What does this uneducated greedy clown know about anything? He just happened to be born in 1955 US in a time of money.
Meditation was around way before Freud in eastern cultures. For once. Other cultures around the world had similar things about introspection. Just because his greedy ass doesn't want to face his own demons, he frames it as we don't need it
Of course he is. In fact in that same podcast Andreessen makes a point using historical evidence and what is history but collective introspection?
I do agree that too much introspection can be negative and that it's hard or even impossible to understand your decisions and motives until some time has passed.
> But he has since been wrong about a great many things.
This is true for almost all of the tech bros / influencers / CEOs. Being right once and getting rich does not make them smarter or better than anyone. Unfortunately our society doesn‘t view it that way - hence here we are, stuck with the Elons and Thiels of the world. And it‘s hurting us yet they’re on a pedestal
We all know he’s wrong. The problem isn’t that he is wrong, it’s that we have elevated the wealthy into a status where they can be wrong, have no correction, and make decisions whole clothe which negatively affect the rest of us. All while being insulated from their negative world view.
This notion that CEOs are geniuses is just patently false. They are average, and mostly distinguish themselves only in their arrogance and avarice. I would bet the IQ of the average HN reader to be higher than the average C-Suite exec.
I didn't know how old this actually is. I was surprised to learn Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations as a private journal... never meant to be published.
>But he has since been wrong about a great many things.
Basically summarizes any billionaire. Society still seems to drink the kool-aid of billionaires. People think a guy has a billion dollars because he’s a genius. In all cases it was some small amount of intelligence with a whole lot of luck.
My hope is in the decades to come we wake up to the fact these guys are lucky wealth-hoarders and they get too much time on every podcast you can think of.
He’s right in that business success is largely correlated with sociopathy, it helps you focus on the goal of maximizing your own wealth without worrying about the messy details of how other human beings are affected.
Going back four hundred years, it would have never occurred to anyone that humans shouldn’t be slaves or that the environment will be irrecoverably destroyed if everyone pillages it for their own business needs.
>The only access anyone has to those questions is through something like introspection: either their own, or someone else’s honest reports of their experience, or the accumulated testimony of literature and philosophy...
I'm broadly sympathetic to the point in this article but it's trying to slip in literature and philosophy with honest first hand reports of introspection is underhanded. There's no reason to expect them to be any less guilty of motivated reasoning than Marc Andreesen
The problem with certain intellectual pursuits is that it becomes its own little sub culture with its own little sub culture celebrities.
You see, High School never ended. Things can still get lame in the “real world”. The “geeks” need to shut up and go back to the geek table and be more humble. The whole lot of us have demonstrated limited ability on how to be decent.
To quote Rick James:
”They should have never given you developers money. Fuck your Ping Pong table, fuck. Your. Ping. Pong. Table!”
For me too much deep introspection does lead to depression. I am fully capable of diving into my navel, and it turns out to be a deep dark pit. Doing anything productive, or even just fun, is a cure for me. I often read the news, feel miserable about the state of the world, and then go outside and do yardwork, get my body in motion, and very soon feel much better about the world and my place in it. For me introspection isn't bad in itself, but binging on it is, as with food.
Both Andreeson and Elon knew exactly how to take advantage of the times to make money. Both are true "failed" billionaires, Netscape and "PayPal" as the examples. Latter in quotes since Musk didn't contribute much more than getting fired immediately.
So yes, you are the stupid, and the world has not gone towards better, or even different.
> Is the 1 percenters getting dumber or acting like it?
I feel like their messages are designed to derail people's train of thought.
People start to realize that technology isn't fulfilling and they need to re-access their lives? Nah... introspection is a modern invention and that act of reflection is actually the source of your discontent. Stop thinking about it and just go with the flow, you'll be much happier when you stop concerning yourselves with the state of the environment, other people's well being, if your work is fulfilling, or the fact that you have no retirement.
I'm curious how Andreessen came to this motto. Introspection is just a feedback loop, where you evaluate your actions, and adjust for when going forward. Not too unlike a control loop.
Maybe the current AI landscape is a symptom of that mentality - that everyone should just pour as much money and resources into it, never look back, never measure, just keep pushing forward. If you start asking questions, you're in doubt. If you're in doubt, you're a roadblock for progression.
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.
