Anyone have that awesome quote from Bowling for Columbine where Moore is interviewing South Park co-creator Matt Stone and Stone explains the supposed consequences of not getting into honors classes in the 3rd grade?
Paul Graham: News from the Front
11–20 of 128 posts
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#12I did my D.Phil. at Oxford University, and my B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University; while SFU is one of Canada's best universities, it clearly doesn't have the stature of Oxford or Harvard. Were the students at Oxford more intelligent than the students at SFU? No. Were they more motivated? No. Are there jobs for which I'd rather hire an Oxford alumnus than an SFU alumnus? Absolutely. The largest advantage of a great univ…
> when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new?
Considering how many there are of them, probably within the last couple days. But instead of me giving you an example to which you will predictably reply "that's not really new," how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new, so we can see what level of really-newness it would take to satisfy you?
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#13When I was in college, I figured out that the education you get doesn't really change. However, what does change is the people that you are associating with. At the "elite" colleges, there is a greater percentage of smart students, which lends itself to more productive discussions and more difficult tests that force you to challenge yourself. Also, it is like the difference between the regular classes in high school…
This essay posits that choice of college doesn't act as a success indicator when evaluating a pool of people. That's addressing a different question from whether choice of college acts as a success factor for individuals.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#14How was the data analysed?
The most obvious way, and the way the essay seems to imply, is simply to look for correlations between success / failure and which school the founders attended.
If this is how it was done, then the conclusion is flawed. All it shows is that the school doesn't matter, conditional on being accepted by YC (rather than rejected). This is a completely different conclusion than the one the essay reaches, namely that the school doesn't matter, period.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#15First, I'd just like to point out that PG is in an interesting place to report that college doesn't matter, having himself attended two Ivy League schools.
There are two arguments happening here. The first is that entrepreneurship and business success are not so well correlated with where you go to undergrad. The second is that where you go to college doesn't make much of a difference in life in general. I won't really quarrel with the first, since it's been demonstrated pretty often, and YC's results support it as well. The second, on the other hand...
The main problem with trying to assert that college doesn't make a difference in life is that there's really no easy measurement you can do over "net change" in life. That's due both to the long span of time a life consumes as well as the complex and/or fuzzy cause-effect relationships that are at play throughout. At best, I think, you would need to argue over objective differences that have some immediate effect, and then hope that those actually do make a difference. As an example, here are some of the things that I think made Paul Graham successful that are pretty strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard:
- he met RTM and Trevor there
- he got to spend his time in Boston, where he's acknowledged startups can thrive
- being able to drop the H-bomb almost certainly helped give credibility to his company
- he learned Lisp (not really the most popular language at the time, except at certain places)
Would Viaweb have happened had he gone elsewhere, or skipped grad school altogether? Well, maybe. But I doubt it. Harvard's name is what convened the talent (peers, advisors, mentors, investors) that shaped much of that company, and it's there that Harvard's value lies. I think this essay horribly undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your university is amazing.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#16I did my D.Phil. at Oxford University, and my B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University; while SFU is one of Canada's best universities, it clearly doesn't have the stature of Oxford or Harvard. Were the students at Oxford more intelligent than the students at SFU? No. Were they more motivated? No. Are there jobs for which I'd rather hire an Oxford alumnus than an SFU alumnus? Absolutely. The largest advantage of a great univ…
> when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new? Considering how many there are of them, probably within the last couple days. But instead of me giving you an example to which you will predictably reply "that's not really new," how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new, so we can see what level of really-newness it would take to satisfy yo…
>...how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new...
The first example which comes to mind is powerset.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#17This is the first of PG's essays I've seen with comments at the bottom. It seems they're brought to us courtesy of Disqus, a YC startup.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new? Considering how many there are of them, probably within the last couple days. But instead of me giving you an example to which you will predictably reply "that's not really new," how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new, so we can see what level of really-newness it would take to satisfy yo…
>...how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new... The first example which comes to mind is powerset.
Vaporware? That's not really new.
Anyway, they're probably at +3 standard deviations for "newness" compared to all tech startups. Kind of a high bar to match.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#19First, I'd just like to point out that PG is in an interesting place to report that college doesn't matter, having himself attended two Ivy League schools. There are two arguments happening here. The first is that entrepreneurship and business success are not so well correlated with where you go to undergrad. The second is that where you go to college doesn't make much of a difference in life in general. I won't real…
> strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard
This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough.
> undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your university is amazing
Sure, but not by accident. The whole thesis of this essay that this "magic" is bullshit, and that as success depends more on measurable results, it will play much less of a role.
Re: Paul Graham: News from the Front
#20First, I'd just like to point out that PG is in an interesting place to report that college doesn't matter, having himself attended two Ivy League schools. There are two arguments happening here. The first is that entrepreneurship and business success are not so well correlated with where you go to undergrad. The second is that where you go to college doesn't make much of a difference in life in general. I won't real…
> strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough. > undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your university is amazing Sure, but not by accident. The whole thesis of this essay that this "magic" is bullshit, and that a…
>This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough.
Certainly not clear enough for this non-US reader. But of course the word "college" has a different meaning on this side of the border (and an entirely different meaning in Oxford).