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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#111

Post by gedpeck »

haswell wrote: post #94
gedpeck wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Herein lies the crux of the matter in my view. The jump from 2 to 3. When Bob Dole ran for President I wholeheartedly agreed with the position about being respectful to those you disagree with. Politics was still normal in the U.S. at that time. But now we in the U.S. elected a known rapist. A felon and a con man. He can’t run a charity in New York due to his misdeeds. He lusts after his own daughter. We have entered into an era where supporters of one party’s President deserve the assumption of being terrible people.

Now obviously there are many people who disagree with the above. But this is how I see things and I act accordingly. The call for civility comes from those who hold terrible beliefs. We are well into the Paradox of Tolerance situation in the U.S.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#112

Post by ethbr1 »

gedpeck wrote: post #101
ethbr1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but in our current times using someone's identity as a justification to act like an asshole to them is a sith's whisper. We all have our less enlightened moments. Better we not afford ourselves easy intellectual justifications for being our worst selves. As the quip goes: the greatest evils are perpetrated by those most assured of their own righteousness. Edit: Or in video form. Beginning summary: "brick suit g…

In normal times I would agree with you. At present in the U.S. I’d not agree with this sentiment. People who support electing a known racist, thief, con man, and felon are deserving of ridicule and ire. They don’t deserve respect in my opinion. When the politics of a nation shift so far in one direction we get into a situation where supporters of that shift don’t deserve respect. Stalinist Soviet Union is an extreme…

So what lengths do you think you're justified going to against individuals you disagree with?

And how do you feel about them feeling the same about you?

Mutual righteous hostility is why ethnic and religious wars simmer forever, because there's always a convenient justification for acting violently towards others (and them towards you).

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#113

Post by atoav »

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.

Even if your essays win you a Nobel price (Paul Grahams certainly didn't) the writer isn't protected from becoming a bullshit-dispenser.

This is why I respect authors that publish a consistent level of quality more than those who hit and miss as if they were throwing darts at a map. And the stuff I have read from Paul Graham is definitly not in the former category.

I don't feel he is intellectually honest, either with himself (bad) or with his readers (worse). But if the past decade of the Internet has shown anything, it is that honesty and consistency isn't required to get insecure people to follow you blindly.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#116

Post by raincole »

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…

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#117

Post by pbiggar »

klik99 wrote: post #64
andrewflnr wrote: post #10

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…

Yes - this is exactly how I felt about the "Wokeness" essay. I am constantly afraid that PG is gonna fall down the same strongly right rabbit hole so many of his colleagues have, and he hasn't so far, so seeing the title of the essay was worrying. 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…

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#118

Post by patanegra »

snowwrestler wrote: post #58

Once upon a time, not that long ago, within my lifetime in fact, being gay was targeted for public abuse the way that transgender people are being targeting now. That has declined as people came to understand that being gay, lesbian, bi is part of how a person is made. Under public pressure, a gay person can act straight or at least act not gay. But it doesn't change who they are, doesn't help anyone around them, and…

I think being gay and having gender identity disorder are two things that are somewhat related culturally, but not that much as a condition.

Being gay has no negative consequences and when homosexuals are left to live how they want, they are happy and overall have no problems. Also, this identity doesn't change much during their lives.

In comparison with that, people who are delusional, are not feeling any better when they recognize their delusion. And it might actually be dangerous to affirm them in their delusion.

People with GID are somewhere on a spectrum between homosexuals and delusional people. Even the most affirming countries are clearly not enough. They still have a very high suicide rate. Plenty of them detransition, especially kids. There is statistically significant prevalence of mental disorders. 58% of people with GID have at least one psychiatric diagnosis (source https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830528/).

Personally, I think that society is accepting gays for a good reason and not affirming people with GID for a good reason, too. It's not bigotry, it's a recognition of reality.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#119

Post by hayleox »

andrewflnr wrote: post #10

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…

From the essay: "Consumers have emphatically rejected brands that ventured too far into wokeness. The Bud Light brand may have been permanently damaged by it."

What Bud Light did was hire an influencer to promote their product in an Instagram video (and then of course they later backtracked). The only thing "woke" about the video was that the influencer was a trans woman.

If Paul Graham would like to elaborate on this passage meant I welcome it, but my read was that supporting a trans woman falls under his definition of "wokeness".

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#120

Post by Angostura »

lubujackson wrote: post #62

I'll just say it must suck being precisely in the crosshairs of a political proxy battle. The truth is, neither the left nor the right really give a shit about transgenders but use them to rile up their bases. 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 w…

It’s not really a left- right issue, as far as I’m concerned. It’s people with empathy v those without.
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