman" In 2023, reading about the "glory of war", and the "scorn of woman", should be enough to know what's needed to judge this guy. Mark, you are really smart and successful and most people would envy your fame and wealth and intelligence, but you need to grow up for once and realize how sick some of your ideas are. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_Futurism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_Futurism
  • Uehreka 3y ago
    The idea of someone unironicly promoting Marinetti (a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto) in 2023 is mind-blowing. I get the idea of wanting to be optimistic about technology, but Marinetti is a cautionary tale of how optimism about technology can morph into disdain for humanity. He’s an anti-role model, the thing we need to be careful not to become.
    • idra 3y ago
      This is where the Overton window is shifting. See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years ago.
• cityliving 3y ago
  There's a fair bit to like about this, and it's roughly aligned with my worldview: that, on balance, technology and market forces are a force for good; and that there is a little bit too much techno-pessimism abound that has led to bad outcomes (such as the relative lack of nuclear power). I think it's generally under appreciated just how good things are. The world, overall, is getting continuously better (Factfulness by Hans Rosling demonstrates this better than any other source I've come across). Then again, there are bits of it which are a little bit strange - the enemies section, for example. SV could "move fast and break things" previously, but with its size, power and influence, it probably needs to take a slightly more "win friends and influence people" approach. But most of all, it is a little bit contrary to some of a16z most high profile recent investments: Clubhouse, NFTs, web3. It's hard to see how these investments and products align with building towards abundance. I wonder if he's spent a little too much time away from the hands-on detail, where the next tech innovation will probably happen.
• gen220 3y ago
  Quoting Charlie Munger: > Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. Unfortunately for the original spirit of the internet that they've cashed in on over and over in the previous 25 years, I can't imagine a more Marc Andreessen/Andreessen Horowitz post, today, than this one here.
• joloooo 3y ago
  The redacted version by Ben Grosser is better. https://bengrosser.com/files/Techno-Optimist-Manifesto-Andreessen-redacted-by-Grosser.pdf https://bengrosser.com/files/Techno-Optimist-Manifesto-Andre...
• pcj-github 3y ago
  This suggests to me that Marc Andressen struggles with bipolar disease. This blog post reeks like the tailings of a manic episode. Was he not able to find anyone to bounce this off before pressing "publish"?
• jabowery 3y ago
  First of all, they aren't serious about the scientific method or they'd fund Hume's Guillotine (see github). Moreover, they aren't even serious about reforming sociology -- which is what is needed for them to make strong claims about their "beliefs" aka social theory. That "ivory tower" publication Nature is leading them to but a step or two from a new scientific revolution based on technology, but they refuse to drink. Over 200 ecologists were supplied with the same set of data and asked to make predictions. This was "the first study of its kind" according to Nature, but this is exactly the purpose of Hume's Guillotine with regard to social theories, such as theirs. Why blather endlessly about their "beliefs" about the scientific method as providing the keys to techne kingdom and ignore the opportunity to not only nuke the social pseudosciences, but perform what, in other initiatives with which they are familiar, would be called "due diligence" regarding their own social theory? Second, if they aren't going to be serious about their own social theory, what business do they have thinking of themselves as "apex" anything?
• navaed01 3y ago
  This is all well and good and I agree with most of it, but at some point you need to ask does abundance doesn’t mean happiness or true satisfaction. Can A society they thrives off always pushing be truly content? And if not then what is the point?
• fdeth 3y ago
  The level of lack of nuance (given how high profile the fund is) is eye popping.
• merdaverse 3y ago
  Is this missing an /s at the end? I do believe in the power of technology to make a better world. That's why a venture capitalist using it for profit and then writing a manifesto about how virtuous it is, is the sort of disgusting corruption that makes me skeptic about technology. But hackernews is the perfect venue to get some minor support from techbros that have grown accustomed to this rat race.
• quantified 3y ago
  At the end of the day, technology does little to nothing. It's the people who use it for good or ill, and the people who organize economic, political and other social systems to capture markets, enhance or suppress wages, create or remove regulation, compete or stifle competition. This essay doesn't really address the people side, just that "we" (he and some others) believe that tech is enough. This is so ignorant: > We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. PFOAs are tech. Unexploded cluster bomblets are tech. Fracking fluids are tech. Plastics in the guts of ocean life are tech. Ransomware and doxxing trucks are tech. There's a lot of tech that pmarca wishes would be far away from his gated home. Then there are dental anesthetics, Polartec, electric cars, power tools, elevators, and snowplows. Lots of tech does good. No one complains much about power tools or elevators. Minority viewpoints are set up as a strawman. A piece like this should be more thoughtful to be taken seriously.
• ilikethis 3y ago
  [flagged]