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Paul Graham Is Still Asking to Be Eaten

• auvrw 11y ago
  idk a/b the whole issue. didn't read the medium post. when PG referred to a quote by Stieglitz as "pie in the sky" thinking, tho, I thought, "maybe out of his depth"
• jdminhbg 11y ago
  This is barely literate invective. It does not belong here. That it's generating enough upvotes to get to the front page of HN is a symptom of increasing politicization that's really degrading the quality of submissions.
  • objclxt 11y ago
    > is a symptom of increasing politicization that's really degrading the quality of submissions Yes, how strange it is that when PG posts a particularly inflammatory piece about income inequality people might want to respond to it.
    • Natsu 11y ago
      A proper response might be worth reading, but this is a bunch of insults attacking a poorly-constructed strawman made out of words stuffed into PG's mouth.
      • bmer 11y ago
        I'd like to offer a counterpoint to those who believe that this is simply "nonsense invective". I think the submission is worded like the "everyman" talking, but it makes all the right counter-points. * venture capitalism != democracy * venture capitalism = the few get to decide what is valuable * venture capitalism does not create wealth because existing wealth is used to legitimize "new wealth" * venture capitalism cannot be used as the solution for everything, because in its existing form, it already undervalues things we would all care for (teachers, nurses, etc.) and overvalues things we all understand as entertainment (Candy Crush Saga) * Paul Graham has written some very weird things -- his article then, taken holistically with the background of his other opinions, is scary Pretty well written, I'd say. I am curious to know what words were stuffed into PG's golden mouth.
        • Natsu 11y ago
          The parts claiming that PG hates the "poors" would be one example of stuffing words into his mouth. I have difficulty locating any of the points you mentioned in the article itself. EDIT: Here's the false "distillation" of PG's essay put into quotes (i.e. stuffed into PG's mouth): "I can distill the essence of the entire argument to: “Don’t hate the player, but don’t hate the game either. Hate yourselves, stupid poors, for not getting VC funding to start a company.”" EDIT 2: To reply more fully, point-by-point: * There may be some kind of actual point there in that one needs to have currency in order to 'vote' for startups. I think the point of calling it democratic is that people choose what they want rather than having it chosen for them. * The few are becoming many with things like Kickstarter allowing just anyone to help bring things to reality, though you may have some point in that the amount of money you can bring to bear on the problem is at issue. * "venture capitalism does not create wealth because existing wealth is used to legitimize "new wealth"" - I don't even know what you think "wealth" is, but I'm guessing your idea of it is tied up in currency (dollars, Euros, whatever). If we didn't have, say, a cure for Malaria and a startup brings us that, it's new wealth. This is separate from the amount of currency that may exist in the world or how it may flow as a result of this. If we give everyone $1,000,000 in currency, it doesn't change the amount of actual things we have that could be buyable like, say, cars, though people might be less willing to sell them for particular amounts of currency due to inflation. So this point is completely incoherent as the two sides of it are causally unrelated and it seems not to understand the use of 'wealth' as an economic term. * "venture capitalism cannot be used as the solution for everything" - A strawman, as nothing is given to show that PG has actually claimed that. Instead it gives us this: "The solution to poverty is as transparent as starting Google, you stupid poors. Come on! Figure Google 2 out already, you idiots." * "Paul Graham has written some very weird things -- his article then, taken holistically with the background of his other opinions, is scary" - Fear is the "mind killer" and its effects can be seen in this piece.
    • jdminhbg 11y ago
      People can feel free to respond to posts on PG's personal blog however they like, but their incoherent nonsense can stay on Medium where it belongs.
  • stevehiehn 11y ago
    I think it very much belongs here. I would agree that it has an aggressive tone but not of a thoughtless insulting nature. I think challenging others views is just what smart people do. Its especially healthy to challenge cultural icons that may have options accepted as truth simply because of their impressive reputation.
  • kdazzle 11y ago
    This article says that PG's article is barely literate invective. So if PG's belongs here, this one might as well be here, too. Otherwise it's a bit of a double-standard.
• goodcanadian 11y ago
  Wow. I was not impressed by PGs essay. He had some points, but seemed to be looking at the issue from a very narrow point of view. I gave it a 'C.' I would love to see a high quality criticism. But this? I don't know if this has any points; I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs in. As another comment put it, "barely literate invective."
  • notahacker 11y ago
    I think a comment at the bottom of the linked article puts it perfectly: "this sounds like two straw men having a fight"
    • flinty 11y ago
      straw-person /s
  • kelvin0 11y ago
    My thought also. I've read many of his essays which I enjoyed very much, mostly the more technical-centric ones. But reading this essay gave me the same creeping feeling I had when I read Atlas Shrugged ... (cover to cover!). There is a certain lacking of substance and nuance which paints the world in a very coarse categories and leaves no place for anything in between. Bottom line, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. In fact entrepeneurs NEED non-entrepreneurs (called employees). Some employees are hard working, creative, innovative people who crave something else than 'winning' at the 'free-market' game ...
  • j-reynolds 11y ago
    I definitely don't think it added to the dialogue. If she disagrees, she seems to miss the overall point of PG's essay altogether.
  • petra 11y ago
    I suspect that some of the insults inside this article are because the author didn't have such big reach like PG , and those might be a way to achieve that. But a few of the main points are correct - for example, the way that silicon value measures value doesn't have a lot to do with social value.
• danso 11y ago
  Um...how did this get upvoted so much? I mean, it's sometimes fun to watch the popcorn fly, but this was kind of tepid...I stopped at the explanation of what a VC-funded startup is. Too much telling, not enough showing (I didn't read pg's essay). However, I was surprised that the author was offered $500 from a friend to write a post on Medium. Is writing-as-a-career back in style? I'm all for that.
