alt Hacker NewsI’m not really understanding the notion that these people are so sincere. Perhaps we have different definitions of sincerity.
To my eye, the entire fascination of unsafely injecting peptides in a desire to change your being is largely the opposite of sincerity.
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pphysch • yesterday at 4:23 PM
Yeah, isn't the entire point of SF startup culture (for the last decade++) to build personal wealth through a successful exit rather than build a sustainable business that benefits society? It's a big speculative con game... Opposite of sincere.
Of course we can warp the semantics and argue that these people are "sincere" in their desire to defraud retail investors or something, but that doesn't seem to be the author's argument.
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> If a 14 year old says that they are going to change the world, they are being very sincere even if an ‘adult’ knows that the likelihood is low.
No, it's really a form of sincerity permitted by a sort of willfully affected naivete—adopted in pursuit of the strategy of Twain's amateur:
> The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do: and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.
— 1889, Mark Twain, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”
Hence why the "disruptors" so frequently, so irritatingly blast through Chesterton's Fence and/or market regulations.
Only one amateur in my portfolio need "catch" the incumbent "out".