I Met Paul Graham Once
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I Met Paul Graham Once
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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
#4I really appreciate this article, and I would like the author to know that there are lots of people - yes, especially in tech - that support their happiness.
Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
#7>I’m certain he wouldn’t be rude to my face, but he might quietly discriminate against me, say no thanks. He might not even think of it as discrimination, only that I don’t have what it takes.
>I’m better at my job than most. I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015. None of that will matter.
IMHO, jumping to conclusions just like this is a big reason why 'going woke' isn't a healthy mindset for someone to hold. Stating that none of it matters is exactly the same thing as saying "I can't do it"
Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
#8I like the article, but one doesn't need to meet pg once to get to know what he is.
You can just read his tweets (x's?) and he, like many VCs or higher-ups in SV doesn't give a huge importance in how other humans feel, just in his kids/family/relatives.
So overall, he doesn't care about how you think or feel.
If he did, he wouldn't write an essay on a touchy topic without making a big disclaimer.
By reading him tweet for sometime you'd realize the kind of person he is, and he isn't somebody that is there to support others or something, or has threaded prejudice or huge issues in his life.
The deepest essay pg has written that touches the "They don't like me" point, from all I've read is his thoughts about nerds/geeks, after all we get bullied! You can't compare being a nerd to being transgender, or a victim of racism, or xenophobia. It's very different.
He just doesn't have studied, or suffered enough to understand the perspective of a "woke", then he wrote that article. AI engineers would say the problem with pg's llms didn't have enough training data ;-)
Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
#9In the long run I think realizations like the authors are healthy ones.
PG is not a hero. He's just a guy. A guy who entered into business transactions with a number of people, many of whom benefitted greatly (as did Paul himself). I'm not saying any of that as a negative! Just that we have a habit of attributing superhuman characteristics to folks (Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize comes to mind) and ending up disappointed.
I'm not an affected group by any means but I still share the disappointment in the world we see today vs the possibilities I felt tech would allow when I was younger. The tech CEOs I previously viewed as visionaries now just look like a new generation of socially regressive robber barons. I wanted to be one of those CEOs, these days I'm still not quite sure what I want to be. My only consolation is knowing that I'm seeing the world more accurately than I once did.
Re: I Met Paul Graham Once
#10You should have finished reading PG's essay.
It's really quite narrowly scoped. There's no indication I could see that he doesn't still hold the same basically liberal politics (he included explicit disclaimers, for all the good that did); he might still be fine with transgender identity. He just wanted to talk about how the particular loudmouth brand of annoying leftist came to prominence. He even had a decent definition of them beyond "leftist I don't like", and put them in a broader context.
Even in the HN thread on the essay, it felt like hardly anyone actually read and understood it, just brought their own assumptions and intellectual allergies and let them run wild. It would be great if people could discuss these issues rationally, but the vast majority can't. Everyone is on a hair trigger.