HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

How does this post address network effects in the age of aggregation? Who has sufficient incentive to tie all those disparate blogs and newsletters together? Balaji likes to talk about exit plans. See this speech at YC startup school:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

In general, they strike me as deeply unrealistic.

I am also a fan of his YC talk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Yes, we're working on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

⬐ Apocryphon

Enjoy your right of exit!

But he gave a great talk a few years ago:

Y Combinator: Balaji Srinivasan at Startup School 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Appreciate your analysis defgeneric, though we probably don't see eye to eye.

In my view what you're calling Thiel's anti-political phrases are important. I know you see them as the spread of virus-capitalism, but I think without that kind of frontier building the world would be a much more boring place. I take it you're familiar with Patri Friedman's thesis. What did you think then of Balaji Srinivasan's Exit Ycombinator talk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

I know presently the anti-Trumpists are getting a lot of airtime with their talk of secession, but to be honest there is something much deeper beyond the current election fallout which is worth looking at. From a right perspective I have been wondering for a long time whether Silicon Valley's interests are ultimately orthogonal to Washington but appear to be similar in the present because they're competing for the same thing.

This is a strand of Rene Girard's philosophy, which Thiel is a big fan of (he knew Rene at Stanford I think), many of his ideas revolve around ideas of mimesis and scapegoating. Interestingly; he had a Girardian rationale for investing in Facebook. Never say reading philosophy doesn't pay off! I would love to have a photo of his library.

John Strange is very wrong about Thiel's activities being random. I was asked to write essay on Medium which I called "Peter and the Wolfe", which was an attempt to explain the deeper undercurrents around some of his recent decisions.

The main content of it was written before Trump got into power, so it makes it more interesting retroactively. If you recall, many people on HN were calling him mad, stupid, trying to get him kicked out of Ycombinator and Facebook's board etc. Here is the original comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413

⬐ defgeneric

I don't really see the spread of capitalism as a virus, and indeed none of the founding Marxists did either. While capital's inherent drive to expand is the core of most imperialist theories (and therefore "bad"), the accompanying spread of bourgeois ideology to the entire globe--and with it the social integration of the whole of humanity on scale which was previously unimaginable--is unquestionably a good thing.

So Theil's anti-political phases are interesting to me as a demonstration of how ideology and capital condition each other.

On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.

On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.

My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.

⬐ internaut

> I don't really see the spread of capitalism as a virus, and indeed none of the founding Marxists did either. While capital's inherent drive to expand is the core of most imperialist theories (and therefore "bad"), the accompanying spread of bourgeois ideology to the entire globe--and with it the social integration of the whole of humanity on scale which was previously unimaginable--is unquestionably a good thing.

Interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I'm sure you're familiar with self described communists who identify with Agent Smith's description of humankind in the Matrix, so you know where I got that impression from.

> On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.

We may mean different things by anti-political. I didn't see Thiel's exploration of unusual fringe ideas as being the complete rejection of all politics, but an attempt at making a new kind of politics through technology. So here anti-political meant 'outside of the mainstream' for me. Out of the world of Washington, not out of the broader world of political philosophy.

Along the same lines I think SV ultimately is competing with Washington. An old form of politics vs a new form, similar to the competition of monarchy and democracy.

I think it is in a nascent stage yet, I just think we're being fed the idea their interests are parallel merely because they have converging interests, and I believe that to be a very big mistake because of Girard's ideas about mimesis, namely conflict is more likely, not less likely, because of similarity.

I agree with you though, the same economical laws are ruling still despite this talk of a new economical world order from Wired. It is remarkable as Thiel has been pointing out, just how few new forms of wealth have been created ex-computation in the past few decades. There is a terrific amount of talking but little impact and often the Ted-Talk-People portion of the middle class becomes intensely uncomfortable when this is pointed out to them.

> On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.

I believe Thiel has noted of himself before, that he likes to have (and looks for in others) paradoxical or perhaps contradictory ideas. I think he believes there is some kind of gap between oppositional ideas that either spits off new thoughts or at least keeps you on your toes.

