With a bit of luck, we might soon get a Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques who will weigh in on the other side of this, which should help even out the "holiness." From a morality/virtue perspective, I favor the bone-saw guy: he seems generally less preachy.
The Pope is a remarkably wise and helpful man. He offered us some wisdom.
Yes, he is generally playing on easy mode by saying straightforwardly true things, but that’s meeting the world where it is. You have to start somewhere.
Some rejected his teachings.
Wisdom Is Offered
Two thousand years after Jesus famously got nailed to a cross for suggesting we all be nice to each other for a change, Pope Leo XIV issues a similarly wise suggestion.
The one in particular who had an issue with the Pope’s statement is exactly the one you would guess: Marc Andreessen.
The Context of The Meme Andreessen Used (If You Don’t Know)
For those who aren’t aware of the image, my understanding of the image below, its context and its intended meaning is it is a selected-to-be-maximally-unflattering picture of GQ features director Katherine Stoeffel, from her interview of Sydney Sweeney, to contrast with Sydney Sweeney looking in command and hot.
During the otherwise very friendly interview, Stoeffel asked Sweeney a few times in earnest fashion about concerns and responses around her ad for jeans, presumably showing such ilk that she is woke, and Sweeney notes that she disregards internet talk, doesn’t check for it and doesn’t let it get to her, and otherwise dodged artfully at one point in particular, really excellent response all around, thus proving to such ilk she is based.
Also potentially important context I haven’t seen mentioned before: Katherine Stoeffel reads to me in this interview as having autistic mannerisms. Once you see the meme in this light you simply cannot unsee it or think it’s not central to what’s happening here, and it makes the whole thing another level of not okay and I’m betting other people saw this too and are similarly pissed off about it.
Not cool. Like, seriously, don’t use this half of the meme.
It’s not directly related, but if you do watch the interview, notice how much Sydney actually pauses to think about her answers, watch her eye movements and willingness to allow silence, and also take her advice and leave your phone at home. This also means that in the questions where Sydney doesn’t pause to think, it hits different. She’s being strategic but also credibly communicating. The answer everyone remembers, in context, is thus even more clearly something she had prepped and gamed out.
Here for reference is the other half of the meme, from the interview:
Andreessen Takes Bold Stand Against Moral Discernment
Yes, I do think ‘you should probably be a good person’ in the context of a Pope is indeed against everything that Marc Andreessen stands for, straight up.
Is that an ‘uncharitable’ take? Yes, but I am confident it is an accurate one, and no this type of systematic mockery, performative cruelty, vice signaling and attempted cyberbullying does not come out of some sort of legitimate general welfare concern.
Marc Andreessen centrally has a strong position on cultivating moral discernment.
Which is the same as his position on not mocking those who support morality or moral discernment.
Which is that he is, in the strongest possible terms, against these things.
Tech World Decides Performative Cruelty May Have Gone Too Far
It turns out that yes, you can go too far around these parts of Twitter.
It is as heartening to see pro-tech new media say this out loud as it is disheartening to realize that it needed to be said out loud.
A reasonable number of people finally turned on Marc for this.
The Avatar of Societal Decay
Jeremiah Johnson considers Marc Andreessen as an avatar for societal delay as he goes over the events discussed in this section.
I mean, yeah, fair. That’s distinct from his ‘get everyone killed by ASI’ crusades, but the same person doing both is not a coincidence.
Marc’s Technical Takes And Arguments Also Are Not Good
And no, he doesn’t make up for this with the quality of his technical takes, as Roon says he has been consistently wrong about generative AI.
As a reminder, here is Dwarkesh Patel’s excellent refutation to Marc Andreessen’s ‘why AI will save the world, its name calling and its many nonsensical arguments. Liron Shapira has a less measured thread that also points out many rather terrible arguments that were made and then doubled down upon and repeated.
Marc’s position really has reliably been, as explicitly stated as the central thesis of The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, that technological advancement is always universally good and anyone who points to any downside is explicitly his ‘enemy.’
The Best Defense
There were a few defenders, and their defenses… did not make things better.
That is very much not what happened here, sir. Nor was it about joking about the pope. This was in no way about ‘free speech,’ or about lighthearted joking, it was about being performatively mean and hostile to the very idea of responsibility, earnestness or goodness, even in the theoretical. And it was about the systematic, intentional conflation of hostility with such supposed joking.
(Perhaps the deleted AI video of the pope was funny? I don’t know, didn’t see it.)
Marc nuked several full days of posts in response to all this, which seems wise. It’s a good way to not have to make a statement about exactly what you’re deleting, plays it safe, resets the board.
Very obviously: We’re supporting the Pope here because he took the trust and power and yes holiness vested in him and spoke earnestly, wisely and with moral clarity, saying obviously true things, and we agree with him, and then he was mocked for it exactly because of all these things. Not because we’re Catholics.
There’s this mindset that you can’t possibly be actually standing up for ideas or principles or simply goodness. It must be some status game, or some political fight, or something. No, it isn’t.
Marc also went on an unfollow binge, including Bayes and Grimes, which is almost entirely symbolic since he (still) follows 27,700 people.
You’re All Wondering Why You’re Here Today
I feel good about highlighting his holiness the Pope’s wise message.
I feel bad about spending the bulk of an entire post pointing out that someone has consistently been acting as a straight up horrible person. Ideally one would never do this. But this is pretty important context within the politics of the AI space and also for anyone evaluating venture capital funding from various angles.
Remember, when people tell you who they are? Believe them.
So I wanted to ensure there was a reference for these events we can link back to, and also to remember that yes if you go sufficiently too far people eventually notice.