
My Startup School Europe talk: The Technology - paul
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.html
======
7cupsoftea
What a great article! Lots to think about here.

I'll highlight one point that I think is really important: Kill all daemon
processes. Psychotherapy is a process that is designed to help quiet these
menacing internal voices (harmful parent voices, self-doubt etc.). There are
different therapy orientations: cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal
therapy, psychodynamic therapy, etc. They approach these outdated programs in
different ways. CBT tries to kill them by applying logic (e.g., My startup is
going to fail! [what rational evidence do you have for that belief?])
Relational approaches try to better understand the threatening feeling or
impulse that triggers the harmful programs. It focuses on the defense used to
keep the threatening feeling in check and anxiety at bay (e.g., I'm really
afraid of failing [emotion = fear of failing], so I become a driven workaholic
to try to avoid this outcome and feel less anxiety [defense]). A relatively
recent innovation in the therapy space is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
The key insight is that often the attempt to control, diminish, or avoid pain
is what keeps you entangled in the pain. Simply making space for the pain,
sinking into it, observing it, and feeling it, is what allows it to become
disentangled. This, however, is very hard to do, b/c the natural impulse is to
avoid pain and the issues that cause pain.

Here is a helpful short video that metaphorically captures the ACT
disentanglement process (Demons on a Boat):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-wyaP6xXwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-wyaP6xXwE).

Okay, one last point, I'm game for doing my small part to help reach the
impossible goal. This is going to be a collaborative project right? : )

~~~
paul
Thanks Glen! 7cups is definitely among the startups that are helping to get us
there. I believe that most conflict is ultimately rooted in internal conflict
-- happy, healthy people don't go out and pick fights.

------
lhh
I really enjoyed this - really energizing and inspiring. It's always great to
get that jolt once in a while.

>> "We now, for the first time ever, have the technology and resources
necessary to make the world a great place for everyone. We can provide
adequate food, housing, education, and healthcare for everyone, using only a
fraction of our labor and resources. This means that we can put an end to
wage-slavery. I don't have to work. I choose to work. And I believe that
everyone deserves the same freedom I have. If done right, it's also
economically superior, meaning that we will all have more wealth."

This is some deep stuff. This would really change everything, and mark a major
turning point in human history I think. And the statement that providing these
things to everyone would only require a fraction of our resources I think is
actually true. The capitalist in me feels that this could never happen, but
the pragmatist in me feels there's nothing better we could do to dramatically
improve the lives of just about everyone on the planet.

There are so many questions though... forms of collectivism have been tried
and have failed many times. Are things different now?

~~~
paul
All society is some form of collectivism :)

As is often the case with disruptive innovation, I think the solution is
something non-obvious and non-coercive, more bottom-up than top-down.

~~~
cliffcrosland
I think VR could be one of these bottom-up forces of transformation. There is
no fundamental limit on virtual lands and goods. In VR, every person could
have his/her own virtual palace without imposing burdens on other humans
(except for maybe on the sysadmins running the VR servers). Even if your
physical surroundings are modest, your virtual surroundings could be
breathtaking.

With more of our lives occurring in the inexpensive digital world, perhaps
we'll be less concerned with the expensive physical one and thus less
concerned with working for money.

~~~
XorNot
Still gotta stay alive in your base reality. Most of the world's problems
aren't going to be solved by the tech sector - the tech sector depends on a
stable and reasonably managed, non-corrupt government.

The exact thing missing in pretty much all the worst parts of the world.

------
tomp
> Before I finish, I want to mention my impossible goal.

> We now, for the first time ever, have the technology and resources necessary
> to make the world a great place for everyone. We can provide adequate food,
> housing, education, and healthcare for everyone, using only a fraction of
> our labor and resources. This means that we can put an end to wage-slavery.
> I don't have to work. I choose to work. And I believe that everyone deserves
> the same freedom I have. If done right, it's also economically superior,
> meaning that we will all have more wealth.

Even though I found the whole talk very thoughtful and inspiring, this was the
part that resonated with me the most.

> I'm looking for full-stack hackers. People who understand that technology is
> more than just patterns in silicon. The same patterns and systems of
> patterns exist everywhere. Capitalism is a technology. Like the internal
> combustion engine, it's tremendously valuable and transformative, but it's
> not beyond improvement. The same goes for government, religion, and
> everything else. We have an incredible future ahead of us, but we won't get
> there by clinging to obsolete patterns.

I guess I'm a full-stack hacker; I learn incredibly fast and can understand
very complex systems. I still have to learn, though, to apply this beyond the
world of computers, in ways that leverage technology and have a global impact.

