[digging]

maybe my brain is sleed-deprived but this doesn't feel great to me either. can we not be high quality people without those connections, regardless of how those connections might be made easier for the rare individuals who participate in YC?

[dang]

Of course we can! And are.

[satvikpendem]

Who is saying you/we are not high quality people? No one is saying that high quality people don't exist outside YC, just that YC accepts high quality people. You are committing the logical fallacy known as the fallacy of composition [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

[GreymanTheGrey]

I believe this was the offending sentence fragment that implied the sentiment you say is not there: "the likes of which you are unlikely to meet in the regular world"

[MichaelZuo]

I read that as 'There's a higher probability of meeting high quality people in a location that actively concentrates them, then just randomly going through life.'

[_sentient]

Definitely not trying to imply that these people don’t exist elsewhere, but rather than YC does a great job getting a bunch of them in one place.