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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#461

Post by midjji »

louis___ wrote: post #169
midjji wrote: post #141

There is no doubt in my mind that happiness predicts and causes success. A simple predictor of long term success for everywhere I have worked is mean loud laughs - whining. An old psych study claims that one year after some great or terrible event, winning the lottery, or breaking your back. People are roughly as happy on average as they were before the event. It makes sense in many ways, happiness does not seem to c…

I'd suggest you try meditation. It does not bring you instant happiness, but slowly brings about a sense of wisdom and peace that really resembles long-term happiness

I have, and you are right. But after a few years I used that wisdom to conclude I prefer a low average with a few severe lows and rare few extreme highs. The latter are great, but mostly it just makes me feel more alive, instead of like some monk serenely walking towards oblivion.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#462

Post by fzzzy »

deltaonefour wrote: post #361
0F wrote: post #214

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that. When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological. I’ve been suffering super hard with depression r…

Change your environment. Move to another country and reinvent your identity. This can change your mindset. I think the misnomer is that mindset can be changed by willpower alone. They are wrong. Soldiers in the Vietnam war all did heroin. When they returned to the US people thought we'd have a heroin epidemic. Turns out the change in environment rewired there brains. Try it.

Abandon all of your friends and family?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#463

Post by czbond »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #452
xwdv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge,…

Almost swallowed my cuppa when you called React the latest and greatest

I know it's not, but I'm trying to draw a parallel to what many market devs would probably use and cause themselves more trouble for launching

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#464

Post by pracer »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #368
todorus wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like the motivation behind social security and UBI are different. It's nice to present a clean (modeled) plan, but it's something different when it hits reality. Social security now, is what UBI will look like a few decades down the road. Somebody will find a way to exploit UBI and that hole gets patched, then there's another patch and another. Not to speak of how different political ideologies will apply t…

Confused. If the income is universal (the 'U' in UBI) then what possible hack is there? That's the entire point really. Its why you can get rid of the bureaucracy, since there are no rules to exploit.

I'm confused too. How is that engineers here talking about UBI as a solution to this pressure to keep your job don't talk or consider how to pay that? Besides, when everyone has a base level of income, inflation came in play (as a consequence of supply and demand of goods) and then we go back to the same problem: getting a good life or just the basics to life becomes expensive even with UBI.

Also, I would recommend to read "Debunking Utopia" about the social system Nordic countries implemented in the past, some kind of model for solving the problem of living decently for people without possibilities and/or problems to make a living. The countries are slowly but steady reducing that system because it solves nothing and creates extra problems. With UBI, which is a bigger plan than the system Nordic countries had, you would end up with the same if not worse problems than they faced: people decide not to work for low wages or in jobs that are needed but unappealing (and I don't blame them, for sure), but because someone has to do the jobs, wages increase a lot, which in turn, increases the costs and price of those services. And, voila, we are at the beginning of the problem, were people are stressed or unhappy because they have to keep jobs they don't enjoy or like.

The difference is that the UBI would be the new penny, because you could not buy anything. Maybe with AI and automation we would get there, as robots would not complain or care.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#465

Post by pracer »

jklinger410 wrote: post #289
adwn wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "social security net" we have in Europe isn't perfect, though. You're comparing the imperfect reality of an actual situation (unemployment benefits) against the utopian fantasy of an imagined best case scenario (UBI) – of course the imagined scenario will come out on top. The real result of a UBI will almost certainly look less rosy than the picture you paint, just like every other plan once it gets implemented…

None of what you posted is serious criticism of UBI. > Prices rise due to increased consumer spending capability, to the point where you have to work again to get above the poverty line. Governments will respond to economic factors that diminish purchasing power in order to maintain the effectiveness of UBI, as a part of UBI. > Any realistic UBI is too low for people with special needs Diminished support for disabled…

Of course! government intervention in prices and supply and demand! How nobody thought about it before? Well, they did. And it failed spectacularly, as central planning of prices doesn't work due to the impossibility of getting all the information needed in time and the results of the analysis on time too in order to correct the market.

