Marc Andreessen on Investing and Tech(richardhanania.substack.com)
richardhanania.substack.com
Marc Andreessen on Investing and Tech
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/flying-x-wings-into-the-death-star
116 comments
The internet is a network of networks. Nobody claims DARPA invented sending signals over wires, or even computer networks.
Then DARPA contribution was literally to work out how to connect separate networks together into a practical wide area network.
The internet is a network of networks.
We would of course have had one in some form. The one we have is based on DARPA’s.
Then DARPA contribution was literally to work out how to connect separate networks together into a practical wide area network.
The internet is a network of networks.
We would of course have had one in some form. The one we have is based on DARPA’s.
> The one we have is based on DARPA’s.
I know that. My point is to point out that government funding was not the key to the internet. The two keys to the internet are computers and wires (going back to the telegraphy system).
> Then DARPA contribution was literally to work out how to connect separate networks together into a practical wide area network.
That was also invented several times. They were often called "gateways" at the time.
I know that. My point is to point out that government funding was not the key to the internet. The two keys to the internet are computers and wires (going back to the telegraphy system).
> Then DARPA contribution was literally to work out how to connect separate networks together into a practical wide area network.
That was also invented several times. They were often called "gateways" at the time.
What darpa did was a lot more that ‘gateways’.
As for government funding not being key. I’m not sure we can say either way. It certainly was key to what we ended up with.
We’d have had some kind of internet in any case, but who knows what it would have looked like and what kind of tollbooths etc would have been set up on it had the model been different.
As for government funding not being key. I’m not sure we can say either way. It certainly was key to what we ended up with.
We’d have had some kind of internet in any case, but who knows what it would have looked like and what kind of tollbooths etc would have been set up on it had the model been different.
> What darpa did was a lot more that ‘gateways’.
What a gateway does is connect two different protocols - just what gave it the name "inter"net.
> had the model been different
Indeed nobody can know the details of what might have been. But consider operating systems. Capitalism has delivered a free one that is arguably very, very good. Linux, if that's not obvious :-) Who could have predicted that? Capitalism also produced very high quality software that goes with it, for free.
It's possible we would have had something better than the internet protocol. For example, one that is completely decentralized and not dependent on a central authority to manage things like domain names and assign IP addresses. For example, GUIDs could be used instead. Are you sure that the current internet protocol is the best system? Or is it just that the internet protocol won out because it had a head start in the universities?
For another example of a fault in the internet protocol, say I go to google.com. It fails. What's at fault - the browser, the network card, the cable, the router, tje cable modem, the cable to the house, the ISP, or google's server? There appears to be no way to know, or at least in 25 years of using the internet it's still a matter of poking around the system in my house, rebooting the router, phoning the ISP to see if they know of a failure, etc.
All I get is a screen saying it didn't work.
What a gateway does is connect two different protocols - just what gave it the name "inter"net.
> had the model been different
Indeed nobody can know the details of what might have been. But consider operating systems. Capitalism has delivered a free one that is arguably very, very good. Linux, if that's not obvious :-) Who could have predicted that? Capitalism also produced very high quality software that goes with it, for free.
It's possible we would have had something better than the internet protocol. For example, one that is completely decentralized and not dependent on a central authority to manage things like domain names and assign IP addresses. For example, GUIDs could be used instead. Are you sure that the current internet protocol is the best system? Or is it just that the internet protocol won out because it had a head start in the universities?
For another example of a fault in the internet protocol, say I go to google.com. It fails. What's at fault - the browser, the network card, the cable, the router, tje cable modem, the cable to the house, the ISP, or google's server? There appears to be no way to know, or at least in 25 years of using the internet it's still a matter of poking around the system in my house, rebooting the router, phoning the ISP to see if they know of a failure, etc.
All I get is a screen saying it didn't work.
> Capitalism has delivered a free one that is arguably very, very good. Linux, if that's not obvious :-) Who could have predicted that?
Linus was at a free public university with free healthcare and the state supporting his living expenses when he created Linux. About as far from capitalism as you can get.
> Capitalism also produced very high quality software that goes with it, for free.
I like capitalism and defend it often, however I think that investment matters, regardless of whether it comes from the state or private sources.
> It's possible we would have had something better than the internet protocol.
Yes, or it’s possible we’d have a closed system run by a giant company.
Linus was at a free public university with free healthcare and the state supporting his living expenses when he created Linux. About as far from capitalism as you can get.
> Capitalism also produced very high quality software that goes with it, for free.
I like capitalism and defend it often, however I think that investment matters, regardless of whether it comes from the state or private sources.
> It's possible we would have had something better than the internet protocol.
Yes, or it’s possible we’d have a closed system run by a giant company.
> Linus was at a free public university with free healthcare and the state supporting his living expenses when he created Linux. About as far from capitalism as you can get.
That's a pretty hard stretch there. The university did not finance Linux, it financed his education. Linus could just as well have partied instead. Free healthcare is nice, but for the vast majority of 20 year olds, very little healthcare is needed.
That's a pretty hard stretch there. The university did not finance Linux, it financed his education. Linus could just as well have partied instead. Free healthcare is nice, but for the vast majority of 20 year olds, very little healthcare is needed.
> The university did not finance Linux,
A strawman which nobody has claimed.
> it financed his education.
It financed whatever he wanted to do as part of his education.
> Linus could just as well have partied instead.
As you must surely agree, having made this statement.
> Free healthcare is nice, but for the vast majority of 20 year olds, very little healthcare is needed.
Sure, ignore the part where they paid his living expenses.
The point is that Linus was financed by the state, and Linux was obviously not an entrepreneurial project.
Claiming it is somehow a triumph of ‘capitalism’ is spurious at best.
iOS is a triumph of capitalism.
For what it’s worth, I think both iOS and Linux are good things in the world. I just don’t see how Linux is evidence of anything capitalistic.
A strawman which nobody has claimed.
> it financed his education.
It financed whatever he wanted to do as part of his education.
> Linus could just as well have partied instead.
As you must surely agree, having made this statement.
> Free healthcare is nice, but for the vast majority of 20 year olds, very little healthcare is needed.
Sure, ignore the part where they paid his living expenses.
The point is that Linus was financed by the state, and Linux was obviously not an entrepreneurial project.
Claiming it is somehow a triumph of ‘capitalism’ is spurious at best.
iOS is a triumph of capitalism.
For what it’s worth, I think both iOS and Linux are good things in the world. I just don’t see how Linux is evidence of anything capitalistic.
Yes but I think he means that these people were the first to have two computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environm...
They were the FIRST to have 2 computers? How can we even keep accurate historical info about computer ownership?
> Each SAGE Direction Center (DC) housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) not including supporting equipment. The FSQ-7 was actually two computers, "A" side and "B" side.
If one computer takes more than 10000sqft, then it's should be rare enough and verifiable. For comparison, a large California house with 5+ bedrooms are around 3000sqft.
If one computer takes more than 10000sqft, then it's should be rare enough and verifiable. For comparison, a large California house with 5+ bedrooms are around 3000sqft.
SAGE was truly impressive.
I can't dig up the link right now but highly recommend reading the manuals they wrote for engineers working on the computer. They are from the good old days when manuals were closer to textbooks than what we have now - it starts with the basics of logic and electronics and basically intuits the computer inductively from there.
