That's an excellent criticism. Of course the problem is exacerbated by the HN link pointing to the philosophy doc. The greatest philosophy is to have no philosophy at all, but perhaps we're not quite there yet.
Actually the K&R equivalent for Hoon doesn't exist yet, and when it does it will be the first thing to read. Since it doesn't, the Arvo tutorial is the first thing to read:
http://www.urbit.org/2013/08/22/Chapter-1-arvo.html
But this itself is incomplete. Watch the video first:
Then build Arvo and use the sekrit code it generates to, basically, subscribe to our newsletter.
It's just a bad idea to document anything before it works completely, because you end up with doc that validates this criticism. The right way to build a language is to build it, use it, get comfortable with it, actually master it and become an expert of sorts... then document it. Sadly, not too many of us can live up to this ideal.