I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn".
The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else.
I think the same rush we get from learning something counter-intuitive and novel is the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones.
Edit: It occurs to me that this comment could be seen as an example of what it describes...
It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else.
IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group. Nothing wrong with it, just an (unscientific) observation.
"IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group."
Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now.
> Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now.
This is why I hate being around a good deal of "smart" people (or atleast, people who have smartness attached to their identity, which seems to be rarely the same group). Every statement, every conversation, every fact is just another opportunity for them to put something down or puff themselves up.
Ah yes. Let's all stay positive. It's not like anyone ever died from not wanting to criticize something, right?
Only, things ranging from people going on doomed escapades and startups, via mountaineering accidents up to and including the Eschede train disaster can be at least partially attributed to people being afraid of expressing criticism. Of course there is a valid criticism of how many people express said criticism, but that's another matter.
In fact, what I do see, is a lot of people who are so attached to their own opinion, that even after an amount of statements intended discern between the opinion and person expressing it, they still become angry when facing criticism.
One of the actual reasons I come to HN is to read dissenting views. I may disagree with them, but without them this site would be useless.
You sound like you're snarkily disagreeing with d23, yet the core of your disagreement is based on something that he/she didn't say. No one is saying criticism is bad; obviously if anyone had a default position of never expressing criticism or disagreement, nothing would ever improve, right? But there is absolutely a personality type that thrives on thinking of one's self as being smarter than everyone else, and constantly trying to prove that via relentless negativity or contrarianism. If you rely on such people for insight, you will generally end up being less informed than if you hadn't listened to them at all, because their views are based on boosting their own ego by trying to appear smarter than everyone else rather than from an intellectually honest attempt to get at the truth.
At least, that's how I interpreted the comment you were responding to. Maybe you've never met people like that; if so, you're lucky.
The one good quality such people might have is as a continual Devil's Advocate, in the sense that by disagreeing with all conventional wisdom they might make you take a second look at your own beliefs. But I really feel like it's everyone's responsibility to be their own Devil's Advocate; relying on other people to fill that role isn't constructive.
I guess what I'm really getting at is that there's no shortage of negativity or contrariness out there, and contrariness without insight is no better than agreement without insight. In fact, it can easily lead you astray if you're not careful.
> You sound like you're snarkily disagreeing with d23, yet the core of your disagreement is based on something that he/she didn't say. No one is saying criticism is bad; obviously if anyone had a default position of never expressing criticism or disagreement, nothing would ever improve, right?
Well, I did get sick of it after yet another discussion on HN went into the 'stop raining on the parade' comments.
> At least, that's how I interpreted the comment you were responding to. Maybe you've never met people like that; if so, you're lucky.
I've met many people who dismiss any criticism with complaints of negativism. I've even seen that happen when I complained about how they were dissing others, as if me suggesting they should be more understanding was negative.
In fact, I see a lot of negativity with insight, and a lot of yes-men attitude without any reflection. It's a far more common disease.
I think I'd still rather be around people who argue with statistics and logic than people who don't. Step into a Yahoo news comment section with any article that mentions the US gov't or Obamacare. There's so much bullshit and stupidity thrown around it makes you lose faith in humanity.
I'd rather be around smart people putting someone down or puffing themselves over things they are right about than be around dumb people putting someone down or puffing themselves up over things they are wrong about. Internet arguing, Politics, Sports, Rap battles, etc. same shit, different group, different MO's
What you've described is normal human behavior irrespective of their level of intelligence.
For the record, although I consider myself smart, I usually like to get substantive feedback (whether agreeing with me or not) to battle test my views, learn more and refine my presentation. I intuitively find this to be valuable for me and I seem to be addicted to debating with people of different points of view on topics I care about. I don't care about an echo chamber beyond once in a while reinforcing that random reasonable people agree with me. But I quickly want to move the conversation to stuff I am still battle testing. The thing that frustrates me the most are people who are unable to engage in reasonable discussion and yet are worth talking to for what they know. Usually they nitpick at things which should be logically obvious and ignore the main arguments. It makes me waste a lot of time.
