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Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

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Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#291

Post by Miner49er »

akudha wrote: post #129
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…

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…

> Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?

Well yeah, but not human consumers. Businesses can buy from other businesses and that can be the only surviving part of the economy. Even further, maybe those businesses are fully autonomous. There's no reason this wouldn't work, as far as I can tell.

The economy would be much more focused. It would be mostly energy, materials, and tech.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#292

Post by jihadjihad »

tavavex wrote: post #278
ryandrake wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y Combinator's application still asks: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." They don't actually use the word "cheat" but that's what they're asking for: Are you willing to cheat if it gives you an advantage?

Is that really a surprising trait to expect from a venture capitalist persona? As we go on, especially as most of the simple problems get solved, the system everyone blindly trusted has turned to uphold generally positive trends has turned to lies, manipulation, exploitative practices, loophole engineering and abuse. What I would expect from a successful VC applicant today isn't savvy business sense and actual good i…

> anything short of putting your life on the line for profit

Why should they put their own life on the line when there are so many others whose lives could be used instead?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#294

Post by chermi »

Waterluvian wrote: post #212
Zigurd wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nietzsche died broke and insane. Was that from following his own advice or failing to do so?

Is there a name for this style of non-argument? I guess it’s an attack on credibility due to the inability to attack the content of the argument?

Based on the comments its even shallower than ad-hominem. It's loose association to the "bad" they learned from the "good". Therefore everything from bad is bad. It's team sports thinking.

If I had to guess they probably read some wired article saying tech people are followers of Nietzsche based on one guy quoting one thing one time. Although probably used more dramatic terms like Nazis or fascist or something.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#295

Post by mylies43 »

bdelmas wrote: post #124
cpt_sobel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is their reasoning, it doesn't mean we shouldn't hate the players and the game alike

It’s not the players we should hate but the ones who make the rules of the game. Specifically not the ones who make the rules for the greater good but for themselves.

So, the players?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#296

Post by AlotOfReading »

rglover wrote: post #242
AlotOfReading wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion? Kalshi is just as big a problem (or bigger even) in Nebraska as New York. Taxes going to Anduril happens whether you live in Malibu or Missouri.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#297

Post by suzuki_yuya »

radarsat1 wrote: post #18

I know this is a very minor point in the article, but reading the message next to the Doublespeed phone farm: > out of 130 dms sent, 15 pointed to a conversion. > From a former ecom guy's lens this is insane Why do these otherwise very smart people always seem to draw these kind of shortsighted conclusions? It seems pretty obvious to me on the surface that this "works" because it's new. As soon as it becomes common p…

It depends on how well the messages are built, but 15 conversions out of 130 is not a number cold outbound produces. I run outbound in Japan and our reply rate sits around 1% - a hundred messages to get one person to write back at all, before anything converts. To land 15 you'd be sending thousands, not 130.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#298

Post by Miner49er »

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…

I'm not even sure they care about living. They only care about the growth of capitalism. At some point it seems very likely capitalism won't need humans to continue growing, and all humans may be killed off.

There's people that actively cheer this on, Theil and other billionaires may be among them.

You are assuming they are acting out of greed, but maybe they are just doing what they've spent their whole lives doing - accelerating the growth of capitalism.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#299

Post by etc-hosts »

swat535 wrote: post #171
ceejayoz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And who is going to maintain this low-population paradise of elites, if there is no one left but the elites ?

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Servitor

Re: Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

#300

Post by triceratops »

estearum wrote: post #285
triceratops wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making fun and ridiculing the low status You mean like how Trump mocked a disabled reporter at one of his early campaign rallies?

No, I don't mean that. Being a cheat is low-status. Being disabled is not. Americans actually agree on this, by and large.

Being disabled is a disadvantage in life, just as being low-status is. Whether being disadvantaged is "low status" or not is semantics.
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