11–20 of 882 posts
One of the things I dislike about celebrity is the idea that because I care what pg thinks about startups, that I should also care what he thinks about almost anything else. His Twitter account is starting to make me think he’s becoming Scott Adams.
As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this. Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others. In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I sh…
“Aggressive independence” for its own sake (at scale) can simply degrade into its own form of ironic groupthink.
I invite everyone to read this, this is the single most important work of political science / social psychology I've ever read.
Two categories he identifies, "authoritarian" and "social dominant" map to Graham's "passively conventional" and "aggressively conventional." The latter also tends to correspond to what psychiatrists would describe as narcissist, anti-social and possibly psychopathic traits.
For example, he conducted experiments as role playing games, like a model United Nations. When he removed the few "social dominants" from the player pool, the game ran smoothly, there was peace and everyone went to Alpha Centauri or something.
But when he added a few social dominants, things went to hell quick, and nuclear war broke out. Note that social dominants / narcissists are typically at most a few percents of the population.
I'm sure many people have noticed the phenomenon in any organisation: when a narcissist gets a modicum of power, they can destroy an organisation from within.
He's got an open invitation to stay in my treehouse but he seems to refuse to go anywhere that has weather. Maybe he melts like a witch when it rains or something.
One of the things I dislike about celebrity is the idea that because I care what pg thinks about startups, that I should also care what he thinks about almost anything else. His Twitter account is starting to make me think he’s becoming Scott Adams.
50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | tattletales | naughty ones | | | | aggressive | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | passive | | dreamy ones | | sheep | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------+---------------------…
Good grief man, if you can only detect new ideas when they erupt from the mouths of startup CEOs, and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist (despite having been denied millions if not billions of people), then you're not 'independent', you're just incredibly narrow minded.
Then Mr. Graham goes on to say that the rules of civilized, successful, wealthy societies are that everyone should be free to debate even the worst of ideas, and the people who prevent this or disagree with this are bad, never become entrepreneurs (a laughable thought), are not worth considering, and are in fact responsible for all bad things in the world (well, they and the leaders who appeal to them, only those two groups of people!)
It's laughably puerile... I mean how does he think this way? Has he any idea that one of the most valuable companies in the entire world is from a wealthy, civilized (in terms of lack of crime and lots of social etiquette only), successful country which has no concept of free expression (ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia)?
How do intelligent people end up reducing the world into such obviously untrue caricatures? How does he think that convention is the enemy of new ideas? Following convention is also the same thing as learning from the past or standing on the shoulders of giants. Without regard for convention at some level, the "geniuses" Mr. Graham praises would have been reinventing the wheel over and over and over again!
Good grief man, if you can only detect new ideas when they erupt from the mouths of startup CEOs, and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist (despite having been denied millions if not billions of people), then you're not 'independent', you're just incredibly narrow minded.
In defence of my chosen place in a university: being a quant or CEO implies a different kind of confirmity, namely, to the strong requirement of generating revenue (or at least investment) in the short term. Though we're all pushed to get academic funding as well, I don't think we have it as bad as either of those two roles, and that itself allows a certain diversity of thought.