I think the original comment was directed at the seemingly pretentious nature of the essay. How do you quantify earnestness? Being sincere? I get the “we like demo over slides”, “2 founder over 1 founder” kinda thing, but talking about virtue and moral character seems like PG is struggling to find things to do after retirement. Philosophical musings are almost always due to too much time on hand and assumed profundity of one’s own thought process. Hence the post hoc rationalisation? Maybe?

Plus as it is said by someone in the other comment, success(especially in entrepreneurial ventures) is so much more like playing a game of roulette than it is like running a race. Luck! Lots of Luck! And chance does not fit well with assumed observations. It is a measurement bias that is being masked as concrete conclusions.