Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

modelrepublic.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 459 posts

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#241

Post by Daishiman »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #227
ModernMech wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end game is that we're all dead, and they live off their robot slave army in a world of abundance, no poors, and no governments to tell them no. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's what they want more than anything if you really pay close attention to what thy're doing, which as you say doesn't make sense given an end game where you and I are part of the system. When then say "everyone in the future will be rich…

I still can't wrap my head around it. So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare, and there's maybe 50-100 billionaires left on the planet. Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies. They don't have children? The human race dies with them? Or they have children, somehow avoid the trap of inbreeding and their children in turn have ch…

> This thing makes no sense to me when they can already enjoy everything the world has to offer and on top of that they're for all practical purposes above the law.

It doesn't have to make sense because these are not well-reasoned theories of the future. Thiel, Yarvis and Musk, from what you hear and read on their interviews, come off as drug-addled losers who hate other human beings and anything that doesn't have to do with their hyper-optimized partial view of the world.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#242

Post by rglover »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #215
rglover wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said. I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant. Simplified: if they're going West, you go East. The more "small time" people reject this narrative that we need a bunch of elitist white guys shoving their mediocrity down our throats, the…

I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant. Can you explain how to do that without either drawing attention to them via discussions like this or leaving society altogether? I don't personally fund a16z, but my taxes do. Calls to coordinated action to stop g…

Leave Babylon behind and go build local businesses and communities in what they refer to as "flyover country." That's what I'm doing. Easy? Fuck no. But does it take their relevancy away from them? At the scale of everyone who isn't a coastal barnacle: big time.

They view the rest of this country with disdain and indifference. I'm suggesting that others quit looking at these people as lords and sages to be placed up on a pedestal. Most of them are quite incompetent, skill-less, and frankly, not cool enough to want to hang out with (why they're making "jokes" about there only being two jobs left in the world in the future: Anthropic employees and hookers for Anthropic employees [1]). I'm sorry but I'm not taking direction from a bunch of dorks who can't get laid without paying for it. And I'd take a wild guess that given the climate, the lion's share of America is with me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tjrCFuEA1ds

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#244

Post by augment_me »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #227
ModernMech wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end game is that we're all dead, and they live off their robot slave army in a world of abundance, no poors, and no governments to tell them no. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's what they want more than anything if you really pay close attention to what thy're doing, which as you say doesn't make sense given an end game where you and I are part of the system. When then say "everyone in the future will be rich…

I still can't wrap my head around it. So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare, and there's maybe 50-100 billionaires left on the planet. Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies. They don't have children? The human race dies with them? Or they have children, somehow avoid the trap of inbreeding and their children in turn have ch…

When you have everything, you want something new and different. The whole Epstein scandal is literally about this, you want to kill babies, r*pe the kids, do sacrifice rituals, etc because nothing gives you sensory satisfaction anymore. In the view of the commenters above, humanity will just be the final playtoy, let's have a little nuclear bomb in that town and film it in 4k, etc.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#245

Post by estearum »

jkubicek wrote: post #205
estearum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually. It's a cute story but there's no evidence of it. We got here by putting two of the most hated people in the country on the ballot against him, twice. One was actively hated for decades by the ultra-powerful evangelical voting bloc and hardly loved even by her own party, then another who couldn't be more closely affiliated with the incumbent during a period of high inflation (globally) that ousted incumb…

> We got here by putting two of the most hated people in the country on the ballot against him, twice. I hate this victim-blaming. Democrats deserve heaps of criticism for how they handled the last few elections, but Clinton was the most qualified presidential candidate we've had since maybe McCain in 2008? (I didn't vote for McCain, but it would be hard to argue he wasn't qualified ). You said yourself where the bla…

There's more to winning elections than being qualified, unfortunately.

Blame can be shared among many actors, and generally should be.

There's also special value in finding blame in yourself and your own actions where possible, not as a self-flagellation exercise, but because it will reveal if you had levers available you failed to pull for some reason.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#246

Post by bodge5000 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #147
akudha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting ethical and moral questions aside for a second: Never pay a human again Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes…

> If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? No one. That's the idea. A low-population paradise. Venice without its pesky people to mess with Bezos's wedding. Bora Bora without the peasants.

There's been plenty of good sci-fi written about this, but surely they know that any any display of power is meaningless without someone to have power over? The wedding in Venice only means anything because people live in Venice and you're still able to "take over". Any "paradise" built like this will never be paradise, it'll be just chasing the next extreme until there's nowhere left to go

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#247

Post by ndiddy »

prepend wrote: post #200
akudha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting ethical and moral questions aside for a second: Never pay a human again Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes…

I think the end game is to only do interesting things and automate all the mundane parts of life. We used to have to wash clothes by hand and it took all day. Now we have a washing machine and it takes 2 hours. People used to spend time washing clothes and now we have more members of the household working. I think the future from scifi that I remember (eg, Star Trek) is that humans are just being creative. Usually so…

If everything is automated away, you won't see a Star Trek style post scarcity utopia because everyone on UBI will have lost basically all of their political power. They aren't employable so they can't threaten to withhold their labor in order to get any sort of leverage. The most they could do is withhold consumption to some extent. If you have a dependent population being managed by the same state that's already allowed wealth to accumulate to its current levels, what incentive does the state have to do any more than the bare minimum?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#248

Post by kristjansson »

codemog wrote: post #67
vintermann wrote: post #33

> Lee's stated goal was to “desensitize everyone to the phrase ‘cheating.’” If you say it enough, he argues, “cheat begins to lose its meaning.” A16z praised Lee's approach as “rooted in deliberate strategy and intentionality.” Investors: but surely they won't cheat me !

Lee is a product of his environment. Tech interviews are bullshit and he exposed it. School work is mostly bullshit and he exposed it. How can you honestly tell this young man not to cheat and get ahead when the president does it regularly? We’re a spiritually dead country and the youth is reflecting it. Don’t use Lee as the scapegoat.

The operative part of schoolwork is … not the work part? Of course school work is bullshit, in the sense that the teacher already knows what 7x9 is or who fought at Waterloo or whatever. The point is not the work product, it’s that the student produced it and has been incrementally improved by the experience!

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#250

Post by cindyllm »

kodoman wrote: post #131
pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #81

"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case" -- Niccolo Machiavelli It's a self fulfilling prophecy... while us commoners, or so called "activists" or et…

I think you are interpreting the quote incorrectly. It is not that the prince should be immoral, but rather that he must understand political reality is often filled with perfidious actions and motives. He must recognize that within his principality, there will be those ready to backstab him to gain power. His duty is to the continuation of his principality and the preservation of his own power. This is not merely se…

[dead]
Post reply on HN