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by malcolmgreaves 2y ago

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Mistletoe 2y ago
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- veonik 2y ago
  I don't think the "be nice to everyone" is the thing people are annoyed with, rather it's the "you will be canceled if you step out of line even once" that comes along with it.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    The irony being of course, that the current wave of performative anti-woke articles from PG, Zuck et al is based mostly on fear that they'll be cancelled by the incoming administration if they appear to be too kindly disposed to minorities...
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      That is pure speculation on your part (flamebait speculation at that). You can't prove it nor even offer compelling evidence for it.
      - notahacker 2y ago
        I mean, it'd be a remarkable coincidence if firms queuing up to renounce their DEI initiatives and argue that the President's new bestie was doing a great job of promoting free speech were doing so without regard to the imminent inauguration date of a President who's never exactly disguised his loathing of such things and his desire to make life miserable for people he sees as "woke" (or his fondness for recalcitrant critics for that matter). Even PG himself is busy observing (on Twitter) the trend of removing pronouns from profiles. In fairness to PG, unlike Zuckerberg he's not actually rolling back anything he's been doing for most of the past couple of decades, but it'd be a helluva surprise if he'd just forgotten who was in charge when he got suspended from Twitter in his haste to lavish praise on the president's right hand man for doing such a great job of removing censorship from Twitter
    - eastbound 2y ago
      The incoming administration has never been unkind to minorities. If they have been unkind to criminals, yes, but minorities, never. If you conflate that with minorities, then that kind of demonstrates who you protect: Not the minorities. It’s all words anyway. Wokes hate white people with passion, and that’s why they are not getting half the USA against them.
      - notahacker 2y ago
        And yet we're not observing a trend of CEOs rushing to talk about crime in their haste to accommodate the new regime, we're seeing them rush to update their moderation guidelines to stress that "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" must be understood as valid political commentary and not abuse, delete pronouns from their profiles and shut down their diversity programmes.
  - marstall 2y ago
    what's an example here of unfair cancellation that you are thinking about? I feel that most of those who have been "cancelled" have been so because of fairly egregious stuff like sexual assault, clearly racist speech, etc.
- runjake 2y ago
  There's much more ideology attached to "wokeness" than just "be nice" and "be respectful", such as the concepts around gender and neurodiversity spectrums. Just using the word itself evokes immediate reactions from those aligned with particular political "sides". I've formed this opinion after my many, mandatory DEI trainings at work. I think all good people can agree that being nice and being respectful of people who aren't hurting others is a no-brainer. Edit: Note that this comment is being downvoted to oblivion and illustrates my point.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    I think even the people you would call the most woke hate mandatory DEI training. The idea is fine in theory, there's three main parts that seem to be common to them. * Here's some genres of people you might not have interacted with in your personal life before that you might run into at work, and here's the broad strokes of how each of those groups would describe themselves and some cultural differences you might want to keep in mind. * Here's a baby's first introduction to intersectionality and some situations where that lens might be relevant at work. * Stop sexually harassing your coworkers, Jesus people. But the implementation is unbelievably patronizing and presented with so much "sensitivity" that the overall experience is an hour of what feels like walking on eggshells. It's exhausting.
    - runjake 2y ago
      Agreed. But while pretty much everyone hates mandatory training, there's a large group of people who's beliefs align closely with that ideology. In other words, it's a real ideology, regardless of what one thinks about it. My mental model here is to avoid labeling or lumping people into buckets and just forming opinions of them as an individual, for purely selfish reasons (not missing out on learning from that person). From my perspective as a white person who grew up in very poor black and Latino communities, where we were often the only white family for several blocks, DEI training has been a super weird experience. I now live in an area where white is >90% of the population. I can't quite pin down why, but it feels really patronizing and disingenuous. I find myself often thinking about something that is taught in the training that my friends would find racist or offensive. This is why I'd prefer they just stuck to kindness and respect. We're all flawed humans. That is our beauty.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  I don't understand this wokery-as-politeness argument. Politeness obviously has a place, but if you're trying to solve real social problems while also being unable to discuss the actual problem, because speaking frankly about it is impolite, then clearly is counter-productive if your goal is to solve actual social problems. As far as I can tell, wokery functions as a straight jacket on language that is designed to make only one solution to a given problem (generally the solution that blames white people) even sayable. I don't think it is politeness, I think its a political power play to control language that sounds nice to first-order-thinking left wing types.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  Western urban monoculture.
- grahamj 2y ago
