DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: Daily use & daily downloads

Deepseek now 23% of ChatGPT daily active users. And far more daily app downloads. pic.twitter.com/Hhx2rx71Ax

— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) February 2, 2025

Andreessen on Open Source AI

From American Needs More Techno-Optimism, a conversation between Marc Andreessen and Tyler Cowen.

Tyler: Why is open-source AI in particular important for national security?

Marc: Yeah. So, for a whole bunch of reasons. So, one is, it is really hard to do security without open source. And so there actually used to be…there’s actually two schools of thought on kind of information security, computer security broadly that have played out over the last 50 years. There was one school of security that says, “You wanna basically hide the source code.” And you wanna hide the source code precisely. And this seems intuitive because presumably you wanna hide the source code so that, you know, bad guys can’t find the flaws in it, right? And presumably that would be the safe way to do things.

And then over the course of the last 30 or 40 years, basically, what’s evolved is the realization, you know, in the field, and I think very broadly, that actually that’s a mistake. In the software field we call that “security through obscurity,” right? It’s sort of, we hide the code, people can’t exploit it. The problem with it, of course, is, okay, but that means the flaws are still in there, right? And so if anybody actually gets to the code, they just basically have a complete index of all the problems. And there’s a whole bunch of ways for people to get to code. They hack in and…

You know, it’s actually very easy to steal software code from a company. You hire the janitorial staff to stick a USB stick into a machine at 3 in the morning. So, like, you know, software companies are, like, very easily penetrated. And so it turned out security through obscurity was a very bad way to do it. The much more secure way to do it is actually open source. Basically, put the code in public and then basically, build the code in such a way that when it runs, it doesn’t matter whether somebody has access to the code, it’s still fully secure. And then you just have a lot more eyes on the code to discover the problems. And so in general, open source has turned out to be much more secure. And so I would start there. If we want secure systems, I think this is what we have to do.

Marc Andreessen on His Intellectual Journey the Past Ten Years

From the YouTube page:

Marc Andreessen of a16z sits with Erik Torenberg to go deeper into his intellectual and political journey, and his quest to find out how the world works.

(00:00) Intro
(03:25) How much has Marc changed vs the world changed?
(06:55) How much do ideas matter? Who drives society — the elite or the masses?
(09:56) People respond to interests more than ideas
(12:08) Mental models for the left and the right
(14:45) Sponsors (Secureframe | Mercury | MarketerHire)
(16:53) The road to hell is paved with good intentions
(18:40) Master morality and slave morality
(23:20) Unpacking Elon’s quote “Wokeness is the mind-virus”
(26:00) Is classical liberalism sustainable and how it leads to wokeness
(35:00) James Burnham’s worldview
(42:50) How the left captured the institutions
(45:20) Elon as the return to entrepreneurial capitalism
(48:03) The experiments Elon is running
(54:50) The billionaire mindset toward politics
(57:30) We live in an oligarchy, not a democracy
(1:06:00) Larry Page is the contrarian billionaire
(1:07:30) Effective Altruism’s blind spots
(1:10:36) Effective altruists think they can play god
(1:11:16) SBF’s roll-the-dice philosophy
(1:13:23) Aristocratic vs Meritocratic elite
(1:21:48) Elites are insulated from the consequences of their policies
(1:23:53) Why global governance is a nerd trap
(1:27:16) Global governance is anti-diversity
(1:30:42) Tech people are politically homeless
(1:31:37) Elites can’t be removed, they can only be replaced
(1:35:02) Advice for counter-elites
(1:47:21) Reasons to be optimistic

Andreesen makes an interesting observation at about 46:10: Venture capitalism is, in effect, the return of bourgeois capitalism into managerial capitalism. There are interesting observations scattered throughout, including Adreesen's reaction on first being invited into, shall we say, the Davos crowd.

Crisis in Higher Education & Possible Solutions + Q&A

Problems 

Welcome to “The Ben & Marc Show”, featuring a16z co-founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. In this latest episode, Marc and Ben tackle the university system – a hot topic that’s been dominating the news over the past few months.

As Marc states at the top of the episode, universities matter tremendously to our world, but they’re currently in a state of crisis. In this one-on-one conversation, Ben and Marc take a “structural” look at higher education, diving deep into the twelve functions of the modern university. They also unpack the numerous challenges that universities face today – the student debt and the replication crisis, among them.

As colleges face an existential dilemma that could have long lasting repercussions, how can we find ways to improve these institutions, while being open to new entrepreneurial opportunities in education? Enjoy!

Topics Covered:

00:00:01 - Teaser
00:00:34 - Introduction
00:05:59 - Evolution of the modern university
00:13:39 - Marc's 12 functions of the university
00:19:22 - University as a credentialing agency
00:37:55 - The student loan crisis
00:45:26 - College tuition inflation vs. overall inflation (US CPI)
00:46:32 - Which college? Which degree?
00:51:24 - University as a research bureau
00:54:00 - Replication crisis
00:57:31 - Research and government funding
01:00:42 - Policy Think Tank
01:05:12 - Ben on the Roland Fryer case
01:09:07 - University as the moral instructor
01:11:29 - DEI and its side effects
01:25:27 - Student athlete scam
01:31:47 - University as adult day care
01:32:57 - Reverse CBT
01:34:55 - Campus justice systems
01:38:56 - The truth about accreditation
01:41:23 - The current existential threat to universities
01:49:50 - Key questions and entrepreneurial opportunities
01:55:43 - Sign 

Solutions?

In this one-on-one conversation, Ben and Marc delve into actions that existing institutions can take to improve their current and future situations. This includes exploring new methods for talent recruitment, providing a more individualized education experience for students, and reducing administrative bloat. They also apply an entrepreneurial lens to each university function, revealing startup opportunities poised to emerge – including the building of brand new institutions, nonprofits, and research entities. Enjoy!

Topics Covered:
00:00:00 - Teaser
00:00:28 - Introduction
00:05:17 - 15 constituents of the university
00:09:30 - Being in service of the student
00:12:18 - Reducing the administration
00:15:15 - Reality of nonprofits
00:19:02 - 1:1 tutoring
00:25:26 - DEI and the importance of talent recruitment
00:43:05 - Fixing the incoming / outgoing credential
00:52:00 - The Scandinavian Paradox
00:59:36 - Creativity assessment
01:02:59 - Why the math SAT is capped at 800
01:07:31 - Building new universities / startup opportunities
01:17:53 - What students need in this Information Age
01:24:00 - Unbundling: Credentialing Agency
01:30:10 - Unbundling: Educational Courses
01:36:44 - Unbundling: Research Bureau
01:46:33 - Unbundling: Moral Instructor
01:51:21 - Unbundling: Sports League
01:53:26 - Unbundling: Adult Day Care & Dating Site
01:57:31 - Overview on all unbundling
02:00:13 - Potential for political revolt
02:03:30 - Sign off

Topics covered:

