Perhaps the nuance is in the eye of the beholder? I don't think it's sustainable to go about our lives wearing blinders and averting our gaze from the misuse of technology because one might be afraid of unhappy feelings creeping in.
One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
Look at Germany 1933++ and Eastern Germany 1945++ to see how regular people act when they get power over their neighbours. I don’t have a position on the book, but your argument isn’t supporting what you think your position is - quite the contrary.
People don't stay 'regular' for long after gaining immense power or money. I imagine it's quite difficult to stay grounded and humble in such situations, especially with legions of sycophants and yes-people hyping them up.
People live mostly by convention, not reason (including those who think they don’t). When social sensibilities change, people move with them regardless of whether they are good or bad, because people in general are cowards. They fear life outside the crowd. For most, majority opinion - whether manufactured or not - is God. Most float downstream (including those who think they don’t); few swim upstream.
Is there anything 'regular' about walking onto stage wearing a cap and sunglasses and then brandishing a chainsaw as a 'symbolic' gesture (at anything other than a chainsaw conference)?
Stangneth seems like an important thinker, but wow that article hasn't aged well. Talking about the "profundity" of Hamas evil with nary a mention of Israeli genocide. You can say September 2024 was too soon to tell ... but it wasn't actually. Pure islamophobic propaganda.
You've misunderstood the point of historical absentee analysis and rhe banality of evil.
It is comforting to think that there is a group of "evil people" who are innately different, but most evil is done by people similar to people you know.
Just because your neighbor Joe or your aunt Bertha is a "great person" who coaches the local sports team doesn't mean they aren't evil if they also spend their days working to target minorities and get them thrown in jail or worse - or building the tools used for authoritarians and voting for them.
Not to be dismissive of your point, but this may be a thought-terminating cliché. That's not an argument that would hold up in court against pedophiles and murderers; I would argue that it shouldn't also hold for fascists.
The last one... well, we thought that decent people were the norm and that people would understand the nuance and spirit of laws; however, that hasn't been the case, so you see evil fascists skirting by because they're convinced that "the letter" of the law didn't specifically ban something, so it must be permissible.
> so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
Sorry to burst your bubble, but people consistently doing evil things that don't course-correct once exposed to new information are evil; those are the people we're referring to... (i.e. "a turd by any other name would smell as shit").
"We live in a society", we have a sort of social contract with each other (meaning, it's in our best interest to be nice to one another) and laws that we follow (in case someone isn't following the former).
I think most people would agree that 10 or 20 years ago, we'd be (mostly) lineally progressing towards peace and unity (glossing over some wars, as most people wanted to believe that "once that is over, we can proceed with 'progress'")...
Most people believed it so, that we didn't really give any attention to people that asked "what do we do if the fascists rise to power?"... Many laughed it off! "Fascists!? That's SO 1930's Europe! Besides, everyone knows that fascists are evil, and no one wants to be evil, right?".
So, you can imagine that almost nobody had "coordinated fascist international takeover" nor "brainwashed pedophile-apologist fascist takeover of the US" on their bingo cards. Interesting times...
Which means we need to blatantly and explicitly call out the ones who are choosing to use their evil side for outsized material gains at the expense of a huge majority?
People are motivated by things other than material gains. The hong wei bings were not motivated by material gains. they were motivated by the four olds --erasing the four olds.
I completely disagree with this thesis. In my years as a founder (>40), it was very clear when I saw many forks in the road. One would lead to me getting more wealthy and one would lead to me being able to sleep at night. I chose the latter. Clearly the tech titans have chosen the other path.
I also witnessed many other founders doing really terrible things. It’s a meme around here that technical founders mostly get screwed by the time IPO or M&A proceeds are divvied up. I saw that time and again. Yes, there are exceptions, bit they are rare.
EDIT: was on mobile, wanted to add more:
IMO, the system we have sorts for sociopaths. The people with the power (politicians, CEOs, etc) are far more likely to be sociopaths than in the regular population because the rewards are so great. Look at the Paypal "mafia" (as they are called by many), and their exploits after Paypal.
Here's the way I look at whether someone got lucky or not: were they a 1-hit wonder or did they serially create companies with vast wealth? The former are people that got lucky. I've known some. The latter are mostly sociopaths. I've met many. They are predators. Some of them actually triggered my flight/flight response, and until that happened the first time, I had never in my life (in a business setting) experienced that. I now know what it means, when I feel that feeling. What is interesting is that my body sometimes knows it before my brain.
They're some of the most powerful people in America and, by extension, the world. Wielding such power required immense restraint, control, and consideration.
>I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric
Everyone usually has this
stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.
I'm sure you have some "if they actually do <xyz> then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.
You misunderstand my point. I made no remark about whether big tech bosses behave harmfully or not (and in fact I believe that many do). My point is about blaming “nerds” or “Silicon Valley” for power grabs by a few asshole billionaires.
As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the group for the behavior of a few.
Fair enough, but you have to admit it's virtually impossible to infer your two paragraphs here from that one sentence above. The calling out of "us vs them" rhetoric is what's stated clearly (as well as the fondness for the title).
The uncomfortable reality is that there does exist an 'us vs them' situation in every other aspect of society today, and those who ignore it end up on the losing side.
hah, had to look this up to make sure this was a real thing. But disagree on which is better, the Nerd Reich has a better ring to it. When you say the other one out loud it sounds like "deferred Reich".
It's cute but are there any actual nerds left in big tech leadership? Of the magnificent seven we basically only have Jensen Huang left as a technical leader and maybe you can count Zuckerberg.
The nerd/jock dichotomy is at best loosely pointing at some genuine clusters of interests and predilections that exist among people in the world, and is more often taking a set of tropes from 80s Hollywood movies about high school and using them to try to explain how real people in the world are today, which is stupid.
(Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms! Who acted in them? Theater kids!)
The jocks at my school (Championship Winners) were also simultaneously the smartest kids at it. Most went to Ivy Leagues on academic scholarships. I know a few of them were the first engineers on several well known unicorns.
There is an unspoken presumption many people live believing that the various qualities people can have must be evenly divided among people, because somehow it would otherwise be “unfair”. Got brawn? Can’t have brains. Got X? Can’t have Y. Etc. It’s a coping strategy for weak people with big egos.
The fact is that in primary school, a “nerd” wasn’t necessarily all that “intelligent” even in some narrow sense. If you are inept at something or insecure about it, you might gravitate toward things that avoid it. So you invest time in that activity.
Of course, if the brain is the seat of intelligence, and the brain is just a part of the body, and an intelligent brain is a healthy brain, then it follows that a healthy body overall is more likely to have a healthy brain and thus an intelligent brain. Conpare this with the ancient expression “Mens sana in corpore sano”.
Indeed. People who use this terminology in earnest have a maturity problem. It’s a juvenile way of classifying the world that silly people like to use to channel their petty resentments and envies. Time to grow up.
Google has some tendencies - Sundar Pichai was a materials engineer, Brin is back working there who considers himself a computer scientist. Maybe Hassabis - depends how you define it I guess.
Hassabis is absolutely a nerd. Joint honours physics and maths from Oxbridge and a PhD in neuroscience (and a Nobel prize in none of these fields).
His driving interest was always games (master standard in chess at 13, five-time winner of the all-round world board games championship, video game programmer in his teens then his own studio in his 20s).
Yeah but the dictionary has "intellectually passionate but socially awkward, or someone considered unstylish and lacking social skills". I think he might be a bit social.
I thought it was super cool when a few years ago I found out that Eric Schmidt was the author of Lex! I struggled mightily with lex and yacc in college, but that was a me thing, I think.
When I watch Ex-machina the degree to which I loathed Oscar Isaac's character surprised me. While much of it was because the character was objectively loathsome, part of it was because I felt the type of person he represented was infecting the tech world.
The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'
Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.
It shouldn't matter whether the leaders are actual technical nerds. They are highly focused and motivated individuals who are harnessing tech for the stated purpose. Maybe this is by design and a coordinated movement - or maybe it is the inevitable consequence of uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism.
If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?
Yeah, as I recall Carmack came out against some of the anti-trust actions of Lina Kahn, soecifically blocking certain type of acquisitions and mergers by big tech companies.
Though I'm curious what the take of "founders first" type of VCs like YC on the Figma IPO is, after the acquisition by Adobe was blocked. Whatever the stock price of Figma is now, would they specifically argue that of the two outcomes the Figma IPO was worse for the founders? To be clear, if that acquisition wasn't blocked the IPO wouldn't have happened.
One of the reasons I enjoy coming into HN. Is to read comments stating that the guy that created Facebook, alone in his dorm room, could “maybe“ be counted as a tech lead.
Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways.
Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or have a hard time believing it can actually be true.
The list is missing my #1 quote from Jim Keller (an epic engineer type) although unfortunately quote is in middle of a long YouTube vid. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33662764
Aside: I don't understand why they even mention what journalists think - only engineers opinions matter when judging engineering ability.
Middle of a long YT video is nothing: you can make links to auto seek to a specific place in YT video. When you share link on computer, it even allows you to check-a-box that will include timestamp within link
Or append &t=1h2m3s to the link to prevent writing long sentences on where to seek and save users from manual seeking :)
Maybe he used to be one, who knows. But I doubt he read a book or seen a movie in the past few decades. He got roasted by Joyce Carol Oates on X recently for being an oaf and he immediately started replying to tweets about acclaimed movies. And nothing insightful that proved he had seen them, just 'this is a great movie' or some other stupid oneliner. It would be hilarious if it wasnt so sad that the richest man on earth is such a pathetic little man.
I think Elon Musk just wants to be Tony Stark and cultivates the appropriate image for that.
And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.
A lot of people miss how much of a tit Tony Stark (at least the Robert Downey Jr. version) was.
Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Not good with anything interpersonal. Flair for the dramatic (and dad jokes) at the expense of those working with him.
Musk is a complicated character. He's had nerdy times programing, fascist turns including the famous salute, emperor delusions - he was named after The Elon, a fictional ruler of Mars.
Spoiler: He is not. But he is very good at faking it.
Anytime he tries to give a serious opinion on anything related to computers: It is laughably bad and out of touch (SQL, compilers, languages, performance, etc... ).
He definitively has a scientific background but definitively not "Tech" as far as computer are concerned.
I don’t see how “tech” is limited to software. While your case might be made for software, according to many accounts Musk is a strong driver on the hardware side. For instance, I’ve read the Tesla and SpaceX books by Eric Berger, which are much more focused on technical things compared to the more mainstream books. And while Musk is not in the trenches with a screwdriver, he’s not faking it either.
To be honest, I’m actually interested in this hypothesis: is he legitimately skilled/knowledgeable, or is he indeed faking it? And for either side I would like to see evidence. This question is interesting to me because some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
If he is really faking it, that might even be good, because the success of his companies might be replicable and could continue without him. But what if he is not?
He has a public image of "geek/need hero" that is honestly inspiring.
And that benefits him a lot because it bring people to trust his decisions. He has all the interest of the world to maintain this image.
> some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
People he hired for these companies made contributions.
Unlike the more common pattern, Elon doesn't hesitate to make straight up engineering decisions for his businesses, including ones that look unnecessarily high risk to a lot of his own engineers. Chopsticks catching spaceships made of stainless steel and self driving cars without lidar are well known examples. The success of those choices earns him legit nerd cred.
Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.
If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human.
The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from.
It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) until the AI gets good enough.
No reason we can't rely on other sensory modalities after the AI "gets good enough," either. Humans don't have LIDAR, but that doesn't mean that LIDAR is a "cheat" for self-driving cars, or something we should try to move past.
In principle, I agree; but remember that people like to save money, and that includes by not spending on excessive sensors when the minimum set will do.
What I think went wrong with Musk/Tesla/FSD is that he tried to cut costs here to save money before it would actually save money.
It's safer than human drivers now. That's good enough. It will take more than that to convince world, and it should. I applaud the well earned skepticism. But I'm an old guy who has no problem qualifying for a driver's license, and if you replaced me with FSD 14.2, especially under not ideal conditions like at night or in a storm, everyone would be safer.
I predict a cusp to be reached in the next few years when safety advocates flip from trying to slow down self driving to trying to mandate it.
> Elon was an enthusiastic reader of books, and had attributed his success in part to having read The Lord of the Rings, the Foundation series, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[11][28] At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual.[29] At age twelve, Elon sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500 (equivalent to $1,579 in 2024).[30][31]
I think it's fair to say he at least was a nerd. He was a dweeb getting beaten up in school, burying himself in books and computers at home. His skills are doubtlessly outdated now, but does that really mean much? Woz's skills (which to be perfectly clear, outclassed Musk's by miles) are doubtlessly out of date now too, but nobody would say Woz isn't a nerd.
I think the part where he grew into an unstable dirtbag might be influencing the way people see him now. Saying that is is, or at least was, a genuine nerd shouldn't be seen as any sort of excuse for his scamming, lying, etc.
He definitely has talked about a lot of nerdy books. Don't know about his attention span and not sure how to square what he likes with his values. He brings up the Culture all the time but I have my doubts that he's actually read them
I don't know either, I haven't read the Culture books (yet) either so I can't really evaluate that.
I do believe he read a lot of sci-fi in his youth, if only because that would fit the pattern of a young boy who doesn't get along well with their peers and turns towards solitary pursuits like computer programming. He seems exactly the sort to have read lots of Heinlein.
Almost everything about The Culture will be immediately apparent from stuff Musk talks about, but only about half of it would look like he's understood it.
The only real crimes are reading/writing someone's brain without permission (at which point others may call you names and stop inviting you to social events) or destroying a consciousness without backups (where you'll get permanent supervision to make sure you don't do it again). Most biological citizens have a full-brain computer interface for backups and general fun, called a "neural lace".
The AI Minds in charge of everything give themselves fanciful names, which Musk has used for his SpaceX drone ships.
For the reverse:
Almost every biological citizen is gender-fluid, can change physical gender by willing it, and there's a certain expectation that you try things both ways around so you know how to be a good lover. They dislike explosive population growth regardless of if it's organic or machine reproduction, and as everyone can get pregnant if they want to (because everyone can be a woman if they want to and it all works), it's considered quite scandalous to have more than one child.
It's sufficiently post-scarcity that money is considered a sign of poverty. They mostly avoid colonising planets, instead living on ships, or on habitats so large that if one was located at any Earth-Sun Lagrange point (including the one on the far side of the sun), we could see it.
At the time your choices for dynamic server web apps were php or perl. The LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP or Perl) was very popular back then (early to mid 00s)
You're replying to a single-sentence comment that both calls out the ridiculousness of this book's argument and its funny title. Clearly I can hold two ideas in my head at once and maybe, just maybe, other people can too.
I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.
As far as I knew I was agreeing with the commenter not condescending. The title is a great example of it's kind. It's funny enough to stop one interrogating the proposition it makes.
I think it's lost on people outside of the UK - perhaps even to many inside the UK - just how strongly there is a class divide and a ruling elite. The old money is very old indeed
Actually, that 0.7 intergenerational correlation only tracks surnames—i.e., the male line. It completely ignores the fact that ~50% of the population changes status by marriage, which is invisible in surname analysis.
Think about it: when a blacksmith’s daughter marries a baron, her social mobility doesn’t show up anywhere in the data. She just becomes part of the baron’s lineage going forward.
So Clark has discovered that patrilineal dynasties persist with 0.7 correlation, and then presented this as if it were a measure of social mobility. It’s not. It’s a measure of surname mobility.
If assortative mating across 500 years averaged something like 0.5 (plausible—people married outside their exact status all the time), the actual population-wide status persistence might be closer to 0.4 than 0.7. That’s… a completely different story about how stratified society actually was.
But sure, “elites persist for centuries” makes for better book sales than “we measured half the mobility and ignored the other half.”
I think you're overestimating how far families married outwith their class. Given the scandal of Mrs Simpson or Ms Markle, how often do you think Barons married commoners? It's the stuff of fairy-tales.
Code absolutely belongs there. Like any technology (be it printing presses, weapons, or algorithms) code is neutral by design, but not by impact.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
That's my point. Any tech can (and is) used for this. There's really no point in putting word "code" there. It adds very little additional context. Only in my opinion mostly serves the other goal - to sell.
I don't think you can make this argument. Capital is neither neutral, nor a technology. Currency would at least satisfy one of those two. But capital is a broader concept that is pretty much by definition a form of power, and power's natural tendency is to lead to corruption.
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
are more interesting and worth asking.
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
It’s a power distribution law. You can try to influence it artificially and suppress it to varying results.
It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?
And yet you can “just write some code” and weapons a generation of young men, and cause an incredible increase in depression in a generation of young women.
Pretending code has no direct and obvious impact is rank naivety.
The comment is sincere. You appear to disagree with the book’s argument prior to having heard it — a great candidate for a mind-opening read. If the book (once published) proves its premise, you’ll disproportionately benefit from the read. (I personally like it when a book stretches my existing conceptions.)
I do not disagree with the book's argument. I'm just pointing out (or rather expressing my doubt) that the word "code" brings no additional context to the sentence.
As others (and I) rightfully noted - code and modern tech does make things cheaper and easier, but this can be said about all advances.
The "nerd reich" is not possible without code, code is not possible without computers, computers are not possible without abacus etc.
As I see it the word "code" sells this book better than, say, "taxes". Because taxes are boring and obvious.
>And how did they get those capital, for instance the CEO of Meta?
This is the right question.
I'll quote myself here:
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).
>Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
You absolutely can. Tiny tweaks to social media feeds - what content gets promoted, what gets hidden - have massive impacts on opinions, votes, and society.
And why not code? Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code? The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities, as is the case even in a number of tinpot dictatorships in the developing world.
>Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code?
Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.
>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.
Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.
Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.
My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.
It is being dismantled by those who claim that the public can't have a say but that we should go to "official sources" (government appointed) or "trusted sources" (their pals) to avoid misinformation. This isn't capitalist driven (the standard Marxist line) because this system limits profits and maximalises government control.
Most of the real democracy dismantling attempts in the world seem more along the lines of the Russians centuries old effort to have everything loyal to the Tzar, including Trump.
Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world.
When conditions change, cracks appear..
For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place.
The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it’ll be less leg room on flights, more “offers” when you just opened your banking app to pay a bill, and more sanctioned spam in your inbox.
I truly believe plenty of folks are fed up and a backlash is coming that’ll be a mix of legislation and companies emerging that cater to informed customers. I’m optimistic!
> Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world.
That's a really naive take, for you to enjoy this "ideal capitalism" there are hundred thousands of people who've been seeing and feeling these cracks for decades if not centuries, it's just slowly reaching your neck of the woods
Problem is not with nerds or Silicon Valley, even if Thiel is a lunatic.
Problem are, and always were, obscenely wealthy people destroying the society that created them. In the world where greed is not considered sin anymore, or even a character flaw, they don't even need to pretend anymore.
Crazy to live in a time less moral than the robber baron age. That said, our society made a joke of children making our shoes in miserable conditions, so we have been conditioning ourselves to be ok with this on our own and for a long time.
What's the actual factual accusation here? That monied interests converge on the ruling power? How is this different when the 'opposition' is in control?
As conditions for the middle class continue to deteriorate, isn't it normal that companies that depend on middle class purchasing power try to adjust government buttons and levers to assure their continuation and position in the market?
