The Case for American Seriousness – By Katherine Boyle

Somewhat unrelated but every new consumer company i see that advertises to me is trying to sell me an expensive version of something that exists

Just to name a few,

$36 pair of underwear (tommy John)

$18 socks (Bombas)

$1000 eco mattress (avocado)

$1 chocolate truffle (no chewing allowed)

Not to mentioned the various X as a subscription service. It's depressing that this is considered innovation

The article on BW substack seems to have too many things thrown in with insufficient nuance -- muddying the water and putting the main idea out of focus. I found the original article by KB more nuanced, and a good place to start thinking about what the author means by "seriousness": https://boyle.substack.com/p/on-seriousness

Paul Graham put this out on Twitter earlier today, and I came here to talk about it. I think YC News discussion is usually better than Twitter.

I think the article is pretty good, but she does paint with a broad brush. One example is this, which I’m not sure is well-balanced:

It is unserious to prioritize the old over the young, to shut down public schools for two years in the name of safety, sacrificing the needs of children for the neuroses of adults. Twenty years of educational gains and investment in schooling were “wiped out” by Covid policies, according to the United Nations[1]. This is the real, lasting effect of long Covid.

I don’t see school shutdowns, especially pre-vaccine, as simply the result of neuroses of adults. The schedule could be debated, but I think it’s unserious to make simplistic statements about a complex, and dangerous, situation.

[1]www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/world/americas/covid-19-education-unicef.html

This sounds suspiciously like writing an article coining a new virtue called “seriousness” and defining it as “doing all the things I agree with and none of the things I don’t agree with”