This says more about the author than about Tyson. He takes Tyson hostage as an unwitting totem for the 'uneducated intellectual' in order to stridently indict the scholar class that he clearly despises. The author also shoehorns Tyson's genuinely incoherent statements to fit his narrative. In short, the author had an agenda and a consequent myopia. Drivel.
That's a superficial, unconvincing take. Surely it is surprising to hear a "childhood criminal, devastating fighter, struggling alcoholic and recovering drug addict, convicted rapist, pop-culture eidolon" praise history by explaining that "the past is us in funny clothes." Maybe you disagree that it is interesting to learn that Tyson's mentor was a student of Nietzsche and Clausewitz and passed on his interest in the humanities to his apprentice, but it certainly is to me.
My quarrel is entirely with the packaging and its author. Admittedly, I was already familiar with Tyson's double life as a reader. Many fans are aware of that detail.
> This says more about the author than about Tyson. He takes Tyson hostage as an unwitting totem for the 'uneducated intellectual' in order to stridently indict the scholar class that he clearly despises. The author also shoehorns Tyson's genuinely incoherent statements to fit his narrative. In short, the author had an agenda and a consequent myopia. Drivel.
Your comment says more about you than you think. Try to pause and reflect on your own biases.
The emotional valence of the word "biases" here suggests you're reading something in my comment that simply isn't there. This is not a substantive counterargument. The post was written as if a formal education is somehow a deliberate and calculated insult against the less privileged, thereby attempting to foment unnecessary divisiveness.
“...curator Paul Holdengräber, whose German accent strikes the American ear as both effortlessly intellectual and lightly amusing...
... it’s a shame to hear the audience laugh when Holdengräber asks, ‘Mike, how do you know all this shit?’ Whether Tyson is mapping his own experiences onto medieval history or hearing echoes of the Franks in his troubled life, the credentialed, status-conscious audience is uncomfortable with his sincere interest in a past they find trivial.”
Or - and I’m just spitballing here - maybe the audience was laughing at the surprise of hearing an academic ask of someone’s chosen intellectual pursuit, “Mike, how do you know all this shit?”
I don't get the "surprise factor". It seems a bit condescending, and that "born barbarian" part was completely off.
Don't judge people by their upbringing or profession, or their looks, it's just dumb.
Since this is HN, I get the same impression when I read YC partners 'words of wisdom' on selecting for particular "type" of founder, ideally a Zuck clone, typically determined after 5 min meeting which reinforces existing biases, and rationalized by deep dive into pseudo-psychology of resourcefulness.
Here is an advice for future YC disruptor - select your founders batch without meeting them to overcome your own psychology and irrational biases. Better yet, automate it.
In what world are you in that we have automate the selection of individuals aptitude for something, we can't even agree IQ tests are valid, or develop flawless visual pattern matching datasets that don't indicate that an African person is smiling or not in a passport photo.
And how do you know a VC biases are bad, is that your own bias playing out? If a VC had consistently bad biases I'm sure they wouldn't be in the game very long, their choices might not be always optimal but on average one would assume they come out ahead.
Of course maybe it's all just a coin toss and we can have an octopus choose.
The bias elimination idea is coming from financial industry where I worked for years. Investment decisions on various time horizons are mostly algorithmic these days, in the best firms.
The odds of successful startup are pretty low and there is a good reason to believe that if you throw darts at the wall the success rate will be about the same.
YC success has to do with large numbers of founders funded, with most of them , successful and unsuccessful, coming from particular cluster of population. Attracting the attention of that cluster is the second big reason for their success.
I'm all for scientific approach, so random forest of octopi classifiers doesn't sound so bad. The difficult part is being a founder magnet like pg in the early days.
This surprised me. And being surprised is a good reminder that people are complex, and unexpected, and we shouldn’t get too confident in our assumptions about others.
Iron Mike always came across as a curious mix of boxing scholar and brutal power in interviews and fights at his peak; it wasn't really a suprise that he carried that desire to learn over into other areas.
Fascinating if flawed man, a real icon and always interesting to listen to. His auto-biography is eye opening.
I'm glad he seems to be more at peace these days though for his sake I wish he'd give up the ring...
I've always maintained that if Mike Tyson was born in different circumstances, he'd have a PhD. In his interviews, he always comes across as well-read, though in a very scattered, directionless self-learner sort of way.
Anyone who gets famous and stays famous is playing a part on some level. It's definitely all a game, it's not obvious from a certain perspective, but I think just a few moments behind the scenes and then it does become clear. Almost everything is contrived beyond the 'first thing'. The 'raw' original, Mike Tyson was a stand out character, but how long will a) the public remain interested and b) can one really be biting of ears and going to prison to keep up public perceptions? Easier to get a tattoo, buy some tigers and play crazy in movies.
A lot of people need to see a more human side of Mike.
But I have been listening to his podcast so this is nothing new to me.
However, I have to say that my impression of Mike is not just a humble and intelligent dude. I also see a staunch neo-liberal who is a product of the United States capitalism.
He knows how he was able to get out of Brownsville and he wouldn't want to change the system that brought him his American dream.
At the same time he's compassionate and pragmatic so I'm sure he would be behind free health care and free education but he does truly enjoy having less government, less taxes and more profit for himself.
These are all views that are incompatible with mine, but then again I am not from the US so I have no idea about how he got that mentality on his journey.
I can speculate that growing up in Brownsville instilled a sense of independence and an emphasis on doing for self what no one else will do for you.
Yes he was convicted and has done his time. His past misdeed(s), if genuinely left in the past, shouldn’t be an albatross around his neck for the rest of his life.
