by Marc Andreessen

These are some points I made from the techno-optimist manifesto:

  1. I am here to bring the good news. We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists.

  2. We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution. We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting. We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating. We had a problem of heat, so we invented air conditioning.

  3. We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better. Smart people and smart societies outperform less smart ones on virtually every metric we can measure. Intelligence is the birthright of humanity. we should expand it the most we can.

  4. We believe Hayek’s Knowledge Problem overwhelms any centralized economic system. All actual information is on the edges, in the hands of the people closest to the buyer. The center, abstracted away from both the buyer and the seller, knows nothing.

  5. We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns. To ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever.

  6. We believe central economic planning elevates the worst of us and drags everyone down; markets exploit the best of us to benefit all of us.

We believe central planning is a doom loop; markets are an upward spiral.

  1. We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.

  2. We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand think.

  3. We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights.

  4. We believe Artificial Intelligence can save lives – if we let it. Medicine, among many other fields, is in the stone age compared to what we can achieve with joined human and machine intelligence working on new cures. There are scores of common causes of death that can be fixed with AI, from car crashes to pandemics to wartime friendly fire.

  5. Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth.

  6. We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well.

  7. We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power.

  8. We believe a technologically stagnant society has limited energy at the cost of environmental ruin; a technologically advanced society has unlimited clean energy for everyone.

  9. We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity.

  10. We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life.

  11. We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods.

  12. We believe that technology ultimately drives the world to what Buckminster Fuller called “ephemeralization” – what economists call “dematerialization”. Fuller: “Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

  13. We believe technological progress therefore leads to material abundance for everyone.

  14. We believe the ultimate mission of technology is to advance life both on Earth and in the stars.

  15. We believe that advancing technology is one of the most virtuous things that we can do.

  16. We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology.

  17. We believe this certainly means technical education, but it also means going hands on, gaining practical skills, working within and leading teams – aspiring to build something greater than oneself, aspiring to work with others to build something greater as a group.

  18. We believe the natural human drive to make things, to gain territory, to explore the unknown can be channeled productively into building technology.

  19. We believe that while the physical frontier, at least here on Earth, is closed, the technological frontier is wide open.

  20. We believe in exploring and claiming the technological frontier.

  21. We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom.

  22. We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.

  23. To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”

  24. We believe that we are, have been, and will always be the masters of technology, not mastered by technology. Victim mentality is a curse in every domain of life, including in our relationship with technology – both unnecessary and self-defeating. We are not victims, we are conquerors.

  25. We believe in greatness. We admire the great technologists and industrialists who came before us, and we aspire to make them proud of us today.

  26. And we believe in humanity – individually and collectively.

  27. We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength.

  28. We believe in merit and achievement.

  29. We believe in bravery, in courage.

  30. We believe in pride, confidence, and self respect – when earned.

  31. We believe in free thought, free speech, and free inquiry.

  32. We believe in the actual Scientific Method and enlightenment values of free discourse and challenging the authority of experts.

  33. We believe, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

  34. We believe in local knowledge, the people with actual information making decisions, not in playing God.

  35. We believe in embracing variance, in increasing interestingness.

  36. We believe in risk, in leaps into the unknown.

  37. We believe in agency, in individualism.

  38. We believe in radical competence.

  39. We believe in an absolute rejection of resentment. As Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” We take responsibility and we overcome.

  40. We believe in competition, because we believe in evolution.

  41. We believe in evolution, because we believe in life.

  42. We believe in the truth.

  43. We believe in making everyone rich, everything cheap, and everything abundant.

  44. We believe in what the Greeks called eudaimonia through arete – flourishing through excellence.

  45. We believe technology is universalist. Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world. Anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can contribute. Technology is the ultimate open society.

  46. We have enemies.

  47. Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas.

  48. Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.

  49. Our enemy is stagnation.

  50. Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness.

  51. Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism.

  52. Our enemy is bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy, blind deference to tradition.

  53. Our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.

  54. Our enemy is deceleration, de-growth, depopulation – the nihilistic wish, so trendy among our elites, for fewer people, less energy, and more suffering and death.

  55. Our enemy is speech control and thought control – the increasing use, in plain sight, of George Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual.

  56. Our enemy is institutions that in their youth were vital and energetic and truth-seeking, but are now compromised and corroded and collapsing – blocking progress in increasingly desperate bids for continued relevance, frantically trying to justify their ongoing funding despite spiraling dysfunction and escalating ineptness.

  57. We believe in the words of David Deutsch: “We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.”

  58. We owe the past, and the future.

  59. We invite everyone to join us in Techno-Optimism.

  60. The water is warm.

  61. Become our allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life.

  62. It’s time to be a Techno-Optimist.

  63. It’s time to build.