Discussion

Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

general_reveal: 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

arthurjj: >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

an0malous: 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.

willio58: > Marc Andreessen was right about web browsers.>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.

John23832: 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.

a456463: Yes. I mean calling them out and people take personal offense as if they are receiving handouts from them or they are that rich. They don't give a damn about anyone or anything for that matter

daveguy: Apparently Andreessen is an ignorant fool. Seems par for the course with these tech oligarch asshats.Only at least since the ancient Greeks has introspection been relevant (and even the Renaissance was well established by the 1600s):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_wor...

josefritzishere: 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.

delichon: 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.

ceejayoz: I mean, being aware of that (and adjusting behavior for it) is a form of introspection.Without introspection you'd just dive into the pit.

Sl1mb0: Or worse, you wouldn't even know about it!

wodenokoto: 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?

newyankee: The way I suspect they think is this. A pyramid is always going to be there, it is better we reinforce and consolidate our power at top with the friendlies below and make it sound like that is the best option for everyone.

bluegatty: Ignore all the techno bros on everything but their field of expertise.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

salthearth: Mark Andreessen is an idiot, a guy fooled by randomness.

zug_zug: 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.

supliminal: I guess even HN needs two minutes of hate. Andreessen is an easy target.

AndrewKemendo: It’s really heartening to see that “eat the rich” is finally becoming a consistent message on HNTechnology truly can be used by the dispossessed in order to reclaim power from the billionaire psychopath classBut it requires those of us who know how to wield technology to stop looking to rich people to fund us, and start organizing from the ground up in order to take them downStep one is that all of us blue collar technologists need to get organizedI’ve tried it and failed, but maybe now is the time

keiferski: 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.

artyom: A little bit of both? I don't think they were thought leaders but they were often correct and also at the right point in time.Also, power corrupts. That's a tale as old as time, I have found no evidence that somehow tech-bros are immune to it.

ceejayoz: > Going back four hundred years, it would have never occurred to anyone that humans shouldn’t be slaves…Philosophers considered that even before Christ.https://www.cnbc.com/2011/06/03/the-ancient-and-noble-greek-..."A fragment of Solon’s poetry describes a situation in which many of the poor “have arrived in foreign lands/sold into slavery, bound in shameful fetters.”""In 594 BC, Solon was appointed archon of Athens. His solution to his city’s strife was to cancel both public and private debts and end debt slavery."> or that the environment will be irrecoverably destroyed if everyone pillages it for their own business needshttps://theconversation.com/the-waters-become-corrupt-the-ai...Pliny the Elder: "We taint the rivers and the elements of nature, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life."

general_reveal: Mass Media has always been bad for this reason. It’s really simple, if you have a massive system of pipes that can deliver toxic water directly into everyone’s brain … then it’s systemically a massive flaw.Get it? Where do we even begin rehabilitating this, the system has got us all worshipping Marc Andreeson for fucks sake.You can literally BUY the toxic water dump , that’s how bad our system is. That’s another huge flaw, the toxic system can be purchased with another toxic system, capitalism.Mass brain washing is fueled by mass slavery which is fueled by mass egocentrism. System Design 101, kiddos.

TrackerFF: 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.

moomoo11: Imagine taking advice from VC instead of their money.

siva7: Well, isn't this the whole point of YC?

gassi: I've taken the position that anything the ultra-wealthy say is likely wrong, and every decision they take will negatively affect society, unless and until its corroborated by an unbiased source with expertise in the subject matter.

threetonesun: This is an SNL skit from 1996 that has always been my framing for how many-million/billionaires think, Tiny Camels through Giant Needles: https://www.reddit.com/r/RebelChristianity/comments/113xslu/...

cwillu: The inflection on his voice…

seydor: Technologists used to be smart, now they just have money.

duped: Venture capitalists have never been smart and have always had money

ma2kx: I think this conclusion in itself is more introspection than reading the news. After all most news events are external and whether you read about them or not doesn't make any difference. Its really more the opposite of introspection.

lijok: They changed. You wouldn’t believe it but those most impacted by the mental rot that social media can induce - are the ultra wealthy.

croes: I doubt that. The only thing social media removed was scruples and shame. People were ashamed to say such dumb things and now they think they have some kind of deeper knowledge.Their thinking didn’t change.

monknomo: I think they also suddenly had to deal with a bunch of people being mean to them, and telling them they were wrong, which drove them a little mad.Sort of an oppositional defiant thing, filtered through immense wealth and power

foobiekr: You realized they were always shitheels. Musk was a complete visible fraud long before 2016.

