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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Andreessen is overhyped. He says these bombastic things which, as bombastic things usually do are either not original and/or usually not true. Say, one of the most famous of his is "software is eating the world" from 2011 but Alan Cooper (you know, the guy who invented Visual Basic) in his "The inmates are running the asylum" book from 1998 (that's 13 years earlier) already argued that everything already is or will become a computer with some peripherals. That's just one example, I am not saying Cooper is original but certainly Andreessen is not.

His examples include a modern, computerized warship which predictably crashed... When looking at his investment, sure, people will talk about Facebook but leave out Groupon and Zynga. The guy does not, at the end, shit gold.

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> I am not saying Cooper is original but certainly Andreessen is not.

Same goes for Thiel and his "tech stagnation" theories. From Why celebrity “genius” Peter Thiel is grossly overrated [0]:

> Thiel arrived at this “contrarian contention … about 2008.” That’s odd. The thesis that the most recent wave of tech innovation was slowing, or would soon slow, was discussed in the 1990s by Neo-Schumpeterians like Carlota Perez, and more recently by economists Robert J. Gordon, Michael Mandel and Tyler Cowen, among many others.

0: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/11/meet_the_anti_gay_sexist_cel...

Tyler Cowen actually dedicated his book the Great Stagnation to Thiel. It's silly to claim that Thiel'shis ideas are sui generis, but Cowen seems to treat him as a peer at least. See also:

https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel-on-t...

Thiel is just one of many people listed in the acknowledgements of The Great Stagnation. I've previously watched the interview you linked, and was quite surprised by Cowen's acknowledgment of Thiel as "one of the greatest and most important public intellectuals of our entire time."

However, as the Salon article notes, Cowen himself was a latecomer to the debate (The Great Stagnation was published in 2011). Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital[0], by Carlota Perez, was published in 2003, while Robert J. Gordon has been writing about the topic since at least 2000[1].

During the early 2000s, Thiel and Clarium Capital were incorrectly fixated on peak oil, rather than on the real estate bubble (relevant in the short term) or general stagnation (relevant in the long term)[2]:

> [B]y February 2009 oil prices had temporarily fallen back to almost $40 again. And though Thiel had foreseen the real estate bubble, he still underestimated it. “We didn’t fully believe our own theories about how bad things were,” he admits.

This misunderstanding of the macro picture cost Thiel dearly, with Clarium shrinking 90% from 2008-2010[3], as investors withdrew their money from what was clearly a losing strategy.

0: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1843763311

1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7833

2: http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/peter-thiels-contrarian-strate...

3: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-01-12/clarium-he...

Originality is not required - being pointed in the right direction is.

This is sadly another one of these "HN does negativity" again (as opposed to nativity, which I would pay for tickets)

Andreessen is right in most of his (yes,bombastic) pronouncements - right in the direction of travel, right in the wave to catch.

Which is what is wanted. Society has a lot of challenges ahead and we need plenty of scouts out ahead warning of the danger and the opportunities. The more scouts who come back, and are right about the lay of the land, the better prepared we will be.

So, are his rationales for the future correct? Mostly. Are his investments based on those rationales profitable - less than previous, but that's only relevant if you are an investor in a16z

I hope he keeps calling them, and I look forward to robust discussions about the correctness of his calls - but don't expect that discussion to occur in mainstream papers - HN is where we should do that.

I think his word usage when describing any venture he is involved in is generally hyperbolic and a legal term called puffery:

In law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally. Puffery serves to "puff up" an exaggerated image of what is being described and is especially featured in testimonials.

He probably says things like this because the resulting media attention is a profitable strategy. Being in the media often confers a sense of legitimacy, making it easier to fundraise.

Just look at Donald Trump. He has mastered the art of getting free media attention by saying 'earthy' statements.

I am glad you mentioned trump as an example: In F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," Chapter 10, 'Why the Worst Get on Top'

"...In the first instance, it is probably true that the higher education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values."

[...]

"...It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of a numerous group is needed, strong enough to impose their views on the values of life on all the rest, it will never be those with highly differentiated and developed tastes it will be those who form the "mass" in the derogatory sense of the term, the least original and independent, who will be able to put the weight of their numbers behind their particular ideals. ..."

http://www.savageleft.com/poli/rts-ten.html

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