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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#311
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I disagree with someone, I do not necessarily think they're stupid. That's a needlessly polarizing mindset.

You're a rare person, in 2022.

Maybe you could be come one too

https://www.amazon.com/Never-Thought-That-Way-Conversations/...

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#312
post #18

Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire. when you’ve lost your own, maybe it’s time to acknowledge you don’t know what you’re doing

I find quite amazing that expressing such mild opinion as Paul Graham does can yield reactions so strong and labels so intense as "out of touch reactionary x".

I have at least half of my friends that express weirder, more dangerous opinions that are in total opposite to mine. Is that what internet is all about now? Taking every people we disagree with and dress them as Hitler so we can shit on them? It used to be were I went to actually meet people with different point of views and new things.

On hacker news, I expect people that disagree with Graham to prove him wrong with an argument.

Name calling feels more like being with my mom on facebook.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#316
post #18

Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire. when you’ve lost your own, maybe it’s time to acknowledge you don’t know what you’re doing

Are you confusing Paul Graham with Peter Thiel? PS: You're posting this on pg's site.

PG used to post here but he left because of the negative comments as I remember. A couple of users got banned as well. Twitter allows you to just post and forget without much blow back except for the weird subtweets where people take you out of context. As such successful tweets tend to overgeneralize to avoid nuance or imply that there is nuance but not discuss it. A lot of YC tweeters do this. The problem is we have to take them at their word.

What would be more interesting would be to discuss specific things as evidence for a more general truth.

For example there is a huge criticism of the social sciences in this website (and in general) but none of it is specific criticism of specific hypotheses. (Yes, yes I know people will argue that there are no hypotheses in the social science literature and it is not testable etc... but that is a weak argument and not always true).

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I dislike Musk and what he's done to Twitter, I suspect he didn't intend that. I just think that's the natural outcome of his feelings, his position in society, and his relentless self focus. David Roth did a good job looking at the dynamic: https://defector.com/the-eternal-mystery-of-a-rich-mans-poli... And Adam Serwer has a useful take as well: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/legal-righ…

He's tweeted out some pretty hard right wing talking points and advocated voting for conservatives. It seems pretty intentional.

I agree he holds those opinions. I just don't think his intent in buying Twitter was to put it in the tank for the right.

It's not clear to me that he had a fully formed intent when he made a bid for it. And a big piece of evidence there was that he tried to weasel out and was forced to buy it. Another bit of evidence is the way he has obviously been impulsively half-assing pretty much everything he's done since he took it over. He does not look like a man with a plan.

But to the extent that he had clear intent, I think it was more about hubris. There's this phenomenon in the food industry where a rich person will basically say, "I have eaten at a lot of restaurants, so I'd be really good at running one!" So they will spend a bunch of money on launching and unless they hired competent industry experts and deferred to them, they'll create a clusterfuck. I think it's a similar deal with Musk: He was a dedicated and successful Twitter user, and he thought he could run it better. Turned out it was harder than it looks.

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