Persuade xor Discover
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine. I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful. That doesn't mean I have to like their methods. Google was successful through technical merit. They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better. I'd like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation. TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there's too much garbage there for me.
An example for your consideration:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-b...
For those too lazy to read, it's an article about making viral videos. Some choice advice: "Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex". It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube. Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication. That's why I don't like Arrington.
Perhaps the reason why people don't hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value? Hell, having the PDF of On Lisp online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch's entire publication history.
EDIT: Hate is a strong word. If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that's pretty stupid. Dislike is what I was getting at.
That's why I dislike Arrington. Because he heads a culture where cramming the news out the door is more important than taking reasonable steps [1] to ensure it is accurate.
There is a reason print media doesn't do that much any more! Because eventually you print a lie that does someone (or a company) serious untold damage.
In my mind the Last.fm debacle was a prime example of TC coming very close to crossing that line.
[1] that's important, no one would ever get a scoop if we needed verification signed in triplicate and investigated by a neutral third party :D
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I raise my arm over my head."
Vinnie Boombatz: "Then don't raise your arm over your head."
mattmaroon is thus saying: if scrolling down to read TechCrunch comments hurts, don't scroll down to read TechCrunch comments.
That's actually the sort of thing I want to see on a blog or in a tech-focused newspaper. I could totally see that being a Wired Article (though copy-edited to be less like a how-to and more like a story).
Sure it does, if you've read his articles. Obviously most of the people who complain about him in comment threads have not met him in person. The reason they dislike him is that he uses the same un-ingratiating style in his articles.
When he reports something he's heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it's just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it's not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage. This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it.
Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you're willing to accuse TechCrunch of "outright fabrication" and "baseless speculation" and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student.
If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them.
I don't care if he appears to be a nice or a mean guy. I don't judge people by that criteria. My experience working in the academic research community has taught me that intelligent and busy people sometimes come across as mean, but it's nothing personal. I'm totally used to un-ingratiating people and I work with them every day; it doesn't affect me at all.
When he reports something he's heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it's just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it's not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage. This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it.
I'm going to call bullshit on this one. How about you being reprimanded for asking "mean" questions at TechCrunch 50? Apparently Arrington wanted the boilerplate. I suppose it probably has something to do with the fact that it was TechCrunch's reputation on the line, not a company he was writing about.
Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you're willing to accuse TechCrunch of "outright fabrication" and "baseless speculation" and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student.
That's a fair point, but I don't really feel like wasting an hour of my evening digging through TechCrunch archives. I'll pull a TechCrunch and say that an anonymous source close to the TechCrunch editorial board told me. My original comment is about as well sourced as their average article. ;) Also, it's not hypocritical since I'm not earning advertising dollars from my words. I don't claim that journalism is my profession. If I was making money off of the words I posted to HN, I would keep track of my sources. As it stands right now, I'm simply offering an opinion.
EDIT: dfranke has some examples though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838197
EDIT2:
If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them.
Those words were chosen in haste and I wont defend them. You're right to call me out on them. I don't actually believe that TechCrunch is in the business of outright fabrication. If I wrote a popular and influential tech blog I would have deleted those words during the editing phase. :)
What Michael told me at TCC50 wasn't dishonest. If it had been, I'd have been upset. At an event like that, you're not going to ask exactly the same things you'd ask if a startup were actually pitching you. It's inevitably going to be somewhere between that and mere encouragement. Where between the two is simply a matter of convention. I had no idea what the convention was; I didn't mind being told.
Why? I'm criticizing him because he's a public figure and his words affect the daily lives and well-being of many people. My arguments in my original comment do not apply to the words of individuals in casual conversation, like the one we are having here. In fact, if we held ourselves to the same standards I'm demanding of Arrington, we'd hardly be able to have a conversation. I like to assume good faith for interactions among individuals. I'm not demanding proof about your interactions with Arrington am I?
However, I did edit my previous post with a link to proof mentioned by other posters.
