[awucs]

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.

[tomhoward]

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.

[awucs]

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.