A word about credibility. It comes from the Latin word credo, meaning "I trust." Its value exceeds that of money because it marks you as a person - as someone who is respected, who is trustworthy, and whom you would want to count as a friend. It marks you not as perfect but as special. It makes others ponder not so much that they did the last deal with you but that they would want to do the next deal too. Just as we build credit through many transactions, so we build credibility by the very pattern of our lives. Credit and credibility derive from the same root and signify the same thing: when in doubt, we can trust the one who has either trait. Not blind trust, just a benefit-of-the-doubt level of trust.
Well, pg has earned our trust and deserved the benefit of the doubt when something so off kilter as this is attributed to him. He did not get it here, and that is a sad testament to how crowd-inspired frenzies can bend our perceptions in such faulty ways. Let us only hope that we can learn some good lessons from this.
pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. Indeed, the mob looks pretty much like an ass at this point and kudos to pg for his more-than-able defense. Very lawyer-like, in a way, but far more classy.
> pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see.
What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?
You mean like the cult-like reverence for the pseudo-intellectual issues commentary on Twitter and Medium? The people who have less than a decade in the industry but are experts on compensation, ocracies, power dynamics, and psychology? 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?
You are seeing respect for Paul Graham because, as flawed as some of his opinions might be, he also has the experience backing them. Louis CK said this best:
If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world. That includes my own; I know I still have things to learn and I make a proactive effort to listen more than I talk. I don't always succeed.
I don't mean to get in the way of your hyperbole, but the person above you seemed to have no objection to "respecting" pg, he was taking issue with this:
"pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see."
Which you don't mention at all in your response...
"If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world. That includes my own; I know I still have things to learn and I make a proactive effort to listen more than I talk. I don't always succeed."
Are you actually being serious? Your brain works in such a way that any person who has lived less than 14,610 days couldn't possibly add any value to your life? I don't mean to be harsh but this could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Certainly worse than anything I've seen on Medium.
If I was pg and this was these were the type of people and defenses that were coming to my aid, I would be mortified.
A day later I see no hyperbole here. If the logic one uses is:
-Should I listen to anything this person has to say or take value from their life experiences?
-Well I dunno, have they turned 40 yet.
Is very certainly in the top 5 dumbest things I've ever heard if not the dumbest. A human being going well out of their way to avoid learning things and gaining more experience. But thanks for contributing with the random insult. Hope it helped rebuild your self esteem?
"largely uninterested in your take on the world" is far from "couldn't possibly add any value"
Now I am 33 and I tend to ignore what most people my age and younger think about things like global politics or new programming languages. This has less to do with intelligence than perspective. Basically, if the 'Arab Spring seemed like a new and good thing you don't know enough about the situation to make informed commentary.
I find there's some truth to his philosophy, though. There doesn't seem to go even a week between my having said or thought something, and then realising I've been a fool or at best not quite correct in my reasoning.
I'm 25 years old, and it's been one of -if not the- most important discovery of my life so far that compared to those older than me, I know hilariously little about (all aspects of) life.
Of course young people add value, we do after all make our own world by our subjective views, but those older than you generally have had more time to explore more of those views, and have a much richer notion of how things are and can be.
> If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world.
pg isnt peddling his "take on the world". He talks about serious academic topics in a chronically under and misinformed way. My 50 year old plumber knows jack about Metaphysics, Quantum Field Theory or Abstract Expressionism despite - as in a Louis CK bit - his seeing a dead body "one time".
If you want to have a fire-side chat with him - be my guest. But I ain't fetching the scribe because he's had a few decades wandering around.
>My 50 year old plumber knows jack about Metaphysics, Quantum Field Theory or Abstract Expressionism despite - as in a Louis CK bit - his seeing a dead body "one time".
Well, most of the stuff guys "under 40" think they know about "Metaphysics, Quantum Field Theory or Abstract Expressionism" are a half-understood mismash too (I'm not talking about someone with a PhD in Physics here).
And, as some they will find out later in life, not only knowledge of those "serious academic topics" doesn't matter as much as they thought, but also most of them are inherently bullshit too.
I agree that a lot of the time intellectual pursuits are misdirected ways of solving life's problems (though the worst culprit here is wealth acquisition, doubling the critique of pg here).
There is a kind of wisdom that arises through knowledge of oneself and other people that comes with age. A kind of knowledge which helps you predict what is going to be worthwhile, etc.
However we shouldnt fall into the trap of saying "academic persuits might leave you unsatisfied therefore you can be blase about them whilst discussing them". You cant dispense with the particulars of physics when discussing gravity because your interest in "the universe" owes to a unfulfilled religious need.
"age" is a different category of knowledge and doesnt excuse or justify glorified amateurism in another.
I see a lot of "two wrongs make a right" stuff here in rebuttals. The problem OP is pointing out is the cult like reverence for PG in this responders comments. Coming to his defense by pointing out that there are other authors on Medium and Twitter who also have a cult like reverence amongst their followers is a mis-direction at best. I think the point is non one deserves cult-like reverence. Maybe Ghandi but certainly no one sitting at the top of a money optimizing fountain.
I too was very uncomfortable when reading that paragraph. When I read comments like that I can see why it's possible that PG is starting to run into this recurring theme with the outside world. First it was a misunderstanding around founders with accents. Now it's a misunderstanding of women in technology. If he's becoming inadvertently surrounded with such adoring followers he's likely to find few of his assumptions challenged by such a receptive audience. He speaks, no one challenges him, he becomes emboldened. Then he speaks to a third party not under his spell and all heck breaks loose.
