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PG wants to make startups/hackers surpass earth-shattering thinkers, by considering the differences in the existential risks taken by each. Newton was betting (
by balsam 10y ago
PG wants to make startups/hackers surpass earth-shattering thinkers, by considering the differences in the existential risks taken by each. Newton was betting (in PG's interpretation) that he would not go crazy or be seen as crazy. The existential risk for thinkers. Now to make scummy => crazy, where "=>" can also mean "greater or equals to".
- spraak 10y agoUsually I see "greater or equals to" written as >= Anyways, why shouldn't founders/hackers reach for such heights? But if I didn't know Paul Graham's background, I wouldn't assume that's what this essay infers. Rather, the essay doesn't say anything directly about startups. I'm curious what's scummy about them to you?
- balsam 10y agoI had no time to write a full-fledged comment but people here took offense. Shrugs. I meant that the existential risk for founders is that of looking or being scummy. The precise, non-offensive definition of the sense of "scummy" that I intended, which unfortunately does not rhyme with "crazy", is, "profit from information asymmetry". Newton did not clearly "profit" --- though I had almost taken the 3 bets to mean the ones he placed on the South Sea --- even though he had a massive edge. (Pretty much people are arguing about scale here, in my opinion.) I do think PG wants a modern edge over Newton's methods, which concretely means pumping the applied intuitions/phronesis of the SV intellectual elite using software value capture or the VC network. By the way YC do employ heavy-duty "scum filters", e.g. the women interviewers. This is all consistent to the point of being trivial.