Well said. More generally, it is often difficult to disentangle someone's motives & beliefs (and therefore the things they say) from their occupation. After all, the more deeply you believe in something, the more likely it is you will try to make it happen, the limit of which is making it your primary career.
Suppose someone working at a travel website writes a post about the problems with the existing travel industry. A large percentage of commenters will then pipe in with, "of course she'd say that, she works at a rival firm!"
But is that the causation? Suppose an "independent" person writes the same blog post. The reactions to the blogpost would have been different in that case, even if that person later goes on to start a travel firm.
In other words, is the causation:
1. start/work at travel firm -> try to encourage people to switch to them -> write blog post
2. dissatisfaction with travel firms -> write blog post -> decide to start competitor
(And of course there are many other possible causation chains.)
Yet most commenters seem to assume that (1) is not only the most likely option, but often the only possible explanation.
The problem is that the two possible causations can and very often are intertwined.
If you personally profit from something, then it becomes very hard not to fall victim to massive confirmation bias, where you want something to be true, and any evidence that supports it is viewed favorably while anything to the contrary is held to impossible standards.
Let's be clear here. He's not saying "do this, it's in your benefit." That would be cause for skepticism because Mark is a VC in competition with other VCs. What he's saying here is that some firms engage in a particular type of unethical behavior. This is reporting on an industry trend. It's even a falsifiable claim despite the fact that we are tremendously unlikely to have access to the information that would confirm or refute his claims.
Suppose someone working at a travel website writes a post about the problems with the existing travel industry. A large percentage of commenters will then pipe in with, "of course she'd say that, she works at a rival firm!"
But is that the causation? Suppose an "independent" person writes the same blog post. The reactions to the blogpost would have been different in that case, even if that person later goes on to start a travel firm.
In other words, is the causation:
1. start/work at travel firm -> try to encourage people to switch to them -> write blog post
2. dissatisfaction with travel firms -> write blog post -> decide to start competitor
(And of course there are many other possible causation chains.)
Yet most commenters seem to assume that (1) is not only the most likely option, but often the only possible explanation.