I can't dig up the link right now but highly recommend reading the manuals they wrote for engineers working on the computer. They are from the good old days when manuals were closer to textbooks than what we have now - it starts with the basics of logic and electronics and basically intuits the computer inductively from there.
Early computers weren't mass produced objects, they were huge, expensive, custom built machines. It's like where was the first city to have two skyscrapers or who was the first person to fly to space twice. The records would be there unless they were deliberately hiding them (as many national intelligence agencies do).
Are you claiming that the US government didn't invest in the development and operation of the US telegraph network?
https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/telegraph.htm
https://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/telegraph.htm
Marconi developed a working telegraph first. On his own (well, with a couple collaborators). He strung up lines between rooms in the Capitol and demonstrated how it worked. Only then did Congress allocate funds to build a line between Washington and Baltimore. The line was built, and worked, but Congress showed no further interest, and there was no customer interest, either.
What worked was when Morse interested Amos Kendall, who helped set up the Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1845 with private funding. They set up a line between New York and Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, and on to the Mississippi.
This was profitable on its first day, and there was no stopping it after that.
What worked was when Morse interested Amos Kendall, who helped set up the Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1845 with private funding. They set up a line between New York and Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, and on to the Mississippi.
This was profitable on its first day, and there was no stopping it after that.
-- "The Victorian Internet"The US Postal Service operated a telegraph service more than thirty years before Marconi was born. The US government subsequently funded the first undersea cables, and then the first transcontinental telegraph line. This was all before Marconi was born.
During the American civil war, the North's US Military Telegraph Corp ran 15,000 miles of cable.
Additionally, Marconi didn't invent the telegraph, he invented the radio telegraph.
During the American civil war, the North's US Military Telegraph Corp ran 15,000 miles of cable.
Additionally, Marconi didn't invent the telegraph, he invented the radio telegraph.
The first undersea cable was partially funded by the British and US governments. It was a failure. The second one, that worked, was financed through stock sales.
As for the Civil War, of course the military funded it's expansion. Communications are absolutely essential to a military.
For comparison, two years after Morse's 40 mile experimental line in 1846, there was 2,000 miles of wire. 2 years after that, 12,000 miles and twenty companies. In 1852, 23,000 miles, with another 10,000 miles under construction. 9 years before the military began stringing wire.
As for the Civil War, of course the military funded it's expansion. Communications are absolutely essential to a military.
For comparison, two years after Morse's 40 mile experimental line in 1846, there was 2,000 miles of wire. 2 years after that, 12,000 miles and twenty companies. In 1852, 23,000 miles, with another 10,000 miles under construction. 9 years before the military began stringing wire.
-- The Victorian InternetEdit: Not Marconi, but Morse! Oops!
I hadn't even dared to think that Sturgeon's Law might apply to output in the field of science. Yikes.
"Anyway, science right now is in an existential crisis. This is a real, real issue, and there’s now a generation of scientists who specialize in pointing this out and analyzing it. Andrew Gelman and others. I’ll give you an example: I had a conversation with the long-time head of one of the big federal funding agencies for healthcare research who is also a very accomplished entrepreneur, and I said, “do you really think it’s true that 50-70% of biomedical research is fake?” This is a guy who has spent his life in this world. And he said “oh no, that’s not true at all. It’s 90%.” [Richard laughs]. I was like “holy shit,” I was flabbergasted that it could be 90%.
He’s like “well look, 90% of everything is shit”, which is literally this thing called Sturgeon’s law which says that 90% of everything is bad. 90% of every novel written is bad, 90% of music, 90% of art… 90% of everything is bad. So his analysis was, anything you get in the field of medical experimentation, biomedical development, and this is going to be true of any field, there’s like five labs total in the world that are really good at what they’re doing and doing really cutting edge work. And this is true of quantum computing; pick any field for advanced technology you want.
So those five labs have a pretty good shot at doing interesting work, even some of that is going to reproduce and some of it isn’t. But once you get out of those top five labs, it’s pretty much make-work, incremental, marginal improvements at best, and a complete waste of time otherwise. And I said “good God, why does the other 90% continue to get funded if you know this?” And he said, “well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.” Anyway, a longwinded way of saying that we have pretty serious structural and incentive problems in the research complex. "
"Anyway, science right now is in an existential crisis. This is a real, real issue, and there’s now a generation of scientists who specialize in pointing this out and analyzing it. Andrew Gelman and others. I’ll give you an example: I had a conversation with the long-time head of one of the big federal funding agencies for healthcare research who is also a very accomplished entrepreneur, and I said, “do you really think it’s true that 50-70% of biomedical research is fake?” This is a guy who has spent his life in this world. And he said “oh no, that’s not true at all. It’s 90%.” [Richard laughs]. I was like “holy shit,” I was flabbergasted that it could be 90%.
He’s like “well look, 90% of everything is shit”, which is literally this thing called Sturgeon’s law which says that 90% of everything is bad. 90% of every novel written is bad, 90% of music, 90% of art… 90% of everything is bad. So his analysis was, anything you get in the field of medical experimentation, biomedical development, and this is going to be true of any field, there’s like five labs total in the world that are really good at what they’re doing and doing really cutting edge work. And this is true of quantum computing; pick any field for advanced technology you want.
So those five labs have a pretty good shot at doing interesting work, even some of that is going to reproduce and some of it isn’t. But once you get out of those top five labs, it’s pretty much make-work, incremental, marginal improvements at best, and a complete waste of time otherwise. And I said “good God, why does the other 90% continue to get funded if you know this?” And he said, “well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.” Anyway, a longwinded way of saying that we have pretty serious structural and incentive problems in the research complex. "
I believe, this is how scaling works, and exactly the price we pay to afford the top-notch. In any given field, company, pro sport team, there are top 10% labs/groups/players that matters the most. However, to make the 10% emerge, there has to be a pyramid where the rest 90% is responsible for forming a stable infrastructure. Then it comes down to how well we can design the pyramid. Our result should be evaluated not by how thin we cut down the infrastructure, but how easy we make top-players emerge.
On another note, I have seen small no-name labs published impactful scientific results, and then went back to stealth mode again. It's super cool. Science labs, unlike a business entity, should not be measured by recurrent revenue and growth.
On another note, I have seen small no-name labs published impactful scientific results, and then went back to stealth mode again. It's super cool. Science labs, unlike a business entity, should not be measured by recurrent revenue and growth.
> the price we pay to afford the top-notch.
So, usually when people say this about sturgeon's law type stuff, it's because we genuinely don't know how to determine what's crap and what's not overall. For example, if we're talking about 90% of academic papers are crap, ok, it's true, but we pay the cost because we don't apriori which 10% will be the good ones.
The issue is that in academics, we actually have a pretty good idea which programs produce the best and most impactful work. Now it doesn't seem like a cost we have to pay, but rather a conscious decision not to cut out the crap (or to keep funding the crap).
I think the ideal outcome is that the culture and resources of all programs are approximately the same, and each produces 90% crap, and 10% good stuff.
So, usually when people say this about sturgeon's law type stuff, it's because we genuinely don't know how to determine what's crap and what's not overall. For example, if we're talking about 90% of academic papers are crap, ok, it's true, but we pay the cost because we don't apriori which 10% will be the good ones.
The issue is that in academics, we actually have a pretty good idea which programs produce the best and most impactful work. Now it doesn't seem like a cost we have to pay, but rather a conscious decision not to cut out the crap (or to keep funding the crap).
I think the ideal outcome is that the culture and resources of all programs are approximately the same, and each produces 90% crap, and 10% good stuff.