guzfip: Indeed, he always seems like an obnoxious media attention whore to me long before he got into politics.I tend to have a negative view of celebrities who did cameos for the Simpsons far past its peak lol

croes: 400 years ago black people and women weren’t considered equal to white men.So congratulations, you are a fool

a456463: Yes. They need to be platforms and shamed to hell. Otherwise they thrive in shadows like the ghouls they are.

pkilgore: Andreessen is a virus ("Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Marc Andreessen") and has a virus' motivations: grow without thinking -- maybe the host dies, maybe it doesn't, but just grow.

bigyabai: > Step one is that all of us blue collar technologists need to get organizedSo that Apple and Google can discriminate against us as a bloc, instead of individually?As a programmer I struggle to see how organization would achieve anything. We hold no cards, it's the platform holders who won.

lenerdenator: The problem is that we have made the latter condition an alias for the former.Redefining competence and intelligence as "ability to make money" has done untold damage to American society.

Sl1mb0: I have a personal belief that this is really the result of the "can-do" attitude that pervades not only American society currently; but virtually all of American history.A small group of colonies managed to win a war against what was considered at one point the globe's strongest empire. Throughout the history-narrative of America there is a prevailing sense that the underdog can always overcome their circumstances and win the day. That most Americans (myself included) have a semi-deluded sense that they "can achieve anything they put their minds to" is a direct manifestation of that narrative-history. It's also why there is so much rampant anti-intellectualism here; think about it, if you can do and are capable of anything - why would you *ever* listen to an expert's opinion? It's also why libertarian-ism is so popular; why would you want the rest of society dragging you down when you yourself are capable of so much more?I want to be clear as well, there *are* benefits to the can-do attitude, but at this point I think the cons outweigh the pros, and we are seeing that play out in American society. I'd also like to acknowledge that the current situation is the result of many different factors; but that this one is largely overlooked due to the assumption that it's positives outweigh it's negatives.

hencq: I think there's something to this. And while America has always had this can-do attitude (just look at the number of self help books), it does seem to be in another gear recently. I don't know what caused it, but I think there have been a number of indicators: Trump ignoring Congress and introducing wild tariffs, Musk firing half of Twitter's staff and then later repeating this with DOGE, the quick roll-out of LLMs. There seems to be this prevailing attitude of "we can just do stuff, damn the consequences".It appears to come with a lot of corruption and anti-intellectualism. Like you say there are also benefits to this. I think the break through of mRNA vaccines was an early indicator. I just hope we can steer this attitude back to a more optimistic world-view instead of the blatant self serving one that is currently prevailing.

jjulius: This has always been the case with the massively wealthy. They may be incredibly smart in their specific line of business, which leads them to an enormous amount of wealth and fame. Because our culture likes to lionize success stories, we collectively lean hard into putting people like that on pedestals and giving them more opportunities to speak their minds. Their own egos get inflated as a result, and a feedback loop ensues - they think everything they do is great because, collectively, our culture wants everything they do to be great.But the simple fact is, nobody's a genius in all areas. We all have our areas of expertise, but none of us can be trusted to speak wisely about all things all the time.At the same time, as others have said, your BS detector has matured.

biophysboy: Introspection is not doomscrolling though. Being tugged around by short-lived stimuli from a feed is the opposite of deep self-reflection.In order to go from reading the news to going outside and doing yardwork, you need to have a thought along the lines of "this doesn't feel good - I should do something else". That is introspection.

netsharc: Is this AI slop? In any case I hate writing that is "subject predicate object" that makes the whole article feel as obnoxious like a Twitter thread.Write better sentences, please!

foobiekr: The reason he and Musk are anti-introspection is that when they do it, it hurts. Because they are terrible people.Better to just not think about it.

tombert: It says a lot that he thinks that empathy is the greatest human weakness.One of many, many, many stupid things he's said.

frereubu: The penultimate sentence of this fantastic 1997 interview with Trump has stayed with me since I read it: "Trump, who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul."https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/19/trump-solo

abdelhousni: He likes to molest the money though (cf @hasanabi)

donkyrf: There's the whole "billionaire bubble" thing, where they get surrounded by folks who have an economic interest in keeping the billionaire happy... but I'd posit there's another big change -- tech billionaires didn't used to have any cultural or political juice. This meant that even if they had some weird / bad takes, they kept them quiet.Media consolidation has really helped weird billionaires move the Overton window, so that their weird/bad takes become "acceptable", and then they start admitting them publicly.

