It’s a distinct minority. They’re convinced they’re the majority because everyone they talk to is in the same bubble, especially online. I saw the same thing with Mangione and Kirk and Pelosi.
Do you spend much time with people not in the tech world? I think you'd be surprised how many people hold similar sentiments, even if not to such an extreme, especially once you talk to people in the real world. I've heard far more support for this sort of thing in real life than I have online due to fear of repercussions.
Hell, even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence, so I don't think it's that much of a minority. The US was founded on it, after all.
> Do you spend much time with people not in the tech world?
Most of it. Across the political spectrum.
> even if not to such an extreme
That’s precisely the point. There is a massive difference between doing or aiding and abetting such behavior, cheering it on, and giving into the impulse of “couldn’t have happened to a worse person” before self correcting. There are a few saints who reject the violence at first glance. But most people are in that self correcting phase, and the correction happens the more they learn about the specifics of the assault.
> even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence
I mean, he literally just posted a video on his account of a woman being violently beaten to death with a hammer as a call for people to do something about immigrants.
> he literally just posted a video on his account of a woman being violently beaten to death with a hammer as a call for people to do something about immigrants
Zero dispute. I’m challenging the notion that Americans are rising to that call. (Or cheering on specific attacks, versus general notions of violence.)
In a weird way, maybe social media helps in this one instance. We can’t let the enemy be faceless. There is no glory in shooting a specific mother or nurse.
You're missing that the Americans rising to the call are employed by the state itself. ICE over Trump's tenure with a burgeoning budget has become filled with folks that were part of known white supremacist groups. The most violent believers have been state sanctioned and paid to inflict his agenda.
> Americans rising to the call are employed by the state itself
This is a problem. But it’s categorically different from vigilantism. That sort of grassroots violence is basically impossible to stop once it gets started without major abrogations of rights, at least temporarily. And we have not seen organized grassroots vigilantes taking up arms to pot Trump’s enemies. Not systematically or at any scale that doesn’t just scream gun-control problems.
It's not categorically different and it requires you to really dig your head deep in the sand. The 'unite the right' rally in 2018 was filled with the sort of vigilante violence you say is a problem. The reason why these rallies dwindled is not because of any sort of advancement or government attempt to squash out the problem; it's because they've become embedded within the government.
You're attempting to find step 1 when we're already passed that and into step 2. The vigilantes are coming from inside the house, and the murders committed in Minneapolis combined with the government working overtime to shield them should be the primary signal.
How many people live in Iran, who he just threatened to genocide? How many people hold views that Trump thinks make them his enemy, including being critical of ICE? How many immigrants are in the country? It's going to be a very large number, no matter how you slice it.
Those are real examples, and we should be vigilant about them. My point is they’re still numerically rare compared with population and societies that enter periods of civil strife. (I’m sorry about your own experiences. People say things that are abhorrent. It’s no comfort to know most of them wouldn’t act out on them.)
What I think is different today is -- regardless of how many people organically think this way -- social media is normalizing the idea. We're all being exposed to it.
It's only a minority of people who are radicalized, but it's a growing minority. Radical ideas are more accessible than ever for people to latch on to.
Radical views on violence, social relations, science, politics, distrust of institutions, etc are all way more common than they were in the 90s.
I’d want to see this interrogated with rigor. The alternate hypothesis, and my null, is a relatively fixed fraction of folks is more connected and visible today than before.
Yeah, the number of people connecting a potential war crime in a military operation to Sam Altman’s San Francisco residence with violent intent are slim.
> war crimes blew the Overton window for violence wide open
I see no evidence of this. We didn’t see it after Iraq. And Luigi predates all this.
These aren’t organized political movements. They’re lone actors reaching breaking points. That don’t need a theory of violence, just access to guns and a day of mental instability.
I think youre misreading it entirely, doesnt surprise me given that you're a VC.
Here's one of the posts on that thread: "I mean one thing is to use AI or even ChatGPT as a product, and another is being aware of how billionaires treat the rest of the people
As for Sam, he also has pretty controversial views for how this whole thing will pan out and how he doesn't give a shit about the consequences it might have for the rest of us. Also more recently, the whole Pentagon contract thing"
People can both use LLMs whilst having a distasteful view of the leaders of the industry.
I don't wish violent ends on anyone. I'm not open to sacrificing that part of myself in a rich, historically-free society that retains peaceful means of power transfer.
