From what I encounter, almost daily, I don't think everyone is on the same page, on that; especially amongst folks of means.
I have seen people without a pot to piss in, treat others -even complete strangers- with respect, love, caring, and patience, and folks with a lot of money, treat others most barbarously; especially when they consider those "others," to be folks that don't have the capability to hit back or stand up for themselves.
As to what I do, I've been working to provide free software development to organizations that help each other, for a long time. It's usually worked out, but it is definitely a labor of love. The rewards aren't especially concrete. I'll never get an award, never make any money at it, and many of the folks that I have helped, have been fairly curt in their response.
I do it anyway.
> You should be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest
As noted in the essay, this idea of "taking care of the world" is relatively new. PG claims it's because only now we can take care of the world, but I think it's just a naive idea that doesn't stand the test of time. I'm sure its not novel idea, and many others had thought of it and tried to implement some version of it in their society. But because it hasn't become cannon in any group or culture, it's a bad idea in that it doesn't produce human flourishing. Whereas ideas around wisdom, bravery, honesty, etc have replicated throughout cultures and led to everything we cherish
The idea is that you cannot take care of the world if you can't take care of yourself. So at first you must be these things. Ironically the most empathetic people I have met that purport to care most about "the world" are often the most dysfunctional people - substance abuse, medications, no strong family ties, anxiety, neuroticism, etc. These aren't people we should try to emulate.
Only when you have your house in order can you attempt to help others. Start with the people immediately around you. People you know and love and that know and love you. If you've ever dealt with a family member with a serious problem, you'll see how difficult for you to help them. Now imagine helping a friend, then casual acquaintance, then stranger finally a stranger on the other side of the world.
We should have humility as to what kind of impact we can have on the world and look inward to those around us where we can have the most impact. Otherwise you might as well wipe out hundreds of thousands of people and spend trillions of dollars spreading democracy in the middle east.
One of the most important, time-tested values is one of responsibility and honor. That means doing the right thing with the power that you do have, both by yourself and by others, even if it hurts you. We each are responsible for the environment (natural and man-made) that we inhabit, and to that extent it is our duty to help others and ourselves.
We have been given many, many resources at our disposal, and we bear the responsibility to use them well. Too often in our society we shirk that responsibility with the excuse "well, its not our problem".
But I am only motivated to help individuals. I don't plan to change societies, I don't plan to help social groups, invade countries, dictate some policies, doctrines, because that is what someone can mean "by taking care of the world".
I began to have a profound mistrust and dislike for activists, ideologues, social warriors, fighters for "a good cause" and revolutionaries. Their actions are usually finalized through loss of freedoms and blood baths.
> We have been given many, many resources at our disposal, and we bear the responsibility to use them well.
You should use "I" rather than "we" and I would agree. I've been given the gift of life in my children and I do everything for them. Fortunately I have resources to spare and try to take care of my family and neighbors as well, and I suggest you do the same.
This might be unfair, but I'd summarise what you said as "living a charitable life, but only for people within 50km of your house", and I think it's fairly obvious that "living a charitable life, mostly for people within 50km of your house, but also you give $50 a month to an international charity and you try to generate a bit less carbon dioxide" is better for the world, better for you because you don't have to harden your heart, and wouldn't harm most people's ability to look after themselves.
I agree that it's possible to be too neurotic about this and do what Sam Bankman-Fried did. It's also possible to be a little better than average at caring for the world without much cost to yourself. I don't understand why anyone would have a problem with the latter.
It's as if you wish us to say, "I've figured everything out, let me show you the way." I don't find that particularly reassuring, and it's not exactly the kind of humility that I think you want to convey.
If your bar to helping others is ending all suffering within yourself, then I'm afraid we're all going to be living a very lonely existence if we followed your lead.
Now, I think your larger point is that folks in crisis should tend to that crisis, which I think anyone who has taken a plane ride would understand. Apply the mask on yourself first. But to extend that analogy, you can have a broken hand, or even a broken heart and still be able to help your neighbor.
> If your bar to helping others is ending all suffering within yourself, then I'm afraid we're all going to be living a very lonely existence if we followed your lead.
