[wellpast]

I'd be more inclined to take your point if the lede wasn't PG's current political essays, and the meat wasn't an extensive berate of his naive ideas about programming from 20 years ago.

Anyone that needs to be 'told' that EARTH HAS 4 CORNERS is silly thinking isn't going to hear you - so that's a terrible analogy right there.

When it comes to politics and essays like this that so indirectly (by 20 years! and subject matters miles apart!) try to make their case against a whole person's intellectual status - we are in weird territory.

[ashtonkem]

> Anyone that needs to be 'told' that EARTH HAS 4 CORNERS is silly thinking isn't going to hear you - so that's a terrible analogy right there.

Maybe you just didn't understand the analogy?

The point was that valuing being "aggressively independent-minded" above trying to be right can lead you to being a crank. One should value a process and rigor that leads you in the right direction, rather than valuing thinking different for the sake of thinking different.