Forget academia — that's over. The Valley's most influential minds are leveraging wealth and tech platforms to redefine public discourse and shape tomorrow's realities.
I find several of these writers mildly entertaining, but put them in a university philosophy or social science seminar and they would come across as callow and naive and incapable of actually defending their ideas against reasonable criticism (and I say this as a critic of many aspects of academia). The "philosophizing" strikes me as self-help not for upper-management types but for people who vaguely realize that their sci-fi / fantasy worlds don't quite map to the real world. What I find psychologically interesting these days is how much Thiel and Andreessen appear to revel in their 15-plus minutes of podcast fame. I'm tempted to say making appearances on popular podcasts is the new porsche: how obscenely rich middle-aged men postpone coming to grips with their mortality.
"The "philosophizing" strikes me as self-help not for upper-management types but for people who vaguely realize that their sci-fi / fantasy worlds don't quite map to the real world."
Resonate with this, but also have a slightly different view on what qualifies as philosophy to these men. I don't think they are looking for a self-consistent, bullet-proof philosophy in an epistemological sense as much as they're looking for a narrative that enables them to justify and make sense of their own actions – a narrative that they can believe and sell, even if it lacks a lot of nuance. This would explain why they're annoyed when questioned on certain aspects, like how political power would fit in, or the impact of AI run amok. (For example, Dwarkesh Patel wrote a detailed rebuttal – in good faith, I'd argue – to one of Marc Andreessen's posts that dismissed AI safety concerns. Marc responded by blocking Dwarkesh despite Dwarkesh knowing him in person and even having had him on his podcast a few months prior).
Maybe the very horse-blinders that enabled them to get this far are the very things preventing them from questioning their own world-view once they're at this level.
"Decentralization over Centralization" while I agree with you that they say this the fact is that their view is highly centralized and autocratic. Their approaches inevitably lead to where Yarvin, and really Musk, is. Centralization of economic and communications power in their hands and obediance by others. Ultimately they are not really about ending central government, just moving it from the East Coast, to the West and placing it in a different, but still small, set of hands.
I think in general the case for decentralization is overstated.
Mathematically, though decentralization can bring benefits in terms of communication, information processing, and robustness to _some_ events, systems with a decentralized governance might struggle to reach the same level of optimality that systems with centralized governance can in principle reach.
From a game theory perspective, when independent agents reach a Nash equilibrium, it is very often not an optimal one, and can be one in which everybody loses (like a prisoner's dilemma). To change that you have to change the incentives and internalize the externalities (and you need an external force, e.g. the state, to do it).
Also, economies of scale are a thing, there's a reason a lot of firms merge and in history empires emerged where only separate states existed (though clearly I'm not the historian here).
Also, hierarchical top-down structures have their usefulness. There's a reason why firms are organized hierarchically and don't outsource to the market every single task. Similarly, in engineering, we normally design things top-down rather that waiting for the right design to emerge in a bottom up way.
For the simple cases in which decentralization (be it competitive or cooperative or a mix o the two) works, by all means go for it. But trying to make it a mantra and applying it everywhere is extremely shortsighted IMO.
Decentralization is usually a codeword for the tyranny of local prejudice over the rule of law. This has been understood in political science history, but presently denigrated in service of unaccountability and empowerment of cryptofascism.
I'm not sure how useful it is to lump all these disparate figures together. Stewart Brand and Curtis Yarvin don't really have a lot in common aside from being connected to some SF countercultures and tech cultures. And neither of them can be said to have gained their influence by "leveraging wealth and tech platforms" (unlike Thiel, Andreesen etc).
Brand does not really have a "grand narrative" – one of his singular abilities is to have a very big-picture view of the world without imposing a structure on it. And he did dabble in mainstream politics as an advisor to Jerry Brown at one point.
Lumping v. splitting is an evergreen argument, but lumping in this case serves to illuminate what I think is an important commonality: a hostility to the high modernist state.
Thanks, that was quite interesting! I guess "planetary realism" could be a grand narrative/ideology.
