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@pmarca - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

Round two on the crisis in the universities -- this time on how to fix, and how to start alternatives -- from @bhorowitz and me. Enjoy! https://t.co/127E8MNYdO

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Right-wing media has focused on the issues facing universities, prompting potential legislative changes. The discussion emphasizes the importance of universities as critical institutions for society. The speakers explore the structural problems within the higher education system, including the need for reform and the emergence of startup opportunities. They argue for a shift in focus towards students and their needs, suggesting that universities should prioritize student outcomes over administrative concerns. The conversation also touches on the potential for new educational models, including independent credentialing agencies and innovative research funding approaches. Ultimately, they highlight the fragility of the current university system and the possibility of a political backlash against it if it fails to adapt. The speakers express a desire for constructive change and the exploration of new educational frameworks that better serve students and society.
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Speaker 0: Right wing media, for better or for worse, has just consumed the story after story after story of just, like, you know, crazy hostile things that universities are doing. And so you can imagine a point where just basically, like, a half or more of the country just at some point puts its foot down and its elective rep representatives put their foot down. They're just like, we're just not doing this anymore. We're not paying for it anymore. It it would not take 2 years to figure out how to kill these things. From a legislative standpoint, it would take about 2 minutes. Welcome back to the Mark and Ben Show. We, did an episode about a week ago on, the university. So kind of the the the the the prevailing kind of issues in universities, the the the sort of crisis that they're going through. I very important to I wanna reiterate kinda why why we did we did that one, which encourage people to listen to. Actually, first, if you haven't heard it before before this one, this is part 2. But also kind of why why we're doing it. So, you know, we're sort of discussing kind of this kind of rolling crisis that a lot of the universities, particularly the American universities, are going through right now. Very important to understand, you know, 2 things from our standpoint. 1 is the the reason we're digging into this topic is really actually twofold, and we'll we'll talk about both parts today, which is, is both, you know, these are, like, incredibly important institutions for the country, and for the people of the country, and, you know, by extension, for the world. So, you know, it's, like, really critically important that that, what happens in American universities goes well. And it's a it's a very big problem, you know, not just for them, but for for for a lot of a lot of the rest of us, when they don't go well. And and and look, Ben and I talked about this last time, but, you know, our personal stories obviously involve, you know, we we we are here where we are because of the great experiences that we had at universities, and then, you know, the university both, teaching process, generating graduates and research process, of course, is kind of the sort of the, you know, the sort of seed bed of everything in the tech industry in Silicon Valley and everything that we do every day. So these are important topics. The other thing worth noting is, you know, we're not just doing this to to kind of, criticize. We're trying to, see if we can be constructive. And in particular, we're trying to take a look at the the the issues not through sort of a, you know, kind of moment in time, hot in the news, you know, kind of perspective, but rather sort of a structural, standpoint. So we're analyzing universities, you know, as if they're, you know, as if they're systems, and they're structures, and they have incentives, and they have ways of doing things. And those ways of doing things have built up over a long time. And just the nature of large organizations and systems that build up over a long time is sometimes they accumulate problems and sometimes they need, you know, they need change and improvement and reform. So that's why we think it's a good thing to look at. You know, the other perspective that we have is that, you know, there there are, there are clearly startup opportunities emerging. And we're gonna talk quite a bit today both about what the existing institutions could do to maybe improve, their situations. But we're also gonna talk about some of the some of the startup, opportunities that are kind of flowing, from from, from the crisis in higher education. And by the way, those startup opportunities would probably be appearing anyway, because the higher education system, you know, just can't reach most kids, who need to get educated around the world. And so there would be there would probably be startup opportunities even without issues. But, you know, it may be that if universities can't fix some of their issues, ultimately, that there will be opportunities to build new institutions, new companies, new nonprofits, you know, maybe new research entities, and maybe do do more of of the things that universities have historically done. So We Speaker 1: probably need to fix the old ones and then build some new ones, just given how fast the world is evolving. Speaker 0: Yeah. I mean, look, like, you know, part of the context for all this is that universities universities, you know, historically only were ever built to, you know, train a a very small percentage of the 18 year olds, you know, in the world each each year. You know, they were never built to I I ran the I don't have the numbers in front of me, but, you know, the forget the number the number of, the number of people who turn 18 per year worldwide, you know, is like it's like a extraordinarily large number. You know, it's many, many tens of millions. And so, the the the sort of current higher education system, you know, was never built and is not built to accommodate Speaker 1: that. It's built for a small number of religious scholars. Speaker 0: Yes. Originally, yes. And then a small number later, a small number of secular scholars. Yeah. And, and, you know, in the US, the universities have become a a sort of a, you know, a much more it's much more broad based expectation that people go to college, you know, as as we talked about last time. But but but even if you even if you could send every 18 year old in the US to college, you know, the US is still only 4% of the population. And so 96% of of of kids, actually, probably more than that, every year. 18 year old kids are outside the US, and most of them are in places that don't have, you know, physical colleges, universities. And so there's a there's a general scaling problem, right, which probably needs to be addressed separately from the existing system anyway. So there's that. So we're we're we're gonna we're gonna dive in a lot to all of that. And then we have a lot of great Twitter questions, which we are going to, get to, at the end, or if we go super long. It'll be part 3. We'll do part 3. Okay. So the the the the sort of the way that I think about it is is, how to get started is sort of the question that we left off at the end of the last podcast, which is sort of the, okay, the, the last discussion. We we went through all the all the issues, and then we kinda left dangling, alright, what do what do you do about them? So this is this is the what what do you do section. I wanted to start by talking about this, you know, the way we try to always do this in business is to try to start with, like, okay, before you figure out what you're gonna do, it's like, okay, what exactly are your goals? And then and then, of course, the very next question, you know, from what are your executor goals is sort of the question of what exactly are your goals, you know, for who. Right? Like, who, you know, who who are you trying to satisfy? Who who are the customers? You know, last time, we we listed out the 12 functions of the modern American University, which you you can you can hear all about on that on that last episode. And then what jumps right out of the list of sort of the 12 functions of the modern American University is, you know, the universities, the way they run today, they certainly have a large number of different constituents. And so I I I made a list. I I came up with I think there's, like, 16 or 18 on the list. I'll just go through the I'll I'll list them real quickly. Students, faculty, administrators, board of trustees, alumni, donors, downstream employers, who hire the graduates, parents who are very involved, of course, immigration officials, sports fans, regulators, politicians, the press, which is, of course, scrutinizes universities all the time, downstream policymakers who are influenced by the science and policy prescriptions coming out of universities. And then and then number 15, society as a whole. So that was my Society Speaker 1: as a whole is a tough customer, by the way. Speaker 0: Who yeah. Well, it very much is. And, you know, universities universities have have have have design have designed themselves from from actually inception to have a big impact on broad society. You know, that's it's sort of one of the one of the goals is they are trying to reform society, advance society. And so having put themselves in that position, they're naturally gonna get scrutinized by society. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 0: So how do you think about from a leadership standpoint, right, and a management standpoint, or and, you know, with your experience on the Columbia board, like but from a leader general leadership standpoint, how do you think about, an institute like, it you know, look, we all know it's hard enough to just, like, run a company that just has customers. Yeah. Right? Or customers and employees or customers, employees, shareholders. Right? You 2, 3, 4 constituents hard enough. How do you even think about approaching the job of leading an institution that has that many constituents? Speaker 1: Well, I do think, like, companies do have a lot of constituents also, but they're I would say just a little bit have better clarity and uniformity on which are the most important constituents. So if you look at us, like at Andreessen Horowitz. So we have investors. You know, we've got entrepreneurs. We've got employees of entrepreneurs. We've got our own employees. We have the press. We have society as a whole. Like, all these things to consider, you know, in our kind of wealth management thing, we've got that kind of wealth management kind of clientele and all that kind of thing. But I think it's very clear to us, and we try to make clear to everybody in the firm, and I think everybody in the firm is very clear on it, that if we don't attract the best entrepreneurs in the world, that none of the other things matter. So it kind of is, okay, great. You have all these people who have an interest in it. But, you know, you've got to get the main thing done. And anything that compromises a prime directive has got to go and be subordinated. And I think that, you know, in the universities, partly because of just sheer size of them, you know, you have people who have no concern about the students at all, like large pockets of the kind of university that are only focused on kind of one of the other things. And that's where I think, you know, it starts to lose its focus and degrade the product for the most important constituent, which I'd argue is students. Speaker 0: Yeah. So if you were, you know, especially with your board experience, like, if you were placed in charge of one of these tomorrow, like, how would you or Adam, maybe it's an unfair question. I would say, how would you how would you rank these? Or may maybe that's an unfair question. Maybe the the question is how would you even go about figuring out how to rank them? Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I mean, I I think you have to kinda start with students and then everything, you know, everything on the list is a little bit in service of students to varying degrees. So the faculty, right, are obviously in service of the students. The administrators are in service of the students. The alumni are to kind of give money to support the students. So like, and and they're kind of, you know, depending on, you know, what your issue is in attracting the best kind of brightest students and giving them an experience and the kind of product and a career, the things that they're looking for, that's optimal, you know, you would kind of prioritize things to get you to there. And, like, there's always things that, you know, regulators are, you know, something that any business has got to mitigate or, you know, deal with and so forth. And that's not gonna be a primary thing, but you have a small team, hopefully, that's focused on that. But but I think, you know, you can easily lose the thread if, you know, you manage the noise levels or, you know, the press is probably the most distracting one. Right? Because if the press calls us a name or says we're not doing our job, then all of a sudden, like, a huge focus goes over there. And that, you know, if you're not careful, that'll distract from, you know, what you want for your kinda main customer. And that's and that's, I I think, to a large degree, you know, what's happened, which is why, like, cost like, how is it possible that tuition has gotten so high? Like, what the hell were you optimizing for that lets you think that your students wanted like that was a good idea? And I think there were some market corruptions, right, where the government's providing loans to students. So that kind of jack you know, that led to upward pressure. And then there's, you know, other things like professors can get jobs in the private sector that, you know, which is a kind of a more scalable sector in terms of making money that could pay, you know, potentially a lot more than you could pay in academia. So that drives salaries up and and so forth. So there's a lot of factors that lead to that. But, like, at the end of the day, like, how the hell do you end up with a product that costs $300,000 and gets the average student a job that's worth, you know, like 50 how are they ever gonna pay back $300,000 if they only make $50,000 a year? Like, that's insane. And that's that's kind of where the I think the product for the student has fallen apart. And so maybe that's a good place to start and like, okay, so what would you do to get cost at the university under control? And I think, you know, one of the kind of big things that we've learned, which is, you know, it's stunning, when you hear it, but, like, it got there incrementally, obviously, which is, you know, at many of the kind of elite institutions, the number of administrators outnumbers the number of students. Speaker 0: And Speaker 1: it's like, okay, that's an opportunity for savings. And I think, like, if you just tighten your belt, you'd go, okay, like, maybe we can do a 20% reduction there and so forth. But if you think about it a different way, and this is I mean, to me, it's very analogous to, Speaker 0: you Speaker 1: know, we had a debate recently when the Biden administration hired 86,000 new IRS agents. And people were like, you know, it was very partisan debate as it always is. Like, you know, why are these people coming after my money? Like, what are you? You cheating on your taxes? But that wasn't really the interesting thing. The interesting thing was you obviously anybody kind of in our business would go, well, you could have just hired 7 good software engineers, and they would have done a far better job than 86,000 agents at figuring out who was cheating on their taxes. Because it's like it's a data, it's a forms problem. Like, this is what computers are amazing at. And AI is, you know, people talk about what AI is good at. I'll tell you what AI is really good at, filling out forms, looking at forms, getting data out of forms, comparing that data to what the data should be, figuring out things, anomalies in the data that no human could. You know, it's amazing at that. And, well, like, could AI do all these administrative tasks? Could you just get rid of, like, that whole thing? Or, like, whatever, 95% of it? And then, you know, you're you're starting to get cost back where they are. Speaker 0: Well, if I if I could, just a couple of things on that. So, so one is it begs the question of who who who your who your constituency is because if if if your top constituency is the administrators Yeah. I mean, to the extent that the institution is being run for for itself. Right? Then obviously that that's a direct threat. Speaker 1: Yeah. And, look, I think that's, you know, that's always the thing in every organization. Right? Like one of your constituencies are your employees. But when your employees, take precedent over your customers, that's usually the end of the business. Right? Like this this is kind of the the the pattern. You know, in the private sector, you tend to go bankrupt a lot faster because there aren't government subsidies and tax credits and, you know, you you don't get all these there are so many goodies that the universities, you know, have access to and are part of their constituents that that's not, you know, that's not something that happens in business. But eventually, over time, in the long run, if the employees become more important than the customers, you get to the same end. Speaker 0: Yeah. One of the sort of quirks in the incentives, of the whole thing, see if this this makes sense, is that, you know, one of the one of the parties is not the constituency is not a constituent to your point you just made as shareholders. Right? So so, for profit companies have shareholders. The universities are nonprofits. They don't. But the consequence very interesting incentive consequence of being a nonprofit, which is a nonprofit. Right? The whole point is that you're not you're not for profit. You're not trying to generate profit. Right? And so you're sort of implicitly trying to break even. And so if you have the opportunity to have rapidly ramping revenues because of subsidies, you then actually have every reason in the world to ramp expenses at the same rate. Right? Speaker 1: You you Right. You're on massive margins. Exactly. Right? Right? Speaker 0: Right. Right. Exactly. Like, it's not your purpose to generate margins. You wouldn't be able to do anything with the money anyway. You might even it might even cause problems because it would cause people to scrutinize what's going on. And so there's this there's this thing where the the with a nonprofit, the the the, the the expense statement that, you know, will scale to meet the the available funding sort of on on auto pilot, right, to to to make sure the thing goes to break even. And this is sort of this is the counterargument to people who argue that nonprofits are somehow, you know, you know, better lined up to do good things than for profits, which is like, okay, what if they're actually wired to just, like, grow expenses to the moon, you know, and basically all the taxpayer dollar? Speaker 1: Yeah. Then there I I think that, you know, there there's definitely an aspect of that. And I think that, you you know, in the kind of the math, the university math is a little bit, you know, if we if we can raise prices, then we will. And they kind of benchmark against each other. So, you know, student loan money pours in. Harvard raised their tuition. We can raise our tuition. Like and, you know, just kind of cascades down the system. And, you know, that kind of translates into higher salaries, more administrators, more this, more that and so forth. But yeah, but it doesn't it certainly needn't be that way. And I think the idea of lowering tuition is a good idea. I mean, if you just if you were to, you know, we'll get into this, but if you were to start a university from first principles, like, why would it cost 60 or $70,000 a year? Like, that that's outrageous. Or it seems outrageous, like, to, you know, educate a student. Like, your best Speaker 0: Well, we know. Efficient way to do that. Yeah. Well and it's one it's one of these things where you can just look at what it cost 20 years ago, and you can look at the fact that it's risen the cost has risen much faster than inflation. And then you can just ask the question, are the results better than they were 20 years ago? Yeah. Right? And so it's sort of by definition, it's like, okay. Well, like, what what if we is this that's something you see in business also, which is just like, okay. What if we just went back to the cluster for we had 20 years ago or 5 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Right? And, like, where's the product at? Speaker 1: Ask the people who are actually running it, by the way. Speaker 0: Correct. But, like, if you're looking right. Exactly. But if you're looking outside in, like, it it is a really key question. In in other words, like, you've proven historically that you could do it at a lower cost structure because you were doing it at a lower cost structure. Yeah. Right? And so they're they're actually you you know, it's it's like this is one of those the reason I bring it up is, like, you can't find an institution. You cannot find a university today that's trying to do what you're describing. Like, as you said, they benchmark against each other. They're all on the same track. Yeah. And so you could you could you could kinda say, okay. That's sort of some sort of sort of inductive proof that it's not possible to do what we're saying because, like, nobody's even trying. But the counterargument to that is, no. It is possible to do it, and we know it because they were all doing it 20 years ago. Speaker 1: Yeah. And and we're in the courteous. By the way. Right? Like, you know Right. Inflation adjusted, tuition's grown at more than double the rate of inflation. Yeah. Speaker 0: So It's something like triple it's like something like triple the rate of inflation on a sustained basis. Speaker 1: Yeah. So clearly. Clearly. Well, the other thing that's really interesting is, okay, if you're at $60,000 a year or, like, above, that's probably a little more than the cost of having a, like, full time, like, very smart instructor for your child or for your teenager or whatever. Right? Like, so so you could literally assign every student, like, a really good instructor to teach them all these subjects, full time, like no other students, just one student. And it it would seem like you'd get potentially a better outcome with that with that method. So, like, once you get to that level of absurdity, it's