Earnestness • Hacker News Board

Re: Earnestness

#321

Post by dash2 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #231

walleeee wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market is a discovery mechanism. If you are serious about achieving something, you should seek useful feedback. Willingness to pay is one powerful feedback mechanism. True, but many of the markets we have are neither free nor fair. And even if they were, we should exercise caution before concluding that what is discovered is a need . Markets are equally capable of exploiting wants, socially conditioned propensi…

I want to sell the world on the idea of Capabilities Based Security... which means no product, nothing to profit from, which means no help from Silicon Valley at all. 8( No matter how earnest, or driven... if there's no profit in it, nobody there cares. How do you suggest I market this idea?

My claim wasn't "all problems can be solved by building a firm". It was "some problems can only be solved by building a firm".

Re: Earnestness

#322

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #318

woodruffw wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should my tax dollars go towards that? Why should your tax dollars go towards CS research, when nearly half of all sampled papers (circa 2015) can't be reproduced [1]? As a society, we delegate funding based on perceptions of expertise: someone who knows more than you or I about these specific fields decided that they deserved some amount of funding (probably significantly less than you think). Sometimes that m…

I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able t…

> having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding.

It's the humanities. It's not supposed to be "scientific," with whatever weight you decide to place on that adjective.

Our government (and every government) funds thousands of things, academic and not, that aren't themselves scientific: parks, libraries, public arts, aesthetic programs intended to motivate the public towards some policy goal[1]. Most people think these things should receive some amount of funding, and recognize that they themselves are not immediately qualified to distinguish worthy endeavours from un-worthy ones.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/d...

Re: Earnestness

#323

Post by chmod600 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

iWorshipFAANGS wrote: post #192

If you click on the hyperlink Paul Graham hyperlinks as "academic bogus," you'll find a google scholar search for "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic whiteness." First of all, I don't think Paul Graham read those 5000 article returned by the search. Instead I think he just typed in a chain of academic words he thought represented useless academic research, and then told himself these "tee-hee postmodern bogus." I think…

The "bogus" comment falls in a paragraph about ventures where the earnest don't generally win. So the first question to ask is: do the earnest generally win in that kind of academic field? I don't know much about that field, but I'm guessing probably not just because it is too closely tied to politics. If you earnestly persue research, you are likely to find something that contradicts the current political fashions, and end up buried. So in that sense, PG is probably right.

The next question is: is he inappropriately dismissive (or even insulting) to the field over all? Does is have value that he unfairly dismisses? You seem to think so.

But even if so, pretty much everyone needs to be dismissive about a lot of stuff. At least he's transparent about where his blind spots are.

Re: Earnestness

#324

Post by walleeee » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #231

walleeee wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market is a discovery mechanism. If you are serious about achieving something, you should seek useful feedback. Willingness to pay is one powerful feedback mechanism. True, but many of the markets we have are neither free nor fair. And even if they were, we should exercise caution before concluding that what is discovered is a need . Markets are equally capable of exploiting wants, socially conditioned propensi…

I want to sell the world on the idea of Capabilities Based Security... which means no product, nothing to profit from, which means no help from Silicon Valley at all. 8( No matter how earnest, or driven... if there's no profit in it, nobody there cares. How do you suggest I market this idea?

I dunno, do you have any friends with deep pockets and chaotic energy?

In seriousness, no clue. Forking the financial system, which crypto is arguably intended to do, seems hard enough. Forking the kernel (as I understand you propose) seems even harder; you can't rely on traction from anyone with spare hardware, you'd need voluntary opt-in from established players, right?

I'd never heard of capabilities until I followed your comment to your blog, though, so thanks.

Re: Earnestness

#325

Post by adamsea » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

throwawayback wrote: post #283

__float wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be a bizarre conclusion, since churches are very often tax advantaged. If these authors are able to write grant proposals and get funding, then clearly someone thinks they are producing something of value. You cannot see the value, so you declare there must not be any?

It is a politico-religious movement. Of course people that side with that movement find value in funding people to produce texts in its tradition and educate students in its ways of talking. I don't.

> It is a politico-religious movement.

Well, what isn't? LOL. That and 'cultural marxism' are just scary/meaningful-sounding terms people make up to label and then defame something they don't like.

They're terms that are broad and just accurate enough to describe something, but too vague and imprecise to actually describe anything.

Let me help. You dislike academics who study and analyze society and culture to discover it's biases, unspoken assumptions, and so on, and you don't like that they critique society for the oppressive elements which they believe they've found.

I.e. social justice. Critiques of capitalism. Critiques of systemic racism.

Criticize something specific so we can talk about it. But, the reason you aren't accurate or specific is because if you were, whatever argument you are trying to make would rapidly fall apart.

And I'd love to be proved wrong! Share a specific critique. We can talk about Marxists, neo-Marxists, communists, libertarian anarchism, Progressive Democrats, Social Democrats, The New Left, Poststructuralism, Structuralism, Critical Theory, Postmodernism (though that one's a bit vague), Feminism, Intersectionalism, Third-wave Feminism, Liberation Theology (the current Pope has roots in Liberation Theology, which was a point of contention), and so on.

Or maybe you don't like Democrats? Social Progressives? The entire field of Gender Studies?

Pick something you don't like and let's talk about it.

But, I'd bet your own lack of education (which I don't mean as an insult, more so a factual description - I'm uneducated about, say, genetics) on the things you criticize makes it difficult to do so.

