I have no clue whether or how much being over 30 matters, but I find this article to be full of poor arguments.

> I would guess that a fair majority of the human race has, at one time or another, been young.

This supports Mark's point more than counters it.

> Most chess masters, he tells us, are under 30, and he explains why. Oops, sorry, no he doesn’t. Turns out he doesn’t know why, so he asks us. This seems something of a failure on two counts. First on his knowledge of the subject itself, and second, on the wisdom of bringing up your own lack of knowledge in a speech about the superiority of your mental abilities.

Not really; the statement is more in the spirit of "here is theory; here is data; data matches theory; I don't know why the data is, though." What matters here is whether most chess masters are under 30; if that's false, he should just say that.

> I have to give credit to Mr. Zuckerberg here. He has made me think, and I am a house divided; 50% laugh, 50% throw up.

What values do these sentences add?

> Jesus, if you so believe, was a simple man, who saved the world. Ghandi simplified his life in order to lead people to freedom. Buddha decamped to the wilderness, as did Moses. Mandela lived an enforced simple life for 27 years in prison because of the importance of his ideas. That is Importance. Those are concepts, beliefs, visions, that require a life of simplicity. Pulling an all-nighter to run a debugger in your cubicle just doesn’t seem the same somehow.

Here he acknowledges that simplicity matters, but says it doesn't matter the way Mark claims it does because it's less admirable or heroic than in the cases of Jesus and co. That's not the point. Mark's argument is simply that young people are smarter because they lead simpler lives, which lets them focus on things that matter, presumably to them. (Not things that are heroic.) And pulling all-nighters to run debuggers in a cubicle is something he says, not Mark.

> The difference is, all those 40 year olds have been through that 21 year old stage and know it well. They have learned how to be more focused, more efficient, more productive in less time so they can actually devote time to the things that really are important, like those kids. These are the people who can teach you how to build a happy, sustainable, productive, and satisfying life while still getting a job done.

He is probably agreeing with Mark here, but they are certainly not disagreeing.

> Take a stroll through the nearest cemetery some day. Look at the gravestones. Read the inscriptions. These are whole lives pared down to one phrase. Search for the ones that say CEO, or Chairman, or Acting Vice President, or President’s Club for Sales. Go ahead I’ll wait. Oh really? Well what do they say? Hmm, Loving Father, Devoted Mother, yes, that sounds about right. They all speak of love, family, the home, the heart.

When Mark made the remark about being younger and smarter, he was at a YC startup event. He was most likely stressing the importance of being younger and smarter in starting a startup. What this man's saying is irrelevant.

Overall, I personally feel this was upvoted to the front page more because of the controversiality of the topic than because of the quality of the article. All it does is throw a bunch of objects at random at something Mark Zuckerberg said at a startup event, and then reiterate a couple (old) irrelevant arguments about wisdom and experience.