------
david927
It was a nice talk, except for this:

 _If you think Instagram is just a collection of photo filters, you 're
missing the big picture. Maybe photo sharing won't lead directly to world
peace, but helping people to see the world through the eyes of others looks
like a step in the right direction to me. And they grew to over 200 million
users in less than four years._

The whole talk was "building the impossible", and I think that's what Silicon
Valley used to be about -- about going from 0 to 1 (in Peter Thiel's term) and
letting the world go from 1 to n. That's impossible and that's what the valley
did for decades.

But now the measurement is, "How many users to do you have today?" It's
superficial and meaningless. Instagram is a great success for its investors
(and I have nothing against that) but it won't be around in ten years, and
more importantly, nothing it brought forth will be around either. Instead of 0
to 1, it's more like 1000 to 1001.

I have no problem with people making money, but you make what you measure, you
make what you fund. And we're getting what we make: Flappy Birds and fucking
Instagram.

~~~
PedroCandeias
"How many users to do you have today?" is not meaningless. Each user is a
person, give or take a few bots, sharing their way of life and witnessing
others'. Without editorialization or censorship.

The product may or may not be around in 10 years, but I bet someone somewhere
is learning about what it's like on the opposite side of whatever ideological
divide by watching instagram pictures. The consequences of that will last way
beyond Instagram the product. There's meaning there that goes beyond
advertisement dollars.

~~~
david927
The same can be true for drinking a Coca-Cola. I was talking about Silicon
Valley, not Atlanta.

------
graphene
Paul seems to have failed somewhat in his objective to find deep, if narrow,
appeal with this talk. People I talked to were unanimous that it was the
highlight of the day, and I agree.

In fact, if YC is taking feedback on these events, I'd suggest having more
talks like this, and less of founders chronologically going through their
story. That type of talk is also very interesting, but can get a bit
repetitive, especially for people who have seen videos of previous startup
school talks.

------
staunch
We need a mechanism that allows people to go from wage-slavery to creating
massive value in the world. YC is one method but it turns down 97% of
founders, which by Silicon Valley standards is considered inclusive.

Imagine a YC where the money and decisions came from a crowd of thousands. If
"Show HN" had a "Fund" button. The potential for 100x more Googles is there.

~~~
dharma1
Saw these guys in London recently - they're exactly that. Equity based
crowdfunding with voting rights powered with bitcoin

[http://swarmcorp.com/](http://swarmcorp.com/)

------
SwellJoe
Paul's talks have been my favorite, pretty much every time he's spoken at
Startup School. I've seen a couple of them in person a few years back, and one
(maybe more?) on YouTube. He's among the brightest, humblest, folks I've met
who've done really awesome things. The humility can actually be a little
deceptive...when I first met him, I thought, " _This_ is the guy that created
GMail?" Most of us (myself included), could probably learn something from
_that_.

Interestingly, I think that indicates that paul is more of a Woz than a Jobs.
I think it's interesting that he chose to use Jobs as an example of someone we
need more of (I'm not really in agreement...had he said the world needs more
of Woz or Larry or even Elon Musk, I wouldn't have argued).

~~~
scobar
My bias also leads me to credit Woz more than Jobs, but I admit that I do not
know enough about either to have much confidence in that opinion. One thing is
clear though. Many very smart people who know far more than I do about Woz,
Jobs, and Silicon Valley give the highest praise to Jobs.

What is so interesting to me is that Paul said something I'd always thought,
but hadn't expressed nor heard before. Imagine how many Steve Jobs are out
there who aren't able to thrive like they could have if they were born into a
different situation. That doesn't devalue the brilliance of Jobs. It simply
demonstrates optimism in a civilization with fewer unnecessary limitations.

The entire talk was great. Thank you for sharing it.

~~~
SwellJoe
_" Many very smart people who know far more than I do about Woz, Jobs, and
Silicon Valley give the highest praise to Jobs."_

I believe they do so because they're praising the wrong thing. Making money
for investors is not all that good of an end in and of itself.

Clearly, this is subjective. But, I don't consider Jobs to have been
particularly good for the world, despite his many obvious talents at directing
the making and marketing of popular products. I have a quite strong anti-Apple
bias, based on my belief that Apple has dragged the tech industry backward
rather than forward in terms of providing more access to technology education
and more access to the technology economy to more people, particularly the
poorest people. Just when Open Source was pushing the world toward freely
available source code for everything (and succeeding), Apple's App Store was
slicing up the pie, with proprietary software effectively being required to
participate (locking out all but the relatively wealthy from participating),
and serving the biggest piece of that pie to themselves.

But, that's just my opinion. Many people think Jobs was great, and that Apple
is good rather than a negative force.

------
rorydh
Was there to watch, had a chat with you afterwards and can't wait to read it
again!

~~~
paul
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

------
adwf
This was easily my favourite talk. Really inspired me to double down on my
efforts with my own idea.

