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Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

newyorker.com

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Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#281

Post by vonnik »

blackbagboys wrote: post #278
vonnik wrote: post #243

There are great insights in this piece into how Sam thinks about AI and the future of YC. But getting profiled in The New Yorker bears a risk, and the risk is that other media organizations try to tell the "down" story, because the down story is the only new thing to say after a subject is painted with such grandiose brush strokes. Example: Marc Andreessen gets profiled in The New Yorker and a year later the WSJ publ…

How dare he not humble himself before the god-kings. The negative passages are an integral part of the story, which is about a wealthy and powerful guy living in a closed-off bubble of wealthy and powerful guys with limited or no outside supervision, and a capacity for self-reflection bounded within an extraordinarily limited scope. It may not be the story you want to be told, but it's a perfectly legitimate take on…

Yeah, I'm not criticizing the reporter much, despite a stray factual inaccuracy. I'm writing for an audience of potential sources to point out the risks of letting an interloper such as Tad Friend into your life. It's a trade off. You get exposure, but you have to be careful, because he won't be careful for you. Sam was pretty careful, but Tad still played a little gotcha.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#282

Post by qwrusz »

I have no connection to YC (except for reading HN daily) and I don't know Sam personally.

These longer profiles invite assumptions, praise and critique based on a sentence or two and they are often way off base.

My takeaway and you may disagree, without getting too heavy: Sam Altman is one of a very small handful of people in the history of the world who has the resources, the awareness, the intelligence and maybe the motivation to do important, mankind-changing things. Sound exciting? Actually to most people who get what that really means, that is very very scary and a bit sad.

This group of people is not limited to SV, but for comparison: Elon and Zuck are also in this handful of people with Sam. Musk has chosen his "inter-planetary species on planet Mars" and he has a plan. Zuck (and his wife LLC) seem to have chosen eradicating all diseases ASAP - his plan is starting now.

I don't think Sam has found his "Planet Mars" yet and that can be really hard on someone. He knows the odds of finding it and the odds of success even if he does find it.

I also think the YC startup thing that pg and Jessica started is of secondary importance here. Sam has the skills to run YC of course, but I'm not sure that's why pg handed it to him...

Sam might have office hours and can spit off advice like "talk to your paying customers more" or "understand the problem being fixed" which new, lost founders always seem to need to be told. This stuff is so easy for someone like Sam and most natural entrepreneurs it's almost laughable and might even get annoying after a while...

I think pg handed YC to Sam not for YC's sake. Many people could have taken over YC. I think one reason that pg did it was to give Sam something else to work on so Sam's search for meaning, for his "Planet Mars", didn't consume him to the point that it broke him and the promise he has. He did it to save Sam's life.

These are all assumptions and personal opinions. As someone familiar with earning a relatively large amount of money at a young age and then wanting to do something more important to me than just make more money, but not knowing what to do, Sam is among those I look to and I am following his career.

I wish him a lot of success and happiness.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#283

Post by icpmacdo »

tptacek wrote: post #266
icpmacdo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the iPhone SE?

Because it's a great phone, and it's not super expensive? I have an SE.

Sama does not need to be concerned with the price of the phone, I was wondering is it because of the smaller form factor or another reason. The article talks about him powering through hundreds of emails a day and Im curious if the SE works for that amount of typing

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#284

Post by sudoscript »

stale2002 wrote: post #177
wyldfire wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would it even mean to 'escape' a simulation? In my mind I'm imagining when I write code to model a real process and even at some super high-fidelity simulation I can't imagine an 'escape'. Maybe if the simulation were so self-aware it could conduct local privilege-escalation attacks and replicate itself like a worm/virus? EDIT: aside -- "Microcosmic God" [1] was a great short story along these lines [1] https://…

Assume a non omnipotent being, with non-infinite resources is creating a universe simulation. What decisions would we expect a person like this to make, when designing this simulation? Since they do not have infinite resources, they would likely take shortcuts, and make compromises and tradeoff when designing the simulation For example, if light did not have a speed limit, and interacted with the entire universe inst…

How do you know your own thought processes aren't a part of the simulation? Logic is a great tool to analyze the simulation unless it's been baked on purpose by our overlords.

On a different note, does simulation hypothesis strike anyone else as the idea God just explained in pseudo scientific/computing terms?

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#285

Post by mrep »

n72 wrote: post #138
dave_sullivan wrote: post #136

> Only twenty per cent of the Inc. 500, the five hundred fastest-growing private companies, raised outside funding. I thought this was an interesting statistic. "80% of the fastest growing private companies did not need to raise capital to become one of the fastest growing companies."

...which makes this statement seem awfully silly: "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."

> "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail.

Someone care to explain that because I don't see economic growth as a dependency to democracy.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#286

Post by [deleted] »

napsterbr wrote: post #56
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #49

This is neither here nor there: I'd never read about Sam Altman's sexuality before this article, but when watching him interview Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago on the making the future series, it crossed my mind and I wondered if he's gay. Something in the body language. A certain type of light on Sam's face. So reading this, I've loudly exclaimed to myself, "I thought so!"

My gaydar had already told me, but I did not know he was out. I'm guessing it's not easy at all being an openly gay VC within this small community in the Valley. Kudos to Sam, I already had a great respect for him; much more now. I hope he can disrupt minorities and bigotry too.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#287

Post by abysmallyideal »

mrep wrote: post #285
n72 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which makes this statement seem awfully silly: "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."

> "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. Someone care to explain that because I don't see economic growth as a dependency to democracy.

As soon as you hit resource scarcity, there is no cushion to give people "rights" and the state begins to change the economic rules to maintain stability.

The US and the West experienced a huge gain in resource that is quickly being squandered in a contest of "either we use it or we lose it". Since there was more to go around there is less need to enact stricter forms of government.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#288

Post by abysmallyideal »

yrahmed wrote: post #33

I love Sam and just wish they would have used a different metaphor than "Manifest Destiny". Isn't manifest destiny what led to the genocide of native american populations?

It is about the American outlook where the perception is warped to the extent that all that is seen and wanted is only meant for them.

Or in another sense; because it exists, then it exists only for them. It ties into their earlier religion where they warped the belief that an entity called God created the world for mankind and humans, where they only reason and believe that only they themselves to be human and man.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#289

Post by codyb »

apsec112 wrote: post #51

I continue to be impressed by the quality of The New Yorker's reporting. This is so far above and beyond most media coverage about Altman and YC.

It's great that every week that release some five or so long form articles many of which must take months to complete. I'm duly impressed by every issue which shows at my door.

Re: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

#290

Post by codyb »

danjoc wrote: post #276
JBReefer wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what good journalism looks like, especially when it covers complex topics

"At a hundred and thirty pounds, Altman is poised as a clothespin, fierce as a horned owl." to me, sounds like a romance novel, not objective reporting. From a group that espouses the virtues of a 30 second elevator pitch, I find the down voting odd. There's an incredible amount of verbosity here that essentially adds nothing to the article. At 46 pages, that's roughly half the size of the entire GoLang specification…

This article isn't written for you then. It's written for the audience of the New Yorker which consistently reads quality long form which paint whole pictures. As a hacker news commentator you probably have far more insight into the start up scene than the vast majority of them.

I'm also curious about the 46 pages, I'd put it at about 15 in the print form of the magazine. Enjoyed the read and comment thread quite a bit.

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