
Powerful Thoughts From Paul Graham - lispython
http://www.rosshudgens.com/thoughts-from-paul-graham/
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krichman
> But I have no trouble imagining that one person could be 100 times as
> productive as another.

This is a smokescreen. I believe it too, that one person could be 100 times as
productive as one other. But what the salaries are saying is that one CEO is
more productive than all those 100 people below him put together. I think 100x
productivity is more standard deviations than that seems to represent.

Everyone, just admit that the CEO's are paid for having contacts in the right
places. They aren't outperforming 100 engineers all day every day or even most
days. The notion that salaries are some measurement of productivity is
complete hokum.

Nor do I buy 54, the idea that rich people create more wealth for society from
by-products, like Henry Ford gifting us with the automobile. I don't think
it's correlated.

Yes we have some by-products that improve our lives, but we also have Wal-
Marts lowering the quality of products nationwide and RIAA lowering the
quality of free speech nationwide. So it's not as if rich people lead directly
to benefits for society and they could just as easily push the other way.

Being wealthy isn't like being some video game paladin, it's just another form
of concentrated power.

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karamazov
> I believe it too, that one person could be 100 times as productive as one
> other. But what the salaries are saying is that one CEO is more productive
> than all those 100 people below him put together.

We're not interested in the case where one person is 100x more productive than
another because the second person is watching youtube. If the CEO is 100x more
productive than the average person working for her, then she is, in fact, more
productive than 100 of the people working under her put together. That's
exactly what that statement means.

And, anyway, whether or not the CEO is 100x more productive, her output is
worth 100x more. How do we know? Because that's what she's being paid.

Is she being paid for her contacts? It doesn't matter, so long as she's
steering the company in the right direction. You're implying that "having
contacts in the right places" is corruption, but it's not; knowing what to
build and who to sell it to is a big part of running a company. CEO's don't
spend their time conniving in smoke-filled rooms, they spend it trying to push
their company forward.

Rich people don't get that way without providing something people want. Wal-
Mart may or may not be lowering the quality of products nationwide, but what
they're demonstrably doing is providing goods to people at great prices that
let them generate a lot of profit. That's something people want, whether or
not you agree with them. The RIAA, on the other hand, is a symptom of the
power of the music industry - and the way the music industry got to have so
much power, and so much money, is by providing music that people wanted to
listen to enough that they paid for it.

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jellicle
> Rich people don't get that way without providing something people want.

Thanks for the laugh. So what did the six Walmart billionaire heirs provide?

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snowwrestler
Nothing, obviously, but most people who are rich in the U.S. did not inherit
their wealth.

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analyst74
That may be true in the past, but according to study, who your parents are
matters more in US than in most other developed countries.

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

~~~
snowwrestler
Factors that improve social mobility are not the same thing as inheriting an
immense wealth. Bill Gates benefited tremendously from the good financial
position of his parents, but his immense wealth came from his own work
starting and building Microsoft.

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navait
"Why Nerds are Unpopular" was always my least favorite of the pg essays. The
thought "Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they
want even more to be smart" is arrogant. I don't think nerdiness implicitly
makes the things you do more important or smarter. Being bullied in school is
undeniably wrong and hurtful, but claiming it's evidence of your intelligence
or that you're above social "games" is silly. Even nerds bully, and seek some
form of status the essay claims nerds aren't.

And is it really true? It's certainly possible to be well liked and smart, and
I don't think intelligence implies that you lack social skills. It's more true
that certain levles of nerdiness causes a lack of social skills.

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pekk
Weren't a nerd in school, then, were you?

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irishcoffee
Some of the most popular people I knew in high school went on to full rides at
Stanford, Harvard, UNC, and the like.

Being a "nerd" means what? Because it has no correlation to intelligence, and
is purely a social label, generally self-inflected/self-assumed.

Edit: public high school

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JacksonGariety
Going to Stanford or Harvard certainly doesn't make you a "nerd". Quite the
opposite in fact.

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unalone
Hahaha, what?

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agentultra
> Sed Itious • 8 hours ago − > Let's remember that what Graham preaches as
> Axioms are his > political and social truths, as much as he'd love to claim
> > them as Truths.

> For example, (38) is a point based on an assumption that History is the
> history of the 20th century. There were extremely powerful and long lived
> countries with despicable civil rights. Currently China's getting more and
> more powerful and is hardly a beacon of civil rights.

> (31) is a point most used to excuse the abuse of minorities, for example
> through racism. It's inconvenient to not have the usual privilege to
> mistreat those with less power and money than you, truly an unacceptable
> burden created to limit those free, rich, privileged spirits like Graham.
> How dare society, the government (fill in the anti-genius malevolent force
> of your choice).

> As for Graham's idol Jefferson, and quoting that slave holder regarding
> rights and limited government, can we remember that Jefferson's ideological
> followers fought a abattoir of a civil war to uphold their concept of civil
> rights as property rights above the rights of others (that is slavery). The
> libertarianism Graham finds so attractive will sell the civil rights of a
> poorer person at the alter of the property rights of those with more
> economic power.

> What I'd like to understand is why tedious ex-nerds like Graham feel an
> irresistible urge to proselytize Ayn Randian blather. If he's at peace with
> his success, what is up with the insufferable sanctimoniousness? Feels like
> a giant dose of bubbling narcissism.

Best comment from the article, saved for posterity here.

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Pwnguinz
The criticism of #38 is misplaced. Historically, powerful and rich nations
were ones with progressive (for its time) civil policies. Greeks were
powerful, until corruption set in. When Rome was a Republic, it was powerful.
When any one individual tried to become the emperor, it begun its slow decay.
It's not something that occurs over night. What PG is saying that, all else
being equal, the richer nation will be more prosperous. There are going to be
unaccountable natural advantage a particular region will have (Middle East),
that no matter how corrupt, it will be prosperous so long as it has what the
rest of the world wants.

Currently, China is getting more and more powerful, and at the same time the
government is implementing and exploring more liberal policies towards civil
rights. This is pretty telling.

The criticism of #31 doesn't make sense. How does PG's statement (or thought
process) excuse racism? I'll copy and paste PG's statement here:

    
    
        I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side barely has the upper hand. That’s where you’ll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.

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ameister14
First, it's really important that you recognize "Greeks" means many different
city-states with completely different cultures.

Nations didn't exist until a couple hundred years ago.

Rome did not begin its decline with Julius Caesar.

What do you mean by "progressive (for its time) civil policies?" You seem to
be following a linear model of history, and that's fine, but what exactly is
progressive?

Was Sparta progressive?

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verbalist
I think this is wrong:

>53\. If I had a choice of living in a society where I was materially much
better off than I am now, but was among the poorest, or in one where I was the
richest, but much worse off than I am now, I’d take the first option. | It’s
absolute poverty you want to avoid, not relative poverty.

