He said it was a question of network effects and impact. Mozart died broke because of poor money management and the inability to reach a worldwide audience.

An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at a time.

A baseball player is paid millions because he (through cable TV) can impact/entertain many more anonymous people indirectly.

Is it fair? Probably not but there aren't incentive systems in place to pay good teachers according to their impact.

Clive James had a fascinating BBC documentary a while back, a multi-part series "Fame in the 20th Century". It's pre-Internet but I believe still very relevant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fame_in_the_20th_Century

This thread is recent but there's some great older stuff that I recall. Check out this thread from Bruce Swedien - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bruce-swedien/83165-seven-peo... (scroll down for the bit about MJ)

Edit: Here's a story from Bruce about recording and mixing Billie Jean - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bruce-swedien/84587-real-stor...

This is a very good description of a lot of online communication, including many HN discussion threads. But I don't have to tell you that, because you already know it. I guess this generalizes to saying that it feels like swimming upstream sometimes to add significant amounts of new information to an online discussion among casual participants who may not know one another in real life. I find it easier to dig out my references and really lay out a lot of new information in some online networks I participate in with other members of a membership organization. Many of us have met one another in real life, and have already established emotional bonds over a meal or a beer, so on those networks I feel more comfortable challenging conventional wisdom. That CAN happen here on HN, of course, but it feels considerably less natural.

"Mixing past the money" perfectly describes a feeling I often have while refactoring code. What a perfect phrase!

I have no idea why the author has decided to crowbar their own bias on platform preference into this article. There doesn't appear to be any information that states its the platform at fault.

- The poster is a notable complexity theorist and is not "just trying to get attention".

- Doron Zeilberger's "a lot more interesting" take is completely subsumed in Richard Lipton's blogpost, in that it mentions other possibilities beyond the basic "what if it's polynomial with a really huge exponent" scenario.

- Assuming computational power to increase exponentially indefinitely is completely ridiculous, and without the "indefinitely" part this assumption no longer works to justify "easy = P".

- It is trivial to say that if P=NP, then AM=MA, because both AM and MA are in the polynomial hierarchy, and if P=NP, the hierarchy collapses completely.

- The most important point to be taken away from the blogpost is not just that "easy = P" is an assumption that's been held on too unreflectively and may not turn out to be true. It's that studying what this assumption means, how it could break down, and why it hasn't, by and large, broken down so far, may get us closer to understanding P ?= NP.

Home life is measured in weeks and months, and when you ask somebody what's new, they'll say "not much" and maybe tell you what they did last weekend. Or the weekend before that.

Road life is measured in hours. I'll find myself telling somebody a story of this amazing thing that happened earlier on my trip, possibly in another country, and suddenly realize that it was only 3 days ago. A month of travelling compresses so much life into such a short span that it's really strange checking in with friends back in the world that can account for that same month with a single sentence.

There are times when life in the 'states can approximate that (the first weeks of a new startup for instance), but it's so easy to drop back into steady state where life is measured in calendar time.

In this case there would be a great incentive for people to live less densely, which seems a bad thing. Someone who went off and lived in the sticks where land was practically worthless could reduce their tax bill to next to nothing. Especially if they lived in a mobile home (deluxe versions of which would rapidly appear).

Preface: I love meta-conversation. It's like introspection and from introspection, there is growth...

I am with you. I thoroughly enjoyed the post. I like knowing that MJ was a very nice man and very genuine. He was an authentic person in a sea of frauds and bluffers -- a breath of fresh air.

Anyway, this is just a problem with community. Communities are just aggregates of the individuals. I lurked at HN for a long time before I decided to join in and try to add value. I like HN because the community here values truth above all. There was a desire to have open conversation and see all sides of an argument and really dig deep into a topic to figure out what is going on.

I think the MJ issue is one of those. It's an interesting story. A long life of hard work, sacrifice, a rollercoaster of a life. His is the kind of lesson we can learn from.

But the community here is very ... narrow minded I would say. It's young. It hasn't "Learned the hard way" so to speak. It's quick to adopt new technologies. It's slow to learn from the past. This community wants change. It wants something different. But Michael Jackson stories have quickly become "the same." This community wants to get away from that.

Anyway, I'm just rambling here. Flag me if you want, [dead] my comment. I'm just talking. I don't have an agenda, but it seems more often than not, agendas are being pushed here. Propaganda.

