I Met Paul Graham Once • Hacker News Board

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#501

Post by coderc » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:26 AM UTC

djur wrote: post #479

coderc wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, agree with calling people what they want to be called. That said, here's a thought experiment: What if someone is inconvenienced? What if someone feels uncomfortable using pronouns that don't match the sex of the person? What about uncommon "neopronouns" like "zhe", "xe", or "fae"? Whose comfort gets priority in this situation?

We expect people to say things that make them uncomfortable all the time. I don't feel comfortable telling my boss that I'm the one who wrote the buggy code that caused the incident, but I have a responsibility to do it regardless. I might be expected to thank everyone involved in a project, even if I don't feel personally grateful to them. And so on. Obviously there's no easy way to reason these cases from first pri…

I've never met anybody who used neopronouns either, I've only heard about it online.

I wonder if there are any long term effects of forcing someone to say something that they consider to be untrue? Taken to its most hyperbolic extreme, it could be used as a form of psychological torture, like something out of 1984, where Winston is tortured for not accepting that four fingers being held up is five, or "Four Lights" from Star Trek.

To get one to renounce what they know to be true and accept whatever you say without question is probably the ultimate form of control and subjugation.

For emphasis: "taken to its most hyperbolic extreme".

edit: more realistically, you could say that transgender or gay people might feel like they are compelled to lie about who they are in order to fit in, or in certain circumstances. Surely, if we recognize this as psychologically damaging, then we should recognize all other types of forced lying to be similarly damaging.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#502

Post by bookofjoe » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

jimmydddd wrote: post #287

afavour wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I almost included something in my comment about "I guess this is what getting old is like", losing your idealism as you age. But equally, maybe not. If I'd grown up in, I dunno the 60s? I would have witnessed enormous leaps in technological possibility and enormous increases in standards of living, personal freedoms, yadda yadda. In my youth it felt like there was a viable future where tech enabled radical…

"I saw a dead head sticker on a Cadillac."

"His hair was perfect"

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#503

Post by next_xibalba » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

metabagel wrote: post #397

the_clarence wrote: post #383

My current way of thinking about it is that we should tolerate communities that we find weird. People who cross dress are to me as weird as the religious people or the overly enthusiastic magic the gathering players. Should I hate them or discriminate against them? No. Should I let them force their community rituals on me? No as well. I don't like someone telling me "God bless you" as much as someone forcing me to pr…

> someone forcing me to pretend they're a different gender What is it specifically which you don't want to do? Use their preferred pronoun? In this scenario, who is forcing you and how?

Many examples of people losing jobs, becoming the object of online mobs, etc for refusing to use preferred pronouns.

Men participating in women’s sports.

Men entering women’s spaces like locker rooms and bath rooms.

Men imprisoned alongside women, with predictably horrible results.

We can treat trans people with compassion, but they are not entitled to change our culture and trample common sense without slow, careful examination. Now that we’re returning to sanity on that front, the data aren’t looking very good.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#504

Post by marssaxman » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:34 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #269

afavour wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I almost included something in my comment about "I guess this is what getting old is like", losing your idealism as you age. But equally, maybe not. If I'd grown up in, I dunno the 60s? I would have witnessed enormous leaps in technological possibility and enormous increases in standards of living, personal freedoms, yadda yadda. In my youth it felt like there was a viable future where tech enabled radical…

I wouldn't call it "losing my idealism," but, rather "understanding that everything is a lot more complex than my simple young mind could deal with." I'm probably more "idealistic" than I have ever been; it's just that I no longer have the silly "Let's just do this one simple thing" attitude. I've just found that getting places is always a lot more difficult than we think. Usually, it's people, and all their messy pe…

> The good news is, is that I am actually accomplishing more than I did, when I was younger.

How are you making that happen?

This is an honest question.

As I've gotten older, and developed a deeper understanding of the intractability of the world's problems, this change in perspective has cratered my motivation. It was one thing to give my all toward what seemed like it mattered, back when the scope for possible change still appeared to be great enough that one could imagine living in a better world: but knowing now that no matter what I do it's just going to be more of the same old bullshit, with maybe - at best, and this unlikely - one or another of the rougher edges on the great, awful machine of exploitation and suffering which powers our civilization slightly filed down, so that maybe a couple of people here and there don't get hurt quite as badly as they otherwise might have, while the core of the process continues crushing the life and beauty out of the world, unchanged... it's difficult to muster up any real energy to do anything about it. I still go through the motions, when it seems like I must, for conscience's sake; but I don't believe in it anymore. The source of my past effort is all gone.