And as a proponent of UBI, YOU should explain how it would work, not the others. What financial tools or mechanisms would use a government to control the inflation or the rise in prices? I mean, even in the late Soviet Union had to look at capitalists countries to have an idea of the prices for basic products, because they coul not put a price that would make it work.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#466

Post by pracer »

jklinger410 wrote: post #406
adwn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments will respond to economic factors that diminish purchasing power in order to maintain the effectiveness of UBI, as a part of UBI. How? Using which political, economic, and financial tools? And what will be the side effects of those policies? That's exactly the point I was making: UBI proponents assume a downright utopian best-case scenario where everything works as planned (even though those plans are va…

As an opponent of UBI you should know what economic and financial tools would be available, and then explain why they wouldn't work, rather than act like they don't exist. It would help your counter argument.

No, is the other way around. You claim UBI would work and the problems some of us said are not real problems because it could be solved. So now, it is your turn to explain which mechanisms would avoid those problems.

Otherwise I could say "erasing money would make us live like aristocrats" without explaining how or why, and you should try to figure out why I could think that way, what kind of tools and mechanisms I thought of and after that, explaining why it would not work. Obviously, I could say those are not the right tools for my idea, so you have no real counter arguments, yada yada yada...

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#467

Post by pracer »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #265
adwn wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "social security net" we have in Europe isn't perfect, though. You're comparing the imperfect reality of an actual situation (unemployment benefits) against the utopian fantasy of an imagined best case scenario (UBI) – of course the imagined scenario will come out on top. The real result of a UBI will almost certainly look less rosy than the picture you paint, just like every other plan once it gets implemented…

> Prices rise due to increased consumer spending capability, to the point where you have to work again to get above the poverty line. By far this is the easiest to predict, but least likely to be addressed (by the proponents) concern I have with UBI. A social safety net shouldn’t be a hammock, as it is said. I’m concerned with AI and what happens when it’s pointless to hire people because a $100k robot can do the sam…

Totally agree with this. Otherwise, I don't see UBI solving anything, but creating new problems.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#468

Post by pracer »

newaccount74 wrote: post #438
aranelsurion wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the childless, and those who never want children? They pay for everyone else's children through their taxes. Money they could use elsewhere for their own needs or pleasure. -- To be clear, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I don't have population charts of Austria on my desk and I'm too lazy to Google it right now, I'd assume it tracks a similar trend to the rest of the Europe and it's slowin…

That's exactly why everyone should get UBI. Because then noone is left out. Some need it more than others, but you get it even if you don't need it or don't deserve it. I'm pretty sure people would be a lot more hesitant to complain about others getting UBI if they get it themselves.

There are already problems with this written in a comment above. I recall it would be like: do residents get it too? How long they need to be in the country to get the UBI? What about expats working in the country? and their kids? Should the kids get the money since birth or later?

And last one: as UBI comes from taxes (the state generates 0 money, just collect from others), what about those who decide not to work at all? How long until some of them stats asking for an increase in UBI because they cannot get a rent in the city?

It seems you have an idealistic view about human nature and that everyone is good and honest, not greedy, etc. The reality is not bad, but not so naive.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#469

Post by pracer »

adwn wrote: post #310
tomc1985 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are discounting the fact that in the second scenario you don't have to work . I don't know about y'all but that is my fantasy.

> I think you are discounting the fact that in the second scenario you don't have to work *for a while . Only very few people are able to save enough to never have to work again, even with a low standard of living.

If the plan is to live off the savings, probably not. The idea is to make some investments, either stocks or real estate (for renting, for example), and have the money work for you.

It is not easy in any case, that's for sure. Besides, I sometimes think if I could get there, I would work time to time in interesting projects.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#470

Post by kbelder »

suction wrote: post #456
goatsi wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only possible in the Victorian period for the wealthy elite. If you were born into a family that owned vast swaths of land or used to run slave plantations in the Caribbean you were set for life and could devote your life to less crude pursuits than the gain of capital. You would also have a ready built network of others with similar wealth and social expectations.

And not only in England - all of Europe's elite, in France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, spend their days sponsoring art and partying, basically. They were the ones paying all the famous composers, painters, etc. whose work we still marvel at today. The rise of the United States and its capitalist system brought an end to that. The businessman rose over the noble man, both in wealth as well as image.

Not the businessman, really; the _normal_ man. If we were back in the Victorian age, it's likely that you and I would be doomed to labor every day for meager sustenance, supporting the occasional noble and their leisure.
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