PG only suffers from trust/naivete in dealing with reporters. Here are some ways to avoid the tricks reporters play on those they interview:
1. Keep the interview short and stick to the script. This is what Laura Bush does better than almost anybody. Don't give reporters any "gotcha's" to their tricky line of questions.
2. If possible, do the inteview by email, not phone, videochat or in person. This way, you can give a considered response to their questions, which is what folks like PG excel at.
PG is not a professional interview giver. It shows.
And I'm no PG fan boy. I think his Startup = Growth article is flat out misleading w/r/t startups that start from a base of one user or one cent in revenue (to take extreme examples) and then say a startup is growing if it has 5% weekly growth.
What people (entrepreneurs, other investors, the public market) respect about PG is his judgment and pattern recognition. This comes from starting a few companies, and more importantly having the best seat in the house for watching new companies sprout and grow. This gives him pattern recognition well beyond most people. And this is why people respect what he has to say about both starting companies, and the raw inputs (people, ideas and money) needed to create them.
I suppose you wouldn't listen to Einstein when he was under 40 too, hmmm?
There are numerous examples of younger, less experienced people being in the right while the older, more experienced are at fault because of one thing or another. Of course, this is the exception, not the rule. However, less experienced people often have an interesting take on things that more experienced people miss. When you're 35 you might be better served reading a brilliant 35 year old's thoughts than a brilliant 55 year old's. In many ways, you may be able to better relate and understand the younger one's thoughts.
Did Einstein say something profound about social issues or people interactions when he was younger than 40? I don't say I agree that younger people have nothing of value to say in these areas, but I think you are mixing a bit different things there, experience in some field and life experience. And while age has some correlation with life experience it does not mean that someone older will be wiser at all.
>Did Einstein say something profound about social issues or people interactions when he was younger than 40?
Jefferson was 33 when he penned the Declaration of Independence. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed when he was 39. Marx published The Communist Manifesto when he was 30.
Seriously, this list could go on for ages. Dismissing the perspective of youth is as indicative of an ignorance of history as youthful naivete.
"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 first couple of years in industry you (generally) know you are a newb. It is that awkward 2-6 years of experience range where you a fair bit of experience but really you don't. You just aren't a newb.
People with high confidence in themselves often over estimate their experience around this time and look silly to anyone with actual experience.
I don't think 40 is some magical number. In fact many experiences that happened over 10 years ago in high tech starts to "fade" and become less relevant.
What's with the almost cult-like relevance for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?
- Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo
- Founded Y Combinator to advise and invest in startups
- Smart investor with substantial success and track record (Dropbox, AirBnB, etc)
In other words, he's earned a reputation for doing some very smart things, and documenting them in clear, easily understood language, over the past 20 years.
I'm not being a mirer or a nuthugger here. I participate in HN because it benefits me and I learn useful things amidst the noise. (And of course pg started this site too.)
For what it's worth, I wrote the code that did this in SpamAssassin just slightly before Pg published "A plan for spam". Although he had some very useful improvements to the algorithm which I rolled in.
Correct, and pg is not writing code for startups now, but investing in them, sharing his experience with them (mentoring), connecting them to follow-on investors, and supporting the process of growing those startups in which he has an active interest.
I'm frankly surprised you've been here for 2 years and never realised.
You see the ycombinator in news.ycombinator.com? In this website?
That's pg's company.
Do you know what ycombinator is? That he started the seed funding movement? That he was blogging about hacking startups before people even really realised you could hack startups? Before lean startup existed? That he's written his own dialect of LISP? That he started and sold his own startup in the early days of the web? And that, now this is some serious respect, it was actually written in LISP?
That's not cultish, it's earned respect and pg's got it in buckets around here.
Crikey.
Little drunk, but crikey, talk about having absolutely no fucking clue. The guy's a machine of intellectualism, most things he turns his mind to he de-constructs, encapsulates and then explains brilliantly. Yeah, occasionally he's wrong, especially when he tries to justify certain aspects of exploitative capitalism, but damn he's good. Very good.
None of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on. I granted him "entrepreneur" status. He can have "compu-sci" intellectual too.
>None of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on.
You don't get insights into these by getting a degree from some university on the subject. You get insights into those things by studying them, practical experience, and more importantly thinking.
If anything, the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors.
And REAL thinkers, the kind that leave a mark in history, from Socrates to Sartre and from Kierkegaard to Popper and Wittgenstein to leave it to philosophy, are full of scorn for academia in general and professors in particular, and even if they sometimes happen to be working as such themselves, they are greatly atypical to their "churn papers" colleagues.
Not that pg is on that level, but critisizing him because "none of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on" is bullshit.
Your a priori abstract attack that he lacks insights has no meat at all behind it. You could just as well have said that "he has tons of insight into what he writes" -- and it would be exactly the same.
If you want to provide something worthwhile, do a SPECIFIC critique of what he wrote somewhere, and tell us what is wrong with it by providing counter-arguments and rebuttals.
> the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors.
Not about the subjects they research. That is the purpose of research.
> are full of scorn for academia in general
All of those people are academics par execellance. I'm not talking about business-ified institutional academica. I'm talking about spending a long time on a topic, researching it and thinking deeply, clearly on it before you offer your opinion as though it were valuable.