I took a plane ride to Wisconsin for instance, for a three day conference of Christian apologists because they are hard to get a hold of online, and I had serious questiona.
I enjoy having my views continually challenged -- but I have begun to draw a line between those with whom I disagree and those who make me angry. I have less time for those who make me angry -- but I say that without judgement. I can't say they're arguments are empty if I refuse to engage them -- the most I can say is that it's not beneficial for me to engage them.
In terms of "people who are unable to engage in reasonable discussion and yet are worth talking to for what they know ... they nitpick at things which should be logically obvious", I would counsel toward assuming good faith on their part, and just not engaging them. If you'd like to benefit from what they know, it's fair that you should try to hear their arguments charitably and even entertain that what you consider "logically obvious" may be more cultural than logical.
There's an interesting possibility that our brain actually gives us a neurochemical "hit" every time we encounter a particularly juicy piece of insight porn. The reason for this is evolutionary: insights are basically the recognition of deep patterns that explain seemingly unrelated phenomena, which lets us "compress" our knowledge and so increase our understanding of the world. (It's not that our stone age ancestors were developing scientific theories, but they had many complex things in their environment to predict: the weather, animal behaviour, their own social networks, other hunter-gather tribes, etc).
The pleasure gained from studying mathematics, or listening to complicated pieces of music (esp classical, where complex pieces might be based on simple underlying patterns) are good examples. Humour might be a complementary reward circuit, giving us a psychological hit when we discover something that contradicts our worldview.
(I'm aware that the preceding paragraphs was themselves a piece of insight porn :)
Whenever someone says "There's a possibility X is evolutionary", nowadays, I mentally continue it with "The reason for this is rationalization".
As an aside, what's it called when you come up with an explanation of something to fit the facts the way you want them? Hindsight bias comes to mind, but it's not exactly that. More like a mixture of hindsight/confirmation bias and wishful thinking.
That is an established idea; if you can explain any possible outcome equally fluently, you can't explain anything. I find it a useful cognitive hack; if someone asks you whether X or Y will happen (and for the sake of argument let's discard "none of the above"), instead of asking that question of my brain directly, I try to pretend in sequence that both have already happened, and then explain why. If you can easily explain both, if neither gives you trouble, you don't really know, no matter how convincingly the rest of your brain may be telling you that you have an opinion.
I meant the phrase, not the idea. I agree with you, though. Especially when someone tells me "well, it was obvious that X would happen, because Y", I ask them "what if I was lying and the opposite of X happened? Was that equally obvious? If both are obvious, then neither is".
You have to be precise when talking about the effects of biological evolution on our brains. We know our brains were initially created entirely by biological evolution; what's not clear is how direct or indirect the influence of evolution has been on our psychology. That is, does evolution hardwire relatively complex behaviour (as it does in many animals) or does it merely specify high-level learning algorithms? This appears to be the case with humans - we don't have many instinctual behaviours compared with other animals, but we do have an instinctual ability to learn new things. It's interesting to speculate how this ability might have arisen; the ability to learn new things and to spot patterns must have been useful to our distant ancestors, as they're such fundamental traits of human cognition.
This is also why the "nature vs nurture"/"biology vs culture" debate is a false dichotomy: the foundation of human culture is our ability to learn, which is itself a genetic adaptation.
It's not scientific, but criticism of this kind of rationalization often applies the term "just-so story", as does the Chabris review that started this discussion. It's borrowed from Kipling, who told fanciful but childishly plausible tales of "How the Camel Got His Hump", etc.
Evolutionary biologists are rightly slammed for having made many strong, wrong predictions. But I think it still has some value, if you just make weaker predictions. Instead of "a is necessary because of such and such living conditions", we think that "a might be more likely then b because of such and such living conditions". From certain assertions to potential hypotheses basically.
Well, there is clearly some things that have evolved the way they have, so I don't think anybody's claiming that there's no merit in evobio. It's applying it to everything that's the problem.
Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought.
In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven't thought of it before.
So I think of people like Gladwell as pop-fusion artists, like say, Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble. They often get disproportionately rewarded (as compared to "real" jazz artists), but they DO do a lot for a lot of people by introducing them to something they otherwise might not have considered.
