PG, if you asked him, might describe himself as defending people who do real work from a larger culture that all too often prioritizes serving the status quo over accomplishing the goals that the status quo was established to accomplish. One example of that would be SpaceX doing the launch vehicle design work that the NASA/Boeing/Big Government Contractor complex was established to do. At the same time, SpaceX works its people extremely hard and is lead by a billionaire with abnormally unsophisticated PR. So there you have cultural and business forces set against a new company that has nothing going for it except the fact that it actually does stuff. Actually doing stuff is a surprisingly small advantage in a world that is interested in so many other qualities.

I would like people to stop believing that this is a real example, at least around here (I'm close to a few NASA missions). SpaceX was selected by NASA for some lunar lift services, and everyone I know is quite excited by US's expanding lift / launch capabilities. I think that I and those around me exist in these roles to serve the needs of the nation and priorities of congress and the scientific community, and will use any tools at our disposal to do so.

Other companies may fight this, sure, but stop throwing NASA (an exploration agency) in with those who would benefit from suppressing SpaceX.

Personal opinion.

SpaceX + vendor-agnostic NASA contracts are a world away from the cost-plus launch vehicle design projects with heavy involvement from NASA engineers that got us to the moon, built the ISS, and also spent a long time going nowhere once the corruption caught up with the system.

I'm not close to any NASA missions at all, so this is just my take.

It seems clear that NASA is more happy than not about what SpaceX is bringing to the table. Any model that spins a NASA-vs-SpaceX narrative is confused and wrong. I think that's an agreement with your point.

But when you look at what SpaceX is operating in opposition to, whether it's cost-plus bids, or closed contracts for various launch services, etc etc, NASA has been very much a part of that whole system.

So, my point is, it makes sense to talk about SpaceX's model vs the model of "the NASA/Boeing/Big Government Contractor complex".

Why can’t we have both? A job where we can “actually do stuff” without getting mistreated by psychotic billionaires. There’s a lack of compassion in tech.

Assuming you are in the US: I’d say that, if anything, tech is a fantastic little bubble when compared to the rest of corporate America. We, the “nerds”, exert a level of control over our work/careers that is unparalleled in other industries. We have plenty of opportunities available if we dislike our current situation. Tech companies provide excellent benefits and compensation. Maybe only doctors have the same level of mobility/compensation.

You will always be mistreated by someone if you work for a corporation. We have it easier than almost everybody else, really.

Speaking as someone who has come to my tech career later in life (and after another career), this is absolutely correct. All industries have their problems: software is no exception, there are things that could be better. There are bad days, even bad months.

But at nearly 6 years in I still wake up every day amazed that I get paid as much as I do to do this thing that I really enjoy. With overall reasonable hours. Without having to deal with the general public. Considered an asset despite the fact that I cost so much and write bugs. And with people banging on my door constantly to get me to work for them. I feel extremely fortunate.

Maybe there is something wrong with our society that tends to cause organizational dysfunction and make it hard to do stuff. Perhaps it takes someone seriously atypical (maybe a little psychotic) to manage to build an institution that can actually accomplish things at scale in this environment. If there are 10000 well-adjusted bureaucrats standing between you and your aspiration to build electric cars and rockets, it will take some serious force of personality (a personality disorder?) to defy all of them.

Because big companies would never let a person like Elon Musk create something like Space X internally.

I'm speculating, but perhaps with all the YC IPOs in the past year they are now liquid billionaires, and he is thinking it through, out loud, via essays, which is how he figured out things from Lisp to startups to investing?

> Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.

Underrated advice. Psychoanalytics helps with self reflection, not with reading minds.

I can recommend Erich Fromm "Fear of Liberty" these days, because it describes many dilemma we face today. Might be interesting if you can see some effects he describes in yourself or others.

Psychoanalysis should be eaten with a pack of salt though. I think it vastly more fitting to model behavior than what writers from the field of psychology produce these days, apart perhaps from advertisers.

>Whenever there is dichotomous thinking, cognition has moved away from clarity.

Can you expand on this?

This is a deep topic worthy of an essay, the kind of essay pg might write! The concise reply is, when you catch yourself in dichotomous thinking, you should assume you have misunderstood or oversimplified.

Sometimes you have to go with your misunderstanding or oversimplification to make a decision or to make progress, but keep in mind you are doing so based on beliefs which are unlikely to correspond to reality.

