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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#571

Post by jasonzemos »

mjburgess wrote: post #499
scythe wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you linked fails to substantially address the article you claim to critique. You basically quoted him once on a rather controversial point and said "I disagree with this quip!". This particular sentence is hilarious: > if you have any serious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques of capitalism, wealth and power It seems like you're calling Paul Graham a ps…

I would need to go through many of his articles to expose their chronic lack of information. It's not a case of disagreeing, it's that others have disagreed and he hasnt bothered to make himself aware of how. This is no good for an "intellectual" idol. > It's a matter of degree. It has nothing to do with "degree". "Corruption" has nothing to do with the mixture of wealth and power: in extremely capitalist societies t…

It seems the reason you disagree with PG's article is because you're making a transgression that people who contemplate political philosophy know not to make: you've positioned economic power antecedent to political power. Specifically, that money buys votes. This is false in a democracy of any economic flavor -- though admittedly deceptive by appearance. The data is indeed somewhat reliable for those involved in political campaigns: money appears to translate to votes. Philosophers distrust this. For them, the simple requisite of having to buy votes is evidence a democracy still exists; that political power is prior to economic power. The issue then becomes the character of the voter being bought, and thus the character of the people in general.

It is easy to dismiss PG's entire article -- from its foundation to conclusions about transparency -- if you've already concluded that democracy does not exist; that votes do not translate to power in any meaningful way; that capitalism has become the real foundation on which political power is merely a simulacrum. In doing this we've hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of pessimism, and the discussion ceases to be productive.

The law only codifies what the people, through their votes, decide to codify within it. Capitalism does not a priori codify wealth as political power. The law merely aids the confluence of capitalism: money, a signifier -- to represent resources: the signified. Capitalism is contained within the theater of democratically held political power -- until it corrupts that containment. PG's mention of secrecy in a democracy is a useful one: secrecy subverts the power of the informed voter, it is a breach of that containment. It allows the potential for capital to slip out into the realm of realpolitik -- which is reserved for the people alone through their vote.

I think if you review what PG is saying about corruption through the prism of philosophy without the distortions of politics itself (and all its frustrations) you might not consider it unsubstantiated idealism or what have you.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#572

Post by nycticorax »

apricot7 wrote: post #569
abalone wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, you nailed it. The bigger problem with pg's statement is not the 13 year old girl claim. It's that he fully blames them and middle school curriculum while giving YC, PyCon and the startup industry a pass. His stance is we already have an open door and are self-selected, so the problem must be up the line. You're right, he dodged the question of whether we need to be more proactive , not just open.

Let's look back to the boys ten years ago who didn't start programming, because they didn't want to be socially ostracized and passed over as a potential romantic partner. Are those boys to blame for their decision? If not, why are you campaigning to only push money in the direction of girls?

That's an interesting point, but it's orthogonal to whether PG was being disingenuous in "What I Didn't Say".

And I'm not campaigning to push money in any direction. That's a separate issue.

I agree that it's not obviously a bad thing if all these people who didn't become hackers (female or male) became something else that is socially valuable and makes them happy. But I'm also willing to consider the possibility that some women would have been happier and contributed more to society if they had become hackers, but didn't because they felt out of place or unwelcome when they tried to. And that if that's the case, then I'm at least willing to consider that maybe we as a society should do something about it.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#573

Post by abalone »

nycticorax wrote: post #570
abalone wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, you nailed it. The bigger problem with pg's statement is not the 13 year old girl claim. It's that he fully blames them and middle school curriculum while giving YC, PyCon and the startup industry a pass. His stance is we already have an open door and are self-selected, so the problem must be up the line. You're right, he dodged the question of whether we need to be more proactive , not just open.

All this having been said, I think that the level of vitriol PG has been subjected to is completely unfounded. I think it's unclear whether YC is morally obligated to lower its standards for female applicants, or to make special efforts to encourage them to apply. The first is fraught, since it implicitly means you're selecting less-qualified people over more-qualified ones (the Ivy League universities do this for di…

There are other ways of being proactive. I bet if you asked teachers and parents, they'd say 13 year old girls lack female hacker role models to look up to. They'd note how bro-y the hacker culture appears to be.

So perhaps our industry could make a greater effort to spotlight and support our very best examples of female hackers, and put them in closer touch with 13 year old girls. And to dial down the bro-iness of events and startup office cultures.