There's a difference between high-impact and high quality. You'd hope that the peer review process selects for high quality and then the impact is TBD by history, but it's usually the other way around.
> On another note, I have seen small no-name labs published impactful scientific results, and then went back to stealth mode again. It's super cool. Science labs, unlike a business entity, should not be measured by recurrent revenue and growth.
Did the individual contributors stay at these labs?
Did the individual contributors stay at these labs?
Yes, but this sturgeons law (maybe less extreme extent) often applies to within labs or within scientists as well.
Newton did first rate work, but he also spent a lot of time working on alchemy and theology which didn’t get anywhere.
Research grants are generally competitive, if you haven’t shown you’ve ever done something my significant or haven’t done something significant in a long time, it is difficult to survive. But indeed even the top scientists spend a lot of time on dead ends.
It is true that often only top 5 labs or so doing good work, but those top 5 labs are not constant over time, they wax and wane like fashion trends.
The lesson is just because over last few years the top work came from only a few labs, it’s premature to eliminate all other labs because those top labs could be lower in the next cycle.
Newton did first rate work, but he also spent a lot of time working on alchemy and theology which didn’t get anywhere.
Research grants are generally competitive, if you haven’t shown you’ve ever done something my significant or haven’t done something significant in a long time, it is difficult to survive. But indeed even the top scientists spend a lot of time on dead ends.
It is true that often only top 5 labs or so doing good work, but those top 5 labs are not constant over time, they wax and wane like fashion trends.
The lesson is just because over last few years the top work came from only a few labs, it’s premature to eliminate all other labs because those top labs could be lower in the next cycle.
It's also important to distinguish between things that turn out to be crap in retrospect and things that can be known to be crap given the information available at the time. Those are two very different things. Yes, alchemy is crap, but there's no way Newton could have known that given the data he had at his disposal at the time.
> things that can be known to be crap given the information available at the time
Sometimes people do investigate the crap, and discover it's actually fertilizer. The trouble is, one cannot tell in advance.
Sometimes people do investigate the crap, and discover it's actually fertilizer. The trouble is, one cannot tell in advance.
You understate your point. Many advances were 'known' in advance to be crap.
It’s somewhat laughable to say he worked on alchemy and theology and that got no where, while we are discussing him and his accomplishments 400 years later. Alchemy is an esoteric inner journey. Ramanujan was by all accounts a one of a kind genius. Just from wiki ‘Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess Namagiri Thayer’. Belief systems can be very powerful or destructive to ones own accomplishments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
This law seems to lack any kind of rigor or theoretical basis and seems like a purely rhetorical device.
This law seems to lack any kind of rigor or theoretical basis and seems like a purely rhetorical device.
90% of published laws are BS.
It’s not quite the Liar’s Paradox, I think Sturgeon’s fits into the other 10%.
It’s not quite the Liar’s Paradox, I think Sturgeon’s fits into the other 10%.
90% of Sturgeon's Law is crap.
As are most of these "laws". The idea isn't to do a conclusive, thorough examination of all things under the sun and render a statement that reflects that particular moment in time. The idea is to make an observation--perhaps true, perhaps false--that helps us maintain a healthy mindset when examining and comprehending things. It's not meant to be insightful, it's meant to encourage us to strive for better insight.
90% of laws are bad
Seems like an empirical approach to addressing this would be more effective. Otherwise it's just a gut feeling. I am not saying its wrong its just lacking in verifiable information.
It's purely rhetorical but - the specific 90% figure aside - it's fairly straightforward that not everyone can be the best. Everything else is just figuring out what sort of distribution you have.
In many fields the definition of "crap" depends, after all, on what the rest of the field's output looks like.
In many fields the definition of "crap" depends, after all, on what the rest of the field's output looks like.
It sounds like a manifestation of the pareto principle. I would in no way be surprised to see scientific advancement follow a power law distribution among contributors where the top 5-10% produce more and better science than the bottom 90% combined.
There's all kinds of reasons to expect that too... Everything from funding, likely collaboration partners, talent, etc.
That would give it some theoretical basis.
There's all kinds of reasons to expect that too... Everything from funding, likely collaboration partners, talent, etc.
That would give it some theoretical basis.
Not only this, but it appears to me that diagnoses of the state of science as a problem are making the classic problem a person like Andrew Gelman would usually quickly point out, which is ignoring base rates. Saying 70% of published research can't replicate sounds bad in a vacuum, but how does that compare to 50 years ago? We have no idea if this number that sounds terrible outside of any context represents an improvement, degradation, or no difference at all from what we should expect.
That isn't by any means to suggest we shouldn't try to make science better by being more replicable and reducing fraud, but if it is an improvement, we're already doing something right and there is far less cause for despair and cynicism.
It also, of course, doesn't do any base rate comparison to non-scientific ways of generating facts. If 90% of published psychology research turns out to be wrong, but 99% of folk psychology turns out to be wrong, then science is still winning there.
That isn't by any means to suggest we shouldn't try to make science better by being more replicable and reducing fraud, but if it is an improvement, we're already doing something right and there is far less cause for despair and cynicism.
It also, of course, doesn't do any base rate comparison to non-scientific ways of generating facts. If 90% of published psychology research turns out to be wrong, but 99% of folk psychology turns out to be wrong, then science is still winning there.
"Saying 70% of published research can't replicate sounds bad in a vacuum, but how does that compare to 50 years ago?"
It doesn't matter a whole lot with respect to 'how it compares to 50 years ago' if the assumption that science is supposed to be objective and credible.
It's supposed to be 'approaching 100%' i.e. they are publishing findings, not fake findings.
i.e. it's not a game of 'getting a higher percentage' it's a game of integrity.
The implications that 'most science is rubbish' is pretty scary actually and it has profound consequences for the future both in practical terms (i.e. we can't trust a lot of it), but especially in populist terms (i.e. people not trusting climate change, vaccine research etc.).
"If 90% of published psychology research turns out to be wrong, but 99% of folk psychology turns out to be wrong, then science is still winning there. "
Is it though? We spend bazillions on psychology and nothing on pop psychology, so we'd have to contemplate how valuable that '10%' is to society - especially in the context that we may not even know 'which 10%'.
This is kind of a big problem.
It doesn't matter a whole lot with respect to 'how it compares to 50 years ago' if the assumption that science is supposed to be objective and credible.
It's supposed to be 'approaching 100%' i.e. they are publishing findings, not fake findings.
i.e. it's not a game of 'getting a higher percentage' it's a game of integrity.
The implications that 'most science is rubbish' is pretty scary actually and it has profound consequences for the future both in practical terms (i.e. we can't trust a lot of it), but especially in populist terms (i.e. people not trusting climate change, vaccine research etc.).
"If 90% of published psychology research turns out to be wrong, but 99% of folk psychology turns out to be wrong, then science is still winning there. "
Is it though? We spend bazillions on psychology and nothing on pop psychology, so we'd have to contemplate how valuable that '10%' is to society - especially in the context that we may not even know 'which 10%'.
This is kind of a big problem.
There's a big, important difference between "fake fraudulent findings" and "not-replicable findings." The latter suggests problems stemming from a big nasty complicated poorly-understood world, and can be improved with introspection and change over time. The first step is the greatly increased discussion over it now than in the past - we're discovering the size of the problem. The next step will be to do things with that. Publishing negative results, getting everyone to have a better understanding of prob/stat... I think those are the directions to go in.