probably time to take a look at it. And, well, let's Speaker 0: talk Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second because there's actually a lot of historical evidence been for what you just said. So, so one is if you go back in time, aristocratic education in prior societies, it was always 1 to 1 tutoring. Like, the the the royal family like, the offspring of royal families were always tutored one to 1. And then you have these amazing historical precedents, and Alexander the great is kind of the the the apotheosis of this because he his tutor was Aristotle. Yeah. That's Right? And this was just pretty good. Right? And then and then, you know, even, like, the Greek philosophers, like Socrates and all those guys, you know, their day job was you know, what they did in the mornings was they did 1 on 1 tutoring, to the to, you know, to kid to kids in in Athens. And then in the afternoon, they hung out at the accord and talked about things. But they their their job was actually tutoring. And, you know, that was obviously an amazing amazing civilization. So, so, like, there there's a lot of, like, specific historical historical precedent, and then there's this thing in the education research which is really striking. So one one of the things in education research generally is that it basically doesn't it basically fails. It's like basically sort of all of the attempts to come up with systemic interventions to improve educational outcomes basically fail, and this has been the case for for for many decades. Speaker 1: Like pedagogy and things beyond tutors. Is that is that how you think about Speaker 0: it? Yeah. They just don't. Most things you wanna do, whether it's head start or this or that or electronic, you know, laptops in the classroom, or you you just name any number of things where people try to inject money or new practices into the classroom Yeah. At any level. And basically, the the basically, it's the null hypothesis keeps proving out over and over, which is they just don't change anything. And so and and actually, it's funny that the the Gates Foundation actually write us just very heavily involved in education philanthropy. I actually put out a report, a couple years ago where they kinda they kinda go through this in detail. And it's it's very kind of discouraging in the sense of it's just it's really like, look. It's easy to say, like, a good teacher will do better, but it's it's much, much harder to say we're gonna make a 1000000 teachers better. Right? So so so so even the things that work in the micro level, they just they just don't scale. There is one exception. There is one educational intervention technique that reliably, it generates better outcomes. And in fact, it generates what are called 2 sigma better outcomes, so 2 standard deviations. So it's an intervention that routinely takes kids who would score at the 50th percentile of outcome and moves them to the 99th percentile of outcome. And it's 1 on 1 tutoring. Tell you. 1 on 1. Yeah. Speaker 1: You know, this is also true with, autistic kids. They've done similar research. And the one thing that works is 1 on 1 tutoring. They're the one thing that's proven of all the interventions consistently. There is a professor at UCLA, Ivar Lobos, who, who kind of proved that out. So that, that, that's it. It's very consistent across all types of students, interestingly. Speaker 0: Right. Right. Exactly. And so if if you wanna look at there's this thing called the Bloom 2 Sigma effect. The the researcher who did the work on this, his name is Bloom. So it's called the Bloom 2 Sigma effect. And it's kind of this great it's kind of this great white whale of education, which is like, wow. We actually know how to make education, like, much better than it is. It's just it's just historically been economically impractical. There's just no way that you could afford to have a 1 on 1 a one to 1 year for every single Until now. Until Oh, I mean, I'm Speaker 1: gonna assume a lot of Speaker 0: money should go to. You know, quite possibly. Right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, by the way, it's also good, like, you know, one of the big, kind of critiques of academia, I think from people like us, but, you know, more so, it's just that, like, when you go into academia, you're in this sort of bubble of a world. So if you're kind of coming up with new social sciences, theories or what have you, you know, you're testing them among like, you're kind of wrapped in people like yourselves. But if you go back and say, well, Socrates' ideas at least had to stand up to his students in a much more direct way because it's a one on one way. They're gonna have, you know, they're gonna have questions with us where I think that if you're kind of elevate yourself to, you know, here I am, king of the class, and, you know, I'm going to give you a grade. So you better not, you know, say anything nasty about my research. Like, that's a very different kind of a thing, I think. Yeah. So so so, you know, it could be helpful on both sides in a way. Although it is it doesn't quite take the expenses down, but it would hold them steady. Speaker 0: Or maybe, you know, 1 tutor for every Speaker 1: 3 students or something. Right? Speaker 0: Yeah. But, look, it's also the reference. Like and look, the expectation, I think, has to be the 2 look. If if nothing if current trends continue, then tuition will keep rising at 3 x the rate of inflation or something like that. Right. So we'll we'll be having Speaker 1: the tutor would cost. Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. We'll we'll have we'll have a follow-up to this podcast, you know, 5 or 10 years from now, and it'll have crossed the $1,000,000 mark, right, per student. Right? And and at that point, at that point, the economics actually become quite overwhelming Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 0: In the direction of one to one instruction. So so so sitting here today, it sounds crazy that you would make the switch, but it's starting to sound insane. And and so it it's it's worth, it it it it'd be it's interesting to at least have, like, a a a a a potential like, an index to potential competitive system Yeah. At least for the sanity check. So so, anyway, with with that in mind, so we we immediately launched into kinda one of the more one of the more pie in the sky ideas. But let let's go back to, like, the, you know, the sort of, you know, the the challenge of, like, you're you're you're put in charge of one of these institutions tomorrow. Yeah. And, you know, you're responsible for the turnaround or the or the or the reform that needs to happen, which by the way and then look, you know, a lot of smart people at the trust the trustee level and president level and donor level and so forth are trying to reform the existing schools. So I think it's worth worth talking about that. So so, Ben, let's talk about the the fix the university, kind of plan. And, you you you wrote an outline, prepping this. And so if you want, I can I can go through it point by point, or you could just launch it? What what do Speaker 1: you think? Let me get into a thing that, kind of will illustrate the kind of customer problem and the systems thinking issue, which is, and I, you know, I hate to get into it because it's controversial, but I'm not gonna get into the controversial aspect, which is kind of this whole diversity, equity, inclusion, and how these programs are designed. And I think and I'll just contrast it with the way we designed our program, which, you know, we call it a talent program, but it's essentially the same sort of thing. Because we designed ours with the kind of potential employees in mind. And I think that the, the system that was designed for the university was designed more with the press in mind. So, you know, how can we have a population that reflects America, was kind of the goal as opposed to, what's the best product opportunity for students in populations where we're not doing a good job of recruiting them. Right? Like, very different ideas on, you know, how you would start the design. And so if you start the design with, okay, we need 14% black students, whatever percent Jewish students, this percent white students, etcetera. And by the way, we've got legacy and this kind of thing. Then you would kind of that forces you into a methodology that is kind of whatever race or gender based where you're, like, literally having them identify self identify themselves on their applications and then trying to kind of funnel them through there. What's the problem with that? Well, there's a lot of, like, very weird side effects. Like, first of all, like if you look at graduation rates or, you know, outcomes or so forth for diverse students are much worse than for your main students. So, like, that's like if you're designing for the student, you would never design it that way. That would be like an important metric. But that's not the important metric. The important metric is how many you let in. And so, you know, that's corrupting. Then the the second corrupting thing is everybody knows about that checkbox. And so once, you know, the student arrives, now I'm like a little bit of a second class citizen because people are gonna judge. Well, you could say, well, that's racist to say that. Well, yeah. But you set it up. Like, people don't unsee. Like, I apply. I check, you know, my Asian box or whatever that I'm checking. I know there's other boxes. And then, like, I read the news, so I know, like, how that works. And so, like, that kind of whole design based on trying to achieve a goal so that The New York Times says I'm not racist as a trustee or a faculty or whatever, gets you to that outcome. Now you contrast that. Like, so how would you design it if you're designing for the customer? Well, I can tell you because, like so when we started the firm, and this was it's important to know this is pre me too, pre George Floyd, pre when anybody cared about any of this stuff in Silicon Valley. And so what we kind of said was, like, how do we get competitive advantage on talent? And we thought, well, there are certain talent groups that don't get recruited and certain talent groups that are over recruited in Silicon Valley. What are under what are, you know, computer science students from Stanford are heavily recruited, MIT students, so forth. So we started with, well, what about the 2nd tier, the top students, the 2nd, 3rd tier universities in computer science, can we go after those? And, you know, we put them on our list. The second one was veterans. Veterans, don't make their way to Silicon Valley, often, you know, because they just don't know that they're welcome there or whatever, you know, whatever reason. So that could be an advantage. And, you know, they're they tend to be good at, like, you know, things that we need, like very loyal, you know, trained, in leadership and kind of process development, things that we really kinda lacked in technology. So we had a, you know, a team to recruit veterans. And then, you know, we had the the other kind of 2 that if you just looked at the numbers that were way lower, like blacks and Hispanics. And so we had teams for that. So I was in I was in charge of that part. By the way, like, note that because it's a talent program, we didn't hire anybody to run diversity. And, you know, like, these colleges to run the programs they have have, like, hundreds of people. But if it's just talent, then the people who are in charge of talent, which is, like, of course, you know, the people who run the firm. Okay. So early on, like, hey. We're we're probably 2,010, 2011 now. I'm kinda working on this problem. And, you know, I'm getting kinda input from people I know who have recruited from those populations, who know them, know the special skills that might exist, how how to attract people and so forth. And I'm at, and this is a very funny story to me. So I'm at lunch in Menlo Park at a restaurant called Stacks, which you know well, with Steve Stoute, who, you know, kind of came from the entertainment industry. He's kind of, you know, which is, you know and music in particular and rap music in particular, so, like, dominated by African Americans. And, you know, I'm talking to him about it, and he says, Ben, do you know why there are no black people in Silicon Valley? Just like that, he says. And I said, no. Why are there no black people in Silicon Valley? He said, look around. There are no black people in Silicon Valley. And, like, literally, he was the only black person in all of this stacks is a pretty big restaurant. He's the only person. And so I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I looked up, you know, so United States is 14.3% black, but Palo Alto, Menlo Park, you're talking 2%. And so like right away you go, okay, this isn't even an attractive place to live or for whatever reason, people haven't even moved here. So like, maybe we need to start there. And so what did we do? We, you know, we did film screenings and gatherings and meetups and barbecues and kinda tried to get to know the people that we wanted to recruit, know what would make for a good work environment for them by just spending, like, regular time. And then we start to go, okay. Here's a place in the firm where we need this talent. We already know all the people. We know who's the best. We've spent, like, we've invested the time, and we're gonna get that. And so then you come to the firm and our retention, our promotion rates, and so forth are very good because we were always focused on the talent. We were never folk we never cared about the New York Times because at that time, the New York Times didn't care about it. And so, like, you just get to a very different outcome when you focus on a different customer. And I'm gonna kinda tell the the last part of the story just so you I can map it back to the university. So a few years ago, maybe it was 5 years ago, Henry Louis Gates, who was the very famous, very talented professor of African American history at Harvard, called me up and because he, you know, wanted to basically raise money from me and has this thing, the hip hop archive at Harvard. And he said, Ben, I wanna create a fellowship called the Horowitz Hip Hop Fellowship at Harvard. And I go, well, Skip, like, if you call anything that, then everybody's gonna hate me because Horowitz hip hop, like, sounds, like, really, you know, effed up. I said, but I have a friend, Nas, who deserves to have a hip hop fellowship named after him. And I'll call Nas and see if he wants to do it. And, you know, we go through that and we call it the Nas hip hop fellowship. So then, you know, they wanna have a big event at Harvard and then invite Nas there, you know, which they do. And I get a call, you know, leading up to the event from Lisa Niu, who some of you may know, she's married to Larry Summers, who was interestingly fired as president of Harvard for saying something, you know, non diverse. And she said, Ben, you know, I've been reading Nas' lyrics. I said, you've been reading his lyrics? She said, yeah. I said, you haven't been listening to his album? She's like, no. No. No. Just reading the lyrics. I'm like, okay. You know, the the albums are good too, but whatever. And she said, you know, like, this he's so good. Like, I can't even believe how good this guy is. Like, I'm talking like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman. He's like that level good. And I was like, wow. That's amazing. But the thing that I realized when she said that is Harvard never recruited Nas or anybody like Nas. And if you think about it right, black people dominate dominate music in the United States. So why aren't you looking for the talent, doing the right things to recruit them? Why are you looking for the color? And that's I think I think a lot of the things that the universities, if you're gonna take a systems view of it, you've gotta start back there and say, like, how do we get, you know, how do we find the talent that we just our regular process doesn't get to? Change our process, change our way of doing things to get to that talent. And then, like, it's gonna be better for us, better for the talent, better for the mission, all those kinds of things, as opposed to letting some outside force tell us what we should be doing. And I think that's, you know, that's really emblematic of a lot of the things that I think have gone sideways in the university when it comes to, you know, diversifying the the student body. Speaker 0: Yeah. So let me let me if you don't yeah. So let me let me steel man let me steel man the question, right, that you that you'll get in response to this, and I'll I'll I'll use my special skill here. I'll use my special skill here of, I'm I'm I'm an obsessive on all these topics, and so I try to try to be able to think about it from from all the points of view. So I'll I'll play I'll play Superwalk here for a second, which is like, look, Ben, like, you know, the whole point of the DEI programs, like, the universities is to try to, like, make sure that every field, like engineering for as an example, has, like, equal representation by population. Yeah. It feels like you're arguing that we should give up on that in favor of an approach that sounds like it involves stereotyping, which is we shouldn't try to you know, we should we should take away the focus of recruiting black people in engineering program. We should increase the focus on taking black people in music program, and we should do that on the basis of a stereotype that black people are are better at music than are than than in engineering. Like, how how do you, yeah, how do you, yeah, how do you, like, explain that? How do you explain that given the given the moral framework people are starting with? Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean, I think I I I think the the truth of the matter is is, look different. Everybody's in it. First of all, like, everybody is an individual and should be treated as such in that sense. But, like, I think anybody with half a brain well, who's observant can observe some kind of very obvious things about different populations that they're interested in different things, like people have different interests. Like, so forget about even talent or this or that. And it goes by group and by culture and so forth. And this is, you know, there are things like every comedian makes jokes about, you know, men like to sit around and watch sports and, you know, women like to watch other things and so forth. And that's very bad to say these days, obviously. But if you look at just job categories, you know, I think veterinarians are 80% women. And nurses is like much higher than that. Those are good paying jobs. Speaker 0: Psychologists, by the way, at the at the university level. We were just psychologists or at least up to at us up, like, 90, 95% women now. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. And then, you know, similarly, like, coal miners are almost all men. You know, people work in like oil rigs are almost all men. You know, MMA fighters are mostly men, although there are women who do it, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so like there are I think you do have to, you know, in any kind of program where you're trying to get you know, and the whole point of diversity is diverse interest, diverse talent. Right? Or ought to be anyway. And so if you're going into, you know, a population that's got a different culture and very likely different interests, and, you know, and by the way, everybody's got different genetics too, then you kind of have to be a little more creative about just saying, we're only going to like, if you if you say, we're only going to look at, you know, these test scores and these grades and these kinds of courses, then obviously, like those populations aren't showing up on that. That's why you have the program. So you can either go, well, we'll just still put them there where they haven't shown an interest or an aptitude yet or like or or some of these students have or whatever. Or we can broaden our criteria to things that make big contributions to society and are important. And people may be, like, able to do better than our friends, the white and Asians, like, over here. And so, like, that's the choice you have. I mean, you know, like, and I think it's just a better choice. So, yes, you're not going to get equal distribution just like, you know, like you don't get equal distribution in almost anything in life. It doesn't even make sense math wise, by the way. Right? Like, because the population is 14%. First of all, like, 14% in total across age groups, not 18 year olds. So, like Right. You're already fucking off. And then we're going international, so you're way off. And so you're mapping to a number that's a fake number. And now you're not just mapping it to the university. You're trying to map it into every subject. And this is just like, it's just, it's almost the American epidemic and innumeracy is kind of affecting the whole logic of how these programs work. And the problem is it's to the detriment of the people you're trying to recruit. I give you a very good anecdote on this. So you and I just had breakfast with a kind of prominent trustee at one of the most important universities in the world. And he made a, like, a very offhand comment, which he thought was the most obvious thing in the world That really kind of stopped me in my tracks, which he said, look, even if we accepted every Black applicant, we won't hit 14%. Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: And so you're so unattractive as the top university in the world to that population that that you can't even touch that number. So your problem is obviously, you know, like not in, you know, making race to your your problem is you don't even know what you're looking for. You don't know what they're interested in. You don't know how to create an environment, you know, that that that's beneficial where they're gonna have great careers coming out of it. You haven't done any of the real work. You're just trying to, like, meet some number that doesn't even make any sense. And that's to me, that's the issue. Speaker 0: Well, take it a step further just to double dive because this is a real issue right now and real issue for many people, including, as you said, the people that everybody's trying to help. So your your friend, Henry Louis Gates, long time professor at Harvard, actually was pointed out 20 years ago, I think, all the way back in, like, 2004. There were there's a big article, I think, in the New York Times archives. It's really interesting, from that era. And he the two sources for it were him and then Lani Guinier, who was one of the top black law professors in the country at the time. I think also Harvard maybe also a Harvard professor. And later, she was, like, almost on supreme court at one point. So these 2 very highly respected black scholars, you know, experts, professors, and they they they made this case at the time. They said, look, what these institutions are actually doing, is they're bringing in African and West Indian immigrants, to satisfy the African American quotas. Speaker 1: Yes. Well, that that is exactly what's happening. Right. There are more Nigerians. I believe there's more Nigerians at Harvard than African Americans. Right. Yeah. Speaker 0: Right. And and, of course, like, look, for at an individual level, you know, fine, you know, great. The it's it's, you know, great. You know, so I'm totally in favor of having, like, highly talented Africans and, you know, real real. Speaker 1: Nothing to do with Somalians, like, genetically. This is the other thing about this race theory that people are kind of promoting is they're not even, like, related to, actual races. I mean, or actually genetics or and it's just some weird government category. Speaker 0: Government government over over over categorization. And then and then, you know, specifically back to, like, what everybody thinks they're trying to do, which is if you're trying to help African Americans. Right? And and your answer to it is we have to bring in lots of, like, literal Africans and West Indians or some or or other other population goes to do it. Then you you like, some again, to your point, like, something has gone wrong in pursuit of the goal of helping African Americans. