It's not fair to talk about Alan Kay this way. Alan Kay actually did a ton of pioneering work in children's education, and in an applied (real-world) empirical way, not just in a theoretical sense.

He and some of his collaborators were among the earliest in applying Piaget and Bruner's learning models to programming education, mainly for learners under age 15.

I went looking at the names because "manufactured outrage" connotes politics or culture war. It's the sort of accusation you'd expect to see if the list was full of names like Jordan Peterson. Instead I see Tao who on his blog comes across as apolitical, mild-mannered, even humble. Not the kind of guy who's into culture fights. Or Kay whose book recommendations had a kind of 60s lefty flavor, as far as any political leaning came across to me.

There's a bigger argument here, but I'm just addressing this one unmerited accusation in this thread.