On one hand, VCs that fund thousands of early-stage startups are inevitably going to fund some bad stuff, even if they try hard to avoid it.
On the other, the older I get the more I worry about the decline of spirituality in the West. Especially in tech, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a hyper rational snowglobe of people optimizing a local maxima, not even considering (and often looking down on) the possibility that there are larger, more important games to play.
The thing is: a16z isn't even trying to avoid it, they are intentionally looking for questionable startups and cultivate a controversial reputation. They seem to have no moral filter whatsoever.
These same VCs have been pushing spirituality on the US via socially conservative politics. It's highly possible that they are only instrumentalizing a value system that they don't really personally buy into, but their strategy does beg a lot of questions. One of which is what role spirituality can actually play in helping here.
For example, Peter Thiel has gone out of his way to give something like sermons on "the anti-christ". At the same time, he hesitates when asked if the human race should survive. What's happening there?
Maybe it's not enough to just have values. Maybe they need to be a particular kind of values. Which is probably implicit in what you meant. I just think it's worth pointing out that a concept like spirituality itself doesn't necessarily mean "good" or pro-social.
To put it bluntly, weren't the people who sacrificed children to Moloc technically "spiritual"?
Yeah, I agree. I meant spirituality in the wholesome sense, not the spiritual bypass or Christian bc the party that supports my company is Christian sense.
I’m a dad who has struggled with this too. I’ve also had the privilege of getting to know a relatively large number of highly successful people.
One thing I’ve noticed is that, yes, to make it into the history books you likely have to pursue your career at the cost of everything else (and be insanely lucky).
But right below that degree of one in a billion success is a much larger group of very successful people who manage to achieve admirable balance in their lives. Their spouses love them, their kids want to spend time with them, and rhey might even have a hobby or two.
The thing is, these people tend to be quieter - a few I know are downright secretive. They aren’t constantly online or in the press seeking validation because they have achieved fulfillment at home and work.
The barrier to change is not just regulation. Regulation is downstream of public opinion. Compare China and the US. In China, public sentiment around AI seems to be a hunger to use it for fear of being left behind. Whereas in America, it's an apathetic pessimism around inequality and safety.
China has seen much faster growth in recent decades, which incentivizes people to work hard and have faith it will yield results. In America, the average standard of living has not improved for a long time, so instead of a desire to change things, like cutting regulation to speed up drug discovery, most Americans are quiet quitting.
In this climate, the unfortunate reality is that we're unlikely to see a popular revolution to drastically change things one way or another. Instead, we're much more likely to see regulatory capture by a small number of wealthy, powerful, motivated people. And everyone else will complain on social media, but that's about it.
On the other, the older I get the more I worry about the decline of spirituality in the West. Especially in tech, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a hyper rational snowglobe of people optimizing a local maxima, not even considering (and often looking down on) the possibility that there are larger, more important games to play.