Totally agreed. While not bad, this all expresses a somewhat familiar loneliness in the world from a successful tech guy like pg. I think it just happens here:
> The most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done.
Something like this has been a marker for humanism since Pico della Mirandolla's famous "Oration on the Dignity of Man," for sure, if not Aristotle before that. But there is another viewpoint and set of frameworks that privileges the sociality and capacity for working together of humans. Isn't it, at least arguably, more impressive what we can build only together, rather than what any one of us has thought up at a given time? Ideas feel destined, individuals are products of their time; if I am not going to manifest some creative idea, it seems inevitable someone else will eventually. With the individual, it could always be otherwise, e.g., all the Einsteins who die in sweatshops, etc.
But what could not be otherwise is the brute force and cunning of people in general. Its much easier to replace a single CEO than it is an entire workforce.
I am not trying to be too damning, there are certainly worse formulations out there, and perhaps this is all a matter of emphasis. I also don't expect a guy like Paul Graham to be anything other than this kind of individualist; there is some necessary investment into the ego in order to live in the world he does, its fine. There is just the tinge of disappointment for me that this is still where we are at, when the world has such a surplus of ideas and deficit in solidarity.
> The most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done.
Something like this has been a marker for humanism since Pico della Mirandolla's famous "Oration on the Dignity of Man," for sure, if not Aristotle before that. But there is another viewpoint and set of frameworks that privileges the sociality and capacity for working together of humans. Isn't it, at least arguably, more impressive what we can build only together, rather than what any one of us has thought up at a given time? Ideas feel destined, individuals are products of their time; if I am not going to manifest some creative idea, it seems inevitable someone else will eventually. With the individual, it could always be otherwise, e.g., all the Einsteins who die in sweatshops, etc.
But what could not be otherwise is the brute force and cunning of people in general. Its much easier to replace a single CEO than it is an entire workforce.
I am not trying to be too damning, there are certainly worse formulations out there, and perhaps this is all a matter of emphasis. I also don't expect a guy like Paul Graham to be anything other than this kind of individualist; there is some necessary investment into the ego in order to live in the world he does, its fine. There is just the tinge of disappointment for me that this is still where we are at, when the world has such a surplus of ideas and deficit in solidarity.