Logically that does not make any sense. If everyone is able to relieve themselves of their own suffering (no one else can anyway, in an ultimate sense), which includes loneliness, then there would be no more suffering. This is a Buddhist mindset that seems kind of harsh at first, but it's a reality people benefit from once they accept it: you must become your own savior. And once you are in good place, even just mentally, it becomes very natural and easy to help out others.
Problems only start when people reject this idea, and think they have all the answers to all the problems, and start enforcing their beliefs on others using violence - which is a trend we're seeing more & more these days.
Same here, just FYI. There's a reason that I couched it in terms of "I have seen..."
I know multimillionaire high-school dropouts, and dirt-poor people with multiple advanced degrees from Ivy-league universities.
But the community of which I'm a member, stresses the importance of getting our own house in order, before looking to others, so people with means can do a lot of good (or harm).
Who? Not familiar with that... looks it up ... Oh. No. Not that. Actually, about as far from that, as you can get.
Cult, schmult. Been called worse. Whatever creams your Twinkie. Our Fellowship basically has nothing to do with wealth, personal philosophy, or social standing. It's about helping each other out of some bad situations, and it's fairly common to have people from all walks of life, rubbing shoulders.
> "I was in the Air Force a while, and they had what they call 'policing the area,' and I think that’s a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area, then we won’t have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you, and see what needs to be changed."
-Willie Nelson
Most especially be aware of others' happiness or misery, along with our own heart's intentions and actions and how they affect both others and ourselves. Our sense of inner peace is dependent on how our karma radiates back into our heart from how we have affected others. This is the most sublime rule of the universe: you reap what you sow, for good or ill.
Cultivate universal compassion and then shine its beneficient light on as many people as you can with real effortful service.
That is the purest heading for our moral compass, and it's always our choice both what we choose to do and how to course correct our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors.
We ALL need to self-reflect and -evolve for the majority of our life, slogging through mistake after failure after falling short of the mark, learning humility and perseverance and mercy for others who need even more grace than we do.
"Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries." --Rumi
12 year old asking her friend can have a social media account but she can't. TV, food habits, bedtime, etc. Not our problem. Also applies to cleaning up what's around you. The alternative is paralysis and not cleaning up anything.
I've seen images of pro-environment demonstrations that just trash their immediate surroundings while pretending to be concerned about the global state of pollution.
> I've seen images of pro-environment demonstrations that just trash their immediate surroundings while pretending to be concerned about the global state of pollution.
Ancient populations like the Romans had the concept of numens, deus loci, and gods of nature that were responsible for the world, were venerated and people who devoted them to these deities did their part to help the world. Being a good host (i.e. the rapport with the Other) was also always a key duty, so much that it is Zeus/Jupiter who presided to it.
It was always part of the farmer's job to take care of nature and their fields. It was part of the nobility jobs to develop their territories. It is only in modern times, with mechanized agriculture and nation states, that these personal duties got lost. Also, if we widen our attention to include aboriginal people, taking care of the world is quite central to their world view.
Even modern environmentalists thought and acted locally until very recently.
Now "the world" can only mean the entire planet as a a whole. It's a frame of reference that most people have never really had. It's only in modern times (space race) that we started to think of the planet as a place and within those times it's only in very recent times when we have started to think of taking care of this planet.
This is something I think a lot of "do-gooders" miss. We're only in a position to do better because we took care of ourselves. It's a prerequisite. The flip side of that is taking do good (for the planet, for society e.g.) to an extreme where that becomes the only focus while letting everything else go south. We can take care of the planet only if we have the economical means to do so. We can help others only because we have enough to be able to do so. Environmentalism taken to the extreme says we should dismantle our economy because because it destroys the planet, however in the process of dismantling our economy we are taking away all the tools we have as well. If we're all poor the environment is going to do worse. People will go back to burning wood to keep themselves warm instead of e.g. using solar or nuclear power. We can have freedom only by having a culture and environment where that doesn't equate to chaos. Taken to an extreme "freedom" is chaos.
The other way of putting this is the well known saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
> the road to hell is paved with good intentions... including—or especially yours
The stakes for quietism are high.
The definition you quote is basically the late Stoic definition of virtue. While very decent, it's notably pre-Christian.
Pretty sure that Zoroastrianism has that kind of thing, as central tenets.
