Haters • Hacker News Board

Re: Haters

#231

Post by danso » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #143

What if the reason haters are using the word "fraud" is not because of sour grape chewing about the random vagaries of chance, but because the company (at the behest of their leadership) has been lying to their customers about such things as: 1. Their employee list (not updating it quickly after major staffing changes) 2. Legal status: misrepresenting to the public and to customers that the company is licensed to ope…

A more recent example would be this Dec. 30, 2019 twitter thread [0], in which someone asked for an update from the California state regulator on Lambda's approval status, and was told that they were not approved, (see edit for correction of following) and apparently, do not appear to have submitted an application.

[0] https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680

edit: the thread author just replied that BPPE followed up and said Lambda has recently applied:

https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1216075710818766848

> In a follow up BPPE said they recently applied. They also said it’s not possible for any school offering ISAs to meet the legal requirements.

Re: Haters

#232

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #223

rossdavidh wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically yes, but it should be said that John Carreyrou didn't act like a hater. Perhaps a better test is, that a thoughtful person thinks y is a fraud, whereas more or less by definition a hater does not come across as a thoughtful person.

That isn't actionable advice. If you think you can reliably identify thoughtful people then you're a fool. Everyone likes to believe that they're good judges of character but we're all very fallible.

I think it's difficult to tell if oneself is thoughtful, but identifying other people as thoughtful or not is not nearly as difficult, if you have known them for any amount of time. If they are commenting on a topic you know about from personal experience, is their commentary more or less well informed than the average person?

We are certainly all fallible, but thoughtful would not imply infallible, only that you are thinking over (in this case) the actions of the person in this case, prior to deciding if they were wrong or right. A fanboy, or a hater, more or less by definition knows the answer ("right" and "wrong", respectively) before thinking about it much.

Paying attention to the opinions of other thoughtful people is a much better strategy than only paying attention to your own opinion, with all of its perspective problems. If all the thoughtful people you know have the opposite opinion of you about someone or something, it doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but it ought to at least prompt some double-checking on your part.

Re: Haters

#233

Post by tompccs » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #226

tompccs wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are old stories. Given pg's statements on Twitter it's likely Lambda School was at least at the back of his mind when he wrote the piece but I don't think it's the sole reason.

This all blew up on Twitter and Reddit a few nights ago. I actually ended up in chats (directly and indirectly) with a few different LS alumni who didn't know what to do, as they were unable to find work and afraid to speak out against LS for not doing a good job.

Interesting. I think Austen is a brilliant self-promoter, which is the source of much of his and LS's success. Not knocking that at all, the product seems to work for a lot of people and the more he can scale it the more people he can help.

Being a good self-promoter puts you prominently in the public eye which is I think attracts a lot of detractors/haters. There are also competitors with very similar offerings who can't match up to Austen's hype machine. They want to claim there is some fatal flaw at the heart of LS to make Austen look like some kind of fraudster. This seems despearate to me.

There are always dissatisfied students. I remember when I was an undergraduate I got into arguments with people on a private facebook group who felt that the course should have been more "spoon-fed" to us and that the exam questions were unfair. People come to higher education with widely varying expectations. As the old adage goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time.

That said, my antenna is up for any serious criticism of AA and LS. So far I've not seen anything beyond to-be-expected low-level grumbling, which is being pounced on his strange growing harem of haters. Which only adds weight to pg's article, in my opinion.

Re: Haters

#234

Post by tempsy » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #224

tempsy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impetus for the post was a few critical threads on Lambda School on Twitter. I highly doubt any of this would’ve happened if the CEO had not spent a year relentlessly boasting about his company in a way that you’d expect a used car salesman to do. It was (and continues to be) too fantastical in a way that anyone who has worked in startups knows is rarely the case behind the scenes. When you invite scrutiny upon y…

> When you invite scrutiny upon yourself by being shameless seller in chief it’s your own doing, not because people suddenly decided they wanted to come out of the woodworks and bash your work. Lambda School hasn't been under criticism for literally years because Austen sells too hard. It's because they've done some shady, unethical and outright illegal things. Their refusal to pay license fees while publicly claimin…

No one would be taking about Lambda School if the CEO didn’t court publicity through Twitter.

It’s literally the only reason most even know what Lambda School is. That’s my point.

