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Notes -
Smart computer guy with no kids versus ordinary people who have kids - where do you think "society" comes from? If nobody is having children but they are all software whizzes, then after their generation there won't be anyone there to use this wonderful project they created.
I don't know what Jepsen is, I don't know what distributed systems are, but at the end of the day, things are made for people, not people for things. The eventual effect is that all this Smart People Stuff is on the backs of Average Normies who buy, use, consume and need things that they have no idea are dependent at several removes on the Smart People Stuff, but at the same time, without the mass of Average Normies driving the economy because they use, buy, consume and need things, the work the Smart People do would be meaningless.
To be clear, that was a rebuttal to "the LGBTs are actively destroying society". I'd obviously prefer if jepsen was straight and had children.
Which people, though? People can only have purpose to the extent they experience, act, or relate - and more intelligent, capable, and complex people do all of those more, and with more depth, than less so. Which is more or less the same as being more 'productive', whether technically or artistically or intellectually or politically, or even in some other inscrutable personal sense.
Marginal contribution isn't "importance if entire class vanished". The US needs janitors and farmworkers a lot more in lower-tech eras than it does now.
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