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Earnestness

paulgraham.com

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Re: Earnestness

#221

Post by anubidiocane »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #212
iWorshipFAANGS wrote: post #192

If you click on the hyperlink Paul Graham hyperlinks as "academic bogus," you'll find a google scholar search for "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic whiteness." First of all, I don't think Paul Graham read those 5000 article returned by the search. Instead I think he just typed in a chain of academic words he thought represented useless academic research, and then told himself these "tee-hee postmodern bogus." I think…

Have you ever read a codebase that accomplishes very little, yet has a million layers of abstraction? With classes like `MainApplicationBeanInjectionFactoryBuilder`? I think the scathing point was that much can be written about nothing, and one way to obscure your content is to use language such as "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic whiteness".

But what is the layman term for "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic whiteness"?

And why a researcher should use it?

Ironically PG founded Ycombinator, which is "an implementation of a fixed-point combinator in lambda calculus"

Re: Earnestness

#222

Post by randomsearch »

dcx wrote: post #201
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…

Do you remember life before iPhones? Before Google and universal knowledge, YouTube guides on every subject under the sun, Microsoft Excel, personal computers, international video calls, remote work? (Plus the indirect benefits to you economically from every industry adopting the above) The world has added 3.4 billion people since 1980. We're in a life-or-death struggle for carrying capacity, so daily life naturally…

Totes agree with the “yeah but actually tech companies have done amazing things” argument but do you ever wonder why so many examples are now quite old? I mean I was raving about Google in 2001 and here we are near 20 years later saying how great their impact on search is...

Re: Earnestness

#223

Post by puranjay »

ummwhat wrote: post #179

Here's an easy way to figure out where earnestness matters vs where it's just bullshitting all the way down. Are there any prodigies? Mathematics: yes. Music: yes. Real estate: no.

You'll find earnestness in fields where the "system" is known, transparent, learnable, and verifiable. Musicians and mathematicians can't bullshit because other practitioners will catch on easily.

In real estates and startups, the "system" is usually esoteric, highly network dependent, and non-verifiable. You can't tell if a startup founder is truly a genius, or just lucked out (or had access to his dad's millions as seed funding).

Any field where knowledge remains locked away in closed networks essentially becomes the domain of bullshit.

Open knowledge breeds earnestness.

If everyone knew exactly how every real estate deal in the world was structured, there would be no bullshit real estate investors.

Re: Earnestness

#224

Post by cambalache »

dang wrote: post #189
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.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Under that premise nothing can be criticized. Even Mein Kampf must have a "charitable" interpretation.

Re: Earnestness

#225

Post by anubidiocane »

ummwhat wrote: post #179

Here's an easy way to figure out where earnestness matters vs where it's just bullshitting all the way down. Are there any prodigies? Mathematics: yes. Music: yes. Real estate: no.

> Real estate: no

What about Graham Stephan?

Re: Earnestness

#226

Post by dcx »

Alex3917 wrote: post #205

> 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. To be fair a lot of startup origin stories are so ridiculously fake that they seem like they could have only been created as a mockery of earnestness. Like the founders know they're lying, they know everyone else knows they're lying, and they'…

I went looking for the source of this anecdote, I believe this is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgzi_jUBu9U

Re: Earnestness

#227

Post by courtf »

war1025 wrote: post #207

I think it's interesting that PG seems to so often focus on the whole "nerd" thing. Maybe it was just a happy accident of my adolescence, but the whole "nerd" stereotype never seemed to apply to anyone or be used against them. People were singled out for other reasons, but academics or interests along those lines was never one of them.

Yeah this is something he writes about regularly, and it is certainly anachronistic. I also think it's important for rich nerds to justify their position to themselves somehow, and to have some imagined hardship to point to in their past that helps explain their superiority (ha!) over the non-nerds. In reality, it's mostly a bunch of rich kids who would have been rich no matter what nonsense they got up to. Maybe not billionaire rich, but rich enough for the distinction to be sort of meaningless.

I think PG falls into numerous traps in this piece, and many other posts, but I appreciate his writing all the same. In particular, I think the idea that making some business, even if trying to solve a "serious" problem, can never really be fully earnest. There is so little room for pure problem solving, it's all politics. There are more than enough talented people, more than enough funding, to solve all sorts of problems. What remains is the negotiation about who will get the opportunity. Politics.

Re: Earnestness

#228

Post by nitrogen »

boh wrote: post #213
Quarrelsome wrote: post #2

Earnest 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 think you have too much optimism regarding the value of people's earnest expressions. Children are children and so their earnestness is cute and endearing (in most instances)--adults are far less charming and far more petty, self-indulgent, spineless, fickle, fearful. Social media is a cesspool largely due to all this earnestness. Fear of retribution and shame is helpful in mitigating the self-absorption embedded i…

No, given the proper "freedom" to be "earnest" you wouldn't be the next Picasso or Steve Jobs. We know because if that's who you were, that's who you'd be.

This statement cannot be allowed to stand uncontested. It suggests that everyone is exactly where they ought to be, that all bullying and harassment and isolation that keeps people from reaching their potential is right and just.

Re: Earnestness

#229

Post by DoreenMichele »

andi999 wrote: post #198
DoreenMichele wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earnest but interesting is sometimes a recipe for drama. Nothing worse than being well-meaning, right about something and saying something no one really wants to hear. If you have any sense whatsoever, you intentionally shoot for "boring" while being publicly earnest. Remember: "May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse . There's a downside to being interesting.

That proverb is wrongfully attributed to the chinese.(me beeing the party pooper here)

I initially wrote it without the word Chinese and felt like the sentence didn't convey "This is intended to wish you ill." I felt it sounded more like "This is a swear word."

Can't win for losing. ;)

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