What Michael told me at TCC50 wasn't dishonest. If it had been, I'd have been upset. At an event like that, you're not going to ask exactly the same things you'd ask if a startup were actually pitching you. It's inevitably going to be somewhere between that and mere encouragement. Where between the two is simply a matter of convention. I had no idea what the convention was; I didn't mind being told.
Ah, so we've established that the standards one should hold oneself to in discourse is a matter of context. I argue that Arrington holds himself to the standards of a blogger when the context he operates in demands that he hold himself to the standards of a journalist. TechCrunch likes to fire shots quickly and in large quantities and it doesn't really matter if a good number don't hit their mark. I know it makes the most business sense, but I don't deal out my respect based on business savvy.
Valid points on TCs double faceted appearance (reminds me of nature vs demeanor). I still enjoy the heck out much of their articles. Specific authors usually mean more to me than the "brand".
It is clear from your writing that you are after the truth, and it is clear from TechCrunch articles they are after the pageviews only. This is okay if they provided quality product, instead they provide the latest rumors with little technical understanding behind linkbait uninformative titles.
According to PEW Research, 5/6 search users can't tell the difference between the search results and the sponsored links, so the idea that Google won based on "technical merit" is pretty much wrong. To 95% of people Google was just another search engine but with better marketing.
However, as many others mention below, most people dislike Arrington because Techcrunch has no journalistic scruples. The way they attacked Last.fm without even bothering to properly check into facts was yet another example of this.
pg cites his own curt/succint approach to writing as a reason people dislike him and speculates that people dislike Arrington for the same reason, thus using Arrington as an example for part of his argument. While pg's central thesis in the essay stands, the Arrington example does not.
Other commenters have referred to this as well. I'm curious: how do you know it was baseless? All I remember is an unsatisfyingly ambiguous they-said-they-said dispute that was never resolved in my mind (and apparently not Google's as well, because a quick search doesn't reveal anything). IIRC, Techcrunch printed what they said was a leaked email substantiating the base of their claim. Was that email a forgery?
Just to spray some anti-troll foam on this, I mean my questions strictly literally. I don't have a preference for the truth to be one way or the other. I'm just curious (mildly; enough to post the question) what it actually is.
This can extend even further--from everything I've gathered, George W. Bush is a very easy person to like once you know him in person. Yet he was very recently one of the most widely despised people in the world. Your actual personality doesn't seem to matter once you start doing things people don't like, or otherwise become famous outside people who know you in person.
I offend people by writing. And I do it the same way Michael offends people in person:
You ask friends you know are nice to read your drafts and warn you if you're being mean.
That's a bit of an logic leap though. Common sense suggests that if someone is disliked by a person, the reason is most likely evident and known. Most don't dislike as a default response.
Assertions not following Occam's Razor need citation.
You've heard "First impressions last", right? So obviously we judge people outside of conscious, logical thought processes.
Person and Costume: Effects on the Formation of First Impressions http://fcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/32
First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind After a 100-Ms Exposure to a Face http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118597412/abstrac...
Confirming first impressions in the employment interview: a field study of interviewer behavior http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3296559
But that doesn't mean that people would react positively, either. The response would simply be altered: people would likely try to work with him, try to correct his behavior as they saw fit, or dismiss him altogether.
> When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves.
This is stunningly arrogant, and I'm speaking as someone that's constantly accused of arrogance. If you're going to tell people that you understand their motivations or behaviors better than they do, you should trot out some better evidence than mere conjecture.
At the very least, let's see some studies of controversial figures, the traits those figures have in common, and the most common reactions to them. Let's see if there's a correlation between mere abruptness in an individual, and widespread long-term dislike of that person.
Or do some social experiments, with actual control and experiment groups.
The point though was less about coming up with the right kind of experiments -- although that could be kind of fun -- and more that it's extremely arrogant to tell people that you understand them better than they do, especially when it's completely unjustified, as it is here.