  • tipiirai 11y ago
    Because it was a valid response and many liked it, including me.
• vasilipupkin 11y ago
  I think it's possible to vehemently disagree ( as I do ) with Paul Graham on his inequality thesis, and still be logical and coherent. This article is neither. It's patent nonsense.
  • genericresponse 11y ago
    I actually think it's quite well written. It's not out there to dispute PG's central point. It's written to dispute the idea that Silicon Valley's engineering/business/vc minds have demonstrated skill at building anything more than an economically better future for themselves and those within the system. If it achieves that it seeks to invalidate PG's expertise. (From which much of his authority is derived. A concept familiar to Holly Wood as she is a sociologist.) It also criticizes his breadth of knowledge in the subject area, something an academic would be in a position to comment on. (I'd love to hear from an economist or another social scientist on whether PG's suppositions reflect the broader literature.) Getting back to the article's main attack- It does so by making a logical, if emotion filled, attack. Venture capitalism is still capitalism. Participants work to, primarily, their own economic benefit rather than the benefit of society. (Yes, it's the worst system except for all the rest, but it still doesn't make the most long term beneficial allocations. See: poor funding for fundamental science research.) Moreover the article criticizes PG (citing his lack of perspective) for promoting a "bootstraps" ideology. It tries to illustrate that the ideology is flawed in two ways: 1. The people who could most benefit don't necessarily have the personal capital (time, knowledge, etc.) to effectively run a startup. 2. It implies that there is only so much problem space that can be effectively addressed at any given time. This is written in the style of a qualitative sociology monograph. I find it quite compelling, however, I'm not surprised that the crowd here doesn't share my view.
    • vasilipupkin 11y ago
      Plenty of paragraphs that are utter nonsense. Example: "First of all, over 95% of startups fail. Every venture capitalist knows this. Those pesky things, for the most part, just eat money and more often than not actually destroy wealth. But the second reason why you should not allow yourself to think that startups create wealth is because of how they are funded." This is nonsense that displays utter lack of understanding of startups, venture capital, economics, finance. To refute it, I would have to start with an Econ 101 lecture, followed by a lecture on basic statistics and probability distributions. In short, it's just incoherent nonsense
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• transitorykris 11y ago
  The post is a great example of how the term "value" is misunderstood. Value in the context of startups (Lean's definition) is not the same value when I talk about a nurse's or school teacher's work. The distinction is subtle, and when the subtly is missed can lead to anger because it feels as though a kind of value is being devalued.
  • foolrush 11y ago
    The writer completely understands this issue and is why she is reframing it. This is part of the thesis, the manner in which capital forwarded by VCs into startups, shape this dysfunction.
    • braythwayt 11y ago
      Yes she perfectly understands the difference. The problem she is attacking is that in Silicon Valley, people pave over the difference and act as if creating wealth is in and of itself creating both kinds of value.
      • tmercer 11y ago
        Does she have a source for this? Because PG's essay never made that claim, which is why people are accusing her of strawmanning.
• steinsgate 11y ago
  Given two technically and aesthetically identical products A and B, if A manages to get significantly more funding, better management and outreach, it will probably sell more. We would say that the market thinks that A is more valuable. But A and B are identical products, so where is the difference in value coming from? I think funding, management and outreach all depend on human resources behind the product, most importantly, the team of founders. They have to get the funding, manage the company and communicate well to customers. If the founders are "high value", they can imbibe the product with some of this "value". A system of computing values, which includes this "human value" is problematic. In this system, the value of the Nazi philosophy, let's say, would depend on the person propagating it. A charismatic leader like Hitler brainwashed a lot of people into believing its legitimacy, thereby increasing the value of the philosophy. The same philosophy, in the hands of someone else, might not have gained any foothold. When we talk about equal opportunity, we talk about resources like money. But human resource can also play a huge impact in determining the value of a product. I do not know what the definition of equal opportunity in the context of "human value" should be. It is clear that a certain class of people possess more "human value" than others, and there is an inequality because of this. The question is : where does this value/inequality arise from? And should society continue including this in the computation of value, or should we construct rules where this value is suppressed? In summary, the market is not a detached entity judging value, but it can be influenced by "high value" people to go in a certain direction.
  • Natsu 11y ago
    Another name for that "human value" you discuss would be "influence." I don't know of any system immune to that. Some proposals, like the one in China to have a "social currency" system (i.e. the government gives you money for promoting their ideals) seem more likely to promote the value of influence rather than decreasing it so I'm not even sure if there's an agreement over whether it's good or bad. Honestly, I suspect it depends on the positions of the person with it: that is, people will be unhappy when people they don't agree with have a lot of influence and happy when people they do agree with have a lot of influence.
    • steinsgate 11y ago
• giaour 11y ago
  While I can't say this is the best written essay I've ever read, I do find it telling that most of the commenters would rather dismiss the piece as "barely literate invective" than engage with the arguments it advances. If you don't have anything to contribute beyond an angry critique of the author's writing style, then maybe you should sit the discussion out.
  • goodcanadian 11y ago
    Fair point, I suppose. However, I have trouble engaging with the arguments when I can't even read far enough to figure out what they are. The article starts out by calling PG names and then throwing up straw men. It almost seems designed to piss me off enough to stop reading . . . and that was my point.
• melted 11y ago
  All I can say is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLiu7B25G4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLiu7B25G4o. Please stop blogging. Thanks.