The 'holier than thou' is showing.
This book appears to be available only for preorder now, not yet published. Nobody here has read it, nobody here can read it, and even if they could, this submission will disappear off the front pages before commenters have a chance to order and read the book. Thus the comments section here is going to be useless (or at least more useless than usual).
I don't know what happened to this website but stuff like this keeps hitting the front page more and more often despite having close to zero value. It feels like SEO spam to me.
Yes, the bad link given here doesn't do the content justice, whatever your opinion would be. It would've been better to link to one of the author's articles on the Nerd Reich website (or something more substantive like his newsletter content). I'm assuming you're talking about the link itself as opposed to the content of the book or topic in general.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Except there's nothing to discuss because the book is not released. Is HN about "awareness" now? Why not come back in 2026 when the book is actually released and people can actually talk about the contents of the book?
Very good question - posted it for awareness / sparking hopefully nuanced “are we the baddies here?” reflection in the community, and curious folks to preorder.
I would assume by default that billionaires are politically active and causing a problem. However this link doesn't give a lot of hints about how or wherefore. I assume this is a jab at Thiel; but it is a bit light on in the synopsis department.
There are a huge number of threats to democracy and the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter. It is a real problem and a bigger one than some billionaire or even the consensus of the billionaires. Sometimes voters and capital come into actual conflict and generally the voters tend to win Pyrrhic victories when that happens.
1. Consider preordering the book if you're already reacting to part of its premise; it should be a juicy read.
2. Regarding the power of billionaires vs the power of the median voter, consider that each lever in a system deserves attention before pulling on it or reconfiguring it. How can one determine "the biggest threat to democracy" without digging into the details?
> the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter.
Hard disagree.
The biggest problem is a misinformed electorate.
An accurate, honest and truthful press is vital for democracy; how else do people know whom to vote for! The fact this is being dismantled (often supplying deliberate misinformation) is truly worrying.
After all, the electorate is entitled to have a lack of principles and no common sense; nobody ever said democracy was perfect. However the electorate needs to be provided with an honest set facts on which they can base their decisions without cries of "fake news". Whatever their political leanings.
I don't know if you will find a time in US history where the press was accurate, honest, and truthful.
I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.
I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.
> I don't know if you will find a time in US history where the press was accurate, honest, and truthful.
1) Spare us the US defaultism!
2) If we are going to make this conversation about the USA, didn't US broadcast media have a 'fairness doctrine' that was abolished some years back? Hence the growth in outlets providing heavily biased dishonest news on broadcast media? I suggest this has driven much of the popular rhetoric of which you speak.
Frankly, every country has seen a growth in biased social media "news" sources regardless as to the broadcast media fairness doctrines that still exist in those countries. Deliberate misinformation and a lack of trust in journalism is real.
Now it goes beyond money: they are aiming at shaping societies. From mars colonies (imagine musks tantrums when they vote him out) to project 2025 type of political works.
When you have too much money, it's kinda boring to keep making more of them. You want self-expression to the max extent the society will allow you.
So why would it take off there instead of in a larger city with more resources?
I'm not disagreeing with you completely, but I would like to know more about what other factors you would consider to have been more impactful. I don't know that you really need hippies around to get that kind of 'california capitalist' mentality either tbf.
My cousin suddenly has been very captured and obsessed by an area of opinion I didn’t have a name for, fixed money supply, all inflation inherently bad, Elon Musk is badly treated, longer government terms (which sounds reasonable initially until you actually think about just having LESS democracy), no minimum wage. After some research it’s definitely coming from influencers linked to the SV techno feudalists - it’s just such a strong change. But you realise real power is only useful if people can come along with you - if you can build support with the public…
Sounds loosely libertarian, but the longer terms one is new. Its long appealed to technical folks because of its simplicity and ability to address a wide swath of policy issues.
It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, thats another impractical ideology under the hood, dressed up as something more meaningful.
I know it's fashionable to say that democracy itself leads to these outcomes that destroy democracy. I think Arendt was right about self-colonization and overproduction of elites being the main thing that leads to totalitarianism. There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years. Power corrupts, but that's distinct from an argument that the systems which created it in this case should be replaced by systems that funnel power in other ways.
It does, by its very nature. Power is not magic, nor is it the Force. It's not a quantity you can stockpile and own - power is leased, it's granted to you by other people. It comes with expectations on how you will wield that power, and usually can be taken away just as quickly as it was granted, if you exercise it in ways they don't approve[0].
Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.
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[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.
False dichotomy; power is not a stockpilable quantity, it comes from other people and their willingness to defer to you or entertain you. Compromising is not a temptation to get power quicker - compromise is power, it's how you acquire it. The more you want to lean on the system to help you, the more aligned you need to be with it, eventually becoming one with it; you sacrifice autonomy at every step of the way.
Whenever I heard that expression I have never perceived people to mean "so don't obtain power". More like, "if you do get power be careful". Or "even if he seems like a nice guy, we should maintain a separation of powers".
Like it's more a force than a destiny. Gravity pulls the moon down every day yet it doesn't fall on our heads.
> There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years.
It's less wildly successful as a political entity than Christianity or Islam.
I'm not talking about the number of impoverished converts or believers. In terms of prosperity and global power, no religion or former empire has come close.
> There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years.
I don’t know that I would position the USA in this way.
I would not call these people "nerds", many are entitled bros (gals?) with rather rich parents. If you look at many of their family history, their parents are well into the upper middle class, borderline rich. In most cases, they went to the best schools.
It just so happens, tech is were the real money is now. If this was 40+ years ago, they would have ended up on Wall Street or Madison Avenue.
In less than a page, they call it feudalism, fascism, and capital(ism) / corporate rule. Mussolini in his manifesto explicitly defined the 2nd in opposition to the 3rd among other things, and even Marx considered the 1st and the 3rd to be very distinct. Of course the 1st and the 2nd are also quite different.
So which one is it? Oh wait, it's a modern progressive, "calling everything I don't like every bad name I remember from high school history"! Are they also nativist globalists and authoritarian libertarians? I bet they are!
I'm no historian, but has there ever been a society in world history that wasn't dominated by a 'privileged few'?
Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?
As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.
The United States from 1945 to about 1970 made a fair amount of noise about broadening the scope of the franchise. This certainly was not the norm historically, but contemporary ambivalence about that project is what leads us to this article today.
Fascism is a form of ultranationalism based on a myth of national rebirth (“we must purge decadence and be born again”), which seeks to create a new, regimented society through authoritarian power and mass mobilization, often embracing violence.
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Facism is a very appealing form of organizing society, so no surprise that people would like to have it. The same way many europeans though that facism is an answer to many problems of those times.
But wait, why, beyond shallow demonisation, such seemingly great idea could be considered undesired? Thoughts?
Violence and chaos for anyone with "wrong" ideas, or friends, or genealogy. One man dictating your life choices and options. State control of quite literally everything you do, with the threat of violence and death as their tool.
I think a good comparison would be the word "puritan". At one point puritanism was an existing social movement that mattered, and lead to a lot of upheaval.
But the context in which it existed is gone. So if someone calls someone a puritan now, they don't mean they're trying to rid the Church of England of catholic influences. The reformation is over. It's now a fuzzier kind of "cultural" insult.
I think people are finding hard to let the word "fascist" go. For so long you could use it to immediately put people on the defensive. But much like puritan, the sting is basically all gone. Hard for people to grasp here as I know this place trends older and more left wing, but time marches on.
“Puritan” retains meaning beyond its historical context, since it was originally a descriptive term that became a term for a specific movement. “Fascist” does not, because it doesn’t have a (useful) descriptive meaning, it was only ever a symbol for a specific ideology.
Funny how points 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14 and often also 2 and 13 are fundamental for rhetoric of the modern "progressive" left. Thank you for the link. It's the best thing to send to those who are too quick to call their opponents fascists these days.
>The word "fascist" now has positive connotations for me
Spoken like somebody who never had to endure real fascism.
>I realise a lot of you will want to call me fascist for this comment, or more likely something a bit snider and less direct. Just know that I genuinely don't care. It's just a word now.
No, you may not be a fascist, but it's opinions like yours that helped make it possible. Mitläufer.
Anything that is a millimeter to the left in US politics, which happens to still be considered right in the rest of the world, gets immediately coined as left wing activists.
This may have been true in the 80's but it is no longer the case. Left wing politics and whatever nutty ideas this faction produces is now more extreme than its counterpart in Europe. It is as if US lefties have taken the 'everything is bigger in the USA' mantra and applied it to their utopian ideologies. State-run grocery stores? The whole 'DEI/DIE' bureaucra[c/z]y? The aggressive way in which gender ideology is being forced upon those too young to realise they're being bamboozled? Only in the U.S.A...
Right wing activists working with and within government (think taxation, immigration, housing, environment, race, gender) have made a mess of government and society, and are calling anyone who criticizes the current mess as far radical left.
This is stupid and dangerous, but an obvious deflection from the root cause, concervatives who have made quality of life worse prompting an angry reaction that threatens their power.
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The phrases constructed by your pattern don't bring any clarity, ability to distinguish one from another. It's pure flow of emotion and abstraction which would work only among same-way-thinkers. Good for groups bonding, bad for any communication outside of the group.
You use universally true patterns without even realizing that.
Right wing? In Canada, UK, and many other western nations?
I am not interested in US politics, but if you don't think the current government is not a REACTION to past governments and actions(the summer of love riots of 2020, remember that?), I don't know what to say.
Thiel is probably the most obvious example, being explicitly anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian. Musk is also known for endorsing fringe far-right views and activists. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more such attitudes in the SV elite, but the rest of them are better at self-regulating.
