Paul Graham

A response to Your Comments on "Why Paul Graham is (sort of) wrong about philosophy"

2014-05-27

First, I want to thank you guys for reading, criticizing, and commenting on my post. Given that there’s so many other excellent things you could have been reading, I’m honored that you spent a little time on what I’ve written. Now, let’s respond to some comments: Credentials A couple of comments came up about my “credentials.” Here’s some info: I studied philosophy and religion as an undergrad at the University of Central Florida.…

Why Paul Graham is (sort of) Wrong About Philosophy

2014-05-26

A couple years ago, Paul Graham wrote an essay about philosophy. The essay, on my reading, makes three central claims: Philosophy has largely been driven by our failure to realize that our words are imprecise. This failure is the result of failing to search for useful knowledge. We can do philosophy better if we filter out thoughts that don’t meet a usefulness criterion. While I agree with a lot of what Graham says about philosophy in his essay, I think Graham is wrong on some of the more important points he makes.…

Should the Idea Person get Extra Equity?

2014-04-24

As I mentioned in my last post, I have some ideas for a startup, and I’m excited to start working on them.¹ Unfortunately, doing a startup raises a lot of questions that I, as a former wannabe philosophy professor, haven’t really considered. Since its probably not a good idea to dive in to a venture that I don’t really understand, it seems like I should spend some time wrestling with what we might call “startup questions.…