Very few people posting things publicly request people to start a debate about it.
Is your issue more that pg is a public enough figure that he can't not get attention for things he posts? Or is it that the attention he gets is likely to occur in a forum he views regularly and has an attachment to?
Lots of similar thinkpieces get posted on HN every day that people have all sorts of debates about without being invited to do so. And most figures with the wealth and visibility of pg can't really publicly post things without a group somewhere arguing over its content. A downside of having that level of fame I suppose.
When you have a foundational role in hacker news and post a lengthy exposition of your views on a continually contentious topic I would think a reasonable individual would expect engagement. Most importantly the individual themselves is more than capable of making that concept clear himself if he so chooses. We don't need to speak up for him.
Empathy for Paul Graham's predicament is the topic of this branch of the subthread, but it wasn't the point I made at the top of the thread, which is that regardless of whether Graham wants this post on the front page of HN, it doesn't belong here.
Sure okay but you do expect someone somewhere to debate you on it. That the forum ends up being hackernews isn't really significant to me visavis your opinion that some published writing could be free from debate.
> It sucks having to be careful about what you because of what other people will do with it, and the weird debates you'll be forced into as a result.
I have just the tiniest sliver of Paul Graham's innate valence with HN, but it's enough to make me pretty empathetic about this problem: there is a pretty strong chance that if I blog something relatively superficial (just because it's on my mind), someone will submit it here. A throwaway I wrote about Javascript Cryptography has been on the front page here something like 5 times, and I've felt like I had to apologize for it each time. It is not a great feeling, and I "blog" less than I'd like to as a result, and, again, I'm not Paul Graham, where literally the simplest thing I could possibly blog about politics ("there is a difference between both-sidesism and moderation") generates a huge front-page thread.
i'm not being obtuse but why don't you simply unpublish the post? whatever the reason is (whatever the tangible/intangible benefits conferred upon you for having it remain up) obligates you in direct proportion.
i write math notes for myself that i only publish to a public github repo. the repo is public because it lends me some credibility to have it on display that i study math. if there's an error in them and someone chances upon them and internalizes that error then i am (to a small extent) culpable.
I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for. I have a backlog of blog posts, about a dozen entries long, none of which are published because I don't feel prepared to defend them here. I guess you can say "good, you have a personal journal". I don't feel great about that.
(And, for the nth time, I have just a teeny tiny sample of the problem Paul Graham has! It's not like what I write is all that popular. Paul Graham has a rabid fan base here.)
i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt since you generally style yourself as voice of reason on hn.
that being said you're not addressing my challenge, that this thing
>That's what blogs are for.
isn't actually the case.
take for example your characterization of this kind of miscellany
>shitty first drafts of things
can you name another medium/form/forum where authors publish "shitty first drafts"? why is blogging different? because it is ephemeral and has 0 mass by virtue of being digital?
on the contrary take something like twitter, for example, and compare its relative weight, ephemerality, inchoateness to your blog posts; tweets are very much fair game for all any kind of engagement.
Sure: Twitter, and Hacker News comments. Two places I write a lot (one of which Paul Graham uses as well). What's annoying is that putting something in a better medium --- blog posts are better than both Twitter and HN comments for a number of reasons --- they're elevated in this weird way to the front page of HN.
Did you just take me to task for not directly responding to a point you made earlier and then, after I took the time to generate that response for you, pretend that hadn't happened at all? Are you conversing with me or just using me as an opportunity to riff for the thread? I doubt anyone's really reading this far down other than you and I.
>I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for.
the first sentence does directly address it (choice) wrt to you and your blog (not pg's which he owns).
but the last sentence
>That's what blogs are for.
even according to you
>But even if I could
is the crux of what's at issue. and this you have not addressed anywhere that i can see
But whether or not it belongs here is just your opinion. People have reposted plenty of stuff from your site here that I thought “doesn’t clear the bar”, but everyone else disagreed. And while you are no Paul Graham, you’re a big enough member of the community to get support/upvotes just because of your name.