> do a SPECIFIC critique of what he wrote somewhere
I have on one of his essays, but I took it seriously to write that critique.
The audience I would be targeting in a critique of the man (via a critique of his under-informed rants) are those who equate money with success and "money-making" with intelligence. I value my time too much to spend the amount required undoing that confusion.
So, I should probably point out that pg went to Harvard specifically to study Philosophy. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in 1990. Therefore your critique that he should have a degree before writing about philosophy is interesting.
All of those people are academics par execellance. I'm not talking about business-ified institutional academica. I'm talking about spending a long time on a topic, researching it and thinking deeply, clearly on it before you offer your opinion as though it were valuable.
pg spent weeks on each of his early essays. He spent a solid month writing What You Can't Say. He spent at least a couple days writing this one. They aren't opinion pieces.
Reaction from literary critics? Reaction from the target audience? Financial success?
It seems to me that by two of those standards Stephenie Meyer knocked the ball out of the park. It is not clear to me why we should care about the other standard of quality.
Analogously, pg's essays being very popular with a number of people in no way translates to other standards of quality :-) They may resonate with people, but without solid grounding in reality, they may be no better than "pop philosophy".
Personally, I agree with some of his essays, but on some others he's way off the mark. For instance, his writings on anything Hollywood or copyright-related betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what artists sell. Yet those essays were extremely popular simply because they confirmed people's biases (hence "pop philosophy"). However, if you check the so-called "blogosphere", you can find many others who have posted well-reasoned criticisms of those (and other) essays.
Do you honestly not know what a Ph.D is, or are you just making a flabbergastingly disingenuous argument? He has a doctorate in CS, not philosophy, despite the ceremonial Latin name of the degree.
Instead of going on about a "flabbergastingly disingenuous argument" and blaming it on him not understanding that a Ph.D is not a philosophy degree (seriously? you think he doesn't know that?), it would have been much more productive, and correct, to assume he made the simple mistake of thinking pg has a Ph.D in philosophy, where in fact he has a B.A.
>the most clueless people in those areas I know are tenured professors.
>>Not about the subjects they research. That is the purpose of research.
They are cluless _especially_ about the subjects they research.
Most philosophy, political economy etc academics are beyond mediocre -- not only in advancing their field, but even in understanding the greats who contributed to it and rightfully presenting their knowledge.
Most real development comes from outsiders to this system -- people incombatible with academic life, even if they happen to work as professors (like Adorno or Wittgenstein did for example). And that was true already in the '40s and '50s, were academic discourse and research freedom in those fields was extremelly better compared to (market driven, low quality, paper churn) today's reality.
>The audience I would be targeting in a critique of the man (via a critique of his under-informed rants) are those who equate money with success and "money-making" with intelligence.
Oh, those poor fools. Because there are other, proven, definitions of success that everybody should ascribe to, right?
>I value my time too much to spend the amount required undoing that confusion
I read the linked comment, and some of your other comments on the topic on this thread. You took this into meta meta (yea, 2x) territory. Not the actual issues, not the person who wrote the linked essay (pg), but the people discussing the person discussing the issues.
Why would you do that?
And furthermore, how can you possibly feel you survive your own critique of "pseudo-intellectuals"? This is you [0] spouting amateur social science:
> Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle of positive freedom... to increase ones ability to do something on has to have more money. Therefore under capitalism there is always a fundamental tie between money and power.
Which, by the way, I have no problem with. A well-regarded logical fallacy is "appeal to authority", the contrapositive of which implies that we should judge arguments on their merit regardless of where they come from. So if people find some writing illuminating, attack the logic, not the writer, and not the readers.
It's "amateur social science" in the sense that it's an "off-hand comment". I could write a 5k word essay on this very small point and make it respectable, I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. If pg's observations were confined to small discussion threads on HN i wouldnt have much issue. But he presented the article I mentioned at Defcon. And his "Essays" section are presented as essays, not "off-hand comments".
> Why would you do that?
I'm responding to the questions raised in the most convenient way. I'm not going to give a serious critique of the many essays which require it to make a small point about his blase approach to serious academic topics. Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability.
>It's "amateur social science" in the sense that it's an "off-hand comment". I could write a 5k word essay on this very small point and make it respectable
Pics or it didn't happen.
>I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. (...) Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability.
>It isnt back tracking when at the time you made the comment you said it was an off-hand comment.
So, it isn't backtracking if you pre-emptively declare that you are backtracking. Right.
>It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.
Unfortunately the similarity doesn't hold, because Jon Stewart doesn't also say "I can do a much better news program than them", whereas you did said that you could write a respectable "5k word essay on this very small point" (and then didn't).
>Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience
As if the section of website where something is published matters one iota. It's not like having an essays section necessitates that you only put George Steiner quality material in it. Heck, Zed Shaw has an essays section on his website.
Also, you keep mentioning this conference audience a lot -- Sounds like sour grapes to me.
As if Defcon is some elite philosophical conference, and Paul Graham failed to keep to the level of previous speakers, like Plato or Heidegger.
I'm reacting to how he is treated and how he writes (playing up to this image of himself as a Heidegger). If we attribute his writing to a small time blogger who's writing on a few topics for fun then all of my critique looks insanely harsh.
You have to put what im saying in the context of how his work is read (as some kind of obviously briliant religious text).
It isnt back tracking when at the time you made the comment you said it was an off-hand comment.