I am not convinced that's certain. At best, we can tell that those cultures were outcompeted by others, but the healthy human cells are outcompeted by cancer as well. Additionally, I'd say that throughout most of the human history taking care of the world in the modern sense was not an existential matter because we had much more room for error.
OP is mistaking those values which reproduce themselves well with values which are Good. Upholding tradition is a particularly brutal example; its ethical consequences are entirely variable depending on what traditions are being upheld. The one thing that it does succeed in doing is reproducing the same social structure which, among other things, will raise new people to believe in upholding tradition. Those values which lead to their adoption by new people will stick, and those values which don’t are weeded out of the population. OP sees the mixed bag of values that result from this process and cherishes them as the word of god.
If you as say a father always put your own wellbeing (or some other definition of self-interest) first, then you're going to be a pretty lousy father. But you shouldn't ignore yourself. It's all about striking a balance, and in the end this balance simply aims toward the common good.
It doesn't make sense to say that because sometimes a naive, "greedy" strive toward the common good doesn't work then the principle is false.
You can carve real basis for the common good and other metaphysical principles. One such basis is that, metaphysically, the supreme valuation of the self is on very shaky ground. The self, although very important conceptually, doesn't stand up as an ultimate metaphysical basis, because we are really dynamic results of a whole network of interactions that includes not only whatever happens in our brains, but the whole cosmos -- there's no absolute boundary between yourself and others, and everything is always fundamentally changing. You from today is different from yesterday, and significantly different from many years ago. The common good is much more metaphysically defensible. That's why most metaphysical traditions (religions, usually) almost universally put the common good (sometimes enacted by God) above all else -- it really makes the most sense imo[1]. Again, you shouldn't be naive about it, and in practice and in most cases it makes sense to first take basic care of yourself, "keeping your house", and then go help others, but this is more a guideline, heuristic and reminder (specially important to give for radical altruists, but common sense for most people I think).
But really if yourself is your actual fundamental priority, I think you will act very poorly. Although even in that case there are good strategic reasons to be cooperative (people thinking you are evil or egoistical will already turn around many people and compromise relationships and cooperation opportunities).
[1] If you don't buy this metaphysical formulation, there's an (I believe) ultimately equivalent formulation that may be easier to accept: the fact that you "Could exist/could have been born as another person". If in some metaphysical sense you could have been born as that poor person that needs assistance, doesn't it make sense to help her, which logically implies that if you were in their shoes you would be helped?
>> You should be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest
I completely agree.
Being "wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest" is something related to you, something that you can change about you, something that you can choose to be without producing harm.
"Taking care of the world" is not about you and your actions anymore. It's about the others. It's the path of resentful ideologues, revolutionaries and murderers.
Robespierre, Lenin, Mao, Marx, Kim Ir-Sen, Pol Pot tried to "take care of the world."
Should they tried to "be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest" and leave the world be, the world would have been in a much better place.
Under most circumstances, in most societies, I wouldn’t expect a subscriber of this value system to eliminate slavery.
Edit: I’ll clarify in advance. Our ideas of wisdom, bravery, honesty, temperacy, justice and tradition most clearly, and the public interest are all defined and shaped by our society. We’re quite sensitive to temperance towards alcohol, but not so much towards sugar in our (American) society. It’s brave to fight in a war for your country, until you realize you’re aggressing upon another for resources your people don’t need, at which point the brave thing to do is to refuse to fight and protest the war, but what about the vast majority of soldiers kept from that realization to ensure that they remain good fighters? Bravery becomes a carrot and a stick with which society controls the individual rather than an ethic by which the individual has a virtuous impact upon society. To counter this process I would, to start, suggest an ethic that includes a strong skepticism towards the status quo rather than an interest in upholding tradition.
No, tradition is ways of living that have stood the test of time. They might not be perfect, but the idea that you can just reinvent all that stuff and do it better than tradition is the kind of thing that the Greek word "hubris" was invented for.
Also, upholding tradition doesn't mean being blindly enslaved to it. Part of the reason traditions got that way is that people adapted them when things changed.
I get my hair cut every month because my family instilled the tradition of grooming. But for the kind of people I've encountered who want to "uphold tradition", I'm "corrupting" tradition because I don't get a "traditional" man's haircut (aka a typical cut from their window of reference).
