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Heresy

paulgraham.com

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Re: Heresy

#881

Post by jimkleiber »

alanlammiman wrote: post #734
jimkleiber wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as he wants pushback—that he wants to engage in a back and forth discussion, almost like two people in a fight pushing each other, not a fight where people push each other for a minute and then the other pulls out a gun. I understood his definition of heresy as a tool for wanting to end debate, not deepen it.

Well, to take the analogy a step further, if you go out on the street and start pushing people around, and one of them pulls out a baseball bat and beats you to a pulp, should you really complain that they didn't just push back? Nope. You just had it coming, and if you are such a macho street-fighter you should accept you got owned that time. Sure, if you were in a dojo practicing martial arts - an environment that i…

I like how you took it further. I agree that there may be fewer rules in interacting outside of such a dojo, but there are still some rules. For example, laws governing self-defense that often say people cannot respond to a push by beating the person to a pulp with a bat, lest they get charged for assault and maybe more. And beyond law, just norms on how we agree people should or should not fight fairly.

So I think there is a spectrum from all rules to no rules and that most, if not all, places of human interaction have some level of formal and informal rules on how we expect others to behave.

Re: Heresy

#882

Post by alanlammiman »

mwcampbell wrote: post #726
alanlammiman wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was also the example that came to my mind. It is perhaps one of the most iconic examples, and as such, absent a concrete example or further clarification, I don't see why you shouldn't assume that this is representative of what the author had in mind.

> as such, absent a concrete example or further clarification, I don't see why you should assume that this isn't what the author had in mind. Because we shouldn't automatically assume the worst in each other?

That is very far from 'the worst' I can imagine in someone. Further, it is hardly 'automatic' - it is a response to a hypothetical situation the author posited, for which multiple people considered that as the most prominent concrete example. If the author did not intend that, he did a poor job of making his argument clear.

Re: Heresy

#883

Post by unityByFreedom »

This is the pot calling the kettle black and serves to divide more than it does unite. In the past PG was heavy handed on HN, later handing over the reigns to dang et al. That doesn't mean his influence is gone, or that the initial thumb on the scale had no lasting impact.

More competing tech from non-SV sources would be a boon for everyone including YC. There's no motivator like healthy competition.

Re: Heresy

#884

Post by alanlammiman »

alanlammiman wrote: post #702
morelisp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Regardless of whether one agrees, I had to smile at this, because it is simply a more formal way of saying 'OK, boomer'

800+ comments on an article about cancel culture and this is the one that gets negative points. Well, ok boomers! LOL :)

Re: Heresy

#886

Post by tptacek »

at_a_remove wrote: post #879
tptacek wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. I don't think this is new for him; there's always been a vein in his writing of someone scarred, late into life, by bad experiences in high school. Maybe it's not deliberate, but it is a vibe he sometimes manages to give off. When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted (I'm looking for a better term but let's roll with that). When…

Those feminists are so angry when they write about feminism. They seem happier when they write about other topics. Clearly, then, we know what to advise them to write about. You see how that works?

I don't understand. What do "feminists" have to do with this? There are a zillion different kinds of feminists. Did I miss something about this post, is it subtly anti-feminist?

Re: Heresy

#887

Post by musicale »

tshaddox wrote: post #872
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't do this because of the topic of the essay. If he could, it wouldn't need to be written.

Unfortunately any argument of that form can be rejected immediately on epistemological grounds. Take for instance the argument “we can’t say certain words any more because speaking them will summon an ogre who will immediately kill and eat the speaker…and I can’t give any evidence of this occurring, or give an example of any of these words for obvious reasons.”

> we can’t say certain words any more because speaking them will summon an ogre who will immediately kill and eat the speaker

One does not speak of Voldemort or his creator.

Re: Heresy

#888

Post by kemayo »

Banana699 wrote: post #644
UncleMeat wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tacitus or Voltaire are variously credited with the notion that in any epoch, to know who is in power, ask who you may not criticise. The actual source of this quote is a literal Nazi who was using this quote to claim that Jewish people run the world. It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of autistic people at work, but autistic people clearly aren't running the world through some secret cabal.

>The actual source of this quote is a literal Nazi This is called the Genetic Fallacy, it is completely irrelevant who said anything as long as that thing is true and/or useful. Nobody owns words. Aristotle supported slavery, you don't interrupt every logic lecture with "You know the source of those funny terms is a literal slavery supporter?" do you?. >It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of au…

> This is called the Genetic Fallacy, it is completely irrelevant who said anything as long as that thing is true and/or useful. Nobody owns words.

Is it irrelevant, though? I mean, there's a reason you haven't edited your post to say "Kevin Strom, a noted white nationalist[1], is credited with". (Or even just "Kevin Strom is credited with", with no reference to his politics at all.)

Notably, you're employing a fallacy as well -- "Tacitus or Voltaire" functions as an appeal to authority here. These famous people said this, it must have merit. A resistance to correctly attributing the quote suggests that the mantle of authority is the point.

(I don't care about debate fallacies, really. I just like to bring up when people complaining about them are employing their own. Petty, I know.)

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/05/30/fac...

Re: Heresy

#889

Post by tptacek »

musicale wrote: post #871
tptacek wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. I don't think this is new for him; there's always been a vein in his writing of someone scarred, late into life, by bad experiences in high school. Maybe it's not deliberate, but it is a vibe he sometimes manages to give off. When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted (I'm looking for a better term but let's roll with that). When…

> When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted I could imagine that even unhappy or poorly-adjusted people might sometimes have worthwhile things to say. > He should take a break from this stuff and write about teaching his kids Lisp. What would be the main benefit from doing so?

It's a big question, I guess: "why write anything?" I don't know! Certainly, neither pleasure nor persuasion could be the objective behind a piece like this. What are the other reasons? Venting? I'm interested in what you think.

Re: Heresy

#890

Post by mjirv »

> Structurally there are two distinctive things about heresy: (1) that it takes priority over the question of truth or falsity, and (2) that it outweighs everything else the speaker has done.

I would amend #1 to “the adherents of the conventional view are convinced its truth is beyond question.”

Truth is actually really important, maybe the most important thing for heresy. A defining feature of heresies is that those enforcing them believe strongly that the heresy is untrue.¹

Take PG’s example of doubting the divinity of Christ. Truth isn’t secondary in that case - just the opposite. Believing it, literally, is the core feature of Christianity.

> The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way. The same statement can't be true when one person says it, but x-ist, and therefore false, when another person does.

This is a fallacy. Insofar as this phenomenon exists (less than people think), it’s because the belief content of the statement is different depending on who says it. There’s a common view on the identitarian left that “minorities can’t be racist because racism is about power and they don’t have any.” But a Latino professor who spends his time arguing that Black people are genetically inferior to other groups will get cancelled just as quickly as a white one.

¹Or need to be seen as believing it 100%

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