Earnestness • Hacker News Board

Re: Earnestness

#331

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #135

wombatmobile wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG seems to have a cynical conception of what "politics" is, since he seems to be saying that practising it is anathema to earnestness. 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 ho…

But I kinda feel like your example proves the point, because I've never seen MLK described as a "politician" or "political figure". Politics as most people understand it is the process of deciding who ought to run the government, and King specifically avoided discussing this ( https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/sta... ) because he felt that doing so would undercut his mission of social change.

King was a political figure for sure.

People use a broader definition of politics all the time. Office politics. Geopolitics. Realpolitik. Identity politics. Political correctness.

Re: Earnestness

#332

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #318

woodruffw wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should my tax dollars go towards that? Why should your tax dollars go towards CS research, when nearly half of all sampled papers (circa 2015) can't be reproduced [1]? As a society, we delegate funding based on perceptions of expertise: someone who knows more than you or I about these specific fields decided that they deserved some amount of funding (probably significantly less than you think). Sometimes that m…

I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able t…

That's pretty much just opinion? Of course they include politics, as does history, anthropology, literature. That means nothing.

Strawman PC gender studies you have encountered may have poisoned it for you. That doesn't mean its worthless, or even wrong.

Re: Earnestness

#333

Post by ResearchCode » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

boh wrote: post #249

nitrogen wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only thing I'm suggesting is that freedom doesn't spare you from mediocrity. Real oppression, an experience the US professional middle class is largely spared of, the type experienced by the citizens of Venezuela or the people currently being held in Xinjiang re-education camps, is truly insurmountable and requires large macro shifts to institute change. To suggest individual bullying, harassment and isolation ar…

I thought it was about becoming the next Steve Jobs, as in billionaire founder. They tend to grow up with great privilege. Evidently there are great obstacles for the middle class, such as favoritism for the already affluent. As in any country, it has little to with actual capability.

Surely Venezuela could have less social mobility, but it isn't actually that great in the west.

Re: Earnestness

#334

Post by eloff » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #332

slashdev wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able t…

That's pretty much just opinion? Of course they include politics, as does history, anthropology, literature. That means nothing. Strawman PC gender studies you have encountered may have poisoned it for you. That doesn't mean its worthless, or even wrong.

No, but that is my opinion. I think it's a net negative to society until I see evidence to the contrary. Links welcome.

Re: Earnestness

#335

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #326

woodruffw wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. It's the humanities. It's not supposed to be "scientific," with whatever weight you decide to place on that adjective. Our government (and every government) funds thousands of things, academic and not, that aren't themselves scientific: parks, libraries, public arts, aesthetic programs intended to mot…

Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method. History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis i…

> History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts.

I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted.

Philosophy predates what you think of as "logic," and does not use the phrase to refer solely to systems that map roughly to the constrained proof structures that programmers are taught. More profoundly, many philosophers will outright reject the idea that logic is some kind of a priori substrate: not because they think it's wrong or not, but because they think that it's the responsibility of philosophy to consider what would have to be for it to be otherwise.

I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality."

Re: Earnestness

#336

Post by geofft » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #320

geofft wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the references on the other end of the link. I expected it to be a particular article with all four of those words in the title. It was not; it was just a search for those four words. The top result is an article about the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (d. 1968), who was among other things one of the leaders of the theological opposition to the Third Reich and its subversion of Christian belief in service o…

It's worth mentioning Paul Graham has a degree in philosophy. He should know what hermeneutic and dialectic mean.

By the way, he has now silently changed the link to remove "whiteness" and add "racialized" and "phenomenology," which I guess confirms

- no, he did not read the results and had no specific academic work in mind, he just listed some words he didn't like

- he still doesn't like words about the academic study of race

- he somehow didn't learn the meaning of "phenomenology" in his Ivy-League philosophy degree, either

Re: Earnestness

#337

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #76

alecbz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I simply can’t see how this can be right. What we know about PG’s experience is a huge prior that shapes how we interpret what he writes. I think this probably explains some of the polarization we see in the comments - people who don’t know who he is see this as just a dumb blog post that seems to be getting too much karma. People who do, see it as insight from someone who is in a position to actually know something.

Many of his critics mention his connection to HN, discuss his earlier essays, and so on.

Re: Earnestness

#338

Post by geofft » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

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…

A note for people seeing the essay now: he's quietly changed the link to be "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic racialized phenomenology." (Which makes it even clearer that he doesn't have a reasoned argument at any specific target in mind, just "tee-hee postmodern bogus." Also that he forgot he needs to hide his power level.)

EDIT: He's quietly changed the link again to remove "racialized."

Re: Earnestness

#339

Post by geofft » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

rst wrote: post #49

Odd to see a stress on interest in a problem for its own sake from pg, who has elsewhere written that the startup economy would be crippled by raising taxes on people who had already gotten fabulously rich. If being in it for the money is "the wrong motive" to do a startup, downgrading the potential financial gains from set-for-dynasty to merely set-for-life would seem to be a way of ditching the poseurs...

That's because this essay doesn't exist in isolation, it's a defense against the (entirely accurate) claim that his interest in Lisp for its own sake hasn't changed the world, only his business skills have: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400184

If you don't have that context, then the essay is in fact very confusing: the beginning of it says that caring about money is the wrong motivation, and the end of it says how good it is that you now get money from earnestly working on things. What it's actually doing is trying to convince people that there's a connection between his financial success and his earnest work on Lisp, and more generally that successful startups (who apparently still need VC investment) tend to be successful because they deserve it, not because they happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right access to capital.

Re: Earnestness

#340

Post by eloff » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #335

eloff wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges. Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method. History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis i…

> History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of his…

> I'm sorry, but this is a profound misapprehension of the humanities: one of the first things you do in the study of history is learn that history is a human project, subject to human flaws. We don't take Thucydides and Herodotus at their words; we expect the "facts" of history to be distorted.

Sure, but there's still a basis in facts where can corroborate accounts from different authors, even different sides in a war. yes it's subject to interpretation, and there's no one right answer. But you also can't just make stuff up and get people to take you seriously. There's some rigour to making and presenting your arguments. Very different to gender studies.

> I know that it's difficult, but please consider whether your own positions have become dogmatic. You don't have to agree with prevailing views in gender studies (I don't even know what they are!); you merely have to ask yourself whether you're qualified to dismiss it as "an ideology with very little basis in reality."

Maybe. I've seen a lot of terrible examples of things from gender studies. I'm sure there have to be some redeeming ideas right? The whole field can't be 100% worthless. But by and large there's not much value in it and a lot of nonsense, incorrect, and even dangerous thinking to be found there.