It's all about real AI today (not based on words and rules - lookup CTM - the real bots have this and its based on vector space). Get the companies and groups that are making very small breakthroughs in this area. The days of regurgitated cut-n-pasted text entry boxes and js (geocities, friendster, myspace, facebook) are over. Time for the new Googles of the world that will solve things bigger than SpaceX like extending human lifespan which is a requirement for space travel.

+1 on the CTM stuff. I recommend Jeff Hawkin's book "On Intelligence" if you're looking for a quick read.

Thinking democracy's success is tied to economic growth is a pretty dim worldview. I hope he's wrong about that.

"Economic growth" can exist on a computer screen completely decoupled from the "real world" and independent of a strong middle class.

IMHO An economically strong middle class is needed to maintain social order. This mitigates the public from hunting and and killing the rich and keeps the public from displacing their social frustrations on to each other and creating riots. Generally its a better existence for everyone.

Historically speaking, I don't feel like the basic way that society fails is by "hunting and killing the rich." I mean, you can MAYBE gloss the communist revolutions of the early 20th Century that way. What else?

If "Economic growth" leads to ever increasing inequality, I don't think society will be more democratic because of it.

An interesting paradox!

The logic behind it, I think game theory, is simple and does not just apply to democracy but any system of corporate or state government.

It goes like this:

Suppose there exist 2 parties to a conflict of interest. I want Z, but you also want Z, and this is a rival good, only one of us can have it at one time.

Then it is possible for 1 party to play ball with the other party, but IFF there is a different, separate conflict of interest where the trade can be reversed.

So I win A, but only if I allow you to win B. 'the next time'

This logic only can work if we allow each other to be winners.

Suppose our economic incentive was to 'defect' in game theory parlance, and defect always. Why would this be so?

Perhaps because we're in a zero sum game instead of a positive sum game. Perhaps I must win or I will die, in which case my non-cooperation with you is non-negotiable.

"I want Z, but you also want Z, and this is a rival good, only one of us can have it at one time."

sama, and Thiel, believe technology solves this by turning a potential rival good into non-rival goods. Or put more simply; if everybody can have stuff they are happy.

There can be exceptions to this logic, like a mother choosing her child's survival over her own in a pregnancy gone wrong. But in a world without growth, without those potential negotiations 'violence' becomes selected for.

The important realization is not the trivial 'more stuff makes people happy'. It does, but the real reason why growth is a big deal is that in the long run it selects for outcomes which don't lead to deadlock leading to violence.

Where I part company with Sam, is the belief that democracy is worth saving. It is worth saving representation, each entity's self interest in a system must be recognized yes, but not democracy. Ironically equal voting must lead to unequal outcomes. Right from the initial premise it does not hold up against physical reality. Like genetics, circumstance, and all of history. There are other systems in G-space that have the potential to be much better at governing. That includes systems in which people would feel much more represented than they do in our current system. Equality of votes is like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. I mean even the NSDAP had policies on the environment and health most people agree with in the present. What does that say about our ability to select?

tldr; The relationship is close to axiomatic in game theory and democracy when looked at in the cold light of day is a pretty dim worldview to start with.

Can you provide any links / reading related to some "other systems in G-space"? Sounds interesting.

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.

I found the most interesting point in the whole article the publicly stated consideration of establishing a China presence.

It would appear to make a lot of sense given current capital availability in China, world-leading mobile payment penetration, and US/SF issues with visas, overheads, component sourcing. Get over here!

How is China with 'innovation' though? The portrait we seem to get so often in the West is that China excels at imitation and fails at original thinking. Maybe innovation isn't needed for domestic success, but it is for creating things that penetrate the rest of the world (and, these days, dare I say universe?).

This was a pretty good article -- certainly one of the better portraits I've read of SA.

However, I usually see better writing in the New Yorker. Take "as a result, the once nerdy Y Combinator is now aggressively geeky." What the hell does that mean? (Nothing.)

OTOH, a few memorable quotes:

Growth masks all problems. (Steve Huffman)

Despite having raised a robust $1.6 million after Demo Day, the founders were ridden with angst. Fredrik Thomassen said that they wanted to make their war chest last forever, and Sondre Rasch mentioned that he’d frugally chosen to live in a twelve-entrepreneur collective in a nearby forest.

and "upload"?

"what intrigues him is their potential effect on the world. To determine that, he’ll upload all he needs to know about, say, urban planning or nuclear fusion."

I read it as somewhere between "skim" and "learn" - it's probably a term sama used himself in the interview. If you think of yourself as a machine it's probably a term than makes sense; it doesn't feel particularly aspirational to me :)

Nerds are obsessive about and skilled at one thing. Geeks are good at academics in general.

The brilliance of YCombinator, IMO, is HackerNews. It's turned YC into a self-perpetuating machine by getting smart people to congregate and talk about news YC itself partially generates.

I heard about YC, PG, and sama all through this outlet.

