Earnestness • Hacker News Board

Re: Earnestness

#381

Post by alecbz » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:29 AM 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.

I'm not saying PG asserting some insight is the same as some random person asserting it: certainly PG has some prior we should take into account.

But I think good essays are ones where you don't need to really rely on that prior. A good essay is one that convinces you that what it's saying is true, instead of just asserting it and relying on the reputation of the author.

If an essay doesn't convince you directly, then:

a) the author just didn't take the time to provide an explanation

b) the explanation is too complex, or too difficult to materialize, it's something you just develop an intuition about

c) it can't convince you directly because it's not actually true

If you trust the author on the subject matter enough such that you're in a/b territory, then while I think an essay that explained more would be a better one, an essay that doesn't is still valuable.

But I think at least one concern is that we're actually in c territory. Especially with stuff like "picking winning companies", I'm hesitant to take things at face-value. It's such a complicated thing to predict, it's easy to succumb to survivorship bias. I'm not convinced that PG is just so good at it that things should be taken at face-value.

Re: Earnestness

#382

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Earnestness

#383

Post by woodruffw » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

eloff wrote: post #378

woodruffw wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Except that a lot of it is just made up! Both the G…

You seem to have a post factual philosophy. Just because some things are made up in history does not mean the whole field is without rigor, nor does it make it equivalent to the counter factual nonsense coming out of gender studies. That you can find examples to the contrary does not prove the rule or make everything somehow equal.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but those weren't supposed to be examples to the contrary (it's a matter of historical fact that people believed those myths, and acted based on those beliefs), nor do I have a "post factual" personal philosophy (I'm actually a Rawlsian and a moral realist, which is about as stodgy and non-postmodern as you can get by moral philosophy standards).

The point with that whole digression was to provide a little window into the kinds of analyses that a critical philosopher might do: they're not interested in dismantling history as a whole; they're interested in carving at the joints between phenomena that are taken for granted as conjoined. I think that's important, even if it isn't the kind of research that I personally excel at (or even understand especially well).

Re: Earnestness

#384

Post by qPM9l3XJrF » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

retsibsi wrote: post #341

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People's motives are as mixed in Silicon Valley as anywhere else. Even the founders motivated mostly by money tend to be at least somewhat interested in the problem they're solving, and even the founders most interested in the problem they're solving also like the idea of getting rich."

Yeah, but the parent talks about 'raising taxes on people who had already gotten fabulously rich', not some kind of radical egalitarianism. You'd have to be very strongly money-motivated to be deterred by the prospect of merely having hundreds of millions rather than a billion, or a couple billion rather than several billion, or whatever.

"What matters in Silicon Valley is how much effect you have on the world."

http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

I feel this... I don't want billions for myself, I want billions so I can fund moonshot projects. If starting my business in a foreign country with no wealth tax is the difference between being a millionaire and a billionaire, I will strongly consider relocating.

Re: Earnestness

#385

Post by ehnto » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

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…

> Some people seem to find success in art and innovation operating in the same repressive environment, so maybe the environment is not the problem.

The environment is still a problem, it's just that these people found a way to work past it (through great privilege or uncontested personality)

I find it funny you chose Steve Jobs, a renowned narcissist in what could reasonably be called an argument warning against embracing narcissism.

Re: Earnestness

#386

Post by pkd » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #364

tardismechanic wrote: post #342

"You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction." Possibly the most famous verse (2-47) from the Bhagavad Gita. https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/2/verse/47

Seems like real slave morality to me. Also, that kind of attitude could be used to convince people to do some horrible things: Tasked with executing a political dissident? No problem! Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities.

It doesn't translate very well to English. The word for "duty" has way more weight attached to it. It's things you ought to do from a sense of righteousness, not things prescribed to you by some random corporation.

Re: Earnestness

#387

Post by qPM9l3XJrF » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #154

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value PG's opinion more than a rando blogger because he's very successful, has observed a lot of data about what makes startups successful, seems unusually serious about being correct, and has written a lot of things I consider insightful in the past. He's a name I know and I click it when I see it on HN. There are a lot of other people with similar HN clout, patio11 for instance. I haven't noticed a trend for comm…

I mean it's at least technically quite possible that someone like PG would have a very good intuitive understanding for what works and what doesn't, without this meaning that he is able to systematise this implicit knowledge in such a way that it is empirically solid and/or can be usefully taught to others. This is similar to the fact that experts are not always the best teachers, or that a rhetorically skilled speak…

>I mean it's at least technically quite possible that someone like PG would have a very good intuitive understanding for what works and what doesn't

Fair point

>you can be either "earnest" or jovial and funny and not both strikes me as a particularly false dichotomy

I'm looking at the essay and I'm not seeing where it says this? Maybe I just forgot.

>people who are actually good at bringing people together

From the essay (in a footnote):

>It's interesting how many different ways there are not to be earnest: to be cleverly cynical, to be superficially brilliant, to be conspicuously virtuous, to be cool, to be sophisticated, to be orthodox, to be a snob, to bully, to pander, to be on the make. This pattern suggests that earnestness is not one end of a continuum, but a target one can fall short of in multiple dimensions.