Thats what they want people to believe. In the same time industry titans in the US like Ford where funding the ascencion of the nazi regime because they feared what happeing in Russian, without properly understanding the context that make possible the revolution to occour in there.
NOw they pack the "revolution" in a neat way to sell people the impression they are revolting against a system at the same time they sell fear for them to give up righs in the name of safety.
I think it's both. For sure Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and others all have some extremely out there beliefs, lots of power, a desire to wield it, and connections to POTUS and the vice president who both seem to be about gaining and wielding as much power as possible.
I haven't read the book but I've read some stuff on a website of the same name, and the way it ties it all together felt very tinfoil hat to me. I think these guys all mutually tolerate each other's insanity in their common lust for ever more power and insatiable egos.
> Has anyone? It's got an August 2026 publication date. Is there even a first draft?
I'd guess the book is an expanded version of the blog. (Which I don't recommend - I do think this is conspiracy theory territory and of negative value.)
It's just the classic of people with a whole lot of money getting what they want from the government, only boosted by the fact that for the previous decade and a half the left has legitimized political action from corporations since it benefited them, as platforms were largely left-leaning. Now the boot is finally on the other foot and panic ensues.
Can't say I like it, but it has been my position from the very start that this would happen, and as such I'm fresh out of sympathy.
It's at least a little bit amusing that, five or ten years ago, if you opposed big corporate tech allying with government to impose undemocratic political programs, then you were a fascist, while all good thinkers supported that partnership. Only to have that valence switch on a dime when the context changed.
If the Left (and the Right, for that matter) want to make durable political change, they really need coherent theory beyond who's the Bad Guy of the moment.
This is real. Gil Duran is extremely well respected among those of us who are against the fascist takeover of Silicon Valley, which has been well-documented for quite some time.
Not trying to say that you or Gil Duran is wrong, but any anti vaxxer or flat earther can say the same about their "theory" and their well respected writers.
Fair point so let me qualify that. Among the fairly mainstream US left, who have put significant work into documenting and pushing back against the rise of tech oligarchs, Gil Duran is well respected.
Are you familiar with Curtis Yarvin, and his influence with Thiel, JD Vance etc? He absolutely advocates for monarchy and dismantling democracy. He's also, if we are to judge his extensive writing, very much a racist
Have you read Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-fascism per chance? The dictator bit comes later, if it comes at all. Eco made 14 points that let you detect fascism - the higher the score, the higher the chance of a fascist regime being established.
Well this is exactly what I mean with inflation of the term fascism.
Surely there are lots of things wrong in US society, and surely some of them can be seen as part of a fascist society.
But really this is nothing compared to self declared fascist regimes such as Franco, Mussolini or Hitler.
Yes the current Trump regime is trying to suppress other opinions, sometimes quite openly. But luckily there is still plenty of room in the US to criticize the sitting president.
What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?
"What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?"
In what year? 1933? 1937? 1945?
People conflate Nazi Germany with murderous, full-borne authoritarianism, but it took a decade to actually get there. They were just as much fascists at the start as at the end -- it's just that their ideology had room to fully metastasize.
Not true. Long before Hitler rose to power, the militant section of his movement, the SA, was already physically attacking political opponents. That started in the early 20's.
When he finally became head of the government, in 1933, that violence immediately became much more official: the SA was officially deputized as 'Hilfspolizei' and attacks on e.g. communists became legalized. In that same year the first concentration camps were established.
Do you mean that the things like annulling the elections when the "wrong" candidate won [1] or barring the opposition candidates from running [2],[3] are not the worst excesses?
Are these "woke" or just "events that negatively impacted far-right candidates"?
Le Pen is a particularly egregious example, given it's an embezzlement conviction and not some kind of "too racist" penalty or whatever we're imagining
This exact thought is the human death drive externalized and is responsible for a lot of human misery in the world. Shame on those who unironically believe it.
The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.
It’s been 10 years and I have still yet to ear anyone on the far left defining what is a woman without using the very word “woman”.
Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed.
The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism.
I’ve seen how that game plays out: and it’s not pretty.
This is far more similar to Communism than Fascism. Their mentality is that they are a scientific vanguard (like Marxism) and that the ends justify the means. They also share the binary thinking of Marxists. They part company with Fascism because most of them are internationalist.
I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric, but I gotta admit, the title is a stroke of genius.
Perhaps the nuance is in the eye of the beholder? I don't think it's sustainable to go about our lives wearing blinders and averting our gaze from the misuse of technology because one might be afraid of unhappy feelings creeping in.
One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
>deny that their purpose is of oppression...
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
Look at Germany 1933++ and Eastern Germany 1945++ to see how regular people act when they get power over their neighbours. I don’t have a position on the book, but your argument isn’t supporting what you think your position is - quite the contrary.
People don't stay 'regular' for long after gaining immense power or money. I imagine it's quite difficult to stay grounded and humble in such situations, especially with legions of sycophants and yes-people hyping them up.
People live mostly by convention, not reason (including those who think they don’t). When social sensibilities change, people move with them regardless of whether they are good or bad, because people in general are cowards. They fear life outside the crowd. For most, majority opinion - whether manufactured or not - is God. Most float downstream (including those who think they don’t); few swim upstream.
Is there anything 'regular' about walking onto stage wearing a cap and sunglasses and then brandishing a chainsaw as a 'symbolic' gesture (at anything other than a chainsaw conference)?
He was excited about cutting waste and regulation. Most business people wouldn’t be that theatrical about it. But they sure share the sentiment.
I'd make an exception for Musk.
See: banality of evil
Seems like Arendt got it wrong. She let herself be fooled by Eichmann. He wasn’t banal at all.
Bettina Stangneth, “Eichmann Before Jerusalem” (2014)
https://newcriterion.com/article/the-profundity-of-evil/
Stangneth seems like an important thinker, but wow that article hasn't aged well. Talking about the "profundity" of Hamas evil with nary a mention of Israeli genocide. You can say September 2024 was too soon to tell ... but it wasn't actually. Pure islamophobic propaganda.
it's almost like the people you call evil are just regular people
anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically
so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue
You've misunderstood the point of historical absentee analysis and rhe banality of evil.
It is comforting to think that there is a group of "evil people" who are innately different, but most evil is done by people similar to people you know.
Just because your neighbor Joe or your aunt Bertha is a "great person" who coaches the local sports team doesn't mean they aren't evil if they also spend their days working to target minorities and get them thrown in jail or worse - or building the tools used for authoritarians and voting for them.
> anyone can be evil, anyone can be good,
Not to be dismissive of your point, but this may be a thought-terminating cliché. That's not an argument that would hold up in court against pedophiles and murderers; I would argue that it shouldn't also hold for fascists.
The last one... well, we thought that decent people were the norm and that people would understand the nuance and spirit of laws; however, that hasn't been the case, so you see evil fascists skirting by because they're convinced that "the letter" of the law didn't specifically ban something, so it must be permissible.
> so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
Sorry to burst your bubble, but people consistently doing evil things that don't course-correct once exposed to new information are evil; those are the people we're referring to... (i.e. "a turd by any other name would smell as shit").
"We live in a society", we have a sort of social contract with each other (meaning, it's in our best interest to be nice to one another) and laws that we follow (in case someone isn't following the former).
I think most people would agree that 10 or 20 years ago, we'd be (mostly) lineally progressing towards peace and unity (glossing over some wars, as most people wanted to believe that "once that is over, we can proceed with 'progress'")...
Most people believed it so, that we didn't really give any attention to people that asked "what do we do if the fascists rise to power?"... Many laughed it off! "Fascists!? That's SO 1930's Europe! Besides, everyone knows that fascists are evil, and no one wants to be evil, right?".
So, you can imagine that almost nobody had "coordinated fascist international takeover" nor "brainwashed pedophile-apologist fascist takeover of the US" on their bingo cards. Interesting times...
The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
Which means we need to blatantly and explicitly call out the ones who are choosing to use their evil side for outsized material gains at the expense of a huge majority?
People are motivated by things other than material gains. The hong wei bings were not motivated by material gains. they were motivated by the four olds --erasing the four olds.
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I completely disagree with this thesis. In my years as a founder (>40), it was very clear when I saw many forks in the road. One would lead to me getting more wealthy and one would lead to me being able to sleep at night. I chose the latter. Clearly the tech titans have chosen the other path.
I also witnessed many other founders doing really terrible things. It’s a meme around here that technical founders mostly get screwed by the time IPO or M&A proceeds are divvied up. I saw that time and again. Yes, there are exceptions, bit they are rare.
EDIT: was on mobile, wanted to add more:
IMO, the system we have sorts for sociopaths. The people with the power (politicians, CEOs, etc) are far more likely to be sociopaths than in the regular population because the rewards are so great. Look at the Paypal "mafia" (as they are called by many), and their exploits after Paypal.
Here's the way I look at whether someone got lucky or not: were they a 1-hit wonder or did they serially create companies with vast wealth? The former are people that got lucky. I've known some. The latter are mostly sociopaths. I've met many. They are predators. Some of them actually triggered my flight/flight response, and until that happened the first time, I had never in my life (in a business setting) experienced that. I now know what it means, when I feel that feeling. What is interesting is that my body sometimes knows it before my brain.
They're some of the most powerful people in America and, by extension, the world. Wielding such power required immense restraint, control, and consideration.
> A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal.
With the help of the CIA. /s
>I'm not a big sucker for this kind of un-nuanced "us vs them" rhetoric
Everyone usually has this stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.
I'm sure you have some "if they actually do <xyz> then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.
You misunderstand my point. I made no remark about whether big tech bosses behave harmfully or not (and in fact I believe that many do). My point is about blaming “nerds” or “Silicon Valley” for power grabs by a few asshole billionaires.
As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the group for the behavior of a few.
