Persuade xor Discover

#1

Post by fallentimes » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:22 PM UTC

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#2

Post by shimon » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:47 PM UTC

An exercise from the essay:

...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2]

Footnote:

[2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend.

Please submit your solutions below.

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#3

Post by sachinag » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:51 PM UTC

shimon wrote: post #2

An exercise from the essay: ...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2] Footnote: [2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend. Please submit your solutions below.

I'm skeptical that some groups of people are inherently braver, smarter, or harder working than others.

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#4

Post by tsally » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:53 PM UTC

I've never met Arrington, so whether he's nice or not doesn't really apply to me. I also don't own a startup, so there's no conflict there. My personal beef is that TechCrunch is a 'serious journalistic entity' when they get documents leaked to them, but the second people start trying to hold them to the standard of real journalism suddenly it a blog. It's difficult to pinpoint, but there's something two-faced about TechCrunch that I don't like. It's some combination of the sensationalism, exaggeration, and in some cases outright fabrication that really get to me. Since Arrington is the founder and figurehead of TechCrunch, my feelings about the blog naturally extend to him.

The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine. I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful. That doesn't mean I have to like their methods. Google was successful through technical merit. They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better. I'd like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation. TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there's too much garbage there for me.

An example for your consideration:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-b...

For those too lazy to read, it's an article about making viral videos. Some choice advice: "Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex". It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube. Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication. That's why I don't like Arrington.

Perhaps the reason why people don't hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value? Hell, having the PDF of On Lisp online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch's entire publication history.

EDIT: Hate is a strong word. If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that's pretty stupid. Dislike is what I was getting at.

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:54 PM UTC

shimon wrote: post #2

An exercise from the essay: ...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2] Footnote: [2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend. Please submit your solutions below.

[deleted]

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#6

Post by rms » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:56 PM UTC

shimon wrote: post #2

An exercise from the essay: ...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2] Footnote: [2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend. Please submit your solutions below.

And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; all generations have the potential to be as great as the (Greatest Generation, GI Generation) when faced with sufficient external challenges.

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#7

Post by dfranke » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 8:57 PM UTC

I'm fairly sure it's the comment thread that I started (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831461) which set off this essay, so I guess I'm the archetype of "ordinarily calm people who go berserk when [Arrington's] name comes up in comment threads". But if your explanation of my psychology is correct, then why don't I go berserk at you as well? I've disagreed with a few of your essays, and by and large pointed out those disagreements in these comment threads, but I've never disagreed violently with any of them. My beef with Arrington is that he writes a gossip tabloid. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#8

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 9:02 PM UTC

rms wrote: post #6

shimon wrote: post #2

An exercise from the essay: ...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2] Footnote: [2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend. Please submit your solutions below.

And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; all generations have the potential to be as great as the (Greatest Generation, GI Generation) when faced with sufficient external challenges.

[deleted]

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#9

Post by cperciva » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 9:04 PM UTC

shimon wrote: post #2

An exercise from the essay: ...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2] Footnote: [2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend. Please submit your solutions below.

'... I'm skeptical about the idea that the current generation is in any way inferior to past generations.'

Re: Persuade xor Discover

#10

Post by iamwil » Tue, Sep 22, 2009, 9:08 PM UTC

dfranke wrote: post #7

I'm fairly sure it's the comment thread that I started ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831461 ) which set off this essay, so I guess I'm the archetype of "ordinarily calm people who go berserk when [Arrington's] name comes up in comment threads". But if your explanation of my psychology is correct, then why don't I go berserk at you as well? I've disagreed with a few of your essays, and by and large pointed out…

The essay is less about arrington berserkers than it is about why pg writes the way he does, even though the discovery started off as a question about arrington berserkers.