  I don’t know about “be nice” - Personally the expression I equate it with is “live and let live” (or maybe “quit being an asshole”) It’s a reaction to discrimination. If there wasn’t racism and sexism and discrimination there would be no “wokeness” So congrats righties, you got what you asked for
- daseiner1 2y ago
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  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - daseiner1 2y ago
      I don't think Boards of Directors and C-Suites of massive, publicly-traded companies operate based on empathy. They pattern-match cultural trends to maximize shareholder value. To assert otherwise is laughably naïve. My comment suggests that I think introducing inflammatory political issues into the work environment, issues that have a "correct" answer as far as your boss's boss's bosses are concerned, is unethical, corrosive, and counterproductive. Beyond that, you know virtually nothing about me. But by all means, continue in your presumptions. Let's further accelerate the breakdown of civil discourse, perhaps that's the only way to eventually get back to something approaching respect for differing opinions, no matter how assertively stated.
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - glitchc 2y ago
      The problem is that it's a performance. You know who else cries convincingly without meaning it? Actors in movies. Wokeism has equated performance to action. Pretend you care, make it public, and the problem somehow goes away. If you truly care about solving problems, that position basically guarantees that nothing will change.
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - dang 2y ago
      Yikes, you can't attack another user like that on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again. (I'm not endorsing the parent comment either, but you can't be aggressive like this here, and you've been doing it in more than one place, which is not cool.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ctoth 2y ago
  You're clearly passionate about social justice. But pretending it's just 'being nice' and everyone who disagrees is evil? That's exactly the kind of oversimplified thinking that stops real progress and actually causes evil. Movements for social change are messy. They involve hard trade-offs, heated debates about methods, and yeah, sometimes people on 'your side' screw up or take things too far. Pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. And the history is just wrong - 'stay woke' wasn't forced on anyone. People chose it proudly before it became contentious. You're rewriting history to avoid engaging with actual criticism. You can fight for what you believe in without pretending you're in a morality play where the good guys are pure and the bad guys twirl their mustaches. Real life is more complicated than that.
  - mempko 2y ago
    You have it backwards. People who had old conservative views were told they were wrong and got upset. So they started to believe they were being targeted and persecuted when in reality, if you count how many went to jail or got fired, it was people where were brave enough, woke enough, to fight for change.
runjake 2y ago
Do you have any points of substance you can elaborate with? I would genuinely like to hear your argument.
- e_i_pi_2 2y ago
  Not OP, but personally it's just sad to see someone that you view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense, like if a great mathematician suddenly stopped their research to focus on flat earth and contrails
  - diggan 2y ago
    > view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense Are you saying that thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction, regardless of the person? Or that specifically PG thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction? Or maybe even "thinking about wokeness in that way" is the distraction? It seems like if "wokeness" is important, then having more people thinking about it is better, regardless of their outcome from thinking about it. If "wokeness" isn't important at all, I'd totally understand you, but seems there are way more people out there thinking about it more than PG, since it's the first time I see him say anything about it at all.
  - runjake 2y ago
    Thanks for engaging. Is it nonsense if it greatly affects government and workplace policies? Especially now at a time where the incoming POTUS has demonstrated a lack of respect for a wide swath of people. (Just to be clear, despite the above comment, I do not align with "wokeness".)
chen_dev 2y ago
This comment is kinda harsh isn't it? Do you have anything specific from his words to support: > ... mind become filled with mush > desperate pledge of allegiance ...
- Miner49er 2y ago
  I think it's just the fact he spends this much time thinking about wokeness. His whole argument is it's unimportant and performative, so then why did he spend all this time writing an article about it?
  - haswell 2y ago
    > His whole argument is it's unimportant and performative, so then why did he spend all this time writing an article about it? Arguably because a large portion of the population doesn't agree that it's unimportant and performative. Current culture is captured by the concept and collectively spends a massive amount of time worrying about it. If you personally feel that this is a waste of time, how else do you communicate that if not by spending time thinking and writing about it? I also think most meetings are a complete waste of time. The fact that many other people feel meetings are important directly impacts me, and just believing that they're a waste isn't good enough. It's necessary to actively push against something if you think that thing needs to change.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    He doesn't argue it's unimportant. If you took that away from the essay you didn't read it closely enough because it contains sentences like: "College students larp. It's their nature. It's usually harmless. But larping morality turned out to be a poisonous combination." If you're describing something as poisonous, especially if it's the behavior of a large group of people, then you're saying it's important.