Fair enough, but you have to admit it's virtually impossible to infer your two paragraphs here from that one sentence above. The calling out of "us vs them" rhetoric is what's stated clearly (as well as the fondness for the title).
The uncomfortable reality is that there does exist an 'us vs them' situation in every other aspect of society today, and those who ignore it end up on the losing side.
It's not new. Quoth one of the best lyricists of the past century:
> There is a war between those who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't
- Leonard Cohen, 1974
A statement so vague and ominous it could have been uttered at any point in human history by persons of any ideology without loss of meaning.
Yet you have to admit that 4 days lecturing about the Antichrist is an order if specificity greater than the tangle of European alliances before WWI.
There is a better one. It was about how the far right was trying to take over Furry Fandom... The title was "the Furred Reich".
hah, had to look this up to make sure this was a real thing. But disagree on which is better, the Nerd Reich has a better ring to it. When you say the other one out loud it sounds like "deferred Reich".
It's cute but are there any actual nerds left in big tech leadership? Of the magnificent seven we basically only have Jensen Huang left as a technical leader and maybe you can count Zuckerberg.
> maybe you can count Zuckerberg
I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.
>his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding
a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.
My body is just the vehicle that carries my brain around - and my brain deserves a smooth, luxurious ride.
Your brain doesn't live in isolation, your body and the fitness of it are crucial to fueling that brain.
> Your brain doesn't live in isolation
Well, we can't completely prove that...[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
> a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.
Sure, I don't disagree. I just put that in to prevent people from claiming he was a jock now because of that (which would clearly be absurd).
The nerd/jock dichotomy is at best loosely pointing at some genuine clusters of interests and predilections that exist among people in the world, and is more often taking a set of tropes from 80s Hollywood movies about high school and using them to try to explain how real people in the world are today, which is stupid.
(Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms! Who acted in them? Theater kids!)
The jocks at my school (Championship Winners) were also simultaneously the smartest kids at it. Most went to Ivy Leagues on academic scholarships. I know a few of them were the first engineers on several well known unicorns.
The nerd/jock dichotomy is rooted in envy.
There is an unspoken presumption many people live believing that the various qualities people can have must be evenly divided among people, because somehow it would otherwise be “unfair”. Got brawn? Can’t have brains. Got X? Can’t have Y. Etc. It’s a coping strategy for weak people with big egos.
The fact is that in primary school, a “nerd” wasn’t necessarily all that “intelligent” even in some narrow sense. If you are inept at something or insecure about it, you might gravitate toward things that avoid it. So you invest time in that activity.
Of course, if the brain is the seat of intelligence, and the brain is just a part of the body, and an intelligent brain is a healthy brain, then it follows that a healthy body overall is more likely to have a healthy brain and thus an intelligent brain. Conpare this with the ancient expression “Mens sana in corpore sano”.
Life imitates art. The dichotomy is stronger than ever especially with the rise of incel rhetoric in mainstream circles.
Indeed. People who use this terminology in earnest have a maturity problem. It’s a juvenile way of classifying the world that silly people like to use to channel their petty resentments and envies. Time to grow up.
I couldn't care less about muscles but I do go to the gym 3 times a week.
My dad died from a heart attack in his fourties and my mom only has 30% lung capacity left thanks to smoking.
Your health always catches up with you and it's better to prevent trouble.
Google has some tendencies - Sundar Pichai was a materials engineer, Brin is back working there who considers himself a computer scientist. Maybe Hassabis - depends how you define it I guess.
Hassabis is absolutely a nerd. Joint honours physics and maths from Oxbridge and a PhD in neuroscience (and a Nobel prize in none of these fields).
His driving interest was always games (master standard in chess at 13, five-time winner of the all-round world board games championship, video game programmer in his teens then his own studio in his 20s).
He's the end game boss of nerdland.
Yeah but the dictionary has "intellectually passionate but socially awkward, or someone considered unstylish and lacking social skills". I think he might be a bit social.
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I thought it was super cool when a few years ago I found out that Eric Schmidt was the author of Lex! I struggled mightily with lex and yacc in college, but that was a me thing, I think.
When I watch Ex-machina the degree to which I loathed Oscar Isaac's character surprised me. While much of it was because the character was objectively loathsome, part of it was because I felt the type of person he represented was infecting the tech world.
The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'
Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.
It shouldn't matter whether the leaders are actual technical nerds. They are highly focused and motivated individuals who are harnessing tech for the stated purpose. Maybe this is by design and a coordinated movement - or maybe it is the inevitable consequence of uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism.
If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?
Carmack? Also ended up drifting right, but you can't fault his technical credentials.
Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".
Yeah, as I recall Carmack came out against some of the anti-trust actions of Lina Kahn, soecifically blocking certain type of acquisitions and mergers by big tech companies.
Though I'm curious what the take of "founders first" type of VCs like YC on the Figma IPO is, after the acquisition by Adobe was blocked. Whatever the stock price of Figma is now, would they specifically argue that of the two outcomes the Figma IPO was worse for the founders? To be clear, if that acquisition wasn't blocked the IPO wouldn't have happened.
One of the reasons I enjoy coming into HN. Is to read comments stating that the guy that created Facebook, alone in his dorm room, could “maybe“ be counted as a tech lead.
Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways.
Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or have a hard time believing it can actually be true.
Here is a list of credible persons commenting on Musk whether he understands engineering or not. With all the sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
The list is missing my #1 quote from Jim Keller (an epic engineer type) although unfortunately quote is in middle of a long YouTube vid. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33662764
Aside: I don't understand why they even mention what journalists think - only engineers opinions matter when judging engineering ability.
Middle of a long YT video is nothing: you can make links to auto seek to a specific place in YT video. When you share link on computer, it even allows you to check-a-box that will include timestamp within link
Or append &t=1h2m3s to the link to prevent writing long sentences on where to seek and save users from manual seeking :)
Maybe he used to be one, who knows. But I doubt he read a book or seen a movie in the past few decades. He got roasted by Joyce Carol Oates on X recently for being an oaf and he immediately started replying to tweets about acclaimed movies. And nothing insightful that proved he had seen them, just 'this is a great movie' or some other stupid oneliner. It would be hilarious if it wasnt so sad that the richest man on earth is such a pathetic little man.
I think Elon Musk just wants to be Tony Stark and cultivates the appropriate image for that.
And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.
A lot of people miss how much of a tit Tony Stark (at least the Robert Downey Jr. version) was.
Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Not good with anything interpersonal. Flair for the dramatic (and dad jokes) at the expense of those working with him.
Is there a difference? I mean, he may be Tony Stark to himself but end up an oppressor to others.
He thinks he's Tony Stark but he's actually Justin Hammer.
Musk is a complicated character. He's had nerdy times programing, fascist turns including the famous salute, emperor delusions - he was named after The Elon, a fictional ruler of Mars.
> Elon Musk must be one
Spoiler: He is not. But he is very good at faking it.
Anytime he tries to give a serious opinion on anything related to computers: It is laughably bad and out of touch (SQL, compilers, languages, performance, etc... ).
He definitively has a scientific background but definitively not "Tech" as far as computer are concerned.
I don’t see how “tech” is limited to software. While your case might be made for software, according to many accounts Musk is a strong driver on the hardware side. For instance, I’ve read the Tesla and SpaceX books by Eric Berger, which are much more focused on technical things compared to the more mainstream books. And while Musk is not in the trenches with a screwdriver, he’s not faking it either.
To be honest, I’m actually interested in this hypothesis: is he legitimately skilled/knowledgeable, or is he indeed faking it? And for either side I would like to see evidence. This question is interesting to me because some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
If he is really faking it, that might even be good, because the success of his companies might be replicable and could continue without him. But what if he is not?
> or is he indeed faking it ?
On a domain side to nerdery: video games. There is zero doubt he is faking it entirely.
The streams he publishes on game like PoE or Elden Ring, have been long commented on online boards
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1hwe0id/elo...
And honestly, I can understand it entirely.
He has a public image of "geek/need hero" that is honestly inspiring. And that benefits him a lot because it bring people to trust his decisions. He has all the interest of the world to maintain this image.
There was a podcast with Mark Andreesen, the VC, and he said that Elon has deep understanding and involvement in the technical side in his companies.
Wow if Marc Andreesen said then it must be true.
> some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
People he hired for these companies made contributions.
Can you elaborate how this relates to his own competency?
Unlike the more common pattern, Elon doesn't hesitate to make straight up engineering decisions for his businesses, including ones that look unnecessarily high risk to a lot of his own engineers. Chopsticks catching spaceships made of stainless steel and self driving cars without lidar are well known examples. The success of those choices earns him legit nerd cred.
Self-driving cars without LIDAR was a pure cynical business decision and hasn't worked well technically.
Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.
It must be a bit embarrassing having Waymo and Baidu cracking ahead with the driverless taxis while the Tesla ones still don't work well though.
If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human.
The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from.
It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) until the AI gets good enough.
No reason we can't rely on other sensory modalities after the AI "gets good enough," either. Humans don't have LIDAR, but that doesn't mean that LIDAR is a "cheat" for self-driving cars, or something we should try to move past.
In principle, I agree; but remember that people like to save money, and that includes by not spending on excessive sensors when the minimum set will do.
What I think went wrong with Musk/Tesla/FSD is that he tried to cut costs here to save money before it would actually save money.
It's safer than human drivers now. That's good enough. It will take more than that to convince world, and it should. I applaud the well earned skepticism. But I'm an old guy who has no problem qualifying for a driver's license, and if you replaced me with FSD 14.2, especially under not ideal conditions like at night or in a storm, everyone would be safer.
I predict a cusp to be reached in the next few years when safety advocates flip from trying to slow down self driving to trying to mandate it.