It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.
Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience.
> I'm responding to the questions raised in the most convenient way.
Absolutely not the case; here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987798, the relevant comment that sparked this discussion), you are simply taking the conversation into new territory and insulting people.
> But jesus,
>> pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see.
>What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?
I come to HN for the interesting links and discussion, not for pg. You really aren't prosecuting your case very well. In all your comments, I can't see even one solid example supporting your arguments. All your arguments are ad hominem, I'm less than impressed!
Nothing he said is out of line with what a lot of classical liberals were saying throughout the 19th century and they were refining ideas that basically go back to Aristotle. If echoing their thoughts qualifies one to be a pseudo-intellectual then I'm going to guess in horror at what you consider to be genuine intellectual thought.
He isnt "echoing their thoughts" any one who has read Adam Smith systematically would know that the very first few lines of this are explicitly rejected by him.
They're childish research-lite versions of a 50s-style classical liberalism. It is much the same as Ayn Rand another amateur philosopher who knew very little on the topics she was writing about.
I dislike the "talking head" approach to serious topics. I dont think "giving your opinion" excuses a lack of serious research. Half-baked, under-informed opinion isnt truth or even the attempt to reach it; regardless of whether it is phrased with feigned objectivity. I wouldnt be too annoyed if he wasnt glorified by other $-eye'd idiots.
You obviously appreciate thoughtful investigation into serious topics, and that's commendable. But I think you're going a bit too far here. I think most people on HN enjoy pg's essays because they tend to be well written and logical. You're annoyed by some of the things he's written/spoken about, but that doesn't mean everyone who likes the guy is a "$-eye'd idiot". You're getting a negative reaction because you've gone totally off topic for the sole purpose of personally attacking people.
Spot on. I mostly agree with the content of mjburgess' comments, but I feel they're not really justified in this context. I occasionally read a comment here that seems to be fawning a bit too much over pg, and just shrug and move on. I don't get the impression that there's a serious personality cult thing going on, nor do I get the impression that pg actively cultivates such a thing.
pg writes candidly (but respectfully) from the perspective of someone who has been very successful in some areas, and has opinions on other areas. His world view shines through clearly and he doesn't seem to claim authority (or not too often, anyways) on the issues. In fact, I started enjoying his articles long before I was even aware of HN or of who he was. He just seemed like a bright dude with interesting articles to me.
I find everything he writes fascinating, and the closer to his expertise, the more 'value' I ascribe to his writing. But he isn't, nor does he seem to want to be, some kind of guru on all matters of life. He seems pretty honest.
The fact that he has a relatively small group of starry-eyed followers exhibiting cult-like behavior is not really his fault, but just a natural consequence of his fame/success. I don't think it warrants mjburgess' response.
But maybe I'm missing something or underestimating the degree of cult-like following going on?
The number of defenders coming out of the woodwork may perhaps suggest something. Whenever one writes something critical about pg or one of his articles you get many people making cultish appeals to authority, "what do you know, he's founded x/y/z" though this has nothing to do with his credibility on Q topic.
As I have said elsewhere you have to take my comments in the context of his fawning fans. As a guy "writing about shit", fine. But as a guy who plays up to this praise and receives it whatever he talks about, he aint anywhere near the intellectual ballpark for that.
I mean if he wrote an article about race and Cornell West wrote a critique, you'd have hundreds of people coming to defend pg on the back of the cultish Bay Area mentality.
I think most of HN agrees with pg because it gives them ideological cover.
The tech world is meritocratic, politically concentrating on wealth disparity over wealth creation is nonsense, Silicon Valley's problems are minor look elsewhere, etc. etc.
It's a very Panglossian outlook meant to make you feel good about yourself, generally.
And anyone who has done any serious reading of economics is well aware that Smith is hardly considered authoritative on any subject in economics. His only insights are almost word for word copies from Cantillon. I'm not the biggest fan of Rand but she's far from a joke. Her writings deserve to analyzed and taken as seriously as any other philosopher.
I don't know if PG is the right about everything he says or even most of what he says but he has inspired a lot of people to do things (largely for the good of society). A philosopher could hope for little more I suspect (not even suggesting PG would self-ascribe that term but I would ascribe it to him).
It's the opinion of any academic philosopher who has ever reviewed her. It also has nothing to do with her individualistic/libertarian view - Nozick, for example, who shares many of the same conclusions wrote a detailed review of her books in which he exposed her arguments and philosophical analysis as barely at an undergraduate level.
One of her greatest sins is her perpetually trashing people like Kant whilst having no idea what theyve said - because she makes many of the very same points. pg does this too.
Most of this is just bluster and argument from authority. The only substantive critique I see you making here is that pg's suggestion about decoupling wealth and power won't work because wealth is power. But your definition of "power" is "increased ability to do something", whereas pg's implicit definition of "power" was "the ability to corrupt important social processes that are supposed to treat everyone fairly".
So I don't see the force of your critique: pg and you can both be right. Wealthy people can have more ability to do things even if there are systems in place to prevent them from corrupting particular processes that are considered worthy of such protection.
I read your comment. And the article you were commenting on.
To be honest I found your comment shallow and mean spirited. You didn't present a true criticism of the article. You simply alleged that it was lame.
Ironically, whilst you may be correct that being an entrepreneur will not give a person insights into philosophy, he happens to have a degree in philosophy so perhaps that gives him some insight. More specifically, he has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University.
