Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness • Hacker News Board

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#431

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #210

themacguffinman wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's a choice in the same way that the outcome of an if-branch is a "choice". You have control over it in the same way a computer program has control over its own output. Which is to say: no actual control at all. Free will/choice isn't a coherent concept philosophically and I find it almost impossible to take anyone seriously when they propose "just change your mind" as a solution to anything. I am already str…

Not sure where you are going with the free will thing unless you are going for the genetics answer to happiness which I find lacking. Are some people happy? Yes. Are there people who were not happy who now are? Yes. How? Lots and lots of anecdotes are around changing how they approached life, not how they changed their genetics. Looking at your linked article, they are going off of a wellness questionnaire first deve…

There's a lot of fine literature out there that can properly explain better than I can why free will is an incoherent concept, I recommend googling it. Although the philosophy is fairly basic, it's hard to flesh out concisely in the format of social media comments. A one sentence summary might be: we are our physiology and thus bound by the laws of physics and chemistry, we cannot have more free will or more capacity to self-change than the physical particles that comprise us. Honestly I'm not interested in object-level rebuttals to this, the philosophy around this is fairly settled and feels like debating whether the earth is flat.

The genetic heritability finding is not related to the free will argument, it is its own scientific finding. I don't know why the existence of those life-changing anecdotes matters at all, the research has never shown that happiness is 100% determined by genetics, only that the stable component of happiness has a high heritability. I also want to point out that "genetic heritability" doesn't simply mean "you don't got the happy gene, you're fucked", genetic inheritance is not mutually exclusive to environmental influences. Indeed, at least some gene-behavior studies will recommend "positive gene-environment matchmaking" [1] in its conclusions.

No happiness study is going to have a perfect definition of happiness, which scientifically is studied as "subjective well-being" because it's subjective. The study's definition of subjective well-being is reasonable and consistent. If you think that changing the questions will radically change results, I invite you to do or find your own scientific research. We don't exactly have a glut of happiness research, we have some modern meta-studies [1] that flesh out the relationship between genetics and behavior a little more but otherwise upholds existing heritability findings.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9781-6

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#432

Post by lazide » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #349

czbond wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of experience pushing forward stuff with wife / kids. One must learn to delegate. Yes you can do "programming whatever", but you don't have the time. If you believe in the project, allocate.... $100,$500,$1k a month for a few months (whatever is your threshold) and outsource! It doesn't need to be in "expensive React with microservices".... you can do v1 in Laravel and a purchased template. (as example).…

This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge,…

Eh, I think this is a major fallacy that burns a lot of potentially viable companies to the ground.

Step 1 is validate your market and produce something of value - that is the focus of the MVP.

The MVP doesn’t need to go from $0 to $bln. and it’s a red flag in my opinion of something thinks it does. If the market is already established or there are established competitors, and you’re building out more capacity then sure - but then you should already be able to build a spreadsheet with all the market variables, or you’re fooling yourself.

If you can’t do that with 1 person and random tools, it doesn’t mean that isn’t a business. It does mean it’s a higher risk of failing, and failing catastrophically, and destroying a whole lot more money in the process.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#433

Post by lazide » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #391

czbond wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the value proposition is common, then yes it is hard. If it is novel, then no. Agree design is much more important than before. But you can still pay a designer $1k or less and it looks pretty nice. Maybe not "uniquely different", but nice. Agree the days of "simply put it up and get users" is probably gone. One has to work it, which is what distinguishes a project from a business. Developers may be good at one, b…

The problem with this advice is the same as with most advice for how to get ahead: It just does not scale, not even a little. It only works for a few. If more people follow it, it's just more stressful and/or expensive for everyone. I mean, if this is the kind of society that any poster of such advice has in mind than I won't complain. Who am I to dictate what the end goal is? If people want a society for winners, so…

Blindly spending $100mln to make an awesome app without getting a MVP out to validate an idea for way cheaper is just ‘making up losses at scale’. It also doesn’t scale.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#434

Post by lazide » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #309

gkop wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t ring true in my decade of management. Some people are just incapable of doing a bad job, and others just incapable of doing a good job. Whether or not they want to work for you.

A decade of management under a system where people have to work whatever job is available to them just to survive. That's a huge, screaming confounding variable. If the people you've managed have a meaningful choice in where to work, then they aren't the primary target of UBI.

Considering we’ve never (to my knowledge) had a system where People didn’t have to work to survive at some level - how would anyone know?

Even idle noblity had expectations (military service, patrons of arts and society, etc).

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#435

Post by borroka » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #180

suction wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

I know plenty of people who will say "you know what, I'm out" despite living paycheck to paycheck, or maybe having 1 or 2 months living expenses saved up. They're just open to the risk of going with the flow, and confident they'll find something to keep them going. They tend to be a lot happier than those I know who are focussed on money and career. This doesn't work if you're literally struggling to make ends meet t…

This is what Tullio Kezich wrote in his book "Federico" to describe Federico Fellini's attitude towards life.