Makes sense. I personally read some of the comments before jumping into an article, mainly because comments most of the time loop me in on something that I am completely clueless or have little aware of. Also to see if the article is worth reading into because obviously if you read 20 people saying "The author of the article doesn't know what he is talking about" then its more possible that indeed the author has written about something he doesn't know or understand.

Also a lot of the times the solutions given or explanations are amazingly good and entertaining. Thanks to YC I've become a better person I'd say.

Also a lot of the times the solutions given or explanations are amazingly good and entertaining. Thanks to YC I've become a better person I'd say.

I couldn't agree more, on both counts. It's such a thrill seeing a link to a research paper or exceptionally well written essay, and have the author answering questions in the comments. I can't even estimate how much general science, history, and literary education I've received this way, almost by accident. No doubt I am a much more well rounded person as a result.

I rarely read TFA. I'm here for the discussion, and if the discussion is extraordinarily interesting, I'll read the article for clarification. To me, HN is the "guild" that teaches fundamentals, and keeps me abreast of the state of the industry (and many, many unrelated topics that are equally interesting!). Normally this level of access to illuminating dialog would be restricted to universities, but I can get it here for free, in my underwear. I've spent a good part of my life geographically isolated from centers of learning and industry, and being able to remain in the loop is priceless. I doubt my personal and professional growth over the last 10 years would be a fraction of what it is if I hadn't had this resource. Yes, I am a fanboy.

"Thanks to YC I've become a better person I'd say."

Specifically I have become a better writer. The HN crowd is a tough but fair audience when it comes to upvotes on comments.

The brilliance of YCombinator, IMO, is HackerNews....

Before HN there was PG's blog.

Before HN there was PG's blog.

Before pg's blog, there was /.,

before /. there was Carmack's .plan file ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12575501

How is /. now compared to YC?

If you mean the fund(s), I disagree.

The strength of YC is the relatively large value they provide in exchange for your equity. Their "price" is still excellent and continues to clear the market. This becomes rapidly obvious if you attempt to raise early stage funding and start comparing options.

Aside from the actual cash and the famous network, YC and its partners have earned a reputation for sticking with their investments through tough times instead of writing them off. This seems relatively rare amongst early stage investors, especially outside the US. In my relatively few years of experience in business, I've learnt to value people in the "cooperate cooperate" quadrant of the Prisoner's Dilemma very highly, and it's not a reputation you can "buy" quickly.

HN is a place to have civilised discussions thanks to both a seed of core tech personalities for historical reasons drawing a network of quality, and thorough and active moderation. I think "self-perpetuating machine" is harsh and not quite representative of most of the value derived by those of us who are not part of the YC ecosystem and unlikely ever to be (and yes, I haven't read the original article).

PS: nice site! Light, fast and with just one tracker (but "old geeks" would crunch web logs, surely?)

I agree. HN and pg's old essays were a gem in the times were little other startup resources were out there.

I had to change the font so I was able to read the article.

I agree, and it's very frustrating that most articles are unreadable unless I change their font or colour choices. I should have to have an extension installed that makes text readable. And, unless people speak up the people who create these broken designs will never know that they are choosing to say "fuck you" to a sizeable proportion of their audience.

But: it's about the least interesting thing that can be said about this article. And whoever is responsible at the New Yorker will never see these comments.

I think dang has said these kind of comments are off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236332#9238739

I personally don't think "The choices you've made exclude part of your audience, and may not be compatible with laws around accessibility" is bike-shedding, but I have stopped commenting on design choices.

two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation

I'm very curious who these two billionaires are and what exactly are they planning to do regarding this likely hopeless project.

One of them is obviously Musk. I could guess on the other, but it would only be based on the "wildness" of the other billionaire's imagination.

Musk strikes me as an imaginative but a very rational person who deeply thinks about stuff, so this is confusing to me.

His argument that our world is most likely a simulation does seem logical given our current knowledge. However, breaking out of the simulation is completely another matter, more in line with Hollywood thinking than with anything that scientists can be engaged to do, at least currently.

It's completely wacky, but if you've got a few mil to drop on wacky ideas, it starts to seem a bit less wacky in the grand scheme of things. It's basically a wager: "There's a small, but perhaps nonzero chance I'm living in a simulation. I've got the throwaway cash to fund an escape attempt. This investment has a massive chance of being completely wasted, even if this is a simulation. But if there is even a tiny chance of figuring something out, I might as well take it."

What would it even mean to 'escape' a simulation? In my mind I'm imagining when I write code to model a real process and even at some super high-fidelity simulation I can't imagine an 'escape'. Maybe if the simulation were so self-aware it could conduct local privilege-escalation attacks and replicate itself like a worm/virus?

EDIT: aside -- "Microcosmic God" [1] was a great short story along these lines

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God

Assume a non omnipotent being, with non-infinite resources is creating a universe simulation. What decisions would we expect a person like this to make, when designing this simulation? Since they do not have infinite resources, they would likely take shortcuts, and make compromises and tradeoff when designing the simulation

For example, if light did not have a speed limit, and interacted with the entire universe instantly, this would be very hard to simulate. You would save resources by giving light a speed limit.

