4 ms·

There’s an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it was hard to main

There’s an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it was hard to maintain respect. It’s funny because his long form posts which are often insightful were likely reviewed/edited by a third person. A concept he has actually said only exists in the modern commercial publishing era.

notatoad 4y ago
>were likely reviewed/edited by a third person or else just had the benefit of more time to think about them. i certainly know i say some dumb stuff, but if i write it down and think about it for a week before saying it to anybody else, i'm going to censor like 90% of the stuff that comes out of my head.
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  That was always the dumbest criticism of Obama - that he took frequent pauses when speaking (the uuuuhs) and chose his words carefully - his critics used it against him where anyone with half of brain understood why. That being said, Trump essentially DDoS the art of the inartful / wrong / dumb, so maybe that was a better way to go. Who knows....
  - beambot 4y ago
    Very off topic, but... Most presidential speeches are written by a speech writer & displayed on the teleprompter, not ad libbed on the spot. The "uuuuhs" were an intentional mannerism.
coffeebeqn 4y ago
There’s another one: the medium is the message
zug_zug 4y ago
So I notice a trend for people to take seem to take stabs at PG whenever he's brought up, and sometimes not seemingly even relevant to the article at hand. I suppose you can only speak for yourself, but I find the words "insipid" and "embarrassing" particularly emotional / unscientific. Out of curiosity, what is there a connection to the article at hand or alternatively why do you feel it's important to spread awareness of his incompetence?
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Why would you think that science has anything to do with this?
- sdiacom 4y ago
  Just last month, he was passionately defending Elon Musk's decisions running Twitter, on Twitter, from all those annoying plebs who dared to speak their minds about it, not even having ran any companies themselves. The topic of "the article at hand" is, inevitably, his incompetence.
  - zug_zug 4y ago
    Are you saying frustration is simply that he changed his mind on this issue then? And actually it sounds like you think he changed his mind in the right direction. Was he rude to you personally or something?
jedberg 4y ago
> were likely reviewed/edited by a third person You don't have to guess, he lists the names of every person who reviews his posts at the bottom of the posts.
bestcoder69 4y ago
Dude the other day he said "Automation is inductive proof that Marx is wrong"! A mistake you wouldn't make if you sniffed Marx's wikipedia page, let alone opened your eyes to read it. pg deleted it and posted this response: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1600122386346450944 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1600122386346450944 (...after, hilariously, Matt Bruenig replied with a correction from ChatGPT - which is also deleted because he auto-deletes tweets.) e: Reading the thread now, I love this reply from pg, who I've seen attack marxism, socialism, leftism, what-have-you, endlessly and smugly in the past: > I freely admit I have only a superficial grasp of Marxist doctrine. I could no more debate the finer points of it with an actual Marxist than I could debate the finer points of church doctrine with a Jesuit. (Nor would I want to be able to do either.) The finer points!!! Amazing. Something to keep in mind when the billionaires tell the ol' lefties to read econ 101!
- tpush 4y ago
  That particular exchange really was one of the most embarrassing and ignorant ones I've seen on part of pg.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  I hope he got a refund from the ghostwriter for that one.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Quoting the GP tweet to the one you linked: > You still occasionally hear people saying that founders don't deserve to be rich, because their employees created all the value. But the falsity of this claim becomes increasingly obvious as automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees. Do you disagree with this, or just disagree that it’s in contradiction to Marx?
  - topaz0 4y ago
    To start with, "don't deserve [...] because employees created all the value" is a straw man. Lots of other value Out There that they exploit that comes from other places than their employees' labor but also isn't "created" by the founder. Also lots of reasons people shouldn't be rich, whether or not they are founders and whether or not they "created" value.
wwweston 4y ago
It's very hard to be smart all the time, and you don't have to be stupid to be wrong.
- the_cat_kittles 4y ago
  what you have to do is correctly assess yourself, which is impossibly rare among people who made a bunch money
  - hyperhopper 4y ago
    Especially amoung the people that will get in front of a crowd and shout "I'm rich, bitch!" Doubly so when intersected with the crowd that publicly eschews earthly possessions. Turns out hypocrites aren't self aware
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Really like this comment -- dovetails nicely with Bill Gates "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose," and helps illuminate the fundamental problem: status insulates you from accountability, but without accountability you lose a crucial form of feedback essential in nearly everyone's ability to correctly assess themselves.
ignoramous 4y ago
> There's an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. I wonder how much of that is down to the person themselves (judging someone else, through the lense of whatever prejudices and biases) and not their heroes. As they say from where I am: short of meeting true evil, there's no one worse than your own self.
memish 4y ago
PG still has an excellent batting average and is more insightful than not even on Twitter.
eikenberry 4y ago
I've met PG at a book signing and he was quite pleasant. I asked about when Arc would be released (this was a while back) and he laughed and joked about it. Really nice guy. Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?
- bestcoder69 4y ago
  GP is calling pg dumb, not mean - your anecdote is compatible.
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    You cannot be both pleasant and dumb. Dumb people are inherently annoying.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone? I think you learn more about a person through Twitter than meeting them since for better or worse people drop the polite, professional veneer that normally associates face to face meetings. It showcases (a) what concerns them so much they have to Tweet about it, (b) what their values are, (c) how they read situations, (d) how they treat people etc. It's weirdly like you're watching them perform in some scientific experiment and seeing how they react to different stimuli.
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    But you go to far. "Meeting someone" is meeting that public veneer that they use when meeting new/random people. It is not spending a lot of time with them and getting to know them. It is about how first, in-person impressions match up against your expectations.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  > Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone? That really is one of the worst parts of Twitter. The form of short-form drive interaction encourages some of the most pithy and dismissive conversations and leads to some really hostile interactions that often dispense with human decency. (I mean, not restricted to Twitter, I've experienced it here, and on Mastodon, but Twitter really takes the cake.)
jimbob45 4y ago
I feel that there's a fitting SMBC on this topic. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29
alangibson 4y ago
He actually wrote a blog post about how he writes. He sends drafts to people and heavily rewrites, sometimes over the course of weeks or months (IIRC). So, yea, the agitated dad vibes get (dare I say) edited out in the process.
mjklin 4y ago
Something I explained to my children today: don’t tweet about things you explained to your children today apropos of nothing, it makes you sounds like a jackass

