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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

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!”

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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.

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

Who has a better idea whether a lawyer or a surgeon is actually good at their job - their clients or their peers?

It is much easier to collude with peers than with clients, so I'm more likely to trust reviews from clients than peers.

Much easier to lie to customers though.

When you book a hotel do you base your decision on reviews from other customers or other hotel owners?

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.

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.

genuinely curious what truth-distilling insight you think the average customer has that somehow can’t be manipulated artificially.

people get duped by deceptive marketing every day, man.

On the other hand, we have seen how perverse incentive amongst experts work too. Academia is rife with fraud (e.g. publishing 500 paper a year), because certain incentives make it possible. I agree expert are important and should be judged by peers, but incentives around budget allocation and prestige should not be attached to performance, especially in science. However I understand it's a complex topic so I probably miss a lot of information, just my 2 c.

skin in the game. They paid for the product, and if the company's still in business, didn't sue it or convince everyone else not to. A good review costs a restaurant critic nothing.

I'm surprised at how many people took the bait to treat this as an either/or proposition. One criteria of evaluation is never sufficient to make a good decision - why not ask both? A smart consumer reads the product label and the user reviews.

> Are credentials and expertise not a reasonable measure of merit and achievement

I think the assumption behind their statement is that this in fact the case.

Media/politics use the words credentials and expertise interchangeably, and credentials invariably means those issued by universities. So a professor is assumed to always be an expert, even if they can't evidence that in reality. The result is a large number of ivory tower academics who call themselves experts in things, but who have no skin in the game and whose theories are never tested against reality. Hence the replication crisis, which Marc Andreessen is on the record as being very concerned/aware about.

Determining actual expertise is the Number 1 problem faced by both VCs and startup founders, and those are both communities who are famously rather indifferent to credentials.

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?

(a) indulge in abstract theories

(b) engage in social engineering

(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.

>(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.

Forgot one.

(g) exhibit uncredentialed university dropout know-it-all worldview

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.

In democracies, laws don't emerge from nowhere as some top-down mandate... much to the chagrin of people who in the private sector actually can totally warp incentives to effectively induce or forbid certain behaviors in other people.

We have seen how developers use the term "God-mode" in their software. (I will cite examples if requested.) From this end user's perspective such terminology suggests some strange if not comical delusions of grandeur.

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."

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.

> 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?

Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem.

Sure: Henry George, Steven Pinker, Mustafa Suleyman off the top of my head.

What makes them better is pretty simple: they sound like thinkers who are engaging with the substance of a rather complicated topic, instead of like cult leaders who are making declarations of faith. Which, it should be obvious that the only reason anyone is engaging with this (and we have to) is because of the power held by the person saying it.

Also, listing people without their permission, especially posthumously, as if they’re co-signers on your manifesto is transparently intellectually dishonest. I honestly shudder to think of the calculus that would lead a serious thinker to believe that’s okay.

Marc is presumably a smart guy and I’m sure he’s perfectly friendly, but this stuff is starting to veer a little Kanye if you ask me. No one is immune to their own distorted reality, so I hope he has people he trusts who can (and do) provide pushback.

> Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem.

Exactly! When you…

- emphasize personalities & personal biographies

- cite vague feels about which people "sound like thinkers" (why?)

- stretch to imply a recommended-authors list has been misrepresented as "co-signers" in some way that's vaguely not "okay" – and try to imply some unprecedented & counterproductive politeness norm that an author (even a dead author?!?) can't be cited favorably without permission

- layer on empty unevaluable intensifiers & slurs presuming agreement where it doesn't exist ('cult leader', 'obvious that the only reason anyone is engaging', 'transparently intellectually dishonest', 'honestly shudder', 'veer a little Kanye', 'distorted reality')

…you're taking the easier path: leaning on shallow attitudes, shifting fashions, & groupthink moreso than the actual text/ideas on offer.

And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece. It's all Regina bluffing mean-girl dominance via tone & slur, without reasoning: "Pmarca, stop trying to make tech-optimism happen. It's not going to happen."

Well, that kind of social flocking & mocking works in some places, for a while – until it doesn't.

Maybe you missed my original point: I agree with the argument for the most part.

My position has been validated in actual reality. The mainstream reporting -- that is, the reporting that the people who need convincing actually read -- has not been positive. I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimism than towards it.

If you were a pessimist already, this confirms and amplifies all of your fears. If you were neutral, well it looks like the pessimists were right: the big tech people are truly off the rails.

> And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece

Right! And aren't most reactions outside of HN negative?

Could it be that humans actually don't interpret words on the page as completely isolated from the actual context in which they're stated, who stated them, and how they're stated? Could it be that "the techno-optimists" need to convince humans of things? And no, the inclusion of context and tone in an argument is not some recent cultural wokeism phenomenon.

Just Kagi the article and see the response. I struggle to see how this advances the cause, regardless of how long you want to argue with me here on HN about overlooking the context/subtext/pretext.

You're citing biased samples, like how on HN itself:

- A disproportionate number of direct-replies to almost any opiniated submission are negative. (If you agree, an upvote is often enough! It's the objectors/nitpickers who are loudest in the comments – even if unrepresentative.)

- Often, also, it's sullen/underemployed people who have the most time to comment.

I disagree that the "mainstream reporting" represents "the people who need convincing". They're more of a neurotic clique than ever before. It's time to go around them, to folks doing real work.

Your arguments are still a bunch of impressionistic handwaving about appearances rather than substance: "I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimist than towards it."

Your emphatic belief about superficial "eww!" reactions from within your info-bubble is not much of an argument, nor does it engage with the actual ideas in the text.

For the 'manifesto' to work, it doesn't have to convince anyone who's already predisposed toward grumbling about Andreesen's tone or self-awareness, or who's fond of vague derogatory phrases like "truly off the rails".

It just has to reach the totally-separate set of people who are excited by, & eager to collaborate around, the positive vision within the text itself.

You know, those thousands of actual words written – against which you've only lodged abstract complaints about tone & emphasis, & that he didn't do enough to convince you, & the total cop-out-on-substance "but as far as I can tell most people agree with me!"

Kagi results are biased? I mean... I guess.

You got it pal, hope all those people are feeling rah-rah!

No search engine's results will be an accurate census of reader reactions.

Such results will especially undersample Andreesen's intended audience of potential builders, which isn't the snarky cliquish media scene to which you've apprently outsourced your sensibilities.

And again: to repeatedly appeal to "most people agree with me (as far as I can see, according to my idiosyncratic media diet)" isn't the win you seem to think it is. It's more a confession that you're not bringing much of your own reasoning/logic/experience to a discussion, and defer to (often-faked) social proof for validation. If I cared what Kagi's crawl/ranking thinks, I'd search Kagi. (I don't.)

Very interesting how the goal here needn’t be to build a broad coalition or broad consensus in order to shape the future.

It’s almost as if technologists believe they can (and actually have a moral imperative to!) shape the world without being elected and without being accountable to the people whose world they’re shaping…

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is

He wants crypto to be cool

Hearing himself talk

The manifesto comes from a guy whose business model for the past 3 years was grifting people into the NFT hype, so either he's just another conman selling a vision or a megalomaniac completely lacking self-awareness.

Why not both?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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/b...

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.

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.

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.

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