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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#841

Post by phs318u »

LegitShady wrote: post #794
mcv wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want to pretend he has 75 IQ I don't think anyone has ever argued that. He obviously has above-average IQ. That does not automatically make his claims of working on rocket designs himself, credible. In fact, I think those claims put credence to the story that they present ideas in such a way that he thinks he's designing rockets himself.

Quoted post unavailable.

> explain to me how it would work, such that elon wouldn't notice

He's a narcissist. At least, it seems obvious to me that he is. And narcissists are absolutely amenable to co-opting other people's ideas. It's what they do, because everything is about them.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#842

Post by jdgoesmarching »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #312
DiNovi wrote: 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 wer…

You finding his opinions “mild” doesn’t make them so, and half of your friends are probably not billionaires with a lot of power and influence in the tech industry.

If you want to defend Paul then do so, but most of this comment is just hyperbolically complaining about how he is criticized.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#843

Post by LegitShady »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #840
LegitShady wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the odds are that elon did it or even knew about it?

My own personal sense tells me no employee/subordinate would carry out such abrupt and drastic actions without explicit approval from above, no matter how much they want to please their boss. I could be wrong though. Unfollowing Bari Weiss and suspending Paul Graham over very minor disagreements they voiced seems like a very personal & impulsive decision that I don't see why anyone besides Elon himself decided on it.

> My own personal sense tells me no employee/subordinate would carry out such abrupt and drastic actions without explicit approval from above, no matter how much they want to please their boss. I could be wrong though.

outside of a very small bubble no one knows who PG is and I promise you his twitter status account doesn't matter if it was breaking the rules.

Go ask your mother if she knows who elon musk, bill gates, steve jobs, and paul graham are/were. No one outside of computer science/business people looking for VC know who he is.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#844

Post by mcv »

LegitShady wrote: post #794
mcv wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want to pretend he has 75 IQ I don't think anyone has ever argued that. He obviously has above-average IQ. That does not automatically make his claims of working on rocket designs himself, credible. In fact, I think those claims put credence to the story that they present ideas in such a way that he thinks he's designing rockets himself.

Quoted post unavailable.

Please read again. I'm not arguing its truth, I'm arguing its credibility. Those are not the same thing.

How would it work? I'm not even remotely an expert on it, but one of the things I heard they did with Trump, was to present several options, some obviously good, others obviously, bad, and then let him choose. (On that particular issue, Trump apparently picked the bad option that nobody expected him to pick. So there's a level where this trick stops working.)

Edit: A link to the story that someone else also posted here: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296...

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#845

Post by occamsrazorwit »

samtp wrote: post #606
pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him. He also called for a leading infectious disease expert to be jailed, further endangering someone who was already under armed protection from previous threats. And there was that one time that he shared an unfounded conspiracy theory about an elderly man who was attacked with a hammer in his own home. There w…

He also tried to anonymously get news agencies to publish that the cave diver was a pedophile too [1].

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-...

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#846

Post by ssnistfajen »

adharmad wrote: post #244
consumer451 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paul is an out of touch reactionary billionaire My theory is that humans are just not evolved for billionaire levels of wealth disparity. It's not a criticism, it just appears to be a fact. Honest question: are there any "in touch" billionaires? Maybe Mark Cuban in some ways for example?

Gates or Warren Buffet. Both of them seem pretty grounded for the amount of wealth they possess.

They are just out of touch in different ways. Gates' banana comment became the quintessential example of how out of touch rich people are even though it was ultimately inconsequential.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#847

Post by ehsankia »

elliekelly wrote: post #417
KMag wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon could both be smart and making huge mistakes. It happens all the time.

This is absolutely true. But I think “smart” leadership avoids repeatedly doubling down on their mistakes. You can, very rarely, double down on what looks like a bad bet and come out ahead. I’m not even sure I’d call that smart but it does happen. But it takes a not-smart person to see the losses stacking up over and over and decide to dig in their heels. Even if you’re absolutely certain your goals and overall strat…

I really don't want to be defending Elon, but I think saying "Elon must be stupid because of how he handled Twitter" is as silly as "Elon had success with Tesla and SpaceX therefore he knows how to run companies". Those two seem like two extremes.

The answer seems more along the lines of, Twitter and its problems are very very different from Tesla/SpaceX, and while Elon may have been good at the latter, he has zero experience with the former.

That being said, not realizing the above I guess makes him partly not-smart, and I assume the shortsightedness was due to the inflated ego caused by his previous two successes.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#848

Post by landemva »

ramraj07 wrote: post #724
mcv wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. I used to think that too, but I've since come across a story that SpaceX actually has people who's informal job is to manage him, and they present their ideas in such a way that he thinks they're his, in order to keep him happy. He's mostly there to bring money and hype. No idea if that story is true, but honestly, it would explain some things. The impression he's bee…

I did my PhD under possibly the most narcissistic, ruthless, and petty professors anyone around me had ever heard of, so I might be able to comment on this. I and the few people who managed to actually graduate with our sanity intact (out of like 50) learned to play this game you suggested where we have to play to their egos, and try and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable projects that will end with us…

> try and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable projects that will end with us publishing.

Maybe the university publish or perish system is the real problem, with the egojerks being symptoms?

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#849

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Moto7451 wrote: post #789
mcv wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. I used to think that too, but I've since come across a story that SpaceX actually has people who's informal job is to manage him, and they present their ideas in such a way that he thinks they're his, in order to keep him happy. He's mostly there to bring money and hype. No idea if that story is true, but honestly, it would explain some things. The impression he's bee…

I worked on the Engineering side of compliance at my last job managing Compliance and Security. As part of going public, part of my job was keeping some executives away from the Auditors. This was not because the Auditors wanted information from them that we didn’t want to share, but because the auditors actually had zero interest in what they had to say. I.e. they did not care about Joe Techbro and his Git front end…

My dad's oldest living friend worked at Koch industries for years. I forget his official title, but they way he describes his role was "I ran interference to keep the brothers from killing each other."

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#850

Post by kmlx »

samtp wrote: post #606
pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him. He also called for a leading infectious disease expert to be jailed, further endangering someone who was already under armed protection from previous threats. And there was that one time that he shared an unfounded conspiracy theory about an elderly man who was attacked with a hammer in his own home. There w…

> Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him.

this is false. he called him that after the cave diver told Musk to “stick his submarine where it hurts”.

it only takes 1 minute to search google.

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