Yes, Dan Drezner, whom I alternately praise and despise, and just finished praising, a lot, yesterday, has come up with a definite “bewilderer”, feeling the need, for some reason, to waste a significant amount of brain cells replying to aging Silicon Valley wunderkind Marc Andressen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”, a ponderous treatise that strikes me as nothing more than an unconscious self-parody/exercise in libertarian psycho-babble, assuring us that, among other things, “people will die” if we don’t listen to him, as if “people”—every last one of us—will not die no matter what we do.
Let’s get Marc out of the way first, because, frankly, the guy bores me intensely. I confess that I haven’t read the T-O Manifesto in toto—I have damned few brain cells to waste—but the little I have read sounds like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra on both laughing gas and magic mushrooms. Here is some “truth”—or “TRUTH”—for you:
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.
Dude, here’s a suggestion: Put down the nos and the shrooms and get over yourself. Get all the way over yourself and shut up.
I say this as an aging dude who likes technology, a lot. I believe, like Marc, that technology is a good thing. I think AI is a good thing. I’ve previously argued that, contrary to the claims of some naysayers/skeptics/doomsayers, life is considerably better now, not only since 1940, but also 1970, and “even” the year 2000—if it weren’t for the numerous political and economic disasters that have befallen us, which are not the fault of technology. And I think we could use a dose of that techno-optimism these days to counter the techno-hysteria we get from both the right and left, who want to blame someone other than themselves for their inability to come up with a political package that will win the consistent support of a majority of the American people.
What I object to is Marc’s absurdly messianic tone—“We believe our descendants will live in the stars”, for example. Dude, you can’t live in a star. They’re too damn hot. And if you believe in the possibility of interstellar space travel, well, you’re dumber than Elon Musk, who’s only dumb enough to believe in interplanetary travel. A journey to Mars, Elon’s destination of choice— “only” 34 million miles away—would take between 3 to 6 months, he says, which may be, shall we say, “optimistic”.1 Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, on the other hand, is more than 4 light years away, or about 24 trillion miles. A journey there, traveling at Elon Musk speed, would take several hundred thousand years, and an awful lot of fuel,
Even more irritating than Marc’s faulty grasp of celestial distances is his deification of “markets”—this after 2008! Going full Ayn Rand on our asses, Marc earnestly explains it all for us, in simple words that even non-billionaires can understand: “Willing buyer meets willing seller, a price is struck, both sides benefit from the exchange or it doesn’t happen.” Which explains why, back in 1900, Kentucky coal miners worked 60-hour weeks with no safety equipment and were paid with “company script”, redeemable only at the company store. Because who wants to work in God’s sunlight for, you know, money!
Okay, enough about Marc. More than enough! I never would have gone off on this rant over very little if Dan—remember him?—hadn’t gone after him first, not because Marc talked nonsense, though he did, but because he also dared to talk smack about, you know, university professors! How dare he! Sneers Marc
Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.
“Playing God with everyone else’s lives,” says Marc. Hey, that’s my job!
Amusingly, Marc’s blathering billingsgate prompts Dan to unleash some of his own: “If Andreessen can’t handle criticism from university professors then he should shut the hell up, retreat to the safe space of his house, and count his billions.” Mean! After a few more wisecracks—not all of them, let it be said, as cranky as this one—Dan concludes with a zinger that, frankly, is just not quite fresh enough to sting, and which I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him use before: “What Andreessen says that is true is not new, and what he says that is new is not true.” Dan, maybe you should have just stayed out of this one.
1. In my earlier takedown of Elon, I said travel to Mars would take several years. In fact, a shorter duration is possible if you leave at an “optimal” time, which, thanks to the movements of the Earth and Mars, only occurs once every few years. But I know of at least one 78-year-old dude who won’t be making the trip.
