Is it just me or is the way you construct sentences jarring and hard to read? Not sure if it's my dyslexia but I had trouble deciphering the first couple of paragraphs/word jumbles.
It's not you. The entire comment is a disorganized mess of poorly thought out and non-cohesive grammar.
In the section quoted below for example, he starts off by writing about critiques, in which he appears to have immediately grasped for words that aren't suited for the purpose, such as how the nonsensical "personalized to" should have been "focused on". He add the completely unnecessary pseudointellectual "to one extent or another", to make it seem like he is intensely judging ideas. He then says the "social purpose" is "universal" which I'm not following the meaning of at all. I doubt many others are either, but it just seems like another pseudointellectual throwaway. He then follows that with "which is that I felt uncomfortable that reading this might mean I have to re-evaluate my worldview", which is perhaps the most atrociously nonsensical and poorly laid out sentence fragment I've read in a long time. In the part following that, he needed a period before "actually" for it to make sense as he likely intended.
Honestly, it seems like he's just trying to write words as they come to him as if in a heated and rash spoken conversation, in which he has a elevated personal impression of erudition, compared to the people he believes he communicating down to.
"The actual critiques are personalized to the content and, to one extent or another, valid, but the social purpose of the critiques is universal which is that I felt uncomfortable that reading this might mean I have to re-evaluate my worldview and I'm going to dive into the comment section and upvote all the people telling me actually, I don't have to do that."
Personalized to doesn't mean focused on; it means subjective and relative to the critic.
The "social purpose of the critiques is universal" is saying that, in opposition to the disparate and varied, personalized, nature of the specific critiques, their social purpose is all the same.
This universal purpose is saying "I felt uncomfortable ... might have to re-evaluate world view ... I'll upvote all the detractors".
> elevated personal impression of erudition
This is ironic, I have to say.
Anyhow, I found it easy to read the comment. It does flow a bit like stream of consciousness, but it's comprehensible, probably in part because I agree with a good amount of it. You shouldn't expect polished prose in comment forums on the interwebs.
If you felt that it talked down to you (personalized), then perhaps evaluate the social purpose of your own comment (did you feel uncomfortable? I got the impression you did).
Why "personalized to" doesn't work is because that line is referencing the text, not the author. If he would have preferred to have used "personalized to" he could have done so, as long as the subject in that line was changed to the author. Your interpretation of the universal social purpose line is creative and more intelligible than the referenced comment, but whatever the intended meaning may have been, it was not immediately clear.
As to your second to last comment, I wouldn't have even mentioned it had the other commenter not mentioned how they found the prose jarring. To your question in your final line, I didn't say that I felt I was being talked down to, I said that the author seemed like he thought he was talking down to an audience below him, such as with his line where he mentions his startup friends whom he shared his text with, but wouldn't share the same with HN.
