There are plenty of people who have genuine passion and interest yet don't succeed. Sounds like survivor bias. Funny that you also appeal to authority -- PG can

There are plenty of people who have genuine passion and interest yet don't succeed. Sounds like survivor bias. Funny that you also appeal to authority -- PG cant possibly be wrong because he is rich and successful :). Also studying society/people is an academic discipline. There is plenty of hard science which is equally "bogus". What about bad neural network papers, or bad physics papers? Regardless, these things are not new ideas, or something people don't know about. Yes being eager/earnest can help. Yes bad papers exist. The issue is why choose that particular example? Why are all of PG's blog posts exactly the same -- none of them have anything particularly deep or offer new insight -- but there always seems to be controversial content mixed into the supposedly honest discussion. If they are not doing it deliberately and its somehow internalised then people should at least call them out.