Humans uphold tradition by default, we don't really need a reminder to do it and we certainly don't need a reminder to uphold someone else's idea of tradition.
I don't see pg saying that in the article under discussion. so this criticism, however justified it might be in some cases, doesn't seem to me to be relevant here.
> Humans uphold tradition by default
True, but defaults can be overridden. And culture often tries to do that. See below.
> we don't really need a reminder to do it
In our current culture, where our so-called "elites" do indeed believe that they can reinvent society from scratch, and have been busily destroying traditions for decades in the process, I think we can indeed benefit from such a reminder.
Hubris is about not knowing your place with regard to those above you (the Greek pantheon) and the inevitability of the reckoning when the gods decide to put you forcefully and often brutally back in (their opinion of) your place. Implying that someone wanting to do what they think is right is both naive and deserves divine retribution is a nasty take indeed.
This "do what you're told", "don't make waves", and "let others handle government/systems/things outside of your zone" sounds an awful lot like the walrus and the carpenter to me.
Change them when it makes sense to change them, bearing in mind that the way they are now has stood the test of time.
> letting "the right" group of people tell us which traditions are the right ones
I said no such thing. The people who decide when traditions need to be changed are the ones who are living them.
> Hubris is about not knowing your place with regard to those above you
And in my use of that as a metaphor, the traditions themselves are the things "above you".
> Implying that someone wanting to do what they think is right is both naive and deserves divine retribution
Someone who is giving a "hard pass" to tradition, as the poster I responded to did, is going way beyond "do what they think is right", since they clearly have not actually thought at all about what traditions are and why they exist.
> This "do what you're told", "don't make waves", and "let others handle government/systems/things outside of your zone"
Is nothing like what I said. You're attacking a straw man.
People who have everything they need will make up a story where you deserve your troubles to avoid facing their own vulnerability.
It's easy to assign what you just described to character traits that the given people happen to have regardless of their economical stance. Yet, thinking about it a bit, being nice when poor is just a life strategy that makes sense. Not only that one's precarious situation (of any kind) attracts a lot of vulnerability, it also attracts a lot of dependency on pretty much everyone's good grace. Being anything but nice by default means undermining one's success. There is not much to gain by being hostile when poor. When one gets to be rich (in relation to others) however, the game changes. People want things and it makes sense to direct their attention and energy on other people that (ideally) do have what they want or (at least) may assist them with getting what they want. And, many people would like to cut corners and resort to dirty tricks in doing so. It's not that hard to imagine what that rich folk has to face in relation with other ambitious and not so scrupulous individuals, what a winning strategy in this case would look like, and why it makes sense to become the default behavior.
The other thing about folks without means, is that they know what it’s like, to have needs. A lot of folks with means, are pretty used to having the skids greased, and not needing stuff from others.
I think humans are social animals, and we’re generally wired for empathy. When we can see, in others, that which we see in ourselves, it helps us to feel more connected.
I’m not a particularly competitive person. That’s actually a deliberate posture. When I “win” something, that means someone else loses, and I’m not so comfortable with that.
The reasons partly have to do with being raised overseas, and experiencing grinding poverty in others. It really made a mark on me.
This is a thousands years old apparent dichotomy between rich evil people and good poor people.
But the reality is not like that. Rich can be good and poor can be evil. The same person can be good in some moments and evil in others.
Depicting the world in only two colors, black and white, paints a false image of the reality.
I know people hate complexity, but we shouldn't try to oversimplify things.
Refute that...
You could also say that power corrupts, money brings power therefore money corrupts.
You'd only really get an answer looking at trends and statistics. In my personal experience, people who have been through hardship develop empathy. They can become rich afterwards or stay poor, but most people tend to keep that empathy.
An evangelical and an atheist will probably disagree about the helpfulness of spreading the gospel, for example.
most people believe they do good and care about other people.
A lot of people are not Christian, nor belong to any other religion, but have a vague belief in a God and many of those do believe good people go to heaven. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism
At my age, it’s kind of vital to have a Purpose, so there’s that…
The worst lies we tell are most often the ones we tell ourselves.
It's just like the low-achieving over-confident folks of Dunning-Kruger: they don't really care about the truth, they're satisfied just believing they're an expert. The real experts take a far different tac, one of humility and intense, honest work.
"Nothing is more important than compassion and only the truth is its equal."
