A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
41–50 of 254 posts
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#42Earlier 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…
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.
Related - My friend group is a bunch of (predictably) nerds, and describing the times I want to keep working on an interesting tech problem for my employer as "wizarding" has been fairly successful. It's specifically a D&D reference, since what I'm usually doing is figuring out a new pattern ("spell") to add to my repertoire ("spellbook") that I can then use in many other situations.
It's... difficult, to convey to people what it's like having a job you like doing, working for people that treat you with respect, when they've pretty much only ever had jobs they didn't like and working for people that treated them poorly.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#43Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#44[deleted]
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#45Wow, 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.
> I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it The people I know who look down on modern academics, tend to dislike a set of changes that started happening in the mid-late sixties and ramped up through at least the 2010s. I'm not sure that's applicable to someone who got their PhD in 1946.
I am a bit too lazy to go back into Thiel talks and find the relevant quotes, however, if I recall correctly He talks about Einstein and similar physicists on how they were not compensated correctly and not being billionaires despite their huge contributions to the society and how they made wrong life choices.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#46I’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…
The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher. My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping f…
All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher. My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping f…
All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
being a hipster and being a socialist aren't the same.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#48Earlier 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.
There is an 80-year old astrophysicist at the local government research observatory here. The government doesn't pay him anymore, but he has his own grants. He is almost certainly the most productive person at the facility, running circles around people half his age.
And he does everything. Is a leader, guide and mentor for all the young scientists. He does serious intellectual work. Sometimes spends all day out in the sun, improving/fixing/maintaining telescopes. They held a conference in his honor last month.
The lesson is not to judge people's productivity using just their age as the gauge.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher. My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping f…
All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
I followed my left-leaning parents' advice to get paid for doing something I love. But luckily for me I love coding.
Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
being a hipster and being a socialist aren't the same.
Kinda hard to be either without being left-leaning