Well put. I don't think this is new for him; there's always been a vein in his writing of someone scarred, late into life, by bad experiences in high school. Maybe it's not deliberate, but it is a vibe he sometimes manages to give off.
When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted (I'm looking for a better term but let's roll with that). When he writes about cancel culture, or maybe really culture of any sort: different story.
He should take a break from this stuff and write about teaching his kids Lisp.
> When he writes about cancel culture, or maybe really culture of any sort: different story.
Is there anyone at all who writes "happily" about cancel culture? Even SJW's themselves can only give an impression of being perpetually angry and frustrated; they try to present their inner frustration wrt. the world at large as some sort of zeal for superior justice and universal social liberation, but don't quite manage to convince anyone.
It's not that his writing is unhappy. It's that when he writes about it, he seems like an unhappy person. I don't know if that's the case for "SJWs"; I mostly steer clear of the "cancel culture" discourse.
Is your core concern here the fact that when Paul Graham writes about things he likes, his posts have a positive tone, and when he writes about things he dislikes, his posts have a negative tone?
When he writes about things he dislikes, his writing gets less interesting --- not in the sense that criticism and negativity is uninteresting; I enjoy a zero-star Ebert review as much as the next person, but in the sense that his actual prose style gets less interesting --- and, as the comment upthread noted, markedly more misanthropic. He doesn't seem to be having a good time writing it. I can point to things he's written where it reads like he's really enjoying himself. Maybe he's just not good at cultural criticism?
Don't let me sound like I'm psychoanalyzing the guy. I'm sure he's fine, probably saner than I am. I'm just talking about the writing.
I think it's more “when he is consciously lying to advance political propaganda and needs to avoid engaging at anything more than a general level to avoid immediately giving the game away, his prose becomes less interesting.“
His classic piece “The Submarine” is negative on its subject, but it's quite engaging and not evasive the way this piece is. And there is a reason for that.
We probably agree on the substance of the piece, but that aside: there are people who write bad takes on this stuff that clearly enjoy the writing (Matt Taibbi is a classic example). Paul Graham isn't one of them. I wonder why he bothers: he's exactly the least persuasive kind of person to take the "cancel culture is a problem" side of the argument, and the process doesn't seem pleasant for him.
This would be a convincing argument if it was extended with links to people who have written about "cancel culture", "wokeness" or whatever in a genuinely pleasant way, even and perhaps especially to criticize it. Maybe "Scott Alexander" of Slate Star Codex got closest, but even he reportedly regrets much of that writing - i.e. it does make him unhappy, which I think speaks volumes. I don't think it's realistic or fair to demand this feat from Paul Graham.
I'd look for someone writing from the perspective of "all humans are innately predisposed to prejudice and must work to overcome it", which avoids dividing up the world into "x-ist people / not-x-ist people".
I don't hold out hope that this perspective will ever become mainstream, but because it's an alternative to "us-vs-them", there's more opportunity for redemption, communion, and joy.
> all humans are innately predisposed to prejudice and must work to overcome it
Much of "Scott Alexander"'s following came from the readership of a blog named literally 'Overcoming Bias', that's devoted to descriptions of how all humans are often remarkably petty and prejudicial in obscure and counterintuitive ways. It's definitely not taking a mainstream perspective, and the 'redemption' in it is quite subdued, but it does seem to avoid that particular pitfall.
I agree; I am saying that this is a mode where Graham doesn't write well, not that it is impossible to write engaging badly-detached-from-facts propaganda.
Though Taibbi writes for a different audience that probably makes that easier.
I presume you refer to the avoidance of examples in the article. Your comment suggest he was correct to do so. Some people will be desperate to disprove that modern heresy exists, and highlighting forbidden opinions would help negate the entire article.
It's a piece about identifying 'PR hits' that misidentified something as a 'PR hit'. There's a microscopic 'correction' at the bottom but the fact the correction undermines the premise of the piece - that you too can learn to identify 'PR hits' from Paul Graham - is just ignored.
> I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed, this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of detecting witch hunts in any era
Talking about PR[1] isn't wrought with intellectually-dishonest landmines in the manner that it is for talking about what Graham terms "heresy-hunters". This is also obvious to even anyone who's paying a mild amount of attention to the cultural changes he's describing.
[1] the topic of "The Submarine", for those who are unfamiliar
I wrote a comment here about how the term "heresy hunter" is a good example of what I'm talking about, bad writing because "heresy hunting" is a clunky made-up term, and there are much better, more vivid words to use instead. But, it turns out, there is a lot of writing about "heresy hunting" out on the Internet --- in Evangelical Christian theology. Maybe that's what happened? Maybe Graham is born again?