  - codexb 2y ago
    Because it comes with very real consequences, sometimes even criminal now.
cle 2y ago
I can't help but wonder if this is intentionally ironic. (From TFA: "There's a certain kind of person who's attracted to a shallow, exacting kind of moral purity, and who demonstrates his purity by attacking anyone who breaks the rules.")
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  I think it’s intentional and ironic. But I don’t think PG realizes what he did. I throughly believe he’s in the space of “I can do it because i am morally superior. But other folks can’t because they don’t get it like I do.” I get this feeling from reading not just this, but his other essays too.
  - chen_dev 2y ago
    Not sure about 'I can do it because I am morally superior'. Is it required to be morally superior to have an opposing view? > other folks can't because they don't get it like I do His point of view undoubtedly resonates with 'some folks'.
  - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
    > I can do it because i am morally superior. But other folks can’t because they don’t get it like I do. I think it’s more of “I can do it because I can afford it. But other folks can’t because they need their job (or something similar).”
  - thingsilearned 2y ago
    @malcomgreaves I'm not sure you caught the intended target of @cle's comment. I believe he was talking about your comment being the thing he thought may be intentionally ironic, not PG's essay. One of the main points in the essay: "The problem with political correctness was not that it focused on marginalized groups, but the shallow, aggressive way in which it did so" And your comment is a classic example of that behavior.
deleted 2y ago
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pickledish 2y ago
(regardless of the merit of your criticism, this comment was at least very funny to me, so thank you for that)
23B1 2y ago
I found the essay cogent and accessible. He's very active online and engages in good faith even with his detractors.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  Whatever else you think of him, he's an incredibly concise and persuasive writer. Even on topic I disagree with him on, I can't fault his reasoning or presentation.
  - mempko 2y ago
    There is nothing logical about his essay. There is no reasoning. It's kind of all over the place. It's kind of a desperate essay.
  - LeafItAlone 2y ago
    >Whatever else you think of him, he's an incredibly concise and persuasive writer. This is not a concise essay.
antithesizer 2y ago
Paul Graham was never smart. He was always just a successful guy whom lots of naive student mistook for a guru on account of his success. That happens a lot. Young people in need of guidance would do well to read the classics and disregard everyone with a pulse.
- farleykr 2y ago
  I'm assuming you're exaggerating for effect at least a little but with that caveat I couldn't agree more. CS Lewis has a great argument for this in his introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation. Paraphrasing his argument: Time naturally filters out the nonsense and what we're left with are the books that are worth reading by virtue of the fact that they have stood the test of time. Truth or at least the closest we can get to it naturally bubbles up to the surface over time. https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/study-resources/bookshelf/c-s-lewis-on-the-reading-of-old-books/ https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/...
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    Taleb is a strong proponent of this as well. Related to the “Lindy Effect” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
  - reubenmorais 2y ago
    Counterpoint: all the nonsense in millennia old religious texts that still wastes people's time to this day.
    - redundantly 2y ago
      Aye, but that nonsense benefits religious authorities and politicians, it has value to them, hence its staying power.
    - beardyw 2y ago
      You must have spent a lot of time studying them to reach your conclusion.
dismalaf 2y ago
This is a ridiculous comment. I don't know if you've noticed but a lot of what's happening in the entire western world politically is a result of the backlash against wokeness and leftist economics. Without wokeness there is no Trump, and the far right in Europe would still be marginal. Edit - it's funny, just yesterday I was listening to a podcast where Peter Thiel was lamenting the lack of introspection on the left. Lots of comments proving it correct.
- p4bl0 2y ago
  Are you accusing the people who fight against Trump's politics and who vote against him to have put him in power? Also, what "leftist economics" are you talking about? Now this is a ridiculous comment. It reads just like "antifascists are the new fascists" discourses. It's absurd.
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    When a vocal, extreme minority of the left drives things towards absurdity, there is likely to be an acute reactionary response.
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    A bunch of people who previously voted left are now voting right. Ask yourself why.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - tinyplanets 2y ago
      Massive disinformation campaigns that have occurred over the past 10 to 15 years.
  - normalaccess 2y ago
    Trump is the "solution" to the problem of militant radical Neo-Marxism or whatever you want to call it. He exist in a world where the Overton window sits comfortably over the destruction of the entire western world by the hand of communists bent on burning down the world to rule over the ashes. When everything is bent into identity politics, for good or ill those that can manage their image will thrive. And Trump is very good at managing the Trump brand.
dpe82 2y ago
In a way, this kind of ad hominem attack supports his point.
mordae 2y ago
He's just kissing the ring.
- hintymad 2y ago
  That's just not true. He did not like wokeism, but on the other hand he's aligned with the democrats, including voting for Kamala. Like his politics or not, he is independent thinker.