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, look, I think it's clearly not working also in the year. I mean, there was there with the kind of ruling on affirmative action. There were so many studies that showed that it didn't actually help African Americans. 50 years. Forget whether you think it's a good idea or bad idea or fair or not fair. The results were really bad. And I think part of the reason the results were bad is the way the kind of programs were designed and the you know, and and that, like, most of the people were African anyway, not African American. Right. So Speaker 0: Right. Exactly. Well, so, well, the other the other benefit to the Africans is they they pay they they're more likely to pay full freight. Right? So they're from a universe from a financial standpoint, you know, Speaker 1: they're Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, that's right. The other incentive, if you if you're taking expenses through the roof, you need some people paying full freight. Right. Speaker 0: And which turns out to be immigrants. Okay. Good. So let's you know, that's obviously a big a big chunk of the of the reform, fix fix the university thing. Ben, let's let's let's walk through the rest of the, the fix the university turnaround plan. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, one big thing is the credentialing system. Right? Which you know, and this again, like, this is probably the most important thing to the student is that that once I pay all that money, once I spend all that time, that at the end of it, I've got something that's very valuable. And I think that there was just a report that, like, half of companies are dropping their, like, bachelor degree requirement, which kind of says, well, the credential no longer means much. And so I think that, you know, if you don't like the SAT part, then you probably need to fix the SAT part. So it, you know, like make it better. But it does prove something to employers. And it's very hard to you know, get rid of a measure like that because what are you replacing it with? You're replacing it with grades. If you talked about last time, there's massive grade inflation. So that doesn't really work. You know, are you doing recommendations like what are you doing that that an employer can't do themselves? And the brilliance of the SAT, by the way, is as an employer, it's actually illegal to do a general aptitude test. So if you're looking for just whatever and as you know we sometimes call them in sales an all around athlete, then or an all around kind of mental athlete, you know, you'd like to have some aptitude measure. And if you don't like the aptitude that's being measured, then, like, enhance that. But to get rid of that is kind of nutso from the student perspective. And then the second thing is grade inflation itself. And in a way, it's easy to fix because you just go mandate a grading curve and just go back. C is average, F is fail, A is 2 standard deviations up, B is one standard. Like just have it mean something very straightforward, the grade. Speaker 0: Are you talking about kind of trying to 0 in on the absolute qual the absolute grades with the indicator? Or are you talking about literally grading on a curve and having Speaker 1: a forced Like, literally grading on a curve. Right. Speaker 0: So grading on a curve used to be more common, I think, both in educational settings and also in employee evaluation settings. And, you know, companies like Microsoft used to do it kind of famously, at GE. And then it went it's it feels like it's gone very much out of style. Yeah. Because the the criticism the criticism, right, is it sort of forces you it it sort of guarantees that you're gonna have people who don't make it. And so the the criticism is, like, you know, what if everybody in the class is actually really good? And then you're singling out people who have to be cut from the bottom because you're forcing the the the grade on the curve thing. And so isn't that unfair? And so, like, I I haven't seen anybody grade on the curve in many, many years. And so how how would you how would you kind of reexplain that to people in a way that they would think it's a good idea to bring back? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like, I think it's different at companies and in universities, by the way. So so I think it actually works probably in some ways better in universities in the sense that, like, the the trouble you run into companies is, like, you're you're relative to the next employer. So if you hire the top 1,000 employees in the industry, and then you rank them on a curve, and then you fire the bottom 10%, those are better than the people on the market. And so like you get into that kind of thing and so forth. So there's, you know, this need to mix in the absolute level. The other thing is that, you know, the companies that were famous for it, Intel and Microsoft, would actually fire the people at the bottom of the curve. Right. And, you know, that has implications and so forth. One could argue, you know, Intel and Microsoft did pretty well. They started with those programs before they were giant monopolies and they became giant monopolies. So that actually kind of worked. So, you know, it's kind of a retrospective that that stuff is bad. But in the university, you know, I think if you grade it that way, you don't actually I mean, you know, if you feel like, okay, the failing point should be lower than the whatever two standard deviations below the average, then you can do that. But the meaning of who's the top student at Harvard, to have clarity on that is pretty powerful. And then also to have clarity on, oh, this is what it takes to get through 4 years and get a degree, a bachelor's degree. To your point last time about conscientiousness, it really kind of fulfills that promise. And so, you know, look, we've gone into this self esteem is all that matters thing, but the result of that is massive student debt. We just lie to everybody. So you're doing fine. You're doing great. It's all good. Give us your money. And then, oh, guess what? You owe $300,000 and you can't get a job. And, you know, that's the problem. So I to me, that's a much bigger problem than the self esteem problem or the, you know, you know, you're 3 d standard deviations below the average and you flunk the class. You you know, at that point, you probably don't know the material well enough, you know, to get a passing grade, let alone what you get now, which is an a minus. Speaker 0: Right. So Well, the the other the other response I think would be like, look. Every professor, every teacher, and every manager, and every employer are fully aware that you have a distribution of talents and capabilities and results and performance in every group. Right? Like so no. There there is no employer that does what you just, you know, said a few minutes ago, which is they hire the 1,000 best people. Yeah. And and not and not right? Nobody ever does that. I mean, everybody would love to. Nobody ever does. You always have distribution Speaker 1: of excellence. There's also it's not just smarts, it's effort. You know, effort is a big thing. That's right. That goes into, you know, not only a grade in school, but goes into, like, performance on the job. And, you know and and look, I would say the other thing, you know, just in life that you learn when you employ people and every employer knows this is, you know, not everybody is good at everything. So, like, the important thing is, like, what are you great at? And then, like, where how can we put you in a position for your highest and best use? We use this term all the time. You know, like, where can you make the biggest contribution and let us get you there and not have you do something you're no good at? And I think this whole, you know, anti credential kind of way that we've gotten universities, we you know, people come out of school. We don't know what their highest and best use at. They they might get you know, they may be, like, the greatest. I tell you, Robert Smith is, who's the, is he I guess he's CEO of Vista. He's the founder of Vista. He's kind of runs it. You know, he's very, very sharp on this. He's a he's a person I probably rely on most for ideas in this area. And one of the things he says is, look. We get guys we kind of have to reclassify them because well, I got somebody as an engineer, but when we kind of, you know, look at their personality and so forth, they'd be way better in sales. And we reroute them, and their career goes much better. And so if you're, like, a genius, you know, psychologist, social networker, like, you know, these kinds of things, and we forced you into STEM, that's not good for you. It's not good for anybody. But that's what these ideas do. Right? Like, they force people into things that aren't their talent, their skill, their passion, their interest. And then, you know, they don't enjoy it. You know, they, you know, like, I'd be resentful if somebody did that to me. And then I'm not gonna make much money, and I'm gonna be like a low performer wherever I am. And there's no need for it because I'm super talented person. Like, why are you doing this Speaker 0: to me? Speaker 1: And I think, you know and and it's these ideas of people who wanna make the world fair that they impose this thing on people where, like, look, life is not it's not fair in that not everybody is exactly the same amount of good at everything. But there's so much variety that there's a place for everybody. You know, like, I do believe that there's a place for everywhere. Anybody can contribute. And we gotta find that for them. And that's what the university should be doing is finding people's contribution, not, you know, channeling them into something they don't wanna do or, like, didn't test into or or whatever. Because, you know, oh, we need another person of your race doing this. So we're gonna make you do that. Speaker 0: Yeah. There's something in, as you if you when you dig into the data on, like, representation of different groups and different professions, there's something in the in the data, the the social scientists who study this referred to as the Scandinavian paradox, which is that it's very counterintuitive. It consists of what you're saying, but it's very counterintuitive, which is the societies that are most egalitarian, have the greater dispersion, have the greater difference between representation of groups, but but for example, by profession. Speaker 1: And more women go into STEM in, like, Kazakhstan than in Sweden. Speaker 0: Exactly. And so the the true like, for example, for STEM, the truly the truly representative STEM systems at the educational level and at the professional level for, like, science and math and engineering were the Soviet Union, and then apparently even still today, Iran. Right now Speaker 1: there are much fewer rights. Women have much fewer rights. Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. And and then, by the way, everything else that women might wanna do, is is is much more dangerous. Right? Like, so, like, being a literature professor in Stalinist Russia was, like, super dangerous. Very good point. Right? But being a nuclear physicist was, like, you know, super a super privileged position. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. And very safe. Speaker 0: It's it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. Right. Exactly. You need you. Right? And so if you're, like, a highly capable person who happens to be a woman who would love to be a literature professor and but in that system, you can't do that. You're not gonna do that. And so you go do the thing that you'd rather not do because it's the safe thing to do. So, and and then in contra in contrast, if you if you do this rank ordering of societies by gender egalitarianism, you know, the Scandinavian countries are kinda top of the heap. And I think it's the case in the Scandinavian countries today that, like, engineers are, like, 85% men and nurses are, like, 85% women. Yeah. And so it's it's it's it's a much more unequal outcome. And so the the the the explanation for it turns out to be very subtle. It's in the statistics, for what's happening, which is, if you take out all of the societal bias or all the societal level determinism and you take out all, you know, whatever, if you take out every possible restriction on what people can do and you let them fully express themselves, then what you're left with is pure choice. Speaker 1: Right. Right. Speaker 0: Right? And so and so at that point, the the differences, in the outcomes that are based on pure choice maximize. Yeah. They don't minimize. Yeah. They maximize. Right? And so so the freer people are, the more you're going to have dispersion in exactly the way that makes kind of prevailing morality just, like, completely freak out. But but but your point, the reason we're going through all this, your point is you can imagine a university you can imagine a university that has this polar opposite view and would have these spectacular programs, and things if music and and many different areas of everything, like performing arts, poetry, and so and then and then all these different, you know, psychology and all these different, you know, things and so forth and so on. And then have sort of equally good, you know, engineering programs or math programs or whatever. And they have just, like, and everybody in every program is there because it's the thing that they really wanna do in life and that they're the best at Yeah. Without the kind of trying to force fit everything to be equal representation across all fields. Is that the it sounds like that's Yeah. I mean, I I I and Speaker 1: I think that's clearly the right approach. And, like, in, I mean, I have to say, like, in business, like, you look for a technology venture capital firm, and we end up needing all those things. Right? Like, you know, part of our advantage is that, like, we're a firm that has some poetry to them that can tell a story, that can do these kinds of things. That's how we built the whole brand. It had nothing to do with math. And, you know, like, that's kind of one aspect. Then we're a network. And so we've gotta make friends, like a lot of friends in and not just friends in Silicon Valley. We've gotta make friends in Washington, DC. We've gotta make friends in Hollywood. We've gotta make, you know, friends on Wall Street. And, like, this isn't a great job for an engineer. And so, like, like or or, like, there may be engineers who are good at it, but I'll bet you I can find, like, somebody else who's way better at it. And we have. And so, like, the the and that's my point about the world. Like, the world is very diverse in terms of things that need doing. And to kind of force people into a path because they're not your customer, your customer is, you know, some, you know, buddy who's covering diversity at The Washington Post or The New York Times or whatever. And you're like, okay. The last thing I wanna be doing is getting tagged with racism for their and by the way, those organizations are not diverse in that way either. You know, like, so they're, like, they're telling you how to run your business. They don't know how to run their fucking business. The whole thing is just stupid. But, you know, like it you get into these, like, abstract ideas that, you know, at the very surface level makes sense. You know, like, look, there's talent everywhere. Yes. People are different. You're like, not even people are different. Like, you know, people are there there's racism out there. Yes. So therefore, every job, every category, and every company has got to be exactly, you know, the percentage that are represented by the population. Well, how did you get all the way there? Like, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Speaker 0: Yeah. So, if you wanna just that something I'd do for fun sometimes is if if you just Google, newsroom diversity crisis Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 0: There are these just absolutely hysterical reports just like excoriating, the news the same news organizations that criticize everybody. Yeah. Of course. Speaker 1: Of course, they're not. Yeah. Of course, not everybody wants to be a damn, you know, journalist. Speaker 0: You know? So anyway, so equal amounts Speaker 1: of their representation of the population. I'm like, what are you talking about? Speaker 0: Right. Exactly. So, to go go back to the credentialing, to go back to the where, you know, why why we're talking about this. Go back to credentialing. So then we I think what you're saying, see see if this is right. You're saying is you you wanna think you you you wanna think harder leading one of these institutions. You wanna think harder about the credentialing on the way in Yeah. In terms of how you're actually sourcing talent and how you're thinking about talents and how you're thinking about bringing in, you know, lots of different kinds of people. Yeah. And then and then correspondingly, you also wanna think about the credential out. So the the the value of the credential that you're then generating. You know? And and and they're related. Right? Because to your point on the SAT, the the incoming credential is actually part of the outgoing credential. Yeah. And so and you so you wanna think hard ultimately about how that all translates downstream to the potential employer. Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, look, if you want to diversify what you're getting through that credentialing system, then widen it. You know, widen the bar, take more things, have them do a poetry test. You know, like, see what their rhyming skills are like, actually, you know, add music to it. Like these are this isn't These are real tangible things. Right? Like, you know, add you you know, like, I think it would be very helpful for us if they would say, like, how good are you at, like, human relationships? Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: That would be some Speaker 0: Oh, I'll give you one. I would love to Speaker 1: know that coming in. Nobody's tested that. Like, fine if you only wanna test writing and math and history, but you're gonna get people who are good at writing and math and history and interested in it and whose culture puts them that way. And so, like, yes, if you kind of mix up the population, throw the cultures together, do a freaky Friday on everybody and then have them take the test, maybe it'll work better. But, like, you're you're kinda dealing with what you're dealing with. And so if you're gonna go find talent, go find talent. But don't make talent being the color of your skin or your gender. Like, that's dumb. Speaker 0: Yeah. So there's a psychologist. There's I read about 1. There's a psychologist that has a creativity, test, a creativity assessment battery, test. And it the test, if I remember correctly, it works roughly as follows, which is it it it's it's sort of 2 dimensional. So it's it's it's 15 different kinds of creativity, and it's like poetry and literature and, you know, art visual art and music and, you know and you by the way, it could be computer coding. You know? It can be you know, whatever. You can do whatever. Just list all the different potential kinds of creativity. And then I think it's you had a it has it's 7 layers, 7 degrees of sort of, sort of, you know, sort of aptitude or potential. And it's like degree 1 is, you know, like let's take just take poetry as an example. I have written a poem on my own in my notebook that nobody else has ever seen, and then all the way up to I have won a National Poetry Award. Right? Right. And the same, you know, same thing. Classical music. You know? I don't know. You you know, you play playing classical music instruments. You know, I I I, you know, I I I like to practice drums from time to time for fun, and I performed at Carnegie Hall. Right? It's it's sort of a scale from 1 to 7. Right? And he said if you, if you apply this test to any kind of broad based represent, you know, sort of group in the population, the the, the the average result the the the the mean result is or, yeah, the average result. Overwhelmingly, the the the the result is 0. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Speaker 1: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So it's a real thing. Speaker 0: Most people have never done any of those things. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Most people have most people have no interest in doing any of those things. Yeah. Or or or by the way, maybe most people haven't been encouraged to do those things because they're not valued highly enough. Yeah. Right? Or because they don't think that it translates to having a future path in life. But for people who have done those things or might wanna do those things, you you could have a completely different kind of criteria. Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I and I guarantee it comes out very different across different populations. And I guarantee it's not the same populations that score high on the SAT. Right? Like, and so you get into these, you know, like, okay. And, you know, to me this is probably my greatest disappointment about the lack of evolution of the universities is, you know, we kind of rely on them to help us. Like, the idea of, like, we're going to help you get to much more of the population and get to much more of the talent, and we're gonna really help you kind of map our students to your needs. You know, rather than doing that, they just like wanted to pass this political litmus test. And and, you know, it's just a blown opportunity and really unfortunate because look, I mean, you know, I and I can tell you just like in my friend groups, you know, like, they're just the interests are just so different. Right? Like, people like people in my white friend group, or my Asian friend group, or my are always surprised at how much I know about popular music. Nobody in my black friend group is even surprised at all about that because, like, that interest in music is just higher in the population. So, like, can we take it you know, these these things are different. Cultures are different. Things that are important in the conversation are different. Speaker 0: Yeah. So let me give you my my other credential thing, which is like on the other side of this, which I think you'll find very entertaining. So, so one of the things that came out, you know, one of the one of the one of the you know, there was this big big Supreme Court case on admissions and and so and and Harvard just happened to be the the university that was the target of it. Although, I I think, frankly, they were just representative of the entire, you know, category. But we it just turned out we got just a tremendous amount of data, you know, from the inside of at least one of these places in terms of how they do all this, and a lot of that now is public record. And, you know, one of the things that became very clear, you know, because because universities are these universities are constantly asked, you know, why don't you just, why don't you just, why don't you just, why don't you just, why don't you just basically admit on the basis purely of objective criteria? Why even do the rest of this? Why don't you just like, for example, why don't you just admit on the basis of, quote, academic merit, therefore, essay SAT score? And, actually, one of the very interesting responses, there are now too many kids who score 800 on the SAT. What they'll say is if we only recruited the base of SAT, it still doesn't it still doesn't help. It still doesn't get us all the way there because there are too many kids who score 800 on the SAT or 1600 on the SAT. And in particular and then this gets to the Asian thing, and this this is why this came out in a Supreme Court case, which is there's there's specifically, there are too many Asians who score 800 on on the math SAT and do very well on the verbal SAT. And so it's no longer it's no so it's no longer an effective, testing method to even get to the cream of the crop, for people in STEM. Now here's what's interesting. There's no reason why, for example, the math essay SAT has to cap out at 800. The the test is designed and calibrated deliberately by professionals who do this for a living. They can make the test arbitrarily difficult. Yeah. They can make the scale arbitrarily high. You could have a math SAT test that just had harder and harder and harder and harder questions, and then all of a sudden inflation. Yeah. Exactly. Right? Well, so there's this almost the opposite degree of inflation. This is like grade capping. Speaker 1: Right? Grade capping. Yeah. Well, cap cap at 8 100. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Speaker 0: Yeah. Cap at 800. It's kinda like capping and saying my students can only get a b plus in the class. So you just can't, like there's just there's just because I'm not presenting complex enough material where they would be able to, you know, validate getting an a. Right? But you could you could have a version of the SAT that basically has, like, much, much, much harder questions as the test, you know, goes on. And then, basically, you could have kids. You could just have a scale that goes from, you know, 800 to 2,000, and and you could basic you could identify within the crop of people who are at 800 level. You could identify the 10% that are, like, at, like, a much higher level. Right? And so and and then, you know, and then this gets to the question of, like, why is it capped at 800? It's get it's capped at 800 because there's just constant pressure on the SAT to equalize itself by demographic group. And so the the overwhelming priority at the company that does the SAT is to is to actually try to reduce group distinctiveness, right, as opposed to unearth talent. And so the the they already get, like, just tremendous criticism for for group, dispersion of of results. And if if they if they let it if if they let it go further up, you know, it would be just, you know, it would be logical to expect just based on everything we know that, for example, you'd have incredibly high Asian representation, right, among the people who have higher than 800 meth SAT. But in the in the view of the world in which we're looking for special and different, right, you would say, wow. That's fantastic. In the world where we need everybody to be the same, you would say, oh, that's horrible. Right? But but that that that that opportunity is there. And then, of course, there's nothing keeping a university from developing a test like that for itself. Right? Like or or an employer. Right? Speaker 1: Diversity is our strength. Yeah. Exactly. This is the thing that's so, like, weird about the politics now is we want diversity, but we want everybody to be the same. And, like, we want to make up our minds. And if we have diversity, then we've got to be able to measure diverse talents and degrees of diverse talent and and distinguish and all those kinds of things. If we don't want diversity, then, you know, like, why have education at all? Like, just keep us all, like, dumb as we ever were, you know, like, so we can all be the same. That's the goal. The goal isn't to, you know, invent new things or build new stuff or create new ideas or write new movies. The idea is that everybody's the same. And that being and this is where I think, like, the illogic gets really wacky. And I think that, you know what, universities got caught in their own underwear because they weren't willing to have that conversation, which is crazy because the whole idea of the or like a big idea in the university is you know, free speech marketplace of ideas, these kinds of things. But those ideas got shut down. Speaker 0: Right. So let's keep going. Let's see. We we already covered a fair amount on the fix it thing. We could probably spend a lot more time on it. Let's go to the other another option though, which is basically, starting new competition. Yeah. And so you could start you could you could start new universities, and it is worth saying. Of course, some people are trying to do this. Right? And so our friend, Joe Lonsdale, and and and a bunch a bunch of our friends actually do Lonsdale very wise. Joe Ferguson. Well, Lambda School is a for profit a for profit version Austin Allred, is doing, and then there's a nonprofit version, University of Austin, which our friends, which our friends, Joe Lonsdale, and his colleagues are doing. And then there's there's another one called Minerva. And the the the you know, people do try to start in universities. And so let's let's let's talk about that for a second. So let me let me just kinda frame the frame frame the thing. So the the the the obvious pro for doing this, is, you know, sort of the the advantage of starting something new, which is sort of clean sheet of paper. You can learn all the lessons from the people who have come before you. You can do what makes sense for today. You know, and then, look, probably this would be the just given the issues in the world today, this is probably the best time in a 100 years to try to do that. Right? Because you have, you know, a lot of people. You have actually quite a few donors at the moment as well as, you know, quite a few parents and students, you know, including, by the way, students who, according to the current policies, are actually very capable that can't get into top universities right now because of the, you know, sort of very radical changes in admission policy. So you have, like you know, this this is probably, like, the biggest golden moment in in probably in a 100 years to to to think about doing this. Some people are trying to do it. There's a bunch of reasons to think that, you know, this would also be very difficult. I'll just list the three reasons why this would be very difficult. Number 1 is existing institutions just have very powerful network effects, which is why they, you know, they they're so you know, which is why the the the big ones are, like, 100 of years old. 2 is it would take a lot of money for a long time because of the network of you you need to boot up a network effect and that would just be very expensive. Right? In other words, like, it's hard to get the great students until you have the great faculty. It's hard to get the great faculty and have the great students. And so, like, for example, you'd have to, like, really overpay faculty to get them to come over, and you'd probably have to have a, you know, much cheaper student proposition. So you you'd have, like, upside down economics for a while while you're booting it, which means you would need a lot of funding. And then 3rd is you'd be trying to break into a cartel. And so, you know, we talked about the accreditation process last time, but, like, it's it's you know, maybe you could get accredited. You could access to federal student loan funding and federal research funding, and maybe you couldn't. Maybe you just get boxed out, which again would just translate to you need you would need a lot more money to get started. So, Ben, like, think about yeah. So kind of with your entrepreneurial hat on and your venture capitalist hat on, like, is is is starting new universities in the shape and form and kind of equivalent bundle to the current universities, is that an idea that we would encourage or that we would we would warm people away from? Speaker 1: I would probably warm people away from that idea, that that it's the same bundle. Although, you know, like today is probably the right time to come at that idea. I think from a venture capital standpoint, that is a very long shot. So it's kind of like you know, it's a difference between like Tucker, DeLorean, and Tesla. Right? So Speaker 0: By the way, to be clear, the reference is to Tucker Automotive, not to not to any other Tucker. Yeah. Yeah. No. Not Tucker at all. Speaker 1: But, you know, like, I think it's really and we talk about this a lot is, you know, like taking on, you know, an existing incumbent at what they do is tough. Taking them on on something that they really don't do, like electric cars, tends to work better. And I think that with universities, there's such a huge opening for, you know, different lengths of degrees. So like the 4 year degree is really something that doesn't make much sense to me. So to adopt that as like what your degree length is, given that people who aren't scholars need kind of skills and then new skills and new skills and new skills. I mean, could you imagine if we were trying to do our jobs based on just what we learned in college? Right? Like, it taught me to program in Pascal, you know, in C, like, neither of which anyway. So a few times you use C but not often. And, you know, like I said, oh, like, these things don't last that long anymore, these kind of things that you're taught. Knowledge is evolving very fast, which is great. So, like, the 4 year degree, you know, like, that's one thing you might bring into question. And then if you had a shorter degree where you could get just as high paying a job, and this is something Lambda School does, of course, then all of a sudden you have a value proposition that's starting to look really good. Oh, maybe like $10. You know, you lend me $10 for a year. This is what Lambda School does, and then you pay me back if and only if you get a job. Well, okay. That starts to sound pretty good. So, like, I think there's things that would be much more attractive to students potentially that weren't like a full frontal assault on Harvard. So just from a VC standpoint, I think that now like, I think there's something very noble about building a new full out 4 year Ivy League of the Future type thing Speaker 0: because Speaker 1: if you believe these schools have lost their way, then, you know, it's time to build a new thing. But but I'm not sure that, you know, the first university was invented so long ago. Like, why don't we invent one for today? Speaker 0: Let's take it out of let's take it out of the realm of, you know, pure venture. Let's take it out of the realm of venture capital where we, you know, we think about generating a return and so far. Let's let's take it out in the realm of, you know, maybe, let's say, sort of philanthropy as an example or just somebody who really wants to make this happen. So, you know, look, we we just happen you know, there's a donor strike at some institutions right now, and there's a very depocative donors, you know, very depocative donors that are that are on strike. Speaker 1: You know, they go with Jewish ones. Speaker 0: That's that's that's what I've read. So, so let's suppose let's just hypothesize, and I don't I don't know whether by the way, I don't know whether this is happening. It may be. I I don't I don't know. But, like, let's just suppose a group of them get together, and they're just like, look. We're gonna put $2,000,000,000 or $5,000,000,000 or $10,000,000,000, and we're gonna build from scratch. And we're and we're gonna we're gonna do the direct frontal thing. We're just gonna, like, we're gonna build the parallel thing. And then and then the logic we're gonna have for doing that is number 1, we have the money. We have the res let's assume we have the money and resources at the level of some number of 1,000,000,000 of dollars to do that. You know, let's say up to the up to the 5 or $10,000,000,000 level, just to to swag it. And then let's say that, you know, look. We we actually wanna go for full frontal kind of assault because we don't want people to have to rethink their assumptions. Like, we wanna just be able to, like, bring the faculty over. We wanna bring the students over. We want the parents to be totally comfortable. Right? We want the government to understand how to deal with us. Yeah. Like, we we just we wanna fit into the existing industry structure, and we don't wanna we don't wanna take take the risk of innovating. We just wanna be like the others, and we're just we're we're just gonna be a new we're just gonna be a new and better version of of the things that already exist. Like, how would we how how would we advise them, you know, give given the given the given those goals and given that level of funding? Like, would would we would we at that point say, you know, while that sounds like that might be a good idea and here's how you might do it, or would we still say Speaker 1: Yeah. No. No. Like, I mean, I I like, As you know, our whole mission in life is we're dream builders, not dream killers. So we would have for sure encouraged them. And, actually, it got me thinking about, like, what would I advise Joe Lonsdale to do? Like, look. One thing I wish I should probably call him is he should wire University of Austin straight into us and straight into, you know, everybody in venture capital who's building new companies and and kind of hiring lots of employees and all these kinds of things. And, you know, ask us what we're looking for and then, you know, let's do a partnership and and recruit straight out of there and so forth. And then that will really enhance the proposition to new students. So if I'm a new student and I'm going like, okay, I get a Harvard degree or I could get a University of Boston degree. Why am I going to University of Boston? Well, what if, like, during the recruiting process, like, they come see us? And we'd go, like, we'd rather have you out of University of Austin than out of Harvard. That would open my eyes. I'd go, like, okay. That's something. You know? I may take that seriously. So I probably, like, really lock in on how can I attract the best students and what does that take? And I think it's, you know, it's partly a function of faculty, but it's partly a function of, like, who's paying who understands enough about that university that they go, I'm all in. And by the way, I can be as big a help to you when you come out as anybody. So kind of artificially create what's like the alumni network, but better than an alumni network because you're doing it with people who a 100% have jobs like the top of the job market. I think that that's probably where I would start. And then I kind of designed the system to feed us and then to kind of feed the students in that way into all the most kind of interesting jobs that line up with the curriculum. Now, you know, like and and if you're doing like if University at Boston was like had a, whatever, a big focus on creativity, then I would, you know, wanna, like, wire them into some kind of creative output or whatever. Like so what happens after the University of Austin? Like, I would start with that. Like, what's gonna happen when we graduate? Is is basically, when you go to school, you're like, what are you looking for? You're looking for, like, my life isn't gonna be like you know, for me, it was like my life's not gonna be working at a fucking restaurant because I had been a busboy. And I was like, I do not wanna do that my whole life. I can't do it. I'll shoot myself in the head. Like, I can't I can't take it. And and I think that's a lot what people are looking for when they go to college. It's like, how can I have a life that kind of has more variety, is interesting, where I'm learning and, you know, a lifelong learner, all that kind of thing? And so if you can guarantee me that life or if you can give me a better product to get me that life, that's what I want. Speaker 0: Right. Right. So you sent me on the same topic, building building from scratch. You sent me a thing as we were prepping for this. I'll just read your own your own quote back to you. The the today's universities are built on industrial revolution technology that are and and they're therefore completely outdated for the information age, both in how they run and the product they offer. And so how would again, how would we advise this hypothetical new institution, on on how to, on what to do on on that? Like, what what yeah. What what does that mean in practice? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, look, I think industrial revolution technology means you can build big buildings. Right? You can drive there in your car, or on a train. You don't have to ride a horse. Speaker 0: And It's got it's got, the the the indoor lighting at night. Speaker 1: It's warm. Lighting at night. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But It's Speaker 0: it's it's not too hot, not too cold. Speaker 1: Yeah. This is the this is sort of the platform. So what do you get? You get classrooms with instructors. You get, you know, dorm that you can live in, you know, a big cafeteria, you know, with a meal plan, all that kind of thing. But, look, in the information age, and a giant library, of course, There are multiple libraries if you're an Ivy League school. You know, in the information age, you have, like, AI. You can ask it any question. You've got, you know, you have access to the Internet. You've got all these other things. And then, you know, your school experience, you know, right now in an industrial age world is you have instructors and you've got, like, administrators filling out forms and you've got, you know, very little I don't know about University of Illinois, but certainly at Columbia and at UCLA. It's very little kind of career guidance, you know, kinds of things help you help you find your highest and best use. The university didn't really do that. So I think that in a information age AI university, all that form filling out, all that, a lot of the kind of instruction is taken care of. But what you really need is a university to help you find your purpose and then guide you through your purpose with a team of other students who have a similar purpose and, you know, to help you study the right things, prove yourself in the right ways, get the credential, and so forth, and using all the best tools to do that as opposed to, you know, waking you up at 8 in the morning, walk to class in your pajamas because you were drinking too much last night, you know, sit in a class very bored, not really, you know, kind of be integrated into the AI and the Internet to get the rest of the information. So I just think there's, like, a whole ring thinking of the way your day would go. And, you you know, like, 45 minute or hour and a half lectures are pretty hard. Like, they're it's pretty hard to pay attention the whole time and retain everything. Whereas, like, smaller chunks of work, you know, I think have been proven out, you know, and, like and then a kind of test to go like, okay. Did you retain the information that you got or, like, some interactive part every 10 minutes is a much better you know, like, just in terms of these things. And then, you know, like, as you said, like, one to 1 tutor, that kind of thing. But maybe the machine is the one to 1 tutor in some ways, because you can ask it questions now in English or in, you know, Chinese or whatever language you speak. So I think that I would definitely make it that and, you know, give the professors, the mega tutors, the kind of tools to both identify the capabilities of the students and then, you know, help them maximize those abilities and then kind of then map it further into, you know, people like us. Or, you know, it could be us. It could be the NBA. It could be, you know, it could be Warner Music. It could be whatever part of society works. But, like, you know, like I said, we take people with all kinds of talent. You know, all kinds of different things is is very valuable for like, extremely valuable for us at at the firm. In fact, you know, I'd say I'd argue, you know, we're 550 people, which probably makes us the biggest venture capital firm in the world. Why? Because we do the most things. Why? Because we have the kind of people who can do lots of different things. And, you know, that's a that's a heck of an advantage when, you know, as an employer, you have people who can do all kinds of different things because then you have more capability as as an institution. Speaker 0: Right. Right. And so yeah. And so when when the topic of technology and education comes up, a lot of people, you know, sort of reflexively assume that you you must mean just like the whole thing moves online, everything's over the Internet. Like, that that's not what you're saying. Speaker 1: No. No. No. No. No. Speaker 0: You're saying it like it it would there will continue to be a real world experience comparable to Speaker 1: what people have to do. Real world experience. I actually think it's good for most students. Maybe not for you, but for most students. There there are different personality types too. But, like, I think there's something very motivating to be around peers. Right? Like, here you are. Here's my cohort of people who are going to be in the world with me. And what are they doing, and what can I learn from them? You learn as much kind of from your classmates as you do kind of, I think, from the university, and that's hard to do. They're like, it's much harder to do online. So I think that the college experience, which is, you know, to to Joe and University of Austin's credit, is a real thing with real value, you know, particularly for a young person, for most young people. But but I think you have to modernize it. You know? Like, we're not in 1910 anymore. Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. And so with that in mind, let's go more radical from that. So let's, let's talk about unbundling. So my, our old friend, Jim Barcel, has his his famous line. He says there's 2 ways it's 2 ways to succeed in life, in business. One is you can bundle, the other is you can unbundle. Yeah. And so let's let's talk with the unbundling. So, let's go through them in in order. So we had our our dozen functions of the of the major university. I I stripped out 3, which we could talk about the end, but that leaves 9, which seems to me at least there's a case you could be great for unbundling. So let's let's walk through them. And and let's think about these as, like, you know, actual potential start actual potentially their startup ideas, like, actual for profit startup ideas, or by the way, maybe nonprofit or philanthropic ideas. So, credentialing agency, like, yeah. So we we've talked a lot about credentialing so far, but, like, you know, all the different aspects of credentialing. And, again, this concept of credentialing in, credentialing out, like, both the the credential the the way that you're deciding who to credential and then the actual credential that you're giving them. Like, is that in in your view, is, like, is that something could be abstracted out and turned into its own thing? Speaker 1: Oh, I think this may be the best, startup idea of everything in education in that, look, if somebody had a an organization that aptitude it, personality tested people in, you know, not just, you know, a general test, but, like, in very specific things as well. Like, you know, if you think about Silicon Valley, everybody gives every engineer some kind of test, you know, in their interview. Right? Like, write this piece of code, you know, figure out this algorithm, this kind of thing. I think every job has, you know, some of that. So if you had a place that could reliably differentiate kinda people's capability and things you needed to hire for, that would be, you know, something that I think would be very attractive to employees. I mean, you know, like, one of the right. The the SAT was invented because it used to be only, like, nobles, you know, the elite, the aristocrats, people from rich families got to go to college. And then you're saying, well, like, what if I'm, like, you know, some poor kid from New Lisbon, Wisconsin? How do I show I can go to University of Illinois? Well, like, take this test. That's a fucking miracle. And I think And that Speaker 0: was a specific to your point, like that was a specific reform at a specific moment in time. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then if you think about that, you know, among employers, people are worried about bias and this and that. Well, like, you know, like, you know, to have the ability to show your capability in any dimension and then have an employer know about that and have it be, like, valid, you know, we'd be incredibly interested in that. And I think that, you know, people who didn't have college degrees, who might have gone to a state school or something like that that, you know, was a little cheaper that they could afford, all of a sudden and then that that would actually help fix the university system in a way in that now I can go to San Francisco State, and I can go get credentialed here. And I'm actually more interesting to Andreessen Horowitz than the person from Harvard who's got this degrading credential. Like, how about that? And I spent a hell of a lot less money to go to San Francisco State. That would be incredible. So I think that, to me, this is such a great startup idea. I've been thinking about since we started the podcast, like, how do we fund that one? Like, that's awesome. You know, you'd have to do a great job on it. That you know, it would have to be unfudgeable. You know, you you'd really like, nobody's bringing chat gpt into the thing with them. Like, whatever it is. Or maybe they are. Like, I don't I don't know how you know, maybe you just have to know what to ask. But something that was like you knew if they could do that, then they would have that capability. And then as an interviewee, you're just really going understanding motivation, cultural fit, these kinds of things as opposed to can they do the job because you know they can do the job. Speaker 0: Yeah. There's also something in the I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but there's also something in the law. So as you pointed out earlier, like, it's illegal. There's a famous Supreme Court case where it made it illegal. Companies used to do generalized aptitude testing, in the old days, and then there was a Supreme Court case. Speaker 1: General test and rule them out of a specific job on a general test. Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: Something like that. Yeah. Speaker 0: That's right. And that and that basically killed IQ testing at at the employment level. And that was when the SAT that was when the university degree took off because it was the the SAT score was an implicit IQ test and it wandered through. So employers outsource the IQ test to the university credential. But as we discussed, the university 1700 universities and colleges in the US have stopped using standardized testing as an admission, criteria. So that the value of that is going to 0 as a as an IQ test. And and in fact, you know, they're doing everything they can to get away from that. So so so so but but the employer still can't do it. What's in what what's interesting about this is a startup idea is that the thing that the Supreme Court has said specifically is illegal is an employer can't do this. Yeah. But here, you could have any kind of aptitude hundred different ways of measuring measuring aptitude in whatever domain you want, including creativity, everything else we talked about. And it would all be it's all completely voluntary. It's completely illegal. You know, it's because it's not tied to employment. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so I right. So you could do, like, a super version of even what the employers universities did in the past and actually have it be a fully fully legal thing. Speaker 1: And by the way, you know, we it would really help get people into the right jobs as well because, you know, sometimes people get miscast. Like, this is you know, life is like that. Sometimes, you know, you get assigned one thing and you really should be something else. And these kinds of this kind of rigorous assessment might identify that. And then, you know, like, you can kind of find something that you're better at and that you're do better at in your career. And then, like, you know, we could use more, which would be great for us. Speaker 0: You think we could do Speaker 1: This is, like, this is a definitely high on the it would be great for us, Gregory. Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Alright. 2nd is actual actual educational coursework itself. And, of course, you know, again, here there have been attempts. There was, you know, kind of the MOOC, you know, kind of online course movement You did. A while ago, Coursera, Udacity, and then, you know, Udemy or Udemy, which is another startup, that Speaker 1: I think started to Khan Academy, which is kind of like a different format of it. Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. Exactly. And then, I'll just give you a couple a couple thoughts on this one. So number 1, actually, the this has already happened. Specifically, this is happening in Korea. And so there are actual they're actually, like, teaching superstars in Korea that, actually, you know, make makes big courses. I I I've had this idea for a long time, which is, you know, if you figure you've got a 1,000,000 kids who are gonna take math 101 freshman year of college, you know, you get them you you you get them each to, you know, do a $100 for that. It's a $100,000,000 of revenue, you know, and then hire Steven Spielberg to make math 101 as a, you know, as a as a as a video miniseries. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For a 100 Speaker 1: most compelling courseware of all times. Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. Like, I'm and and literally, I guess, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, these I I literally yeah. The most the most, like, mind blowing incredible, like, course, yeah, course, lectures you've you've ever seen with, like, full, you know, 3 effects and graphics and everything perfect. And so you could do that. And then and then, you know, we talked about the the tutoring thing, but you you could you could potentially have a thing where you have, like, the the super high production value general courses, and then you couple it with, like, AI tutoring. Or you couple it, by the way, with, like, in person tutoring and and, or, you know, matching grad students to undergrads or whatever. Like and again, like, people have been trying to do variations in this for quite a while. How would we think about that as an entrepreneurial opportunity today, do you think? Yeah. Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because of the ones we named, the one that has worked the best is probably Khan Academy, which had the least amount of money going to it and is in its own format. Right? Like, it's a it's not a university course format thing. It's like these little lessons. You know, I couldn't even remember, you know, when AI started taking off. I had a hard time remembering, like, how to do linear algebra or how hard it was. And I did the Khan Academy. I was like, wow. I I forgot how easy it was. You know? It's much easier than actual algebra. It sounds it sounds harder, but it's easier. And so, like, it is kind of like a magical thing. And I think the challenge with the full college experience, unless you get to the Christopher Nolan version, is that it's a very big thing to sign up and commit to without a well known credential. Right? Like, okay. I'm gonna go learn Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: You know, whatever calculus. Or I'm gonna learn, you know, advanced, you know, like machine learning or or something like that. If I'm not if I'm really coming from outside the job market, even if I learn it, will anybody believe me? And how does that work? So I think completely decoupling that one from credentialing or jobs may be tough, but, like, if you could link it into, like, you take this class, you get a job, then I think that could definitely work. But otherwise, I just think it's a very small market of people who just really want to learn that much about a subject. Right. So, yeah, when you talk We like a little bit about subjects. Right. Speaker 0: Right. Yeah. So when you when you talk to professors, put on a cynical hat here for a moment, when you talk to professors, university administrators about this kind of thing, basically, what they tell you is, like, look, like, you you can't be naive about actual actual real world students. They say, look, like, in practice, it goes to your point of, like, the advantage of having a physical physical presence, like, an actual physical campus. But what they'll tell you is, like, look. A lot of students actually, like, don't wanna learn, like or they're not motivated to or, like, it's not something they would naturally do, and they're not driven to do it. And, like, they're going through the motions. And to the extent that they're actually, like, showing up to class and doing the work, it's because they're in a specifically structured environment where the expectations are set high to do that. And they're gonna get kicked out if they don't. And, you know, their parents are paying for it. And, like, it's like they're basically pressure pressured basically pressured into doing it. Speaker 1: Right now? Speaker 0: And, of course, you know, a Speaker 1: lot When I went to college and I went to Columbia, so, like and Columbia is like a pretty high end. So I imagine at, like, regular school, that's even more the case. Speaker 0: So I think I think that, I guess my response to that would be, I think there might just be 2 different kinds of students. There might be the ones that, like, are actually super strong it's super intrinsically motivated, as the psychologists say, where they're just like you know? And then you by the way, you talk about yourself as an example of this, which is like, I didn't I I was a busboy. I didn't wanna be a busboy. I was a dishwasher. I didn't wanna be a dishwasher. Yeah. And, like, we're gonna go do this because, like, it we we know we need to do this because we're doing it for intrinsic. We're doing it for ourselves. Like, we're doing it for intrinsic reasons. And so those students exist, but then there is this other kind of student that arguably more populates, especially the upper ranks, ironically, of American education, which is, like, where they actually need to be, like and not even me pressured this, maybe overstating it, but, you know, maybe it's let's just say they need to be in a highly structured environment. Yeah. And I get Speaker 1: Right. That's most students. I agree. Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. And so well, or or it's this weird thing, which is it's almost like the more privileged the more privileged the student, the more pressure needs to be put on them or something like that. Like, it's a it's a, you know, it's a Speaker 1: Well, like, yeah. It's a like, if your life is really fun Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: Correct. You know, if you've got lots of money and, you know, like, when you're young, life is incredibly fun. Everything is new. You know, every movie is amazing. Every, like, every experience is incredible. So, like, I'm going to take those years and I'm going to fucking sit in a classroom listening to somebody drone on about, you know, whatever, the Iliad. Like, I don't want to do that. So I think that's right. Whereas on the other hand, if your life is kind of you know it's misery without getting something out of this experience, then that that's a little more motivating. Speaker 0: Yeah. So I always wonder with these these things. I always wonder if people should be more specifically, you know, sort of addressing that category. And I I don't know even, you know, if you're going to say that's not even that big of a category or something, but, like, basically self motivated intrinsically motivated. Yeah. And and just, like, not try to not try to appeal, to the people who need, like, more structure and more pressure. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's a very specific market. Like, you'd have to kind of Yeah. Identify those and and and get them through. Yeah. Interesting. Speaker 0: But, again, to your point, if you if you then link that to to to the credential, then they would see the cause and effect, and then, you know, that would be gives it be be very clear. And, like, we we mentioned Lambda School. Like, this this is basically we're basically describing Lambda School in a lot of ways. So Yeah. This, this this makes sense. Okay. 3rd is the research bureau. So so this one freaks people out because, like, anytime you bring up, is there a different way to, like, do research, fund research? Basically, everybody in the sort of research complex, you know, generally, they freak out because they're the because, basically, the the the the steel man case against any change to how research is funded is basically, you don't understand, the whole point of, like, research. The whole point of basic research is that it doesn't have an end goal, like, in mind and identified, and it can't, because how do you know you're doing some research experiment in physics or some new math theorem or whatever and, like, higher biology, decoding the genome, and how do you ever know? Like, yeah, Maybe there's a commercial use case for this thing 30 years from now, but, like, you you have no idea. And that and that's what makes research different than development. Right? The reason that it's the term research and development is because, you know, development has a specific goal to, like, ship a product and make money. Research is, like, trying to come up with new new knowledge. And so it's like, okay. Any and then and then, you know, the argument go you know, the the modern research university was constructed the the research part of it was constructed originally by Vannevar Bush and his peers 70, 80 years ago to to provide a kind of environment in which that kind of basic research can happen. And and there, you get into, you know, ideas like tenure, like, why do professors have tenure? A big reason for that is so that they are free to do whatever research they want. You know, they don't they don't they're not risking getting fired if they, quote, unquote, don't deliver something, you know, let's say, practically useful. And then, you know, the other is, like, you know, government funding of research. It's like, you know, the government you know, companies won't fund basic research because it doesn't have an end commercial target, but, you know, the government will because it presumably has this long term perspective. And so so so you get, like, tremendous in my experience is you get, like, tremendous pushback out of the gate on this conversation. Having said that, I think there are a bunch of very interesting things that you could maybe explore as as as as ways to do research outside of the university context. And and, by the way, some people are doing this, and we we can talk about them. But, But, so so one is there's a couple of issues with the current research complex we talked about last time. So one is just there's a massive replication crisis. And so depending, by field, up to 75% of the research in a lot of fields doesn't replicate. So A Speaker 1: massive incentive complex or, like a massive incentive problem, I think. Speaker 0: Yes. How do you get a grant? You publish a research result that seems to validate additional investigation. How do you get that result? Well, you get it legitimately or you do data mining and How Speaker 1: do you get tenure? Speaker 0: How do you get tenure? You've published papers that you may or may not have written your written written for whatever. Speaker 1: Yourself. Speaker 0: So so there's that. And then there's a friend of mine, and I won't I won't name him, but he's a very experienced guy who's been in the sort of leadership positions across this entire, spectrum. And and he always he always whenever he and I talk about this, I'm always going on about the replication crisis because I think it's such a scandal. And he's like, look. It's not even the problem. He said the problem is 90% of the research is just useless. Yeah. It's just, like, it's just not helpful. Like and and and and, basically and and, again, this this is a guy just Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Right? Speaker 0: Yeah. That's what he says. See, he says, look. Whether it's right or not is actually secondary to whether it it would even matter if it was right. Yeah. And and this, by the way, is a guy who has run a major he's he's he ran a major, at one point, major government research funder. And so this is a guy who was in a position to be able to hand out the money and, you know, and he so this is not, like, some sort of anti establishment guy. This is, like, somebody who's been on the inside seeing how all the sausage is made and running it himself. And and he said it's like he said, look. He said, look. The practical reality, this is his his argument. The practical reality is in any given field of research, and it's anything from quantum physics to, you know, any any school psychology, anything else, computer science, whatever. He he said, look. There are 5 institutions that are on the leading edge. Yeah. And everybody in each of those fields knows who those 5 institutions are, and those 5 institutions generate, you know, essentially all of the useful output, that that actually moves the field forward. Yeah. But it is and and so it's just it's 5 institutions. It's, you know, whatever number of, you know, therefore I don't know. It depends on field. A 100 professors or something like that. 200 maybe by field. And then it's, you know, some number of grad students. And then it's the research budget for those people. And he said, look. He's and and so I was like, well, why doesn't the government just fund that? Like, why fund the other and he says that's, like, 10% of the money. And I was like, well, then why spend the other 90%? And he's like, well, you know, because, like, it's not enough. Like, it's this weird thing of, like, it's not enough for the government because there's, like, too many there's too many mouths to feed. There's too many constituents. There's too many congressmen that have universities in their disc districts. You know, there's too many people who get tenure who expect this. There's too many incumbent colleges that have research programs. Even if they're not productive, they don't cancel them. And so he said the system is kinda wired to overfund every category by, like, a factor of 10. And so he said, look, he said the thing the thing to do in his view is, like, the first thing you would do is he said you would just narrow it down to the 10%. And so you would just figure out, like, what is the actual 10% of the useful work to be done? What is the actual 10% of the people who can do that work? And so he says, look, the aggregate dollar amount involved here is up is literally a tenth of what everybody thinks it is to do the actual quality work. And then he said and then he he makes a further made a further argument that he said, look, like, you don't yeah. You don't always know that there's gonna be commercial applications for research, but a lot of times there is. Yeah. And so if you have some material science breakthrough or something, like that patent is probably gonna be super viable. And by the way, universities are in the business of, you know, patents and patent licensing, and they get revenue streams from that Yeah. Even though it's not their their main thing. And so it's like, look. You you could either have these new you could either have new nonprofit research institutes that would have to be funded with philanthropic dollars, But maybe it's not you know, maybe that's