Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Finally, a practical use for ai; making laws 1000x more complex...

Funnel diagrams are so badly named; the entire point of a funnel is to ENSURE that everything you put in on top also makes it to the bottom.

really wish the quora ceo thread had dropped in time for last week’s read max post

we should shut down the postal service & reallocate the budget & real estate for mental health services and facilities that are free for all Americans

— @jason (@Jason) May 8, 2023

That guy has a fetish for getting yelled at for his stupid takes I think.

I saw that one in the context of someone’s QT calling him a dumb motherfucker and otm

who is this guy and why do people engage with him?

minor figure who made some money in the blog rush by selling off a completely inconsequential set of websites, then got in on a private Uber offering and made a bunch of money

he and another dude have some obnoxious SV/VC podcast. Elon had both of them sitting around at the twitter offices coming up with ideas, which makes no sense as he's not an ideas guy

also, all the other people from blog media back in the day (movabletype/sixapart/etc) peeps love to dunk on him for being a dumbass

per my quick research, "weblogs inc" was basically trying to be a network like gawker media but was really just a package of a bunch of sites, only a couple of which got any traffic, that was then bounced between AOL, Yahoo, etc.

A lot of what's wrong with everything in this thread can be chalked up to the fact that silicon valley is disproportionately dominated by 20-somethings, 20-somethings are already fucking idiots, and these particular 20-somethings are arrogant idiots because they went to Stanford and/or built some dumb app that made them easy money.

It's also a lot of why I'm not sanguine about AI development

@jason is the author of the canonical "get rich quick investing in early stage startups" book https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Invest-Technology-Startups-Timeless-Investor/dp/0062560700

he was a regular on this bad tech podcast i used to listen to when i didn’t know any better (this week in tech), was always promoting something called ‘mahalo.com’

20-somethings are already fucking idiots

i was not an idiot in my 20s ...

oh god I used to listen to this week in tech too, way back in the digg.com days! one day they covered something in the news that I actually knew something about and they were clueless about it, but making all these sweeping statements that sounded like they knew something. which made me think that if they were this ignorant about something I knew about, what about all the stuff I didn't know about? so I stopped listening.

when i was in my 20s i worked corporate AV for meetings and conferences, including a number of silicon valley tech ones ... most of the tech people treated me (and other venue staff) like "the help" and were assholes

its not really true that sv is dominated by 20 somethings for instance the guy were discussing @jason is certainly not in his 20s, although he may have been at one point

most people that are over 30 have been in their 20s at some point?

oh god I used to listen to this week in tech too, way back in the digg.com days! one day they covered something in the news that I actually knew something about and they were clueless about it, but making all these sweeping statements that sounded like they knew something. which made me think that if they were this ignorant about something I knew about, what about all the stuff I didn't know about? so I stopped listening.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 1:15 PM (five minutes ago)

haha yeah it kinda sucked. they had a magician guy on there who was also a rabid libertarian, which kinda makes sense. and this old guy john dvorak who would always complain about government regulation. SV brainworms to the core

most people that are over 30 have been in their 20s at some point?

― sarahell, Tuesday, May 9, 2023 1:28 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk im not like a age scientist really

age science vs. hipster studies

which way western man

Most magicians are libertarians though.

John Dvorak! I haven't seen that name since I used to read my father's copies of PC Magazine in the 90s.

remember when there were two magician movies

john dvorak, robert scoble

oh robert x cringely

A lot of what's wrong with everything in this thread can be chalked up to the fact that silicon valley is disproportionately dominated by 20-somethings

there might be startups mostly staffed with people in their 20s but very few are started by people in their 20s these days, if they ever were

I think this quote from one of the AirBnb founders kind of sums it up

You know, when we were in Y Combinator, Paul Graham said, “Make something that people want. Make something for yourself.” And the problem is once you get really successful, you stop becoming the customer. And I mean, I can’t make products just for 41-year-old tech founders. That’s not a really big market. So I’ve gotta make sure I remember the 26-year-old me that didn’t have a lot of money when I started the company.

