PG has written very candidly of being uncomfortable speaking publicly [1].
As an uncomfortable public speaker myself, when I've been in that situation of being introduced at the beginning of a Q&A session, my mind is mostly occupied with mildly anxious thoughts about how I'm going to get through the talk without freezing up or saying something stupid. I'm not paying close attention to what the host is saying.
It's worth considering that one of the reasons PG stepped away from being president of YC seemed to be that he got sick of having the minutiae of his words and actions scrutinised and presumed to be motivated by malice. There's a reason his preferred method of public communication is long-form essays.
As the parent to your comment pointed out, he's been at pains to credit his co-founders in the past, and shows no signs of having an ego-driven need to be known as the sole founder of YC.
I did a video series on programming a while back. I wasn't teaching. I was just sharing being a fanboy with some experts.
Boy, did that suck. Every little thing that happened, I couldn't help but think through all the mistakes and omissions being made. I can't imagine doing the same thing at the scale of YC.
I'll probably do it again. I love writing and expressing myself. But I can see where PG did the right thing to get out of the light a bit. I remember on HN the guy would say something like "It's raining outside" and 14 people would respond with misunderstandings, clarifications, arguments, nit-picking. At some audience level all in the same room, it becomes impossible to communicate back-and-forth. The long-form essay is probably best.
I didn't listen to the whole thing nor do I care about any one individual thing, but they did talk about the co-founders as well from what I saw.
That said, other than that I disagree with you. If someone wants to have their opinions taken seriously they have take other people's opinions seriously as well and can't get angry as soon as people disagree.
Personally I think many of his essays aren't very good, but there just isn't any practical way to discuss them. And frankly I don't think people are really that interested in doing that either.
I don't think there's been any "getting angry as soon as people disagree" - he's substantially edited essays in response to critiques. It's pedantry and the presumption of malice that were probably the hard things to deal with, and he just realised that his time and energy would be better spent being an attentive father and partner. Good for him.
I disagree. I think his way of having a debate is very dysfunctional. Many of his essays makes themselves hard to argue with rhetorically. He doesn't leave much room in the text itself nor in the medium for people to share their own opinion about it. And when people despite that still do write e.g. blog posts his response isn't to their argument, but that they have misunderstood what he meant. The way to make pedantry meaningless is to have a substantial debate. I also think there is as much presumption of malice on his part as anyone else. You can even find that in many of his essays where he talks about other people either being with or against him. I could find you some examples where I think he did an especially bad job, but what is the point? If you like his essays do that, but base that on substance and not some sort of universal truth on Hacker News.
As an uncomfortable public speaker myself, when I've been in that situation of being introduced at the beginning of a Q&A session, my mind is mostly occupied with mildly anxious thoughts about how I'm going to get through the talk without freezing up or saying something stupid. I'm not paying close attention to what the host is saying.
It's worth considering that one of the reasons PG stepped away from being president of YC seemed to be that he got sick of having the minutiae of his words and actions scrutinised and presumed to be motivated by malice. There's a reason his preferred method of public communication is long-form essays.
As the parent to your comment pointed out, he's been at pains to credit his co-founders in the past, and shows no signs of having an ego-driven need to be known as the sole founder of YC.
Maybe give the guy a break?
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/speak.html