LIDAR provides dense point clouds from which you can derive geometry that Tesla's vision methods struggle to perceive.
(Subtle things, like huge firetrucks parked straight across the road.)
As far as physics is concerned (his initial background), he definitively is knowledgeable for a CEO yes.
Good example if anyone wants it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZslebJEZbE
It doesn't matter. He knows enough to be able to harness it for realising his worldview - and that is the problem.
> Elon was an enthusiastic reader of books, and had attributed his success in part to having read The Lord of the Rings, the Foundation series, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[11][28] At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual.[29] At age twelve, Elon sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500 (equivalent to $1,579 in 2024).[30][31]
I think it's fair to say he at least was a nerd. He was a dweeb getting beaten up in school, burying himself in books and computers at home. His skills are doubtlessly outdated now, but does that really mean much? Woz's skills (which to be perfectly clear, outclassed Musk's by miles) are doubtlessly out of date now too, but nobody would say Woz isn't a nerd.
I think the part where he grew into an unstable dirtbag might be influencing the way people see him now. Saying that is is, or at least was, a genuine nerd shouldn't be seen as any sort of excuse for his scamming, lying, etc.
He definitely has talked about a lot of nerdy books. Don't know about his attention span and not sure how to square what he likes with his values. He brings up the Culture all the time but I have my doubts that he's actually read them
I don't know either, I haven't read the Culture books (yet) either so I can't really evaluate that.
I do believe he read a lot of sci-fi in his youth, if only because that would fit the pattern of a young boy who doesn't get along well with their peers and turns towards solitary pursuits like computer programming. He seems exactly the sort to have read lots of Heinlein.
Almost everything about The Culture will be immediately apparent from stuff Musk talks about, but only about half of it would look like he's understood it.
The only real crimes are reading/writing someone's brain without permission (at which point others may call you names and stop inviting you to social events) or destroying a consciousness without backups (where you'll get permanent supervision to make sure you don't do it again). Most biological citizens have a full-brain computer interface for backups and general fun, called a "neural lace".
The AI Minds in charge of everything give themselves fanciful names, which Musk has used for his SpaceX drone ships.
For the reverse:
Almost every biological citizen is gender-fluid, can change physical gender by willing it, and there's a certain expectation that you try things both ways around so you know how to be a good lover. They dislike explosive population growth regardless of if it's organic or machine reproduction, and as everyone can get pregnant if they want to (because everyone can be a woman if they want to and it all works), it's considered quite scandalous to have more than one child.
It's sufficiently post-scarcity that money is considered a sign of poverty. They mostly avoid colonising planets, instead living on ships, or on habitats so large that if one was located at any Earth-Sun Lagrange point (including the one on the far side of the sun), we could see it.
He wrote and sold his first software aged 12. He may not be very good with computers but does have some nerd origin.
Elon Musk is probably one of the most cutthroat businessmen on the planet. His skills don't lie in technological implementation whatsoever.
Martin Eberhard was the technical co-founder of Tesla and Elon Musk is trying his best to erase his contributions to Tesla.
Eberhard and Tarpenning where the co-founders. Musk was an early investor, became the third CEO, and then sued to claim co-founder status.
Yeah there's an interesting interview with Eberhard https://youtu.be/88KHfX_kPIY?t=88
Eberhard wasn't that technical and was the CEO in the early years.
Yes. As far as business is concerned, facts speaks for themselves.
But that has nothing to do with the valley chips and computer nerdery
Except that he didn't invent any of it.
Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine.
His work was making a yelp clone.
He invented the very successful hyperloop.
He also successfully managed to invent a company that takes government contracts and fails to deliver to block momentum for public facilities.
(Boring company...)
I know it’s sarcasm but he didn’t event invent it… just promoted it to undermine high speed rails
Did you forget your /s ?
I guessed people would figure that.
Zuckerberg? The genius coder according to the movie. Programming in PHP.
Are you new? PHP was the standard for that type of app at the time.
And that was really bad, although Mark Zuckerberg himself can hardly be blamed for that.
Your point is 100% correct, but for the sake of our discourse please strive to be more polite!
I'd prefer you focus your attention elsewhere
There are numerous criticisms you can level at Zuckerberg, but writing the first version of Facebook in PHP is not one of them.
At the time your choices for dynamic server web apps were php or perl. The LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP or Perl) was very popular back then (early to mid 00s)
Classic example of humour as stop-think
You're replying to a single-sentence comment that both calls out the ridiculousness of this book's argument and its funny title. Clearly I can hold two ideas in my head at once and maybe, just maybe, other people can too.
I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.
Classic example of motivated reasoning as stop think. Condescend at your own peril.
As far as I knew I was agreeing with the commenter not condescending. The title is a great example of it's kind. It's funny enough to stop one interrogating the proposition it makes.
> "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg.
Lord William Rees-Mogg being the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, of Brexit fame.
Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereign_Individual : 1997, since I had to check.
> Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
Endemic problem in UK politics, and a lot of other countries.
I think it's lost on people outside of the UK - perhaps even to many inside the UK - just how strongly there is a class divide and a ruling elite. The old money is very old indeed
Indeed. You are literally likely to be in a better social class today if your ancestors were Normans conquerors rather than the Anglo-Saxon conquered.
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...
Actually, that 0.7 intergenerational correlation only tracks surnames—i.e., the male line. It completely ignores the fact that ~50% of the population changes status by marriage, which is invisible in surname analysis. Think about it: when a blacksmith’s daughter marries a baron, her social mobility doesn’t show up anywhere in the data. She just becomes part of the baron’s lineage going forward. So Clark has discovered that patrilineal dynasties persist with 0.7 correlation, and then presented this as if it were a measure of social mobility. It’s not. It’s a measure of surname mobility. If assortative mating across 500 years averaged something like 0.5 (plausible—people married outside their exact status all the time), the actual population-wide status persistence might be closer to 0.4 than 0.7. That’s… a completely different story about how stratified society actually was. But sure, “elites persist for centuries” makes for better book sales than “we measured half the mobility and ignored the other half.”
I think you're overestimating how far families married outwith their class. Given the scandal of Mrs Simpson or Ms Markle, how often do you think Barons married commoners? It's the stuff of fairy-tales.
Thanks that sounds fascinating. Will take a look
That's how and why they get published. Little names don't get in there. I haven't read the book so can't judge the content.
This is the book that introduced the idea of disaster capitalism - how to profit from other people's misery.
Formerly known as opportunism.
>democracy is being dismantled not by coups or tanks, but by code, capital, and the illusion of innovation
Not sure "code" belongs here. Even less sure about "illusion".
Take those away and what is left is "dismantled... by capital". Nothing new, really.
Code absolutely belongs there. Like any technology (be it printing presses, weapons, or algorithms) code is neutral by design, but not by impact.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
Does open source code count as "capital"? It also has a real and significant effect.
That's my point. Any tech can (and is) used for this. There's really no point in putting word "code" there. It adds very little additional context. Only in my opinion mostly serves the other goal - to sell.
You can argue the same for the capital that goes in. It’s used for what it’s used. By itself it’s neutral.
I don't think you can make this argument. Capital is neither neutral, nor a technology. Currency would at least satisfy one of those two. But capital is a broader concept that is pretty much by definition a form of power, and power's natural tendency is to lead to corruption.
Yes, but I think that questions like
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
are more interesting and worth asking.
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
>How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
This sentence applies to "code" as well as to "capital"
It’s a power distribution law. You can try to influence it artificially and suppress it to varying results.
It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?
And yet you can “just write some code” and weapons a generation of young men, and cause an incredible increase in depression in a generation of young women.
Pretending code has no direct and obvious impact is rank naivety.
By code doesn’t mean all code it just describes the modus operandi to distinguish them from the old type that used oil for instance
Again, this is my point: there's no real reason to distinguish them from the old types. :)
Have you heard about palantir ? Flock? Prism?
One day you're chasing terrorism, the next you're chasing ecologists, political opponents, unions, minorities, &c.
If we’re being honest, democracy, such as it is, is being dismantled by people. Code, capital, and illusion have no volition.
Code:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
It sounds like this book would be a good candidate for your reading list.
It would be great if you have tried to express yourself other than some weird implications.
The comment is sincere. You appear to disagree with the book’s argument prior to having heard it — a great candidate for a mind-opening read. If the book (once published) proves its premise, you’ll disproportionately benefit from the read. (I personally like it when a book stretches my existing conceptions.)
I thing you might have misunderstood me.
I do not disagree with the book's argument. I'm just pointing out (or rather expressing my doubt) that the word "code" brings no additional context to the sentence.
As others (and I) rightfully noted - code and modern tech does make things cheaper and easier, but this can be said about all advances.
The "nerd reich" is not possible without code, code is not possible without computers, computers are not possible without abacus etc.
As I see it the word "code" sells this book better than, say, "taxes". Because taxes are boring and obvious.
The purpose of software is to reduce the cost of change.
Of course “code” belongs here.
I take parent's meaning to be that "code" is redundant in the repetition not blameless.
Yes, thank you.
And how did they get those capital, for instance the CEO of Meta?
And isn’t social media that prefers rage over information a danger to democracy?
>And how did they get those capital, for instance the CEO of Meta?
This is the right question.
I'll quote myself here:
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).
Same goes for political influence.
>Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
You absolutely can. Tiny tweaks to social media feeds - what content gets promoted, what gets hidden - have massive impacts on opinions, votes, and society.
And why not code? Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code? The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities, as is the case even in a number of tinpot dictatorships in the developing world.
>Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code?
Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.
>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) would disagree.
Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.
Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.
My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.
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It is being dismantled by those who claim that the public can't have a say but that we should go to "official sources" (government appointed) or "trusted sources" (their pals) to avoid misinformation. This isn't capitalist driven (the standard Marxist line) because this system limits profits and maximalises government control.