georgemcbay: IMO they were always the way that they are now, they just didn't broadcast it in public.Before social media started running society off the rails people like this would generally hold back their controversial opinions to avoid alienating a chunk of the public.Now they realize they can say whatever they want and the 40% of people that glaze them for it are worth more to their ego than the downside of alienating everyone else.

the_sleaze_: > as ideas worth listening to, on any topic.Shoe Button Complex as coined by Buffet and Munger. I see this all the time from even mildly successful people. Suddenly the Early Bitcoin Adopter is now a Macro Economist and a Relationship Guru.I heard someone say once their father legitimately doubted whether things and people truly existed when he turned his head or left the room. I've had a relationship with a woman who as it turned out didn't have the ability to recreate other peoples inner worlds. Her life has been lived clumsily, and that isn't her intention.I truly wonder what would become of me and my mental state if I has so much buying power that I could make anyone I chose unimaginably wealthy if I chose to. What it would do to them, and then my own reflection of myself in them.I'd probably start saying things like "empathy is a weakness" sooner that I would like.

AndrewKemendo: I’m not here to argue with youIf you believe you are incapable of actually doing anything then you are correct, and you should just go ahead and submit yourself to whatever power structure you think will benefit you the most

vishnugupta: > 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.

ssimpson: > 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.Why do they always feel like they need to pull stuff out of their butts to make themselves sound like they know what is going on? In some ways I think it's related to the stock market "just meet the next quarterly goal" kind of thinking. Who cares if you don't come up with something pithy to say for a few years. Have big impacts over time instead of tons of little ups and downs all the time.

roncesvalles: All the rich are on ketamine.

bayarearefugee: Organizing years ago would have been huge for software developers but unfortunately I do think it is too late now, given the onset of AI (weakens the collective by improving individual productivity since not every developer will be onboard) and just the current political landscape. The NLRB has been gutted.

anthonypasq: Elon is a social dumbass with the emotional maturity of an edgy 14 year old boy, but calling him a fraud I'd say is false and unproductive.

mrhottakes: He's been lying through his teeth for the better part of two decades, "fraud" is true and productive.

bluGill: The ultra-wealthy are no different from anyone else. However the effects of their decisions - both good and bad - tend to be much larger than what most of us can do.

jjulius: “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.”- Teddy Roosevelt

tombert: Often I'm not even entirely convinced they know a lot about their own business either. It seems like the ones who make the cartoonishly large amounts of money are the ones who got lucky to hire decent people early on.

marcusverus: It's only unproductive if assume their goal is honest dialogue, which it is not. Their goal is to tear down a political enemy. Attacks are generally productive, as those who've watched general internet sentiment regarding Elon swing from admiration to frothing, mindless hatred can attest. The truth is entirely beside the point.This is true of the same crowd on any topic, btw.

jacquesm: A bit of both. You became more attuned to what really does and does not make sense and they rotted a bit further. But 10 years ago it was pretty visible for both Musk and Andreessen.

pwdisswordfishy: > Marc Andreessen was right about web browsers.Actually, what about web browsers was he right about?

kartika36363: congratulationsyou are absolutely right, whilst having $0b in your accounts

roncesvalles: Also a product of the US stock market going up and to the right for the last couple of decades. It's very easy to convince yourself that you are some genius perceptor of the world because you've been getting 30% CAGR on your portfolio for the last few many years. But in hindsight it was always more likely to be green than red, and you could handily beat the market average if you had any kind of tech tilt at all, which many of these people naturally did.

_fat_santa: I have a tangential theory to this.Being rich != being famous. There are tons of extremely wealthy people out there that keep a very low profile. Sure they might be well known within their circle but ask the average person and they have no clue who that person is. I would say this is the case for like 90-95% of billionaires.Musk, Andreessen, Zuck and others were all in this camp 10 years ago but they all decided that simply being rich wasn't enough, they wanted to be famous. These folks have all the resources and connections to become famous so they can get on all the podcasts, write op-eds, and are guaranteed to get the best reach on social media and thus the most eyeballs on their content and the most attention paid to them.But when you go from making a few media appearances a year to constantly making media appearances in one way or another is that you need more "content" so to speak. Just like a comedian needs more content if they are going to do a 1hr special versus a 10min set at a comedy club.The problem for all these guys is they have a few genuinely insightful ideas mixed in with a ton of cooky and out of touch ideas. Before they could safely stick to the genuinely insightful ideas but as they've made more and more appearances, they have to reach for some of those other ideas. They don't realize that their cooky ideas sound very different than their few insightful ideas. They think all their ideas are insightful based on the feedback they have been getting for the past decade or so.

