Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#211

Post by mkramlich » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 2:23 AM UTC

martey wrote: post #44

[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

The point of the article is not that men should not be ambitious, but that their self-image should not rely on how much money they make. You might consider it "ambitious" if a woman spends a significant amount of time, money, and effort on her appearance in order to look like a celebrity or supermodel, but others would call it "dumb and dangerous."

A man's self-image should not rely on how much money he has.

But a woman's image of that man will often depend a great deal on how much money he has. Not all the time, and it's not the only factor, of course, but to say it's not a big or frequent factor in the real world is to deny reality. (Not assuming you think that, more that the OA's message came close to making this mistake.)

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#212

Post by dnsworks » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 3:12 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #141

hyperbovine wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 27-year old, part-time consultant, it's not so theoretical :-) I agree I could never support a family living the way I do, but raising a family is at odds with maximizing your free time anyways.

I don't really know what to say about this. It makes me totally face_plain. In my opinion, a goal of maximizing your personal free time at the expense of family is completely crazy. You should raise a family because its joys are immense and awesome, more immense and awesome than anything involving a huge chunk of money and/or free time (i.e. boredom, which more often than not does not end well), and I would instantly…

Actually, as a divorced man, I prefer the empty house.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#213

Post by ramchip » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 3:57 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #188

rick888 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness." and how do you suppose we do that? Freedom to me means: 1) not having to work for anyone 2) having enough time to do what I want 3) traveling around the world You need money to do all of these. To get money, you need to create something that people are willing to pay for, which…

Sounds like you've never tried this freedom that you speak of. I've been doing the 3 things on your list for the better part of 10 years now, and I've never been wealthy. 3. Living on the road is no more expensive than living anywhere else. Less usually, since there's no rent or car payment involved. I can live large in Thailand for $500/month. 2. Living on the beach, I once calculated that I needed to bill one day p…

Aren't you extremely wealthy compared to the average Thai?

It sounds interesting for someone in your kind of situation, but there's a lot of assumptions that are not universals: being fairly rich (or having skills worth a lot) off the start, being limited to cheap countries (the parent poster talked about going around the world, which sounds a lot more expensive than and quite different from staying on a beach in Thailand), having skills that can be applied via teleworking and short contracts, etc.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#214

Post by jquery » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 4:03 AM UTC

nickpinkston wrote: post #176

jquery wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic is tautologous. Evolution seeks no such things. Evolution just happens and is random. It's quite likely we have many traits which are not advantageous for survival, especially in our modern world. Appealing to evolutionary psychology is an intellectual and argumentative reductionist shortcut.

Evolution is not random - ask any biologist. Random mutations are actively selected for traits strongly favoring better species survival. While certainly not a panecea, such strong drives as success, power, etc. that we're discussing are in no way accidental such as optical illusions and the like. To make an argument like this is to misunderstand evolution entirely.

> Evolution is not random - ask any biologist.

First you say this. Then you say this:

> Random mutations are [...]

See, you're arguing semantics. Yes, evolutionary pressures force natural selection, extracting order out of the fundamental randomness, but the mutations of evolution are random. My point is we don't know which pressures forced which particular traits, so to draw specific conclusions about modern behavior based on evolutionary psychology is more in the realm of speculation than actual science. It's all so much guessing and assumption.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#215

Post by jquery » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 4:08 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #181

aswanson wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The reductionism is just too easy in these arguments with every behavior contorted to project onto a sexual / survival basis. There is no quarter given for things simply being what they are.

Very few things are what they are when it comes to how we work, because until very recently (compared to the total history of humans), the environment in which we lived was intensely competitive and brutal, and anything that didn't aid survival/propagation that required energy was strongly selected against over generations. There are many things for which the evolutionary cause is not obvious to us, but it doesn't ma…

> There are many things for which the evolutionary cause is not obvious to us, but it doesn't make sense that there would just be lots of random truly superfluous aspects to us.

Sure it does. Look at our appendix. Look at all the diseases out there--almost every person has at least one almost-certainly non-advantageous yet obvious ailment. One can speculate that it would be advantageous in scenario A or situation B, but that's all it is, is speculation. Maybe something we have now was advantageous 5000 years ago, but we don't necessarily know why, nor is it useful to describe modern behavior in such terms.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#216

Post by tensor » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 4:41 AM UTC

terra_t wrote: post #3

Well, there's also the issue that the economy refuses to provide honest reliable jobs for honest reliable people... If your dad or mom is a professor, maybe you can get a tenure track job, but if you're anybody else you've got take what's in the marketplace... And "playing it safe" means the odds are 100% that you'll get screwed... The only career path that seems possible of providing any security of all is an "all i…

Tenure is not all it's cracked up to be. Today you are looking at being 40 before you acquire tenure. Sure, some people get it earlier, but I believe on average the numbers come out to roughly 40 or late 30's.