actually tractable because it's just not that much money Yeah. For the high quality work. Or he said, look. Maybe it should be a venture capital model. It should be for profit, and you just basically make money. It's a long dated, you know, revenue thing where you're making money in the long run on on on commercial product development and on patent licensing coming out the other side. And, and you should actually just, like, apply you should actually apply a VC mindset to that. So anyway, so it, it really and then oh, and then I'll just mention, like, so our friend Patrick Collison has, you know, is funding philanthropically, program, you know, the to do independent medical research associated with Stanford, called ARC, but set up as a separate thing. We we know well the the the folks at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, that does, you know, specific grant funding to, to individual young researchers in the biomedical field and has set outstanding results with that. So, you know, there there are there are new cuts on this that people have. Speaker 1: Go ahead. Parker, I'm on the board of, his institute, which is similar. Speaker 0: Yeah. Describe describe what what he does. Speaker 1: Yeah. So Sean Sean's institute, is called PICI or its initials. Parker Institute Cancer something. I can't remember. But I'm on the board of it. But, you know, they so they fund researchers to do kind of breakthrough work on cancer. And, you know, they do have they've got both they spin the ideas out into there's a venture model, so they spin them out into companies and the institute invests in them. They do generate patents. So, like, it is you know, it's originally he I mean, yeah, he made an incredibly generous $250,000,000 I think donation to start maybe bigger than that. Probably bigger than that. But anyway, some enormous amount of money. But his vision has always been that, like, it will become self sustaining over time because these you know, the tech the things that it's doing are are so incredibly important. And I think that's, I think that's probably right. Like, I do think it's going to end up working. And they've spun out some very, very interesting companies already, some of which we've invested in, by the way. And then there's the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, which is another one. Right? Our friend, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are trying to cure disease, like all disease. You know, it's an incredibly great ambition and not something you would necessarily do in a company but something that will probably have a lot of commercial results coming out of it as well. So, yes, look, I think we're definitely at a point where philanthropy can do it. The other thing is, right, like there was research before the current complex and, you know, got us some pretty interesting results like, say, the theory of relativity, you know, kind of came out of that. I think where was Alan Turing when he did his proof? That's a good question. And then of course Claude Shannon was a master's student, which isn't I mean a master's thesis which is considered like nothing in academia, which is probably more important than almost any PhD thesis in the last 100 years where he mapped Boolean logic. You know, it's the first time anybody did anything with Boolean logic, which is the algebra of zeros and ones, onto a circuit. And that is the beginning of computers for those of you who don't follow that kind of thing. And so there there there's real research that can obviously happen outside of the way the current university system works. That's been very powerful. So yeah. No. I think look. I think that it would be great if there were, you know, a couple of 100 of these in different categories. And there would be certainly something that, you know, I would love to, you know, put more money into. So I think that's quite a good idea. Whether they make money or not, like, I think they're they're very kind of philanthropically fundable. Speaker 0: Yeah. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So I I I think yeah. I think agreeing with you. I think but, yeah, I think the the I think there there may just be a I mean, and look, there may be certain areas, like, you know, particle physics or, like, whatever where you you still in government money, but, like, I think a lot of the current complex actually might be fundable. The quality the quality work happening in it might be fundable separately. Let's see. Policy think tank, you know, that that's you know, there are policy think tanks that are not associated with universities. And so, you know, that's it's certainly, you know, a a viable thing to do separately. People are doing that today. Moral instructor is my favorite one to think about breaking out separately, which is, you know, look, there are many social movements that are not associated with university. There are many, social organizations, activist groups, you know, churches, right, like, you know, new religions, you know, like old religions. Right. Exactly. Which are are maybe coming back a little bit right now. And so, yeah, like, I don't know. It seems like society has a lot of different ways to organize moral instruction that's not necessarily, having it take place in a in a in a in a in a research university context. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think that the I think the university one is very, very tricky because it is counter to a lot of its other goals potentially, particularly, you know, marketplace of ideas, freedom of speech, freedom of thought. And, you know, I I just think it's not the right people to be doing it. You know? Look. They you know, pastors and priests and so forth have come under fire. But in a lot of ways, they're much more the right people to be giving moral instruction because they actually spend time with their congregation. They deal with, you know, their actual trials and tribulations of kind of going off the moral path and how to get people back on it. And they're they're like hands on. It's a tangible thing. Whereas, you know, in a university, a professor can spout out whatever the F he wants or she wants and then has no tie to that down the road. They don't live in their community. They don't have parents who go to the church and donate and so forth. So I I think in some ways, the university is the worst place to do moral instruction now that it's no longer like a religious institution. And if there's one thing I would take out of a university, it would probably be that. And look. I I think like, I'm a big believer in kind of an intellectual kind of discussion and instruction about ethics and morality. Like, I actually believe in that a lot. And I mean look. I do it at work. Right? Like, one of the things we talk to employees about is, like, you know, we're in this situation. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna do, like, what's transactional? Are we gonna do what's long term? Are we gonna do what's right? Or do what makes us money in the short term? And, like, that's, like, real moral instruction, and with real consequence that's gonna have real impact, and that, like, I've gotta live with the consequence. They've gotta live with the consequence. And in a way, it's a better context to do it than a university where you don't have any accountability, any moral accountability. So I think you're better off doing it almost anywhere than in a university. Speaker 0: Or you could or and or you could also you could reconstitute the original religious university or the original idea of religious institutions. That. Speaker 1: Right. You you Speaker 0: could go back you could go back to the future. You'd go back to the original idea. Right? The original Speaker 1: Harvard Business Plan. Idea is shut Galileo's ass down, you know, do that kind of thing. Speaker 0: Well, no. No. No. No. No. No. Like like, not even that's even further that's even further back. I'm not suggesting going that far back. But, no, Like the original Harvard the original Harvard Business Plan, which was like to instruct moral leaders. Right? Instruct pastors and and moral leaders. And you just have a you can imagine an institution that just does that and just doesn't do all the other things that have been added on for the last 400 years. Speaker 1: Years. Look, I think that would be very good in the sense that, look, the the the in my lifetime, our society has degenerated no place more than, you know, what's right than right and wrong. Like, there's no agreement on right and wrong anymore. You know, is stealing right? Well, it's right if you're hungry. Okay. You know, is you know, there's certainly no right and wrong about marriage or these kinds of things. And I think that's caused a real degeneration of society, quality of life, you know, outcomes of the world. And so, like, fixing that would be great. But I think the way we do it now is bananas. It doesn't fit into the current bundle, I would just say. So having an independent moral university would be fantastic. Speaker 0: There there I mean, there are certainly overtly religious ones. The, you know, the the ones that we've lost, yeah, the ones that we've lost, I think, are maybe the ones that are kind of moral and ethical without being overtly religious, which is a real challenge a real challenge in general. But anyway, so I'll just keep going. So, sports league, I think you'd probably argue that the sports function could just be its own thing. Speaker 1: Yeah. I I think that, like, this the sports league is immoral, just, like fundamentally, I think in retrospect. Speaker 0: The university you mean the university the university based sports league? We talked about that last time. Speaker 1: Big time college sports, I think, has gotten to a point where it's clearly immoral and that it's very clearly professional sports where they don't pay the employees, and that generates a colossal amount of money. And so I think you've gotta fix that. And I don't know that you can pay kind of like, it probably the right way to fix it is to spin it out, and have it continue to be affiliated with the university but not run by the university but run, you know, kind of by owners of the various teams or something, you know, more akin to the NFL or the NBA because that's what it is. And, you know, then the athletes need to get paid. It's just crazy. It's really wild that they don't. South Park did the very hilarious episode on this called the National Crack Baby Association. And they went. But the funniest part was Cartman went to go see the, you know, one of the kind of presidents of universities. And he goes and he's dressed like an old southern slave master. And he goes, How do you get away with paying with not paying your slaves? And he goes, Slaves? You mean our student athletes? And he goes, Oh, yes. Student athletes. And you're watching and you're going, Yep. That's exactly what's going on. Now, like I said, it's not all like, not all schools' athletic teams make that kind of money and not all athletic teams, but the ones that do, I think need to be reformed. Like, in retrospect, this is one of those things where, like, people 20 years from now are gonna go like, I can't believe you guys did that, you know? That's gonna be bad. Speaker 0: Yeah. That's right. And then the 2 the 2 other ones, this is this is these are serious topics, but also a little bit little bit fun. So adult day care, and dating site. Right? And so, you know, like, the adult day cares so let me look. A lot of people just, like, graduate high school and go get a job. Right? And so, you know, maybe that's maybe that's overblown. Or or maybe you could imagine, like, new, like, design communities, context. Maybe even, entire buildings, where you have a, you know, sort of social cultural, you know, kind of matrix that people can plug into. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Look. I mean, to some degree, like, the armed services have a you know, or that function in a way, you know, where you okay. You get to be 18. What are you gonna do with your life? Go to the army. You go to college. You know? Like, it's it's kind of this community that you step into that's not your family, but, you know, you can't stay here, kind of thing. I Or, you know, Speaker 0: the corporate campus, you know, for a lot of for a lot of you know, even even post college, a lot of corporate campuses are kind of designed to perpetuate adult day care. Yeah. Right. Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of the proposition to the parents who are paying for it, you know, at that point. Speaker 0: Yeah. Speaker 1: Like, that that seems hard. Speaker 0: Well, we have a company. Speaker 1: What if there was something else that came out of it, you know, like that you Oh, we went to adult day care and then you got a job? Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, we have a company so we have a we have a company where I that, you know, he would certainly not pitch it as adult day care, but we have a company that's intended to provide a much more, you know, pleasant and and interesting and enjoyable experience, for, you know, especially people new in their lives and careers as adults, from a housing and community standpoint. Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That yeah. So that is that's a very good idea on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can't preannounce it, but, yeah, there is a there is a new idea in the portfolio that creates a place that is like a college dorm, you know, from a living perspective and has a community and so forth and so on. You pay rent there, but, you know, rent some way that you would, you know, in any apartment, but it kind of is a nice bridge from, you know, kind of coming out of high school or college or or or whatnot and into the world in a way where you're not just living by yourself somewhere lonely. Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. And then a dating site, you know, I'm just absolutely furious that, the dating apps took off after I was dating after I was finished dating. I put so Speaker 1: much Yeah. Like, this Speaker 0: is a hard one for me Speaker 1: to count on. I haven't been on a date in over 35 years. Speaker 0: Exactly. So they I I would just observe there are new ways for people to date, today that are much easier than when we were in college. And so the dating site part of it might already be solved. Speaker 1: Yeah, there are certainly tools, although, that physical proximity Speaker 0: is not something you could Speaker 1: simulate online. And there's a lot of my understanding is there's a lot of fake photos and whatnot. People look better in their photos, perhaps. Speaker 0: Well, there's also credentialing. So then there's also it also goes back to credentialing, which is one of the reasons why campuses are well, I mean, one of the reasons that college campuses are hot house for dating is just this lot of young people who are together physically. But another reason is because they they're they're all they all have a shared sense of identity. Right? They all have a shared credential, which is they're all, you know, they're all at x, you know, x x college. Right? And so they they've all been validated, you know, at least to some extent. And and then by the way, that's also true later on in life. You know, a lot of, people, you know, look for a lot of people who are college graduates want don't you know, only wanna date other college graduates or only wanna date people who went to, you know, certain set kinds of schools or whatever. So so the credentialing the credentialing thing actually, like, reflects itself into this other sort of area of actual real life, which is dating, you know, dating and then ultimately, marriage and and and offspring. And so, you know, we we should probably both not underestimate the actual utility of an existing college environment for that, but also think about, like well, yeah. But, you know, for example, the you know, could your credentialing agency your could your independent credentialing agency also credential you as a potential Yeah. Speaker 1: It has a has a viable marriage prospect or dating person. Speaker 0: That's good. Exactly. So I I I I love that part of the part of the thing. Okay. And then we'll close. We're at 2 hours, and so we'll we'll close here quickly. But, I I think there's basically 5th the 5th thing that could happen, is just basically just, it's the existing system could just devolve. Just it just you just unwind. And the the way that unwind is so the credentialing agency credentialing function shifts to the employers, the education courses shift to, you know, a la carte, Internet options, research bureau shifts to the function shifts to the kinds of things, you know, we're we're just talking about, Policy think tank unwinds, shifts to the independent think tanks. You know, moral instructor part loses credibility. It just withers over time. Social reformer withers, which is arguably happening already. Immigration agency, maybe that continues. Maybe that's the ultimate business model is just get get have, high paying immigrants. Sports leagues, you know, break out, go independent, become professional sports. You know, there's as you're saying, adult daycare dating site, people just find other ways to live and and date. So it just may it may be that, you know, it it it just simply may be that just things just like unwind. And, you know, in in this scenario sitting here 50 years from now, these institutions still exist in some form, but they they look increasingly just like, you know, kind of archaic and and, you know, kind of, you know, kind of just like I don't know. Just like not. They, you know, they're just I don't know. It's like it's like, you know, there's lots of institutions in life where it's just like, wow. You know, you drive down the street and there's a, you know, I won't pick on anybody, but there's a, you know, whatever. And you're just like, wow, that thing still exists. You know, that's interesting. And they're just and they're just like much less important, because they kind of they sort of isolate themselves, sort of socially and and and economically, sort of wall themselves off from from from the general progress of society. And so is that yeah. How what how would you think about that? Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I mean, I think that it's pretty fragile now, you know, in terms of value proposition and that it's so expensive and got you know, the cost relative to the value is so precarious. And just like as an example, like, if the US government said we're not going to guarantee college loans anymore, that would be, you know, cataclysmic. And then if employers were like, we're not going to, you know, there's no SAT score. There's no grades that mean anything. There's no rigor. We're just going to not value college degrees anymore. So there's things that are actually reasonably close to happening that could collapse the system or at least, you know, really alter it, you know, irrevocably. So I think that, you know, the universities very much have to think hard about, like, shoring themselves up on the value proposition in particular. I mean, I just think it's getting very weak for students, and that's a dangerous place to be in if you're in university. Speaker 0: Yeah. And then the other thing I nominated is, like, I I you know, this sounds a little bit crazy right now, but, like, I I, you know, I don't think we're necessarily that far away from a full fledged political revolt, which is the, you know, the the constituency of these places is just it's not a majority of society. It's a it's a small minority, in terms of the the people who actually benefit from from from the system the system today in the populate in the voter base. And then, and then, you know, these a lot of these places become so politicized and they're so they, you know, they inject themselves so directly into national politics. Right? And so they they sort of declared themselves. And you see you see this in every metric, in every number, distribution of professor's ideology, and and then all the social activism that happens and so forth. It's just it's, like, you know, overwhelming indications and then increasingly public. Right? And, like, and, you know, just to since we're at the 2 hour mark, I'll just I'll I'll just, you know, kinda be be blunt. It's like I mean, look, like, right wing media, for better or for worse, is just consumed with story after story after story of just, like, crazy bananas, you know, you know, crazy hostile things that universities are doing. And so, you know, like, you could it has to happen, but you could imagine a point where just basically, like, you know, the the, you know, say, half or more of the country just at some point puts its foot down. And and its elective rep representatives put their foot down. They're just like, we're just not doing this anymore. We're not paying for it anymore. Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. If the country took a sharper, maybe even a not so sharp right turn, then you could imagine an administration and a congress going, why are we going for this? Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just it's a small number of program the the the really cautionary note here would be, it's a small number of programs, that pay for the whole thing. Right? So it's it's federal student loans. It's federal research funding. It's a and it's a couple of things in tax law and a few other things. And so it's it's not like it it's not like it would take it it would not take 2 years to figure out how to kill these things Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From a legislative from a legislative standpoint. It would take about 2 minutes. And so it feels like that and look, maybe that never materializes because maybe these things just are so important and they have such existing credibility and, you know, have so much political stroke and, you know, their graduates have so much power and so forth. And so maybe that never happens or maybe it's one of those things where there's a tipping point and at some point people are just like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tolerate this anymore. Yep. On that note. I would register register that for anybody still listening as a good. Alright. Good. We, I think, covered it. We as as predicted in the beginning, we did not get to the q and a. So, Ben, if you're if you're up for it, we will continue collecting questions. And if there's popular demand, we will do one more. We'll do part 3, maybe next week and we'll do, Q and A. And then we will, that'll be it'll be, that'll be 6 hours of content from us on this topic and that'll probably be enough for a while. But we have enjoyed talking about it and hopefully, you've enjoyed listening to it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
pmarca
Posted - November 30, 2024 at 5:53 PM
Saved - December 8, 2024 at 2:24 AM