- haswell 2y ago
  As a liberal/left/progressive person who agrees with many of the ideas "woke" people are pushing, I find "wokeism" extremely problematic. We need to put to bed the notion that criticizing some aspect of a social phenomenon somehow means someone is wholly endorsing the worst elements of the opposition. Personally, I believe "wokeism" (I hesitate to even use this word because it's poorly defined) is actually one of the largest impediments to moving society towards the ideas generally associated with the word. It's a tactics issue. The difference between "We want the world to look more like X" and "Let's do these specific things to make the world look more like X" is critical. How you go about the latter can have a huge impact on the former.
cageface 2y ago
My respect for PG and the rest of the leadership of the tech world unfortunately seem to be headed off the same cliff. The arrogance and lack of empathy is so disappointing and so unnecessary. Please try harder. A lot is at stake here.
regularization 2y ago
The scientific method is to look at data and form models of reality from that. Not to have a model in mind and then look for evidence to support it or evidence to ignore. Graham has a Hegelian, Panglossian view of things. In "woke" terms he is a very, very wealthy white cishet male born to an upper middle class physicist. As the relations of production and social order were created for and are controlled by his class he defends it. To use an example - due to government mandates, the number of blacks attending Harvard Law School this year is less than half what it was last year. It does not fit into the narrative of a progressive, forward moving country which is meritocratic (although absurdly the legacies etc. taking their place is called a move to meritocracy). You can't say there is a national oppression of Africans in the US by the US, or that things are not meritocracy, so thinking starts getting very skewed. You can read this skewed thinking in Graham and others. YC was started by a convicted felon, and it's due to his privileged birth that Graham was not convicted along with his co-founder. Meanwhile black men are killed by police for selling loose cigarettes or handing a clerk a counterfeit bill (something I unknowingly did once) to cheers from corporate media commentators and demagogues. What kind of country you live in even here in the imperial center is very much a question of what class you are in, as well as other things. The working people and wretched of the earth are tired of being lectured to by the scions of diamond mines, Phillips Exeter graduates and the like. Even if they do know the worst case big O time for quicksort. History goes through twists and turns, and I welcome the challenges to their power we will be seeing this century.
- daseiner1 2y ago
  [flagged]
BeetleB 2y ago
Your comment, while eloquent, is totally unsubstantiated. At least PG tries to justify his perspective. You didn't.
diggan 2y ago
I do agree with you that it seems like that and I generally agree with you, but I'm also not a fan of your comment that only addresses the mind of PG, while the words he written are right there. Point out the parts of the blog post that shows his lack of rational thinking and research, rather than just giving some overall personal attack, as currently the comment is relatively off-topic considering the submission. I'm sure there are good and bad parts of the blog post, while you failed to address any sides of it.
codexb 2y ago
Did we read the same article? It seems like a pretty coherent and plausible explanation for the current state of political correctness.
- bpt3 2y ago
  You read a reply from a person that doesn't like the implications of PG's statements and conclusions. Which I think is further evidence of PG's claims.
LeroyRaz 2y ago
Could you expand on why this article makes you believe his mind has "become filled with mush." What points is he making (if you consider him to be making clear points), how do you think those points are flawed, etc..
belter 2y ago
It just amazing to see how the new Trump administration prepares to take over, all the Tech Bros suddenly are coming out of their shell. Musk on DEI. Zuckerberg just got back to his Misogynistic persona of the first days of Facebook. Peter Thiel published an editorial in the FT last week talking about conspiracy theories on JFK, and now...The attack on Wokeness... Cherry-picking historical examples, misrepresenting real power dynamics, and dismissing genuine social concerns as mere “performative” gestures. All while coming from a privileged VC perspective that notoriously funnels opportunities to the same elite circles...
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I don't disagree, but Thiel has been "out of his shell" for decades.
mempko 2y ago
What I find funny is that PG thinks he is a thinker who breaks the rules. No PG, you and your friends write the rules. Wokeness is about acknowledging the game is rigged against black people and others. But go ahead PG, redefine it as political correctness, then write an essay about how the current system is actually good. The reason wokeness scares the elite like PG is because it targets the system they themselves helped create.
- pm90 2y ago
  It doesn’t even have any kind of real power to unseat these dorks. They have enough capital and connections to hold on to power for life. It attempts to delegitimize them, question their worldview and expose them to other viewpoints and their reaction is to lash out against it. Very fragile identities.
dang 2y ago
Ok, but please don't break the site guidelines when posting to HN. Name-calling and personal attacks aren't allowed here, and your comment consists of nothing but. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- zahlman 2y ago
  The sheer amount of content-less booing of political outgroups throughout the thread (overwhelmingly in one direction, unsurprisingly given the article content) has really disappointed me.
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  Fair. Apologies for skirting the rules.

