(2023-07-03) Wenger Low Rung Tech Tribalism

Albert Wenger: Low Rung Tech Tribalism. Silicon Valley’s tribal boosterism has been bad for tech and bad for the world.

I recently criticized Reddit for clamping down on third party clients. I pointed out that having raised a lot of money (OPM) at a high valuation required the company to become more extractive in an attempt to produce a return for investors. Twitter had gone down the exact same path years earlier with bad results

In “What’s Our Problem” Tim Urban introduces the concept of a vertical axis of debate which distinguishes between high rung (intellectual) and low rung (tribal) approaches. This axis is as important, if not more important, than the horizontal left versus right axis in politics or the entrepreneurship/markets versus government/regulation axis in tech.

Paul Graham has a long history of such low rung boosterism.

The net effect of this low rung tech tribalism is a sense that tech elites are insular and believe themselves to be above criticism, with no need to engage in debate. The latest example of this is Marc Andreessen’s absolutist dismissal of any criticism or questions about the impacts of Artificial Intelligence on society

In this context I find myself frequently returning to Martin Gurri’s excellent “Revolt of the Public.” A key point that Gurri makes is that elites have done much to undermine their own credibility, a point also made in the earlier “Revolt of the Elites” by Christopher Lasch.

The cost of low rung tech boosterism isn’t just a decline in public trust. It has also encouraged some founders’ belief that they can be completely oblivious to the needs of their employees or their communities.

If you want to rise to the moral obligations of leadership, then you need to find the intellectual capacity to engage with criticism. That is the high rung path to progress.