and Hacker News (now running on a machine with enough memory to stay afloat) remains the only meaningful deployment of Arc in existence.

I take issue with this. :)

I often disagree with what Paul Graham writes. However, to call him a "profoundly unserious public intellectual" is silly. This essay doesn't make the case.

Who would dare create a language and announce such a lofty goal? I have never met Paul, but I have been through YC and have interacted with many close to him. IMHO Paul is a rationalist to a fault. However, he has the uncommon ability to inspire others, and he has found tremendous value in a simple formula:

  1. Test your idea.
  2. Try to understand why you were right or wrong.
  3. Improve upon your idea.
  4. goto 1.

YC is a product that tested this formula, and it worked better than anyone (probably Paul included) could have anticipated. I have talked with hundreds of venture capitalists inside and outside of Sillicon Valley, and no one talks to founders like YC. Like everyone, Paul is far from perfect. However, I admire his positions regarding failure and humiliation.

IMHO thousands of brilliant people harbor ideas that are lost to time because of fear of failure and humilation. If you create a new programming language, someone will call it a failure if it is not widely adopted. If you create a social website, someone will call you a failure if only a hundred people use it.

I see Arc as a success.