surprisetalkMarc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/marc-andreessen-is-wrong-about-introspection/
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.
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.
> 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. I personally think cost satisfaction explains multiple levels, from biology up.
Related to introspection - it certainly has a cost for doing it, and a cost for not doing it. Going happy go lucky is not necessarily optimal, experience was expensive to gain, not using it at all is a big loss. Being paralyzed by rumination is also not optimal, we have to act in time, we can't delay and if we do, it comes out differently.
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?
They’re just the most ruthless
If you look at the entire entirety of understood history of biology:
The most ruthless always wins
That 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 generation
That is literally and unambiguously how all life operates
There 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
That's not how humans came to populate areas that previously were dominated by predators who would be obviously deadly to individual humans. Cooperation and planning are what made physically weak humans dominant. That cooperation and planning developed and flourished without authoritarian structures.
They found luck and success and continue to compound that. However it's easy to make so much money when you have that much already. Just promise the world or invest in companies that do and ride unicorns with private investments into the sunset. The risk they take now is very low.
I feel like they will never suffer the consequences of their actions in any negative way should they get it wrong.
Rarely do we see billionaires not become billionaires because they know how the game is played because they shaped the game so they only ever fail upwards.
> Just promise the world or invest in companies that do and ride unicorns with private investments into the sunset.
Yes, which is why the ranks of the very wealthy are filled with lucky grifters. They got rich by luck, then expanded that wealth with some combination of fanciful statements, lies, and outright fraud.
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.
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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.
Oh come on. So you're rooting for the evil genius in the comic book movie? You would harm millions of people to move up the financial success yardstick?
I don't think many people would agree with such positions.
I do think that people who have succeeded financially might adopt that ethos as an ex post rationalization.