Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s certainly the most valuable natural resource a person is born with, by far, but I’d argue there’s also technically space and energy there, too. The space a baby consumes is almost valueless, and the energy output is also (though thoughts of babies being harvested in The Matrix come to mind).
You haven’t seen a baby consume space in your significant others life? Guessing not a woman? That actually sacrifices personal space (breasts) for baby? They consume and change boobies, and mommies time! Man mommy rant
Time is the only real currency we have
131–140 of 313 posts
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#132The rest of the article goes on to deliver, frankly an opinionated way for young developers to act to maximise on their time.
I really think this is short sighted and honestly all of that can be boiled down to having the ability to scale yourself effectively.
It’s basically about Kaizen, continuous improvement, but perhaps ironically that takes time.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#133The title is abuse (or misunderstanding) of the word "currency". Currency is an accounting mechanism. Time is, well, something else. It's an incredibly valuable commodity, a necessary (but not sufficient) ingredient for any activity and hence any kind of progress, and one which you cannot make more of and so is worth using wisely. But comparing it to currency is a category error.
Which brings me to my second point: it seems intuitively obvious that if you want to use time wisely you should use it efficiently, and typing faster is more efficient than typing slower. But this overlooks a crucial point: typing faster can only produce a linear improvement in your efficiency. If you type twice as fast, you will be able to type twice as many characters in the same amount of time. But there is another dynamic in play: if you type slowly, then the cost of typing will become more painfully evident to you, and that can motivate you to think about ways to type less, and that can lead to exponential improvements in typing efficiency.
I have been coding for forty-one years. I never learned proper touch-typing, and so my typing has always been quite slow by coder standards. As a result, typing boilerplate is extremely painful for me, and I try to avoid it at all costs. That drove me to learn Lisp, and that has led me to a coding style where I only need a tiny fraction of the code that, say, a Java programmer needs to do the same job. So yes, I type 2x slower, but I only have to type 0.1x the amount of code for a net win of 5x. And the techniques that lead me to that win can be applied recursively. There are domains in which I can get 100x or 1000x improvements (i.e. 1 line of Lisp code is the equivalent of 1000 lines of Java or C). I never would have been motivated to learn those techniques if I were able to type fast.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
They introduced these at the grocery store my wife and I frequent. We used them just once. As long as the lines aren't long, it seems just as quick to have the 2 checkout people (1 cashier, 1 bagger) do the work in a batch at the end, as opposed to fiddling around with bagging as you go.
There are no baggers in Sweden though.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#135Parameters of the universe are currency. Time is one of them, space (or area on earth’s surface) is another, and energy is a third. How these three things are used is what generates value to human beings. Each of the fundamental items can be traded individually, but money is used as a proxy for value . The most common trade is when a person can trade their time and their body’s energy. They produce some level of valu…
You're using "energy" as a pseudoscientific gloss. A human being provides an extremely meager amount of energy in the physics sense of the word. That energy could be purchased much more cheaply. The economic value of human labor is more closely tied to human intelligence/dexterity. More reasons to think your comment is more about making the reader feel the insight is deep: there are other important conserved quantiti…
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#136I agree with the sentiment of this article, but strongly disagree with the title, and the advice to learn to type fast. The title is abuse (or misunderstanding) of the word "currency". Currency is an accounting mechanism. Time is, well, something else. It's an incredibly valuable commodity, a necessary (but not sufficient) ingredient for any activity and hence any kind of progress, and one which you cannot make more…
Name the part of the car that enables it to go fast: the brakes.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#137I’ve often wondered what society would look like if optimized for saving people time. Just some quick thoughts: - Crosswalks and traffic lights would become non-existent and replaced with more pedestrian overpasses, turning/merging lanes, and other designs. Waiting for the light to change is a huge waste of time for both pedestrians and drivers. It seems like we might get this eventually with self-driving cars. - Min…
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're using "energy" as a pseudoscientific gloss. A human being provides an extremely meager amount of energy in the physics sense of the word. That energy could be purchased much more cheaply. The economic value of human labor is more closely tied to human intelligence/dexterity. More reasons to think your comment is more about making the reader feel the insight is deep: there are other important conserved quantiti…
No I’m not. I’m talking about energy quite literally. The chemical energy in food is converted into work output. Of course there are more efficient ways to harness energy, but not to power a human body. We use those more efficient method where we can, hence automation and machinery and tools. This is all reflected in the abstraction layer of money.
> The most common trade is when a person can trade their time and their body’s energy.
They are not "trading their body's energy". They a performing a task which requires innumerable inputs, among them energy, vitamins, oxygen, correct ambient temperatures, training, tools, etc. Energy has a preferred fundamental status in physics but it does not have such a status in this economic transaction. There is no reason to emphasize over any of the other inputs. You are bringing it up because of the aura attached to it in in physics.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t use them because I just assume it’s going to be a personal information harvest fest, and it won’t work as advertised anyway. Like most other software-driven things these days.
Unless you pay with cash at the grocery store, they are already harvesting it. I’m surprised they are not selling it to the health insurance companies to monitor your habits.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are many pedestrian overpasses in some big cities (like the one I live in) but it's not so simple, because then you have to climb up stairs, which takes more time... you walk more steps add some heavy duty sun and people rather wait in the shade down below rather than climb up. Also pedestrian overpasses tend to be really narrow (read: uncomfortable) Also, why should we be so stingy with time? it's better (IMHO…
Ideally, the road would be at a lower level than the sidewalk. Then you wouldn’t need to spend time climbing up the bridge, and it wouldn’t be a big deal to have multiple wide bridges. Think Venice, except roads instead of canals. Presumably engineering tech will also get better and cheaper and some sort of rapid outdoor escalator or elevator could also solve the problem. Regarding stinginess: I understand where you’…