Hacker News Reader

Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

I have the feeling this goes much deeper than knowledge work and AI. I see it in many places that people seem to not take their job serious anymore. The incentive seems to be gone. Also their managers don't seem to care anymore, as they are also taking their job less seriously.

I can't put a finger on it, but it's not about younger people or Gen Z, it also applies to older people. It just feels like good work doesn't matter much anymore, and everyone tries to make the best out of it in their private life.

View on HN

Sometimes in an effort to understand things I'll try and take them to their limit. One limit, framed as a path to a kind of dystopia is "wire heading". Another more tangible limit is opium addiction. These are basically collapsing of values. Trading a rich and robust value system for pure dopamine.

Modern media is on this spectrum (infinite scroll, algorithmically tailored, short form video).

When people can get dopamine by pressing a button it's easy for them to trade a rich and diverse set of values for that button. When people can get dopamine by pressing a button, it's hard to maintain a rich and diverse set of values.

Values are genuine interest (want) in taking actions and patterns of actions.

Interesting idea. Modern media and social media is probably really the most relevant change we had in the last 15 years. Everything else didn't change that much.

It's the product of a low-trust society. Goals and aspirations are founded upon optimism about the future and striving to better youself. If you're a new grad and can't even start your career, what hope do you have for the future.

For the older folk, it does seem like they gave up but also refuse to cede poewr. They lived their full careers and are comfy in retirement on assets. They are just enjoying the rest of life and have no regards for the future.

Yeah something broke during COVID. One factor was the stimulus created enormous wealth inequality, people who owned assets before that live like gods now and people who didn’t can’t even buy a home. The economic policies since then have exacerbated the issue.

I think it started before 2020.

I think 15 years of asset boom has made enormous fortunes not just for billionaires but for regular middle class folks and especially anything tech or finance related. When your investments make much more than your wages, its hard to care about your career but this is the norm now for lots of people around me.

This is inevitable in any system where the old want to maintain purchasing power over the young and the proportions of old are increasing relative to the young.

I'd say its more like about time we had a correction to make people realize markets dont always go up, money doesn't come easily and we all have to get back to working.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com