
Disagreeing with Paul Graham - gabrielroth
http://rothbrothers.net/2008/03/disagreeing-with-paul-graham.html
======
pg
The first half is an argument with a strawman:

 _It can be done, but you have to make it a deliberate project and put some
time and thought into it, rather than just stumbling on a bunch of programmers
in a cafe._

The story about the programmers in the cafe was not evidence for any claim. It
was just an explanation of what set me thinking about the problem. It's not a
pillar holding up anything, so attacking it proves nothing.

(Incidentally, a moment's thought would have made it clear that I have in fact
"put some time and thought into it." I've spent 24 years as a professional
programmer, during which I've observed thousands of programmers working for
all sizes of companies. Plus I've seen first hand the transformation undergone
by roughly 200 YC-funded founders so far.)

The second half is fallacy:

 _But rather than pointing out fallacies, a better way to refute Graham's
evolutionary argument is by reductio ad absurdum. ... Our ancestors lived in a
world that was shrouded in darkness half the day, therefore we would be
happier without electric lights._

This supposed refutation can itself be disproven by reductio ad absurdum,
because it could be applied to _any_ explanation of our inclinations based on
how we evolved.

(Bad example, incidentally. There do seem to be conflicts between electric
lights and human biology: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021902398.html))

Neither of these arguments even attempts to refute the central point of the
essay. In case anyone wants to try it, the central point is that in an
organization organized as a tree structure, structural forces tend to give
each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of the whole tree. That
we work better in groups of 10 than 100 I feel is obvious enough not to need
justification. The argument from evolution is just an attempt to explain why
groups that size work.

Though on the whole my reaction is "I want my 20 minutes back," there was one
encouraging thing about this experience. Even these dishonest DH5s are more
civil than Atwood DH2ing about my choice of metaphors.

~~~
Husafan
Your "(Incendentally, a moment's...)" comment makes me sad. Obviously Roth
spent well over a moment reading and contemplating your essay. The fact that
you disregard his thoughts so flippantly, along with those of other
intelligent people, makes me wonder whose opinions you would respect.

He clearly states he thought your central point was: "It will always suck to
work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it
will suck," because "humans weren't meant to work in such large groups."

How is this so different than your stated thesis that: "the central point is
that in an organization organized as a tree structure, structural forces tend
to give each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of the whole
tree. That we work better in groups of 10 than 100 I feel is obvious enough
not to need justification?"

His refutation relies on examples of humans partaking in behavior that they
were not originally "evolved" to do. It is a direct response to your reliance
on evolution. If you thought the whole point of your essay was "obvious enough
not to need justification," then why did you write a whole essay on the
subject?

To address your central point, I would cite the space program. Humans were
obviously not evolved to be space-faring creatures, and yet hundreds
(thousands?) of human intellects in concert (in a tree-structured
organization) managed to land a man on the moon. The idea of synergy, where
many humans in an organizational structure can accomplish more than any single
human's evolved capabilities, has long been recognized
(<http://www.complexsystems.org/magic.html>). Many people that work in such
organizations draw personal satisfaction from the fact that they are
furthering what they consider a greater good, rather than their own personal
desires. Where a start-up glorifies individuals, organizations tend to glorify
the whole. The fact that this is not satisfying to some does not mean it is
not satisfying to others, and certainly does not imply that “You were not
meant to have a boss.”

~~~
nickb
I felt like I gave that aspect of his post the reply it deserved. I'm not
accusing him of not having spent a moment on it, but of missing things a
moment's thought _should_ have shown him. It's actually charitable to
attribute that to an oversight.

And you're right, he does state something close to the central point of my
essay. But if you keep reading, that's not the part he tries to refute.

