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>A few days ago, Paul Graham published an essay on “Wokeness”. I skimmed it. I couldn’t finish reading it, it made me too upset. … >I’m still not sure what pg thinks “Wokeness” means Hmm
The point he’s making is that Paul did not explain what he thinks “wokeness” means in a coherent way. Which is true.
First, the brief "woke" movement which was soon taken by the right and extrapolated to the extreme. It's the same tactic used by the right for any issue - when I was a kid it was "if gays can marry, then they will want to marry their pets."
They take whatever social progress has been made and push it until the concept annoys >50% of people then say "that's what the left wants."
But I can't get behind the left's approach of highlighting and siloing every sub-group. It just simplifies division and is counter to all the American "melting pot" concepts that actually worked over many decades to integrate immigrants and normalize differences.
I don't know where all of this leads, but it certainly doesn't feel like progress is ever made or even really desired, only a cycling of hot button issues to distract everyone.
My guess is there are two possibilities as to what's going on: * Many tech pioneers and leaders deep down felt an animosity towards supporting people who didn't fit the mold and finally feel free to express it (the worst-case outcome), and/or * Many tech pioneers and leaders wish to continue supporting those who don't fit the mold but feel their own status threatened by figures with nearly infinite power[0] who disag…
There's also a third type, that I consider to be the most likely reality given self-selected population of founders / successful leaders: - People who will amorally play to the limits of the rules if it helps them win. It doesn't matter what they personally feel, or even if they have feelings at all. They tack with whatever way the wind is blowing in order to derive the maximum benefit. E.g. the million dollar inaugu…
You 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 defin…
When I read it though, I realized he was just using "wokeness" to mean the dogmatic surface level understanding of the subject (IE, not that he was being surface level, but he's talking about people who engage with equality/identity issues in a surface level way). It's kind of a strawman idea, but people like that exist and are annoying. It makes me wonder how many people who are really centrists hate wokeness because they think the most annoying wing of it is representative of the whole movement.
Reading PGs article, I get the sense of someone who doesn't fully understand the thing he's criticising, so makes me hopeful he can learn. But again, I'm always a little afraid that the legit criticizisms of his article will get drowned out by people who reinforce what he says in it.
You 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 defin…
Nah, this is just not true about that essay. This is sort of excessive "lets twist what people say with maximum leftist spin so that we can paint everyone who disagree with them as crazy". It is getting repetitive, tiresome and amounts to a massive amount of online gaslighting. Center and left are all supposed to pretend that everyone is leftist just concerned with some extremists, no matter how much it is clear it is not the case, unless someone actually supports nazi party ... and sometimes even longer.
That essay did not even cared about actual history of events either.
My guess is there are two possibilities as to what's going on: * Many tech pioneers and leaders deep down felt an animosity towards supporting people who didn't fit the mold and finally feel free to express it (the worst-case outcome), and/or * Many tech pioneers and leaders wish to continue supporting those who don't fit the mold but feel their own status threatened by figures with nearly infinite power[0] who disag…
If only tech had some sort of rugged frontiersmen who weren't afraid of a bit of hardship. Davy Crockett types, pushing boundaries and standing firm under siege no matter the personal cost.
We could call them "pioneers" - if any existed.
In 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 dis…
I still like a lot of what Steve Jobs had to say at times. I do not pretend to know what he was like IRL or if I would even like him ... doesn't matter.
Truth be told folks who take those ideas and principles from others and not carry the weight of those folks as idols, might even do better with them.
I thought this was better than most essays in this vein. I do fundamentally disagree with the author. People can think poorly of you for whatever reason they want. If someone hates trans people, they can, and you can't stop them. The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred. It predictably didn't work, and it's good that we're turning away from it. Adding on, the trans issue isn't simple. The…
Many other countries have robust anti-hate speech laws that are effective, although less so in the age of the internet.
People broadly conform to the society in which they live, and the rules of the society are broadly set by the laws they adhere to. So in countries where hate speech is disallowed, people conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and hateful people are the exception.
In the United States, it is clear that hatred is the norm as long as it is permitted by law and by leadership.
You 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 defin…
This is exactly the thing the essay seems to be complaining about. It's not the ethics of equality being targeted, it's the moral hypocrisy. People put on a false front with offensive messaging claiming support of these groups, but the whole purpose is to build clout or benefit themselves. They don't care about the message at all. Messages like "I support lgbtq, and if you don't you're a bigot," are self-aggrandizeme…
But then literally in the same sentence, you say, "If you do the thing I don't like (in this case, calling people bigots because they don't support lgbtq) *then you are self-aggrandizing."
"Nobody should be called a bigot for their views on lgbtq, but it's virtuous to call people self-aggrandizing for calling people bigots."
Either name-calling is okay or it's not. You can't have it both ways.
You 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 defin…
> It would be great if people could discuss these issues rationally, but the vast majority can't. Everyone is on a hair trigger. If only we in the tech industry could blame social media on anyone but ourselves :(
I don't think we should put all the blame on social media anyway.