Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you… - Paul Graham

If I had a choice of living in a society where I was materially much better off than I am now, but was among the poorest, or in one where I was the richest, but much worse off than I am now, I'd take the first option. If I had children, it would arguably be immoral not to. It's absolute poverty you want to avoid, not relative poverty. If, as the evidence so far implies, you have to have one or the other in your society, take relative poverty.

"Make something people want" is fundamentally advice about being empirical, instead of assuming you already have all the answers. The equivalent for investors would be "Let founders teach you what people want."

think language designers would do better to consider their target user to be a genius who will need to do things they never anticipated, rather than a bumbler who needs to be protected from himself. The bumbler will shoot himself in the foot anyway.