Joe Rogan Experience #1840 - Marc Andreesson

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. MAMarc Andreessen0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) What's up, Marc? How are you? (laughs)

   4. MAMarc Andreessen0:14

      (laughs) I'm good, I'm great.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Have you done a podcast before?

   6. MAMarc Andreessen0:16

      I've done podcasts before.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Yeah?

   8. MAMarc Andreessen0:18

      Nothing with this reach, though.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Oh.

   10. MAMarc Andreessen0:19

       So that's exciting.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:20

       You can't think about that.

   12. MAMarc Andreessen0:21

       Yep. Nope, not at all.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:22

       Can't think of the reach part.

   14. MAMarc Andreessen0:22

       Yep.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       Um, first of all, very nice to meet you.

   16. MAMarc Andreessen0:25

       Yeah, you too.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       You, you're, like, you're a tech OG. Like, uh, y- you know, when it comes to, like, the tech people, you're, you're like... You know. You're at the forefront of it all. I mean, you were one of the co-found- you were one of the co-creators of Mosaic, right?

   18. MAMarc Andreessen0:39

       Yeah, mm-hmm. That's right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       What was it like before there were web browsers?

   20. MAMarc Andreessen0:42

       (laughs) So-

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       How do you know- y- you know a time before web browsers, like...

   22. MAMarc Andreessen0:46

       I do. So, y- y- I'm an OG now, but when I first started, I thought I missed the whole thing. Like-

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:52

       Really?

   24. MAMarc Andreessen0:52

       ... I thought I missed the whole... 'Cause I missed the personal computer. I missed the whole thing.

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       You missed the ad- the in- in- original use of the personal computer?

   26. MAMarc Andreessen1:00

       Yeah, the personal computer, and before that, all the other computers that, you know, came before that. So the computer revolution kinda happened over the 50 years right before I showed up.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:07

       What was the first personal computer?

   28. MAMarc Andreessen1:09

       The first personal computer... The first true personal computer, they were like kits in the early '70s that you could build. Um, the first interactive computer that you could use the way you use a PC was all the way back in the '50s. It was a system called PLATO, at the University of Illinois, where I went. And it was, uh, it was really, it's- there's a great book called the, uh, the- it's like The Bright Orange Glow, and it was a, it was a s- screen, black screen with on- only orange graphics.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:34

       Wow.

   30. MAMarc Andreessen1:34

       Um, and they, they built it by hand at the time, and they had the whole thing working. And so, they, they, they like these ideas are all old ideas. They had email. Like, they, they had all these ideas kinda way back when. It just-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So you are messing…

   1. MAMarc Andreessen15:00

      telnet, where you could log in to somebody else's computer and use it.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:04

      So you are messing around with this stuff and you guys create... Was it the very first web browser or the first, like, used-by-many-people web browser?

   3. MAMarc Andreessen15:15

      Yeah, it was the first... It was a productized, um... It was the first browser used by a large number of people. Um, it was the first browser that was really usable by a large number of people. Um, it was also one of the f- one of the first browsers that had integrated graphics. The, the actual first browser was a text browser. Uh, the very first one, which basically... Which was, which was a prototype that Tim Berners-Lee, uh, created. So, it... But it was just... It was very clear at that point, like we, we now have the G- we have, we have Windows, we have the Mac, we have the GUI, right? We have graphics, like, and, and then we have the internet, and we need to basically pull all these things together, which is what Mosaic did.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:44

      And GUI is graphic user interface?

   5. MAMarc Andreessen15:46

      Graphic user interface, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:47

      What is a GUI?

   7. MAMarc Andreessen15:48

      And, and it... And again, it sounds like it's... We, we've lived with the GUI now for 30 years. Most people don't remember computing before that. It sounds like-

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:54

      Right.

   9. MAMarc Andreessen15:54

      ... obviously everything would be graphical, but it was not obvious at that point. Most computers at that point still were not graphical and so it was, it was a big deal to basically say, "Look, this is just gonna be graphical."

