'I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would really like to avoid it'
https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
Edit: the essay itself seems... not very perceptive. Notably, putting things on a continuum between far left and far right and imagining that everything is somehow a process of picking out options on this continuum seems amazingly reductive.
Further, the dig on "intentional moderates" also seems to miss the point that many intentional moderates might well be seeking to function politically - so picking out moderate positions in the range of public opinion might be a case of keeping your powder dry and being effective, not compulsively trying to be a moderate because it's nifty. This was very much the case with the way Obama analyzed his own politics (turning the huge ship, very slowly). Not saying I agree with that but the assessment of "intentional moderates" really feels like a cartoon.
I'm just saying, to the extent this post is political, it's political in a totally routine way that doesn't clear the "interestingness" bar for this site, other than that Paul Graham wrote it. It doesn't belong on the HN front page.
> It sucks having to be careful about what you because of what other people will do with it, and the weird debates you'll be forced into as a result.
i write math notes for myself that i only publish to a public github repo. the repo is public because it lends me some credibility to have it on display that i study math. if there's an error in them and someone chances upon them and internalizes that error then i am (to a small extent) culpable.
(And, for the nth time, I have just a teeny tiny sample of the problem Paul Graham has! It's not like what I write is all that popular. Paul Graham has a rabid fan base here.)
that being said you're not addressing my challenge, that this thing
>That's what blogs are for.
isn't actually the case.
take for example your characterization of this kind of miscellany
>shitty first drafts of things
can you name another medium/form/forum where authors publish "shitty first drafts"? why is blogging different? because it is ephemeral and has 0 mass by virtue of being digital?
on the contrary take something like twitter, for example, and compare its relative weight, ephemerality, inchoateness to your blog posts; tweets are very much fair game for all any kind of engagement.
you could also publish anonymously. you have a choice. so does he.
here's your partial response
>I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for.
the first sentence does directly address it (choice) wrt to you and your blog (not pg's which he owns).
but the last sentence
>That's what blogs are for.
even according to you
>But even if I could
is the crux of what's at issue. and this you have not addressed anywhere that i can see
Is your issue more that pg is a public enough figure that he can't not get attention for things he posts? Or is it that the attention he gets is likely to occur in a forum he views regularly and has an attachment to?
Lots of similar thinkpieces get posted on HN every day that people have all sorts of debates about without being invited to do so. And most figures with the wealth and visibility of pg can't really publicly post things without a group somewhere arguing over its content. A downside of having that level of fame I suppose.
He sure can, but having a platform and competence in one area doesn't mean your skill applies to another. This whole article is a fascinating example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.
The idea, of two kinds of moderates is interesting. The framing is, at best weak and at worst very flawed, shallow and a gross oversimplification.
The shots at the left, at marxists, are palatable. At no point does this article take a genuinely "moderate" stance on the current political climate. Rather it takes an insidious right leaning view.
> and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.
So everyone is right some of the time?
> Moderates are sometimes derided as cowards, particularly by the extreme left.
I can name half a dozen right leaning issues that would get me thrown out of a gathering if I expressed my views, maybe even threatened with physical harm.
> If I knew a ... people in the entertainment business, ... Being on the far left or far right doesn't affect how ... how well you sing.
Is followed up with...
> You could be mindlessly doctrinaire in your politics and still be a good mathematician. In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves.
Holly crap this is the most ignorant thing I have read in a long time. There was large attraction to Marxism after the Great Depression. Not only did smart people take it up but droves of them in the "entertainment" industry. Is he completely unaware of the House Unamerican Activities Committee and the blacklisting?
> It's possible in theory for one side to be entirely right and the other to be entirely wrong. Indeed, ideologues must always believe this is the case. But historically it rarely has been.
Both extremes have been bad "historically" but it ignores the common theme of totalitarianism as an overriding ideology.
> For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates rather than despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it means that the far right is less ideological than the far left.
Again, House Un-American Activities Committee ... And just about every issue the US far right champions today. In fact the far right base could be grouped into a few "single issue items" (guns, taxes, abortion)
> But if the ideas you use in your work intersect with the politics of your time, you have two choices: be an accidental moderate, or be mediocre.
This whole article is mediocre, it is a right leaning assessment and bent on politics. Shades of Ben Carson, pyramids as grain storage.
I mean, if you want to talk about partisan accusations...
Just because someone doesn't buy into your views doesn't mean they're secretly scheming to reinforce the other side. Someone can be the same side of the aisle as you _and also_ still disagree with you.
1) As far as I am concerned, it just shows PG's colors where he stands on the spectrum, and that is: Useful on its own. It also appears to refute its own point.
2) The accidental moderate serves a different purpose: it diffuses the left vs right as being black and white set in stone. The worst thing in a political discussion is saying "you are X on political spectrum" (or any name calling) and ignore whatever the other person has to say. It is akin to being Republican or Democrat (or any other 2 political parties) without considering the candidates or viewpoints they expressed.
That being said before I opened the essay I expected it to be about the act of (self-)moderation, so I was disappointed.
> I say this as a moderate, of the accidental variety, myself!
I had to laugh. As you are a reasonably prolific contributor here, I've seen dozens if not hundreds of your comments. It's gotten to the point I can reliably tell when it's a tptacek comment before I even read the byline. And it's not because you have stances on both sides of the political aisle.
This isn't a nuanced or deeply explored post on the topic of moderates. Same as the previous post that was on here this week or last. Name brand carries a lot.
Also, one reason this is getting shot down less hard than the atlantic is that it's a simple point being made in <60 seconds of reading. The atlantic would take >10 pages to do so.
This thought would be even more viable as a tweet.
Much more importantly though is what the content does to/with the community. Unless there's something truly remarkable about it, political content on HN generates terrible threads. Unlike embedded JIT compilers or linear algebra books, virtually everybody on HN can summon a strong opinion about routine political content, and a huge fraction of those opinions will piss someone else off. It's not a new phenomenon; it's why "politics and religion" is a cliche about what's out of bounds for civilized conversation.
Some political content is worth the thread drama. But this obviously doesn't clear that bar (and, again, I'm not suggesting Paul Graham thinks it does; he didn't submit it).
edit: sincere q, I have no idea how these things are handled
There are many posts that get on the front page which have even less merit from your POV. Posts about health or about management, many of the above with arguably unsubstantiated titles. If those make it here and get discussed I don’t see why this one deserves an exceptional consideration.
If the Atlantic is so damn smart, why don't I give a shit about their forum? And why don't you?
Maybe PG's essays wouldn't survive on the front page (all glory be to the masses who bestow their wisdom on us by voting!) if they were written by someone else. But they weren't written by someone else.
"Guys! You guys are voting all wrong!" feels lame. Sorry?