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Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

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Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#351

Post by quantummagic »

TFYS wrote: post #264
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.

This will be the reality until we come up with a way to make good decisions using direct democracy, and make that decision-making process so fast and easy that it can be used for any kind of group decision. Concentration of power stems from our inability to make good decisions as a group of equals. We have to choose someone to make decisions for the group because there is currently no other working way to make them.…

That's just a naive utopian fantasy.

The 51% voters are just another self-interested power center that will favor themselves and extract resources from the 49%. Not to mention that the system can be corrupted at every point. For instance, you still need police and military to enforce the results of group decisions; and at any moment they can seize power and take control, unless they're placated with preferential treatment by the system - reinventing systemic hierarchy.

There is no system that is immune to human corruption. And all the high-minded belief in the human spirit, and the good-will of democracy, falls flat with even a cursory examination of previous attempts.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#352

Post by 121789 »

j2kun wrote: post #227
lijok wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed. You wouldn’t believe it but those most impacted by the mental rot that social media can induce - are the ultra wealthy.

Elon was always problematic. His increasing social media use removed the natural filters that prevented people from seeing it.

[flagged]

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#353

Post by steveklabnik »

irishcoffee wrote: post #288
lordnacho wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I took from the video game thing is that he thought he could fool people. It's very obvious to gamers when someone hasn't played, it actually doesn't matter whether you have high level gear. There's things you can't buy with money, and respect is one of them. He fundamentally doesn't understand how status works. He could, for free, just put out a video where he says "look at me, I'm a busy CEO, but I play this g…

This is made even more interesting by the fact that musk was caught misrepresenting himself playing the computer game Diablo in the not-so-distant past. IIRC he was either buying accounts or paying someone else to stream on his behalf. [0] [0] https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal...

Also in sort of stark contrast to the "here's my elden ring build", which was pretty incoherent, and so was believed to be actually his.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#354

Post by keiferski »

volkk wrote: post #348
keiferski wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think competence implies elitism. On many topics, everyone’s opinion isn’t equal. I wouldn’t trust a random person’s opinion on civil engineering; philosophy in the sense of the specific field of philosophy (metaphysics, ethics, etc.) is no different. The effects are just more abstract. Even then I’m not really claiming that academic philosophers are always right and amateur ones always wrong. Rather that ama…

there's a fine line between competence and elitism. competence usually has direct measurable impact with ego. elitism is 0 impact, and all ego.

I don’t really know what this is supposed to mean, but it’s pretty vague and content free.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#355

Post by scottious »

NegativeK wrote: post #325
scottious wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Elon came up with the hyper loop idea and everybody I worked with at the time thought it was revolutionary. These were very smart people who were fooled. In hindsight, how could we all have fell for this? What a profoundly stupid idea, but I distinctly remember at the time it felt right. I guess what I'm saying is that I think a lot of people just wised up and started seeing through his B.S.

Anyone who assumes they won't be fooled is setting themselves up for disaster. The biggest of Musk's warning signs, for me, was the hype. Hype can drown out valid criticism. When the hype is big enough, valid criticism ends up being drowned out by rage based, critical rhetoric that's in a screaming match with proponents. (The worst part about being hype averse is that I can end up averse to legitimately exciting thin…

> Hype can drown out valid criticism

It's funny you mention that because I remember at the time of HyperLoop somebody said "what about just ... trains?" and we all scoffed at it as if trains were some outdated technology

Let's just say I'm on team trains now.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#356

Post by kettlecorn »

foobiekr wrote: post #52
John23832 wrote: post #12

We all know he’s wrong. The problem isn’t that he is wrong, it’s that we have elevated the wealthy into a status where they can be wrong, have no correction, and make decisions whole clothe which negatively affect the rest of us. All while being insulated from their negative world view.

The reason he and Musk are anti-introspection is that when they do it, it hurts. Because they are terrible people. Better to just not think about it.

I'm not sure they really feel significant guilt.

