The most precious resource is agency • Hacker News Board

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#251

Post by ativzzz » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

combatentropy wrote: post #30

idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

You should let your child have lots and lots of freedom to do whatever he wants, even if that is often watching television or whatever. Ideally you would have a lot of outdoor places for him to roam --- whether that be a large amount of land that you live on or just a green neighborhood. This is based on my own experience, because I was allowed to manage my free time. When I got out of school, I had a chore or two, b…

Depends on the person. I spent every minute of free time I had playing video games as a kid. I had a lot of free time since my parents were very laid back and gave it to me. I wish my parents were more strict and forced me to do other things, literally anything else.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#252

Post by borroka » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

asimjalis wrote: post #235

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…

I can totally relate to this. The most valuable thing I have retained from all of my previous jobs has been the relationships many of which are ongoing. Once I realized this it occurred to me that instead of trying to optimize for accomplishment I need to optimize for these relationships. This changes the game. This also explains an economic paradox. Why does our compensation go up when we switch jobs? The reason is…

"This also explains an economic paradox. Why does our compensation go up when we switch jobs?"

Is it a paradox only if you take for true the existence homo or company economicus

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#253

Post by theandrewbailey » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

roland35 wrote: post #182

idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

Parent here with 2 boys, ages 6 and 2 :). I have some good news for you if you're worried about planning! I was wondering the same things before they were born, but it turns out that children will develop their own interests and are much happier digging into what they are interested in. The best thing you can do is help support their interests! They will also see what you are doing and want to follow along too. Don't…

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#254

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #17

bedobi wrote: post #8

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like my schooling was mostly a giant waste of my time and energy. I was waaaay ahead in subjects I liked, because those things I learned myself out of innate interest. Rather than the system accommodating and encouraging being ahead, in those subjects I…

Daycare. The point is that school is, first and foremost, a daycare. All the talk about education is just marketing.

It's not, though. Kids with stay-at-home parents are still required to go to school. Compulsory education is near universal at this point, but at least in the American tradition, the first publicly-funded, mandatory schools were mostly for instilling community values into kids, and this was in communities where women weren't even allowed to work outside the home. Kids were actually expected to learn reading and math at home before they even started school.

History isn't the present, but the reason most laws exist today is just inertia, not some principled stand of the legislative bodies that might otherwise be able to repeal them.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#255

Post by Godel_unicode » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

pgustafs wrote: post #234

ThinkBeat wrote: post #191

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…

I vehemently disagree. Not with your explicit reasoning, but with the implicit assumption that there is some 1-dimensional metric of specialness or greatness that we're all being measured against. The great thing about life is that it's so multidimensional. If you want to be the richest person in the world, of course you're setting yourself up for failure. But if you want to be the best version of yourself, you can e…

You said you disagree, and then you repeated their point with different words.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#256

Post by bjornsing » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #109

bedobi wrote: post #8

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like my schooling was mostly a giant waste of my time and energy. I was waaaay ahead in subjects I liked, because those things I learned myself out of innate interest. Rather than the system accommodating and encouraging being ahead, in those subjects I…

> It really begs the question, what's the point? To educate the highest number of children possible, as a reasonable cost, to assure a steady supply of capable labor year after year. Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention.

> Sadly, this results in low-salaried teachers, cookie-cutter teaching plans, and teacher-to-student ratios that are not adequate to cater to the outliers that need attention.

In my view/experience the real outliers need only to not be held back (implicitly by culture, or explicitly).

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#257

Post by sumtechguy » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

bkirkby wrote: post #126

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.

15 years ago a young engineer i worked with overheard me say "getting rich is a pretty easy formula if you are patient." he came to me later and asked me to expound. i told him "the formula is: spend less than you make and invest the left over. you do that long enough and you'll become wealthy." i also told him "from what i can tell, it will happen so gradually that you'll barely notice a difference in your lifestyle…

I have followed this and am on track to having a nice sum when I decide to retire. I look at that pile. Divide it by what I make now per year. That number is the number I could coast and not have to 'worry' about money with 0 change in lifestyle. I then add that to my current age and figure out where I should run out when I am old. That number is currently not far enough along for my liking. I am also doing ridiculously better than many of my peers on this. As many do not even understand that many companies give you money to put money into a 401k.

Realistically though back when being a millionaire meant 'retire immediately' things were much cheaper. You could get a car for 3-4k. Now a similar car would be 30-40k. You could say 'oh but that car is so much better'. That is true, but this 10x is mostly true across most goods I have found. I think many do not realize what a number inflation did on everyone in the late 70s and very early 80s. So many of these 'sayings' are still around but their numbers off by a factor of 10.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#258

Post by borroka » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:31 PM 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…

The obsession of Americans with "how do you pay for your kids to go to college?" is truly bizarre to my non-US eyes (I am living in the US). They are adults when they go to college, there are merit-based scholarships, sports scholarships, they can work some, maybe I could loan some money. If you cannot afford Harvard or Stanford, don't go to either. I did not, I did fine, and I would not contribute with my money to those institutions.

I got zero money from my parents after I turned 17, and the bare minimum before that, and I would have felt inadequate as a young adult if I had taken money from them, which they did not have in any case. Exception exists (e.g. disabilities).

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#259

Post by atatatat » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #40

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…

Amen. I’m a sober alcoholic, and if I died tomorrow I’d be content knowing that I did at least one worthwhile thing with the time I had: I helped another alcoholic, a 23 year old man who tried to kill himself shortly before I met him, get sober and start working and move out of his mom’s basement and stand up straight and look other people in the eyes and then go and help a few other people stop drinking. Not a singl…

Thank you.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#260

Post by atatatat » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 3:32 PM 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…

With the right attitude, the amount of money you have in your pocket can be "FU" money.