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Cities and Ambition

paulgraham.com

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Re: Cities and Ambition

#171

Post by earthboundkid »

maxklein wrote: post #160
mroman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mistaken in concluding that "normal" people shape a city. The traits that make a city unique are the result of the actions of a minority of its inhabitants. If your "logic" were accurate, Los Angeles would be no different than Tijuana, for example, considering that most of the "normal" people there are lower class Mexican immigrants. Allow me to inform you of something essential about PG's essays: they requir…

I'm not the cleverest guy in this room. I once took an online IQ test and only got 115. To be fair, lots of questions were things like "What of this has no relationship with Kansas". But I digress... If a person trying to communicate cannot make his point understood by any but the most intelligent, then he has failed in communicating.

It depends on the point and the audience. If the point is complex enough, then you have to give up on conveying it to certain people. If the audience is smart enough, you reach past the lowest common denominator.

Indeed, the best way to write something that lasts for ages is to write something that ordinary people reject, bright people don't really understand, and the smart fall head over heels in love with. That's what keeps Plato in business. No one knows what he was saying exactly, but the really smart guys running the universe can't help but be charmed by it.

Re: Cities and Ambition

#172

Post by epi0Bauqu »

rw wrote: post #120
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a disproportionate number of white bums, but there are certainly a lot of black bums too. So I would not say they are almost always white.

What would be the proportionate number of white bums?

I don't know exactly, but I've been to a lot of cities, and Cambridge is off the average.

Re: Cities and Ambition

#173

Post by ntoshev »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #24

I think the biggest shift in deciding where to live is happening "online" rather than "offline". I am an online nomad. I never lived and never will live in MySpace. I do not like the MySpacians message (Hey lets try to see who has more friends and hookups). I sometimes spend time at Facebook. I lived there for a little while until I realized I am not so much into keeping in touch and I had no friends in the few hours…

It is good, but still low-bandwidth. Perhaps the reason for compulsively refreshing the homepage is that we just can't get enough.

Any suggestions about how to make better online environments for people who care about similar things?

Re: Cities and Ambition

#174

Post by benmathes »

coglethorpe wrote: post #39

I've noticed messages as well: Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop. Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right? Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners. Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer. Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.

Garberville, CA: Hey, man, you should give to the community and help me get some weed.

Wolfeboro, NH (smalltown New England summer resort): You should pretend it's 1962 like all the retirees do.

Waltham, MA (Brandeis University): Go back to NYC when you graduate.

Cambridge, MA: You should be more educated.

I chose "educated" over "intelligent" largely because I lived closer to Harvard. When I go to the MIT side of Cambridge I would switch the two. In and around Harvard you see a strong vein of people who aim for the prestige of higher education over the knowledge it brings.

The middle-aged people dream of sitting in a musky study debating high-falutin mish-mash over a nice port. The college-aged kids dream of sitting in a coffee shop debating their PHIL101 papers. They seek _established_ education.

I know this doesn't speak for every aspect of Cambridge, which I did love living in for a few years, but the too-strong emphasis on the appearance of education as opposed to the knowledge you gain helped me move to take a job in San Mateo (shameless plug: RockYou.com).

Disclaimer: I am not your average anything. My move to San Mateo from Cambridge is via Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I speak Mandarin but I'm English/German. Take what I said with a healthy grain of wacky salt.

Re: Cities and Ambition

#175

Post by steveplace »

coglethorpe wrote: post #39

I've noticed messages as well: Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop. Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right? Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners. Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer. Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.

I'll play the game, too, but with only two observations:

Orlando, FL: Subprime.

