What’s a strong disagree you have with him? For if he is so non-conformist certainly you disagree with him on a few things.
What makes him weird in his thinking compared to your typical Bay Area tech person? They all seem to value non-conformity, thinking from first principles, growth, etc.
What view would you’d say is truly contrarian? One that most here would disagree with?
Most of the critique here isn’t about him saying something people just disagree with. He’s not being radical in any way whatsoever. The critiques here all have to do with the fact that he’s saying aggressively conventional things that are framed as the opposite. Banal, backwards and self-congratulatory. It’s not that he’s said anything disagreeable in content.
You’re fighting against different people with each point you make. It’s like you made a field of straw men and then shot each down. You do the same thing with critiques of HN itself: “people always have said this”, where the “this” is vague and has often been different at different times. If what they say is different then maybe some are right, maybe the “this” was right at the time, and now it’s a different this, and it’s right now. Just because a choir sounds bad doesn’t mean a few voices aren’t correct.
Paul is an aggressively conventional guy. He’s your super stereotypical “slightly nerd techie”. He excels at second order thinking (“everyone says X, but have you thought of Y”) but then he just stops there. He never contends with his own second order contrarian idea, he just builds reinforcements around it. This essay is kindergarten chalkboard aphorism “Think Outside the Box!” framed as real contrarianism, which is why he gets flak.