Maybe it's embarrassing to interview a guy from down the street instead of a professor at Columbia, or have anecdotes from the local supermarket instead of a brownstone on the Upper East Side.
Still, anything is better than hiding behind a solid wall of references. Let a little light in! Reassure me that the author's not dead!
> Same thing with Paul Graham. He [is part of the financial elite]. The exact same thoughts coming from [some pleb] mean a hell of a lot less.
So... actual elitism. This isn't a very charitable way of engaging with literature, and it's your own loss.
Plenty of "nobodies" had thoughts that became legitimate well after their own lifetimes.