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Fashionable Problems
121–130 of 195 posts
Re: Fashionable Problems
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think here by conservative he means doing what everybody else is doing. Risk averse. Following the mainstream. Going into COBOL May have been a conservative choice 40 years ago, but not anymore. The conservative choice is to go with the herd.
> The conservative choice is to go with the herd. That's not conservative. Being conservative means that you only follow a change if it makes sense. If you adopt some new technology, you should do it because it convinces you that it's better, not because it's new, wasn't available before, everyone else is doing it, or any other such reason. If you are conservative, you don't neccessarily end up doing what the majorit…
I think your definition of conservative is correct, but it assumes the thing you’re trying to conserve is something like energy spent on new/different approaches. I think pg’s definition of conservative in this case assumes the thing being conserved is something like prestige or credibility.
As an aside, in my experience it’s a fairly common usage to describe any behavior that avoids risk along some dimension, which could very well mean going with the herd, if you’re trying to conserve social status.
Re: Fashionable Problems
#123I think pg understates the problem. It isn't just fashionable. Think about how the solutions we use today evolved. Someone had an idea originally and certain decisions were made about that approach.. those that best adapted to the conditions of the time were successful... rinse and repeat over several decades. Those ideas that preserved the past were more likely to succeed because they preserved the ecosystem that al…
"Ideas that diverged too much from the existing successful tech had a huge obstacle in their way: they had to recreate all of the existing solutions in their new model.” You’re so right! There are great examples of companies that preserved the existing ecosystem of solutions (Facebook with PHP, Microsoft with C++, Google with Java and C++, maybe also Amazon with Perl 5 and C++). There are also great examples of succe…
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Re: Fashionable Problems
#124As a long-time pg supporter, it pains me to say this: I think at this point pg could write anything and it would show up immediately with critical acclaim. It was more charming when he had to work hard to make his points known. But hey, fame, right? Just famous people things. There's so much more to say in this case, though! How do you avoid the traps? Waving a wand like "Just love something" leaves far too much to t…
> The idea that people have devoted their lives to the wrong thing is inherently offensive to them. That's a point not covered here. This itself is in need of a lot of conversation. I think a really ugly part of SV startup culture is, in my opinion, "it's okay to offend and hurt people, and it's sometimes demanded of you to..." And I think we can be so much better than that. Being "disruptive" this way is just a lazy…
I interpreted that more as, the mere fact that a technology exists will offend some people. Automation that puts people out of a job, for example, offends a lot of people, especially those who will be most directly affected. It doesn’t mean those people don’t deserve compassion and assistance, but their taking offense shouldn’t prevent someone from working on automation (in my opinion). I think that goes for a lot of technologies.
And some not technologies. I’m a lawyer and recently there has been movement toward letting people who aren’t lawyers do things that are traditionally considered the practice of law, like creating and filing certain legal documents. Most of the documents are ones that are already done almost exclusively by paralegals and secretaries, but I regularly see articles arguing for restricting this couched in the language of protecting people from malpractice. It seems to me to be a case of lawyers who worked hard for their status being offended by change that would lower the cost of legal services and their status. I don’t think their offense should be taken into account, rather I think we should make changes to benefit people who currently can’t afford legal services.
I also don’t personally think there is any shame in spending your life on something that becomes an anachronism, so I don’t think much of the offense taking at new technology is warranted. Once upon a time, 90-something% of people were farmers, after all...
Re: Fashionable Problems
#125This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim: > I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar things. Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what…
I am wondering how far the essay would go if it were not from PG.
This is basically my biggest critique of PG and various other YC leaders. Many of the conclusions, while likely be probably being more "right" than "wrong" in virtue, are derived from intuition and observations, not evidence based. It's even more ironic, given how much emphasis the firm places on evidence based thinking of its portfolio founders versus anecdotally thinking.
Great example:
"One quality that’s a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent"[0]
The danger is that I think pg has been "right" about so many things that every time he pontificates about something it's treated as dogma. So when he's "wrong", it'll be ignored. Impressionable people (which likely fits the characteristic of many young tech entrepreneurs) will therefore be lead astray.
[0] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2013/12/19/292...
Re: Fashionable Problems
#126I think pg makes an excellent point here.
The Modern American Think Piece is ripe for disruption. I, like I imagine many HNers, am troubled by the shameless grift, anti-intellectualism, and dull senility of the current fashionable op-ed essay hegemony (The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, and People. I hope to be one small part conquering this decrepit aged cement hedonism, if I can be cursorily self-promotional.
Nevertheless, I think pg's fine wisdom shines again in this elegant (and yet fashionable) think piece.
Re: Fashionable Problems
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lot of evidence for what Paul says once you dig into a specific field. Taking two fields I know well: in physics, there was decades of work on fundamental questions on systems in equilibrium, while many obviously important open questions in out-of-equilibrium systems went neglected until the last 10 years or so when there's been a huge upsurge. These questions were known to be open 20 and 30 years ago, but…
I know next to nothing about physics, but I do know some about ML. I think the reasons tensor networks are unexplored is interesting: The tools and techniques for dealing with them build on those for neural networks and the theoretical benefits are not clear cut enough to gain them a foothold over the practical results of neural networks.
Agreed. There is still a lot of work left to do!
Re: Fashionable Problems
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thought is that Paul should view his essays at least as seriously as someone who is writing an important college application essay given who the audience is (college admissions in that case; HN readers in this case among others). Or maybe someone writing an opinion piece for a newspaper that is widely read and taken as significant. Imagine as an extreme (and not what PG is doing) if someone writing an 'essay' were…
If anyone is taking pg's essays as what they they ought to think rather than as what he happens to think, that's their problem, not pg's. I don't think anybody is taking them that way, though; people are just conjuring this up for some strange reason. Some even suggested that HN has this response! Actually, I think I know the reason. pg writes to maximize brevity and directness. He's always interested in the shortest…
Anyone can be direct. Fewer can be direct while having a lot of money. I'd bet the latter is on more people's minds.
Re: Fashionable Problems
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am wondering how far the essay would go if it were not from PG.
This is basically my biggest critique of PG and various other YC leaders. Many of the conclusions, while likely be probably being more "right" than "wrong" in virtue, are derived from intuition and observations, not evidence based. It's even more ironic, given how much emphasis the firm places on evidence based thinking of its portfolio founders versus anecdotally thinking. Great example: "One quality that’s a really…
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Re: Fashionable Problems
#130[deleted]