How to Escape the Modern Rat Race • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#51

Post by hinkley » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

mgolawala wrote: post #19

georgeecollins wrote: post #9

I really like this point of view, but it is important to point out that the bar for happiness in life and relationships (as a proxy for "reproduction) is way below our aspirations. You aren't really trying to be like Instagram influenceres because of your "selfish gene". Your "selfish gene" would do better directing you toward fundamentalist communities where reproductive rates are higher. No, you are being influence…

Hasn't Human nature itself been crafted by evolutionary forces? It is conceivable that our ancestors that were more laid back and content were more likely to be out competed by those who were hungry for power and prestige. In fact, as an example, isn't there some often quoted statistic about half a percentage of all living humans having descended from Genghis Khan?

I had a libertarian coworker who didn't understand why people didn't just vote with their feet on all of this stuff.

The closest I got to explaining it to him is that Advertising as a profession in the US is the successor to WWII psychological warfare. People are being paid to use your instincts and your worst impulses against you. All day. Every day. It started out weaponized, and now it's industrialized.

To opt out requires a level of enlightenment (literally and figuratively) that few invest in, and some doubt they could achieve even if it were a priority.

We have black hat hackers attacking our brains, and only occasionally do the white hat hackers get any sort of publicity, and some of those have less substance but are more approachable than the real experts. These people are almost always standing on the shoulders of giants, and thus their work feels derivative (eg, Marie Kondo), which is off-putting to people. Their style-over-substance makes them in effect hyper-palatable people, which is a form of cognitive dissonance with the message.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#52

Post by saiya-jin » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

khalilravanna wrote: post #50

I’m so happy I made the mistake of buying a BMW with the money from my first software engineering job. I learned in my 20s that money buys very little short term happiness. And then you’re stuck with a loan and a “cool” car that you’ve normalized into “just another car”. So happy I made that mistake early and now I can puerilely laugh with a bit of schadenfreude whenever I see an expensive car knowing the owner loved…

There is some middle path - ie buying that beamer, few years old, for say 25% of the original price. Not because of some immaturity, need to compensate for something missing in life, just a desire to have a good car that does on the road exactly what one wants, whenever one wants and covers all one needs from it. Sticking with it for 10+ years, having it serviced at good unofficial mechanic, so it costs +-same as crappy cars people buy new for much higher prices. Which means simply not caring about the cost, in face of overall added value to life.

It brings long term happiness. Satisfaction. Its just great. One of best investment in quality of life I ever did.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#53

Post by mgolawala » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #30

mgolawala wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't Human nature itself been crafted by evolutionary forces? It is conceivable that our ancestors that were more laid back and content were more likely to be out competed by those who were hungry for power and prestige. In fact, as an example, isn't there some often quoted statistic about half a percentage of all living humans having descended from Genghis Khan?

Human nature may be crafted by evolutionary forces, but that doesn't mean that human behavious do is always in service of biological evolution. The idea about people coming from Genghis Khan is unrepresentative in a couple ways. First, that a large number of people have a common ancestor does not mean that the common ancestor was in fact Genghis Khan. It could have been someone else associated with the Mongol conques…

Fair point. I see what you are saying. I was focusing on the innate human nature side of things, but I have to agree, the behavior that actually manifests through conspicuous consumption is being heavily influenced by media and advertising.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#54

Post by analyte123 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

war1025 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you are being influenced by media, which convinces you that things are a proxy for happiness and good relationships The Fight Club line has always really resonated with me: "We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" Live below your means. Tune out from all the consumerism. Suddenly you find that you have enough savings built up that you could support yourself for multiple years without working. Now you ar…

This works without kids. If you have kids, then typically you desire to give them the best available options, and that then means living in higher priced neighborhoods with higher achieving student populations. And then your kid befriends another kid whose parents are doctors/lawyers/engineers/business owners, and they want to don vacation or camp with them and you need to pony up a few hundred or thousand dollars an…

Agreed. The sort of critique in this article feels a little stale. It's easy to convince someone that buying luxury cars is wasteful status-signaling. It's not so easy to convince me that raising kids in a safe neighborhood with good schools is wasteful, or that it is getting any cheaper to do so, or the consequences of failing to do so are getting any better.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#55

Post by icandoit » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #28

georgeecollins wrote: post #9

I really like this point of view, but it is important to point out that the bar for happiness in life and relationships (as a proxy for "reproduction) is way below our aspirations. You aren't really trying to be like Instagram influenceres because of your "selfish gene". Your "selfish gene" would do better directing you toward fundamentalist communities where reproductive rates are higher. No, you are being influence…

> No, you are being influenced by media, which convinces you that things are a proxy for happiness and good relationships The Fight Club line has always really resonated with me: "We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" Live below your means. Tune out from all the consumerism. Suddenly you find that you have enough savings built up that you could support yourself for multiple years without working. Now you ar…

Think of this equation:

happiness = things_you_have - things_you_want

It's much easier to reduce your desires than it is to buy new stuff. Your resources are scarce and your desires infinite. If you can convince yourself you have everything you want already nothing can touch you. Write down a list of reasons to not buy the new hotness.

