I understand your underlying sentiment, but the simple fact is the OP claims there's effectively guaranteed success and anyone can be a multimillionaire in a year if they aren't afraid to try. You know as well as I do that is not the case.
She really doesn't though. But lets say Cathy has been paying attention and sees the average person who is going to understand the whole FIRE mentality and recognizes that we have a couple of built-in things that would have given us an edge had we gone down that route. Namely a clearer understanding of how costs affects outcomes.
I've read the original question a dozen times now and I really don't get where your interpretation comes from. The original question simply posits that such success is possible: "in 1-3 years"
And it is. It isn't guaranteed. Neither is any other path. Both rely on some pretty simple principles holding true. Lets say start to finish (idea, use up capital, fail to capitalize) takes 6 months. If you spent 6 months acquiring capital, and 6 months trying to win with an idea, you'd get 3 tries at greatness in 3 years.
Most of us didn't even take the one try. I just read the OP again, and I don't see this:
If you tried to go wantrepreneur you'd be rich within a year.
I do see:
"I can think of plenty of methods with a reasonable (but uncertain) probability of earning multiple millions of dollars in a far shorter time frame (say, less than a year)."
I don't see: It will definitely happen. It will take less than a year.
Do you see how you rigidly applying the second line to the first is what is causing your hangup? What she wrote doesn't say what you think it says. If you ascribe to "reasonable" a value different from what she was thinking, that is where the disharmony started. What I'd wager for $1mil depends entirely on risk, and what her actual point was (forgive me if I'm miss-stating Cathy) is that the risk (chance of failure) is actually somewhat exaggerated.
And given a group of people with (based on what MMM has published about his reader demographics) above average training and education, particularly in the technical fields like engineering and computer science, as well as above average skills when it comes to personal finances and frugality, we wouldn't fall into the same bucket as "everyone." A barely literate high school drop-out whose "big ass bikes" motorcycle shop he started in his garage, that folded due to a zoning ordinance legal issue, has no bearing on the success of my start up. So a claim that the risk is exaggerated isn't entirely without merit, simply because IT IS. The statistics thrown around for "number of small businesses that fail" invariably include incredibly stupid people incapable of a basic assessment of risk that MMMers are capable of (self-selected for failure) as well as a huge group of con-artists and assholes who serial-fail. Which is to say, they start businesses they KNOW won't make money and just ride the salary they pay themselves until the business folds (oilfield services contractors is one example I know of personally). Number one reason new businesses fail? They run out of money. As in, they spend too much money. As in, not a problem with this group of people (for the most part).
The overall success rate of the average business start up isn't a valid statistical datapoint when the control differs so radically from the test group.
If you truly believe that it is, congratulations. You demonstrate the means and methods by which YOU were convinced that you couldn't hack it independently. The machine that turns out drones worked on you (as it did on me).
And now I'm off to netflix and chill, instead of working on my novel, because damnit, I'm in no hurry.