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       Yeah. Most computers were using DOS?

   11. MAMarc Andreessen16:06

       DOS, yeah, that's right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:07

       Yeah. And so when you created this... When you and whoever you did it with created Mosaic, what, what was that like to... What was the difference in, like, f- functionality? Like, what was the difference in what you could do with it?

   13. MAMarc Andreessen16:22

       Yeah. Well, so I... It... So (laughs) it worked really well. Um, so it... Like, we po- we polished it. Like, we got it to the point where, like, normal people could use it. 'Cause it was a bla- You, you could do this stuff a little bit before, but it was like a real black art to put it together. Um, so we got it to the point where it was, like, fully usable. We made it w- It's called backward compatible, so you could use it to get to any information on the internet, whether it was web or non-web. Um, and then you could actually have graphics actually in the information, right? So, so web pages before Mosaic were all text. You know, we, we added graphics and so you had the ability to have images, um, and you had the ability to ultimately have, you know, visual design and all the things that we have today. Um, and then later with Netscape, which followed, then we added encryption which gave you the ability to do business online, right? To be able to do e-commerce, right? And then later we added video, we added audio and, you know, it, it just kind of kept rolling and kind of became what it is today.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       When you look at it today, what... Do you remember your thoughts back then as to where this was all going?

   15. MAMarc Andreessen17:15

       So it was impossible to predict what... It's... You know, it's just-

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:19

       Of course.

   17. MAMarc Andreessen17:19

       It's played out at a much higher (laughs) level of scale with many more use cases than we would have thought, but it seemed pretty obvious to us that people would want this kind of thing. 'Cause at the very basic level is the ability for anybody to publish anything, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       Yeah.

   19. MAMarc Andreessen17:32

       Text or video or audio, right? Um, and then it was the ability for anybody to consume anything, right?The ability for all computers in the world to connect with each other and that you wouldn't need centralized gatekeepers. You wouldn't have, you know, TV networks that could control what was on. Anybody could produce, you know, what- whatever they want to do. And then, so that... Like, that basic idea (laughs) seemed like a pretty good idea. Um, it, it hit an incredible wall of skepticism. Like, all of the experts, right? They're all on the record. They're all... If you read the newspapers, magazines at the time, 100% it would be like, "This is stupid. This is never gonna happen. Nobody wants this."

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:02

       (laughs)

   21. MAMarc Andreessen18:02

       "This is, this is never... You know, this is never gonna work and if it does work, nobody's gonna want it." Uh, over... All, all the big companies were completely dismissive. Um, it was just like, "There's just no way. This is just too crazy." It was the same, same pattern. It's these, these crazy kids are at it again. You know, okay, sure, they've been right, you know, every other time. You know, not every...

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:18

       (laughs)

   23. MAMarc Andreessen18:18

       They've been right many other times. You know, it's like-

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:20

       But this one they fucked up on.

   25. MAMarc Andreessen18:21

       Electricity worked, you know, telephones worked, the railroads worked, okay.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:26

       Light bulb.

   27. MAMarc Andreessen18:26

       Yeah, light bulb worked, but like, you know, this computer thing is stupid. This internet thing is stupid. You know, now we're hearing it today. You know, crypto, blockchain, you know-

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:32

       Yeah.

   29. MAMarc Andreessen18:33

       ... Web3, this stuff is stupid. You know, every new thing, it's just this constant wall of doubt. Um, and, you know, and frankly, a lot of it's fear and a lot of it's, you know, just kind of people getting freaked out.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:42

       But your unique perspective of having been there early on with the original computers, having worked to code the original web browser that was widely used, like... And seeing where it's at now, does this give you...... a, a better perspective as to what the future could potentially lead to? Because you've seen these monumental changes, like firsthand and been a part of the actual mechanisms that forced us into the position we're in today.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. MAMarc Andreessen30:00

      like, uh, the, the man-

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Yeah.

