Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 323 posts

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#91

Post by planarhobbit »

tomhoward wrote: post #75
lumost wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider how ineffective this advice is then. What decisions can you make? You could take this to mean that you should follow your gut, or not. Does it share anything useful for formulating a decision? And why is this approach better than the alternatives?

The problem with the OP's criticism and yours is that it starts from the assumption that PG has set out to "sell" the reader faux-actionable insights. What he's really doing is answering the question "how can I come up with startup ideas?", which has always been asked of him and the other YC partners frequently. And his answer is: you shouldn't try to come up with startup ideas; that's not how it works. Instead you s…

This is why I don’t get the recent pg hate that’s been happening on HN. He’s always done this, but now people are saying he’s out of touch because he’s rich/white/old. Majority of things he’s blogged are no-nonsense observations.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#92

Post by vidarh »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

My first company got its investment because one of my co-founders talked about it to a random stranger at a bar, who turned out to have money burning in his pocket.

I second your advice to get lucky.

Most of my 27 year career has followed as a domino from that. Once we'd paid back his investment and exited (for a pittance; the ISP marked we'd entered had become impossible for a small player), his lawyer happened to get a question from another client if he knew any software developers locally. That job led me to meet someone who left to start a company, and I followed. There I met one of the co-founders of my next startup. That startup hired a lawyer who later went on to hire me for one of his startups. The co-founder of that startup hired me for my current job.

There have been interludes that did not follow so directly, and there are certainly things I've done to help things along, but there are also many more examples of luck involved along the way too. I'm sure I could have gotten a lot less lucky and still done ok, or been more lucky and done better, but overall I've come out of a lot of things disproportionately well.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#93

Post by 015a »

enos_feedler wrote: post #4

Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know, this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup ideas" referenced in this post, pg says: "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an i…

I think it does belong; ultimately, knowing if one has the "right sort of hunches" is only possible in hindsight, there's as much luck as anything else involved in what PG/VCs/founders do, and they in-no-uncertain-terms admit this through their their entire model of investment; throwing money at 100 companies praying that one 1000x's.

Just as how its easy to criticize ideas because criticism is cheap, its also easy to pick out if a business will probably fail; but singling out success is near-impossible. If you asked me if playing video games all day was a good way to get the brain-surgeon-rocket-engineering job of your dreams, I'd say it probably isn't; but the right way is far more elusive.

In other words, its high level, not useful, and once you get into the specifics his message falls apart. I also think: VCs are generally quick to trivialize the impact the rising economic tide of the '10s had on all investments, not the least of all in the novelty of software-related venture investments, and many people will be found without pants over the next decade. Which I only say to add that this is a common theme with insight porn; trivializing luck & privilege.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#94

Post by rjtavares »

thenerdhead wrote: post #90
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

While most would call it luck, most self-help "insight porn" from the 1800s would say it is "fortunate" because you are in control of influencing it with your previous actions. If a complete stranger became your big customer from the same scenario, that would be luck.

Can we stop pretending theses things aren't luck?

Sure, there's merit involved - but that's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. There's a million competent people having basically the same drive and capability. The thing that makes a difference is luck. Period.

Please note: this doesn't mean that succesful people don't deserve the success - most times they do. It's just that there are many more people, equally deserving, that didn't have the same success. Let's treat those people better.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#95

Post by closedloop129 »

hammock wrote: post #46
closedloop129 wrote: post #37

>When I’m consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down specific experiments I can try that put the things I “learned” into practice. Could you turn this into a social network where people cooperate to do these experiments? It could be used to figure out which ideas are helpful and it could be used to help people when they are stuck implementing an idea.

We could get the government to fund the experiments with research dollars, and build institutions around the country where people run these experiments with young people eager to learn and apply science and get experience with such things. Then the results could be published first in science journals for the other institutions, and then the best ones written up in popular book form for the masses to consume. Wait a m…

Exactly. However, the incentives are different. Academics do not necessarily care about the same questions. They are also not personally affected but just research a topic.

With a social network, people with problems can come up with their own answers. They already do, in existing networks. I think, organizing a social network by research question could be an improvement on the status quo.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#97

Post by thenerdhead »

recyclelater wrote: post #72
ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.

This is not a new idea. Just a new messenger for the modern era. Marcus Aurelius was talking about this thousands of years ago.

> At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

> Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

Not even "discipline", but what is "nature".

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#98

Post by tomhoward »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #73
startupdiscuss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, this was not meant to be advice! This was anti-advice. You can't use the criterion: if it is insightful it has to be actionable on an insight that says "I have no actions for you". The difference is, it is not trying to trick you.

It's just empty self aggrandizement. "Be the right sort of person and you'll have the right hunches" is transparent nonsense.

It's not nonsense, it's an obviously-tautological statement, made with the full awareness that it's not helpful advice, but used to explain the point. It's one sentence out of a long essay. Later in the essay he provides recipes for coming up with startup ideas, even though he warns that that approach is suboptimal. What more could be asked of him?

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#99

Post by [deleted] »

wholinator2 wrote: post #79
ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

Yeah, I agree. Though I will say that doesn't mean epiphanies aren't valuable long term. A little boost to get you started might translate into a huge change in personal circumstances 10 years after that small boost. Without a couple months with Jordan Peterson relaying not just the possibility but the nobility of looking people in the eyes, entering the forest at the place that looks darkest to you, etc. I would alm…

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#100

Post by piaste »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #53
mft_ wrote: post #14

I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I believe what the genre is really selling is the paradigm that you're not achieving enough, and you need to work harder, and because there are only so many hours in the day, you need to work smarter too, and to do that you need our insights to help you be much more efficient. So I'd take it a step f…

I've followed Tim for a good amount of years and the thing that hit me the most was when he talked about using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line. It made me think, he is happy to use the tool for his own gain, but opening acknowledges that it's bad for him, of course, most people in his situation would be the same, but it made me think, how all of that is mostly for his gain, not what a lo…

> using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the time line

I don't use socials, so I need some help understanding this sentence, please.

What does it mean to "[not] see the timeline" and why is it important?

Post reply on HN