A lot of people become "stuck in their ways" as they get older. Marc saying this about introspection might be an example of it starting to happen to him. By definition, "being stuck in your own ways" is having a lack of introspection.
Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
291–300 of 513 posts
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re just the most ruthless If you look at the entire entirety of understood history of biology: The most ruthless always wins That is to say if I go into a village and kill all the adults and teenagers and steal all the kids who are scared to be killed by me, then I will win in the probably two successive generations that I’ve been able to successfully brainwashing into thinking I’m some kind of God. That is unti…
That's not how humans came to populate areas that previously were dominated by predators who would be obviously deadly to individual humans. Cooperation and planning are what made physically weak humans dominant. That cooperation and planning developed and flourished without authoritarian structures.
Tribal chiefs are not authoritarians? Because basically every Stone Age village has one.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the late 1990s I went to a RealNetworks developer conference and Andreesen, then at Netscape, was a keynote speaker. I was curious and open to his insights, but his talk was so vapid (I remember he kept giggling) and arrogant that I eventually walked out. I remember he kept bragging about Netscape's next big project (something after Netscape 5 maybe?) and how it was going to wipe Microsoft out permanently. Only a…
Fair enough. But the software eats the world essay did change the world. Maybe he was lucky, but I still think he managed to position himself in order to be heard with that essay. Maybe I am naive.
You should look into the person Marc hired to research and validate that for him (basically write it) Ro Venkatesh. His essays are quite titilating. And you can immediately see it was Ro's idea not Marc's.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
So not only is he not wrong, he's a keen social critic?
Personally I cleave to the extremes of the hyperintrospective portion of the spectrum, so no, I think taken at face value his comments are absurd. Nonetheless you need to understand the dark and less visited corners of the mental landscape whence these ideas and his (putative) target audiences were borne (Bay Area rationalism), and the strategic nature of this communication which is more intended to send a message to…
But why give him credit for subtext for which there's no apparent evidence? By all appearances he's saying this stuff in earnest. Why does it need to be "encoded"?
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#295Is 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?
You realized they were always shitheels. Musk was a complete visible fraud long before 2016.
Obnoxious, egocentric, very low EQ, and with almost no moral values, absolutely. Fraud? Not sure. He did make a lot of outlandish predictions, but on the other hand, Tesla revolutionized EVs (forcing everyone to follow suit), and SpaceX revolutionized space tech. He can't take credit for the technical achievements in either, but he did have the tenacity to push both through. Can't say many other people would have done that.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the late 1990s I went to a RealNetworks developer conference and Andreesen, then at Netscape, was a keynote speaker. I was curious and open to his insights, but his talk was so vapid (I remember he kept giggling) and arrogant that I eventually walked out. I remember he kept bragging about Netscape's next big project (something after Netscape 5 maybe?) and how it was going to wipe Microsoft out permanently. Only a…
Fair enough. But the software eats the world essay did change the world. Maybe he was lucky, but I still think he managed to position himself in order to be heard with that essay. Maybe I am naive.
How do you think it changed the world? I don’t think that was an especially prescient thing to say/write at that time. The idea that software was poised to continue to grow in 2011 was pretty obvious to most people. It is true that some companies were undervalued and many VCs and other folks were scarred from the dotcom bust.
But if you go back and read it, you might notice that a lot of the companies and software he discussed and predictions along with them failed to be true or lasting.
I think mostly it was a good catchphrase.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#297It's also worth looking at where Andreeson seats the origin of harmful introspection - in turn of the last century Vienna, with Freud. That is to say, introspection is a product of Judeo-bolshivism, created by the Jews to sap Aryan man of his natural vitality and dominance. It's sick, but it's just another example, along with the admiration of Italian Futurism, of how Andreeson has immersed himself in a fascist milieu.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#298This 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.
It's also become a huge business, with endless "business thought leader" books and podcasts that have very little substance.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#299The author conflates anti introspection and post-introspection. Marc is not against introspection, he clearly identifies that a few hundred years ago introspection wasn't all that common. Marc clearly identifies as post-introspection in that there's something beyond just humans constantly looking inwards (which seems to be the Author's passtime).
There's a fine balance between contemplating what to do and focusing on doing - perhaps Andreesen thinks that the balance needs to be shifted righwards.
On the topic of Sigmund Freud: The author fails to understand that it takes a critical mass of people to develop functionalities for the society to meaningfully change. In the same way that Hinduism identified atheism multiple thousands of years ago, but that didn't bring any meaningful change in the society until the west brought modernism.
Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Steinbeck: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires”
Roughly 18% of US households have a net worth over 1 million, so to some extent, they really are.
It's a big number, but it's often tied up in housing in VHCOL/HCOL areas. It also doesn't mean much re: not needing to work in these areas.
Also given retirement in US is self-funded via saving/investment instead of pension, someone who wants a comfortable retirement in many areas of this country needs $1M NW by 65 to generate a $40k/year income (above the social security payments which don't go so far) at safe withdrawal rates.