
Why Accountants are Dull and Guitarists are Glamorous - mixmax
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/EndOfIntellectualProperty?skin=print.pattern
======
sho
The article espouses a nice theory, but I can think of some pretty big holes,
especially relating to differing cultures and indeed our own historical
experience. Musicians were not always the revered gods they are today. Back in
16th century England, I can't imagine the neighbourhood bard being more of a
chick-puller than, say, the rich merchant.

Culture plays a huge part too. I was speaking to one of my Chinese friends the
other day and was struck by something she said about the popular boys in her
school. I asked what made the boys popular - she replied that, amongst other
desirable traits, they got good grades. Needless to say this does not apply in
any western society I've been a member of. Rather the opposite, in fact.

In a society edging towards post-scarcity, perhaps the desirability of
conspicuous displays of wasted energy, like being "cool" or whatever, move to
the fore. But in a society still climbing the developmental ladder, I just
don't see it. Not to say that the theory lacks any merit at all - the
conspicuous waste thing could well be a big factor, like how people buy
ridiculously expensive watches just to show they can. But I don't see how it
"evolved" when even the west has been like this for only half a century or so.

A more likely explanation for the sexual allure of popular musicians is their
perceived wealth, exciting and interesting lives, boasting rights over ones'
friends, and over society in general. The same thing can be seen, mapped into
a different context, in the Chinese experience - good grades at school = good
university = good job = all of the above benefits. I would posit this is a
more likely explanation than the "evolved waste" theory.

~~~
buggy_code
As a Chinese American guy with great grades, I believe your friend is full of
BS (unless she's "Chinese" in that she actually lives in China). In HS /
College, I've never seen good grades = popularity.

~~~
sho
Yes, she's from Shanghai. I have no reason to think she is lying.

~~~
leecho0
I think it has lots to do with cultural values. I went to elementary school in
Taiwan for 4 years. In an asian education environment, you need to take exams
after exams to get into good schools to get a good job. Not to say it isn't
the same in the states, but it's on a different level. In junior high school,
it isn't uncommon to see kids stay at school for 14 hours plus to study months
on end. Most schools have rankings for midterms/finals, and some give out a
slap on the wrist for every point under 90 (at least when I went to school) to
reinforce the importance of studying.

So being bad academically is more like losing a school wide competition,
rather than the American system of being able to shrug it off as something you
don't care about. In Asian countries, they don't buy the idea that people can
be talented at different things, it's more a black and white "you're smart or
you're not" thing. So of course people like winners more than losers.

So back to the point in the article.. I don't think it's about the actual
utility of a person's skill, but the perceived successfulness within the
context of societal values.

Which brings up an interesting point: other than using the societal values,
how else will you know how successful a person is when real success is often
based on luck and isn't apparent until ~30?

------
menloparkbum
The initial premise is wrong. Charm, looks and money are more powerful in the
mating game than what someone does for a living. Poor, ugly, and boring
artists and musicians don't get laid very often, even if they are good at what
they do. A hot, rich bank manager is going to pull more trim than any
financially struggling, mediocre looking artist. The stark reality is that the
counter groups he mentioned, engineers and programmers (I know nothing about
bank managers) are comprised of people who often take pride in the fact that
they aren't good looking or charming and can be quite deluded about their
potential for becoming rich.

His other point, that the reprap is going to make manufacturing obsolete, is
very wishful thinking. The current commercial 3-D printers aren't good enough
to produce anything other than models. The materials also cost $25 per cubic
inch. Printing out a replica of a thermos costs $700. Costs are going to have
to plummet and someone is going to need to invent a magical material that can
automatically scrub out all the striations in the printed surfaces.

~~~
gruseom
_Poor, ugly, and boring artists and musicians don't get laid very often, even
if they are good at what they do._