notatoad 4y ago

>were likely reviewed/edited by a third person or else just had the benefit of more time to think about them. i certainly know i say some dumb stuff, but if i write it down and think about it for a week before saying it to anybody else, i'm going to censor like 90% of the stuff that comes out of my head.

bigmattystyles 4y ago
That was always the dumbest criticism of Obama - that he took frequent pauses when speaking (the uuuuhs) and chose his words carefully - his critics used it against him where anyone with half of brain understood why. That being said, Trump essentially DDoS the art of the inartful / wrong / dumb, so maybe that was a better way to go. Who knows....
- beambot 4y ago
  Very off topic, but... Most presidential speeches are written by a speech writer & displayed on the teleprompter, not ad libbed on the spot. The "uuuuhs" were an intentional mannerism.

coffeebeqn 4y ago

There’s another one: the medium is the message

zug_zug 4y ago

So I notice a trend for people to take seem to take stabs at PG whenever he's brought up, and sometimes not seemingly even relevant to the article at hand. I suppose you can only speak for yourself, but I find the words "insipid" and "embarrassing" particularly emotional / unscientific. Out of curiosity, what is there a connection to the article at hand or alternatively why do you feel it's important to spread awareness of his incompetence?

bowsamic 4y ago
Why would you think that science has anything to do with this?
sdiacom 4y ago
Just last month, he was passionately defending Elon Musk's decisions running Twitter, on Twitter, from all those annoying plebs who dared to speak their minds about it, not even having ran any companies themselves. The topic of "the article at hand" is, inevitably, his incompetence.
- zug_zug 4y ago
  Are you saying frustration is simply that he changed his mind on this issue then? And actually it sounds like you think he changed his mind in the right direction. Was he rude to you personally or something?

jedberg 4y ago

> were likely reviewed/edited by a third person You don't have to guess, he lists the names of every person who reviews his posts at the bottom of the posts.

