Denial of the existence of white supremacy is a fun easter egg embedded in the middle of the essay.
[deleted]
Earnestness
51–60 of 478 posts
Re: Earnestness
#52Earnest is my favourite word for describing that beautiful part during a child's development where they haven't yet had a negative experience from expressing themselves earnestly. That window of time where if you ask if they know something they would proudly reply "no!" because they have no idea that there might be shame in not knowing something. I seek to try to make myself more earnest and undo the damage of fear o…
> I seek to try to make myself more earnest and undo the damage of fear of retribution/shame but I'm always a bit sad when I get in trouble because I was straight forward but adult politics is sadly complex sometimes. You might enjoy reading these two posts and discussions: "The power of ignorance" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041281 "Asking questions" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729028
I've also written about this effect, called Lampshading: https://www.swyx.io/lampshading/ asking the "stupid question" is a strength when done in taste.
Re: Earnestness
#53I 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?
[deleted]
Re: Earnestness
#54> 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…
Politics might be the hardest to be earnest in... and yet we must, for the future's sake !
Re: Earnestness
#55Retrospectively ascribing success to character traits that we favour is subjective to the point of meaninglessness.
Earnestness, like any other trait or 'virtue' is not innate or absolute. Everyone has the capacity to exhibit this trait or be seen to exhibit it, when refracted through the non-objective lens of someone else's bias and perception. For example, a politician for partyX is seen to be an earnest 'straight man' who cares deeply by his supporters, while supporters of partyY view him as a reckless oaf.
To promote the use of personality traits as a predictor of success is naive at best.
Re: Earnestness
#56> paulgraham.com Oh. All I know to expect from seeing that is a weird kind of popularity, agreement and participation you don't see for other blogs posted on HN, sometimes with the other half-or-so of comments being annoyed with Paul Graham. Does HN covertly promote all links to that blog or is there something more substantial to it?
I find this funny. I'll bite. Paul Graham created Hacker News. And is a founder of Y Combinator.
Yes, and when we say ‘created’ hacker news, he coded it himself in a dialect of lisp which he also coded just for this purpose.
Re: Earnestness
#57I 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?
Yes. It’s because of who he is. If I wrote this post, it would not have the same meaning as if he wrote it. 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…
I think if your perspective has enabled you to know things you wouldn't have otherwise, _most_ of that should just come through from the writing. It should be possible for you to write in a way that's convincing independently of who you are.
A different person might not have been able to produce the same essay, but if the essay is the same, who the author is shouldn't matter too much (for a good essay).
Re: Earnestness
#58> 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…
His posts aren’t fact based, they’re mostly an expression of his feelings.
A great example are his 5-6 posts talking about how the most important facet of a programming language is its brevity (https://ideolalia.com/essays/thought-leaders-and-chicken-sex...). At no point does he cite any facts backing that up. Even when the brevity chasing language he created failed to gain traction, he didn’t see that as an indication to recheck his assumptions.
In other words, “feelings don’t care about your facts”. But hey, there’s a market for that sort of article. So who are we to judge?
Re: Earnestness
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
In politics, the word "technocrat" is used to try to carve out a divide between specific intellectual talent and political leadership talent, with a heavy implication that these are mutually exclusive. I think that's how PG is using "earnest" here. He presents it first as a compliment but goes on to suggest that it is exclusive from understanding other people's motivations, and by extension, exclusive from business l…
> In politics, the word "technocrat" is used to try to carve out a divide between specific intellectual talent and political leadership talent, implication being that these are exclusive. No, in politics, “technocrat” describes an advocate of rule by an elite of technical experts. When applied to a candidate for office, it often more specifically designates someone who sees their own self-evaluated membership in such…
> No, in politics, “technocrat” describes an advocate of rule by an elite of technical experts.
I've never seen that usage - in my experience, a technocrat is always the (supposed) expert, not the advocate for expert rule.
Wikipedia commonly uses "advocate for technocracy" on the relevant biography pages.
Re: Earnestness
#60I 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?
On average, his writings are definitely more worthy of discussion than the newest JS framework or somebody doing something with old or underpowered hardware. Perhaps most of the once-top posts aren't as exciting as one would believe?