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Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#131

Post by coldtea »

bluGill wrote: post #111
gassi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken the position that anything the ultra-wealthy say is likely wrong, and every decision they take will negatively affect society, unless and until its corroborated by an unbiased source with expertise in the subject matter.

The ultra-wealthy are no different from anyone else. However the effects of their decisions - both good and bad - tend to be much larger than what most of us can do.

>The ultra-wealthy are no different from anyone else

The ultra wealthy are very different from anyone else. First of all, their focus gets to be about power, everyone else's is survival and making the rent. Second they have armies of ass kissers. Third, they have no job and can even own politicians. And of course their wealth isolates them from repercursions anyone else would face, and puts their experience way out of phase with the regular people.

And we should also account for the sociopathic drive that made them rich in the first place (sociopaths are overrepresented in higher status positions).

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#132

Post by estebank »

monknomo wrote: post #75
croes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. The only thing social media removed was scruples and shame. People were ashamed to say such dumb things and now they think they have some kind of deeper knowledge. Their thinking didn’t change.

I think they also suddenly had to deal with a bunch of people being mean to them, and telling them they were wrong, which drove them a little mad. Sort of an oppositional defiant thing, filtered through immense wealth and power

After one becomes wealthy, social media easily becomes the only place where anyone says no to them. When everyone who surrounds you tells you "you're absolutely right, let me get that for you", you atrophy the muscle that let's you course correct when you're making a mistake, and when someone disagrees with you it feels that much stronger.

Wealth is not the only way this can happen, you see it with notoriety and power who have gotten used to " being right" (Dawkins comes to mind), and now this experience is being "democratised" by LLMs.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#133

Post by sharadov »

The problem is with the media pouring endless attention on these tech bros and bestowing the mantel of expertise in every field on them - philosophy, politics, religion, sociology.

So now they spout their mouth off and the media hangs on their every word and debates it.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#134

Post by rybosworld »

spamizbad wrote: post #123
gassi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken the position that anything the ultra-wealthy say is likely wrong, and every decision they take will negatively affect society, unless and until its corroborated by an unbiased source with expertise in the subject matter.

I think the ultra-wealthy are just operating under what they think they need to tell people in order to get the outcomes they want. You're only going to hear the truth - or something correct - if its to their benefit.

I used to think this but I think that's only true for the low-profile wealthy folks. And they voice their opinion indirectly, like through owning media companies.

The people that feel the need to be loud and in the public eye aren't necessarily playing 4d chess. It's really just an ego thing for them.

The wealthy who keep a low-profile are the smarter one's.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#135

Post by codersfocus »

There's a balance to be had between introspection and taking action. People tend to have a bias for one or the other (action bias vs thinking bias.)

Those who act would do well to think a bit more, and those who think a lot need help taking action.

I recently launched an app that can help in either case (Wiseday on the app store.)

It lets you print a daily page that can both be used to introspect, as well as an execution aid to help you actually take consistent action towards your goals.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#136

Post by jacquesm »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #38
John23832 wrote: post #12

We all know he’s wrong. The problem isn’t that he is wrong, it’s that we have elevated the wealthy into a status where they can be wrong, have no correction, and make decisions whole clothe which negatively affect the rest of us. All while being insulated from their negative world view.

[flagged]

I don't think technologists are blue collar. They are not necessarily part of the owner class but true blue collar work is not done behind desks.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#137

Post by moregrist »

wodenokoto wrote: post #31

Is the 1 percenters getting dumber or acting like it? Like 10 years ago, I felt like Andreesen and Elon were thought leaders. Now they sound like idiots. Did I or did they change? Did I grow up and they changed to a younger audience and what I used to enjoy was just a different kind of stupid?

When you reach a certain level of wealth and power, it seems like it’s very easy to surround yourself with people who only tell you how brilliant and successful you are.

This creates an echo chamber where you don’t get reality checks, and when you do they’re easy to brush off as some form of “sour grapes,” after all if the person telling you that you’re wrong was so great they’d have your level of wealth.

I think it takes a really extraordinary person to avoid this. As far as I can tell, most of the modern Silicon Valley titans are not extraordinary in this respect.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#138

Post by _fat_santa »

lijok wrote: post #45
wodenokoto wrote: post #31

Is the 1 percenters getting dumber or acting like it? Like 10 years ago, I felt like Andreesen and Elon were thought leaders. Now they sound like idiots. Did I or did they change? Did I grow up and they changed to a younger audience and what I used to enjoy was just a different kind of stupid?

They changed. You wouldn’t believe it but those most impacted by the mental rot that social media can induce - are the ultra wealthy.

I have a tangential theory to this.

Being rich != being famous. There are tons of extremely wealthy people out there that keep a very low profile. Sure they might be well known within their circle but ask the average person and they have no clue who that person is. I would say this is the case for like 90-95% of billionaires.

Musk, Andreessen, Zuck and others were all in this camp 10 years ago but they all decided that simply being rich wasn't enough, they wanted to be famous. These folks have all the resources and connections to become famous so they can get on all the podcasts, write op-eds, and are guaranteed to get the best reach on social media and thus the most eyeballs on their content and the most attention paid to them.

But when you go from making a few media appearances a year to constantly making media appearances in one way or another is that you need more "content" so to speak. Just like a comedian needs more content if they are going to do a 1hr special versus a 10min set at a comedy club.

The problem for all these guys is they have a few genuinely insightful ideas mixed in with a ton of cooky and out of touch ideas. Before they could safely stick to the genuinely insightful ideas but as they've made more and more appearances, they have to reach for some of those other ideas. They don't realize that their cooky ideas sound very different than their few insightful ideas. They think all their ideas are insightful based on the feedback they have been getting for the past decade or so.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#139

Post by roncesvalles »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #88
keiferski wrote: post #37

This whole scenario is just the logical conclusion of American anti-intellectualism. The need for intellectuals doesn't really go away, but rather we start assuming that "good at making money" = "has ideas worth listening to, on any topic." Not really surprising that many of these people are also frequent critics of academia and professors.

> as ideas worth listening to, on any topic. Shoe Button Complex as coined by Buffet and Munger. I see this all the time from even mildly successful people. Suddenly the Early Bitcoin Adopter is now a Macro Economist and a Relationship Guru.

Also a product of the US stock market going up and to the right for the last couple of decades. It's very easy to convince yourself that you are some great perceptor of the world because you've been getting 30% CAGR on your portfolio for the last few many years.

But in hindsight it was always more likely to be green than red, and you could handily beat the market average if you had any kind of tech tilt at all, which many of these people naturally did. This applies to private equity too. I think a lot of mediocre tech VCs ended up with green books because the tide was just rising so fast; if you invested in any Stanford/Berkeley/MIT person who walked through your doors, it was impossible to end up in the red.

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