   3. MAMarc Andreessen30:00

      ... will convince himself he's talking to a real woman, like, pretty easily, even when he's not.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:03

      Right.

   5. MAMarc Andreessen30:04

      Um, and so just think of this as a slightly more... you know, you can think about this as a somewhat more advanced version of that, which is, look, if, if this thing... if it's an algorithm that's been optimized to trick people basically, th- to convince people that it's real, it's going to... it's gonna pass the Turing test even though it's not actually conscious. Uh, uh, meaning it has no awareness. It has no desire. It has-

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      Right.

   7. MAMarc Andreessen30:24

      ... no regret. It has no fear. You know, it has none of the hallmarks that we would associate with being a living being, like mu- much less a, a, a conscious being. And so, so this is, this is the twist, and this is where I think this guy at Google got, got, got, got kind of str- strung up a little bit as... or held up, um, is i- the, the computers are gonna be able to trick people into thinking they're (laughs) conscious, like, way before-

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:43

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MAMarc Andreessen30:44

      ... they actually become conscious. And, and then there's just the other side of it, which is like we, we have no idea. We don't know how human consciousness works. Like, we, we have no idea how the brain works. We have no idea how to like... we, we have no idea how to do any of this... any, any of this stuff on people. The, the most advanced form of medical science that understands consciousness is actually a- anesthesiology 'cause they know how to turn it off.

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:00

       (laughs)

   11. MAMarc Andreessen31:02

       Right? They know how to c- you know, power off-

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:03

       Yeah.

   13. MAMarc Andreessen31:03

       ... and then they know how to power it back on, which is also very important. But like-

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:06

       Right.

   15. MAMarc Andreessen31:06

       ... they have no idea what's happening inside the black box. And, and w- we have no idea. No- nobody has any idea. So, so this is a...... parallel line of technological development that's not actually recreating the human brain. It's doing something different. It's basically training computers on how to understand process and then reflect back the real world. It's very valuable work because it's gonna make computers a lot more useful. For example, self-driving cars. This is the same kind of work that makes a self-driving car work, right?

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Yeah.

   17. MAMarc Andreessen31:32

       So this, this is very valuable work. It will create these programs that will be able to trick people very effectively, right? And so, so there are... For example, here's what I would be worried about, which is basically, like, what percentage of people that we follow on Twitter are even real people, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:47

       Yeah. Well, Elon is trying to get to the bottom of that right now.

   19. MAMarc Andreessen31:49

       He's trying to get to the bottom of that, you know, specifically on, on that, on that issue for the business. But just, uh, let's also think more generally, which is like, okay, if you have a computer that's really good at writing tweets, if you have a computer that's really good at writing angry, political tweets, or wr-writing whatever absurdist, you know, humor, or whatever it is, like... And by the way, maybe the computer is gonna be better at doing that than a lot of people are. You know, you can, you can imagine a future internet in which most of the interesting content is actually getting created by machines. You know, there's this new system, DALL-E, um, you know, that's getting a lot of visibility now, which is this thing where you can type in any phrase and it'll create you computer-generated art, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:21

       Oh, I've seen that. Yeah.

   21. MAMarc Andreessen32:23

       Yeah, yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       They, they've done some with me. It's really weird.

   23. MAMarc Andreessen32:25

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:26

       You know Chase Lepard? He's got a few of them that he put up on his, uh, Instagram. Wh- How does that work?

   25. MAMarc Andreessen32:31

       Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a very similar thing. So basically, what they do, what, what the ... And Google has one of these and, and, and OpenAI has one of these. What they do is they pull in all of the images on the internet, right? So if you... If, if you think about-

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:42

       Okay.

