In 2020, the investor Paul Graham wrote an essay titled "How to Think for Yourself." One lesson: "If you're surrounded by conventional-minded people, it will constrain which ideas you can express, and that in turn will constrain which ideas you have. But if you surround yourself with independent-minded people, you'll have the opposite experience: hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to [sic], and to think of more." At the end of the essay, Graham thanks the broad panel of independent thinkers with whom he has surrounded himself: Six of the seven are men between forty and fifty-five years old. Five of the seven work at Y Combinator, a business incubator in San Francisco cofounded by none other than Paul Graham. One is the CEO of the payment service Stripe. The seventh is Peter Thiel.