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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#561

Post by trainyperson »

musicale wrote: post #342
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…

> socially regressive robber barons At least we got some good universities (and a somewhat functional transcontinental rail system) out of the 19th century iteration. > In 1975 the student body of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder, Leland Stanford [1] It's a shame th…

The “Robber Barons” name is used now for the sketch comedy group on campus: https://youtube.com/@stanfordrobberbarons

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#562

Post by insane_dreamer »

> Moves like Mark’s, and essays like pg’s, create the permission structure for people to discriminate against me.

This is key. Many people might say, "come on, Mark's just doing the usual sucking up to the new President" or "Paul's just expressing his views and trying to bring things back into balance.", just like they defend Trump's famous denigration of a disabled person on the campaign trail -- he was just joking, playing to the crowd.

Words are real things, and when spoken by people in positions of great power, they can enable abhorrent behavior which the original speaker might never engage in (well, maybe Trump) but others will.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#563

Post by [deleted] »

jmeyer2k wrote: post #549
wastle wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's just a word and makes no difference then there should be no issue with using "he" to refer to any and all individuals of the male sex.

Must be hard to have to deal with that, I'm so sorry you have to use a different word when referring to someone. It's obviously much harder for you to use a different pronoun than for them to have their entire gender identity invalidated. Would you like for people to misgender you constantly and purposefully? Your life must be so hard. I feel bad for you to have to use a different word to refer to someone. Maybe have…

[deleted]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#564

Post by insane_dreamer »

sien wrote: post #526
musicale wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> socially regressive robber barons At least we got some good universities (and a somewhat functional transcontinental rail system) out of the 19th century iteration. > In 1975 the student body of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder, Leland Stanford [1] It's a shame th…

[flagged]

the tech billionaires didn't give us any of that (though you might have a case with the iPhone and SpaceX); they're just the ones who monetized it

It's like Carnegie setting up 2500 libraries but charging access to them and becoming an even greater billionaire in the process

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#565

Post by codesnik »

iaseiadit wrote: post #547
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…

What “fascism” are we talking about here? A company pulling tampons from men’s rooms? Companies scaling down DEI departments that advocated (probably illegally) in favor of gender and race-based discrimination? Or are you speaking more broadly about the U.S.? Is it fascist to revert to a sane border policy that’s aligned with what most U.S. citizens and legal immigrants want? Or an executive branch that’s actually ru…

we've seen newly government getting from shadow to the front row on the inauguration. No need to hide anymore.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#566

Post by horrible-hilde »

crimsoneer wrote: post #277
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…

Yeah. I'm clinging to the hope the hacker revolution might not be over just yet :P

maybe it just got hijaked for a bit.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#568

Post by wastle »

jmeyer2k wrote: post #549
wastle wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's just a word and makes no difference then there should be no issue with using "he" to refer to any and all individuals of the male sex.

Must be hard to have to deal with that, I'm so sorry you have to use a different word when referring to someone. It's obviously much harder for you to use a different pronoun than for them to have their entire gender identity invalidated. Would you like for people to misgender you constantly and purposefully? Your life must be so hard. I feel bad for you to have to use a different word to refer to someone. Maybe have…

Oh so it does make a difference now?

Well then, consider that it really is not my problem if these males are offended by the simple word "he".

Have you heard of the Stroop effect?

More to the point, I've no interest whatsoever in encouraging a man's fantasy "woman" identity, quite the opposite in fact.

Perhaps these men would consider giving women and girls the basic decency and respect of refraining from such misogynistic appropriation.

They could even pick another word to describe themselves, given that "woman" is already taken. What's so hard about using a different word?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#569

Post by jppope »

fisherjeff wrote: post #535
rtpg wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic Cantrill bit about not anthropormphizing Larry Ellison applies to a lot of tech CEOs. Thing is Larry Ellison doesn't write blog posts acting like he's a philosopher. Some tech CEOs really position themselves as arbiters of culture and it just feels more and more like trying to transfer their tech/business positioning into a cultural one. I do not like it!

This is it, this is the best comment. They’re all a bunch of aspiring lawnmowers, some of them just try to ride whatever the latest wave of popular opinion is to cynically accumulate some social currency.

"Tech billionaires are really just a bunch of aspiring lawnmowers"

^^ I am totally behind this proposition even though its a 2nd effect allusion

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#570

Post by wisty »

I'm suprised that people are super-duper angry at pg's 2025 essay when it's substantially the same as his 2004 essay "what you can't say" - https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html other than using the word "woke".

It would have been better if he'd also called out some of the people who are prigs on the right (e.g. the people who are suddenly very very upset about the integrity women's sports, which thy don't watch anyway).

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