6 ms·

Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasing

by Arubis 6y ago

Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality, like PG's become a synecdoche of SF VC-fuelled startup culture as a whole. Whether that's him changing, or me, or the world, I'm not certain--but I still look forward to them simply because the ensuing discussions here on HN tend to have some gold in them. Edit: typo on “synecdoche” (original was “synecdouche,” which could be read as clever/juvenile but was simply unintentional). Also: my original phrasing (which I’ll leave intact above for context) was vague; I specifically meant to express that the more recent essays resonate less with me than the older ones once did. I haven’t reevaluated the older essays; it’s been ages since I went through them.

texasbigdata 6y ago
I mean if you’re a human and you’re trying to generate weekly content or similar, there should be some kind of s-curve in your production function. No one is novel enough to come up with new ideas ad infinitum (sp?). Dudes been writing for how many years?
- walleeee 6y ago
  That's the thing. Why is he trying to generate content constantly if he has little to say? I have my own theories (elaborated elsewhere in this thread), but it's a question that needs asking.
B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago
.
- Arubis 6y ago
  Ha! This was unintentional, but I’ll leave it for context of your comment. Edit: alas, with your comment removed, this is nonsensical; I’ve fixed the typo in parent.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jahewson 6y ago
You had me at synecdouche.
gist 6y ago
> Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality This most likely comes from spending not only a long time but also a large amount of time around 'a certain type of person' more than anything. Maybe an example is how many people reacted to those workers who delivered packages, food or pumped gas when the pandemic first set in with lock-downs in some states. All the sudden it was as if those people were pure gold in a way that they never even existed or were thought about before (by certain people).
rndmize 6y ago
While I agree (and would describe the issue as a kind of insularity), I find that PG's essays still have a fair amount of value – if I had to put some kind of measure on it, I'd say that for his older ones I found value in 80-90% of a given essay, while the more recent ones like this, it's closer to 40-50%. Using this one as an example, I disagree with many of the assertions in the first section, some in the second, and find the third to be quite solid. In particular, his take on the nature/nurture aspect of thinking for yourself is something I disagree with. He specifically notes that he got a fair amount of fastidiousness about the truth from his father and cites high school as a bad place for independent-minded people due to social mechanics – both things that I feel point in the other direction. I'd go so far as to say that most education systems beat the curiosity out of children with great effectiveness and encourage conformism, and given the lack of classes like philosophy and critical thinking, thinking for yourself has become something mostly passed from parents to children because the parents that have it find it important that their children learn it. I don't think there's anything stopping a great portion of the population learning to evaluate information they receive critically, or qualify the quality of their own knowledge – in fact I'd say it's not only possible but becoming essential, as these seeming once-a-generation satanic panics are beginning to tire me out.
- crdrost 6y ago
  Yeah, there's nature-nurture stuff going on, but there is also a strange inability to grapple with context shifts. What is “conventional” is changing, and an idea which seemed “independent” is no longer. This is why Alan Kay’s talks about the same are nicer. He is explicit about “you find yourself in a pink world surrounded by pink things and then you have a blue thought which could take you out of the plane of your existence... but you have been to school, to church, you have othe things to do today, and so you squash it—it becomes a ker-splat. But every once in a while you have an unguarded moment, maybe in a shower or waking up, where those things don’t kick in quite so fast and instead your idea gets to suddenly expand for a bit, it becomes a ker-pow. The scientific term for these is ho-lee-shiiit.” It’s not something that is unavailable to others, it is a common human experience. Then he defines something similar to pg’s idea, but more grounded in two preferences: are you more interested operationally in getting your tasks for today done, or are you more interested in an idea for its own sake even if it doesn't have pragmatic function? And are you intimidated by the reactions of your peers (to whom the blue thought seems insanity?) or do you not care what anyone thinks? Finally, our inability to invent the future is generally traced to our funding sources. These sources prize innovation, producing an amazing version of whatever is already out there and really perfecting it, rather than discovery or invention, heading out in a risky direction where you don't know what the tasks are, and you just have a vague dream but no idea what challenges you are going to face. He usually mentions NSF proposals, the ones that are successful say here is what I'm going to do and here is how I will do it.
pembrook 6y ago
