The “wanting to distance oneself” is an extremely pragmatic reaction: if you believe similar arguments need to be made, you have a legitimate interest in putting forth good versions of those arguments. He has a big platform and this will be portrayed as “the case” for techno-optimism, not to mention the attitude and tone.
I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?”
Most plausibly, it’s for attracting other ultra-wealthy/ultra-powerful (and yes, unelected!) LPs, which would make the tone rather ominous in my opinion.
> I’m not really sure what the purpose of publishing something like this is. It doesn’t really seem intended to convince anyone of anything? Is the controversy the point? Galvanizing some “base?”
The only thing that makes sense to me (other than he simply is that out of touch) is that he's actually trying to recruit followers to a new religion and so he actively wants to attract people with poor critical thinking skills.
The manifesto comes from a guy whose business model for the past 3 years was grifting people into the NFT hype, so either he's just another conman selling a vision or a megalomaniac completely lacking self-awareness.
This feels a bit of an extreme reaction to me, I don't try and read into gotchas in writing and use them to "run away". Instead it makes me:
1. View the writing with skepticism
2. Try to understand what Andreessen thinks makes him not one of those ivory tower figures, because I certainly think of him as one.
2 seems the more insightful one to me, but certainly 1 qualifies how I view his writing.