Fully agreed. A lazy article all-round. Where are the examples? Where are the pitfalls?

Is the insight merely that some wacky ideas turn out to be right sometimes?

Yeah, sure so how can we tell in advance? How is this actionable? And his answer is: listen to reasonable domain experts. That phrase is doing some real heavy lifting there...

Pretty much all of his articles are similarly lazy (edit: and usually articles from other top SV folks). I'm always astonished that people upvote his stuff. I've come to think of it as an HN tax: we get a well-moderated forum with otherwise good content and in return we have to scroll past one extra article every month or so.

> I've come to think of it as an HN tax

That's a great way to put it!

All this stuff about Copernicus, Darwin, Galileo... You're not revolutionizing our understanding of humanity's place in the universe... You're buying companies that make filesharing apps and (often untaxed) hostel booking websites.

pg is one of the people introduced me to lisp and i think lisp is the greatest idea in computer science. so his ideas have some weight for me, but lately the disconnect is quite unbearable. he is again picking the wrong side in history.

will these supervillians ever stop? nothing less than world-domination is enough.

microsoft tried to own everything about computing, they largly succeeded. they even infiltrated schools and still every pc is sold with windows-preinstalled.

then came google/facebook/apple... and they all want to own the entire internet.

unity wants the entire gaming/gamedev/computer-graphics. i am sure there are schools out there have unity classes, just unbelievable. "unity-developer" is the norm in job titles now, and i have never once heard "photoshop-artist" in the title of a job description.

this particular case is no exception.

ok, most logical conclusion is i too am envious.

You created an account just to say this? Damn, commitment.

Well, I don't want to get my usual account banned for expressing such apostate views. They're very protective of their cult leaders round here.

I do not think that the problem is with the content, moreso with the unnecessarily aggressive tone. Shit, cult ... - HN generally rewards civility and does not like sliding towards Twitter mode of operation.

What are your views then?

Imagine if people could completely change their idenitites every time they said something. It would make conversation and discourse as we know it impossible.

It would make the idea you created an account to express invalid. You can't criticize Paul Graham if he can say "That wasn't me, it was Gaul Praham".

If your ideas aren't good enough for you to stay by them with some form of consistent identity, do not express those ideas. Think about them, develop them and then communicate them when they no longer embarrass you.

powerfull people can silence you in so many ways. they will always have a platform, you won't.

you also got discourse backwards. you should be judging the arguments presented (which in this case not much), not the persona.

You actually add credibility to his writing because you make it obvious that you don't actually have a counter argument.

How can you effectively counter an essay with so many empty generalizations and broad assertions? It would be like debating jello.

Well you could say that instead of going after the author.

Burden of proof, my dude.

I recall "Dr. Gene Ray" defending the credibility of Time Cube on similar grounds. There wasn't enough of an idea presented to even have an argument about.

You are being unfair, its not any better then most HN articles, fits here just fine if you ask me

I agree that it fits here just fine (more than a lot of the crap that hits the front page) but I also agree with the OP that the “cultism” is annoying, not that I expect anything else given his association with the company that created HN.