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Comment by floppiplopp | Hacker News Reader

A manifesto by an idiot for idiots. The guy displays a severe lack of education and just shows what a dangerous and delusional moron he really is.

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I struggle with this because while I am with you in tone and spirit, the fact of the matter is that pmarca is incredibly intelligent. Putting his wildly successful investment firm aside, you know that he created the first widely used graphical web browser and co-founded Mozilla, right?

Instead, I propose that he's been breathing different oxygen for so long that he's long since started believing his own legend. Frankly, I just don't believe that he has anyone in his life who would serve as a grounding influence, and I find this really sad.

Anyhow, I jumped into the thread because I find calling someone demonstrably brilliant an "uneducated, delusional moron" might feel good but it distracts from the real discussion.

You can be brilliant in some aspects and a delusional moron in others. The latter often happens when the brilliant feel their brilliance extends beyond their education.

I didn't finish high school, and by your logic I shouldn't be able to do much more than flip burgers.

I can believe that pmarca is wrong about many things, but that doesn't make him a moron. pmarca is clearly not a moron. If you have a huge problem with his opinions, writing him off as a moron is intellectually lazy and it won't advance your position.

You need to read what I wrote again because I didn’t call him a moron or say that if you are uneducated you can’t be brilliant.

Not only did I read what you wrote again, I re-read the comment that you replied to... the one that clearly unambiguously calls pmarca a delusional moron.

In other words, we were both replying to a comment that did indeed call him a moron.

So long as we’re clear that I didn’t.

No you can’t, moron is a term for intelligence, not knowledge.

Well if we want to language lawyer things it actually says delusional moron which could imply an intelligent person under delusions acts moronically. But in reality we're discussing this using colloquial terms so I don't think your complaint carries much water.

Have you ever heard about Bobby Fischer's opinions on literally anything other than chess? Is he not intelligent?

As the other poster said it's not relevant how smart someone is in one arena because they can have dogshit opinions in others.

https://www.chess.com/blog/Rodgy/the-genius-craze-of-bobby-f...

That may or may not be a correct assessment but you will have a hard time convincing anyone, moronic or non-moronic, without any real arguments and counter-examples.

I for one would have loved some more substance to your post...

Have you read the article that is the subject of this thread? You could start with that

So... you too are unable to actually articulate the issues you have with it?

He uncritically cites the author of “The Fascist Manifesto” as a “patron saint.” You can safely disregard anything that does this as idiocy.

He is better known as the author of the Futurist Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_Futurism

He’s pretty famously an author of both that and the Fascist Manifesto that followed a few years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_Manifesto

I'd never heard of him until today.

I would stand up to defend your right to read and enjoy a good book by a person that you aren't an expert in.

In general, I try to start by extending the benefit of doubt. It seems like nobody here stopped to wonder if pmarca had any idea that the dude wrote the Fascist Manifesto. And if he didn't, does he still deserve to be shamed for enjoying his other work without Googling him first?

What if you found out the author of the last thing you read was a fascist after the fact? Should we be mad at you?

Do you Google the author of everything you read? If so, that sounds exhausting.

If you call one of the fathers of fascist ideology your “patron saint,” in the context of also listing several other right wing thinkers, I think you know what you’re doing and should expect corresponding disdain.

Are there no left-wing thinkers in that rather extensive list?

The irony of calling other people uncritical when using logical fallacies to make your point.

https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/log...

The irony of not understanding what ad hominem is while accusing others of it.

I know this might not be a good comment by the guidelines, but I rarely have wanted to be able to give ten upvotes like in the case of this comment

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