Comment by zug_zug

5 days ago

shrug Well I've been on HN for about 20 years, and I'm not anti-pg (he's about 50/50 by my accounting). I'm also anti-censorship, anti-authoritarian, anti-mob.

But he missed the mark here. It feels like he published a first-draft without getting any dissenting takes on one of the biggest hot-button topics on the web. I (or a million other people) would have been happy to read a draft of this and explain that he'd create offense and confusion with his... attempt to explain the history of priggishness around social justice based on his lived experience... if that's really what this is supposed to be.

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zug_zug

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jazzypants  5 days ago

NINE other millionaires read this weird, angry screed. Not a single one felt the need to gently guide Paul Graham towards the truth.

These people are willfully ignorant, but they're so arrogant that they think that they're right about everything.

soheil  5 days ago

> he'd create offense

That's sort of the point of the essay, he compares woke to a religion and explores how companies deal with various religious beliefs at work, ie: no one religion is ever allowed to suppress others no matter how righteous its believers feel or offended they may become.

I'm not sure why that's a bad thing or would create "confusion" in your mind.

  • n4r9  5 days ago

    The essay does much more than that. It makes a number of claims that are at best debatable and at worst unfounded, such as:

    * The origin of woke-ism is university humanities departments

    * Musk succeeded in "neutralising" wokeness on Twitter without censoring left-wing voices.

    * Racism is (or should be) independent of linguistic context.

    * That wokeness is a serious problem in the US.

    He also makes liberal use of argument from incredulity, does not provide any facts, figures or citations to back up his claims, and suggests some very dubious moral standpoints (that it is wrong for university staff to get reported for sexual harassment).

    That said, I do somewhat agree with you when you say "I don't think what pg is saying is anything new". In fact, he's never really said anything new, and he's always been prone to fallacious thinking. What's happened here is that he's exposed this more than ever before.