If, on the other hand, you just dumped all those psychology researchers out of the academic environment and sent them to marketing and advertising companies... are we better off?
If, on the other hand, you just dumped all those psychology researchers out of the academic environment and sent them to marketing and advertising companies... are we better off?
> If, on the other hand, you just dumped all those psychology researchers out of the academic environment and sent them to marketing and advertising companies... are we better off?
Honestly? Very possibly.
The reason is that regardless of your opinion of marketing/advertising (mine is not overly positive while acknowledging that informing consumers of new products etc is a worthwhile endeavour broadly speaking) at least if the psychology researchers were trying to implement whatever their pet theory is in a company the market will quite quickly let them know whether or not it is horseshit. Markets have faults of course but at least if the psychological theories were implemented at companies you could reasonably easily tell if they were effective or not simply based on do they increase sales etc. If they turn out to be nonsense, this acts as a signal to the individual as well as others that this avenue of study is not worth further exploration.
Whereas Academia can often act as an artificial greenhouse environment for theories/hypotheses that won't survive contact with the real world but seem quite successful in the artificial environment.
Honestly? Very possibly.
The reason is that regardless of your opinion of marketing/advertising (mine is not overly positive while acknowledging that informing consumers of new products etc is a worthwhile endeavour broadly speaking) at least if the psychology researchers were trying to implement whatever their pet theory is in a company the market will quite quickly let them know whether or not it is horseshit. Markets have faults of course but at least if the psychological theories were implemented at companies you could reasonably easily tell if they were effective or not simply based on do they increase sales etc. If they turn out to be nonsense, this acts as a signal to the individual as well as others that this avenue of study is not worth further exploration.
Whereas Academia can often act as an artificial greenhouse environment for theories/hypotheses that won't survive contact with the real world but seem quite successful in the artificial environment.
Interesting. Marc is a nuanced guy of course but I sense he may have shifted in the last while. I recall in his 1:1 w/ Peter Thiel he took the opposing side of this argument. Peter does not mince words re: the progress of "science". Perhaps Marc was just doing it for the sake of discussion.
Playing with some numbers... here's an interesting way setting a bar for publication can backfire: if you don't publish negative results, and you define positive results as 0.05-level, you're going to greatly inflate the amount of false-positives you publish, in fields that rely on statistical significance.
(Fudging here around the 0.05 threshold threshold, since stuff on that boundary is the most likely to produce false positives, not sure what how to use a more realistic range... I think this would just be upper-bound on false positives? Please correct/clarify if your probability/statistics knowledge here is deeper than mine!)
Let's say twenty different researchers have a similar idea, they all pursue it, and one of them gets (un)lucky and gets apparently statistically significant results. They're the only ones that try to publish, and nobody ever has the knowledge that it only worked 1 time out of 20 (or more?) - even the people who's experiments failed who see it are only aware of their own attempt, and maybe they just messed something up.
Let's say 90% of all published results are non-reproducible. What sort of pipeline would be required to create that? For every reproducible, significant finding, there are 9 false-positives. For each of those false-positives there were 19 true-negatives. So about 1 out of 180 research attempts are reproducible truly-meaningful novel results. Does that sound reasonable? It's hard, right, especially to keep finding new things on top of everyone else's continued progress too? But it isn't necessarily malicious or fraudulent every step of the way - we just have our system structured in a way that biases in favor of creating false positives.
(Put in other numbers, say 10% of all research has significant results, then 90% of it doesn't, and at the 0.05 level, that's still (up to?) 4.5 false positives for every 10 truly statistically significant things, meaning close to 1 out of every 3 papers would still be expected to be a false positive.)
Publishing negative results would require a bigger publication industry, and more people spending more time filtering through it all, but you'd at least be able to compare to the literature to say "this looks like it worked, but ... it hasn't ever worked for anyone else."
(Fudging here around the 0.05 threshold threshold, since stuff on that boundary is the most likely to produce false positives, not sure what how to use a more realistic range... I think this would just be upper-bound on false positives? Please correct/clarify if your probability/statistics knowledge here is deeper than mine!)
Let's say twenty different researchers have a similar idea, they all pursue it, and one of them gets (un)lucky and gets apparently statistically significant results. They're the only ones that try to publish, and nobody ever has the knowledge that it only worked 1 time out of 20 (or more?) - even the people who's experiments failed who see it are only aware of their own attempt, and maybe they just messed something up.
Let's say 90% of all published results are non-reproducible. What sort of pipeline would be required to create that? For every reproducible, significant finding, there are 9 false-positives. For each of those false-positives there were 19 true-negatives. So about 1 out of 180 research attempts are reproducible truly-meaningful novel results. Does that sound reasonable? It's hard, right, especially to keep finding new things on top of everyone else's continued progress too? But it isn't necessarily malicious or fraudulent every step of the way - we just have our system structured in a way that biases in favor of creating false positives.
(Put in other numbers, say 10% of all research has significant results, then 90% of it doesn't, and at the 0.05 level, that's still (up to?) 4.5 false positives for every 10 truly statistically significant things, meaning close to 1 out of every 3 papers would still be expected to be a false positive.)
Publishing negative results would require a bigger publication industry, and more people spending more time filtering through it all, but you'd at least be able to compare to the literature to say "this looks like it worked, but ... it hasn't ever worked for anyone else."
IMO, it is another form of compensation.
People look to get 3 things in a job: Compensation, Interest and Reputation.
The professor is a researcher who teaches. However, they do not want to merely be a teacher. Especially when it comes with a substantial pay cut in comparison to the industry. So, you offer them repute and interest by giving tenure and something to research. The university gets a better teacher for cheap and the professor gets an inflated sense of ego and self-actualization.
From the student's point of view, it opens up alternate avenues for promotion. If only the top 5 labs get funded enough to do good work, then entering those top 5 labs early is absolutely essential. Anyone who doesn't get on the bandwagon early, will be left to the wolves like medical residencies. It will greatly exacerbate the competition in standardized exams and sideline students who don't abide by a rigid template early in life. (eg: a lot of friends went to tier 2 universities for their masters, did excellent work and got into the top 5 labs purely because the top 50 lab was funded enough for them to make up for lost time early in life)
I have also seen lab impact scores jump around substantially enough, that while the 90% hypothesis may be true, we have no way to picking out who will create the 10% that's gold. While half of the 10% might get reliably produced by the top 5 labs. The other half can be notoriously hard to pin down. You will see this in top industry groups (MSR, Brain) that hire exclusively out of the top 5 labs. Even there, the 90% number holds, despite there being a hiring system specifically built for capitalistic impact.
On the flip side, any academic field whose employability exists only within academia is a dictionary-definition pyramid scheme. It is a common accusation that's correctly levied on the liberal arts, but STEM should not be immune to it.
People look to get 3 things in a job: Compensation, Interest and Reputation.
The professor is a researcher who teaches. However, they do not want to merely be a teacher. Especially when it comes with a substantial pay cut in comparison to the industry. So, you offer them repute and interest by giving tenure and something to research. The university gets a better teacher for cheap and the professor gets an inflated sense of ego and self-actualization.