I think a lot of the people pitching who are younger are doing so in a way that attracts the attention of 50-something VCs and 40-something tech founders who now live very different lives than they did in their 20s.

And I mean, I can’t make products just for 41-year-old tech founders. That’s not a really big market.

at one point i was somehow on a list for a company that offered "private plane sharing" ... speaking of products for 41-year-old tech founders.

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

John Dvorak! I haven't seen that name since I used to read my father's copies of PC Magazine in the 90s.

― blatherskite

remember when penn gillette wrote a column for pc magazine and mostly used it to be creepily obsessed with uma thurman

eww

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

― Andy the Grasshopper

i think it's more that we accord founders more respect than they're due. anybody can have an idea - it takes the exploited working classes to make that idea work

I got an ad for classes on “building your founder brand.”

They managed to make the word worse.

"Founder" works when your company has been built up, retrospectively - no one can deny that Colonel Harlan Sanders was the founder of KFC

But he didn't use that term when he opened his first roadside chicken shack

anybody can have an idea - it takes the exploited working classes to make that idea work

uh, sometimes the person with the idea is the one that makes the idea work ... like it is not impossible for someone to have ideas and actually do work ... even though much organizational theory (and practice) doesn't find that efficient.

most founders work alone, they aren't reliant on anyone else's work at all

speaking of exploitation etc., I only just learned about Alexander Wang (noted above as coiner of "botsexual," and who is, btw, in his 20s) and Scale AI, which it seems operates a glorified human clickbot farm to "train" AI on data.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-alexandr-wang-turned-army-clickworkers-ai-unicorn/

"“We’re the picks and shovels in the generative AI gold rush,” says Wang, who briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire after Scale was awarded a $7.3 billion valuation in 2021. His clients now include the U.S. Department of Defense and OpenAI.
But that success was not built entirely on silicon. It also took a human army: some 240,000 people in Kenya, the Philippines and Venezuela work for Remotasks, a subsidiary Scale doesn’t mention in its marketing materials. This vast, outsourced workforce performs a rudimentary task crucial to AI, labeling the data used to train it.

https://scontent.fewr1-6.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/344875914_780645436716335_7579604316754725664_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p180x540&_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=VtVhMpSEpWEAX_H4yJ4&_nc_ht=scontent.fewr1-6.fna&oh=00_AfBPhWG857GX36mIOaoO2dfU6YfpbvmdMXsmX3rtcL4LUA&oe=645F2EBF
(amazing layout/juxtaposition choice)

this was a storyline in the tv show Silicon Valley iirc?

I think it was a storyline in Capital too

Marx was a dope ass showrunner

seize the means of production: lights, camera, and direct action baby

"founder" is such a shitty word - way too grandiose

victory is life

New frontiers in the ignorance grindset. If you’re already one of the dimmest guys alive are you just going to rest on your laurels? No, you’re going to get out there and innovate the paid to be a dipshit space in ways that are frankly startling. Work harder to not get smarter. pic.twitter.com/anIXiWHRUF

— Huge Mantis (@HugeMantis) May 12, 2023

extremely gratifying

rip Doyle Brunson - here is when he totally destroyed Jason Calacanis for $100k https://t.co/JPyqZPRRso

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 16, 2023

so funny that @jason is a long time high stake tv fish

like once or twice just to play with the big boys is fine, tho personally i would rather not do it on tv, but he was on those shows for years

lol

and some of the truest words ever spoken about poker pic.twitter.com/Q5jq5xh0JO

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 16, 2023

lol yeah I hadn't put 2 and 2 together that Jason Calacanis was THAT guy

as much as I despise some of this shit I will give crypto some credit in that it's kind of kept poker alive and well these last 7-8 years. one site I'm on lets you do NFT profile pictures which I think is a great feature because not only are these players always awful they tilt extremely frequently. so it's nice to be album to identify them so easily

he didn't use that term when he opened his first roadside chicken shack

He did, however, use the appellation "Colonel" unironically.

(Yes, I know, he was actually a "Kentucky Colonel," but come on now, he sold shitty fried chicken.)