Life is Short • Hacker News Board

Re: Life is Short

#181

Post by sotojuan » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:27 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #48

vdnkh wrote: post #42

I'm (only) 23 and I've felt this for a while. I've been trying to leave my small no-name company for a higher calibre job in NYC for a few months now. I guess I'm lucky because I know what I want - but I need to wade through extreme amounts of bullshit to get there. I'm very efficient with my time but if I made every second worthwhile, I'd go nuts. Sometimes BS time (videogames, the pub, etc) are necessary.

> I'm very efficient with my time but if I made every second worthwhile, I'd go nuts. Sometimes BS time (videogames, the pub, etc) are necessary. Be careful with equating "unproductive" and bullshit. Society at large only cares about your productivity, and there is always pressure for you to do "productive" thing that advances some imaginary life ladder. From your POV and benefits, all those productive things might a…

Yeah. I don't consider playing video games for an hour or so to wind down "bullshit", provided they do not stop me from achieving my daily goals.

Not only are "unproductive" activities like film, video games, socializing/hanging out very enjoyable for me, but the most interesting people I've met do a lot of them. All in moderation.

Re: Life is Short

#182

Post by zappo2938 » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:28 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #125

zappo2938 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You are the music while the music lasts." --T. S. Eliot I am looking forward to twenty years from now when I will have time to read all the Kurt Vonnegut, T. S. Eliot, and Charles Bukowski I missed when I was younger. Fortunately, for now, I need to get some work done.

Read them now. They may even guide your future.

They guide my present.

"A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong." -- from Civil Disobedience by Henry Thoreau

That something I have to do is learning to write shell scripts at the moment.

Re: Life is Short

#183

Post by mattmcknight » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

cryoshon wrote: post #88

mildbow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people will pick fights with people who have an audience (like pg) just so they can borrow that audience for a short while. I'm not convinced that most of the aforementioned responses weren't motivated by that. So, given that almost anything pg will write/has written will get the same treatment, why would he play their game by bothering to defend himself? In fact, there is a pureness to insulating yourself fr…

If you propose a radical idea like "income inequality isn't bad", you need to expect a debate because the idea is far from proven. It sounds lame, but PG's essay is a stanza in a larger societal conversation, and conversations involve more than one person. To weigh in on one side invites response, especially if you're influential.

It certainly doesn't seem like a radical idea. Most of the responses started out with some variation of "well, we didn't mean literally all income inequality is bad. Obviously some income inequality is good. We just have too much. No one actually wants perfect income equality. pg is arguing against a strawman". In that sense, he successfully pointed out that the shorthand phrase "income inequality" causes equivocation when taken literally, where both sides of it are using to mean different things.

Unfortunately, most of the responses never made it much past identifying this confusion between the literal meaning of income inequality and what they meant, by saying we have "too much" income inequality. This is a tautology, and most responses failed to address the important question of "how much is too much?".

Most responses instead then focused on inventing or imagining a lot of things pg didn't say, things they thought he might be implying. pg responds by simplifying his essay, so that there is less stuff to read into it. People still try to read too much into it. pg gives up at responding to things he didn't say, no time for BS.

I think he added to the conversation a good point, that many people are sloppy when they refer to income inequality, and that it is not all bad, and that we need to be more precise when we talk about what the real problems are. However, people mostly ignored that...despite actually agreeing with what he actually said, they wanted to disagree with what they thought he said...

Re: Life is Short

#184

Post by crimsonalucard » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:30 AM UTC

You as pg's wife have vested interest in pg's reputation as your well-being is intrinsically tied with his reputation and well-being through marriage. Your words are not totally empty though as it is still supporting evidence, it is just not solid evidence and it is not something I will totally accept, unlike the op.

The probability for this essay to pop-up right after PG started a fire with his economic essay is just to small for there to be no connection. Could be, that this essay is in itself bullshit. People lie to themselves to hide truths that are painful but self evident. I think this essay could be such a lie.

