391–400 of 513 posts
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" Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How is this flame bait when it specifically addresses both the title and the content of the article? The article itself is a list of prior art of introspection and a critique of Marc’s lack of awareness of said art.
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?
>>Andreessen and his cronies are making large claims about what human beings want and need.
Could very well be a moving target according to what they need from human beings at the time.
After they win a few times they start to think they're experts at slot machines, not just lucky.
Over time, they start to think they're also experts at other things, and because they have money people start to listen to them.
Unfortunately they just keep proving me right on this.
I think this blog post doesn't quite understand Andreessen's position. In fact, perhaps Andreessen doesn't understand his own position, which makes this even worse. Freud isn't the issue; Freud did not think the unconscious was "inside," he said the unconscious is the metapsychological apparatus which is the result of primary repression (something we all experience at a young age, since we don't remember, for instanc…
You have got it right (though IDK what you mean by unity and zero), the author is even less well read than Andreesen so their arguments make no sense since they don't have this background.
This 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.
goes both ways. elitism exists on both ends of the spectrum. the academic side is largely the same thing except it's attained from years of schooling through certain pedagogues that tout the one true way and if you haven't been through that wringer, then your understanding doesn't count. true intellectualism, has humility and the everlasting honest pursuit for truth. neither of these extremes have this quality.
Personally, every time I approach an unfamiliar domain I’m shocked by its depth and sophistication, seemingly only made possible by hundreds of thousands of hours given by passionate and intelligent people. Where there are parallels of concepts between domains, there’s often also highly specialized language formed around the exceptions that separate the two (e.g. applications of signal processing in different domains).
> true intellectualism, has humility and the everlasting honest pursuit for truth
True intellectualism recognizes the value of institutions and the models and frameworks of organized thought that they produce. For every Ramanujan, there are millions of Terrence Howards.
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All the more reason to start earlier, so you have more lived experience on the job by your mental peak at 22. Instead your lived experience is playing Halo or something like that by that point. Or wasting time flipping burgers. Wish I could have dumped all the hours I did in restaurant work in highschool into research. The door was shut though until I got into undergrad even though I was a hard worker and could have…
Ah if you look at it from the perspective of doing research or other deep intellectual work by 22, I can see your point. Certainly if that is the peak of human mental capability (not something I can argue for or against but I'll take it as true) you ideally would pursue a focused education up to that point that allows you to dive deep into a challenging problem. IMO this is different from wisdom however, and in fact…
I'm not saying go into the cave and toil. You would still do all the stuff you do socially. Just your academic and professional subject matter would be tailored like it is when you reach undergrad and drop certain subjects in favor of your specialty. You still socialize a ton as a researcher in undergrad and grad school and beyond. Research is very much a collaborative effort too, unlike a lot of jobs or academic learning up to that point. That being said I don't think some magic threshold is reached with that when you reach 32 vs 22. Some people famously lack any social skills all their life. Some people are socialable straight out of the womb. This isn't a linear process.
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They changed. You wouldn’t believe it but those most impacted by the mental rot that social media can induce - are the ultra wealthy.
I have a tangential theory to this. Being rich != being famous. There are tons of extremely wealthy people out there that keep a very low profile. Sure they might be well known within their circle but ask the average person and they have no clue who that person is. I would say this is the case for like 90-95% of billionaires. Musk, Andreessen, Zuck and others were all in this camp 10 years ago but they all decided th…
> decided that simply being rich wasn't enough, they wanted to be famous
While these are true, the real detail is that these people were never satisfied with being rich -- they wanted to be powerful. And influence is what makes one powerful. Being rich goes a certain distance: once you have f you money, the only thing worth buying to gain more power is fame.
They also truly believe they have all the right ideas, and the validation that comes from being platformed for a financial success (often right-place-right-time type luck, but sometimes combined with genuine skill or insight in a relevant field) hardens them to all criticism.
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I'm not defending Musk, but "problematic" used in this type of context is one of those words that says more about the speaker than it does the subject.
I think you can forgive it as a rhetorical device when speaking to a really broad audience.
To me, Musk crossed from "maverick" to "problematic" around 2018, when he tried to insert himself into the Thai cave rescue operation and ended up slinging accusations of pedophilia on Twitter.
At this point, he has unlocked many more specific adjectival achievements, and those are the ones that should be invoked whenever Musk's behavior is the topic. (Which it isn't here.)