And I'd bet your true dislike is something you'd be shunned for expressing, which is why you hide behind nonsense-phrases that function as dog whistles.

Because we all kinda know what you mean, even though you didn't actually say it.

Re: Earnestness

#326

Post by eloff » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #322

slashdev wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with funding CS research. It's at least somewhat productive to society. Not hugely, but that's academia for you. Even batting 50% is great compared to 0%. These kinds of woke gender studies, socialist, racist, fields etc are a joke. I don't accept your implication that only someone inside the nut house are credentialed to evaluate it - if anything those seem like the people least likely to be able t…

> having nothing to do with science or any kind of semi-scientific discipline, and should not receive public funding. It's the humanities. It's not supposed to be "scientific," with whatever weight you decide to place on that adjective. Our government (and every government) funds thousands of things, academic and not, that aren't themselves scientific: parks, libraries, public arts, aesthetic programs intended to mot…

Let's not compare gender studies to a park. That's a bit apples and oranges.

Humanities are meant to have some redeeming value and some rigorousness even when you can't apply the scientific method.

History, literature, philosophy, and anthropology are all good examples of valuable humanities where there is some grounding in logic and facts. Gender studies on the other hand is just an ideology with very little basis in reality, and little grounding of any kind in facts and logic. You could call it a religion of sorts, but it would be insulting to religions which at least have a richness of tradition and culture and philosophy behind them.

Re: Earnestness

#327

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

croissants wrote: post #10

My perception is that one drawback of earnestness is that it often comes off as just being boring. The most earnest people I know are not popular. The most popular people I know are more like twinkle-in-the-eye-kind-of-BS-but-not-pathological-liars. I don't mean to say "grr, why aren't nerds more popular!". I mean more that this specific kind of earnestness seems to preclude the playing of certain conversational game…

> Earnestness, for example, is pretty far away from my conception of "playful" or "flirty" or even "fun".

Cliff Stoll is the most earnest person I have talked to in the past year, and also one of the most playful and fun. See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

I think you have a non-standard personal definition of “earnest”. As I understand the words, earnestness and playfulness are completely orthogonal/unrelated attributes.

Re: Earnestness

#328

Post by kabirgoel » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

Tainnor wrote: post #154

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value PG's opinion more than a rando blogger because he's very successful, has observed a lot of data about what makes startups successful, seems unusually serious about being correct, and has written a lot of things I consider insightful in the past. He's a name I know and I click it when I see it on HN. There are a lot of other people with similar HN clout, patio11 for instance. I haven't noticed a trend for comm…

I mean it's at least technically quite possible that someone like PG would have a very good intuitive understanding for what works and what doesn't, without this meaning that he is able to systematise this implicit knowledge in such a way that it is empirically solid and/or can be usefully taught to others. This is similar to the fact that experts are not always the best teachers, or that a rhetorically skilled speak…

You make a good point: while PG may be able to intuitively pick out "winners," this does not mean he will be successful at making those intuitions explicit, as he attempts to do in his blog posts.

Re: Earnestness

#329

Post by adamsea » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #323

iWorshipFAANGS wrote: post #192

If you click on the hyperlink Paul Graham hyperlinks as "academic bogus," you'll find a google scholar search for "hermeneutic dialectic hegemonic whiteness." First of all, I don't think Paul Graham read those 5000 article returned by the search. Instead I think he just typed in a chain of academic words he thought represented useless academic research, and then told himself these "tee-hee postmodern bogus." I think…

The "bogus" comment falls in a paragraph about ventures where the earnest don't generally win. So the first question to ask is: do the earnest generally win in that kind of academic field? I don't know much about that field, but I'm guessing probably not just because it is too closely tied to politics. If you earnestly persue research, you are likely to find something that contradicts the current political fashions,…

None of what you are saying responds to what the parent poster actually said.

You're constructing your own argument and then claiming the other person was arguing what you're arguing, but did a bad job of it.

Re: Earnestness

#330

Post by zemo » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #287

zemo wrote: post #253

he poses the idea of being earnest about something in a way that is disingenuous. > Why can't there be people interested in self-driving cars or social networks for their own sake? If you are interested in self-driving cars, but you are not interested in the effects that self-driving cars have on society, you are not actually interested in self-driving cars: you are interested in yourself. To be interested only in th…

If I'm interested in A but not how A affects B, then I'm actually just interested in C rather than A? That makes even less sense than saying that altruism doesn't really exist because altruists enjoy being altruistic. > If we set our ethical standard at "so long as I am interested in doing the building, I am being earnest", our efforts will forever be deployed by others, perhaps with effects that do not align with ou…

hmm, I think the way I worded that sentence is getting in the way of what I'm trying to say. Perhaps this is more clear:

If you're interested in how something works (e.g. self-driving cars), but not what it does, you're not interested in the thing itself: what you are actually interested in is your own sense of mastery.

> You seem to be advocating that innovation should follow an ethic of "do not call up what you cannot put down"

Um, I've never heard this quote before but it looks like it's a Lovecraft quote? Was that ... said by one character to another character after they had summoned some sort of monster or other infernal being? Is ... is your argument that the monster is good if the monster pays you money?

> "fail forward" has a history of working rather better.

uh, define "working better". Better for whom? Along what dimension? Again, this really seems to be arguing that if your idea makes you rich, it is good.