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0 pointsDoreenMichele5y ago0 comments

Of course, that assertion is hyperbole. The point being I don't think this really belongs here.

I'm someone who finds social stuff very interesting. I mostly don't like gossip rags and a lot of psychological studies are essentially useless garbage.

What value does this article really provide? Does it tell us where you can look out for Paul Graham's personal biases in order to get more value out of his writing? Does it propose better answers to anything in particular?

This amounts to jealousy or something and it reminds me of an old comic strip where the punch line was to the effect of "After 12 straight hours online this woman is going You People Need To Get A Life!"

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lkrubner5y ago

Suppose a professor has a Very Great reputation, and another professor has an Ordinary Great reputation.

You take a class with each.

From the Very Great professor you get several maxims that don’t seem to actually help you, nor can you figure out how to apply them to your work.

From the Ordinary Great professor you get a bunch of advice that you can easily apply to your own work, and you feel that you’ve immediately improved in the subject.

Is it jealousy to then say the Very Great professor seems to have a reputation that exceeds his actual skill?

That’s how I read the comparison of Graham to Hickey.

It’s an important issue, especially if Very Great has a prominent position in the industry and is using that prominence in harmful ways.

billy_beef5y ago

I have to disagree here. The article is criticizing his work, his history of participation in a field, and his current commentary on politics. Yes, it discusses him as a subject, but not as a piece of gossip and strung-together ad hominem's. It is definitely critical of him, but mostly in his capacity as a commentor and his history of being incorrect. It's not second-rate tabloid stuff because of what dimension of him it's mostly considering.

DoreenMicheleOP5y ago

Racism, sexism, personal attacks in intellectual circles -- such things all tend to work more or less the same way. Attack them in a way that has plausible deniability and is socially acceptable for some reason.

But if you look at the overall pattern of behavior, the real point is to attack or exclude a particular person or particular group of people.

Among other things I've had a college class in Social Psychology. I object to a gossipy piece of garbage getting so many upvotes on HN while bringing down the quality of discussion here.

If you find something meaty in his analysis of pg's work, then why don't you comment on that instead of arguing with me?

If my comments here are so off the mark, why do they have so much attention? This piece is failing to generate meaty discussion. It's mostly generating hot takes about Paul Graham and not commentary on the criticism of his work because the framing of the piece doesn't really fit with the idea that it's about criticizing his work.

If it were really about criticizing his work, what we should see here is debate about whether or not that criticism holds water. And I'm not really seeing that.

lkrubner5y ago

Your comments are drawing my attention because you’ve previously written a great deal on Hacker News that I agreed with and so I’m surprised that you have such a negative view of such an excellent essay.

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0 pointsDoreenMichele5y ago0 comments

Of course, that assertion is hyperbole. The point being I don't think this really belongs here.

I'm someone who finds social stuff very interesting. I mostly don't like gossip rags and a lot of psychological studies are essentially useless garbage.

0 comments

lkrubner5y ago

Suppose a professor has a Very Great reputation, and another professor has an Ordinary Great reputation.

You take a class with each.

From the Very Great professor you get several maxims that don’t seem to actually help you, nor can you figure out how to apply them to your work.

From the Ordinary Great professor you get a bunch of advice that you can easily apply to your own work, and you feel that you’ve immediately improved in the subject.

Is it jealousy to then say the Very Great professor seems to have a reputation that exceeds his actual skill?

That’s how I read the comparison of Graham to Hickey.

It’s an important issue, especially if Very Great has a prominent position in the industry and is using that prominence in harmful ways.

billy_beef5y ago

DoreenMicheleOP5y ago

But if you look at the overall pattern of behavior, the real point is to attack or exclude a particular person or particular group of people.

Among other things I've had a college class in Social Psychology. I object to a gossipy piece of garbage getting so many upvotes on HN while bringing down the quality of discussion here.

If you find something meaty in his analysis of pg's work, then why don't you comment on that instead of arguing with me?

If it were really about criticizing his work, what we should see here is debate about whether or not that criticism holds water. And I'm not really seeing that.

lkrubner5y ago

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