Whether you consider that kind of arrogance to be a negative trait or not is up to you.
This is stunningly arrogant
No it's not. It's an obvious fact of human nature. One way to know this is by self-observation. That may seem oxymoronic (how can I observe something I am denying?) but with a bit of honesty it works well.
One tell-tale sign is when the emotional charge around something is incommensurate with the reason someone is giving. I think this may be going on here. The most common stated criticism of Arrington is that his journalistic standards are poor. But is everyone who says that really so passionate about journalistic standards in general? I kind of doubt it.
They claim that in human behavior, other people can be better judges of certain traits related to behavior -- like whether we come across as friendly, aloof, curt, etc. -- but the individual is more aware of things like motivations than anyone else can be. In any situation where an individual is unaware of their motivations, the best that anyone else can do is make wild guesses. The article called these "dark areas".
I can't say whether there's any actual support in research for the content of that article, but it does agree with most of the other pop-psychology garbage I've read, like "Blink".
Regardless, you and I have absolutely zero information about other people when it comes to guessing their motivations. We don't know their backgrounds, and we usually don't know them well enough to understand their personality. We certainly don't know an entire class of people well enough to tell them what their motivations are.
The best we can do is conclude that their stated motivations don't make sense given some other information about them.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but using yours and pg's justifications for this, I could tell you right now that you're defending pg out of a hidden desire to win recognition from him, since he has influence and resources. (If I were an actual real-life psychologist, I would probably also trot out some lame garbage incorporating "evolutionary psychology", and would conclude that you're behaving this way because ancient peoples who behaved this way had some kind of evolutionary advantage in the imaginary environment I've invented for them.)
You would probably object to that, and then I would grin and say, "Ah, but you don't understand your motivations as well as I do! If only you were more honest in your self-observation, you would see that I was right."
So, yes, while I agree that in some cases the stated motivations don't make sense, I disagree that we can assume that we know what the actual motivations really are -- especially without a shred of supporting evidence.
Hell, why not assume that Arrington draws fire because he's the founder and figurehead for TechCrunch, and people dislike TechCrunch because it sometimes picks on their buddies' startups? That conclusion has exactly as much supporting evidence as the one that pg drew. (None.)
Wait, I know! People actually dislike Arrington because he said he would debut a really awesome tablet PC by now, and where is it? We're all disappointed, and that's why we hate him. That conclusion, too, has exactly as much supporting evidence as yours or pg's. (...None.)
I don't dislike Arrington individually, and I don't even have a very strong opinion of TechCrunch, so I can't explain any motivation for actual hatred on my part. But, I also shouldn't think that I can explain any actual hatred on anyone else's part.
But Im not going to sit and rant angrily at him. Commentors on TechCrunch do plenty of that - but y'know every blog has that. TCC just reacts badly to it sometimes :)
Yes there are angry people - your right. Some probably dont like his abrasiveness (It's never worried me; my family are like that so Im used to it), some probably dont like his ethics and get cross (again, never understood that one). Sadly none of this is will change their minds :)
(Just look at Graywolf angrily hounding Matt Cutts day and night over any conspiracy he can formulate in Google blog posts / press release etc. he wont stop no matter how patient Cutts is with him)
Unfortunately, people's egos get hurt easily. You can't tell them what you think. You can't disagree with them blatantly. You have to slowly and carefully guide them from a place where they're 100% correct to a new place where they're still 100% correct even though they now think completely differently about the problem. It's not easy, and the hacker in me always considers it a huge waste of time and effort. Why can't people just accept that their first idea was wrong and move on?
One method I've found effective is to just link to a few articles on the subject. The hope is that 1) the author of the articles is better at persuasion than I am, and 2) my peer's ego is more open to taking advice from an expert than from me.
If you're Steve Jobs (or Mike Arrington or pg), then you are fortunate enough to have little need for this persuasive cruft in your life. If the rest of us want any chance of influencing people higher in the pecking order, however, we need to cradle their fragile egos.
