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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

> The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns.

This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.

I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire. Risk aversion, greed and interpersonal drama will kill a good idea way before anything else. I sometimes like to reframe this one as "100% of $0 is still $0".

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I care less about receiving the money and more about the implications people have regarding money.

For example, when I'd joined a company I did not get any travel expenses. They expected me to pay the 200 euros a month myself. I'd suggested it and they shrugged it off. The company is now firing people and others are leaving.

The current company just has a default rate of money you get per km. They don't need to, but they know people want this and will ask about it.

Its a small example but it gives you a view of how a company operates

I call this an example of a company putting their money where their mouth is. You can pay lipservice all you want but where will you allocate your (scarce) resource(s)? Resource allocation is a pretty reliable communication channel to discern intent of a company, or a manager.

It’s the same with things like mental health and burnout prevention. You can either have a good work life balance through the year and good management and all that or you can have some consultant come throw a PowerPoint at your peons and a $5 voucher to some BS “health” app and call it a day. One is hard and effective and the other cheap and useless

What top players do in Age of Empires II:

They keep resources (money) at zero by spending them frequently unless they have something more expensive and more urgent to buy.

They are greedy because they want to pay the same amount (or less if possible) for better units (or upgrade them), which is why technology can be more urgent than creating more units.

They are very risk averse, but don't look like it. The more talented a player is, the more risky some of his decisions or actions may appear, but they're not riskier when you take talent into account. That being said, they do sometimes make very bold moves, even in tournaments, because they think the opponnent is not going to expect it.

Alright time to go back to being a villager.

I do behave pretty differently in video games where failure doesn’t mean I lose my house or my child goes without medicine

> I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire.

That sounds cool but hasn't been my experience at all. I used to care about money, and used to earn well. These days I care less about money (which I can afford to, precisely because I used to care about money) and earn an order of magnitude less.

The problem is that you have to acquire money first to care less about it

> This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.

A noble man that spends all his time jealous of the things the men without scruples have is not so much far from doing what they did. It's also what the men that did it before him told themselves "why play the right game if everyone else doesn't".

Disagree. You can still get fucking angry at how they’re capable of fooling others because of the skewed incentives we built in our capitalistic society

Of course you can, you're just way closer to being them. If you're in positions to take decisions that prevent others from doing it, do it without getting mad, actually improve things. If you're not, your getting mad will just make you more likely to join them later on. The cliche version is "hate consumes you".

Oh nonsense.

Reverse the argument, does it make any sense?

"Every time a (whaling ship crew, police force, oil executive, etc) gets angry at protestors and sprays them with (water cannons, rubber bullets, lawsuits), they are more likely to join them!"

Unfortunately you're so far from the point that I don't think it's worth explaining. But the wisdom I shared is not mine, it exists for thousands of years. People have known for a long time it's useless to spend too long worrying about things you can't change, and that they should focus on those they can. And that bitterness is not going to help you. Those are the only assertions I'm making.

If you want to live bitter about how broken the world is instead of focusing on improving the things you actually can change that's up to you.

Stoicism must be the most misconstrued and misunderstood philosophical framework ever. It's just so good for the people in power, and Silicon Valley seems to have eaten it up perfectly and spit out a version of it that is quintessentially functional to convince people that questioning power is useless.

That is not what I said. You seem to assume people have no ability to change anything. I said people should focus on the things they can change.

> Disagree. You can still get fucking angry at how they’re capable of fooling others because of the skewed incentives we built in our capitalistic society

This is what I replied to. You cannot change that other people want to fool others. You can decide to fool others though. You can decide how you operate under a system you disagree with, and your contribution will help change it, to larger or smaller degrees. Being actually internally angry about "capitalism" day to day is completely useless though. Go be the economic agent you think more people should be. Work for someone with morals instead of maximize salary. Move to a country more similar to your values, so many things can be done than "be angry at capitalism".

I also don't see why being bitter and angry is a synonym to "questioning power" to you. You can think about things you disagree without getting angry presumably.

Funnily enough I totally agree with you in principle. Though I believe we are witnessing a constant erosion of these alternatives constantly and organically at the hand of the owner class. What you say assumes that the solutions you are mentioning are still viable. Let’s say I agree and decide to join USaid to do good. Elon fucking Musk comes in, guts it, indirectly causes thousands to lose help and die. My answer to this according to this frame should be “oh well, he would have done it anyway, can’t change that. Won’t help me being angry at the massive twat, so I’ll just jog on then”?

If you're a random worker of a huge organization and it gets bought or co-opted, yes you should jog on. Go help someone else that hasn't been co-opted.

This is why even though I'm generally a progressive I'm against unions. The solution to bad owners is everyone quitting their company. This was not feasible in a town with a single factory but is very feasible today. Quit working for bad people and bad people will change or become powerless. Prolong the ability for them to keep workers and they will keep being exactly as they are.

Have you ever had to pay rent or feed children?

Of course I'm not a rich Californian on a 300k salary

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