4 ms·

It's 'Hacker News', not 'Objectivist News'.

ctdonath 11y ago
It's a branch of Y-Combinator, funding startups with the expectations of high rewards for high risk & effort without strangers confiscating some 75% of profits. It's the discussion forum for real-world objectivism in action.
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  What "high risk"? Y-Combinator invests a very small amount of money from extremely wealthy people. It's "high risk" in the same way your buying a lotto ticket might be termed "high risk".
  - nightski 11y ago
    High risk in the sense that companies founded by Y-Combinator are focused on raising a lot of capital to feed extremely fast growth. This is not slow healthy growth. From Y-combinator's perspective they are fine since a.) initial investment is low and b.) extreme diversification. But the companies themselves can be very volatile and risky.
    - braythwayt 11y ago
      However, although their are obviously exceptions, YCombinator typically invests in founders who don’t have a ton of financial skin in the game. Which founders have kids that won’t eat if the company fails? If you aren’t looking at being thrown out of the family home, you aren’t really taking on a huge amount of risk. The typical thing at stake for most founders is opportunity cost: “With my grades and experience, I could have been making $200,000 - $300,000 consulting or at BigCo, but I chose to found a startup instead."
- talideon 11y ago
  Holy crap! I only wrote that half-jokingly, not expecting that you were took objectivism seriously, but you do! I don't take Rand's philosophy seriously for much the same reason I don't take postmodernism as a whole seriously: the Continental approach (which she employed) lacks any real rigour[1]. Great for fiction, but not so good for being useful. As well as that, we objectively (see what I did there!) know that some of her important points (such as on causation, determinism, and free-will) are bunk, and it's not as if she was even particularly consistent on them anyway. The best I can say to you is to go read Hume and come back to me: he was a much better philosopher than Rand, and had much more interesting and useful things to say about the world. Alternatively, maybe try to broaden your horizons with the Rationally Speaking Podcast (http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/ http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/). But if you don't want to, that's fine: you do you. [1] Even with the continental school philosophers I do take at least a little more seriously, such as Nietzsche and Camus, it's more on the level of 'oh, that's an interesting idea', 'hmm... that's an interesting line of though', and 'oh, that's an interesting story' rather than anything seriously useful. And Rand doesn't even get to that level. I'm totally OK with her loathing Kant[2] and thinking Marxism sucks, but she doesn't offer much else of any depth, which, I guess, at least nothing that's been published. [2] My personal opinion of Kant is that he was a stick-in-the-mud prude, and that deontological arguments, such as those Kant made, fall down when exposed to the real world, even though deontology itself can be a useful tool.
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    Rand makes for a convenient & well-known reference when making a brief point on a casual discussion board. I have a similar reaction to many of the "soak the rich" types posting on this thread: I don't expect they take Bernie & Bolshevism seriously but...they do!
    - talideon 11y ago
      If Rand is the best reference, then I'm not sure those boards are all that well worth taking part in. Sanders isn't a Maxist/Marxian by a long shot. He might describe himself as a democratic socialist, but he's really a social democrat with much more in common with the aims of the Fabian Society than anything else: his ideas are pretty much those of any European social democratic party (such as the British Labour party, Dutch PvdA and GroenLinks, German SPD, French Parti socialiste), and whatever you might somehow think, none of those parties are hives of Bolshevism. Also, whatever about the 'soak the rich' thing (which I haven't seen much evidence for), only one commenter seems to take Marxian though seriously here, and even they said that he's doing himself a disservice by using the label 'democratic socialist'[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351

It's a branch of Y-Combinator, funding startups with the expectations of high rewards for high risk & effort without strangers confiscating some 75% of profits. It's the discussion forum for real-world objectivism in action.

ForHackernews 11y ago
What "high risk"? Y-Combinator invests a very small amount of money from extremely wealthy people. It's "high risk" in the same way your buying a lotto ticket might be termed "high risk".
- nightski 11y ago
  High risk in the sense that companies founded by Y-Combinator are focused on raising a lot of capital to feed extremely fast growth. This is not slow healthy growth. From Y-combinator's perspective they are fine since a.) initial investment is low and b.) extreme diversification. But the companies themselves can be very volatile and risky.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    However, although their are obviously exceptions, YCombinator typically invests in founders who don’t have a ton of financial skin in the game. Which founders have kids that won’t eat if the company fails? If you aren’t looking at being thrown out of the family home, you aren’t really taking on a huge amount of risk. The typical thing at stake for most founders is opportunity cost: “With my grades and experience, I could have been making $200,000 - $300,000 consulting or at BigCo, but I chose to found a startup instead."
talideon 11y ago
Holy crap! I only wrote that half-jokingly, not expecting that you were took objectivism seriously, but you do! I don't take Rand's philosophy seriously for much the same reason I don't take postmodernism as a whole seriously: the Continental approach (which she employed) lacks any real rigour[1]. Great for fiction, but not so good for being useful. As well as that, we objectively (see what I did there!) know that some of her important points (such as on causation, determinism, and free-will) are bunk, and it's not as if she was even particularly consistent on them anyway. The best I can say to you is to go read Hume and come back to me: he was a much better philosopher than Rand, and had much more interesting and useful things to say about the world. Alternatively, maybe try to broaden your horizons with the Rationally Speaking Podcast (http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/ http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/). But if you don't want to, that's fine: you do you. [1] Even with the continental school philosophers I do take at least a little more seriously, such as Nietzsche and Camus, it's more on the level of 'oh, that's an interesting idea', 'hmm... that's an interesting line of though', and 'oh, that's an interesting story' rather than anything seriously useful. And Rand doesn't even get to that level. I'm totally OK with her loathing Kant[2] and thinking Marxism sucks, but she doesn't offer much else of any depth, which, I guess, at least nothing that's been published. [2] My personal opinion of Kant is that he was a stick-in-the-mud prude, and that deontological arguments, such as those Kant made, fall down when exposed to the real world, even though deontology itself can be a useful tool.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Rand makes for a convenient & well-known reference when making a brief point on a casual discussion board. I have a similar reaction to many of the "soak the rich" types posting on this thread: I don't expect they take Bernie & Bolshevism seriously but...they do!
  - talideon 11y ago
    If Rand is the best reference, then I'm not sure those boards are all that well worth taking part in. Sanders isn't a Maxist/Marxian by a long shot. He might describe himself as a democratic socialist, but he's really a social democrat with much more in common with the aims of the Fabian Society than anything else: his ideas are pretty much those of any European social democratic party (such as the British Labour party, Dutch PvdA and GroenLinks, German SPD, French Parti socialiste), and whatever you might somehow think, none of those parties are hives of Bolshevism. Also, whatever about the 'soak the rich' thing (which I haven't seen much evidence for), only one commenter seems to take Marxian though seriously here, and even they said that he's doing himself a disservice by using the label 'democratic socialist'[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11066351