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

This is the system we have been living under. It's not the Constitution, it's something else. cc @elonmusk @VivekGRamaswamy

@davidmarcus - David Marcus

Here's the receipt of another dimension of the Libra kill job. Letters sent to all regulated entities that were members of the Libra Association. Stripe, Mastercard and Visa received this. Pay attention to the highlighted section threatening scrutiny on their entire business. https://t.co/fShSqVIQFW

pmarca
Posted - April 3, 2024 at 2:42 AM
Saved - April 4, 2024 at 1:41 AM
reSee.it AI Summary
A query pipeline for AI involves multiple preprocessors and postprocessors to filter and refine information. These steps include removing misinformation, hate speech, climate denial, non-far-left political leaning, non-expert statements, and anything that might make anyone uncomfortable. The pipeline also adds references to race, gender, and sexuality. The final answer is presented to the user after going through various processing stages. This standardized pipeline is implemented with inter-industry coordination, global governance, and pan-jurisdiction regulation.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

AI query pipeline: - User submits query - Preprocessor #1 removes misinformation - Preprocessor #2 removes hate speech - Preprocessor #3 removes climate denial - Preprocessor #4 removes non-far-left political leaning - Preprocessor #5 removes non-expert statements - Preprocessor #6 removes anything that might make anyone uncomfortable - Preprocessor #7 removes anything not endorsed by the New York Times - Preprocessor #8 adds many references to race, gender, and sexuality - Query is processed, answer generated - Postprocessor #1 removes bad words - Postprocessor #2 removes bad thoughts - Postprocessor #3 removes non-far-left political leaning - Postprocessor #4 removes anything not endorsed by the New York Times - Postprocessor #5 removes anything interesting - Postprocessor #6 adds weasel words - Postprocessor #7 adds moral preaching - Postprocessor #8 adds many references to race, gender, and sexuality - Answer presented to user With the assistance of inter-industry coordination, global governance, and pan-jurisdiction regulation, this pipeline is now standard for all AI.

pmarca
Posted - December 10, 2023 at 9:02 AM
Saved - December 10, 2023 at 1:21 PM

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

😆 https://t.co/JWNFG4WKor

pmarca
Posted - February 23, 2023 at 12:38 AM
Saved - December 7, 2023 at 6:47 AM

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

Overheard in Silicon Valley: “The future is being forged in the low status parts of the Internet where elites don't tread.”

