It might be sacrilegious to ask, but what does this have to do with hacking (other than say, hacking down of oak trees).
The fact that it's ranked so highly just goes to show the amount of ass kissing going on here.
The fact that it's ranked so highly just goes to show the amount of ass kissing going on here.
BTW I know Calif. Ave. too, I used to eat at Chu's every now and then (the little potsticker hole-in-the-wall shop). Is that still there?
Ass kissing? Ugh.
If you don't like a story, flag it. Stop whining or leave.
Also see http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate
Corrected, thanks.
This is a bit disorganized, but I'll try to lay out how the gears are turning in my head:
When you implicitly call out a community or someone very admired in that community (whose also running things for free for a lot of people's enjoyment), it's courageous but it burns some of your future ability-to-speak-out-and-others-will-listen-edness.
If you were to make similar comments frequently, eventually people would just shrug it off instead of burning the mental energy to apply difficult critical thinking.
Now, I was one of those disagreeable kids who used to argue with teachers when they got their math or chemistry wrong, and eventually I stopped doing that and started thinking:
"Do I want to burn some of my speak-out-and-people-will-listen-edness on this particular topic?" Because you only have so much, and you might want to use it on something important later.
Does the tree submission get submitted and voted if it's not Paul Graham or another very admired poster? Probably not. But it's a minor thing to take a banner up against, and it just oh-so-slightly decreases the resources you have by taking up that banner. And maybe it minorly gets on the nerves of a few people, and they don't like it, and so you get oh-so-very-slightly less attention/goodwill in the future.
Or maybe not. Just something to ponder.
My comment was an attack on the herd phenomenon, not on PG. It was not meant to offend anyone. If it does offend anyone, well, I really don't care. If it burns some of my future ability-to-speak-out-and-others-will-listen-edness, then I don't care either. Worst case scenario, I can always join with a new username, like IamNotTriinT.
I disagree with your reasoning, though. This neighborhood is (apparently) pretty well known in Ye Olde Silicone Valley(e). That being the case, I'll bet any number of nerd bloggers or private individuals could have written it up and gotten upvotes; perhaps not as many, but that's not a problem unless you dislike the idea of reputations in general.
The other factor to consider is this: that the people upvoting are aware that PG has more clout than the average poster, are aware that this is a slightly less-hackerly story, and are upvoting it because they approve of the additional attention PG can help bring to it.
That's depressing. That's what education is supposed to be about (rather than blindly accepting incorrect facts).
You have to think about your goal. Is your goal to get the teacher to correct their mistake and move forward? Or is it to boost your ego?
If it's the former, it's probably better to approach them later, in private, and point it out politely. They will correct the problem next session, or send out an email between sessions.
Either that, or be very polite, e.g., "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you wrote down <wrong stuff> there. Why isn't it <right stuff>?"
If you say, "Mr. Smith, you're wrong. It should be <right stuff>, not <wrong stuff>" you are strictly speaking correct, but you'll humiliate them. It feels good for your ego -- I'm smarter than the teacher! -- but probably won't advance the class.
This isn't about the "sorry state of education," it's about knowing what people feel when you blurt shit out in class.
Here is the admittedly unusual way in which I look at it: In most cases, the school system (including the teachers) is implicitly claiming that students are better off in school with them than anywhere else. When a ludicrous claim like this is being made and enforced, I don't see why they should be cut so much slack.
The problem, really, is that it's impossible to make a fully qualified statement and still be engaging. As a speaker, you have to skip over some detail somewhere, thus there is always going to be a place to jump in and act an ass.
Or were you just saying "in general"? If so, point me to something PG has put online that is utterly pointless. He has a remarkably good filter for useful content, even within his own essays there are rarely sentences that are extra.
For starters, I didn't say that the story about oaks getting hacked is pointless. Note also that I didn't say that PG puts pointless essays online.
My comment was on what PG comments on HN. If somebody asks PG a question and he briefly replies "yes", the comment gets upvoted beyond what is reasonable, even if it's the question, NOT the answer, that carries the interesting information. Hell, a Y/N answer only carries 1 bit of information...
I was trying to point out that, contrary to popular belief, HN is not immune to herd phenomena. In a way, this might be a good sign. It shows that we're humans. It shows that computers haven't yet passed the Turing test.
I largely agree with you about this post, though I don't mind its being here and I read it with interest despite not living anywhere near Silicon Valley. And I agree that PG gets much more karma than a clone who happened not to be called PG would (which suggests an interesting experiment...), and that that's kinda silly. But don't disparage bits.
Oh, it sure can! For instance, suppose that we're back in 1986. The Microsoft IPO has just taken place. I ask God if Microsoft will ever be a huge success, and God tells me: "yes". There you go, 1 bit of information that would have made me very rich. However, despite the worship, I have doubts that PG has become himself God. Hence, his 1-bit answers are less valuable than God's 1-bit answers ;-)
Of course I agree that a bit from PG is not as reliable as a bit from God (making the obviously-necessary assumptions about God). But that's not a problem about bits. :-)
At any rate, pg is a recursive input to the hn community. Part of this community is pg. Part of this community is you and me, too, but a bigger part is him.
A large part of why I came here in the first place is pg's essays, which span the gamut. I came to think of him as a clear thinker, so I'm going to pay more than usual attention to anything he has to say.
All the people I respect this way can unashamedly and unreservedly admit to respecting other people themselves. When it's mutual, it's called friendship. Sometimes it's called love.
:)
I just wanted to stir things up a bit and stress that dissent can be good. If HN ever becomes a monoculture due to excessive inbreeding and indoctrination, it will become uninteresting because everyone will think the same. There's richness in variety of ideas / opinions.