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I've come across his twitter feed a few times, I suspect it's not some 4D chess move but a lot of things he sincerely believes, and an advertisement for his fir

I've come across his twitter feed a few times, I suspect it's not some 4D chess move but a lot of things he sincerely believes, and an advertisement for his firm (as all blogposts are). There's a lot of twitter brained "tech thought leaders" out there and they finally try to write something coherent for normies and it comes out like that nonsense.

tsunamifury 3y ago
Multiple audiences is not 4D chess. Have you ever worked in marketing or PR? It’s bog standard stuff.
dundarious 3y ago
Yes, his rants about the PMC a while ago were near inscrutable (not that I think PMC is an inscrutable/useless category), but after reading a lot of it, seemed to expose him as someone prone to self-serving delusions. I think there are interesting conversations to be had about elite cultural and academic production, as a side-channel to traditional control by capital. However, I don't think I'm being too uncharitable when I say that he was primarily frustrated at his own perception that he was being held back from his ubermensch pretensions.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
What's amazing to me is the explicit positive references to actual Fascist and/or "Dark Enlightenment" thinkers (Marinetti, Nick Land) as "Patron Saints." Either Andreesen actually has no idea what he's referring to and is just pretentious name-dropping stuff he thinks is "kinda cool", or he's explicitly endorsing anti-democratic authoritarianism. Either alternative is rather disturbing -- though maybe not surprising. In any case, it kinda explains some of the dreck they've funded.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  I think they’ve made it pretty clear they believe in techno authoritarianism. Listen to Theil Altman or AH. Same stuff.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Certainly. And I'll be downvoted to oblivion for this (if anybody is still watching this thread), but to me that's the actual philosophical endpoint of so-called libertarian capitalism. When you abdicate all decision making authority to the market, you also suppress the non-market community/social dimension in society, and you end up in a might-makes-right ethical model; and along with it comes a need to suppress the inevitable resistance to that (unions, left wingers, perhaps minorities, etc.) The classical liberal individual rights stuff ends up being window dressing and justification for a far darker end result. Yes, nobody cares who you have sex with or what drugs you take or what porn you watch -- as long as wealth and control remains unchallenged.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      All watches over by machines of loving grace…

tsunamifury 3y ago

Multiple audiences is not 4D chess. Have you ever worked in marketing or PR? It’s bog standard stuff.

dundarious 3y ago

Yes, his rants about the PMC a while ago were near inscrutable (not that I think PMC is an inscrutable/useless category), but after reading a lot of it, seemed to expose him as someone prone to self-serving delusions. I think there are interesting conversations to be had about elite cultural and academic production, as a side-channel to traditional control by capital. However, I don't think I'm being too uncharitable when I say that he was primarily frustrated at his own perception that he was being held back from his ubermensch pretensions.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

What's amazing to me is the explicit positive references to actual Fascist and/or "Dark Enlightenment" thinkers (Marinetti, Nick Land) as "Patron Saints." Either Andreesen actually has no idea what he's referring to and is just pretentious name-dropping stuff he thinks is "kinda cool", or he's explicitly endorsing anti-democratic authoritarianism. Either alternative is rather disturbing -- though maybe not surprising. In any case, it kinda explains some of the dreck they've funded.

tsunamifury 3y ago
I think they’ve made it pretty clear they believe in techno authoritarianism. Listen to Theil Altman or AH. Same stuff.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Certainly. And I'll be downvoted to oblivion for this (if anybody is still watching this thread), but to me that's the actual philosophical endpoint of so-called libertarian capitalism. When you abdicate all decision making authority to the market, you also suppress the non-market community/social dimension in society, and you end up in a might-makes-right ethical model; and along with it comes a need to suppress the inevitable resistance to that (unions, left wingers, perhaps minorities, etc.) The classical liberal individual rights stuff ends up being window dressing and justification for a far darker end result. Yes, nobody cares who you have sex with or what drugs you take or what porn you watch -- as long as wealth and control remains unchallenged.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    All watches over by machines of loving grace…