I chose that term carefully, and put it in quotes, to avoid derailment about my choice of words. I wanted to make it clear I'm referring without judgment to the types of people he is talking about, and was willing to make my short comment clunkier in the name of keeping it precise.
But the clunkiness you're saying is in my comment, not his essay. The essay includes the words "heretic hunters", but it's only used once:
> I've deliberately avoided mentioning any specific heresies here. Partly because one of the universal tactics of heretic hunters, now as in the past, is to accuse those who disapprove of the way in which they suppress ideas of being heretics themselves. Indeed, this tactic is so consistent that you could use it as a way of detecting witch hunts in any era
Personally, this single usage and less-clunky grammar doesn't strike me as especially bad writing.
You're hinting that most accusations of heresy come from the right (evangelical christians), rather than the left. This almost seems absurd to me, as someone who consumes a wide range of news media every day.
Well, I came to the same sort of conclusion. This in particular:
>There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to agree that it's so.
Not only bears no resemblance to actual lived reality, because the penalties for speaking out against orthodoxy (or even just being trans or gay or a bi-racial couple) were far worse than simply being kicked off twitter, and virtually none of those had any impact on anyone else in the same way that refusing to mask up or get vaccinated does today. They'd have fired their asses in 1918 too.
Yep, also there are still rules at many businesses and schools that specifically target black hairstyles as unfit to be in public settings.
We could just point out that they're not really concerned about people getting "cancelled" as much as who is doing the cancelling and who's getting cancelled. Somehow it was a good thing when governments and corporations were able to cancel people based on race, gender, vaccination status, and sexual orientation... but now that they're being cancelled on the basis of being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and... well, at least vaccination statuses have remained consistent... suddenly there's a problem. Suddenly the all-knowing overlords of business that people trust with their retirement accounts and their political landscape are WRONG. LOL.
And usually the cancellation doesn't even have anything to do with a job. It's freaking social media for crying out loud.
> Is there anyone at all who writes "happily" about cancel culture?
It is something that, like the Devil, exists primarily in the minds of people for whom it is a central part of the opposition in their mythological construction of the world, so no.
Cancel Culture has become one of the defining aspects of modern culture. Arguing it doesn't exist is going to be difficult when the elephant is clearly sitting here in the room with us.
Those feminists are so angry when they write about feminism. They seem happier when they write about other topics. Clearly, then, we know what to advise them to write about.
I don't understand. What do "feminists" have to do with this? There are a zillion different kinds of feminists. Did I miss something about this post, is it subtly anti-feminist?
To spell it out: just because someone seems unhappy writing about something, doesn't make them wrong, and it doesn't mean that they should stop writing about it.
I selected "feminists" as an "across-the-aisle" example.
I think you already know that. You could try speculating a bit. It just sounds like you're playing dumb to try to catch me out on something at this point.
You are fixating on the "feminists" when I just mentioned that they are an example. You can look up and see that I have said that. You know who Matt Taibbi is, so ... it just looks like you are playing dumb.
Instead of trying to explain things to you, I am going to ask questions and you can try to answer them.
1) Have you ever heard the phrase "across the aisle?" Consider this in the Congressional sense.
2) On what side or in what political party would you say that most of the feminists, despite their myriad combinations, would reside?
3) What side are the people who are against "cancel culture" on, generally? Again: as a trend.
4) Combining the answers to the first three, can you diagram out where the aisle is, where #2 is, and where #3 is?
5) What is the purpose of selecting an example from "the other side," generally?
Who are you speaking for here? I'm well aware of the political valence of feminism. I'm wondering why you seem to think Paul Graham is the anti-feminist side of this aisle. It's a simple question, I don't know why you're dancing around it.
As my great aunt (born circa 1899) said, "Sometimes the 'You shoulds are the shits.'"
I'd like to see more on topics of enduring interest from Paul than on the ever-evanescent fluff of tech. That his concern lies with teaching his kids not to be social gangsters rather than teaching them some current tech meets with my approval.
It's a big question, I guess: "why write anything?" I don't know! Certainly, neither pleasure nor persuasion could be the objective behind a piece like this. What are the other reasons? Venting? I'm interested in what you think.
When he writes about Lisp, or (for the most part) about startups, or about being a dad, he seems happy and well-adjusted (I'm looking for a better term but let's roll with that). When he writes about cancel culture, or maybe really culture of any sort: different story.
He should take a break from this stuff and write about teaching his kids Lisp.