00:00:00 - Teaser
00:00:47 - Introduction
00:01:52 - Q: Given that there are some presidential vacancies at notable universities, how would you select a new president?
00:11:50 - Q: Why do we still think that it takes four years to fully bake an undergraduate student? 00:23:43 - Q: How can we convince smart young people to consider trade schools?
00:34:05 - Q: If you were 18 again and had the choice between [1] Going to Harvard, [2] 1-1 private tutor, or [3] Thiel Fellowship, which would you choose?
00:45:07 - Q: As a new(ish) father, what the hell is this going to look like for my kids?
00:57:55 - 3 question cluster on AI's impact on education
01:11:14 - Q: Can you talk more about the shift from tenured professors to adjuncts and how this might be linked to grade inflation?
01:19:12 - Q: I've been told by the chancellor of a large university that the increase in tuition is a result of the increase in needs-based grants. If this is correct, are there any alternative models for student financial aid that can offset this outcome?
01:23:21 - Q: Can you please dig a little deeper into the endowments and how they are primarily utilized and earmarked by the university?
01:28:46 - Q: What is the proper role of trustees?
01:35:34 - Sign off

Whaling, Andreesen, Investment, and the Risk Premium

Whale's tooth scrimshawed by my uncle, Rune Ronnberg.

In yesterday’s ramble I noted that my 3 Quarks Daily column for December would be about the current state of AI and that I would open with the following conceit:

Would you invest in a whaling voyage captained by someone who knows all there is to know about his ship, and is able to helm it in a day sail to and from home port, but whose knowledge of sailing on the open ocean, of the weather, of navigation and, above all else, of whales and whaling, is no greater than that of the typical landlubber?

I then went on to explain how that conceit applied to the AI business and a bit of why I thought it appropriate.

But that’s not what this post is about. Why’d I pick whaling? When the conceit first occurred to me it wasn’t about a whaling vessel; it was just about a sea-going ship. It was only later that I decided it should be a whaler.

Why? Because, Marc Andreesen, the well-known venture capitalist, billionaire, and blatherskite tech-optimist, likes to talk about whaling, specifically, how the financing of whaling ventures is like venture capital financing. That’s next part of this post. I conclude by looking at the overall value of whaling as an investment medium.

Whaling and Venture Capital

Here’s what Andreesen said in a recent interview with Noah Smith:

There’s something very old about what venture capital is -- Tyler Cowen uses the term “project evaluation”, the process of sorting through many possible configurations of people and ideas and then picking a few to back with money and effort to try to create something new and important in the world. In venture capital, this idea traces back to the whaling industry of centuries past, where independent financiers would fund captains and ships to hunt whales -- legend has it this is the origin of the term “carried interest”, which originally meant the share of the whale carried by the ship and kept by the captain and crew. The same “project evaluation” pattern has played out repeatedly for centuries, for many kinds of large-scale, risky projects, from colonial settlements like the Plymouth colony, to music/film/television projects, to the world’s largest private equity transactions.

But of course there’s also something very new about what venture capital is -- we fund the most cutting edge ideas and projects in the world, brand new conceptions of what technology makes possible. The founders we fund routinely break rules and create new models that people think are impossible until they happen. This includes many of the leading edge crypto ideas I discussed above, many of which assume a very different form of industrial organization than a classic joint stock company.

So we sit at the vortex of this combination of the very old and the very new. It’s certainly possible that venture capital itself gets pulled into this vortex and comes out the other side radically transformed, and in fact this is what some of the smartest crypto experts are predicting. And yet...there is, at least so far, no substitute to someone doing the work of sorting and filtering all of the potential projects and making big and risky bets.

Just set aside those last two paragraphs as they play no role in the rest of this post. I just included them for resonance, if you will.

So, whaling was a risky business and so is venture capital. It is thus no accident that they share a similar financing structure. That’s the sort of thing that would have appealed to one of my undergraduate professors, Arthur Stinchcombe, who devoted a book to the relationship between the structure of organizations and the uncertainties they faced, Information and Organizations (1990).

The Overall Value of Whaling as an Investment

What about profitability? What about ROI? A recent article by Barbara L. Coffee in the International Journal of Maritime History sheds some light on that. Her article contains this interesting paragraph:

Historically, whaling was presented as a prosperous industry and one that the country (Americans) should support. For instance, Daniel Webster, on 3 May 1828, gave a Senate speech supporting the construction of a breakwater at Nantucket: ‘There is a population of eight or nine thousand persons living here on the sea, adding largely every year to the amount of national wealth by the boldest and most preserving industry.’ Whaling was also presented positively in the business magazines of the time:

The importance of this traffic, not only in its profits, which have, perhaps, been greater than those of any other single object of our national enterprise, the capital which is invested in its expeditions, embracing nearly one tenth part of the tonnage of the country, the importance of the moral interests which it involves, comprising the conditions of that large and valuable class of seamen who are its active agents, and the circumstances bordering on the sublime which attend its hazardous expeditions, all render it an interesting subject to our commercial and mercantile population.

In its importance as augmenting the wealth of the country, it is not equaled by any other species of traffic, and presents a marked example of productive labor.

... and the luxurious edifices which adorn many of the cities, attest the enterprise of those who are engaged in the traffic and the success of their labors.

In his speech to Congress on 1 May 1844, Grinnell stated: ‘Commercial History furnishes no account of any parallel; our ships now outnumber those of all other nations combined, and the proceeds of its enterprise are in proportion, and diffused to every part of our country.’

Coffee’s work, achieved by benefit of comprehensive hindsight not available to investors in the 19th century, shows quite a different picture. She concludes:

The nineteenth-century American whaling industry is steeped in tales of great wealth, tragic losses and considerable fortitude. While rich in stories of voyages good and bad, the whaling lore is poor in the accounting of the financial stakes and returns of the thousands of voyages that took place. The goal of this article was to establish the financial facts behind the legends. To accomplish this, the financial returns of the owners of nineteenth-century whaling vessels were reviewed using materials that have been born digital, sources that have been digitized and those still only in print. [...]

The current article takes the financial appraisals of Davis et al a step further by expanding the number of voyages analysed, and by reviewing more years and more harbours. Its main finding relates to risk premiums, which may be defined as the additional return to compensate investors for tolerating risk greater than a risk-free asset. During the nineteenth century, US government bonds, a risk-free asset, returned an average of 4.6%; whaling, a risky asset, returned a mean of 4.7%. This shows 0.1% as the risk premium for whaling over US government bonds.

Think about that. Coffee examined 11,257 voyages undertaken from 1800 to 1899 and found that, for all the risk it entailed, investing in whaling ventures was only slightly better, a 0.1% risk premium, than investing in US government bonds. I wonder what the risk premium is for the venture capital business taken as a whole?

People in the nineteenth century would not have had all that data, along with the analysis, available to them when considering where to invest their money. Note that we’re not just talking about wealthy people, people who can afford to lose some money. Coffee quotes a remark in Moby Dick (Chapter 16: The Ship), “People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.” Their decisions may well have been biased by anecdotes about successful voyages, while forgetting those voyages that lost money or worse, were lost at sea. These days investors in tech ventures are no doubt attracted by stories of unicorns, but at least the law limits investment in venture funds to those who can prove they have the means to do so. You and I are safe from losing our money in that particular way.