[flagged]

Mistletoe 2y ago

[flagged]

veonik 2y ago
I don't think the "be nice to everyone" is the thing people are annoyed with, rather it's the "you will be canceled if you step out of line even once" that comes along with it.
- notahacker 2y ago
  The irony being of course, that the current wave of performative anti-woke articles from PG, Zuck et al is based mostly on fear that they'll be cancelled by the incoming administration if they appear to be too kindly disposed to minorities...
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    That is pure speculation on your part (flamebait speculation at that). You can't prove it nor even offer compelling evidence for it.
    - notahacker 2y ago
      I mean, it'd be a remarkable coincidence if firms queuing up to renounce their DEI initiatives and argue that the President's new bestie was doing a great job of promoting free speech were doing so without regard to the imminent inauguration date of a President who's never exactly disguised his loathing of such things and his desire to make life miserable for people he sees as "woke" (or his fondness for recalcitrant critics for that matter). Even PG himself is busy observing (on Twitter) the trend of removing pronouns from profiles. In fairness to PG, unlike Zuckerberg he's not actually rolling back anything he's been doing for most of the past couple of decades, but it'd be a helluva surprise if he'd just forgotten who was in charge when he got suspended from Twitter in his haste to lavish praise on the president's right hand man for doing such a great job of removing censorship from Twitter
  - eastbound 2y ago
    The incoming administration has never been unkind to minorities. If they have been unkind to criminals, yes, but minorities, never. If you conflate that with minorities, then that kind of demonstrates who you protect: Not the minorities. It’s all words anyway. Wokes hate white people with passion, and that’s why they are not getting half the USA against them.
    - notahacker 2y ago
      And yet we're not observing a trend of CEOs rushing to talk about crime in their haste to accommodate the new regime, we're seeing them rush to update their moderation guidelines to stress that "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" must be understood as valid political commentary and not abuse, delete pronouns from their profiles and shut down their diversity programmes.
- marstall 2y ago
  what's an example here of unfair cancellation that you are thinking about? I feel that most of those who have been "cancelled" have been so because of fairly egregious stuff like sexual assault, clearly racist speech, etc.
runjake 2y ago
There's much more ideology attached to "wokeness" than just "be nice" and "be respectful", such as the concepts around gender and neurodiversity spectrums. Just using the word itself evokes immediate reactions from those aligned with particular political "sides". I've formed this opinion after my many, mandatory DEI trainings at work. I think all good people can agree that being nice and being respectful of people who aren't hurting others is a no-brainer. Edit: Note that this comment is being downvoted to oblivion and illustrates my point.
- Spivak 2y ago
  I think even the people you would call the most woke hate mandatory DEI training. The idea is fine in theory, there's three main parts that seem to be common to them. * Here's some genres of people you might not have interacted with in your personal life before that you might run into at work, and here's the broad strokes of how each of those groups would describe themselves and some cultural differences you might want to keep in mind. * Here's a baby's first introduction to intersectionality and some situations where that lens might be relevant at work. * Stop sexually harassing your coworkers, Jesus people. But the implementation is unbelievably patronizing and presented with so much "sensitivity" that the overall experience is an hour of what feels like walking on eggshells. It's exhausting.
  - runjake 2y ago
    Agreed. But while pretty much everyone hates mandatory training, there's a large group of people who's beliefs align closely with that ideology. In other words, it's a real ideology, regardless of what one thinks about it. My mental model here is to avoid labeling or lumping people into buckets and just forming opinions of them as an individual, for purely selfish reasons (not missing out on learning from that person). From my perspective as a white person who grew up in very poor black and Latino communities, where we were often the only white family for several blocks, DEI training has been a super weird experience. I now live in an area where white is >90% of the population. I can't quite pin down why, but it feels really patronizing and disingenuous. I find myself often thinking about something that is taught in the training that my friends would find racist or offensive. This is why I'd prefer they just stuck to kindness and respect. We're all flawed humans. That is our beauty.
gotoeleven 2y ago
I don't understand this wokery-as-politeness argument. Politeness obviously has a place, but if you're trying to solve real social problems while also being unable to discuss the actual problem, because speaking frankly about it is impolite, then clearly is counter-productive if your goal is to solve actual social problems. As far as I can tell, wokery functions as a straight jacket on language that is designed to make only one solution to a given problem (generally the solution that blames white people) even sayable. I don't think it is politeness, I think its a political power play to control language that sounds nice to first-order-thinking left wing types.
ImHereToVote 2y ago
Western urban monoculture.
grahamj 2y ago
I don’t know about “be nice” - Personally the expression I equate it with is “live and let live” (or maybe “quit being an asshole”) It’s a reaction to discrimination. If there wasn’t racism and sexism and discrimination there would be no “wokeness” So congrats righties, you got what you asked for
daseiner1 2y ago
[flagged]
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    I don't think Boards of Directors and C-Suites of massive, publicly-traded companies operate based on empathy. They pattern-match cultural trends to maximize shareholder value. To assert otherwise is laughably naïve. My comment suggests that I think introducing inflammatory political issues into the work environment, issues that have a "correct" answer as far as your boss's boss's bosses are concerned, is unethical, corrosive, and counterproductive. Beyond that, you know virtually nothing about me. But by all means, continue in your presumptions. Let's further accelerate the breakdown of civil discourse, perhaps that's the only way to eventually get back to something approaching respect for differing opinions, no matter how assertively stated.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - glitchc 2y ago
    The problem is that it's a performance. You know who else cries convincingly without meaning it? Actors in movies. Wokeism has equated performance to action. Pretend you care, make it public, and the problem somehow goes away. If you truly care about solving problems, that position basically guarantees that nothing will change.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Yikes, you can't attack another user like that on HN, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again. (I'm not endorsing the parent comment either, but you can't be aggressive like this here, and you've been doing it in more than one place, which is not cool.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ctoth 2y ago
You're clearly passionate about social justice. But pretending it's just 'being nice' and everyone who disagrees is evil? That's exactly the kind of oversimplified thinking that stops real progress and actually causes evil. Movements for social change are messy. They involve hard trade-offs, heated debates about methods, and yeah, sometimes people on 'your side' screw up or take things too far. Pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. And the history is just wrong - 'stay woke' wasn't forced on anyone. People chose it proudly before it became contentious. You're rewriting history to avoid engaging with actual criticism. You can fight for what you believe in without pretending you're in a morality play where the good guys are pure and the bad guys twirl their mustaches. Real life is more complicated than that.
- mempko 2y ago
  You have it backwards. People who had old conservative views were told they were wrong and got upset. So they started to believe they were being targeted and persecuted when in reality, if you count how many went to jail or got fired, it was people where were brave enough, woke enough, to fight for change.

