Academic credentials in the US, especially at the 'prestige' institutions, have been hollowed out quite a lot by politics, groupthink, & logrolling.
Large government subsidies, & a self-replicating nearly-hereditary elite, have insulated much of their output from accountability to the broader society, and even from accountability to the truth.
Even an "uber-wealthy capital allocator" with a big personal-wealth buffer faces sharper feedback from today's concrete & changing reality – losses from mistakes, gains from smart choices – than tenured academics, or bureaucrats with lifelong sinecures.
In the text, he's not arguing from authority, or personal biography – so why would he need to waste any words about his personal particulars? (They're in the public record if you need them as part of your own heuristics.)
He's saying some ideas, & some systems, are better – not ranking people by class. Further, a "manifesto" like this is a resonant call to draw like minds, moreso than any sophisticated apologetic to try to convince doubters. (For that: read the other authors he name-checks.)
To obsess on the speaker's characteristic – their "self-awareness", their tone, their inability to "read the room", their station in life – rather than their words & ideas is a big part of the downbeat but in many places entrenched attitude he's criticizing.
Per Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
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 context is naivety, not wisdom.
There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to. My point is that everything about this screed — content, context, subtext, and omission — hints at this particular horse being pointed a bit askew.
> 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 game. It's a free country.
> There are several “techno-optimist” (and adjacent) horses one can hitch their wagon to.
Ok, then. Who are your favorites, and in which ideas/dimensions are they offering something with better insight/appeal/non-'askew'ness than Andreesen?
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.
> 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.
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.
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!"
No search engine's results will be an accurate census of reader reactions.
Such results will especially undersample Andreesen's intended audience of potential builders, which isn't the snarky cliquish media scene to which you've apprently outsourced your sensibilities.
And again: to repeatedly appeal to "most people agree with me (as far as I can see, according to my idiosyncratic media diet)" isn't the win you seem to think it is. It's more a confession that you're not bringing much of your own reasoning/logic/experience to a discussion, and defer to (often-faked) social proof for validation. If I cared what Kagi's crawl/ranking thinks, I'd search Kagi. (I don't.)
Very interesting how the goal here needn’t be to build a broad coalition or broad consensus in order to shape the future.
It’s almost as if technologists believe they can (and actually have a moral imperative to!) shape the world without being elected and without being accountable to the people whose world they’re shaping…
Large government subsidies, & a self-replicating nearly-hereditary elite, have insulated much of their output from accountability to the broader society, and even from accountability to the truth.
Even an "uber-wealthy capital allocator" with a big personal-wealth buffer faces sharper feedback from today's concrete & changing reality – losses from mistakes, gains from smart choices – than tenured academics, or bureaucrats with lifelong sinecures.
In the text, he's not arguing from authority, or personal biography – so why would he need to waste any words about his personal particulars? (They're in the public record if you need them as part of your own heuristics.)
He's saying some ideas, & some systems, are better – not ranking people by class. Further, a "manifesto" like this is a resonant call to draw like minds, moreso than any sophisticated apologetic to try to convince doubters. (For that: read the other authors he name-checks.)
To obsess on the speaker's characteristic – their "self-awareness", their tone, their inability to "read the room", their station in life – rather than their words & ideas is a big part of the downbeat but in many places entrenched attitude he's criticizing.
Per Eleanor Roosevelt: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."