No connection to the physicist.
Not sure what about the site was "unbearable". It's just text. There weren't any banner ads or taboola chum. I guess I have low standards for what constitutes a decent site.
The writing was a little growth hackery, one weird trick to supercharge your business, with a dusting of math theory. It was definitely an ad, but in the sense of "write compelling content and they will come to your site", as opposed to spray-and-pray low rent banner ads.
How many business domains end in a Nash equilibrium? How many end up with a monopoly or a small number of cartel players? How many businesses really only compete on price? How many try to inflate perceived value with branding and narrative management? What does "invent" mean in the context of a company like PayPal, which essentially just copied and repurposed one part of the banking system?
"Business is hard" has nothing to do with the replication crisis. If your business is succeeding, you're reading the market correctly by definition. If it isn't, there may be other reasons besides not reading the market correctly.
It's hard because the number of failure modes is bigger than the number of success paths. And the success paths are culturally disguised and non-obvious. (E.g. hard work, VC finance and advice, a good company culture, and so on are not a success path. Ferociously trying to monopolise a market while paying your employees as little as you can get away with and producing minimally competent products boosted by PR, ads, branding, and aggressive sales tactics is far more likely to lead to "success.")
What is the point of this article? It's certainly not to offer actionable strategic intelligence.