Your last paragraph is actually the most thoughtful response I've read about
this whole controversy. But I think you're wrong to say that startups glorify
the individual. The startup founders I know are on average more idealistic
than people working for big companies. They tend to be the ones who want to
make the world a better place; though there are of course exceptions, the
people working at big companies are the ones who tend to think of their job as
something they do mainly for the money.

~~~
rw
Let's try something else. I claim that founders tell themselves (regardless of
truth value) that they want to be:

"Making the world a better place (and getting really damn rich)."

The justification for this attitude is that one can supposedly participate in
a positive-sum game for both parties -- one party is you, the other is the
world. This is the altruistic lure of market structures. Whether or not you
agree with that non-zero-sum stance (do markets actually tend to produce such
situations, all externalities considered?), I think the "making a lot of money
indicates I'm filling a truly needed demand" mentality produces entrepreneurs
who unnecessarily tie their personal increase in wealth to the feeling of an
increase in some greater good.

But we do get pretty cool products out of this, whatever the psychology
involved.

------
asdflkj
This is wrong, but being a civil argument, at least there are concrete things
to refute.

 _One problem with direct observation is that it's hard to get a
representative sample. It can be done, but you have to make it a deliberate
project and put some time and thought into it, rather than just stumbling on a
bunch of programmers in a café._

False dichotomy. PG's sample is neither a deliberate project, nor the people
in the cafe. It's the programmers he has known and observed over his life.
There's no reason to doubt representativeness of his sample.

 _a case where an ad hominem argument is relevant and valid._

There's never a case where ad hominem is valid. If it's valid, it's not ad
hominem, by definition. A logical fallacy can't be valid. But I'm nitpicking
here. His point is:

 _The fact that this observation confirms his preexisting belief in the
worthiness of startups makes it less credible than if the same observation
were made by someone who had no particular interest in startups._

Occam's Razor suggests that PG works with startups because he thinks they're
better, not that he thinks they're better because he works with them. He is
rich enough to work on whatever he wants.

 _A creature that's perpetually dissatisfied, always striving for advantage,
wins out over a creature that's happy._

Then why does happiness exist? Why hasn't it been eradicated millions of years
ago? Answer: because it serves a purpose. It's how evolution tells the
organism, "keep doing what you're doing". Not everything that mentions nature
is an appeal to nature.

~~~
sofal
>There's no reason to doubt representativeness of his sample.

So the sample of programmers that he has known and observed over his life is
unquestionably representative?

>There's never a case where ad hominem is valid.

Are you saying that biases and potential biases of people have absolutely no
relevance in any "valid" discussion, even in response to subjective
observations about why people act the way they do?

>Occam's Razor suggests that PG works with startups because he thinks they're
better, not that he thinks they're better because he works with them. He is
rich enough to work on whatever he wants.

Are you suggesting that this makes PG completely free from bias?

>It's how evolution tells the organism, "keep doing what you're doing".

So happiness is just a reward we get from pursuing those things that will
result in the propagation of our genes?

>Not everything that mentions nature is an appeal to nature.

Sure, but that's irrelevant. Gabe says PG's essay is an appeal to nature and
backs it up. If you disagree, then please do the same.

~~~
Hexstream
">There's no reason to doubt representativeness of his sample.

So the sample of programmers that he has known and observed over his life is
unquestionably representative?"

there's no reason to doubt != it is unquestionable that

------
mstoehr
I somewhat agree with sah in that Roth's essay did not fully address the
central point of Graham's essay: the effect that large hierarchical structures
have on people. The discussion of ad hominem arguments aside, I would point
out that you could phrase Roth's argumentative method as, "you've argued for x
given method y, and I can use method y to also prove z, you don't believe z,
therefore you can't prove x". A rough sketch might look like this: y --> x y
--> z therefore z <\--> x (this step is hard to sketch out because it's
unclear) ~z therefore ~x.

The difficulty with this argument is a fallacy about implication. Roth states
that the "evolutionary argument" supports pg's view, but that he can then use
that same "evolutionary argument" to prove an absurd point of view. Then he
holds that he has disagreed with pg's central viewpoint.

This method of argumentation is fundamentally flawed because pg's view might
be supported by a multitude of arguments, the truth or usefulness of the
"evolutionary argument" is not a necessary condition for the truth of pg's
view of organizations, bosses, and human nature. Hence, Roth has merely
attacked pg's method of proof while leaving the central claim untouched. I
have other criticisms of Roth's argument, but even if I am wrong in such
criticism the argument would fail to disagree with pg.

~~~
zoltz
Refuting the proof of a central point rather than the central point itself
must be considered DH6 in Paul Graham's hierarchy. Roth probably took that for
granted. I certainly would. Otherwise I hereby claim P = NP and preemptively
accuse anyone not accepting this of deliberate dishonesty and bad spirit and
categorise their disagreement as "formally possibly up to DH5 but effectively
DH1 at most".

------
mechanical_fish
This reads like Mister Spock's review of a punk rock concert.

"I don't understand why the audience was asked if it was 'ready to rock', as
they clearly did not have instruments. Also, it was illogical to ask them to
'fight the power', since power is an abstract physical quantity that cannot
meaningfully be 'fought'."

