
Seattle Seahawk Russell Okung Responds to Paul Graham - balls187
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/seahawks-lineman-russell-okung-responds-paul-grahams-essay-inequality-startups/
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HiLo
It's almost like PG and his posse is part of the reason for some of the toxic
culture in SV. But God help you if you say that...

My open resentment for them aside, I do wonder why he feels qualified to
comment on the economics of income inequality. Just cause you were
tangentially involved with something does not give you room to run roughshod
over well established economic research.

This would be like Alan Greenspan telling you about which technology companies
are solid bets. Or an electrician telling the architect that the building is
actually designed how the electrician sees it, not the architect. Like wtf?

I would love an official YC response because I know many in the financial and
economics community who see SV and PG specifically as kind of a joke would
love a debate, rather than PGs masturbatory, illogical, pseudoscientific
rants.

~~~
dragonbonheur
I would like a response from the "many in the financial and economics
community who see SV and PG as kind of a joke" as to why they invest in and
exploit the tech sector (they know what NASDAQ is, I hope) and yet treat it as
a joke? Do they think they are successful jocks versus socially maladapted
geeks and nerds? Seriously, computers have taken over finance and expert
systems will soon do a better job than humans managing economic systems as
large as countries - how do the jocks react when they are told that they will
be mere clerks to machines?

Not that I agree much with PG or the HN posse these days but I'm curious to
know about their reaction to the inevitability of the jocks being the first
casualties of business management automation

~~~
HiLo
Complete straw man? Which YC companies are listed on the NASDAQ? Exploit might
be the appropriate word, but most of the SV VCs come from tech backgrounds
these days, not finance.

Why? All of YC's companies are worth $30 billion, and it's the resounding
success? How many deals that big does Wall Street do each week? How big are
the biggest hedge funds in terms of AUM? What about average hedge fund size?

I don't think they're "successful jocks" at all, although I'm glad you have no
experience there - I know you think all the best PHD's are going to SV but
maybe rethink that.

If you can convince an owner to sell his company, and another company's
management to buy it, all with a machine, well, then you've pretty much
created superintelligent AI and it's not just Wall Street that would need to
be worried at that points, it's literally everybody. You think a machine can
convince a crusty CEO of a company to give up his empire building, spend more
time with his kids, and hey, maybe accept a slightly lower multiple too? Or
rather, a machine that calls Goldman Sachs at _just_ the right time to offer
them an emergency credit line on terms that haven't been offered before - only
after convincing them that these terms are actually favorable to them and that
your standing will be able to help hold them up? Perhaps they, too, can make
the decision about storing oil for a storage trade - maybe they can vet the
vessels, the captains, the port agents, the inspectors, the storage tanks, the
insurance companies, the financing banks, and the counterparties, and maybe
then they can build good working relationships with all of them in order to
get them to fix all their mistakes when they inevitably happen? Will a
computer go to a bank executive and actually persuade him that these
activities should be profitable and safe, when it's not always such a sure
thing they will be? Will a computer know not to blend gasoline to a certain
spec because hey, there's a chance I might actually want to blend it with
something else because this guy has a position and I think I can talk him into
adding to it? What I'm getting at is, it's obvious you don't understand how
Wall St works.

Nobody was talking about jocks. I'm talking about the people running hedge
funds, private equity funds, investment banks, and trading houses. If you
totally fail to see how most of these are social activities to their very
core, with numbers there as support, then of course you think it can all be
automated.

What you aren't factoring in is Wall Street is probably on the cutting edge of
automating work - DE Shaw, where Jeff Bezos worked prior to Amazon, was
implementing many of the same statistical methods that are just getting big
now, all the way back in the 90's.

So I complained about PG specifically posting pseudoscience, and you come back
saying "well how will jocks feel when they're automated." I just don't see
this going far.

~~~
dragonbonheur
I'm just going to ask one more question :D What will your buddies do when
Bernie breaks Wall Street up? :D :D :D

