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Earnestness

paulgraham.com

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Re: Earnestness

#471

Post by webmaven »

solveit wrote: post #456
webmaven wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me the subtle miscommunication between billionaires and the rest of us is the rest of us are asking “what ever will you do with a dynasty” and many billionaires, I think, have a mental model of “I have proven I can employ this wealth more effectively than bureaucrats, and I like to solve big problems, and wealth makes it easier to solve big problems.” > This is a huge generalization we could easily find…

I don't disbelieve you, but do you have evidence to back this up? That is, do you have evidence that suggests value capture at the price of value creation is more important than value creation itself?

If you don't capture the value you create, you don't become staggeringly wealthy.

If you capture value you don't create, you become staggeringly wealthy.

Note that I am not claiming that value isn't being created at all in that second scenario, just that the entity capturing the value isn't creating it.

If you capture value while destroying some, the picture gets more complicated, as it depends on the nature of the feedback loops involved. It isn't too hard to see examples in the wild of organizations pursuing strategies aimed at getting a larger slice of the pie, or at getting slices of more pies, rather than strategies that are aimed at getting the size or number of pies to grow overall.

Re: Earnestness

#472

Post by zepto »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #470
zepto wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The link is deliberately suggesting that any research on race is bogus “ If this statement were true, then would be merit to your conclusions. However it’s obviously not true . The link clearly does suggest that the kinds of academic paper that search yields are bogus. The original search was for “hermeneutic” “dialectics” “hegemonic” “intersectionality” “whiteness” (as best I can reconstruct). This is quite obvious…

> It’s puzzling that you have concluded that this means he thinks that ‘any’ research on race is bogus. So: any research on race is fine, but using the words 'whiteness', 'racialized' or now 'intersectionality' (this word appears newly to me) makes it bogus... Half of the results on Google Scholar which mention 'white supremacy' contain at least one of those three words, broadly consistently since 1990. How do you ta…

> So: any research on race is fine, but using the words 'whiteness', 'racialized' or now 'intersectionality' (this word appears newly to me) makes it bogus...

Again, a puzzling interpretation.

A couple of points, it’s fairly obvious that PG doesn’t expect people to go through every single search result past the first few.

Search results with the conjunction of those words are listed first. You have mistakenly used the word ‘or’, but search engines place ‘and’ results first.

PG doesn’t use the term ‘white’ anywhere. That has been introduced by you. He uses the term ‘whiteness’.

I am a little surprised you conflate these two terms, since in both the academic discourse, and in activism about race, these words do not mean the same thing.

> How do you talk in any useful way about race relations without ever using those words?

It’s not clear what this question has to do with what PG wrote, and the rest of your post seems to hinge on its relevance.

PG didn’t say anything about people not using words. He posted a link to a search he expected would prioritize examples of the kind of research he thinks is bogus.

Generally when we do a Google search, we assume that the first few results will be the most relevant, not that every result is equally relevant.

See my earlier point - search prioritizes results that contain as many of these terms as possible.

To summarize: Your comment seems to be based on two misunderstandings. One about how Google search works, and the other about how the meaning of the word ‘whiteness’ differs from the word ‘white’ in contemporary discourse on race.

Also, I note that you conflate search results with research. These aren’t the same thing.

Re: Earnestness

#473

Post by zepto »

alecbz wrote: post #466
zepto wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a very obvious no-true Scotsman fallacy around the notion of a ‘good’ essay, plus a straw man of what PG wrote: “just asserting something and relying on the reputation of the author”, and one of what I wrote: “that things should be take at face-value.” It is fairly obvious that persuasive writing often convinces people of things which we are either not true, or meaningless. It’s also fairly obvious th…

Re. strawman: maybe this is a good essay, but I was referencing Dumblydorr's assertion that if someone else had written this essay it would be considered mediocre/not make it to the top of HN, and your response that this is irrelevant, since the author _is_ in fact PG. I'm not sure where the no-true Scottsman is? > I can’t really see what you are trying to accomplish by insisting there is something called a ‘good’ es…

> Are you suggesting it's dangerous that SSC writes good, convincing essays, despite the fact that he's not some well-known figure?

Of course not. What did I write that would suggest that?

> cult, getting convinced by their writing seems to be more about getting convinced by bad arguments than it is about attempting to consider arguments directly.

Your criterion for a ‘good’ essay was that it is convincing in the absence of knowledge of who the author is.

For someone who is persuaded, both SSC and the cult leader’s writings both meet this criterion.

How would you modify your criterion to distinguish the two?