I'd previously been under-emphasising the AI aspects of what I was attempting,
in the worry that people would think an AI-based startup was too difficult or
crazy to go for. Now I've just spent the last week rewriting copy and redoing
my pitch to _deliberately_ emphasise it. And I feel a whole lot better about
it too!

------
swombat
That was the best talk of the day - but it felt more like an article being
read than a talk. Still, I enjoyed it! Glad it's posted.

~~~
paul
Thanks! I had just finished writing it and didn't have time to rehearse, so it
was basically an article being read :)

~~~
tomp
I haven't read the article, as I was there on the day, but I sincerely hope
you included the "slides blunder" in the transcript - it was really funny and
perfectly timed.

~~~
paul
That was a genuine mistake. It's funny how many people thought I did that on
purpose :)

You'll have to watch the video to get that part though...

------
bfwi
Can't seem to find the videos of the Startup School Europe talks. Will they be
put on youtube?

~~~
paul
I believe the videos will be available in the next day or so.

------
npalli
The video of the talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5w-0H-hq6E&list=PLQ-
uHSnFig5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5w-0H-hq6E&list=PLQ-
uHSnFig5P7scrcPr3VPHrG1OylKhpt&index=9)

------
XorNot
I thought a comment about Gmail didn't really make much sense. I don't know
who was opposing Gmail in Google, but it was hardly an orthodoxy. It was
essentially obvious from the get-go that Gmail would be _huge_.

------
gameguy43
There are echoes of some zen/meditation ideas in here. I'm just starting to
get into that kind of stuff. Curious to hear if Paul meditates, and what
resources he (and other HNers) recommend for getting into it.

~~~
walterbell
Some context in this Wired article on Wisdom 2.0 conference,
[http://www.wired.com/2013/06/meditation-mindfulness-
silicon-...](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/meditation-mindfulness-silicon-
valley/2/)

------
morganwilde
Personally, I appreciate the fact that it was read rather than recited. This
made it easier to interpret the message as I understood it. Theatrical
motivational speeches have the opposite effect on me. So it was perfect.

~~~
tinkerdol
I agree -- artificially injecting enthusiasm into a speech draws more
attention on the speaker and turns it into some sort of performance, and can
detract from the message.

Another person there commented to me afterwards, "yeah that was a great
speech, but I just wish it had more energy, if it did it could have gone
viral!" But this person was from California... I think different regions are
calibrated to different communication styles, and to someone calibrated to a
reserved European temperament (wherein "enthusiasm" often is auto-encoded as
"insincere" or "silly") the delivery was perfect :)

------
lesingerouge
While I was listening to that particular part I had a very distinct feeling
that he was reffering to what could be called "nation-hacking". While it's
certainly not the only way to change the world, changing laws drastically it's
still the most efficient way. And there is really not enough experimenting
getting done in this area.

On a related note, I feel that some of the things that might be interesting to
study/experiment with might be at the intersection between these three items:
anthropology, information technology and law.

------
discreteevent
Love what you do - That's refreshing and maybe a bit subversive. (Of course
it's been said before in many ways, but rarely now and rarely in this sphere.)

------
krat0sprakhar
Awesome talk, Paul! Super inspiring!

> I would sometimes force myself to run a few miles because it's supposed to
> be healthy, but I never liked it. Then I read a book that said we are born
> to run, and that it can be fun

Quick question - can you refer the book you are talking about above? I too
have a distaste for running but the sheer accessibility for fitness (compared
to going to gym) makes me want to develop a liking for it.

Thanks!

~~~
paul
[http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-
Greatest...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-
Greatest/dp/0307279189)

It's a fun story too. I don't know if we're actually born to run or not, but
it's inspiring either way.

~~~
silverlake
You might like this story from This American Life. I was listening while
driving, was totally mesmerized, and ended up in Wisconsin.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/80/tr...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/80/transcript)

------
josephlord
It was a really good talk. I thought that I wasn't going to like it to start
with but there were some really good concepts and ideas and by the end it was
one of my favourites. Possibly the only talk not featuring sharing mattresses
in a two room apartment or something similar.

Choose the interesting path resonated as a useful criteria for making some
major decisions.

------
jongold
This was so so good; highlight of my day and one of my favourite talks of all
time, instantly. Thanks again!

------
yvsong
This powerful message will be responsible for some new startup successes, and
a lot of sweat and tears from startup failures.

------
dharma1
Was there, my favourite talk. Thanks for making the trip down Paul

~~~
amac
I was there and also enjoyed Paul's talk. I thought Alfred Lin made some
really thoughtful comments too. From both talks, for me it was clear that one
really has to push boundaries and do stuff other people don't think is
possible in order to have an impact.

------
tariqr
That was an incredible talk, Paul, many thanks!