Your view of PG and SV culture is following the standard sentiment curve. Just like the culture at large. 20 years ago we were the innovative pioneers shaking up the all-powerful old guard, and everybody loves to root for the underdog. Now we’re the new seemingly all-powerful incumbents (look at the top 5 S&P 500 companies right now). Underdogs no longer. You can see this very clearly in media coverage of Silicon Valley over the past 15 years. Look at Google. It’s gone from “Google is our savior and the greatest corporation to ever exist,” to “Google is an evil destructive power bent on world domination.” Was either characterization ever true? Of course not. The truth has always been in the middle. You’re seeing what has always been there...But viewing it with an overly critical lens this time, whereas last time you viewed everything overly optimistically. You’re ignoring the good stuff now, when you used to ignore the bad stuff.
- bransonf 6y ago
  I think you make a very good point, especially with the Google answer. But I don’t know if that shift in sentiment is unwarranted. The Google of 2005 was nothing like the Google of 2020. When Google was just a search company, they were purely innovators. Google indexed the internet better than anyone else. But Google now is pretty bloated. Chrome, Android, Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube. The thing is, your gripes with one product affect your perception of all Google products. If you don’t like Chrome, your YouTube experience might be degraded, and you might resent Google’s increasing influence on web standards. I’m not saying it’s bad that Google has made a lot of useful things work. But Google has lost its magic. The same can be said of Facebook. Young people flocked to it a decade ago. It was new, it was magic. Now it’s bloated too (Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus), and has its own set of unique issues. It’s like how some people prefer bands that haven’t become mainstream yet. I prefer small companies because they are still on their toes trying to make better products. Google and Facebook don’t care about you as a user anymore, they’re too big to care. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft... they too have lost that magic with age and size. They’ve become boring. Boring is a recipe for disruption.
- typon 6y ago
  But there wasn't that much bad stuff to ignore in the past - because it wasn't that bad. Google did not have that much influence or power, so their bad tendencies (assuming they have been the same throughout their lifetime) were just benign. There is no point in holding up a big magnifying glass on underdogs - things can't go horribly wrong. But it is completely justified to hold the powerful accountable, and that's what people are doing now.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality There's a unique type of hubris that comes from operating in the startup/VC world for a long period of time. On a long enough timeline, investors and founders alike start to forget that selection bias has shaped their perspective of who is successful. The failed investments and bankrupt startups are quickly forgotten, almost as if they never existed. What's left is a few home run investments and headline startup founders that get to rewrite their history to make their success seem obvious from the start. It's also a side effect of coaching early startup teams. Startups are hard and often spend more time looking like failures than successes in the early days. Advisers and investors get into a rhythm of praising their founders to rebuild confidence and energize the teams. It's common for investors to tell their companies that they are uniquely talented or exceptional as a way to short-circuit any doubts that their problem space is too hard for anyone to conquer. Spend enough time telling people that they are one in a million, exceptional, and not like the general population and eventually you'll start believing it too. This essay feels a lot like the advice we received as an early stage startup: It's what we wanted to hear, maybe what we needed to hear to keep going, but it's not necessarily generally true advice that can be applied to all situations. If you're a startup foundering experiencing doubts, this type of writing can provide a kick in the pants that you need to keep going. If you're not in the startup world, it just feels out of touch.
- ip26 6y ago
  I don't think it's actually a unique form of hubris. This is a common discussion point in the politics of class. The wealthy quickly come to convince themselves of their own greatness & deservedness. Elements of luck, failures, and aid from others are all removed from the personal narrative. You wind up with a tautology; I made it because I am great, and because I am standing here, I must be great. It's hard & uncomfortable to think that you are just as lucky as you are good, and that others equally deserving (but less lucky) have nothing.
nicholast 6y ago
Over time there has been a shift in theme from essays on startups to essays on parenting. I believe this example strongly falls in the latter.
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  That's my sentiment as well. I read it, then started skimming, thinking: was this written for 8 year old boys?
  - mtrower 6y ago
    Is that because you believe the contents obvious to all, or because the explanations and presentation of concepts would not impact those who might stand to benefit?
np_tedious 6y ago
It's sort of like power of positive thinking / self help book stuff, but for nonconformism and thinking differently. Even if repetitive and sometimes lacking rigor, I'll probably keep reading everything he posts. I could use that influence.
spitfire 6y ago
Just so I'm clear on this, how do you pronounce "synecdouche"?
- xdavidliu 6y ago
  I recall my high school english teacher saying it once: sin-ECK-duh-kee
0x445442 6y ago
I'm not sure if it's his love of Lisp or what but I've always found his essay on how to write essays to be his best.

