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Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

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

#261

Post by somenameforme »

globalnode wrote: post #198
jandrewrogers wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare. I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their f…

i think people trying to argue that we would be more productive is a symptom of the productivity disease. where all we value is productivity and thats the only way we can justify more non-work time. i personally just think we should all have more time to do what we want, whether that is being productive on personal projects, talking to people, playing games, or doing nothing. happier people right? why should 10% of t…

I was all with you right up until the class conflict stuff. Nobody's enslaving anybody. Well that's not true, we're mostly enslaving ourselves. There are endless easy opportunities in life. For instance go teach English in Saudi Arabia and you'll earn around $60k a year which doesn't sound like much until you account for the fact you pay 0% in taxes and have a cost of living well under $1k a month.

Just live frugally, dump your excess into index funds, and you'll likely be a millionaire in a decade. Yeah it's Saudi Arabia, but the price is right. And from that point one never needs to work another day in their life if they don't want, since typical returns on a million $ are more than enough to pay for cost of living in like 90% of the world.

Yet approximately 0% of people will take this advice. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of people generally prefer to seek the easiest, most popular, lowest friction choices. Options like I'm mentioning here only exist precisely because most people won't take them. But it's a sort of paradox in that there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so.

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

#262

Post by kakacik »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
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. Th…

Yeah, not buying this entirely. People love slacking off in their free time, after some intense period its the easiest way to relax. Hard manual labor should have mental exercises as resting and reverse.

Its completely on people. Who the heck was ever told to work like crazy whole life, do nothing more, and let their personality formed up till mid 20s slowly evaporate? I certainly never heard that. Its your and mine responsibility to keep our life interesting, bring up challenges for good old struggle and overcoming, fostering resilient personalities, find passions. Nobody forces you to work till you drop with gun next to your head, do they.

These aren't some empty words, I can attest it myself - moved myself half across the Europe into completely unfamiliar environment, culture, customs and language. That's challenging if one decides to stay, find friends and integrate properly. Doesn't help the language is French - one of the harder ones to learn well, IMHO a badly designed 'spaghetti code' of a language that needs desperate update from endless sets of old rules and exceptions. Then I picked up from 0 various mountain sports - from hiking to climbing and alpinism, ski touring, even flew paraglider for a while, also started free weights gym training. Diving in the sunny places with coral reefs. What spurred all this was a hard breakup and one guy who showed me the way to these activities and I walked it myself from that point.

Had a bad paragliding accident where I broke both legs (wheelchair perspective on life for 6 weeks was truly eye-opening experience), so I supplanted it with more climbing which I luckily can keep doing (ie this evening with my US buddy). You see the pattern - once these become your passions, its very hard to actually not wanting to do them more and more, they make me feel great long term, are super healthy and one sees world and life from other perspectives. As body ages I can move to other sports - planning starting wind surfing this summer as a replacement for that paragliding, fingers crossed.

When I compare myself with peers back home who literally never moved and stayed whole life in some comfy jobs its staggering how 'undeveloped' personalities many have - know only what few news websites say, repeat what others said, but not much experience outside their little bubble, no resilience, fear of unknown (of which for them in this world there are many). Hard to have any meaningful discussion about more than weather and kids with them, very shallow knowledge on whole world and life.

That on top of having and raising 2 kids with my wife with both busy careers, no nanny and all family 1500km away. I want to say I am busy but still, there is ton of time to slack off. TON of it. But some form of 'comfort zone', even if uncomfortable but at least familiar, is the proverbial death of a person, of that spark that makes you grin like a baby from time to time and feel joy of life. Or, more simply - if work is too much on you, work less, drop a day, leave earlier and screw what everybody else in office rat race thinks, they don't live your life.

Sorry trying to cram a lot of different ideas swirling in my head into one post and I am not a poet nor english native speaker.

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

#263

Post by nottorp »

lecor wrote: post #226
monocasa wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval serfs typically worked about 150 10 hour days a year. In addition to the winter months there's a lot of gaps where the plants are in the ground, and now just need intermittent maintenance. All of this of course ignores women's work, which was more omnipresent across the year. But it was also pretty social as well, hence the lasting power of phrases like "sewing circles".