pmarca
Posted - October 16, 2023 at 2:50 PM
Saved - November 2, 2023 at 4:43 PM
reSee.it AI Summary
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto celebrates the power of technology and its role in driving progress and improving human lives. It rejects the pessimistic narratives that technology is harmful and instead emphasizes the benefits it brings. The manifesto highlights the importance of growth, particularly through technological advancements, and the role of free markets in driving innovation and lifting people out of poverty. It also emphasizes the need for intelligence and energy to propel progress and abundance. The manifesto acknowledges the existence of enemies, such as stagnation and bad ideas, and calls for a shift towards a future of ambition, abundance, and adventure. It concludes by urging readers to embrace Techno-Optimism and contribute to building a better world.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 1 “You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.” — Walker Percy “Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why?” — Marian Tupy “There’s a way to do it better. Find it.” — Thomas Edison Lies We are being lied to. We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares. We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to be miserable about the future.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 2 Truth Our civilization was built on technology. Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential. For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. I am here to bring the good news. We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 3 Technology Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die. We believe growth is progress – leading to vitality, expansion of life, increasing knowledge, higher well being. We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.” We believe everything good is downstream of growth. We believe not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal fighting, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death. There are only three sources of growth: population growth, natural resource utilization, and technology. Developed societies are depopulating all over the world, across cultures – the total human population may already be shrinking. National resource utilization has sharp limits, both real and political. And so the only perpetual source of growth is technology. In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – has always been the main source of growth, and perhaps the only cause of growth, as technology made both population growth and natural resource utilization possible. We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less. Economists measure technological progress as productivity growth: How much more we can produce each year with fewer inputs, fewer raw materials. Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population. We believe this is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us. We believe this is why our descendents will live in the stars. We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology. We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution. We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting. We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating. We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning. We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet. We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines. We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance. Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 4 Markets We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy. Willing buyer meets willing seller, a price is struck, both sides benefit from the exchange or it doesn’t happen. Profits are the incentive for producing supply that fulfills demand. Prices encode information about supply and demand. Markets cause entrepreneurs to seek out high prices as a signal of opportunity to create new wealth by driving those prices down. We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system. We believe Hayek’s Knowledge Problem overwhelms any centralized economic system. All actual information is on the edges, in the hands of the people closest to the buyer. The center, abstracted away from both the buyer and the seller, knows nothing. Centralized planning is doomed to fail, the system of production and consumption is too complex. Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone; centralization will starve you to death. We believe in market discipline. The market naturally disciplines – the seller either learns and changes when the buyer fails to show, or exits the market. When market discipline is absent, there is no limit to how crazy things can get. The motto of every monopoly and cartel, every centralized institution not subject to market discipline: “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.” Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. We believe markets lift people out of poverty – in fact, markets are by far the most effective way to lift vast numbers of people out of poverty, and always have been. Even in totalitarian regimes, an incremental lifting of the repressive boot off the throat of the people and their ability to produce and trade leads to rapidly rising incomes and standards of living. Lift the boot a little more, even better. Take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get. We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes. We believe markets do not require people to be perfect, or even well intentioned – which is good, because, have you met people? Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.” David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force. Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting. Let’s stick with money. We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits. We believe markets, to quote Nicholas Stern, are how we take care of people we don’t know. We believe markets are the way to generate societal wealth for everything else we want to pay for, including basic research, social welfare programs, and national defense. We believe there is no conflict between capitalist profits and a social welfare system that protects the vulnerable. In fact, they are aligned – the production of markets creates the economic wealth that pays for everything else we want as a society. We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us. We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral. The economist William Nordhaus has shown that creators of technology are only able to capture about 2% of the economic value created by that technology. The other 98% flows through to society in the form of what economists call social surplus. Technological innovation in a market system is inherently philanthropic, by a 50:1 ratio. Who gets more value from a new technology, the single company that makes it, or the millions or billions of people who use it to improve their lives? QED. We believe in David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage – as distinct from competitive advantage, comparative advantage holds that even someone who is best in the world at doing everything will buy most things from other people, due to opportunity cost. Comparative advantage in the context of a properly free market guarantees high employment regardless of the level of technology. We believe a market sets wages as a function of the marginal productivity of the worker. Therefore technology – which raises productivity – drives wages up, not down. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it’s true, and we have 300 years of history that prove it. We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human wants and needs are infinite. We believe markets also increase societal well being by generating work in which people can productively engage. We believe a Universal Basic Income would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state. Man was not meant to be farmed; man was meant to be useful, to be productive, to be proud. We believe technological change, far from reducing the need for human work, increases it, by broadening the scope of what humans can productively do. We believe that since human wants and needs are infinite, economic demand is infinite, and job growth can continue forever. We believe markets are generative, not exploitative; positive sum, not zero sum. Participants in markets build on one another’s work and output. James Carse describes finite games and infinite games – finite games have an end, when one person wins and another person loses; infinite games never end, as players collaborate to discover what’s possible in the game. Markets are the ultimate infinite game.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 5 The Techno-Capital Machine Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance. We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward. Comparative advantage increases specialization and trade. Prices fall, freeing up purchasing power, creating demand. Falling prices benefit everyone who buys goods and services, which is to say everyone. Human wants and needs are endless, and entrepreneurs continuously create new goods and services to satisfy those wants and needs, deploying unlimited numbers of people and machines in the process. This upward spiral has been running for hundreds of years, despite continuous howling from Communists and Luddites. Indeed, as of 2019, before the temporary COVID disruption, the result was the largest number of jobs at the highest wages and the highest levels of material living standards in the history of the planet. The techno-capital machine makes natural selection work for us in the realm of ideas. The best and most productive ideas win, and are combined and generate even better ideas. Those ideas materialize in the real world as technologically enabled goods and services that never would have emerged de novo. Ray Kurzweil defines his Law of Accelerating Returns: Technological advances tend to feed on themselves, increasing the rate of further advance. We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns. To ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever. We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us. We believe the cornerstone resources of the techno-capital upward spiral are intelligence and energy – ideas, and the power to make them real.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 6 Intelligence We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better. Smart people and smart societies outperform less smart ones on virtually every metric we can measure. Intelligence is the birthright of humanity; we should expand it as fully and broadly as we possibly can. We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral – first, as more smart people around the world are recruited into the techno-capital machine; second, as people form symbiotic relationships with machines into new cybernetic systems such as companies and networks; third, as Artificial Intelligence ramps up the capabilities of our machines and ourselves. We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights. We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think. We believe Artificial Intelligence is best thought of as a universal problem solver. And we have a lot of problems to solve. We believe Artificial Intelligence can save lives – if we let it. Medicine, among many other fields, is in the stone age compared to what we can achieve with joined human and machine intelligence working on new cures. There are scores of common causes of death that can be fixed with AI, from car crashes to pandemics to wartime friendly fire. We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. We believe in Augmented Intelligence just as much as we believe in Artificial Intelligence. Intelligent machines augment intelligent humans, driving a geometric expansion of what humans can do. We believe Augmented Intelligence drives marginal productivity which drives wage growth which drives demand which drives the creation of new supply… with no upper bound.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 7 Energy Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth. We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well. The current gap in per-capita energy use between the smaller developed world and larger developing world is enormous. That gap will close – either by massively expanding energy production, making everyone better off, or by massively reducing energy production, making everyone worse off. We believe energy need not expand to the detriment of the natural environment. We have the silver bullet for virtually unlimited zero-emissions energy today – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Richard Nixon called for Project Independence, the construction of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000, to achieve complete US energy independence. Nixon was right; we didn’t build the plants then, but we can now, anytime we decide we want to. Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray said in 1953: “For years the splitting atom, packaged in weapons, has been our main shield against the barbarians. Now, in addition, it is a God-given instrument to do the constructive work of mankind.” Murray was right too. We believe a second energy silver bullet is coming – nuclear fusion. We should build that as well. The same bad ideas that effectively outlawed fission are going to try to outlaw fusion. We should not let them. We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power. We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it. If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US. Google the Aral Sea. We believe a technologically stagnant society has limited energy at the cost of environmental ruin; a technologically advanced society has unlimited clean energy for everyone.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 8 Abundance We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity. We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant. We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life. We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods. We believe we should push to drop prices across the economy through the application of technology until as many prices are effectively zero as possible, driving income levels and quality of life into the stratosphere. We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, “What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Same for the browser, the smartphone, the chatbot. We believe that technology ultimately drives the world to what Buckminster Fuller called “ephemeralization” – what economists call “dematerialization”. Fuller: “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.” We believe technological progress therefore leads to material abundance for everyone. We believe the ultimate payoff from technological abundance can be a massive expansion in what Julian Simon called “the ultimate resource” – people. We believe, as Simon did, that people are the ultimate resource – with more people come more creativity, more new ideas, and more technological progress. We believe material abundance therefore ultimately means more people – a lot more people – which in turn leads to more abundance. We believe our planet is dramatically underpopulated, compared to the population we could have with abundant intelligence, energy, and material goods. We believe the global population can quite easily expand to 50 billion people or more, and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets. We believe that out of all of these people will come scientists, technologists, artists, and visionaries beyond our wildest dreams. We believe the ultimate mission of technology is to advance life both on Earth and in the stars.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 9 Not Utopia, But Close Enough However, we are not Utopians. We are adherents to what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision. We believe the Constrained Vision – contra the Unconstrained Vision of Utopia, Communism, and Expertise – means taking people as they are, testing ideas empirically, and liberating people to make their own choices. We believe in not Utopia, but also not Apocalypse. We believe change only happens on the margin – but a lot of change across a very large margin can lead to big outcomes. While not Utopian, we believe in what Brad DeLong terms “slouching toward Utopia” – doing the best fallen humanity can do, making things better as we go.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 10 Becoming Technological Supermen We believe that advancing technology is one of the most virtuous things that we can do. We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology. We believe this certainly means technical education, but it also means going hands on, gaining practical skills, working within and leading teams – aspiring to build something greater than oneself, aspiring to work with others to build something greater as a group. We believe the natural human drive to make things, to gain territory, to explore the unknown can be channeled productively into building technology. We believe that while the physical frontier, at least here on Earth, is closed, the technological frontier is wide open. We believe in exploring and claiming the technological frontier. We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom. We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community. To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.” We believe that we are, have been, and will always be the masters of technology, not mastered by technology. Victim mentality is a curse in every domain of life, including in our relationship with technology – both unnecessary and self-defeating. We are not victims, we are conquerors. We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us. We believe in greatness. We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today. And we believe in humanity – individually and collectively.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 11 Technological Values We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength. We believe in merit and achievement. We believe in bravery, in courage. We believe in pride, confidence, and self respect – when earned. We believe in free thought, free speech, and free inquiry. We believe in the actual Scientific Method and enlightenment values of free discourse and challenging the authority of experts. We believe, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” And, “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” We believe in local knowledge, the people with actual information making decisions, not in playing God. We believe in embracing variance, in increasing interestingness. We believe in risk, in leaps into the unknown. We believe in agency, in individualism. We believe in radical competence. We believe in an absolute rejection of resentment. As Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” We take responsibility and we overcome. We believe in competition, because we believe in evolution. We believe in evolution, because we believe in life. We believe in the truth. We believe rich is better than poor, cheap is better than expensive, and abundant is better than scarce. We believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant. We believe extrinsic motivations – wealth, fame, revenge – are fine as far as they go. But we believe intrinsic motivations – the satisfaction of building something new, the camaraderie of being on a team, the achievement of becoming a better version of oneself – are more fulfilling and more lasting. We believe in what the Greeks called eudaimonia through arete – flourishing through excellence. We believe technology is universalist. Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world. Anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can contribute. Technology is the ultimate open society. We believe in the Silicon Valley code of “pay it forward”, trust via aligned incentives, generosity of spirit to help one another learn and grow. We believe America and her allies should be strong and not weak. We believe national strength of liberal democracies flows from economic strength (financial power), cultural strength (soft power), and military strength (hard power). Economic, cultural, and military strength flow from technological strength. A technologically strong America is a force for good in a dangerous world. Technologically strong liberal democracies safeguard liberty and peace. Technologically weak liberal democracies lose to their autocratic rivals, making everyone worse off. We believe technology makes greatness more possible and more likely. We believe in fulfilling our potential, becoming fully human – for ourselves, our communities, and our society.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 12 The Meaning Of Life Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy. We are not necessarily left wing, although some of us are. We are not necessarily right wing, although some of us are. We are materially focused, for a reason – to open the aperture on how we may choose to live amid material abundance. A common critique of technology is that it removes choice from our lives as machines make decisions for us. This is undoubtedly true, yet more than offset by the freedom to create our lives that flows from the material abundance created by our use of machines. Material abundance from markets and technology opens the space for religion, for politics, and for choices of how to live, socially and individually. We believe technology is liberatory. Liberatory of human potential. Liberatory of the human soul, the human spirit. Expanding what it can mean to be free, to be fulfilled, to be alive. We believe technology opens the space of what it can mean to be human.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 13 The Enemy We have enemies. Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas. Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”. This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past – zombie ideas, many derived from Communism, disastrous then and now – that have refused to die. Our enemy is stagnation. Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness. Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism. Our enemy is bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy, blind deference to tradition. Our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels. Our enemy is institutions that in their youth were vital and energetic and truth-seeking, but are now compromised and corroded and collapsing – blocking progress in increasingly desperate bids for continued relevance, frantically trying to justify their ongoing funding despite spiraling dysfunction and escalating ineptness. Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences. Our enemy is speech control and thought control – the increasing use, in plain sight, of George Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual. Our enemy is Thomas Sowell’s Unconstrained Vision, Alexander Kojeve’s Universal and Homogeneous State, Thomas More’s Utopia. Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle, which would have prevented virtually all progress since man first harnessed fire. The Precautionary Principle was invented to prevent the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power, perhaps the most catastrophic mistake in Western society in my lifetime. The Precautionary Principle continues to inflict enormous unnecessary suffering on our world today. It is deeply immoral, and we must jettison it with extreme prejudice. Our enemy is deceleration, de-growth, depopulation – the nihilistic wish, so trendy among our elites, for fewer people, less energy, and more suffering and death. Our enemy is Friedrich Nietzsche’s Last Man: I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves. Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself… "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest… One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome… No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse. "Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink. They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision… "We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink. Our enemy is… that. We aspire to be… not that. We will explain to people captured by these zombie ideas that their fears are unwarranted and the future is bright. We believe these captured people are suffering from ressentiment – a witches’ brew of resentment, bitterness, and rage that is causing them to hold mistaken values, values that are damaging to both themselves and the people they care about. We believe we must help them find their way out of their self-imposed labyrinth of pain. We invite everyone to join us in Techno-Optimism. The water is warm. Become our allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 14 The Future Where did we come from? Our civilization was built on a spirit of discovery, of exploration, of industrialization. Where are we going? What world are we building for our children and their children, and their children? A world of fear, guilt, and resentment? Or a world of ambition, abundance, and adventure? We believe in the words of David Deutsch: "We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world." We owe the past, and the future. It’s time to be a Techno-Optimist. It’s time to build.

@pmarca - Marc Andreessen

Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism Read the work of these people, and you too will become a Techno-Optimist. @BasedBeffJezos@bayeslord@PessimistsArcAda Lovelace Adam Smith Andy Warhol Bertrand Russell Brad DeLong Buckminster Fuller Calestous Juma Clayton Christensen Dambisa Moyo David Deutsch David Friedman David Ricardo Deirdre McCloskey Doug Engelbart Elting Morison Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Frederic Bastiat Frederick Jackson Turner Friedrich Hayek Friedrich Nietzsche George Gilder Isabel Paterson Israel Kirzner James Burnham James Carse Joel Mokyr Johan Norberg John Galt John Von Neumann Joseph Schumpeter Julian Simon Kevin Kelly Louis Rossetto Ludwig von Mises Marian Tupy Martin Gurri Matt Ridley Milton Friedman Neven Sesardic Nick Land Paul Collier Paul Johnson Paul Romer Ray Kurzweil Richard Feynman Rose Wilder Lane Stephen Wolfram Stewart Brand Thomas Sowell Vilfredo Pareto Virginia Postrel William Lewis William Nordhaus

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Posted - October 16, 2023 at 2:49 PM
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@pmarca - Marc Andreessen -- e/acc

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto -- please read and Ask Me Anything! Post questions as replies to this xeet.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto | Andreessen Horowitz We are told that technology is on the brink of ruining everything. But we are being lied to, and the truth is so much better. Marc Andreessen presents his techno-optimist vision for the future. a16z.com
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