
Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen - yarapavan
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/mark-zuckerberg-interviews-patrick-collison-and-tyler-cowen/
======
Nokinside
The most interesting part of the talk is what is avoided.

Like the positive effect of government policy. The US Anti-trust policy was
very effective at times.

Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC) 1938-1941 forced licensing of
tens of thousands of patents.

When AT&T Bell Labs invented transistor it was forced to allow anyone to use
it's knowledge. People went to Bell Labs and they were taught how to
manufacture transistors. Massive industry spurted overnight. If transistor was
invented today, the inventor would have a monopoly for transistor 25 years and
generate huge profits.

~~~
mjewkes
In their public-facing work, Cowen and pc talk primarily about the importance
and upside of progress and growth [1][2]. As someone who leans left, I find
these writings both novel and compelling - some of the most compelling market-
oriented thinking I've come across.

At the same time, pc, Cowen, and Zuck are in the thick of the SF "conservative
libertarian" milieu. Thiel was a/the first major investor in FB, Stripe, and
Cowen's "Emergent Ventures". Cowen's Mercatus center has deep ties (that I
don't fully understand) with Koch industries and the federalist society. Etc.

I'm _far_ less impressed with the policies actually advocated for by these
groups.

I'd actually be really interested in hearing the three of them discuss
opportunities for government policy to have significant positive impact. I'd
be surprised if pc wasn't a fan of at least some aspects of the FAA / NTSB
[3], and I know Cowen advocates for public increases in basic research / R&D
investment [4].

As "libertarian conservative" "public thought leaders", I wonder where else
they might agree that government intervention can be net very-positive.

[Edit: sorry about the labels. There are real clusters of thinking and people
here that need names, but I'm sure that they'd prefer different labels]

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-
need-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-
science-progress/594946/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Attachments-Prosperous-
Respo...](https://www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Attachments-Prosperous-Responsible-
Individuals/dp/1732265135) \+ thorough review/interview
[https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tyler-cowen-
stubborn...](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tyler-cowen-stubborn-
attachments/)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1021995602970923010](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1021995602970923010)

[4]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/02/th...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/02/the-
public-funding-of-research-and-development.html)

~~~
mjewkes
Conversely, I'd love to read a Vox editorial that looks for opportunites for
government deregulation/step-back.

------
the_watcher
What I was most struck by in the conversation is that Zuck is actually _doing_
some of the things Cowen advocates - policy experimentation, taking on long-
term projects with uncertain payoffs, etc. at CZI.

I'm a huge fan of Patrick Collison and know that Stripe is also doing tons of
experimentation and product innovation, but I was struck by how much less like
an academic Zuck sounded. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, but Cowen
and Collison seem to focus on what _everyone_ should be doing, while Zuck's
focus is on what he, personally, can get done (again, caveat being that
Collison is simply so well-read that he comes off as an academic, while I'm
aware that in reality he's doing a ton himself as well).

~~~
pc
> _What I was most struck by in the conversation is that Zuck is actually
> doing some of the things Cowen advocates - policy experimentation, taking on
> long-term projects with uncertain payoffs, etc. at CZI._

I'm a big admirer of what Mark is doing with CZI (which is part of why Cowen/I
agreed to the interview). Stripe is still a private company, but maybe I'll be
able to intervene more directly over time. If I do, having CZI as precedent
will be very helpful.

~~~
mikorym
I don't want to sound like I am trolling or something. However, I find it hard
to take anything Mark Zuckerberg does seriously. For that matter, I am so
biased that I have no interest in these interviews at all (maybe to your
detriment).

How do you see this? You say that you are an admirer of CZI. In my experience
with obnoxious CEO types, they are happy to be philantrophic or "build" things
when it suits them, and only then. Do you think it's a net positive? Wouldn't
someone else (like Gates or even Buffet) be a better leader for these
initiatives? I'm sure that if Mark did not get so successful with FB, it would
have been the WA founders, otherwise someone else yet again.

Sorry if this is a steriotypical reaction, but I am sorry; I just can't trust
something from camp Zuck.

~~~
the_watcher
If you went back 25 years, Bill Gates was considered by many (if not most) the
"obnoxious CEO", but you're now using him as an example of "someone else I'd
take seriously".

