I didn’t see the pattern either and had to look it up. Apparently, you can rewrite 1 + 1/(1+2) + 1/(1+2+3)+… as 2(1 - 1/2 + 1/2 - 1/3 +…+1/n - 1/(n + 1)) = 2(1 - 1/(n + 1))
From there, the limit of 2 is obvious, but I guess you just have to build up intuition with infinite sums to see the reformulation.
Not trying to defend the decision, but as far as I know, the reasoning is that if you charge significantly less than you could, it might be because you have other undisclosed agreements with the tenants, like them doing some extra chores for you, repairing the flat or something else. This way, you could avoid a lot of taxes. The sentence also doesn’t seem to be a fine in the narrow sense, but rather a demand of additional taxes. If I’m not mistaken, it’s perfectly legal to charge very little for a flat, but you still have to pay taxes as if you would have rented it out for a regular price.
I think quite some people heard of the concept of different kinds of infinity, but don’t know much about how these are defined. That’s why this meme should be inverted, as thinking the infinities described here are the same size is the intuitive answer when you either know nothing or quite something about the definition whereas knowing just a little bit can easily lead you to the wrong answer.
As the described in the wikipedia article in the top level comment, the thing that matters is whether you can construct a mapping (or more precisely, a bijection) from one set to the other. If so, the sets/infinities are of the same “size”.
I think the text tries to make the point that it doesn’t work not because but despite him being black. The argument Perry and others make in this case is not one in the form of material benefits but rather moral ones. A member of a marginalized group makes it big, which is supposed to inspire others from this group. The point is that this form of trickle down economics works just as badly as the “regular” one, which is hardly at all.
I might have made this up as well, but I have a very distinct memory of basically suddenly becoming conscious at around being 3 years old. I woke up from a nap and for a couple hours or possibly days, I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming or the world around me was actually real. After a couple of days of waking up in the same environment, I eventually accepted this to be reality. I of course don’t remember everything from this point on in my life, but it really felt like the first time I was able to explicitly think about stuff.