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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 wa

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.
- suoduandao2 3y ago
  I actually agree with the idea that we should judge people based on their popularity with customers rather than their peers. Credential are very often indicative of the former
  - tomComb 3y ago
    Who has a better idea whether a lawyer or a surgeon is actually good at their job - their clients or their peers?
    - Jensson 3y ago
      It is much easier to collude with peers than with clients, so I'm more likely to trust reviews from clients than peers.
      - c0pium 3y ago
        Much easier to lie to customers though.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      When you book a hotel do you base your decision on reviews from other customers or other hotel owners?
    - nradov 3y ago
      With professionals it's their peers. Unfortunately that doesn't really help unless you're in the "club". In any community the other doctors all know who are the best surgeons and who are the butchers. But they won't publicly badmouth a peer or even privately tell you unless they really trust you.
  - yao420 3y ago
    Spectrum is the ‘most popular’ internet with the most customers in my area. Not because they are liked but because they are the only option outside of maybe starlink.
  - 3y ago
dinvlad 3y ago
I gotta admit, I'm really impressed by Marc's ability to completely subvert so many historical facts and figures to "support" his self-contradictory line of thought. This is just on a whole other level - even Trump would be jealous. The e/acc crowd is just _completely_ insane, at this point. I'd laugh hard if not for the fact that people like Marc have economic power over the rest of us.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I like how “we” prefer intrinsic motivation (near the end) but UBI is a bad idea (earlyish-middle, I think) because people need work to be happy (it’s for their own good, you see) and they won’t do any work if we don’t threaten them with poverty—the huge amounts of unpaid work ordinary people already perform, despite needing to also work for pay, is evidently invisible to our economic genius and Randian-Nietchien super-man, Mr Horowitz. Clearly has a different sort of people in mind with these two ideas. Friggin’ elitist masquerading as some savior of humanity. Gross.
Karrot_Kream 3y ago
> but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” This feels a bit of an extreme reaction to me, I don't try and read into gotchas in writing and use them to "run away". Instead it makes me: 1. View the writing with skepticism 2. Try to understand what Andreessen thinks makes him not one of those ivory tower figures, because I certainly think of him as one. 2 seems the more insightful one to me, but certainly 1 qualifies how I view his writing.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  The “wanting to distance oneself” is an extremely pragmatic reaction: if you believe similar arguments need to be made, you have a legitimate interest in putting forth good versions of those arguments. He has a big platform and this will be portrayed as “the case” for techno-optimism, not to mention the attitude and tone. I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?” Most plausibly, it’s for attracting other ultra-wealthy/ultra-powerful (and yes, unelected!) LPs, which would make the tone rather ominous in my opinion.
  - carapace 3y ago
    > I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?” The only thing that makes sense to me (other than he simply is that out of touch) is that he's actually trying to recruit followers to a new religion and so he actively wants to attract people with poor critical thinking skills.
  - tlarkworthy 3y ago
    > I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is He wants crypto to be cool
  - jddj 3y ago
    Hearing himself talk
gorwell 3y ago
He's perfectly self aware that he has rejected his own class. It's weird that people think that's impossible or something and insist that he must be one in the same.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lsiq 3y ago
  This isn't it, he was never part of the class in the first place and he does not share its insular self-serving worldview. He didn't go to Harvard, he went to Illinois. He built his own tech firm when taking that path wasn't even a thing for people to do, he did not inherit banking interests.
  - mempko 3y ago
    It's ironic he talks about markets yet Netscape came from Mosaic, developed at a public university (Urbana-Champaign in Illinois) without market forces. HTML and HTTP developed at CERN, another public institution.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      In the usual pattern, there's something mysterious and totally unexplainable happening where all the systems have broken down somewhere between when Person X was a beneficiary of the system and when Person X is expected to be a benefactor to the system.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > he was never part of the class in the first place and he does not share its insular self-serving worldview I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over his 4,800-square-foot Tuscan-style Atherton mansion and 13-structure Malibu compound [1]. I went to public university. I then made money. Where you come from doesn't determine who you end up as. But it can leave chips on your shoulders if you never revisit your own past critically. I genuinely have no problem with Andreessen’s lifestyle. But his conspiratorial worldview is in lockstep with the class. [1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/billionaire-marc-andreessen-pays-record-177-million-for-13-structure-malibu-compound-1235041097/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/b...