Should we just let these terribly evil people who are responsible for thousands of deaths roam freely free of consequence then? It's not like they're breaking any laws in their evil acts, so we can't hope for our legal system to prosecute them, in fact we can count on it to protect them.
Zuckerberg played a major role in the Rohingya genocide.
Sam Altman disagrees with you about violence being bad, he just signed a deal with the same DoD that killed a bunch of innocent schoolgirls in Iran.
The US can be counted on to protect these people, just like it protected Kissinger, rather than ever prosecuting them.
The US has even threatened to invade the Hague if it were to ever try prosecuting for the warcrimes they do execute.
There isn't a justice system we can rely on anymore.
That healthcare CEO would still be alive and completely consequence-free if Luigi hadn't killed him.
> Should we just let these terribly evil people who are responsible for thousands of deaths roam freely free of consequence then?
No.
> It's not like they're breaking any laws
Then it’s not categorically evil. If it is, change the laws. Anywhere.
> he just signed a deal with the same DoD that killed a bunch of innocent schoolgirls in Iran
Yup, not okay with the precedent that anyone affiliated with our military deserves summary execution. Because then someone will justify the same for anyone affiliated with Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or who shops at Target.
> That healthcare CEO would still be alive and completely consequence-free if Luigi hadn't killed him
Was a middle-managing CEO within a subsidiary. The actual billionaires are doing fitness—they don’t walk the streets of Manhattan. United has changed zero policies and thus zero patient lives have been changed. Well done. Glad Mr. McDonald’s got his ab pics out for his moment of celebrity.
Tell me who I should vote for this next election cycle to do that.
> Yup, not okay with the precedent that anyone affiliated with our military deserves summary execution. Because then someone will justify the same for anyone affiliated with Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or who shops at Target.
I think it's a false equivalency to draw a line between an organization that kills children and an organization that campaigns for the protection of the environment.
> Was a middle-managing CEO within a subsidiary. The actual billionaires are doing fitness—they don’t walk the streets of Manhattan. United has changed zero policies and thus zero patient lives have been changed. Well done. Glad Mr. McDonald’s got his ab pics out for his moment of celebrity.
The elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].
Vigilante justice usually starts by aiming for the top (or a minority group, if conducted from the top). But it's inherently anarchic, and eventually attacks anyone vulnerable in striking distance. I have Indian and central European heritage. My dry bones are knowing the cost of violence and value of peace, and degree to which even those who initially embrace violence tended to wind up regretting the offramp they previously precluded.
> The elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos
You sound like you're trying to convince me: I am not pro-violence, but I have cracked open a history book and the same thing happens over, and over again when the masses don't get what they deserve from an out-of-touch ruling class. I briefly braved life in a very unequal society - no one is safe there. Telling a person who hopelessly feel like they have nothing to shun crime and violence while they walk the same streets as the very rich is not as effective as you think it is.
> But it's inherently anarchic, and eventually attacks anyone vulnerable in striking distance.
Here's the brief, recent timeline on anti-elite radicalization:
-2008 the Great recession resulted in corporates get government bail-outs, while regular people got foreclosed, no one went to prison. Even getting a McJob is difficult.
- 2014/2015 K-shaped economic recovery in progress. Populist politicians decide to harness the still-angry "burn it all down" demography to turn out the vote. This is what was behind the Bernie bro to Trump-voter pipeline, "drain the swamp" and all that
- 2020-2022: Covid shutdowns. Businesses get bail outs again via loan forgiveness. High inflation. Cops chill outside during active shooting in Uvalde. Layoffs begin.
- 2024: Brian Thompson gets shot; elites get shocked by public support expressed for the shooter, but don't introspect on whether they are out of touch, instead, executive protection budgets go up - problem solved! Layoffs continue.
- 2025: DOGE cuts, SV CxOs and VC class goes completely mask-off, cuts to "entitlements" proposed, ACA subsidies killed. The who's who of elites show up in the Epstein files: not a single charge is filed. AI promises to kill jobs and companies embrace it, layoffs continue. Swamp is still not drained, crypto scams go mainstream.
- 2026: (we are here) 2 citizens killed by ICE while protesting. War with Iran. Layoffs continue, now naming AI as the cause. Inflation spiking.
With all this, would you be surprised that some folk may feel the scale is thumbed against them? Elites in every generation or 2 seem to need to relearn the same lesson: keeping their end of the social contract is really fucking important, in whatever form it takes in their age: giving alms, noblesse oblige, workers rights, the New Deal, etc.