moregrist: When you reach a certain level of wealth and power, it seems like it’s very easy to surround yourself with people who only tell you how brilliant and successful you are.This creates an echo chamber where you don’t get reality checks, and when you do they’re easy to brush off as some form of “sour grapes,” after all if the person telling you that you’re wrong was so great they’d have your level of wealth.I think it takes a really extraordinary person to avoid this. As far as I can tell, most of the modern Silicon Valley titans are not extraordinary in this respect.

jacquesm: I don't think technologists are blue collar. They are not necessarily part of the owner class but true blue collar work is not done behind desks.

codersfocus: There's a balance to be had between introspection and taking action. People tend to have a bias for one or the other (action bias vs thinking bias.)Those who act would do well to think a bit more, and those who think a lot need help taking action.I recently launched an app that can help in either case (Wiseday on the app store.)It lets you print a daily page that can both be used to introspect, as well as an execution aid to help you actually take consistent action towards your goals.

spamizbad: I think the ultra-wealthy are just operating under what they think they need to tell people in order to get the outcomes they want. You're only going to hear the truth - or something correct - if its to their benefit.

rybosworld: I used to think this but I think that's only true for the low-profile wealthy folks. And they voice their opinion indirectly, like through owning media companies.The people that feel the need to be loud and in the public eye aren't necessarily playing 4d chess. It's really just an ego thing for them.The wealthy who keep a low-profile are the smarter one's.

sharadov: The problem is with the media pouring endless attention on these tech bros and bestowing the mantel of expertise in every field on them - philosophy, politics, religion, sociology.So now they spout their mouth off and the media hangs on their every word and debates it.

gordian-mind: Weak article. It never really tries to reconstruct what Andreessen meant, just takes a narrow quote, reads it in the least charitable way, and then spends most of its energy tearing down that version with loaded rhetoric.The comments only reinforce that impression: most are some variation of “rich guy, therefore idiot.” This is more pile-on than discussion.

pasquinelli: this is so funny for me to read. a few years ago, i would see programmers saying they can negotiate better deals for themselves than a union could. now you're saying it's already over, programming as a skill has a future valuation that's heading to zero.i advise against being so sure of your ideas. maybe you think platform holders have all the cards--test it. if they fight efforts to unionize, that tells a different story.

bigyabai: Individuals can negotiate insane labors deals for themselves. Go ask the best-paid person you know how they got their pay package, it usually entails some form of schmoozing. Unions are for bringing the bottom-rung up to par, not for raising the top bar further.> if they fight efforts to unionize, that tells a different story.You are describing an industry that has outsourced intelligent labor to India and Pakistan for more than 25 years. The efforts to unionize would be like trying to save America's auto industry in 2004.

jbmchuck: 'Thought leader' has always been a code word for 'bullshit artist'.

Trasmatta: Yes. One of the most important things to learn is how to introspect and actually FEEL the pain that surfaces when you do. That's how healing begins. If you never do that, you're stuck in whatever destructive patterns you use to avoid that introspection forever.It turns out that when you actually allow yourself to feel those things, it gives your nervous system the ability to metabolize and process them.

ohrus: Thinking any one person is a 'thought leader' is, generally, a dumb thing to think.You grew up.

bigyabai: Of course you're not here to argue, there's no precedent for what you're suggesting. Nobody has fought against Apple, Google or Microsoft and taken home a significant victory.This leads me to believe that the power structures can't be fixed. There is no amount of protesting that can coerce private capital to take humanity's best interests to heart, that's the tragedy of the commons. There is no guerilla warfare you can wage on a totalitarian platform like iOS or Windows; you simply lose in the end, because you are malware and the OEM is always right.Movements like GNU/FOSS win because they don't even acknowledge the existence of corporate technology. They don't "fight" against anyone or make multi-billion dollar nemeses because it is a waste of volunteer hours that could go towards building something wonderful.