> My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.

Agreed.

⬐ internaut

This is an important video.

I believe Washington and the Valley are inextricably oppositional. I don't mean because of a Trump presidency. I mean I think in a foundational way Washington is in a zero sum game with the Valley and most of us are loathe to admit it. In 100 years, one has to subsume the other.

Sure. For clarification: by G-space I meant 'how to govern well' or 'how to solve problems about, with, or in governance'.

This is obviously an enormous topic area. It is also a dangerous and highly contentious subject matter filled with many taboos, due to its nature and importance.

That said political scholars, like economists, have come to many consensus realizations. This is kind of amazing since Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are clones from a political science perspective, there exists a great diversity of thought.

This means that there is not as much of a gap between somebody like Francis Fukuyama and Moldbug as is popularly imagined. If you have a sincere interest in outcomes you find unexpected allies.

Here is a good start:

Volume 1: The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama Volume 2: Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama

Seeing Like a State by James Scott

Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman

The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer

The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joesph Tainter

The majority of the time these authors are interested in outcomes, not in winning for whatever their home team is.

Outside of academia Silicon Valley itself is having a serious discussion on this topic from our perspective:

Balaji Srinivasan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Peter Thiel : http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3EBfS9IcB4

Patri Friedman : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

Larry Page : https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/larry-page-wants-earth-to-...

Last but not least, the notorious Moldbug: Best explained by Scott Alexander : http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-...

If somebody is aware of an interesting line of thought around these issues I'll be happy to hear it.

One thing is perfectly clear and that is with the advent of the Internet we see the world differently and that this will lead to different forms of governance for the first time in several hundred years.

I also half seriously recommend you listen to audiobooks by Lovecraft to get into the appropriate mood for studying or reading about government.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

I don't agree with his statement but it feels familiar after reading the books I recommended to you. This stuff has scale and is scary, the last person to seriously tinker with the subject on this level was Karl Marx.

That is why Patri's ideas may eventually win the day, but I leave you to it.

⬐ selimthegrim

Loving the James Scott fan club on HN. Putting in a plug for the Art of Not Being Governed as well.

⬐ sebastos

Thanks for the detailed reply! Looks like a great list of refreshingly unusual thinking, and I love the Lovecraft suggestion!

>you can't really create a government around it

You say that as if it's a bug and not a feature...

In all seriousness, I'm not sure I understand your claim that it's an impossible form of society. I understand the argument that the US or other existing nation states aren't going to become libertarian societies, but I see no theoretical reason why the creation of such a society is impossible (particularly when sea and space colonies start opening up new frontiers). I think this Startup School presentation by Balaji Srinavasan is relevant: https://youtu.be/cOubCHLXT6A

⬐ smoyer

I didn't mean to make it sound that way - I think it's a feature. Many of the libertarian groups don't seem to recognize this and are proposing we try to create Xanadu (and I don't mean Ted Nelson's product - it's more likely to exist).

I agree that these societies could exist outside of a formal government - they'd need the ability to evict people which probably means everyone would need citizenship elsewhere.

There are companies like teleport http://teleport.org that try to visualise this potential with data.

Also recommend this YCombinator startup school talk by Balaji Srinivasan on this topic: Silicon Valleys Ultimate Exit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

> In that case, immigration is the only choice.

That would be the "exit" from [0].

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Interesting that Balaji Srinivasan talked about this concept of Silicon Valley as the enemy at startup school last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

⬐ michaelochurch

I love how he calls everything but Silicon Valley (a shitty fucking suburb) "the paper belt". He clearly doesn't understand what any of those other cities and industries do.

> Silicon Valley ideologues are proposing secession

I believe no one ever said this; it has been misreported by Gawker and others.

If you're curious, the original talk is here with no mention of secession: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Here's the original talk for anyone that prefers original content to the "journalist telephone" game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Video of original talk from startup school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

The talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" that the article mentions was (also?) given at Startup School a few weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

...and the website is not the worst part of the ACA ride we are now on.

