151–160 of 174 posts
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I resonate with your comment but completely reject the conclusion. Death is inevitable, who cares how high you climbed on a ladder you didn't define? Why is that meaningful? Money is nice, dont get me wrong, but to value the climbing itself?
Doing hard things is tautologically good.
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Bullshit. Many things are hard because they shouldn't be done and systems have evolved to make the thing hard for good reason.
I see you’ve probably never spent time in a large, ossified bureaucracy. There are plenty of things in the world that are hard only because they’ve been made difficult by people who either don’t want them done, don’t understand, or greatly benefit from their not being done, but would be a fantastic idea to do. Such as get a new coffee maker for our office, but it would take two years, multiple committees, and an elec…
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The safety, if that’s what you wish to attain, lies in living as frugally as you can while vesting your RSUs for as long as you can bear, and GTFO of the rat race.
This is a lie for smooth brains who think they’ve figured out the “hack” to the system. Usually resulting in living as if you worked a menial job not having a family and essentially working hard to not achieve anything. Then mostly living the rest of your life consuming your own smugness.
- riding a bike instead of driving (makes you fitter, hotter, increases mating potential)
- cooking food (impressive to friends and potential mates, makes you and your family healthier)
- building furniture, tech stuff, whatever (your stuff is customized to your own tastes and situation)
- playing music in a band (get paid for a Saturday night out instead of paying for it)
- helping friends and asking friends for help in return (builds social ties)
Hot take: being clueless is better than these essays make it out to be. The examples are all really socially annoying people (Michael, Dwight) but I've known some pretty nice and pleasant middle managers who had generally great lives. They probably could've gotten all of that with less work but perfectly hitting the Pareto frontier is quite difficult.
According to this theory, the Clueless are the ones who suffer the most. They invest most, they care about made up goals nobody else cares about, they play by rules everyone else thinks are dumb, they feel loyal to a company that doesn't love them back, and because they are more invested in the company, they are the ones who feel the loss the most when the sociopaths pull the rug. I think it's actually the Losers who…
I liked that model a lot, but it made me a bit sad too. All my life I was bad at being a loser, somehow I never really felt I fit in. I thought this was because of psychopathic tendencies or something. However, after reading this I realized there was another option and I was just clueless.
In that sense, the real “governance mechanism” isn’t internal management at all but the external Darwinian churn of the market.
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Okay if not American Slavery what's your benchmark? Having to do things you don't want? I'm being serious. You use extreme language and hyperbole so it's hard to take you seriously. Do you think your situation is akin to like, someone being held hostage in a call center and forced to scam people? Where is the line, in your mind?
Because it is a hard line to draw, doesn't mean I'm not being serious. You are objecting to using the word 'slave' as a descriptor, except in extreme cases. But the term slave is often used in culture for a lot of things. Being a 'slave to your addictions', 'a slave to your desires', 'an office slave', 'wage slave'. etc.... I'll spare you a list of hundreds of examples. I think since you are the one objecting, then y…
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Because it is a hard line to draw, doesn't mean I'm not being serious. You are objecting to using the word 'slave' as a descriptor, except in extreme cases. But the term slave is often used in culture for a lot of things. Being a 'slave to your addictions', 'a slave to your desires', 'an office slave', 'wage slave'. etc.... I'll spare you a list of hundreds of examples. I think since you are the one objecting, then y…
I do think agency is the fulcrum and concede I was being too pedantic. I do think even from an agency perspective it is possible to "drop out" to some extent but not completely, but that's why I asked about the work aspect. Even if you are not working a 9-5, life does require work. That some choose to toil the fields for their food or sit in a cubicle, you must work all the same. So are we slaves to life?
If you are toiling on your farm to survive. Or even hunting/gathering for food. You do need to work to live. So a slave to life? All life is a burden? Even Buddhist have 'all life is suffering'.
But toiling in an office, is usually for someone else's benefit. You are only getting a fraction of your work back in pay. So if you are 'trapped', unable to change, and working for someone else's benefit, then a 'slave'? (wish I had some Marx quote to fit here).
It is bit of slippery slope, since i'm not trying to include every person that just complains about working because they would rather play video games.
And yet, in a market system, the 'rat race', we all do have a sense that we are 'slaves to the system'.
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Explain.
to hazard a guess: the better your coding model is, the less you have to assess your fundamentals, and thereby suffer arrested development.
I know I should have experimented with LLMs sooner, but leaned into my instinctive "VIM has gotten me this far" attitude.
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Are we forgetting the context of who started the war?
It's just not relevant to the statement "I'm punching until they can't punch back" who threw the first punch.
What I mean is that it makes no sense to say you're fighting a war to achieve peace if you're the one who started the war, breaking the peace that existed before then.
If peace is your goal, then the status quo was already in line with your goal. Starting the war contradicts your stated goal of peace.
Do I really have to spell all that out?