by Arubis 6y ago

texasbigdata 6y ago

I mean if you’re a human and you’re trying to generate weekly content or similar, there should be some kind of s-curve in your production function. No one is novel enough to come up with new ideas ad infinitum (sp?). Dudes been writing for how many years?

walleeee 6y ago
That's the thing. Why is he trying to generate content constantly if he has little to say? I have my own theories (elaborated elsewhere in this thread), but it's a question that needs asking.

B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago

Arubis 6y ago
Ha! This was unintentional, but I’ll leave it for context of your comment. Edit: alas, with your comment removed, this is nonsensical; I’ve fixed the typo in parent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jahewson 6y ago

You had me at synecdouche.

gist 6y ago

> Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality This most likely comes from spending not only a long time but also a large amount of time around 'a certain type of person' more than anything. Maybe an example is how many people reacted to those workers who delivered packages, food or pumped gas when the pandemic first set in with lock-downs in some states. All the sudden it was as if those people were pure gold in a way that they never even existed or were thought about before (by certain people).

rndmize 6y ago

While I agree (and would describe the issue as a kind of insularity), I find that PG's essays still have a fair amount of value – if I had to put some kind of measure on it, I'd say that for his older ones I found value in 80-90% of a given essay, while the more recent ones like this, it's closer to 40-50%. Using this one as an example, I disagree with many of the assertions in the first section, some in the second, and find the third to be quite solid. In particular, his take on the nature/nurture aspect of thinking for yourself is something I disagree with. He specifically notes that he got a fair amount of fastidiousness about the truth from his father and cites high school as a bad place for independent-minded people due to social mechanics – both things that I feel point in the other direction. I'd go so far as to say that most education systems beat the curiosity out of children with great effectiveness and encourage conformism, and given the lack of classes like philosophy and critical thinking, thinking for yourself has become something mostly passed from parents to children because the parents that have it find it important that their children learn it. I don't think there's anything stopping a great portion of the population learning to evaluate information they receive critically, or qualify the quality of their own knowledge – in fact I'd say it's not only possible but becoming essential, as these seeming once-a-generation satanic panics are beginning to tire me out.

crdrost 6y ago
Yeah, there's nature-nurture stuff going on, but there is also a strange inability to grapple with context shifts. What is “conventional” is changing, and an idea which seemed “independent” is no longer. This is why Alan Kay’s talks about the same are nicer. He is explicit about “you find yourself in a pink world surrounded by pink things and then you have a blue thought which could take you out of the plane of your existence... but you have been to school, to church, you have othe things to do today, and so you squash it—it becomes a ker-splat. But every once in a while you have an unguarded moment, maybe in a shower or waking up, where those things don’t kick in quite so fast and instead your idea gets to suddenly expand for a bit, it becomes a ker-pow. The scientific term for these is ho-lee-shiiit.” It’s not something that is unavailable to others, it is a common human experience. Then he defines something similar to pg’s idea, but more grounded in two preferences: are you more interested operationally in getting your tasks for today done, or are you more interested in an idea for its own sake even if it doesn't have pragmatic function? And are you intimidated by the reactions of your peers (to whom the blue thought seems insanity?) or do you not care what anyone thinks? Finally, our inability to invent the future is generally traced to our funding sources. These sources prize innovation, producing an amazing version of whatever is already out there and really perfecting it, rather than discovery or invention, heading out in a risky direction where you don't know what the tasks are, and you just have a vague dream but no idea what challenges you are going to face. He usually mentions NSF proposals, the ones that are successful say here is what I'm going to do and here is how I will do it.

pembrook 6y ago

Your view of PG and SV culture is following the standard sentiment curve. Just like the culture at large. 20 years ago we were the innovative pioneers shaking up the all-powerful old guard, and everybody loves to root for the underdog. Now we’re the new seemingly all-powerful incumbents (look at the top 5 S&P 500 companies right now). Underdogs no longer. You can see this very clearly in media coverage of Silicon Valley over the past 15 years. Look at Google. It’s gone from “Google is our savior and the greatest corporation to ever exist,” to “Google is an evil destructive power bent on world domination.” Was either characterization ever true? Of course not. The truth has always been in the middle. You’re seeing what has always been there...But viewing it with an overly critical lens this time, whereas last time you viewed everything overly optimistically. You’re ignoring the good stuff now, when you used to ignore the bad stuff.

