livinginfear

I came here to complain about the same thing. I found the writing of the article to be terrible. So many tortured and silly phrases. That one in particular. Without paying taxes, all you'd have is the Camorra...

Also...

> "It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries—far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed..."

Fragile construct? Terrible writing.

I think I'm missing something here. What did he have to gain from doing this? I understand that he was able to incur large amounts of debt under someone else's identity, but at that point he effectively was Woods. He was married under that name, he was employed under that name... If the authorities ever came looking for the Woods that incurred all the debt, it would be him that paid.

I appreciate your response. I apologise if my initial response seemed too hostile. I've seen the claim made a handful of times on Hacker News that Tinder somehow games the results to maximise engagement. Admittedly I've been waiting since the last thread about Tinder to refute this point. I apologise for targeting you in doing so.

Your conviction is in contradiction with perhaps the most strongly held compulsion of everyone, everywhere, or that has ever existed. That alone should give reason to question it. You sound like you're motivated by spite.

No one hoards women. If the top 10% of men had sexual access to more than one woman at a time, without committing to any of them in a monogamous relationship, that alone would be enough to change the dating landscape significantly. Assuming that the women involved weren't in a different relationship at the time.

Social customs surrounding sex inside marriage, or even sex inside a relationship have changed over time. Successful men have sexual access to more than one woman (If that's what they want). Sure, eventually people settle down and pair off, but before that happens the market is completely different.

Have you considered talking to a therapist about this?

> removing all incentive for the platform to function correctly in the user's interest, much like any big platform nowadays.

People keep saying this, but it's just not true. Tinder does function in many people's interest. I had a lot of success using Tinder, and eventually met my wife on there. People keep implying there's some kind of hidden algorithm at play that somehow pairs you up with people who are "Okay, but not great" to keep you hooked on the app. How the hell would it manage such an amazing feat?

Lots of tech people seem to dislike Tinder. I want to present an argument in favour of the 'swipe and match' model: If your personality is 'stronger' than your appearance, in terms of attracting a partner, this model is actually highly optimal. Think of optimising a database query to maximise selectivity: You want to narrow the search space as quickly as possible. If finding a partner who is physically attracted to you is hard, then everyone who actually does match with you has cleared that hurdle. Lots of tech people seem to idealise OkCupid, but it's really a better use of your effort to swipe/match than sending personalised messages to many people on OkCupid, only for a large amount of recipients to reject you on account of your appearance.

Can anyone predict a potential benefit to society that might come from this research? I can only think of bad things coming from this. It's like a major step down the staircase towards dystopia.

Everyone was up in arms the other day about a developer who had to take a personality test for a job at FedEx. Imagine what this leads to.

Thank you for sharing that link, and your story. Your father led an extraordinary life.

> George Lucas didn’t have billions of merchandising revenue in mind...

Doesn't copyright stop other people from making billions in merchandising revenue off of George Lucas' ideas without his consent?

> We don’t really need Nth Star Wars sequel powered by those extra profits.

Without a copyrighted C3PO, he could start turning up in just about anyone's derivative works. There could be horrible Star wars sequels forever, or TV ads with C3PO selling household cleaning products.