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I'm going to say the unsayable: Paul Graham has a sophomoric understanding of art and philosophy, at best. As with people such as Elon Musk, he attempts to le

I'm going to say the unsayable: Paul Graham has a sophomoric understanding of art and philosophy, at best. As with people such as Elon Musk, he attempts to leverage success in one narrowly defined area into an authority over vast domains of human knowledge. When I was fifteen, I thought his essays were profound. When I was fifteen, I thought many things were profound. It has been many decades since I was fifteen.

ggm 5y ago
But a lot of HN readership are much closer to 15 than you (or I) and so the trivial->trivium comparison might hold?
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  At this point, I think it more resembles lying to children about Santa Claus. I don't understand why people do it. I feel no need for subsequent generations to recapitulate my mistakes. I may have learned something the hard way, but I have little interest in encouraging or participating in what amounts to a de facto practice of 'cogitational embryological parallelism'.
overgard 5y ago
While that may or may not be true, you haven't actually offered any sort of refutation or insight into the topic at hand. While I'm not 15, who should I find more credible, the guy making a dispassionate general argument that makes sense, or the old hipster being like "whatever pg is laaaammme"? (Also how is what you're saying unsayable? People say this on practically every PG essay here. It's very obviously quite sayable)
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  Isn't that always the case? Someone says 'you can't say X anymore', which by definition means saying X. Nothing here concerns 'that which can't be said'. If something truly can't be said, it's utterance is physically impossible, therefore being concerned about suppressing such or such being suppressed is a moot point. We are discussing things that can very much me stated, but which carry consequences of a certain nature. Passion and dispassion are indicative of neither factualness, nor truthfulness, nor sensibility. This is a matter of form. A call for the death of a minority can be delivered with utter dispassion and pure reason and a plea for such a minority's salvation from such can be delivered with utter passion and vice versa. 'Making sense' depends on assuming my knowledge to be the horizon of that which is knowable. Something might not make sense, but it might not make sense because I lack some knowledge. (Is it a language I do not understand, or is it gibberish?) However, such might also make no sense because it never 'had sense to begin with' (a concept which could be considered dubious, but which I will go with for the moment). I, in this scenario, however, lack the knowledge to know that by definition. So does such not make sense because of a property inherent in its being, or does it not make sense because of my ignorance? While all that I can do is 'make sense' of things through my understanding, if I allow myself to conceptualize, or act on the assumption of such a conceptualization, that my knowledge is a totality of knowledge, I potentially commit an error which endangers me. (Though, conversely, there are those who would argue that anything less than absolute surety in oneself will lead to hesitation and destruction.) Secondly, this assumes that what 'makes sense' does so because of its inherent truthfulness. However, a sensible statement and a truth statement do not necessarily have to be synonymous. It would make sense, for example, why someone should not be allowed to insult God's representative on Earth. Sensibility always necessarily carries from certain assumptions which eventually cannot be evidenced. I would even be tempted to say that the gamut of credibility is, besides possibly being wide bordering on infinity, probably shaped like a Klein bottle. > old hipster Well, that's not such a nice thing to say to someone as they're coming up on a birthday.
  - overgard 5y ago
    That's a lot of words that don't answer the specific question of what you actually disagree with. (For what it's worth though happy birthday! I just turned 37 so im well aware of the fun of being a cranky old person :))
    - apocalypstyx 5y ago
      HN discussions have too short of a half-life, and I'm too lazy to type that much (and, yes, that is taking into account that my posts already tend to be verbose.) And to be overly generous to myself, you never actually asked for that information, just stated that I failed to provide such. Your actual questions, I did answer to a minimal degree. As for anything else, I'll be productively lazy and possibly appropriate the results of the labor of someone else when it becomes available.
d0mine 5y ago
Consider this: [almost] all popular (found by/landed from google) questions on StackOverflow are simple/easy for experts in corresponding topics. There are two camps: one think that it makes StackOverflow useless, another—the exact opposite (SO is an immense time-saver). People can solve problems even if they are not experts on the topic (you can't be an expert in many areas at once).

ggm 5y ago

But a lot of HN readership are much closer to 15 than you (or I) and so the trivial->trivium comparison might hold?

apocalypstyx 5y ago
At this point, I think it more resembles lying to children about Santa Claus. I don't understand why people do it. I feel no need for subsequent generations to recapitulate my mistakes. I may have learned something the hard way, but I have little interest in encouraging or participating in what amounts to a de facto practice of 'cogitational embryological parallelism'.

overgard 5y ago

While that may or may not be true, you haven't actually offered any sort of refutation or insight into the topic at hand. While I'm not 15, who should I find more credible, the guy making a dispassionate general argument that makes sense, or the old hipster being like "whatever pg is laaaammme"? (Also how is what you're saying unsayable? People say this on practically every PG essay here. It's very obviously quite sayable)

apocalypstyx 5y ago
Isn't that always the case? Someone says 'you can't say X anymore', which by definition means saying X. Nothing here concerns 'that which can't be said'. If something truly can't be said, it's utterance is physically impossible, therefore being concerned about suppressing such or such being suppressed is a moot point. We are discussing things that can very much me stated, but which carry consequences of a certain nature. Passion and dispassion are indicative of neither factualness, nor truthfulness, nor sensibility. This is a matter of form. A call for the death of a minority can be delivered with utter dispassion and pure reason and a plea for such a minority's salvation from such can be delivered with utter passion and vice versa. 'Making sense' depends on assuming my knowledge to be the horizon of that which is knowable. Something might not make sense, but it might not make sense because I lack some knowledge. (Is it a language I do not understand, or is it gibberish?) However, such might also make no sense because it never 'had sense to begin with' (a concept which could be considered dubious, but which I will go with for the moment). I, in this scenario, however, lack the knowledge to know that by definition. So does such not make sense because of a property inherent in its being, or does it not make sense because of my ignorance? While all that I can do is 'make sense' of things through my understanding, if I allow myself to conceptualize, or act on the assumption of such a conceptualization, that my knowledge is a totality of knowledge, I potentially commit an error which endangers me. (Though, conversely, there are those who would argue that anything less than absolute surety in oneself will lead to hesitation and destruction.) Secondly, this assumes that what 'makes sense' does so because of its inherent truthfulness. However, a sensible statement and a truth statement do not necessarily have to be synonymous. It would make sense, for example, why someone should not be allowed to insult God's representative on Earth. Sensibility always necessarily carries from certain assumptions which eventually cannot be evidenced. I would even be tempted to say that the gamut of credibility is, besides possibly being wide bordering on infinity, probably shaped like a Klein bottle. > old hipster Well, that's not such a nice thing to say to someone as they're coming up on a birthday.
- overgard 5y ago
  That's a lot of words that don't answer the specific question of what you actually disagree with. (For what it's worth though happy birthday! I just turned 37 so im well aware of the fun of being a cranky old person :))
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    HN discussions have too short of a half-life, and I'm too lazy to type that much (and, yes, that is taking into account that my posts already tend to be verbose.) And to be overly generous to myself, you never actually asked for that information, just stated that I failed to provide such. Your actual questions, I did answer to a minimal degree. As for anything else, I'll be productively lazy and possibly appropriate the results of the labor of someone else when it becomes available.

d0mine 5y ago

Consider this: [almost] all popular (found by/landed from google) questions on StackOverflow are simple/easy for experts in corresponding topics. There are two camps: one think that it makes StackOverflow useless, another—the exact opposite (SO is an immense time-saver). People can solve problems even if they are not experts on the topic (you can't be an expert in many areas at once).