We also expect that they might abstract out the nitty gritty details of how things work at the atomic level. If you don't really care that much about how very small particles interact with each other, you might have these numerous calculations evaluated lazily, when they are "observed" by the higher level entities.

Things get really interesting when you start thinking about what kind of bugs a god programmer might be likely to make when designing their simulation.

Are there any weird natural processes, that would be much more elegant if our equations modeling them were changed very slightly, almost as if the equation was a mistake in the first place? Another attack avenue is to combine two natural processes in unexpected ways, to try and find "edge cases".

How do you know your own thought processes aren't a part of the simulation? Logic is a great tool to analyze the simulation unless it's been baked on purpose by our overlords.

On a different note, does simulation hypothesis strike anyone else as the idea God just explained in pseudo scientific/computing terms?

There's no way out. It's turtles all the way down.

Impossible. That would cause a stack overflow.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, probably.

This quote from a YC Partner:

It’s all about founders. Facebook had Mark Zuckerberg, and MySpace had a bunch of monkeys.

The kind of ubermensch/Ayn Rand rhetoric that makes me cringe.

Do you think it's wrong?

To call people monkeys because they didn't accomplish as much as Mark Zuckerberg? Yes it's very wrong! And ironic given that MySpace had a much better exit and impact than FriendFeed (the company created by the partner quoted)

Radiation hormesis is one of those junk science topics that persists in the literature despite many thorough efforts to debunk it.

Could you support that with references?

Isn't the null hypothesis sufficient?

I do admire all the ambition. But does it really have to be mixed in with views such as "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth." I'm sure Sam (and other SV types) is well aware of the complexity of reality and that YC, as one company, cannot be hugely important to that growth. In other words, if YC simply stopped functioning tomorrow, I can't imagine the GDP growth of the United States would be at all affected. Guys, what you're doing is very, very impressive, but, c'mon, let's get off the idea that you're instrumental in saving democracy for all of us (and all the other delusions of grandeur).

And if you think about it, most of these disruptive companies are not offering real growth. Both Über and Air BNB, for instance are diverting dollars from the legacy provider. And they're doing this by offering better service and/or lower prices. There is no value creation to see here.

Well they are funding very ambitious stuff like nuclear power startups and AI initiatives, which most others usually shy away from. This is potentially extremely disruptive and a massive boon to the economy.

And your assessment of Airbnb of just "diverting dollars from the legacy provider" is wrong in my opinion, it turns an unused space into cash (creating a new market/enabling an underserved market), just like early-eBay turned unwanted stuff in your house into cash. I'm not fully sure where I stand on Uber, but they're certainly offering a much better customer experience than traditional taxis.

AirBNB turns my unused space into cash but also keeps me from staying at a hotel. These businesses are certainly adding value for their shareholders and customers. They are not generally expanding the economy. I should also admit that many existing business models should be disrupted.

It doesn't keep you from staying at a hotel, that's a choice you make. Also, I've stayed at AirBnb locations where there was no other accommodations options, so it's difficult to argue it's taking business from a hotel in these scenarios. Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised if bigger hotel chains legally evade loads of tax like virtually all large multinational companies do, which isn't an option for most AirBnb hosts, who must pay full tax on everything (or face the consequences, e.g. the situation in New York).

Connecting our day to day efforts to a larger unifying purpose is a powerful driver of change and an essential leadership skill.

I believe Sam is better at making such connections than most people I know.

At Graham’s table, he [Altman] and others discussed how to stop Donald Trump

If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel

Is this true? How does it work?

Thiel is a very vocal supporter of Trump and yet he's Altman's friend, a friend so close they would want to spend the rest of their life alone together, in the event of a catastrophe.

Altman can certainly have all the friends he wants; but he shouldn't get to pretend he opposes Trump at the same time.

Friends can disagree. Pretty sure it's as simple as that.

Of course, but we're talking about opposite world views here.

I actually read a bit of an insinuation to the fact they're both gay, but maybe I'm overreading into the article.

You guys surprise me. Obviously friends can disagree, including about important things. I'm trying to think of a sublime historical example but I'm tired and all that comes to mind is Camille Paglia and Rush Limbaugh. Oh well.

It's not just politics, like one would be a little more conservative and the other a little more liberal.

A Trump presidency would be an extinction-level event (for example -- and this is just one small example -- he doesn't "believe" in global warming, and would dismantle the EPA).

How far can friendship go?

The only way to explain this is, Altman doesn't think Trump is that big of a threat. Which makes me question his judgement very much.

A Trump presidency would be an extinction-level event.

You are amusing. How similar to a meteor strike would you say Trump is, or is there another analogy that you want to make [0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Most_widely_s...

I love Sam and just wish they would have used a different metaphor than "Manifest Destiny". Isn't manifest destiny what led to the genocide of native american populations?

