Of Free Speech And Arranged Marriages

Image via WikipediaTimes Of India: Government nod to prosecute Google, Facebook, Yahoo
Wall Street Journal: Google, Facebook Fight Indian Censorship Demands

The place I showed up in America was Kentucky, of all places. At that point I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. Within a year I was up to speed. Experiencing racist demonization can do that to you.

In Kentucky I found massive consternation about the idea of arranged marriages. There were people who thought it was flat out wrong. There were those who accepted it as a cultural difference. The idea made me uncomfortable even before I came to America, but it did not take me long to realize marriages in America are not that not arranged either. Like Time magazine once said, you might fall in love with the stranger you spotted across the room, but it is society that decides what room you were in. That part was fixed. It was arranged. Only a narrow band of people cross the racial, cultural lines in matters of romance. That is not in the individual domain, that is in the collective domain.

That is not a defense of arranged marriages. I hope the practice fades away over time. More and more people pick their own mates. And I hope interracial marriages end up the norm not the exception in America.

And so you have this free speech debate in India. Like Fred Wilson would say, I am a free speech bigot. Some people in power in India are saying free speech is okay as long as you don't disrespect Sonia Gandhi. I don't buy that. But I do happen to respect Sonia Gandhi.

Plenty Still Broken In The World

Image via WikipediaPaul Graham has a new blog post out. The guy has a beautiful writing style. And he tackles the most amazing topics.

Paul Graham: Schlep Blindness

Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task. ....... Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it. ...... schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. ....... The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness. ....... For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. .... Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments. ....... Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved. You'd have to make deals with banks. How do you do that? ...... That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that there's less demand for them among founders. If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. (This is also true of starting a startup generally.) ...... there's plenty still broken in the world, if you know how to see it.

I have said a few times being an entrepreneur is like being gay. I have a suspicion people are born or not born an entrepreneur, because there are so few of them. And by some estimates 1% of the population is born gay. I think that is also the share of entrepreneurs in the broader population.

In this blog post Paul Graham establishes the 1% within that 1%. Most entrepreneurs stay away from the big ideas, the big problems that need to be tackled.

I read the blog post twice.