I know this is somewhat of a false dichotomy, but at some point I think PG's essays started to shift from being directed at startup founders to giving advice to his children that they can read when they grow older.
There probably is some tethering to whatever his perspective is at the time. At some point, YC was a relatively new idea coming to life and he was probably constantly thinking a certain way. Now, it's something that he's been up to for decades.
That said, I think there's more of a zeitgeist change than actual change in pg's content. Things sound different 10-15 years apart. A lot of things age poorly, often: idealism, stand up comedy... most anything avante garde-ish.
Clever people spoke highly of agile,for example, when it was manifestos and such circa 2005.
Ok I just looked up the phrase false dichotomy, apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant, probably would have been better said as "the two are not mutually exclusive", still point holds.
"False dichotomy" implies more than just the fact that "the two are not mutually exclusive". It further implies that the speaker in question has implied that the two are mutually exclusive, when they are in fact not.
I feel like a lot of it is the same stuff that you get in generic self help books, but explained in contemporary techie language and cultural references.
Not that that is necessarily bad per se, there can be a lot lot of value to reminding people of things that may seem obvious. But it's annoying when people treat him like a genius for saying fairly standard platitudes in a clever way