adamsmith 3y ago
There’s a lot to unpack in the quoted passage, but it is not an ad hominem attack. That you think it is, and then turn around to make an ad hominem argument of your own explains your misinterpretation.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I think this clause makes it literally hard to parse the argument. That’s because of who he is, sure, but that’s not an ad hominem attack on it. The peanut butter comment was snarky, I’ll admit that! The point is that it’d be a remarkable achievement if somehow he hasn’t lost touch with a huge portion of most people’s everyday reality.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
(a) indulge in abstract theories (b) engage in social engineering (c) disconnect from the real world (d) delude themselves (e) appoint themselves (f) play God with anyone else's life with total insulation from the consequences. That seems to describe developers, and this VC was one, Silicon Valley VC and/or SBF-types. Who the heck even comes close to (f) except Big Tech. With respect to (e), "unelected", does anyone know when the next ICANN, ARIN, or ISOC "elections" will be held. Even assuming hypothetically the web is not controlled by private companies, and "non-profits" are actually governing it, the internet is not and has never been a democracy. It's a truly hilarious quote, even if taken out of context. It's like he is describing himself and his portfolio companies. Who is the enemy. Look in the mirror. But maybe SillyCon Valley VC knows the best way to communicate with developers who will potentially work like dogs to make him money is to speak their language. Maybe he is a meme maker.
- samplatt 3y ago
  >(f) play God with anyone else's life with total insulation from the consequences. [...] Who the heck even comes close to (f) except Big Tech. Monsanto. Nestle. Enron, Goldman Sachs, the Pinkertons. BP, Chevron, Woodside, Rio Tinto, BHP.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Forgot one. (g) exhibit uncredentialed university dropout know-it-all worldview
- bko 3y ago
  I think the idea is that VCs and private companies can't force their will onto people. They can indulge in abstract theories, but it never becomes legislation that others have to abide to (e.g. laws that curtail speech meant to "protect democracy") They can socially engineer but voluntarily, or in other words propose social norms in form of ux and product. But things get out of hand very quickly in a market. For instance, no one designed the method people use for retweeting, it wasn't engineered. Some decisions were made but with limited desires effect. Similarly the market connects you to the real world. You put a product out there and it loves and dies on its usefulness to others. Same with the rest. Everything is voluntary, which is kind of the point as opposed to mandated from top down. Even big tech like Google have trouble controlling their own inventions. Think of SEO spam and bots, which is a constant battle. That's an example of the worse, but there are good things like distributing unfiltered information.
gojomo 3y ago
Academic credentials in the US, especially at the 'prestige' institutions, have been hollowed out quite a lot by politics, groupthink, & logrolling. Large government subsidies, & a self-replicating nearly-hereditary elite, have insulated much of their output from accountability to the broader society, and even from accountability to the truth. Even an "uber-wealthy capital allocator" with a big personal-wealth buffer faces sharper feedback from today's concrete & changing reality – losses from mistakes, gains from smart choices – than tenured academics, or bureaucrats with lifelong sinecures. In the text, he's not arguing from authority, or personal biography – so why would he need to waste any words about his personal particulars? (They're in the public record if you need them as part of your own heuristics.) He's saying some ideas, & some systems, are better – not ranking people by class. Further, a "manifesto" like this is a resonant call to draw like minds, moreso than any sophisticated apologetic to try to convince doubters. (For that: read the other authors he name-checks.) To obsess on the speaker's characteristic – their "self-awareness", their tone, their inability to "read the room", their station in life – rather than their words & ideas is a big part of the downbeat but in many places entrenched attitude he's criticizing. Per Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. Which reality is that again? In that reality, does this writing warrant more attention, or less? Presumably we’re reading this to understand what Marc thinks, and to isolate the stated words from their context is naivety, not wisdom. There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. My point is that everything about this screed — content, context, subtext, and omission — hints at this particular horse being pointed a bit askew.
  - gojomo 3y ago
    > Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. No, but if that's the 1st subtext into which you rush, rather than all the other ideas on offer here, much broader than any of Mr. Andreesen's life particulars, then you've chosen to play a pettier game. It's a free country. > There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. Ok, then. Who are your favorites, and in which ideas/dimensions are they offering something with better insight/appeal/non-'askew'ness than Andreesen? Or do you only nitpick?
quantified 3y ago
The piece is a view from the know-it-all UN-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.

