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Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

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Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#21

Post by lilactown »

wellpast wrote: post #17
lilactown wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any point in the article where the author says that PG is a _bad person_. Just that perhaps we shouldn't take him seriously as an intellectual, which is perfectly okay. You can be a good person and but "unserious" w.r.t. being an intellectual - I mostly am! The only way this is can be seen as a personal attack is if PG (and his followers) identify with being a "serious intellectual." At that point it make…

I don’t understand the motivation for categorizing someone like PG as a un/serious intellectual. Are we to ‘believe’ all ‘serious intellectuals’ and disregard the ‘unserious’ ones. There’s a clear attempt at this weird kind of classification here—at best it’s a weird kind of paternalized way of thinking about people with ideas; at worst, its a poor rhetoric for classifying PG into the category of ‘wrongthinker’.

It feels like you're the one trying classify what the essay's saying in a weird way. Someone can critique a person without condemning them. One can say that PG's opinions shouldn't be taken seriously without saying that he's a 'wrongthinker.'

The internet gives a mouthpiece to many, many people; not everyone's opinion should be considered with equal weight. The essay's author uses the example, "EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE." It is content that someone put a lot of time and effort into. How should I use the ideas and world view found in the timecube website to forge my own?

Probably not much. That's what I equivalate with "taking seriously," and a "serious public intellectual" is someone whose opinions I would probably consider when forming my own.

I don't think the author is tearing PG down to try and oust him from his material wealth; just saying, maybe what he writes in his essays shouldn't be taken as seriously as some of us thought.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#22

Post by wellpast »

o_class_star wrote: post #16

[flagged]

> When it comes to politics, his opinions are poorly-thought-out, self-serving, and generally worthless.

As are 99.999% of everybody's.

Except what you're saying (ie your judgement about PG's 'poor' political thinking) is self-referentially meaningless unless you consider yourself a "native expert" in political thinking.

Why are we not to take and measure and discuss ideas a la carte?

What value is there in group-classifying the 'wrongthinkers', except to save people the exhaustion and torture of learning new and diverse ideas and for thinking for themselves?

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#23

Post by santoshalper »

wellpast wrote: post #3

I haven't followed PG much either of late but it was recently brought to my attention by a coworker that he is now on the side of the 'bad guys'. I'm all for substantial criticism and discussion, and am always desperately looking for it, but this (unequivocally political) essay unfortunately has all of the distinct hallmarks of the simplistic contemporary political discourse. It takes a great many words to offer no s…

In this case you can't really separate the political, not that you probably ever can. Also, here's a good question, why is it always conservatives that seem to want "politics" to be separated from "real life"? A question for another time.

Back to this article. PG's entire worldview centers around an assumption that wealthy, powerful people are inherently good and a benefit to society. I don't think he believes all of them are, but that generally they are. Except for the ones he doesn't like or got lucky.

This is, of course, obvious retroactive defensiveness of his own wealth and influence and once you know to look for it, you see it in many of his essays. In PG's worldview, successful founders (Himself included ofc) just have "it", some kind of natural talent and ability for creating wealth and value, and we (everyone else) should get out of their way and let them fix things. "It", by the way, can be anything from resourcefulness to intelligence, to determination, depending on what PG feels like writing about.

Whenever one of these great men runs into adversity and is unsuccessful (Arc for example), then it is clearly the fault of others who simply Do Not Get It. Perhaps they are stupid, perhaps he has simply failed to make them see. He isn't sure yet. But he is sure it is definitely not his fault. It cannot be, because he has "It".

In spite of having worked with hundreds or thousands of startups, there is no curiosity in his worldview. No desire to dig deep into the data and understand why some people succeed and others do not. No analysis on the opportunities some have that others do not (what a remarkable privilege it is to be able to take several years off to start a company in your 20s and have the resources to do it). There are so many interesting things he could try to learn from the data he has.

But there is no need. Great founders just have "It" and the world is definitely a better place for them. Nuff said.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#24

Post by santoshalper »

BenGosub wrote: post #2

The author starts with a few political comments and then goes into another direction - programming languages. I was expecting a conclusion on the political comments, without finding it. But, even if Paul Graham has been wrong about language design, it doesn't mean he's been wrong about current affairs or the importance of startups in the coming future. If anything, his bets have been largely successful and by openly…

Well, it's good to know that Brian Armstrong seems like a good guy. Clearly nothing to see here.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#25

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

wellpast wrote: post #17
lilactown wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any point in the article where the author says that PG is a _bad person_. Just that perhaps we shouldn't take him seriously as an intellectual, which is perfectly okay. You can be a good person and but "unserious" w.r.t. being an intellectual - I mostly am! The only way this is can be seen as a personal attack is if PG (and his followers) identify with being a "serious intellectual." At that point it make…

I don’t understand the motivation for categorizing someone like PG as a un/serious intellectual. Are we to ‘believe’ all ‘serious intellectuals’ and disregard the ‘unserious’ ones. There’s a clear attempt at this weird kind of classification here—at best it’s a weird kind of paternalized way of thinking about people with ideas; at worst, its a poor rhetoric for classifying PG into the category of ‘wrongthinker’.

I think you're projecting a lot onto this. All the author of the OP is pointing out is that PG's political writing is often very naive, in a way that makes it clear he doesn't do even the most basic research on the topic before pontificating. This is something worth calling out because PG is offering himself as an authority on these subjects. He's also a skillful writer, so his plausible off the cuff impressions sound reasonably smart if you don't do any research yourself.

None of these observations on PG's blogging are particularly new, and I've had the same criticism of much of his startup specific advice as it essentially attributed success to nebulous concepts like "pattern matching skill."

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#27

Post by samatman »

o_class_star wrote: post #14

Getting to Paul Graham levels of wealth and influence is, in fact, very simple: 1. Be white and well-enough off that you know how to talk to rich people. 2. Be in technology on a US coast (West is better, East also works) during the late 1990s— an anomalous time and place with a level of opportunity that appears about once in 250 years. 3. Get really good at programming and use a "10x" programming language like Lisp.…

Well that certainly explains Kanye West!

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#29

Post by TT3351 »

wellpast wrote: post #8
paperdropper wrote: post #5

Not surprising to see that a thoughtful critique of HN's monarch garners such little attention, compared to when the cult leader himself drops some verbal turds for his acolytes to polish.

Lots of votes, but little ‘attention’, as in: little discussion. Why? Not because of “monarchy” but because there’s little intellectual material in this hit piece. It’s pure ad hominem.

I fail to see how this is an ad hominem, can you please explain?

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#30

Post by DoreenMichele »

This is a vapid personal attack on one person. This amounts to little more than gossip and mud-slinging and if the target were anyone but Paul Graham, it likely would have been flagged to death long ago.

The irony is that the attention it gets here may end up accounting for the lion's share of exposure it gets.

HN Guidelines say:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I guess if you choose your target carefully, you can get around that rule by writing an entire blog post that fails to make any kind of real and substantive argument with anything in particular and merely calls him an "idiot" at length.

HN is no longer "turning into Reddit." Now it's turning into "People" magazine as long as the people you gossip about are tech people.

If you think Paul Graham is "out of touch," maybe you can work on an app that helps rich people solve the problem of finding themselves surrounded by a sea of either yes men sucking up to them or haters. I imagine that sucks the oxygen out of their intellectual life for quite a lot of successful people.

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