The Techno-Optimist Manifesto • Hacker News Board

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#381

Post by ethanbond » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #352

ethanbond wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. Which reality is that again? In that reality, does this writing warrant more attention, or less? Presumably we’re reading this to understand what Marc thinks, and to isolate the stated words from their…

> Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. No, but if that's the 1st subtext into which you rush, rather than all the other ideas on offer here, much broader than any of Mr. Andreesen's life particulars, then you've chosen to play a pettier ga…

Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem.

Sure: Henry George, Steven Pinker, Mustafa Suleyman off the top of my head.

What makes them better is pretty simple: they sound like thinkers who are engaging with the substance of a rather complicated topic, instead of like cult leaders who are making declarations of faith. Which, it should be obvious that the only reason anyone is engaging with this (and we have to) is because of the power held by the person saying it.

Also, listing people without their permission, especially posthumously, as if they’re co-signers on your manifesto is transparently intellectually dishonest. I honestly shudder to think of the calculus that would lead a serious thinker to believe that’s okay.

Marc is presumably a smart guy and I’m sure he’s perfectly friendly, but this stuff is starting to veer a little Kanye if you ask me. No one is immune to their own distorted reality, so I hope he has people he trusts who can (and do) provide pushback.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#382

Post by shuckles » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #368

shuckles wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am all for reducing rent seeking, including in this case literally. However, my point is that the hippies became squares in the same way the hackers became squares. It's not clear that housing costs are causal; they might just be incidental.

I think it's one of those things where you'd want to look at it statistically, or 'at the margin'. Many - most - people will grow up and settle down some. But high housing costs kind of force the issue even more, and leave less room for people to have some more freedom to explore.

If we are thinking about this as a dynamic system, then: many people who moved to the valley before 2010 got some sort of windfall, whether through home equity or participating in a notable period of wealth creation. Why didn’t that mint a bunch of hackers on the margin, if disposable income is so explanatory?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#383

Post by carapace » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #361

carapace wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's beyond stupid. Literally we have families and children out of love. It's the foundation of everything else in human society.

You're wrong on the basics: many people on earth are arguably most of the western world until the 19th century had families out of a sense of pragmatic and religious obligation to continue their line.[1] This is not love. But worse, nobody has built a city out of love, or completed a major research project backed by love alone; these kinds of projects require an entirely different kind of force that scales. Money and…

> You're wrong on the basics

No, friend, you are.

Money and force are both powered by love.

Do you know of the "Five Whys" technique? It turns out there's a psychological version. Without going into a long thing about it, it turns out that all human motivations follow a chain of desired outcomes the eventually terminate in one of five profound states: Love, Bliss, Oneness, Okayness, and huh! I forgot the fifth one. (It's not important for the sake of discussion.) All human actions are attempts to re-engender these deep and profound states, just with more or less yak-shaving.

- - - -

As an aside, thanks for the book recommendation, that looks really interesting. I believe the ancient Greeks and Romans were not strangers to love, though, eh?

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#384

Post by gojomo » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #381

gojomo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah, I see. We’re supposed to engage these ideas in the “reality” in which interlocutors don’t have motivations, incentives, perspectives, personal histories, or attitudes toward topics that are revealed in their tone. No, but if that's the 1st subtext into which you rush, rather than all the other ideas on offer here, much broader than any of Mr. Andreesen's life particulars, then you've chosen to play a pettier ga…

Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem. Sure: Henry George, Steven Pinker, Mustafa Suleyman off the top of my head. What makes them better is pretty simple: they sound like thinkers who are engaging with the substance of a rather complicated topic, instead of like cult leaders who are making declarations of faith. Which, it should be obvious that the only reason anyone is engag…

> Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem.

Exactly! When you…

- emphasize personalities & personal biographies

- cite vague feels about which people "sound like thinkers" (why?)

