I think if you're going to say something like this, you should sign it with your real name. Whatever his flaws, Swartz wouldn't sink to what you've done: if he was going to criticize someone he wouldn't do it anonymously.
I don't think his projects are bad or anything, but his writing just drips of egotism that makes him a great target for attack.
a) Somebody anonymously and publicly calls you names in plausible-seeming ways that others will read.
b) Somebody publicly claims to be better than everybody, including you the reader. Everybody reads him.
It's pretty clear that a is more damaging. Even if it goes out to fewer people. It is fallacious to reason that it's not so bad because it is hurting one person rather than many. On the one hand generality dilutes criticism. On the other the effects of libel can be greatly non-linear in who reads them, and when.
As for the dripping with egotism bit, that is an interesting problem. I probably would have sounded like that too at his age, but back in the pre-Web era there was no way for anyone to read what most 20 year olds wrote. Now that people can start publishing so much younger, we'll have to learn to be more tolerant of various flaws of youth.
I wonder what Swartz will be like when he's 40.
Maybe he needs someone with more life experience who is experienced at writing for the web to advise him on how not to "drip" his egotism quite so much while still communicating his point. Maybe even someone with a past business relationship with Aaron who he might respect.
Not to name names or anything. :)
this is like the movie idiocracy where luke wilson gets called "faggy" because he has a command of the english language.
i think pg defends him so (puts him into yc, puts him in reddit etc..) because aaron has a good balance of intelligence and doing things well. he's a good weapon for anything intellectual.
Submitted for evidence.
"And what did he talk about? A screwup by a restaurant he went to. And how the host worked hard, overhard even, to pacify him about it."
...
"Cooling out marks is how institutions persuade people to accept things they think are wrong. The con-man convinces you getting stolen from is OK. Your job convinces you it's OK that they're corrupt. The restaurant persuades you it's OK that they're incompetent."
So, if someone at a restaurant makes some kind of mistake, and the host works hard to make it right, it is important to not forgive them and go on holding a grudge, because that would just make you "the mark". I think that's the moral he's putting forth here.
And furthermore, you should hold the same kind of grudges against inanimate entities, like "the economy".
"Did the economy cheat you, fire you, stick you in some crappy job with a crabby boss? Listen, the motivational speaker explains, it's not the economy's fault."
So, remember, the Economy is out to get you! I don't even know what this means. Corporate CEOs, sure. Congress and the President, sure. Illegal immigrants, I suppose you could argue a case there if you really wanted to. But anthropomorphizing the economy seems a little off, to me.
Obviously, Aaron is a guy with high intelligence and substantial skill. He played a part in a successful company at a very early age, has contributed some highly praised source code to the open source community, and is still ambitious, idealistic and involved in a lot of things. But reading his blog makes me think he's also a little wacky.
But, as pg pointed out, thank God I didn't have a blog that the entire world could read when I was in my early 20s!
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/decenttodo
How to write software that people want is something Aaron knows about and he expresses himself well on that topic.
(From http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)
I wonder what the reddit guys think of aaronsw.
If his criticism is wrong, let it fail on its own merit. I love your essays Paul, but this seems like a "Support the Troops" style deflection.
Perhaps you could publish qwertyy's IP address.
John.
John.
Now, I'm not saying that people don't have a right to privacy. You'll note that I don't talk about private issues on my blog (such as my family) and I think those are irrelevant to my interaction in a forum like this. But I'm much happier when people identify themselves so that I can follow them over time.
There are good arguments for being able to be anonymous on the net (for example in the case of human rights abuses in countries it may be useful to be able to transmit information anonymously; or if we implement voting on the net). I don't think those arguments apply in a public discussion forum like this.
Of course, I'm probably an outlier on this, I'd expect a group of engineers to be fairly pro-anonymity.
John.
I've noticed that a surprising number of people live two lives-- one on the internet and one in person. I can respect a decision to live like that, even if the behaviors differ between the online and offline lives, even if the two lives are separate. Now, I don't exactly condone this behavior, but I think anyone should have the right to do it. Forcing everyone to forgo anonymity prevents some people from doing that, because it fuses the online and offline lives.
But I can certainly understand where somebody has a public image that can be damaged by some random poster, so I'm with pg to some extent. I think a better question would be about this whole hero worship idea in general. Guys like Woz are great hackers, no doubt about it. But are they really worth the elevated platform many of us put them on? I don't think so. I don't read pg essays because hey, it's another pg essay! I read some of them because they were helpful.
So I can understand the frustration many people feel when it looks like they are being sold on reading blog material simply because of the hype surrounding somebody's name. Quite frankly, I find that useless to me personally. So make the comment about _that_, and not some particular person.
The interesting undercurrent in this discussion is that the technical world is very much a reputation, name-dropping, hero worship kind of place. As much as we all understand the importance of finding and servicing users in our startups, let's be honest: teams are going to get rewarded by both the investment community and the marketplace based on PR factors. That makes an attack like this one even worse, cause it hits somebody right in the pocketbook.
Your argument that I'm wasting vertical space makes a lot of sense, especially given the clean look of reddit/news.yc compared with /.
From now on I'll stop signing.
But that would be fine, if you didn't try to pass off your personality defect as an ideology for everyone to follow, as you did in this thread. That was what sent me over the edge.
Signing messages was unrelated to anonymity, it's a years old habit that I started on Usenet and continued in online forums like this one. I don't claim that signing messages is part of the ideology I was talking about above. If I did I wouldn't have stopped.
It amuses me that you choose to describe it as a 'personality defect' from behind an anonymous account here. If we were standing face to face would you describe me signing messages in that way?
How do you figure? There are enough people who like Swartz and have pull in the Web 2.0 world that a post like this could really hurt your career.
Personally, I think it would have been better if had been done in a less vicious way and not done it anonymously, or just not posted it on the internet, but now that it's done I think he(?) has very valid reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
And I don't agree that a post like that could really hurt your career. It's nonsense to think that being an asshole is going to ruin your career. There are plenty of total dicks out there (not saying that the original poster is one) who are successful. What matters is not that you are Web 2.0 and buddy-buddy with someone who's got a high profile blog, what matters is that you make a decent product.
John.