

Tell HN: PG revises 3 essays - yagibear

PG seems to have revised a couple of his essays from 2006, labelling them "rev August 2009": 
http://www.paulgraham.com/6631327.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/randomness.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/whyyc.html
======
aaronsw
"Few people can experience now what Darwin's contemporaries did when The
Origin of Species was first published, because everyone now is raised either
to take evolution for granted, or to regard it as a heresy. No one encounters
the idea of natural selection for the first time as an adult."

It's interesting to read this in the context of _The Selfish Gene_. Mary
Midgley (who wrote a scathing attack on the book[1]) once suggested that she
probably found it hard to appreciate its virtues because she'd read the ideas
in it so many times before -- by the time the book came out they hardly seemed
novel to her.

[1]:
[http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php...](http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=14)

"So if you want to discover things that have been overlooked till now, one
really good place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief
that it's all about us. And expect to encounter ferocious opposition if you
do."

Peter Singer is a good case study in this.

~~~
jacobolus
Actually, this statement of PG’s about Darwin’s contemporaries is pretty
oversimplified. Evolution-like ideas had been “in the air” for several decades
when Darwin published, and at the time, many regarded them as heresy (by
default), while others had bought into them. Natural selection was indeed a
new idea, but while it strengthened the argument for evolution tremendously by
providing a plausible mechanism, and while the giant pile of evidence in
Darwin’s book was extremely important, the debates at the time weren’t all
that different in tone from the ones that happen today (except that today all
of the legitimate scientists are on one side these days).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought>

Lamark’s main works were from the turn of the 19th century, as was Cuvier’s
work on extinction, and Darwin’s uncle Erasmus’s descriptions of
“metamorphoses”. Paley’s _Natural Theology_ , which originated the famous
“watchmaker” analogy for God, was from 1802. The _Vestiges_ , published
anonymously in 1844, sparked massive controversy that was the talk of
“educated” people throughout the world. Indeed, when Darwin finally published
the Origin in 1859, the scientific/religious debate had been widespread for 50
years, and in the general public consciousness for at least a decade or two;
Darwin himself had been well aware of it as a young man.

------
pg
These are salvaged from the blog I briefly tried having in 2006, after one of
the startups we funded launched blogging software.

~~~
unalone
Infogami?

~~~
aaronsw
Yes. They were here: <http://paulgraham.infogami.com/blog/>

------
unalone
I can't tell what was revised. I doubt the changes are notable.

~~~
pg
I didn't change that much from when they were originally posted. One's cut out
of something longer.

