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The most precious resource is agency

simonsarris.substack.com

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Re: The most precious resource is agency

#191

Post by ThinkBeat »

The problem with the article is that it only uses examples of extra ordinary people.

Most people are not geniuses, they are average. You are not a genius.

Most people who flunk out or drop out of school do not become billionaires and neither will you.

Most people who decide to give it their all and become various forms of artists will never be famous, noticed no wealty or admired (Though on a nano scale you may have people who do)

By a large margin most restaurants / startups fail. You are not going to create the next unicorn.

yes this is not 100% accurate because it does happen. Much like buying a lotto ticket. People do win.

But you will not. (Almost entirely certain but again some do win).

People like Lonardo da Vinci are 1 in a billion. Maybe one in 2 billion.

People like Jobs and Zuckerberg are a lot more common. There are maybe 1000? 10.000? If we say 100.000 that is about 0.0013% of the world population. You are not in the 0.0013% (2019 estimate)

(Though you really need take into account the privilege accorded people based. on where they live, where they were born, family. If you win the lottery and grow up in a wealty educated country, you have a HUGE advantage.

Much like buying 1 lottery ticket drastically increases you chance of winning.

The point being nearly all people fail to be special. They will not be remembered by the grater society after their death. They will have made no huge impact on the world. They will never make it big.

Thus we should not focus our choices in life my making a few of the same choices that are advantageous for 1 in a billion.

We should not set our goals to achieve what they did.

We should focus on having a nice life, a good set of friends, enough money to live ok, having interesting hobbies Having a job that is ok. A safe and dry place to live. Have some love.

We should expect and respect that we will be average That is not a failure. That is what most likely will happen.

So set out to make the most of it.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#192

Post by TecoAndJix »

overthemoon wrote: post #188
sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. Man. One of the worst jobs I've ever had was working as a paralegal in a law office, but I had two friends there that made it so much fun. We'd send each other emails making fun of the attorneys (obviously a risk but the IT person was a friend), joking around, talking about the future, sending dumb memes and getting hammered after work. After that, I got m…

This whole thread makes me think of this comic (it's more cynical the older you get). "What do you want to be when you give up"?

https://joedator.com/cartoons/what-do-you-want-to-be-when-yo...

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#193

Post by leoedin »

agent008t wrote: post #190
sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just curious - why/how did you decide to have kids at 29? I can see mostly disadvantages to having children. Perhaps a nice highlights reel, but the daily grind sounds miserable. Having a cat seems like a much better deal. This sums up my sentiment: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/baby_vs_cat You seem to have a different opinion, so I wonder if it is just a matter of preference of if your perspective is very different…

I've got a 14 month year old. The daily grind is relentless. But it's not miserable. I've watched a tiny helpless creature turn into a curious little person who can walk around and play with things, who gives me big smiles and hugs when he sees me, who takes real joy in such stupid things (current obsession: bike helmets). It's hard to quantify why that's a good thing - much like to many of my friends the idea of voluntarily spending an evening writing software that's different to the stuff I do at work all day also seems completely crazy.

Sure, there's low points, but there's also high points every single day.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#194

Post by blacktriangle »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #152

The article raises some good points, but I also have some strong reservations. Take the examples, for instance. The author puts a lot of stock in what Nabokov and Da Vinci did themselves in their youth and calls this 'agency'. But at the same time, conveniently or inadvertently, the author doesn't expand and look at the broader picture in which those individuals lived and how that determined their lives. Nabokov was…

I think your line about rote excersizing allowing education to scale to millions is an often lost point when talking about the problems with modern education systems.

The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home has an interesting comment on this issue. The author, with a Masters in Education and years working in public schools, says that she often runs into parents who are worried they are not qualified to teach because they do not have formal training in big-E Education. Her response is that our Education training system, with all of its study of psychology and law, is not designed around educating a single child to their maximal potential, but about scaling up education so that a single teacher can teach a room of 40 children to a socially acceptable minimum. From this point of view professional educators have no advantage over the individual parent and may even bring along irrelevant habits from their formal training.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#195

Post by blacktriangle »

Aeolun wrote: post #49
soheil wrote: post #33

> Who could blame young adults for thinking that work is fake and meaningless if we prescribe fake and meaningless work for the first two decades of their existence? This does not mean schoolwork would have been more meaningful to them if they had less meaningless work in their earlier years. Most schoolwork is complete crap that is highly irrelevant and should never be taught unless there is strong interest on the p…

I believe there is something to be said for teaching people elementary math. But that doesn’t include anything at high-school level. Also, statistics and chance. Maybe it’d allow people to properly understand why we need to get vaccinated.

