Maybe you’ve seen the New Yorker piece about “How San Francisco’s new entrepreneurial culture is changing the country”. If you haven’t, it’s worth reading, if only for a fragmented, but locally—in the mathematical sense—true and honest look at aspects of SF and silicon valley in general.

But therein lies the caveat. Every word in the piece is true, but it only captures fragments of what’s going on, and so it misses the whole story. Nathan Heller takes Johnny Hwin as an archetype, or perhaps a messenger of things to come, and then finds experts to explain aspects of the hows and whys surrounding the startup scene, and pretends that the latter explain the former. Meanwhile, we’re suckers for a good story, and so as soon as anyone presents that we’re about to hear one, we start agreeing.

The problem is that there’s no causal relationship between Naval Ravikant’s correct position that companies—especially tech companies; especially software companies; especially web services companies—are becoming easier and easier to start, and the idea that Hwin’s entrepreneur-who-made-it lifestyle of communal housing, part-time growth-hacking startups / part-time musician is a harbinger of things to come for all of us. In fact, Hwin’s lifestyle doesn’t even generalize to the entrepreneurs-who-haven’t-made-it-yet. Where Hwin life swaps with rock stars and no one ever really knows where he is at any point, I can personally guarantee you the locations of all the other not-rich-yet entrepreneurs: working their asses off in coffee shops and offices.

But there’s truth to Hwin’s lifestyle, too. Uber and Airbnb are fantastic. Privatized buses? Privatize the buses! Maybe it’ll improve service. And there’s definitely a growing movement in intellectual and creative people both starting and seeking out events where they might meet other intellectual and creative people.

I don’t think that’ll turn us all into Johnny Hwins, though. The theme of startups in the bay area is one of increasing efficiency. Google lets us access information more efficiently. Facebook lets us interact with our friends more efficiently. Uber gets us a ride more efficiently. Even Bonobos promises to make buying pants more efficient. What people will do with that efficiency, though, is up to them. I don’t expect people around the world to follow the personal whims of certain SF denizens. Rather, I expect an explosion of lifestyles, with people inventing and then colonizing ever more niches in the social ecosystem.