Paul Graham is a buffoon.

He had lunch with Eric S. Raymond once.

Before I was aware of that awful, disgusting fact, however, I remember Graham for trying to be seen as more than just a nerd or IT guy. He most likely knows that it’s a field largley dominated by proles (Raymond is one for sure).

A Jewish blogger from Manhattan, Half Sigma, once made this point as well. I guess because of Paul Fussell, who, in his book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, grades certain professions, with engineers being more at the bottom when it comes to class.

Still, it’s almost cringe-worthy, as they’d call it today, seeing how Graham tries to paint himself as a … painter. Who studied in Firenze or so to make it look more professional.

His writing betrays him, though, and he harbors a hatred for people educated in the Humanities. He’d even be jealous of someone like Allan Bloom, I guess.

In one of his so-called “essays”, he wanted to make the point that those who studied French literature would have a harder time studying physics than vice versa.

The trouble is: who cares? This has not much to do with IQ, either. To quote Nils M. Holm from his book “Bridging the Gap. The Reconciliation of Intelligence and Culture”:

Not all skills are typically developed to the same degree, so the perceived resistance may differ in different areas. One person I know has a weakness in mathematical thinking, which in their case means that they score only 1.5σ in math tests, but 3σ to 4σ in other tests. They recognize their weakness very distinctively. Whenever they try to solve a mathematical problem it feels like ‘‘wading through molasses’’ to them. Interestingly, they score very high in logical thinking when it is unrelated to mathematics.

Graham is too stupid to get this, instead he just regurgitates shallow viewpoints that are prole.

IT guys are a joke, mostly. Who cares about their opinions anyway? Stick to your code. Stop nagging us who are interested in good breeding and a classical education with your awful viewpoints that no one gives a hoot about. It’s the same with this esr (Raymond) guy: had he not been part of the Open Source movement, no matter how irrelevant his role, no one would even know him. The same goes for Graham.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila was spared today’s net-enabled idiocy, yet is always a great weapon against such vulgarity:

The modern mentality’s conceptual pollution of the world is more serious than contemporary industry’s pollution of the environment.

It is fine to demand that the imbecile respect arts, letters, philosophy, the sciences, but let him respect them in silence.

The cultural rickets of our time is a result of the industrialization of culture.

In no previous age did the arts and letters enjoy greater popularity than in ours. Arts and letters have invaded the school, the press, and the almanacs.
No other age, however, has produced such ugly objects, nor dreamed such coarse dreams, nor adopted such sordid ideas.
It is said that the public is better educated. But one does not notice.

The majority of men have no right to give their opinion, but only to listen.

We should ask the majority of people not to be sincere, but mute.