If art has little value, why is the annual revenue for the global entertainment industry over $2 trillion? No one is being forced to pay for a Netflix subscription. The markets have spoken and have assigned it a large value. Whether you view art as frivolous is subjective, the numbers aren't on your side.
No, the author is saying the share of revenue the distributors (tech, music industry) are receiving is misaligned with the value they're adding. Compare content creators with a SWE. They both produce the product being sold, what percentage of the revenue should they receive?
Close relationships can having negative value and it's apart of the question (see parenthesis). Gaining and keeping a relationship are not the same but also not particularly relevant here since the purpose is to quantify the value of close relationships when making a rational decision. Parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, etc relationships have very different value but if you've never had a child, then your estimations of value can only come from your own relationships or asking other parents.
Wrt to bailing on your child, many single moms and dads will tell you that's a thing, not a noble thing but it obviously happens. Also consider marriage, in the US divorce rates are around 40% and can cost more than half of your total assets, which is often far more than the cost of raising a child. In terms of expected value (depending on your income), more risky to get married than to have a child.
A thought experiment for those without children approaching having one from a rational perspective. What is the value of your closest personal relationship; your mom, your spouse, your pet etc? Let's say you have a choice, for that relationship to have never existed, meaning all memories (good and bad), and everything you've gained (and lost) from that relationship would be erased unless you paid a price. How much money and time would you sacrifice for that relationship to still exist?
Increasing human prosperity/reducing human suffering is largely a function of technological advancement, wealth distribution and avoiding wars. All of these require a large population of educated humans to drive forward and since yours will likely be educated, probably net positive.
I think people are reading this line the wrong way. The author isn't implying Instacart is as important as the transistor, that would be ludicrous.
He's simply drawing an analogy between the output of laboratories like Bell Labs that produce breakthrough scientic research and "economic labs" like YC that produce breakthrough businesses.
Yes, AirBNB, Instacart etc are breakthrough businesses in the sense that they disrupted long-standing and deeply entrenched business models. The ideas themselves are not extraordinary but building and scaling a business from zero often against much better financed competitors is no easy feat and takes a unique amount of persistence (and often good timing) to succeed.
CS fundamentals can be readily learned without obtaining a degree. If you don't think so, then you've never met a self-taught programmer and are probably (no offense) someone with limited professional experience.
The similarities in my experience between big tech (FAANG) and big non-tech are heavy process/communication burden, deep tech debt and perf review driven culture.
The main differences in tech are:
Engineers seen profit centers instead of cost centers, therefore treated/compensated as "talent"
Many (but probably not most) big techs are bottom up, much less common in non-tech
There is at least as big of a process and cultural difference between small startups and big co's.
You seem to be implying "software engineers" require much more than a business degree, in which case I believe you to be a young person (< 30) and I forgive your naivety and the trolliness of your comment.
SWE is not a profession that requires deep education in math and science, like a physicist or neurologist. Having anything beyond a bachelor's in CS is not worthwhile outside of maybe ML..maybe.
A person with business degree who grinds toy problems on LC will almost always do better on FAANG coding interviews than a CS new grad with no grinding full stop.
The degree is just a stamp for junior engineers to get their foot in the door, which is no longer needed once you have a stamp from a reputable tech company.
Because the polling majorly favored Biden and the results showed far more Trump votes than anticipated could rationally be interpreted to mean that mail-in ballots were flawed in a way that favored Trump.
I'm not claiming this is the case but providing an example of how subjective and spinnable any set of facts can be made.