I Met Paul Graham Once • Hacker News Board

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#121

Post by 331c8c71 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

> 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

Well this can work very differently from what you imagine I believe. Like late Soviet Union where certain things were said in public and other things were said in private or in "trusted environments". For years and years... From what I hear this is in part what goes on in large multinationals where the pressure to conform is quite tangible.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#122

Post by timeon » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #75

"why go out of your way to remove them" in principle, it's fine to have them. But really, they are just a symbol of the fake performative substance free dei culture. A reminder of it. Transgender employees should not be discriminated against, should have all the protections and respect like any other employees. But do we really need tampons in mens' bathrooms, really?

Why does it bothers you?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#123

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #110

layer8 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where things go wrong is that the "extremists on both sides" is used to distract from what people on one side do. It is just a shield designed to prevent analysis.

It's not, because there's a difference between 'extremist individuals in a side' and 'a side as monolith.'

It is currently en vogue to use the excesses of specific instances or individuals to tar entire identities, but that's statistically dishonest.

Most people are not extremists, in the sense of 'if you talk to them at 1:13pm on a random Tuesday.'

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#124

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

Arainach wrote: post #72

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…

>The whole "war on hate" thing was a bad idea; you can't forbid hatred You can't forbid it but you can absolutely make it socially unacceptable. "Free speech" doesn't mean letting people spew hate and doing nothing; choosing not to hand them a megaphone, support their business, etc. is entirely valid.

It became so socially unacceptable that its proponents won the US presidency and took control of Congress and globally famous business leaders are bending the knee to them without repercussion? What definition of "can absolutely" are you using?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#125

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

gedpeck wrote: post #111

haswell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The call for civility comes from those who hold terrible beliefs.

Oof, that's a lot of assumption.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#126

Post by ryanisnan » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

I appreciate this post, and that HN clearly isn't moderating it in a way outside of their stated policies.

It is really hard to see the backpedaling of big tech with regards to identity politics as something other than virtue conformance. The sad and natural question that gets drawn is, where does the real virtue start and the performance begin?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#127

Post by rchaud » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

Having read many of PG's essays from the 2000s and seeing how he communicates now, I can only reach one conclusion. Like Musk, Zuck and the others who got rich quick decades ago, they are too far removed from any kind of "hacker" ethos today, and see everything from 30,000 ft, almost literally. What kind of self-described hacker spends their days advising incubees on the best way to close "high-touch B2B sales"?

They concern themselves with accumulating power first, and maintaining their "innovator" image second. Any empathy or compassion they may have had for the concerns of ordinary people appear to be long gone, except perhaps for their personal friends who may be on the receiving end of state-sanctioned bigotry. Reagan for example ignored AIDS, seeing it as a "gays and minorities" issue, while in private he looked out for the care of his AIDS-afflicted gay actor friend Rock Hudson, who passed from complications in 1985.

Back to PG, see his essay from some years ago, "How People Get Rich Now"[0]. You would think it was ghost-written by an investment bank's IPO division. Every single line is another way of saying "raise money for speculative bet, then go public", ignoring his own decades of experience at YC indicating the overwhelming majority cannot achieve this, in the biggest VC market in the world. Much of the United States population has absolutely no entry point into Sand Hill Road.

A response to that essay from a software engineer provided a sobering perspective to counterbalance the winner-take-all world PG lives in. [1]

[0] https://paulgraham.com/richnow.html

[1] https://keenen.xyz/just-be-rich/ (HN discussion link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40962965)

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#128

Post by robmccoll » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

This is a myopic view. You are obviously correct that you cannot legislate that someone think in any particular way or otherwise force someone to change their minds, but the idea that collectively deciding that a viewpoint is not longer tolerated within the broader society and then making efforts to support that at all levels is ineffective and not worthwhile is absurd. Threats, physical violence, and murder have always been illegal, but used to occur with much higher frequency against many minority groups toward which society tolerated hatred and abuse. It's plainly obvious what changed is the idea that it would be brushed under the rug, that others would at worst turn a blind eye to the perpetrator if not support them, that there would be no real consequences whether legal or in social circles - this environment in which people act on impulse rather than thinking twice about what they're doing - went away. We must remember that progress isn't permanent, that civil rights must be maintained and won't protect themselves, and that there's probably someone out there that hates someone each of us loves and cares about for some arbitrary reason and would act on that if only society gave them permission.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#129

Post by runjake » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

r0p3 wrote: post #40

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…

It is not narrowly scoped, it states that we need to stop another "wave" of "social justice piggishness" which would include challenging the gender identity framework the author is using among other things. It also makes broad claims about social justice politics writ large. Having read it carefully I found the hn thread interesting and it correctly criticized the essay's lazy reasoning.

Unless pg just now edited it out, you're making false quotes and misrepresenting his words.

I cannot find the quote "social justice piggishness" or the word "gender" in his essay. Every single mention of the word "wave" is attached to "wave of political correctness" or a close variation thereof.

Edit: OP meant "priggishness". Got it.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#130

Post by Suppafly » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

gedpeck wrote: post #45

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…

Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice goddamn human to human across the table from you. In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.

>In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.

I feel like the parent comment is pretending to be deep and meaningful but is really just rehashing the 'both sides are the same' argument with a side of 'everyone is entitled to their own opinion'. It's nice to say that we should judge everyone for who they are, but if who they are is a vocal member of a group that wants to hurt other people, that's all we need to know to judge them. Pretending otherwise is silly.