~~~
ramzyo
Interesting point, although I hesitate to see this as an effective
counterpoint. People change, perceptions of people change, and those who were
once maligned can become beloved, while those who were once beloved can become
maligned. Bill Gates has followed the maligned to beloved arch over the last
25 years - it's easy for me to see how Mark could follow this same trajectory
given that he's relatively early in his career.

~~~
kelnos
I wouldn't call Gates "beloved", at least not in all circles. I consider his
work with his foundation as basically table stakes in society for someone who
has made his fortune from illegal, anti-competitive practices that damaged an
entire industry.

Beyond that, while I'll certainly admit that government has a ton of problems,
I'm not sure that the best model for funding -- for example -- research into
various diseases is to put decisions under the control of rich people in the
private sector, no matter how "reformed" and generous they seem. Or that
super-rich people deserve to have praised philanthropic legacies because they
managed to game the system during some point in their lives at the expense of
income inequality and unfair markets.

Granted, Gates doing good with his money is orders of magnitude better than
him sitting on it doing nothing, but I don't think he deserves all the praise
he's been getting, given his background.

~~~
minblaster
I agree. It’s amazing how easily people slip into the ends justifying the
means.

Yes, he’s contributing now. Doesn’t excuse the practices that got him there.

~~~
ramzyo
It's a tough thing you're hitting on - definitely something I wrestle with
personally with respect to people who follow career arcs similar to Gates'.
Personally, I don't believe the ends ever justify the means, although in
admiring Gates today for the work he does I don't feel that I'm doing that nor
excusing him for his past. Would I ever look to young Gates as a role model?
No. Gates of today, yes. I imagine I could think of Zuckerberg the same way
one day if he has a long enough career.

------
sova
It seems that naturally with technological progress and population increase,
we are doomed to always zero out our gains in the minute with losses in the
aggregate. How is it that science and technology move forward but crop yields
remain constant? Cowen mentions that it seems to be a "last mile problem" for
delivering scientific research benefits to all. Collison has a cool list of
"Fast" completed projects on his site of big tasks in human history on the
order of hundreds of days. Zuckerberg's main focus is to invest in medicine
research because he believes the long term eventuality of such investment is a
definite decrease in healthcare. Overall, it seems that the questions focus on
the global population in aggregate or nations as wholes, and on long-term or
permanent solutions to emergent issues. I disagree that Zuckerberg's major
impact will be on medicine, human opinion is much more influential than hard
science in the shimmering parallax of annals of dimly lit human history
backwards into the ages. I'm glad they are talking about such matters: the
intellectual hubs of Vienna and Silicon Valley, the research (or lack of
research) in coming to understand Human Progress. One thing that seems to be
ignored the whole time is the progress of the individual, the progress of the
family, and the progress of the tribe. We can measure in aggregate all day,
but the only true test of progress is if our newer generations of humans shine
brighter and are more illuminated than we are.

~~~
Isamu
>but crop yields remain constant

Some, not all, crop yields have been stalling in recent years. I think Tyler's
point was maybe the increasing cost of research and effort to keep moving the
yield curves up, such that it may be stalling progress there.

Data on crop yields here: [https://ourworldindata.org/crop-
yields](https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields)

~~~
mikorym
>> crop yields remain constant

> some, not all...

Good that you made this correction. In 1960 the average yield for tomatoes was
50 ton/ha or less in the area where I am from. [1]

In 2019, the yield was 100 ton/ha, but in the most optimal areas you get 140
ton/ha. If you use nets you get 250 tons/ha.

>> How is it that science and technology move forward but crop yields remain
constant?

This is bordering on conspiracy theory; I have experience in tech in
agriculture and the progress the last 50 years is nothing short of a
humanitarian miracle. The miracle is far from complete though.

[1] First hand knowledge.

------
pyb
"What’s interesting and, anyway should be concerning, is that for almost every
conceivable applied measure we seem to be getting at best constant returns.
But that’s really bad because we see exponentially increasing inputs and
constant return outputs."

Ironically, in terms of innovation, the yearly output of companies such as
Facebook and Stripe has seemed somewhat constant, despite those companies
getting many orders of magnitude bigger!

Maybe MZ and PC should investigate this issue at their own companies, and
perhaps even begin to fix it. After that, they'll be better able to look at
fixing innovation in the world at large.

