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Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

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Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#51

Post by curio_Pol_curio »

tolciho wrote: post #35
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I think Marvin Minsky was the first person that I saw take a stand against "knowing yourself" Minsky himself struggled with Freud, wanted to reject Freud, yet found he couldn't do so entirely. With a little more insight than Andreesen he traced "pathological self-knowing" to Eastern roots including meditation practice. What everybody gets wrong about Andreesen is that Andreesen's origin story of being radicalized thr…

> I think Marvin Minsky was the first person that I saw take a stand against "knowing yourself" Ordinarily M. de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife visited for him, and this was the received thing in the world, where the weighty and multifarious occupations of the magistrate were accepted as an excuse for what was really only calculated pride, a manifestation of professed superiority—in fact, the a…

Did Dumas explore the liminal space between "know thyself" and "know others", also known as "know one another"?

Did Villefort's wife or "The Count"'s romantic interests help them patch up their blind spots?

One can ofc argue that mutual learning has been the death of many a marriage/family, but I'm more interested in how self-reliance taken to its "rational-agentic-alignment" extreme is a primary obstacle to self-improvement :)

That's a framing Minsky didn't take in his Society of Mind.. but I'm not obviously looking forward to a hallucinated sequel Mind of Society

Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#52

Post by rainsford »

energy123 wrote: post #38
gtowey wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtue is something the virtueless prey upon. However, the takeaway is not to abandon virtue, it's to censure the virtueless. There are far more of us than there are of them.

The most dangerous people throughout history take morality very seriously. They have so much commitment to their moral system that they're willing to kill millions of people to enforce it. People like Andreessen are not without morality. Their moral system is right-libertarianism. The people I am least afraid of are those who are without a deep fixation on morality.

The person you're replying to was talking about "virtue", which I'd argue is an entirely different thing than "morality". Virtues are traits that can help people be better humans, while morals are rules separating right and wrong. Things like courage, patience, introspection, kindness, etc, are all virtues, while morals tend to be much more of the Ten Commandments variety.

I don't think anyone has ever killed people or gone to war for a virtue, but they certainly have to enforce their moral code on others. Probably the worst combination is people with strong moral beliefs but few virtues, since their lack of virtue both fails to temper their moral fury and poorly guides the moral determinations they get so fired up about.

Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

rainsford wrote: post #52
energy123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most dangerous people throughout history take morality very seriously. They have so much commitment to their moral system that they're willing to kill millions of people to enforce it. People like Andreessen are not without morality. Their moral system is right-libertarianism. The people I am least afraid of are those who are without a deep fixation on morality.

The person you're replying to was talking about "virtue", which I'd argue is an entirely different thing than "morality". Virtues are traits that can help people be better humans, while morals are rules separating right and wrong. Things like courage, patience, introspection, kindness, etc, are all virtues, while morals tend to be much more of the Ten Commandments variety. I don't think anyone has ever killed people…

> Virtues are traits that can help people be better humans, while morals are rules separating right and wrong.

Insofar as there is a difference at all, (what people see as) virtues are generalizations of (what they hold to be) moral rules or, viewed another way, moral rules are the operationalizations that give concrete meaning to the platitudes of virtues. They are inseparable, even if notionally distinct categories.

Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#55

Post by rainsford »

What I find particularly interesting about this philosophical approach is how much it comes across like nothing so much as just searching for a plausible excuse for intellectual laziness.

Real introspection can be challenging and lead to some uncomfortable realizations about yourself, so it's understandable why someone might want to shy away from it. But rather than just admit that as a shortcoming and an opportunity for personal improvement, because admitting the need for personal improvement is also challenging, it's easy to concoct a reality where lack of introspection isn't just OK but actually the preferable alternative.

Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#56

Post by curio_Pol_curio »

curio_Pol_curio wrote: post #51
tolciho wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Marvin Minsky was the first person that I saw take a stand against "knowing yourself" Ordinarily M. de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife visited for him, and this was the received thing in the world, where the weighty and multifarious occupations of the magistrate were accepted as an excuse for what was really only calculated pride, a manifestation of professed superiority—in fact, the a…

Did Dumas explore the liminal space between "know thyself" and "know others", also known as "know one another"? Did Villefort's wife or "The Count"'s romantic interests help them patch up their blind spots? One can ofc argue that mutual learning has been the death of many a marriage/family, but I'm more interested in how self-reliance taken to its "rational-agentic-alignment" extreme is a primary obstacle to self-imp…

Update: missed this relevant comment! In the sense of examining both Minsky's or GP's (viz ours) frames.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603333

>"It's difficult to _[think]?/[will]?_ what we feel is wrong"

But it's easier for a third party (wife/therapist/LLM) to point out framing errors?

As we are collectively doing to Andreessen's and Villefort's in this thread:)

Re: Marc Andreessen's dangerously unexamined life

#59

Post by sitkack »

api wrote: post #42
deaux wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Backing up a bit, I've long observed that a decent number of highly educated and intelligent folks tend to gravitate toward authoritarian politics. That's because, being smart and educated, they obviously know how everything should work. Intelligent yet unwise (otherwise known as stupid) people are the most dangerous combination. The opposite, "wise yet dumb" on the other hand, tend to be fine. For this reason I'm…

Oh yeah. I've said for years: smart dumb is much worse than dumb dumb. Dumb dumb is just dumb and ineffective. Smart dumb can do real damage.

AI gives smart dumb an army of robotic backhoes.
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