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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#601

Post by gunian »

_yb2s wrote: post #596
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…

That hacker spirit is alive and well, and will be long after the fascists for one simple reason: The same open minded creative attitude that fully and warmly welcomes people who are different, is also what makes us better able to solve science and tech problems in a creative way. The fascists need the hackers, but we don’t need them. Authoritarianism is fundamentally culturally incompatible with innovation. Nazi cryp…

operation paperclip would beg to differ WW2 ended because of sheer numbers

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#602

Post by mgraczyk »

> I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015

You should do a startup then. I think you'll be surprised how little most VCs and customers care about your personal life.

No doubt the vibes worldwide are taking a dark turn, but pg has been pretty reasonable and his essay in particular seems like an accurate read on what has happened.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#603

Post by _yb2s »

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…

It is fascism to create a false narrative that all of our problems are caused by people with a different skin color, country of origin, gender identity, etc., and that it justifies setting up an authoritarian government that unjustly persecutes those groups and anyone that disagrees or tries to stop them.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#604

Post by ilikehurdles »

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…

how did free speech become fascist? even in this ludicrous essay, which claims meta announced it will "increase the hate speech people like me receive". no, it announced reduced filtering of content.

what is more conformist than forcing people to adopt your speech and view points under threat? what you don't realize is the hackers and nonconformists _are_ taking the tech back, they're taking it back from this oppressive bureaucratic regime that stifles creativity and forces everyone to tiptoe within its absurd religion of rules and newspeak. they're taking it back from dei consultants and hr departments. make it about merit and hacking, not about dogmatic adherence to a (fundamentally incorrect and bad imo) social cause.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#605

Post by jmcgough »

mgraczyk wrote: post #600
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…

And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants, and we have cheap and fast internet everywhere, ... This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size, and I can't imagine how anybody who works in tech can not know of the specific good things they have done or be so confu…

> This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size

I'd take Jonas Salk, Norman Borlaug, and Marie Curie over Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Benzos.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#606

Post by cguess »

sien wrote: post #597
insane_dreamer wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like I said, you might have a case with SpaceX (though how much does that help humanity? not so sure) internet companies become defunct because some other company puts them out of business - if we had never had Facebook we would still have had a way to keep in touch online > It's also worth considering how many millionaires were made by the companies that the billionaires started. who cares? the world doesn't need mo…

The point is that the 'billionaires' were not exploiting their workforce. The workforce that made Google, MS and many other companies were also highly paid. The consumer surplus of all these things is the bigger thing. And getting to that is really not easy.

The developers that made Google and Facebook and such were highly paid. The people who were hired for a dollar an hour to train the anti-CP models most certainly were not and have instead suffered horrible trauma.

Externalities are so easily ignored if they don't happen in SF (and even the ones that do. For instance, take a look at the pricing out of affordable housing for all the cooks, dish washers, janitors etc who cater to that highly paid workforce but now have to commute hours each way).

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#607

Post by gooosle »

mgraczyk wrote: post #600
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…

And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants, and we have cheap and fast internet everywhere, ... This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size, and I can't imagine how anybody who works in tech can not know of the specific good things they have done or be so confu…

> This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people

By what metric?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#608

Post by _yb2s »

gunian wrote: post #601
_yb2s wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hacker spirit is alive and well, and will be long after the fascists for one simple reason: The same open minded creative attitude that fully and warmly welcomes people who are different, is also what makes us better able to solve science and tech problems in a creative way. The fascists need the hackers, but we don’t need them. Authoritarianism is fundamentally culturally incompatible with innovation. Nazi cryp…

operation paperclip would beg to differ WW2 ended because of sheer numbers

> operation paperclip would beg to differ

Operation paperclip? A huge number of scientists and engineers unable to accomplish much under an authoritarian regime, but then driving massive innovation and discovery when freed from it, is exactly my point. Even when employing brilliant creative people authoritarians will always setup a work culture and organization fundamentally incompatible with innovation where traits like creativity and honesty are seen as threats, and aggressively punished.

Even in the USA, you can see the effects of this- highly innovative research programs from Skunkworks to DARPA always have a radically anti-authoritarian work culture.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#610

Post by nova77hn »

faraggi wrote: post #558
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?

I think it’s Sweden.
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