Re: Haters

#235

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #128

I never could learn to deal with this. I set up a blog way back when blogs were first a thing, maybe 20 years ago. Started posting articles about internet, culture, tech, anything I found interesting. Almost immediately, I had people dropping by and posting the most vile comments. Whatever I did, I did for bad reasons. I was a bad person and there just wasn't anything I could do or say to fix that. I never learned ho…

[deleted]

Re: Haters

#236

Post by stanferder » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

johnwheeler wrote: post #215

danso wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your standard for determining that someone else is actually a "hater"? Because people like Carreyrou were most definitely considered "haters" by Holmes' supporters – Tim Draper in particular called Carreyrou "a hyena" [0]. Your reasoning that Carreyrou is not a hater because he had "career incentives" that drove him is not a sound argument. A hater is not necessarily some kind of evil altruist, i.e. hating pu…

> A hater is not necessarily some kind of evil altruist, i.e. hating purely with no respect to personal gain. That is exactly the thrust of PGs essay. Neither of those people violated their own principles. Holmes and Madoff are frauds. Full stop. Tim Draper did consider Carreyou a hater. Draper was proven wrong the instant Carreyou was vindicated. Carreyou didn’t want Holmes to fail because “why her and not me” like…

> I hate this fraud because why good on him/her and not me?

> Carreyou didn’t want Holmes to fail because “why her and not me”

Why is envy assumed to be the motivation of the "hater"? If I recall correctly, Markopolous was driven by the idea that cheaters shouldn't win. Is that any different than the "hater" who is driven by the idea that person/product/concept "X" is unworthy?

The world needs haters for the same reason it needs entrepreneurs. They're usually wrong, but sometimes they're right.

Re: Haters

#237

Post by netman21 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

While I am by no means "famous" in the sense of Paul Graham famous, this essay is spot on. I had a coterie of haters when I was getting started on my own. I would post a blog and they would counter with their own blog making fun of me. One of them was a better writer than I and his criticisms were cutting. But they were just mean. I suspect it was this guy who created a fake twitter account using my avatar. It was labeled "fake" so not an attempt to slander me. I felt somewhat like it was a compliment. And it was very clever.

I just disengaged from all these people. I don't read comments on my blogs or articles. But still, having negative fanboys impacts you the rest of your life. You imagine them calling you out. It pulls you down and slows you down.

Thanks for this PG.

Re: Haters

#238

Post by AnimalMuppet » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #193

Defenestresque wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The people you refer to did not hate Holmes/Enron/etc unilaterally because of a vague feeling that their talents were overestimated. They had, to use PG's term in the article, a dispute with them over a particular issue that they had picked up on, often as a result of having domain-specific knowledge that allowed them insight into their operations (i.e. that financials did not seem to be adding up for Enr…

But that's also true for those who call Elon Musk a fraud. Disputes such as "funding secured" (securities fraud), "full self driving coming later this year" (false advertising), booking warranty expenses as goodwill (accounting fraud), Musk's claim he had "recused himself" from the SolarCity acquisition when he hadn't (securities fraud). These accusations of fraud are all truth-claims about the world. They are provab…

I don't think PG is talking about accusations that the person is engaging in fraud. I think he's talking about claims that the person is a fraud - that they have (to use the singer example) no actual talent.

If I claim that Tom Brady, say, defrauded someone, that's an accusation about actual deeds involving actual money. If I claim that he's a fraud, though, I'm claiming that he's not actually any good as a quarterback. That's a very different claim. One claim lives in the realm of objective facts about actions; the other lives in the realm of emotional reaction to success.

Re: Haters

#239

Post by johnwheeler » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #229

johnwheeler wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A hater is not necessarily some kind of evil altruist, i.e. hating purely with no respect to personal gain. That is exactly the thrust of PGs essay. Neither of those people violated their own principles. Holmes and Madoff are frauds. Full stop. Tim Draper did consider Carreyou a hater. Draper was proven wrong the instant Carreyou was vindicated. Carreyou didn’t want Holmes to fail because “why her and not me” like…

Holmes and Madoff were frauds after sufficient evidence (including the consequences of their business practices) were made public and heavily scrutinized. That said, I agree PG's essay isn't intended to be about people like Carreyrou, or the SEC investigators into Madoff, etc – I am confused about which real-life people of consequence he's actually thinking of, because it's strange to write an essay about such an abs…

Sure maybe Carreyou wasn’t advancing his career. I should have said that was one possibility. It would be a noble pursuit because he did the world good.

Re: Haters

#240

Post by johnwheeler » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

stanferder wrote: post #236

johnwheeler wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A hater is not necessarily some kind of evil altruist, i.e. hating purely with no respect to personal gain. That is exactly the thrust of PGs essay. Neither of those people violated their own principles. Holmes and Madoff are frauds. Full stop. Tim Draper did consider Carreyou a hater. Draper was proven wrong the instant Carreyou was vindicated. Carreyou didn’t want Holmes to fail because “why her and not me” like…

> I hate this fraud because why good on him/her and not me? > Carreyou didn’t want Holmes to fail because “why her and not me” Why is envy assumed to be the motivation of the "hater"? If I recall correctly, Markopolous was driven by the idea that cheaters shouldn't win. Is that any different than the "hater" who is driven by the idea that person/product/concept "X" is unworthy? The world needs haters for the same rea…

I think you can qualify a hater as someone who wishes someone else would fail for no good reason other than making them feel better about themselves. Maybe that’s envy, maybe it’s not.