You don't even have to be a billionaire to make people believe whatever thing you say. In the 10s you can just say the most amateurish take on a subject imaginable and get a highly educated audience to nod along if you tell them you make $200,000 a year optimizing ad delivery for google.
Counterpoint -- Yes he's wrong and obviously so. But is some rich dude saying something stupid worthy of platforming?
It almost feels to me like acting as though a famous person being gasp wrong about something is implicitly suggesting that this is somehow surprising?
We should be surprised and write essays when the smartest people we know say something silly. Just because somebody's bank account has some zeroes in it doesn't mean it should be worthy of our focus.
Every time I hear his name I have to think of "America needs to build more" but just not in my backyard.
> “I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” the two wrote in their email, signed by both, as reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.” [0]
Pointing out hypocrisy is easy and not necessarily damning. But looking at all the -100 for everyone but +2 for me fabric of society abusing startups he funds I can't help but think he is a pretty whack person. Let's stop listening to him.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 66.7 ms ] threadMeditation was around way before Freud in eastern cultures. For once. Other cultures around the world had similar things about introspection. Just because his greedy ass doesn't want to face his own demons, he frames it as we don't need it
I do agree that too much introspection can be negative and that it's hard or even impossible to understand your decisions and motives until some time has passed.
> But he has since been wrong about a great many things.
This is true for almost all of the tech bros / influencers / CEOs. Being right once and getting rich does not make them smarter or better than anyone. Unfortunately our society doesn‘t view it that way - hence here we are, stuck with the Elons and Thiels of the world. And it‘s hurting us yet they’re on a pedestal
Only at least since the ancient Greeks has introspection been relevant (and even the Renaissance was well established 400 years ago in the 1600s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_wor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself
found this if anyone wants to explore: https://vectree.io/c/stoic-self-examination-marcus-aurelius-...
>But he has since been wrong about a great many things.
Basically summarizes any billionaire. Society still seems to drink the kool-aid of billionaires. People think a guy has a billion dollars because he’s a genius. In all cases it was some small amount of intelligence with a whole lot of luck.
My hope is in the decades to come we wake up to the fact these guys are lucky wealth-hoarders and they get too much time on every podcast you can think of.
Going back four hundred years, it would have never occurred to anyone that humans shouldn’t be slaves or that the environment will be irrecoverably destroyed if everyone pillages it for their own business needs.
I'm broadly sympathetic to the point in this article but it's trying to slip in literature and philosophy with honest first hand reports of introspection is underhanded. There's no reason to expect them to be any less guilty of motivated reasoning than Marc Andreesen
You see, High School never ended. Things can still get lame in the “real world”. The “geeks” need to shut up and go back to the geek table and be more humble. The whole lot of us have demonstrated limited ability on how to be decent.
To quote Rick James:
”They should have never given you developers money. Fuck your Ping Pong table, fuck. Your. Ping. Pong. Table!”
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.
I feel like their messages are designed to derail people's train of thought.
People start to realize that technology isn't fulfilling and they need to re-access their lives? Nah... introspection is a modern invention and that act of reflection is actually the source of your discontent. Stop thinking about it and just go with the flow, you'll be much happier when you stop concerning yourselves with the state of the environment, other people's well being, if your work is fulfilling, or the fact that you have no retirement.
Maybe the current AI landscape is a symptom of that mentality - that everyone should just pour as much money and resources into it, never look back, never measure, just keep pushing forward. If you start asking questions, you're in doubt. If you're in doubt, you're a roadblock for progression.
It almost feels to me like acting as though a famous person being gasp wrong about something is implicitly suggesting that this is somehow surprising?
We should be surprised and write essays when the smartest people we know say something silly. Just because somebody's bank account has some zeroes in it doesn't mean it should be worthy of our focus.
It's not like they don't have a right to an opinion, but it's usually outsized, aggrandized nonsense.
Rare Book + Ego + a few thoughts on a long walk = Insufferable Twitter Nonsense
> “I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” the two wrote in their email, signed by both, as reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.” [0]
Pointing out hypocrisy is easy and not necessarily damning. But looking at all the -100 for everyone but +2 for me fabric of society abusing startups he funds I can't help but think he is a pretty whack person. Let's stop listening to him.
[0] https://fortune.com/2022/08/06/marc-andreessen-billionaire-n...