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Referring to people who follow PG's writing and the discussions on this site as a cult is not correct, and frankly I'm getting tired of the moniker. If Paul we

by js440 19y ago

Referring to people who follow PG's writing and the discussions on this site as a cult is not correct, and frankly I'm getting tired of the moniker. If Paul were to write something bogus, the people here would be the first to pick it apart. As with any reasonably well-known person, there are followers that adhere to PG too religiously. I can't speak for these people except to say that they are the minority on HN. Paul's writings are inspiring in the same way as Rand. But they are different because they span the gap between fantasy and reality. His main message of "Make something users want" couldn't be more pragmatic. Certainly some essays are more speculative and philosophical than others, but most tend to be focused on one idea: How to do something that is exciting and meaningful to you and fit that into how the actual world works; spanning the gap between your personal fantasy job and the reality of making that into a business.

smalter 19y ago
i suppose that calling something a cult does imply a false god, but that's not what i meant. i didn't mean to suggest those who admire graham have a cultish mentality; instead i meant to refer to those who have a cultish view towards graham (which you note) and compare those with a similar view towards rand and explain why. (certainly using the word "cult"/"cultish" must be considered sensational if we're comparing graham with, say, david koresh, but i meant it in a more colloquial sense.) i couldn't agree with you more that graham has a deep understanding of the startup and its economics. you seem to agree with me but with qualification, which i can live with. an aside: do you think making things that people want really results in the creation of value? i mean to ask this particularly vis-a-vis the creation of something i might call first order goods, or things that we really need. in other words, does it make sense, when talking about creation of value, to differentiate between those things humans need (e.g., food, water, energy sources) and those things that we want? for instance, is the world of value (see graham's essay on the fixed pie fallacy) constrained by underlying natural resources which are necessary for things like fun internet sites that people want to build on top of? i'm sure someone has written about this so anyone who could point me to such a writing or give their own thoughts--that'd be great. i ask this as part of the question of whether value creation is really so simple. i think this is probably true for the world we live in (u.s. circa the year 2000), but not true for all universes.

by js440 19y ago

smalter 19y ago

i suppose that calling something a cult does imply a false god, but that's not what i meant. i didn't mean to suggest those who admire graham have a cultish mentality; instead i meant to refer to those who have a cultish view towards graham (which you note) and compare those with a similar view towards rand and explain why. (certainly using the word "cult"/"cultish" must be considered sensational if we're comparing graham with, say, david koresh, but i meant it in a more colloquial sense.) i couldn't agree with you more that graham has a deep understanding of the startup and its economics. you seem to agree with me but with qualification, which i can live with. an aside: do you think making things that people want really results in the creation of value? i mean to ask this particularly vis-a-vis the creation of something i might call first order goods, or things that we really need. in other words, does it make sense, when talking about creation of value, to differentiate between those things humans need (e.g., food, water, energy sources) and those things that we want? for instance, is the world of value (see graham's essay on the fixed pie fallacy) constrained by underlying natural resources which are necessary for things like fun internet sites that people want to build on top of? i'm sure someone has written about this so anyone who could point me to such a writing or give their own thoughts--that'd be great. i ask this as part of the question of whether value creation is really so simple. i think this is probably true for the world we live in (u.s. circa the year 2000), but not true for all universes.