rdevilla: I think Andreessen's comments were borne of hyperbole and as a (deliberate) overcorrection against certain Bay Area rationalist types whose 10,000 word navel gazing screeds border on schizoidal personality disorder.I have watched these people expend literally years getting into hypothetical arguments with strawmen they believe are active participants in their community when, at best, they are occasional lurkers, and will erect entire superstructures of theory and belief that make utterly no sense to those outside of their rationalist cult.Lesswrong and motteizen type users fall squarely into this category, who also tend to cleave towards the pro-AI side of the spectrum now that, as with the rest of their lives, they are able to delegate the production of logorrhea at scale to the machine.These people are mentally unwell, and reading their proclamations is not too dissimilar to browsing a deep web trans community discussing esoteric gender theory, or even merely the slashdot comment section in 2016 - just with an extra ten paragraphs of fluff and vapidity as if they had been fed on a steady diet of the New Yorker; none of which has any correlation whatsoever to material sensate reality. No wonder there is such reverence for the hyperreality of LLM literary hallucination in these circles...Sent from my iPhone

sibeliuss: His statements about this were purely politics, and nothing more. He himself does not believe this. It's political revisionism.

a456463: I agree he could be doing political revisionism. But I fail to grasp, why?

sibeliuss: To appear as a strongman in the eyes of those in power, those who are clearly incapable of introspection. And by such moves he himself gains power.

rybosworld: Tim Dillon said summarized it pretty well - can't remember or find the exact quote. Something to the effect of:"Look around at all these things I have - how could I be wrong when I have so much?"And that's how you get the Andreessen's and Musk's of the world stating these nonsensical things as truth. In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick. The fact that they have so much wealth is a testament that their way of thinking is always right.You don't need to look very hard to see this is what they really believe. Elon has done extremely silly things like claiming he was the best Path of Exile player in the world because he paid several people grind his account to a high-level. Having enough money to pay someone to play the game for you, is the same as being good at the game, in his mind.

visarga: > In their minds, financial success is the ultimate yardstick.In a loopy recursive way, it is. Cost gates what we can do and become. Paying back your costs to extend your runway is the working principle behind biology, economy and technology.I am not saying rich people are always right, just that cost is not so irrelevant to everything else.

steveBK123: Americans are weird creatures in this regard. Give them 5% of their compensation / 0.0001% of a company in stock/options and suddenly they think they have become Big Capital.If you need to work to collect a wage to pay your expenses, you are still labor, sorry if that hurts peoples feelings, but it shouldn't.

AndrewKemendo: These terms are all pretty flexible - blue collar in 1950 is extremely different than blue collar in 2026.What category would you place the following 99% of human people:You you will lose your ability to eat and have housing if you do not show up to a place (even if it’s at your rented apartment) and spend hours doing on what someone else wants you to do

hackable_sand: Software developers definitely do not have class solidarity and their anxiety is unjustified.

thedima: I really like the way you put it: “It’s okay to be wrong. We’re all wrong from time to time. What’s not okay is not having a way to be corrected by the outside world for a specific reason: being at the top of the political pyramid, being ultra-wealthy and surrounded by flattery, etc"

quantummagic: You're right, but we've never devised any system that prevents this from happening. Every single organization leads to a concentration of wealth and power. And even those ideally conceived to have counterbalancing forces, eventually are corrupted and subverted. It seems to be the steady state of reality.

ozgrakkurt: Maybe wealth should be reset every time? There shouldn't be inheritence at all?

quantummagic: It's a lovely idea, but that system will have to be enforced by a power structure... which will always tend to grant itself special privileges. And even before such corruption, without inherited wealth, there will still be entrenched institutions that control resources, and have a continuity of leadership, that will always be looking out for themselves and their in-group. It's just natural.

rexpop: The fatalistic view that "platform holders have all the cards" and that "programming as a skill has a future valuation that's heading to zero" is a common psychological barrier in labor struggles. Oppressed or subordinate groups often suffer from a "diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor"[0].However, theories of political and social power argue the exact opposite: the power of any ruling class or corporation is actually quite fragile because it depends entirely on the cooperation, obedience, and skills of its subordinates. If highly skilled individuals like blue-collar technologists and programmers collectively withdraw our human resources, skills, and knowledge, we can severely disrupt or paralyze the systems that enrich the platform holders.0. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire

mpalmer: So not only is he not wrong, he's a keen social critic?

ahnick: This blog post and all the comments in response feel very tautological. I think Marc has a fairly simple point here, which is don't spend time dwelling on the past. Learn from the past, take away information about how things can be improved, but then make a plan (for whatever it is that you are building/doing) and move forward with that plan.In the podcast, he basically lays out that the A16Z thesis is that there is not enough technology, information, and intelligence in the world, so they are going out and investing in companies/ideas that can make an impact in these areas. That requires learning from the past, but not dwelling on it. Seems like a very sensible and positive approach to me.

