Humans are a bunch of individuals though with an incredible amount of diversity. If their claim is biological, it would be helpful to pin down more precisely what they mean, because right now it's pretty vague. I'm dubious that there's a rigorous claim here though because pretty much every time I've seen a claim like this before it's essentially just protection of one's personal beliefs about psychology without more of a basis than assumption that their personal experience is universal, which is what the comment you're responding to is alluding to.
They didn't explicitly say they were trying to speak for all of humanity. I'm responding to the specific interpretation of it directly because as the comment you were responding to pointed out, it was ambiguous.
In typical HN fashion, the blog post is a run of the mill “hack” and instead of commenting on the article, a Hacker News instead word vomits their favorite IKEA furniture.
Guidelines explicitly mention this type of submissions:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
You think it is an interesting submission, but it isn't even a particularly relevant step in the ongoing soccer drama.
Calling Swift middle class and that they were possibly paycheck to paycheck is laughable.
Her father had a huge role to play in her success with his business deals and would largely be considered upper middle class if not higher. If anything, Taylor’s story reinforces the idea that families with wealth offer easier paths in life for their children.
I'm from Pennsylvania and a proverbial stone's throw from where Taylor Swift is also from. Trust me when I tell you that there's nothing "middle class" about her. Her parents are wealthy and this gave her a big boost into the entertainment industry, with lots of expensive coaching, music lessons, and trips to Nashville.
IIRC he worked for a large financial services company (Merrill Lynch?) and was able to transfer to the Nashville office so that Taylor could be closer to the music scene.
No offense, but "the idea that families with wealth offer easier paths in life for their children" - like isn't this obviously the case?
The amazing thing about America is that there are paths for those not as wealthy, but of course they are harder, as much as we might not want them to be... no?
The thread is about Taylor Swift, arguably the most successful music entertainer of all time. The parents with upper|middle class gave a boost, but you absolutely cannot buy this level of stardom and hasn't been replicated anywhere that I know of.
America is 100% the place to be rich or poor, if this really is your goal, from Dolly to Jackson or Swift.
Nobody is claiming this or ever should. The claim is that there is real proof of "success" from dirt poor to middle|upper class with these music entertainer examples. Nothing ever will be equal chance, and that shouldn't really be the goal [depending on how it's defined and implemented].
Sad state that of affairs when comments like this appear and have affirmative replies. Shows how socially unaware and one-dimensional a Hacker News is.
Competition continues to rise for limited higher education slots. The solution is not to get rid of the measurements we use to decide who should occupy those slots, it's to add more slots (and ideally, also create viable career/life opportunities that do not require a super-expensive education to begin with).
Can you explain how that's "socially unaware" or "one-dimensional"?
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