Those are examples of being proactive that have nothing to do with lowering standards. Pointing fingers elsewhere in the system is not that different from defending the status quo, because it's an interdependent system.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#574

Post by skybrian »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #566
skybrian wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting emotional reactions aside for a moment, I think the real point is that unbiased behavior is quite difficult to achieve and requires discipline. If you're not doing anything systematic to root out bias and just relying on good intentions, it won't be enough. Yes, having a variety of interviewers helps somewhat, but people can be biased in similar ways - it is possible for women to be unconsciously biased again…

"The percentages you cite show this is a problem in many industries" No it's not a problem. This is where you and people like you, differ from me and people like me. You see "differences" as a problem, I see "differences" as a reality and not something that we need to play God with in order to equalize. So the reason why I'm not on the football team isn't because I'm 5'8" and 125 pounds and can't compete with the oth…

Hey, you're the one bringing up quotas, not me. I think I said that aiming for a specific number isn't the goal.

Football has a lot of numbers associated with it so I'd guess it's pretty fair, especially since Moneyball was published. (Assuming football coaches learned from it; I don't actually follow football.) I was actually more interested in your other example of entertainment industry executives.

I am pro-analytics: I think you should measure all the things you can because the numbers can be interesting. But just as you wouldn't judge programmers by lines of code, raw numbers about hiring are only a suggestive data point. To figure out if there's a real issue, we would need to go deeper and look for other things to measure. (But obviously we're not going to do that here in a chat room discussion.)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#575

Post by crassus »

freyrs3 wrote: post #340
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who wake up in the morning, just like you or me, and instead of doing something productive with their time begin the day's hunt for a topic to be offended about. These are people that spend every day searching for something that offends them so that they can bitch to their followers about it and feel like they are producing some real change in the world. Think on par with "Fox News commentary," excep…

I find the twitter comment you linked to very insightful, it's just a thinly veiled statement of "even if the facts don't support the claims I made about your actions, you're still to blame for your inaction ". This kind of "You're either with us, or against us" mentality is rather alarming...

The concept of a struggle session might help understand what's going on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Also, Moldbug: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol...

Re: What I Didn't Say

#576

Post by nycticorax »

yo-mf wrote: post #15

Truly unfortunate all around. PG getting slammed from every direction. Jessica Lessin's new venture gets a black eye for shoddy journalistic standards. Lots of invective going around for what appears to be liberties of interpretation. And of all of this, I am not sure this really does anything to address the very serious topic on the imbalance of men to women in technology jobs.

I don't think The Information comes out of this looking bad at all. I think that PG was being somewhat disingenuous in "What I Didn't Say".

Read http://jessicalessin.com/2013/12/31/on-the-information-and-h...

and the things I wrote elsewhere on this thread.

ValleyWag comes out looking terrible, of course.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#577

Post by hobs »

jacalata wrote: post #474
hobs wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that people fear to do something if they think they might fail or have that the something might have a bias against them. However, I would argue YCom graduates are people who do a thing even if THEY ARE TERRIFIED. Being afraid of failure is not a justification for not trying, it is in fact a thing any healthy person has. The successful among us are the ones who operate even though they are afraid of failure.…

That mindset could justify any arbitrary barrier to y combinator, but I don't see pg instituting a mandatory cliff dive as part of the application even though startup founders need to be able to show courage and deal with unexpected and crazy obstacles.

That's true! However, another quote that I thought was relevant to this same way of thinking: (this was just posted today on HN, and I thought, exactly!)

    “Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.

    “You think you know the difference between a hero and a coward, Mike? Well, there is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same, but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does.”
~ http://blog.garrytan.com/

When I read this, it exactly encapsulated what I was trying to say. You are allowed to fear everything, but if you let fear control you or decide what you will or will not do you will not become great. You may even regret bitterly not taking the jump off the cliff.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#578

Post by mjffjm »

chrisgd wrote: post #520
dave_sid wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The ones who work at Silicon Valley startups and lecture the entire industry about how things work, then surround themselves with like-minded people to have strength in numbers" - Love this... this phenomenon sounds so familiar in my job I really think it should have a name. Anyone know if it has a name?

the investment banking model

consulting

Re: What I Didn't Say

#579

Post by chris_wot »

mjburgess wrote: post #496
chris_wot wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider this to be the definitive comment that puts to bed the argument being pushed.

I know his academic background. His article on philosophy cannot have taken "weeks" because it is so woeful.

Your credentialism and elitism doesn't impress me.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#580

Post by [deleted] »

ericabiz wrote: post #560
argumentum wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does YC being a "frat house" have to do with applying though? I can understand why that perception may discourage someone from participating in YC, but the acceptance rate is so low that it seems like premature optimization to think beyond the application.

There's not much more I can say that I haven't already said, as some of the conversations I've had were explicitly off the record. But I can say this, in a generic sense: All of the top accelerators will seek out people they want to attend and encourage them to apply. When this happens to you, as a founder, you're well aware that if you apply, you're very likely to get an interview and also very likely to get in. I c…

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