I LOVE that Paul Graham posted this just a day after posting Mark Twain's "corn-pone opinions" with no sense of irony or self awareness.
"""
"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."...
The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities."""
This billionaire's opinion of wealth inequality, his own part in it, and the straw men he battles are the very essence of corn-pone based thinking that Twain is speaking to.
Graham's (toxic and highly biased) opinion about wealth inequality is a condition of how he gets his corn-pone every day. To him, however, this corn-pone opinion becomes the very essence of rational thinking amongst himself and his peers (like Marc Andreesen and his periodic twitterisms).
The two postings are directly related and not an attack based on his wearing of red shirts on thursdays.
From the wikipedia """Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact or when used in certain kinds of moral and practical reasoning.[3]"""
I think part of the point is that pg didn't "post" these to HN himself at all. Someone else submitted a blog post from pg from 2004, and then someone else submitted this recent blog post. In other words, the author of the posts didn't submit them for discussion on HN at all, counter to the insinuation you appear to have made.
""" "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."...
The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities."""
This billionaire's opinion of wealth inequality, his own part in it, and the straw men he battles are the very essence of corn-pone based thinking that Twain is speaking to.
Graham's (toxic and highly biased) opinion about wealth inequality is a condition of how he gets his corn-pone every day. To him, however, this corn-pone opinion becomes the very essence of rational thinking amongst himself and his peers (like Marc Andreesen and his periodic twitterisms).