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I find Sam Altman's essays completely devoid of any insight. He's trying really hard to be like PG, while he simply doesn't have the street-cred required. Case in point, when they did a series of Y Combinator interviews a few years back Sam apparently thought to himself that it would be appropriate for him to be interviewed third following Elon and PG - in what world does that make sense?

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For me, the value of a piece of writing has very little to do with who wrote it. Successful people say silly or stupid things all the time, so I try not to get caught up in their echo chambers. Sure, most successful people are smart, but I'd argue most smart people aren't that successful.

As for this essay, a lot of the points resonated with me, so I liked it. I have no clue who Sam Altman is, and I don't think it really matters.

That's the correct way to look at it. You want to evaluate ideas on their own merits, but you also want to use heuristics and proxies when determining which ideas to consider in the sea of ideas on the Internet. A correct heuristic to search for good ideas is to seek the opinion of the previously successful people.

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