I believe it's unfair to include Diamond in this genre, as although he's popular, he's also a thinker (and prof) with an academic's consistency and attention to data. The Freakonomics guys are also closer to data, but episodically popularising rather than Diamond's coherent meta-narratives. The biggest argument you could level against Diamond might be one of leaning too heavily on "geographical determinism", which he can veer towards at times.
I agree with both your points--at least with respect to Guns Germs and Steel. Arguably he way overextended his basic research in later works.
An interesting supplement to Diamond is Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. To greatly oversimplify, Morris endorses the idea of a Western core headstart (with credit to Diamond) but then basically says "Well, yeah, of course that's the case." But how does that explain how things ended up millennia later. A good read.
Another broader point though is that serious researchers are always going to put down popularizers who write books people actually read. But no one is going to read serious researchers except other serious researchers. Of course, you can go too far in the popularization direction and I tend to agree Malcolm Gladwell is a great example of that.
Fortunately, there are a couple examples of serious researchers who are also excellent (though maybe not as well known) popularizers. Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow) and Steven Strogatz (Sync, etc.) come immediately to mind, because I have read them recently. I have some books by Benoit Mandlebrot in shipping, and I am quite excited about them.
If anyone has other examples, I would love to hear them--I'm trying to pack my immediate reading list right now and am currently uninterested in fiction.
Steven Pinker is an experimental Psychologist you might like. His book 'The Blank Slate' is very good.
Joseph Stiglitz, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek & Paul Krugman are all winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and all have written some accessible books for the public.
The Richard Dawkins books on biology are really good.
Steven Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics has written some fine popular science books.
I found "The Misbehavior of Markets" by Benoit Mandelbrot to be a good and engrossing read. It explained the concepts of fractals and especially fractal dimensions better than the Wikipedia page and other sources that I have read previously.
The difference between Gladwell and Diamond (and for that matter Levitt) is that Gladwell is attacked for his work being atheoretical; it's basically a collection of anecdotes that belongs on a bookshelf with Bill Bryson.
Diamond is criticised for stretching his grand unified theories too far and missing all the evidence to the contrary. Levitt is accused of picking bad hypotheses and doing sloppy econometric analysis to support them. Gladwell doesn't have any grand unified theories, or any theories substantial or original enough to be controversial. and doesn't do any comparable statistical analysis.
Worth mentioning that the Freakonomics guys (Donohue and Levitt) work tying abortion law to crime reduction was debunked. There was a bug in the regression analysis code, "coding errors" (as in typos while copying data tables from print sources), and flat out statistical errors (most egregious was their use of total arrests instead of arrests per capita).
More interesting is that reduction in childhood exposure to lead is the most significant factor. Levitt counters the debunking of his theory two paragraphs down from your link:
I know, Levitt and Donohue made the corrections, and then made even more "corrections", until they got back their original results (or as close as they could get).
That's how it often goes when researches are accused of scientific misconduct (not to accuse LD, just noting). One famous example was Potti & Nevins at Duke. There were several back-and-forth "Comments" published to counter the questions Baggerly & Coombes were raising. PN repeatedly addressed the issues, each time releasing another "corrected" supplementary data set. Eventually the journals stopped publishing the BC critiques, PN seemingly convinced the reviewers that BC were just being pedantic about inconsequential statistical subtleties. It only came to a head because Duke was proceeding with human clinical trials based on that research.
To this day Potti still claims that he can address all the issues BN raised and correct them, and that his research was valid.
Diamond is very much in the same camp. In the introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel he stated that his motivation for the work was to come up with evidence with which to counter an Occam's Razor assumption (basically, that certain groups had done more smart things because they were smarter) that contradicted his campus political theory. The "academic's consistency" is the lawyer's consistency of only making the arguments that support what he has decided in advance to support, and the "attention to detail" is attention to only those details that support his case. The fact that his book presented no evidence in favor of the Occam's Razor position (the reason certain groups do more smart things is because they are smarter) but only a list of possible counter-arguments makes it not an investigation of an issue, but an attempt to defend a pre-existing political position.
Even anthropologists sharing the same campus politics have been unwilling to endorse Diamond's arguments with any real enthusiasm.
"developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else."
It doesn't seem limited to nerds, though. These books are always top sellers in places like airport book stores, so there's got to be a wider audience than that. If anything, I'd say these are very middlebrow books that hit a sweet spot in making college-educated (though not necessarily nerdy or even particularly smart) people feel smarter. They're like the USA Today distillations of behavioral and neuroscience research.
the destructive thing about this style of writing[1] isn't that the readers like to feel smart or superior to others; the destructive thing about it is that instead of distilling research with an aim to convey useful information, he distills that research with an aim to find the most shocking or counterintuitive possibility, even if the evidence isn't really strong enough to support an 'extraordinary claim' You actually get dumber (well, not dumber, but you gain incorrect models, which can make you look and act dumber) from reading Gladwell's work.
Really, though, I'd argue that most business books I've read had a similar feel. 99% bullshit, and the 1% based on actual science is often based on very shaky evidence.
[1]Gladwell's style is pretty familiar if you've read many business books. Very light, very easy to read; it sounds very authoritative, but is at best 99% fluff and 1% actual solid information. When the fluff is actual fluff (case studies, etc...) so long as you find it entertaining, there's no harm. The problem comes when the fluff is demonstrably incorrect and contributes to you making real-world poor decisions.
One important difference is that Gladwell is pretty good writer and doesn't really go too much into specific personal/business advice. Vast majority of business/personal development books on the other hand display crappy writing and live off people buying their promises hoping to actually find some practical advice. In that landscape Gladwell stands out: he actually give a lot of references you can check yourself, he doesn't give harmful advice and he delivers what should be expected from him - entertainment and great topics for conversations.
The field of popular nutrition is exploding with this. "Warrior diet" and "Paleo diet" are two recent ideas that come to mind.
But as I type this it occurs to me: This might extend to beyond nerds. This effect might be what is addictive about Oprah or Dr. Phil (relationship insights), or even the bobble-heads on tv talking about the latest source of their political rage, or even sports junkies.
The Paleo or Primal diet idea has been around for a long time. I think it has gotten more momentum as more cherry-picked scientific studies have been found.
One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art -- and could therefore be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the human race.
I'm not saying that his argument is wrong, but it definitely runs against the prevailing wisdom. Similarly "Collapse" (the idea that the success or failure of societies is predictable) and "Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities).
Maybe those things are obvious to you, but I don't think they're obvious to most people.
> Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities).
I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emerged, but that's another story). Something like "one can only be productive in a temperate climate", while those poor souls that have to live at the Tropics will never become industrious peoples.
What's funny is that way earlier than that, the early Greeks were saying that their dry climate was perfect for talking about philosophy and related stuff, and that a more "humid" climate would have been against that (I'm thinking about Heraclitus, mainly).
My recollection is that Diamond's argument is slightly different. He argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia meant that societies were more easily able to expand, because you experience relatively little climate variation moving along parallels than you do moving up and down meridians, which you are forced to do when you expand in a north-south oriented continent like America or Africa.
Similarly Eurasia had a wider variety of indigenous grains suitable for cultivation, and more large mammals suitable for domestication, and these could be taken with a population when the migrated (because of the aforementioned east-west orientation).
These advantages meant that populations were able to increase more rapidly, which necessitated an earlier development of agriculture, which lead to further productivity gains as improving food yields meant that people could spend more time developing more advanced technology.
The increased population densities had two further advantages - firstly, it meant that wars were more frequent, so Eurasians developed more advanced weaponry (the "guns" and "steel" of the title). Secondly, evolutionary pressures selected for resistance to diseases that could spread easily in crowded environments (the "germs").
So it's a little bit more subtle than just "our climate is inherently better for deep philosophical thoughts" or "our climate means that we are more productive workers".
>So it's a little bit more subtle than just "our climate is inherently better for deep philosophical thoughts" or "our climate means that we are more productive workers".
Precisely.
The people here are ripping on the author's simplified theories by presenting even more simplified versions of the arguments.
It's usually called environmental determinism and is something no modern anthropologist or geographer really wants to be associated with (as much as a modern biologist would want to be associated with eugenics or phrenology).