poly2it: Why does he need to make a historical justification for it then? It would be disingenuous if, as the blog author suggests, Andreessen knows better.

pjmorris: I agree that the consequences are greater. There seem to be at least two perspectives on whether wealth makes you different:1. In 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the rich “are different from you and me,” and Ernest Hemingway supposedly retorted, “Yes, they have more money.”2. Kurt Vonnegut's obituary for Joseph Heller...True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Not bad! Rest in peace!”Or, as Cyndi Lauper sang it, 'Money Changes Everything'I'm of the latter persuasion, that wealth influences one's personality in important ways.

azinman2: They got radicalized, which was intensional from the right. Further, wealth and time has shifted the hippy ethos of the valley to libertarianism.It’s amazing how often becoming rich makes one into a libertarian :)

mayneack: That may or may not be true in aggregate, but for extreme outliers it's impossible to separate from survivorship bias. Are Musk and Andreeson really the most skilled entrepreneurs in the world or are they just good enough for luck to propel them to stratospheric success?

wat10000: I'm not sure he's entirely wrong.I have a theory that a large fraction of the population is not conscious. They go about their lives, they still work and think and have emotions in some form, but they don't actually experience. In other words, they're P-zombies. (Note: I do NOT support any actual action based on this idea. This certainly doesn't suggest that it would be morally acceptable to do anything to that group that wouldn't be acceptable to do to the rest.)This is by analogy to mental imagery. For a long time, there was a debate over whether people actually saw mental imagery in some real sense, or whether it was just a way of describing more symbolic thought. These days the general consensus seems to be that it varies, where someone might see extremely lifelike images, or more vague images, or none at all.Since it's all about internal experience, people had a hard time understanding that their experience wasn't necessarily the same as everyone else's. The same might be true of consciousness.This started out as mostly a joke or a thought experiment, but more and more I'm thinking it might actually be true. Statements like Andreessen's really push me in that direction. It's such a baffling statement... unless Andreessen is a P-zombie, then it makes perfect sense. And if he is, he probably thinks this whole consciousness idea is just a weird analogy for perception, and thinks we're a bunch of weirdos for acting like his statement isn't something obvious.

jdelman: That’s simply not what introspection is, though.

AndrewKemendo: John Steinbeck: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires”

bdangubic: truer words have yet to be spoken

jdelman: I’m convinced that he meant rumination, not introspection. There’s simply no way to be “high agency” without some level of introspection. Rumination is essentially a kind of excessive introspection that leads to paralysis.

pavel_lishin: What do you mean by "high agency"?

johannes1234321: There is a shift in society on what can be said and what they keep private. Back then you would pull stings in background, now you can bribe thenUS president in public.Also: Back in the days™ statements where edited by marketing people and others before publication. Now people blast out stuff on their own via "social media"

palmotea: > Why do they always feel like they need to pull stuff out of their butts to make themselves sound like they know what is going on?Massive, unconstrained egos? They think they're hot shit, because they surround themselves with yes men.I'm reminded of this:> Beneath the grand narrative Musk tells, when he takes things over, what does he actually have the people under him do? What is the theory of action?> He has people around him who are just enablers. All these Silicon Valley people do. All his minions. And they are minions — they’re all lesser than he is in some fashion, and they all look up to him. They’re typically younger. They laugh at his jokes. Sometimes when he apologizes for a joke, which is not very often, he’ll say that the people around him thought it was funny.> When he was being interviewed at Code Conference once, he had a couple of them there. He told a really bad joke, and they all went like: Ha-ha-ha-ha. And I was like: That’s not funny — I’m sorry, did I miss the joke? And they looked at me like I had three heads. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...)

bko: You're correcting him by commenting on a popular article arguing he's wrong. So it appears he has been "corrected" rather broadly and vocallyHe's free to choose what to believe. He's not "insulated from his negative world view". If you're correct and introspection is to his benefit and he chooses to forgo it, it's his loss.So I don't know what you're upset about.I think his broader point is that people are too introspective in modern times and its paralyzing. For instance, I remember reading a blog that argues that argues PTSD doesn't exist historically. People saw terrible things, buried their children and suffered unimaginable pain but there were no concept of PTSD. He argues that its not because it was taboo (virtually every other topic that was taboo was extensively documented), so perhaps there was less introspection.https://acoup.blog/2020/04/24/fireside-friday-april-24-2020/

