Please try to be charitable, not adversarial, toward the counterparties in a discussion on HN. I will try to do the same.
I was characterizing what the parent appeared to be saying, so that I could discuss it (that greed is a part of human nature). I was not justifying greed.
Social mobility doesn't have anything to do with it really. Even if it is easier for the average citizen to become wealthy, that doesn't entail that the ones actually doing meritorious work are being rewarded accordingly. The "merit" in your idea of a meritocracy only measures the ability to accrue wealth, which is meaningless (as proxy for the more general notion of merit) when rich assholes are rewriting the laws to their own benefit.
> One thing is for sure, housing prices would skyrocket!
Sure, in the hypothetical of instantaneously doubling the population without any time for the market to adjust for increased demand. But if the population doubles over the course of 30 years? That's only about 11 million people a year, the market would expect and adjust to the influx of people easily. Governments would also ideally be devising initiatives and changing policy to promote affordable housing. The high cost of housing in the US is its own issue anyway.
But it's not... the feds will utterly fuck you over for possessing cocaine. Just 5 grams of crack in many states is going to land you in jail for a long time. Maybe you mean for research purposes, but even that I would doubt.
Such a shame because cocaine is a blissful, perfect drug and smoking crack is an especially excellent way to consume cocaine.
The difference is that these agencies never even bother with a warrant to store all of our data, and claim to not "collect" anything all while using algorithms to conduct mass surveillance at a scale far beyond the KGB's wildest dreams. And when they do want to spy on an individual more directly, it's done through gag orders and secret courts with no accountability to the public.
Digital data is actually afforded even fewer protections than your example of letters in the mail.
Actually if you check out more of his work it looks quite different from what was chosen for this article. I think the article wants to portray a logical progression from modern art to generative art, or just to show that an algorithm is capable of generating images that are similar to those of highly creative human artists.
He also is a young guy with plenty of time ahead to develop his own style. As someone who also experiments with generative art and music I am absolutely impressed by what he's done so far.
> Well at any rate, the difference is that nearly anyone can learn to read, whereas there is no evidence to suggest that more than a few percent of people can become a computer programmer.
LOL, programmers aren't that special. I would stake my life that 90% of people have whatever genetic potential necessary to become at least an average programmer.
It's a common complaint on HN that too many articles include irrelevant details about the people and scenery of technical fields, but this article really pulls it off perfectly. It is dense in technical information and the personal stories complement this information and make it more memorable (e.g. I didn't know that the duration of an earthquake is a rough proxy for its magnitude, but I won't forget after reading the narration in the opening paragraphs).
> Sitting alone, staring into a wall while listening to music is not a thing most healthy people do. For most, music is a secondary activity.
It's called listening carefully and it's something that every serious musician does on a regular basis. What a strange notion you have that this, an act that requires concentration and discernment, is unhealthy.
So now your two SUVs and white McMansion with a picket fence are an "immutable biological trait"?