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Earnestness

paulgraham.com

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Re: Earnestness

#451

Post by adamsea »

sameers wrote: post #247
adamsea wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair there's a ton of hand-waviness on HN about the hot new web framework MongoDB xyz thing. It's not that different, IMHO : ). > PG studied philosophy, often talking about it in a very positive light, so the claim that he doesn't see value in humanities is -- apologies -- bogus. True but with the Analytic / Continental divide in philosophy you still get a lot of folks on the Analytic side of things who think t…

> True but with the Analytic / Continental divide in philosophy you still get a lot of folks on the Analytic side of things who think that anything not quantifiable in the way that they are used to is bunk. I am glad you pointed that out. Anecdotally, I have found that "philosophy" to many in the tech industry when used perjoratively means Continental vs Analytic philosophy. Plus, even with analytic philosophy, when…

Agreed! :)

Re: Earnestness

#452

Post by guenthert »

"They are doomed to be the straight man. [..] it becomes an advantage later."

That's not my experience (and I'm nearly as old as Mr. Graham).

Re: Earnestness

#453

Post by adamsea »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #167
cambalache wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 su…

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

You must be from Europe or something ;)

Re: Earnestness

#454

Post by dang »

zemo wrote: post #449
dang wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

is your argument that he's a genre writer and his genre is his own cult of personality, and that his pieces should not be judged on the coherence of their arguments, because making strong arguments is not the point of his writing?

That's pretty obviously not my argument.

Re: Earnestness

#455

Post by nathanallen »

geofft wrote: post #165

This is spin, and it's important to understand why it's spin, because somewhat unusually, this essay seeks to prevent you from using your critical reasoning facilities. Here's the context: This essay is, at its core, a rebuttal to https://ideolalia.com/essays/thought-leaders-and-chicken-sex... , which makes the argument that while Paul Graham is undeniably an extraordinarily successful businessman , he's not that suc…

It does strike me as thinly veiled virtue signaling. It can be summarized as:

Earnestness is a virtue that I, in my benevolence, recognize in others ("nerds").

I too am earnest.

Sincerely, PG.

Re: Earnestness

#456

Post by solveit »

webmaven wrote: post #445
nthj wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me the subtle miscommunication between billionaires and the rest of us is the rest of us are asking “what ever will you do with a dynasty” and many billionaires, I think, have a mental model of “I have proven I can employ this wealth more effectively than bureaucrats, and I like to solve big problems, and wealth makes it easier to solve big problems.” This is a huge generalization we could easily find cou…

> It seems to me the subtle miscommunication between billionaires and the rest of us is the rest of us are asking “what ever will you do with a dynasty” and many billionaires, I think, have a mental model of “I have proven I can employ this wealth more effectively than bureaucrats, and I like to solve big problems, and wealth makes it easier to solve big problems.” > This is a huge generalization we could easily find…

I don't disbelieve you, but do you have evidence to back this up? That is, do you have evidence that suggests value capture at the price of value creation is more important than value creation itself?

Re: Earnestness

#457

Post by greendude29 »

machinelearning wrote: post #432
greendude29 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

relatively shallow startup founder wannabees, ie the kinds of people he sells his anti-intellectual "genius" to in order to make money off of.

Seems like he doesn't make money off of wannabees but rather the successful ones, no? PG has been quite respected in the valley for a while so its surprising to me that people suddenly dislike him. What was the turning point for you?

> Seems like he doesn't make money off of wannabees but rather the successful ones, no?

Depends on your definition of success. Founding a business that operates at loss but is subsidized in a false economy of other businesses doing the exact same thing is not a good definition of mine, and that's the vast majority of bay area startups.

> What was the turning point for you?

I've always found him to be an anti-intellectual, like much of modern tech.

Re: Earnestness

#458

Post by darkerside »

lambdatronics wrote: post #414
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…

My understanding of 'politics' is: when power is transacted via social influence instead of money. This is why you get corporate politics. The financial incentives within the company (such as bonuses & raises) aren't strong enough to transmit the required forces. Soft power steps in to fill the vacuum.

Pretty good definition. I don't know if it deserves the hate it gets. I've heard politics described as, relationships. And the more I think of it that way, the more acceptable, and even positive, it seems.

Would you rather do things because your boss exercises role power (I'm your boss and you must do what I say), or because you like, respect, and trust your boss (relationship power)?

Re: Earnestness

#459

Post by zemo »

dang wrote: post #454
zemo wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is your argument that he's a genre writer and his genre is his own cult of personality, and that his pieces should not be judged on the coherence of their arguments, because making strong arguments is not the point of his writing?

That's pretty obviously not my argument.

my argument is that PG's writing is weak specifically because he rejects dialectics. Your argument is essentially that he's writing in a genre that is not dialectic in nature. This is like if I said "I don't like this cookie because it is not sweet" and you said "the cookie is not sweet therefore your argument is invalid".

Re: Earnestness

#460

Post by bonoboTP »

silvestrov wrote: post #218
bonoboTP wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scandinavian countries have very high trust societies, based on any survey that looked into this. Why that is is a difficult question and leads us very far. Is it money? Where did the money come from? Oil (but that's not there in all Nordic countries)? Lack of war? Did the lack of war come from their high trust? Or the geographic distance to warring nations and empires of Europe? Is it related to the cold environment…

> Lack of war? Denmark and Sweden have been at war with each other so many times you can't give an exact number as it becomes difficult to say when it's a prolonged war and when it's 2 seperate wars. A simplified list: https://useless-denmarkfacts.tumblr.com/post/125179860721/al...

What I meant specifically is that they are in part rich because they didn't have to rebuild from scratch after WW 2.
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