Comment by bansarefun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bansarefun | Hacker News Reader

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I had the same thought as the parent. His last essay was, by a wide margin, his least well considered, most nonsensical, and most widely criticized essay. It was, by a wide margin, his worse ever work.

And now, suddenly, his next essay is on life being too short for bullshit and arguing on the internet?

Yes... this seems to me like one thing: it seems like Paul Graham knows he wrote a god-awful, indefensible, steaming turd of an essay; and he's running away. He wants to stand by his self-entitled beliefs. He wants to stand by his ridiculous mischaracterizations of those he attacked. He wants to stand by all that bullshit.

And he's standing by his awful essay by claiming engaging with critics of his steaming turd would be a waste of his life.

Yes. This is another new low point for pg.

pg, you're over. You used to be important... and you'll continue to think you're important. But you are now the past, and the future will be found somewhere else.

Enjoy your bubble where everybody tells you that everything you say is gold. Enjoy never growing or learning again, because you've sealed out voices that are willing to tell you when you're wrong. Enjoy pretending you're perfect.

You're done.

You're a joke.

pg. you're the past.

We banned this account for trolling and detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917656 and marked it off-topic.

I personally didn't like too much that essay about inequalities, but I think your comment is unnecessarily nasty.

I believe arguing with commenters like you is exactly the bullshit PG mentioned.

His tone might seem unnecessarily harsh at first, but when taken in context of the amount of ass-kissing that goes on here, it starts to seem more like an appropriate counterweight.

You can be a counterweight without being an asshole. If not, you're just contributing to the problem.

Just like it is possible to disagree respectfully it is probably un-wise to take the position that calling out those that are resorting to personal attacks and outright bile implies agreement.

So yes, that tone was too harsh and in fact entirely in-appropriate.

It's fine.

pg is wealthy. One of the benefits of wealth is that you a choice about what you want to see and hear, especially about yourself. And that by default, you will only hear good things.

pg has made a conscious decision that not only does he only want to hear those good things; but that he will never respond to critical voices.

So the arguments about style and tone are moot, because a man like pg will dismiss my argument either way. He's not going to wake up tomorrow, admit that nobody is asking for 100% income equality and that he was a dishonest sack of shit for pretending otherwise. He just won't do that. It would involve admitting so many flaws and wrongs... It would involve admitting that all of the people who reviewed his essay were also kissing his ass. It would involve admitting that he lives in a bubble.. It would involve admitting that he's lost touch with reality.

So it really doesn't matter how I say any of it. I can be polite or rude; I can be academic or casual; I can be concise or long-winded. pg isn't capable of hearing my message, because to hear my message would be to recognize how he lives; and to do so would shatter his beliefs about why he has so many relationships with interesting and successful people. To do so would shatter the myth that it's about his genius and amazing intelligence. To do so would be to admit that he's just a rich guy who started doing early-stage VC at a point in time where even a barely skilled individual money could do very, very well; and if they applied even a modicum of skill, they could experience a massive virtuous cycle.

So I don't really care about these complaints about tone... because pg can't hear me anyway. He's made sure of that. He's too busy writing fiction about what it means to oppose massive income inequality; he's too busy willfully misunderstanding the situation; he's too busy pretending that he's far far far more special than he is.

> [pg is] not going to wake up tomorrow, admit that nobody is asking for 100% income equality and that he was a dishonest sack of shit for pretending otherwise

pg did not make the claim that anyone is arguing for "100% income equality"; he did not posture as if that was the position he was arguing against. You're making things up and are being appropriately downvoted for it.

The topic of this essay was:

"[E]conomic inequality is not just one thing. It consists of some things that are very bad, like kids with no chance of reaching their potential, and others that are good, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin starting the company you use to find things online. If you want to understand economic inequality—and more importantly, if you actually want to fix the bad aspects of it—you have to tease apart the components. And yet the trend in nearly everything written about the subject is to do the opposite: to squash together all the aspects of economic inequality as if it were a single phenomenon."

If he oversimplifies his opposition at all, it's to characterize their position as "economic inequality is bad and should be decreased". He positions that argument as the one in opposition to his. It sounds like you've misunderstood what he's written and are attributing positions to him that he did not write.

Truth. His last essay actually hurt me pretty personally. There aren't too many figures in the business or tech world that I actually admire, and I was really disappointed when a guy that has been this lucky is too scared to acknowledge that life simply isn't fair, and that hard work isn't always enough. PG has become a beggar like the rent seekers he claims to abhor.

> There aren't too many figures in the business or tech world that I actually admire, and I was really disappointed when a guy that has been this lucky is too scared to acknowledge that life simply isn't fair, and that hard work isn't always enough.

I think you've seriously misunderstood his last essay, and should read it again with a less emotional and more logical eye. He acknowledges the truth of exactly what you said in the opening of the essay:

> The solution to this puzzle is to realize that economic inequality is not just one thing. It consists of some things that are very bad, like kids with no chance of reaching their potential, and others that are good, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin starting the company you use to find things online.

> If you want to understand economic inequality—and more importantly, if you actually want to fix the bad aspects of it—you have to tease apart the components. And yet the trend in nearly everything written about the subject is to do the opposite: to squash together all the aspects of economic inequality as if it were a single phenomenon. ( http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html )

"Kids with no chance of reaching their potential", i.e., life that is not fair. He explicitly acknowledges this right up front, and yet you accuse him of arguing the opposite or failing to recognize it. I find this point of view frustrating.

The thesis of PG's essay is that inequality is not a single phenomenon, and has some bad parts, but also some unavoidable parts. To simplify what he said, some people are more productive and driven than others, and technology amplifies this difference.

("Some people are more productive and driven than others" should not be a controversial statement. I would perform drastically worse at quarterbacking an NFL game than every single NFL quarterback. Many people would perform drastically worse at my job than I do.)

Totally understand what you're saying, but instead of even attempting to tackle any of the issues he mentions, pg just comes across in this as "I am rich because I'm productive and if I couldn't earn a lot of money I wouldn't work hard so don't take my money," which is rather short sighted and self absorbed.

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