Earnestness • Hacker News Board

Re: Earnestness

#141

Post by LMYahooTFY » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

Bresenham wrote: post #123

> Reporters literally can't believe it when founders making piles of money say that they started their companies to make the world better. The situation seems made for mockery. How can these founders be so naive as not to realize how implausible they sound? I can't speak for someone like Kara Swisher, but attempting to channel her, I don't think she would think it is beyond belief that some hacker teenager who droppe…

>The Steve Jobs orchestrated formerly secret cabal, that included Eric Schmidt and others, to drive down engineer salaries in the Bay.

Can you elaborate/provide links on this one? I'm unfamiliar.

Re: Earnestness

#142

Post by inopinatus » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

kabirgoel wrote: post #42

> 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…

It’s also absolutely the opposite of my experience. I’ve met a bunch of Swedes, Norwegians, Finns and Danes and they are some of the most sophisticated and cynical folks I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

Perhaps the particularly dry brand of Scandinavian pragmatic irony is lost on pg because pg is too earnest to notice that they’re on the other side of a zetetic event horizon.

Re: Earnestness

#143

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

wincy wrote: post #15

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this funny. I'll bite. Paul Graham created Hacker News. And is a founder of Y Combinator.

I didn’t know this, and I’ve been using HN for years now, thanks for the information. I just thought Paul Graham was some super popular vaguely tech person.

I should have recalled this sooner, but it happened to me once, too.

I was doing a product demo of a remotely operated device with a guy from AT&T. We were supposed to be able to communicate through the device but it wasn't working well. They'd just rolled out a new network and it was spotty. I suggested at one point that we use text messages as a back up for communicating and I actually asked him if he was ok with that.

He says, 'Yeah, no problem. My name's on the patent.' 'huh?', 'I'm on the SMS patent.'

Re: Earnestness

#144

Post by fullshark » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #141

Bresenham wrote: post #123

> Reporters literally can't believe it when founders making piles of money say that they started their companies to make the world better. The situation seems made for mockery. How can these founders be so naive as not to realize how implausible they sound? I can't speak for someone like Kara Swisher, but attempting to channel her, I don't think she would think it is beyond belief that some hacker teenager who droppe…

>The Steve Jobs orchestrated formerly secret cabal, that included Eric Schmidt and others, to drive down engineer salaries in the Bay. Can you elaborate/provide links on this one? I'm unfamiliar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

https://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-b...

https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper...

Re: Earnestness

#145

Post by jelliclesfarm » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

alextheparrot wrote: post #22

croissants wrote: post #10

My perception is that one drawback of earnestness is that it often comes off as just being boring. The most earnest people I know are not popular. The most popular people I know are more like twinkle-in-the-eye-kind-of-BS-but-not-pathological-liars. I don't mean to say "grr, why aren't nerds more popular!". I mean more that this specific kind of earnestness seems to preclude the playing of certain conversational game…

Can you expand on the boringness? That conflicts with what I think because I believe that engaging hobbies are that vitality which manifests as “playful” and “fun”. Are you willing to try something new, and if you do, are you willing to learn to do it well enough to enjoy it. Engaging with a hobby tends to involve making it part of me - the hobbies I haven’t committed to actually liking and just performed have always…

Re your example, Borges is one of my fav authors too. Would love to see that list.

Re: Earnestness

#146

Post by cambalache » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #121

brighton36 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the problem with seeing white supremacy is that in doing so, we create white supremacy.

[EDIT: Every statement here is a basic fact, easily verifiable and backed by reputable scholarship and reaearch. Controversy comes from peoples dislike of the implication of these facts, not the truthfulness of the statements themselves. TBH I think downvoters should be ashamed of themselves. Or, better educate themselves.] What? No. White supremacy is literally a cop murdering a man by pressing his knee on the guys…

> White supremacy is literally a cop murdering a man by pressing his knee on the guys neck until he dies, with the cops buddies standing by and watching

That is not white supremacy until you prove he did it because the victim was black and not because other reasons (like him being a bully cop). So under that criteria any white person killed by a black person was victim of black supremacy.

A better example of white supremacy is white people in liberal cities taking over the BLM movement and making all about themselves.

Re: Earnestness

#147

Post by jhawk28 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #136

These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.

Is he trying to stroke his ego, or is pg trying to signal to potential founders what qualities he is looking for? I would think the latter.

Re: Earnestness

#148

Post by cambalache » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #4

> 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…

Not only that , in many parts of the world (LATAM for example) American institutions are not considered earnest at all, you know they all have underhanded motives.

Re: Earnestness

#149

Post by newacct583 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #136

These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.

I won't go that far. But I will say that, contra his earlier writing, pg's recent stuff has a real "feedback in the bubble" feel. It's still treating SV culture as it was fifteen years ago and not really willing to engage with or even nod to the way the industry and its effects on society have evolved.

So e.g. Airbnb is still a hero story about disruption even as it settles into an established power and its inconvenient side effects on things like the real estate industry become apparent.

It's not that he's wrong, or that I even disagree with this particular essay. I just think the world has kinda moved on from this model of innovation and we need to be solving different problems than how to make the next batch of kids rich.

Re: Earnestness

#150

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #136

These essays are getting ridiculous. We get it, you have tons of experience funding companies so it helps you to do a competent job filtering the candidates.But after that it is pretty much a crap-shoot, and all this theorizing are just post-hoc rationalizations to satisfy your ego.

[deleted]