When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted (I'm looking for a better term but let's roll with that). When he writes about cancel culture, or maybe really culture of any sort: different story.

He should take a break from this stuff and write about teaching his kids Lisp.

Is there anyone at all who writes "happily" about cancel culture? Even SJW's themselves can only give an impression of being perpetually angry and frustrated; they try to present their inner frustration wrt. the world at large as some sort of zeal for superior justice and universal social liberation, but don't quite manage to convince anyone.

Don't let me sound like I'm psychoanalyzing the guy. I'm sure he's fine, probably saner than I am. I'm just talking about the writing.

His classic piece “The Submarine” is negative on its subject, but it's quite engaging and not evasive the way this piece is. And there is a reason for that.

I don't hold out hope that this perspective will ever become mainstream, but because it's an alternative to "us-vs-them", there's more opportunity for redemption, communion, and joy.

Much of "Scott Alexander"'s following came from the readership of a blog named literally 'Overcoming Bias', that's devoted to descriptions of how all humans are often remarkably petty and prejudicial in obscure and counterintuitive ways. It's definitely not taking a mainstream perspective, and the 'redemption' in it is quite subdued, but it does seem to avoid that particular pitfall.

Though Taibbi writes for a different audience that probably makes that easier.

I presume you refer to the avoidance of examples in the article. Your comment suggest he was correct to do so. Some people will be desperate to disprove that modern heresy exists, and highlighting forbidden opinions would help negate the entire article.

It's a piece about identifying 'PR hits' that misidentified something as a 'PR hit'. There's a microscopic 'correction' at the bottom but the fact the correction undermines the premise of the piece - that you too can learn to identify 'PR hits' from Paul Graham - is just ignored.

> I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed, this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of detecting witch hunts in any era

Talking about PR[1] isn't wrought with intellectually-dishonest landmines in the manner that it is for talking about what Graham terms "heresy-hunters". This is also obvious to even anyone who's paying a mild amount of attention to the cultural changes he's describing.

[1] the topic of "The Submarine", for those who are unfamiliar

But the clunkiness you're saying is in my comment, not his essay. The essay includes the words "heretic hunters", but it's only used once:

> I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed, this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of detecting witch hunts in any era

Personally, this single usage and less-clunky grammar doesn't strike me as especially bad writing.

>There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to agree that it's so.

Not only bears no resemblance to actual lived reality, because the penalties for speaking out against orthodoxy (or even just being trans or gay or a bi-racial couple) were far worse than simply being kicked off twitter, and virtually none of those had any impact on anyone else in the same way that refusing to mask up or get vaccinated does today. They'd have fired their asses in 1918 too.

It's so frustrating when a cis white male pretends there are more risks associated with opinions these days. There aren't!

We could just point out that they're not really concerned about people getting "cancelled" as much as who is doing the cancelling and who's getting cancelled. Somehow it was a good thing when governments and corporations were able to cancel people based on race, gender, vaccination status, and sexual orientation... but now that they're being cancelled on the basis of being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and... well, at least vaccination statuses have remained consistent... suddenly there's a problem. Suddenly the all-knowing overlords of business that people trust with their retirement accounts and their political landscape are WRONG. LOL.

And usually the cancellation doesn't even have anything to do with a job. It's freaking social media for crying out loud.

I did not get that impression

It is something that, like the Devil, exists primarily in the minds of people for whom it is a central part of the opposition in their mythological construction of the world, so no.

You see how that works?

I selected "feminists" as an "across-the-aisle" example.

Instead of trying to explain things to you, I am going to ask questions and you can try to answer them.

1) Have you ever heard the phrase "across the aisle?" Consider this in the Congressional sense.

2) On what side or in what political party would you say that most of the feminists, despite their myriad combinations, would reside?

3) What side are the people who are against "cancel culture" on, generally? Again: as a trend.

4) Combining the answers to the first three, can you diagram out where the aisle is, where #2 is, and where #3 is?

5) What is the purpose of selecting an example from "the other side," generally?

And you didn't answer a single one of my questions.

As my great aunt (born circa 1899) said, "Sometimes the 'You shoulds are the shits.'"

I'd like to see more on topics of enduring interest from Paul than on the ever-evanescent fluff of tech. That his concern lies with teaching his kids not to be social gangsters rather than teaching them some current tech meets with my approval.

I could imagine that even unhappy or poorly-adjusted people might sometimes have worthwhile things to say.

> He should take a break from this stuff and write about teaching his kids Lisp.

What would be the main benefit from doing so?

It's just plain old tribalist hypocrisy: people Graham agrees with are encouraged to weaponize their victimization, while people he disagrees with are denied. First-degree intolerance (including but not limited to "x-ism") is acceptable in any amount, second-degree intolerance (intolerance of intolerance) is verboten.

Where do you get that from the original post? I am not seeing it.

People Graham disagrees with who are denied: those who speak out about "x-ist" utterances, whom he characterizes as "heretic hunters".

