[adregan]

I’m not really understanding the notion that these people are so sincere. Perhaps we have different definitions of sincerity.

To my eye, the entire fascination of unsafely injecting peptides in a desire to change your being is largely the opposite of sincerity.

[rexpop]

> If a 14 year old says that they are going to change the world, they are being very sincere even if an ‘adult’ knows that the likelihood is low.

No, it's really a form of sincerity permitted by a sort of willfully affected naivete—adopted in pursuit of the strategy of Twain's amateur:

> The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do: and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.

— 1889, Mark Twain, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”

Hence why the "disruptors" so frequently, so irritatingly blast through Chesterton's Fence and/or market regulations.

Only one amateur in my portfolio need "catch" the incumbent "out".

[temp8830]

> Only one amateur in my portfolio need "catch" the incumbent "out".

The rest can live out the rest of their short degenerate lives as the failed experiments that they are. This does however have the side effect of turning the entire town into a society of failed degenerates...

[kelnos]

Except that the people doing this are like 0.1% of the entire town, so it doesn't really matter.

[Barrin92]

>No, it's really a form of sincerity permitted by a sort of willfully affected naivete

The willful part turns the sincerity into nihilism, people who utter sentences like:

"I could fill a notebook of quotes from this conversation. “They change your personality, it’s literally made me less shallow knowing that we can just looksmax you.” “Ugliness is just a choice now.” “I shot up a twink with ozempic who did not need to lose any weight.”"

pretty obviously don't sincerely believe what they say, quite the opposite, it's just a giant joke they're consciously in that would go away they moment they ran out of venture money or whatever finances these parties and lifestyles. These people all sound like William Gibson characters which they are aware of because they're the type of people to register that, it's like the Great Gatsby but with cringy nerds

[operatingthetan]

I'm a bit confused why we are taking the drunk ramblings of people at some party so seriously. Nothing in these sentences is that weird or shocking, it's just people trying to impress each other, or fit in, or learn stuff. A lot of it is probably just made up. Nothing here is very SF-specific, except it sounds like these people use reddit a lot.

[rexpop]

> it sounds like these people use reddit

Is giving "guy who's only seen Boss Baby" vibes.

[pphysch]

Yeah, isn't the entire point of SF startup culture (for the last decade++) to build personal wealth through a successful exit rather than build a sustainable business that benefits society? It's a big speculative con game... Opposite of sincere.

Of course we can warp the semantics and argue that these people are "sincere" in their desire to defraud retail investors or something, but that doesn't seem to be the author's argument.

[hungryhobbit]

A successful exit means you've built something so useful that someone else will pay lots of money for it. Sure that gets twisted sometimes when borderline frauds (and actual frauds) sell companies through misrepresentation ... but there is similar fraud whenever and wherever money is involved!

Fundamentally, the vast vast majority of founders who exit successfully made society better somehow.

But ... it's also true that founders who exit successfully are like 0.001% of the Bay Area's population, but we talk about them like they're 10% ... so we should all stop talking about them so much ;)

[pphysch]

> you've built something so useful that someone else will pay lots of money for it

"Useful" is quite the euphemism.

> Fundamentally, the vast vast majority of founders who exit successfully made society better somehow.

This is an extraordinary claim.

[kelnos]

I think this is a form of selection bias. We hear about -- and rage about -- the people you describe here because it's news, and it's outrageous.

But there are lots of people with a sincere mission who we don't hear about, because they're quietly working toward their goals.

That doesn't say that their goals are worthwhile or that what they're doing is actually good for the world, but they can still sincerely believe it is.

Most of them fail, and we hear about precious few of them. That doesn't make them any less sincere either.

[pphysch]

Sure, this isn't a rigorous study. But it's clear that American society is in decay (specifically: education, science, healthcare, democracy) and meanwhile SV has been busily innovating in adtech/surveillance, miltech, fintech, porn, gambling, recreational drugs, addictive media, disruptive automation... Not that all those are the same type of vice but it's clear where SV priorities lie.