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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Insofar as orthodox privilege is a real phenomenon, one of its greatest strengths is its ability to cast a smokescreen around wealth, power, and influence.

Paul Graham is an obscenely wealthy and powerful man; he benefits disproportionately from controlling the public discourse around what is or isn’t “orthodox.” This is worth remembering when he (or any other phenomenally wealthy and powerful person) attempts to lay out these kinds of oblique culture war positions.

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Isnt this ad hominem itself a “culture war position”?

What? No. Y'all use this word way too much get a grip.

No, this is class consciousness, and by conflating these things you've strengthened their point.

I'll assume that this was downvoted because the "culture war" dividing America is one of the preeminent expressions of class warfare in this country, and therefore acknowledging class _is_ inherently engaging in the "culture war". Which, fair point.

I think that's naive. Class consciousness is being aware that those with wealth are the ones who set the orthodoxy to begin with. Paul Graham writing a blogspot is irrelevant, he is barely exercising his position while doing so.

Look for corporate meddling into politics and culture war if you want a smokescreen. The current culture wars being identity-based isn't an accident, for example, there won't be a worker's right month same as there won't be a worker's right parade, no corporation is putting money into that.

> there won't be a worker's right month same as there won't be a worker's right parade

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

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Cesar+Chavez+Day+parade&atb...

There are Labor Day parades

I don’t think that the underlying observation (wealthy, powerful people stand to benefit disproportionately from confusion about how society allocates privilege) is ad hominem. Unless being characterized accurately as wealthy and powerful is an insult.

It’s a culture war position in the sense that it’s a response to one.

It is ad hominem. Thing is, ad hominem is often a valid way of arguing, as long as a property or trait in question is relevant to the issue. Yet, as many other things in the internet discussion, it ended up as an easy way to label and disregard arguments of others without putting any effort into discussion.

> he benefits disproportionately from controlling the public discourse around what is or isn’t “orthodox.”

I don't see any evidence this is true, not even that he controls public discourse in any significant way.

We are posting on a website that he created, and that he defined the original (and primary) scope of discourse for.

But more directly: at least two people have called my comment an ad hominem; 'pg is arguably the single person most responsible for popularizing the dismissal of critiques as "ad hominem" among technical people[1]. Note that even he doesn't make the ridiculous claim that personal observations are inherently irrelevant.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

It seems the Overton window on Hacker News is pretty much the same as elsewhere. Which doesn't look like pg is controlling anything.

This is a perfect example of an ad-hominem argument.

It's an observation; I don't think I've stated anything that isn't (1) public knowledge, or (2) common sense about how wealthy and powerful people maintain wealth and power.

Yes, all ad hominems are observations. The point is they are merely observations about the person making the argument, not the argument itself. They aren't necessarily false, and they may even be interesting to some people, but they fail to tackle the argument. An argument's validity doesn't depend on who spoke it, so if you think it is invalid, you might attempt to explain why.

I don't have an opinion about whether it's valid or invalid, and I don't think 'pg does either. I think this kind of argumentation is psychological dressage for ego-dystonic rich and powerful people.

This seems to be not an ad hominem argument because it seems to be not an argument. What are they arguing?

Paul Graham is (was) a lonely nerd who felt different than other people. The smokescreen is maintaining this self- identity when his practical situation changed.

Reminds me of Kanye, who has been keeping his embattled underdog act up the entire time.

EDIT: not to criticize too heavily, the post is very good

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