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Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

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Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#41

Post by billy_beef »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #35
billy_beef wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how one article being posted signals the decline of this website into a gossip column

Of course, that assertion is hyperbole. The point being I don't think this really belongs here. I'm someone who finds social stuff very interesting. I mostly don't like gossip rags and a lot of psychological studies are essentially useless garbage. What value does this article really provide? Does it tell us where you can look out for Paul Graham's personal biases in order to get more value out of his writing? Does i…

I have to disagree here. The article is criticizing his work, his history of participation in a field, and his current commentary on politics. Yes, it discusses him as a subject, but not as a piece of gossip and strung-together ad hominem's. It is definitely critical of him, but mostly in his capacity as a commentor and his history of being incorrect. It's not second-rate tabloid stuff because of what dimension of him it's mostly considering.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#42

Post by DoreenMichele »

tptacek wrote: post #39
neurotech1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very telling that pg or other admins haven't flagged or removed this submission.

pg has nothing to do with HN anymore, and hasn't for many years. Dan doesn't kill things that are critical of pg or YC. (And DoreenMichele is quite wrong about this post; right or wrong, one thing it clearly is not is "vapid").

vapid: offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging.

I'm failing to see this generate meaty discussion here. I am currently seeing mostly lots of flagged to death or grayed out comments, likely because it's basically gossip and mud slinging and not really anything more than "Some guy has a bee in his bonnet about Paul Graham for some reason."

PS there's only one L in my name, not two.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#43

Post by tptacek »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg has nothing to do with HN anymore, and hasn't for many years. Dan doesn't kill things that are critical of pg or YC. (And DoreenMichele is quite wrong about this post; right or wrong, one thing it clearly is not is "vapid").

vapid: offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging. I'm failing to see this generate meaty discussion here. I am currently seeing mostly lots of flagged to death or grayed out comments, likely because it's basically gossip and mud slinging and not really anything more than "Some guy has a bee in his bonnet about Paul Graham for some reason." PS there's only one L in my name, not two.

Among other things, it's a long and careful consideration of the different meanings of "brevity" in a programming language, and every paragraph is heavily cited. It clearly didn't speak to you, and that's fine, but you're wrong about it being vapid.

(Fixed the name thing, sorry about that).

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#44

Post by DoreenMichele »

tptacek wrote: post #43
DoreenMichele wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vapid: offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging. I'm failing to see this generate meaty discussion here. I am currently seeing mostly lots of flagged to death or grayed out comments, likely because it's basically gossip and mud slinging and not really anything more than "Some guy has a bee in his bonnet about Paul Graham for some reason." PS there's only one L in my name, not two.

Among other things, it's a long and careful consideration of the different meanings of "brevity" in a programming language, and every paragraph is heavily cited. It clearly didn't speak to you, and that's fine, but you're wrong about it being vapid. (Fixed the name thing, sorry about that).

Then maybe you can do something to help course correct the conversation here other than being dismissive of me, like leave a top level comment that will help people here focus on the parts of it you personally find meaty instead of on the excessively obvious framing of "Waah, I am basically jealous of this man."

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#45

Post by tptacek »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #44
tptacek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things, it's a long and careful consideration of the different meanings of "brevity" in a programming language, and every paragraph is heavily cited. It clearly didn't speak to you, and that's fine, but you're wrong about it being vapid. (Fixed the name thing, sorry about that).

Then maybe you can do something to help course correct the conversation here other than being dismissive of me, like leave a top level comment that will help people here focus on the parts of it you personally find meaty instead of on the excessively obvious framing of "Waah, I am basically jealous of this man."