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.

suoduandao2 3y ago
I actually agree with the idea that we should judge people based on their popularity with customers rather than their peers. Credential are very often indicative of the former
- tomComb 3y ago
  Who has a better idea whether a lawyer or a surgeon is actually good at their job - their clients or their peers?
  - Jensson 3y ago
    It is much easier to collude with peers than with clients, so I'm more likely to trust reviews from clients than peers.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      Much easier to lie to customers though.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    When you book a hotel do you base your decision on reviews from other customers or other hotel owners?
  - nradov 3y ago
    With professionals it's their peers. Unfortunately that doesn't really help unless you're in the "club". In any community the other doctors all know who are the best surgeons and who are the butchers. But they won't publicly badmouth a peer or even privately tell you unless they really trust you.
- yao420 3y ago
  Spectrum is the ‘most popular’ internet with the most customers in my area. Not because they are liked but because they are the only option outside of maybe starlink.
- 3y ago

dinvlad 3y ago

I gotta admit, I'm really impressed by Marc's ability to completely subvert so many historical facts and figures to "support" his self-contradictory line of thought. This is just on a whole other level - even Trump would be jealous. The e/acc crowd is just _completely_ insane, at this point. I'd laugh hard if not for the fact that people like Marc have economic power over the rest of us.

hotnfresh 3y ago
I like how “we” prefer intrinsic motivation (near the end) but UBI is a bad idea (earlyish-middle, I think) because people need work to be happy (it’s for their own good, you see) and they won’t do any work if we don’t threaten them with poverty—the huge amounts of unpaid work ordinary people already perform, despite needing to also work for pay, is evidently invisible to our economic genius and Randian-Nietchien super-man, Mr Horowitz. Clearly has a different sort of people in mind with these two ideas. Friggin’ elitist masquerading as some savior of humanity. Gross.

Karrot_Kream 3y ago

> but boy does this lack of self-awareness just shout “distance yourself and run, don’t walk!” This feels a bit of an extreme reaction to me, I don't try and read into gotchas in writing and use them to "run away". Instead it makes me: 1. View the writing with skepticism 2. Try to understand what Andreessen thinks makes him not one of those ivory tower figures, because I certainly think of him as one. 2 seems the more insightful one to me, but certainly 1 qualifies how I view his writing.

ethanbond 3y ago
The “wanting to distance oneself” is an extremely pragmatic reaction: if you believe similar arguments need to be made, you have a legitimate interest in putting forth good versions of those arguments. He has a big platform and this will be portrayed as “the case” for techno-optimism, not to mention the attitude and tone. I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?” Most plausibly, it’s for attracting other ultra-wealthy/ultra-powerful (and yes, unelected!) LPs, which would make the tone rather ominous in my opinion.
- carapace 3y ago
  > I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?” The only thing that makes sense to me (other than he simply is that out of touch) is that he's actually trying to recruit followers to a new religion and so he actively wants to attract people with poor critical thinking skills.
- tlarkworthy 3y ago
  > I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is He wants crypto to be cool
- jddj 3y ago
  Hearing himself talk

gorwell 3y ago

He's perfectly self aware that he has rejected his own class. It's weird that people think that's impossible or something and insist that he must be one in the same.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lsiq 3y ago
This isn't it, he was never part of the class in the first place and he does not share its insular self-serving worldview. He didn't go to Harvard, he went to Illinois. He built his own tech firm when taking that path wasn't even a thing for people to do, he did not inherit banking interests.
- mempko 3y ago
  It's ironic he talks about markets yet Netscape came from Mosaic, developed at a public university (Urbana-Champaign in Illinois) without market forces. HTML and HTTP developed at CERN, another public institution.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    In the usual pattern, there's something mysterious and totally unexplainable happening where all the systems have broken down somewhere between when Person X was a beneficiary of the system and when Person X is expected to be a benefactor to the system.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > he was never part of the class in the first place and he does not share its insular self-serving worldview I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over his 4,800-square-foot Tuscan-style Atherton mansion and 13-structure Malibu compound [1]. I went to public university. I then made money. Where you come from doesn't determine who you end up as. But it can leave chips on your shoulders if you never revisit your own past critically. I genuinely have no problem with Andreessen’s lifestyle. But his conspiratorial worldview is in lockstep with the class. [1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/billionaire-marc-andreessen-pays-record-177-million-for-13-structure-malibu-compound-1235041097/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/b...

