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I Met Paul Graham Once

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Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#671

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

> And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants

Well, that depends if RFKjr and his lunatics get control of the HHS[0][1]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/rfk-jr-aaron...

[1] https://www.protectourcare.org/experts-say-deadly-samoan-mea...

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#672

Post by relistan »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #615
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.

>Indeed – Carnegie Libraries may be one of the best results. how much of this "the 19th century Robber barons at least did one thing right" idea is all down to Andrew Carnegie, I sometimes wonder.

The scale of the Carnegie library program is pretty incredible. My dad’s library as a kid was a Carnegie library in central Iowa. The libraries near where I live in Dublin, Ireland are Carnegie libraries.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#673

Post by [deleted] »

tomlockwood wrote: post #652
iaseiadit wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He's not obligated to do anything, man, but I can point at what he does and call it fascism. I know you may struggle with this because the American education system is awful, but if you pay a tiny fraction of attention to what American senators are like, you'll come to know that in a fistfight or a battle of the wits there is a non-zero number of senators that Biden could beat. This is not a Red vs Blue issue, as sim…

[deleted]

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#674

Post by sien »

ModernMech wrote: post #630
sien wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mate, I'm nowhere near San Francisco. Just because San Francisco is disastrously run despite staggering riches and has horribly magnified problems does not mean it's the fault of people who started companies in San Jose.

You don't see a connection between tech CEOs who hoard vast wealth, and a public sphere starved of real investment?

The US government spends 10 trillion dollars year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

That's larger than the GDP of all but two countries in the world.

That is not starving.

On top of that, tech CEOs and highly paid tech workers pay a lot of tax. Far more than they cost the country.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#675

Post by countarthur »

ivraatiems wrote: post #628
chlodwig wrote: post #518

[flagged]

I see this argument all the time and I have so, so many questions about it. It just does not make a lot of sense to me. Please know that while we have fundamental disagreements, I am also genuinely trying to understand this worldview. According to your definition, what is an intersex person? How should one refer to one? There are intersex people who who look like women but have penises, and vice versa. You can simply…

The claim that 1-2% of the population is intersex is a common myth: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/

"Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia." "...the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%"

It's often commonly claimed it's as common as red hair, too - it isn't. https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-commo...

Personally I've always found the "argument from commonality" to be shaky philosophically and morally. A population's degree of minority doesn't make discrimination or mistreatment more acceptable, so why massage stats to make them seem more populous than they really are?

As to your question as to why does "woman" have to mean "adult human female" - because that's the dictionary definition.

I totally agree with you that there are some people whose sex is hard to judge immediately, often, but not always, because they've gone out of their way to make it ambiguous. Everyone else can be clocked at 100 feet in a dark alley - we're evolved that way.

A few awkward social faux pas over people who look or act androgynous - for whatever reason - doesn't justify exploding a category that works and serves everyone well almost all of the time. I don't feel guilty over my use of sexed pronouns even if I occasionally get it wrong and this insistence that I should... isn't convincing.

Notice that arguments about the treatment of "intersex" people (those with disorders/differences of sexual development) are used to buttress the position of people who feel like they're the other sex, but are otherwise biologically completely normal. These groups really have nothing in common but it's useful to conflate them.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#676

Post by countarthur »

brandon272 wrote: post #531
chlodwig wrote: post #518

[flagged]

A woman is an adult human female, or a person who identifies as such. In other words, there is biological definition. Then there is malleable social terminology. We can acknowledge biology while also accommodating who choose to - or need to - identify differently. If we can't accept that, then my next question would be: what do you expect someone who is gender dysphoric to do? What do you believe the appropriate cour…

What does "such" mean here?

How should I treat someone with body dysmorphia who believes they are 130 kg when they're closer to 50? Should I agree with them and affirm them as fat as they believe they are? Or should I - if it's my place - implore them to go to talking therapy and refuse to be drawn into their self-hating fantasy?

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#677

Post by watwut »

axiomo wrote: post #180
watwut wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think transgender are in the crosshairs of a political proxy battle. The issues is that many people feel disgust and hate over the idea of transgender. And whenever they become visible, they lash out and react.

It's more the behavior of trans activists that gets people riled up. There's really no need for men who say they're women to be going around conquering everything that's for women and then admonishing people as bigots or transphobic when they object to this. Instead they could, you know, just live their lives peacefully without launching attack after attack on women's rights. It'd be better for everyone.

I never interpreted "taking a dump in a toilette" as conquering.

> Instead they could, you know, just live their lives peacefully without launching attack after attack on women's rights. It'd be better for everyone.

Obvious issue here is that the same groups who hate trans also tend to be pretty misogynistic. So, I do not believe this is about womens rights at all.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#678

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

marssaxman wrote: post #504
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chan…

Well, speaking only for myself, I'm a lifelong member of a benevolent organization that provides many ways to do good works.

I can assure you that the work I do, makes a pretty big difference in some lives. We're not out to change the world. We're only trying to police our own area*.

Being older and more experienced, means that the work I do is much more effective, and much more economical (we don't have a lot of means). It also means that I work well with others, and am much better at team stuff.

*> “I was in the Air Force a while and they had what they call “policing the area.” And I think that’s a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area then we won’t have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you and see what needs to be changed.”

-Willie Nelson

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#679

Post by probablybetter »

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]

nice try. The billionaires gave us none of the above. Sincerly, an old programmer who was actually there when these things were funded, often at the public expense in many nations.

Computer games are pan-et-circenses, IMO, but I also don't recall any billionaires having created any.

Your John Galt story is trite and untruthful.

Re: I Met Paul Graham Once

#680

Post by probablybetter »

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.

sure it is. "mature" markets are only interesting for large moneyed entities to try to tweak things and squeeze .01% more profit out of a service/process/product.

innovation is risky and rewards accordingly.

Ycombinator app-startups are low-hanging-fruit with marginal innovation and marginal risk => it ain't hardware, and it's just webservices and a few React devs...

SpaceX and DARPA and ARPA = our tax dollars.

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