In those prime years before 40 will see very poor income given your education level and expenses, and a whole lot of stress and overtime spent in meeting all the requirements. Big publication list, talks, grants, scholarships, postdocs, teaching experience, taking on grad students, and perhaps even committees.

You really need to love the lifestyle, and not money, to stick it through to tenure.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#217

Post by kragen » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 7:07 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #118

seldo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me cynical, but I don't think 18-year-old Bill Gates had the Gates Foundation in mind when he started trampling over the competition in his rise to the top. He wanted to be rich and powerful (because frankly, with the looks and alleged personality of Bill Gates, how else was he going to get a date?). The Gates Foundation, worthy as it is, was something he only realized he wanted after he had achieved everything…

> "(because frankly, with the looks and alleged personality of Bill Gates, how else was he going to get a date?)" Honestly, that's probably a better description of Zuck than it is Gates. If Bill Gates' goal was to get rich and fuck women, I doubt he'd have settled down so quickly with another coder who worked in his company. You know, more like supermodels and actresses and such.

I doubt he'd have settled down so quickly with another coder who worked in his company.

Gates founded Micro-Soft in 1976. He married Melinda French in 1994, 18 years later. She was a manager, not a technical lead, and she was primarily working on "information products" like Encarta, not software products.

However, I agree that it's unlikely that getting a date was his motive.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#218

Post by _delirium » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 8:08 AM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #189

potatolicious wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sympathy upvote - not sure why you got downvoted for a perfectly cogent argument. You are of course absolutely right - if what you're after is the resort hotel experience, jet-setting around the world, fine-dining and boutique shopping then yes, you do need to be exceedingly wealthy. But IMHO travel is so much more meaningful than that, and in fact I don't see much of a point to the jet-set lifestyle at all. A trendy…

> But IMHO travel is so much more meaningful than that, and in fact I don't see much of a point to the jet-set lifestyle at all. As you travel, you slowly get friends around the world who are doing amazing things you'd like to see. I wish I could see my grandmother back in Boston right now, go to my best friend's birthday party in Los Angeles, visit Beijing to catch up with a couple old friends and talk business, and…

I have friends and family around the world, but somehow that makes me even more opposed to this quick-trip view of travel. I have a life and family in the United States, and a life and family in Greece, and I tend to not like mixing them a lot. Visiting Greece for a weekend feels hugely disrespectful to me--- I tend to visit for a week at the minimum, preferably 2+ weeks. It's a context switch, and I find that short trips fail to fully implement the switch, instead treating it as just another location, like any other location, rather than getting into the local language, mood, culture, etc. Even just linguistically, it takes me at least a week to get comfortable using Greek as an everyday language again. You really need some time to properly switch contexts and treat it as somewhere genuinely different, imo.

That, and the jet-setting lifestyle would alienate me from friends and family: if I were the type of person who flew in to Greece for a 3-day weekend, I would no longer be one of them.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#219

Post by 10ren » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 8:32 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #96

tansey wrote: post #74

Imagine you're in a big slot machine tournament with 150 competitors. Each player gets to pull one of two machines. One machine pays $1 every time. The other machine pays an average of $0 but has a variance of $50. Everyone gets 1 pull, the scores are tallied, and the bottom half of the players are out, and a new group is brought in to replace them. Which machine would you pull? The evidence[1] is pretty clear that i…

Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number of offspring.

With the number of official offspring.

Sadly, many studies have shown that a surprisingly high percentage of children are not the biological children of their fathers. IIRC, around 5%. And it's well known that many high-profile/successful men have many affairs.

This is fits in with evolutionary pressures.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#220

Post by evanrmurphy » Sun, Aug 15, 2010, 10:39 AM UTC

jazzdev wrote: post #197

rick888 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is that what freedom means? it sounds like you're condition of freedom is to have money, and its only freedom as long as you can pay for it. not really that free." I suppose I could live in a cardboard box on the side of the road and quit my job, but I don't think it would be a very nice existence. Having enough money to quit your job, buy a nice house, support a family, and travel is the ultimate freedom. You don't…

is that what freedom means? I'm halfway through Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" (recommended by someone on HN) and he has an interesting definition of freedom. Freedom is spending more time seeking pleasure than avoiding pain. I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's the gist of his definition. Good book.

Freedom is spending more time seeking pleasure than avoiding pain.

Very interesting definition. Thanks for sharing that.

It vaguely reminds me of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, in which he explores how the right to certain opportunities may be as essential to freedom as the right to property.

The connection may only be superficial, but that was a good book too. (Sen was a Nobel Prize winner.)