Bum, I like most of your comments but this one is so empirically false it's
ridiculous (if you take out the incongruent "boring").

~~~
menloparkbum
I was using boring to be the opposite of charming. Maybe boorish is a better
word.

However, although it is counterintuitive, I stand my ground. My job (until I
stopped doing it) involved a weird intersection of art and technology. My
roommates (when I had them) have all been artists. I know every gallery owner
in San Francisco, I help set up friend's shows. Art is sort of "my thing"
outside of programming. Thus I feel like I know a little bit about that world.
The guys simply are not getting any. Sexual frustration is probably one of the
driving factors for most contemporary art. The better the art, the less sex
the artist is having. At a certain point the art becomes good enough to result
in an odd sort of fame and fortune and then the artist may get to have sex
again. However it's still less frequent than you'd think just because visual
art does not carry the same cultural cachet as music, movies, pro wrestling or
reality TV.

I know less about musicians but I used to be a really good jazz pianist and
that got me nowhere with women. In fact it's taken years of heavy drinking to
expunge all knowledge of jazz and piano from my system, and it still surfaces
from time to time, rendering me involuntarily celibate. Have you been to a
jazz show lately? It's all nerdy dudes. You'll have better luck with women by
making inappropriate presentations at a ruby programming conference than you
will by being a jazz musician. I snuck out to a jazz show last weekend and
when I got home I lied to my girlfriend and told her I had met up with an ex
for a drink. I knew she'd find that more forgivable. Of course, when people
say musician these days they don't mean a jazz musician, they mean the Jonas
Brothers and Dave Matthews. Sure, those guys are getting laid, probably even
with similarly aged fans. But for every famous pop musician there are
thousands of real musicians slaving away at their instrument with little hope
of future procreation. Just read some Zed Shaw, he supposedly practices guitar
8 hours a day and you can tell by the tone of his rants that he hasn't had sex
in almost a decade.

Now what about that statistic that said people who majored in studio art were
0% virgins? I'll grant that artists who go to art school definitely do get
laid... while they are at art school. It's well established that art school
chicks are the easiest women on the planet. I taught a "programming for
artists" type course at an art school once and not a class session went by
when I wasn't at least vaguely propositioned, and I was the instructor. Even
the ugly fat dude who is supremely awesome at airbrushing dragons will get
laid ONCE at art school. However, that's only because the messed up female
artist who makes hand puppets out of her own hair decided to use the sexual
encounter as the final project for her conceptual art elective. Once all these
people get out of art school, the women all date gallery owners and lawyers
and the guys never have sex again.

~~~
TriinT
You should write a book. Seriously. I love that rare blend of guilt,
frustration and bitterness. Hackers and painters. Nerds and artists. Neither
one nor the other is destined to spawn. They may be lucky enough to leave
their tiny mark on the planet with their ideas & creations, but not with their
genes.

~~~
plinkplonk
"You should write a book. Seriously. I love that rare blend of guilt,
frustration and bitterness. "

heh heh! Just my 2 cents, but being some kind of musician does get you laid in
my experience. I am a very mediocre musician (I have no "instinct" for music I
play very "mathematically", but hey I enjoy the playing) and am not handsome
by any means, but my guitar playing (sucky as it is) _has_ got me (and the
other members of my rather ad hoc band) laid regularly. I think of being
somewhat good at music as a "hack" to take care of the getting laid part
(serious relationships are a different story).. And to be somewhat at music
(vs being _really_ good at it) takes only a year or so of practice so it is a
good investment. So if all you want to do is get laid without too much effort,
picking up a musical instrument maybe worth your while. The guitar is easy
(compared to, say, the violin). form some kind of band and play at parties.

As I said, I am not discounting or challenging your (menloparkbum's)
experience. just my 2 cents. YMMV

~~~
gaius
The music itself is irrelevant. If you're on stage performing _anything_ and
people are paying attention, then you are the de-facto Alpha Male, and that
trumps every other factor for attractiveness to females (for short-term
relationships/one-night stands).

------
wallflower
I always thought some musicians were sexually magnetic because women felt an
emotional connection with the musician, probably through their songs.

Some musicians can make music that makes people feel better. Music can affect
us at the most powerful level, the emotional level.

I saw Adam Sandler play at my university once and you would not believe how
many beautiful college women were coming up to him after the show, wanting
just a fragment of a moment of his attention.

The Hanukkah song. His trademark. It was scary to see almost everyone cheer
and sing along as loud as they could. People were connecting their lives to
his maybe-not-so-silly song.

I witnessed similar things with "Hootie and the Blowfish" and the Dave
Matthews Band. I never understood "Backstreet Boys" and NKOTB. But maybe
musicians are a societally-accepted way for women to objectify and idealize
men.

~~~
ananthrk
_But maybe musicians are a societally-accepted way for women to objectify and
idealize men._

Well said. I wish I could upmod you twice for this sentence alone!

------
kingkawn
Peacock feathers do not equate to attractiveness for peafowls. It is an
assumption that was accepted without testing. Does this relate to the HN
posting about how hackers are horrible at statistics?

[http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/03/26/peacock-feathers-
fe...](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/03/26/peacock-feathers-females.html)

------
discojesus
_Self-copying 3D printers will make it an order of magnitude cheaper again,
and will finally kill the idea of intellectual property. But - just as with
computers and music - they will also expand creativity, because people don't
create things just to make money; the real reason they create things is to get
noticed by other people with whom they want to have children..._

Right, because large pharmaceutical companies spend millions in researching
and developing drugs that increase the quality of peoples' lives just to
impress chicks.

(Viagra aside...) :P

If you "kill intellectual property," you will kill many (not _all_ , as the
article writer so astutely mentioned, but many) incentives. Very few people or
organizations are going to subsidize a few hundred million dollars worth of
R&D on a drug or invention if it is just going to be given away...

------
sown
You know what kind of accounting is glamorous?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_accounting>

------
j1o1h1n
Bah - selfish gene again. People give away ideas because we are social animals
that survive through our ability to co-operate and recognise that it is
advantageous to share. Except for those evil selfish Peter Chamberlen brothers
of forceps fame.

