I found this article excellent and definitely thought provoking, and I am just wondering how can someone read that and come out with a bad impression like that?!

Do you have some undisclosed issue with PG??

The simple fact is people want to be good. People are afraid of being wrong. They are afraid of failure. They look for the one deep truth that will guide them and protect them from wrong. Once they believe they have found that truth, is anyone surprised that they cling to it?

TFA would have you believe these fears are irrational. Just keep at it, right? Just power through the judgement of your fellow humans. But it is not irrational. Nor is it stupid as TFA seems to imply. The simple fact is if you put yourself out there, there will be consequences. You will be judged.

I sent some code for an idea I had to a mailing list. At some point someone called it "schizophrenic". Maybe to you this is literally nothing, just an innocuous comment that promptly slides off. However, for a long time I actually thought I was insane for thinking and imagining the things that I did. I have to make an effort to suppress thoughts like that to even so much as write this comment on this website. So for me that was a particularly harsh judgement. I don't think I'll forget the moment I read that word until the day that I die. I will certainly never show my face there again.

It takes a certain audacity to put yourself out there. It takes a certain sociopathy, a certain arrogance. Succeed, and it actually leads to the judgement of your naysayers instead of you. They are quite literally judged by history as wrong. Such judgement is even observed in TFA, look at how the so called "obstinate" are singled out for being stupid failures. Such is the nature of humanity.

I am sorry but you are taking things far too seriously. People have always had to "put themselves out there", it's part of living in a society rather than as a hermit. If you don't pull your weight in a tribe, others, not just you, may literally die, every hand counts. Others expect you do that, justifiably. Being judged is always going to be part of living in a society. But that's a good thing, not a bad thing! Learn to take criticism well. Some word someone said shouldn't affect you so strongly. Perhaps that was said by a 13 year old that doesn't know any better. Or by someone suffering from serious mental illness who finds some solace in trying to get other people on the internet disturbed.

Being judged as stupid is of course very harsh, but it's also not wrong sometimes. Do some people behave stupidly sometimes?? Of course they do, we all do. That doesn't make us bad people, and we shouldn't despair because we believe we have been categorized as stupid: we should definitely consider whether it's a fair assessment given the circumstances, and try to do better next time. Very smart people can, and do, behave stupidly, specially when talking about religion or politics. Even smart people can say the most stupid things. I think no one is very smart or very stupid in every context, there's always a context where you'd look totally stupid even if you're Albert Einstein. Imagine Mr. Einstein trying to hunt in a jungle in Africa. Even with practice, he'd probably never get good at it. His very way of thinking, very scientific and evidence driven, what we consider intelligent, would get him eaten in no time over there. What count there is being fast thinking, acting on instinct... that's how you survive there, and that's what you would count as "smart" if you lived there.

Anyway, hope some of what I say here helps someone :).

Congratulations!

> pg just doesn’t do it for me.

For me, he's hit or miss. He has a writing style that tries very hard to boil things down into very simple terms while also approaching subjects that are deep and complex. Often the result is so oversimplified that it misses the mark.

But I do believe pg is thinking deeply about this stuff and there's often insight in his writing even if the narrative ends up too simple and self-satisfied for my taste.