- stretch to imply a recommended-authors list has been misrepresented as "co-signers" in some way that's vaguely not "okay" – and try to imply some unprecedented & counterproductive politeness norm that an author (even a dead author?!?) can't be cited favorably without permission

- layer on empty unevaluable intensifiers & slurs presuming agreement where it doesn't exist ('cult leader', 'obvious that the only reason anyone is engaging', 'transparently intellectually dishonest', 'honestly shudder', 'veer a little Kanye', 'distorted reality')

…you're taking the easier path: leaning on shallow attitudes, shifting fashions, & groupthink moreso than the actual text/ideas on offer.

And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece. It's all Regina bluffing mean-girl dominance via tone & slur, without reasoning: "Pmarca, stop trying to make tech-optimism happen. It's not going to happen."

Well, that kind of social flocking & mocking works in some places, for a while – until it doesn't.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#385

Post by spiralx » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

nickpp wrote: post #294

winphone1974 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any capital intensive project can become a resistant monopoly for the first mover, who then manipulates pricing to prevent competition.

> who then manipulates pricing to prevent competition How exactly? Reducing profits defeats the purpose of becoming a monopoly, while any sliver of profit is the startup's opportunity. To create a monopoly you need to restrict competition some other way, like through governmental regulation.

> Reducing profits defeats the purpose of becoming a monopoly, while any sliver of profit is the startup's opportunity.

Only if you ignore the concept of loss leaders, or the very act of competing in the market itself by undercutting competitors' prices. Companies are very happy to receive less money in the short term in exchange for guaranteed recurring revenue in the long term, it's only rational after all, and applies as much to a yearly subscription being cheaper than 12 individual monthly subscriptions as it does to established companies accepting reduced revenue in the short term to guarantee their share of the market in the long term.

This is all pretty obvious from a basic understanding of how companies work TBH.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#386

Post by ethanbond » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #384

ethanbond wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem. Sure: Henry George, Steven Pinker, Mustafa Suleyman off the top of my head. What makes them better is pretty simple: they sound like thinkers who are engaging with the substance of a rather complicated topic, instead of like cult leaders who are making declarations of faith. Which, it should be obvious that the only reason anyone is engag…

> Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem. Exactly! When you… - emphasize personalities & personal biographies - cite vague feels about which people "sound like thinkers" (why?) - stretch to imply a recommended-authors list has been misrepresented as "co-signers" in some way that's vaguely not "okay" – and try to imply some unprecedented & counterproductive politeness norm that…

Maybe you missed my original point: I agree with the argument for the most part.

My position has been validated in actual reality. The mainstream reporting -- that is, the reporting that the people who need convincing actually read -- has not been positive. I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimism than towards it.

If you were a pessimist already, this confirms and amplifies all of your fears. If you were neutral, well it looks like the pessimists were right: the big tech people are truly off the rails.

> And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece

Right! And aren't most reactions outside of HN negative?

Could it be that humans actually don't interpret words on the page as completely isolated from the actual context in which they're stated, who stated them, and how they're stated? Could it be that "the techno-optimists" need to convince humans of things? And no, the inclusion of context and tone in an argument is not some recent cultural wokeism phenomenon.

Just Kagi the article and see the response. I struggle to see how this advances the cause, regardless of how long you want to argue with me here on HN about overlooking the context/subtext/pretext.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#387

Post by spiralx » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #349

stevenhuang wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not suggest knowing it's optimal either. I'm pointing out The Economy/Market and its mechanisms is a complex system. I urged caution making conclusions from facile knee jerk first order observables when it's the unknown nth order effects we should probably try to identify and characterize first. > just the financial service industry fucking us over. Maybe. But why think you know this? I haven't even tried to qu…

I don't know it in the way that I know about gravity or garbage collection. But I know it in the sense that the end results of this complex system are at best subject to debate as a net win given metrics that include the environment and equitability. A system with the set of pros and cons that the current one demonstrates on a daily basis seems incredibly unlikely to me to be remotely close to optimal. Now, what does…

> When I see a system that combines externalities, wild inequality of outcome and this sort of builtin restistance to tackling the cons, my facile knee jerk reaction is to assume that it is rigged.

