msiyer

"Self loathing of the human race needs to stop"

I completely agree.

"Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species"

I completely agree.

"Are you aware how many countless people have and do work to improve your quality of life, protect you, make sure you are fed and watered and provided with distractions like HN to complain about how awful we are."

It is a symbiosis. You make it sound like a parasitic relationship.

"The big point here though is that this is not a coincidence. When people contribute to society, they tend to be rewarded."

Getting rich and contributing to society are very different things. A footballer is almost always going to be richer than a professor in a top-class university. Drug barons are rich, but I doubt they are contributing to society.

Bankers are getting richer. They created the recession and profited from it. The hardworking common man paid for their success. I do not think it is as simple as you say it is.

As I said, "poverty" was the not the right word. Otherwise, the examples are just fine. Curie in particular. She refused to patent Radium. It is hard to comprehend in an era where even simple geometric figures, colors and fonts are being patented.

Tesla, Ramanujan, Gutenberg...

"Poverty" is a strong word. I could have used a different word.

What I really wanted to convey is that Gutenberg, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, Tesla, Gauss and plenty others deserved to be billionaires if Bezos deserves his billions.

Being a workaholic is not much different from being an alcoholic. These are different forms of addiction. All workaholic societies are destroying themselves due to health complications and declining birthrates. Also, the problems of poverty and absolutely ridiculous wealth distribution patterns seem unsolvable. What more is needed to understand that the economy in its current form does not work in the long term?

If Jeff Bezos' contribution to society is so immense that he deserves all the billions he has amassed, what about the scientists and mathematicians of the world who died in poverty, but on whose shoulders the modern world is built upon?

The pursuit of profit kills society. All our social suffering exists because we have been trying to merge two incompatible ideas. We expect our lawyers, doctors, technocrats, politicians... to do the right thing. However, the right thing is almost always detrimental to profits. Profit always trumps "right thing".

Government is a corporation. Corporations are the government.

"Google Allo was Google's attempt at a WhatsApp clone, and it launched just a year-and-a-half ago with a laundry list of deficiencies."

With the greatest talents working in tandem, I fail to comprehend how they can ever create something that is less than perfect? A great product failing due to market dynamics is one thing, but releasing a half-baked product is something that leaves me bewildered.

I agree with most of what you say. We know of no "better way". Nature is infinitely more intelligent. If Nature wanted us to not know or do something, we would not have been able to. Our ability to edit genes is a result of Nature's willingness to let us experiment. We still have very little understanding of what genes are or how Nature edits them for evolutionary purposes.

One thing that I know is that ethics have no meaning in Nature's eyes.

Some questions that have always bothered me:

Do mentally sick people have "consciousness"?

What happens to "consciousness" during episodes of extreme rage\trance\trauma?

Sometimes, I think that we are simply machines collecting data for someone. A other times, I feel there is a higher purpose.

Any species that has survived for a considerable period has to be intelligent.

Facebook exists because it works for a section of the population. I do not like it. I do not use it. If someone likes it, I let them use it. I throw in a word of caution regarding privacy concerns etc. I, however, do not expect them to honor my views.