Comment by irrigation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by irrigation | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It seems like you are saying "Patio11 clearly is lying about his consulting rates and the sale of BCC proves it."

The root of this thread is someone who is a little surprised at how small of a transaction the sale of BCC was. Despite all of the transparency, a lot of people had a much greater sense of success, and it is a little like finding out that the stock guru had a yearly return of 2%. That is neither here nor there, and I have no comment or interest in BCC and related ventures, and was only tangentially commenting on the notion of inflated success, and with that reputation for wisdom/knowledge.

On the consulting side, I'm not saying that he's lying, however many people defensively jump to that conclusion. More generally I am saying that history has shown that a lot of people do lie (embellish, exaggerate, etc) to get attention, which leads to a situation where the onus of proof is on the speaker, increasingly so when there are extraordinary claims. I found the post about consulting simply extraordinary, and I have no reason to give anyone a pass just because.

> The root of this thread is someone who is a little surprised at how small of a transaction the sale of BCC was.

I think the sale numbers line up very well with what I would expect given the numbers actually posted (if anything I'm surprised the sale price is as high as it is). Is your thesis that people should lower their expectations about how much recurring revenue businesses are worth? If so, I agree.

> I'm not saying that he's lying.

You'd be better off if you were. Instead you are employing classic and cowardly character assassination techniques. There is literally nothing Patrick or his defenders can do to refute your claim (mostly because you refuse to make one). Even if they did, you could fall back to the safety of saying "I wasn't saying Patrick specifically is a liar, I was posting about people generally."

Instead you are employing classic and cowardly character assassination techniques.

This is the "untouchable" argument that attempts to short circuit any critical discussion. If skepticism is a character assassination, then hopefully we're all assassins.

There is literally nothing Patrick or his defenders can do to refute your claim (mostly because you refuse to make one).

Nor is there any specific thing I can do to disprove their claims. A bit of a catch-22, isn't it? As incredibly uncommon as their claims of success in the consulting world may be -- and I'm not saying this out of the blue -- it is possible that somehow they lucked into a series of incredibly generous clients who saw BCC as such a success that they gave a blank check. I have never seen an individual consultant without an incredible reputation (and being famous on HN != being famous) make anything near what they claimed, but it remains possible.

Pretty much anything is possible. If someone claimed to have achieved alchemy (theoretically possible via fusion), I similarly couldn't possibly say "no, they're lying!".

It's possible. I think it's incredibly improbable, but it is simply impossible for me to say that it's a lie.

So perhaps lighten up on the double standard.

There is no double standard. If patio11 were insinuating that you were a liar, I'd ask him to come right out and say it as well. Skepticism/critical discussion is no cover for rhetorical techniques that amount to trolling.

So 1) stop insinuating he is a liar or 2) make it more concrete. Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why? What would it take to make you stop spreading said accusation?

That would be a skeptical argument that could be critically discussed. As it stands, your position is "in the face of lots of evidence that patio11 has produced that indicates he usually writes the truth, I refuse believe him about this specific thing for reasons I will not outline."

I for one believe him because of his long track record of writing things that are verifiable and my own experience as a consumer of consultant products.

>Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why?

I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. While I don't agree with user=irrigation's comments, I think he's been pretty clear: the claims don't jibe with his experience as a consultant and he's skeptical about the self-promotional aspects. It's hardly ambiguous.

So why are you demanding he come out and call patio11 a liar? That would be an asshole move. Instead he's saying "I don't believe it", and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We're all just "some guy" on the internet, who cares?

He hasn't come out and said I don't believe it (or hadn't as I wrote these comments). He's insinuated that it isn't believable, or that patio11 is lying, but he hasn't just made the claim.

That's what I'm hoping he will say instead of insinuation about a specific person. 1) make a claim. 2) put some counter claims along with it ("I've been doing consulting for X years and never seen a charge rate greater than Y") 3) and if necessary point out what it would take to change the position.

You are right though, I probably shouldn't care, but I really dislike the behavior in this case. It seems like simple trolling trying to hide behind dissent. Which is a disservice to all of us.

In this thread alone you've written more than 12 paragraphs that all boil down to "people sometimes lie, therefore Patrick is probably lying".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com