bransonf 6y ago
I think you make a very good point, especially with the Google answer. But I don’t know if that shift in sentiment is unwarranted. The Google of 2005 was nothing like the Google of 2020. When Google was just a search company, they were purely innovators. Google indexed the internet better than anyone else. But Google now is pretty bloated. Chrome, Android, Gmail, Docs/Drive, YouTube. The thing is, your gripes with one product affect your perception of all Google products. If you don’t like Chrome, your YouTube experience might be degraded, and you might resent Google’s increasing influence on web standards. I’m not saying it’s bad that Google has made a lot of useful things work. But Google has lost its magic. The same can be said of Facebook. Young people flocked to it a decade ago. It was new, it was magic. Now it’s bloated too (Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus), and has its own set of unique issues. It’s like how some people prefer bands that haven’t become mainstream yet. I prefer small companies because they are still on their toes trying to make better products. Google and Facebook don’t care about you as a user anymore, they’re too big to care. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft... they too have lost that magic with age and size. They’ve become boring. Boring is a recipe for disruption.
typon 6y ago
But there wasn't that much bad stuff to ignore in the past - because it wasn't that bad. Google did not have that much influence or power, so their bad tendencies (assuming they have been the same throughout their lifetime) were just benign. There is no point in holding up a big magnifying glass on underdogs - things can't go horribly wrong. But it is completely justified to hold the powerful accountable, and that's what people are doing now.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality There's a unique type of hubris that comes from operating in the startup/VC world for a long period of time. On a long enough timeline, investors and founders alike start to forget that selection bias has shaped their perspective of who is successful. The failed investments and bankrupt startups are quickly forgotten, almost as if they never existed. What's left is a few home run investments and headline startup founders that get to rewrite their history to make their success seem obvious from the start. It's also a side effect of coaching early startup teams. Startups are hard and often spend more time looking like failures than successes in the early days. Advisers and investors get into a rhythm of praising their founders to rebuild confidence and energize the teams. It's common for investors to tell their companies that they are uniquely talented or exceptional as a way to short-circuit any doubts that their problem space is too hard for anyone to conquer. Spend enough time telling people that they are one in a million, exceptional, and not like the general population and eventually you'll start believing it too. This essay feels a lot like the advice we received as an early stage startup: It's what we wanted to hear, maybe what we needed to hear to keep going, but it's not necessarily generally true advice that can be applied to all situations. If you're a startup foundering experiencing doubts, this type of writing can provide a kick in the pants that you need to keep going. If you're not in the startup world, it just feels out of touch.

ip26 6y ago
I don't think it's actually a unique form of hubris. This is a common discussion point in the politics of class. The wealthy quickly come to convince themselves of their own greatness & deservedness. Elements of luck, failures, and aid from others are all removed from the personal narrative. You wind up with a tautology; I made it because I am great, and because I am standing here, I must be great. It's hard & uncomfortable to think that you are just as lucky as you are good, and that others equally deserving (but less lucky) have nothing.

nicholast 6y ago

Over time there has been a shift in theme from essays on startups to essays on parenting. I believe this example strongly falls in the latter.

davidivadavid 6y ago
That's my sentiment as well. I read it, then started skimming, thinking: was this written for 8 year old boys?
- mtrower 6y ago
  Is that because you believe the contents obvious to all, or because the explanations and presentation of concepts would not impact those who might stand to benefit?

np_tedious 6y ago

It's sort of like power of positive thinking / self help book stuff, but for nonconformism and thinking differently. Even if repetitive and sometimes lacking rigor, I'll probably keep reading everything he posts. I could use that influence.

spitfire 6y ago

Just so I'm clear on this, how do you pronounce "synecdouche"?

xdavidliu 6y ago
I recall my high school english teacher saying it once: sin-ECK-duh-kee

0x445442 6y ago

I'm not sure if it's his love of Lisp or what but I've always found his essay on how to write essays to be his best.