I don't really believe pg when he writes: "I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words, and you have to choose one or the other" or ". If you want to please people who are mistaken, you can't simply tell the truth." Actually, it's not that I totally disbelieve him but I think its rationalising in a way that is not entirely intellectually honest. Maybe he rationally agrees with the former. The latter is probably true. But the reasons that we choose our words, our "style" is a lot less rational. In any case, claiming that 'my style is the honest one while the anaemic version that "everyone else" uses and want me to use would be the right one from a persuasion or self promotion perspective,' that is bogus. PG, Arrington & Dawkins have all been successful with their styles. It is doubtful they would have been with the style they describe. Perhaps it is because of the abrasiveness, perhaps not. That's up to discussion.
I understand pg is not defending himself, but he does seem to be defending Arrington in solidarity.
edit:* Something has been bothering me about this comment. I don't disagree with the premise of this essay. I agree with it. Arrington is disliked for reasons unarticulated and possibly unknown to his haters. I'm not even absolutely convinced that this conclusion is wrong. I would be very surprised if the effect it is describing explains everything. A few other explanations seem more likely to me. I am just suspicious of the class of argument put forward in the same way pg is suspicious of the 'heroic generation' arguments.
And I should mention that the reason I don't like Mike involves a very poor way he treated someone I know.
Reminds me of a quote from Robert Heinlein
"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."
That neatly explains my personal affinity towards pg, and my disinterest towards Arrington and many other "journalists" out there today.
Techcrunch is the Entertainment Tonight of Silicon Valley, and I don't find the gossip produced by either medium adds a lot to my life.
That isn't to judge him, and certainly not to "hate" the man, but it is to say that the content is not appealing.
Sometimes discovery must be done collaboratively. When this is the case, it can be more effective to mind one's social graces. Otherwise, productivity relies on other people ignoring negative social cues. I wouldn't take that bet.
The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious reasoning for why labor unions were founded by heros after all.
The second eulogizes the heros who founded labor unions. Then makes it clear that there is no reason to think that current union leaders would be capable of less if asked. And concludes that the shrinking of unions must be due to external circumstances.
With that in mind I can draw up version 3 that says what version 2 does but not at length.
"Why are labor unions shrinking today? Some say that we have lesser leaders today. Admittedly today's leaders do not regularly face hired thugs, etc like their predecessors did. But there is no reason to believe that they would be any less capable of heroism at need. The cause must be external."
I made the same major points as #3, without causing offense, with fewer words than your short version. The secret is to avoid offense by figuring out what could be offensive and not saying it, rather than figuring out what could be offensive and elaborating on how you're not trying to offend.
Ugh. After spending so much of yesterday arguing about whether people's dislike of Arrington was due purely to their high standards for journalistic integrity, or whether (this being the whole point of a disarming manner) they were also influenced by his manner, I just can't face the prospect of spending any of today arguing about labor unions.
I did not say that the labor movement wasn't founded by heroes, but that is the last I have to say about it.
You give two versions of the "labor union" paragraph. One of them does not say whether early union leaders were heroes or not (but might carelessly be read to imply that they aren't). The second states that they definitely were.
The second version is less offensive to people with pro-union biases. But it is more offensive to people with anti-union biases. If you wanted to avoid offending a particular person or group, your rewriting approach would work. But to avoid offending a diverse population you should instead remove any claims (express or implied) about unrelated controversial topics, or simply choose less divisive topics for your examples.
To illustrate how different the two paragraphs are, the first paragraph could easily be a lead-in to an essay that argues that an environment that requires personal heroics from leaders drives away the dreck that are mismanaging labor unions today. This would be an example of the "sudden about face" that I referred to in my earlier response. The second paragraph could not be used to start that essay. Nor could the concise third version that I offered. The fact that one naturally leads to an argument that the other two do not proves their inequivalence.
