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Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#171

Post by rexpop »

bigyabai wrote: post #154
pasquinelli wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is so funny for me to read. a few years ago, i would see programmers saying they can negotiate better deals for themselves than a union could. now you're saying it's already over, programming as a skill has a future valuation that's heading to zero. i advise against being so sure of your ideas. maybe you think platform holders have all the cards--test it. if they fight efforts to unionize, that tells a different…

Individuals can negotiate insane labors deals for themselves. Go ask the best-paid person you know how they got their pay package, it usually entails some form of schmoozing. Unions are for bringing the bottom-rung up to par, not for raising the top bar further. > if they fight efforts to unionize, that tells a different story. You are describing an industry that has outsourced intelligent labor to India and Pakistan…

[dead]

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#173

Post by deburo »

gordian-mind wrote: post #155

Weak article. It never really tries to reconstruct what Andreessen meant, just takes a narrow quote, reads it in the least charitable way, and then spends most of its energy tearing down that version with loaded rhetoric. The comments only reinforce that impression: most are some variation of “rich guy, therefore idiot.” This is more pile-on than discussion.

Which makes me curious about what Marc actually meant. The quote itself raises eyebrows.

EDIT: From checking in with Claude about his talk.

> So the thing he was arguing against was specifically what he sees as a modern therapeutic culture — the expectation that people should examine their motives, feel guilty about their actions, and look backward. He wasn't framing it as a philosophical position so much as a practical one about founder effectiveness.

https://claude.ai/share/9c5611f7-fd0e-4f76-bd39-e1129c035a4f

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#174

Post by littlestymaar »

Marc Andreessen is wrong about many things that may be worth arguing against, but not here: this was completely idiotic take that doesn't deserve anything but contempt.

And it's not like you could convinced his followers that this take is wrong, anyone gullible enough to take such an insane take at face value is very unlikely to read your rebuttal.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#175

Post by johannes1234321 »

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.

Yes, they are different: People who care about others are less likely to become ultra rich. You become ultra rich by mostly caring about your cut and your profits.

While there are exceptions with people who were lucky and were at the right spot at the right time, there is a different distribution of character traits compared to society at large.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#176

Post by pixl97 »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #163
quantummagic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but we've never devised any system that prevents this from happening. Every single organization leads to a concentration of wealth and power. And even those ideally conceived to have counterbalancing forces, eventually are corrupted and subverted. It seems to be the steady state of reality.

Maybe wealth should be reset every time? There shouldn't be inheritence at all?

Define wealth in an exact manner.

Because rich people have both the power and motivation to define it in a manner in which they still win. Wealth can be education. Wealth can be contacts. Wealth can be properties. Wealth can be businesses. Wealth can be in other countries.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#177

Post by CalChris »

duped wrote: post #77
seydor wrote: post #2

Technologists used to be smart, now they just have money.

Venture capitalists have never been smart and have always had money

Poker players with a blog. No one ever has a difficult problem and thinks, damn, maybe I should ask a VC.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#179

Post by kmeisthax »

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?

It's both. Back then[0], the ultra-wealthy had whole teams of PR managers - people devoted to doing the verbal equivalent of making sure they were lit with perfect 5500K portrait lighting at every angle. In other words, DLSS 5 but for personality. In order to sustain that kind of shitty magic trick, the PR team needs to completely control everything they say. This is a lot of effort.

The moment the ultra wealthy slip up - that they reveal that they're a normal shitty person with a severe case of affluenza - the illusion shatters. And social media has made it both very easy and addictive for rich people to indulge in their worst vices. So now instead of fundamentally soulless people engaging in virtue signalling to pretend to be human, you have fundamentally soulless people engaging in vice signalling, because suddenly these p-zombies been given access to a machine that finds them fellow p-zombies to validate themselves with.

Furthermore, once you see this happen a few times, your mental default changes. Now you assume every wealthy person is an asshole until proven otherwise. Even if Elon Musk might be saying something poignant about space travel or AI safety, you've seen enough Cybertrucks and "X Æ A-12"s and "autistic" Nazi salutes to know that he's a moron. You, personally, were ignoring the latter to focus on the former, because you were probably smarter than him. But he's shoved the latter in your face to the point where it's undeniable.

> Did I grow up and they changed to a younger audience and what I used to enjoy was just a different kind of stupid?

No, you're thinking of MAD Magazine. Notably, it's still possible for an emotionally mature adult to still enjoy that kind of humor. But emotionally mature adults tend to not enjoy manchildren.

[0] 10 years ago was 2016, which is probably not as far back as you were thinking.

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