My favorite line in a speech with lots of favorite lines:
"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."
"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."
Theory 1: event occurs as a result of emergent phenomenon.
Theory 2: powerful people that I dislike caused it.
Both theories are excuses for being lazy.
It seems to be more of an application of rule "if I say something that's appealing to the majority of people on YC I'll get upvoted."
The difference in context is crucial, of course: the laziness pg is talking about is the decision that you shouldn't even try something because you don't have the "stuff" (genius) that you'd need to do it. When coding (and in a lot of other areas, too), you've already decided that you're going to do the job, and it's just a question of how to bang it out most efficiently.