[karyon]

Can someone expand on this? I found the article interesting, energetic and containing a strong and, to me, positive and useful message ("ask yourself what are you building?").

Yet parent calls it ignorant, of what? a sibling comment is "horrified" that the article gained so much attention here, although it seems to me that with it's focus on building stuff it's 100% on topic (which is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting").

As it's a little unsettling to me that other people find it horrifying that people like me found the article interesting, any details would be appreciated.

[crispinb]

I'm really reluctant to say any more about this particular dead duck, but the ignorance and vapidity go hand-in-hand. The notion that we just apolitically need to 'want' the right things is risibly divorced from the reality of the complex, historical, political world we live in. It's a marketing slogan, not an analysis. "Just do it!", coming straight out of the world of the magical thinking books that so often dominate management & business categories. It pretends we're all hyper-individualist point-form existentialist entrepreneurs without history or culture or politics or .. anything much really.

The details, such as they are, are too flimsy to be worth addressing in detail. It's all too dreary - the tired conflation of the 'West' with one large outlier nation, the endless shrill calls on public provision advocates to demonstrate what's been amply demonstrated for decades, etc etc etc.

I truly make efforts to not be crudely incendiary about matters of importance. I do fail more often than I'd like because the issues matter and evoke strong reactions. But I'm not even going to try in the case of an article so flatly stupid. It merits only dismissal, and has already had more attention than it deserves. Over and out.

[lazyasciiart]

Have you read the article that you are commenting on? Because the very first paragraph starts explaining things that Andreeson appears to be ignorant of.

[karyon]

Yes, I have. "Every Western institution" is obviously an hyperbole, I wouldn't consider that ignorant. I started skimming the reply-article at some point, as it seemed to me like most nitpicks the author had might be correct, but missed the point of the original article. Reminding me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854475.

(OT: 'Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." ', from the HN guidelines)

[lazyasciiart]

OT: perhaps that guideline should be updated to say that when asking a question that appears to be entirely covered by the article under discussion, commenters should clarify that they have read and it, and explain why the article does not sufficiently answer the question. As it is, it's just a suggestion to be more passive aggressive - those two examples convey exactly the same thing except in the second one, you pretend that you are not accusing the commenter of not reading it. For example here, my response could have been "The very first paragraph says that." Would you have interpreted that differently in any way?

[PascLeRasc]

Marc's article was calling for things like building delivery drones and automating vaccines, which would be fantastic, but we're not living in a world where that's feasible right now. It was interesting, I agree, but as this response points out, there's more pressing matters right now like homelessness and internet access.