As for his achievements not giving him insight into 'anything else he writes on' that appears to me to be patently silly. A good deal of what he writes on is about entrepreneurship.
All in your criticism smacks to me of small minded jealousy. It's a familiar pattern - small petty people trying to boost their flagging self esteem by trying to tear down those who have achieved.
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 pseudo-intellectual not because he's posturing, but because you disagree with him. You don't address any of the actual claims in the article, but you do call them "silly".
Here's the problem with your response to that one quote you took out of context:
>"The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. So why not go after corruption? We don't need to prevent people from being rich if we can prevent wealth from translating into power."
>Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle of positive freedom... to increase ones ability to do something on has to have more money. Therefore under capitalism there is always a fundamental tie between money and power.
It's a matter of degree. Many countries which rank low on various measures of corruption are nonetheless capitalist (New Zealand, Sweden, etc). Many countries which are socialist nonetheless suffer nepotism of the form Graham described in his previous example (Argentina, Zimbabwe, etc). Sure, it's a "small off-hand point", but it's the only part of your comment which isn't simply an insult without any backing.
>One's ability to make money - to have one's skills suit the market; or to be lucky - has nothing to do with the value of your opinions or how frequently/prominently they should be offered to the rest of us.
This is not related to the essay you had claimed to respond to. It apparently represents drawback of inequality, but it is left up to the reader to magically grasp your intuition that this drawback exceeds the benefits Paul Graham claims may be derived by rewarding those who are successful in business endeavors.
One way to phrase this comment in a mature, reasonable way would be the following:
"I think that the lacuna between the abilities of rich and poor to communicate to a large audience makes the level of inequality Graham advocates in society unacceptable."
I might respond as follows: since people can only consume a finite amount of information, there will always be a situation where only a tiny minority have the ability to broadcast their views effectively. It is not clear to anyone how to identify in an objective manner who is most deserving of a wide audience, and so no society which has attempted to restrict this has ever succeeded in improving the quality of media reporting (but please provide examples!). In fact, essentially all societies which replace "communication by the rich" with "communication by the community-endowed-communicators" have even less reliable media than capitalist countries, consider e.g. Pravda. Thus your claim about inequality does not really provide much basis for an alternative, nor is it a problem specific to monetary inequality per se.
>None of his achievements as an entrepreneur give him insights into philosophy, political economy or anything else he writes on.
Actually, a great deal of the essay Inequality and Risk focuses on the motivations of entrepreneurs, which, considering that he has worked with dozens of them, one would expect him to be in a uniquely important position to address. He usually does a pretty good job sticking to what he does know in this and many other essays.
I downvoted you. In this and your subsequent comments you show little willingness to contribute to the discussion in any but a superficial way, and you provide little substantial argument or evidence to back up your repeated insults. Since you have been commenting on this thread (we can see your timestamps) for over an hour, one would expect it to be worth your time to write a comment that is worth reading.
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 the Law codifies wealth as power (eg. Citizens United) and in extremely Socialist societies it codifies the opposite. "Corruption" is perceived to be prevalent in societies (eg. italy) in which the public and private sphere are blended and the Law tracks this lack of clarity.
This is why its not sufficient to say "abuse of wealth" is corruption and we need to fix corruption. Because "corruption" is defined by and against the norms of particular societies and does not measure how much wealth distorts the political landscape. Americans do not see owning many news outlets as "corruption" for example, but it is arguably an abuse of wealth to gain political power and influence.
To treat his articles seriously and engage with them (I have written about his essay on Philosophy before) is to give them too much credit. If i wanted to contribute substantively to this debate I would go and find someone informed on the matter and reply to a essay they have written. To reply to pg is to educate him.
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.
The irony here is how you're able to leverage the publications[1] of PG to explain how the arguments in the parent-post are falling short in substantively criticizing the publications by PG.
But anyway, given that I actually pointed out I disagree with him in some aspects, how is that fawning?
The guy's got a history that reads better than any of us here could probably hope for and he writes some amazingly well thought out and well reasoned essays.
I'm don't idolize him, I think he's more intelligent than me.
Which I say about very, very few people.
I think it's absurd to call him a pseudo-intellectual.
Going by your personality as demonstrated here it seems you idolize intellect so when you "think he's more intelligent than" you you're going to put him on a pedastle. This may seem natural to you, but it comes across as fawning and misplaced.
To dig into word choice here a bit. You attack someone for placing a value on "intellect", but criticize pg for being a "pseudo-intellectual". One interpretation of this is that you regard an "intellectual" to be something other than person who effectively used their intellect. Instead, you seem to regard an intellectual as a person who expresses conformity with the majority view of American academia (i.e., a modern liberal who isn't fond of markets.)
If I list the accomplishments of the current Pope and explain how great I think he is doing and has always been doing and how he is just an awesome person, then I'm being cultish... even though I'm an atheist?
Your argument does not make any sense at all. It's a string of words ordered to seems to mean something rational, while it is in fact complete gibberish. Listing accomplishments paired with fawning and idolatry is ... exactly that. Reverence, not cultism.
I don't know you, Matt, and I certainly don't have a beef with Paul Graham - I have much respect for him. But, the specific components of your encomium do not recommend you. More specifically:
> That he started the seed funding movement?
Um, people were doing seed rounds before YC. For like, decades. They weren't blogging about it, because there was no HTTP and HTML and always-on broadband, but crikey, how the hell do you think half of silicon valley started?