That said, you're right that I was wrong to bluntly state that your first version said that labor unions weren't founded by heros. It says that anyone who claims that has difficult problem to explain, which leads people to conclude that they were not founded by heros. But doesn't state that conclusion. And, as I noted in my initial response, room has been left for solving the difficult problem instead.
This is a standard formulation that implies that you disagree with the statement "the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers."
That isn't the statement with which you want to disagree. You want to disagree with the person who thinks that we could return to the old days, if we were only more heroic.
Try something like this:
Some people think that the reason for the loss of the high-paying union job is a lack of moral courage in the modern age. Our ancestors were giants, and if we were more like them we could return to the golden age.
In fact the truth is simpler than the "fallen civilization" explanation . . .
Just out of curiosity, have you ever discovered something that you thought would offend enough of your audience that there was no point publishing it?
Can you hint at some of those ideas?
read about "the conformist test" ~ http://paulgraham.com/say.html I've written a few things that on reflection after reading "can't say" I've thrown out.
Some of the most compelling talks I've been to are stories winding through a narrative. Conciseness doesn't really fit it, and it is certainly designed for discovery more than persuasion. But it's a bit of both, characterized perhaps by discovery of the audience - though not necessarily of an intended idea, which would make it persuasion.
My personal experience is that this sort of writing is far more common than the ingratiating kind when you get out of the school/professional environment.
I disagree that it makes the same point. I'm sure it's intended to make the same point, but it doesn't - "written this way it seems like" == "it makes a different point", as far as I'm concerned.
The code example isn't a perfect parallel: you can cut down code but still have it perform the exact same functionality - it either follows a certain execution path or it doesn't. That's not so easy to do with writing, since there is no "hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader".
I don't think it's about offending people or not, it's about whether or not the reader walks away with the point you're actually trying to make. It should usually be possible to avoid both "offensive" and "fawning", and settle on "neutral".
Of course, the problem is that "neutral" is often the most boring to read.
In fact, all of the staff @ TechCrunch seem to be nice, people of the few I've met.
"Everyone I meet must treat me just the way I like; otherwise, they are completely worthless!"
The key, of course, is to recognize when you're reacting to those kinds of mental triggers and change your attitude and manner accordingly (which is easier said than done).
I found the second example of unions (the "ingratiating" one) easier to understand, because it was concrete, and therefore allowed me into the author's point of view, and had redundancy so I could easily confirm what I thought he meant.
Also, the fact that he admires courage makes me think we have similar values, and therefore, he is worth listening to. There exist extremely intelligent people who lack compassion and wisdom, i.e. foolish villains. I don't think their advice is going to be very helpful.
But the conventional behavior when meeting someone new is to act extra friendly
And now I show what sort of person I am: I read the above line and thought.. ohhhhhh... that's what I've been doing wrong (no, not sarcastic). I've also thought that people who act extra friendly on first meeting are really insincere. But sounds like it's standard communication protocol, and communication is improved by speaking a common language, so I really should start doing this. Thanks pg!
This is one of those pearls that makes reading Paul very satisfying. This inside view is vital when it comes to understanding people.
Why we write is essential to crafting the best version of a post/essay/article. I write for the most biased observer, myself. If I can respect the point and style of one of my posts, it gets published and the yardstick I measure content by does fluctuate daily.
When I cover a topic well, I can easily link back to that thought process within other posts to convey my ideas in a well thought out manner. Modularized web commenting if you like the concept allows for more rapid responses of higher quality to ongoing discussions.
The great part is, I can go back and update older concepts with a fresh perspective by writing follow on posts.
Maybe this is just a false impression. But it may indicate that it is more difficult to talk about oneself than about something/someone else.
[EDIT]: I found why I felt it verbose. The latter part, about pg's essays' attitude to mention facts plainly and succinctly, hence they tended to offend some people, was obvious. So I felt it was unnecessary explanation. Probably it is necessary for different audience.
He reminded me strongly of a salesman, in that he used simple yet insidious verbal tricks to "wind people up", as we say in these parts, though less self-serving - more in an idly sadistic and demeaning way. He was a negative and arrogant force in the conversations, and they improved when he left.