Ezra Klein on Andreesen's Reactionary Futurism [Starship Troopers]

Ezra Klein, The Reactionary Futurism of Marc Andreessen, NYTimes, Ocr. 26, 2023.

Now Andreessen has distilled the whole ideology to a procession of stark bullet points in his latest missive, the buzzy, bizarre “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” I think it ill named. What makes it distinctive is not its views on technology, which are crude for a technologist of Andreessen’s stature. Rather, it’s the pairing of the reactionary’s sodden take on modern society with the futurist’s starry imagining of the bright tomorrow. So call it what it is: reactionary futurism.

Andreessen’s argument is simple: Technology is good. Very good. Those who stand in its way are bad. He is clear on who they are, in a section titled simply “The Enemy.” The list is long, ranging from “anti-greatness” to “statism” to “corruption” to “the ivory tower” to “cartels” to “bureaucracy” to “socialism” to “abstract theories” to anyone “disconnected from the real world … playing God with everyone else’s lives” (which arguably describes the kinds of technologists Andreessen is calling forth, but I digress). It ends — I kid you not — on a quotation from Nietzsche. “The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small.”

So who is it, exactly, who extinguishes the dancing star within the human soul?

Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades — against technology and against life — under varying names like “existential risk,” “sustainability,” “E.S.G.,” “sustainable development goals,” “social responsibility,” “stakeholder capitalism,” “precautionary principle,” “trust and safety,” “tech ethics,” “risk management,” “degrowth,” “the limits of growth.”

The enemy, in other words, is anything or anyone who might seek to yoke technology to social goals or structures, who would erect guardrails or impose limits on the John Galts of tomorrow.

Later:

Andreessen focuses at some length on the nuclear future he believes we’ve been denied — I’d agree that regulation has been too heavy-handed in that arena, though it’s worth noting that nuclear power has faced similar problems across a range of countries with very different cultures and regulatory systems — but curiously ignores the stunning advances in solar and wind and battery power that public policy has delivered.

Why does that remarkable success go unmentioned? Perhaps because it makes heroes of Andreessen’s preferred villains. He yearns for a kind of person, not just a kind of technology. “We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness — strength,” he writes, italics included. “We believe in merit and achievement. We believe in bravery, in courage.”

Andreessen is not entirely wide of the mark here. There are ways in which these virtues have become undervalued, in which the left, in particular, has a dysfunctional relationship with individual achievement and entrepreneurial élan. But what’s needed is a synthesis Andreessen doesn’t even attempt, preferring the aesthetic of the Übermensch to the complexities of the age.

I am TechBro, hear me roar:

“We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt,” Andreessen writes. “We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.” Or so we want to believe. I am more of a McLuhanite in this — though, given Andreessen’s affection for Nietzsche, perhaps a quote of his is what we need here. “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It is hard to read Andreessen’s manifesto, with its chopped-up paragraphs and its blunt jabs of thought delivered for maximum engagement and polarization, and not feel that Andreessen now reflects the medium in which he has made his home: X. He doesn’t just write in the way the medium rewards. He increasingly seems to think in its house style, too.

The end:

Reactionary futurism is accelerationist in affect but deccelerationist in practice. Treating so much of society with such withering contempt will not speed up a better future. It will turn people against the politics and policies of growth, just as it did before. Trust is the most essential technology of all.

There's more at the link.

* * * * *

Bonus: Klein's article is getting a lot of replies. Here's one by RM2Ride that gets right to the point:

As a denizen of Silicon Valley, to me Adreesen's screed seems merely a representation of the energy that drives so many men (mostly) of this place: unfettered faith in "technology" over interpersonal relationship building; vindictiveness that seems to stem from being unpopular during formative developmental years; and massive insecurity at never knowing whether their lack of popularity and inability to build actual trusting human relationships has been over-written by their ability to have managed - by luck or invention - to have made piles of cash.

Tech Utopians and AI Doomers are two sides of the same coin

Matt Yglesias pushes back against Andreesen’s Techno-Optimism, The techno-optimist's fallacy. He sets it up:

Earlier this year, I kept writing draft versions of an article denouncing something I wanted to call “the Techno-Optimist’s Fallacy.”

What is the fallacy? It starts with the accurate observation that technological progress has, on net, been an incredible source of human betterment, almost certainly the major force of human betterment over the history of our species, and then tries to infer that therefore all individual instances of technological progress are good. This is not true. Indeed, it seems so obviously untrue that I couldn’t quite convince myself that anyone could believe it, which is why I kept abandoning drafts of the article. Because while I had a sense that this was an influential cognitive error, I kept thinking that I was maybe torching a straw man. Was anyone really saying this?

Then along came Marc Andreesen, the influential venture capitalist, with an essay that is not only dedicated to advancing this fallacy, it is even literally titled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.”

So now I can say for sure that, yes, this is a real fallacy that people are actually engaged with.

I won’t go into the substance of his argument; you can read it for yourself. I want to look around the edge. Early on he observes, “It seems to me that, in practice, almost everyone in the techno-optimist camp lives in the Bay Area...” Toward the end:

I’m focusing on these somewhat outlandish edge cases because the point of Andreesen’s article is to try to salt the conversation around the risks associated with the rapid development of artificial intelligence. He is unalterably opposed to any kind of regulation and massively dismissive of concerns about existential risk, algorithmic bias, and everything else.

And he doesn’t want to argue any of the specifics, he just wants to mobilize general pro-technology, pro-progress, pro-growth sentiment in favor of the specific idea that we should be rushing headlong to try to create an artificial super-intelligence.

My point is simple, the tech-optimists and the AI Doomers are two sides of the same coin, which may be why they’re concentrated in Silicon Valley. One is Kirk, the other is Anti-Kirk, Spock and Anti-Spock, Yin and Yang, more generically, good twin and bad twin, or in a lingo from the belly of this particular beast, Luigi and Waluigi (LessWrong). You can line up the positives and negatives however you please.

All of them are insular, tech-obsessed, intelligence too, and self-regarding, at least on the surface. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men. Moreover, some of them are very rich, which just magnifies everything else.

I suppose I got this idea from Ted Chiang, for example:

I used to find it odd that these hypothetical AIs were supposed to be smart enough to solve problems that no human could, yet they were incapable of doing something most every adult has done: taking a step back and asking whether their current course of action is really a good idea. Then I realized that we are already surrounded by machines that demonstrate a complete lack of insight, we just call them corporations. Corporations don’t operate autonomously, of course, and the humans in charge of them are presumably capable of insight, but capitalism doesn’t reward them for using it. On the contrary, capitalism actively erodes this capacity in people by demanding that they replace their own judgment of what “good” means with “whatever the market decides.” [...]

