The most precious resource is agency • Hacker News Board

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#141

Post by curtainsforus » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

qqtt wrote: post #117

ryloric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed what the parent poster might be saying, it's not about "Bubbles of Comfort". I too live in one of those countries like you put it, and while I live in the bubble to some extent, I know people who've never used internet or a smartphone/computer in their entire lives and live a decently happy stress-free life. Their lives are not nasty or brutish, they're not leading less-fulfilling lives as a result…

If you want to live a nomadic disconnected lifestyle (with limited access to "technocratic" things like health care and education), you can do that almost anywhere, including Western countries. Again, the central aspect of this topic is agency. Do people choose to live that way, where they live it? And how many would choose a different lifestyle if given the same opportunities as everybody else? Yes, you can live a h…

Not without people to do it with. And the people that the parent poster is talking about aren't nomads.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#142

Post by xwolfi » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

overgard wrote: post #18

One of the biggest tragedies isn't just that the childhood is wasted, but that many people never learn to have agency once it is available. I'm not saying you need to start your own business or anything like that, but it seems like most people live their lives never questioning the scripts that are given to them. The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically…

I went and did the other side, living nontraditionally and trying to be what I wanted. I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vague…

I smiled at "changing the world". It's very funny we think about the world as if it needed changing, had the ability to change in a lifetime or that it was remotely interested in our own opinion of it.

It's probable most people in the world, the majority being Chinese and Indian, would strongly disagree with what you think it should be. If not, it's the africans and the europeans who would.

I have a huge amount of agency in my life, simply because I can live with little money, enjoy obeying and building stuff in teams, can be useful and accept sacrifice, so I moved across the world to work in investment banks and it's striking how similar yet different people are, and hows silly 20-something are in speaking of changing "the world".

Something I hear a lot around me that I also apply a lot is to "pick your battles". There are things that are pointless to fight over, others you can and must. And you see the frustrated spinning around behind you on detail why you slowly but surely build the bigger picture.

Start by changing your hometown, already a feat :D

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#143

Post by tester34 » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

School sucks for individuals, but for the whole system there's no significantly better solution (at least that I'm aware of), sadly.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#144

Post by curtainsforus » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #128

Aeolun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just raise them as you would a child? Give them a body, upgrade it so they grow every few years. Lets see where we end up.

> Just raise them as you would a child? That could only work even in theory if you've programmed in all the innate behaviours/desires human children have. And in practice raising superintelligent children who can clone themselves and rewrite their minds is not a thing we know how to do.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to create artificial intelligences, though, which was Dreyfus' point.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#145

Post by christophergs » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

Shades of PG's "Why Nerds are Unpopular" [1]

> "As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#146

Post by watwut » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:41 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #25

overgard wrote: post #18

One of the biggest tragedies isn't just that the childhood is wasted, but that many people never learn to have agency once it is available. I'm not saying you need to start your own business or anything like that, but it seems like most people live their lives never questioning the scripts that are given to them. The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically…

For all but the last ~150 years or so of human existence, meaning and purpose came almost exclusively from (1) raising a family and (2) religion. I think the cruelest tragedy of modernity is that we no longer teach our children that life can actually be quite rewarding and fulfilling outside of one’s profession.

That is quite literally not true. Ypu need just a brief look at history or antiquity to see that.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#147

Post by ElFitz » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #125

indigochill wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, if circumstances allow. Have no debt, make a software engineer's salary, and live on half of it. Put the rest in mutual funds. Repeat for some number of years and your investments' passive income eventually surpasses your budget, at which point you're free from the rat race. The part people find unpalatable (and sometimes impossible, depending on circumstances) is the "live on half of it" part (but even if h…

That's a great goal, but you're confusing simply having money with having FU money. They're not the same. The "FU" bit is important. It means something. To be honest, even your strategy there sounds tremendously flawed because you're assuming that you'll even want to live that life. What happens if you meet someone, get married, and have a couple of kids after you 'retire'? Suddenly your retirement fund is nowhere ne…

> Is your 'live on the interest from half the earnings of 11 years as an engineer' going to cover $500k in 20 years time?

Most people won’t ever be able to do that, no matter how much they save of what they earn.

Also, cost of living is another huge factor here. Housing isn’t always as expensive as it is in the Bay Area, and some countries have good (even sometimes great) free education. Heck, in some, you are paid to attend the top schools.

FU money isn’t about being rich. It’s about being able to keep living the life you want even in the event you were to tell your boss or the world to fuck off.

So… in this… everyone’s goal would be different, and yours is not his?

If my kids wanted to go to a half-million dollars university, I’d just burst out laughing and ask them how they expect to pay for that. If they were to reply that they expected me to, I’d probably laugh them out of the room.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#148

Post by ElFitz » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #128

Aeolun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just raise them as you would a child? Give them a body, upgrade it so they grow every few years. Lets see where we end up.

> Just raise them as you would a child? That could only work even in theory if you've programmed in all the innate behaviours/desires human children have. And in practice raising superintelligent children who can clone themselves and rewrite their minds is not a thing we know how to do.

> And in practice raising superintelligent children who can clone themselves and rewrite their minds is not a thing we know how to do.

We could learn to. Through trial and error.

Even though a too big mistake means creating a psychopathic superinterlligent child who can clone itself, rewrite turns mind and easily hack the few American ICBMs not protected by the wondrous safety of floppy disks.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#149

Post by Sander_Marechal » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 10:08 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #25

overgard wrote: post #18

One of the biggest tragedies isn't just that the childhood is wasted, but that many people never learn to have agency once it is available. I'm not saying you need to start your own business or anything like that, but it seems like most people live their lives never questioning the scripts that are given to them. The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically…

For all but the last ~150 years or so of human existence, meaning and purpose came almost exclusively from (1) raising a family and (2) religion. I think the cruelest tragedy of modernity is that we no longer teach our children that life can actually be quite rewarding and fulfilling outside of one’s profession.

I am convinced that (organised) religion has done far more harm to the world than good.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#150

Post by ak39 » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

There is no default life script. Everyone is a myth legend. A hero. You can't fault an opinion piece like the posted article, but there's a chink in this thinking. Such opinions - give agency early and it will yield dividends not just for the individual but for humanity as a whole appeals to our most primal human conundrum: our sense of purpose and our destiny in life. The idea of the one individual making geometrically disproportionate impact for all humanity is mythologised. And it's an error. The flip-side of this myth is the ugly face that if we as a society stop producing such myth legends (the original author claims it might have stopped after ca 1968) we are failing as humanity, or worse that if you do not become that myth-legend you are unworthy of respect, or dignity. This is a terrible way to look at things. I do agree about the author's powerful comment that kids (adolescents) today are hardly considered useful for any form of vocational education outside the cookie-cut education systems. But can you orchestrate this paradigm like the CCP did in the late 60s/70s forcing urban kids to learn farming as part of their education? Or is it a naturally existing societal affordance to enable such evolution in kids?

There are many unspoken mythical legends living today, huddled in their numbered and anonymous cubicles. There are many unknown engineers who've done crucial work within their own boundaries of "scripted life" to prevent bridges from collapsing or payroll runs to be corrupted (just in time). No one hears about them. No one celebrates them. But there are billions of us on this planet achieving myth-level brilliance daily just by being responsible parents. Or just by being simply kind to fellow humans.

There is no default scripted life.

Edited: added "Or just by being simply kind to fellow humans."