FWIW: That 150 hour estimate came from work by Gregory Clark at UC Davis who has since cast doubt on it. “There’s a reasonable controversy going on in medieval economic history,” Clark told (Amanda Mill). He now thinks that English peasants in the late Middle Ages may have worked closer to 300 days a year. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/medieval-...

As for many things, there's a synthesis that seems more realistic here:

https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-peasant/

Hint: it's not 150 days.

However, what the work time estimates are missing in this discussion is that you maintained relationships with all your neighbors and most of the village.

Exactly the opposite of the modern world, your work was solitary and your leisure time was social.

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

#264

Post by nottorp »

gitonup wrote: post #208
andix wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Things people mostly do when they feel good. This sounds like an inversion of cause and effect. > All three activities are hobbies. [...] It's nothing that gives life a purpose. I find this to be a dire outlook, myself.

Hustle culture. Everything has to have a purpose. Ideally commercial.

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

#265

Post by globalnode »

somenameforme wrote: post #261
globalnode wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think people trying to argue that we would be more productive is a symptom of the productivity disease. where all we value is productivity and thats the only way we can justify more non-work time. i personally just think we should all have more time to do what we want, whether that is being productive on personal projects, talking to people, playing games, or doing nothing. happier people right? why should 10% of t…

I was all with you right up until the class conflict stuff. Nobody's enslaving anybody. Well that's not true, we're mostly enslaving ourselves. There are endless easy opportunities in life. For instance go teach English in Saudi Arabia and you'll earn around $60k a year which doesn't sound like much until you account for the fact you pay 0% in taxes and have a cost of living well under $1k a month. Just live frugally…

maybe class struggle was the wrong terminology, but the more i see of problems in the world the more i start to think its about money/power vs "all the other busywork" we get bombarded with daily.

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

#266

Post by tick_tock_tick »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market Modern society arguably has more opportunity for play–and evidence of adults playing–than ancient socities. We also have a larger fraction of labor that one can genuinely like doing, versus being forced to do.

I think you should really look up the amount of work the average european peasant was doing in the middle ages, and the amount of free time they had off. Or how much time hunter gatherers spend actually hunting or gathering. Or how meaningful any of that was, compared to what we do today... Our conditions are better today than in the early industrial revolution, but that's not saying much.

The first couple of google results just seem to say your view is a very common mistake/misunderstanding people make when confusion "not working" with leisure time.

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

#267

Post by ctb_ »

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…

This

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

#268

Post by kakacik »

nate wrote: post #48
bcrosby95 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to really say from anecdotes. My uncle retired early and was sharp as a whip until 86 or so. Then decline hit him hard. There was no change in life circumstances, he just got old. Also, I think you'll find that taking care of someone who can't take care of themselves is a lot of work. I had to do it for my mom for 6 months and its a ton of stuff. Talking to doctors. Arranging appointments. Etc.

"I think you'll find that taking care of someone" => I know you were writing this generically. And I'm just replying to this for the sake of all of us who do actually know what it's like taking care of someone. But yeah. Holy shit this is hard. I've been doing this too. Had to move my mom and dad to a place a block from me when my mom was going through her final few months with Alzheimers. That was so hard. So gross.…

Maybe a little consolation but still - you are doing an amazing and wonderful thing that you can be proud of for rest of your life. Extremely hard and taxing, no doubt there. Think about some nice moment from childhood when things are rough.

Respect to you and all others doing similar service.

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

#270

Post by wiseowise »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #161
devilsdata wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare. I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their f…

> I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their free time in almost exactly the same way they spent their free time when they had less of it. Binging on social media, television, or games? Now they just do more of it for longer. The people that volunteer more were already doing it, and they are in the small minority.

You lock people for decades in the madhouse which leaves only escapism as a coping mechanism and then act surprised when they continue to escape. Make the experiment with a clean slate: a group of children raised to be empowered by creation and creativity, having generous allowances to experiment and not burdened with work or brain rot. Did I just describe rich kids? Anyway.

And what’s “a lot of free time” anyway?

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