
In conversation with Marc Andreessen - npalli
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-conversation.html
======
mhd
"But this is the big story of our time—the elimination of poverty. We have
people rising out of poverty at a global level and in the U.S. at
unprecedented rates. In 50 years, we’ve gone from hunger being the dominant
problem among lower-­income people to obesity being the dominant problem."

Which is good, as it increased Walmart's share value? I'm really not sure how
to read this, this is moving beyond SV techno-libertarianism into straight-
forward Onion territory.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's good that scarcity of material goods and services has ceased to be a
problem, and now the only remaining problems are self inflicted.

Similarly it would be a good thing if no one murdered anyone else even if
people occasionally committed suicide.

~~~
mhd
I don't quite get how getting over the dust bowl famine means that _poverty_
is solved. Obesity doesn't really imply that the poor are now just applying
all their affluence wrongly and could easily buy houses if they just would get
their hands off the Mickey D, so it's all their fault if that isn't the case.

"Self inflicted" is really over-simplifying things and sounds like something
out of Rand (or misunderstood Nietzsche).

~~~
cpwright
I don't think the point is that they could buy houses and live a middle class
lifestyle. If you compare the two absolute circumstances: 1\. Not having
enough calories, and literally being pained by hunger, and the associated
near-term consequences thereof. 2\. Having too many calories in not the right
proportions, which have longer-term consequences.

I would expect that people in both circumstances #1 and #2 would prefer for #2
to happen to them. Just because things aren't perfect, doesn't mean they
aren't better than they were.

If you look at things as absolutes (as opposed to comparing "poor" people to
the middle or upper class), then you can fairly assert that the kind of
poverty that was more common in the US in the past and is still common in the
developing world is, for the most part, solved.

~~~
mhd
Again, that's solving starvation, not poverty. Those might often go together,
but aren't really identical. You could have all the money in the world, if
there's a omnipresent famine that wouldn't help you a lot.

If the goalpost for poverty is not starving, than that's a friggin' terrible
definition. If that's the end of one's aspirations, just making sure that
other people don't croak from hunger, then this paints a sadder picture of
humanity than my initial interpretation of the original quote.

I'm not denying that things haven't improved for people in the US, but in what
kind of morality system would we consider this the end of the line?

~~~
theworst
I don't see it as a goalpost for poverty, more of a milestone -- it's the
first symptom of poverty that IMO humanity wants to relieve

------
gregpilling
from the article

"The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of
entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with
MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in
the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had
Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited
and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students
per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per
student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from
that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field
in order to have that course?

You could hire James Cameron to do it.

You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s
study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality]
experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the
battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all
the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original
Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?"

\-------------------------------

So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?

~~~
sytelus
Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything
by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands
of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we
humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only
by actually doing things.

For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General
Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some
understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone
takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In
other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal
documentaries.

Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and
exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and
make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows
professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow
understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to
college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace
this.

~~~
karmacondon
I respectfully disagree. If you measure learning with homework questions from
textbooks, then of course textbooks and the modern classroom will seem like
the best way to learn. There are many ways to educate. Getting a person
intensely interested in a subject is the best way to get them to learn more
about it, and Hollywood does intense interest like nobody's business. Someone
who associates math with special effects and compelling stories will be more
receptive than someone who associates math with boring lectures and homework
problems.

Someone who watched a documentary on General Relatively won't be able to
perform the necessary calculations to get a rocket to the moon, but that
doesn't mean that they didn't learn anything. A higher concept view that makes
people say, "Oh, I get why gravity is cool now" could be more useful to most
people than homework assignments that don't hold a lot of practical value.
Someone is going to be an astrophysicist, needs rigorous practice and skill
mastery. Someone who is gong to be a plumber might be better off learning the
concepts in an intuitive way that provides an opportunity to learn more.

~~~
rvn1045
I think 'knowledge' can be gained from watching these lectures. By knowledge I
mean facts. But if you want to learn a skill, you better be slogging on the
homework's to gain intuition. I don't think you can learn discrete math by
just watching lectures, you'll have to spend countless hours doing problems to
learn anything non-trivial.

------
hudibras
It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people and
that women just need to lean in more. It's all a meritocracy, you know,
nothing we can do about it.

But, hey, maybe Those People can still nab a slot in a MOOC so it's all
good...

~~~
jgalt212
As a "white person" I am getting a little tired of running interference for
the equally economically successful Asians and South Asians.

~~~
adventured
In the US at least, asian people are more successful than white people are.
Higher incomes, higher levels of college education, higher GPAs, higher SAT
scores, lower unemployment rates, and lower rates of poverty.

The recent trend to pretend that asian people are white people as far as
diversity is concerned is extremely disturbing. It points to an incredible
racism at the heart of the arguments.

------
AndrewKemendo
_We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could
contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re
working on._

I would like to hear a lot more about this. Being on the east coast the
Silicon Valley crowd or even just the ethos around it seem totally foreign.

I will say I am somewhat connected in the D.C. area and I have heard from many
Angels and VC's that the east coast will never look like SV simply because the
money that is here is not like SV money - it's too tied up, needs too much due
diligence and investors are too tightly wound as advisers/board members.

I don't know if that is true, and we are seeing huge growth in the Startup
scene here, but it certainly feels much more restrictive than what you see on
HN and read about how SV money/networks get thrown around.

~~~
saddino
As someone who relocated from DC to SV two years ago, DC has always had a
healthy startup scene that is, as you suspect, hampered severely by money
flow. That's not to say it's not possible to fundraise where you are, it's
just amazingly much harder to do so.

