Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

nber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 395 posts

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#151

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hallole wrote: post #143
jltsiren wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an outcome of the expectation that people earn their living. People work less today than they used to, but a larger fraction of that work is paid. And it's a consequence of making divorce legal and socially acceptable. Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract. The wife assumed the responsibility for running the household, and the husband had a lifetime obligation to support her. But if you stay aw…

> "Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract." I don't buy this. You can, for the purposes of your argument, reduce marriage to being something like an economic contract, that's fine; but, in reality, that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about. Also, solving the burden of work for one sex isn't a solution. Granted, it's better than nothing.

> that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about

Ancient societies' marriages we have records about were principally about economics and politics.

Maybe the poor were having love marriages. We don't know because most of our sources couldn't be bothered with them. But to the degree we have evidence, it's in even poor landowners preferring to marry children off to the owners of adjoining plots. Like, maybe that's a coïncidence. But probably not.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#152

Post by andix »

SupremumLimit wrote: post #149
andix wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience its really hard to find something that connects people of different age groups in a meaningful way, that doesn't involve a workplace-like setting. Older and younger people often just don't compromise enough from an intrinsic motivation to make it work. If they are somehow forced to work together, and have to make compromises, it suddenly works much better. They also benefit and enjoy it. It doesn't h…

Really? This just proves the point of the grandparent comment. I can think of at least three types of activities off the top of my head: sports (granted, not all of them, but definitely true for my sport - squash), music (playing an instrument in a group setting), and volunteering. I also know people who are in a bridge club with people twice their age. There are still social activities connecting people of different…

All three activities are hobbies. Things people mostly do when they feel good. It's nothing that gives life a purpose.

In the past a lot of activities connecting different age groups was a job or job-like too. Working on a farm or a family business together. Running a household and childcare together.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#153

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #59
breezybottom wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like it's a problem with retirement.

It sounds like a problem with a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus for their entire lives

> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus

Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#154

Post by zamadatix »

calferreira wrote: post #122
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

I actually have the same fear. I love computers and I don't know what I'll do once I retire. Problem solving on computers is like oxygen to me.

Love computers outside of ${dayJob}!

Work on some open source projects and dig into some bugs, become that crazy but fun neighborhood guy always building some contraption in his garage, volunteer as a mentor for advanced STEM programs like FIRST FRC, volunteer at/run a local computer reuse program where you help take used computers and get them into a state people in need of one can use, build those things you always thought sounded fun to work on at ${dayJob} but could never "justify" to management, build and operate a retro computing collection.

Some of these scratch the tinkering itch, some of these scratch the community itch, some of these scratch the meaning itch, and so on, but all allow you to have a goal, sense of purpose, and to love computers however much you want without having to make money doing it.

Getting initial momentum on this can seem tricky, same as for careers, but once you get going the time at ${dayJob} starts to feel like it gets in the way of loving computers instead of the other way around.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#155

Post by SupremumLimit »

andix wrote: post #152
SupremumLimit wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? This just proves the point of the grandparent comment. I can think of at least three types of activities off the top of my head: sports (granted, not all of them, but definitely true for my sport - squash), music (playing an instrument in a group setting), and volunteering. I also know people who are in a bridge club with people twice their age. There are still social activities connecting people of different…

All three activities are hobbies. Things people mostly do when they feel good. It's nothing that gives life a purpose. In the past a lot of activities connecting different age groups was a job or job-like too. Working on a farm or a family business together. Running a household and childcare together.

I disagree quite strongly. I derive a lot of meaning from these types of activities (in addition to family and friends of course) and zero meaning from my job. It's the narrow focus on work to the exclusion of everything else in life that is the problem - and that's what the comments above highlight.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#156

Post by singpolyma3 »

antisthenes wrote: post #115
qwerpy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why someone would FIRE and not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do. And the "won't you be so bored?" people. No, I'm not bored. You might be because you need someone else to tell you how to spend your hours. Between learning new hobbies, tackling my backlog of projects in my old hobbies, taking care of my health, and spending quality time with my family, I still have more…

The tragedy is that people who are most likely to successfully FIRE have spent so long being laser-focused on making money to FIRE, that they neglected their (hobbies, social circle, health - underline as needed), so they find themselves in such a predicament. Personally, I'd love to FIRE. I have at least 5-10 years of personal projects in my head that I would do if I didn't have a 9-5 job. Unfortunately, graduating…

FIRE isn't about job market, you can't control that. Though in tech most people are still making quite large incomes which does help.