> That he was blogging about hacking startups before people even really realised you could hack startups?
I don't even know what this means. Every true startup is fundamentally a hack; it's probing at the boundary of the risk frontier. (I'm not talking about those VC dice rolls on the flavor du jour, manifest as a bunch of brogrammers with zero understanding of the time value of their own risk profile.)
For "hack startups <v.>" to make sense, one would have to infer a new usage of the word "startups", namely, to refer to the pattern-matching herd mentality of tech VC dealmaking and The Great Game of Deal Flow. Partially driven by real opportunity and partially driven by the wealthy exodus from equity markets in a post-HFT world, the modern funding bubble has led to a difficult climate for seed-stage companies, and Paul & YC are merely taking advantage of that impedance mismatch between them and traditional VCs. But to imply that there is some fundamental new structure that Paul discovered with YC is absurd. Incubators & incubation is a decades-old concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_incubator
> Before lean startup existed?
The term "lean startup" started being popularized in 2011 by Eric Ries. This is less than three years ago. There are innumerable things older than this. Actually, there are few truly noteworthy things in the technology space that cannot be described as existing "before lean startup".
> That he's written his own dialect of LISP?
I think many LISPers have done this. Isn't the whole point of LISP to write your own dialect of it for each problem?
Anyways, I just wanted to point out that your list is not very impressive at all, and the fact that they impress you doesn't really reflect well on you.
1. He has extremely well-written essays on technology and business. Being able to think clearly and articulate cogently in this space is a rare skill, and I have deep respect for those who possess it. Joel Spolsky (who I also respect) is much more verbose than PG. Few tech writers achieve the level clarity of expression that Paul does in his writing, and he achieves it while writing about difficult and subtle things.
2. He has mentored a great many startups. Granted, he gets his pound of equity for cheap cheap but nonetheless this devotion so the cause of helping other geeks start companies is very admirable. Note that this is not the same thing as what the parent poster claimed: "hacking startups" and "starting the seed funding movement".
Also, building HackerNews is a very cool badge of honor but frankly it is nowhere near as sophisticated as Reddit (c'mon, "Unknown or Expired link" and hellbanning?). The fact that there is a driving function behind pageviews to it makes it a go-to place in the tech world, but the technology and codebase of HN itself is not anything terribly impressive.
It's interesting how people are attacking you for using 'pseudo-intellectual', while completely disregarding the 'cult-like reverence' bit. Your question is just as damning without the 'pseudo-intellectual' adjective, yet they are trying to change that to 'intellectual'.
This is a nice demonstration of 'framing': you frame pg as not deserving cult-like reverence because of his 'pseudo-intellectuality' and people respond by explaining how he is a true intellectual. Except that the arguments they give for that assertion are wrong, because that is not the assertion for which they have arguments. Their arguments actually explain why pg is revered and they are now contorted to be arguments that seem to be meant to explain why is he is cult-like revered for his intellectuality.
The result is that it seem like people are tacitly acknowledging the 'cult-like reverence' and are giving completely ridiculous arguments in support. The ridiculousness of those arguments is pointed out and we get into pointless discussions about what things mean, completely losing sight of the original point.
The bottom line is: pg is revered and reasons for that reverence are given. There is nothing cult-like about the reverence and the pseudo-intellectual part of his writings (I would use another word to describe that quality of the writings, but that is beyond my current argument), are not the reason for the reverence.
"pseudo" was a little strong. But if you have any serious familiarity with his "off-topic" rants, youll see he writes about issues glibly and with a severe lack of information. I dont mind "academic journalism", I do it a lot myself: write on difficult topics for a lay audience and maybe sacrifice a little accurasy a long the way. I think pg likes be seen making points more than he wants further understanding/truth/etc.
"The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. So why not go after corruption? We don't need to prevent people from being rich if we can prevent wealth from translating into power."
Umm... how about in a capitalist society money is the vehicle of positive freedom... to increase ones ability to do something on has to have more money. Therefore under capitalism there is always a fundamental tie between money and power.
That's a small off-hand point.
But if you have any serious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques of capitalism, wealth and power that whole article will just seem silly.
I'm sure he means well. But it takes a certain kind of "pseudo"-something to think that this kinda hackney "thought-lite" material should be delivered at a major conference (Defcon 2005). If i were asked, on the back of my reputation, to speak on this, I would at least spend a week watching/reading/etc. as much as I can in the area.
>But if you have any serious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques of capitalism, wealth and power that whole article will just seem silly.
If you have any "erious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques" you'd know that ALL articles and books will just appear silly in isolation. Especially since most of the important critics are vehemently opposed to the ideas of other important critics.
The role of an isolated piece of writing on some topic is not to provide a summary of the ideas ("the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques") on the topic -- that's just what you do for a bad academic paper.
Its role is to showcase the ideas of the author in a clear light and within his frame of thinking.
>But it takes a certain kind of "pseudo"-something to think that this kinda hackney "thought-lite" material should be delivered at a major conference (Defcon 2005).
Then again, it also takes a certain kind of pseudo-something to value Defcon as a venue for intellectual thought, as opposed to a mostly technical conference and get-together.
Preface: Occasionally, I disagree with pg too. But I respect him since I find most of his essays insightful and I appreciate the effortless precision of his writing style. I.e. too many bloggers beat around the bush and rarely attack the crux of their topic directly, let alone adequately support their thesis.
