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Comment by tigertheory | Hacker News Reader

I like Paul Graham a lot but this is simply not true.

Look at the most successful people of recent times and you will quickly see a consistent pattern of meanness when you dig into how they work with others: - Steve Jobs - Bill Gates - Elon Musk - Sam Altman - Etc.

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But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day?

Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money.

Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elon Musk and they both suffered from it. Elon Musks own daughter is attacking him online. Think about that.

Elon Musk is on top of that a seriously pathetic individual. That is pretty obvious, isn't it.

Sam Altman ... I mean, just the accusations are so cringe and ignominious.

None of those people strike me as authentically happy and fulfilled. They all overstepped the mark and paid for it dearly or are in the process of doing so. They all suffered from their habits of being reckless and lacking compassion.

If failing for you means being broke or "not rich", then yes. But that would be a very narrow interpretation. Certainly not mine. I seriously pity all of them.

    Sam Altman ... I mean, just the accusations are so cringe

Yeah.. sexually assaulting your sibling is "so cringe".

Graham's essay seems to be mostly about material success, which the listed people have in spades.

You're probably right. But then he is wrong anyway. Almost all the famous founders of the most successful companies the US produced are or have been infamously mean. Sometimes they had more likeable co-fouders like Paul Allen or Wozniak, but his little opinion piece falls flat nonetheless. He is contradicting himself in his own self-righteous thought bubble. I just chose not to participate.

"authentically happy and fulfilled" is not the definition of success that PG is using in this essay.

TBH the pursuit of great wealth and the world of startups is not the line of work to pursue if the goal is to be "authentically happy and fulfilled".

Their companies are all doing well (although I think the jury is out on OpenAI). So did they fail? Graham seems to measure a person's success by the success of their company.

>Elon Musks own daughter is attacking him online. Think about that.

If you read Walter Isaacson's book on Musk it's pretty clear that his kids do love him, he does care for them well, and that his "daughter" fell into pretty extremist ideology.

That may well be. I'm also extrapolating from what I read about his upbringing. That's pretty extreme. He was severely abused by his father (possibly even sexually) and bullied by his peers. His "superpower" is an insatiable desire to proof something forever. Also asking Epstein (post-conviction) for an invitation to a wild party on his island is allowing for conclusions that are hardly flattering. And I mean that in a way that is orthogonal to happiness.

Why the scare quotes? Would you like to be more explicit about which ideology you think she fell into, and why you consider it extremist?

edit: this book? https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/1/23895069/walter-isaacson-...

Look her up on TikTok, she’s not mentally well. Extreme leftist ideology is what I’m talking about.

You should read the book, it’s pretty good. Isaacson is not at all biased towards Musk, he has a lot of critical things to say about him. The author is one of the most trusted and thorough biographers of his generation and is known for extensive primary-source research.

This verge article is cope, they are a very politically biased organization. Linking to them is the equivalent of me linking to Fox News and trying to pass it off as unbiased.

Also, those are not scare quotes. His “daughter” is a man pretending to be a woman because of mental illness and extremist ideology.

It doesn’t seem that leftist to me. Are you a shrink? Or are you using some kind of folk diagnosis to determine she’s mentally unwell?

What kind of ideology strips individuals of the right of self determination to live and be called whatever they want? That’s what most civilized people call extreme.

Can you give an example of “valid” scare quotes? Or a definition even?

IMO, Isaacson isn't the most objective biographer and his sourcing tends to be pretty awful. I don't trust anything he's written about contemporary people and I'm still disappointed that the access Steve Jobs gave him was seemingly squandered.

It's PG, the definition of the sort of success he advocates in the startup world is "accumulated a lot of money, influence and kudos" and those guys are outlying successes in those areas, regardless of issues in their personal life and how many people detest some of them.

Sure, there are normies with greater levels of personal happiness (as well as plenty of nice normies who also managed to fall out with significant people in their lives for one reason or another), but I don't think PG is likely to consider them higher achievers, even if they're significantly more secure and happy in their career than some of those individuals.

Steve Jobs was certainly flawed and his personal relationships extremely complicated, but I would recommend reading the memoir his daughter wrote, Small Fry as it provides a more firsthand, nuanced perspective into Jobs as a father and partner. Compared to Elon, Steve would be father of the year.

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