[martythemaniak]

> If only Bill Gates and Larry Summers had had my mom to go to for advice, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief.

The actual lesson is not "listen to your mom", but "character matters". It doesn't matter how much someone agrees with you, how smart they are, how rich they are, how many great ideas they have etc etc. A rotten character will eventually rot everything around it. Techines/nerds/geeks get so enamoured with ideas they tend to not even see the kind of people ideas come from.

[gowld]

The implied lesson is that moms impart character.

Bill Gates's mother was self-dealing up nepo baby business contracts while Scott's Mom was warning him away from bad people.

[veunes]

Character matters but so does having people around you who are willing to call it early, before you've rationalized yourself into ignoring it

[fragmede]

> Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but probably has something to do with that.