Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

Post by UncleMeat » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

simianwords wrote: post #271

heresie-dabord wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that rich people have something to say What is (or used to be?) implicit is that a person who has the means to be free of subsistence activities will/should take the time to *acquire a quality education and make an even better contribution to society and humanity. But what is evident is that the wealthy are rotting intellectually like much of the rest of society. And their brainrot has more impact because…

> What is (or used to be?) implicit is that a person who has the means to be free of subsistence activities will/should take the time to *acquire a quality education and make an even better contribution to society and humanity. The rich got rich exactly by contributing to society and humanity. This is exactly what I mean by "rich people bad" local optima trap that you also seem to have fallen into.

Post by UncleMeat » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

simianwords wrote: post #390

rhines wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it true? Even on a small scale, when I taught kids how to swim for $20k/year I believe I did more for society than when I built systems to help a large streaming service deliver ads for $100k/year. There are certainly exceptions, but in general money comes from extracting value from others, while jobs that provide to society are not extractive and this pay less.

This is fundamentally wrong. If Elon created Tesla and made ~$100B of wealth from it, he also made all the other shareholders richer by way more. Not only that - the world now has Teslas it otherwise wouldn't. Everyone wins and there is no extraction of values (old Marxist jargon that needs to go away).

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #409

gwerbin wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking issue with this use of "problematic" says a lot about the speaker too.

"Problematic" is just vague. It's not that much more writing to specify the actual problems.

Post by longislandguido » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:35 PM UTC

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…

Post by deeg » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #59

wodenokoto wrote: post #31

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?

> Did I or did they change? I’d say both. They ran out of novel things to say which is expected of anyone because there’s only so many non trivial things one could say. But then unlike normal people they didn’t stop talking because being rich they are bored and they want to be in the limelight all the time. So they end up talking nonsense. You also changed, you are now wiser and have developed BS detector.