[Caligula]

This article seems to be related to http://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham-says-women-havent-be...

It is the first time I saw Paul Graham appear on my Facebook. It is not worth reading, the author is just going for clicks by making baseless accusations. Paul also claims he was misquoted and thinks he should start bringing a recorder to interviews.

It is a shame, one of the appeals of reading a Paul Graham interview or his writing was that it was very open, I hope his no doubt hiring a PR filter or being more reserved with his words will not reduce the quality.

[bluekeybox]

> It is the first time I saw Paul Graham appear on my Facebook

Amazing times we live in, isn't it? If this is how the average person finds out who someone like PG is, what hope is there for the world at large?

Please note that had PG been known through standard mass-media channels way earlier, there might have been even a fighting chance that more women (i.e. outsiders) had joined the tech world early on, since this way the news about YC wouldn't spread through what are predominantly male/engineering-graduate-heavy word-of-mouth channels, and we would have avoided this mess in the first place. Yet the press and the world at large is not even interested in the success of something like YC until the YC is big enough to throw rocks at because of some juicy inclusion/exclusion controversy. So what we have is a controversy that, like hundreds of others like it, is nearly "manufactured" by the press itself.

The moment you become big is the moment you become torn apart by the world.

[Crito]

I'm not sure what you mean. If somebody isn't interested in either programming or being involved with tech startups (and the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not) then I don't see any particular reason to expect people to have heard of PG.

Experts in fields are typically widely unknown by the general public. I first learned of Andre Geim (A Nobel Prize winner in Physics; not my field) from a youtube video about beer and magnets. I don't think that suggests anything dreadful about society.

[bluekeybox]

I'm commenting on the role of mass media in a contemporary society. This is important because I'm afraid that soon everyone is going to hear about PG/YC because "oh no, patriarchy!"

To repeat, look at engineering circa 1990s -- nearly entirely male-populated field, moderate prestige. Now look at engineering circa 2010s -- slightly more diverse field, significantly higher prestige. If you start with a 90+%-male base and you achieve moderate, growing success via entirely word-of-mouth advertising and by absorbing people from that base, you are setting yourself up for a situation where your organization reflects the base it grew out of (i.e. male engineers). And yet the media is not going to pay attention to you until your field is large and successful enough for spoils to be had from throwing rocks at you, at which point obviously they are going to criticize you for being "exclusionary". So what you have is a nearly entirely media-manufactured controversy. Why didn't the media focus on getting more women into engineering in the 1990s? Because it wasn't a prestigious enough field at the time for organized entryist action to exist.

Why is there a problem with this controversy? Because entryism exists. Entryists are interested in entering any high-prestige field and taking it over for themselves. They are not below taking up social justice banners to accomplish their goals. In fact, the most successful entryists utilize those banners to the highest effect. The whole controversy is pure manufactured evil. This is not about women's rights or social justice. It's about entryism.

[Crito]

Hmm, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

[minimaxir]

It should be noted that the misquote was on The Information's end, not Valleywag.

[sgdesign]

Seeing how badly people reacted on Twitter, I don't see any upside for anybody to say anything about this issue at all. Which probably won't help matters much…

[waterlesscloud]

Separate from the merits of the discussion, Twitter is in a phase where it LOVES to get outraged about things.

It's very mobbish right now. It's really a turn-off.

But I do think it's a fad that will self-correct. Once it goes too far people will lose followers for joining the mob-du-jour and will adjust accordingly.

[xgarland]

Seems like people are just looking for any and everything to be offended by these days.

[minimaxir]

pg will be writing a clarification soon.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064

[andrewliebchen]

Having the full interview behind a $400 paywall doesn't help anyone evaluate his words "in context."

[Camillo]

Was the ValleyWag article discussed on HN? I seem to have missed it.

[minimaxir]

Valleywag is a banned domain, so all submissions to the article were autokilled. (and there were many submissions)

Since the original article was under a paywall, those links were also killed.

[gkoberger]

Gawker is blocked (or at least heavily penalized), and nobody else really wrote about it.

[kmfrk]

People have tried submitting it a handful of times through the mentions of other sites, but they all get censored from the frontpage.

[caycep]

For what it's worth it IS a gawker media property and so I usually take these interviews with a few shipping containers worth of salt...