Do you also love these kinds of people?
So, at least for me, it's a long slog through the morass of my life full of idiotic bad habits of attitude and behavior. No, these vices must be dilligently picked off one by one, whack-a-mole style, using our mind and practices. As we progress, we must develop our humility towards those a bit further back on the progression or even stalled before the starting block, remembering that we all started out from zero when we first decided to take the path of love.
Our struggles with our ego result in either developing a demeaning, self-righteous persecution of others via false pride (thus nipping our nascent spiritual progression in the bud, if not our ill-gotten confidence), or developing a humble gratitude to the universe and its Creator for helping us overcome that vicious beast and our weakness in confronting and defeating its many dimensions of vice, one after the seemingly endless series of others.
We must either humbly submit to kindness, gratitude, and patience or suffer defeat at the hands of an ego gone mad with ignorant power.
The greatest medicine and sustenance for surmounting such formidable obstacles in the ego is compassionate service to mankind, asking nothing in return, and consulting often with the Source for help, appreciation, and inspiration.
To those who haven't begun the journey yet, we must only offer our compassionate, kind help in the best way possible, with gentle touches of wisdom. That is the best way to testify to God's love we are to carry to one and all in our every intention, thought, emotion, word, and deed, purifying them incrementally over time. These are called by some "the fruits of the spirit", and are mentioned in this NT quote:
"You will know them by their fruits."
People can say whatever they want, but the truth of everyone's life shows more and more clearly upon our face as our years of living accumulate, and also in our tone of voice and content of our utterances, but most importantly in our desires and treatment of society's least valued members.
That why Rumi said, "You have no idea how little we care about what people say."
Maybe 80% of the people are good people and 0.1% of people are responsible for most of the world’s misery.
Is it more like a calling? a spiritual consolation?
I’m a longtime member of an organization that is about helping others. It’s not something that I go into detail about, at the level of press, radio or films.
Also, selfishly, I really enjoy this kind of work; especially at a craftsman level. It’s nice to have an excuse to do it.
This is the most fundamental law of the human universe, and we all live under its iron fist as its gears grind our life's chosen actions' butterfly wingbeats back into us in perfect harmony with the frequency we emanated out into others, consonant or dissonant, loving or selfish, kind or cruel, generous or callous.
In addition, there are amplifiers and attenuators for both the positive and negative, especially at the narrow ends of our potentials' bell curve, so we best be careful how we wield our free will and the energy we possess to affect the world.
Ignoring this law does not change a person's situation, just their foundation for how they construct their custom decision-tree methodology of preference and habit, thus establishing their inertias and ability to self-reflect. This is because we are free to ignore the truth, just as we are fully free to be the biggest narcissistic asshole we can be given our station in life.
To boot, we're all doing this within multiple layers of our cultures' inertias that contribute to our perspective, once again, as per our choices.
Within it all, at the very center, is the most precious and perilous gift in the universe: our free will, mind, and body co-existing tripartite on this beautiful planet Earth.
Some people do things because they like doing those things…
If that's the case, that means there's something in it for you, enjoyment.
Lovingly serving others' happiness is a part of the asymmetric dynamics of the human universe, only accessible and operant in the world of free will and the ability to learn and manifest right from wrong, love from callous disregard or even cruelty, creation or destruction.
Peace be with you, though I hardly need say that to someone who already understands peace beyond what most can comprehend. Thanks for having your boots on the ground.
Neither saint, nor villain [anymore -Ed.]. My life story has made me who I am, and has forged my worldview. From what I have seen of your comments, life has forged a different worldview for you. It sounds like you may have overcome your own challenges, and it might be inspiring to hear those stories.
My story is not at all unusual. I regularly hang out with folks that knock it into a cocked hat. These are real people. They actually exist. They aren’t some Internet simulacrum. It makes me a bit regretful, that so many folks may not find communities that inspire them. They are out there, if we but look.
Just because we may choose not to look for it, does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
My post may not be what everyone wants to read, but it certainly inspired some interesting discussion, didn’t it? Whether or not I agree with everything, I find it a refreshing sidebar to the types of topics we usually cover.
I choose to keep showdead = no, so I am sure there’s some pretty brainsick stuff, as well, but HN seems to do a fairly good job of suppressing that kind of nonsense.
