Paul Graham is a good writer. He's not an elite-tier writer's writer like "the dead guy" who's not actually dead, but he's still better than 99% of business executives, and he's better in the skills that businessmen want.
Paul’s style of removing all friction might help the concepts slide smoothly into one’s brain, but as antirez points out, they’re less likely to stick.
That's fine. The ideas transmit, the words are forgotten. He doesn't need to use memorable sentences if he's saying what he's trying to say.
Paul Graham is a very skilled communicator. He's not a writer's writer like YKW, but he doesn't need to be.
Paul Graham is a very good writer, but one of the things I admire most about him is that, when he happens upon a truly excellent writer, he doesn't show the jealousy for which writers are infamously known. There has never been a case of a truly excellent writer being penalized, harassed, and eventually banned here.
What's worse is that it can sometimes (but not always) read through your anti-bias prompts.
"No, I want your honest opinion." "It's awesome."
"I'm going to invest $250,000 into this. Tell me what you really think." "You should do it."
(New Session)
"Someone pitched to me the idea that..." "Reject it."
AIs are inferior to humans at their best, but superior to humans as they actually behave in society, due to decision fatigue and other constraints. When it comes to moral judgment in high stakes scenarios, AIs still fail (or can be made to fail) in ways that are not socially acceptable.
Compare an AI to a real-world, overworked corporate decision maker, though, and you'll find that the AI is kinder and less biased. It still sucks, because GI/GO, but it's slightly better, simply because it doesn't suffer emotional fatigue, doesn't take as many shortcuts, and isn't clouded by personal opinions since it's not a person.
I found an absolutely fascinating analysis on precisely this topic by an AI researcher who's also a writer: https://archive.ph/jgam4
LLMs can generate convincing editorial letters that give a real sense of having deeply read the work. The problem is that they're extremely sensitive, as you've noticed, to prompting as well as order bias. Present it with two nearly identical versions of the same text, and it will usually choose based on order. And social proof type biases to which we'd hope for machines to be immune can actually trigger 40+ point swings on a 100-point scale.
If you don't mind technical details and occasional swagger, his work is really interesting.