I suppose everyone you list is kind of an alt intellectual – opposed to high modernism and outside of the normal academic/east coast cultural establishment. But who isn't these days. In the Trump era, the rationalist state is basically dead, somewhere between a sick joke and a nostalgic memory.
Back in the 70's there were individuals whose wealth was both inherited and from entrepreneurial success. They met formally and informally over issues similar to the "organic intellectuals". As with the "organics", ideas were substantive, but the will to collaborate and to take theory to practice had the same issues. Only, today, the "organics" have the advantage of time and technologies such as generative Large Language Models and DAO's (FUNCTIONING distributed autonomous organizational models) with tokens or bitcoins.
The significant difference with the "organics" is their experience with their entrepreneurial successes and the realization for the need for strong leadership. Gilman cites Gramsci's theory as to how the new ideas replace the extant ( the current state-based system), a hope of the "organics" without defaulting to the current "strong men"- a Trumpian dream. Yet the "organics" realize that, even in the digital world ego and politics can not be digitized and their ability and predilections preclude their commitment to take their theories to practice.
It is interesting that the Global Business Network, created by Stewart Brand, focused on "advice" and was eventually absorbed into a business consulting firm.
Johnathan Blake and Nils Gilman's book, "Children of a Modest Star", served as a platform to outline their model which was a tiered management structure which seemed much like that in the science fiction series, Star Trek, basically autonomous, but defaulting when "needed" to the next level. As with the "organics" and the earlier ideas, above, we sit at a pivot point which could tilt to the well defined extant strong state with its cumbersome attempt at inclusion, or default to a version of the "organics". That is, of course, unless AGI, artificial general intelligence, becomes manifest.
You know the techies today are sorta like the engineers and business people frustrated in the progressive reform movement a century ago. There’s a need for intellectual and political leadership there. Some of these directions about bottom up internet scale approaches to uplifting the human condition seem not wrong? Like I get the absence of politics though a lot of that is also structural. We live in an age of ostensible democracy with an invisible oligarchy, a time of tremendous inertia in the immovable object that is the industrial era administrative apparatus
All that said I did enjoy your thing and chuckled thinking of a few more b and c list intellectuals in this space
It seems strange to me to put individuals who are from a past era, now 30 years old (california ideology types) along with people whose thought has only come into vogue during the last decade or so.
Why? We would have little trouble doing this for defense intellectuals, or international lawyers, etc. — so why not for the Valley technorati? There are of course always factions and fashions within these groups but it’s helpful to beginning by lumping before splitting.
I do not think the periodization works. IMHO the '90s california ideology types have more in common with Tom Friedman and other globalization theorists from that same era than they do with Yarvin. And this is true in some of those other realms you mention too-- John Robb at his BRAVE NEW WAR peak was much closer to the California Ideology than he is to Albert Wohlstetter (or Peter Thiel).
Moreover, the "tech right" are a self-conscious rejection of Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, and the '90s Wired crew. The California Ideology is to this new brand of silicon valley thinker what communism was to Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, and Frank Meyer, or what the new left was to Podheretz and the 1st generation neocons. Of course is easy to trace the intellectual debts Burnham owes to Marxism, but it doesn't really make sense to me to classify his post '30s writing as "Marxist." Likewise here.
Found the article very interesting. The only part I'm not sure about is regarding the concentration of power and building "opt-in" systems. An opt-in institution in my mind would co-exist anarchically with a number of other options that would cater to different preferences without creating a winner-takes-all scenario.
If the tech elite are focused on building opt-in systems (e.g AI) that would disproportionately empower a very small segment of people who opt in while leaving the rest behind, can it be considered truly opt-in or pluralist?
