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A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

latimes.com

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Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#11

Post by RangerScience »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #5
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. The older generations cling to positions of power and refuse to make room for the newer generations, so it is upon them to find meaning and purpose through other avenues. Retiring seems important for allowing younger generations to take their place. But if all you have is your work and you've l…

There’s a big difference between having a purpose in your life, something you love doing, that happens to be done at a work place; and being an employee.

IMHO it is absolutely a good thing to dream of a life which values things outside of employment.

We just happen to use the same word - “work” - for both kinds of situations.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#13

Post by dctoedt »

mrtksn wrote: post #4

Wow, such a winner: Long, healthy life full of accomplishments within a community where he is liked and he likes them back. I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it, would he consider Rudy Marcus a "winner", maybe bigger one than himself? I recall something about Thiel looking down on the life choices and motivations of scientists.

> Peter Tail

Friendly amendment: You mean Peter Thiel, presumably?

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#14

Post by lordnacho »

paulcole wrote: post #9
robotnikman wrote: post #3

I feel like one of the secrets to living longer is to have a reason to get up every day, a purpose to fulfill in life. And this guy certainly has one.

I mean it’s not that interesting to write about the 100 year olds who have no purpose and just putter around. Might be skewing your conclusions a bit.

Someone mentioned a paper a while ago examining whether retirement was actually what caused death, rather than retirement being caused by ill health. Perhaps someone here can link it.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#18

Post by sigmoid10 »

lordnacho wrote: post #14
paulcole wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s not that interesting to write about the 100 year olds who have no purpose and just putter around. Might be skewing your conclusions a bit.

Someone mentioned a paper a while ago examining whether retirement was actually what caused death, rather than retirement being caused by ill health. Perhaps someone here can link it.

This study [1] seems to suggest that there are quite a few negative effects that can be associated with retirement itself rather than age alone. But the effects are rather small and it also seems like they can be offset by maintaining a social life and physical exercise after retirement. So yeah, being alone on the couch all day is bad for physical and mental health. But that holds for any age, retirement only exacerbates it for some people.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27751397

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#19

Post by moonchrome »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #5
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. The older generations cling to positions of power and refuse to make room for the newer generations, so it is upon them to find meaning and purpose through other avenues. Retiring seems important for allowing younger generations to take their place. But if all you have is your work and you've l…

> Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family.

Friends and family are great reprieve between working hours and obligations. I wouldn't want that to be the only thing going on. Stay at home moms and retired people around me are not the image of fulfilment.

The few retired people I've met that were happy and engaging are the kind that didn't stop working past retirement.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#20

Post by mrtksn »

dctoedt wrote: post #13
mrtksn wrote: post #4

Wow, such a winner: Long, healthy life full of accomplishments within a community where he is liked and he likes them back. I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it, would he consider Rudy Marcus a "winner", maybe bigger one than himself? I recall something about Thiel looking down on the life choices and motivations of scientists.

> Peter Tail Friendly amendment: You mean Peter Thiel , presumably?

Right, Autocorrect keeps correcting it wrongly. It's the SV billionaire from the PayPal mafia.
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