adamsmith 3y ago

There’s a lot to unpack in the quoted passage, but it is not an ad hominem attack. That you think it is, and then turn around to make an ad hominem argument of your own explains your misinterpretation.

ethanbond 3y ago
I think this clause makes it literally hard to parse the argument. That’s because of who he is, sure, but that’s not an ad hominem attack on it. The peanut butter comment was snarky, I’ll admit that! The point is that it’d be a remarkable achievement if somehow he hasn’t lost touch with a huge portion of most people’s everyday reality.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

(a) indulge in abstract theories (b) engage in social engineering (c) disconnect from the real world (d) delude themselves (e) appoint themselves (f) play God with anyone else's life with total insulation from the consequences. That seems to describe developers, and this VC was one, Silicon Valley VC and/or SBF-types. Who the heck even comes close to (f) except Big Tech. With respect to (e), "unelected", does anyone know when the next ICANN, ARIN, or ISOC "elections" will be held. Even assuming hypothetically the web is not controlled by private companies, and "non-profits" are actually governing it, the internet is not and has never been a democracy. It's a truly hilarious quote, even if taken out of context. It's like he is describing himself and his portfolio companies. Who is the enemy. Look in the mirror. But maybe SillyCon Valley VC knows the best way to communicate with developers who will potentially work like dogs to make him money is to speak their language. Maybe he is a meme maker.

samplatt 3y ago
>(f) play God with anyone else's life with total insulation from the consequences. [...] Who the heck even comes close to (f) except Big Tech. Monsanto. Nestle. Enron, Goldman Sachs, the Pinkertons. BP, Chevron, Woodside, Rio Tinto, BHP.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Forgot one. (g) exhibit uncredentialed university dropout know-it-all worldview
bko 3y ago
I think the idea is that VCs and private companies can't force their will onto people. They can indulge in abstract theories, but it never becomes legislation that others have to abide to (e.g. laws that curtail speech meant to "protect democracy") They can socially engineer but voluntarily, or in other words propose social norms in form of ux and product. But things get out of hand very quickly in a market. For instance, no one designed the method people use for retweeting, it wasn't engineered. Some decisions were made but with limited desires effect. Similarly the market connects you to the real world. You put a product out there and it loves and dies on its usefulness to others. Same with the rest. Everything is voluntary, which is kind of the point as opposed to mandated from top down. Even big tech like Google have trouble controlling their own inventions. Think of SEO spam and bots, which is a constant battle. That's an example of the worse, but there are good things like distributing unfiltered information.

gojomo 3y ago

Academic credentials in the US, especially at the 'prestige' institutions, have been hollowed out quite a lot by politics, groupthink, & logrolling. Large government subsidies, & a self-replicating nearly-hereditary elite, have insulated much of their output from accountability to the broader society, and even from accountability to the truth. Even an "uber-wealthy capital allocator" with a big personal-wealth buffer faces sharper feedback from today's concrete & changing reality – losses from mistakes, gains from smart choices – than tenured academics, or bureaucrats with lifelong sinecures. In the text, he's not arguing from authority, or personal biography – so why would he need to waste any words about his personal particulars? (They're in the public record if you need them as part of your own heuristics.) He's saying some ideas, & some systems, are better – not ranking people by class. Further, a "manifesto" like this is a resonant call to draw like minds, moreso than any sophisticated apologetic to try to convince doubters. (For that: read the other authors he name-checks.) To obsess on the speaker's characteristic – their "self-awareness", their tone, their inability to "read the room", their station in life – rather than their words & ideas is a big part of the downbeat but in many places entrenched attitude he's criticizing. Per Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

ethanbond 3y ago
Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. Which reality is that again? In that reality, does this writing warrant more attention, or less? Presumably we’re reading this to understand what Marc thinks, and to isolate the stated words from their context is naivety, not wisdom. There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. My point is that everything about this screed — content, context, subtext, and omission — hints at this particular horse being pointed a bit askew.
- gojomo 3y ago
  > Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. No, but if that's the 1st subtext into which you rush, rather than all the other ideas on offer here, much broader than any of Mr. Andreesen's life particulars, then you've chosen to play a pettier game. It's a free country. > There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. Ok, then. Who are your favorites, and in which ideas/dimensions are they offering something with better insight/appeal/non-'askew'ness than Andreesen? Or do you only nitpick?

quantified 3y ago

The piece is a view from the know-it-all UN-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.