~~~
pluies_public
This is one of these situations where the first (pg's) choice is rationally
better, but has also been shown to result in higher chances of low self-esteem
and depression. It's very hard to shake off the feeling of being "among the
lowest", even though in absolute terms you're perfectly well-off.

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rayiner
It's not not necessarily irrational, it just seems that way because the
hypothetical is artificially simplified. In the real world, relative wealth
imbalances lead to power imbalances, which have global ramifications.

This is the heart of the current American malaise. Americans don't feel
wronged because their standard of living is so terrible (it's not). They feel
wronged because they feel that the rich have leveraged their wealth in a way
that captures a disproportionate share of new wealth creation--wealth their
labor is ultimately responsible for creating.

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philwelch
How did this blogspam get upvoted? If we want to discuss vintage pg essays we
can, but breaking a series of essays into a few dozen bullet points while
stripping out the reasoning in between does violence to them. If you're only
capable of thinking in bullet points, please do the rest of us a favor and
don't inflict your mental disability on the rest of us.

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huhtenberg
Sorry, lost me at this -

> _Nerds [...] want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be
> smart_.

I don't know a single nerd who _wants_ to be smart. You certainly get a huge
kick out of learning new things, but becoming smarter is not a goal.

~~~
thedufer
> You certainly get a huge kick out of learning new things, but becoming
> smarter is not a goal.

I think it's clear that you're using a different definition of smart than pg,
because the way he uses it that quote is a nothing more than a contradiction.

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nos4A2
Wonderful list, I agree with a lot of things, but

"And as for the schools, they were just holding pins within this fake school.
Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary
purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so
adults can get things done."

I don't think this is true, this assumes that if an adult were not working
he\she would devote time to their kids (and hence learning would be better). I
think (from personal experience) school is a place where a lot can be learnt,
and that system is important.

Another one "Good Bad Attitude – Like Americans, hackers win by breaking
rules."

This only works when a very strong framework of rules exist that most people
abide by, so when a hacker breaks few of those, being a minority, the system
persists, or changes gradually. However if you look at a system like China or
India, everybody is a hacker (in the sense everyone tries to find the shortest
way to do something) and that leads to broken systems overall.

~~~
squozzer
You may be arguing China and India in reverse. Everybody is a hacker there
because even those in charge of the systems (e.g. police) are hacking so it
becomes a matter of survival.

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seanlinehan
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p2hVKwh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p2hVKwhxvVEJ:www.rosshudgens.com/thoughts-
from-paul-graham/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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wongwf82
> most people who “can draw” like drawing, and have spent many hours doing it

While I agree with this, it seems that there is a stage where drawing could be
part of you easier. Just like someone can learn how to play guitar more easily
when they're young vs when they're over 20.

Having said that, I also find that it is much easier to learn how to draw now
than ever before. YouTube made it so much easier for people to share skills.
So I could learn a certain technique with a certain tool much easier these
days than in the 90's.

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tome
Is the image supposed to look like The Last Supper?

~~~
ohwp
I think it is. Those are the disciples of PG.

I'm not sure if I find the image a little scary...

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PixelPusher
Why would listen to these silly points, he doesn't produce anything himself.
He is no nerd and has no business judging other nerds.

He's an investor who's gotten lucky and been around smart people.

He's nothing special and I would never take any of his points seriously.

I've had a few exchanges w/ him via email and he just quotes silly sayings and
has no real substance in him.

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gideons
At the end of the day PG is a smart dude and a wealthy dude, but he's not a
philosopher or great thinker on social interaction. His essays barely rise
above the level of Rush lyrics and angst-y teenage poetry. Use him for
inspiration but don't take his BS too seriously.

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Tichy
Any solutions to the problem of schools in sight? I dread the day when I'll
have to send my kid off to school. Obviously I'll look at different schools,
but I doubt that I'll find many interesting ones. I don't want to waste years
of my kids life.

~~~
randomsearch
Try reading "The One World Schoolhouse" by Salman Khan.

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metaphorm
Paul Graham is a very insightful man, except on matters of salary,
compensation, and individual productivity. In this respect he seems blinded by
his own success and probably infected with at least some small part of the
greed sickness.

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sublimit
I liked these quotes and was surprised to see the negative response.

Sed Itious' comment seems to attack Graham on a personal level, like for being
a "tedious ex-nerd" or having "bubbling narcissism", even linking him to
racism somehow. Is all this about some issue with Paul Graham's personality
that I'm not aware of, or did people sincerely not relate to the quotes? They
don't seem that different from the inspirational soundbytes usually upvoted
here.

