I think it's fear. This essay questions the motivation and premises of the biggest life choices of many people on Hacker News. Be smart, be ambitious, study har

I think it's fear. This essay questions the motivation and premises of the biggest life choices of many people on Hacker News. Be smart, be ambitious, study hard, be successful, make a lot of money. I've seen people recoil very hard when they are reminded about very deeply buried insecurities. When someone suffers from depression or anxiety, you'll sometimes see the most incredible mental gymnastics to avoid going into therapy and doing a bit of introspection. "I don't like the therapist". "It's boring". "This is pseudoscience". To me this looks like an instance of the same phenomenon; it's more comfortable to reject this premise entirely than to consider that it could also be relevant to your own life.