That said, I'm one of those who "don't see the problem". I reread his essay about inequality. I tried to imagine your thought process. I agree that money, freedom, and power are joined at the hip. I don't see how this contradicts pg's quote.
Here's how I understand things. Corruption implies power by definition. But does power necessarily imply corruption? Lord Acton believed power consistently causes corruption in practice. But it doesn't have to be that way. I think we can agree on this.
Here's where I imagine our disagreement lies (best guess, low confidence). Corruption connotates "immoral behavior". But pg's examples indicate (to me) that he wanted to address not immoral behavior per se, but the double standard society imposes between the privileged and the less fortunate.
This distinction frames the discussion in a more actionable way. Like you said, power enables people to do what they want... which isn't always moral (or fair [1]). It's inevitable. So society won't be able to prevent this consistently, lest reality resemble Minority Report. But one thing society can prevent is punishing offenders according to a double standard. Another thing society can prevent is lack of transparency. I imagine either would decrease corruption while allowing the privileged to enjoy their power (money) in more socially acceptable ways.
Personally, I'm especially upset with the U.S. lobby system. In theory, democracy is supposed to afford one vote per capita. In practice, the lobby system allows the powerful to undermine this principle.
I didn't read the essay in question, but from your quote it sounds like you are deliberately misinterpreting his point. He is talking about political power.
Political power is one form of power; political action are one kind of action. The point I made encompassed them. For example "the ability to be heard" increases with wealth: having your opinion be prominent in a democratic society is politically powerful and the more money you have the more you are able to finance outlets for your views.
One's ability to make money - to have one's skills suit the market; or to be lucky - has nothing to do with the value of your opinions or how frequently/prominently they should be offered to the rest of us.
pg doesn't even begin to engage in anything like this critique of inequality. I dont really think he knows anything about why serious academic researchers and writers have seen inequality as a serious problem for democractic societies. Because he hasnt spent the time to find out.
I do happen to have such serious reading and I don't find the whole article just silly. I may agree with some parts more than others but it isn't idiotic. He's exploring an important issue, wealth distribution and economic growth and outlining some of his ideas on the topic.
btw WTF is a 'vehicle of positive freedom?' This is not a term of art in any serious social science or philosophy that I'm aware of but apparently it is important to your theory of money and power in a capitalist society. A theory, incidentally, which you don't take the trouble to outline. You simply state that 'under capitalism there is...' It is indeed a small off-hand (and unclear) point.
And why the heck shouldn't he be able to give a talk like this at a tech conference? Defcon isn't an academic conference. Unlace your girdle and give yourself a break from your half digested pomposity. :)
I agree with you that reducing inequality is important in order to correct imbalances of political power. But if that is just an off-hand point, then what is your actual point? You said "if you have any serious reading on the last two hundred years of economic, political and sociological critiques of capitalism, wealth and power that whole article will just seem silly." Are you going to give us anything to go on there, or just assume no one will speak up for fear of appearing equally gauche as pg?
I haven't read the submission yet, neither am I fully up to speed on the topic, but I'm going to go all meta on you and ask what a pseudo-intellectual is?
There are two definitions. The first describes one who believes himself to be both intelligent and thoughtful, but fails to recognize his deficiency in at least one of those two habits. The second describes one who is both intelligent and thoughtful, from the perspective of one who fails to recognize his deficiency in at least one of those two traits.
Determining which definition is in use, in a given case, is not always straightforward.
Most of the reverence for this guy (regardless of whether you find it pseudo-intellectual or not) can probably be explained by the fact that Paul Graham is a co-founder of Y Combinator, and you're on ycombinator.com.
Go change how an entire industry works, help found more successful startups than you can count on your fingers, pile up few billions while you are also coding a prime destination on web for hackers - and then you too would get a cult-like reverence for your pseudo-intellect.
He writes for hackers, not for Nature, his articles take a week, not a year. People like to read his perspective and he's got some street cred. Why does it bother you so much if he has a following? So do sportspeople, businesspeople, graffiti artists. That's ok. It takes very little from your life. Personally I'm glad he takes the time.
If you have some sort of actual experience in Philosophy and enter an opinion on a subject relating to Philosophy, that is an intellectual argument. If you are an entrepreneur with no training in Philosophy and enter an opinion on a subject relating to Philosophy that is a pseudo-intellectual argument. Pretty simple really.
Note: I don't think that he actually is a pseudo-intellectual, just giving you the example you were asking for.
The people at the bar down the street are not engaging in pseudo-intellectual discussion when they discuss an instance of the current foreign policy that was in the news that day, even though they know nothing about political science and the art of foreign policy. Your definition includes that and is thus just silly.
Just entering an opinion on a subject you don't know 'enough' about is not pseudo-intellectualism. Pseudo-intellectualism is making it seem like you have significantly more intelligence on a subject than most other persons or have put significantly more thought into it, often connecting a subject to other subjects, and are thus qualified to make more informed comments on these subjects. You can lend more credence to your comments by using the correct academic vocabulary, but can be caught as a pseudo-intellectual by using it in the wrong way.
Ignoring the fact that it was pointed out elsewhere in the comments that pg has a BA in Philosophy (apparently confirmed by wikipedia), this assumes that someone without training has nothing worthwhile to contribute[1]. While that may end up being true in the majority of cases, I don't think it's valid to apply the term to individuals just because they don't have credentials, in the absence of other evidence. I do like Merriam Webster's definition[2].
