"I don't recall Larry learning anything from doing a PhD itself, as opposed to doing the work independently."
Seeing as one major focus of a PhD is to learn to do independent research, this statement is essentially vacuous. It also disregards the influence on his thinking process from his advisor (Winograd) and fellow graduate students.
The distinction is not essentially vacuous: it's possible for the learning of "how to do independent research" to be itself largely independent, e.g. Edison and Einstein.
I said I don't recall Larry talking about this anywhere - can you show where he does? Specifically, about how doing the PhD helped this specific person to learn to do independent research. I'm interested in this.
I did not miss "great people around him". Your claim was that he didn't learn anything from his PhD. My claim is that he undoubtedly learned a lot from his advisor and other graduate students. If you are talking about learning stuff in classes, that is simply not the point of a PhD. Anywhere you see him credit Winograd's influence, you are seeing him mention learning from his PhD. See his commencement speech from like 3-4 days ago as one recent reference...
Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web -- he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me.
Maybe a nod is encouragement, but it sounds like Larry had decided to do it anyway - so the statement reads as an absence of discouragement.
On reflection, I think we mean the same thing, your "learned a lot from his advisor and other graduate students", and my "great people around him". There's a question of what a PhD is. It could be the independent work; the academic justification and presentation in terms of literature; the discussions with smart, interested people. (btw I've been doing one for a few years now).
I think our disagreement is about our definitions.
Seeing as one major focus of a PhD is to learn to do independent research, this statement is essentially vacuous. It also disregards the influence on his thinking process from his advisor (Winograd) and fellow graduate students.