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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#511

Post by jacquesm »

pg wrote: post #498
baxtr wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. Would be great to see you being more active on HN again!

Thanks, but as I learned when I was running HN, being a regular user of a forum (which the moderator necessarily is) and writing essays are fundamentally incompatible. If you're known to be a regular user of a forum, then when someone says something about you and you don't reply, it reads as a tacit admission that they're correct. And when you write essays people say all kinds of things about you. The combination is…

Rule #1 of any forum is don't moderate the forum that you are active on. Musk is finding out the hard way why this is the case.

Happy to see your post here though!

Edit: and while we have you here briefly, Happy Holidays!

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#512

Post by neltnerb »

themitigating wrote: post #483
zelias wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what context does a "smart guy" truly not realize that growing industrial manufacturing companies ("cars and rockets") from scratch is a fundamentally different challenge than running a mature web-only social media company? Is he simply blinded by success?

You can be smart and impulsive at the same time. Remember, he tried to get out of the purchase probably after thinking about it.

He had plenty of time to think about it before deciding to fire all the people he fired in the cruelest way possible.

It may have been satisfying to him because he has a caricature in his head of who they are and what they did and it made his fans happy. But impulsive? No, there was plenty of time for smart to override impulsive here. This is something -- arbitrary, chaotic, intentionally cruel -- but it isn't impulsive.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#513

Post by themitigating »

braingenious wrote: post #121
dnissley wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I disagree with someone, I do not necessarily think they're stupid. That's a needlessly polarizing mindset.

What sort of decisions or behavior would lead you to believe that somebody is stupid?

I'll bite

- the ability to explain why you think a certain way or did something (i.e. when you ask a child why they threw a glass they'll say "I don't know"

- the speed at which you learn/process new information

- the ability to understand your emotions and the level of control you have over them

- your willing to engage in debate

- how inquisitive you are

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#514

Post by jacquesm »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #506
pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on him banning Ukrainian phone numbers, effectively making it so that Ukrainians can’t sign up to share information about the war.

I would chalk that up to slow service degradation more than malice. Twitter is likely slowly running aground.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#515

Post by skilled »

eastendguy wrote: post #14

Wow, Twitter is collapsing much faster than I expected. With PG and some other high-profile accounts gone, many will loose interest in their Twitter feed fast. Rinse and repeat.

No offense, but pg doesn't really post all that much stuff that would make me reconsider Twitter as a platform if he left. And, to be fair, neither does anyone else. Twitter is a marketing platform not a social network.

I use it primarily as a RSS feed and the occasional "get up to speed with the latest news fast" alternative.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#516

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#517

Post by lost_tourist »

braingenious wrote: post #121
dnissley wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I disagree with someone, I do not necessarily think they're stupid. That's a needlessly polarizing mindset.

What sort of decisions or behavior would lead you to believe that somebody is stupid?

Someone who claims to hold a basic concept of something as straight forward as "free speech absolutist" and doesn't see the logical incoherence of proceeding to ban reporters and others who publish and aggregate publicly available information (@elonjet).

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#519

Post by croes »

speakfreely wrote: post #481
bombolo wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. You mean hiring engineers to work on cars and rockets?

Organizing the efforts of large teams of smart people is one of the most high value activities you can do in our society. Edit: not saying that's happening at Twitter, but it has demonstrably occurred at Tesla and SpaceX.

You can also hire people for that

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#520

Post by waprin »

jacquesm wrote: post #432
pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return. A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better. Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back…

Well said, good analogy.

There’s the immediate issues of the policy. But there’s the bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy. One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he enacts a far worse content policy than anything old management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy.

Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he’s demonstrated that any previous advocacy for free speech was completely disingenuous. He wants to run Twitter like he’s the dictator of a banana republic. And any time you spend on the platform strengthens his ability to do so.

It was disturbing and confusing watching people like pg and Lex Fridman seemingly throw their apparent principles to the wind tolerating this type of behavior. I do sympathize there was some ambiguity about Elons plans for Twitter before this last week but with the banning of journalists and the banning of links to Mastodon, that ambiguity has been removed.

I’m relieved pg took a stand here but like you I wish it was a much stronger one.

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