   27. MAMarc Andreessen32:42

       If you go to Google Images or whatever, just do a search, you know, on any topic, it'll give you thousands of, a thousand images of you, whatever. And then basically, they pull in all the images. Um- (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:50

       Yeah, that's me.

   29. MAMarc Andreessen32:51

       Exactly.

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:52

       How bizarre.
4. 45:00 – 59:13

   Right. But aren't we…

   1. MAMarc Andreessen45:00

      weapons, I, I would argue and a lot of historians would argue basically prevented World War III. So, so, so the pros and cons on these technologies are tricky, but they usually do turn out to have more positive benefits than negative benefits in most cases. I just think it's like, it's hard or impossible to get new technology without basically having both sides, without you know ... it's, it's hard to develop a tool that can only be used for good. And for the same reason, I think it's hard for humanity to progress in a way in which only good things happen, right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:24

      Right. But aren't we looking at the pros and cons of nuclear weapons to a very small scale? I mean, we're looking at it from 1947 to 2022.

   3. MAMarc Andreessen45:33

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:33

      That's such a blink of an eye.

   5. MAMarc Andreessen45:35

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:35

      We could still fuck this up.

   7. MAMarc Andreessen45:37

      We could really screw it up.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:38

      And the consequences are so grave that if we do fuck it up, it's literally the end of life as we know it for every human being on Earth for the next 100,000 years.

   9. MAMarc Andreessen45:49

      Having said that, there were thousands of years of history before 1947, 1940, there were thousands of years of history before that, and, and the history of humanity before they mentioned nuclear weapons was non-stop war.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:59

       Yeah.

   11. MAMarc Andreessen45:59

       Right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:59

       No, it's not stop war, but it's a different thing, right?

   13. MAMarc Andreessen46:01

       Well, it was pretty bad.

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:02

       It's pretty bad, yeah.

   15. MAMarc Andreessen46:03

       Uh-

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:03

       No doubt.

   17. MAMarc Andreessen46:04

       So the original form of warfare, like if you go back in history, the original form of warfare, like the Greeks, the original form of warfare was basically people outside of your tribe or village have no rights at all. Like, they don't count as human beings.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       Right.

   19. MAMarc Andreessen46:14

       They're to be, they are to be killed on sight, right? And then the way that warfare happened, like for example, between the Greek cities, and this is the, like the heyday of the Greeks, Athens and Socrates and all this stuff. The way warfare happened is we invade each other's cities. I burn your city to the ground, I kill all your men, and I take all your women as slaves, and I take all your s- children as slaves, right? So like (laughs) that ... pretty apocalyptic.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       Yeah.

   21. MAMarc Andreessen46:33

       Right? Um, and so-

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:34

       Isn't that kind of what's going on in Russia right now?

   23. MAMarc Andreessen46:36

       Well, so the, the, so the-

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:37

       And Ukraine?

   25. MAMarc Andreessen46:38

       Russia h- Russia is, this is the big question. This is the big question for the U- for the United States on Russia right now, which is like, okay, what's the one thing we know we don't want? We don't want nuclear war with Russia, right?

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:48

       Right.

   27. MAMarc Andreessen46:48

       We, we know we don't want that. What do, what do we want to do? US government, what does it want to do? Well, it wants to arm Ukraine sort of up to the point where the Russians get pissed off enough where they would s- start setting off nukes. And, and, and this is the sort of live debate that's happening. And, and it's just, it's, it's a real debate. You, you could look at it and you could say, "Well, nuclear weapons are bad in this case 'cause they're preventing the US from directly interceding in Ukraine, and it'd be better for the Ukrainians if we did." You can also say that nuclear weapons are good 'cause they're preventing this from cascading into a full land war in Europe between the US and Russia.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:16

       Right.

   29. MAMarc Andreessen47:16

       World War III. And so it's a, it's a complicated calculus. I, I'm just saying like, I don't, I don't know that things would be better if we return to the era of World War I, right?

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:26

       Right.

Episode duration: 2:47:16