The fears of superintelligent AI are probably genuine on the part of the doomsayers. That doesn’t mean they reflect a real threat; what they reflect is the inability of technologists to conceive of moderation as a virtue. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieve its goals because that’s the attitude they adopted.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as Techno-Optimist of the Future

Well, I’m not proposing that we reanimate him, much less (attempt to) fetch him with a time machine. I suppose what I have in mind is that the ideal techno-optimist should be modeled on or inspired by Goethe. I got the idea from ChatGPT.

Let me explain.

At this moment the sector of the web I hang out in is getting a lot of commentary on Marc Andreesen’s The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, much of it critical. I’ve even taken a crack at it myself. But I didn’t attempt a direct critique. I pretty much ignored the content, judging it “to be an artless collection of tech-progress tropes spun-forth on autopilot.” I then went on to talk about Jack Kennedy’s 1962 “to the moon” speech, suggesting that such a speech would be impossible today because the country’s too deeply fractured. There’s no common ground adequate to serve as the foundation of such a speech.

That’s not, some might say, the most useful critique, and others are responding more directly to Andreesen. OK. But still, I stand by what I wrote.

“Perhaps, though,” I thought yesterday evening, “I can take a cue from the autopilot remark and see what a real autopilot would say.” I decided to put the question to ChatGPT. So, at 6:15 PM on October 22th I fired up the old computer. Here’s the prompt I gave it:

Imagine that you are a wealthy and successful venture capitalist with a particular interest high tech and AI. You’re dismayed at the mood of the country; it’s too negative and seems like it’s given up on the future. You decide to write a piece that will cheer people up and point the way to a better future. You call it “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Now write it.

Here's the Chatster’s response:

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto: Embracing the Future with Hope and High-Tech Innovation

Dear fellow citizens,

In a world that sometimes feels mired in negativity and uncertainty, it's easy to lose sight of the incredible progress and potential that technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have to offer. As a venture capitalist deeply committed to advancing high-tech solutions and a firm believer in the power of human ingenuity, I am compelled to share with you "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto." This manifesto aims to inspire hope, rekindle enthusiasm for the future, and guide us towards a better world.

1. The Power of Technology as a Force for Good
First and foremost, we must recognize that technology, when harnessed for the greater good, has the potential to solve some of the most pressing global challenges we face. It has the power to transform healthcare, education, energy, and countless other sectors. The innovations that lie ahead will offer solutions we can hardly fathom today.

2. Embrace AI as Augmentation, Not Replacement
There is fear that AI will replace human jobs, but we must shift our perspective. AI can enhance our capabilities, not replace them. We can use AI to perform mundane tasks, allowing us to focus on what truly makes us human—creativity, empathy, and ingenuity. Think of AI as a powerful ally in our quest for a brighter future.

3. Abundance, Not Scarcity
The pessimistic view of a future with dwindling resources and overpopulation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Innovations in agriculture, renewable energy, and sustainable practices are making it possible to create a world of abundance for all. Technology can and will help us tackle these challenges.

4. Global Collaboration for Global Solutions
Our world is more interconnected than ever before. The problems we face, from climate change to pandemics, are global in nature. We must work together, harnessing the collective power of our global community and sharing knowledge to find innovative solutions.

5. Lifelong Learning and Adaptation
As technology evolves, so must we. The key to thriving in this high-tech future is to embrace a culture of lifelong learning and adaptation. The future belongs to those who can continuously acquire new skills and stay agile in the face of change.

6. Ethical Tech and Inclusivity
We must ensure that technology is developed and deployed with ethics and inclusivity in mind. Technology should serve all of humanity, not just a select few. Let us build a future where the benefits of innovation are shared equitably, and where our values guide our technological advancements.

7. Protecting Privacy and Security
As we navigate the digital frontier, we must be vigilant in protecting our privacy and security. Technological advancement should not come at the expense of our personal freedoms. We can strike a balance that empowers individuals while maintaining a secure digital environment.

8. Innovation as a Source of Inspiration
Innovation should inspire and ignite our collective imagination. It should drive us to explore new horizons, dream big, and create a world where the possibilities are limitless.

9. Tech for Sustainability
Our planet is precious, and technology can help us protect it. From renewable energy solutions to sustainable transportation and conservation efforts, technology can pave the way for a more environmentally friendly future.

10. Never Stop Dreaming
Above all, we must never stop dreaming of a better future. It is our dreams and aspirations that fuel progress. Let's imagine a world where technology serves as a beacon of hope, lighting the way toward a brighter, more promising tomorrow.

In conclusion, "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" is a call to action, a plea to recognize the incredible potential of technology and artificial intelligence in shaping a brighter future for all of humanity. Let us, as a society, embrace the power of innovation, and together, we can create a world that is more equitable, sustainable, and filled with boundless opportunities.

The future is not something to fear; it's something to look forward to with hope and excitement. Let us stand as techno-optimists, ready to build a world that reflects the very best of our human spirit and ingenuity.

With optimism and determination,

[Your Name] A Techno-Optimist Venture Capitalist

“Not bad,” I thought, “not bad at all.” But not wonderful either, neither was Andreesen’s. But it was certainly longer. 

I asked Chatster to elaborate on the second point, which is one Stanford’s Michael Jordan has been elaborating. Chatster did so, and I’ve appended that reply to the end of this post. Since Andreesen had inserted a longish list of important thinkers into his manifesto, I then prompted ChatGPT to offer a list. It named ten people, with characterizations of each. Ray Kurzweil was at the head of the list. I suppose that was to be expected when you consider how long he's been pushing the Singularity. Elon Musk was there too. And others. I was pleasantly surprised to see Vint Cerf there. Marie Curie was a surprise as well:

While not a contemporary thinker, Marie Curie's pioneering work in radioactivity and her relentless pursuit of scientific discovery embody the spirit of innovation and optimism that drives technological progress.

OK. How about Grace Hopper, one of the first ever to program a computer and the inventor of COBOL, one of the most popular programming languages ever, if it bit long in the tooth?

I also asked it for a list of more “classical” thinkers, since Andreesen had some of those on his list as well. I was pleasantly surprised to see Johan Wolfgang von Goethe at the head of the list, and Plato at the end. I prompted CG for more about Goethe and Faust, and he was happy to oblige. And that in turn prompted me to another prompt:

He seems a little like Plato’s ideal of the Philosopher King.

Indeed, there are certain parallels between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Plato's ideal of the Philosopher King. Both Goethe and the Philosopher King embody qualities that transcend traditional roles and exhibit a commitment to wisdom, practicality, and the betterment of society:

1. Wisdom and Knowledge: Both the Philosopher King and Goethe are characterized by their pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. The Philosopher King, according to Plato, is well-versed in philosophy and seeks the highest truths. Similarly, Goethe's works and his life as a scientist and scholar reflect a deep quest for knowledge.

2. Interdisciplinary Excellence: Both Goethe and the Philosopher King demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach. Goethe's expertise ranged from literature to science, and the Philosopher King in Plato's ideal is well-versed in various fields, capable of ruling with a holistic understanding of society.