bestcoder69 4y ago

Dude the other day he said "Automation is inductive proof that Marx is wrong"! A mistake you wouldn't make if you sniffed Marx's wikipedia page, let alone opened your eyes to read it. pg deleted it and posted this response: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1600122386346450944 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1600122386346450944 (...after, hilariously, Matt Bruenig replied with a correction from ChatGPT - which is also deleted because he auto-deletes tweets.) e: Reading the thread now, I love this reply from pg, who I've seen attack marxism, socialism, leftism, what-have-you, endlessly and smugly in the past: > I freely admit I have only a superficial grasp of Marxist doctrine. I could no more debate the finer points of it with an actual Marxist than I could debate the finer points of church doctrine with a Jesuit. (Nor would I want to be able to do either.) The finer points!!! Amazing. Something to keep in mind when the billionaires tell the ol' lefties to read econ 101!

tpush 4y ago
That particular exchange really was one of the most embarrassing and ignorant ones I've seen on part of pg.
tedunangst 4y ago
I hope he got a refund from the ghostwriter for that one.
ChadNauseam 4y ago
Quoting the GP tweet to the one you linked: > You still occasionally hear people saying that founders don't deserve to be rich, because their employees created all the value. But the falsity of this claim becomes increasingly obvious as automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees. Do you disagree with this, or just disagree that it’s in contradiction to Marx?
- topaz0 4y ago
  To start with, "don't deserve [...] because employees created all the value" is a straw man. Lots of other value Out There that they exploit that comes from other places than their employees' labor but also isn't "created" by the founder. Also lots of reasons people shouldn't be rich, whether or not they are founders and whether or not they "created" value.

wwweston 4y ago

It's very hard to be smart all the time, and you don't have to be stupid to be wrong.

the_cat_kittles 4y ago
what you have to do is correctly assess yourself, which is impossibly rare among people who made a bunch money
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  Especially amoung the people that will get in front of a crowd and shout "I'm rich, bitch!" Doubly so when intersected with the crowd that publicly eschews earthly possessions. Turns out hypocrites aren't self aware
- wwweston 4y ago
  Really like this comment -- dovetails nicely with Bill Gates "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose," and helps illuminate the fundamental problem: status insulates you from accountability, but without accountability you lose a crucial form of feedback essential in nearly everyone's ability to correctly assess themselves.

ignoramous 4y ago

> There's an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. I wonder how much of that is down to the person themselves (judging someone else, through the lense of whatever prejudices and biases) and not their heroes. As they say from where I am: short of meeting true evil, there's no one worse than your own self.

memish 4y ago

PG still has an excellent batting average and is more insightful than not even on Twitter.

eikenberry 4y ago

I've met PG at a book signing and he was quite pleasant. I asked about when Arc would be released (this was a while back) and he laughed and joked about it. Really nice guy. Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?

bestcoder69 4y ago
GP is calling pg dumb, not mean - your anecdote is compatible.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  You cannot be both pleasant and dumb. Dumb people are inherently annoying.
threeseed 4y ago
> Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone? I think you learn more about a person through Twitter than meeting them since for better or worse people drop the polite, professional veneer that normally associates face to face meetings. It showcases (a) what concerns them so much they have to Tweet about it, (b) what their values are, (c) how they read situations, (d) how they treat people etc. It's weirdly like you're watching them perform in some scientific experiment and seeing how they react to different stimuli.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  But you go to far. "Meeting someone" is meeting that public veneer that they use when meeting new/random people. It is not spending a lot of time with them and getting to know them. It is about how first, in-person impressions match up against your expectations.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
> Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone? That really is one of the worst parts of Twitter. The form of short-form drive interaction encourages some of the most pithy and dismissive conversations and leads to some really hostile interactions that often dispense with human decency. (I mean, not restricted to Twitter, I've experienced it here, and on Mastodon, but Twitter really takes the cake.)

jimbob45 4y ago

I feel that there's a fitting SMBC on this topic. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29

alangibson 4y ago

He actually wrote a blog post about how he writes. He sends drafts to people and heavily rewrites, sometimes over the course of weeks or months (IIRC). So, yea, the agitated dad vibes get (dare I say) edited out in the process.

mjklin 4y ago

Something I explained to my children today: don’t tweet about things you explained to your children today apropos of nothing, it makes you sounds like a jackass