~~~
jonmc12
I had been listening to some "Game A" vs "Game B" podcasts - Schmachtenberger,
Hall (Greenhall), Rutt, etc, just before listening to this podcast. For
example: [https://soundcloud.com/venturestories/game-b-in-a-silicon-
va...](https://soundcloud.com/venturestories/game-b-in-a-silicon-valley)

These thinkers propose a common constraint for stagnant growth in education
and medicine: a philosophy of science. There is much more to it, and
unfortunately it's not a concise explanation. However, I find this conceptual
frame much stronger than the education/medicine problem "commonalities"
described by Zuck, Collison and Cowen. Further, the "Game A" insight seems to
predict the shortcomings of an applied meta-approach of "the tool-building
which comes from having the experience building engineering teams."

Game A: ("hill climbing") invest in better microscopy tools, even though
"right now, the actual technology of microscopes is ahead of scientists’
ability to process the data".

Game B: ("valley crossing") invest in a philosophy of science to better
understand complexity management, causality and sense-making in the domains of
education and medicine.

"And as engineers.. you really want to get into the code and step through it
to see where the thing is breaking down" (Zuck). But whats 'broken' at FB? is
it a server infrastructure? monetization? or is it interpersonal psychology of
user relationships? Mistaking our tools' observation for reality, and
optimizing for only what we can measure can build profits, but it has limits
to make sense of complexity - and undefined/unmanaged complexity is common to
the nature of education/medicine problems.

~~~
t_serpico
What exactly does it mean to invest in a 'philosophy of science'? I broadly
interpret that as efforts geared towards gaining a big picture understanding
of a problem, its subproblems, and interdependencies.

------
valleyjo
They discuss the fact that we are seeing linear gains from exponential
investment in several fields (healthcare, semiconductors to name a few). This
is a fascinating problem.

~~~
netcan
They discuss healthcare & higher education in parallel, and I do think the
cost explosion in both is worth noting... But the differences are as important
as the similarities.

Some big healthcare cost increases come from increased consumption. It's not
_just_ incentives, bureaucracies and inefficiencies that caused cost
increases.

Once upon a time we had less medical care to consume, fewer procedures, cancer
treatments and other such costly stuff. Medical care costs were mostly
clinical, doctors salaries and such. Prenatal care once meant occasional
visits to a doctor or nurse. These days, it also means ultrasounds, genetic
testing, more blood tests & such. That costs more.

There are just more available treatments to treat patients, especially the
already high-cost stuff like cancer treatment, surgery.... These are new
things that the medical industry are doing, and cost money. It's at least
partly a "we buy more" situation, not just price inflation.

A sociology degree, OTOH, is not different in a than it was in the 1950s.
There are nearly no non-efficiency related cost increases in higher-ed. No
new, expensive stuff is being used to teach these students. Prices just
increased, and most of that got observed into administration.

In terms of ROI at a societal level... Idk if it's usefully measurable, for
medicine at least.

There definitely aren't massive, healthcare-related increases I gross life
expectancy and such. Does that mean bad ROI? This gets philosophical.

~~~
jeremyw
> It's not just incentives, bureaucracies and inefficiencies that caused cost
> increases.

This might be true if there weren't stark counterexamples, e.g. Singapore at
1/4 the cost, with better outcomes. Notably there, government dollars flow
through to consumers who choose among competitors by price and quality.

~~~
pmohun
There is also a lower focus on end of life care in Singapore, which makes up
the vast majority of spending in the American system.

