Thinking democracy's success is tied to economic growth is a pretty dim worldview. I hope he's wrong about that.
[deleted]
Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
21–30 of 312 posts
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#22Thinking democracy's success is tied to economic growth is a pretty dim worldview. I hope he's wrong about that.
"Economic growth" can exist on a computer screen completely decoupled from the "real world" and independent of a strong middle class.
IMHO An economically strong middle class is needed to maintain social order. This mitigates the public from hunting and and killing the rich and keeps the public from displacing their social frustrations on to each other and creating riots. Generally its a better existence for everyone.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#23This was a pretty good article -- certainly one of the better portraits I've read of SA. However, I usually see better writing in the New Yorker. Take "as a result, the once nerdy Y Combinator is now aggressively geeky." What the hell does that mean? (Nothing.) OTOH, a few memorable quotes: > Growth masks all problems. (Steve Huffman) > Despite having raised a robust $1.6 million after Demo Day, the founders were rid…
and "upload"? "what intrigues him is their potential effect on the world. To determine that, he’ll upload all he needs to know about, say, urban planning or nuclear fusion."
Yep -- this one puzzled me so much that I assumed I was in the wrong, because surely there's no way that a writer for the New Yorker would make a mistake that egregious. I must have read that sentence twenty times.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#24Radiation hormesis is one of those junk science topics that persists in the literature despite many thorough efforts to debunk it.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#25The brilliance of YCombinator, IMO, is HackerNews. It's turned YC into a self-perpetuating machine by getting smart people to congregate and talk about news YC itself partially generates. I heard about YC, PG, and sama all through this outlet.
Makes sense. I personally read some of the comments before jumping into an article, mainly because comments most of the time loop me in on something that I am completely clueless or have little aware of. Also to see if the article is worth reading into because obviously if you read 20 people saying "The author of the article doesn't know what he is talking about" then its more possible that indeed the author has written about something he doesn't know or understand.
Also a lot of the times the solutions given or explanations are amazingly good and entertaining. Thanks to YC I've become a better person I'd say.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#26I do admire all the ambition. But does it really have to be mixed in with views such as "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth." I'm sure Sam (and other SV types) is well aware of the complexity of reality and that YC, as one company, cannot be hugely important to that growth. In other words, if YC simply stopped functioning tomorrow, I can't imagine the GDP growth of the United States would be at all affected. Guys, what you're doing is very, very impressive, but, c'mon, let's get off the idea that you're instrumental in saving democracy for all of us (and all the other delusions of grandeur).
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#27> At Graham’s table, he [Altman] and others discussed how to stop Donald Trump
> If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel
Is this true? How does it work?
Thiel is a very vocal supporter of Trump and yet he's Altman's friend, a friend so close they would want to spend the rest of their life alone together, in the event of a catastrophe.
Altman can certainly have all the friends he wants; but he shouldn't get to pretend he opposes Trump at the same time.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#28I do admire all the ambition. But does it really have to be mixed in with views such as "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth." I'm sure Sam (and other SV types) is well aware of the complexity of reality and that YC, as one company, cannot be hugely important to that growth.…
Not currently at least.
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#29This quote from a YC Partner: > It’s all about founders. Facebook had Mark Zuckerberg, and MySpace had a bunch of monkeys. The kind of ubermensch/Ayn Rand rhetoric that makes me cringe.
Do you think it's wrong?
Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny
#30> At Graham’s table, he [Altman] and others discussed how to stop Donald Trump > If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel Is this true? How does it work? Thiel is a very vocal supporter of Trump and yet he's Altman's friend, a friend so close they would want to spend the rest of their life alone together, in the event of a catastrophe. Altman can certainly have all the fri…
Friends can disagree. Pretty sure it's as simple as that.