> The actual thrust of the argument seems so broad (i.e. reliance on intuition), this could be used to label almost anybody outside pol-sci academic circles a "profoundly unserious public intellectual" for commenting on politics.

You're pretty much spot on with this line. Most people are terrible public intellectuals, and of the people who identify as such, many are profoundly unserious and completely useless. This article is asserting that Paul Graham does not belong in the vanishingly small set of people one should consider as a serious public intellectual.