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Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

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Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#81
Dropbox, the startup that most easily came to pg's mind, began with a single founder, who didn't already have a relationship with his co-founders. It was also a great idea, well-worked out from the beginning. Not undermining the five points, just saying that they're more guidelines.

It's crucial to look at the founders, because that's what does the work. Just as Catmull says of movies, a successful startup is made of many creative ideas; also, many implementation challenges, flexible adaptations and tests of determination that is very hard for one person to handle.

A startup is an on-going process, not a one-off event.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#82
I think what Mr. Graham is saying is not only natural, but inspiring. Firstly success and opportunity generates itself, and the best way to generate that is to look for patterns. So if people like us are successful, then in looking for more success, we should look for people like us. Secondly, the fact that 'naughtiness' is one way to look outside of the status quo, doesn't diminish all the other ways of looking for solutions. Mr. Graham celebrates 'naughtiness', other 'like us' traits could include tenacity, perseverance, team oriented, data driven, and humility. So this is not about following the rules versus not following the rules, it's about being able to distinguish between necessary, even essential rules and problematic rules. Today Mr. Graham exhorts us to celebrate naughtiness in our quests, tomorrow we can celebrate mischievousness. There's plenty of time, and plenty of traits to success.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#83

Meh... Y Combinator is a potential source of start-up funding. Just as important, Y Combinator is not exclusive of any other source of funding. The difference between YC and other sources of funding is that YC funds a lot of companies twice a year rather than on an as-needed basis so the whole process is very eventful. As YC funds more companies, the value of the "We're a YC company" branding diminishes faster. Whats…

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Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#84

Is the sandals with socks thing some sort of deliberate middle-finger? In NYC on a stage, no less.

It was a deliberate choice. When packing for a trip to NY and thinking about what you're going to wear onstage, one does not "accidentally" wear socks with sandals. Pg is a very smart guy - clearly he knows what the impact would be.

I think it has more to do with maintaining a kind of legitimacy/authenticity within the hacker community than anything else. It's just good business sense to be the opposite of what geeks don't like/understand: VCs in suits. When you're in the business of funding businesses, you want to be approachable.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#85

This is probably the single most discouraging thing I've ever read about startups, but at least it's honest. Entitlement? "Naughtiness"? I think after Google, the idea got out there that it's possible to succeed by just being good . Technically and morally. This sounds like a return to status quo. Not saying he's wrong. He's almost certainly right, it's just depressing.

It's the whole circle-jerk that tech and web have become. Why on earth is Techcrunch hosting a business conference where hosts can fellate big Silicon Valley success stories. On TWiT, they used to talk about tech; now all they talk about is VCs and angel investors. Tech is so hopeless ingrained with the speculative investment market, they've adopted the worst biproducts of it.

I think you are confusing TWit with Twist..

Twit is Leo's tech shows..which are still tech focused. Twist is Jason Calacanis' shows which have a VC/Angel 50% focus.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#87
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following all the rules does not make you a good person. In fact, rule following and obedience to authority is what enables large scale evil. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment for a famous demonstration.

The thing I've never understood about philosophy is that why are ethics and good/evil considered to be properties of people as opposed to systems? It seems like all the social science research points to the conclusion that the intrinsic nature of a person, if such a thing even exists, has almost nothing to do with their behavior. So you would think that there would be dozens of papers that analyzed the trolley proble…

I think you're looking for decision theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#88
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birkenstocks are never OK.

And fashion snobbery is? Birkenstocks are a kind of footwear. Lots of people like them. What's the point of getting affronted by this? Does it make the world anything other than worse?

Clothing communicates information. Although this information is highly contextual, it is still information.

Understanding that people judge you by how you dress isn't snobbery, it's accepting reality.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I've never understood about philosophy is that why are ethics and good/evil considered to be properties of people as opposed to systems? It seems like all the social science research points to the conclusion that the intrinsic nature of a person, if such a thing even exists, has almost nothing to do with their behavior. So you would think that there would be dozens of papers that analyzed the trolley proble…

I think you're looking for decision theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory

What I'm interested in though isn't what makes a decision by a person ethical or rational or whatever, but rather what makes a social system itself (or an algorithm that interfaces with people) ethical or unethical. E.g. looking at the ethics of the design the social system behind the Zimbardo prison experiments, rather than looking at the decisions of the individual actors once they're already in that environment.

I am somewhat interested in questions like whether or not it's morally acceptable to lie to a system or a (non-conscious) robot. At least on the surface this doesn't violate any of Kant's moral objections to deception. That is, Kant said (more or less) that the reason why lying is unethical is that it deprives the other person of their ability to make a rational decision, and our rationality is part of what makes us human, so lying is unethical because it deprives others of their humanity. So e.g. is it unethical to lie to about your age on a porn site? It might be, but if it is then we'd an entirely new framework to justify that sort of thing.

It almost seems like based on the power imbalances between people and algorithms, and the traditional justification against lying, it would almost be morally virtuous to teach your children to lie, as long as they're lying to a machine and not a person. (Of course a machine could be composed of people who are following an algorithm when interacting with you, but they still aren't making any sort of autonomous decisions for themselves.)

Anyway this type of problem is a little different than the problem of what makes the systemic design of a social system ethical or unethical, but they're both just different sides of the same coin.

Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

#90

Meh... Y Combinator is a potential source of start-up funding. Just as important, Y Combinator is not exclusive of any other source of funding. The difference between YC and other sources of funding is that YC funds a lot of companies twice a year rather than on an as-needed basis so the whole process is very eventful. As YC funds more companies, the value of the "We're a YC company" branding diminishes faster. Whats…

I think you're just being bitter because you got rejected by YC, and now trying to deal with it by saying "Well, YC's not that great anyway". With the value of YCs portfolio companies over $3 Billion, it's ridiculous to make the allegation that YC is some kind of pyramid scheme.

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