runjake 2y ago

Do you have any points of substance you can elaborate with? I would genuinely like to hear your argument.

e_i_pi_2 2y ago
Not OP, but personally it's just sad to see someone that you view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense, like if a great mathematician suddenly stopped their research to focus on flat earth and contrails
- diggan 2y ago
  > view as a historically great mind getting distracted by nonsense Are you saying that thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction, regardless of the person? Or that specifically PG thinking about "wokeness" is a distraction? Or maybe even "thinking about wokeness in that way" is the distraction? It seems like if "wokeness" is important, then having more people thinking about it is better, regardless of their outcome from thinking about it. If "wokeness" isn't important at all, I'd totally understand you, but seems there are way more people out there thinking about it more than PG, since it's the first time I see him say anything about it at all.
- runjake 2y ago
  Thanks for engaging. Is it nonsense if it greatly affects government and workplace policies? Especially now at a time where the incoming POTUS has demonstrated a lack of respect for a wide swath of people. (Just to be clear, despite the above comment, I do not align with "wokeness".)

chen_dev 2y ago

This comment is kinda harsh isn't it? Do you have anything specific from his words to support: > ... mind become filled with mush > desperate pledge of allegiance ...

Miner49er 2y ago
I think it's just the fact he spends this much time thinking about wokeness. His whole argument is it's unimportant and performative, so then why did he spend all this time writing an article about it?
- haswell 2y ago
  > His whole argument is it's unimportant and performative, so then why did he spend all this time writing an article about it? Arguably because a large portion of the population doesn't agree that it's unimportant and performative. Current culture is captured by the concept and collectively spends a massive amount of time worrying about it. If you personally feel that this is a waste of time, how else do you communicate that if not by spending time thinking and writing about it? I also think most meetings are a complete waste of time. The fact that many other people feel meetings are important directly impacts me, and just believing that they're a waste isn't good enough. It's necessary to actively push against something if you think that thing needs to change.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  He doesn't argue it's unimportant. If you took that away from the essay you didn't read it closely enough because it contains sentences like: "College students larp. It's their nature. It's usually harmless. But larping morality turned out to be a poisonous combination." If you're describing something as poisonous, especially if it's the behavior of a large group of people, then you're saying it's important.
- codexb 2y ago
  Because it comes with very real consequences, sometimes even criminal now.

cle 2y ago

I can't help but wonder if this is intentionally ironic. (From TFA: "There's a certain kind of person who's attracted to a shallow, exacting kind of moral purity, and who demonstrates his purity by attacking anyone who breaks the rules.")