I have a saying (among others from my dad) that captures a similar idea: “Make things, and be good.”
A loaf of bread is good for a person who is starving, but less good to someone with celiac disease. A bowl or rice is more good to a starving person with celiac than a loaf of bread, etc.
so no: things relate to each other and in this relation, they can be objectively bad (bad to the object subjected to its effects). Things don't exist without the effects their existence exerts. Rephrased: the question of their goodness is, commonly, a question of fitness.
[0] Saying "prioritised" instead of "good", because "creating good new things" is tautologically, uninterestingly "good".
In what sense?
History hasn't finished. There's more things today than there were yesterday, and there will be more things tomorrow than there are today.
If you stop making new things because you think there's already enough things, you're just confining yourself to the world as it exists today. Do you think the world has finished? Do you think it can't be improved?
If you want to build the world of tomorrow you're going to have to make some of the things that exist tomorrow that don't exist today.
And once you've accepted that you need to make new things, I don't think it's much of a leap to accept that it's good to make good new things.
It might be a new philosophy, message, movement, technology, space, gathering, poem, or otherwise.
If something is so hard to do, for political reasons, it might be time to try something new. The goal might be the same, but maybe a new approach will yield better results.
[0] This is a small escape hatch for "what if one can only create new things" or "actual cure for cancer".
One good thing about new ideas is that it becomes an enabler for everyone else who are not working on new ideas. Similar to how technology democratises peoples abilities.
If political realities prevent us from solving problems, then we can either change the political realities or create new solutions. Individuals generally can't change political realities, but they can create good new things that work around them. So it is good advice.
There isn't really a technical solution to the problem of political instability.
> If the tools and techniques needed to efficiently grow food are cheap and widely available, farmers in politically unstable areas can simply grow their own food without a dependence on far away agribusiness.
You posit political instability as a problem but your solution doesn't address it. Thinking that, in a politically unstable environment, it would be simple to grow food if only you had better tools and techniques is naive. If the political environment was stable people would be able to feed themselves even without newest tools and techniques.
- global warming - antibiotic resistance - environmental contamination - food quality diminishing - explosive increase in chronic disease, especially in young people - extinction of most other species - fertility problems - declining birth rates - poly-pharmacy becoming normal - now things related to energy consumption with AI and cryptocurrency - huge decline in social behaviors across the population
Just seems like for every new advancement we're making new chronic issues that are barely incentivized at all for being managed and alleviated
Tens and tens of billions are spent to generate cute pics instead of same tech applied to radiology, diseases cure, etc.
Technology is vital to a functioning society.
There's certainly more debate to be had whether various bits of modern technology are net positive or net negative, but even still I personally believe modern technology is mostly neutral to very good for humanity in a vacuum and it is other forces like modern capitalism that bend it toward being harmful.
eg. Social media is very clearly having a net negative impact on modern society, but I don't believe that would still be true if it wasn't driven by algorithms created to maximize ad revenue above all other concerns.
And obviously there is some inherent coupling of modern technology and capitalism that isn't avoidable, but I don't think capitalism on its own is wholly bad, its the slavish cult-like worship of it as the only way to do things that causes it to be so destructive.
https://charlieharrington.com/create-wonderful-things-be-goo...
My only complaint: I remember it was hard to make it fit on my bookshelf :)
How?
Is the internet a net positive or net negative thing? How about Social Media? Is it maybe even more complex such that we can't tally up positive/negative "points" and a term like "net positive" doesn't even make sense for these things?
— Paul Virilio
If you make, say, an ovulation app designed to feed user data to companies so they can fire pregnant workers before the company is required to give leave or other benefits, that's bad. Get it? You are not so incapable of distinguishing these things as you feign here. Pretending that everything is a neutral tool that might be misused for bad is child-like. Stop doing that.
Here's a bit of an oversimplification: - is what you made useful to anyone? If it's not, no one will use it so it doesn't matter. - does what you made help people be more productive or less productive? - does it help improve people's health or degrade it? - does it give people what they want in the short term at the cost of harming them in the long term? - does it help some people while actively harming others? - does it help people but harm the environment or other creatures?
Etc.
