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What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#261

Post by frevd »

TrysterosEmp wrote: post #67

Well this line of reasoning works beautifully for engineers, because solving the types of problems engineers love also HAPPENS to be extremely lucrative. What if acting doesn't feel like work? Playing soccer? Hiking? It's extremely difficult to make money doing these things. "Follow your folly" career advice can work, or it can just make people feel terrible because they realize they're doing things they don't love b…

Besides the finding something that you enjoy part (and given that that makes you good at it) there was this second part - something that is work for somebody else. He probably should have mentioned that there is an implicit third part - finding and convincing somebody to actually pay you for doing this work, plus a fourth issue - the competition. However, there are careers in soccer, not sure about hiking though, that's more recreational, you might make a teaching business out of it though.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#263

Post by mmagin »

robotresearcher wrote: post #225
delian66 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I think AI will be the solution to the problem. No, it will not. Sufficiently smart AIs will be sentient beings just like you, and it will be immoral for you to keep them as slaves.

We will make them so they don't mind working for us. It would be cruel to make them "free". Like domestic dogs. They will be our partners in life and not autonomous creatures. I don't see any a priori reason that being smart would require resenting servitude.

As a thought experiment, consider if we developed a drug that makes humans enjoy slavery. Would slavery then be morally acceptable, provided that drug was furnished to the enslaved humans?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#264

Post by ribs »

Paul talks about this subject like it's a breaking of the code or something, but it's just economics. If there's a commodity you can get for cheaper than other people, you stand to gain. In this case the commodity is pleasure, which you can buy for negative money.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#265

Post by gsteinb88 »

jules wrote: post #239
Micaiah_Chang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some skills in physics which are sort of foreign to the math method of problem solving. (Speaking as a physics major) For example, picking a nice reference frame in simple mechanics problems is something that a physical intuition is good for. Same with spotting symmetries in an EM problem. Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the solution…

I majored in math and physics. The same kind of intuition that you use for physics you also use for math. In physics you may call it choosing a reference frame, in math you call it choosing a coordinate system. At least for me it's exactly the same kind of thinking. You hit the nail on the head here though: > Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the…

Thank you so much for this; you just described my undergraduate experience in physics perfectly, especially the endless nagging feeling that something isn't quite right -- I never managed to make that feeling go away. I ended up taking a bunch of maths courses towards the end of my undergraduate and can still remember one particular functional analysis lecture on dual spaces where I finally figured out what the hell those dual spaces in quantum were about. Sadly, this was after I had struggled through and finished the full quantum sequence.

Ironically though, I ended up drifting into the EECS department to do applied physics and I've found an environment much more similar to mathematics (and to the experiment-based approach you advocate) than to the physics department -- when you're trying to build systems rather than just solve problems, you can't just wave your hands. Instead, you have to pick apart your assumptions and figure out why you can ignore certain things and not others.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#266

Post by andrzejsz »

takemikazuchi wrote: post #215
swatow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in my solutions and my math teacher was quite upset because she didn't know what I'd do for the rest of the year in her class. She thought I was being arrogant and I should take in the material slowly, not swallow it all like a whale. But I wasn't arrogant or anything, because unfortunately this skill didn't transfer to the rest of my classes Accusin…

This is a bit of tangent, but I looked up Idris since I'd never heard of it. I'm currently learning Haskell and they look really similar. What differentiates the two? What can you do in one that you can't do in the other?

Although I am not expert on these things but it seems to me that Idris has better support for so called dependent types http://ejenk.com/blog/why-dependently-typed-programming-will...

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#267

Post by stegosaurus »

jusben1369 wrote: post #257
stegosaurus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an addition to this, I've struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why. Some people would probably call it 'entitlement', but I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person/company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them…

I definitely wouldn't call it a sense of entitlement. What you say though is disturbing and unfortunate and I wish I had a good answer. Imagine you buy a plane ticket and fly to somewhere exotic. Passenger in seat 11a is thinking "flying is horrible. It is a huge polluter. You're all crammed in like sardines. The airline is owned by wealthy fat cats and I had to pay $1500 for the 'honor' of being stuck with horrible…

An interesting post and one that has me questioning quite a lot.

I actually used to have that sort of viewpoint to a huge extent. I remember vividly thinking when starting University - there are so many other people begging to have this chance, I was the lucky chosen one, I should revel in it (I had a relatively poor upbringing).

Fast forward a few years and it's all coloured by what I can only describe as... 'seeing too much'. It's like an odd, less severe, less violent form of PTSD. Everything is tainted by the knowledge that my privileged alma mater is, predominantly, a way of signaling membership in the upper/middle classes.

The knowledge that if I manage to secure a job based on my education, mainly I've just circumvented the barrier to entry, met the arbitrary requirements, etc.

The way that the employment market is basically a race, but with real consequences. Coming second in the 100m sprint might be emotionally scarring, but coming second in the job interview might mean starving, having to sell your possessions, having to spend weeks 'wasted', unable to learn due to struggling to meet basic needs, etcetera.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#268

Post by tomasien »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #156

You can get paid to do that kind of math. But what about stuff that doesn't pay? The things that don't seem like work to me aren't profitable or even monetizable. And please don't tell me something to the effect of "I'm not trying hard enough".

I think if that's the case holistically, that what you like to do that other people think is "work" literally can not be monetized in the current economy, then that's just a tragedy. If the economy hasn't developed a model for what you uniquely like to do then I think that's just a very unfortunate reality. However, I wonder if perhaps you're taking it too literally. It's quite possible that what you like to do has manifested itself in economically unpalatable ways generally, but if you thought creatively you MAY find that there are economically beneficial places that aren't so obvious where you fit perfectly.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#269

Post by cenhyperion »

delluminatus wrote: post #4

Personally, I experienced this with programming. When I learned to program in high school, it never struck me as a chore; it was always just interesting and I enjoyed it. However, I think the only reason I was able to enjoy learning programming was because of how adept I already was with computers as a "power user", because it gave me the physical skills and conceptual underpinnings required to appreciate the field.…

> you simply have to put the effort into practicing new things even if you don't enjoy the practice. That's where you get into willpower, commitment, etc. My experience of the world is that you simply cannot expect to be successful by only doing things that don't feel like work; sometimes, you have to actually do the work.

This is 100% spot on. I came to programming in middle school with not much more than average knowledge of using a computer. I could fix the family's wifi, but had never touched a command line. So I had to learn all the underpinnings of a computer at the same time. I enjoyed both immensely, but at times it was tedious, and I had to push through that to get to the parts that I now really enjoy.

I know a lot of people that have quit, deciding coding wasn't for them, when they hit those tedious bits of understanding a file system and command line.

It's just like getting through the phase of learning an instrument where you have to struggle to remember chords and where notes are and build muscle memory. I don't think most musicians enjoy that part, they enjoy the creativity that comes after it.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#270

Post by pmoriarty »

jules wrote: post #239
Micaiah_Chang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some skills in physics which are sort of foreign to the math method of problem solving. (Speaking as a physics major) For example, picking a nice reference frame in simple mechanics problems is something that a physical intuition is good for. Same with spotting symmetries in an EM problem. Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the solution…

I majored in math and physics. The same kind of intuition that you use for physics you also use for math. In physics you may call it choosing a reference frame, in math you call it choosing a coordinate system. At least for me it's exactly the same kind of thinking. You hit the nail on the head here though: > Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the…

Physicists seem very hand-wavey to mathematicians, and mathematicians seem very hand-wavey to logicians. If you want to learn what real formal rigor is like, study logic.
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