I didn't get "I am basically jealous of this man" from the article, like, at all.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#46

Post by [deleted] »

santoshalper wrote: post #18
captain_price7 wrote: post #13

The summary of this essay appears to be that Paul Graham relies too much on his own intuition, but intuition can lead people astray- a lengthy discussion on the failure of PG's own Arc language is used to support this argument. And apparently his recent political/social commentary fails for the same reason. The author went as far as to call him "profoundly unserious public intellectual". I'm not convinced that role o…

I think his real assertion is that PG is a bullshit artist, which seems essentially accurate to me. The world is full of people who, having achieved success (and more critically fame and money) become intellectually lazy and convinced that their own intuition (or other relevant natural ability) is infallible. I feel like I'm in the same boat as the author. PG used to be one of my favorite writers on the web, and now…

[deleted]

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#47

Post by DoreenMichele »

tptacek wrote: post #45
DoreenMichele wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe you can do something to help course correct the conversation here other than being dismissive of me, like leave a top level comment that will help people here focus on the parts of it you personally find meaty instead of on the excessively obvious framing of "Waah, I am basically jealous of this man."

I didn't get "I am basically jealous of this man" from the article, like, at all.

You have already made it abundantly clear that you disagree with me. Restating that you disagree with me adds nothing to this discussion. We already know you disagree with me. Your personal opinion and my personal opinion differing here is of no real importance to me.

What does bother me is that this article is generating so many grayed out and downvoted comments because of the manner in which it was written. If you think there is something useful to be gained from the piece, you know a helluva lot more about programming than I do. You are in a much better position than I am to leave a top level comment that will help turn this pile of manure (by which I mean the comments on HN) into something thought provoking and interesting.

I'm in no position to do that.

My goal is to see better discussion here. As someone who has studied things like Social Psychology, I'm only qualified to comment on the defects in this and why it's generating such lousy comments. I'm not qualified to tell people where to look for some meat here and help them focus on that. You are.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#48

Post by DoreenMichele »

billy_beef wrote: post #41
DoreenMichele wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, that assertion is hyperbole. The point being I don't think this really belongs here. I'm someone who finds social stuff very interesting. I mostly don't like gossip rags and a lot of psychological studies are essentially useless garbage. What value does this article really provide? Does it tell us where you can look out for Paul Graham's personal biases in order to get more value out of his writing? Does i…

I have to disagree here. The article is criticizing his work, his history of participation in a field, and his current commentary on politics. Yes, it discusses him as a subject, but not as a piece of gossip and strung-together ad hominem's. It is definitely critical of him, but mostly in his capacity as a commentor and his history of being incorrect. It's not second-rate tabloid stuff because of what dimension of hi…

Racism, sexism, personal attacks in intellectual circles -- such things all tend to work more or less the same way. Attack them in a way that has plausible deniability and is socially acceptable for some reason.

But if you look at the overall pattern of behavior, the real point is to attack or exclude a particular person or particular group of people.

Among other things I've had a college class in Social Psychology. I object to a gossipy piece of garbage getting so many upvotes on HN while bringing down the quality of discussion here.

If you find something meaty in his analysis of pg's work, then why don't you comment on that instead of arguing with me?

If my comments here are so off the mark, why do they have so much attention? This piece is failing to generate meaty discussion. It's mostly generating hot takes about Paul Graham and not commentary on the criticism of his work because the framing of the piece doesn't really fit with the idea that it's about criticizing his work.

If it were really about criticizing his work, what we should see here is debate about whether or not that criticism holds water. And I'm not really seeing that.

Re: Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers

#50

Post by pierrebai »

I wish I'd find it curious the extreme negativity toward the essay, but unfortunately it fits with my world view of people in general: they'll approve of things that concord with their own opinions and interpret everything through the prism of what they already believe.

The essay is labelled ad-hominem by many, even though it provides a cogent argument and multiple supporting facts. Of course, to take an example, the question of the enterpreneur as a luminary and an exploiter depends greatly on what you already believe. I happen to already think that Facebook, Google and co are exerting bad influence, holding and using information they collect about everyone to their own advantage. Others, like Uber, are easy to be thought as direct exploiters.

The attacks on Arc and Bel and succinctness are also argued with factual arguments. (Arguments that I happen to agree with; bias, bias...).

In the end, the essay posits a simple thing: that behind all the pseudo-theoretical posturing underlying PG essays, they are mere opinions pieces.

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