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Neither of these arguments even attempts to refute the central point of the essay. In case anyone wants to try it, the central point is that in an organization organized as a tree structure, structural forces tend to give each person freedom in inverse proportion to the size of the whole tree.

Already done: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=142597

If I hadn't already done it, I wouldn't bother with it now, though, because:

Even these dishonest DH5s are ...

Roth's contribution is CLEARLY NOT DISHONEST (couldn't resist the uppercase here). I get the impression that the chance you would ever take advantage of any refutations to plug holes and thus further improve the standard of your essay collection is precisely zero. It's all about "picking a winner" (this term actually appears in paulgraham.com/disagree.html) instead of advancing towards the truth. Readers of your essays will do best by just enjoying the incredible density of ideas, then deciding for themselves which ones to accept, rather than following the "comment" link at the bottom.

If anyone has a link to an instance where Paul Graham helps the search for the truth by conceding a nontrivial point in an argument, I would be grateful. That would help repair my impression, and probably some other people's as well.

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