From the student's point of view, it opens up alternate avenues for promotion. If only the top 5 labs get funded enough to do good work, then entering those top 5 labs early is absolutely essential. Anyone who doesn't get on the bandwagon early, will be left to the wolves like medical residencies. It will greatly exacerbate the competition in standardized exams and sideline students who don't abide by a rigid template early in life. (eg: a lot of friends went to tier 2 universities for their masters, did excellent work and got into the top 5 labs purely because the top 50 lab was funded enough for them to make up for lost time early in life)
I have also seen lab impact scores jump around substantially enough, that while the 90% hypothesis may be true, we have no way to picking out who will create the 10% that's gold. While half of the 10% might get reliably produced by the top 5 labs. The other half can be notoriously hard to pin down. You will see this in top industry groups (MSR, Brain) that hire exclusively out of the top 5 labs. Even there, the 90% number holds, despite there being a hiring system specifically built for capitalistic impact.
On the flip side, any academic field whose employability exists only within academia is a dictionary-definition pyramid scheme. It is a common accusation that's correctly levied on the liberal arts, but STEM should not be immune to it.
[deleted]
It should be point out that Marc Andreessen of all people should deeply believe Sturgeon's law - after all, return on investment for venture firms are dominated by few 'hits' and lots of 'duds'.
Of course - I think if anyone act on the belief that 90% of their bets are duds, they would not be in the venture business. It's really interesting that a process could lead to a distribution - but knowing the outcome distribution is actually...useless?
Of course - I think if anyone act on the belief that 90% of their bets are duds, they would not be in the venture business. It's really interesting that a process could lead to a distribution - but knowing the outcome distribution is actually...useless?
> So those five labs have a pretty good shot at doing interesting work, even some of that is going to reproduce and some of it isn’t. But once you get out of those top five labs, it’s pretty much make-work, incremental, marginal improvements at best, and a complete waste of time otherwise. And I said “good God, why does the other 90% continue to get funded if you know this?” And he said, “well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.” Anyway, a longwinded way of saying that we have pretty serious structural and incentive problems in the research complex. "
This seems like an non-thorough and fairly uninteresting answer to the question.
I would want to know how much useful-but-not-groundbreaking stuff still comes out of the "make work" crowd, how wide you need the funnel to be at the top to make sure you catch the people who can end up in the top labs and who make breakthroughs, how much of a "safety net" that you need to make sure people are motivated to jump into the funnel in the first place rather than going into something safer, etc.
A world where we have fewer "wasteful" make-work research jobs but also have fewer breakthroughs isn't great. Hell, you could call the majority of today's service- and information-oriented non-academic jobs "make-work" too (let's up those clickthrough rates! let's stream this video in 8k instead of 4k! let's move this money around slightly faster!). So is there necessarily much utility in moving "make-work" researchers into other fields?
This seems like an non-thorough and fairly uninteresting answer to the question.
I would want to know how much useful-but-not-groundbreaking stuff still comes out of the "make work" crowd, how wide you need the funnel to be at the top to make sure you catch the people who can end up in the top labs and who make breakthroughs, how much of a "safety net" that you need to make sure people are motivated to jump into the funnel in the first place rather than going into something safer, etc.
A world where we have fewer "wasteful" make-work research jobs but also have fewer breakthroughs isn't great. Hell, you could call the majority of today's service- and information-oriented non-academic jobs "make-work" too (let's up those clickthrough rates! let's stream this video in 8k instead of 4k! let's move this money around slightly faster!). So is there necessarily much utility in moving "make-work" researchers into other fields?
it's all about incentives, the modern academic system has the incentives all wrong for creating innovation and quality work. Replication crisis is just a symptom of the real problem
> So those five labs have a pretty good shot at doing interesting work, even some of that is going to reproduce and some of it isn’t. But once you get out of those top five labs, it’s pretty much make-work, incremental, marginal improvements at best, and a complete waste of time otherwise. And I said “good God, why does the other 90% continue to get funded if you know this?” And he said, “well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.” Anyway, a longwinded way of saying that we have pretty serious structural and incentive problems in the research complex. "
You need to fund avenues that don't look promising now. Some new developments may make them good. E.g. deep learning before 2011.
You need to fund avenues that don't look promising now. Some new developments may make them good. E.g. deep learning before 2011.
It is also difficult to identify who is doing good work a priori and there’s also the out of left field work which proves successful despite being a no name. You also train new scientists etc…. I think most noble prizes are from people whose research was initially discounted.
[deleted]
> So his analysis was, anything you get in the field of medical experimentation, biomedical development, and this is going to be true of any field, there’s like five labs total in the world that are really good at what they’re doing and doing really cutting edge work. And this is true of quantum computing; pick any field for advanced technology you want.
That's also true for software engineers. A handful of 10x can carry a company a long way.
That's also true for software engineers. A handful of 10x can carry a company a long way.
As if we are capable of determining who is doing the top 10% best science and are not glued to the 10% most shining project according to the fad of the day.
I don't see a better system. Maybe I'm misunderstanding his or your point. To me this is essentially capitalism. 90% or more of businesses fail, and of those that don't, 90% or more suck. But if you tried to call that 99% "waste" that could be avoided by only running the good business, you would fail miserably. Research is exactly the same. We can't just identify and fund the good research.
(But this should be obvious to a VC so I may be reading it wrong)
(But this should be obvious to a VC so I may be reading it wrong)
Well said - Perhaps a way to look at it is that 'good' is a subjective target that should be define as 'distance from average/medium'.
So let's be thankful of the crappy medium haha
So let's be thankful of the crappy medium haha
This is definitely not the right analogy because one is a matter of risk, the other a matter of integrity.
New business ventures are inherently risky.
Research is inherently risky, and we would expect 90% to 'fail' but for 90% of papers to be rubbish would be a matter of 'extreme corruption' along the lines of 90% of judges taking bribes etc..
"I don't see a better system."
Well, one thing we could do is punish people for knowingly publishing crap results, i.e. have a 'secondary review system' that investigates 'why' results were rubbish, and if there was malfeasance, well, put in place some kind of retribution.
We could also change our tune with respect to expectations, and come to 'expect' that the majority of research should publish then 'null' result and that should just be it.
New business ventures are inherently risky.
Research is inherently risky, and we would expect 90% to 'fail' but for 90% of papers to be rubbish would be a matter of 'extreme corruption' along the lines of 90% of judges taking bribes etc..
"I don't see a better system."
Well, one thing we could do is punish people for knowingly publishing crap results, i.e. have a 'secondary review system' that investigates 'why' results were rubbish, and if there was malfeasance, well, put in place some kind of retribution.
We could also change our tune with respect to expectations, and come to 'expect' that the majority of research should publish then 'null' result and that should just be it.
Be careful about assuming malice where ignorance exists.
It's possible for 90% of papers to be rubbish without any ill intent or dishonesty on the part of the experimenter. They might simply suffer from "works for me" syndrome, as it afflicts software developers. In science, this equates to failing to control for all the possible confounding factors that might affect the result of the experiment. They might have carefully controlled for everything they thought of and gotten methodologically valid results, but then when another experimenter tries to replicate it, they find their experimental environment is different in a way that neither considered important but alters the results.
Finding all these conflaters is the point of science. If you can't replicate the experiment, it means the results don't hold, but it doesn't mean the investigators were bad people - and assuming they are is unlikely to get better science.
It's possible for 90% of papers to be rubbish without any ill intent or dishonesty on the part of the experimenter. They might simply suffer from "works for me" syndrome, as it afflicts software developers. In science, this equates to failing to control for all the possible confounding factors that might affect the result of the experiment. They might have carefully controlled for everything they thought of and gotten methodologically valid results, but then when another experimenter tries to replicate it, they find their experimental environment is different in a way that neither considered important but alters the results.
