Hacker News Reader

I can't be the only person who doesn't want to be a successful person. Most problems worth solving won't be solved in a way that benefits individuals in the manner described. Optimizing for self-gain just leads to more investors and fewer problems getting solved.

View on HN

I do really think that PG often glosses over what he really means when he says "success." From a critical view, you could interpret the word to mean solely financial/economic success. Given his occupation, I would imagine that's his intention with the term.

But if you replace that term with something like "virtue" or "eudaimonia" and read from that perspective, there can sometimes be some truths to glean from his writing. Nothing really novel, but interesting to read nonetheless.

> But if you replace that term with something like "virtue" or "eudaimonia"

These are generally ego-centric qualities that don't clearly benefit the people around us outside of our not being a liability to others under most moral frameworks. Greek philosophy is quite a poor fit for modern relations between individual and society.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com