5 ms·

pg's writing is so lazy. At best he engages with thinkers in a superficial way, further, he never expands his horizons beyond the typical cadre of classics, he

pg's writing is so lazy. At best he engages with thinkers in a superficial way, further, he never expands his horizons beyond the typical cadre of classics, he says nothing of actual intellectual substance and worth, and if anything he legitimizes an uncritical stance toward the world (a sort of pseudo-intellectual neopositivism). I still think a poverty of exposure and experience in the history of philosophy and literature on the part of his audience is the only reason he gets any sort of readership.

bigyabai 2y ago
Yeah. I've never been particularly fond of the "traditional" computing essays by Stallman et. al, but compared to PG's essays they read like Tolkien.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bayarearefugee 2y ago
I agree with you in the general case but I'd also add that this specific post is even worse than the usual stuff he writes. It's a 1500 word essay that says absolutely nothing at all.
- jpm_sd 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    "Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
graycat 2y ago
Maybe PG is "superficial". Hmm ... It may be that commonly drilling down as deep as can is not productive and, instead, there is some wisdom that commonly productive solutions are surprisingly simplistic, i.e., "superficial"?
- sctb 2y ago
  To add to this: I think pg does drill down, but what he does more than most is make the effort to bring those insights back up.
booleandilemma 2y ago
Can you recommend a writer you like? Have you written anything?
- bayarearefugee 2y ago
  "Have you done XYZ?" is such a lame counter to criticism of someone else doing XYZ badly. You don't have to have made a movie to recognize a bad movie. You don't have to have built a car to recognize a poorly designed car. You don't have to have written a song to recognize unlistenable garbage.
  - booleandilemma 2y ago
    It's not a counter, I'm looking for more information.
- voidhorse 2y ago
  I can recommend several. If pg's essays have some amount of appeal to you, you are probably potentially interested in philosophy, here are just a few people who have authored works of far greater eloquence, depth, and significance than anything paul graham has ever written: Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault, Ryle, Montaigne, Maggie Nelson, Didion, Bertrand Russel, Jean Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Niklas Luhmann, Norbert Wiener, Hienz von Forester, Hans Georg Gadamer, Juergen Habermas, Rebeca Solnit... And these are just the few people that came to mind off the cuff. If I bothered to look I could probably give you more. These tech luminaries act as though no philosophy or significant social analysis or cultural criticism has happened in the west since Plato and Cicero, but it's simply...entirely untrue. There's a wealth of deep, enriching philosophical heritage to explore, and I think these bozos don't engage with it because they are either too lazy (much easier to read translations of the classics) too disingenuous (much easier to base your sophistry on material that is so old as to not be contested) , or too self righteous (they already possess the one truth birthed directly by the divine cells of their brains because they like the lisp programming language and worked at yahoo, so why bother to interact with the thought of others in a serious way?) to bother. Not to mention, they don't dare engage with the highly complex dedicated academic studies of the classics anyway. I doubt pg has done little more than read a modern translation of Cicero. Probably not even Leob, probably Penguin Random House. But hey, those ignorant of the gold vein will happily lop up pewter.
sph 2y ago
[flagged]
- voidhorse 2y ago
  Hey, fair enough, and if you feel the article helped you reflect on your life, great. However, the reason the lack of depth and engagement bothers me is that it is its own (perhaps unintentional) form of intellectual gatekeeping. By failing to seriously engage with much of the literary tradition, paul effectively avoids helping his readers discover this tradition, allowing them to further their reflections and develop their own ideas through further exploration. This is why I call the writing lazy specifically—it stops practically before it begins. If it's unintentional, this is laziness—deciding that a half-baked, isolated musing is worth sharing. If it's intentional, it's more malicious. A sophist benefits from ignorance. The less his audience knows the more novel or insightful his empty ideas appear. I think the accusation of superiority is fair, I am engaging in some rhetoric myself. But the stakes are different. A comment on a community forum is not of equal potential impact as knowingly, intentionally publishing a work when you are aware that you have an audience and influence. Furthermore, it's not like pg is engaging with this particular thread of discussion or my accusation, or many for that manner. It's mostly a monologue these days. We should demand and ask for more of leaders with influence, not less. Why set the bar lower for people we know have popularity and pull? That have platforms through which they can shape the public consciousness? I'll also note that I only "name dropped" because someone asked. People really need to get over their emotive attachments to intelligence. I'm not saying I'm smarter than anyone else on this forum, or even pg for that matter because I don't think questions about degrees of intelligence even make sense unless you narrowly prescribe the notion and context. Stop being insecure.
- wetpaws 2y ago
  [dead]
dragonwriter 2y ago
> I still think a poverty of exposure and experience in the history of philosophy and literature on the part of his audience is the only reason he gets any sort of readership. That and people who hero-worship him for his role in YC and some of his other previous business and/or technical work and assume everything he does is valuable because of that.

