Wonder what he thinks when he was investing in OMGPOP, Reddit and 9Gag. How many hours have those sites clocked off of peoples lives. Don't get addicted :)
Life is Short
211–220 of 452 posts
Re: Life is Short
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
All NBA centers are tall. This doesn't mean that all people who aren't NBA centers are short.
PG claims that if all other avenues to wealth are shut off, then the driven and determined will "do well" at starting startups. That is not at all the same as saying that all successful startup founders are driven.
If the game is more equitable the tall centers or the driven founders will do better. If bribing the ref/lawmakers is an option then this is less true.
Re: Life is Short
#213I'm a more productive engineer now that I have small kids than I ever was before. I don't have time for bullshit. I don't build my own PCs, I buy Macs. I don't waste time building some over-architected nonsense on a side project, I ship the MVP. When I do take time away from my kids I maximize it by learning three or four new technologies, patterns, or libraries at once. When you realize how short time really is you…
> I don't have time for bullshit. I don't build my own PCs, I buy Macs. It is sad - and disgusting - to see this degree of arrogance in bluntly categorising those who use (or build) PCs (and not Macs) as indulging in bullshit! I am happy that you have found a useful computer in Mac. At the same time, though, please realise that hundreds of millions of computer users choose otherwise too. And, please do not conclude t…
Whoa whoa slow down. Parent sounded like they simply don't have time to build computers anymore and that buying a Mac is just far easier (less driver issues due to the vertical stack, etc).
This seems perfectly justified and fine to me; I don't get why you're so upset by it.
Re: Life is Short
#214You as pg's wife have vested interest in pg's reputation as your well-being is intrinsically tied with his reputation and well-being through marriage. Your words are not totally empty though as it is still supporting evidence, it is just not solid evidence and it is not something I will totally accept, unlike the op. The probability for this essay to pop-up right after PG started a fire with his economic essay is jus…
Bruh, his wife probably has a much better idea of his mindset than we do.
Re: Life is Short
#215"You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strengt…
Book description for those that may be interested:
“Murakami is like a magician who explains what he’s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves.” —The New York Times Book Review
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
Re: Life is Short
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then he's back to saying that inequality would arise because some people are "more driven" than others. Another way to phrase that would be to say that those with less money are simply less driven. Put in uncharitable terms, they would be poor because they were lazy. It really sounds like he believes this to be the cause of real world inequality, too: "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever th…
> [saying] inequality would arise because some people are "more driven" than others [=== saying] those with less money are simply less driven. Slow down there. You can't just take the converse of any old statement. PG is saying: IF ((starting equal) AND (differences in drive)) THEN (ending unequal). You are saying that PG's statement is equivalent to: IF (now unequal) THEN ((earlier equal) AND (differences in drive))…
> Slow down there. You can't just take the converse of any old statement.
This is in the context of a hypothetical universe where "the only way left to get rich is to start startups." In that universe, PG asserts that the driven will do well, thereby creating inequality. Since we know inequality exists, some will have done less well, and "determination is the main factor in the success of a startup."
To go back to what you said earlier, this isn't directly relevant to real world inequality. But the essay posits this hypothetical world as a parabolic justification for economic inequality. The essay acknowledges that "few successful founders grew up desperately poor" but refuses to engage in any discussion of why. It will only examine a simplified universe, which allows the author to make implications about the real world and then hand wave any reactions away when others engage with those implications.
Re: Life is Short
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of my personal perspective, this is unfair. He stated a position which is not only widely disputed, but the dispute over which has an entire field of media and academics devoted to it, and which routinely splits the population roughly half and half (look at basically any election result in the western world). And he disagreed with your side. He's in the other 50% of the population from you. To claim that b…
This isn't really about red vs. blue -- the "red" side acknowledges massive wealth inequality as a genuinely bad thing as much as the blue does (recall the president most known for trust busting, and recall the 'R' next to his name -- Republicans like markets, not wealth inequality). The two sides just have different explanations for what causes it and what will resolve it. This is about understanding an issue. The e…
You have your history all wrong. If you try to squeeze the Republican party of 1900's economic policy into the current American liberalism vs. conservatism spectrum (I say squeeze because obviously the political positions of that time were different than today's), they would be liberal, and the Democrats of that time would be conservative.
So the fact that once upon a time red meant liberal, but no longer does, does not prove that economic conservatives have reducing economic inequality as a direct goal.
Re: Life is Short
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't have time for bullshit. I don't build my own PCs, I buy Macs. It is sad - and disgusting - to see this degree of arrogance in bluntly categorising those who use (or build) PCs (and not Macs) as indulging in bullshit! I am happy that you have found a useful computer in Mac. At the same time, though, please realise that hundreds of millions of computer users choose otherwise too. And, please do not conclude t…
Whoa whoa slow down. Parent sounded like they simply don't have time to build computers anymore and that buying a Mac is just far easier (less driver issues due to the vertical stack, etc). This seems perfectly justified and fine to me; I don't get why you're so upset by it.
> I don't get why you're so upset by it.
Because harsh expressions are usually gratuitous. Because blanket assertions are usually wrong. And, because combining both is rude.
(This applies to parts of PG's essay as well!)
For instance, did you really need to say `Whoa whoa slow down' when you began your reply? Did that add value?
Re: Life is Short
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a hostile interpretation of the essay.
PG claimed that some rich people "create wealth" and are thus entitled to it. He further argued that they're extra entitled to it because even if you eliminated all other sources of inequality, you couldn't stop them from creating more wealth for themselves: "creating wealth, as a source of economic inequality, is different from taking it—not just morally, but also practically, in the sense that it is harder to eradi…
> PG claimed that some rich people "create wealth" and are thus entitled to it.
Close enough. But, like, is anyone really going to argue with this? With scare quotes, sure, OK, I guess there's an example of someone out there churning out widgets from their blood-diamond-financed widget factory, and that's more of a grey area, but without weird factors like this...yes, people ought to be entitled to what they create. There are valid arguments on definitions of that (patents, land use, etc.) but all of those are disputes on how to apply the main principle, not whether it is legitimate.
> He further argued that they're extra entitled to it because even if you eliminated all other sources of inequality, you couldn't stop them from creating more wealth for themselves: "creating wealth, as a source of economic inequality, is different from taking it
This is a straw man. He didn't argue that they're "extra entitled," he simply pre-empted the (reasonable) argument that not all the rich got rich in good ways.
But in any case: your description of his argument does not match the description I responded to:
“we rich people deserve to have 100x more than the poors because we’re pushing humanity forward”
Do you think the above is a hostile interpretation? I did, so I said so.
Re: Life is Short
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
PG claims that if all other avenues to wealth are shut off, then the driven and determined will "do well" at starting startups. That is not at all the same as saying that all successful startup founders are driven.
If the game is more equitable the tall centers or the driven founders will do better. If bribing the ref/lawmakers is an option then this is less true.
I didn't get that from the essay. PG writes, "Some people still get rich by buying politicians. My point is that it's no longer a precondition."