GGS did cause some despair among academics, as century old discredited ideas were presented as science to the public.
The popularity of the work Guns, germs and steel (GGS) has served to bring the question of human–environment connections once again to the forefront of popular thought. We assert that the recent success of GGS represents both a persistence of environmental determinist logic and a contemporary trend that privileges the environment as the primary influence on human–environment relationships. […] The book is found to mirror earlier environmental determinism by failing to take into account many of the advances in human–environmental thought since the early twentieth century. Its popular success suggests the pitfalls of failures to acknowledge the complex, intertwined and indivisible relationship that exists among humans and their environment. Furthermore, there is evidence that the environmental determinism espoused in GGS has caught the attention of international development policymakers potentially influencing future outlays of aid and assistance to the developing world. These conclusions raise cautionary flags against repeating past theoretical mistakes by accepting simplistic, causal explanations based largely on a deterministic conception of the natural environment.
This paper is really interesting - thanks. Some of my archaeologist friends have criticised Diamond's books for being too simplistic and using outdated techniques (even when they were written in the 80s and 90s) but I had never really figured out why they were wrong before.
What's the alternative? Racial determinism? I can accept that there were many possible outcomes of different groups of humans and way they formed civilizations, and that which one happened was determined by dumb luck - but the environment that people happen to be born in is a part of that dumb luck.
That abstract is completely empty - and I'm paywalled away from the paper.
If the environment isn't responsible at all, you have to be saying that its entirely something from within people that determines their social structure and achievements. No?
> I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emerged, but that's another story). Something like "one can only be productive in a temperate climate", while those poor souls that have to live at the Tropics will never become industrious peoples.
To be fair, the GGS arguments are about explaining the origins of different rates of development, and not giving a rationalization for continued supremacy. For instance, one of his major arguments was that the New World had few domesticated draught animals. That ceases to be of any relevance with modern transportation, or indeed modern industry. He is talking about why some countries got a headstart, not trying to establish some firmly rooted 'natural order'.
The argument actually was that the extreme area offered by Europe and Asia being situated along a large e-w oriented latitude offered both a wide variety of domesticated plant species as well as a greater area to grow them. So a crop domesticated in W Europe could much more easily be traded as there are more markets and arable land.
Africa, oriented N-S has a huge variation in climates from the Med in the North through the Serengheti, the sahel, the savannah, tropical rainforests, the veldt, and etc. A lot more micro-climates that make transferring crops to a different area problematic. There were some other reasons but this was the basis of his geographical argument.
But I disagree that this puts Jared Diamond in the same category as the other three. I think the fact that he is, for the most part, not wrong, clearly sets him apart from
Gladwell, Lehrer and Freakonomics.
Dumping too much data on your readers to ram home the point you're making may be tedious to read, but it's not reprehensible the way twisting and stretching the truth to appear original and profound is.
One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art
Both arguments appear to have some truth. Agriculture at early stages led to worse health, caused inequality, people started living in larger groups which helped diseases to spread.
Time to develop science and art came later, and was not available to an average person for a long time anyway - up to 95% population was working in agriculture until relatively recent times (I don't have the reference for this number though).
The bigger problem with "the worst mistake in the history of the human race" is that it ascribes a meaning and purpose to human existence. That is, there can be no mistake if there is no goal. What is the goal or purpose of human existence? There are many answers to that question, some more defensible than others, but there is no "scientific" answer to it.
About time a Maddox reference made it on here! Though is not quite the Gladwell type, his insights are interesting and had quite a few geeks visiting his site. Matter of fact it was a popular pastime during our CS Lab when our brains were fried from coding.
So, sure this stuff isn't science, but the Gladwell types also give "cultural context" to many geeks I know.
Do you mean this one? It's the only one I can quickly find that includes "math enthusiast" and "mathematician", though it's not exactly "how to tell the difference". http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2320
I think the significant difference between 'new scientist' weekly news and many others is they stick to reporting, and leave the proselytising to others - though they often people a space to make their claims.
Here in Brazil, people love to cite Gladwell 10k hours like he is a GOD.