Most failure comes from not getting past the first question. These are easy questions to ask but very hard to answer. Most startup founders make up answers and then go nowhere and waste a bunch of time/money. Even smart people doing their best fall into this trap. Our system isn't good at developing people to be good at empathizing at scale. When people try to empathize at scale they over-generalize to the point of near meaninglessness.
So, these posts err.. essays.. of his are pieces of abstract textual art that arrive here to be interpreted by commenters and also for admiration and mandatory vc adulation (maybe)?
Or maybe since he is rich now and is influential in making other people rich, lots of them actually, he gets to post whatever it is and also gets to make them gain traction. Yeah, this makes sense. Of course.
Or maybe I am from the crowd that doesn't understand modern art of making money at all; obviously.
He's not doing this for clout or internet points. He's not just writing whatever. pg works very hard on his writing and some of his earlier stuff is excellent. Maybe his next essay will be a banger. Or maybe pg doesn't have any good essays in him anymore. In any case, I respect his willingness to keep at it despite how widely his essays get mocked. It's not easy to put yourself out there.
I skim them to figure out which direction the wind is blowing for our technocrat overlords. The last article of his I read a few weeks ago was completely mask-off, also around the same time as the Zuckerberg "bring back masculine energy" interview. This essay feels softened, almost hedging in the same vein as the "How do you do, fellow kids?" meme.
Billionaires are interesting people, and I can't help but wonder how the next decade will be for them and the countries where they hold the bulk of their wealth.
“Create something new”… ok great insight, thanks PG, I guess this is some big strategic plan to increase the number YC applicants?
It really reads like some abstract art form that one is staring at and has to figure out the “deeper” meaning of. The problem is, there is no deep meaning there.
Nowadays, I skim PG articles when they hit HN, for maybe roughly 3 reasons:
1. To see if there's anything interesting to me.
2. Curiosity about what the writing says about him, or what he might be doing. (Why did he choose this topic, how is he thinking, what messages is he trying to send, why, does this hint at some other actions he's taking with his influence and resources, etc.)
3. As background for skimming HN comments. (Mainly, what's the gist of the sentiment of various HN demographics, when prompted by the PG post. Lately, I think my intent is mostly hopeful or curious, not seeking out something to be angry about.)
Nowadays, I find myself skipping lunch every other day - out of forgetfulness.
Leaning on "new" so hard as part of the "good" just reduces to, "Make new-new things that aren't by every objective measure bad and see if it works out in hindsight".
It would be helpful if we understood what good and bad mean to him.
Do you have a source for this that I can read up on?
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/07/20
"thoughts by a billionaire. self-praising. spiritually enriching. sophisticated. 'high' value"
"thoughts by a commoner. critical. base. self-deluding juvenile hack work. 'low' value"
"thoughts by a billionaire about how critics are delusional and self-important. Sophisticated irony. philosophically challenging. 'high' value"
"suppose I say the author is giving himself a pass for the companies he funds?"
"sophomoric. intellectually sterile. 'low' value"
Reminds me of my own "ai art", The Marlboro Man riding a chrome blow up dog.
"sophomoric. intellectually sterile. 'low' value"
The first thought I had after reading the thesis of the essay is that some people don't make new things but instead maintain important things. I'm more of a builder and if wager pg considers himself one, and I assume the majority of authentic HN users are builders. However I suspect the majority of people are maintainers.
Nurses, electricians, emergency dispatchers, firefighters, mechanics, etc.
We all depend on many complex systems working in order for our lives to not fall apart. Our homes, electricity, running water, soap manufacturing, etc. Choosing to be someone who makes sure these systems keep working is a good thing to do and deserves respect and appreciation. Someday AI may do all this stuff, but someday AI may build all the new things too...
So my response to this specific essay: PG, your answer is incomplete and biased towards your own values. ikigai does a better job of answering this question already, why not build on it? Also thanks for your writing, don't stop.
My biased answer to the question: - do lots of different things and stay curious, and with enough time, effort and luck you will find something you're good at, enjoy, the world wants, and will reward you with all the resources you need and then some. Just keep doing different things and being curious until you get there.
One last thought: Is PG publishing less robust essays in hopes that people will be more compelled to comment and discuss them, bringing together the best ideas on the topic? Something like "the best way to get a question answered on the internet is to post the wrong answer" or however that goes...