malcolmgreaves 2y ago
I think it’s intentional and ironic. But I don’t think PG realizes what he did. I throughly believe he’s in the space of “I can do it because i am morally superior. But other folks can’t because they don’t get it like I do.” I get this feeling from reading not just this, but his other essays too.
- chen_dev 2y ago
  Not sure about 'I can do it because I am morally superior'. Is it required to be morally superior to have an opposing view? > other folks can't because they don't get it like I do His point of view undoubtedly resonates with 'some folks'.
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago
  > I can do it because i am morally superior. But other folks can’t because they don’t get it like I do. I think it’s more of “I can do it because I can afford it. But other folks can’t because they need their job (or something similar).”
- thingsilearned 2y ago
  @malcomgreaves I'm not sure you caught the intended target of @cle's comment. I believe he was talking about your comment being the thing he thought may be intentionally ironic, not PG's essay. One of the main points in the essay: "The problem with political correctness was not that it focused on marginalized groups, but the shallow, aggressive way in which it did so" And your comment is a classic example of that behavior.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pickledish 2y ago

(regardless of the merit of your criticism, this comment was at least very funny to me, so thank you for that)

23B1 2y ago

I found the essay cogent and accessible. He's very active online and engages in good faith even with his detractors.

commandlinefan 2y ago
Whatever else you think of him, he's an incredibly concise and persuasive writer. Even on topic I disagree with him on, I can't fault his reasoning or presentation.
- mempko 2y ago
  There is nothing logical about his essay. There is no reasoning. It's kind of all over the place. It's kind of a desperate essay.
- LeafItAlone 2y ago
  >Whatever else you think of him, he's an incredibly concise and persuasive writer. This is not a concise essay.

antithesizer 2y ago

Paul Graham was never smart. He was always just a successful guy whom lots of naive student mistook for a guru on account of his success. That happens a lot. Young people in need of guidance would do well to read the classics and disregard everyone with a pulse.

farleykr 2y ago
I'm assuming you're exaggerating for effect at least a little but with that caveat I couldn't agree more. CS Lewis has a great argument for this in his introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation. Paraphrasing his argument: Time naturally filters out the nonsense and what we're left with are the books that are worth reading by virtue of the fact that they have stood the test of time. Truth or at least the closest we can get to it naturally bubbles up to the surface over time. https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/study-resources/bookshelf/c-s-lewis-on-the-reading-of-old-books/ https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/...
- daseiner1 2y ago
  Taleb is a strong proponent of this as well. Related to the “Lindy Effect” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- reubenmorais 2y ago
  Counterpoint: all the nonsense in millennia old religious texts that still wastes people's time to this day.
  - redundantly 2y ago
    Aye, but that nonsense benefits religious authorities and politicians, it has value to them, hence its staying power.
  - beardyw 2y ago
    You must have spent a lot of time studying them to reach your conclusion.

dismalaf 2y ago

This is a ridiculous comment. I don't know if you've noticed but a lot of what's happening in the entire western world politically is a result of the backlash against wokeness and leftist economics. Without wokeness there is no Trump, and the far right in Europe would still be marginal. Edit - it's funny, just yesterday I was listening to a podcast where Peter Thiel was lamenting the lack of introspection on the left. Lots of comments proving it correct.

p4bl0 2y ago
Are you accusing the people who fight against Trump's politics and who vote against him to have put him in power? Also, what "leftist economics" are you talking about? Now this is a ridiculous comment. It reads just like "antifascists are the new fascists" discourses. It's absurd.
- daseiner1 2y ago
  When a vocal, extreme minority of the left drives things towards absurdity, there is likely to be an acute reactionary response.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  A bunch of people who previously voted left are now voting right. Ask yourself why.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - tinyplanets 2y ago
    Massive disinformation campaigns that have occurred over the past 10 to 15 years.
- normalaccess 2y ago
  Trump is the "solution" to the problem of militant radical Neo-Marxism or whatever you want to call it. He exist in a world where the Overton window sits comfortably over the destruction of the entire western world by the hand of communists bent on burning down the world to rule over the ashes. When everything is bent into identity politics, for good or ill those that can manage their image will thrive. And Trump is very good at managing the Trump brand.

dpe82 2y ago

In a way, this kind of ad hominem attack supports his point.

mordae 2y ago

He's just kissing the ring.

