Is what he said wrong? Is his history relevant to the actual message he is communicating here? To me, it seems like the answers are "no" and "no".

Guy records a radio PSA saying "don't punch strangers in the nose". Later, it turns out that the guy has a history of punching strangers in the nose. Is the PSA wrong?

There's a way to write the comment that points out that Arrington's history here might be checkered. Unfortunately, the way you wrote your comment isn't that way, because it calls the message into question along with the messenger, and the message here seems valuable.

In retrospect, absolutely absurd should be replaced with hypocritical.

>Is what he said wrong? Is his history relevant to the actual message he is communicating here? To me, it seems like the answers are "no" and "no".

He didn't say it was wrong. He said it was "absurd coming from X" -- which is different.

I guess this would be a DH1 on the disagreement hierarchy?

Well said. For the first time I agree with you....unless I'm downvoted into abyss for expressing my agreement :P

I don't think these two incidents are comparable.

Jamie's diary page (src: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html ) says at the top that the excerpts might serve as a cautionary tale about working in a startup (and Arrington also says in his infamous article (src: http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-m... ) that people who think they are working too hard or sacrificing too much should quit their startup), but aside from that it's a just a bunch of entries from a personal diary, not a rant with an overarching message or thesis statement. Arrington used the diary entries as evidence that the startup experience was hard in 1994, but (correct me if I'm wrong) he never modified jwz's quotes or tried to make it appear that jwz had an opinion that he didn't have.

Arrington didn't literally twist and reshape jwz's sentences, as pg's were. Even still, it's hard to see how Arrington metaphorically twisted anything jwz wrote. From the article:

He's telling you the story of, "If you bust your ass and don't sleep, you'll get rich" because the only way that people in his line of work get richer is if young, poorly-socialized, naive geniuses believe that story! Without those coat-tails to ride, VCs might have to work for a living. Once that kid burns out, they'll just slot a new one in.

Would you name some other ways to get rich with a reliability approaching that of starting a VC-funded startup?

The VCs may be in control, but at least it's a game that can be played. I'm not sure how it was disingenuous of Arrington to cite evidence of how hard jwz had to work. His point was that startups are hard. Jwz didn't seem to refute that, nor provide any hope of potentially escaping a lifetime of working for other people without doing a startup. Startup success is rare, but it seems more frequent than most of history has allowed.

> Would you name some other ways to get rich with a reliability approaching that of starting a VC-funded startup?

Yes, just invest in a mutual fund. Overall VC returns are in line with the broader market at best, and are often worse. (Source: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-returns.html)

That refers to the returns of the venture capitalists, not the startup founders.

It makes no difference, because one must also account for every other failed startup the founders had or will participate in, along with other opportunity cost. In fact, the final ROI of VCs should be higher than the founders' because they get the bulk of the equity in exchange for their investment.

jwz, and Arrington's target audience, were startup employees, not founders.

I'd argue that there's a fundamental reappropriation of jwz's sentiment here, but rereading the uncrunched article I understand your perspective.

The orignal post accuses The Information of publishing a false quote. The article you linked to looks like two authors having a factual and philosophical disagreement, carried out in the normal way. They're on opposite sides of a bright line.

I can see why you might think that but consider it from pg's pov. It is technically true to describe the incendiary passage in the Information's article as incorrect. pg never said what he is alleged to have said. If the information and implication were the same from what he actually said it would be no harm, no foul.

Given that pg was giving background information, not an interview and that his words were misquoted and stripped of context perhaps you can see why people have decided never to give the Information the benefit of the doubt ever again.

It was marketed as quality journalism but it's just Valleywag with a subscription.

Yeah. Most other places would get more slack, but when you big thing is "We are expensive in a market where everything else is free because WE ARE BETTER" and the time before first huge fuckup is counted in days, you lose a lot of that momentum.

That said, suddenly everyone is talking a hell of a lot about "The Information" -- so maybe it will end up being a huge win for them.

Suicide or brilliant marketing move, will be fun to watch.

Unless you're Telegram.