Just like models and actors have built entire careers (and industries, in fact) on just standing around and pretending to do things?
Tom Peters does not pretend to be a hacker.
Hackers are not the only sort of people in the world.
Peter Diamandis, for example, is a personal hero of mine and a champion of industry. Does he run unit tests? No. Does he personally build spacecraft? No.
Does that make him any less valuable as a thinker and leader?
Sure it does. He is the living embodiment of "you can just go around talking shit", he's irrational. You can call him an abstract painterly post-modernist thinker, or whatever, just don't go supporting his way of being by putting meaning where there is none, you'd be giving people false hope, so to say. And that really murders, and subsequently mutilates your inner child.
Maybe not.
But then again, this is a guy who has built an entire career (and industry, in fact) on exactly the opposite of what most of us practice here at hn.
While we build, he talks.
While we test, he guesses.
While we ask, he tells.
When we're right, we deliver value, When he's right, people just say, "Of course."
When we're wrong, shit stops working. When he's wrong, the PHBs still keep writing him checks.
When the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, someone should say so. Especially here.