Part of me has been ignoring a lot of the chatter around the ACA as potential right wing fabricated drama. Too much noise and bilateral bullshit being thrown about these days.

That was until a few days ago, when I would learn our insurance has both more than doubled in cost and is also scheduled for cancellation. Doubled and cancelled. All as a direct result of the ACA. Brilliant! To say this was shocking is an understatement. Our annual cost will go well past $15K.

There's a tragedy of unintended consequences, side effects and direct effects, being played out in the background that hasn't completely come to the surface yet. We certainly can't be the last family to get news of this kind. That means in the coming months it is likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional individuals and families are going to receive these dreaded letters. Apparently hundreds of thousands already have. Last week was our turn.

At one point this and other issues will be difficult to ignore. And they will dwarf the IT issues. The website, as much of a disaster as it is, is likely to pale in comparison to all of the other, non IT, issues.

Some of what's happening is related to the incredible disconnect between Washington and technology. All you need to do is listen to some of these folks talk about the website issue to see how little they understand. I heard one senator say something akin to "they just have to re-enter a list of five million codes". In other words, the term "code" to some of these guys means "numbers" and that someone made a data entry error in copying "codes" into the website.

BSS (Balaji Srinivasan) covered some of this in his excellent Startup School talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

A talk which, he comments, has been mutated into something far different from what he said by the modern equivalent of the "broken telephone" game.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068

I agree very much with his suggestion that an "exit" is required. Not meaning that we ought to pull-up roots and go, but rather that the tech community ought to almost ignore the dinosaurs and go ahead and evolve a society more aligned to modern realities. In his talk he gives examples of various US cities that have been "exited" to some extent through technologies developed in the free market.

To some extent, it's an Innovator's Dilemma kind of a problem.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...

The only way to make step changes is to do it well outside of the organization looking after the status quo, because that's all they know and that's all they can focus on.

⬐ tunesmith

This is a huge story that is really difficult to get a handle on, because the premiums changes are affecting everyone very differently, and the patterns behind them are very tough to tease out. I myself saw my premium go down by over 20%, with better benefits. I've also seen a lot of accusations of lying on either side, which isn't helpful either.

Some factors to keep in mind:

Health insurance plans have to be ACA-compliant. Plans that aren't have to be canceled and replaced.

Just because your new plan is ACA-compliant doesn't mean it's on the exchange. Check the exchange, too, as the price differences could be extreme.

Some companies (Humana in particular) have been sending out inaccurate cancellation letters, with inaccurate "new premium" amounts. They got in trouble a few weeks ago in Kentucky for implying that people had to switch to the replacement plan even before the Kentucky exchange was up. Humana also recently got in trouble in Colorado and had to send out a second letter retracting their first one.

It's possible that some companies may be sending out inflated premium amounts to lower risk, while knowing they will have to send out refunds in a year.

Your old plan may not have been ACA-compliant. Specifically, it may have had annual or lifetime maximums (where the insurance company says, "Sorry, we have spent enough money on you; you are on your own now.") These are now prohibited. Even though this raises premiums, this is a good thing.

Some states have crappy competition - Wyoming for example. There's no one else there to encourage an expensive hospital to lower prices, which means expensive premiums. That's a failure of the free market, not a failure of the ACA. (I say that because if the solution to an ACA's woes would mean MORE ACA instead of less - say a public plan - then it doesn't really fit the narrative of the ACA causing these problems.)

And most importantly, the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium! It was to lower health care costs over time (not compared to now, but compared to what they would otherwise be). It was to raise society's health over time (compared to now). And it was to protect people from going bankrupt from health care costs. (This is already successful thanks to the elimination of pre-existing condition rejections, and the elimination of annual/lifetime maximums.)

