The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 186 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Andreessen: Social Reform Activists Are Driven by Greed and Power, Not Empathy
“They're neither empathetic nor, nor, nor are they suicidal, right? Rather quite the opposite. They're hateful and they're greedy. You know, they're sort of self-aggrandizing and gathering a power of resources for themselves.”
Andreessen: Paul Thomas Anderson's new film is 'Antifa the movie'
“Arguably, it is kind of salient to our times, because I think if you were to retitle the movie, you would just title it Antifa the movie. Like, it's, like, it's like a full-throated celebration of basically violent social change, violent social revolution, lik…”
Andreessen: Corporate HR parallel control structures mirror Soviet governance
“I do think we, I would say, big companies, large institutions have backed into a system that actually is very reminiscent of how the Soviets used to run things with respect to this kind of parallel control structure.”
Andreessen: The EU is determined to place blanket bans on capitalism
“The EU seems absolutely determined to ban everything to sort of put a blanket ban on capitalism and within that ban AI and ban energy.”
Andreessen: Strongly supports the federal execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
“Anyway, I am strongly pro the execution of the Rosenbergs.”
Andreessen: Consumers who use weak passwords should be held legally liable
“Consumers like who use bad passwords, like ought to be held liable for the consequence. Like consumers at some point, like at some point as an adult, you learn that when you leave your house at night, you lock the door, right? Consumers at some point are going…”
Andreessen: Companies Can No Longer Get Favorable Stories in Traditional Media
“There is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're gonna like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible.”
Andreessen: Legacy Media Has Lost Its Prestige and Respectability
“There's still this anxiety that people have, which is legacy media somehow is, like, where the respectability is, the prestige is. I don't believe that anymore, and I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system.”
Andreessen: Every major Silicon Valley company is overstaffed
“Every major Silicon Valley company is overstaffed.”
Andreessen: Corporations do not optimize for profitability
“The one thing that is the least true claim in the world is the companies are optimized for profitability, which is 100% not true.”
Andreessen: Press hates AI with the fury of a thousand suns
“What is the, you know, vanguard of tech right now? And one of the things is AI. And so the, of course, the press hates AI with the fury of a thousand suns. And so the press is running this, you know, sustained, you know, kind of fear campaign on AI.”
Andreessen: East Coast newspapers are a biased information source for Washington
“A fair amount of our cons are actually aimed at Washington because again, it's like if you're a policymaker in Washington, and you're sitting there 3003 thousand miles away, and your entire information source is like East Coast newspapers that hate Silicon Val…”
Andreessen: Hollywood creators avoided political themes fearing career destruction
“These are all the hot button issues that if you screwed them up, you, in, in Hollywood, you got your career destroyed, right? So if you said the wrong thing about COVID lockdowns or vaccines, if you said the wrong thing about Trump, if you said the wrong thing…”
Andreessen: European regulation has made AI illegal, pushing talent to the US
“Europe has basically made AI illegal. Like, they're regulating themselves to death. And so the smart AI people in Europe are moving to the US.”
Andreessen: European regulatory frenzy is killing its tech sector
“Europe, Europe persists in shooting itself, not just in the foot, but in the other foot and in the ankle and in the knee and in the gut. And they're just on this absolute frenzy to regulate and kill, you know, tech in Europe”
Marc Andreessen claims extreme progressives dominate most AI companies except Elon Musk's
“Yes, I think the demographic estimate is something like seven percent of Americans are like these sort of extreme progressives, which basically is the AI, you know, most of the AI companies except for, you know, maybe except for Elon. And so you've got seven p…”
Andreessen: Corporate brands as a concept are on their way out
“And so I think, I, I'm sort of a radical, and so I think the whole idea of, like, corporate brands is basically just, like, it just, it kind of they're on their way out. Like, it's just, as a concept, it just doesn't make sense in the new media environment.”
Andreessen: Mid-Sized VC Firms Offer No Fundamental Value Proposition
“What's the point Of having a department store, right? Of having a sort of mid-sized firm. And I, and the answer is, by the way, there's no point. Like there, for the same reason, there's no point to department store. There's no point to the mid-sized firm for …”
Andreessen: Government debanking of tech startups is extra-legal and unconstitutional
“So yeah, so it's basically a, the way I think about the debanking is it's a sort of an extra legal, unconstitutional you know, completely outside the bounds of any law or constitutional provision. It's the government. Applying pressure. The government regulato…”
Andreessen: Restricting AI innovation is cosmic self-harm for the US
“Like put ankle weights around our own feet. That is the way to basically snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in a way that I, that's a level of self-harm that would be so cosmic. I mean, quite frankly, if we do that, we deserve to lose.”
Andreessen: Americans should be allowed to buy $20k Chinese electric vehicles
“The truth is like, you know, Americans, Americans ought to be able to buy a car that costs 20,000 dollars. And is that good? And of course it'd be great if they could buy it from an American company, but if they can't, they should be able to buy it from a Chin…”
Andreessen: US government is hindering Elon Musk from fighting Chinese automakers
“The guy who, you know, has the highest odds of fighting off the, you know, the Chinese and the U S auto market is of course, you know, Elon is being tortured to death by his own government.”
Andreessen: Cultural obsession with safetyism and speech suppression infected AI
“A lot of this sort of quote, unquote, AI safety movement kind of has gotten wrapped around the axle on this. And, you know, and look, this like correlates to the whole kind of obsession in the last decade in the, in our culture with, you know, safetyism and so…”
Andreessen: Monopolies stop innovating and destroy innovation
“Monopolies stop innovating. Monopolies are just death to innovation because as you like to say, the motto of any monopoly is we don't I don't care because we don't have to.”
