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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#551

Post by cancerhacker »

duxup wrote: post #67
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…

I feel like the best advice is to take the ideas, even principles you like from folks and run with that. That's it. 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 was there, 1986-2006 and by and far what he said internally at company meetings was completely apolitical. He didn’t moralize, he pushed groups to create better products for customers and that’s what we as engineers were exposed to.

The one time I remember something different was around 2003 when he was asked at an all hands meeting, a question that came down to “how do we work with all this chaos, war, blaming ethnic and religious minorities”, etc. The person that asked it was almost in tears. Jobs response was to look seriously non-plussed and he answered “if you can’t do anything else, vote for the democrats” and then moved on to the next question. He may have had deeper opinions- but they were not part of his public discourse when he was ceo.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#552

Post by andrewflnr »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #472
pavlov wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “he might still be fine with transgender identity” How extremely generous!

This is couched because he doesn't express a view, not because there's reason to doubt or to assume a level of acceptance. Be charitable.

Thank you.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#553

Post by tomrod »

sien wrote: post #534
zug_zug wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was a government project. It's laughable to even imagine that if these billionaires didn't exist then nobody else would have invented video chat...

It's not the invention it's the delivery. Consumer goods are delivered by businesses. Delivering new, high tech ones is hard.

Discovery (basic research) is usually costlier than applied research (bundling, development, delivery) in labor costs.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#554

Post by foxglacier »

gedpeck wrote: post #350
foxglacier wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not see how you're part of the problem? You're applying cherry-picked standards that just happen to match what Trump did because you'd already been brainwashed to hate him and his supporters. What if you judge presidents by how many deaths they cause in wars instead of what dirty jokes they made? Wouldn't that be more meaningful measure of badness? No because you're cherry-picking to support your pre-existing…

Cherry picked facts? Ha. Being a rapist is a cherry picked fact? The difference between me and you is that I consistently apply my morals and ethics. I don’t support rapists and bribe takers for President. I didn’t support Clinton when it became clear what he did and I don’t support Trump. Have a higher standard for yourself. Don’t support bad people. I do judge George W. Bush for the deaths he caused. Obama too.

Fair enough, they're all bad. Maybe except Biden?

As far as I know, Trump wasn't convicted of rape, so it's maybe a bit of stretch to call him a rapist.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#555

Post by EGreg »

I read the second part of the essay, about the author choosing to transition and live their life identifying and presenting as female. If that makes them happier then I am all for it but I certainly think society’s norms are upstream of people’s decisions. I personally believe that society should be more accepting in general, of autism, tomboys, femboys and other ways of presenting, especially for children. If they were, then people wouldn’t feel so much pressure to conform to a specific stereotype.

Instead when it comes to kids they are often told how they should behave — eg ADHD is another thing that’s overdiagnosed and medicated — including with amphetamines. Notable progressive Thom Hartmann even wrote a book about this ADHD medication industry, with his theory of “hunters and farmers”, when his own son was put through the ringer. In the past, many girls would be called tomboys rather than encouraged to transition because they didn’t like to associate with “feminine” things or present as female. In Sweden, they even had gender-neutral “hen” pronouns for kids.

As far as their observation about trans women being programmers — I want to ask a risque thing on HN. Who are the top female developers that you know? I want to follow their work.

I have found that some of the people I have found to be really innovative female developers, such as the makers of Redbean server (Justine), or decentralized database technology such as Mauve Signweaver, are (I believe) in fact trans women.

What is it that leads to nearly everyone who does hardcore programming and abstract concepts being born as a biological male? In evolutionary psychology “just-so stories”, one could say men were used to long periods of silent stalking animals or building constructions instead of socializing in the cave or raising children. But I am not so sure about just-so stories and the effect size is just way too strong. Was programming really so much different when Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper or Margaret Hamilton were doing it? Female programmers were more prevalent when it was punchcards. But then you look at, say, Apple and everyone’s a dude and Susan Kare is hired to design icons, rather than programming. Or when I worked at Bloomberg, practically all the developers were male and some of us would go to lunch with the people from the Sales department, because that’s where the females were.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#556

Post by [deleted] »

lucb1e wrote: post #399
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I personally did not read the parent comment's saying of "can" as meaning "has been"

[deleted]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#557

Post by foxglacier »

KPGv2 wrote: post #542
foxglacier wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's because genocide is too simple and poorly defined a concept to apply appropriately to every situation. It's just the result of people trying to generalize from a few specific events that happened in the past which they already decided were bad for some other reason and ended up creating the label genocide to describe them. Look at the disagreement people have over whether Israel or Hamas committed genocide in…

> People can't even agree on the meaning of the word as it applies there. The fact that your average Joe can't explain it is as material as your average Joe being unable to write a Bash script is to computer science not being a real thing. Essentially everyone on Earth except Israelis and religious sycophants agree what Israel has done is genocide. It is ludicrous to suggest Hamas has conducted a genocide against Isr…

[flagged]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#558

Post by faraggi »

low_tech_love wrote: post #379

"I’m certain he wouldn’t be rude to my face, but he might quietly discriminate against me, say no thanks. He might not even think of it as discrimination, only that I don’t have what it takes." This resonates pretty strongly (and depressingly) with me being an immigrant academic in Europe who came originally from a third-world country. Even though I am one of the most productive researchers in my department, even tho…

Do you happen to live in Switzerland?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#559

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#560

Post by nradov »

1oooqooq wrote: post #415
musicale wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed – Carnegie Libraries may be one of the best results. I would like to see our modern robber barons and philanthropists (and society in general) put some effort into creating a usable digital library system; we actually have things like Google Books, which scanned many university collections, but it will likely remain unusable as an actual digital library unless some sort of copyright reform can be enacted.

these thing will come, after it's too late. robber Barons also destroyed nature and communities. only in their old age they tried to be remembered by universities and libraries. only question is if musk and Zuckerberg will build their 2080 ouvres still in the USA or elsewhere. remember most Barrons made their fortunes living in the North East and ended up on the West. the world is more global today. the Musk Universi…

The current crop of tech billionaires seems fond of New Zealand and have been building bunkers there to escape from nuclear war or global warming or a peasant revolt or whatever. Maybe they'll build a university there as well?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/billionaires-are-building-lu...

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