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PG's Rarely Asked Questions

paulgraham.com

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Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#171

Post by robertk »

NY_Entrepreneur wrote: post #17

Nice. He covers several topics that would be good to have covered on some "What I wish my father had explained to me when I was 12, however, I've come to expect that mostly he didn't understand very well.". But among topics it would have been good to have had Dad cover, PG omits the biggie, especially for hackers, maybe for painters -- how to make an A in Women 101-102!

Lesson 1 is that you don't make an A. The girls get an A from you. I know girls want me, and I make them chase me. Combine that with the basics (dress well and go out and talk to girls) and you're halfway there. But don't think "basics" means easy; you'll be surprised at the number of excuses a perfectly normal guy will make not to say hi to that girl.

Man up, walk over to her, and say "Hi. I thought you looked cute and wanted to meet you. I'm Robert." Repeat times 1000. That was your warm-up. Now things should feel much more natural and you will understand a whole lot more about social interaction.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#172

Post by sthlm »

robertk wrote: post #169
tentonwire wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree with the GP, except I would say it takes a special talent to excel at it in a given amount of time. A "special talent" in this case would be a predisposition to learning how to play a guitar. >Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player? Yes, whether due to nature or nurture, I would say certain people will be faster at learning how to play the guitar, and th…

What about Salman Khan's TED talk, where he shows that it is a frequent occurrence that kids stumble on a math concept, but then rapidly catch up or exceed their peers. If learning as a general phenomenon occurs in plateaus, but turns out linearly the same in the long run for most everybody (like a graph of the prime counting function seems choppy up close but a line out far), perhaps it is the case we intuitively th…

What you're talking about is known generically as the General Learning, which is an aptitude in itself. Some people learn better than others. It also depends on what you learn.

Nurture: At various ages, the ability to learn changes (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88....). It might well be true that there is a lot of optimization to be done in the way we teach -- something that Salman Khan illustrates well with his new teaching methodologies. That doesn't necessarily mean however that at all stages, ages, circumstances, people will be equally able to learn something.

Nature: Some people have an innate aptitude; I won't look for papers, as I find this to be truly obvious.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#173

Post by robertk »

NY_Entrepreneur wrote: post #30
larrys wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how to make an A in Women 101-102!" My initial reaction to this was to agree with the statement. And I still sort of do. But I think women (or men) can be a big distraction if you are trying to create something. That being said the correct woman or men can help you achieve as well if the relationship is stable. The statement "behind every great man" there is a ... is basically true from my experience.

"Behind every great man is a woman"? Maybe! In the case of FDR, Ike, Patton, and McArthur, I suspect it was more their mothers than their wives! Few men have such helpful mothers! Then there is your "if the relationship is stable". Well, yes, and 'effective'! So, and especially for the huge fraction of men who don't have mothers as helpful as FDR's, how to get such a 'relationship'????!!!! May I suggest Women 101-102…

Just in case anyone took the above seriously, please keep in mind the author was joking.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#174

Post by Robin_Message »

rwmj wrote: post #14

He's really wrong about LISP macros. Would suggest pg takes a look at camlp4. Edit: maybe instead of downvotes, you could reply explaining what's wrong with this position. Or just look at camlp4 and see how it provides macros that are better (with a better underlying language) than LISP. And yes, I've written a LISP compiler.

My personal opinion is that a type system on top of macros needs types that are too painful for anyone to actually use. The winning element of Lisp macros is that they are dirt simple and untyped, which makes them easier to write (but makes run-time errors more likely).

At a meta level, you might as well argue that Python programmers should be using ML instead, since the features are similar but ML is statically typed so more errors can be found at compile-time. The logic of the argument is correct, and yet Python (and Ruby and Javascript and so on) win. Again, I think its to do with easy of expression and less thought up front, but I'm not really sure.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#175

Post by derrida »

jackfoxy wrote: post #112
mdiep wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see a full list of all the books you read and the order in which you read them. I recently started reading The Story of Civilization and augmenting it with other works seems like a wonderful idea.