Finding all these conflaters is the point of science. If you can't replicate the experiment, it means the results don't hold, but it doesn't mean the investigators were bad people - and assuming they are is unlikely to get better science.
I think this is a good point too - venture companies and research SHOULD have two very different distributions
Research in general is the same, but shouldn’t _published_ research have already gone through a filter such that it represents the 10% that hasn’t failed?
Only if you tie publication to reproduction. But you can't really do that, because to reproduce an experiment independently, the independent researchers need to have learned about your result and methodology, which = publication.
Without being able to independently verify results, a lot of journals rely on signals like your research & results being noteworthy, which is anticorrelated with them being true. If our understanding of the world is at all correct, you'd expect most experiments to give boring, status-quo results, and your first impulse when you get something noteworthy is to assume the experimenter made a mistake. (Interestingly, this is how things work at the undergrad level - if you measure the speed of light at 1 million meters/sec, your prof will assume you screwed up.)
Probably we need a separate verification step after publication, with researchers evaluated on what fraction of their published results survive verification, not just how many papers they publish. Publish all the noteworthy results you get, but assume that published research doesn't mean much until it's been independently reproduced.
Without being able to independently verify results, a lot of journals rely on signals like your research & results being noteworthy, which is anticorrelated with them being true. If our understanding of the world is at all correct, you'd expect most experiments to give boring, status-quo results, and your first impulse when you get something noteworthy is to assume the experimenter made a mistake. (Interestingly, this is how things work at the undergrad level - if you measure the speed of light at 1 million meters/sec, your prof will assume you screwed up.)
Probably we need a separate verification step after publication, with researchers evaluated on what fraction of their published results survive verification, not just how many papers they publish. Publish all the noteworthy results you get, but assume that published research doesn't mean much until it's been independently reproduced.
> He’s like “well look, 90% of everything is shit”
I think there is a difference between "being shit" and "being fake" though. 'do you really think it’s true that 50-70% of biomedical research is fake?'
Fake seems more insidious and problematic.
Also this brings up a very troubling issue. If 90% of the "research is fake/shit" and lets say that means that 90% of the researchers are "fake/shit", then it means that 'scientific' consensus is also likely "fake/shit".
This is why I'm always skeptical of 'scientific' consensus. Science is about evidence, testing, etc. Not consensus - which is the realm of politics, law, etc.
And I'd suspect 99.99% of social 'sciences' is probably 'fake/shit' and that is used to push/change society/government/etc.
I think there is a difference between "being shit" and "being fake" though. 'do you really think it’s true that 50-70% of biomedical research is fake?'
Fake seems more insidious and problematic.
Also this brings up a very troubling issue. If 90% of the "research is fake/shit" and lets say that means that 90% of the researchers are "fake/shit", then it means that 'scientific' consensus is also likely "fake/shit".
This is why I'm always skeptical of 'scientific' consensus. Science is about evidence, testing, etc. Not consensus - which is the realm of politics, law, etc.
And I'd suspect 99.99% of social 'sciences' is probably 'fake/shit' and that is used to push/change society/government/etc.
I think it's irrelevant to what was being said in their conversation. In Marc's context, being fake/shit equated to non-replicable simply. Before that quote, I believe he was talking about the replication crisis briefly.
> So it’s very hard to make time scales match for 20-year intellectual journeys.
Xerox did it with the copy machine. Which then remade the business world. They did it again with the user interface, though it was Apple that capitalized on it.
Frank Whittle soldiered on for many years trying to invent the jet engine, funded by venture capitalism at the time. The government wasn't interested until he demonstrated flying jet aircraft. In the meantime the US government shut down Lockheed's nascent jet engine project.
Xerox did it with the copy machine. Which then remade the business world. They did it again with the user interface, though it was Apple that capitalized on it.
Frank Whittle soldiered on for many years trying to invent the jet engine, funded by venture capitalism at the time. The government wasn't interested until he demonstrated flying jet aircraft. In the meantime the US government shut down Lockheed's nascent jet engine project.
> I think it’s possible we as a society spent 50 years assembling these systems and these games in the first half the 20th century, and then we spent the last half of the 20th century gaming the games.
Interesting perception, seems to have explanatory power. I’ll note that building games and gaming them has accelerated with tech. (Facebook, Tiktok, Amazon, REvil, Robinhood.) These aren’t institutional games, these are societal games. Different and fluid yet roughly defined groups.
Interesting perception, seems to have explanatory power. I’ll note that building games and gaming them has accelerated with tech. (Facebook, Tiktok, Amazon, REvil, Robinhood.) These aren’t institutional games, these are societal games. Different and fluid yet roughly defined groups.
The super elite hypothesis is interesting, in that it lacks a plausible mechanism. By and large you would expect that educating and equipping more people would produce more progress in any field, up until there is more coordination tax than benefit from adding more people.
Is it possible that the sciences and other fields have exceptionally high coordination taxes? Or is it likely that we’ve structured them such that only a small number of slots exist for people to move the needle.
The latter seems eminently true given the finite number of conference slots and the former seems true given the the need to convince more people of a given direction.
If such a dynamic exists than the advent of communication technologies may actually hamper forward progress due to elimination of smaller research networks.
Is it possible that the sciences and other fields have exceptionally high coordination taxes? Or is it likely that we’ve structured them such that only a small number of slots exist for people to move the needle.
The latter seems eminently true given the finite number of conference slots and the former seems true given the the need to convince more people of a given direction.
If such a dynamic exists than the advent of communication technologies may actually hamper forward progress due to elimination of smaller research networks.
> Marc: I think there’s a real argument, and this is the most uncomfortable form of argument, there is a real argument that there are just a certain number of super-elite people.
I really enjoy it when people say exactly what they think.
I really enjoy it when people say exactly what they think.
It's not a brave or iconoclastic thought; it's actually incredibly common: Throughout history the wealthy have thought of themselves as superior.
If they got lucky, it was because they were "super-elite." No one's going to win a nurture-or-nature argument but there's a clear self-interest in these situations to call nature what was, at least in part, nurture.
If they got lucky, it was because they were "super-elite." No one's going to win a nurture-or-nature argument but there's a clear self-interest in these situations to call nature what was, at least in part, nurture.
He's not talking about the wealthy, he's talking about scientists, most of whom are not rich, or at least not "super-elite" level rich.
Oh, he's talking about himself and his friends too, make no mistake. In nurture-vs-nature, those who struggle to achieve something understand how large a role nurture plays, and those who win the "circumstance lottery" tend to insist that it was bestowed on them directly from God.
It's like talking about how there are "just a certain number of super-elite" players of pickle ball. It's conflating datasets of those who have been given access to the entire spectrum of attributes necessary to know and be good at pickle ball, with the vast seas of those who haven't. How can you say it's rare based on such a small data sample? If you were a pickle ball champion, would you really brag about how, "Let's face it, there are only a couple of us; we're just that good."
It's like talking about how there are "just a certain number of super-elite" players of pickle ball. It's conflating datasets of those who have been given access to the entire spectrum of attributes necessary to know and be good at pickle ball, with the vast seas of those who haven't. How can you say it's rare based on such a small data sample? If you were a pickle ball champion, would you really brag about how, "Let's face it, there are only a couple of us; we're just that good."