I find several of these writers mildly entertaining, but put them in a university philosophy or social science seminar and they would come across as callow and naive and incapable of actually defending their ideas against reasonable criticism (and I say this as a critic of many aspects of academia). The "philosophizing" strikes me as self-help not for upper-management types but for people who vaguely realize that their sci-fi / fantasy worlds don't quite map to the real world. What I find psychologically interesting these days is how much Thiel and Andreessen appear to revel in their 15-plus minutes of podcast fame. I'm tempted to say making appearances on popular podcasts is the new porsche: how obscenely rich middle-aged men postpone coming to grips with their mortality.
"The "philosophizing" strikes me as self-help not for upper-management types but for people who vaguely realize that their sci-fi / fantasy worlds don't quite map to the real world."
Resonate with this, but also have a slightly different view on what qualifies as philosophy to these men. I don't think they are looking for a self-consistent, bullet-proof philosophy in an epistemological sense as much as they're looking for a narrative that enables them to justify and make sense of their own actions – a narrative that they can believe and sell, even if it lacks a lot of nuance. This would explain why they're annoyed when questioned on certain aspects, like how political power would fit in, or the impact of AI run amok. (For example, Dwarkesh Patel wrote a detailed rebuttal – in good faith, I'd argue – to one of Marc Andreessen's posts that dismissed AI safety concerns. Marc responded by blocking Dwarkesh despite Dwarkesh knowing him in person and even having had him on his podcast a few months prior).
Maybe the very horse-blinders that enabled them to get this far are the very things preventing them from questioning their own world-view once they're at this level.
"Decentralization over Centralization" while I agree with you that they say this the fact is that their view is highly centralized and autocratic. Their approaches inevitably lead to where Yarvin, and really Musk, is. Centralization of economic and communications power in their hands and obediance by others. Ultimately they are not really about ending central government, just moving it from the East Coast, to the West and placing it in a different, but still small, set of hands.
I think in general the case for decentralization is overstated.
Mathematically, though decentralization can bring benefits in terms of communication, information processing, and robustness to _some_ events, systems with a decentralized governance might struggle to reach the same level of optimality that systems with centralized governance can in principle reach.
From a game theory perspective, when independent agents reach a Nash equilibrium, it is very often not an optimal one, and can be one in which everybody loses (like a prisoner's dilemma). To change that you have to change the incentives and internalize the externalities (and you need an external force, e.g. the state, to do it).
Also, economies of scale are a thing, there's a reason a lot of firms merge and in history empires emerged where only separate states existed (though clearly I'm not the historian here).
Also, hierarchical top-down structures have their usefulness. There's a reason why firms are organized hierarchically and don't outsource to the market every single task. Similarly, in engineering, we normally design things top-down rather that waiting for the right design to emerge in a bottom up way.
For the simple cases in which decentralization (be it competitive or cooperative or a mix o the two) works, by all means go for it. But trying to make it a mantra and applying it everywhere is extremely shortsighted IMO.
Decentralization is usually a codeword for the tyranny of local prejudice over the rule of law. This has been understood in political science history, but presently denigrated in service of unaccountability and empowerment of cryptofascism.
I'm not sure how useful it is to lump all these disparate figures together. Stewart Brand and Curtis Yarvin don't really have a lot in common aside from being connected to some SF countercultures and tech cultures. And neither of them can be said to have gained their influence by "leveraging wealth and tech platforms" (unlike Thiel, Andreesen etc).
Brand does not really have a "grand narrative" – one of his singular abilities is to have a very big-picture view of the world without imposing a structure on it. And he did dabble in mainstream politics as an advisor to Jerry Brown at one point.
You might be interested in this conversation I had with Brown and Brand a couple of years ago: https://www.noemamag.com/the-origins-of-planetary-realism-and-whole-earth-thinking/
Lumping v. splitting is an evergreen argument, but lumping in this case serves to illuminate what I think is an important commonality: a hostility to the high modernist state.
Thanks, that was quite interesting! I guess "planetary realism" could be a grand narrative/ideology.
I suppose everyone you list is kind of an alt intellectual – opposed to high modernism and outside of the normal academic/east coast cultural establishment. But who isn't these days. In the Trump era, the rationalist state is basically dead, somewhere between a sick joke and a nostalgic memory.
