There is a world of difference between saying it's impossible to accomplish what he has and saying that he, at this moment, has developed a place for himself that relatively few people, even here on HN, have. The former is obviously wrong, just as much as the latter is obviously right.
The point is that if Patrick can do it starting as a Japanese salaryman, you can most probably do it from whatever position you're starting from even more easily.
Obviously, most HN'ers haven't established for themselves the career Patrick has. My point addresses why that is.
I'm arguing here with the same mentality that says 37signals advice only works for 37signals, "because they got to start with a hugely successful blog".
I suspect that there's not much difference between what you're saying and what I believe: I also suspect I didn't phrase my original meaning clearly enough, because I think we're speaking at cross purposes. No disagreement with what you're saying, but I was attempting to talk about who Patrick is likely to know given A, not how difficult or easy it is to achieve A if you commit to going down that route.