Space Coast, FL: God's Waiting Room

Re: Cities and Ambition

#176

Post by asdflkj »

wheels wrote: post #154
asdflkj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't breaking the rules, if it were truly that general, result in something more substantial than goofiness? And if it's just goofiness, perhaps a better way to put it would be "break the social conventions". It might seem like I'm being contentious just for its own sake, but I'm not. It's precisely the thing that most irks me about Western Europe: the attitude of "don't break the rules". Europeans seem to like t…

It's a mix here. There's definitely a bohemian atmosphere (in many, not all parts of the city), but reducing that to sex and drugs isn't really fair. It extends to arts, street culture, work environments, etc. I think I see what you're getting at though, so I'll give a few specific examples of rules that are broken here: - "Living in a big cultural center is expensive." It's cheap here. I don't know of any other west…

Interesting! How did the housing surplus come about?

Re: Cities and Ambition

#177

Post by geebee »

This is an interesting take on cities. What do you think New Orleans says? I haven't been there post-Katrina, but it definitely has a very powerful vibe (the "show us your tits for beads" stupidity is actually just a very small section of the city, not at all characteristic of the rest of the place...)

"You should live more soulfully?"

Re: Cities and Ambition

#178

Post by jbenz »

timr wrote: post #152
jbenz wrote: post #46

I live in Columbus, OH and as I read PG's essay I was wondering what Columbus tells you. And seriously, I just kept thinking about one thing: "You should play college football." College football is king in the Bus, and the players and coaches are our royalty. It's kind of a scary thought, but I'm as big a Buckeye fan as anyone else, so I'm partly to blame. But I also admit that I don't want to live in a place where t…

If you've never lived anywhere else, you owe it to yourself to move on. I grew up in Columbus, and while it was a nice place to be a kid, I could never live there today. Too sheltered. And trust me...the valley isn't scary. It's nothing but a gigantic suburb, punctuated with office parks. Sure, the housing is hideously expensive, and there are freakishly rich people everywhere, but otherwise, the place won't present…

I actually grew up in the burbs of Raleigh and then Dallas, I didn't come to Columbus until college.

The thought of moving to SV is scary exactly because of the expense, especially when I have a decent paying job here that I love. It would be foolish to abandon that, right? (I guess this illustrates the differences again between the two areas: Columbus would answer "Yes!" and SV would answer "No!")

I should mention that Columbus does have industries other than Buckeye Football. If you're passionate about insurance, this is the place to be. Of course, who is really passionate about insurance?

As far as deciding a city's worth based on personal experiences, it's always going to be just that: personal. But I can't deny the influences of cities on my individual life.

Re: Cities and Ambition

#179

Post by wheels »

asdflkj wrote: post #176
wheels wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mix here. There's definitely a bohemian atmosphere (in many, not all parts of the city), but reducing that to sex and drugs isn't really fair. It extends to arts, street culture, work environments, etc. I think I see what you're getting at though, so I'll give a few specific examples of rules that are broken here: - "Living in a big cultural center is expensive." It's cheap here. I don't know of any other west…

Interesting! How did the housing surplus come about?

A lot of people left West Berlin when the city was divided and a lot of people left East Berlin right after reunification. The massive housing surplus that resulted caused housing costs to sink and cheap housing made the city a mecca for alternative culture. Cost of living probably doesn't even hit a quarter of Paris or London.

Here's an article from 6 years ago that's somewhat dated, but still gives you a feel for things good and bad:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_23/b3786132....

Re: Cities and Ambition

#180

Post by janm »

hugh wrote: post #69
edw519 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"your best best is probably to try living in several places when you're young" I have, and here's what they've said to me: Pittsburgh: You should be nice. New Jersey: You should be in New York. Los Angeles: You should go outside. Phoenix: You should go inside. Detroit: You should be glad you have a good job. Tampa: You should buy a new pair of flip flops for dinner Saturday night.

Places I've lived: Sydney: You should spend more money on real estate. Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes. London: You should have been here 150 years ago. Davis, CA: You should leave Davis, CA.

Sydney is real estate, through and through.

London: "You should have been here 150 years ago" is essentially "you should be more aristocratic". I think that signal is strong in London. I have been at dinner with friends who started arguing about how far they had to commute on the tube (as a proxy for social class.) The English pretend to the world that it doesn't matter but it seems to matter deeply to them. This seems to be an English hidden rule; that is how the discussion started.

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