Back in the 70's there were individuals whose wealth was both inherited and from entrepreneurial success. They met formally and informally over issues similar to the "organic intellectuals". As with the "organics", ideas were substantive, but the will to collaborate and to take theory to practice had the same issues. Only, today, the "organics" have the advantage of time and technologies such as generative Large Language Models and DAO's (FUNCTIONING distributed autonomous organizational models) with tokens or bitcoins.
The significant difference with the "organics" is their experience with their entrepreneurial successes and the realization for the need for strong leadership. Gilman cites Gramsci's theory as to how the new ideas replace the extant ( the current state-based system), a hope of the "organics" without defaulting to the current "strong men"- a Trumpian dream. Yet the "organics" realize that, even in the digital world ego and politics can not be digitized and their ability and predilections preclude their commitment to take their theories to practice.
It is interesting that the Global Business Network, created by Stewart Brand, focused on "advice" and was eventually absorbed into a business consulting firm.
Johnathan Blake and Nils Gilman's book, "Children of a Modest Star", served as a platform to outline their model which was a tiered management structure which seemed much like that in the science fiction series, Star Trek, basically autonomous, but defaulting when "needed" to the next level. As with the "organics" and the earlier ideas, above, we sit at a pivot point which could tilt to the well defined extant strong state with its cumbersome attempt at inclusion, or default to a version of the "organics". That is, of course, unless AGI, artificial general intelligence, becomes manifest.
Here is an alt more civic minded vector from a friend: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vr00n_past-few-days-in-dc-have-been-a-tapestry-activity-7358972579270778880-ASCj?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAGitEEB2KnyGZUsAblSo-pwZsfpRgkb1ys&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link
You know the techies today are sorta like the engineers and business people frustrated in the progressive reform movement a century ago. There’s a need for intellectual and political leadership there. Some of these directions about bottom up internet scale approaches to uplifting the human condition seem not wrong? Like I get the absence of politics though a lot of that is also structural. We live in an age of ostensible democracy with an invisible oligarchy, a time of tremendous inertia in the immovable object that is the industrial era administrative apparatus
All that said I did enjoy your thing and chuckled thinking of a few more b and c list intellectuals in this space
Thanks for the summary and synthesis. Re:
“The hard questions of power, its exercise, and its accountability, remain stubbornly human, no matter how much code is thrown at them.”
Really today we have the rule of nobody in vast swathes of civic life
It seems strange to me to put individuals who are from a past era, now 30 years old (california ideology types) along with people whose thought has only come into vogue during the last decade or so.
Why? We would have little trouble doing this for defense intellectuals, or international lawyers, etc. — so why not for the Valley technorati? There are of course always factions and fashions within these groups but it’s helpful to beginning by lumping before splitting.
I do not think the periodization works. IMHO the '90s california ideology types have more in common with Tom Friedman and other globalization theorists from that same era than they do with Yarvin. And this is true in some of those other realms you mention too-- John Robb at his BRAVE NEW WAR peak was much closer to the California Ideology than he is to Albert Wohlstetter (or Peter Thiel).
Moreover, the "tech right" are a self-conscious rejection of Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, and the '90s Wired crew. The California Ideology is to this new brand of silicon valley thinker what communism was to Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, and Frank Meyer, or what the new left was to Podheretz and the 1st generation neocons. Of course is easy to trace the intellectual debts Burnham owes to Marxism, but it doesn't really make sense to me to classify his post '30s writing as "Marxist." Likewise here.
Interesting. Wasn't aware of these interconnections, thanks for sharing.
Found the article very interesting. The only part I'm not sure about is regarding the concentration of power and building "opt-in" systems. An opt-in institution in my mind would co-exist anarchically with a number of other options that would cater to different preferences without creating a winner-takes-all scenario.
If the tech elite are focused on building opt-in systems (e.g AI) that would disproportionately empower a very small segment of people who opt in while leaving the rest behind, can it be considered truly opt-in or pluralist?