Re: Earnestness

#474

Post by zepto »

zepto wrote: post #472
throwaway2245 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s puzzling that you have concluded that this means he thinks that ‘any’ research on race is bogus. So: any research on race is fine, but using the words 'whiteness', 'racialized' or now 'intersectionality' (this word appears newly to me) makes it bogus... Half of the results on Google Scholar which mention 'white supremacy' contain at least one of those three words, broadly consistently since 1990. How do you ta…

> So: any research on race is fine, but using the words 'whiteness', 'racialized' or now 'intersectionality' (this word appears newly to me) makes it bogus... Again, a puzzling interpretation. A couple of points, it’s fairly obvious that PG doesn’t expect people to go through every single search result past the first few. Search results with the conjunction of those words are listed first. You have mistakenly used th…

In conclusion - PG is clearly dismissive of certain academic writing on ‘whiteness’.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that he denies the existence of white supremacy.

That just isn’t implied by the link.

Re: Earnestness

#475

Post by alecbz »

zepto wrote: post #473
alecbz wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. strawman: maybe this is a good essay, but I was referencing Dumblydorr's assertion that if someone else had written this essay it would be considered mediocre/not make it to the top of HN, and your response that this is irrelevant, since the author _is_ in fact PG. I'm not sure where the no-true Scottsman is? > I can’t really see what you are trying to accomplish by insisting there is something called a ‘good’ es…

> Are you suggesting it's dangerous that SSC writes good, convincing essays, despite the fact that he's not some well-known figure? Of course not. What did I write that would suggest that? > cult, getting convinced by their writing seems to be more about getting convinced by bad arguments than it is about attempting to consider arguments directly. Your criterion for a ‘good’ essay was that it is convincing in the abs…

> Of course not. What did I write that would suggest that?

> being persuaded by an essay is ... a red flag that we may be being manipulated by someone we wouldn’t choose to be manipulated by

I was persuaded by SSC essays, despite not knowing much about the author. Was that a red flag? Was it bad that I remained convinced by them despite not finding out much about what experiences in his background have shaped his perspective?

> How would you modify your criterion to distinguish the two?

The distinguishing factor is in what you should be persuaded by.

If a "cult leader" is able to convince you of something by presenting you with good arguments, maybe they aren't a cult leader/it's not crazy to believe whatever they're selling.

If someone's convinced of cultish notions because they were persuaded by bad arguments, I'd say the primary remediation is "don't be persuaded by bad arguments", not "don't listen to people unless you know who they are". I wouldn't say the second statement is terrible advice, but it's not the primary problem.

Re: Earnestness

#476

Post by walleeee »

mikewarot wrote: post #448
walleeee wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind helping me understand your idea better, then? I gleaned my (mistaken) assumption from your Capabilities Digest: > The principle of least privilege is the solution to this whole mess, but it has to be applied from the kernel all the way up the stack. This is a lot of forking work to do.[0] [0]: http://capabilitiesdigest.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-root-caus...

Forking the Linux kernel would just result in another monolithic Linux kernel, with all the drivers all tied in. There are microkernels, which is the specific thing Linus Torvalds didn't want to do when he started Linux. In capability based systems, not even the drivers have access to everything. Any given process is giving a list of capabilities, like file handles to resources, and those are the ONLY things that pro…

That helps a lot. So would it just require an open standard for microkernel implementations, then, or would hardware need to change?

Re: Earnestness

#477

Post by mikewarot »

walleeee wrote: post #476
mikewarot wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forking the Linux kernel would just result in another monolithic Linux kernel, with all the drivers all tied in. There are microkernels, which is the specific thing Linus Torvalds didn't want to do when he started Linux. In capability based systems, not even the drivers have access to everything. Any given process is giving a list of capabilities, like file handles to resources, and those are the ONLY things that pro…

That helps a lot. So would it just require an open standard for microkernel implementations, then, or would hardware need to change?

Genode runs on a variety of microkernels, the nice thing about them is they only do a very few things, so adapting to a new one shouldn't be hard, nor dangerous.

Re: Earnestness

#478

Post by kwhitefoot »

retsibsi wrote: post #375
kwhitefoot wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Sweden or Denmark but here in Norway great store is set on straightforwardness, plain speaking, and trust. Generally you are assumed to be telling the truth and if you say that you will do something then people will assume that you mean it and possess the necessary skill. This sort of atmosphere means that there is less bureaucracy involved in getting things done, paperwork is on the whole simpler t…

> The downside is that Norwegians (or at least Norwegian institutions) can be distrustful of foreign academic qualifications; even those from a highly respected institution that is older than Norway, unless they have personal knowledge of it. Is this a downside, or has the rest of the word devalued its academic qualifications by lowering its standards, failing to seriously tackle cheating, and (relevant to postgradua…

The specific example I had in mind was an acquaintance who held a doctorate from Trinity, Dublin. and it was quite a while ago. So no, I don't think devalued qualifications was the issue.
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