These issues are cultural, not just political or economic. I am looking
forward to seeing what PC and TC can come up with for a common framework. This
seems to be a tough problem.

~~~
keenmaster
The healthcare sector constitutes 18% of our GDP, a truly insane amount. That
is 7-8% (~1.5 trillion) more than it should be. Excessive end-of-life care
explains almost none of that. The two biggest issues in American healthcare
are:

\- Zero price transparency

\- Payment through intermediaries like insurance companies and your employer,
who often pays half of your insurance premiums and other healthcare
expenditures

With no price transparency, prices are just made up with little connection to
actual value delivered. Because of the middlemen, most patients don’t feel the
full cost of healthcare. Patients in aggregate still pay for the full
negotiated cost, just indirectly in the form of higher premiums and forgone
wages (marginal premiums paid by the employer).

At this point, Medicare for All is our best hope. A true market-based
healthcare economy, as great as it may be, is a pipe dream. With Medicare for
All, the government would set reimbursement rates in stone. Most doctors who
want a substantial amount of patients would have to accept those rates. Unlike
insurance companies, the government would not be able to aggressively increase
its “premiums,” or taxes, every year and it won’t get kickbacks from hospitals
for high cost care. The government would also set empirically backed standards
of care that lower their cost burden with no impact on average lifespan.

We could potentially allow for parallel “luxury care” purchased by the patient
if they want to be able to expedite their non-emergency knee replacement from
6 months to 2 weeks. The government would be incentivized to launch health
initiatives and laws that help lower the rates of obesity and diabetes in the
population. Lastly, the government would also be incentivized to increase the
supply of doctors. There are multiple instances in the past when medical
organizations lobbied or misled Congress into over-limiting the supply of
medical residencies. They also had a hand in restricting the number and size
of medical schools. So yes, overpaid, scarce medical professionals are a big
part of the cost burden, and their representative institutions are making sure
they stay overpaid. Only recently have medical organizations lobbied to
increase the number of residencies again. That’s just damage control.

The American people should not accept compromise on healthcare any longer.
That’s what the ACA was, and it did not do enough. Medicare for All will bring
us in line with the rest of the developed world which has better health
outcomes at a much lower cost. We can save >$1 trillion and put that money
towards things like a national high speed rail network, anti-poverty efforts,
government-subsidized corporate internships, and an accredited national online
education and retraining platform with the best professors on every subject
imaginable.

------
laingc
I loved this interview, and generally have a lot of time for Tyler Cowen’s
podcasts and blog.

This topic is one that Peter Thiel has been talking about for over a decade. I
have a general theory that whatever smart people are talking about now, Thiel
was discussing 10 years before. This is why I always try to find out
everything I can about what Thiel is talking about today - it’s like getting a
glimpse into the future.

~~~
buboard
it's likely Thiel influenced both of them (is invested in both)

> what Thiel is talking about today

what he said 10 years ago is more actionable

------
dv_dt
I'm always cautious about Cowen as he receives backing from the Koch network.

[https://macro.economicblogs.org/naked-
capitalism/2018/05/sco...](https://macro.economicblogs.org/naked-
capitalism/2018/05/scofield-tyler-cowen-koch-brothers-funding-mercatus-center-
george-mason-university-academic-freedom/)

~~~
nostromo
The Kochs have also funded stem-cell research and gay rights initiatives --
are you similarly cautious about those things?

~~~
dv_dt
They also fund widespread climate denial, federal court stacking, and the tea
party (probably not this anymore), likely at many times the magnitude. So yes
I am cautious.

~~~
exolymph
To be clear: You are also cautious about stem-cell research and gay rights
initiatives, because those have been Koch-funded?

~~~
dv_dt
No I've never encountered those efforts and have had no reason to evaluate
them one way or another. Maybe they are too small to have reached any
appreciable public notice? (or at least my notice).

To be honest though, I feel the opinions and speech of billionaires are
amplified in our media so one should always be more critical and cautious of
any of their projects, because money gives the ability to shortcut a more
critical vetting of the effort.

------
artfulhippo
> Collison: when we sort of talk about the phenomenon of “progress,” you know,
> I think GDP or GDP per capita is a pretty good first approximation measure
> of it and it correlates strongly ——

I got confused when Collison said that there was scientific evidence that
business productivity increases with improved management practices. That’s the
thesis of business schools and management consultants. What’s the new idea
here?

1) What’s the difference between “Progress Studies” and economics?

2) When businesses acquire their competitors, does this accelerate or inhibit
progress?

~~~
svcphr
He's referring to research by Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford. They've
worked together.

Ctrl-F management on his research page
([https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/research](https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/research)).
In one paper, they randomly assign consulting services from a management
consultancy to manufacturing plants in India and found a 17% increase in
productivity.

~~~
alkibiades
not sure that means it generalizes to all countries or types of business

~~~
svcphr
Oh, definitely not! As with all RCTs, gotta worry about generalizability.

He has a lot of other work showing correlations between management and
productivity at much more scale, but this was the one attempt (that I know of)
trying to establish something more causal

------
wnm
there is also a video version of the interview at
[https://about.fb.com/news/2019/11/a-conversation-with-
mark-z...](https://about.fb.com/news/2019/11/a-conversation-with-mark-
zuckerberg-patrick-collison-and-tyler-cowen/)

------
dluan
> Collison: But even if technology solved that, I guess my worry would be that
> the socio-institutional dynamics that have ruined cities or made them less
> effective or whatever, probably also generalized and applied to other
> domains.

Reminder that Stripe _as a company_ put out a position opposing Prop C. The
hypocrisy, I guess.

Someone needs to update pg's 'founders should live in the future' to
specifically include FAGSLC as the future, because otherwise we're just
wasting heat.