------
waterlesscloud
"I mean, part of it is, I love arguing.

No, really?

The big thing about Twitter for me is it’s just more people to argue with."

You know, that does pretty much sum of the appeal of Twitter for me too.

~~~
innguest
I love arguing and I honestly did not know Twitter was fertile grounds for
that. So I appreciate your comment. Now excuse me while I create my first
twitter account.

------
jasonisalive
Wow, I liked Marc already, but after reading this, I love him. This should be
required reading for everyone.

Edit: I really admire the graceful way he handles the hard questions about
libertarian philosophy - social welfare and job loss. Even though I don't
agree with him, and feel he may be pulling some punches to keep his message
broadly palatable, it's still impressive.

~~~
wffurr
By "graceful" you mean dodged the question and the interview let him get away
with it?

Calling the very real hardship caused by job loss in America the "lump-of-
labor" fallacy and calling our welfare state "very advanced" is not very
graceful. Some exposure to what that's really like would be highly instructive
for Marc. Spoiler: it's demeaning and depressing.

~~~
jasonisalive
He's a libertarian. A real libertarian argument would be something like this:
"People should not expect to receive unconditional support in the event of
losing their job or suffering financial hardship. People should factor such
risks into their financial planning. Any unconditional support structures will
weaken the incentives to prudent financial planning and lead to massive and
society-wide problems of systemic dependency and economic maladjustment."

Unfortunately the logic behind this argument is poorly understood and widely
resisted. People who advance such arguments are typically perceived as
arrogant, callous, and entitled. So I think Marc is indeed dodging the bullet
by trying to softly suggest alternative ways to perceiving these issues, as
well as trying to encourage a change in perspective to notoriously-oblivious
Americans on how their polity actually stacks up in global terms.

~~~
wffurr
>> People should factor such risks into their financial planning.

Easy for us to say, with our six-figure salaries and hot job market. How the
heck is someone working a minimum wage job supposed to do any financial
planning? How does a child without the sort of supportive environment I had
escape the cycle of poverty?

Libertarianism is great if everyone is equally powerful. I'd be all for it if
all people were equally educated, equally wealthy, and equally willing to
respect others' property rights.

~~~
jasonisalive
I work a minimum wage job. Save, save, and save some more. The only people I
could reasonably blame for my position in life would be my parents, not wider
society.

Maybe people should blame their parents more instead of vague shadowy
corporations?

------
nazgulnarsil
>The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of
entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with
MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in
the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had
Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited
and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students
per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per
student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from
that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field
in order to have that course?

This makes me more optimistic about the future than I have been in a while.

~~~
sytelus
No, this doesn't change much. Before MOOCs we still had all the textbooks
authored by same professors which anyone can buy for less than $100 and learn
the subject on their own. MOOCs are very much a video version of those
textbooks.

The major missing component of MOOCs is intensive homework problems that often
requires you to consult professors in their office hours. And the time
professors/TA spend in checking your homework.

The core thing to understand is that real learning doesn't happen when you are
listening to lectures but it happens when you are working on homework and
doing exercises where you struggle through and occasionally have to go back to
professor's offices to get insight.

But the truth is that the price of education is mostly justified as
"certification service". When you have degree from Stanford it means someone
very reputable is backing up your claim that you have learned thing or two
about something. That's mainly what you are paying as "tuition fees". MOOCs
are relatively much weaker as certification services and hence chances of them
getting trusted is same as chances of trusting degrees from many other "online
universities".

------
vonklaus
>There’s this myth that government regulation is well intentioned and benign,
and implemented properly. That’s the myth. And then when people actually run
into this in the real world, they’re, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t realize.”

To his point, you really do get the sense that, on balance, people are
becoming more libertarian, and a lot of that has been catalyzed by technology
disrupting entrenched business models that have benefitted from regulatory
protectionism.

~~~
freshflowers
Funny, because from a European perspective I get the sense that SV
libertarianism (accompanied by a complete lack of ethics) is leading to a
backlash where people are demanding stronger consumer-, labor- and privacy-
protection.

I would say the reaction in the real world tends to be "Oh, fuck, those
regulations are good for something after all."

~~~
wakeless
You are right in a sense. I think people are demanding more flexible,
realistic and more consumer favourable laws. Rather than the rigid structures
that are in currently in place.

~~~
aptwebapps
I would say that they're just asking for new laws to meet the need of the
moment, and I'm not even very libertarian. I mean, I'm sure they'd describe
them the way you have but it's not clear to me that there's substance to the
characterization.

------
vuldin
TIL Mark Zuckerberg didn't know what Netscape was before meeting Marc
Andreessen. Zuckerberg may get some slack from the reporter and even Andressen
regarding this, but it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little
about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon.

~~~
ChrisGaudreau
I'm only 19, and even I remember a time when Netscape was still pretty
popular, or at least a lot of people had Navigator installed. It was even
mentioned or displayed in a lot of programming books, articles, and
presentations. I wonder how he managed to avoid knowledge of it for so long.

~~~
hkmurakami
iirc I'm one year younger than Zuck but still remember upgrading to Netscape
Navigator 4.0 from a previous version. But then again I grew up in SV and my
dad was in the PC industry. Zuck grew up the the East coast, and that's
probably the biggest difference.

~~~
ChrisGaudreau
I grew up on the East coast too. When I was ten or so, it was really common
for people around here to have that installed.

------
jokoon
> The American Enterprise Institute, I think, does a lot of good work.

meh

