What I Didn't Say • Hacker News Board

Re: What I Didn't Say

#281

Post by Crito » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 11:55 PM UTC

orionblastar wrote: post #260

grellas wrote: post #229

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo , meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we…

Look you are getting credibility and trust confused with respect and other things. Personally I don't trust anyone, I've been burned too many times. Yeah that makes me paranoid, but it comes from too many bad professional relationships were I was backstabbed by the other person to further their career goals. I must state that this does not happen in every organization, and that there are a few people I would trust if…

Do you give people who you respect the benefit of the doubt? By that, I mean that if they say something that could be interpreted charitably or uncharitably, do you tend to tentatively assume that they meant it the charitable way?

I think that is what grellas means by "trust".

Re: What I Didn't Say

#282

Post by aaronem » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

wr1472 wrote: post #242

mjburgess wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

I haven't read the submission yet, neither am I fully up to speed on the topic, but I'm going to go all meta on you and ask what a pseudo-intellectual is?

There are two definitions. The first describes one who believes himself to be both intelligent and thoughtful, but fails to recognize his deficiency in at least one of those two habits. The second describes one who is both intelligent and thoughtful, from the perspective of one who fails to recognize his deficiency in at least one of those two traits.

Determining which definition is in use, in a given case, is not always straightforward.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#283

Post by oskarth » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

This piece should have to be written. I think the same goes for the essay Foreign Accents. I'm not a women, but I am a "foreigner", and it's completely obvious in both cases what pg actually said. That is, unless you have a thing for being Offended or you are looking for excuses.

It's sad that pg feels he has to waste time doing these type of clarifications. Especially since he's not even holding any controversial opinions in either case, but is merely observing what he has seen at YC.

I wish more people would be harder on the trolls with nothing but superficial criticism. Ignore them, and if they gain traction, despise them, the same way you despise spammers.

There's an asymmetry here. The trolls lose nothing on their vitrolic rants. For them it's a win either way, since at worst case they get some page views, whereas pg has to spend time dealing with bullshit. It would be more just if these trolls were punished, and pg weren't made to feel like he has to respond like this.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#284

Post by jsmthrowaway » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 11:59 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #236

grellas wrote: post #229

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo , meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we…

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

You mean like the cult-like reverence for the pseudo-intellectual issues commentary on Twitter and Medium? The people who have less than a decade in the industry but are experts on compensation, ocracies, power dynamics, and psychology? The ones who work at Silicon Valley startups and lecture the entire industry about how things work, then surround themselves with like-minded people to have strength in numbers?

You are seeing respect for Paul Graham because, as flawed as some of his opinions might be, he also has the experience backing them. Louis CK said this best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXcWeFn-YYM (NSFW in the latter half)

If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world. That includes my own; I know I still have things to learn and I make a proactive effort to listen more than I talk. I don't always succeed.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#285

Post by oskarth » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 11:59 PM UTC

This piece should have to be written. I think the same goes for the essay Foreign Accents. I'm not a woman, but I am a "foreigner", and it's completely obvious in both cases what pg actually said. That is, unless you have a thing for being Offended or you are looking for excuses.

It's sad that pg feels he has to waste time doing these type of clarifications. Especially since he's not even holding any controversial opinions in either case, but is merely observing what he has seen at YC. I wish more people would be harder on the trolls with nothing but superficial criticism. Ignore them, and if they gain traction, despise them, the same way you despise spammers.

There's an asymmetry here. The trolls lose nothing on their vitrolic rants. For them it's a win either way, since at worst case they get some page views, whereas pg has to spend time dealing with bullshit. It would be more just if these trolls were punished, and pg weren't made to feel like he has to respond like this.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#286

Post by Nimi » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 12:00 AM UTC

"""Mark Zuckerberg starts programming, starts messing about with computers when he's like 10 or whatever. By the time he's starting Facebook he's a hacker, and so he looks at the world through hacker eyes. That's what causes him to start Facebook. We can't make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years. """

I wonder why pg thinks being a programmer is a prerequisite for looking at the world through hacker eyes. The notion that Zuckerberg could have started Facebook as a non-technical co-founder doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and you could even argue Steve Jobs, while having some technical chops, wasn't the typical uber-hacker-has-been-doing-this-since-age-12 programmer). Or not?

Re: What I Didn't Say

#287

Post by crazygringo » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #149

crazygringo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. When you evaluate a team, you need to be able to judge their confidence, see how they interact with each other, get a feel for the trustworthiness, the way they look at you when they answer a question, and so on. If you can't see them, and their voice is disto…

> Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. While I agree that blind applications would be somewhat tough for startup founders, conducting seems like a bad example. You could fairly easily judge the resulting music without being able to see the conductor.

I'm going to assume you don't have a lot of familiarity with conducting. It often takes an entire season to rehearse with a group in order to produce music that could accurately be 'judged'. And a conductor is about far more than the music -- how is their rapport with the orchestra? What are they like to work with? What kind of an artistic vision do they have for the group, and how do they communicate that? Ultimately, what kind of a leader are they going to be, along 20-odd different dimensions?

Even with world-class orchestras, where performances are regularly put on with guest conductors after only a few hours of rehearsal time, no permanent conductor would ever be hired on the basis of merely listening to their music. It's a leadership position. (Unlike orchestra players, where it really is more directly about musical proficiency.)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#288

Post by aaronem » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #236

grellas wrote: post #229

A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo , meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we…

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

You confuse respect with reverence, and pseudo-intellectualism with lively intellect; I can't imagine why. Incidentally, your malaprop is showing.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#289

Post by semiel » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 12:04 AM UTC

aaronem wrote: post #274

semiel wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that this was pretty much common knowledge, but sure, I can point you in the right direction. One interesting place to start is Harvard's "Project Implicit". They have a massive publication list[1] and you can even test your own implicit reactions[2]. There are plenty of other scientists testing things like whether people judge women as less competent. A quick google search pulled up a PNAS…

I'm a programmer, not a psychologist. I have, however, some slight familiarity with IATs as a purported measure of unconscious bias; they have never impressed me as being particularly reliable as such, given what seems to be their questionable repeatability, not to mention the ease with which they are manipulated, and the way most of the results so obtained tend to hover just outside the margin of error. I won't even…

Goal-post movement detected!

So even if we arbitrarily exclude a perfectly valid psychological technique because it "doesn't impress you", there's still the matter of my third link. Didja click it?

EDIT: The most surprising part of the PNAS study, to me, is that people who agreed with statements like "Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States" were statistically more affected by implicit gender bias.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#290

Post by Crito » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 12:06 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #190

marquis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure of not being a 25 year old guy, basically. Or 25 for that matter.

This raises a good point, but informal inferences about age, ethnicity, and sex can be made from other parts of the application. Statistics on the discrimination of Ivy league schools show that (east) Asian face a stacked deck in college applications at "selective" schools[0]. Its plausible that much of this is inferred from ethnic names. To the extent it impacts the short-lists for interviews (ie, before candidates…

> "Statistics on the discrimination of Ivy league schools show that (east) Asian face a stacked deck in college applications at "selective" schools[0]. Its plausible that much of this is inferred from ethnic names."

I wonder how a surname like "Lang" would fair. It is either Germanic of Asian, though it seems to be primarily Germanic in practice but seems strongly Asian to people who are not familiar with it[0]. If there is discrimination keyed off of "Asian-ish sounding" names then it might be apparent when looking at these sorts of names.

[0] I know a germanic "Lang". Apparently he gets asked how his family got that name a lot.