~~~
uoaei
>Fully Automated Gay Space Luxury Communism

For those having trouble parsing that acronym.

~~~
adenverd
I'm afraid to ask, but, in what community is this phrase spoken frequently
enough to warrant an acronym?

~~~
uoaei
Satirical-edgy leftist meme pages

------
ebetica0
"So for example, if you look at the U.S., productivity growth mid-century or
say between, you know, 1920, 1970, was maybe about 1.9% a year. Now most
economists think it’s much lower, maybe around sort of .4% a year, something
like that."

Isn't this just because the US was riding off of the coattails of two world
wars and being _the_ global superpower? I wonder what the data says about the
rest of the world in that period, probably not so good?

------
darshanime
Why don't we ever see Larry Page doing such things? Don't even remember when I
last saw news about him.

~~~
chubot
He has a vocal cord disorder and speaking is apparently a hardship for him.

------
adenverd
Tyler makes a compelling case in his book[1] that economic growth is
responsible for most of the biggest improvements in human flourishing over the
past century. He concludes that economic growth is a moral imperative.

All three participants in this interview discuss the "exponential inputs,
linear outputs" problem/slow-down that industries face as they scale and
mature.

Question: how far does ROI have to fall for the growth of an industry to cost
more than its returns to society are morally worth? Is this even possible? Or
is there an assumption that the market would somehow fix/prevent this
scenario?]

[1] Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments, 2018

------
stopads
Mark Zuckerberg takes it for granted that the most important things in the
universe are productivity growth and the number of people citing your
publication and talks about ways we can make these numbers go up more in this
podcast.

Are those really our biggest priorities right now? Should they be? How many
more decades are we supposed to pretend the pie getting bigger will cause all
problems to ~ _magically tricklesolve themselves_ ~, because this there is
lots of evidence that this is not happening.

~~~
empiricus
Maybe a growing pie is not perfect, but it is greatly preferable to a
shrinking one. For a simple example, take a company that looses some contracts
and stops growing; you get new conflicts or old ones become critical, ppl
start leaving, etc. As long as the pie is growing, it can hide or solve by
default many existing problems which would be very difficult or costly to fix
otherwise.

~~~
vitro
Is growing pie sustainable?

~~~
whb07
Why wouldn't it be? Humans have infinite wants and needs. These change
overtime in terms of taste/perception as well. So the counter point should be
made as to how this isn't the case and that a "growing pie" is actually
against human nature.

~~~
eloff
It's the compound interest problem. If you keep compounding growth, like
growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger
than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in
radius. So clearly, growth is not sustainable and must eventually slow down
until it approaches zero.

To be clear, we're far away from that today. But the parent is mathematically
correct, the best kind of correct.

~~~
eloff
A lot of people nitpicking at the argument here, about resource substitutions,
efficiency improvements, etc.

So let's simplify this argument a little. It's not possible to have infinite
growth in a finite universe. By definition infinity > not infinity for
arbitrarily large values of not infinity.

Therefore the limit of growth as time approaches infinity is 0.

At some point you reach the physical limit of the system and exponential
growth ends. This is true even for digital systems if the digital good
involves some physical resource like energy, storage space, bandwidth, etc.

For example, if we keep growing energy usage at the historical rate of 3% a
year, we would cook ourselves with the waste heat within 400 years. It doesn't
matter where the energy comes from. Now we can get around that by moving off
the earth, which buys time, but eventually, also in short order, we'd use all
the available energy from our star. We could get around that through nuclear
energy sources or widening the area to encompass more stars. But there is only
so much matter and energy in the universe. Eventually the show stops.