That's iteresting. I was not aware of such a connotation - to me the term manifest destiny just meant "a destiny that can be clearly seen and that cannot be changed" [1]. Maybe the article's sub-editor was equally ignorant of 19th century US history.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manifest%20destiny

No way. That's a deliberate choice of words and the parallel is actually pretty striking. From Wikipedia:

In the 19th century, manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. There are three basic themes to manifest destiny:

The special virtues of the American people and their institutions

The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America

An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty

And just to add to this, Manifest Destiny had some very concrete related beliefs. Such as "the rain follows the plow", the belief that if you settle and farm somewhere, the climate will magically change to make this workable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_follows_the_plow

This led to people settling in unwise places. And you know what, even though the Wikipedia page says that climatologists now regard this as mere superstition, these areas of the US are now well-populated: A critical mass did settle, so in a way it's all worked out.

Don't Sam and other YC folks thinks that technological innovation will put most people out of a job, necessitating a "basic income" which makes them permanent government dependents?

I continue to be impressed by the quality of The New Yorker's reporting. This is so far above and beyond most media coverage about Altman and YC.

Golden quote:

"Launching a startup in 2016 is akin to assembling an alt-rock band in 1996 or protesting the Vietnam War in 1971—an act of youthful rebellion gone conformist."

Anyone who was aware of startups before 2010 already knew this.

That's ridiculous. Everything powerful that startups "try to disrupt" (GM, government, Wall Street, etc) now has their own incubators.

Only to one's immediate family might the work-life balance and low chance of success raise eybrows.

Yeah, that's what "gone conformist" means.

Agreed. This a very long and well written article. It does have some very heartbreaking, personal stories too:

One of Altman’s co-founders at Loopt, Nick Sivo, was also his boyfriend; the two dated for nine years, but after the company sold they broke up. “I thought I was going to marry him—very in love with him,” Altman said

My impression: It is 46 pages printed. I opened the link, read three paragraphs, and still not a word about the Manifest Destiny mentioned in the title. Closed it. Way too long. Way too much story telling.

That's what good journalism looks like, especially when it covers complex topics

"At a hundred and thirty pounds, Altman is poised as a clothespin, fierce as a horned owl."

to me, sounds like a romance novel, not objective reporting. From a group that espouses the virtues of a 30 second elevator pitch, I find the down voting odd. There's an incredible amount of verbosity here that essentially adds nothing to the article. At 46 pages, that's roughly half the size of the entire GoLang specification.

Long articles are fine so long as the length is required to convey the information presented. Based on the first few paragraphs, this one appears to actively waste time with pretentiousness. Not my cup of tea.

"The missing circuit in my brain, the circuit that would make me care what people think about me, is a real gift."

I think that circuit exists and is functioning quite well. It seems to me there's a lot of glory embedded in YC's plans.

"The missing circuit in my brain, the circuit that would make me care what people think about me, is a real gift."

... opined Altman in his New Yorker PR piece.

He said people, not the medias.

Who do you think the media's audience is?

Perhaps he should have said "most people" instead of what he did say.

I've been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Sam Altman ever since he was named President of YC in 2014. Now I know. It's less to do with him; more to do with this narrative of Sam Altman as some visionary, world-saving, future-builder. The story just doesn't fit the character. There's no comparison between him and true visionaries like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc.

Unlike Sam, these guys can dive deep into whatever industry they choose with a very obvious clarity of thought. Watch any of their interviews for examples. Even though Steve Jobs wasn't "technical" he was able to speak about the technical aspects in detail. On the other hand, Sam seems to stand at a very high, superficial level. I have yet to see him dive deep into any of the frontiers he's focused upon: AI, energy, biotech, etc.

But it's not just that, these visionaries let their track record speak for itself. I don't seem to understand Sam's track record. A Stanford dropout whose claim to fame is selling Loopt for $43M (at a loss to investors) after raising $30M in total at a $175M valuation, and pocketing $5M for himself? Then goes on to tout YC's runaway success as due, in part, to his leadership when >60% of YC's portfolio value is due to ~15 companies from pre-2014 YC batches.

To top it off, as proof of his ambition, a silly comparison between YC's portfolio value being 14% of Alphabet's market cap is made. That's apples-to-oranges.

Bottom line, the results we see today are largely due to PG & friends. I wish people would stop forcing this narrative of Sam Altman as a visionary. Right now, he's more Tim Cook, less Steve Jobs. There's nothing wrong with being an operational genius. YC, the company, has a manifest destiny.

It's the American narrative and boy, is it clear in all its features if you read this article with a European mind.

If you're American and some foreigners tell you that you all look like you're up your own assess all the time, just think of this New Yorker piece as an explanation why.

Excellent prose that crafts the same old boring story about how this very special individual has become richer and more successful than others. All around him an orbit of friendly millionaires and billionaires whose contradictive role is left out of the picture and an army of wannabes whose anxiety-laden lives are always romantically portrayed with a recurring reference to ramen-based meals -- because it's fine to have nutrition deficiencies and work 22 hours a day if you're building the next (much probably) useless tech startup that will hopefully turn you into the next Sam Altman.

