I suspect the personal effort involved in creating the file is more valuable than the file itself. Reading someone else's maxims is never going to have the impact on you that it has on them, or that creating your own list would have on you. He says it himself, "It's like putting everything I've learned into my brain's electro-chemical RAM banks." What good is the reminder of things learned to someone who hasn't learned the same things?
One of the maxims my wife and I use for decision-making is to take a step back and consider the big picture... to ask ourselves, "Is this even what we want to do in the first place?" But without having had the experience of almost making a decision that wasn't what we wanted big-picture because of focusing too much on optimizing the details, the maxim wouldn't have the same power.
What you're saying is that the process of experiencing the maxim and internalizing its lesson is more valuable than the maxim itself. I disagree - the bible and quran's lessons for life have been shared with and digested by many millions of receptive minds. It is the sharing of knowledge and experience, accumulated over generations, that allows our species to make the incremental improvements that leads to advancement. Keeping truths to oneself may be valuable, but if you have a powerful truth, the leverage you obtain by sharing with the world is a lot more powerful.
Nevertheless, you do have a point - how do you create value for people through a maxim that they haven't experienced? I would argue that the credibility of whom the maxim originates from is very important.
For example, The Bible has tremendous credibility and respect from its believers (and many non-believers too); this significant ethos prepares people to be receptive towards the maxim. Or for a modern day example, imagine the difference between a regular joe giving you career advice on his blog (as you wonder, 'who is this guy?', vs. reading maxims from Mark Cuban's blog.
In order to solve this problem of ethos, a site would have to employ reputation or karma for each maxim, with people weighing in on how valuable / truthful each maxim has been through their personal experiences. A maxim written by an anonymous becomes more credible when Mark Cuban, PG, or other famous people publicly vouch for it.
The following is a stream of thoughts, not a well-worked out position I'm trying to defend. I find this line of discussion very interesting and have no sure answers.
The Bible (and other holy books) often teaches maxims with stories though, which is like indirect experience.
Even if everyone I respect publicly vouched for "today you, tomorrow me" as a maxim, I don't think it would have as much impact as reading that story. And the impact of reading that story can't possibly compare to the impact the events had on the person who actually experienced them.
Why do science classes do experiments if not to add experience to facts which are already supported by almost universally recognized authority? Is there anyone on Earth who doubts f=ma? Yet the experience of it makes it more "real" somehow.
I'm not trying to say reading the maxims of others is useless. I tend to read most lists of maxims that come up on HN. But usually if one really becomes meaningful to me it's because it resonates with what I've already experienced. It puts my experiences into words in a memorable way.
You've just inspired a new part of my brain. I need to write-up a new idea for a website.
btw I agree with everything you said. The reason I used the bible as an example is that it is didactic through stories. Not just lists of laws. The website idea I was thinking of would have, for example, PG, Cuban, et al weigh in with their own stories, corroborating or contradicting the 'maxim'.
I agree completely that the proliferation of all the "rules of success" lists on the web proves ineffective in actually making a difference in the readers' lives.
One of the maxims my wife and I use for decision-making is to take a step back and consider the big picture... to ask ourselves, "Is this even what we want to do in the first place?" But without having had the experience of almost making a decision that wasn't what we wanted big-picture because of focusing too much on optimizing the details, the maxim wouldn't have the same power.