Here's why I avoid talking about certain topics: it's embarrassing, and mostly not useful to the audience.
The article focusses on people determined to agree or disagree with PG. Interestingness is a far better barometer of value than agreement. My tests for what I say/write: Is it interesting to the audience? The subsidiary test for what I write here: Will it make PG uncomfortable to hear? And my test for that: would it make me squirm in his position?
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There's endless ways to talk about how much I admire PG and Eliezer Yudkowsky. I could describe running into Eliezer's ai_design.temp.html document back in '98 after searching a new search engine called 'Google' for 'copycat eurisko sources' after reading Douglas Hofstadter's book about his cool AI projects, and my obsession with AI for the next 3 years. I could talk about the sense of epiphany of reading 'Why nerds are unpopular' and 'the age of the essay', and then PG's essays on startups that gradually opened up to a struggling, mediocre grad student the third career option besides academia and bigco research lab, with the grand culmination of 'How to do what you love'. When I met PG I felt like how I imagine teenagers felt in front of the Beatles ("OMG, I can't believe it.. it's really PG.. quick say something.. wait don't say something stupid..")
How I feel about these guys is more than admiration. It's a sense of identification intertwined with the time in my life I ran into them, and the influence they had (http://akkartik.name/blog/2009-03-22-20-03-26-soc). It's not about how good they are, or whether there are better writers out there, or whether they can kick Chuck Norris's butt; it's about the vivid memories of reading specific essays.
I could say all these things, and even rationalize to myself at the time that they were interesting, or said in interesting ways. They may even be interesting to say once. But this is a community, and there's a daily routine, and the emphasis is on the trajectory rather than on individual comments. It would be super boring to find endless ways to talk about how much I admire PG and Eliezer. Or to read everybody else's, I fear, far too similar stories.
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I like to praise the people I admire in useful ways. Like if I can focus on something they said and add more evidence. Or contrast a point with what somebody else said. Or respond to a commenter who seemed to miss the point. I admire the content of their writings, and the form. A great form of praise is by showing I understood, at a deep level, what they were trying to say. An even better one is to try to write like they do.
(OMG, I really hope I didn't make them squirm. I hope PG didn't think this was lame. But I can say this once. But I hope I'm not embarrassed next time I meet PG. Will I meet PG soon?..)
You did pretty well at avoiding squirm-induction, I think - I'm glad you tried to put yourself in my/his shoes.
For the record, one of the best ways to avoid inducing squirms and induce a strong warm fuzzy feeling is to talk about what the one has inspired you to do - i.e., "PG, it's as a result of reading your work that I learned Lisp as my first programming language and started hacking on open source", even if you never founded your own startup, is probably going to induce a stronger warm fuzzy feeling than any amount of praise directed at particular essays you liked.
I find that sort of causality hard to draw, though. My choices are either to make it a hard correlation with a minor accomplishment (I tried programming in lisp, and came up with these few programs I found interesting: http://akkartik.name/lisp.html) or to make it a more fuzzy correlation with something bigger ("Everything I have done and everything I will do, would have been less good if you hadn't written what you did." http://akkartik.name/about. Or "When I write I try to imagine how you would react to each sentence." http://akkartik.name/?f=Me)
Neither seems satisfactory, especially since other people influenced these accomplishments as well. Let me attempt a middle ground -- using examples.
Eliezer, I still maintain an interest in blackboard systems to this day. For example, here's a program I wrote a couple of weeks ago: http://github.com/akkartik/brooks-ruby-warrior/tree/master. Thanks to reading Hofstadter and you and Brooks, I knew when I approached this problem that finding the heuristics to solve a particular AI problem is relatively easy. What is hard is finding an open-ended architecture to integrate lots of heuristics together. I ended up with a faint likeness of an idea others have explored in far harder domains.
PG, as I hinted above, inspired me to come to silicon valley 2 years ago. I do what I love. That was not something I could say a few years ago. Agh, this is more squirm-inducing. Here's a program that came out of conversations when I spoke to PG at a YC dinner in Boston last July: http://akkartik.name/newsflash. PG induced me to leave the problem of generating recommendations behind, at least for some domains.
I don't have more significant contributions. Hopefully that will change.
The article focusses on people determined to agree or disagree with PG. Interestingness is a far better barometer of value than agreement. My tests for what I say/write: Is it interesting to the audience? The subsidiary test for what I write here: Will it make PG uncomfortable to hear? And my test for that: would it make me squirm in his position?
---
There's endless ways to talk about how much I admire PG and Eliezer Yudkowsky. I could describe running into Eliezer's ai_design.temp.html document back in '98 after searching a new search engine called 'Google' for 'copycat eurisko sources' after reading Douglas Hofstadter's book about his cool AI projects, and my obsession with AI for the next 3 years. I could talk about the sense of epiphany of reading 'Why nerds are unpopular' and 'the age of the essay', and then PG's essays on startups that gradually opened up to a struggling, mediocre grad student the third career option besides academia and bigco research lab, with the grand culmination of 'How to do what you love'. When I met PG I felt like how I imagine teenagers felt in front of the Beatles ("OMG, I can't believe it.. it's really PG.. quick say something.. wait don't say something stupid..")
How I feel about these guys is more than admiration. It's a sense of identification intertwined with the time in my life I ran into them, and the influence they had (http://akkartik.name/blog/2009-03-22-20-03-26-soc). It's not about how good they are, or whether there are better writers out there, or whether they can kick Chuck Norris's butt; it's about the vivid memories of reading specific essays.
I could say all these things, and even rationalize to myself at the time that they were interesting, or said in interesting ways. They may even be interesting to say once. But this is a community, and there's a daily routine, and the emphasis is on the trajectory rather than on individual comments. It would be super boring to find endless ways to talk about how much I admire PG and Eliezer. Or to read everybody else's, I fear, far too similar stories.
---
I like to praise the people I admire in useful ways. Like if I can focus on something they said and add more evidence. Or contrast a point with what somebody else said. Or respond to a commenter who seemed to miss the point. I admire the content of their writings, and the form. A great form of praise is by showing I understood, at a deep level, what they were trying to say. An even better one is to try to write like they do.
(OMG, I really hope I didn't make them squirm. I hope PG didn't think this was lame. But I can say this once. But I hope I'm not embarrassed next time I meet PG. Will I meet PG soon?..)