⬐ mynameishere

It was to lower health care costs over time

I'm not sure how this is possible. The other goals you mention are feasible, but only to the extent that they prevent cost saving.

the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium

Well, it was intended to lower some, and raise others. People with preexisting conditions cannot be insured. They can only be subsidized with something falsely called "insurance". The losers in ACA are pretty much the same as with single payer: The young, healthy, and productive. Call it fair or unfair, the situation is much different than with single payer in that ACA is going to let people see just how much they themselves are getting boned.

⬐ tunesmith

I think the CBO has already projected a lowering of the future "cost curve". I guess we'll have to see how it actually plays out.

⬐ hga

"as potential right wing fabricated drama"

Perhaps you might want to start looking at reputable alternative news sources that e.g. would have told you you're among the 16 million who's existing policies were outlawed by the "Affordable Care Act" ... 3 and a half years ago.

To those of us who've been paying attention, this is no surprise at all ... maybe not even an unintended consequence, e.g. why aren't you part of some collective (company or whatever) getting group insurance? Yeah, that's going in the direction of "right wing" fever swamps ... but entirely consistent with a lot of undisputed things we know about Obama et. al. E.g. could you be considered a modern day kulack?

As for getting out of the game? I think not. E.g. assuming you and yours are less than 50 years old, one of the things you'll be paying for in whatever policies you get (note, when someone spent some quality time with an ACA calculator he could find no scenario where being married didn't result in a higher total bill) is the expensive 50-64 set. And you're not saying you can't afford paying twice as much ... you think the Federal government will make it easy for milch cows like you to escape?

One of the speakers here. I found the online reaction to my talk pretty interesting as a case study in internet telephone. Here's the talk itself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

First party viewers mostly seemed to like it:

http://seen.co/event/startup-school-2013-cupertino-ca-2013-6...

CNET gave a second party writeup:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57608320-93/a-radical-dream...

Then third party people started mischaracterizing it:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valleys-ultimate-exit-is...

Finally, the Hill wrote a fourth party account, quoting these third party accounts, and that's what Washington DC saw:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-a-local-politics...

Not everyone got it wrong; I think this account is closer:

http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/virtual-expatriates-a...

But I encourage you to open up those tabs and go through them one by one to see a kind of pinball reflection of the tone of the talk. In microcosm it's an example of the emerging gap between Silicon Valley and DC, and gives a sense of how policy makers can inadvertently form their opinions from echoes of echoes. Doubly ironic and somewhat sad as we can use the internet to make direct connections between people these days. The good thing is that interested parties can see the primary source directly.

⬐ tikhonj

I think this chain of articles is particularly interesting to follow because it neatly illustrates how different the audiences are: the articles neatly show both what the audience wants to hear and what it actually hears. This is a property of blogs in general: they can measure the impact of any given article far more than newspapers, so less popular views can't ride the coattails of more popular ones. This creates a pretty direct feedback loop: blogs write more of what people want and, to an extent, people want more of what blogs write.

Also, reading some of these articles really illustrated your point about blame--it seems the writers are more than ready to play an "us vs game" them with "privileged technocrats" or a "techno-utopian clique" against the implicit common man in the audience. Instead of comparing ideals and ideas, it focuses on people behind the ideas and their perceived arrogance. This is particularly annoying because arrogance seems disproportionately harshly judged by society.

⬐ rhizome

I read it as a game of Operator in service of other'ing[1] by the status quo.

1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Other

⬐ gadgetdevil

Prof. Srinivasan:

While I thought your talk was interesting (and I really dig all the great work Counsyl is doing), it sounded like a 13 year old who just discovered Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" for the first time and thought they had everything figured out. Your Silicon Valley neoliberalism is nothing new.

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron predicted this back in 1995 in their essay, The Californian Ideology: "Their politics appear to be impeccably libertarian - they want information technologies to be used to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' in cyberspace where every individual would be able to express themselves freely. Implacable in its certainties, the Californian Ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market - a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives."