Stoicism has more to say on this, for example negative visualization. If you feel upset with your spouse or kids imagine them being hit by a car and dying in your arms. Car or truck? Did the car stop, or speed off? Burial or cremation? What will you say to your family, their friends? Manufacture details and explore their emotional impact. The frustration just evaporates.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#56

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

khalilravanna wrote: post #43

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works without kids. If you have kids, then typically you desire to give them the best available options, and that then means living in higher priced neighborhoods with higher achieving student populations. And then your kid befriends another kid whose parents are doctors/lawyers/engineers/business owners, and they want to don vacation or camp with them and you need to pony up a few hundred or thousand dollars an…

Imo it’s the same thing. It all goes back to the individual, the parent in this case. The parent needs to teach and model to the kids that a focus on wealth and material “stuff” is meaningless and leads to unhappiness. Not saying that’s easy—-it’s hard to teach yourself and live these values alone—- but it’s an extension of the same idea. It’s spreading the values out to your own personal community starting with your…

The goal is to surround your kid with the other kids who will be as good of an influence as possible. I'm not saying you won't find kids like that everywhere, but generally, the higher the income of the parents (up to a point), the likelier the parents are to have taught their kids to value education and other things that will help them succeed.

And so to maximize this probability, people stretch themselves to live in neighborhoods bidding against other people also stretching themselves to live in the "best" neighborhood they can afford.

I teach my kids that it might be a poor ROI to work for material stuff, but I do teach them the importance of wealth in being able to obtain resources in the future.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#57

Post by noisem4ker » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

khalilravanna wrote: post #50

I’m so happy I made the mistake of buying a BMW with the money from my first software engineering job. I learned in my 20s that money buys very little short term happiness. And then you’re stuck with a loan and a “cool” car that you’ve normalized into “just another car”. So happy I made that mistake early and now I can puerilely laugh with a bit of schadenfreude whenever I see an expensive car knowing the owner loved…

The decay slope of happiness depends on personality. I still feel glad I splurged for expensive stuff I really liked ten years ago, and still like now. Part of it is emotional inertia, but it's probably also correlated with the fact I don't do impulse buying, am wary of advertisements and thoroughly research prior to parting with money.

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#58

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

st1x7 wrote: post #48

It's ironic that the image of a rat race that came into my head after reading the title was exactly what the author proposes as an alternative at the end of the article - comparing yourself to others and constantly trying to upgrade your skills and yourself.

Bingo!

The "rat race" has already adjusted for insufficient means of material improvement and has now entered the "knowledge economy" mode whereby now the signalling revolves around virtue and moralizing.

TikTok has basically captured this entire new mode of engaging signaling, you can't open that app and swipe your feed without hearing someone lecture/preach/opine at you about some perceived collective wrong doing.

TikTok buries the button that allows you to "dislike" content and so curate your feed to better enable this economy of head-nodding and head-turning.

An entire platform that largely consists of people signalling virtues (how to be black; how to be white; how to not be a simp; how to not be one of _those_ people, etc, etc). I mean look at any of the "No Nuance November" content on TikTok

It's funny, IG was just materialist imagery accompanied by platitudes of self-liberation but TikTok realized people desire to stoke their moral indignation as a means of coping with increasing complexity of the world

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#59

Post by 1996 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

claudiulodro wrote: post #49

1996 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This works without kids. If you have kids, then typically you desire to give them the best available options Let me quote you one of my favorite posts: "You say 'I can't do XYZ because I have kids and a mortgage?' - well maybe you should have thought about the long term ramifications of your actions."

Long term ramifications like the continued survival of the human race or a working economy when you're old and retired? It's in society's best interest that a reasonable amount of children are born each year.

You certainly know the concept of externalities, like pollution. If you don't, it's like how fixing your car exhaust brings you very little personal benefits. But if nobody did, smog would make your life miserable.

Kids are just the same - except the other way around!

So personally, when I'm old and retired, I plan to depend on the work your kids (and the kids of other people who also generously considered the "continued survival of the human race") while in the meantime maximizing the benefits that come from the freedom of not having kids.

You may not like this freeloader spirit, and governments generally encourage people to have kids by various means ("working economy, GDP growth and all that are important after all!).

But as it's not illegal to "abstain" from the rat race, I do not care much :)

Re: How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

#60

Post by khalilravanna » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #52

khalilravanna wrote: post #50

I’m so happy I made the mistake of buying a BMW with the money from my first software engineering job. I learned in my 20s that money buys very little short term happiness. And then you’re stuck with a loan and a “cool” car that you’ve normalized into “just another car”. So happy I made that mistake early and now I can puerilely laugh with a bit of schadenfreude whenever I see an expensive car knowing the owner loved…

There is some middle path - ie buying that beamer, few years old, for say 25% of the original price. Not because of some immaturity, need to compensate for something missing in life, just a desire to have a good car that does on the road exactly what one wants, whenever one wants and covers all one needs from it. Sticking with it for 10+ years, having it serviced at good unofficial mechanic, so it costs +-same as cra…

Oh absolutely. That BMW was a used 2011 328i with a manual transmission. Great car and if I had kept it like you suggest I would have been smart. But I had to buy some other dumb used cars before I learned my lesson. Now I’m rocking a used ‘08 M3 to drive into the ground. Put 50k miles on it. Looking forward to the next 100k.