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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#361

Post by freyrs3 »

__pThrow wrote: post #224
Crito wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really surprise or disturb you that PG takes a special interest in things said about himself? It should not.

I think pg is very influential in tech and he has missed several opportunities to speak out for the powerless being abused. I think this is made worse when he runs Hacker News, and lets that platform be used in a very similar case to defend himself. My original post references "First They Came" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... ) That's not to suggest feminist bullying is anything close to Nazi Germa…

Is pg also to blame for not immediately hopping on a plane to feed starving children in Africa? Just because someone is silent about an issue you personally care about doesn't give you cause to criticize them for their morals.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#362

Post by ma2rten »

mjburgess wrote: post #319
mjburgess wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pseudo" was a little strong. But if you have any serious familiarity with his "off-topic" rants, youll see he writes about issues glibly and with a severe lack of information. I dont mind "academic journalism", I do it a lot myself: write on difficult topics for a lay audience and maybe sacrifice a little accurasy a long the way. I think pg likes be seen making points more than he wants further understanding/truth/e…

I seem to have been down-voted, maybe some dont see the problem. Here's a randomly picked example: http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html Randomish quote from end of article, "The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. So why not go after corruption? We don't need to prevent people from being rich if we can prevent wealth from translating into power." Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle…

I didn't read the essay in question, but from your quote it sounds like you are deliberately misinterpreting his point. He is talking about political power.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#363

Post by coldtea »

mjburgess wrote: post #319
mjburgess wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pseudo" was a little strong. But if you have any serious familiarity with his "off-topic" rants, youll see he writes about issues glibly and with a severe lack of information. I dont mind "academic journalism", I do it a lot myself: write on difficult topics for a lay audience and maybe sacrifice a little accurasy a long the way. I think pg likes be seen making points more than he wants further understanding/truth/e…

I seem to have been down-voted, maybe some dont see the problem. Here's a randomly picked example: http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html Randomish quote from end of article, "The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. So why not go after corruption? We don't need to prevent people from being rich if we can prevent wealth from translating into power." Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle…

>But if you have any serious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques of capitalism, wealth and power that whole article will just seem silly.

If you have any "erious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques" you'd know that ALL articles and books will just appear silly in isolation. Especially since most of the important critics are vehemently opposed to the ideas of other important critics.

The role of an isolated piece of writing on some topic is not to provide a summary of the ideas ("the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques") on the topic -- that's just what you do for a bad academic paper.

Its role is to showcase the ideas of the author in a clear light and within his frame of thinking.

>But it takes a certain kind of "pseudo"-something to think that this kinda hackney "thought-lite" material should be delivered at a major conference (Defcon 2005).

Then again, it also takes a certain kind of pseudo-something to value Defcon as a venue for intellectual thought, as opposed to a mostly technical conference and get-together.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#364

Post by edw519 »

This incident immediately reminded me of Hall of Fame baseball player Steve Carlton, one of the greatest professional athletes of all time. He had a simple method of dealing with media "issues": he didn't talk to them.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Carlton ...

Carlton slumped in 1973, losing 20 games. The media's open questioning of his unusual training techniques led to an acrimonious relationship between them and Carlton, and he severed all ties with the media, refusing to answer press questions for the rest of his career with the Phillies.[13] This reached a point where, in 1981, while the Mexican rookie Fernando Valenzuela was achieving stardom with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a reporter remarked, "The two best pitchers in the National League don't speak English: Fernando Valenzuela and Steve Carlton."[14]

Sometimes I wonder if more people responded this way, "professional journalism" might actually have a chance.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#365

Post by robg »

theorique wrote: post #312
mjburgess wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, he was mischaracterized and he replied. But jesus, > pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?

What's with the almost cult-like relevance for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur? - Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo - Founded Y Combinator to advise and invest in startups - Smart investor with substantial success and track record (Dropbox, AirBnB, etc) In other words, he's earned a reputation for doing some very smart things, and docum…

Indeed, if pg is a pseudo-intellectual, then the word "intellectual" has so little meaning as to be useless.

