Marc Andreessen pens “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Discuss

by jasoncrawford1 min read16th Oct 202317 comments

6

This is a linkpost for https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

An excerpt:

Our civilization was built on technology.
Our civilization is built on technology.
Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.
For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently.
I am here to bring the good news.
We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being.
We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.
We have the will.
It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.
It is time to be Techno-Optimists.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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[-]jasoncrawford7mo 4

I've heard people criticize this for lacking nuance, not engaging with critics, and not citing sources. I feel this misunderstands the genre. It's a manifesto. It's not supposed to be nuanced or appeal to critics; it's supposed to be even a little divisive, drawing a line in the sand, recruiting those who are already sympathetic and ignoring or even repelling those who are not. It's not supposed to argue for its claims, it's supposed to stake out some beliefs and declare them.

If you just don't like manifestos of any stripe, then fine; but it never makes sense to criticize a piece for not being in a different genre.

[-]Jelle Donders7mo 1

This works both ways imo. You can boldly state things in a manifesto, and people can boldly criticize it.

[-]jasoncrawford7mo 1

Haha, fair point! (Although I would suggest that the most productive way to do that would be to pen an opposing manifesto.)

[-]NunoSempere7mo 2

I see the appeal and I like the aliveness, but I dislike the lack of nuance and disagree on the specifics.

[-]jasoncrawford7mo 1

Which specifics?

[-]NunoSempere7mo 2

E.g., "Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle", unqualified

[-]jasoncrawford7mo 3

To be exact, what he said was:

Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign … under varying names like … “Precautionary Principle” [etc.]

I interpret that to mean not that he's against precaution, but that he thinks terms like that are being used to promote bad ideas.

Also, the Precautionary Principle is objectively bad:

As we look back on the failed civilizations of the past, we can see that they were so poor, their technology was so feeble, and their explanations of the world so fragmentary and full of misconceptions that their caution about innovation and progress was as perverse as expecting a blindfold to be useful when navigating dangerous waters. Pessimists believe that the present state of our own civilization is an exception to that pattern. But what does the precautionary principle say about that claim? Can we be sure that our present knowledge, too, is not riddled with dangerous gaps and misconceptions? That our present wealth is not pathetically inadequate to deal with unforeseen problems? Since we cannot be sure, would not the precautionary principle require us to confine ourselves to the policy that would always have been salutary in the past—namely innovation and, in emergencies, even blind optimism about the benefits of new knowledge?

–David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity

The EU had by now installed the precautionary principle as a guiding light. This superficially sensible idea—that we should worry about unintended consequences of innovation—morphed into a device by which activists prevent life-saving new technologies displacing more dangerous ones. As formally adopted by the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty, the principle holds the new to a higher standard than the old and is essentially a barrier to all innovations, however safe, on behalf of all existing practices, however dangerous. This is because it considers the potential hazards, but not the likely benefits of an innovation, shifting the burden of proof to an innovator to prove that its product will not cause harm, but not allowing that innovator to demonstrate that it might cause good, or might displace a technology that already causes harm.

–Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works

[-]NunoSempere6mo 1

the Precautionary Principle is objectively bad:

You might want to Ctrl+F here for mentions of the precautionary principle: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207020301230

[-]jasoncrawford6mo 1

Thanks. What I see is that this paper specifies “a non-naive precautionary principle” or “an intelligent application of the precautionary principle,” which implies something about what the precautionary principle might end up being in practice without those qualifiers…

[-]Jelle Donders7mo 1

The precautionary principle is objectively bad? That's a massive assumption that only holds if you are somehow confident that nuclear war, engineered pandemics, advanced AI derailing society etc. are all impossible, right?

[-]jasoncrawford7mo 3

No. The Precautionary Principle doesn't just mean “take precautions when warranted.” No one would be against that. It has become more like a bias towards inaction, regardless of cost/benefit calculations. See Ridley's quote above, about how this “superficially sensible idea” was transformed into something irrational.

[-]Yarrow B.6mo 1

I think Ezra Klein has a lucid take on the "manifesto". Ezra observes that it's a covert anti-wokeness rant:

It's a mistake to read his manifesto as about technology. It's about how we were once brave and strong and we have become soft and weak.

In Ezra's New York Times column on Andreessen's rant, he writes:

It’s a coalition obsessed with where we went wrong: the weakness, the political correctness, the liberalism, the trigger warnings, the smug elites. It’s a coalition that believes we were once hard and have become soft; worse, we have come to lionize softness and punish hardness.

I would describe myself as a techno-optimist, but I find Andreessen's rant distasteful and alienating. I think allowing Andreessen to define what constitutes techno-optimism would do significant damage to the techno-optimist cause.

[-]jasoncrawford6mo 1

I have never particularly liked the term “techno-optimism” anyway. “Optimism” on its own is confusing enough. “Techno-optimism” implies that not only do you think we can solve all problems, but that technology will be the solution to all of them, which is not really true.

[-]Yarrow B.6mo 1

What’s a good alternative word for someone who has a strong conviction in the past, present, and future benefits of technology?

[-]jasoncrawford5mo 1

Good question, I don't know. People have been talking about “progress studies” or the “progress movement” or “progress community”, and others have talked about the “abundance agenda”, but none of those lend themselves to personal labels/identities…

[-]ryan_b7mo 1

Comments in no particular order:

Marc Andreessen continues to sound just like himself. I think this is good for the piece, it feels very genuine. In the main I agree.

Markets is the biggest section. This feels telling and also kind of wasteful. It also had the clunkiest bits which were, but of course, the ones about economics. By contrast the Technology section felt a bit thin, but I could easily forgive a certain amount of c'mon, you know why you are here in the effort.

What is this for, really? I can tell who it is for, because it doesn't seem like it would register much with people who didn't already mostly agree. But what problem is the manifesto solving? Guessing by some of the keywords included in the bad ideas list, this feels like maybe trying to further crystallize e/acc into a broader concern?

On the flip side, this bit here under The Enemy makes it seem more like talking book:

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”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.

Purely as a matter of style, I thought the "we believe" and "we had a problem" chunks were great, that's what I want out of a manifesto. I would jettison all the quotes and argumentation, moving names and sources to footnotes or something; I mostly found it distracting, like he was so used to the argumentation side of things he had trouble letting it go (Not that I blame him, I would have the same issue were I to write a manifesto). I thought some of them were compacted too much, like compressing all the progress in agriculture into the green revolution, which sort of deprived it of emotional impact (not least because of term confusion, since green revolution shows up in advertising campaigns and slogans constantly meaning something entirely different).

All that said, I liked it and I wish more public figures like Marc would do things like this.

[-]Rob L'Heureux7mo 1

Marc is a modern-day Thomas Jefferson. I agree with every word he wrote and find it inspirational and a great encapsulation of how I feel about tech and what it can do for society. The movement needs a rallying cry and a big tent to go with it. I intentionally mention Jefferson, as someone whose actions often fell short of his inspirational vision and words. Marc is not without criticism in this regard, but who is? This is not the time for criticizing our friends, and as such, I won't nitpick the things I would alter in such a manifesto. I hope it can help formalize this ethos into a practical movement for society, especially for those of us in the US who feel politically homeless.