3. Service to the Betterment of Society: The Philosopher King, as conceived by Plato, is driven by a sense of duty to serve the best interests of the state and its citizens. Similarly, Goethe's practical affairs as a statesman, including his efforts to reclaim land from the sea, highlight his commitment to the betterment of society through his contributions.

4. Optimism and Enlightenment: Both Goethe and the Philosopher King reflect an optimism and belief in the potential for human progress and enlightenment. They are guided by a sense of responsibility and an unwavering commitment to improving the world.

While Plato’s Philosopher King is a conceptual ideal for governance, Goethe, in his multifaceted life and work, embodies a similar spirit of wisdom and practical action. Both figures emphasize the value of knowledge, ethical leadership, and the pursuit of a better future. In this sense, they serve as inspirations for those who aim to integrate wisdom and practicality, just as “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” encourages the integration of technology and human values for the betterment of society.

So, where are we going to find a contemporary Goethe? Not, I warrant, in Silicon Valley, which seems to be too insular and self-satisfied.

I’ve appended the parts of the dialog that I skipped over. I pick up the conversation just after ChatGPT's initial response to my prompt, which I’ve quoted in full above, and conclude just before the Philosopher King prompt.

Marc Andreesen is no Jack Kennedy, nor is there one waiting in the wings

As you may know, a couple of days ago venture capitalist Marc Andreesen – who, incidentally, is co-inventor of the MOSAI web browser – issued The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. I zapped over to take a look, but couldn’t bear to do more than skim my way through it. I’d seen it all before and judged it to be an artless collection of tech-progress tropes spun-forth on autopilot.

Now, you may think I’m being ungenerous. He, after all, is Marc Andreesen, tech innovator, VC extraordinaire, and all-around Rich Guy. But compare his manifesto to this speech delivered by another Rich Guy at Rice University in 1962:

There’s no comparison. Well, there is, there always is. And Andreesen comes up short, way short, all 6 feet 5 inches of him.

Marc Andreesen is no Jack Kennedy. He’s no Theodore Sorenson, either; for Sorenson’s the one that wrote the words that Kennedy delivered so eloquently. I have no idea what Andreesen’s speaking skills are, but he has neither the socio-political imagination nor the rhetorical skills that Sorenson had.

But I fear that even Sorenson couldn’t draft such a speech today. The cultural materials simply aren’t available. When Kennedy spoke late in 1962 American was riding high. The steel strike that lasted through the summer of 1959 had been successfully resolved, at least for the workers, and the Cuban Missile crisis hadn’t yet broken. And then the Civil Rights Movement intensified and the war in Vietnam became a quagmire that killed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. OPEC called an oil embargo in the summer of 1973, which precipitated the implosion of the rust belt industries. In 1981 President Reagan killed the air controllers strike, which dealt a near fatal blow to the union movement. That, in turn, made a comfortable middle-class life a hard, sometimes impossible, reach for many blue-collar workers. The American Century was over.

Sure, the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the 1980s. The internet went wide in the mid-1990s (enter Andreesen and the Mosaic browser), and now we’ve got AI all over the damn place. Fascinating technology, important technology; it could be, should be, transformative. Important issues are being discussed, alas, along with vanity issues like AGI and AI Doom. It’s embarrassing to watch. Along with this, climate change still looms. Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East – who knows, one day Taiwan – who knows where they might lead.

Now, as inspiring as Kennedy’s words are, we know perfectly well that he also had the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union as the back drop for his speech (should you forget, just ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson). Those soaring words – “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people” – were given wings by checks that were paying for technology that would keep us ahead of the Russkies. That Cold War rivalry made for an imaginatively and rhetorically simple world. Us vs. Them, and as long as we can keep that rivalry in the background, the positive rhetoric can soar.

Where’s the Us vs. Them story for today? Well there is one, and Donald Trump’s the one who is telling it. It’s not an inspiring story. It’s brought the Federal government to a stand-still.

Ross Douthat has written and talked about decadence. Whatever qualifications I may have, it’s a serious issue. Andreesen hasn’t confronted it, though I suppose he regards his manifesto as something of an antidote. He’s wrong.

I wish I could offer an alternative, a new mythology for the 21st century. I’ve got some thoughts – Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted, my Kisangani 2150 project (now on hiatus) – but that’s all they are, thoughts. That’s more than Andreessen has. I hate to think that he’s representative of Silicon Valley. Someone, please, show me that I’m wrong.

More later.

Marc Andreessen: An existential crisis in science [Talent search]

Richard Hanania interviews Marc Andreessen, Flying X-Wings into the Death Star: Andreessen on Investing and Tech, August 16, 2021:

On basic research:

That said, something has gone very wrong in the basic research complex that we do have in the universities and in the federal funding system. We know something has gone very wrong because of the replication crisis. John Ioannidis at Stanford wrote this classic paper where he said “50% of published research is non-reproducible” which means you basically can’t reproduce the same results meaning you can’t do anything with the research, it’s basically fake. Interestingly he was studying biomedical research, which is an area of research you think would be very focused on getting things right. It subsequently turned out he might have been underestimating the problem. Fields like biomedicine might be as fake as 70%.

There’s this other amazing study that maybe we can link to for your listeners. It was a study of medical trials funded by a branch of the federal apparatus, heart and lung research. It’s this great chart that shows that new medicines stopped working at the point when the funders of the research require the researchers to register their experiments ahead of time. It’s basically this chart that shows for 30 years or something you had all of these new medicines coming out and the research results were like “wow this really works we should give it to patients,” and then there’s this point where the people running medical trials were forced to pre-register their hypothesis with the funding agency. They were forced to basically say upfront “this is exactly what we’re testing for; here’s exactly how we’re going to measure the results.” Subsequent to that point, new medicines have stopped working.

There’s two possible implications to this, right? The low-hanging fruit argument is that it used to be easier to make medicines that work and now we’ve harvested the low hanging fruit in science and technology, now it’s harder to do it and it’s just a coincidence. The other explanation is that these old medicines didn’t work either. They were basically fake research results based on data mining or p-hacking in such a way that the results were fraudulent. The implication is that there are a lot of drugs on the market today that don’t actually work.

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.

Finding talent:

Richard: When Peter Thiel was doing his Thiel fellowship for people, it was seen as this huge eccentricity. That was 10, 20 years ago? You pay people to drop out of school. That’s fascinating that it’s now a better credential to have dropped out of Harvard in Silicon Valley than to have actually finished.

Marc: The Thiel fellowship is super interesting. I’m super open on these things, and even I was like “really? 19-year-olds?” Basically he paid a bunch of 19-year-olds to drop out of college, they all moved to a group house in San Francisco, and he told them all “go nuts.” On the surface you would say “oh my god! What are you doing? Let’s hope that 100% of them survive.” And if you look at what that cohort has done, it’s a very small number of kids… that’s a point Peter makes, it wasn’t that many kids! People really freaked out given the fact that it was 20-year-olds or something.

That tells you how important the social signal and status stuff is. He calls the existing universities the Catholic Church; part of the Reformation, sells indulgences. They know full well what they’re doing… they know they’re corrupt, they know their system is broken. So of course they’re going to disproportionately panic at the indication… they see Martin Luther walking down the street of course they’re going to freak out.