"He lived deep inside things with indomitable curiosity and perpetual openness, surrendering himself to what Dostoevsky calls "the river of life", in the serene awareness that it always takes you somewhere".

It always takes you somewhere.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#436

Post by Izikiel43 » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

> humiliated

Humbled I think you mean

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#437

Post by mncharity » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #389

fxtentacle wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the curiosity. I know one guy who rushed through bachelor, master, and a PhD in mathematics in like half the regular time without ever breaking a sweat. Sometimes, you'd meet him in the cafeteria reading research papers for fun. You could mention any topic, and he'd know something related that one time he was super curious about and he spent an evening reading through Wikipedia. He's like a sponge who so…

What if you’re exactly like this guy, but with a small fraction of his raw intelligence? Does that work out or just annoy people? Asking for a friend…

Perhaps...

Explore and nurture one's motivation (the "for fun"), else the years of time/effort won't be allocated. Including topics, environment, tooling, metacognition, enjoyment, etc, etc.

Emphasize integration, making connections. As merely accumulating disconnected trivia provides less leverage for understanding and play, for engaging with and informing new observations, and for interesting storytelling. Rough-quantitative understanding can be helpful (eg Fermi questions), but utility seemingly plateaus low absent accompanying integrated conceptual understanding.

Integration seemingly requires surfing primary-ish literature (the "reading research papers"). Using paper intros, journal "in this issue" summaries-with-context, survey articles, definitive doorstop tome on topic X, etc. Because outreach and education content is very not sufficient (example: 5-yr old Q: What color is the Sun? 1st-tier astronomy grad student pervasive A: Yellow! Q: And sunlight? Common A: white. And then, not infrequently, a pause, and: That doesn't make sense, does it??? Two incompatible conceptions, perhaps first learned in K, persisting unintegrated into grad. Helped by popular intro astro college textbooks having it wrong, remaining decoupled from the science, for decades. The distance/gap between "science" education content, and science, can be very large. Despite some overlap in personnel, their goals, institutional support and infrastructure, culture and incentives, are rather divergent.

Integration can benefit from sheer quantity of material chewed on. Jim Keller (chip designer) commented his superpower was reading books, IIRC a book (or few?) a week, since he was 8 yo.

Cultivate storytelling skills (the "interesting person to be around").

Excellence is far easier if you can do playdates with excellent people. Especially in math. The delta between "I read the book and saw the lecture" and "I worked the problems" and "I did hours with someone wizzy in front of a blackboard" can be vast. And then there's people who could have a clue, but are babbling history/economics/policy nonsense to praise at DC dinners, lacking folks to push back. Being non-nutter can be hard without a good community. Witness researchers respected on their research focus, but gone nutter on some nearby-but-not-their-research-focus side interest. Or non-tech discussions on HN. ;)

What else...?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#438

Post by newaccount74 » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

aranelsurion wrote: post #423

newaccount74 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would likely be wrong, because people would instead be jealous because you're "freeloading" by not working and therefore not paying taxes There's a precedent why I think that people will approve of "universal" income: We have "Familienbeihilfe" in Austria. It's a payment of roughly 200€ per child that parents get. Everyone gets it, regardless of income, so noone is jealous. It's the best way of distributing financi…

What about the childless, and those who never want children? They pay for everyone else's children through their taxes. Money they could use elsewhere for their own needs or pleasure. -- To be clear, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I don't have population charts of Austria on my desk and I'm too lazy to Google it right now, I'd assume it tracks a similar trend to the rest of the Europe and it's slowin…

That's exactly why everyone should get UBI. Because then noone is left out. Some need it more than others, but you get it even if you don't need it or don't deserve it.

I'm pretty sure people would be a lot more hesitant to complain about others getting UBI if they get it themselves.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#439

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

k8sToGo wrote: post #273

hit8run wrote: post #230

I don't know about you but I for sure don't want do be a top performer in a job. I disrespect the societal applause you get as a good cog in an enterprise. Build my own stuff and be my own boss makes me happier but then reality hits in and all the cracks in our society begin to show. Seriously. I WANT to be happy. But how can one be happy in a world like this? EDIT: Maybe I'm not in a good mood today but right now I…

I don't think it is just you and today. I remember when I was younger (college and before) I was happy because I was looking forward to something and envisioned a positive future (e.g. graduation, first job, high salary etc.). Kind of hard to do the same thing these days, especially now that I am an adult. The world has become nothing but an endless grind for greed and corruption. Every day I ask myself what is the p…

I don't know if everyone can truly embrace this, but one perhaps useless suggestion is to embrace the absurd life. In his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", Albert Camus asks: does the absurdity of our futile lives require that we reject life itself? Camus answers: no, it requires revolt. Camus compares the absurdity of the human life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. He concludes that "The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#440

Post by quantified » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

0F wrote: post #214

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that. When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological. I’ve been suffering super hard with depression r…

There appear to be many different causes for depression. The day may come when it’s either curable for all the causes or at least the symptoms can be removed. If faith in that day is needed to survive until then, have that faith.

It is so pointless. Why does it occur more than its opposite?