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Paul Graham Profile picture
@paulg
May 3, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Banning plastic straws achieves nothing. Or at least, nothing good. It does achieve a couple bad things though: it gives people a false sense that something is being done to address ocean plastics, and misleads people about the true sources of them.
It's not types of plastic that are the problem, but the places they're discarded. This is where ocean plastics come from:

theoceancleanup.com/sources/
The US, Canada, and all of Europe combined account for .87% of plastic emissions. The Philippines accounts for 36%. Image
The reason the Philippines emits so much is not that it's emitting waste shipped from the US, Canada, and Europe. Even if every kilogram of plastic waste shipped by the US to the Philippines ended up in the sea, it would account for less than 1% of the Philippines' emissions.

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More from @paulg

Paul Graham Profile picture
Mar 24
I have a file of notes about essays I might write in the future. Typically I'll have about a paragraph about each. I was curious how long the file was. 1792 lines!
In practice this file is practically write-only. When I have an idea for an essay but don't have time to write it (e.g. because I'm in the middle of another) I make a note of it in the file. But I pretty much never go back and read them.
That's not to say that I don't write the essays described in the file though. I often do. But not because I found them by scrolling through the file. I just ended up thinking about the same topic again.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
Aug 27, 2023
Want to start a startup doing eye-tracking? If so I'd be interested in funding it. A friend of mine has ALS and can only move his eyes. He has an eye-controlled keyboard, but it's not very good. Can you make him a better one?
The reason this is worth doing as a startup is that I think eye-tracking may turn out to have broader applications than it currently does. It may even be a component of the next form factor in computing, the nature of which is still strangely unclear.
You have to be based in the Bay Area for me to fund you, because I want my friend to be your initial guinea pig. He's up for it. And he has a technical background, so he'll understand when the early versions don't work.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
Aug 26, 2023
When you talk to more established founders, there's a common theme: late-stage investors pull some nasty shit. Once you get past series B you should stop optimizing for investors who can help you and switch to optimizing for ones who won't knife you if things go bad.
One reason late stage investors behave so badly is that they're not worried about reputational damage the way seed and series A investors are. But YC may be able to make them start to worry. YC keeps a list of who's done what. Eventually that will affect their deal flow.
Ultimately the best solution is to be profitable and not to need these later rounds. Then if you do choose to raise them you can do it on terms where the late stage investors have no power.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
Aug 13, 2023
When I'm trying to help founders find new startup ideas, I usually start by trying to figure out what's unusual about them. What do they know or care about that few other people do? There's usually something, and it often leads to an idea.
If this new idea was already inside them, why hadn't it bubbled to the surface? Two reasons: they didn't realize what was unusual about them, and they discounted it as a source of ideas.
One reason people discount their unusual qualities as a source of ideas is that they think of them as random, or even weaknesses. But even apparent weaknesses can be sources of ideas.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
Jun 12, 2023
Talked to a programmer today who said AI coding tools made him about 10x more productive. Though 10 seems like a round number, this was an attempt at a precise estimate.
If that kind of increase in productivity were the norm, it would make starting a startup qualitatively different, because you could do with 8 programmers what would have taken 80, and a company with 8 programmers is much easier to fund and run than one with 80.
Maybe 10x isn't in fact the norm now. It sounded on the high side to me. But if it isn't, just wait a year.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
May 9, 2023
Observation suggests that people are switching to using ChatGPT to write things for them with almost indecent haste. Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it. Within a year the median piece of writing could be by AI.
I warn you now, this is going to have unfortunate consequences, just as switching to living in suburbia and driving everywhere did. When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think.
I don't have the slightest hope of averting this switch. I often tell startups it's safe to bet on laziness, and this is one of the biggest bets on laziness in history. The switch is going to happen, and we won't know the consequences till it's too late.
Read 4 tweets

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