I challenge you to find a theoretical counter example.

~~~
danans
> At some point you reach the physical limit of the system and exponential
> growth ends. This is true even for digital systems if the digital good
> involves some physical resource like energy, storage space, bandwidth, etc.

At some point well before that, the sun will go red giant and swallow earth,
so that's sort of beside the point. In the meantime, if we continue to fuel
GDP growth via inefficient use of non-renewable natural resources, we'll have
big problems far sooner than any astrophysical limit sets in.

------
dredmorbius
For those seeking the direct audio link:

[http://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/cowenconvos/CWT-BONUS-
Zuck...](http://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/cowenconvos/CWT-BONUS-
ZuckerbergCollison-podcast-v1.mp3)

------
professor_trex
What is the software package that MZ references at 55:21? It sounds like
“nepariu”?

------
chillacy
> U.S. life expectancy is basically going up in linear fashion. But if you
> look at expenditures, we used to spend a few percentage points of GDP on
> healthcare, and now it’s about 18%. So we’ve gone up to 18%, and we’re not
> even boosting the rate. I’m not saying it’s the fault of any one group of
> people, but something has gone wrong.

(US life expectancy actually declined for a 3rd straight year due to "deaths
of despair" like drug overdoses and suicides)

But as for the 18% of GDP on healthcare, medicine is an inelastic good that
has severe supply side restrictions (AMA + legislation) and no price
transparency. Companies are profiting greatly, it's great for GDP and terrible
for people.

Similar for the other "cost disease" areas mentioned: education and housing
(though for different reasons).

Slatestarcodex has a good overview on cost disease too:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-
cost...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-
disease/)

------
buboard
there's a video of the conversation in zuck's facebook page

------
hogFeast
The self-importance of pretty much everything in this interview is literally
unbearable.

I will give you the precis: I think X is important, why doesn't everyone think
X is important (usually about five sentences of escalating grandeur about the
importance of X), because I think X is important and "no-one is talking about
X" you know that I am a real genius...on and on.

Cowen is also an utter ignoramus. He seems to confuse being an economist with
having knowledge about literally everything (the mistakes Collison makes can
be forgiven, there is no reason why an economist shouldn't realise they aren't
an expert on literally everything). Btw, afaik, he is the only economist who
has actually tried political philosophy too (again, the ego on this guy)...he
made the same kind of trite insights and tried to pass them off as signs of
his genius there too.

~~~
yellowstuff
> He seems to confuse being an economist with having knowledge about literally
> everything.

Cowen does have knowledge on almost literally everything. If you listen to his
podcast he will get into the weeds with experts in a diverse array of fields.
When he interviewed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar he asked about specifics of his
basketball career and also his writing and political work, when he interviewed
an Asian food writer he asked specifics about cuisine in different regions of
China. He always seems to have studied the entire body of work of every guest
he speaks to every week. He reads and travels extensively. You may still think
Cowen's ideas are bad, but he is obviously well-informed on the issues he
discusses.

~~~
hogFeast
I am sure that Cowen prepares for those interviews. But he doesn't have
knowledge "on almost literally" (this isn't a phrase that makes sense btw)
everything.

I am not going to do a line-by-line but several things he says in the
interview are just inaccurate. That is fine, I am specifically saying that no-
one knows everything. The issue is that he goes on to make other points based
on stuff he doesn't understand.

As I pointed out too, his career is somewhat chequered. And he has a history
of writing grand papers on subjects which he knows nothing about.

------
PunchTornado
Patrick should take some oratory lessons. As a CEO it is important to be able
to speak slowly, be brief and on the point.

~~~
throw_away_456
Only on HN will you find randos confidently telling a founder-CEO who grew his
company from $0 to $35B what's "important" about being a CEO.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
I'm pretty sure I've seen this phenomena on Reddit, Twitter, and Medium, too.

------
hos234
Mark Zuckerberg is too full of himself. Not only does he have a track record
of not having an imagination, he seems to have got it into his head, that if
he reads two books on Economics and Sociology over the summer he needs to be
at the policy making table. WTF seriously? I have no idea why he is being
entertained. Hand the cash over to experts and fuck off.

~~~
the_watcher
> Not only does he have a track record of not having an imagination, he seems
> to have got it into his head, that if he reads two books on Economics and
> Sociology over the summer he needs to be at the policy making table.

The latter is at least arguably true if one assumes that's all the thought
he's put into things, but the former statement is just wildly false

~~~
hos234
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He is not qualified to be in
the room. The problem when people like him with a big chequebook show up, is
the majority of "experts" will just pander to get the cheque which has many
unintended consequences. Fact of life.

