5 ms·

Not all of them are marketing. Some of them expose his belief system. After “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” it’s very hard for me to take him seriously again.

by henry2023 3y ago

dboreham 3y ago
a16z is not one person.
- threeseed 3y ago
  The manifesto is hosted on the main a16z website. So the obvious assumption is that Ben and the other leadership is supportive of it.
  - dools 3y ago
    It's also signed Marc Andreesen: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ Like he's the author of the post, at the top of the page.
    - laserlight 3y ago
      Wow. This is so bad that I can't take it seriously.
    - klabb3 3y ago
      This strengthens my theory that VC vocabulary consists almost exclusively of other people’s hot takes. I know only of two other groups of people who speak primarily in quotes: religious fundamentalists and teenagers during a brief fan-frenzy of some pop culture icon (eg Nirvana).
- __loam 3y ago
  His name is literally the a9 in a16z lmao. It's his venture capital firm.
vundercind 3y ago
Oh wow, I forgot about that! What a wild read. It was such a mess. I loved it. Something about a famous rich person putting that much effort into something so amateurish and clumsy, while apparently being so confident, in an eager-college-freshman sort of way… I dunno, call it endearing, maybe. I mean it’s either that or it’s horrifying. I choose to pretend it’s endearing because there’s too much horrifying already.
- dools 3y ago
  It's horrifying because it's not an isolated wild rich man seizure, it's the same shit that Musk, Dorsey et al believe. The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism.
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    > The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism. This is basically what "longtermism" is. It's "we will amass huge amounts of capital to rule you now, because we know best, and we promise that as a result your (great-great-...)grandkids will have it better than if we hadn't". It's just getting rich and playing with toys but with an ethical justification for it. It reminds me of how back in the day there was all sorts of Creative Bible scholarship around it being "easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven". Like they were all "actually the 'eye of the needle's is the name of this big gate in Jerusalem. It's super easy to get a camel through it!" EA has done some neat stuff in the here and now in terms of looking at charities et al. But anything claiming to benefit the unborn trillions of the far, far future is just someone making excuses for themselves.
    - fire_lake 3y ago
      - I know what is good through utilitarian principles and my deep knowledge of science and Bayesian statistics - AI safety is an imminent threat and the best solution is to form an AI company and sell large amounts of stock to big tech - I’m super smart so I need to be the one to work on this - I need to earn loads of money so that I have the resources and focus to save humanity
pokstad 3y ago
What part is so bad? Care to quote?
- dools 3y ago
  I have never heard of it, but I just had a quick skim through and IMHO the bad parts are the parts that have anything to do with economics, because it exposes him as a totalitarian neofeudalist (although he might not think of himself that way ... most totalitarian neofeudalists don't, they just don't understand their own economics well enough to see where it leads).
  - bkirkby 3y ago
    how totalitarian? you have free markets (which the manifesto supports) or planned economies and planned economies are where totalitarianism works.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Is the US as it operates today a free market (how free?) or a weighted control economy where the larger players have a greater weight of control of media and the political landscape via owned outlets and subsidised senators? Do small players in the US economy have equal access to the market, or are they overshadowed by near oligarchies? Are you always so bicameral?
      - bkirkby 3y ago
        the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government (including those politicians you reference). so when we bring in more government then it's less free market. how close we are getting to a free market depends on who is in power and calling for reduced government intervention/regulations for businesses. as far as control of media, traditional media is becoming increasingly irrelevant and when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free. and small players seem to disrupt all the time. openai being the most obvious recent example. twitch being another notable example before that. i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions, but your use of bicameral confused me a little. did you mean to say binary?
djangogitit 3y ago
Yoiks I hadn’t seen that and just googled it It’s funny how the better way is never “end aristocracy” and secure equality of condition Just more feudalism with the rich never fighting just betting
- bkirkby 3y ago
  did you mean to use a different word than "aristocracy?" and what is "equality of condition" and how do you achieve it?
  - waihtis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - __loam 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - waihtis 3y ago
        [flagged]
        djangogitit 3y ago
        [dead]
lenerdenator 3y ago
if there's one thing that we've learned over the last eight or nine years, it's that you don't have to be taken seriously by most people to have an impact.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
About four years ago Andreesen published this: https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/ https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/ They were and remain big crypto investors and it's pretty weird that the essay doesn't acknowledge how much talent and money crypto sucked up. He asks where the supersonic aircraft are and - ignoring that they have awful externalities - there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell. A16Z is a leading venture fund - if anyone's gonna build the future, they could use A16Z's money. So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in?
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell. A quick review of their website and some cursory googling reveals that while boom is not in their portfolio they have invested in a company developing a super sonic jet engine technology (Astro Mechanica) [1] as well as a company producing precision machine parts for aerospace (Hadrian) [1] and various other companies that intersect with the area. [3] Perhaps they wanted to invest in Boom but the deal wasn’t right or they are skeptical of that particular company or they simply never got the chance but clearly they are putting their money into this area and it’s worth researching before judging them. 1. https://www.notboring.co/p/astro-mechanica https://www.notboring.co/p/astro-mechanica 2. https://www.hadrian.co/ https://www.hadrian.co/ 3. https://a16z.com/portfolio/ https://a16z.com/portfolio/ (Look under American dynamism)
- juitpykyk 3y ago
  Never forget the video where Marc was asked what is Web3 and he spent 5 minutes talking gibberish nonsense.
  - squigz 3y ago
    So... explaining "Web3"?
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in? You still want to invest in a particular company or people who you believe will make you tons of money. Just because someone is active directionally in what you believe will be the future does not necessarily mean you should put your money with them.