This is what it is, people: a narrative. Why always trying to live by someone else's narrative? What really strikes me as incredibly counterintuitive is that every single startup story is different in its own ways, and what set successful startups apart is their willingness to follow individual paths. Yet, the way we tell these stories always gets down to pattern-matching the same old tropes everybody knows and loves.

I fondly appreciate most of the American culture, I'm enamoured with the startup scene naïveté, I think Y-combinator is a wonderful and extremely innovative player in the VC scenario. I mean, I love even this echo chamber that's called hacker news. That's how much I dig this stuff.

But again, I'm European. Doubt and skepticism are built in as standard features. So please, listen to me when I say that's better to limit agiography to the boooks about catholic saints from the Middle Age.

As a fellow European, I disagree that we have built in common features - unless you think "European" means your country and its closest relatives. If we all had the same culture, the EU wouldn't probably be in its slow bureaucratic slump.

On topic, don't underestimate the power of faith. Humans are not rational beings by default, so powerful narratives about the hot shots of SV really do have an effect in inspiring the next generation of SV hot shots. Yeah, it might be a bubble waiting to pop, but it also might be the fastest economic and technological growth the world has ever seen.

But wouldn't you agree that we share at least a general attitude that tends toward a (most of the time) healthy skepticism?

I find it odd that you'd criticize Sam Altman in this way then go on to call Steve Jobs a "true visionary". I see Jobs as being more a managerial type that managed to get a few things very right. He wasn't able to dive deep into technical things and grok them as you said. I have read comments on hacker news from people that worked directly under him, talking about how he forbid using object orientation in programming. So programmers had to hide it from them that they were actually using it, which was easy because he could not read the code.

Additionally, Sam Altman is now in a position to achieve greatness and he probably will do so whether or not he has already. Someone in that position would not even have to be particularly exceptional (once again, whether he is or not) to do so. So whether he has or not so far is a moot point. I'm just pleased he has ambition and apparently isn't focused on the lime light. Compare that to how most billionaires use their funds (ie, big yachts etc) and you should just be pleased that anything is happening.

Anyway, my main point is that I guess that an appreciation of "genius" is a highly subjective thing. And the instant someone would mention Jobs as such is the same moment I'd intensely disagree with them. It can probably just be left at that.

I have read comments on hacker news from people that worked directly under him, talking about how he forbid using object orientation in programming.

Steve Jobs talked incessantly about object-oriented programming after he left Apple, and built an entire company (NeXT) and operating system (NeXTStep) using a new object-oriented programming language (Objective-C). He didn't write the code himself but he funded and led these efforts.

Is there anyway you can find those comments of people working directly under Jobs? I've be curious to read them.

I have yet to see him dive deep into any of the frontiers he's focused upon: AI, energy, biotech, etc.

I do admit I am still very skeptical about his views on AI. I am not an expert on that particular subject, but as a student of biology my understanding is that we are still a very long way away from truly understanding how "intelligence" works...

I think of it as happening in a sort of Moore's law sense. Double what you can do today in 18 months, then do that 5-7 times in the next decade, and the results should be pretty staggering.

What's even neater about AI is that the requirements to get involved are much lower than that of hardware and much easier to propagate. Combine that with the inherent power of machines teaching themselves and networking with each other and we may be looking at more of a power law or exponential rate of increase in capacity for accomplishments.

Very exciting times.

What's even neater about AI is that the requirements to get involved are much lower than that of hardware and much easier to propagate.

That's thinking very much from a CS point of view. Sure, if we're only talking about software you're quite right. But I would strongly argue that if we want to build an artificial intelligence, we first need to know what a "natural" intelligence looks like - and that includes a lot of neurobiological research that still needs doing. Now you can say what you like about software, but neuroscience doesn't come that cheap...

Not to mention it allows them to control negative comments/articles through implicit threats/incentives and direct (and hidden) moderation/manipulation.

There's an annoying fakeness about YC/HN that gets old after a while. Lots of founders willing to tell YC folks whatever they want to hear and YC folks happily slurping it up like it's authentic. Genuinely gamed. And worse they treat anyone who isn't a sycophant (people like @pinboard/idlewords) as crazy assholes who they actively seek to filter out of YC/HN as possible.

It would be really good for the world if HN was replaced by a neutral platform.

Although we banned this account for abuse elsewhere in the thread, I'm unkilling this comment because it's so patently untrue. It doesn't resemble the Hacker News I look at, and I look at HN a lot.

It's also factually incorrect, both re idlewords (whose latest piece spent most of the day at #1 on HN) and everyone else who uses this site in the intended spirit.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625852 and marked it off-topic.

"It doesn't resemble the Hacker News I look at, and I look at HN a lot."

Given your position, do you think that you can look at HN objectively?

It would not be wise to argue with someone who can hellban you. Even if it is purely logical and factual in nature.

Lobste.rs is also a good HN-alt. A bit more groupthink on common topics, and less groupthink on VC stuff.

No, we don't ban people for arguing with us.

If you won't take Dan's word for it, maybe you'll take mine?

I spend a lot (too much) time here, I've been quite critical of PG, a fair number of YC investments that I think behaved in an un-ethical way, and have read most of what Maciej has written through HN (and the associated comment threads).

