PG gets held to a higher standard than anything else on here. If some random smart person put up the same article, everyone would congratulate them for at least the effort.
I can't tell if PG's (cultivated) simple style makes people think the "idea" is simple.
In any case, even if people don't like something, they don't usually go out of their way to tell the author, especially when it is something as personal as PG's essays.
This is something else PG does in this essay: he pays attention to his own feelings and sensations, and draws lessons out.
Not saying you have to like that sort of thing, but at least look at it based on its own goals.
p.s. I keep adding to this response but Russell's answer doesn't really contradict PG, at least not the way I read them.
Some 'random smart person' or 'some random notable smart person'?
Perhaps what people react to is the implied wisdom and halo around PG. That creates the negativity. It's the 'he's achieved something therefore what is being said is notable'.
If PG wanted he could post same thoughts under some assumed name or blog (without having Trevor, Paul et all review first) and what people think.
Also he is not opining about an issue where his expertise in particular is anything special. What he has achieved in life (that creates the halo) is not related to what he is talking about. And even in what his area of expertise is (startups or programming) he is not even close to being right most of the time (maybe programming because that is more science than art).
He doesn't have to be an expert in what he writes. I mean from his own perspective (I assume, never met him, don't know him) he is just a regular person writing a regular article about something he found interesting.
It is entirely the reader's problem if they put this extra pressure on his "implied wisdom and halo".
This is a crazy statement to me. I'm sure you believe it, but I have the exact opposite impression: that if the majority of his stuff were posted anonymously on another domain nobody would notice or care.
> even if people don't like something, they don't usually go out of their way to tell the author
I think people do this because of the outsized home-crowd effect. His stuff is always (IMO) disproportionately upvoted here so that entices a reaction.
That may be true, but it does not contradict anything I said.
He's unbelievably wealthy and created HN. That gives him an outsize influence that doesn't come from the merit of his ideas. Critique is a useful counterbalance to that effect so that his ideas get a level of weight more appropriate to their worth.
There's a LOT more to good writing than that, and in any event it's not that big of an insult to say someone isn't as good a writer as Bertrand Russell.