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I Stumbled Upon Paul Graham's Essays – and Can't Stop Reading

6 points by xnslx 6mo ago

I stumbled upon Paul Graham’s essays and couldn’t stop reading. Just wow — how can one person be that insightful?

andsoitis 6mo ago
> how can one person be that insightful Then you will truly be blown away by Aristotle, Newton, Plato, Kant, Darwin, Einstein, Marx, Confucius, Leibniz, Freud.
- xnslx 6mo ago
  Yes, actually I also read a lot of Aristotle. Totally blown away by such wisdom!!
- Dumblydorr 6mo ago
  Yeah maybe my standard is high but PG is just another essayist. I’d rather reach for real literature or historical non-fiction before PG. I will grant for the tech industry it’s some of the more insightful stuff I’ve seen but I don’t need more folk wisdom, I need more screen-free doing and less consumption of text.
xnslx 6mo ago
Which essay do you like the best? It inspires me so much and makes me want to keep writing. As he said, there’s a kind of thinking that can only be owned by writing.
- djyde 6mo ago
  My favorite is "Do things that don't scale" (https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html), which has been really inspiring for my indie product work. Especially for those of us building internet products, we often tend to build scalable things right from the start, but in reality, products in the early stages require founders to do a lot of non-automated dirty work. For entrepreneurs, reading Paul Graham's articles is incredibly useful. (Sent via haiker.app — My handmade Hacker News app)
  - xnslx 6mo ago
    Yes! That’s one of my favorite essays right now too. It also reminds me of what Stripe did early on — they focused on serving just 50 customers in the first two years, but went all in on doing it really well.
- chistev 6mo ago
  https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html https://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html https://www.paulgraham.com/college.html https://www.paulgraham.com/college.html https://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html https://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html
  - xnslx 6mo ago
    Thank you!! Gonna read them one by one!
ex-aws-dude 6mo ago
How is a post with literally 2 points the top of /ask The algorithm on this site makes no sense sometimes
- xnslx 6mo ago
  Don't take it seriously, it's just luck.
- Dumblydorr 6mo ago
  It seems based heavily on recency? Not a lot questions per day it seems. Does anyone have the algorithm for ranking?
OutrageousTea 6mo ago
[flagged]
- xnslx 6mo ago
  [dead]
mikewarot 6mo ago
Congratulations, you're one of the lucky 10,000. Here's the appropriate XKCD ref. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
nivertech 6mo ago
https://paulgraham.com/articles.html https://paulgraham.com/articles.html

6 points by xnslx 6mo ago

I stumbled upon Paul Graham’s essays and couldn’t stop reading. Just wow — how can one person be that insightful?

> how can one person be that insightful Then you will truly be blown away by Aristotle, Newton, Plato, Kant, Darwin, Einstein, Marx, Confucius, Leibniz, Freud.

xnslx 6mo ago
Yes, actually I also read a lot of Aristotle. Totally blown away by such wisdom!!
Dumblydorr 6mo ago
Yeah maybe my standard is high but PG is just another essayist. I’d rather reach for real literature or historical non-fiction before PG. I will grant for the tech industry it’s some of the more insightful stuff I’ve seen but I don’t need more folk wisdom, I need more screen-free doing and less consumption of text.

xnslx 6mo ago

Which essay do you like the best? It inspires me so much and makes me want to keep writing. As he said, there’s a kind of thinking that can only be owned by writing.

djyde 6mo ago
My favorite is "Do things that don't scale" (https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html), which has been really inspiring for my indie product work. Especially for those of us building internet products, we often tend to build scalable things right from the start, but in reality, products in the early stages require founders to do a lot of non-automated dirty work. For entrepreneurs, reading Paul Graham's articles is incredibly useful. (Sent via haiker.app — My handmade Hacker News app)
- xnslx 6mo ago
  Yes! That’s one of my favorite essays right now too. It also reminds me of what Stripe did early on — they focused on serving just 50 customers in the first two years, but went all in on doing it really well.
chistev 6mo ago
https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html https://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html https://www.paulgraham.com/college.html https://www.paulgraham.com/college.html https://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html https://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html
- xnslx 6mo ago
  Thank you!! Gonna read them one by one!

ex-aws-dude 6mo ago

How is a post with literally 2 points the top of /ask The algorithm on this site makes no sense sometimes

xnslx 6mo ago
Don't take it seriously, it's just luck.
Dumblydorr 6mo ago
It seems based heavily on recency? Not a lot questions per day it seems. Does anyone have the algorithm for ranking?

OutrageousTea 6mo ago

[flagged]

xnslx 6mo ago
[dead]

mikewarot 6mo ago

Congratulations, you're one of the lucky 10,000. Here's the appropriate XKCD ref. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

nivertech 6mo ago

https://paulgraham.com/articles.html https://paulgraham.com/articles.html