hintymad 2y ago
That's just not true. He did not like wokeism, but on the other hand he's aligned with the democrats, including voting for Kamala. Like his politics or not, he is independent thinker.
haswell 2y ago
As a liberal/left/progressive person who agrees with many of the ideas "woke" people are pushing, I find "wokeism" extremely problematic. We need to put to bed the notion that criticizing some aspect of a social phenomenon somehow means someone is wholly endorsing the worst elements of the opposition. Personally, I believe "wokeism" (I hesitate to even use this word because it's poorly defined) is actually one of the largest impediments to moving society towards the ideas generally associated with the word. It's a tactics issue. The difference between "We want the world to look more like X" and "Let's do these specific things to make the world look more like X" is critical. How you go about the latter can have a huge impact on the former.

cageface 2y ago

My respect for PG and the rest of the leadership of the tech world unfortunately seem to be headed off the same cliff. The arrogance and lack of empathy is so disappointing and so unnecessary. Please try harder. A lot is at stake here.

regularization 2y ago

The scientific method is to look at data and form models of reality from that. Not to have a model in mind and then look for evidence to support it or evidence to ignore. Graham has a Hegelian, Panglossian view of things. In "woke" terms he is a very, very wealthy white cishet male born to an upper middle class physicist. As the relations of production and social order were created for and are controlled by his class he defends it. To use an example - due to government mandates, the number of blacks attending Harvard Law School this year is less than half what it was last year. It does not fit into the narrative of a progressive, forward moving country which is meritocratic (although absurdly the legacies etc. taking their place is called a move to meritocracy). You can't say there is a national oppression of Africans in the US by the US, or that things are not meritocracy, so thinking starts getting very skewed. You can read this skewed thinking in Graham and others. YC was started by a convicted felon, and it's due to his privileged birth that Graham was not convicted along with his co-founder. Meanwhile black men are killed by police for selling loose cigarettes or handing a clerk a counterfeit bill (something I unknowingly did once) to cheers from corporate media commentators and demagogues. What kind of country you live in even here in the imperial center is very much a question of what class you are in, as well as other things. The working people and wretched of the earth are tired of being lectured to by the scions of diamond mines, Phillips Exeter graduates and the like. Even if they do know the worst case big O time for quicksort. History goes through twists and turns, and I welcome the challenges to their power we will be seeing this century.

daseiner1 2y ago
[flagged]

BeetleB 2y ago

Your comment, while eloquent, is totally unsubstantiated. At least PG tries to justify his perspective. You didn't.

diggan 2y ago

I do agree with you that it seems like that and I generally agree with you, but I'm also not a fan of your comment that only addresses the mind of PG, while the words he written are right there. Point out the parts of the blog post that shows his lack of rational thinking and research, rather than just giving some overall personal attack, as currently the comment is relatively off-topic considering the submission. I'm sure there are good and bad parts of the blog post, while you failed to address any sides of it.

codexb 2y ago

Did we read the same article? It seems like a pretty coherent and plausible explanation for the current state of political correctness.

bpt3 2y ago
You read a reply from a person that doesn't like the implications of PG's statements and conclusions. Which I think is further evidence of PG's claims.

LeroyRaz 2y ago

Could you expand on why this article makes you believe his mind has "become filled with mush." What points is he making (if you consider him to be making clear points), how do you think those points are flawed, etc..

belter 2y ago

It just amazing to see how the new Trump administration prepares to take over, all the Tech Bros suddenly are coming out of their shell. Musk on DEI. Zuckerberg just got back to his Misogynistic persona of the first days of Facebook. Peter Thiel published an editorial in the FT last week talking about conspiracy theories on JFK, and now...The attack on Wokeness... Cherry-picking historical examples, misrepresenting real power dynamics, and dismissing genuine social concerns as mere “performative” gestures. All while coming from a privileged VC perspective that notoriously funnels opportunities to the same elite circles...

ceejayoz 2y ago
I don't disagree, but Thiel has been "out of his shell" for decades.

mempko 2y ago

What I find funny is that PG thinks he is a thinker who breaks the rules. No PG, you and your friends write the rules. Wokeness is about acknowledging the game is rigged against black people and others. But go ahead PG, redefine it as political correctness, then write an essay about how the current system is actually good. The reason wokeness scares the elite like PG is because it targets the system they themselves helped create.

pm90 2y ago
It doesn’t even have any kind of real power to unseat these dorks. They have enough capital and connections to hold on to power for life. It attempts to delegitimize them, question their worldview and expose them to other viewpoints and their reaction is to lash out against it. Very fragile identities.

dang 2y ago

Ok, but please don't break the site guidelines when posting to HN. Name-calling and personal attacks aren't allowed here, and your comment consists of nothing but. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

zahlman 2y ago
The sheer amount of content-less booing of political outgroups throughout the thread (overwhelmingly in one direction, unsurprisingly given the article content) has really disappointed me.
malcolmgreaves 2y ago
Fair. Apologies for skirting the rules.