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Comment by kylemathews | Hacker News Reader

Huh? Everyone has to make the choice between being clever or kind. The point of the talk wasn't "make the right choices and you'll end up a billionaire." The point of the story was the quality of your life, your own happiness, and your real worth is determined by the choices you make, not what gifts you have because, as Jeff pointed out, they're just gifts after all, you didn't earn them.

His implicit point was an average intelligent person with average wealth can be just as satisfied with his/her life as a highly intelligent, highly gifted billionaire provided they both made quality choices about how they lived their life.

Edit: clarified last sentence.

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That's easy to say when you have a few billion in the bank. But most people simply don't have the liberty of choice at all, their lives are driven by requirements, not by freedom of choice.

Freedom of choice is for the most part an illusion, it is only true freedom if you determine what's on the menu. To be able to choose 'left' or 'right' when you want 'straight', 'down', 'reverse' and so on as valid choices but you don't have them because of the constraints placed on you by every day life is a false kind of freedom presented in those limited choices.

So, in practice, your average billionaire has more (many more) choices available to him than those lower on the financial ladder. The reason Jeff Bezos had the choice to give that speech or not is not because he's particularly happy, but because he's rich.

But he's talking to a class of Princeton grads. Being stuck with few choices is not a problem most of them will have.

Many less choices doesn't mean no choices.

I lived and worked for two years in the Philippines amongst some of the poorest people in the world. These people were constrained in many ways as you describe in job choices, educational attainments, opportunity for travel etc. But regardless of how poor they were they still had the choice of to be kind or clever, to forgive or seek revenge, to pursue worthwhile activities or fritter away their time/money on drugs and alcohol, etc. There were many many very happy people I met in the worst of slums.

The most important choices we make in little have absolutely zero to do with how much money we have.

For a more extended essay on the topic, read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl who survived a Nazi concentration camp.

To pull one quote off its Wikipedia page: "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

> to pursue worthwhile activities or fritter away their time/money on drugs and alcohol

no, that's genetically predetermined.

> He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

A key insight in ethics is that truly ethical decisions almost always go against the person making the decision.

A situation such as a concentration camp brings out the worst in some and the best in others in very stark contrast because of the environment, not because of the people in it. In less polarizing circumstances those on opposite ends of the spectrum might very well get along just fine.

A couple of movies and books bring that out really well, 'Der Faelscher' for instance, and the diary portion of the Odessa file as well as plenty of first hand accounts, such as the one you reference but also many others. The scary thing is that such an environment will also bring out the worst in otherwise decent people, and that our society in some ways does the same thing to its inhabitants, even if not on such a drastic scale.

>A key insight in ethics is that truly ethical decisions almost always go against the person making the decision.

What? Which theory of ethics are you using? I don't agree with this at all.

The speech emphasizes making good choices, which has nothing to do with the quantity of choices of available. The billions of dollars, in the context of his speech, is a gift, while leaving a job and starting an online bookstore is one of the choices that defines his life.

> Everyone has to make the choice between being clever or kind.

I was baffled by this remark; since when being clever or kind are mutually exclusive options? According to the transcript he said "will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?".

Being "clever or kind" isn't mutually exclusive, but being "clever at the expense of others, or kind" is. It's a good point in my opinion. It's easy to forget the human element.

Being "clever or kind" isn't mutually exclusive, but being "clever at the expense of others, or kind" is.

Hmm, yes, that's the point of my comment.

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