But that's just the brain's bias towards simple explanations and well-defined actors - the Ockham's Razor heuristic you could call it. Truth is we're still in the early stages of capitalism where most (all?) nations aren't stably resourced and as such geopolitical strategy and internal unrest can and will undo capital expansion with a stroke of the pen or a bullet from a gun. The need for monopolisable extractative resources such as fossil fuels ensures that capital will trend towards monopolistic behemoths with deep connections to their governments, and that permeates down into capital as a whole.

Moving to a more decentralised model of resourcing means less need for national security to favour and support massive quasi-governmental corporations that are "too vital to fail" and which leads to an environment where the inevitable endpoint of every market sector is consolidation into their own behemoth conglomerates. The more dispersed your resource acquisition is, the less dependent on massive corporations governments will be.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#388

Post by spiralx » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

m-ee wrote: post #220

tjmc wrote: post #200

So the Economist reported today that Tuvalu is planning for its disappearance as sea levels rise [1]. What a great opportunity for Msrs Andreeson, Thiel, Musk and all the other neo-Rand true believers to step in and create their seasteading utopia. They could cast this manifesto in gold at the entrance. Years from now, when we visit their brave new world below the waves I'm sure it will have worked out great! [1] htt…

I would caution against encouraging the billionaires to get into coastal engineering https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/fiji-surf-wars

Surely this is the more apposite link when talking about libertarian tropical island paradises? :D

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/michael-oliver-r...

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#389

Post by cma » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 10:10 PM UTC

throwaway9274 wrote: post #273

survirtual wrote: post #169

In a world where abundance reigns, the old structures and the leaders who champion them fade into obsolescence. The energy that once went into seeking more begins to flow into sharing, nurturing, and sustaining. In this transformed landscape, resource hoarding and centralized control are not just out of place; they become barriers to the collective human journey toward wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. When everyone'…

We do not live in a post-scarcity world. Every day people get up, enforce the laws, execute the national defense, bury themselves up to their elbows in humans’ abdomens to heal their broken bodies, and pick your turnips. The world is not self-executing. Market mechanisms coordinate that activity by transmitting information through the price signal. In their absence, the material abundance you mistake for post-scarcit…

> Every day people get up, [...] and pick your turnips.

There are turnip harvesting machines in wide use:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyAOQtnOJh4

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#390

Post by gojomo » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 10:22 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #386

gojomo wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry I’m not going to write a point by point rebuttal of a 250-line slam poem. Exactly! When you… - emphasize personalities & personal biographies - cite vague feels about which people "sound like thinkers" (why?) - stretch to imply a recommended-authors list has been misrepresented as "co-signers" in some way that's vaguely not "okay" – and try to imply some unprecedented & counterproductive politeness norm that…

Maybe you missed my original point: I agree with the argument for the most part. My position has been validated in actual reality. The mainstream reporting -- that is, the reporting that the people who need convincing actually read -- has not been positive. I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimism than towards it. If you were a pessimist already, this confirms and amplifies all of yo…

You're citing biased samples, like how on HN itself:

- A disproportionate number of direct-replies to almost any opiniated submission are negative. (If you agree, an upvote is often enough! It's the objectors/nitpickers who are loudest in the comments – even if unrepresentative.)

- Often, also, it's sullen/underemployed people who have the most time to comment.

I disagree that the "mainstream reporting" represents "the people who need convincing". They're more of a neurotic clique than ever before. It's time to go around them, to folks doing real work.

Your arguments are still a bunch of impressionistic handwaving about appearances rather than substance: "I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimist than towards it."

Your emphatic belief about superficial "eww!" reactions from within your info-bubble is not much of an argument, nor does it engage with the actual ideas in the text.

For the 'manifesto' to work, it doesn't have to convince anyone who's already predisposed toward grumbling about Andreesen's tone or self-awareness, or who's fond of vague derogatory phrases like "truly off the rails".

It just has to reach the totally-separate set of people who are excited by, & eager to collaborate around, the positive vision within the text itself.

You know, those thousands of actual words written – against which you've only lodged abstract complaints about tone & emphasis, & that he didn't do enough to convince you, & the total cop-out-on-substance "but as far as I can tell most people agree with me!"