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Our efforts, in part, define us

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Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#91

Post by dfee »

dangus wrote: post #86
aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem wit…

> If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation.

This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though.

For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in.

Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#92

Post by d--b »

I have a feeling that these feelings come from culture.

Protestantism or Japanese cultures really value effort in a way mediterannean culture (for instance) does not.

Think about Flemish paintings that have all these very intricate details, while Italian painters invented the messy sfumato.

I don't like that digital cameras took over, because I don't like the quality of digital pictures, but I love that LLMs are taking stuff off my plate / brain. I have absolutely zero romanticism associated with effort. I do romanticize smartness.

Gauss finding n*(n+1) / 2 because he didn't want to sum numbers by hand is my absolute hero. Of course he was protestant so what I just said really doesn't make much sense.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#93

Post by mym1990 »

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #88
aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but maybe you can help figure: Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that? Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests. (One other class of exceptio…

I would guess a lot of intrinsic motivation is driven a lot by hormones and things like dopamine release when you do something that is really interesting or exciting. I play tennis and absolutely love it, I will never make a dime from doing it, and that's totally okay with me.

Things that are built with money are often done so for scale. Successful things that are built with money often also have people who have some interest in the thing they are building.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#94

Post by mym1990 »

dangus wrote: post #86
aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem wit…

"If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts"

This seems like a dire situation for most humans and probably isn't the status quo for human operation. Its perfectly fine to sit on the beach, but eventually a light should go on that would say "lets go build some tools", "lets go see if I can catch a fish", "lets build a hut". Which would all be fine and admirable things to spend your time doing.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#95

Post by ambicapter »

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #88
aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but maybe you can help figure: Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that? Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests. (One other class of exceptio…

So "traction", as in, many people using your creation, is the only form of worthwhile meaning? Sounds like you believe external validation is the only form of worthwhile meaning?

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#96

Post by jebarker »

card_zero wrote: post #64
caerwy wrote: post #59

Following Karl Popper's thinking on this topic, I'd say that our problems define us, and when we solve our problems we often discover new and interesting children problems demanding attention. “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.” — Karl Popper

That's not a real Popper quote, is it. The sentiment is nice, but it must be radically paraphrased, because he doesn't generate pithy quotes very often. > To conclude, I think that there is only one way to science—or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part—unless you should meet another and…

This feels right to me, but I wonder what he was thinking of when he said “problem”. For me life is most effortless when I’m working on math or cs problems/puzzles but I sometimes get this guilty feeling that I “should” be working on a problem that is useful to the rest of the world.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#97

Post by ImaCake »

shubhamjain wrote: post #14

> For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of the photographer above. Which is ironic, because smartphone photography is astonishingly average to someone who actually understands photography. Phones try to…

No smartphone can match the bottom tier super-zoom camera I have for bird photography. Even with the frankly microscopic sensor on the super-zoom the power of depth-of-field on an adjustable zoom lens is amazing.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#98

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

mym1990 wrote: post #93
gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but maybe you can help figure: Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that? Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests. (One other class of exceptio…

I would guess a lot of intrinsic motivation is driven a lot by hormones and things like dopamine release when you do something that is really interesting or exciting. I play tennis and absolutely love it, I will never make a dime from doing it, and that's totally okay with me. Things that are built with money are often done so for scale. Successful things that are built with money often also have people who have some…

Thanks for helping to refine the thinking. I guess the other side of the coin that would be make the paradox interesting is that, in the long term, it has to seem that most of the stuff built with money (but without intrinsically motivated managers) lose out to the stuff built on pure passion. After discounting for a heap of survival bias.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#99

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

It's still largely unclear how AI is going to affect the job of software engineers both in the shorter term, pre-AGI, and after that.

However, I'm pretty sure that the job of SWE isn't about to disappear, since even when human-level AGI appears, the process of software development isn't about to get any easier than when it was done by actual humans. I don't see non-technical middle managers able to take over as systems architects and lead developers. It'll just mean that the day-to-day of those charged with developing software per PHB's requirements changes.

That said, I do feel fortunate to have been from the generation where software was developed entirely by hand, having started in the era of 8-bitters (NASCOM-1 in 1978) and only just in the last year transitioning (against my preference) to a role of overseeing offshore developers rather than being hands-on. Still, I think that those who enjoy the challenge and fun of conjuring up dreams out of software will still find plenty to enjoy in the future, although it will be different, just as it has already changed a lot from the time when we were writing everything in assembler to today arguing about whether Rust is better than C++.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#100

Post by swat535 »

aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

While you make good points, I wanted to quickly counter this narrative with the fact that majority of people are chasing money because it provides them the basic necessities.

Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships; all of which are required for happiness.

I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office chasing money and the average Joe working double shifts at Walmart.

Most people don't even have the luxury of optimizing their life for money.

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