| So Paul Graham has just developped the perfect classifier "A Plan For Haters And Fanboys". I will try to apply to it to myself --- Well I am clearly an hater, because I think that Paul Graham says a lot of stupid shit on subjects where he lacks the ability to empathize with the real victims, like many people who are male, white, powerful, well-connected and who can basically accomplish whatever the fuck they want to accomplish. Why don't all those poor victims just do the same, right? This inflated ego leads him to be a jerk more often than necessary, and write things that are obviously wrong (but not for him) on some subjects where he is a like a snowflake who thinks he is the real victim being attacked. A bit like all those Trump voters who think that the problem with racism in the USA is that white people like them are being unfairly critized as being a racist. At that point, the Paul Grahan classifier has all the necessary signals to classify me as an hater. ---- On the other hand... I am obviously a fanboy because I genuinely believe that Paul Graham is a very generous, bright mind who has worked a lot and helped thousands of people. I know for a fact that he has helped me a lot, I've read pretty much everything he wrote and was nodding furiously all of the time. I can tell you my ten favorites articles from him. Well actually, let's do it. I really liked - "Lisp for web-based applications"
- "A plan for span"
- "If Lisp is So Great"
- "What You Can't Say"
- "The Python Paradox"
- "The Age of the Essay"
- "How to Start a Startup"
- "What I did this summer?"
- "You weren't meant to have a boss"
- "Ramen Profitable"
- "Startup = Growth""H
- "Do Things That Don't Scale"
- "Default Alive Or Default Dead?" Oops, I told 13 instead of 10, and I had to force myself to stop here. That's what fanboys do. --- In summary, I understand the tentation to have "A Plan For Fanboys/Haters" like he had a "Plan For Spam". Frankly that would be nice if that was possible, I would buy it, just say your price. But I'm starting to think that real human beings are more complex than this nice dichotomy. I think Paul Graham is like a normal human being, with wonderful parts and deep flaws, pretty much like all of us. That leads him to be right and helpful on a lot of subjects, and also to be wrong and a jerk on other topics. Since he is a bright guy, he would have no problems to discover why he was wrong, if he applied his own principles to those topics. And he would apply his own principles if he was interested. His output being deeply wrong shows that he is not interested right now by those topics. Ok, fine. |