
Abbreviated Parody of Paul Graham's "Boss" - dshah
http://www.jsequeira.com/blog/2008/03/24.html
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Prrometheus
I for one believe this conversation has reached an absurd level.

~~~
astrec
Obviously intended as a parody, but I think he's inadvertently on to
something.

~~~
greendestiny
Yes he's revealed that we are past the point of flogging a dead horse, indeed
people are now interfereing with horse's corpse in unfortunate ways.

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fab13n
The "elite" (politicians, rock / sports / business stars...) are indeed known
for either fucking their secretaries / fans / interns / homosexual toilet
mates, or divorcing every couple of years, depending on their professional
constraints. OTOH, people who don't want to dedicate all of their resources to
their libido tend to settle for a safer and simpler monogamy.

This is more of an additional argument to PG's thesis than a parody, actually.

~~~
byrneseyeview
They are 'known' for it in the sense that if they do it, we will all 'know'
about it. I'm sure that within a block of my home there are more people who've
cheated that way than you could find in a week's worth of TMZ and The Drudge
Report.

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dshah
Although I fall in the camp of agreeing mostly with the original, this was
just too funny to resist posting.

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pdorrell
The analogy that this parody depends on is a very weak one, because PG's point
is that the modern job in the modern company did not exist when we were
hunter-gatherers, i.e. any time prior to the invention of modern agriculture.

Marriage, on the other hand, is the result of an intrinsic human tendency to
form long-term relationships and raise children within those relationships.
This tendency has probably existed for longer than the "modern" human species
(the major evidence for this, as I remember, is the similarity between male
and female size, and the fact that human monogamy is determined by the
combination of helplessness and large size of the new-born infant, so that the
mother requires major help from the father in order to raise her child
successfully).

Modern civilisation has not done anything to prevent men and women getting
together the way they always have, and it has had limited success in providing
"artificial" alternatives.

~~~
ambition
I would argue the opposite: that lifelong monogamous marriage is unnatural.
Witness divorce rates in Western society. (Many other cultures that are
overtly polygynous.) Humans, by nature, are slightly biased toward polygyny.

Let's assume PG's argument is that employees are unhappy because they are
going against the grain of human group-dynamic nature. By analogy, nearly a
majority of married couples are unhappy because they are going against the
grain of human polygynous nature.

~~~
pg
I did a lot of reading about hunter-gatherers last year while researching
another topic, and I was surprised how universal monogamous marriage is. It's
so prevalent I suspect it's in our DNA. It seems to be bad when it's
indeterminate who is the father of a child.

~~~
ambition
"How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker has some very well-reasoned arguments to
support your intuition that it's in our DNA. [It's basically a popsci
introduction to evolutionary psychology and cognitive science.]

~~~
giardini
I just finished that incredible book, which I consider the best read of my
last two years.

It would be a worthy addition to any entry-evel AI, psychology or cognitive
science class.

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angstrom
I fall into the camp "To each his own". Some people get their kicks at
startups, some don't. If anything I would say there are corporate prides and
solitary tiger entrepreneurs.

And those that can do both without whining are ligers...bred for their skills
in magic.

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microcentury
I can't find the original source now, but the best summary/parody of the
original article I read was roughly: "I'm wonderful because I founded a
company and made a lot of money. Oh, you haven't founded a company? You suck."