1: I'm not trying to argue with you. You plainly qualified it as a clarification, not a position. I just think your definition falls short in some respects, so thought I would clarify your clarification. :)
Hm. So you're saying that the distinction betwen "intellectual arguments" and "psuedo-intellectual arguments" is the experience and/or training of the arguer? Isn't it possible for an experienced, trained philosopher to make psuedo-intellectal arguments? Isn't it possible for an inexperienced, untrained person to make a valid argument?
I would think that the validity of the argument is what matters!
Seriously, wtf. What does this even mean when talking about a person, and not a particular essay? Do you honestly not think that Paul Graham embodies a life of the intellect?
Can we lay off the cheesy deification of PG? He was called a sexist, and he responded well. He is not a paragon of society, he is simply someone who is very good at tech and making money. And he is probably a good person too, but come on, this is just silly.
On a second note I'm also curious as to what exactly you're referring to when you say he has the credibility that should make us know that he isn't sexist. I'm not saying he is sexist, I'm just saying that all of his credibility lies in making good business decisions, not gender relations.
"On a second note I'm also curious as to what exactly you're referring to when you say he has the credibility that should make us know that he isn't sexist. I'm not saying he is sexist, I'm just saying that all of his credibility lies in making good business decisions, not gender relations."
I agree. This willful blindness to bias and prejudice because smart people are not biased or prejudiced prevents us from examining our thoughts and behavior.
Let's not praise Paul Graham just yet, based solely on his response. The Information's founder Jessica Lessin offered comments like: "We reviewed the transcript again and shared it with Paul. We stand behind our excerpting and editing for clarity. We continue to believe that the quote is in its proper context. Thanks for checking in." (http://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham-says-women-havent-be...)
More importantly, it's not about some beloved leader besmirched by a drive-by interview. The focus is best on YC's track record — and what it'll do to fix it — not a quote/misquote.
Look you are getting credibility and trust confused with respect and other things.
Personally I don't trust anyone, I've been burned too many times. Yeah that makes me paranoid, but it comes from too many bad professional relationships were I was backstabbed by the other person to further their career goals. I must state that this does not happen in every organization, and that there are a few people I would trust if they showed some good faith and helped me out with things. But since nobody I know wants to help me out, and once I reached the age of 40 I get old I am too old for this industry.
But PG is worthy of my respect, he has paid his dues in this industry, he knows what he is talking about and has experience, he hasn't backstabbed anyone that I know of so he has credibility, yes he is one of the few that I would trust had he helped me out in some way.
Look there is a lot of jealousy in the industry for experienced people. We get called nerds, geeks, dorks, etc by all of the people in other industries. They claim they know how to use a computer, and sure maybe use a Wordprocessor and write on a blog using Wordpress, but every once in a while one of them gets a bad case of jealousy that 'hackers' or 'IT workers' know more than they do, so they lash out and do a hatchet job on someone who got some attention in the media. This is basically politics, and how one person can backstab another.
I've had my words taken out of context a lot as well. It is but just one way to backstab someone. It is not just the Internet trolls who do it but the news media and these people writing blogs that hate the startup community.
In street terms, these people are 'haters' if I used that term correctly.
Do you give people who you respect the benefit of the doubt? By that, I mean that if they say something that could be interpreted charitably or uncharitably, do you tend to tentatively assume that they meant it the charitable way?
People I respect I give the benefit of the doubt and interpret it as charitable, but I still have to verify what they say by checking other sources.
People I don't respect, I assume they are lying to screw with me and in 90% of the cases when I try to verify what they are claiming is true, ends up being untrue. The other 10% of the time I had a mistake and had misjudged them.
I have a respect for the Hacker community here, because most people are honest about their feelings and speak from experience and cite sources and stuff.
On Facebook there was this guy on a friend's group who asked me to prove what I was saying, so I cited seven peer reviewed sources. He said he didn't need to prove anything he said was true and that I was wrong for simply disagreeing with him. He then went into a rage and sent me threats via private message. I then blocked him and reported him for abusive behavior, he then accused my friend of censoring the posts to hide the truth because when I blocked him all of my comments vanished from his view. My friend explained to him that he had been blocked by me and that he could no longer see the comments of a user who blocked him. He still refused to believe it. This guy claimed to be a programmer, had no clue how math and science worked, couldn't even figure out how the block feature of Facebook works. Guys like him I have no respect for.
As you observe yourself, PG's credibility didn't work in this case; I'm not sure it ever does.
For example, how does the non-credibility of the press work? We all know from experience that the actual business of the press in general is to produce catchy headlines based on a forced interpretation of the "facts" (or based on no facts at all).
And yet, we're always ready to trust an article and get all upset as if the press was doing its theoretical job of uncovering some hidden truth (last sentence of PG's post: "even now I'm still fooled occasionally.")
Why is that? Why does the press still have any credibility left?
Well, pg has earned our trust and deserved the benefit of the doubt when something so off kilter as this is attributed to him. He did not get it here, and that is a sad testament to how crowd-inspired frenzies can bend our perceptions in such faulty ways. Let us only hope that we can learn some good lessons from this.
pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see. Indeed, the mob looks pretty much like an ass at this point and kudos to pg for his more-than-able defense. Very lawyer-like, in a way, but far more classy.