> he's talking about himself and his friends too
No he’s not. He’s talking about scientists. You are putting words in his mouth.
No he’s not. He’s talking about scientists. You are putting words in his mouth.
Irrespective of the self-rationalization, if their success is conditional on their starting place, how can one judge it to be “lucky”? It must necessarily be predetermined, correct?
How is that saying anything meaningful though?
The only way the statement could be false would be for everyone to be at the same level of skill/knowledge/aptitude/etc. but there's clearly some non-uniform distribution and regardless of where you draw the line to define super-elite, some people will fall in that group.
The only way the statement could be false would be for everyone to be at the same level of skill/knowledge/aptitude/etc. but there's clearly some non-uniform distribution and regardless of where you draw the line to define super-elite, some people will fall in that group.
He's saying it's an intrinsic quality. The implication being that we spend too many resources educating people.
He doesn't appear to be saying that. He's talking in those paragraphs about systems, and arguing that by building systems that scale, we're creating bureaucracy that de-motivates the most elite people even though it was originally intended to allow the excellent performers to rise.
But he doesn't present much evidence for this beyond a speculative "If someone’s truly a member of the elite, are able to generate elite-level results, if you wanted to demotivate them and draw them out of the field, what would you do? You would surround them with mediocrity and drown them in bullshit" that's extrapolated from what the founders he's talking to are telling him.
One potential blind spot seems to be "maybe weeding through tedium is a good quality in many researchers, since much of research is more tedious than founding a startup." After all, he's basing this on talking to people who left the system, not talking to today's top researchers.
I think a bigger one is that he says even in his system, most (50%+) of the companies he funds fail to do anything interesting. So this is still, from the same sort of standard of efficiency applied to researchers here, woefully wasteful.
I'm also not really clear on how he thinks it should be changed.
But he doesn't present much evidence for this beyond a speculative "If someone’s truly a member of the elite, are able to generate elite-level results, if you wanted to demotivate them and draw them out of the field, what would you do? You would surround them with mediocrity and drown them in bullshit" that's extrapolated from what the founders he's talking to are telling him.
One potential blind spot seems to be "maybe weeding through tedium is a good quality in many researchers, since much of research is more tedious than founding a startup." After all, he's basing this on talking to people who left the system, not talking to today's top researchers.
I think a bigger one is that he says even in his system, most (50%+) of the companies he funds fail to do anything interesting. So this is still, from the same sort of standard of efficiency applied to researchers here, woefully wasteful.
I'm also not really clear on how he thinks it should be changed.
I can't tell whether these types of guys are totally ignorant of concepts like the Nietzschean Übermensch or whether they're just careful to avoid referring to it too directly.
They are totally aware and believe that they are the Übermensch while funding and working on the Clubhouse app and sneering at all the people in broken institutions delivering things like healthcare or education.
"Imagine you're an expert in only one thing and it's computer programming. Books are a waste of time except as quick references; you can achieve full expertise just by teaching yourself through internet searches, discussion forums, and maybe the occasional blog post if you're really keen. When you have to solve a problem, you strip away as much of the context as possible, until you can isolate it down to a single phrase of logic. As soon as you solve that one isolated microproblem, the results blow up exponentially to satisfy all kinds of needs and desires you haven't even thought of.
Now imagine that even though you're doing journeyman skilled labor like a plumber or electrician (except it doesn't even require professional certification), you earn a salary well into the six figures - or even equity that grows to the millions or billions - in a Wall Street-like testosterone bubble where you and your colleagues unabashedly believe you're the smartest people in the room, the beneficiaries of a pure meritocracy, and you're Changing The World as much as you can when unimpeded by the hordes of fuzzies who just don't know how to think.
Of course you come to believe that anyone who claims to be a credentialed expert, and says this or that issue is actually much more complicated and contextual than you appreciate, is probably just a big faker whose whole field of study could be solved elegantly if a smart person like you just spent some hobby time stripping away the context to isolate that one neat trick of logic."
Not sure who wrote this originally found it here - https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/i7a24j/tech_brai...
"Imagine you're an expert in only one thing and it's computer programming. Books are a waste of time except as quick references; you can achieve full expertise just by teaching yourself through internet searches, discussion forums, and maybe the occasional blog post if you're really keen. When you have to solve a problem, you strip away as much of the context as possible, until you can isolate it down to a single phrase of logic. As soon as you solve that one isolated microproblem, the results blow up exponentially to satisfy all kinds of needs and desires you haven't even thought of.
Now imagine that even though you're doing journeyman skilled labor like a plumber or electrician (except it doesn't even require professional certification), you earn a salary well into the six figures - or even equity that grows to the millions or billions - in a Wall Street-like testosterone bubble where you and your colleagues unabashedly believe you're the smartest people in the room, the beneficiaries of a pure meritocracy, and you're Changing The World as much as you can when unimpeded by the hordes of fuzzies who just don't know how to think.
Of course you come to believe that anyone who claims to be a credentialed expert, and says this or that issue is actually much more complicated and contextual than you appreciate, is probably just a big faker whose whole field of study could be solved elegantly if a smart person like you just spent some hobby time stripping away the context to isolate that one neat trick of logic."
Not sure who wrote this originally found it here - https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/i7a24j/tech_brai...
I mean, look at the monuments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s myopic to judge the tech world around mobile apps instead of the decades long capitalizations that can bring mass market super computers into the palm of our hands.
Now compare that to the research interests over the same time-horizon. We still have psychology departments not educating basic cellular biology as a graduation requirement!
It’s myopic to judge the tech world around mobile apps instead of the decades long capitalizations that can bring mass market super computers into the palm of our hands.
Now compare that to the research interests over the same time-horizon. We still have psychology departments not educating basic cellular biology as a graduation requirement!
[deleted]
Richard's argument starting with
> But I think of sociability or socializing as a collective action problem.
is excellent. He nails it in a way I hadn't articulated before. Marc disagrees, but I'm really with Richard on this one.
> But I think of sociability or socializing as a collective action problem.
is excellent. He nails it in a way I hadn't articulated before. Marc disagrees, but I'm really with Richard on this one.
I like what strongtowns has to say on the topic. Also, it does seem like circumstances bringing people together for some amount of time seems necessary for bonding.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/1/6/college-campuse...
https://news.ku.edu/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/1/6/college-campuse...
https://news.ku.edu/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it...
It's difficult to speak off-the-cuff on any topic that might come up in an interview, but I expected better than 'at least it's not boring' about QAnon when attempting to reply on the social impacts of technology.
Social media definitely has negative impacts (e.g. directly tied to mobs in India and Burma) and positive impacts (so much easier to stay connected across the world) - it would've been 'interesting' to hear a more nuanced take from one of the inventors of the modern internet
Social media definitely has negative impacts (e.g. directly tied to mobs in India and Burma) and positive impacts (so much easier to stay connected across the world) - it would've been 'interesting' to hear a more nuanced take from one of the inventors of the modern internet
On immigration policy:
> Traditionally if I wanted to work at a company in another country I would have to go to that country. I’d have to be an immigrant from my country, at least for a while. In a world of remote work and Zoom and Slack, I can now work for people anywhere in the world. I can work for companies doing any kind of knowledge work. Immigration policies apply to the atoms of human beings, they don’t apply to the bits. I can go to work for some company anywhere in the world if it’s a remote-friendly company. I may never travel there, I may never have to travel there.
