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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#641

Post by intended »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #617
intended wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to grant this, but then thought of how VC hit rations work. Is it really ‘hard’ to make tech firms profitable, or is it more a function of survival? Many of the companies which enter are bought out, or acqui-hired, adding to the leaders. Tech often rewards those who survive long enough to consolidate. And finally, enshittification is a way to make MORE money, but it’s not hard.

>And finally, enshittification is a way to make MORE money, but it’s not hard. maybe it's medium difficulty? There must be some enshittification that makes significantly less money, up to shutting down companies.

hahaha. yeah I was struggling to articulate this and the idea of levels came to mind.

Extracting money out of people, because you can price it better, and competition isn't going to stop you, means theres a race to the bottom.

This is on top of being vastly profitable already.

So its not hard, its just following a script.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#642

Post by ModernMech »

j2kun wrote: post #538
beardedwizard wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't argue that, but there are cultures out there that disagree - so how can it be universal?

What "culture" says it's okay to treat humans as if they are animals?

MAGA culture. Often frames people they don't like as "vermin", and it sets up a permission structure to cause violence against them by labeling them as diseased or inherently criminal.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#643

Post by defrost »

iaseiadit wrote: post #640
tomlockwood wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fascist to vilify immigrants? Is the republican party full of bright young twenty year olds? Can you post "cis" on twitter?

Who “vilifies immigrants”? President Trump is married to an immigrant, as is Vice President Vance. And many of Trumps advisors are immigrants. And he has repeatedly said he wants America to attract the best people from around the world. You mean he vilified illegal immigrants specifically. That’s fair, he did. But he’s not obligated to speak kindly about people who flout our laws. > Is the republican party full of br…

> Who “vilifies immigrants”? President Trump is married to an immigrant, as is Vice President Vance.

Misogynists, domestic abusers, patriarchs, etc. are also frequently married to women.

Such is the real world in which we live.

As points go that one doesn't carry weight.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#644

Post by mgraczyk »

BlackFingolfin wrote: post #638
mgraczyk wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which robber baron do you consider to be responsible for curing polio?

Bill Gates, who contributed around 30% of the total money spent on the world eradication effort so far

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#645

Post by ModernMech »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #239
axiomo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But do we really need tampons in mens' bathrooms, really? More to the point, do we really want men like the author in the women's bathrooms? Just because they desire to be women. We all need to take a step towards respecting women's boundaries by collectively telling these men: No.

I’ve always been baffled about people who care about it. Just for a hot second sit down, and think how many times you’ve even talked to a trans person in your life. Like it’s such a tiny percentage of people that extreme majority of people will literally never have a conversation with one in their entire lives. But for whatever reason it occupies the minds of a good chunk of people throughout entire political spectru…

They're not as rare as you think. In a class of 100 students I have 1 or 2 trans students every semester. My pharmacist is trans. You have probably interacted with trans people before without even knowing.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#646

Post by ImaCake »

rockemsockem wrote: post #355
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm too lazy to search my comment history, but I wrote a comment on the original post about pg's essay that I did pretty much agree with what pg wrote, and so consequently I agree with most of what you wrote. But that said, I definitely could not ignore the timing of pg's essay, and it felt plain gross to me. It felt like a lazy, convenient pile-on at that moment, even if pg's position had been largely consistent for…

Idk if it's just me, but I voted blue in the last 3 presidential elections and I'm way more pissed about the Democrats than the Republicans right now. They failed the country, so hard, by making poor decisions which made them lose. They did this repeatedly, I think which decisions were the wrong ones is up for debate, but the surest one imo is Joe Biden running again instead of stepping aside and having a real primar…

> Idk if it's just me

This is a widely held view amoung a lot of socialists and left-of-centre folks within America and globally. You could try "Chapo Trap House" podcast if you want to hear this point of view.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#647

Post by horrible-hilde »

tome wrote: post #349
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Islam is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a religion of peace. It is. The word Islam and Salaam are etymologically tied to the word "peace". If your definition of peace is "never wages war", well there's no country or political regime in the world like that. Even India, which was liberated by the famous nonviolent philosopher Gandhi, did not last many years without needing to wage war and take territory. Isl…

> Islam is the only remaining religion with a political element and an existing desire for statehood What do you mean by this? There are several countries that declare themselves to be Islamic.

it means danger to the non-believer

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#648

Post by ModernMech »

next_xibalba wrote: post #503
metabagel wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Legitimate question, according to you, this person should be going into the woman's room: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Angel#/media/File:Buck_An...

How do you feel about that?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#649

Post by ModernMech »

EGreg wrote: post #555

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 w…

I've noticed this as well in the compilers community. Essentially every woman I know in this area is MtF.

I can't back this up with science, but my feeling is that because neurodivergence/autism occur at higher rates in males than females, and ND brains are better at abstract reasoning inherent in programming, male born people are drawn to it. I also believe this accounts for the overrepresentation of MtF trans women, because there is definitely an intersection of autism and transgenderism.

Which is really ironic because Zuckerberg, Musk, and Gates are all definitely on the spectrum. The current tech power center was created almost entirely by queer autistic neurodivergent weirdos.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#650

Post by _yb2s »

iaseiadit wrote: post #636
_yb2s wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Immigrants are welcome in America, but we do not have an open border. We have an immigration process that must be followed, just like every other country on Earth. Violating the immigration process is breaking the law. Enforcing our laws is not “unjustly persecuting” people. If you can’t be intellectually honest and distinguish between illegal and legal immigration, or the fact that the U.S. does not have an open bor…

It is unreasonable to pretend this movement in the USA is even remotely content with strictly enforcing current immigration law, or welcoming to legal immigrants. The foundation of the movement is based on fundamentally dehumanizing and hating immigrants- with blatantly dishonest rhetoric like “they’re eating our pets” and discussion of how to revoke 100% legal full US citizenship by widespread denaturalization under dishonest and fabricated accusations. Just yesterday there was an unconstitutional executive order with a motivated misinterpretation of the law that aims to deny citizenship to US born children.

I am an academic scientist and many of my coworkers are foreign born and all here legally with green cards or visas. These are brilliant people with PhDs developing tech that is massively stimulating the US economy. Every single one of them knows they are unwanted by this current administration and political movement and is making family preparations for forced deportation. I noticed about half of our foreign postdocs suddenly needed to “visit home” this month, and I expect many are terrified and don’t plan to return. A similar terror to what trans people are facing, as discussed here. New hires have been refusing prestigious job offers for lesser offers in other countries.

The core of the movement is driven by hatred and dehumanization of specific groups of people- any particular immigration policy is only secondary and a first step.

Focusing on the immigrant aspect alone is also not appropriate here, when they are systematically implementing the entire philosophy and systems of fascism in all other aspects as well.

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