41–50 of 478 posts
I earnestly think his writing has an overindulgent fandom here. Every single blog post rockets to the top and, in my opinion, they are usually short and lacking in citation, evidence, or persuasion. He may write snappily, but is every single post worthy of Han's top slot?
I find it hard to take sweeping statements like this seriously. What makes Scandinavian countries any more or less earnest than, say, Germany or France? This seems no better than to say, “The French make great lovers,” or “The British are terrible cooks.” Absent any evidence to back them up, many such statements in PG’s essays seem to be an expression of his prejudices. The very least he could do is to provide some criterion the reader can use to test “earnestness” at the population scale.
In this case, I imagine that he started from “Scandinavia is the region with the highest number of startups per capita” and inferred that this must mean that they are more earnest, rather than going the other way around.
I earnestly think his writing has an overindulgent fandom here. Every single blog post rockets to the top and, in my opinion, they are usually short and lacking in citation, evidence, or persuasion. He may write snappily, but is every single post worthy of Han's top slot?
I know that sounds counterintuitive, but the reason is that we know that PG has huge experience of and access to startup founders and seen their outcomes and has had a great deal of opportunity to formulate thoughts like like this on the basis of what he has seen.
I have experience of startups too. I could have written something like this, but it genuinely wouldn’t have been as meaningful coming from me, because I don’t have the same perspective as he does.
> Interestingly, just as the word "nerd" implies earnestness even when used as a metaphor, the word "politics" implies the opposite. It's not only in actual politics that earnestness seems to be a handicap, but also in office politics and academic politics. I don't think this is always the case. I've found that no matter the size of the business, they are made up of people, and people have bullshit detectors. When yo…
I understand what he means if by "politics" he means self-interest and hoodwinking voters. And that may be his experience of politicians, but it doesn't define the field any more than Mulligans define golf. Champion golfers don't take Mulligans, don't kick their ball closer to the hole, and don't miscount strokes. They are all far too earnest, and have been since they started in the sport.
Likewise with politics. MLK did what he did because he cared for the rights of people. So did Thomas Jefferson, They're not the only ones, though it is difficult to come up with examples that are universally admired because when it comes to politics, we all have different opinions, because we all have different interests.
But what is politics? When I studied it at university, we learned on the first day that politics is just who gets what, where, when, and how, in a society.
Anyone who fights for the rights of other people in society, whether for left or right, for rich or for poor, may be earnest, and virtuous in the eyes of their peers.
I earnestly think his writing has an overindulgent fandom here. Every single blog post rockets to the top and, in my opinion, they are usually short and lacking in citation, evidence, or persuasion. He may write snappily, but is every single post worthy of Han's top slot?
In some ways, this entire site exists to promote him.
Denial of the existence of white supremacy is a fun easter egg embedded in the middle of the essay.
> The most earnest part of Europe is Scandinavia, and not surprisingly this is also the region with the highest number of successful startups per capita. I find it hard to take sweeping statements like this seriously. What makes Scandinavian countries any more or less earnest than, say, Germany or France? This seems no better than to say, “The French make great lovers,” or “The British are terrible cooks.” Absent any…
Denial of the existence of white supremacy is a fun easter egg embedded in the middle of the essay.
> It's a bigger social error to seem naive in most European countries than it is in America, and this may be one of subtler reasons startups are less commmon there. Founder culture is completely at odds with sophisticated cynicism. I have a high opinion of pg, but mocking an entire continent for non-earnestness because it doesn't make as much money as the US (because they have more startups because, supposedly, the A…
I hear what you're saying and there might be some truth to it. I didn't read that "sophisticated cynicism" as very mocking. You could even say he's calling them cooler than us, in a very earnest kind of a way.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/cool-the-etymology-...