Rather it is about controlling expenses. The thing you can actually control. My sister's family of 5 lives on less than 50k CAD / year, because they simply must (low income) so if one is making a 100k white collar salary (for example) one can live a lifestyle higher than hers while still banking 50k/an. Etc.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#157

Post by csallen »

spencerflem wrote: post #102
pixelready wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, polarization pushes people towards either wholesale “burn it down” anti-capitalism or full throated corporate bootlicking and I don’t think either tact is particularly useful. There’s a more subtle critique about our indoctrination in the west towards concepts like the “efficiency of the free market” demanding that we overlook rampant alienation among the working population that is more what a lot of people ar…

I don’t think being anti-capitalist necessitates being anti “perform a skilled role or responsibility that's useful for your tribe”. To me, that’s the big benefit- under capitalism you’re not working for your tribe, you’re working for a tiny few shareholders. I’m pretty sure the world overall and certainly “my tribe” would be better off if the job I’m working just never got done

> under capitalism you’re not working for your tribe, you’re working for a tiny few shareholders

The first half of this sentence is false, but the second half is true.

I don't know about you, but when I look at my window every day, I see thousands of people working for their job: making delicious food that others can eat, stocking store shelves so others can shop, trimming trees so the city will look nice, driving trucks full of goods that others can have, designing good website UX for others to use better, repairing broken cars, etc. It's an intricate dance of millions of people waking up every day and doing selfless things for others in their tribe, in just the right amounts, because we've (miraculously) given them an incentive to do so.

To me what's depressing is that we can live in such a wonderful world, but with a cynical pessimistic culture in which it's commonplace to ignore the chief output of everyone's work.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#158

Post by devilsdata »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life.

That is the biggest rock in the bucket. Smaller rocks include social media use, diet, exercise, whether the person is in a toxic home environment, mental health, or has children.

I have ADHD and I often struggle with having the energy to do anything outside of work. So I try to optimise my life to give me the most energy that I can have. I eat really healthy; high protein, high fibre, low saturated fat. I try to keep my social media use low, using ScreenZen. I meditate. I do resistance exercise a few times a week.

But even still, I find that my mind is exhausted part of a way through a workday, usually by 14:00-15:00. Maybe that's because I'm a software engineer.

I don't know how to fix it. But I'd really appreciate an extra day a week off, even at the cost of some remuneration. I love my work, but I don't want it to feel like it's the only thing I have going.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#159

Post by Unbeliever69 »

I voluntarily retired at age 55 after a startup I was a principal in for five years ran out of money (raising funds was not my responsibility). Having worked from home during most of that time, and having nobody to report to other than myself, I decided I couldn't go back to the grind. I was fortunate enough that my wife earns enough and has good enough benefits that I don't need to work. It took a lot of paying down debt and massaging our finances, but it's worked out swimmingly. We're doing far better on one income than we ever did on two. Obviously, at my age, there are no kids in the picture. Not only am I her personal assistant (she's a teacher), but I take care of the household, which takes a ton of stress off her plate.

I could see a world where cognitive decline takes place, but it's actually been the opposite for me. When I'm not fulfilling my responsibilities as my wife's assistant and taking care of the household, I have many hours during the day to pursue my own passions. I've also been much more structured with my time. I actively journal. I spend time with friends and family. I occasionally do things for fun like fly fishing. I set aside a specific time to read every day for pleasure and learning. I go to bed at a set time and wake up at 5am. I probably log anywhere from 8 to 16 hours a day doing agentic AI coding and design in Claude Code. Freed from the treadmill of employment and the grind of keeping up with the fast pace of deeply learning new technology, I feel sharper than I have in decades. It also doesn't hurt that my passion projects are generating income, which keeps me highly motivated and mentally engaged.

I'm sure those of you that read this probably think that I didn't retire. I think an argument can be made for and against this. I feel retired. I just don't fill all of my time with leisure which I think is the trap that many retired people fall into. The things that I do to keep mentally sharp are intentional choices. It just so happens that those things are things that resemble work.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#160

Post by ASalazarMX »

calferreira wrote: post #122
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

I actually have the same fear. I love computers and I don't know what I'll do once I retire. Problem solving on computers is like oxygen to me.

Hear me out: you would get to choose which problems to solve!

But I get you; a job finds well-scoped problems and spoon feeds them to you, it can be daunting to look for a worthy problem to solve on your own. Think of it as a new skill you'll have to develop.

Post reply on HN