The original California Ideology Essay published in 1995: http://w7.ens-lyon.fr/amrieu/IMG/pdf/Californian_ideology_Mu...

Kevin Kelly on The California Ideology: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/07/the_californi...

"That Deep Romantic Chasm": Libertarianism, Neoliberalism, and the Computer Culture by Thomas Streeter http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/romantic_chasm.html

⬐ trg2

Balaji, you were far and away my favorite talk at Startup School. I took CS184 on Coursera and it was more valuable than my entire undergraduate education. Thank you.

⬐ robomartin

I agree with the vast majority of your points. Didn't even bother to look at the broken-telephone links. Why bother.

What you are talking about sound very much like what's covered in The Innovator's Dilema [0].

I am not entirely sure I understand your position with regards to government. It seems you are suggesting the only way to evolve things is to "exit". I took this as perhaps going to the extent of physically relocating to a country where what you want is either accepted or already there. You gave the example of your parents. As the son of immigrants I too have similar examples. Can you clarify this point?

There's a huge divide between Washington's understanding of the ever-evolving world of technology and that reality. Watching the various layers of Washington discuss what they perceive to be the issue with the ACA website is proof enough of that.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...

⬐ tikhonj

Part of the talk was to contrast voice and exit. I don't think the point was that exit is the only way to evolve government; rather, exit is often the best way to create significant change, get out of deadlock or try less popular ideas. Voice (eg voting) is still an option.

Moreover, physically leaving the country is not the only way to "exit". Another example was Bitcoin--a currency that the government may not even be able to fully regulate! The internet and BitTorrent are more popular examples. So technological innovation can also help create an exit, and is perhaps more appropriate for "Sillicon Valley".

⬐ robomartin

Agreed 100% then.

What's happening to us and other societies is exactly the innovators dilema. It is beyond obvious that, in the case of the US at least, what has worked well for the last 237 years is coming to an end. The divide you mention in your talk between tech and Washington is hurting not only us but, in my opinion, the rest of the world as well.

Frankly it is hard to imagine anything that might compell our society to change quickly enough. In my view the natural consequence of this effect is that any other society smart enough to embrace change could easily position itself to lead the world into whatever form the next world order might take. If in 100 or 200 years we still have countries, poverty, ignorance and war humanity will have failed miserably.

⬐ pmorici

Your talk reminded me of the recent BBC interview with Russell Brand where he talks about how he doesn't vote because he feels like the only way to change the system is to not participate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYcn3PuTTk

⬐ subsystem

I don't really get the "I'm indifferent so I don't vote" argument. If you're really indifferent you might as well vote as the downside is minimal, while the downside if you're wrong is quite large e.g. someone is manipulating you into not voting. Sometimes the only way to be rational is to act irrationally.

⬐ ajslater

In, for instance, US presidential elections, unless you live in one of maybe 3 to 5 states the probability of your voting affecting the outcome of the race significantly is near nil.

However I still vote, just to show pollsters what support exists for my (very) minority political positions. Or at list as close as I can get to them with the few minority candidates that make it onto the ballots.

⬐ pmorici

I think it stems from the belief that both political parties are essentially the same so by voting you are lending legitimacy to the system you view as broken. Think about how when they hold elections in de facto dictatorships how they always tout high voter turn out.

⬐ simonebrunozzi

In my opinion, your talk was the most interesting (and unexpected). You did a great job.

⬐ rfnslyr

I want your idea so desperately to become a reality, and we're so, so close. Like a tech world of the best hackers and geeks contracted by the outside.

⬐ brandnewlow

I was at Startup School and enjoyed your talk as it gave me some new ideas to think about.

I also worked in media for a time and I think the mischaracterizations in the "third-hand" accounts are less about an emerging gap and more about the huge market for time-waster content on the web.

Valleywag mischaracterized your talk because someone at Valleywag is paid to write half a dozen "pieces" a day that will appeal to a certain audience. Intentionally mischaracterizing things and blowing things out of proportion is necessary to meeting the daily quota of articles.