In a recent startup accelerator demo day it was cited by both a famous entrepreneur and a journalist.
I always cringe when I see it cited as pure truth and in a bad context.
My conclusion is people do it do sound cool and smarter. The "insight porn" was spot on.
Seems to plague the softer/human sciences like economics, psychology and anthropology more than physics/chemistry/maths (though these fields have there own poor journalism)
You think so? Planet Money routinely brings on actual economists to explain things in plain language. And when they don't, they're just describing not-very-technical but interesting things (e.g., how the music industry works, what those complex securities that ruined the economy were, etc.). They don't often (ever, that I can recall) come up with new phenomena.
Is it really fair to lump Jared Diamond in with Malcom Gladwell? Diamond writes about a career of firsthand research, and has won a Pulitzer prize. His field of study (traditional societies) is by its very nature shrinking daily, and requires serious dedication to observe firsthand. In contrast, every single human on earth has experienced a difficult assignment. So yes, while both Diamond and Gladwell overgeneralize based on a small sample size, Diamond's pool of potential samples is orders of magnitude smaller.
It's like Daniel Dennett's deepities, just a little less shallow, to cater for the intellectually self-absorbed. (<s> Look at my mice bite-size analysis! </s>)
The Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond are more or less scientists. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist. There's a difference.
Both Steven Levitt and Jared Diamond devote a lot of ink over whether or not their theories are testable, while Malcolm Gladwell tends to just find anecdotes which seem to back his theories up.
I'm afraid you are spot on. I often realize the bs and then keep on reading, because
A) Its so fun.
B) I hope I might still learn something useful.
I suspect school and teachers are part of the problem. Even at the best universities I would spot professors claiming things which were obviously wrong or not based on strong scientific evidence but presented as if. So all you can do is keeping to plow on hoping you learn more truth than not.
Ok, so, as someone who admits to read this stuff I would like to ask. Is there anyone who was able to break their addiction? And if so, what helped?
Also, is there a good book review source which spots "insight porn". I usually check Amazon before buying a book to check if its outright bullshit but that approach doesn't work all that well.
Gladwell's books aren't aimed at nerds in the HN sense. They're actually targeted at people in communications / advertising who want an edge and also something to read on the plane.
"the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones." [1]
The question is would anyone have thought anything of PG's essays before he became "PG" that he is today? Not that people didn't read them but it seem now that anything that he has written or writes takes on such status that people are less likely to question or disagree with any conclusions.
[1] Also noting that PG's (at least the ones's I've seen) essays are always proofed by others it would be interesting to get a sense of the type of comments and changes that are made post that proofing.
Well, it's not just that he's been successful in the past, but that to this day his advice and mentoring helps produce many successful startups.
When someone achieves repeated and consistent success over many years (say, Warren Buffett), it is wise to listen to what they have to say if they're willing to share their knowledge and experience.
And also, HN isn't full of nearly as many mindless zombies as many other sites. When pg posts something contentious or controversial, usually there's debate about it in the comments.
The reason PG is the YC founder we hear about is his essays, not the other way around. Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston were all just as much founders as he was.
I'm trying to think now what would be the opposite of this? Books that are completely counter-intuitive, that forces you to rethink your original Weltanschaunng in the first place - Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" and Nassim Taleb's "AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder" comes to mind. Even rereading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" can give you this counter-intuitive insight.
The problem I have with your comment is that you describe something auspicious and then slap a derogatory label on it and thus unfairly decry it as problematic. If insight equates to truth, and counter-intuitiveness equates to challenging our flawed assumptions, and 'face-value' equates to lucid and well-argued, then what exactly is there to complain about? Just because you find a formula behind something, doesn't make it a problem.
I don't think this deserved to be down-voted - the website is relevant to the discussion and we've put countless hours into trying to make a useful tool and we've already taken the concept further than anyone else that I'm aware of. My comment is making fun at what we're doing, but what we're doing is not a joke. I would sharing what we've done as one of my more useful comments, yet it is the only one to be downvoted.
The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else.
I think the same rush we get from learning something counter-intuitive and novel is the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones.
Edit: It occurs to me that this comment could be seen as an example of what it describes...