I miss that past self, but I can't imagine how to believe that any possible accomplishment would actually matter anymore, enough to justify putting my back into it. What's your secret?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#505

Post by djur » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:39 AM UTC

prarro wrote: post #491

djur wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noticeably treating a coworker differently because of your beliefs about their gender identity is not a balanced and pragmatic solution.

[flagged]

Do you ask everyone you work with for a birth certificate so you can ensure you're referring to them using the terms you consider appropriate?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#506

Post by wastle » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:40 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #493

wastle wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a left versus right issue, not really. Most of the feminists arguing against gender self-id are on the left. This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women. Often, the person advocating for gender self-id hasn't spent any time considering this impact at…

> It's not a left versus right issue, not really. Most of the feminists arguing against gender self-id are on the left. In the sense that the vast majority of all feminists of any kind are on the left? Is there such a thing as a rightwing feminist? JK Rowling? > This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain wh…

> In the sense that the vast majority of all feminists of any kind are on the left? Is there such a thing as a rightwing feminist? JK Rowling?

There are some feminists who reject the left-right divide and don't place themselves anywhere on it, as a response to the male-dominated political system. It's not a very popular view but it exists.

JK Rowling isn't one of them, she has left-wing views and describes herself as such.

> instead of talking about the person in the article's very real concern about being discriminated against while working or even being attacked while socializing, we're talking about some extreme hypothetical about women's prisons.

Sadly it is not hypothetical.

If you believe that supporting gender self-id positively addresses the concerns of males like the blog author, then you should also be willing to consider the documented and evidenced harms to women and girls.

And certainly if you wish to understand why there is such significant opposition to policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex.

> Also, it's weird how often people are completely silent about the treatment of female prisoners... until it's related to transgender issues. Or female athletes for that matter. If you were actually worried about it, there are probably bigger fish to fry.

One might also wonder why policymakers haven't fried these bigger fish that would improve conditions for female prisoners and female athletes, and instead have chosen to introduce gender self-id policy which demonstrably harms women and girls while privileging males.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#507

Post by throwaway292939 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

jhp123 wrote: post #282

I'm not a target of tech's fascist turn, but my head is still spinning from the change of direction. When I entered this industry it was for hackers, nonconformists, weirdos, nerds, people who don't care about titles or clothes or what your genitals are. What particularly stings is that the vipers at the top tricked people into giving away an enormous amount of intellectual property. Zuck is removing tampons from the…

[flagged]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#508

Post by steele » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:42 AM UTC

One way to think of him is a wealthy person unaccustomed to hearing "no" that wants to say whatever they'd like regardless of the social collateral and writing an essay complaining about an empathy zeitgeist. Make no mistake, a person with thinking so fixed and undeservedly confident in ideas which he has a woefully limited understanding about will just as soon tell you to to rename your preferred pronouns as they would your company.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#509

Post by next_xibalba » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

James_K wrote: post #79

It's interesting to see how tech bros are slowly sliding to the right. The first thing I ever read from Paul was his thing about lisp, and I almost instantly disliked him. There is an intense ego that radiates from his ilk. You see a similar thing with some small business owners. Owning and running a business gives them a feeling of superiority. They feel that they are affluent thanks solely to their own efforts (and…

> tech bros are slowly sliding to the right

I see many people confidently and incuriously throw this idea around, meanwhile many of the tech bros are saying “no, I haven’t shifted all that much , the left just went crazy”. [1] I’m not sure which claim is “correct”. Probably breaks one way or another on an individual basis. But it does seem like we should probably give people some credit for introspection versus mind reading.

[1] The following cartoon has been shared by many and distills the idea well: https://x.com/swipewright/status/1462114108535312388?s=46&t=...

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#510

Post by strken » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

djur wrote: post #450

strken wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this less as "the Bud Light campaign was morally wrong because it was woke" and more as "the Bud Light campaign went disastrously badly for its brand and sales because it was woke". I have heard people call it "the gay beer", which is a pretty bad branding change when double-digit percentages of your (former) drinkers are homophobic and you sponsor NASCAR. One of my personal beliefs is that paedophiles who nev…

How was the campaign "woke" unless you define "trans people exist and should be supported" as woke? If Graham dislikes prigs, shouldn't he be criticizing the censorious social conservatives that led the boycott?

I define "trying to market a beer that's commonly drunk by Republicans using a trans influencer" as woke because it's:

A) ineffective at marketing the beer, because it prioritises a social justice objective instead (making it a political stance)

B) ineffective at changing any Bud drinker's mind on trans people, because it prioritises aggressive performance (making it woke)

The problem is not "oh, trans people exist, that's so woke"; it's doing activism in a way that harms both your company, because your brand is now "the gay beer", and trans people, who have to put up with a public debate about the existence of Dylan Mulvaney as well as a damaging boycott that scares marketing departments and moves the Overton window rightward.