Re: Life is Short

#185

Post by zeroonetwothree » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:31 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #102

treebeard901 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, how long does it really take to build a new PC? Maybe an hour for research and ordering parts... another two hours at most to put it together. Seems like a small investment for something you're going to use a lot.

Do you have kids? Finding time to use said built PC is as precious (in the early days of children) as the time spent researching and building. I read somewhere that new parents lose 6 months of sleep in the first 18 months of having a child. Provided this estimate is wildly inaccurate, new parents are still trying to catch up 2-3 years later.

I have two kids under two, and I've built two PCs in that time. It takes a few hours, but I enjoy it. It's relaxing to do stuff like that at the end of the day. My alternatives are watching TV or reading Hacker News, and I don't see how that's any better :).

Re: Life is Short

#186

Post by jey » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:33 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #106

anunumoose wrote: post #3

Mr Graham, I respect you and you've accomplished more that I will in my life, but I sincerely hope that this essay against "bullshit" and "arguing online" isn't you declaring that you'll be "bubbling" yourself after your last essay was met with wide disagreement. It's possible that sometimes, no matter how smart you are, your experiences have been limited in a way and you're missing a part of something everyone else…

Yeah, I'm curious why this essay was written. A week after having finished spending (evidently) quite a while writing two essays about economic inequality and your personal role in increasing society-wide inequality, why the sudden change to caring about spending time with your kids? And why the need to say this out loud? This essay strongly feels like rationalizing to oneself an unwillingness to engage with reasoned…

While it's possible that that caused pg to write this essay when he did, the position articulated in it is completely consistent with what he's been saying for a long time. And a glance at his Twitter feed makes it clear that he finds joy in being a dad and makes it a real priority.

Re: Life is Short

#187

Post by xiaoma » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:34 AM UTC

giaour wrote: post #160

xiaoma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the idea that variation in productivity leads to a variation in income a "breathtaking misunderstanding of poverty"? It's absolutely true that variation in productivity leads to a variation in income and it's also true technology acts as a lever and is increasing the variation in productivity between people. At no point did PG say anything like what you claim it "sounds like" he is saying. The essay was an arg…

Keeping in mind that PG is a venture capitalist -- as in, a financier -- how should we apply your interpretation of his essay to PG himself? His current job is incubating companies and then collecting returns, so are you saying that PG was arguing that he is the problem? Edit: s/rents/returns/

Rent collecting or rent-seeking behavior has a special meaning in economics. It's different from investing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

A an example of rent collecting would be if he used his wealth to lobby for a law requiring all start-ups to have a license which an organization he controlled granted (and charged for).

Re: Life is Short

#188

Post by giaour » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:34 AM UTC

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #90

jacobolus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graham’s essay that got dumped on was hardly an “original thought”. The whole “we rich people deserve to have 100x more than the poors because we’re pushing humanity forward” schtick is as old as civilization, and Graham’s version was a particularly lazy and poorly argued one.

That is a hostile interpretation of the essay.

PG claimed that some rich people "create wealth" and are thus entitled to it. He further argued that they're extra entitled to it because even if you eliminated all other sources of inequality, you couldn't stop them from creating more wealth for themselves: "creating wealth, as a source of economic inequality, is different from taking it—not just morally, but also practically, in the sense that it is harder to eradicate."

This is not a hostile but a literal interpretation of the essay and is the same viewpoint advanced by Atlas Shrugged.

Re: Life is Short

#189

Post by hellofunk » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:38 AM UTC

>And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.

But not if you had 8 private jets, or 8 cars, or 8 houses, or even 8 telephones. This is a rather arbitrary statement.

Re: Life is Short

#190

Post by billythornton5 » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 4:42 AM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #189

>And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was. But not if you had 8 private jets, or 8 cars, or 8 houses, or even 8 telephones. This is a rather arbitrary statement.

Get fucked faggot.