101–110 of 117 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey if you sold your startup for $45 million, I don't think you count as a small fry at all.
Of the 45m I only walked away with ~20m net. But besides that, I was in an industry with a lot of very very overpaid people. Some made that much a year. Kept my feet on the ground.
I found the second example of unions (the "ingratiating" one) easier to understand, because it was concrete, and therefore allowed me into the author's point of view, and had redundancy so I could easily confirm what I thought he meant.
Also, the fact that he admires courage makes me think we have similar values, and therefore, he is worth listening to. There exist extremely intelligent people who lack compassion and wisdom, i.e. foolish villains. I don't think their advice is going to be very helpful.
But the conventional behavior when meeting someone new is to act extra friendly
And now I show what sort of person I am: I read the above line and thought.. ohhhhhh... that's what I've been doing wrong (no, not sarcastic). I've also thought that people who act extra friendly on first meeting are really insincere. But sounds like it's standard communication protocol, and communication is improved by speaking a common language, so I really should start doing this. Thanks pg!
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I didn't say people only dislike him because of the way he seems in person . How could all the random people who complain about him in comment threads have met him in person?
I'm hope I don't appear to be trolling or taking things out of context, but it did sort of sound like that, especially if one is skimming: I offend people by writing. And I do it the same way Michael offends people in person:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would someone explain the reference?
Doctor Vinnie Boombotz is Rodney Dangerfield's fictional doctor. (Rodney Dangerfield is a late American comedian.) Rodney had a famous joke that I will paraphrase below: Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I raise my arm over my head." Vinnie Boombatz: "Then don't raise your arm over your head." mattmaroon is thus saying: if scrolling down to read TechCrunch comments hurts, don't scroll down to read TechCrunch comments.
I wrote a new version that addresses the problem embodied in the comments here: http://paulgraham.com/pxdremix.html
The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious reasoning for why labor unions were founded by heros after all.
The second eulogizes the heros who founded labor unions. Then makes it clear that there is no reason to think that current union leaders would be capable of less if asked. And concludes that the shrinking of unions must be due to external circumstances.
With that in mind I can draw up version 3 that says what version 2 does but not at length.
"Why are labor unions shrinking today? Some say that we have lesser leaders today. Admittedly today's leaders do not regularly face hired thugs, etc like their predecessors did. But there is no reason to believe that they would be any less capable of heroism at need. The cause must be external."
I made the same major points as #3, without causing offense, with fewer words than your short version. The secret is to avoid offense by figuring out what could be offensive and not saying it, rather than figuring out what could be offensive and elaborating on how you're not trying to offend.
I wrote a new version that addresses the problem embodied in the comments here: http://paulgraham.com/pxdremix.html
Reading the article the biggest thing that hit me is that the two versions of the union paragraph are not equivalent at all. The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious…
Ugh. After spending so much of yesterday arguing about whether people's dislike of Arrington was due purely to their high standards for journalistic integrity, or whether (this being the whole point of a disarming manner) they were also influenced by his manner, I just can't face the prospect of spending any of today arguing about labor unions.
I did not say that the labor movement wasn't founded by heroes, but that is the last I have to say about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading the article the biggest thing that hit me is that the two versions of the union paragraph are not equivalent at all. The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious…
You know, as I was cutting out the stuff about Arrington, I was thinking to myself, what is the second biggest bicycle shed? What controversial but peripheral issue are people going to seize on now? Labor unions, probably. Ugh. After spending so much of yesterday arguing about whether people's dislike of Arrington was due purely to their high standards for journalistic integrity, or whether (this being the whole poin…
You give two versions of the "labor union" paragraph. One of them does not say whether early union leaders were heroes or not (but might carelessly be read to imply that they aren't). The second states that they definitely were.
The second version is less offensive to people with pro-union biases. But it is more offensive to people with anti-union biases. If you wanted to avoid offending a particular person or group, your rewriting approach would work. But to avoid offending a diverse population you should instead remove any claims (express or implied) about unrelated controversial topics, or simply choose less divisive topics for your examples.
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…
"Google was successful through technical merit." According to PEW Research, 5/6 search users can't tell the difference between the search results and the sponsored links, so the idea that Google won based on "technical merit" is pretty much wrong. To 95% of people Google was just another search engine but with better marketing.