I've meant to compile this list, so you just inspired me. I wish the Durants had had the stamina for one more volume. I don't know much about the European revolutions of 1848 and would have like to read about that time from them. I already had read a lot of ancient Greek literature in translation as well as The Pentateuch , all the historical books of the Old Testament and the Gospels . Western Civilization springs f…

Did you enjoy Spinoza's Ethics?

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#176

Post by brndnhy »

wyclif wrote: post #101
jackfoxy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zed, You are one of the interesting people I would like to meet someday. I will eventually get in touch. My job (among other distractons) is sapping me right now, but I hope to get back to real life by mid-November. Likewise I can be reached jacfoxy at gmail dot com.

I would add Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy to the book list. It appears to be a glaring omission.

This was one of my favorite college texts. I'm really disappointed that I'd forgotten about it until your comment. Thanks.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#177

Post by ra »

Volpe wrote: post #153
Willwhatley wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered about variants on democracy. The parliamentary and constitutional forms seem to me to incentivize (for those who want power) going along to get along. Sophists, flatterers, demagogues; there is no good incentive to vote, only the strong disincentive of some other party's bums overseeing you rather than ones you know. There's a Twain short story about folks who get more than the initial vote, in proporti…

There are democratic countries where it is compulsory to vote . This of course brings it's own set of problems...

In Australia it is compulsory to vote. Having lived here through four general elections, I actually believe it has a negative effect on democracy.

That is to say, compulsory voting forces the most disinterested and politically ignorant members of society into the polling booths. It usually favors the most conservative party. In Australia that translates to maintaining "old-fashioned" views on, most notably, processing of refugees.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#178

Post by iskander »

dgreensp wrote: post #40

>I never had to manage anyone in our startup, even though I was the president. The other hackers were my peers, and would have given me the raspberry if I'd tried to "manage" them. We operated by consensus. And the rest of the company reported to our experienced COO, who was also more of a peer. Operating by consensus and not valuing the role of "manager" only goes so far. It may work when you're a few people living…

>I think it ultimately leads to cultures like Google's, where every decision requires a room full of engineers to agree.

What is this fantasy Google? The Google I interned at was highly hierarchical, with enough meddling managers to drive this whole thread insane.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#179

Post by gbog »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #125
pg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of something I wrote that you believe is false?

It's the omissions that are the problem, not errors. You have selectively ignored major areas of philosophy in order to make your ideas seem original and compelling.

It is a bit sad to avoid the discussion with pg below (maybe it is in preparation?)

For me there is one (very excusable) "blind" point in pg's position, it's Eastern classic philosophy (hear Confucianism and a bit of Taoism). For some, it will not even be considered philosophy, because it do not ask questions about questions. It is closer to politics, because it tries to answer the one important question (in Eastern eyes), how to have human beings living together without too much blood. Answers are complex, and rely on ethics, self-cultivation, etc. Studying these Classics is not just for statisfying one's curiosity about past things, it will help understand the world, and what to be in the world, all of that without any "magic trick" (hear God, promise of the paradise).

I don't think the ommissions you are talking about are on these lines, so it would be nice to see where these ommission make pg's essay unfair.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#180

Post by Volpe »

ra wrote: post #177
Volpe wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are democratic countries where it is compulsory to vote . This of course brings it's own set of problems...

In Australia it is compulsory to vote. Having lived here through four general elections, I actually believe it has a negative effect on democracy. That is to say, compulsory voting forces the most disinterested and politically ignorant members of society into the polling booths. It usually favors the most conservative party. In Australia that translates to maintaining "old-fashioned" views on, most notably, processin…

Is that problem really caused by compulsory voting, or more Australian society in general?

Australia was sporting the White Australia policy up until about 30 years ago, and still requires citizen applicants to pass an 'English' test. It's rather primitive and discriminative processing of refugees (arriving by boat only!?) seems to fall in line with that as well.

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