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pg was like a role model for me. I was so inspired by his early essays that I have read them time and again. And I was really disappointed by pg's recent essay.

pg was like a role model for me. I was so inspired by his early essays that I have read them time and again. And I was really disappointed by pg's recent essay. Yes, I agree that if a founder's accent is so strong that he couldn't be understood, he is less likely to succeed. There is no controversy here. I am not disappointed on what he said but how he said it. "...anyone with half a brain...","they must just be clueless if they haven’t gotten rid of their strong accent..." These phrases seem so arrogant to me. Can pg speak Chinese without strong Chinese accent? Does he know how difficult it is to get rid of strong accent? How would he just easily judge these people with strong accents as "half a brain" or "clueless" so easily? "...Everyone got that? We all agree accents are fine?... " Yes, we all got it, since pg is always right 200% of the time, and everybody who disagree are just idiots who don't get his scientifically obtained and proved "empirical evidence".

petegrif 13y ago
He's English.
gfodor 13y ago
I think is point is that if your accent is so strong that you are not understandable, then odds are you either are ignorant that it is a problem or are too dumb to consider it a possibility, since otherwise you would have taken steps to improve it to the point that you are intelligible. Now that there has been a shitstorm pg can no longer delve into specifics anymore without inflaming hurt feelings, but I imagine he is talking about people who have incredibly extreme accents and are extraordinarily hard to understand. I have worked with a number of people like this, they were ultimately unable to live up to their potential, and I would characterize them as "clueless" in this regard since I would be genuinely shocked if they were at the very least aware nevermind actively trying to correct the problem. It defies belief to think that these folks could not have dramatically improved their accent had they identified it as a problem and spent a few hours each week of dedicated effort to improve it. This point is of course lost on people who are eager to be offended. If you have a ridiculously strong accent then it's hard to argue that it is unreasonably difficult to go from there to simply being intelligible. People are instead focused on the difficulty of losing an accent altogether which is of course very hard and completely irrelevant.
- philangist 13y ago
  Some people can't just "fix" their accents though. I think that's a large part of the problem most people have with what Paul said. It's not completely irrelevant. It's the whole point.
  - gfodor 13y ago
    My point is that it depends on what you mean by "fix." Is it extremely hard for a person with a unintelligible accent to eliminate it? Of course. Could that same person with a few hours of regular effort quickly make incredible progress (in that most of their peers would go from not being able to understand them to being able to?) I'd have to speculate yes.
jtheory 13y ago
> Can pg speak Chinese without strong Chinese accent? I'm sure he'd agree it would be foolishness for him to launch a startup in China, pitching to Chinese investors and customers. The "half a brain" comment could have been better phrased, but that wasn't part of the essay -- it was off-the-cuff in a spoken interview, so he didn't have the opportunity to have 5 people read it and tidy it up before it was published (as he does with the essays). About role models -- they're all like that. Anyone you may take as a role model is going to have flaws, going to make mistakes, going to sometimes say the wrong thing or make the wrong decision. Sometimes they'll regret it themselves (privately, or publicly) and sometimes not; sometimes they won't even notice they've screwed up. If you don't see the flaws yet, it's because you don't know them well enough yet. Don't lose your inspiration, though. Take your role models off their pedestals, and keep looking for new admirable behavior.

petegrif 13y ago

He's English.

gfodor 13y ago

I think is point is that if your accent is so strong that you are not understandable, then odds are you either are ignorant that it is a problem or are too dumb to consider it a possibility, since otherwise you would have taken steps to improve it to the point that you are intelligible. Now that there has been a shitstorm pg can no longer delve into specifics anymore without inflaming hurt feelings, but I imagine he is talking about people who have incredibly extreme accents and are extraordinarily hard to understand. I have worked with a number of people like this, they were ultimately unable to live up to their potential, and I would characterize them as "clueless" in this regard since I would be genuinely shocked if they were at the very least aware nevermind actively trying to correct the problem. It defies belief to think that these folks could not have dramatically improved their accent had they identified it as a problem and spent a few hours each week of dedicated effort to improve it. This point is of course lost on people who are eager to be offended. If you have a ridiculously strong accent then it's hard to argue that it is unreasonably difficult to go from there to simply being intelligible. People are instead focused on the difficulty of losing an accent altogether which is of course very hard and completely irrelevant.

philangist 13y ago
Some people can't just "fix" their accents though. I think that's a large part of the problem most people have with what Paul said. It's not completely irrelevant. It's the whole point.
- gfodor 13y ago
  My point is that it depends on what you mean by "fix." Is it extremely hard for a person with a unintelligible accent to eliminate it? Of course. Could that same person with a few hours of regular effort quickly make incredible progress (in that most of their peers would go from not being able to understand them to being able to?) I'd have to speculate yes.

jtheory 13y ago

> Can pg speak Chinese without strong Chinese accent? I'm sure he'd agree it would be foolishness for him to launch a startup in China, pitching to Chinese investors and customers. The "half a brain" comment could have been better phrased, but that wasn't part of the essay -- it was off-the-cuff in a spoken interview, so he didn't have the opportunity to have 5 people read it and tidy it up before it was published (as he does with the essays). About role models -- they're all like that. Anyone you may take as a role model is going to have flaws, going to make mistakes, going to sometimes say the wrong thing or make the wrong decision. Sometimes they'll regret it themselves (privately, or publicly) and sometimes not; sometimes they won't even notice they've screwed up. If you don't see the flaws yet, it's because you don't know them well enough yet. Don't lose your inspiration, though. Take your role models off their pedestals, and keep looking for new admirable behavior.