Then teach them biology and statistics, and the issues of regulatory capture so they learn why vaccines are causing an epidemic.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#196

Post by FourthProtocol »

I disagree. Strongly. The (our) most precious resource is time. Our time is finite, and thus constrains agency.

Like money, agency is (to a degree) within our reach. It can come and it can go. Time on the other hand, simply runs out. Time can be be taken, it can be given, and it can be squandered. It can never be returned (overtime today repaid by a vacation tomorrow is still time lost today).

If you're salaried you know exactly how much you're selling your time for. Real wealth is when ALL your time is yours to do with as you please. Agency therefore is simply one means to that end.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#197

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

vincentmarle wrote: post #165
mc32 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists just try to explain things. They don't make economics. The nation and enterprises big small in concert make an economic system. But, go back far enough in the past before nations and businesses and economics were still in play. It's like numbers, it exists even if we are ignorant of it.

Milton Friedman is a good example of an economist who actively tried to influence economic policy

[dead]

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#198

Post by csomar »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #118
onion2k wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You will never have FU money working a regular job.

That's just nonsense advice. The entire point of retirement savings is that at some point you can stop working. FU money is just about timing. You can change that timing. 1. Reduce outgoings. It's easier to have FU money if the amount you need to be able to say "FU" is smaller, because you've perfected the art of living on a little less than most. Most people's outgoings grow to meet their incomes: resist that. You d…

> Learn about compound returns a little more. $500 a month at 8% (typical market returns recently), and over 10 years gives you back $92k - a $32k profit on the $60k you put in.

You might want to update your models. If interest rates will remain at 0 (or get negative like in Europe), you'd be lucky with 0-1% return.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#199

Post by agent008t »

leoedin wrote: post #193
agent008t wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious - why/how did you decide to have kids at 29? I can see mostly disadvantages to having children. Perhaps a nice highlights reel, but the daily grind sounds miserable. Having a cat seems like a much better deal. This sums up my sentiment: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/baby_vs_cat You seem to have a different opinion, so I wonder if it is just a matter of preference of if your perspective is very different…

I've got a 14 month year old. The daily grind is relentless. But it's not miserable. I've watched a tiny helpless creature turn into a curious little person who can walk around and play with things, who gives me big smiles and hugs when he sees me, who takes real joy in such stupid things (current obsession: bike helmets). It's hard to quantify why that's a good thing - much like to many of my friends the idea of vol…

But how did you decide that this is what you wanted? It is a big, life-changing decision to make. Did you wake up one morning and think, 'you know what, having a child would really make my life a lot better'? Or had you been looking forward to becoming a parent from an early age, and were just looking for the right time?

E.g. I certainly didn't even think of it when I was 16 - I was dreaming of other things. Nothing much changed at 25. In my 30s, I am only considering it because it is part of the 'life script' and 'now or never' kind of situation, not because I can't wait to do it. Was it different for you? In an ideal world, I would maybe do it when I'm retired in my late 50s and 60s. I.e. I would prefer to skip children and go straight to grandchildren.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#200

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #76
Aunche wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you you shorten the timespan and only look at cultural changes since, say, the 1970s, though, it seems we've sacrificed a lot of what makes us human (community, interconnectedness, a sense of wonder about the future etc.) at the altar of free market economics Free market economics didn't tell people to spend less time with their families and more time consuming entertainment media. Moreover, the argument that we…

>Free market economics didn't tell people to spend less time with their families and more time consuming entertainment media. It literally did. I've probably seen tens of thousands of advertisements for games consoles, films and Netflix-style streaming services. >from the perspective of a white male Many women would disagree with you on the "male" part.

Free market economics is the idea of humans having a Right to Property. It isn't a thing, let alone capable of "telling" you something.

You're confusing advertising with a philosophical concept of freedom.

To think there's an alternative to freedom is frightening. Just the 20th century alone is chock full of examples of what happens when some people try to strip others of this natural Right.

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