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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

#21

Post by lionsdan »

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.

Maybe "The Mortality Effects of Retirement" ? https://www.nber.org/bah/2018no1/mortality-effects-retiremen...

There are a couple other versions of this full paper

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24127/w241...

https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp_2016-7.pdf

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

#22

Post by saulpw »

mgaunard wrote: post #16
csomar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should make it illegal to work now?

Well it's unlikely he's as productive as he was in his prime.

Yeah, so? It's a lot more productive than a low-effort comment on HN.

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

#23

Post by lisper »

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…

It's not work that sucks. It's having to work that sucks.

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

#24

Post by DocSavage »

mgaunard wrote: post #16
csomar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should make it illegal to work now?

Well it's unlikely he's as productive as he was in his prime.

He's a professor at Caltech and did Nobel laureate-level work. He might be less productive than his prime and still be competitive with other professors, particularly since he brings deep understanding of the history of approaches in his field.

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

#25

Post by rufus_foreman »

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…

I think having choices is better than not having choices.

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

#26

Post by JamesAdir »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #10
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its not a value judgement on my peer group for wanting out of the workplace. Its more of a value judgement on the meaningless of so much of modern work. All the people I mentioned above are involved in work that’s probably more gratifying than making giant corporations richer. One is a playwright, one is a professor, one is a top pulmonologist in the country. I don’t know what their day to day entails, but I can’t im…

This. My friends' father is approaching 92. He worked in his auto repair shop until the age of 89. He was a pillar of the community, known everyone and their cars, and had generations of customer coming with cars to get them serviced.

I don't think he became a rich man from this. He had a house, raised his family, and that's all. He just enjoyed fixing cars.

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

#28

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Alex3917 wrote: post #12

Apropos of Oppenheimer coming out, the guy who invented the H-bomb currently works as a covid researcher. (Or at least an amateur one, not sure what he’s actually doing.)

Not sure who you are referring to since Teller and Ulam both died a while ago.

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

#29

Post by skepticATX »

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…

Perhaps it is more about the structure of the corporate workplace and less about how meaningful the work is?

I love writing code, I don't think I'll ever fully quit, but I also really want to retire early.

The problem is that corporate America is riddled with politics and inefficiencies, and offers little to no long term security for all but the most senior employees.

From what I've seen the people who never retire are in academia, medicine, own a business, or are just so accomplished that they effectively have corporate tenure.

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

#30

Post by [deleted] »

lisper wrote: post #23
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…

It's not work that sucks. It's having to work that sucks.

[deleted]
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