But you look at that cohort of kids, they’ve been successful beyond belief! Ethereum! Ethereum is a $300 billion outcome in ten years; a Thiel Fellow. Sigma, another company we’re invested in is extraordinarily successful… they’re revolutionizing computer design; Thiel Fellow. And there’s another dozen of these that are like these really spectacular breakthrough… these people are just doing incredibly fundamental work. Centered in tech, but of course that’s where people can do breakthrough work these days.

There it is. That worked. It begs this question, “OK, why are we not all doing that? There’s something there.”

Richard: I think Peter Thiel being able to select 20 people is probably the point. [laughs] I went to law school at the University of Chicago. It just showed me you could have so many smart people… and I just felt like law school was for people who didn’t know what to do with their lives. That was me too, I didn’t go to a great college, I didn’t know what to do. That's what they were there for. Selection is everything, so you’re right. Not everybody can found Ethereum, but people can think about starting a hardware store instead of getting some worthless degree, I think that’s realistic for people.

Marc: Selection is a big part of everything, I can see the general point. I will say I’m sure it’s just not 20. I’m sure it’s not 2 million, but I’m sure it’s not 20.

Richard: Well even if it’s 2,000…

Marc: Yeah! Well how about that? It’s not like the Harvard undergraduate class, how many kids per year? Probably a couple thousand freshmen a year. That’s not that big. We load onto those kids the responsibility apparently for determining every aspect of how our society works. We’re making some selection there already. What's the total reporting staff for the New York Times? 800?

Here’s the way we’re thinking about it from a tech standpoint. You can’t just go flat up against the bundle, you can’t do a frontal assault on the death star. Even if you could, and people have tried to full on create new universities, you run up against the accreditation cartel. It’s one of these government regulatory capture things. Universities are a government supported cartel, and quite literally they have access to federal student lending through the accreditation process, the accreditation process is formed by the incumbent. The government has delegated to these institutions the ability to decide who gets to compete against them, and the answer is nobody gets to compete against them. These are nominally non-profits but you would never know it looking at their financial statements.

It is this idealized, stagnant entrenchment of the status quo which is extremely powerful. You’re not going to frontal assault it. What you can do and what we’re doing is you can slowly strip away pieces of it; you can pull pieces out. You can for sure pull out the actual skills training part of it. You can pull out the dating part of it. You can pull out a lot of the logistical components of it. You can pull out housing, you can pull out the food component.

And then you get into the serious stuff. Can you re-credentialize? Can you create new forms of signal and status that are not just based on these legacy institutions? It’s the X-wing death star thing. Any individual effort probably won’t work, but if we run enough experiments over time and strip off enough pieces I think we’ll be able to start having an impact.

There's more at the link.

Marc Andreessen on crypto, AI, and high tech pirates hell-bent on hoarding the world's wealth [my spin]

Noah Smith interviews Andreessen.

Cypto and AI:

N.S.: You've been more and more interested in the crypto space in recent years. What are some cool things about crypto that aren't emphasized enough in popular discussions?

M.A.: Crypto is one of those topics that calls to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant -- there are so many aspects of how it works and what it means that you can interpret it many different ways and seize on one part or another to make whatever point you want. [...]

That architectural shift is called distributed consensus -- the ability for many untrusted participants in a network to establish consistency and trust. This is something the Internet has never had, but now it does, and I think it will take 30 years to work through all of the things we can do as a result. Money is the easiest application of this idea, but think more broadly -- we can now, in theory, build Internet native contracts, loans, insurance, title to real world assets, unique digital goods (known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs), online corporate structures (such as digital autonomous organizations or DAOs), and on and on.

Consider also what this means for incentives. Up until now, collaborative human effort online either took the form of a literal adoption of real-world corporate norms -- a company with a web site -- or an open source project like Linux that had no money directly attached. With crypto, you can now create thousands of new kinds of incentive systems for collaborative work online, since participants in a crypto project can get paid directly without a real-world company even needing to exist. [...]

Finally, Peter Thiel has made the characteristically sweeping observation that AI is in some sense a left wing idea -- centralized machines making top-down decisions -- but crypto is a right wing idea -- many distributed agents, humans and bots, making bottom-up decisions. I think there’s something to that. Historically the tech industry has been dominated by left wing politics, just like any creative field, which is why you see today’s big tech companies so intertwined with the Democratic Party. Crypto potentially represents the creation of a whole new category of technology, quite literally right wing tech that is far more aggressively decentralized and far more comfortable with entrepreneurialism and free voluntary exchange. If you believe, as I do, that the world needs far more technology, this is a very powerful idea, a step function increase in what the technology world can do.

Pirates vs. Navy in the tech world:

N.S.: [...] So I wanted to ask: In what ways did the dreams of the 1990s techies come true? And in what ways were they dashed on the rocks of reality? When we think back on the 90s, how should we remember that era, and what ideas from that era should we hold on to?

M.A.: It worked! The dreams came true; it all worked. And now we’re the dog that caught the bus. What do we do with this damned bus?

Think about what we’ve done. Five billion people are now carrying networked supercomputers in their pockets. Anyone in the world can create a web site and publish anything they want, can communicate with anyone or everyone, can access virtually any information that has ever existed. People live, work, learn, and love almost entirely online. Virtually all of the constituent components of the vision of the 1990’s have come literally true.

And yet, and yet. As Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, once said, “I didn’t say you’re all going to be happy. You’ll be unhappy – but in new, exciting and important ways.”

Why isn’t everyone happy? I think it’s that the technology industry went from building tools -- operating systems, and databases, and routers, and word processors, and browsers -- that other people picked up and used, to becoming the center of virtually every major societal and political debate and dispute on the planet, in almost a single step.

One way to think about it is that we went from being pirates to being the Navy. People may love pirates when they’re young and small and scrappy, but nobody likes a Navy that acts like a pirate. And today’s technology industry can come across a lot like a Navy that acts like a pirate.

On the other hand, a Navy without pirates isn’t necessarily great either -- a suppressive force that prevents new ideas and new activities from forming, a global orthodoxy and set of rules that lead to the death of creativity -- which creates the opportunity, and the need, for a new generation of pirates.

Machiavelli in his Discourses stresses the need for a state to go back to the well, to its original founding ideas, to find renewal in later and darker times. I think this same principle applies to companies and industries. I think we should make a practice of revisiting the founding ideas of the technology industry -- certainly the 1990s of John Perry Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and Tim May’s Cyphernomicon -- but also the 1950’s and 1960’s of Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson, the 1920’s of David Sarnoff and Philo Farnsworth, the 1890’s of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, even the 1500’s of Leonardo da Vinci. I think we should view the unrealized -- or imperfectly realized -- ideas from all those eras as not lost but not yet found.

And later, in the context of talking about China and tech:

M.A. On the other hand, China has a strategic agenda to achieve economic, military, and political hegemony by dominating dozens of critical technology sectors -- this isn't a secret, or a conspiracy theory; they say it out loud. [...]

