Frankly, I have no idea who he is, and I tend to respect opinions more if they're based in real experiences rather than observation (not to say I don't respect well-argued opinions from observation, it's just relative). It's a mystery to dig into who he is, too, and the best I've been able to find is this:
Which just says, vaguely, that he's a neuroscience student who "put his degree on hold". Anybody know who this guy is, and why his opinion is this important to HN and 35,000 Twitter followers? Honestly, I'm just curious. Is this guy some kind of valley culture icon? I've noticed the same trend of all of his posts hitting the front page of HN.
[Since you're in this thread, now: Dustin, a quick "who I am" page which isn't a million pixels wide and describes more about yourself and your goals would go a long way toward credibility. Unless you're a pseudonym, and I respect that (look at my username), but your about page leads me to believe otherwise.]
The first time I heard of him was when he redesigned the American Airlines website. http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html
He's a good designer and I tend to read what he says because svbtle is just so nice to look at. I suspect that 99% of my decision of whether or not to read something has to do with how easy it is to read it.