Marc Andreessen is getting very close to saying the quiet part out loud. This is the clearest statement I've seen to date from a venture capitalist that white collar offshoring is almost certainly going to accelerate due to the shift towards remote work brought on by the pandemic.
> Traditionally if I wanted to work at a company in another country I would have to go to that country. I’d have to be an immigrant from my country, at least for a while. In a world of remote work and Zoom and Slack, I can now work for people anywhere in the world. I can work for companies doing any kind of knowledge work. Immigration policies apply to the atoms of human beings, they don’t apply to the bits. I can go to work for some company anywhere in the world if it’s a remote-friendly company. I may never travel there, I may never have to travel there.
Marc Andreessen is getting very close to saying the quiet part out loud. This is the clearest statement I've seen to date from a venture capitalist that white collar offshoring is almost certainly going to accelerate due to the shift towards remote work brought on by the pandemic.
Well, it's a free market (for capital, but even then not really, but close enough for rhetorical purposes). Outcompete those offshore workers, there was never any other option.
Hard to outcompete such dramatic cost savings. An engineer India is going to cost a tiny fraction of one in the Bay Area. Not sure that's a winnable competition unless you accept a massive pay cut.
My sense is that today a top notch engineer in India, working for a US-based company, doesn't cost "a tiny fraction" of one in the Bay Area. A faction, yes, but not a tiny fraction.
If it were a tiny fraction there would have to be an equally large opposite force keeping that engineer from immigrating to the US, and as onerous and terrible as the visa process is, I don't think it will prevent the best from migrating for better wages, even temporarily.
Exactly. If they're as good as you think they are, they'll also be good at capturing a large fraction of the value they create.
There's an ancient Dilbert about this somewhere...
There's an ancient Dilbert about this somewhere...
[deleted]
[deleted]
> Marc Andreessen is getting very close to saying the quiet part out loud. This is the clearest statement I've seen to date from a venture capitalist that white collar offshoring is almost certainly going to accelerate due to the shift towards remote work brought on by the pandemic.
If anyone isn't hiring international remote right now they are losing a huge opportunity. Lots of people are looking at jumping ships, and western companies can outbid almost anyone for top talent.
If anyone isn't hiring international remote right now they are losing a huge opportunity. Lots of people are looking at jumping ships, and western companies can outbid almost anyone for top talent.
Genuinely curious question: how does something come to be defined as cutting edge? Is it more of a feeling when someone is working on something that just seems so far away from the norm? Is everyone who is researching ways to cure cancer on the cutting edge, or is it a very small subset of that group? Is it defined by how close someone is to actually achieving a discovery?
[deleted]
Marc looks more and more like Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth the older he gets
> you can see in the data the scandals cause people to use them more.
I often wonder if all that negative press about leaks, facebook's privacy violations etc. are just publicity stunts. So many tech articles seeking outrage and smell of fake.
I often wonder if all that negative press about leaks, facebook's privacy violations etc. are just publicity stunts. So many tech articles seeking outrage and smell of fake.
One of my big career disappointments was having a meeting with Marc Andreessen with regard to a project he needed us for, not as an "investee". I didn't idolize him or anything before that but I had it in mind that he would at least have something to offer. In our conversation I realized almost immediately he was a total buffoon and had just been in the right place at the right time.
Ok, but please let's not go into unsubstantive personal attack in HN threads. Maybe you don't owe that person better but you owe this community better if you're participating here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your story is interesting, of course; but you're not actually telling us the story.
Also, "total buffoon and had just been in the right place at the right time" is a pretty sweeping conclusion to say you realized "almost immediately".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your story is interesting, of course; but you're not actually telling us the story.
Also, "total buffoon and had just been in the right place at the right time" is a pretty sweeping conclusion to say you realized "almost immediately".
What a dream, spending your days carrying water for Billionaires.
Who cares about billionaires? I'm concerned with HN.
> In our conversation I realized almost immediately he was a total buffoon and had just been in the right place at the right time.
Sometimes it takes a while, and some deep context, and then some more context, ideally in a different set of circumstances, before you can assess someone's capabilities fairly.
Some people shine in their specialty domain, and flail outside of it.
Others are good in fair weather, but fragile in a crisis. Others are kind of the opposite, losing steam day to day, but rising to the occasion when shit happens.
Seasoned salespeople know all this. They do well consistently in spite of it all by presenting themselves credibly irrespective of their competency in any domain. They dress right for their audience, and they speak persuasively, always mindful of what their audience wants and needs to hear.
But listen to Andreesen talk! He sounds like he's never had to learn how to persuade anybody of anything. Well, not any regular people.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7923122-flying-x-wings-into-the-...
Sometimes it takes a while, and some deep context, and then some more context, ideally in a different set of circumstances, before you can assess someone's capabilities fairly.
Some people shine in their specialty domain, and flail outside of it.
Others are good in fair weather, but fragile in a crisis. Others are kind of the opposite, losing steam day to day, but rising to the occasion when shit happens.
Seasoned salespeople know all this. They do well consistently in spite of it all by presenting themselves credibly irrespective of their competency in any domain. They dress right for their audience, and they speak persuasively, always mindful of what their audience wants and needs to hear.
But listen to Andreesen talk! He sounds like he's never had to learn how to persuade anybody of anything. Well, not any regular people.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7923122-flying-x-wings-into-the-...
And some people are just dolts. It's just my opinion but I believe he falls into that camp based on first hand interactions.
Is he wealthy?
Oh, I just googled it, and the answer is yes.
It's a curious thing, wealth accumulation.
Oh, I just googled it, and the answer is yes.
It's a curious thing, wealth accumulation.
He sounds like he had too many Adderall mixed with coffee. I would know.
> Moderna, which innovated the concept of mRNA vaccines, it was a classic venture capital company. That company would not have existed without venture capital, these vaccines would not exist without venture capital.
Interesting. I commonly hear asserted that breakthrough fundamental inventions don't come from capitalism.
Interesting. I commonly hear asserted that breakthrough fundamental inventions don't come from capitalism.
The fundamental inventions on mRNA vaccines were grant-funded academic work. But I don't know that anyone asserts that breakthrough inventions don't come from capitalism, certainly in the 19th and early 20th century many inventions were created by individual entrepreneurs, for example the Wright Brothers.
> But I don't know that anyone asserts that breakthrough inventions don't come from capitalism,
I hear it all the time.
> certainly in the 19th and early 20th century many inventions were created by individual entrepreneurs, for example the Wright Brothers.
The Wright Bros are my usual reply to such assertions. Also the light bulb, transistor, jet engines, liquid fueled rocket engines, and on and on.
I hear it all the time.
> certainly in the 19th and early 20th century many inventions were created by individual entrepreneurs, for example the Wright Brothers.
The Wright Bros are my usual reply to such assertions. Also the light bulb, transistor, jet engines, liquid fueled rocket engines, and on and on.
Much of it came from the telegraph network that had been developed in the previous century. See "The Victorian Internet" by Standage.
Also, in the 1970s working on computers, everybody with two computers invented ways to hook them together, i.e. invented networking. Many became commercial, like Compuserve and MCImail, some became free, like the BBS systems. Then there's Ethernet and TokenRing for LAN networks.
(Note that DARPA figured out how to connect two computers as soon as they had two. It's just inevitable, not something coming from nowhere. Given two computers and the telephone lines, inventing a way to network them is going to happen in short order, just as water flows downhill.)
We'd have had an internet one way or another.