When PG was still at the helm I would not have come out in support of the balance in the moderation and some of what you wrote would have stuck but those times are gone (at one point he called me a 'concern troll' for raising a legitimate issue which I haven't forgotten about).

But Dan and Scott have been as clean as could be in running the site, the only link there is is that YC still pays their salaries but afaik they have a completely free reign to moderate as they see fit and if you're going to make claims like the ones above then you probably should back those up with specific cases where you feel the moderation wasn't even handed. I know of no such cases off hand.

I hope the Silicon Valley writers are paying attention, there's some really good material in this article.

Reid Hoffman makes clear like I suspected that SV power players are skeptical about Sam Altman. YC is becoming Jack of all trades master of none. Jury is still out on YC under Sam's leadership. By 2020 I think we'll start to see the wheels fall off.

It does seem there's a lot of flailing around. As someone mentioned, this http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ went from 6 under Graham to 21 under Altman. Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC?

It's really easy to get fame and plaudits by associating yourself with a cornucopia of big ideas, it's a lot harder to actually follow through.

This is a strange profile of the sort of hero and status/wealth worship that only seems to have currency in the USA. The more I read the article the less I came away thinking of Altman as a genius and more of a babysitter and teacher.

I'm not really looking to attack Altman's character or competence, he seems to have both in spades, but the whole thing was just...creepy. And cultish.

Totally agree. I had to stop reading as the cult worship stuff started to get thicker and thicker.

Are you sure that you are in disagreement with the article's author? I think both you and te_chris may have missed some of the irony in the article.

This is a thought provoking question. I didn't miss it, but I didn't read it as irony, I read it as a sort of awe-struck breathlessness on the part of the author... or at least, the slightly emotionally distant (aloof, not really ironic) version of that that the New Yorker is very good at.

The idea of writing this sort of piece about someone whose grand ambitions have not yet been realized is both to make the reader aware of the grandeur of the ambitions, and also to draw a line in the sand so that his accomplishments can be judged later, aided by the glimpse into his unfettered idealism.

This is not a criticism of the New Yorker (I love it). Just a phenomenon of the unique genre of personal profiles that the magazine produces. The same tone would also work if writing about an artisanal butcher in Maine, for example.

So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary. Not sure why there's an entire New Yorker piece on him, instead of, say, I dunno, a few paragraphs in the Talk of the Town section.

Has there been a New Yorker piece on PG? I googled and didn't find anything. He's the one that put all this together and seems far more deserving of such a thing.

Actually, YC has expanded radically under the 2 years Sam has been running it, and all the expansion is purely Sam's doing. If you read the article, it discusses all this in detail.

I did read the article. I'm sure Sam has done good things. I still don't see anything which warrants a piece in the New Yorker.

So, Sam's been at this for 2 years, inherited an extremely well oiled machine, and hasn't, as far as I know, accomplished anything extraordinary.

What accomplishments did you expect in 2 years?

Working towards OpenAI, YC Research, the upcoming MOOC, basic income project, the private city project seem very impressive to say the least.

After he has taken over, YC is expanding into new areas, mentioned above, whereas earlier they were focussed on getting the startup program right and expanding to accomodate larger batches.

The things you list are plans, not accomplishments. And I certainly didn't expect extraordinary accomplishments. I just don't understand what in Sam's history warrants a New Yorker article over, say, that of CEOs who have competently run their business for the last 2 years.

Can someone explain what is referred as "Golcondan wealth"?

The most, we are here to understand where to put our technological hands in order to succeed, this because SV (and Y Combinator as one of its coveted stars) still has the gist, the money and the ability to deliver. If we in Western Europe could have something similar in Berlin or Amsterdam, now that London is going, I would be even happier.

Only twenty per cent of the Inc. 500, the five hundred fastest-growing private companies, raised outside funding.

I thought this was an interesting statistic. "80% of the fastest growing private companies did not need to raise capital to become one of the fastest growing companies."

...which makes this statement seem awfully silly:

"Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth."

Yeah, if companies are homogenous then that's fair, but it's not a stretch to believe that certain types of companies require VC funds more than others... in which case losing VC as a funding option would mean up to 20% of new companies fail at the concept stage, or have a harder time. Based on that I think "awfully silly" is a bit unfair.

Sam's contention, as far as I can tell, is that YC is hugely important to economic growth. Startups are a small fraction of growth. Of that small fraction, a fraction (20%) require VC funds. Of that fraction, another fraction may not have made it but for YC. So, we're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that YC is involved with. I'd say that suggesting that YC is hugely, or even just important, to economic growth is absurd (and reflects the massively outsized view SV has of itself).

"Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail.

Someone care to explain that because I don't see economic growth as a dependency to democracy.

Nothing came of Paul Graham’s plan for tech to stop Donald Trump, but Altman, after brooding about Trump for months, recently announced a nonpartisan project, called VotePlz, aimed at getting out the youth vote. Looking at the election as a tech problem—what’s the least code with the most payoff?—Altman and his three co-founders concentrated on helping young people in nine swing states to register, by providing them with registration forms and stamps.

