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Your high IQ might kill your startup (2010)

jamiebegin.com

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Re: Your high IQ might kill your startup (2010)

#131

Post by mtdewcmu »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #67
bestdaytostart wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being poor does suck. However, being rich does not prevent your life from sucking. All the money in the world won't prevent you or a loved one from passing due to an untreatable illness. All the money in the world won't buy you friends or genuine respect. It can't buy you love (though it can buy you sex). Furthermore, you don't need to be rich to avoid the hardship of being poor, you just have to make a sufficient am…

I was poor, and now I'm moderately well off. You are really underselling how much it sucks to be poor. > All the money in the world won't prevent you or a loved one from passing due to an untreatable illness. Death of a family member is much more likely to happen if you are poor. Too bad you can't afford that unreasonably expensive surgery. > All the money in the world won't buy you friends or genuine respect. This i…

You make some good points.Things you learn through hard life experience always have value. At least, I value them, because even if they don't have a lesson I can use, they are among the most interesting and true stories a person can tell you. Normally, life makes lousy stories, not least because we aren't able to tell the stories properly, because we're not fully paying attention. When you are living out your worst nightmare in reality, you are suddenly about twice as awake and twice as alive as you ordinarily are, and your awareness narrows and focuses on the here and now, and everything that happens is endowed with much greater importance than usual. Everything becomes serious, and you're probably going to have insights and make observations that beyond your usual capacity for such things, because all the BS is gone and you don't have to stop goofing around and get serious before you can clear your head, because you are serious.

These moments of clarity probably won't end up being worth enough to justify the misery of the ordeal that prompted them, and I'm not sure living through something terrible makes you stronger. It's probably more likely to do psychological damage that makes you weaker. But the experience itself is not something you can buy, and while the stories you gain are usually no compensation to you, they are the kinds of stories that can be of great value to other people.

Re: Your high IQ might kill your startup (2010)

#132

Post by tluyben2 »

judk wrote: post #94
tluyben2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but fighting your whole life to get rich at stuff that sucks is not worth it. Yes, it sucks to have your cat die, it sucks more to have you die wishing you did something more interesting than sit in board meetings and think about gathering mo money most of your waking life. There is a balance and that balance is not as hard as 'getting rich'; you don't need to 'get rich' to make your life not suck and get your c…

Most people would be very happy if their worst problem in life was thinking it could have been more mentally stimulating. People have regret on their deathbed because people don't want to die and wish they could have their cake and eat it too, not because they suddenly found wisdom.

Anecdotal but I had a lot of people dying around me stating they spent too much time chasing money and too little on living. And I know a lot of pensioners as well who say the same thing; now they are living the life they wanted but have little time left (they think; I always come up with statistics and say they have 20-30 years more but he, who listens to that?). Another salient detail; most guys say they shouldn't have had kids because it took away too much time and most women reget not having more. Anecdotal, still, two countries and around 100 people. Research papers were written with less :)

Re: Your high IQ might kill your startup (2010)

#133

Post by danelectro »

ownagefool wrote: post #111
ryanjshaw wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you've misunderstood parent's point. He's not discussing a theoretical world with robots (???); he's discussing the one we live in, where wealth inequality is a fact. Given the clear benefits of wealth, it's obvious that getting rich is not easy otherwise we'd expect to see less inequality. Before anybody tries to tell me that getting rich might not be important to most people, think very carefully about wh…

The poverty line is a funny thing. I grew up below it; I'm talking about one set of clothes, one meal a day if I'm lucky. Still, growing up in Scotland that's hardly comparable to the likes of kids starving in other parts of the world. Despite some tragedy and external pressures, I was always happy, or at least able to focus on the fact that those external pressures would go away someday. Now that I'm a decent earner…

If you need someone who is going to be required to handle money efficiently enough to get the most out of each dollar, one of the most worthwhile traits is actual years of experience getting the most out of each dollar.
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