Andreessen: Defense prime contractors function primarily as political lobbying operations
“The whole industry is consolidated down to a small number of very large companies that are basically, basically they're large scale political lobbying operations.”
Andreessen: AI incumbent lobbyists exist today because the internet was open
“Again, ironically, and some, and to your point, ironically, some of the companies that are lobbying hardest for regulatory capture and cartel, you know, kind of government cartel status for AI are companies that exist today because the internet was open.”
Andreessen opposes locking down AI models, cheering on open jailbreaks
“The last thing I want is these things locked down. Like, I want these things to be out there, like, doing all kinds of crazy stuff.”
Andreessen: Proprietary corporate data is not a defensible AI moat
“And so your proprietary data as, you know, company X will be a little bit useful on the margin, but it's not actually going to move the needle. And it's not really going to be a barrier to entry in most cases.”
Andreessen: Remote work productivity loss is a fake problem
“My view is that's actually a fake problem. That, that, that the real problem was they weren't working hard to begin with. And they were goofing off 20 hours a week in the office already. And so yeah, they're goofing off at home, but they were goofing off in th…”
Andreessen: Big tech HR drives political and social agenda
“At a lot of companies, including a lot of big tech companies, it's HR has a charter to basically drive political and social change and enforce that change. Very broadly inside the organization, right?”
Andreessen: Bashing China and Big Tech are Washington's only unifying issues
“Look, if there's a unifying issue, there's basically two unifying issues in Washington. One is they don't like China and the other is they don't like big tech. And so, you know, this is a winnable war. Like, this is a winnable war on behalf of startups and ope…”
Andreessen: Post-hoc detection of AI-generated content will not work
“Our view as, you know, I would say both technologists and investors in the space is that the methods of attack of detecting AI generated content after the fact are basically not gonna work. And they're not gonna work because AI is already too good at doing thi…”
Andreessen: Major AI companies are security Swiss cheese
“You're not gonna lock this stuff up. Like you're not gonna lock it up. Nobody's locking it up. It's not locked up. These companies are security Swiss cheese.”
Andreessen: Biden AI order enabled 15 regulatory agencies to claim oversight
“You, the issue with it, my, you know, people have different opinions. My opinion on it, the issue of it is it kind of greenlit, you know, essentially 15 different regulatory agencies to basically put AI under their purview in sort of undefined ways.”
Andreessen: Anti-progress forces control universities, government agencies, and the press
“There is a pretty active campaign in the other direction and, you know, that, that campaign has taken hold of a lot of universities, a lot of government agencies you know, a lot of the power structure of the people who get to decide whether things are legal. T…”
Andreessen: A huge percentage of scientific studies are fake results
“A very large percentage of the studies in the last 50 years don't replicate. They're basically fake results.”
Andreessen: Homelessness non-profits financially benefit from worsening homelessness
“If you're a homelessness nonprofit, do you make money by actually solving homelessness or having to be there, Be more of it, right? You make money by having there be more of it. You feed the problem.”
Andreessen: Public K-12 schools are run for teachers' unions, not students
“Specifically there, it's the teachers, you know, they, you know, it's moderate, I don't think it's controversial to say moderate K through 12 systems run primarily for the teachers and specifically for the teacher unions, which are tremendously politically pow…”
Andreessen: Productivity gains and price cuts render inequality debates irrelevant
“These effects of technology driving up the marginal productivity of the worker and therefore driving up income while simultaneously driving down the prices of goods and services is just these two factors are so massive and increasing quality of life. That all …”
Andreessen: Banning civilian nuclear power was the biggest policy mistake of my lifetime
“I think the single biggest policy mistake of my lifetime was the decision in the seventies, effectively in the seventies into the eighties to ban, essentially ban civilian nuclear power.”
Andreessen: Increasing population generates more ideas to solve resource scarcity
“The answer is to actually put the pedal forward, more people, more ideas, more solutions. And, you know, yes, clearly that's that I agree with him in that argument.”
Andreessen: The U.S. higher education system is a self-regulated cartel
“The college system in the US is a cartel and, you know, it's quite literally a self-regulated cartel by virtue of the fact that it requires, it's on the sort of federal student loan drug to work financially and then the accreditation agencies that determine wh…”
Andreessen: Einstein and Oppenheimer willfully ignored Soviet communist atrocities
“And unfortunately, you know, the history of this is, is that, you know, Einstein and Oppenheimer and others basically chose to ignore the information and they chose to buy into a system sort of past the point that, you know, for at least for people as smart as…”
Andreessen: Utilitarian ethics have dangerously infected modern intellectual elites
“Utilitarianism has become very trendy among our current intellectual elite, who has gotten very fond of sitting on Mount Olympus and making these calls and deciding, you know, which eggs you break to make an omelet, and, like, I think that's a bad road.”
Andreessen: Media panic over AI existential risks is ridiculously overcooked
“And then, you know, on the other side of it, if you, like, read about this in the media or follow the public conversation, there's just this, like, horrifying, basically, you know, sort of onslaught of, like, fear and panic and hysteria about how this is, like…”
Andreessen: Incumbents push AI regulatory capture to create cartels and block startups
“And then quite honestly, also, you know, a set of people who I think are trying to take advantage of this and trying to go for, you know, regulatory capture and try to basically establish a cartel and, you know, try to basically choke off innovation as startup…”