Is it weaponization of victimhood to disagree, and warn others of the hallmarks of a problematic position?

I don't think anyone was confused about who the 'us' and 'them' are. Every group casts a shadow, so it's hard to talk about a 'they' without there being an 'us'.

Just not seeing what you are seeing. Thank you though.

Christians consider Satanists the intolerant ones and vice-versa. Both can be claimed to be voluntary association, but if one isn't a choice, then neither is the other.

Admittedly this is probably cultural on my part; growing up in a working class Canadian family bestows different social ideologies. It’s a complaint I have about Canadian culture (not individualistic enough) but I do think a problem with American discourse is it can err so far on the side of individualism as to become misanthropic: the extreme being the sentiment, “I, and people like me, are the only group that matters.”

That’s not what Paul is saying here at all. I just think discourse about “social heresy” might be more productively framed as — what do we all agree on, how can we focus on channeling that energy productively, and how can we accommodate the people who disagree? Generally speaking capitalism can be a force for good here if you pick big, juicy problems everyone is excited to solve. Climate, energy, etc. And I think Paul is funding some of those companies!

Here's my counter backstory, I grew up and live in a very collectivist society and I'm a very individualist minded person by nature, and it's like hell on earth for me, and to spare you the sob story and to get straight to the point, when I come across pieces like the ones authored by PG in defense of individualism and critical of collectivism, it always hits home and I experience a momentary feeling of relief knowing I am not alone in all of this, and when I see how the militant collectivist crowd is wreaking havoc in the West and making people's life a living hell, it really upsets me and I feel helpless reminding me of my own personal circumstances, and that's why I have strong reactions regarding this issue, and why I feel that something must be done to counter this destructive force and stop it in its tracks.

PS: I don't view every collectivist movement negatively, that would be extremely absurd and I believe that some currents of collectivism can be very beneficial for society and the entire world but I'm still a staunch defender of individualism and will ever be.

This, incidentally, makes the movement seem much bigger than it is.

It's not an ideology that's widely embraced, but has outsize influence in key institutions (kind of like Scientology). And it manipulatively invokes large groups of faceless minorities to paper over the fact that it's being advanced by a small, affluent, relatively homogenous minority: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Yang

> Yang coined the term "successor ideology" in 2019 to describe an emerging ideology among left-wing movements in the United States centered around identity politics. Yang opposes this ideology and believes it may replace traditional liberal values.

Never mind "outsize influence", it has no influence at all — nobody follows "Successor Ideology", not even the person who made it up.

Like there are lots of people demanding to end the SAT because it’s racist against “Latinx.” What do we call those people?

That means that, yes, we kind of do arrive at an us-vs-them mentality - even you do, if you think a step or two further.

Now, you could be pleading for the Christian "love the sinner, hate the sin" idea - people are doing these things, but we need to not "other" the people. And that may be a real point - if "othering" is what they are doing, and we think it's wrong, then we need to be careful not to "other" them. At the same time, while we try to figure out how to help them not destroy society, we still need to keep them from destroying society.

Just not a deep one.

He addresses topics just enough to scratch the itch he wants to scratch without putting any meaningful thought into them, which is why his essays are so easy to discard. Sure, they work for like-minded people who want to drink from the tap of the successful businessman stereotype, but they're usually not useful whenever he strays from talking about business.

PG is capable of at least somewhat greater depth, and has displayed it on occasion, but it suits his purpose to avoid that here.

What could help solve this? Real reconciliation of the different perspectives. There’s a common overlap: we all want to live, and we all have nonzero ignorance.

The tragedy is that the inordinately rich like paulg continue to divide with these self-serving essays instead of helping other to grapple with the K-shaped recovery we’re in now. The place to innovate now is not in blue-sky futurism but to innovate the recovery of those who COVID hit the hardest.

See his words: "Nowadays, in civilized countries, heretics only get fired in the metaphorical sense, by losing their jobs. ... You could have spent the last ten years saving children's lives, but if you express certain opinions, you're automatically fired."

People on the political right have moderate discussions and they are banded aggressively. Here are two examples:

* James Woods had 137,000 subscribers removed in two days, by twitter admins

* Ron Pauls' entire YouTube channel was censored and removed.

This is the "Heretic hunting" point Paul Graham is making.

Would you mind giving me quotes from the post to back up these assertions?

I think the thing Paul really has a problem with is social brigading and mobs attacking people unfairly. Which is fine; but you can make that argument without painting yourself or people like you as a victim. Otherwise you’re just using the same tactic mobs use.

We’re all guilty of this to different degrees because social media algorithms are finely-tuned to propagate outrage and we’re being conditioned to respond to and generate said outrage. I think the way out of the loop is to recognize this pattern and try to break it.

An aside:

One thing I love about VCs is the perfectly fitting, memorable terms they coin. This is a perfect example, I can't stop laughing.