181–190 of 213 posts
What every salary-person has to show for it: a life lived; bills paid; food on the table; health; a roof over your head; a body not ravaged and damaged by hard labor; the ability to relax and have some entertainment in the evening; a place to sleep; comfort; relative stability; the ability to make a living using mostly just your brain. Yes, perspective is important, and I’m not saying one should not strive to make mo…
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This metaphor really has nothing to do with car restoration. He assumes in the example the car would be worth more.
And that assumption is fundamentally incorrect, and not just coincidentally.
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But if it does not work he should have a better example. Still remember the paper about the externality of bee farm and apple farm. Obvious issue of apple not paid the bee farm but no such issue - all paid and in fact have contract what kind of bees etc. A bad economic example is bad example.
> Obvious issue of apple not paid the bee farm but no such issue - all paid and in fact have contract what kind of bees etc. What are you trying to say? This sentence is nonsense.
But allegedly it turns out that in at least some cases where you have beekeepers and apple farmers near to one another they do trade with one another -- with e.g. contracts stipulating what sort of bees the beekeepers are going to keep -- and the market does do its thing, and the result is efficient allocation of resources.
Here's a paper by Steven Cheung about bees and apples in the Pacific Northwest. It claims (I haven't checked any of its empirical claims or its theoretical analysis): https://www.jstor.org/stable/724823
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Maybe that’s exactly the issue. Statistically no one will leave behind such a legacy as Pythagoras, but we judge ourselves by the success of those who have anyway.
One out of a few billion. Who is to say you cannot be that one?
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It's a way of coping with our limited lifespan. The thought of leaving something behind gives people a sense of comfort that they may live on in some capacity when they pass. The truth is, even if you do something impactful, future generations will often take it for granted or overturn your work in making progress. No one escapes the bleak nature of our existence. No one.
Pythagoras would like to have a word with you.
Jordan Peterson has come up with this rule: "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today". Aside all the controversy that surrounds him, this is really deep and solid advice IMO. You don't live the life to impress others, so who cares if you have to show "something", you did a tones of projects, you got knowledge and experience from those projects, that's what you can (and should) sho…
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Pretty sure that Jordan Peterson didn't come up with that.
I can't claim that he did or did not, I quoted him simply as I first heard it from him in this form. And it's not really important who come up with the idea first, in some way it is really an obvious thing, but we all forget about it too often. With the rise of Internet we stopped comparing ourselves with people around us locally, instead now you compare yourself with the whole damn planet. Instead of competing with…
Now you could look at others too but when everyone around you talks about the same few people over and over, it's hard not to think that "unless I'm as good as them, I don't matter".
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And that assumption is fundamentally incorrect, and not just coincidentally.
I think it’s coincidental. Are you suggesting that attempts to create value almost always consume more value than they create? The entire economy is proof this is false.
It makes me wonder, if we were to go full on Jurassic Park and clone some creature from 100mya, would it be able to thrive in today's environment? Would it have sufficient immunity, and be able to digest meat/plants from the present day? Even the alligators have evolved a bit since then.
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I think it’s coincidental. Are you suggesting that attempts to create value almost always consume more value than they create? The entire economy is proof this is false.
No, but in the case of fixing up an old car, it is not just a poorly chosen example. Fixing up older equipment when the industry of parts has moved on, is fundamentally more expensive than going with what the industry is currently manufacturing. It's easy to see a product in isolation and see that it needs a "$3 part" to be "as good as new", without taking into account that products are part of an elaborate, dynamic,…
Historically, the atmosphere was thicker and had a higher percentage of oxygen. Those dragonflies with two foot wingspans could not survive in the current atmosphere. Insects don't have lungs per se and the current lower atmospheric pressure and lower oxygen levels means you would need to basically give them their own pressure suit.
My general understanding is the same would be true for dinosaurs: Their lung design and large size would mean they would need life support to survive at all.
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I like this. I very much like this. I feel what you described matches the problem almost perfectly. Modern economy seems to be transmuting all kind of work into labor. In particular, in white-collar work is something that abstracts you almost completely away from reality. You come in, do whatever arbitrary thing you're asked to, and get money for it, which you can exchange to services of the modern society. Any contr…
> so there's almost nothing you can point to and say "I made that". Really? I'd hazard a guess that most of Hacker News could point to the websites and apps they made and say they made that. What else would be on a developer or software engineer's CV? Same with many other white collar jobs. Designers and media creators/artists can easily point out what they've worked on, as can writers and journalists, or scientists…
You've never worked on a project where you contributed a handful of pieces to a million piece puzzle, of which your contribution is nearly unnoticeable?
And can you say "I made that" when legally, and in the eyes of most, SoftwareCompany Inc "made" it?