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The lesson from this is don't drink anyone's kool aid consciously. PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"; it's t
by cryoshon 11y ago
The lesson from this is don't drink anyone's kool aid consciously. PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"; it's the Silicon Valley cargo cult, and should be compensated against in the mind of the reader. Always be brutally critical of applying the question of qui bono-- always, no exceptions, ever.
PG has little incentive to explicitly qualify ideas that are his foundation (regarding the prerequisites for the above), and frankly it'd kind of break up the nice flow his pieces have anyway if he did. His target audience doesn't want to be told that they started life on second base, and honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg.
- escape_goat 11y ago> taking you down a peg. Like, back to first base, say?
- modfodder 11y agoOr at the back of the rotation, maybe even playing for the farm team rather than the Show.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kelukelugames 11y ago>honestly it's quite annoying to have someone tell you so with the intention of taking you down a peg. This is why a lot of HNers flag articles about privilege, sexism, etc.
- patzerhacker 11y agoPrivilege is just secular "original sin".
- thuuuomas 11y agoI bet that line goes over well at the golf course.
- gtremper 11y agoBut claiming someone has privilege isn't a value judgement on the person, or a sin. Its not claiming they did anything wrong, or that its their fault. I'm not sure why people are so offended when others point out their privilege. Saying someone has privilege is just pointing out the state of the world, it isn't a judgment. People without food allergies have privilege in that they don't have to constantly worry whether what they eat will kill them. The people with privilege often just don't have to think about or deal with stuff that those without do.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- patzerhacker 11y ago>But claiming someone has privilege isn't a value judgement on the person, or a sin...Saying someone has privilege is just pointing out the state of the world, it isn't a judgment. That is exactly the same argument that bigots use when they talk about {minorities, poor people, immigrants, LGBT people}. "That person fits into category X, and everyone in category X shares some characteristic Y because they're in that category. I'm just saying that because it's true!" It doesn't matter who that generalization is made about, whether they're the dominant group in society or not. It's still a terrible generalization and an intellectually lazy argument and in and of itself carries a judgement. If you grant that something like "white privilege" or "male privilege" exists (and most people that buy into the concept do) then by that logic a homeless, illiterate white man has more privilege than a black woman millionaire CEO. >People without food allergies have privilege in that they don't have to constantly worry whether what they eat will kill them. That's absolute nonsense as well. There exist people without food allergies that have other conditions where they constantly have to worry about what they eat, diabetes being an example. So check your cis-gylcemic privilege you fascist!/s Do you see how ridiculous and divisive that sounds?
- 11y ago
- asanagi 11y agoMaybe it's because the website is called "Hacker News" and not "Gender Ideologue News".
- nostrebored 11y agoDamn man, people really wanted to prove your point.
- kelukelugames 11y agoWhat do you mean?
- nostrebored 11y agoJust the two other replies to your comment seemed to be pretty typical HN posts regarding sexism/privilege etc.
- larrys 11y ago"PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders"" To be sure (in the spirt of NY Times "to be sure" statements) [1] PG (who went to Harvard of course as everyone knows) and others always point out the obligatory risks but tend to do so in a way that I think most people perhaps ignore. More or less a "sure it's risky but" as opposed to "you'd be foolish however there's always a small small chance that..." [1] That is where they (and others in the media) counter something they are saying with the other point of view typically buried 3 quarters down the page as a qualifier.
- Hydraulix989 11y agoPG also went to a no-name public high school at a blue collar steel town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.