People were thinking about the difference between life and non-life way before robots. Philosophers/biologists needed to come up with a definition that could get just the right subset of a fire, a rock, a tree, an animal, a human, a virus, etc.
Pretty easy to have a strong risk tolerance when you come from a wealthy background and have an elite degree on your resume. Also, there's very little risk to starting a company these days.
Forecasted ROIs are meaningless considering major is more important for ROI than where you went to school. Harvey Mudd isn't a better university than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton just because its graduates go almost exclusively into what is currently a lucrative field. (MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd are good because of their rigor, which is unrelated.) As it stands, a forecasted ROI ranking would almost certainly be topped by miscellaneous dev bootcamps because of their cost structure.
The point is that the words don't really have a useful meaning anymore. It is especially important in technical topics to have terms with some specific meaning.
If your goal is to get a PhD you should probably focus on finding some way to do research style work. Research is a lot different than taking online courses.
How many of the greatest films of all time was he supposed to make to be considered a genius? Also, he was pretty accomplished in radio and theatre in addition to film.
I know you're trying to be edgy, but it's actually objective fact that 14th century music still being enjoyed by millions in the 21st century is among the least ephemeral music.
You are right that the current state won't last long. Computer science enrollments are skyrocketing, and businesses and government alike are pushing hard for even more people to flood the industry.
First-rate people hire people that went to the same group of first-rate schools they did. Also, why wouldn't second-rate people hire second-raters? According to that quote, no one hires second-raters. It really doesn't make much sense.
I don't see it as something morally wrong. I think the point is more that you're less likely to succeed if you're just doing it because you see other start-ups getting rich. So you start a company just to start a company, instead of having an actually good idea that you're passionate about.