This feels weirdly like someone working out emotional issues by describing them in an emotionally distant "rational" way. Like what does this have to do with anything other then the thoughts in Paul Grahams head?
When you have to justify to yourself why you're a millionaire or a billionaire and "dumb luck, some modicum of skill, and being first" isn't a satisfying reason, you have to rationalize to yourself that you deserve it because you've got something that those ivory-tower eggheads and non-nerdy simpletons don't. And that thing is fierceness.
I've never seen a blog post more worthy of a good old fashioned fisking. I mean come on - "confidence is a self-fullfilling prophecy" - are we being serious here? It's only self-fulfilling because of survivorship bias. Maybe he's running with a crew of super successful founders and that's true, but from my point of view, I remember the dudes at my place of work that could very confidently talk my ear off about something that they half-understood (or very confidently describe an unworkable solution to a problem) and then got fired a month later because they weren't productive enough to meet even the super-low requirements of software development at a car insurance company. It's easy to spin narratives about confidence and restlessness and intelligence when you've surrounded yourself with the winners. Less visible are the people who go all-in on a fintech startup and end up broke a year later. Those people have all the same traits and end up in the same boat as all the other un-fierce nerds.
It's a classic refrain in a petty "revenge of the nerds" mindset. All the "haters" are wrong, unconditionally, and acting like an asshole is excused as being very special and brave.
It's a siege mentality designed to shore up one's sense of superiority, and ensure that one doesn't need to do very much soul-searching.
