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Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

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Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#241

Post by mpbm »

joshuacc wrote: post #105
noobermin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset when you fail if you were building something just to become the next Zuck. This does contrast with pg's story, however.

> The good part is that if you are working on something you care about, you won't be as upset This probably varies from person to person, but failing at something I care about would make me much more upset than failing at something I didn't really care about.

I think he means if it's important to you it's still worth trying and if you fail at least you were trying. Whereas if it's just a business, "nothing personal," then failing means you've got nothing, not even the feeling of working on something important to you.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#242

Post by mpbm »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #140
jseliger wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread It's pretty safe to ignore most of the flack in this thread. Most people vote with their feet (or wallets, or eyeballs, or attention), and they've voted that they love Facebook, regardless of what a minority of people in this thread say or upvote. Nerds have a cantankerous side and are as prone to virtue signalling as any other group. Those of us who read Slashdot…

I don't think he is getting much flack. I think he is more like Bill Gates with some luck involved. Let us not try to put him in the same bucket as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Facebook started as a way to hook up college students, remember poke? It did not start out as a vision to connect the world

Since a solid five minutes of the interview are devoted to Mark explaining how he never expected to start a company, let alone do anything as big as "connect the world", I don't think this is much of a rebuttal of anything. What makes you think Steve Jobs belongs in a "better" bucket than Mark? Even at his grandest vision he just made phones. They were good phones, sure, but he never tried to do anything bigger.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#243

Post by mpbm »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #36
aresant wrote: post #27

The TL;DR of how Zuck wants to build FB's future w/his quotes: 1) "Connectivity, so getting everyone in the world on the Internet." 2) "The next one is AI. I think that that's just going to unlock so much potential in so many different domains." 3) "[The next computing platform] - I think that's going to be virtual reality and augmented reality." For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread he lays out a pre…

Connectivity, AI, VR? You don't have to be a billionaire to see those being important. Hopefully we'll have a more benevolent entity than Facebook bringing us into that future.

Benevolence is over rated. Competitive self-interest is at least verifiably productive.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#244

Post by mpbm »

jazzyk wrote: post #41
aresant wrote: post #27

The TL;DR of how Zuck wants to build FB's future w/his quotes: 1) "Connectivity, so getting everyone in the world on the Internet." 2) "The next one is AI. I think that that's just going to unlock so much potential in so many different domains." 3) "[The next computing platform] - I think that's going to be virtual reality and augmented reality." For all the flack that Zuck is getting in this thread he lays out a pre…

You call the above high-level, vague (and mostly obvious) predictions - "a precise vision"?

concise, not precise

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#245

Post by mpbm »

bozoUser wrote: post #137

Two things that need to be highlighted: I came looking for a video that would talk about building the future and I am surprised Sam & Mark spent lot of time talking about FB origins and other things related to FB and talk future only for the last few minutes. Its almost palpable the cold nature of the interview, they don`t shake hands nor greet each other as someone else noted the conversation seems very detached to…

Why would their body language have anything to do with the content you were hoping for?

Yeah, the title is a bit more grandiose than just "Sam interviews Mark." I thought it was good. It's a huge topic that has hundreds of thought leaders so it's not like you should be expecting something mind blowing.

For me, it was valuable because the whole "building the future" thing is still very much rooted in existing institutions. Outside of Silicon Valley, everybody "knows" that if you want to do something really big you need a government or corporation to do it. Everybody believes it's impossible for one person or a small team to create an impact. It's good to remind people that Facebook is changing the world, but it started in a way that lots of people could start.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#246

Post by mpbm »

harscoat wrote: post #145

Calling BS on Mark, with FB new sponsored links in FB feed... this is total Business, not solving my problem or making my life better. To make the world a better place, Mark should have worked for FriendFeed.

It's disingenuous to claim that because a new feature isn't making your life better means he's failing at making the whole world better.

Maybe you're one of those 10-100K experiments where some engineer pushed something out to see if it worked. Maybe a new feature boosts revenue so they can build solar-powered internet planes that bring entire cities a connection. Maybe it's just noise and isn't actually relevant.

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#247

Post by mpbm »

hawkice wrote: post #143
roymurdock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The part that was painful wasn't turning down the offer, it was the fact that after that, huge amounts of the company quit because they didn't believe in what we were doing...the whole management team was gone in about a year after that."

Making a choice that led to the entire management team leaving is tough, no doubt. Making any massively unpopular decision that leads to some of the smartest people working with you to actively flee your enterprise would be hard for anyone. That being said, there is something to be said about how this comment was made. Because the hard part wasn't turning down the offer. It wasn't even dealing with the outcome of an…

"Dark time" strongly implies a subjective experience. Maybe Mark meant that was an event he personally experienced as intensely dark.

That's more or less the same situation that the TV show Silicon Valley used to stress out their founder. He's got something with potential and an offer to buy it for more money than he's ever thought about before. What do you do? Maybe go throw up in the bushes? How would it feel when you make your decision and then most of your team leaves? What if they're right and you ruined everything?

That scenario is dramatic enough when you get to watch it happen to someone else. Living through it could easily be "dark."

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#248

Post by visakanv »

ItsMattyG wrote: post #210
metaphorm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can it? explain.

The fact that they were able to replicate their success multiple times, just like Einstein, and that they're all smart, just like Einstein, says that there's probably some aspect of talent involved in their success. If it was purely based on luck, without any talent involved, you'd expect billion dollar companies to be more evenly distributed, and not cluster among certain individuals.

> If it was purely based on luck, without any talent involved, you'd expect billion dollar companies to be more evenly distributed, and not cluster among certain individuals.

I agree with you that talent is a thing. That said, the Matthew effect is also a thing. Winning tends to compound – partially because talented people are repeatedly successful, but even lucky untalented people can be repeatedly successful because of all the attention they get.

The example that's coming to my mind now is a little silly but – there are lots of funny people on Twitter who barely get any retweets, and there are moderately funny things said by popular people on Twitter who get tonnes of retweets and responses suggesting that they're the funniest people ever.

It takes a lot of work and/or luck (probably usually both) to get to the point where people just lap up everything you say, but once you're there, there IS a certain Halo effect of sorts.

Sorry if not water-tight, just rambling here

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#249

Post by visakanv »

sp527 wrote: post #174
janvdberg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this [1] Tim Ferris podcast Peter Thiel states about Zuckerberg (paraphrasing here): "the more time you spent with him the more you realise it is not luck." [1] http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/

I think Zuckerberg's success had more to do with being able to identify valuable contributors and convince them to join the Facebook team. He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them. In that way, his primary skillset is very similar to that of Jobs and other successful entrepreneurs.

> He isn't responsible for generating many of the important features or business decisions, though he certainly has to approve of them.

Alternative way of framing this: Any CEO who is personally responsible for generating most of the important features or business decisions in his company is incompetent at hiring and delegating

Re: Sam Altman talks with Mark Zuckerberg about how to build the future [video]

#250

Post by mpbm »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #237
melling wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you don't understand the value behind the trillions of dollars of R&D spent over the past 50 years by tech companies like Xerox, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Google, etc

Not really. I do see a staggering amount of waste though. Duplicated effort across the board, re-invention of the same basic building blocks re-packaged and re-branded, billions spent on patent suits, billions spent on lobbying, etc. Competition in basic innovation does not make sense. In fact I'm not even sure how much of those "trillions" contributed to actual innovation. I suspect a proper analysis would reveal an…

LOL, you see "a staggering amount of waste" in commercial entities and thing the way to find efficiency is to look to the government? Like government-sponsored research is going to be more efficient? That's a good one.
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