That's not ball washing. That's a comparison to the journalists, academics, writers, editors, analysts, etc etc who aspire to that public identity.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#366

Post by ceol »

aaronem wrote: post #332
semiel wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goal-post movement detected! So even if we arbitrarily exclude a perfectly valid psychological technique because it "doesn't impress you", there's still the matter of my third link. Didja click it? EDIT: The most surprising part of the PNAS study, to me, is that people who agreed with statements like "Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States" were statistically more affected by implici…

I fail to see how questioning the validity of the technique constitutes "goal-post movement". I requested citations and you supplied them, which I appreciate. I fail to see how said exchange requires that I respond "oh, hey, there sure are a lot of papers, you must be right!" On the other hand, I must concede that I previously failed to look closely enough on first inspection at your third link. In my opinion, it doe…

You asked for a citation. That's the original position of the goal post. When you were provided with multiple citations, you decided that wasn't good enough, and so started complaining about the veracity of studies in general and finished by ignoring those citations and claiming "vagueness." That's the second position of the goal post. Those two positions are different. Therefor, the goal post has moved.

Your response was filled with bitterness, like someone who was flustered at having been proved wrong. It sounded just like a child crossing their arms and yelling, "Well citations are stupid anyway!"

Re: What I Didn't Say

#367

Post by coldtea »

coldtea wrote: post #351
mjburgess wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "amateur social science" in the sense that it's an "off-hand comment". I could write a 5k word essay on this very small point and make it respectable, I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. If pg's observations were confined to small discussion threads on HN i wouldnt have much issue. But he presented the article I mentioned at Defcon. And his "Essays" section are presented as essays,…

> It's "amateur social science" in the sense that it's an "off-hand comment". I could write a 5k word essay on this very small point and make it respectable Pics or it didn't happen. > I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. (...) Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking

>It isnt back tracking when at the time you made the comment you said it was an off-hand comment.

So, it isn't backtracking if you pre-emptively declare that you are backtracking. Right.

>It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.

Unfortunately the similarity doesn't hold, because Jon Stewart doesn't also say "I can do a much better news program than them", whereas you did said that you could write a respectable "5k word essay on this very small point" (and then didn't).

>Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience

As if the section of website where something is published matters one iota. It's not like having an essays section necessitates that you only put George Steiner quality material in it. Heck, Zed Shaw has an essays section on his website.

Also, you keep mentioning this conference audience a lot -- Sounds like sour grapes to me.

As if Defcon is some elite philosophical conference, and Paul Graham failed to keep to the level of previous speakers, like Plato or Heidegger.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#368

Post by pseut »

crazygringo wrote: post #287
ceejayoz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. While I agree that blind applications would be somewhat tough for startup founders, conducting seems like a bad example. You could fairly easily judge the resulting music without being able to see the conductor.

I'm going to assume you don't have a lot of familiarity with conducting. It often takes an entire season to rehearse with a group in order to produce music that could accurately be 'judged'. And a conductor is about far more than the music -- how is their rapport with the orchestra? What are they like to work with? What kind of an artistic vision do they have for the group, and how do they communicate that? Ultimatel…

Maybe analogies that require programmers to have a lot of familiarity with conducting aren't super helpful here :)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#369

Post by yawaramin »

minimaxir wrote: post #18

For those curious, here's a chart of the proportion of female founders funded by Y Combinator in the last 4 years, which correlates with YC's intention to add more female founders: http://i.imgur.com/MCLqUm3.jpg Data source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjPFdCURhZvddHJ...

Thank you for this. Is there data on applicants? It would be useful to compare the ratios of male founders applied-to-accepted vs female founders applied-to-accepted.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#370

Post by coldtea »

mjburgess wrote: post #356
coldtea wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on. You don't get insights into these by getting a degree from some university on the subject. You get insights into those things by studying them, practical experience, and more importantly thinking. If anything, the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors. And REAL…

> the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors. Not about the subjects they research. That is the purpose of research. > are full of scorn for academia in general All of those people are academics par execellance. I'm not talking about business-ified institutional academica. I'm talking about spending a long time on a topic, researching it and thinking deeply, clearly on it before you offer y…

>the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors.

>>Not about the subjects they research. That is the purpose of research.

They are cluless _especially_ about the subjects they research.

Most philosophy, political economy etc academics are beyond mediocre -- not only in advancing their field, but even in understanding the greats who contributed to it and rightfully presenting their knowledge.

Most real development comes from outsiders to this system -- people incombatible with academic life, even if they happen to work as professors (like Adorno or Wittgenstein did for example). And that was true already in the '40s and '50s, were academic discourse and research freedom in those fields was extremelly better compared to (market driven, low quality, paper churn) today's reality.

>The audience I would be targeting in a critique of the man (via a critique of his under-informed rants) are those who equate money with success and "money-making" with intelligence.

Oh, those poor fools. Because there are other, proven, definitions of success that everybody should ascribe to, right?

>I value my time too much to spend the amount required undoing that confusion

Yep, I expected this part.

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