And did PG's monumental catalogue of rhetorical errors mention the rule about
"not arguing with straw men"? Because I don't think the real PG actually
believes that _literally everyone_ "wasn't meant to have a boss", nor would
the real PG ever endorse the concept that "you weren't meant to have a chair,
because our ancestors didn't evolve to sit in chairs."

~~~
derefr
A tangent, however inappropriate:

You weren't meant to have a bed. The better a bed "feels" to most people, the
worse it is for the health of your back, and vice versa. Most non-serious back
pain can be corrected by sleeping on a dirt floor, or a hay bale.

You also weren't meant to have shoes. Orthopedics today are mostly needed
because of the shoes we wear when we're young; your feet are meant to rest
flat against the ground, to be able to curve around things like rocks and tree
branches, and to mush up into wet dirt or sand. I personally get back-aches
whenever I wear anything other than flat-soled ("skate") shoes, approximating
the natural terrain below them.

From these two things, I can guess that chairs really aren't a good idea
either, but I've never looked into them specifically.

------
sah
I find it kind of upsetting that none of the various disagreements with pg's
essay that I've read have been in reaction to what I felt was the core of the
essay. As far as I'm concerned, the centerpiece of the essay is this
interesting observation about organizational hierarchies, and why they might
necessarily place limitations on individual freedoms.

He also makes some guesses about the effects of those limitations on the
happiness of employees in companies of different sizes, which I think he marks
off pretty clearly as being drawn from observation. What's so incendiary about
those, anyway? Regardless of whether it's true or not, isn't the stereotype of
the creatively stifled employee of a large company a cultural cliche?

I'm ready to stop hearing about this now.

------
aggieben
Best point was at the end:

 _One difficulty with disagreeing with people is that you have to present
their argument and your argument, and so your essay ends up being longer than
theirs._

~~~
edw519
The way this thing is going, we are asymptotically approaching the infinitely
long essay.

~~~
marcus
Yes we're getting dangerously close Steve Yegge length posts

------
Prrometheus
This is why I gave up on a Philosophy Degree: I was jaded by the intense over-
analyzing and language-parsing. Perhaps the blogosphere will ponder whether or
not we were meant to have a boss for as long as we’ve pondered whether or not
we have Free Will.

~~~
hobbs
but what does it mean to "have" a "boss"? ;)

~~~
Prrometheus
How many perfect founders could dance on the head of a pin?

~~~
omouse
3\. But only if each is wearing a top hat and wielding a cane.

------
davidw
Nice ideas (voted it up), but I'm of a mind that the "weren't meant to have a
boss" thing is kind of played out.

~~~
nonrecursive
Even if it is played out, it's great to see a counter argument that's as
logical as this and entertaining at the same time.

------
stcredzero
>When you break it down, Graham's argument from evolution goes like this: our
ancestors worked in groups of eight or so, therefore humans evolved to work in
groups of eight or so, therefore contemporary humans will be more alive and
fulfilled working in groups of eight or so.

>In a general sense, this is the logical fallacy known as the "appeal to
nature" -- the idea that what's natural is ipso facto good or right. There is
no reason to believe this: plenty of natural things are neither good nor
right.

Paul is not saying that working in groups of about 8 is not "good or right."
He's saying that it's satisfying and functional. It's perfectly reasonable to
say that something we were evolved to do is something we do well, and
something we were not evolved to do, we have trouble with.

~~~
serhei
Satisfying and functional _is_ good and right. Are you prepared to argue
otherwise?

~~~
stcredzero
Satisfying and functional is _often_ good and right, but in my personal
system, it is sometimes not.

I could start cheating on my girlfriend pretty easily, but that would not be
"good and right" to me, though it would arguably be satisfying and functional
for me. Sometimes it seems satisfying and functional for me to punch people in
the face. The problem with "satisfying and functional" = "good and right" is
that both sides of that equation are highly complex, contextual, and
subjective.

~~~
serhei
Surely that doesn't mean that in your earlier comment being a startup founder
is satisfying and functional in a way that is _not_ good and right.

~~~
stcredzero
Nope. It's neutral.

------
imgabe
>Maybe the correct conclusion to draw from them is "People who work for an
asshole look less alive," or "People who work on boring projects look less
alive."

It seems like both of these possible explanations are endemic to large
organizations, and would be impossible if you were a startup founder. If you
start your own company and your boss is an asshole and your project is boring,
you only have yourself to blame. You also have the authority to fix it
immediately.

~~~
nonrecursive
I think you're missing the larger point, which is that there are many possible
conclusions you could draw from this very limited sample.

------
mynameishere
If you see a job posting that says something like, "Come work with us--we're
fun, with employee empowerment, etc etc" you don't bother to argue with it
because you know the angle it's coming from. Likewise if someone tells you to
drop out and tune in because that's how they did it coming up from the muck,
well, you have to remember that his writing has motivations closer to a job
posting than a research paper.

------
johnrob
I don't think we were actually meant to have chairs :)

------
pius
tl;dr

