Are you all seriously arguing with Paul Graham about something in his realm of expertise that only someone with a vast experience in multiple startups can form an informed opinion of, or someone that has undertaken a serious research study thereof? If you are not one of those two, just smile, nod, and change your name. If pg suggests something, he thinks it's important, if he thinks it's important enough to write an article on, he's pretty sure he's right and it's important.
But I one disagreeing with him is using logic or proof, they're throwing out a few counter examples to "prove" their intuition and disregarding someone with enough experience to have an actual informed intuition about the topic. Given the choice on an issue you are not that informed on will you trust your own intuition or one of the leading experts in the field?
If there had been logic, data, or some other proof besides a couple of counter examples, I may need to do more than appeal "argue from authority." They aren't, so I'm sticking with the authority.
tsomctl, the other side of the coin is that we have a bunch of people arguing the color of the bicycle shed instead of listening to an expert on the issue.
