He was either 'failing to read anything', or, more likely, reading a fair bit and intentionally stripping all reference to this existing knowledge out of his column for whatever reason. The result was unsurprisingly sophomoric, which I suppose is why it has 150 points on HN.
Or, possibly, he was offering anecdotal observations, and he's not as dumb and lazy and unmotivated as people here are making him out to be. I know it's surprising, but people do come up with these things on their own sometimes.