Today, I feel we have far too much of a focus on "business" and all my nieces and nephew are studying some sort of business focus in their university degrees. I feel it such a waste. If everyone in the world learns to only make businesses (ignoring that a degree is not required for that), who is going to build. If everyone becomes a maker, who is going to support all the non-maker roles.
There are many people for whom their job is not their craft. They're focus - much as PGs now is, is the raising of their family, guiding their children to become good people, showing love, etc etc.
Some may argue this is "making", but that's maybe a different argument.
Your last thought is an interesting one, I hadn't heard the quote before.
A dichotomy like "builder"/"maintainer" just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
Let's take software as example:
- Is someone that pushes their project from version 1.2.1 to 1.4.7 a "builder"?
- Are Linux contributors "builders"?
- Is someone porting CLI Y to rust a "builder"?
- Is someone that wraps a GenAI LLM into a web app a "builder"?
- Is someone in offensive security a "builder" of something?
...or let's ask it differently:
- Is performance optimization "maintenance"?
- Is the fix that prevents a user of your software from accomplishing their task "maintenance"?
- Is the work on a solid infrastructure, one that brings your time to resolution (TTR) closer to zero, the work of a "maintainer"?
- Is a dependency upgrade in your project the work of a "maintainer"?
Everybody builds and maintains all the time, and every artifact once built is in need of maintenance. Technological advancements will always be a collective effort through some form of feedback. Whether you're (re-)building something frequently [0] or advancing through maintenance [1], both are just categories of equal practice.
[0]: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/how-japan-makes-houses...
You only listed examples that relate to creating software. I'm sure the PG essay didn't mean to restrict all possibilities of what people could do to just creating software.
On one end the distinction is clear to me.
A security guard maintains the security of a facility. A nurse maintains the health and well being of patients. A janitor maintains the cleanliness of a facility.
Once you start bringing repairs into the scope of maintenance I can understand the distinction being blurry. I'd draw the line where a repair restores functionality to a previous state without any material improvments (to functionality or longevity). If there is a material improvments to the previously optimal state it's augmentation and therefore building.
To me the distinction is whether you are restoring functionality that previously worked and then stopped, or are you creating new functionality. I would also extend the notion of functionality to include what people perceive as value. So new art that makes someone feel something would be creation. A therapist that helps someone restore their emotional wellbeing is maintenance.
My subjective anecdotal observations are that some people seem more wired for maintenance and some more wired for building and like with any attribute some are wired for both or neither. They are independent attributes that are not mutually exclusive.
So I disagree that there is no distinction, but I agree they are not mutually exclusive.
All this is kind of beside my original point though, which is that it seems like PG left maintenance out of his proposed value system.
Good maintenance prevents something from stopping to work in the first place. I'd frame maintenance as someone's care and effort to put up with something (Bernard Moitessier and "built to be low-maintenance" from my linked article [1] comes to mind), so I'm in strong disagreement with your distinction as stated.
Maintenance, unlike building, is a task that will inevitably occur, but it's the question if you want to put up with it and how you're doing it. Building while ignoring maintenance is just complete negligence, and if you want to allow yourself and others to be negligent, I repaired quite a bit already to understand that fixing stuff can require quite a lot of unforeseen (re-)building. I honestly think this mindset was appropriate 10-30 years ago, but doesn't sit well in our current climate anymore, whether politically, economically nor otherwise.
> I would also extend the notion of functionality to include what people perceive as value. So new art that makes someone feel something would be creation.
I wanted to avoid bringing art into this discussion because art exists purely by maintaining a dialog about it. Artifacts need to be created first, sure, but as soon as they're published they'll just become excerpts to advance in that dialog (hopefully), and there's still the artist/viewer dichotomy in the perception of value and its affiliation of feelings. Making those pieces parts of art history requires maintenance, and that's the same collective effort as with technology.
> it seems like PG left maintenance out of his proposed value system.
Seems like we're spot on.
I dislike the way this is framed and I think the rule/exception are inverted. Certainly, building the jet engine or microprocessor is a big uplift on all boats, but the chances you pull one of these out of the hat are pretty low.
I spent a good chunk of my career attempting to build things that I thought were amazing. It took a lot of drama and disappointment to discover that helping other people means meeting them where they are at right now, not where I want them to be.