It is worse than “stupid”; we are rewarding mediocre (but good-looking) people..

Similar phenomenon in any scaled-up industry. Take the example of academia. Plenty of people without substance “making it” by purely aping the style of French philosophers, Wittgenstein, Feynman, and so on…

There was a chance, if they kept their soul and at what they were doing to make it big as authentic artists and scientists, but they would have to starve for a long time.

As for me, that’s why I am commenting on Hacker News instead of struggling on in grad school :)