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Life is Short

paulgraham.com

221–230 of 452 posts

Re: Life is Short

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Because harsh expressions are usually gratuitous. Because blanket assertions are usually wrong. And, because combining both is rude.

This never happened though. The parent simply stated they didn't have time for bullshit then said they purchase Macs so they don't have build PCs. He / she simply stated what they considered important. It was personal, there was no blanket assertions at all and it was in the same tone as the article so what was gratuitous in this context?

> For instance, did you really need to say `Whoa whoa slow down' when you began your reply? Did that add value?

I certainly did due to the outlandishness of what I replied to. It sounded two orders of magnitude harsher and more personal than I would have expected especially on HN.

Re: Life is Short

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From PG's essay "Economic Inequality": "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them... Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources." This feels like the heart of that particular essay and displays a r…

> This blames poor people for being poor. Huh? He said all the people at the top are not lazy. "All people at the bottom are lazy" doesn't follow from his statement.

Generally as a matter of rhetoric one does not pick out a single attribute to predicate of a class of people, unless one wishes to imply that other classes do not possess the attribute, or that the attribute is a sufficient condition for membership in the class.

What makes it a dirty rhetorical trick is, of course, that one can then reply to one's critics "ah, but I didn't explicitly say what you read into that".

Re: Life is Short

#224
His mention of 'arguing on the internet' as one of the few specific examples of time-wasting behavior makes it hard not to read it as a reaction.

I absolutely believe he values time.

But I also absolutely believe that he is using this as a public excuse as to why he's running away from the criticism of his previous essay; a previous essay which was quite possibly the most flawed piece of writing he's ever let loose onto the Internet.

It's just really, really convenient that one moment he's making ridiculous assertions about what people mean when they're upset about income inequality... and now he's talking about why life is too short for him to have unpleasant conversations.

It reads like cowardice. It reads like a cowardly billionaire who wants to grossly distort the actual concerns of real people; who doesn't want to listen to anybody who doesn't think he's a god; and who wants to live in ignorance.

I'm sure time is meaningful for you... but maybe you should ask him if there wasn't some reason that he suddenly finished this essay. And if maybe it wasn't because he's a thin-skinned jerk who can't handle the fact that his previous missive was really poorly thought out... maybe he can't handle interactions with people who don't think he's a God.

pg has had a ton of my respect for a very long time. But between these two essays, I've realized that pg is no longer a useful or good man. He's passed into that world where he simply cannot accept the notion that he might sometimes be wrong; and he'd rather live in ignorance of that. He'd rather believe he is perfect, that he is a god, than face the fact that he wrote a really terrible essay, an essay that showed a complete disconnect from reality.

But hey... you're married to him so you're a billionaire too, so I bet you thought his reality-deficient spew was also really great. And that's one of the best things about being a billionaire; you can afford to live in a distorted reality that has no connection to the real world. You can do so, and it will be comfortable for your entire family. Nobody will say anything to your face, because you are too powerful.

So yes... enjoy your time... enjoy your ignorance... enjoy shitting on the world and denying reality. Enjoy making excuses for your husband's ignorant brand of politics. Because he's going to get worse for the rest of his life. Rich white men rarely get less entitled as they age.

pg won't wake up and be Bill Gates, realizing that this shit is fucked up. That would require a connection to reality that he has clearly lost.

Re: Life is Short

#225
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read some "rebuttals" to the previous essay, and while there were definitely some valid points brought up, a lot of them seemed to me to have misinterpreted a lot of what was said. PG tweeted about feeling like a lot of his side of the "debate" was pointing out that he hadn't said something. [1] [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/688044252744527875

From PG's essay "Economic Inequality": "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them... Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources." This feels like the heart of that particular essay and displays a r…

I read it differently.

He suggests that social mobility is highly correlated with non-laziness (whether expressed through hard work, not hard but smart work, natural curiosity, drive to tinker with stuff, or ability to deliver on a project started without letting the inertia set in).

That does not mean that poverty is correlated with laziness.

The only logical conclusion that follows is that laziness is not highly correlated with social mobility, e.g. people who are poor and lazy have not statistically been exposed to much social mobility.

Re: Life is Short

#226
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Unpacking the whole context and philosophical debate (e.g. between libertarians and Marxists) requires a book-length argument. (But to briefly answer your question, no. “People ought to be entitled to what they create” is not a universally accepted principle.) So folks responding to Graham are mostly not going to do the topic justice.

(Side note: In a similar but less defensible way, Paul Graham’s summary of Joseph Stiglitz’s several books about inequality [to wit: “The most common mistake people make about economic inequality is to treat it as a single phenomenon. The most naive version of which is the one based on the pie fallacy: that the rich get rich by taking money from the poor.”] was such a ridiculous oversimplification that I suspect either (a) Graham didn’t actually read any of Stiglitz’s books, or (b) he has extremely poor reading comprehension, or (c) his argument is not only self-serving but also entirely disingenuous.)