Techcrunch just seals the deal - it's not a site I have in my reader, I just see it occasionally here or other links.
I hadn't been able to articulate this to myself coherently until I came across this on the Khosla Ventures site (complete with Vinod Khosla's notes such as "this is commie horse shit" and "MBA bullshit" (!).
http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entre...
...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2]
Footnote:
[2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend.
Please submit your solutions below.
Your proposed version is quite PC, to be sure, and I'm sure most humanities majors would defend it tooth and nail (cheap dig, I know :) ), but that in itself suggests to me that it's not what pg had in mind...
For one, I'd expect a lot of people here, including pg, to believe that startup founders excel in all of those categories, even if it's simply selection bias that causes it.
I could have been more precise with a modifying phrase such as "by accident of birth", but that was too unwieldy. The upvoted comments are specific to the GG argument, which are suboptimal, because they don't work as good writing unless you've seen PG's original.
(Yeah, I'm a part-time writer/editor to pay the beer bills, and I can get defensive about my writing. Sue me. You're better at design/coding/picking up chicks than I.)
Idea #1: skepticism about the idea that one generation is inherently better or worse than another generation, specifically with regards to the WW2 generation
Idea #2: People have a tendency to rise to meet external challenges as it becomes necessary. So if Generation Y had a challenge as great as WW2, we would rise to meet it, and if the present day union leaders had a challenge as great as the historical labor movement, they would rise to meet it.
What else?
http://www.blogpi.net/wp-content/uploads/arrington-cigar.jpg
I'm small fry - don't get me wrong - but the 'personalities' certainly want you to do the running and love the attention. I'm actually pondering starting my next company somewhere else because, frankly, I'm not convinced that the valley echo chamber is the best place to be (unless you are flipping fad companies of dubious long term value).
Let the flames begin ;-)
I've heard the traffic is a hassle there? Can you comment?
Climate would lock you out of most of those places minus Austin.
Having said that, I haven't worked anywhere else. The perspective of someone who had would be useful.
I often wonder along the same lines as you mention; the whole fad thing.
Indeed I was chatting to my boss today about the original dot com boom. At the time he had a decent capital to invest but just didn't think the numbers added up (he made his name in fraud investigation so there was more than just gut feeling to it) and so held off.
Interestingly his comment today was "it's happening again; only worse".
I've met many fine engineers, plenty of talented and smart people no doubt, but to be honest it's not that there aren't equally smart and talented people elsewhere. I consider some of the people I work with to be world class... but not better than other world class people I've had the pleasure to deal with. Many of whom are hungrier for it. More wild west.
The valley seems like a middle aged club with lots of sycophant youngsters willing to work themselves to death to get in. Plenty of startups rehashing ideas with the occasional, undervalued imho, gem. I think it's easy to argue that the valley is the center of the universe given the incumbent position of privilege it has. There'll be plenty more money made here and plenty more resulting mutual masturbation.
Maybe it was different in past years.
But I can't help but feel that the smartest money looking to build long term world-changing companies might be wondering.. and starting to look elsewhere for the next revolution. There'll be a pullback given the recent economic upheavals but the world is a big place.
Have you been to greenwich village? Faded glory. The left bank in paris.
Like them I don't think the valley is going away. Just succumbing to middleage spread.
What I do think are important are: 1) the very talented people I meet that come to the valley from all over the world both to live and to attend the endless flow of conferences, 2) the entrepreneurs and researchers I meet who are trying to change the world (in those words), and 3) the wide availability of resources (people, funding, advice, etc) for my startup.
These things I consider most important have actually exceeded my expectations about the valley.
Also, your essay reminded me of the caterpillar from alice in wonderland. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbntWU7pG8 - 47 seconds in). What's the isness in yo bizness!
-discovery version
edit: I'd better tack on my favourite quote from the essay:
"I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words"