Not all of them are marketing. Some of them expose his belief system. After “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” it’s very hard for me to take him seriously again.

dboreham 3y ago

a16z is not one person.

threeseed 3y ago
The manifesto is hosted on the main a16z website. So the obvious assumption is that Ben and the other leadership is supportive of it.
- dools 3y ago
  It's also signed Marc Andreesen: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ Like he's the author of the post, at the top of the page.
  - laserlight 3y ago
    Wow. This is so bad that I can't take it seriously.
  - klabb3 3y ago
    This strengthens my theory that VC vocabulary consists almost exclusively of other people’s hot takes. I know only of two other groups of people who speak primarily in quotes: religious fundamentalists and teenagers during a brief fan-frenzy of some pop culture icon (eg Nirvana).
__loam 3y ago
His name is literally the a9 in a16z lmao. It's his venture capital firm.

vundercind 3y ago

Oh wow, I forgot about that! What a wild read. It was such a mess. I loved it. Something about a famous rich person putting that much effort into something so amateurish and clumsy, while apparently being so confident, in an eager-college-freshman sort of way… I dunno, call it endearing, maybe. I mean it’s either that or it’s horrifying. I choose to pretend it’s endearing because there’s too much horrifying already.

dools 3y ago
It's horrifying because it's not an isolated wild rich man seizure, it's the same shit that Musk, Dorsey et al believe. The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism.
- margalabargala 3y ago
  > The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism. This is basically what "longtermism" is. It's "we will amass huge amounts of capital to rule you now, because we know best, and we promise that as a result your (great-great-...)grandkids will have it better than if we hadn't". It's just getting rich and playing with toys but with an ethical justification for it. It reminds me of how back in the day there was all sorts of Creative Bible scholarship around it being "easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven". Like they were all "actually the 'eye of the needle's is the name of this big gate in Jerusalem. It's super easy to get a camel through it!" EA has done some neat stuff in the here and now in terms of looking at charities et al. But anything claiming to benefit the unborn trillions of the far, far future is just someone making excuses for themselves.
  - fire_lake 3y ago
    - I know what is good through utilitarian principles and my deep knowledge of science and Bayesian statistics - AI safety is an imminent threat and the best solution is to form an AI company and sell large amounts of stock to big tech - I’m super smart so I need to be the one to work on this - I need to earn loads of money so that I have the resources and focus to save humanity

pokstad 3y ago

What part is so bad? Care to quote?

dools 3y ago
I have never heard of it, but I just had a quick skim through and IMHO the bad parts are the parts that have anything to do with economics, because it exposes him as a totalitarian neofeudalist (although he might not think of himself that way ... most totalitarian neofeudalists don't, they just don't understand their own economics well enough to see where it leads).
- bkirkby 3y ago
  how totalitarian? you have free markets (which the manifesto supports) or planned economies and planned economies are where totalitarianism works.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Is the US as it operates today a free market (how free?) or a weighted control economy where the larger players have a greater weight of control of media and the political landscape via owned outlets and subsidised senators? Do small players in the US economy have equal access to the market, or are they overshadowed by near oligarchies? Are you always so bicameral?
    - bkirkby 3y ago
      the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government (including those politicians you reference). so when we bring in more government then it's less free market. how close we are getting to a free market depends on who is in power and calling for reduced government intervention/regulations for businesses. as far as control of media, traditional media is becoming increasingly irrelevant and when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free. and small players seem to disrupt all the time. openai being the most obvious recent example. twitch being another notable example before that. i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions, but your use of bicameral confused me a little. did you mean to say binary?

djangogitit 3y ago

Yoiks I hadn’t seen that and just googled it It’s funny how the better way is never “end aristocracy” and secure equality of condition Just more feudalism with the rich never fighting just betting

bkirkby 3y ago
did you mean to use a different word than "aristocracy?" and what is "equality of condition" and how do you achieve it?
- waihtis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - __loam 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - waihtis 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - djangogitit 3y ago
        [dead]

lenerdenator 3y ago

if there's one thing that we've learned over the last eight or nine years, it's that you don't have to be taken seriously by most people to have an impact.

kevinmchugh 3y ago

About four years ago Andreesen published this: https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/ https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/ They were and remain big crypto investors and it's pretty weird that the essay doesn't acknowledge how much talent and money crypto sucked up. He asks where the supersonic aircraft are and - ignoring that they have awful externalities - there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell. A16Z is a leading venture fund - if anyone's gonna build the future, they could use A16Z's money. So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in?

nyokodo 3y ago
> there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell. A quick review of their website and some cursory googling reveals that while boom is not in their portfolio they have invested in a company developing a super sonic jet engine technology (Astro Mechanica) [1] as well as a company producing precision machine parts for aerospace (Hadrian) [1] and various other companies that intersect with the area. [3] Perhaps they wanted to invest in Boom but the deal wasn’t right or they are skeptical of that particular company or they simply never got the chance but clearly they are putting their money into this area and it’s worth researching before judging them. 1. https://www.notboring.co/p/astro-mechanica https://www.notboring.co/p/astro-mechanica 2. https://www.hadrian.co/ https://www.hadrian.co/ 3. https://a16z.com/portfolio/ https://a16z.com/portfolio/ (Look under American dynamism)
juitpykyk 3y ago
Never forget the video where Marc was asked what is Web3 and he spent 5 minutes talking gibberish nonsense.
- squigz 3y ago
  So... explaining "Web3"?
andsoitis 3y ago
> So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in? You still want to invest in a particular company or people who you believe will make you tons of money. Just because someone is active directionally in what you believe will be the future does not necessarily mean you should put your money with them.