Doesn't this confirm that VotePlz is mostly just a smokescreen to "get-out-the-vote" for a favored candidate?

Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats, because the young and poor tend to be the ones who don't vote and tend to vote Democrat. Back in the 90s MTV had "Rock the Vote" (actually it was a progressive non-profit who partnered with MTV) and their goal was the same.

Get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats

What? This is only true if you believe that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations are exclusive to Democrats.

That should have read:

Non-targeted get out the vote campaigns are always in favor of Democrats.

Interestingly, 538 ran a piece recently that implies that that's not the case this election, and that Trump actually has far more upside from unregistered voters than Clinton does:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/missing-white-voters-cou...

The summary is that by far the largest unregistered cohort is those who are young, poor, and uneducated. And this election, the poor and uneducated group is largely in Trump's camp, while in past elections they may have split roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats depending on other issues.

The other interesting thing is that the Trump campaign has done fairly little with voter registration drives, perhaps because of this image of it largely helping Democrats. Would be an interesting example of how hewing to common wisdom rather than data can end up hurting a candidate, if 538's analysis is true.

This is fascinating. And I definitely trust data more than common wisdom. Good thing for the Democrats that Trump doesn't. :)

Citation?

You could also say that laws that are aimed at reducing voter fraud (from zero) are a smokescreen for a favored candidate/party, because they tend to reduce voting among younger people (less likely to vote in a place that matches their home address) and the poor (less likely to have various types of identification, most importantly a driver's license). There are also people trying to pass laws to reduce the number of locations you can vote (hurts the working poor's ability to vote), the hours polling places are open (ibid), and reducing weekend polling for primaries (ibid). State agencies are also trying to pass laws that reduce or eliminate places you can register to vote, or change the rules regarding how long you have to register before you can vote. They also have laws on the books or are trying to pass laws that allow them more flexibility to not count your vote after you've cast it, and in many cases you have little to no ability to find out if your vote was actually tallied.

IOW, the ability to vote is highly contested. Pressure in the opposite direction is probably necessary if we want to consider ourselves a representative democracy.

How do you get from reducing voter fraud to it being a bad thing for elections. If the problem is that some basic form of government I.D. is hard to come by then fix that, not make it so anyone can walk in and vote. The other stuff about making polling places close early and stuff, I agree, is riduculous, but I don't see how requiring proper identification is a bad thing.

As I understand it, in many (most?) places voter fraud was already pretty rare. If that's the case, then it's not hard to see how a "solution" to the problem of voter fraud could actually prevent more legitimate votes than illegitimate votes simply by making things slightly more difficult for some or all legitimate voters.

Pretty rare? Ok, it's pretty rare that people try my door handle at night, but I'm still not going to leave it unlocked. I think voting is a pretty serious issue, if we're meant to take to it seriously.

It's a question of costs and benefits. Which is worse: 1 illegitimate vote being cast, or 10 legitimate voters not voting at all?

Giving people government IDs is not a trivial problem to solve. Its costs a lot and is hard, while allowing anyone to vote really increases voter turn out (and generally the rates of this type of fraud are very low)

Well, I don't think the fact that it's difficult to do implies we should just give up on it.

Right! And let's force people to do 20 pushups before voting too. Sure it's hard, and will exclude a lot of people, but it will be just as effective as a photo ID at preventing voter fraud.

not make it so anyone can walk in and vote

This is not how it works now.

Even without photo ID, a voter must confirm that they are registered before they are permitted to vote. At my precinct this consists of giving my full name and address, which the poll worker confirms against a list they have of currently registered voters.

If you wanted to steal my vote, you would need to know in which precinct I'm registered, then you would have to go there and give them my full name and address. Not impossible but not "anyone can walk in and vote" either.

Requiring photo ID only makes sense to people who don't understand how the voting system works now. It's very hard to mess up more than a few votes in person. It would be impossible to steal an election that way. And numerous studies of actual elections have shown that to be true.

Meanwhile, the requirement for photo ID reliably messes up the vote for hundreds of thousands of people, mostly poor and minority. Which is the whole point, of course.

Not impossible? In today's world finding your full name and address is incredibly easy. Yes, finding which precinct you vote in isn't as easy, but I don't understand why the system is such that having a government issued I.D. is so difficult to obtain. If that's really stopping people from voting, then there's something wrong with our DMVs, etc.

If you want to steal my vote, specifically, you can certainly do it. Better get there early though, I vote in the morning.

To scale such an effort up to materially affect an election would be incredibly difficult to do, and easy to spot.

If that's really stopping people from voting, then there's something wrong with our DMVs, etc.

The DMV sucks: this is news?

On the one hand, I can agree with you. I don't see someone managing to fake 1000s of votes by walking in without identification. That would require a lot of manpower, I imagine. On the other, I think you or I would still be pretty annoyed if someone had walked in and voted for us.

In today's world finding your full name and address is incredibly easy. Yes, finding which precinct you vote in isn't as easy

That's fairly easy, too, since there is usually a direct mapping between addresses and precincts.