SecretDreams: A salient comment on the current times. But I'll extend it beyond just wealthy people. We have given every soul a platform. At first glance, that seems like a good thing. But we've given everyone a platform where they can accumulate large followings and express a great many opinions completely unchallenged. In reality, we've built force multiplier tools that enable the dissemination of all takes, good and bad, at a rather alarming rate. And, I would argue, the average joe is a bit gullible and easy to indoctrinate. Society, largely speaking, does not receive enough education and protections against these types of indoctrination platforms that we've made. That celebrities, ultra wealthy individuals, bad actors, and random dumbasses can all use and abuse to sell some physical or cognitive junk.

aworks: Is this a difference in kind versus say the printing press and books? That technology gave some souls a platform.Then and now, having a platform isn't the same as having an effective and popular platform for force indoctrination...

SecretDreams: I think it's the velocity by which you can disseminate that makes it different and more dangerous.

AndrewKemendo: They’re just the most ruthlessIf you look at the entire entirety of understood history of biology:The most ruthless always winsThat is to say if I go into a village and kill all the adults and teenagers and steal all the kids who are scared to be killed by me, then I will win in the probably two successive generations that I’ve been able to successfully brainwashing into thinking I’m some kind of God.That is until somebody kills me and then takes over the structure. For example there are no dictatorships that last past the third generationThat is literally and unambiguously how all life operatesThere are intermediary cooperation periods. But if you look at the aggregate time periods including how galaxies form it’s all straight up brute force consumption

geodel: I think you have put this in a correct, concise manner which I agree with entirely.The smaller version of same phenomena I see in enterprises where musings of non/barely technical leadership of a tech org is not only considered as go-to strategy but also why previous plans and implementations which were so obviously crappy not totally replaced yet.

rdevilla: Personally I cleave to the hyperintrospective portion of the spectrum, so no, I think taken at face value his comments are absurd.Nonetheless you need to understand the dark and less visited corners of the mental landscape whence these ideas and his (putative) target audiences were borne (Bay Area rationalism), and the strategic nature of this communication which is more intended to send a message to certain sects rather than reveal anything genuine about himself or others.At these echelons communication takes on a different character. You must understand if you speak at this level.

bikelang: The nature of the ultra wealthy is obviously no different than the rest of us - but the nurture and environment they live is in extremely different. That they live so isolated from the broader human community, are so disconnected from routine discomforts, and so shielded from any kind of consequences is an obvious difference from the rest of us. It’s no wonder they develop sociopathic tendencies when they are materially rewarded for such behavior and have no empathy for the way the rest of us must live.

etchalon: OK, but ... imagine Andreessen said, "I don't eat food."No one would think that was a reasonable position.No one would argue, "Well, food DOES have draw backs. What if you eat too much of it!"We all inherently understand that you have to eat food, and while being careful not to eat too much.We would understand that if anyone said, "Look at all these successful people who also didn't eat food!" that they were talking absolute shite.No one would treat the statement "I don't eat food" as anything other than deeply fucking weird.

simianwords: Anti intellectualism is also falling into the local optima trap of “rich people bad” that a lots of people seem to fall into. The idea that rich people have something to say is so alien that no deeper analysis is warranted.

next_xibalba: This whole debate is pretty weird and misguided, IMO. Marc Andreesen can be right about what works for him. Joan Westenberg can be right about what works for her. This would be obvious to a five year old. This whole brouhaha seems to be merely the setting for HN'ers (and everyone else) to continue their ongoing battles about how the world should and must be and why "the other side" is Wrong. Search through the comments here. Somehow Elon, Luigi Magnione, and Trump are pulled into the discussion.

mlinhares: And the people that fawn all over every single word they say think they'll eventually have the same money as well. But in the end they'll just be dumber.

xhkkffbf: Fawning over rich people is bad. But hating them is okay? How about engaging with the material itself instead of focusing on the bank accounts?

sd9: Isn't this whole comment section about engaging with the material itself and disagreeing with it? I don't see anybody here saying that Andreessen's ideas are bad specifically because he has money, they are saying the ideas he has are bad and he has money and that's probably letting him get away with broadcasting terrible ideas.

