> Marc Andreessen was right about web browsers.
Actually, what about web browsers was he right about?
Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
141–150 of 513 posts
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#142Is 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?
A bit of both. You became more attuned to what really does and does not make sense and they rotted a bit further. But 10 years ago it was pretty visible for both Musk and Andreessen.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#143This 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.
>This whole scenario is just the logical conclusion of American anti-intellectualism. Fawning over wealthy people has been happening for far, far longer than America has been around. This problem is by no means new at all.
Agreed it is not new. But it is taken to a new level.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
This. I remember many a time pmarca getting so upset and just blocking everyone who disagreed with him on Twitter. It was the weirdest thing.
Blocking people that annoy him on Twitter is the only humanizing thing about him. Deciding that someone has annoyed you enough on that platform that you don't care to ever hear from them ever again is the only thing that made that platform usable when you have any minimal audience.
"I've known you for all of 10 seconds and enjoyed not a single one of them" followed by blocking is good, actually. That doesn't make you any more correct or wrong, of course.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Step one is that all of us blue collar technologists need to get organized So that Apple and Google can discriminate against us as a bloc, instead of individually? As a programmer I struggle to see how organization would achieve anything. We hold no cards, it's the platform holders who won.
Organizing years ago would have been huge for software developers but unfortunately I do think it is too late now, given the onset of AI (weakens the collective by improving individual productivity since not every developer will be onboard) and just the current political landscape. The NLRB has been gutted.
> The NLRB has been gutted.
there was a before the nlrb and there were unions then. would you expect union organizers for a tech workers union to be assassinated? would you expect members of a tech workers union to be gunned down en masse? if no, then the political landscape has been so much worse than now, and unions have managed to form.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#146This 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.
>This whole scenario is just the logical conclusion of American anti-intellectualism. Fawning over wealthy people has been happening for far, far longer than America has been around. This problem is by no means new at all.
I'm not talking about fawning, I'm talking about taking the "intellectual" thoughts of rich people as seriously as academics/intellectuals. The notion of taking John Rockefeller's ideas on metaphysics seriously would have been seen as strange by his contemporaries.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#147[deleted]
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#148This 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.
>This whole scenario is just the logical conclusion of American anti-intellectualism. Fawning over wealthy people has been happening for far, far longer than America has been around. This problem is by no means new at all.
What's kind of unique about the US is the way poor or middle-class people idolize the rich. As the saying goes, everyone feels like a temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
My parents told me story about their trip to the US. They went on a boat tour in Miami and when the boat passed the homes of some rich people, the tour guide proudly announced the price of each building. The US tourists on the bus applauded! My parents were shocked.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#149I think Andreessen's comments were borne of hyperbole and as a (deliberate) overcorrection against certain Bay Area rationalist types whose 10,000 word navel gazing screeds border on schizoidal personality disorder.
I have watched these people expend literally years getting into hypothetical arguments with strawmen they believe are active participants in their community when, at best, they are occasional lurkers, and will erect entire superstructures of theory and belief that make utterly no sense to those outside of their rationalist cult.
Lesswrong and motteizen type users fall squarely into this category, who also tend to cleave towards the pro-AI side of the spectrum now that, as with the rest of their lives, they are able to delegate the production of logorrhea at scale to the machine.
These people are mentally unwell, and reading their proclamations is not too dissimilar to browsing a deep web trans community discussing esoteric gender theory, or even merely the slashdot comment section in 2016 - just with an extra ten paragraphs of fluff and vapidity as if they had been fed on a steady diet of the New Yorker; none of which has any correlation whatsoever to material sensate reality. No wonder there is such reverence for the hyperreality of LLM literary hallucination in these circles...
Sent from my iPhone
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Step one is that all of us blue collar technologists need to get organized So that Apple and Google can discriminate against us as a bloc, instead of individually? As a programmer I struggle to see how organization would achieve anything. We hold no cards, it's the platform holders who won.
I’m not here to argue with you If you believe you are incapable of actually doing anything then you are correct, and you should just go ahead and submit yourself to whatever power structure you think will benefit you the most
Of course you're not here to argue, there's no precedent for what you're suggesting. Nobody has fought against Apple, Google or Microsoft and taken home a significant victory.
This leads me to believe that the power structures can't be fixed. There is no amount of protesting that can coerce private capital to take humanity's best interests to heart, that's the tragedy of the commons. There is no guerilla warfare you can wage on a totalitarian platform like iOS or Windows; you simply lose in the end, because you are malware and the OEM is always right.
Movements like GNU/FOSS win because they don't even acknowledge the existence of corporate technology. They don't "fight" against anyone or make multi-billion dollar nemeses because it is a waste of volunteer hours that could go towards building something wonderful.