Some of the agendas around here: Open Source, No SQL, Anti-Microsoft, Anti-higher education, Programming language elitism, environmentalism, healthcare reform, pirating copyrighted material, and getting rich quick to name a few. Some are my agendas, some aren't, but anything contrary to these positions is ignored or flamed for community selection bias. There are people in the group who are not like that, of course. I appreciate lots of comments on both sides. Some of those things I mentioned above I dont like so much, but I tolerate them. Nothing is perfect right? Really my goal is to find truth, but it seems like truth is becoming less of an agenda around here. Logical and rational conversation is becoming [dead] as well.

As the community gets larger, it's going to approach "main stream." And there is a mainstream even among programmers, the l33t ones. I feel like I'm talking to myself 10 years ago. I thought I knew a lot more than I did. I'm not wise by any measure, but I see myself in hacker news, so I can reflect on it with some hindsight, because it is a lot more like myself 10 years ago when I was ... more naive, more optimistic. I didn't know that change isn't always good back then. I was invincible. I could fix the world. I can still fix the world though. :)

Anyway, none of this matters. I'm just occupying brain waves while I am in transition, so I come here to entertain myself. Perhaps that is the crux of it. Hacker News is about entertainment -- entertainment of a "different" sort and that's why pop entertainment is flagged. Michael Jackson is part of that.

I have noticed over time, that to have constructive conversation, you must first agree, then explore. That happened a lot here. "Yes, that's possible, let's see.. let's think about that a little bit." But less thinking is happening and more "regurgitation" is the norm. It's normal I suppose. The only solution, if you find that what you are looking for is starting to "go away" is to start another community or find a new one.

Ask yourself, "From what did this community start?" That nerve is the focus from which dendrites sprout and axons connect and so I'll get off my soap box after I say, I still love hacker news. I think it's still the best aggregator out there. It's a pretty smart community. It humbles me all the time and that's what we need in life is a little humility. I wander around in the "real" world and I feel too smart for my own good. I come here and I feel dumb and it's awesome. It's good to know that there are people like this community out there.

EDIT: Wow... this topic was on the front page, then dead, then on #2. It is an example of itself.

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Also keep in mind that some of us no longer follow Reddit, so we might prefer if HN took a slightly broader view than Erlang innards.

Consider a metaphor.

Transfer your weight onto one foot while leaning forward, in order that your center of gravity is temporarily over-extended, while simultaneously putting your free foot out to 'catch' yourself from falling. Now rinse and repeat. Thus: walking.

If you want to walk faster, lean further forward. It's like watching a Segway, but with articulation.

All willful locomotion -- whether bipedal or otherwise -- depends on initiating a controlled disequilibrium which ultimately results in a prefered new equlibrium.

So it is with looking forward to things in life. Planning for the future. Saving for a rainy day. Working hard today for a better tomorrow.

The ability to conceptualize the _consequences_ of a temporarily destabilizing disequilibrium is what makes man master of the world.

So 'living in the future', far from being a modern malaise, is precisely what enables progress, advancement and civilisation. That doesn't mean that the disequilibrium is always comfortable while it's happening. Indeed, our atavistic selves usually counsel rest in the absence of an urgent limbic call to action -- when we're not starving or physically threatened, say.

But meanwhile, the higher brain recognises that the competion for scarce resources in a hostile world is relentless. And that means running to keep up -- however uncomfortable that might sometimes feel.

Indeed, deferred gratification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification) is analysed as an indicator for intelligence and emotional maturity.

And as for the dishes, whatever he may claim, Thich Nhat Hanh's superordinate goal when he washes the dishes is to have clean dishes. If he can enter a state of flow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) while doing so -- whether because he has phenomenal mental self-control, or an unusually quiet life -- then so be it. But most people can't, and would find their "cognitive surplus" (the brain parts left unused while dishes are being done) better invested in preparatory mental activity, or contructively anticipating the future.

And if he got the dishes done quickly rather than dawdling and daydreaming, he'd be back at the table to enjoy more time with his dinner guests, in whose gratitude he will find favour, and through whose company he will obtain the familiar state of flow which most humans achieve through routine social interaction.

Er...Preferences -> General -> Layout -> All-in-one?