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

Vanity activities

quarter--mile.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 76 posts

Re: Vanity activities

#41

Post by mooreds »

manmal wrote: post #39
mooreds wrote: post #4

Some good points in here, but with respect to networking, the author misses the forest for the trees. Sure, when you go to networking events, you aren't certain you are going to get a job from the folks you meet. What you are doing is increasing your luck surface area. Hiring is not an entirely rational process, but if someone doesn't know you exist, they won't hire you (how could they?). From there, it follows that…

Why not just cold-message people from a potential employer when you’re applying there? Works way better than it should, and is more targeted than talking to people 99% of who you‘ll never see again, at an event.

What is your go-to text for such a cold message? I haven't seen that work but am always interested in new techniques.

Re: Vanity activities

#42

Post by throwforfeds »

satisfice wrote: post #10

To call reading the news “vanity” exposes the true vanity of this kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word “vanity” to my interest to know what’s going on in the world? It’s vanity because I have no important decisions to make about the war in Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government? It’s not vanity, it’s a desire to understand my world and my place within it. What IS vanity is imagining that one’s own…

Yeah, I think "vanity" is not totally the right term here, but I do think they have a point that there are diminishing returns with staying up on the news cycle.

For instance, I think there is a difference between reading some news daily and consuming only news. My father was in the latter category growing up -- I never really saw him read a book, but he was always reading a paper or listening to/watching a news program. Personally I find that I get more from reading books as they're afforded the space to go into depth on a topic. I think the author is trying to point out that that surface level news consumption is fine but probably not as beneficial as we might want to tell ourselves.

The one thing I've found most helpful news-wise, though, is that I find that it's one of the better ways to learn a foreign language to an upper-intermediate or advanced level. I relied heavily on RFI and other news outlets when learning French, with the added benefit that you're often getting international news the media doesn't report on here in the US.

Re: Vanity activities

#45

Post by iNic »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #36
danilafe wrote: post #9

It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts…

> going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact Mmm, yes and no. It depends where your meat comes from. If you buy meat the way it's produced in the US where you have great big sheds full of cattle in the desert with everything trucked in, then yes. If you want permaculture, you absolutely must have livestock. If you want arable farming of any sort, you absolutely must have livestock. The whole thing breaks down…

The amount of cattle required to maintain pasture is way fewer than we have right now. From a CO2 perspective factory farmed cattle tends to look a little better than "free-range" mostly due to reduced land use changes (but it is obviously worse from a cruelty perspective). Finally, we can still have farm animals without eating them!!

Re: Vanity activities

#46

Post by fastball »

satisfice wrote: post #10

To call reading the news “vanity” exposes the true vanity of this kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word “vanity” to my interest to know what’s going on in the world? It’s vanity because I have no important decisions to make about the war in Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government? It’s not vanity, it’s a desire to understand my world and my place within it. What IS vanity is imagining that one’s own…

You are reading too much into choice of term. The author explains their rationale for using "vanity" quite clearly:

> In business, a “vanity metric” is a statistic that sounds good but is not very useful.

It's not about you being "vain" for reading the newspaper, it's just a parallel to another widely used term the author co-opted.

Re: Vanity activities

#47

Post by fastball »

grim_io wrote: post #21
foolserrandboy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the author actually says: Acknowledge that they are hobbies.

What does that even mean? Why does the author care that much anyway? Seems like a person I would not enjoy talking with.

The article explained it fairly well. Re-iterating the credit card churning example: people will spend a lot of time optimizing their credit card spend, to end up with maybe a few hundred dollars in savings per year. Working 10 hours of overtime a year nets more and takes less time/mental capacity, for example. But it is fine to do this anyway if you let go of the "I'm saving money" schtick and just embrace that you like maximizing points on spend.

Re: Vanity activities

#48

Post by fastball »

danilafe wrote: post #9

It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts…

They're not free because they consume your time, which is valuable.

Re: Vanity activities

#49

Post by fastball »

toast0 wrote: post #22
bogrollben wrote: post #12

I enjoyed the article. Many comments here on HN seem to be missing the point. The author isn't bashing on "hobbies" and is not even bashing on "vanity activities". S/he is merely challenging us to acknowledge them for what they are. Stop kidding yourself. If you churn credit cards (for example) and are one of the 10% that can make it truly profitable, then good for you. The other 90% are probably kidding themselves.…

IMHO, churning is clearly profitable if you pay off your card every month, will hit the spend requirements organically and are organized enough to cancel to avoid annual fees in the second year. Some people dive into manufactured spending to hit the required spending, but then you really need to consider the time invested. The question is more about if the rewards are meaningful. I think it's actually worth doing a b…

What's wrong with Chase?

Re: Vanity activities

#50

Post by danilafe »

fastball wrote: post #48
danilafe wrote: post #9

It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts…

They're not free because they consume your time, which is valuable.

Yes, but only if you would spend that time on something that is more valuable (according to your happiness+ heuristic).
Post reply on HN