[beachstartup]

no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial wisdom, than you or i or the next guy, but the billions of dollars at his command to assist in manifesting his will helps quite a bit.

and so does being at the nexus of the tech industry and seeing the entire ecosystem from the inside-out, "behind the curtain" so to speak. they have a lot of insider information, not the least of which is basically every single pitch that comes across every other VC's desk in town, and the actual financial health of funded companies operating in the marketplace. they all share information, that's why they don't sign NDAs.

[tonetheman]

> no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial wisdom, than you or i or the next guy

Nope nope nope. Money does not make you instantly smarter than everyone else.

Not sure why this is my craw... but everytime I see andreessen mentioned I always end up thinking of the crazy "Snowden is a traitor" bit. ah well.

[eli_gottlieb]

>no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial wisdom, than you or i or the next guy,

What kind of evidence could you ever collect for this statement?

[droopyEyelids]

I always wonder, assuming a person had all the benefits, the perfect genetics, the perfect upbringing, the perfect luck in industry, how much smarter or better informed, or capable could they be than the average person?

We have the meme that a great programmer is 10x better than a lacking peer. I think that is the absolute maximum upper bound on how much better someone can be, and that is in a limited, specific pursuit.

When it comes to predicting the future shape of society, we're talking about the average of many, many disciplines- not a discrete thing like programming ability. So I really think at best it'd be like a 2x-3x factor of improvement.

And with something as difficult as understanding the future, 2-3x isn't much, because you're multiplying a standard ability of near 0.