Exactly! When you…

- emphasize personalities & personal biographies

- express vague feels about which people "sound like thinkers" (why?)

- stretch to imply a recommended-authors list has been misrepresented as "co-signers" in some way that's vaguely not "okay" – and try to imply some unprecedented & counterproductive politeness norm that an author (even a dead author?!?) can't be cited favorably without permission

- layer on empty unevaluable intensifiers & slurs presuming agreement where it doesn't exist ('cult leader', 'obvious that the only reason anyone is engaging', 'transparently intellectually dishonest', 'honestly shudder', 'veer a little Kanye', 'distorted reality')

…you're taking the easier path: leaning on shallow attitudes, shifting fashions, & groupthink moreso than the actual text/ideas on offer.

And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece. It's all Regina bluffing mean-girl dominance via tone & slur, without reasoning: "Pmarca, stop trying to make tech-optimism happen. It's not going to happen."

Well, that kind of social flocking & mocking works in some places, for a while – until it doesn't.

My position has been validated in actual reality. The mainstream reporting -- that is, the reporting that the people who need convincing actually read -- has not been positive. I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimism than towards it.

If you were a pessimist already, this confirms and amplifies all of your fears. If you were neutral, well it looks like the pessimists were right: the big tech people are truly off the rails.

> And those lazy appeals to stereotypes & moods are what have dominated almost all of the negative reactions to this piece

Right! And aren't most reactions outside of HN negative?

Could it be that humans actually don't interpret words on the page as completely isolated from the actual context in which they're stated, who stated them, and how they're stated? Could it be that "the techno-optimists" need to convince humans of things? And no, the inclusion of context and tone in an argument is not some recent cultural wokeism phenomenon.

Just Kagi the article and see the response. I struggle to see how this advances the cause, regardless of how long you want to argue with me here on HN about overlooking the context/subtext/pretext.

- A disproportionate number of direct-replies to almost any opiniated submission are negative. (If you agree, an upvote is often enough! It's the objectors/nitpickers who are loudest in the comments – even if unrepresentative.)

- Often, also, it's sullen/underemployed people who have the most time to comment.

I disagree that the "mainstream reporting" represents "the people who need convincing". They're more of a neurotic clique than ever before. It's time to go around them, to folks doing real work.

Your arguments are still a bunch of impressionistic handwaving about appearances rather than substance: "I would bet this has pushed far, far more people away from techno-optimist than towards it."

Your emphatic belief about superficial "eww!" reactions from within your info-bubble is not much of an argument, nor does it engage with the actual ideas in the text.

For the 'manifesto' to work, it doesn't have to convince anyone who's already predisposed toward grumbling about Andreesen's tone or self-awareness, or who's fond of vague derogatory phrases like "truly off the rails".

It just has to reach the totally-separate set of people who are excited by, & eager to collaborate around, the positive vision within the text itself.

You know, those thousands of actual words written – against which you've only lodged abstract complaints about tone & emphasis, & that he didn't do enough to convince you, & the total cop-out-on-substance "but as far as I can tell most people agree with me!"

You got it pal, hope all those people are feeling rah-rah!

Such results will especially undersample Andreesen's intended audience of potential builders, which isn't the snarky cliquish media scene to which you've apprently outsourced your sensibilities.

And again: to repeatedly appeal to "most people agree with me (as far as I can see, according to my idiosyncratic media diet)" isn't the win you seem to think it is. It's more a confession that you're not bringing much of your own reasoning/logic/experience to a discussion, and defer to (often-faked) social proof for validation. If I cared what Kagi's crawl/ranking thinks, I'd search Kagi. (I don't.)

It’s almost as if technologists believe they can (and actually have a moral imperative to!) shape the world without being elected and without being accountable to the people whose world they’re shaping…