I don't mean to get in the way of your hyperbole, but the person above you seemed to have no objection to "respecting" pg, he was taking issue with this:
"pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see."
Which you don't mention at all in your response...
"If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world. That includes my own; I know I still have things to learn and I make a proactive effort to listen more than I talk. I don't always succeed."
Are you actually being serious? Your brain works in such a way that any person who has lived less than 14,610 days couldn't possibly add any value to your life? I don't mean to be harsh but this could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Certainly worse than anything I've seen on Medium.
If I was pg and this was these were the type of people and defenses that were coming to my aid, I would be mortified.
A day later I see no hyperbole here. If the logic one uses is:
-Should I listen to anything this person has to say or take value from their life experiences?
-Well I dunno, have they turned 40 yet.
Is very certainly in the top 5 dumbest things I've ever heard if not the dumbest. A human being going well out of their way to avoid learning things and gaining more experience. But thanks for contributing with the random insult. Hope it helped rebuild your self esteem?
"largely uninterested in your take on the world" is far from "couldn't possibly add any value"
Now I am 33 and I tend to ignore what most people my age and younger think about things like global politics or new programming languages. This has less to do with intelligence than perspective. Basically, if the 'Arab Spring seemed like a new and good thing you don't know enough about the situation to make informed commentary.
I find there's some truth to his philosophy, though. There doesn't seem to go even a week between my having said or thought something, and then realising I've been a fool or at best not quite correct in my reasoning.
I'm 25 years old, and it's been one of -if not the- most important discovery of my life so far that compared to those older than me, I know hilariously little about (all aspects of) life.
Of course young people add value, we do after all make our own world by our subjective views, but those older than you generally have had more time to explore more of those views, and have a much richer notion of how things are and can be.
"pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see."
Which you don't mention at all in your response...
"If you're under 40, I'm largely uninterested in your take on the world. That includes my own; I know I still have things to learn and I make a proactive effort to listen more than I talk. I don't always succeed."
Are you actually being serious? Your brain works in such a way that any person who has lived less than 14,610 days couldn't possibly add any value to your life? I don't mean to be harsh but this could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Certainly worse than anything I've seen on Medium.
If I was pg and this was these were the type of people and defenses that were coming to my aid, I would be mortified.