The closest thing on the list to "bringing people together" in my mind would be being cool, which isn't very close IMO.

>In a world where we increasingly realise the dangers of big tech companies making decisions that impact all of us, including people completely outside of the original tech bubble, I don't think this is a very good position to take.

I don't trust the general population to make decisions either--see our current president for an example of what they can sometimes go for.

Re: Earnestness

#388

Post by lazydon » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

It's funny how a team develops their own common vocab not only for the stuff they work on (Ubiquitous Language as in DDD) but also to describe people.

When a few teammates and I interview folks, other than the usual official evaluations, the best we understand each other's feedback is through this common language. A language that got unconsciously developed while interviewing and working together for years and our experiences with other folks in the organization.

We are no YC, but what PG is referring to as earnest would be in our language simply "good energy". The opposite of it would be "looks tired" i.e. for someone showing completer lack of interest in what they do. Another ones would be "fighter" (one who doesn't gives up on hard problems) and "pacifier" (one who stays calm and composed that's good for handling production incidents and help team through with difficult people).

To further muddy the waters, I think if the job descriptions came up with more details about the personality traits required for the job, that could help people have better job matches and satisfaction. I know it becomes too subjective if you overdo it but perhaps things like StrengthsFinder can help. On the other hand there's a risk of going too further on altogether a wrong path as it happened with Myers-Briggs.

Re: Earnestness

#389

Post by wombatmobile » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #197

wombatmobile wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Politics as most people understand it is the process of deciding who ought to run the government That's a narrow definition, sometimes known as "party politics". And that well might be what PG was referring to. The limitation of party politics in America, and other places, is that to become an elected representative you need money for advertising, which you have to get from somewhere, e.g. donations. These usually…

Ultimately, I guess, "politics" is just a word which can be defined however we want. So I can't tell you that you're wrong or the definition you're using is untrue. It's not obvious to me that a definition of "politics" which groups together party politics, funding startups, and screaming kids coming home from soccer practice provides much useful insight into the world. At best, it's an imprecise statement of the sam…

Your analogy to physics is useful.

"Everything is physics" might be true, but as you say, it isn't very useful because it is too broad a brush. That's why we talk about atomic physics, astrophysics, dynamics, optics, nuclear physics, quantum physics, and for that matter, chemistry, and inorganic chemistry. Each of these is a discipline with its own nomenclature and epistemology that enable practitioners to home in on the elements they study in sufficient detail, with an efficiency of language.

Similarly, politics.

To answer the question, what is your hourly rate of pay and why is it so, we have to turn to politics. Physics won't help us, nor will chemistry. Politics is the appropriate discipline, because in politics humans are the atoms, and their interactions are described by the laws of politics.

Your hourly rate of pay is a function only partially of the legislation enacted by your elected representatives. Your state legislature may set a minimum hourly rate of pay. Whether that rate applies to your job, and to you personally, depends on a number of other human interactions, both in the present and throughout history, which occurred independently to the legislature.

And whether you have your job, which pays $X per hour, or another job, which pays $Y per hour, is a function of... that's right, politics. Or more precisely, labor relations, market forces, race relations, immigration, what school you went to, how much funding your school received, what companies your local layers of government attracted to your area. These factors are in turn influenced by taxation, investment law, transport infrastructure, natural resources, environmental regulations... everywhere you look for the answer to the question What is your hourly rate of pay, you encounter a different sub-discipline of... politics.

Re: Earnestness

#390

Post by iWorshipFAANGS » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #374

zemo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of the surest signs that someone is full of it is that they have a long history of essays with no citations. PG's essays almost never cite anyone else's work or act as continuations onto a line of thinking started by another person. PG wants to discredit the entire concept of academia because he knows that his work does not actually stand up to scrutiny. hehe, curious (perhaps deliberate?) examples. This is maybe…

I think you misunderstand the genre of essay that pg practices. It's a form of thinking out loud, and intensely personal—a way of finding out how one understands oneself and the world by writing about it. This is actually the origin of the term 'essay', which means 'attempt' and is intrinsically informal. Citations would be out of place.

I'm going to post one more time, just because I think there's a bit of a misconception here.

You're absolutely correct about the origin of the word "Essay." It comes from the French word "essais," meaning "test" or "attempt." The form as we know it was invented by Montaigne, whose essays are indeed informal and personal. They're also uniformly excellent, and I'd recommend them to anyone. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Essays_of_Montaigne

However, if you click on virtually any of the essays in the link above, you'll find an essay that is packed with references and quotations. Quotations are a form of direct citation. Sometimes Montaigne misquotes, but this was well before the information age, and he was often working off of memory, so I think we can excuse his lapses.

However, if we are to use the origins of the essay as an example, I don't think we can say that the form necessarily resists citation.