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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

Do you feel the same way when someone bakes a cake, takes a walk, watches a sporting event, knits a sweater, or writes a poem?

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I think that people view art as a side effect of abundance. It is something that naturally arises given a surplus of some thing.

The point of contention here is that someone of that level of intellect has "wasted" their talent on art, rather than productivity, which "should" come first.

For varying definitions of "should" and "wasted", of course.

The effort involved in doing this is incomparable with the things you just mentioned. This is nothing like baking a cake, more like spending thousands of dollars to build a life-sized Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks.

You have no idea how long it took to write this program. I bet it's less than the amount of time a typical baseball fan spends watching games over the course of a season.

P.S. Knitting a sweater takes forever too. Especially if it has buttons.

Man, fuck buttons.

Comment of the year :)

It depends on the quality of cake you are eating. There's a massive difference between a chocolate birthday cake for a 4 yr old or Profiteroles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiterole

Who cares about whether a person should build an Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks or go try to solve cancer? Pushing humanity forward is great - and so is finding personal happiness and growth through exploration. Don't knock one or the other; in fact, don't knock any at all. Both are ways to ascribe meaning to this meaningless place.

The sort of attitude he is demonstrating is backed by some sort of perverse notion that "smart" people somehow owe so much more to society than the rest of humanity that they should not have hobbies because that would delay them paying back their debt.

I don't know what could cause somebody to adopt such a twisted notion, but I think the roots of it go deeper than I care to know.

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