271–280 of 421 posts
So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…
And the HN thread from when it was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231208
Thanks for sharing through all these years, Paul!
(P.S. Graham released his Lisp book freely on his site, worth a read if you haven't already.)
This story gives me so much hope. I too have meandered around in life. Although i've always 'Focused' and worked long hours, i've jumped between so many projects it's hard to keep track of them all. After HS i joined the air force for an enlistment, didn't care for it, tried college, didn't like it so i got a year long internship at tesla. Tried to go back to college for a semester but I hated it so i did another yea…
So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prevent your success from spoiling your kids. Your kids probably are not jealous of anything they see because you provide them anything they want. I think a parent should think and figure out how to create a challenging environment for their kids. Not just artificial challenge like games. Real challenge that will shape(and I think improve) their personality. I'm not a parent so I can't give concrete advise, just shar…
I agree in that constraints can make for creativity, but as a parent, it is very very difficult to create that environment.
I am not saying they should learn computer science, but it's one of the best ways to use computers, and having some basic skills with it is incredibly useful still.
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Link? The best Google result I could find given context was: https://www.thefearlessman.com/the-curse-of-the-middle-class... but there was a full page of different results under that title so I'm not sure it's what you were referring to.
That is essentially it - the upper class has the confidence (and safety net) required to take big swings, and the lower class has nothing to lose. The middle class has been conditioned to live conservatively.
I often feel burned out and uninspired these days, even after past successes. It’s wonderful to take a look back at a time when overly ambitious ideas would be naively pursued, unrelated hobbies would prove fruitful in unexpected ways, and to remember that inspiration can be found again many times through the course of life.
Thank you pg.
I’ve enjoyed many of pg’s essays, but this is my favourite of all time. I often feel burned out and uninspired these days, even after past successes. It’s wonderful to take a look back at a time when overly ambitious ideas would be naively pursued, unrelated hobbies would prove fruitful in unexpected ways, and to remember that inspiration can be found again many times through the course of life. Thank you pg.
By 2000, selling art online was no less enterprising than selling books or pet food online. PG was just half a decade or so early to the party.
By that time, artnet.com was a well-funded and subscribed sales price database. Christie's auction house would feature it's first online only bidding. Art Review magazine was digitizing its entire archive. Major museums were beginning to discuss in earnest how to preserve software based works in their permanent collections. And the Whitney would feature an online exhibit of curated Net Art in its Artport website.
It's rather interesting to imagine a parallel universe, where PG's AI insights could have culminated in him becoming a major conceptual digital artist.
Flash forward to 2020, and online viewing rooms have replaced in-person art fairs. Distributed ledgers are employed for fraud protection. Rare digital is "important". And questions around authorship in AI-generated works are entering the mainstream.
Beeple: A Visionary Digital Artist at the Forefront of NFTs
https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Bee...
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I think people have different definitions of "upper class". Maybe "Upper-middle class" would have been a better term, since pretty much everyone in the U.S. calls themselves some flavor of middle class. But my point is is that most people are not doing nearly as well financially as a mathematician/manager working at Westinghouse modeling nuclear reactors[1][2]. For example, 70% of americans have less than $1,000 of s…
I agree. The question is whether they were above or below the financial threshold where kids know they'll be fine no matter what they do, and so are freer to take risks and pursue their interests. That's a popular argument to make about entrepreneurship being a class privilege, for example showing up in many comments in this thread. I don't know where that line is, but my impression is that people making this argumen…
I think what you are calling intellectual background is a part of what is normally called class. Usually these sorts of things are correlated together, although as you point out, it's a trend, not a rule. PG also comments on this himself [1]:
> Closely related to poverty is lack of social mobility. I've seen this myself: you don't have to grow up rich or even upper middle class to get rich as a startup founder, but few successful founders grew up desperately poor.