bigyabai 2y ago

Yeah. I've never been particularly fond of the "traditional" computing essays by Stallman et. al, but compared to PG's essays they read like Tolkien.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bayarearefugee 2y ago

I agree with you in the general case but I'd also add that this specific post is even worse than the usual stuff he writes. It's a 1500 word essay that says absolutely nothing at all.

jpm_sd 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  "Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

graycat 2y ago

Maybe PG is "superficial". Hmm ... It may be that commonly drilling down as deep as can is not productive and, instead, there is some wisdom that commonly productive solutions are surprisingly simplistic, i.e., "superficial"?

sctb 2y ago
To add to this: I think pg does drill down, but what he does more than most is make the effort to bring those insights back up.

booleandilemma 2y ago

Can you recommend a writer you like? Have you written anything?

bayarearefugee 2y ago
"Have you done XYZ?" is such a lame counter to criticism of someone else doing XYZ badly. You don't have to have made a movie to recognize a bad movie. You don't have to have built a car to recognize a poorly designed car. You don't have to have written a song to recognize unlistenable garbage.
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  It's not a counter, I'm looking for more information.
voidhorse 2y ago
I can recommend several. If pg's essays have some amount of appeal to you, you are probably potentially interested in philosophy, here are just a few people who have authored works of far greater eloquence, depth, and significance than anything paul graham has ever written: Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault, Ryle, Montaigne, Maggie Nelson, Didion, Bertrand Russel, Jean Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Niklas Luhmann, Norbert Wiener, Hienz von Forester, Hans Georg Gadamer, Juergen Habermas, Rebeca Solnit... And these are just the few people that came to mind off the cuff. If I bothered to look I could probably give you more. These tech luminaries act as though no philosophy or significant social analysis or cultural criticism has happened in the west since Plato and Cicero, but it's simply...entirely untrue. There's a wealth of deep, enriching philosophical heritage to explore, and I think these bozos don't engage with it because they are either too lazy (much easier to read translations of the classics) too disingenuous (much easier to base your sophistry on material that is so old as to not be contested) , or too self righteous (they already possess the one truth birthed directly by the divine cells of their brains because they like the lisp programming language and worked at yahoo, so why bother to interact with the thought of others in a serious way?) to bother. Not to mention, they don't dare engage with the highly complex dedicated academic studies of the classics anyway. I doubt pg has done little more than read a modern translation of Cicero. Probably not even Leob, probably Penguin Random House. But hey, those ignorant of the gold vein will happily lop up pewter.

sph 2y ago

[flagged]

voidhorse 2y ago
Hey, fair enough, and if you feel the article helped you reflect on your life, great. However, the reason the lack of depth and engagement bothers me is that it is its own (perhaps unintentional) form of intellectual gatekeeping. By failing to seriously engage with much of the literary tradition, paul effectively avoids helping his readers discover this tradition, allowing them to further their reflections and develop their own ideas through further exploration. This is why I call the writing lazy specifically—it stops practically before it begins. If it's unintentional, this is laziness—deciding that a half-baked, isolated musing is worth sharing. If it's intentional, it's more malicious. A sophist benefits from ignorance. The less his audience knows the more novel or insightful his empty ideas appear. I think the accusation of superiority is fair, I am engaging in some rhetoric myself. But the stakes are different. A comment on a community forum is not of equal potential impact as knowingly, intentionally publishing a work when you are aware that you have an audience and influence. Furthermore, it's not like pg is engaging with this particular thread of discussion or my accusation, or many for that manner. It's mostly a monologue these days. We should demand and ask for more of leaders with influence, not less. Why set the bar lower for people we know have popularity and pull? That have platforms through which they can shape the public consciousness? I'll also note that I only "name dropped" because someone asked. People really need to get over their emotive attachments to intelligence. I'm not saying I'm smarter than anyone else on this forum, or even pg for that matter because I don't think questions about degrees of intelligence even make sense unless you narrowly prescribe the notion and context. Stop being insecure.
wetpaws 2y ago
[dead]

dragonwriter 2y ago

> I still think a poverty of exposure and experience in the history of philosophy and literature on the part of his audience is the only reason he gets any sort of readership. That and people who hero-worship him for his role in YC and some of his other previous business and/or technical work and assume everything he does is valuable because of that.