Teever: No. it certainly isn't.I'm damn near broke right now but it would be obvious to you if you spent ten minutes with me that I'm healthier both mentally and physically than either of those two and I can walk down any street with relative impunity and talk with any stranger I meet without concern that they'd recognize me and have beef with me over some stupid shit I did online. I know that when I interact with people it's because they want to interact with me and not my money.It's true that the cage they live in is gilded but it's still a cage.Sometimes I stumble across wikipedia biography pages a person like a mumblerapper who had a meteoric rise in fame and wealth only to die in a puddle of puke from a Xanax overdose at like 25. It's sad and everything but when I read it I just think "Man, what a fucking idiot..." Like sure this dude probably had a great few years conspicuously consuming a bunch of shit and showing off a bunch of money with some floozies hanging off his arm but where is he now? Dead and cold in a hole in the ground. And he died a pretty pathetic death to boot.I don't know about Andressen but I'm pretty sure I'll outlive Musk. As risk adverse as he is for his physical safety he'll end up doing something downright stupid that ends in his untimely death. With Andressen there's a growing possiblity that enough people wise up to his destructive impact on society and a movement where people who are still physically capable but with inoperable brain cancer or something start taking out people like Andressen.Slow and steady wins the race.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5jI9I03q8E

jorblumesea: I really don't think he thought it was equivalent, he was just larping and thought he could trick people.

johngossman: In the late 1990s I went to a RealNetworks developer conference and Andreesen, then at Netscape, was a keynote speaker. I was curious and open to his insights, but his talk was so vapid (I remember he kept giggling) and arrogant that I eventually walked out. I remember he kept bragging about Netscape's next big project (something after Netscape 5 maybe?) and how it was going to wipe Microsoft out permanently. Only a few years later did I realize whatever it was never shipped, it turned out to be vaporware.

wodenokoto: 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.

aworks: I need to reread it but Paul Fussell makes the case that old wealth is inconspicuous and secure (and maybe inherited) versus nouveau riche which is about visible luxury, branding, and showy consumption. I don't remember if he mentions the need to promote ideas.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class:_A_Guide_Through_the_Ame...

deadbishop: Paul Fussel’s Class was an interesting read

ahnick: People have been doing self-examination for a long time, but Freud's use of psychoanalysis is a fairly modern phenomenon and it's benefits are dubious. Modern therapy looks increasingly like pseudoscience. I expect biotech/AI advancements to make much of modern therapy irrelevant over time, as we obtain fine-grained control over the actual processes in the brain causing various afflictions.

volkk: goes both ways. elitism exists on both ends of the spectrum. the academic side is largely the same thing except it's attained from years of schooling through certain pedagogues that tout the one true way and if you haven't been through that wringer, then your understanding doesn't count. true intellectualism, has humility and the everlasting honest pursuit for truth. neither of these extremes have this quality.

TheCoelacanth: You are completely misconstruing his argument. It has nothing to do with lack of introspection.It is that war was ubiquitous and accepted as a positive thing in society, unlike now where it is viewed as at best a necessary evil.

horsawlarway: Sure, but this argument doesn't actually invalidate the parent at all.To go back to your biology point:Figures like Andreessen or Musk (or, at least in my opinion most billoniares) can be directly compared to cancer. They are EXCELLENT at extracting value from the environment they're in. If you limit your moral judgement to just that... then you clearly think cancer is wonderful, since it does the same thing!Cancer is a group of cells that chemically signal the body to provide resources and spread themselves without restraint, avoiding internal systems that would regulate it via things like apoptosis or other signaling. If you judge a cell by how many resources it can accumulate... Cancer is wildly successful.But the problem is that extraction without introspection, success with insight, moving without care... eventually actors like this destroy the system they operate within.Ex - Andreessen should perhaps spend some introspection on the fact that ultimately "dollar bills" are literal cloth (or more likely... digital numbers) that he can't eat, won't shelter him, and can't emotionally satisfy him.They strictly have value because of the system he operates within that allows exchange, and if he acts without care of that system... he might destroy it. Or it might destroy him.---So directly to your point: There is clearly a need for more introspection than "zero". And suggesting otherwise is unbelievably conceited. It is cancerous, and should be treated as such.

simianwords: I unfortunately see a lot of people take the low iq interpretation of a concept and critique it because the higher iq interpretation looks quite similar unless you have done the ground work.“Rich people bad” is too easy a local optima to fall into and not escape.As for the article: the author asks move forward to what? If the author had read more on what Marc really means by move forward and what direction means, they wouldn’t have asked this. Unfortunately, the low iq critique is easy so that’s what we end up with.