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Comment by alabut | Hacker News Reader

When you put it like that, PG sounds like John Galt.

Closer to the truth than you realize. The writings of both Paul Graham and Ayn Rand are successful because they clearly articulate what a large preexisting minority is already vaguely thinking, so the writing ends up becoming a rallying point for kindred minds to find each other. You can see what a powerful force this is in Rand's case, as it made her successful despite her atrocious fiction.

I was reading a thread in an Objectivist forum once where someone had posted a link to an online Myers-Briggs personality test. Out of 16 types, 90% of the members were the same one: INTJ. Personality is the major determinate of philosophy. I know I enjoy reading PG's essays because it's like reading an older, more experienced version of myself.

That's an interesting observation on the correlation between the Meyers-Briggs results and the population of the Objectivist forum. I'm an INTJ myself and have the understanding that it's a fairly rare personality type. (For my part, the Objectivist viewpoint does have some appeal, but also deep flaws which keep me from embracing it.)

Anyway, I think that it's inevitable that the YC society will take on a life of its own which is oriented with pg's viewpoints. His writings are very charismatic and draw like-minded individuals. Those founders who resonate strongly with the essays and concepts of pg are even more likely to apply for and be accepted to YC.

Fortunately some of the mentioned aspects of the YC culture are independent thinking, self-analysis and critical analysis of others' ideas. Hopefully these attributes will prevent a simple cult of personality from developing. If YC has positive benefits for both the founders and the greater society (via the creation of Things People Want) then inculcating a culture which can accelerate the development of successful startups is an excellent achievement.

"I know I enjoy reading PG's essays because it's like reading an older, more experienced version of myself."

That's the best description of a role model or mentor I've ever read.

"Closer to the truth than you realize."

Apparently so - I wrote the initial comment based on my loose recollection of reading the book a few years ago. Looking up the big speech the Galt character gives in Atlas Shrugged, it's amazing how much of it relates. This paragraph in particular reads like it could have been pg's battle cry against soul-sucking faceless corporations that demand all of your creativity and trust none of your judgement:

"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem — I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality — mine. It is mine that they chose to follow."

http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_br...

For the less literary-minded, Fight Club has also been inspiration for a few of my friends in a similar way.

I think the John Galt speech is only something that Steve Yegge could have penned, if the length is anything to go by.

The link I put up is an aggregation of the various speeches, starting with the first big one. The page doesn't do a very good job of clearly dividing between them, just with super subtle references to page numbers in the margins.

(It's a joke. I read the book, and the Galt speech goes on and on and on, like some of Yegge's writing)

Why do you think personality determines one's philosophy instead of vice versa?

Because personality is largely biological and unchanging.

Lots of people say that, but the fact remains that no one has ever come up with an explanation of how or why genes would code for modern personalities, or with any evidence that's inconsistent with personalities being largely cultural and changeable with skill.

Modern personalties? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Temperaments#Historical_De...

People think and act very differently than they used to.

Largely biological, not entirely. Your philosophy or outlook can certainly have an effect on your personality, but from what I've seen different environments and ideologies just create variations on a biological theme.

You've seen themes in people. But have you seen evidence these themes are not caused by culture? Do you have an argument that they couldn't be? That it's unlikely?

Who is John Galt? ;)

A destroyer :) and I'm sure that's exactly the way that recruiters for large boring companies think of their competition when they go up against cool workplaces and try to land young programmers.

YC expands the scope of cool workplaces beyond the Google-like perks that a handful of companies might offer and get people to consider entrepreneurial options as well. And it's not a problem solely for technology companies, even Pixar has this problem - talented people have to leave to get opportunities elsewhere because only a handful of inner circle elite ever get to direct a film:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-pixar12mar12...

Which is ironic because Brad Bird's big break with The Incredibles came from his experience not getting a chance for creative expression with the old traditional animation studios like Disney.

Pixar has the same bottleneck problem they had at Disney during their feature era - there were "nine old men" established as the (supervising) animators and hardly any room for anyone else. Just like Pixar may have no room to let Doug Sweetland direct a fantastic movie, John Hubley saw limited opportunity at Disney, so he founded the animation startup UPA.

Anyway, it brings up the issue of what I'm going to call superlearning environments. The kind of places that become legendary because of the seemingly unbelievable concentration of talent. For animation, the late-70's Disney training program. For 3D graphics, anywhere Ed Catmull has been. For console games, I'd actually say Virgin Interactive Entertainment, which none of you have heard of.

These kind of environments are hard to discover unless you happen upon them and are blown away by the level of talent involved. But YC is most fascinating to me because it's a continuing (although periodic) experiment in creating one of these environments that's freestanding.

And this kind of environment is exactly what you don't get in a lonely startup. I know this all too well -- it's great to spend time with your co-founders, but I'd always worked with people significantly smarter and wiser than myself and it is absolutely the number one thing I miss.

>These kind of environments are hard to discover unless you happen upon them and are blown away by the level of talent involved. But YC is most fascinating to me because it's a continuing (although periodic) experiment in creating one of these environments that's freestanding.

YC is fascinating to me because it is a conscious attempt to form these environments. Historically, most of the great learning/building groups seem to have come about by accident.

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