But anyway, you can’t just strip out all the context and pretend Paul Graham is having a purely abstract argument in a vacuum. The context today is that the level of inequality and centralization of political influence in America is at a level unseen since the 1920s, or perhaps since the gilded age. There’s a political discussion going on in the society at large about whether this development is healthy, and if not, what to do about it. Many people are angry, to the point that Paul Graham’s essay itself is full of paranoid fantasies about being “hunted”.

Anyone making an argument in modern America is implicitly talking about what direction we should be going from where we are currently, and what social/political changes we can make to get there. Most readers are going to understand such arguments with that context in mind, and only bad/lazy writers will ignore it.

* * *

Graham grew up in a well off family, went to Ivy League college and grad school, worked for a few years as a programmer for his own well-timed web startup then cashed out for tens of millions while he was a relatively young man and transitioned into venture capital, where he has been very successful. As far as I can tell he has basically never worked in any jobs other than being a student, running his own startup, or venture capital. He apparently surrounds himself with other rich techies and has no regular exposure to people outside a tiny cultural bubble. From what I can remember, his only essays which talk at all about folks less fortunate than himself are about his school experience, in particular what I can remember is whining about how English teachers are idiots and how the jocks mistreated him.

From such a position of privilege and ignorance, Graham hand-waves away all the concerns of the vast majority of people in America (not to mention the world), and spends his time justifying his own wealth and prestige and insisting that he shouldn’t have to contribute any of it back to society, with the bulk of the argument being “startups are good”, without further elaboration or analysis.

As you might imagine, this seems awfully cheesy to folks reading along who don’t happen to be multimillionaires themselves.

Re: Life is Short

#227

His mention of 'arguing on the internet' as one of the few specific examples of time-wasting behavior makes it hard not to read it as a reaction. I absolutely believe he values time. But I also absolutely believe that he is using this as a public excuse as to why he's running away from the criticism of his previous essay; a previous essay which was quite possibly the most flawed piece of writing he's ever let loose o…

I might have agreed with you but the way you're presenting your argument makes me want to dismiss you outright. There's a lot of ad hominen and strawman in your post, maybe you want to rethink how you're making your point?

Re: Life is Short

#228

My take on this is the essay exposes a pretty significant flaw in the human condition. The more capable a person is to ignore the bullshit (ie. enough money to retire comfortably immediately) the less likely they should be doing so. And yet having the ability to "ignore the bullshit" is an integral component of what we've all come to recognize as "living the dream". In way too many cases the "bullshit" exists because…

[deleted]

Re: Life is Short

#229
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you pay any attention to current political discussion, e.g. the field of Republican candidates they do NOT argue in favor of inequality. They describe it as a problem just as the Democrats do.

And of course that's false. The Democrats of the 1900s are conservative; the new deal is the most iconic conservative movement we've ever seen yes? And Hoovervilles were created by socialist thought?

Re: Life is Short

#230
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally didn't like too much that essay about inequalities, but I think your comment is unnecessarily nasty. I believe arguing with commenters like you is exactly the bullshit PG mentioned.

His tone might seem unnecessarily harsh at first, but when taken in context of the amount of ass-kissing that goes on here, it starts to seem more like an appropriate counterweight.

It's fine.

pg is wealthy. One of the benefits of wealth is that you a choice about what you want to see and hear, especially about yourself. And that by default, you will only hear good things.

pg has made a conscious decision that not only does he only want to hear those good things; but that he will never respond to critical voices.

So the arguments about style and tone are moot, because a man like pg will dismiss my argument either way. He's not going to wake up tomorrow, admit that nobody is asking for 100% income equality and that he was a dishonest sack of shit for pretending otherwise. He just won't do that. It would involve admitting so many flaws and wrongs... It would involve admitting that all of the people who reviewed his essay were also kissing his ass. It would involve admitting that he lives in a bubble.. It would involve admitting that he's lost touch with reality.

So it really doesn't matter how I say any of it. I can be polite or rude; I can be academic or casual; I can be concise or long-winded. pg isn't capable of hearing my message, because to hear my message would be to recognize how he lives; and to do so would shatter his beliefs about why he has so many relationships with interesting and successful people. To do so would shatter the myth that it's about his genius and amazing intelligence. To do so would be to admit that he's just a rich guy who started doing early-stage VC at a point in time where even a barely skilled individual money could do very, very well; and if they applied even a modicum of skill, they could experience a massive virtuous cycle.

So I don't really care about these complaints about tone... because pg can't hear me anyway. He's made sure of that. He's too busy writing fiction about what it means to oppose massive income inequality; he's too busy willfully misunderstanding the situation; he's too busy pretending that he's far far far more special than he is.

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