I think they're reflexive people and for Andreessen the long period where he was massively invested in the shadiest crypto companies required pushing a culture of conformity.

A lot of Andreessen's investments were essentially pyramid schemes and the greatest threat to those investments was intellectual honesty & introspection.

Under that pressure from him and others a lot of the tech world shifted towards being more tribal. We saw a huge shift away from intellectual honesty and critiquing actions & ideas on their merits to instead a culture of fiercely defending founders and relentless hype.

I also believe that's why they shifted towards the political rightwing, because the more tribalist approach is presently rewarded on that side.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#357

Post by bink »

j2kun wrote: post #227
lijok wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed. You wouldn’t believe it but those most impacted by the mental rot that social media can induce - are the ultra wealthy.

Elon was always problematic. His increasing social media use removed the natural filters that prevented people from seeing it.

I honestly think there's more going on here. It seems to be primarily the vain billionaires that are going off the deep end. I experimented with stimulants when I was young and I remember being shocked at how they changed my personality. I went from pretty stoic to wanting to fight people over the slightest perceived insult. I can't help but think these billionaires with their expensive implants, hair and skin treatments, blood boys, etc. are on some life-extending or performance enhancing stimulants that are affecting their state of mind.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#358

Post by vintermann »

bko wrote: post #317
rybosworld wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Dillon said summarized it pretty well - can't remember or find the exact quote. Something to the effect of: "Look around at all these things I have - how could I be wrong when I have so much?" And that's how you get the Andreessen's and Musk's of the world stating these nonsensical things as truth. In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick. The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament t…

You say financial success as though it is completely independent of pretty much everything. "How could I be wrong, look how handsome I am" To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit. It can be a better rocket design, some insight into human psychology that can help you raise money, or something else. Some people fall ass backwards into money thro…

> To create great wealth in a vibrant capitalist society you have to have some model about the world you can exploit.

As an individual? No. There's an interesting paradox here.

The paradox is that almost no matter what game you're playing, you want to play safe when you're winning and take chances when you're losing. That's what most rich people actually do, and naturally they take as few chances as they can.

But the richest of the rich, aren't going to be those. The very richest are going to be those who are comfortably winning, but still feel the need to take high-risk bets. Usually because of a pathological need to prove themselves.

A few of them, that is. For every Jobs, Musk etc. there's going to be twenty rich failsons who failed in their big bets. You just don't hear about them - why would you, they're now a much lower tier of rich.

So I don't think it's necessary to assume the super-rich has a better model of the world than average. Because of this effect, I think they're more likely to have deeply flawed models of the world, and in particular, deeply self-destructive personal values.

There are a number of recent antics from Musk and Trump in particular which I think can illustrate that well. You'd think they'd both be happier people if they were more content with what they had and weren't so eager to fuck up the world for the rest of us - but their messed up personal values get in the way of that.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#359

Post by scubbo »

codechicago277 wrote: post #345
longislandguido wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right. At least wealth is a quantifiable measure of success in our society. In contrast, many posters on HN think they're always right (it's notorious for it) with no qualifications whatsoever. This discussion is a sea of jealously and a perfect example.

HN posters are famously overconfident, sure, but wealth is a bad measure of success. Putin is one of the richest people on earth, but responsible for extreme political repression and global instability. Pablo Escobar did very well financially. Financial success says how well you’ve extracted wealth from others, and approximately zero about your contributions to society. Einstein, Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King J…

> wealth is a bad measure of[...]your contributions to society

To be _abundantly_ clear, I agree with you and your assumptions here - but, please note that you are making some assumptions here about what "success" is defined as, which might explain why other people disagree.

Re: Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

#360

Post by dang »

John23832 wrote: post #12

We all know he’s wrong. The problem isn’t that he is wrong, it’s that we have elevated the wealthy into a status where they can be wrong, have no correction, and make decisions whole clothe which negatively affect the rest of us. All while being insulated from their negative world view.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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