I thought you were being too harsh, and then I read the essay. Sheesh.
One of the conventions he really adopts here is binary thinking. He's created an enormous false dichotomy, and then decided he and his in-group are 100% on the correct side of it. Another convention is the commanding, voice-of-God essay that has now finally answered an important question. As if things like this ever have one answer. And as you suggest, at this point he's promoting a "nerds >> normies" ideology that may have been novel in the mid-80s, but now seems hopelessly stale to this nerd.
And I think that leads him to write what is just a poor essay on the topic. These days good a chunk of the independence in my thinking comes from things like humility, self-awareness, and empathy. Maybe at 18 the best strategy for independent thinking is to ignore others. But somebody not much younger than Graham, the biggest threat to my clarity of thought is getting high on my own bullshit. It's getting locked into ideas and beliefs that are comfortable or convenient. It's that thinking myself independent of others is the only kind of independence needed.
Of course, I'm lucky in that since I'm not nearly as successful as Graham, I don't have the same kind of incentive to justify my success in terms of me being a unique, superior genius.
One of the conventions he really adopts here is binary thinking. He's created an enormous false dichotomy, and then decided he and his in-group are 100% on the correct side of it. Another convention is the commanding, voice-of-God essay that has now finally answered an important question. As if things like this ever have one answer. And as you suggest, at this point he's promoting a "nerds >> normies" ideology that may have been novel in the mid-80s, but now seems hopelessly stale to this nerd.
And I think that leads him to write what is just a poor essay on the topic. These days good a chunk of the independence in my thinking comes from things like humility, self-awareness, and empathy. Maybe at 18 the best strategy for independent thinking is to ignore others. But somebody not much younger than Graham, the biggest threat to my clarity of thought is getting high on my own bullshit. It's getting locked into ideas and beliefs that are comfortable or convenient. It's that thinking myself independent of others is the only kind of independence needed.
Of course, I'm lucky in that since I'm not nearly as successful as Graham, I don't have the same kind of incentive to justify my success in terms of me being a unique, superior genius.