Most of the real democracy dismantling attempts in the world seem more along the lines of the Russians centuries old effort to have everything loyal to the Tzar, including Trump.
There's a youtube interview with the author here https://youtu.be/FWjR6_qYJAw?t=44
A lot seems about Curtis Yarvin and fans thereof.
Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world.
When conditions change, cracks appear..
For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place.
The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it’ll be less leg room on flights, more “offers” when you just opened your banking app to pay a bill, and more sanctioned spam in your inbox.
I truly believe plenty of folks are fed up and a backlash is coming that’ll be a mix of legislation and companies emerging that cater to informed customers. I’m optimistic!
> Unfettered capitalism is great under certain conditions. Amazing things get invented & rolled out to the world.
That's a really naive take, for you to enjoy this "ideal capitalism" there are hundred thousands of people who've been seeing and feeling these cracks for decades if not centuries, it's just slowly reaching your neck of the woods
Problem is not with nerds or Silicon Valley, even if Thiel is a lunatic. Problem are, and always were, obscenely wealthy people destroying the society that created them. In the world where greed is not considered sin anymore, or even a character flaw, they don't even need to pretend anymore.
Crazy to live in a time less moral than the robber baron age. That said, our society made a joke of children making our shoes in miserable conditions, so we have been conditioning ourselves to be ok with this on our own and for a long time.
What's the actual factual accusation here? That monied interests converge on the ruling power? How is this different when the 'opposition' is in control? As conditions for the middle class continue to deteriorate, isn't it normal that companies that depend on middle class purchasing power try to adjust government buttons and levers to assure their continuation and position in the market? The 'holier than thou' is showing.
Is there a HN convention for links to books?
This book appears to be available only for preorder now, not yet published. Nobody here has read it, nobody here can read it, and even if they could, this submission will disappear off the front pages before commenters have a chance to order and read the book. Thus the comments section here is going to be useless (or at least more useless than usual).
I wanted to disagree then checked the release date. It’s August of 2026. Really early to be discussing this.
Perhaps a link to the author's website and podcast would be more appropriate?
https://www.thenerdreich.com/
I don't know what happened to this website but stuff like this keeps hitting the front page more and more often despite having close to zero value. It feels like SEO spam to me.
Yes, the bad link given here doesn't do the content justice, whatever your opinion would be. It would've been better to link to one of the author's articles on the Nerd Reich website (or something more substantive like his newsletter content). I'm assuming you're talking about the link itself as opposed to the content of the book or topic in general.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363
Except there's nothing to discuss because the book is not released. Is HN about "awareness" now? Why not come back in 2026 when the book is actually released and people can actually talk about the contents of the book?
This is not a Show HN, just a link. Users engage if they want, and a lot of them wanted.
Very good question - posted it for awareness / sparking hopefully nuanced “are we the baddies here?” reflection in the community, and curious folks to preorder.
The comments section here is a phenomenal expository of biases, for the very reason you cite.
I would assume by default that billionaires are politically active and causing a problem. However this link doesn't give a lot of hints about how or wherefore. I assume this is a jab at Thiel; but it is a bit light on in the synopsis department.
There are a huge number of threats to democracy and the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter. It is a real problem and a bigger one than some billionaire or even the consensus of the billionaires. Sometimes voters and capital come into actual conflict and generally the voters tend to win Pyrrhic victories when that happens.
1. Consider preordering the book if you're already reacting to part of its premise; it should be a juicy read.
2. Regarding the power of billionaires vs the power of the median voter, consider that each lever in a system deserves attention before pulling on it or reconfiguring it. How can one determine "the biggest threat to democracy" without digging into the details?
> the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter.
Hard disagree.
The biggest problem is a misinformed electorate.
An accurate, honest and truthful press is vital for democracy; how else do people know whom to vote for! The fact this is being dismantled (often supplying deliberate misinformation) is truly worrying.
After all, the electorate is entitled to have a lack of principles and no common sense; nobody ever said democracy was perfect. However the electorate needs to be provided with an honest set facts on which they can base their decisions without cries of "fake news". Whatever their political leanings.
I don't know if you will find a time in US history where the press was accurate, honest, and truthful.
I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.
I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.
> I don't know if you will find a time in US history where the press was accurate, honest, and truthful.
1) Spare us the US defaultism!
2) If we are going to make this conversation about the USA, didn't US broadcast media have a 'fairness doctrine' that was abolished some years back? Hence the growth in outlets providing heavily biased dishonest news on broadcast media? I suggest this has driven much of the popular rhetoric of which you speak.
Frankly, every country has seen a growth in biased social media "news" sources regardless as to the broadcast media fairness doctrines that still exist in those countries. Deliberate misinformation and a lack of trust in journalism is real.
The topic is Silicon Valley fascism, this isn't the crusade to fight USA defaultism.
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I think it's simpler,money has no Color, no religion.
Silicon valley just happened to reside next to the hippies in the first decades
Now it goes beyond money: they are aiming at shaping societies. From mars colonies (imagine musks tantrums when they vote him out) to project 2025 type of political works.
When you have too much money, it's kinda boring to keep making more of them. You want self-expression to the max extent the society will allow you.
I don't think those pass the sniff test, but grand narratives help to fuel the stocks and invesment bubble
So why would it take off there instead of in a larger city with more resources?
I'm not disagreeing with you completely, but I would like to know more about what other factors you would consider to have been more impactful. I don't know that you really need hippies around to get that kind of 'california capitalist' mentality either tbf.
It won the transistor lottery, then the money oiled the machine.
Recent events prove that there was nothing ideological about it. Once a positive feedback loop is established, it's difficult to break
My cousin suddenly has been very captured and obsessed by an area of opinion I didn’t have a name for, fixed money supply, all inflation inherently bad, Elon Musk is badly treated, longer government terms (which sounds reasonable initially until you actually think about just having LESS democracy), no minimum wage. After some research it’s definitely coming from influencers linked to the SV techno feudalists - it’s just such a strong change. But you realise real power is only useful if people can come along with you - if you can build support with the public…
Sounds loosely libertarian, but the longer terms one is new. Its long appealed to technical folks because of its simplicity and ability to address a wide swath of policy issues.
It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, thats another impractical ideology under the hood, dressed up as something more meaningful.
I know it's fashionable to say that democracy itself leads to these outcomes that destroy democracy. I think Arendt was right about self-colonization and overproduction of elites being the main thing that leads to totalitarianism. There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years. Power corrupts, but that's distinct from an argument that the systems which created it in this case should be replaced by systems that funnel power in other ways.
There's some complaints about this book not being out, but Arendt's book has been out since 1963 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Banality... and is highly regarded reading on this subject.
> Power corrupts
It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it.
But it definitely attracts those corrupted.
It does, by its very nature. Power is not magic, nor is it the Force. It's not a quantity you can stockpile and own - power is leased, it's granted to you by other people. It comes with expectations on how you will wield that power, and usually can be taken away just as quickly as it was granted, if you exercise it in ways they don't approve[0].
Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.
--
[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.
You don't believe that there are people who honored a principle until temptation became to strong? Only people who pursued the temptation?
False dichotomy; power is not a stockpilable quantity, it comes from other people and their willingness to defer to you or entertain you. Compromising is not a temptation to get power quicker - compromise is power, it's how you acquire it. The more you want to lean on the system to help you, the more aligned you need to be with it, eventually becoming one with it; you sacrifice autonomy at every step of the way.
Whenever I heard that expression I have never perceived people to mean "so don't obtain power". More like, "if you do get power be careful". Or "even if he seems like a nice guy, we should maintain a separation of powers".
Like it's more a force than a destiny. Gravity pulls the moon down every day yet it doesn't fall on our heads.
> There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years.
It's less wildly successful as a political entity than Christianity or Islam.
I'm not talking about the number of impoverished converts or believers. In terms of prosperity and global power, no religion or former empire has come close.
> There wouldn't even be such a thing as a silicon valley billionaire if the United States wasn't the most wildly successful political entity for the past 2000 years.
I don’t know that I would position the USA in this way.
Different metrics lead to different “winners”:
Longevity: Imperial China
Institutional legacy: Rome
Global reach: British Empire
Scientific/cultural transmission: Islamic Caliphates
Modern dominance: United States
Another lens:
* Rome & China = stability, governance, internal cohesion.
* Britain & the US = networks, capital markets, technology leverage.
* Caliphates = knowledge platforms, cosmopolitan integration.
Nerds who were bullied at school and weren't picked in gym class style themselves the new SS.
I would not call these people "nerds", many are entitled bros (gals?) with rather rich parents. If you look at many of their family history, their parents are well into the upper middle class, borderline rich. In most cases, they went to the best schools.
It just so happens, tech is were the real money is now. If this was 40+ years ago, they would have ended up on Wall Street or Madison Avenue.
In less than a page, they call it feudalism, fascism, and capital(ism) / corporate rule. Mussolini in his manifesto explicitly defined the 2nd in opposition to the 3rd among other things, and even Marx considered the 1st and the 3rd to be very distinct. Of course the 1st and the 2nd are also quite different.
So which one is it? Oh wait, it's a modern progressive, "calling everything I don't like every bad name I remember from high school history"! Are they also nativist globalists and authoritarian libertarians? I bet they are!
I'm no historian, but has there ever been a society in world history that wasn't dominated by a 'privileged few'?
Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?
As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.
The United States from 1945 to about 1970 made a fair amount of noise about broadening the scope of the franchise. This certainly was not the norm historically, but contemporary ambivalence about that project is what leads us to this article today.
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Fascism is a form of ultranationalism based on a myth of national rebirth (“we must purge decadence and be born again”), which seeks to create a new, regimented society through authoritarian power and mass mobilization, often embracing violence.