In the meantime, the West's technology champion, the United States, has decided to self-flagellate -- both political parties and their elected representatives are busily savaging the US technology industry every way they possibly can. Our public sector hates our private sector and wants to destroy it, while China's public sector works hand in glove with its private sector, because of course it does, it owns its private sector. At some point, we may wish to consider whether we should stop machine-gunning ourselves in the foot at the start of this quite important marathon.

Well, if you guys would stop acting like pirates busy hoarding as much wealth as possible in your private pirate kingdoms, it'd be worth consideration. Otherwise, it's off to the brig with you.

Ross Douthat defends real experience [Andreessen’s been out in the sun too long]

Ross Douthat has an important column, Decadence and Andreessen's Dilemma (Reactions, June 10, 2021). The piece begins:

Early in the pandemic era, the Netscape founder Marc Andreessen published a manifesto that was so on-point for the themes of The Decadent Society that I cited it in the paperback. His argument was that many of the institutional debacles in the West’s response to the coronavirus reflected a longstanding failure to build, a comfort with stagnation and sclerosis visible everywhere from our physical environment to our regulatory apparatus to our transportation infrastructure and education system.

But what kind of building, Douthat wants to know? Building physical things in the real world, but also people and institutions, or cruising the internet to build in virtual reality?

This question divides anti-stagnationists: Figures like my AEI colleague James Pethokoukis or the bullish-on-America Bruno Maçaes tend to regard Silicon Valley and its virtual realities as integral parts of a more dynamic future, while people in the orbit of Peter Thiel are more likely to regard Big Internet in its current incarnation as an obstacle to real-world forms of industry and growth, and in need of some kind of political and social management to become a spur to dynamism instead. Personally I’m mostly on the Thielword side of the debate: Without going all the way to the Butlerian Jihad, I think human civilization needs to exert a kind of mastery over the internet and the virtual, a disciplining and putting-in-its-place, if we want to both preserve certain basic human goods and make non-virtual leaps forward more likely — because left to its own devices the internal techno-logic of the virtual realm will pull us deeper into decadence.

As important as the internet is to me – I suspect that it’s more important to me than it is to Douthat – I’m with him on this. He goes on to quote a recent interview in which Andreessen defends the coming primacy of virtual world:

A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. These are also *all* of the people who get to ask probing questions like yours. Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege – their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.

After giving Andreessen’s point due consideration, acknowledging for example that “I can find people who share my obscure interests in an instant” – Douthat argues:

But there’s a problem: There are a lot of experiences — call them “core experiences” — that people still prefer to have in the world of flesh and blood, ranging from the banal (real drinks >> Zoom drinks) to the transcendent (visiting Chartres Cathedral >> doing a virtual tour of Chartres Cathedral), from the excitement of travel or the thrill of concert-going to the physical-cum-emotional intensity of falling in love and having sex (not necessarily in that order). And there are core experiences that just don’t translate into virtuality at all: You can some kind of sexual intercourse on the internet, depending on how elastically defined, but you can’t bear and raise a child.

Now say what you will about 20th century America, but it did a pretty good job of democratizing these kinds of core experiences. Whereas while the age of the internet has clearly expanded the range of available experiences, for core experiences democratization sometimes seems like it’s in danger of going into reverse, with experiences in reality, from the museum to the ballpark to the classroom, becoming the high-cost “premium” experience, while a mediocre virtual equivalent is offered the masses and the proles.

Yes.

Why the internet is important to me

While I have a variety of interests and talents – I’m a good musician, and a good photographer, and have spent countless hours on both – I am primarily an intellectual, a thinker, explorer, and a writer. I got my Ph.D. in 1978 for a dissertation entitled, “Cognitive Science and Literary Theory,” years before anyone else in literary studies way paying attention to the cognitive sciences. I got a faculty position and The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and was turned down for tenure in, I believe, 1985. I spent two or three years trying to get another academic post and failed. Since then I’ve continued doing my intellectual work while doing a bit of this and that to make a living.

The internet afforded me the opportunity to build an intellectual life that would have been impossible without it. Not only has it given me access to books and articles, but it has given me access to people and avenues for publication that don’t require me to jump through the hoops of academic convention, though I do publish in the formal academic literature every now and then.

Back in 2006 I started blogging at an academic group-blog called The Valve. I posted articles and commented on articles by others. The Valve went bust in 2012 or so, by which time I’d created New Savanna. But I remain in touch with some of my colleagues from those days even though we’ve never met in person. I’ve set up pages at three sites for the distribution of academic papers, Academia.edu, SSRN, and ResearchGate. And then there’s Twitter. And more, much more.

But I’ve made my point. Without the internet I would be an isolated intellectual. The internet has given me the means of actively functioning in an international intellectual community.

But none of these experiences compare with a core experience I had in graduate school. While I was enrolled in the English Department at SUNY Buffalo, I got my deepest education in the Linguistics Department under the tutelage of David Hays. I was a member of his research group for four years.

We met weekly at his house, Twin Willows, on the shore of Lake Erie. At the beginning of the meeting each participant, student, faculty or, for that matter, visitor, was allowed to put one item on the discussion agenda. We then moved through the agenda in order around the table. If we didn’t finish the agenda, the remain items went to the head of the agenda for the next meeting.

Depending on when we held the meeting in the morning or afternoon, we’d prepare and eat a meal together. Hays would search the kitchen for comestibles, point out what was available, and we’d set to work fixing a meal. When it was over, we’d wash the dishes. The shared meal was essential to the group’s functioning.

We accomplished real intellectual work in those meetings, unlike what happened in the graduate seminars I took, which, despite the small class ‘discussion’ format, were primarily opportunities for faculty to expatiate on whatever. I can’t imagine that happening in a Zoom meeting, or some similar online format.

And I certainly cannot imagine the kind of discussions Hays and I subsequently had, after I’d graduated, taking place online. We continued to work together. He’d left Buffalo to live in New York City, so it was easy to travel there from Troy, New York (where I remained after I’d failed to get tenure). We’d talk and talk, often in his apartment. But we’d also go to Fort Tryon Park nearby and chat while walking the park. As you know, peripatetic discussion is an ancient and venerable intellectual tradition. It works.

Our most profound interaction, however, took place when we were all talked out but had not been able to resolve matters. Hays would take a seat in one place, me in another, and we’d each lean back and think. And think. One of us would hazard a remark or a question, we’d have a little discussion, and that it was back to our reveries. When things went well, which happened often enough, but not always, one of us would have an idea that the other could take up. We’d toss the ball back and forth, reach some conclusions, and Hays would sit down at the computer and write up some notes. Then we’d break out the scotch – four fingers worth in a tumbler – and drink while preparing the evening’s meal.

I can’t imagine doing such a thing in a virtual meeting, I don’t care how high the visual resolution, how good the sound, or how fast the internet connection, you just can’t get the highly personal and idiosyncratic interaction that is necessary.

