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YC is a cult

danielharan.com

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Re: YC is a cult

#61

Post by swombat »

rbanffy wrote: post #59
swombat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, one of the common characteristics of people who have been brainwashed (by a cult or otherwise) is that they absolutely do not believe that they have been brainwashed, and will fight that suggestion with all their strength, coming up with never-ending explanations for why they haven't been brainwashed at all!

OTOH, if you were brainwashed into believing another group was brainwashed, you will fight any suggestion the other group was not brainwashed and come up with an unending stream of reasons to believe they were.

Even more twisted: what if you were brainwashed into thinking that people who have been brainwashed don't believe they've been brainwashed? Would you be able to tell whether you've been brainwashed yourself or whether it's the rest of the world that's brainwashed?

The world would be a strange place... but very clean.

Re: YC is a cult

#62

Post by vidar »

Obviously the guy is trolling, but a useful question does emerge: Are people taking pg's advice without critically evaluating it? If they do not then all is fine and dandy but if they do, the guy has a point (albeit poorly presented).

Re: YC is a cult

#63

Post by pierrefar » 

  - People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
  - Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
  - They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic; [sic]
  - They get a new identity based on the group;
  - They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream
  culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
You mean just like doing a PhD or building a company or heck, being a geek about anything in life. A baseball fan who can recite stats about everything and everyone for the past 100 years is, by this definition, part of a cult.

Re: YC is a cult

#64

Post by jwinter »

pageman wrote: post #56

Olympians put in 18 hours a day - so they're cults too? http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/08summer/olympics.asp "...Talk of "magic" swimsuits obscures the incredibly hard work swimmers such as Russell, a second-year pharmacology major, actually put in. Before I went to university it would be 20 hours a week, weights and swimming. When I went to Indiana [his first school] my training stepped up to 30 hours of weights, s…

If you read closely, you'll find that's 18 hours a week.

Re: YC is a cult

#66

Post by endlessvoid94 »

vidar wrote: post #62

Obviously the guy is trolling, but a useful question does emerge: Are people taking pg's advice without critically evaluating it? If they do not then all is fine and dandy but if they do, the guy has a point (albeit poorly presented).

I'm not sure that's it.

Just because many, many people take pg's advice doesn't mean they aren't evaluating it. We only hear about the ones that come to the opposite conclusion (that he's wrong).

Re: YC is a cult

#67

Post by tdavis »

fallentimes wrote: post #32

This guy is presumptuous, ill informed and appears to have a thing for blanket statements. Hi, I'm currently in YC for the summer. Although I certainly don't speak for everyone in YC, I think I'm somewhat more qualified than the author who has never been in the program and who apparently receives his information from blog posts and hearsay. Most of his assertions apply to startups or any intense forms of collaboratio…

Well said, Dan. I said it with a bit more contempt over on the source blog.

ragerageragerage

Re: YC is a cult

#68

Post by Hexstream »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #7

First there was "All YC startups produce unoriginal second-rate stuff" (unfortunately, I don't have the link handy). Now there's this. It is impressive how YC-hate is evolving.

If you plot its success and the hate it receives on a graph I think you'll see a strong correlation.

Re: YC is a cult

#69

Post by danielharan »

mattmaroon wrote: post #2

Hilarious. Blatant linkbait, but hilarious. Clearly he does not know many actual participants. Working 18 hour days for two months is not the norm.

Thank you :)

So, what exactly is the norm? What we hear from blog entries and the like is that you're all working from the time you get up to the time you fall asleep clutching your laptops.

Re: YC is a cult

#70

Post by adrianwaj »

danielharan wrote: post #69
mattmaroon wrote: post #2

Hilarious. Blatant linkbait, but hilarious. Clearly he does not know many actual participants. Working 18 hour days for two months is not the norm.

Thank you :) So, what exactly is the norm? What we hear from blog entries and the like is that you're all working from the time you get up to the time you fall asleep clutching your laptops.

Cults are defined in other ways too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult#Definition_according_to_se...

"A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of [consequences of] leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community."

For and exhaustive list, see here: http://rickross.com/sg_alpha.html

This is no laughing matter. People's lives are ruined by cults, and even if taken away from a cult, their effects linger.

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