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Comment by mnky9800n | Hacker News Reader

Yes. I don’t really understand the “you will be replaced” mentality. I do things because I like doing them not because they have some optimum economic value.

Like read the ad copy of old apple or HP or xerox and see how they wanted to help make tools that help you think. Today everyone wants to make tools that help you make money. I just don’t see why my life needs to be optimised for making money compared to engaging in interesting ideas and creating peace and happiness in the space around me.

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I love designing posters for thé love of it. AI helps me learn new shortcuts or suggest tools, helps me delete this or that, but essentially - my appreciation for the process comes from actually moving things around myself and having a say myself.

With generative art/writing, well honestly - the author is very very limited in what he can command the NN do and particularly if the author has a string vision.

Same for music - I wouldn’t let AI arrange my Renoise tracks, I’d love to do it myself. Is love to create the VCV patches by carefully tuning each knob. And particularly when I actually know/imagine/envision how it should sound.

It takes understanding of underlying tech and love for the work. Love - very important.

For people lacking vision and creativity, those in a hurry, those under pressure to do shitjobs they hate - it idées may be better to use AI. But not for the real artist.

What are your favorite design posters from "the good old days"? haha. Can you share the posters you have made? It's cool that you make such things.

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I just don’t see why my life needs to be optimised for making money compared to engaging in interesting ideas and creating peace and happiness in the space around me.

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This hit me hard! Thanks a lot mate for this comment.

External validation and being useful to others matter. A world of everyone playing violin in a closet for nobody is a dystopia.

only inasmuch as a world where everyone playing violin in the streets is a dystopia, too...

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but chooses not to. May also apply to violins.

My niece would disagree. She loves playing violin just for the playing of it.

It's not that nobody enjoys doing anything just for its own sake—it's the destruction of ways to provide for others, socially. Humans really, really like doing that. The two things may as well be completely different activities, scratching totally different itches. No amount of solo activity will make us feel whole in the same way feeling that our abilities and passions are helpful to and desired by—not just humored by—others we care about will.

This view that you can't just do an activity for your own joy, you have to do it for the approval of other, is the actual dystopia. I wonder how old you are because this seems very much like the attitude of someone who was born in the age of social media.

That would be sad. Did you mean to respond to some post that was about that?

Yes, I responded to yours.

Weird, since that notion appears nowhere in my post.

Given that I'm not the only reply you received reading it that way, perhaps you should consider that you did not communicate what you think you did.

Please point to any part of my post that reads best as "you can't just do an activity for your own joy".

You can just admit you made a mistake. It's fine.

> a dystopia

i think this part gave people the impression that you meant that doing something "for nobody" (eg. for your own joy) was somehow bad/malevolent

See the comment below.

You can just admit you communicated poorly. It's fine.

You cannot share happiness with others if you don’t create it for yourself first as you will have no happiness to give away.

Seeing value only measured by utility seems to sidestep the reality that not everything that counts, can be counted.

In startup land, the world of innovation accounting for organizations is one attempt to better understand that.

> I just don’t see why my life needs to be optimised for making money compared to engaging in interesting ideas and creating peace and happiness in the space around me.

I feel the same way. But I think this is kind of forced on us nowadays. For example, I might want to write a blog post to share my ideas/work/whatever. But it will be used to make money. It will be used to feed my competition. Maybe not necessarily my content, or not necessarily directly compete with me. But as a class of people, by creating more content we are feeding our competition and some minority will make a lot of money out of it.

Maybe I was not doing it for the money in the first place, maybe it was being read by 5 humans in total anyways. But still, I have no escape and I personally find the whole idea disgusting. I will take no part in it.

Yes I agree. But also I just don’t know what to do about it. I mostly try to make things more private. Like I write a newsletter about my thoughts on ai/ml, physics, etc that’s only for my research institute sent through the email listserv. Maybe nobody reads it but also nobody monetises it. And I get an outlet that is hopefully useful to others I’m directly connected to.

> I just don’t see why my life needs to be optimised for making money compared to engaging in interesting ideas and creating peace and happiness in the space around me.

This means your are rich, and you can afford the luxury of such mindset.

Exactly. People are trying to make ends meet. They aren't trying to optimize for money making for fun We're trying to eat today, and maybe someday retire, if we're lucky. It's harder than it used to be, so people are looking for strategies.

It's not some morally superior attitude to "engage in peace and happiness" blah blah you're just rich congrats

There is a very large gap between being "rich" and having to turn every moment into money so that you can eat beans and rice. The general point upthread is that for many/most people, not everything they do has to be a "side hustle."

(And there are probably quite a few people here who are pretty comfortable who still look at a lot of activities through the side hustle lens.)

People who are just trying ro make end meets with no hope of improvement do often adopt this thinking. It is that or alcoholism, drug use and gambling.

People need meaning in their life and work that mistreat you is not that.

I suppose I rather appreciate the lot of you who believe I am wealthy and therefore able to find happiness in life. I suppose I’ll have to disappoint you a bit and tell you that I am not wealthy and certainly not wealthy by most standards on HN. I simply accept that it’s my job to create my happiness. Nobody else will do it for me.

> This means your are rich, and you can afford the luxury of such mindset.

The people I know that are focusing on "engaging in interesting ideas and creating peace and happiness in the space around [them]" are the "poorest" I know of.

They chose to have a part-time job (if they have one at all), they chose to live a simple life (from Western standards)... to do what they care about.

The only luxury they have is living in a society with enough solidarity to allow them to live this way.

I'm not rich and I have this mindset. I make far less than most people on HN do, less than industry average too, but I've been able to live an okay life regardless.

The goal was never to get rich as I realized early on that was improbable and I focused on other things.

I have met a lot of people who live in poverty. They're not all that interested in making money (although they are not necessarily averse but it's definitely never an all-consuming priority). By and large their focus is on human connection.

It's not the default human condition to be consumed by greed any more than it is any of the other deadly sins.

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