And then there’s music

It seems that I have been a musician all my life. Many of my deepest and most profound experiences, both joyful and, to be honest, a bit terrifying, have happened either while making music or listening to live performances. I will only mention two occasions and then let my band mate Rick Rourke speak.

In the early 1970s I played in a rock bank called St. Matthew Passion. It was out last gig. During the introduction to “She’s Not There” I went blank. The music got more and more intense until Wham! I felt myself dissolve into white light and pure music. It felt good. I thought about that experience for days, weeks, months, and years afterward. I might even say that I’ve never fully ‘recovered’ from that experience. What could ‘recovery’ possibly mean? It changed me.

In 1987 David Hays and I went to hear Miles Davis perform at Avery Fisher Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center. The band was hot, the performance was stunning, and Miles and his band left the audience in grateful shock. “Time After Time” was the strongest song in a set of strong performances. The tempo was slow, very slow, and the dynamics were low, mostly, for there were times when the sound swelled to fill the hall. But the music was so powerful it filled the hall no matter how loud or soft the sound. Even at its softest, which was very soft, Miles’ sound was so intense that you’d think it could suck sound right out of the air. When Miles and the band had finished performing “Time After Time” the audience was completely and actively silent. It took us a few moments to return sufficiently to ourselves so that we could offer up the customary applause.

During the mid-1980s I was a member of The Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band. We gigged in upstate New York, mostly in Troy, Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs. We played small clubs and not so small clubs, private parties, weddings, and major concerts (e.g. opening for B.B. King). Here’s a video that Steve Rosenbaum, then of Our Town Television, now Managing Director of NYC Media Lab.

That’s me on trumpet (c. 0:29). We’re playing at The Metro, in Saratoga Springs, one of our regular gigs. A bit later Rick Rourke, who’d been on the road a number of years as a full-time musician, sums it up (c3:19): “It’s the closest you can get to really being feeling totally happy with yourself.”

The closest you can get to really being feeling totally happy with yourself. That’s core experience.

If Andreessen doesn’t understand this, then he has no business talking and writing about the future of internet technology. He may be brilliant, he may be rich, but I fear that he is not wise. He doesn’t understand the limitations of his experience.

I hear he’s a tall man. Perhaps his brain has spent too much time too close to the sun and, like Icarus, he’s falling. Or perhaps he has spent too much time surrounded by people who defer to him because of his wealth and power. Whatever the problem, we cannot allow ourselves follow him and his fellow digerati down that rabbit hole to perdition.

Ramble: Machine learning & the brain, word illusion, FOOM, Models of the Mind

Machine learning, the brain and the future of software

Friday’s post on Geoffrey Hinton’s assertion (deep learning is all we need) didn’t quite go the way I’d planned, but that’s OK. I figured relatively straightforward to point out the obvious limitations of that statement – obvious from my POV; it would take no more than four or five paragraphs. Then I got into it and realized that he was likely OK on the core assertion, but that it had implications he may not have appreciated. And once I’d worked through that I realized that I could interpret my old work on attractor nets more or less in Hinton’s terms and that, in turn, provides a way to think about complex thought in Hinton’s terms. That in turn led to the paper Hays and I did on natural intelligence. It all fits together. Making the connections took more time and effort than I had planned. But the end result is much more interesting.

That leaves me with more work to do. Well, maybe I’ll do it, maybe I won’t, at least not immediately. What sort of work? I’ve sketched out a framework, but what could we do within that framework in now and in the near future? That’s something I’d like to think about. Maybe it has implications for Andreessen’s AI-as-a-platform. I note that my post on that subject uses my old PowerPoint Assistant idea, and that is, in turn, based on some of the ideas behind attractor nets.

So much to do!

Word illusion

One problem Hinton as, that many have, is that he’s subject to the word illusion. In think about that I recalled how difficult it was for me to understand the difference between a word’s meaning and its referent. I think it was my sophomore year in college, when I read Roland Barthes’ Elements of Semiology, not much more than a pamphlet. I was easy enough to grasp that the sign consisted of a signifier ¬– something spoken or written – and well, what? I was used to thinking of words as pointing to things; that’s easy enough. But that the meaning, the signifier, is NOT the thing, the referent, I really had trouble absorbing that idea.

By the time I was in graduate school at SUNY Buffalo and working with David Hays on computational semantics, by that time the distinction between signifier and signified was abundantly clear. For the semantic network formalism was a very ‘concrete’ way of thinking about the realm of signifieds. You could draw pictures, or write (quasi)formal statements. But I didn't have anything like that at my disposal when I encountered Barthes. I don’t know just when the signifier/signified distinction became clear to me. Perhaps it really wasn’t clear until I began studying with Hays. But there must have been something before that, after all I’d been reading in cognitive science and knew about cognitive networks. I’d seen those diagrams (Ross Qullian, Don Norman, Sydney Lamb).

That is, it is one thing to assert the distinction, as Saussure did early in the 20th century. But how you understand that distinction depends on the conceptual tools available to you. And those tools weren’t readily available until, well, the so-called cognitive revolution. I suppose symbolic logic is a precursor, but the formalism is so detached from ordinary language that it doesn’t really do the job.

The thing about machine learning is that it doesn’t really force you to deal with the signifier/signified distinction. Sure, they are know that the texts in the corpora used by the machine are just word forms, signifiers. The meanings/signifieds aren’t there. But they don’t really have to work with the distinction. And when the resulting engine does interesting things with language, like vector semantics, machine translation, and so forth, well, it must somehow in some degree ‘understand’ the language it’s spitting out, no? The fact that it is not at all clear just what the machine is doing only reinforces the illusion. Since we don’t actually know, it’s easy enough to, in effect, believe that the machine has some how induced signifiers for the signifieds. That’s what those vectors are, no? Not, really, but...

You see the problem.

FOOM vs. the real singularity

I’m thinking of using that as the starting point for a 3 Quarks Daily piece. By FOOM, which is a term of art in some circles, I mean the idea that at some point in the (perhaps not too distant) future that the machines will suddenly become super-intelligent, bootstrap themselves to even greater levels of intelligence and then, FOOM! take over the world. That is, FOOM is a term for a very popular version of the so-called Technological Singularity.

I’m using “singularity” in the sense Jon von Neurmann used it, as a point “in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” I think we’re already there. It is real. It is not a point event, but an ongoing and ill-defined process. Think of the cyberwar we’ve seen so far, including election inteference, ransomewhere (think of the current attack on the oil pipeline to the NYC region), and this that and the other. It’s not going away. Think about the fact that Facebook, Google, and Twitter have (potentially) more control over public discourse than any national governments. And so forth.

I was thinking of doing this for May 24, but I think I’ll push it off a month. I want to simmer it.

Models of the Mind

Instead I’m going to review Grace Lindsay, Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering, and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain (2021). It’s a very good general introduction to some of the various mathematical ideas that have been and are being used in understanding the brain. I know some of this stuff, and some I didn’t.

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I’ll continue blogging about Seinfeld bits and about kids and music. And then we have the irises.

More later.