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Facism is a very appealing form of organizing society, so no surprise that people would like to have it. The same way many europeans though that facism is an answer to many problems of those times.
But wait, why, beyond shallow demonisation, such seemingly great idea could be considered undesired? Thoughts?
How is fascism even slightly appealing?
Violence and chaos for anyone with "wrong" ideas, or friends, or genealogy. One man dictating your life choices and options. State control of quite literally everything you do, with the threat of violence and death as their tool.
Fuck. That.
I think a good comparison would be the word "puritan". At one point puritanism was an existing social movement that mattered, and lead to a lot of upheaval.
But the context in which it existed is gone. So if someone calls someone a puritan now, they don't mean they're trying to rid the Church of England of catholic influences. The reformation is over. It's now a fuzzier kind of "cultural" insult.
I think people are finding hard to let the word "fascist" go. For so long you could use it to immediately put people on the defensive. But much like puritan, the sting is basically all gone. Hard for people to grasp here as I know this place trends older and more left wing, but time marches on.
“Puritan” retains meaning beyond its historical context, since it was originally a descriptive term that became a term for a specific movement. “Fascist” does not, because it doesn’t have a (useful) descriptive meaning, it was only ever a symbol for a specific ideology.
For a more rigorous definition than “things I don’t like”, there’s Umberto Eco’s core characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Funny how points 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14 and often also 2 and 13 are fundamental for rhetoric of the modern "progressive" left. Thank you for the link. It's the best thing to send to those who are too quick to call their opponents fascists these days.
Fascism is a well defined ideology. RIP to your bizarre comment.
>The word "fascist" now has positive connotations for me
Spoken like somebody who never had to endure real fascism.
>I realise a lot of you will want to call me fascist for this comment, or more likely something a bit snider and less direct. Just know that I genuinely don't care. It's just a word now.
No, you may not be a fascist, but it's opinions like yours that helped make it possible. Mitläufer.
Mitläufer
The English phrase you are looking for would be "fellow traveller".
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Anything that is a millimeter to the left in US politics, which happens to still be considered right in the rest of the world, gets immediately coined as left wing activists.
This may have been true in the 80's but it is no longer the case. Left wing politics and whatever nutty ideas this faction produces is now more extreme than its counterpart in Europe. It is as if US lefties have taken the 'everything is bigger in the USA' mantra and applied it to their utopian ideologies. State-run grocery stores? The whole 'DEI/DIE' bureaucra[c/z]y? The aggressive way in which gender ideology is being forced upon those too young to realise they're being bamboozled? Only in the U.S.A...
Gender ideology has nothing to do with left wing (outside of the US). The gender pay gap has tho
I use the term progressive as a slur for the idiots who think communism is good and capitalism is evil (posted from their iPhones at Starbucks).
There is a middleground between communism and late stage capitalism.
One of them being, not end on the street because one cannot afford to pay their healthcare.
Which from US politics point of view makes the rest of the world communist.
Right wing activists working with and within government (think taxation, immigration, housing, environment, race, gender) have made a mess of government and society, and are calling anyone who criticizes the current mess as far radical left. This is stupid and dangerous, but an obvious deflection from the root cause, concervatives who have made quality of life worse prompting an angry reaction that threatens their power.
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The phrases constructed by your pattern don't bring any clarity, ability to distinguish one from another. It's pure flow of emotion and abstraction which would work only among same-way-thinkers. Good for groups bonding, bad for any communication outside of the group.
You use universally true patterns without even realizing that.
Right wing? In Canada, UK, and many other western nations?
I am not interested in US politics, but if you don't think the current government is not a REACTION to past governments and actions(the summer of love riots of 2020, remember that?), I don't know what to say.
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Thiel is probably the most obvious example, being explicitly anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian. Musk is also known for endorsing fringe far-right views and activists. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more such attitudes in the SV elite, but the rest of them are better at self-regulating.
Musk was literally campaigning for the German right wing nationalist party.
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Are you talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
It looks like nothing actually happened...
Thats what they want people to believe. In the same time industry titans in the US like Ford where funding the ascencion of the nazi regime because they feared what happeing in Russian, without properly understanding the context that make possible the revolution to occour in there.
NOw they pack the "revolution" in a neat way to sell people the impression they are revolting against a system at the same time they sell fear for them to give up righs in the name of safety.
I think it's both. For sure Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and others all have some extremely out there beliefs, lots of power, a desire to wield it, and connections to POTUS and the vice president who both seem to be about gaining and wielding as much power as possible.
I haven't read the book but I've read some stuff on a website of the same name, and the way it ties it all together felt very tinfoil hat to me. I think these guys all mutually tolerate each other's insanity in their common lust for ever more power and insatiable egos.
>I haven't read the book
Has anyone? It's got an August 2026 publication date. Is there even a first draft?
> Has anyone? It's got an August 2026 publication date. Is there even a first draft?
I'd guess the book is an expanded version of the blog. (Which I don't recommend - I do think this is conspiracy theory territory and of negative value.)
Look at who was and is consulting the President or paying for his vanity projects, judge for yourself.
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My heart goes out to you.
It's just the classic of people with a whole lot of money getting what they want from the government, only boosted by the fact that for the previous decade and a half the left has legitimized political action from corporations since it benefited them, as platforms were largely left-leaning. Now the boot is finally on the other foot and panic ensues.
Can't say I like it, but it has been my position from the very start that this would happen, and as such I'm fresh out of sympathy.
Don't like it? Build your own Silicon Valley.
It's at least a little bit amusing that, five or ten years ago, if you opposed big corporate tech allying with government to impose undemocratic political programs, then you were a fascist, while all good thinkers supported that partnership. Only to have that valence switch on a dime when the context changed.
If the Left (and the Right, for that matter) want to make durable political change, they really need coherent theory beyond who's the Bad Guy of the moment.
LMGTFO:
...singling out ennemies of the Reich... https://www.google.com/search?q=thiel+antichrist
...democracy aiming to be a fair competition of ideas... https://www.google.com/search?q=thiel+competition+is+for+los...
Some starting points for you: Curtis Yarvin, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Balaji Srinivasan, TESCREAL, The Californian Ideology.
This is real. Gil Duran is extremely well respected among those of us who are against the fascist takeover of Silicon Valley, which has been well-documented for quite some time.
Not trying to say that you or Gil Duran is wrong, but any anti vaxxer or flat earther can say the same about their "theory" and their well respected writers.
Fair point so let me qualify that. Among the fairly mainstream US left, who have put significant work into documenting and pushing back against the rise of tech oligarchs, Gil Duran is well respected.
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Are you familiar with Curtis Yarvin, and his influence with Thiel, JD Vance etc? He absolutely advocates for monarchy and dismantling democracy. He's also, if we are to judge his extensive writing, very much a racist
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...
I'm not saying that none of the Silicon Valley oligarchs have some fascist sympathies. But this book is generalizing over all of Silicon Valley.
Fair. Though Thiel has outsized influence in that sphere, so it is significant even if not universal
Have you read Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-fascism per chance? The dictator bit comes later, if it comes at all. Eco made 14 points that let you detect fascism - the higher the score, the higher the chance of a fascist regime being established.
It makes for a stunning read https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the.... Brett Deveraux (historian) once tried to match US society to those 14 points with the expected result: the US matches all 14. He wrote on his blog about it here: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
Well this is exactly what I mean with inflation of the term fascism. Surely there are lots of things wrong in US society, and surely some of them can be seen as part of a fascist society. But really this is nothing compared to self declared fascist regimes such as Franco, Mussolini or Hitler.
Yes the current Trump regime is trying to suppress other opinions, sometimes quite openly. But luckily there is still plenty of room in the US to criticize the sitting president. What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?
"What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?"
In what year? 1933? 1937? 1945?
People conflate Nazi Germany with murderous, full-borne authoritarianism, but it took a decade to actually get there. They were just as much fascists at the start as at the end -- it's just that their ideology had room to fully metastasize.
Not true. Long before Hitler rose to power, the militant section of his movement, the SA, was already physically attacking political opponents. That started in the early 20's.
When he finally became head of the government, in 1933, that violence immediately became much more official: the SA was officially deputized as 'Hilfspolizei' and attacks on e.g. communists became legalized. In that same year the first concentration camps were established.
> I see no support per se for a dictatorial leader, or for strong regimentation of society
Everyone who donated to the Trump inauguration knew what they were buying into, and it has definitely delivered troops-on-the-streets fascism.
It seems nicer than the Woke Reich
Say what you want about "woke" (assuming you can define it), but its worst excesses were curbed by democratic elections.
What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?
Do you mean that the things like annulling the elections when the "wrong" candidate won [1] or barring the opposition candidates from running [2],[3] are not the worst excesses?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen
Do you have any less scandal-laden examples, or is this all of it?
Are these "woke" or just "events that negatively impacted far-right candidates"?
Le Pen is a particularly egregious example, given it's an embezzlement conviction and not some kind of "too racist" penalty or whatever we're imagining
Enjoy your subjugation!
This exact thought is the human death drive externalized and is responsible for a lot of human misery in the world. Shame on those who unironically believe it.
The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.
It's been 10 years, and I have still yet to hear any two people define "woke" the same.
It’s been 10 years and I have still yet to ear anyone on the far left defining what is a woman without using the very word “woman”.
Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed.
The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism.
I’ve seen how that game plays out: and it’s not pretty.
This is far more similar to Communism than Fascism. Their mentality is that they are a scientific vanguard (like Marxism) and that the ends justify the means. They also share the binary thinking of Marxists. They part company with Fascism because most of them are internationalist.
MAGA spam bot?
Go read some books first.
As Marx so famously wrote, all the wealth earned by the people should be concentrated into the hands of a few chosen elites.