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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#91

Post by subarctic »

I have to say that this is a very well written piece. The story in the first half does a good job of showing the author's personality and making him seem very relatable, at least if you are a typical HN reader. And it's a good story and didn't have me thinking "get to the point", especially since the title doesn't make you expect anything more than a good story.

Then halfway down, he drops the words "I'm transgender now" and you start to realize what he/she is really writing about.

If the article started there it would have lost a lot of people. Instead with the first half it gets you invested and you stick around to read the rest of it.

PG's essay about wokeness, on the other hand, didn't really accomplish this. In fact it kind of did the opposite: came on strong and imprecise at the beginning and became more measured and precise towards the end. And thus it probably lost a lot of readers toward the more "woke" end of the spectrum like this author.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#92

Post by phillmv »

dachworker wrote: post #54

[flagged]

If it's any comfort, I'm also an immigrant who was raised in a single parent household. When we last (it's a long story) moved to Canada, I had to share a bed with my dad for a while.

We were never actually poor, poor, at risk. I never skipped meals, or lacked for clothing, though certainly that was a living memory my grandparents had. It was never in question that I would attend university.

Privilege is intersectional blah blah, there are layers to things. I'm not of the dominant Anglo culture, I have an "ethnic" last name, I don't have the same connections people who grew up upper-middle class do. But people certainly see me as white, I'm smart, and I built my career as a bearded guy.

Living as a bearded white guy is just a lot easier, it presents a lot less friction, than being gender non-conforming. That's it, really.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#94

Post by haswell »

gedpeck wrote: post #74
mecsred wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you don't agree at all. Every single adult in the world has "done or advocated for things that cause harm". It's inescapable.

Great harm then? I’m not morally obligated to to treat Putin with respect. Most people agree that there are people who are so reprehensible that they don’t deserve respect.

There are obvious bad/evil actors in the world. When people talk about engaging with other humans respectfully, they're generally not referring to the Putins of the world.

And it's pretty rare to have so much clarity about a person to know they're in the "obviously reprehensible" bucket.

I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I often see people argue like this:

1. There are obviously bad actors in the world

2. Nobody would argue those bad actors should be given respect

3. So I won't respect people I come across who disagree with me

The fallacy is in the jump from 2 to 3, and the assumption that the existence of bad actors means the person I'm interacting with right now is one of them. The vast majority of people aren't Putin, nor can they be judged so quickly/clearly. And setting aside whether or not someone like that deserves respect, there's also a clear difference between respecting someone for who they are vs. behaving in a respectful manner out of self-preservation. The latter may ultimately keep you alive.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#95

Post by guelo »

bobosha wrote: post #23
afavour wrote: post #9

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…

>My only consolation is knowing that I'm seeing the world more accurately than I used to. also known as growing older ;-)

At the end of the essay he says "I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015" and my thought was, yea but YC is biased towards college kids. And then I saw your comment and I think something clicked for me. But maybe the ignorance and pliability of youth really is required to make the crazy bet on the startup dream.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#96

Post by timeon »

ethbr1 wrote: post #24

Great, cohesive, and clear essay! Hear hear. One thing that I think is underappreciated in our current times, that gets lost on both the left and the right sides -- an individual is more important than their identity . - A specific trans person can also be an asshole. - A specific white man can also be a saint. Extremists on both political sides will scream about the reasons one or the other of those statements is wr…

> gets lost on both the left and the right sides

It gets lost because of this black/white US perspective on politics. If you were multiparty system there will be less identities in politics.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#97

Post by 11101010001100 »

lisper wrote: post #82
afavour wrote: post #9

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…

> He's just a guy. A guy who entered into business transactions with a number of people Unfortunately, that's not true. He is also a well-read and influential essayist. He wields power and influence through his words as well as his money.

Not mutually exclusive.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#98

Post by tmountain »

Earlier in my (now long) career, tech didn't feel political at all (just a bunch of nerds trying to figure shit out). Nowadays, it feels really weird to associate things like cryptocurrency with "tech bros on the right", etc. It all feels very unnecessary, but I suppose humans have a natural tendency to divide into camps as a survival characteristic. Whatever the case, The United States has certainly at a stage where it feels like tolerance for others is at a low point--at least as far as my historical memory serves--and the country seems far less welcoming than it has in the past to a variety of cohorts which will affect the makeup of the work force. The general politicization of the tech industry makes me less excited about continuing as an engineer, which is sad, because it's always been a discipline that I've really loved. It feels like "hate politics" are oozing out of everything these days, and I don't see how that represents progress of any kind.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#99

Post by layer8 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #85
ethbr1 wrote: post #24

Great, cohesive, and clear essay! Hear hear. One thing that I think is underappreciated in our current times, that gets lost on both the left and the right sides -- an individual is more important than their identity . - A specific trans person can also be an asshole. - A specific white man can also be a saint. Extremists on both political sides will scream about the reasons one or the other of those statements is wr…

I'm so tired of hearing "both sides" though.

Focusing on the individual means dropping the notion of “sides”. Identifying people (or even arguments) by their alleged “side”, instead of taking them on their own merit, is where things go wrong.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#100

Post by yodsanklai »

DeathRay2K wrote: post #68
slibhb wrote: post #41

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…

You’re wrong that a so-called “war on hate” doesn’t work. More correctly, it doesn’t work in the US because of the first amendment and the few limitations on it. 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 c…

> it doesn’t work in the US because of the first amendment and the few limitations on it.

This isn't clear to me. For instance, Meta was free to forbid hate speech on their platforms, or not to promote it in their feed algorithms. I don't think first amendment would force them to authorize hate speech. They do it to align with power in place (freely or coerced, not clear), but it's not a legal enforcement.

> So in countries where hate speech is disallowed, people conform to a less hateful viewpoint as a rule, and hateful people are the exception.

There are hateful people in Europe too.

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