It's striking that so many mental health difficulties are characterized by dichotomous thinking. [1]

Rationality itself can be profitably critiqued at the meta-level.[2] So, don't be an asshole, unless you need to be. Do you see the world as consisting of assholes and non-assholes? How does that feel? What are the advantages of that view? What are the disadvantages? Is considering that question worth your time?

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/she-comes-long-way-b...

[2] https://metarationality.com/introduction

EDIT: Fixed link, spacing

Clarity is about seeing how things are, not how you've chosen to divide things up.

(I added this as an edit to my other reply, but it seems the edit is lost.)

You can't see anything in this world without dividing things up. That's how your senses (sensory inputs plus processing plus cognition) work. So this version of "clarity" seems hard to achieve.

Maybe just settle for "try to limit the extent to which your cognitive biases and priors shape how you think the world is". You can't reduce them to zero, but you can reduce them a bit.

I agree on the practical level, which is pertinent here.

It is possible to experience non-dual consciousness in high concentration states. [EDIT: For many, this experience is a milestone in psychospiritual development, which undermines the habit of dichotomous thinking.] Awareness and perception aren’t the same thing. Way, way off the subject, but your main point stands, be mindful of priors.

> Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.

Beside your point, but wondering if you could expand on this. I have a tendency to do this, and while it's fun, I'm starting to get the sense that it's a bad habit, possibly because I sense I'm overly confident on something that might be 100% wrong and it feels... invasive?

I've asked myself the same question. While I don't go as far as "never", I do it much less than I used to.

Thinking this way can certainly lead to worthwhile and actionable insights. But I think any skilled amateur will overestimate their abilities. Therapists build their insights on top of huge amounts of biographical information that they gather in intense, concentrated sessions. Their observational skills are trained, and they use them to gather as much information from posture, tone, and expression as they do from narrative. Even if an amateur's observational skills are good, they won't have the right context (the session) to gather that kind of information. So the amateur will be lacking in both theory, and information - compared to the pros. And yet the amateur often has more confidence than the pro - leaping at the first theory that "clicks", not considering alternatives, and with an unwillingness to revise.

The next pitfall comes if/when you decide to act on your insights. And once you have those insights, it becomes tempting to act on them. Then, when you do act, you're almost by definition being manipulative. Your behavior towards the other person is no longer a straightforward reaction to what they're sending your way, but is instead following an agenda constructed to fit a diagnosis that is unknown to them. If they knew what you were up to, they would most likely object, even if your agenda was "for their own good." At best it's paternalistic. Therapists do act on their insights in opaque ways (and often screw up despite all their training) but the particulars of the patient-therapist relationship resolve the ethical violations that us civilians are likely to stumble into.

So, I would say that the tendency to psychoanalyze needs to come with heaps of humility, openness to revision, and a reluctance to act on the resulting insights in 9 out of 10 cases.

"Therapists build their insights on top of huge amounts of biographical information that they gather in intense, concentrated sessions."

Agreed with all of your post, I think this is the most crucial point here. Genuine, skilled psychoanalysis is less about being some master discerner of psychological motives, and instead being very good at giving the subject of analysis a lot of psychological safety to express their innermost thoughts and most personal life experiences. Unless you build that kind of (responsible and professional) intimacy for lack of a better term, you're largely just projecting imo.

Not OP, but as someone who holds this view (who also used to engage in the practice): a lot of armchair psychoanalysis is based less on a genuine understanding of the other person's life and circumstances, and more on the assumption of what their life and circumstances must be combined with a surface-level knowledge of psychoanalytic practice.

Armchair psychoanalysis ostensibly seeks to understand the subject of analysis, but rarely makes the effort to first understand the subject on their terms or in a way where they can articulate their own experience; instead, someone usually has their presumptive conclusion about the subject in mind ("they're just doing this because they haven't gotten over being bullied as a kid" or whatever), and tries to wrangle the limited information they have about that person into their conclusion.

I think you have to detach to get value out of it -- not "what's the reason this person is like this" but "what are three different mechanisms by which a person might become like this". A bit like how a history student of a certain level isn't asked "why did WWI happen" but "contrast the materialist and post-revisionist explanations for the origins of WWI".

I agree on not calling out anything psycho. Not sure about invasive though.

I see what you are saying. I mean the topics do have something of a defensive nature. Though arguably PG could just be making a valid point on topics that are contentious and widely misunderstood

Do you think he's defending himself, or the entrepreneurs he funds, befriends and admires?

I think he perceives criticism of them as criticism of him.