491–500 of 513 posts
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Andreesen: “If you go back, like, 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective." You: "it would have never occurred to anyone that humans shouldn’t be slaves" Come on. Words have meaning.
I was echoing Andreesen's phrasing to make it more clear what I'm responding to, but whatever, enjoy your pedantic dunk.
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Tribal chiefs are not authoritarians? Because basically every Stone Age village has one.
Read some Charles Mann. Tribal leaders if they can really be described as leaders had to work with consensus and cooperation. Modern society is much more coercive.
In their society, and in so many others who have been crushed by the forces of empire over the eons, the leaders of the people did not get there by murdering their way to the top. They were respected persons who were elevated to that position by the people.
Tradition tells us the Cherokee did once have a heriditary priestly class, who were called the Ani-kutani, or Nicotani. The people long suffered under their arrogance until one of them went too far, raping a woman while her husband was away. Her husband then amassed an uprising of the people and they killed out the Nicotani to the last man.
(An existence proof that it can be done, if nothing else.)
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I promise there are thousands to millions of people just as ruthless. Most of them just end up as petty criminals.
No doubt Placement almost perfectly dictates whether high level psychopaths wind up in jail or the boardroom
- Chuang Zhu (late 4th century B.C.)
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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.
It could be a faulty memory, but I've never thought much of the guy after I heard that, and he continues to not impress.
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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.
It was a generic flamewar tangent: it takes the hottest points of indignation (richness, wrongness) to a such a level of generality that nothing concrete can be said. This doesn't overlap with curious conversation, and HN is supposed to be for the latter. It's admittedly hard to remain in curious conversation about things that are so activating, so it's quite understandable that people do it.
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It was a generic flamewar tangent: it takes the hottest points of indignation (richness, wrongness) to a such a level of generality that nothing concrete can be said. This doesn't overlap with curious conversation, and HN is supposed to be for the latter. It's admittedly hard to remain in curious conversation about things that are so activating, so it's quite understandable that people do it.
I usually agree with you, but in this case you're spectacularly wrong. Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg and others have contributed massively ie millions of dollars to the last federal election. They rail publicly against introspection (Andreessen), empathy (Musk), competition (Thiel), death (Ellison), regulation (Zuckerberg, Thiel) and do so on all the media available and their money buys various policie…
The point would be the same if you swapped any other individuals in for those 5.
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I really dislike Elon as a person, but didn't the hyperloop POC work? I admittedly haven't followed it in long time.
Definitely not. The companies that were prototyping it all went bankrupt. The "Vegas Loop" is just a tunnel with Tesla car traffic in it and I don't even think they're fully self driving! Very very underwhelming. Not even remotely close to the "NY to DC in 29 minutes" which he promised. We would have been much better off with investment in tried-and-true boring old trains.
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I usually agree with you, but in this case you're spectacularly wrong. Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg and others have contributed massively ie millions of dollars to the last federal election. They rail publicly against introspection (Andreessen), empathy (Musk), competition (Thiel), death (Ellison), regulation (Zuckerberg, Thiel) and do so on all the media available and their money buys various policie…
I hear you, but your comment doesn't intersect with mine. I wasn't expressing a view about Andreessen et. al. at all - only about the GP comment type. The point would be the same if you swapped any other individuals in for those 5.
Rich less empathetic than poor, study says https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/rich-less-empathet...
How Wealth Reduces Compassion https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...
If you go along the donor list and search for remarks the biggest political donors have made you'll note that most of them are severely lacking in the 'how-to-human' department.
These are the people buying your politics. I still maintain that GP's assessment stands.
As for the comment type, there's nothing disparaging or even insulting about it. I don't know whether GP is a native English speaker, but as an ESL I can't find anything generalising or otherwise wrong with it. I have flagged a lot of comments for posters calling others Nazis or other insults or getting personal and I'm absolutely sure a lot remain. I have no feeling what kinds of failure you're reacting to here and this is grounds for general insecurity.
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?
So yes, you are the stupid, and the world has not gone towards better, or even different.
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> 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.
Sure, but with that definition parent’s comment becomes “wealth is a good indicator of wealth”, which while true certainly isn’t useful. I’m assuming they meant to imply wealth is a measure of positive social impact, which is a bad measure for the reasons I stated. They also might mean it as a proxy for “rightness”, whatever that is, which is even more of a problem but for different reasons.
I don't see any basis for assuming that (again, I say this respectfully - I hold similar values to what I'm assuming you do)
> They also might mean it as a proxy for “rightness”
This feels closer, but still not right IMO. I see it more as a claim that "success" is "ability to achieve one's _own_ aims" - personally, internally-established objectives - whereas you (and I) are trying to tie "success" to external, pro-social measures. Basically, selfishness vs. community.