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Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

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Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#51

Post by tedunangst »

cglee wrote: post #37
tedunangst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrimination is not irrational. As a society we have determined that we value an individual's desire to get a job more than a business's desire for an efficient filtering mechanism. "Discrimination is rational" and "discrimination is bad" are not mutually exclusive.

The fact that discrimination seems natural means that we need to fight against it consciously, not rationalize it as acceptable. If you value diversity, equality, etc, then you have to actively monitor your own discriminatory tendencies and lead with respect, compassion, love instead of rationality and pattern matching.

Pretty sure I didn't say it was acceptable.

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#53

Post by dylangs1030 »

saraid216 wrote: post #45
dylangs1030 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just disregarded my entire argument using a cultural taboo. Nice work. See? I can play at that game too. The problem is, doing that doesn't get anywhere, because I'm still convinced of my point, and you're still convinced of yours, and there's no dialectic to compromise our ideas.

Why would he treat your argument fairly when your argument is that life is unfair?

The ridiculous logic that statement employs aside, he has no obligation to treat it fairly. But if that's the case then whatever he says will just be disregarded. I won't treat his unfair dismissal as fair either. Okay, so we're where we started, with my point still standing.

Again, being snarky like this leads nowhere. If you're going to give a solid rebuttal, good! If you're not, then you're not achieving anything.

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#54

Post by the_watcher »

defen wrote: post #8

This whole "controversy" is so stupid. It consists of people taking pg's words out of context and assigning the maximally stupid interpretation to them. I mean, are there any examples of successful U.S. based founders who have accents that are so heavy that you struggle to understand what they are saying? I'm genuinely curious.

PG is a huge supporter of the Founder Visa, but he hates immigrants? Come on everyone, dig a bit deeper. Luckily, PG has written an entire essay on this sort of topic[1], and how "taboos" are generally seen poorly by history. I'm sure the taboo biasing towards extreme political correctness and willfully ignoring things that can improve outcomes for people because they don't fit in some idyllic worldview will suffer the same fate.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#56

Post by analyst74 »

Linking this to racism is absurd.

The main reason why racism (or other discriminations like sexism) is bad, is because the disadvantaged person cannot change it.

Accent can be changed, culture differences can be learnt, connections can be made.

The world is not a fair place, but as long as individuals have ways to improve their situation, it is fair enough.

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#57

Post by cglee »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #38
cglee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just rationalized discrimination. Nice work.

I think you just disregarded my entire argument using a cultural taboo. Nice work. See? I can play at that game too. The problem is, doing that doesn't get anywhere, because I'm still convinced of my point, and you're still convinced of yours, and there's no dialectic to compromise our ideas.

I apologize for the snarky tone; I just have no tolerance for people who try to justify discrimination, etc. To me, diversity, equality are ends in themselves. They're not means to a higher profit margin; they're not justifiable when more code is written, etc.

Treat everyone equally. Understand that humans are wired to recognize patterns, and are naturally discriminatory. Fight that urge.

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#58

Post by foobarbazqux »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #53
saraid216 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would he treat your argument fairly when your argument is that life is unfair?

The ridiculous logic that statement employs aside, he has no obligation to treat it fairly. But if that's the case then whatever he says will just be disregarded. I won't treat his unfair dismissal as fair either. Okay, so we're where we started, with my point still standing. Again, being snarky like this leads nowhere. If you're going to give a solid rebuttal, good! If you're not, then you're not achieving anything.

My guess is that if you're using words like dialectic then secretly you aren't an extremist. (By extremist, I mean someone who adopts a polarized position, which you freely admit.)

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#59

Post by subsystem »

fsck--off wrote: post #24
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #11

I will state my position unlike those afraid to speak so they can have deal-flow or perhaps enter YC. I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. Such a statement from someone whom people hang to his every-word should not be put out without clarification. The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" hold…

In the HN thread discussing the article [1], pg said: "It's not our top criterion. It's just one that I'm willing to talk about publicly, because there's no way to fake it. We're not against funding people from outside the US, and we fund a lot of them. But 564 startups is enough to see patterns, and the empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking. And I am talking about failure to communicate here. I do…

That only addresses the first part of the answer which I assume isn't the controversial one.

Re: Bring Me Your Accents. Immigration Fuels Innovation

#60

Post by snitko »

powertower wrote: post #17
snitko wrote: post #7

Slightly offtopic: The whole idea of the immigration restrictions is ridiculous. There is not a single justification for it. Unless of course you believe that somehow your people deserve better than everyone else. When people bring up the fact that it drives down wages and residents lose as a result - why don't they also mention that residents win by getting a cheaper product or a service? When people bring up the we…

And when people bring up the x-fold increased violent crime rates, and no-go zones, and enclaves, all statistical facts - you say the victims must just be getting their privileges checked, or they're causing it themselves by breaking the social contract. This whole notion that the people in the US are just too stupid and too lazy and too whatever to be able to create jobs is absurd. It takes more than one person to c…

Would you say that immigrants from certain countries are by nature more violent? If you don't believe that, then there must be something else involved. Maybe, it's that they have incentives to become criminals, because they are being denied legal opportunities to work. Maybe, it's because the police is not interested in protecting anyone, but rather is interested in catching illegal aliens for the sake of it and applying violence to them.

Nobody asks you to invite immigrants to your backyard. Let them live in their enclaves and don't show up there if you think it's not safe. It doesn't mean both communities can't benefit each other. But what makes you think that somehow you have more right to all the land that doesn't directly belong to you than some guy from a different country? Why do we even have these arbitrary borders? Why is it considered moral to deny people an opportunity to travel and settle down where they like?

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