But to cast a fraudulent vote it takes more than doing that, it takes finding that information and using it to vote before the legitimate voter does -- and to do it undetected requires the legitimate voter not voting after you've done it, either.

If that's really stopping people from voting, then there's something wrong with our DMVs, etc.

Sure. But sometimes, it seems like the "something wrong with our DMVs" isn't a separate problem, but a fairly deliberate effort to exploit the danger directly created by adding the functioning of the DMV as a dependency in the electoral process. [0]

[0] e.g., http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/alabama-dmv-closings-draw-call-fe...

We need to hold our state legislators accountable for doing their job. They know how hard it is for some citizens to get the mandated IDs, and if they don't, they should.

Go get em' Ahab!

    Altman worked so incessantly that summer that he got scurvy.

You have got to be kidding. So much food has enough vitamin C in it to avoid scurvy that you have to be eating pretty much nothing but ramen noodles to get it.

I don't need to be rich that badly.

Has anyone identified the Rickover quote that is alluded to at the end of the article?

"At the end of his life, when he may have been somewhat senile, he did also say that it should all be sunk to the bottom of the ocean."

My favorite part of the article (so far):

“My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

Hahaha, that's so awesome.

"I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

Imagine this coming from an ultra rightwing prepper nutball. Do you still love that quote?

Interesting, so sama is a prepper... and he knows that gold will be the only thing with some value left after a financial armaggedon...

Why two McLarens?

Because he can.

He can do lots of things. Why that thing?

Why the iPhone SE?

Because it's a great phone, and it's not super expensive? I have an SE.

Sama does not need to be concerned with the price of the phone, I was wondering is it because of the smaller form factor or another reason. The article talks about him powering through hundreds of emails a day and Im curious if the SE works for that amount of typing

There are great insights in this piece into how Sam thinks about AI and the future of YC.

But getting profiled in The New Yorker bears a risk, and the risk is that other media organizations try to tell the "down" story, because the down story is the only new thing to say after a subject is painted with such grandiose brush strokes.

Example: Marc Andreessen gets profiled in The New Yorker and a year later the WSJ publishes a hit piece on Andreessen Horowitz's returns. That's how journalists think: "what can I say that's different?" The whole industry plays a kind of ping pong, with one reporter telling an up story so the next can tell the opposite. It's a strange form of job security in an insecure profession. In a sense, you know you made it when they're publishing hit pieces about you.

A New Yorker profile is as good as it gets, and in a sense represents peak exposure, at least for someone in tech. (The Kardashians have other benchmarks...) It's doubly risky because at peak exposure, you get journalists who a) don't know much about tech because they don't specialize in it and therefore b) don't care if they get little things wrong, or subtly damage their source, in the telling of their story. They will move on to other profiles.

This comes out in small ways:

1) These sentences about Google and Facebook show that the reporter has misunderstood something fundamental about Google's history as it relates to the rest of the industry: "In the nineties, before the accelerator era, startups were usually launched by mid-career engineers or repeat entrepreneurs, who sought millions in venture capital and then labored in secret on something complicated that took years to launch. As the price of Web hosting plummeted and PCs and cell phones proliferated, college and grad-school dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page and Sergey Brin could suddenly conjure unicorns on their laptops." Google was building its own racks in the 1990s. And for that matter, Facebook didn't need an accelerator.

2) This passage will alienate most readers, because they simply can't relate to a world where a cushion like this somehow equates with a sacrifice: "Leery of tech’s culture of Golcondan wealth, in which a billion dollars is dismissed as “a buck,” he decided to rid himself of all but a comfortable cushion: his four-bedroom house in San Francisco’s Mission district, his cars, his Big Sur property, and a reserve of ten million dollars, whose annual interest would cover his living expenses. The rest would go to improving humanity."

3) And this will piss off the DOD: "He added, “A friend of mine says, ‘The thing that saves us from the Department of Defense is that, though they have a ton of money, they’re not very competent.’ "

Obviously there are positive passages in the profile, but a reporter like Tad Friend will report the negative passages with a straight face knowing that they will spark controversy, outrage or derision. He will tell a larger story of mad scientists and investors creating technology beyond their ken that spells doom for humanity. He will let his subjects hang themselves, subtly, because he can afford to do that kind of damage and pretend he had no part in it. Drop some little bombs, move on.

You're suggesting the reporter is doing something perfidious. Quoting a subject making a fool of himself to you on the record is not "dropping bombs", it's good journalism.

How dare he not humble himself before the god-kings.

The negative passages are an integral part of the story, which is about a wealthy and powerful guy living in a closed-off bubble of wealthy and powerful guys with limited or no outside supervision, and a capacity for self-reflection bounded within an extraordinarily limited scope. It may not be the story you want to be told, but it's a perfectly legitimate take on the situation.

I'm not convinced Sam Altman is as brilliant as claimed to be. I've not seen anything particularly outstanding that he's done. Not hating. Facts only. I think this is simply hype and it reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes.