minblaster

Losers sit in patent offices dreaming of the theories that gets rovers to mars, or the universal model of computation that allowed computers to exist. People told they must be Bigly Winners become reality-star presidents and certainly set an example.

Thinking a desire to win is necessary to exert effort is intriguing.

"Win at what you do" is one of those rah-rah go-getter mindset phrasing that has infected the Western world. Do you "win" at being happy? Having fulfilling relationships? Is everything a game/competition, to be measured with winning and losing?

I think the author is getting stuck in tactics, not strategy.

Problem: OP does not have the freedom to pursue what he finds interesting.

Tactic: Given existing work arrangements, attempt to negotiate a setup where he can just work on what he wants. If the employer changes its mind, OP gets to restart the cycle.

Strategy: Avoid having this problem in the first place.

Pursuing the strategy means taking a high-paying job, saving a large fraction (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...) and having the financial freedom to never worry about this problem again.

If I wanted to study zoonotic viruses, I would put labs in places filled with universities or government agencies focused on disease, like Boston, Atlanta, Maryland.

Tell me about that lab in the Congo again.

Check out nonduality. It’s amusing that we insist that consciousness, which we experience firsthand, must be created by matter, which we experience indirectly. The image creating the screen.

Why do you feel the need to chase what other people consider success? Live life on your own terms.

This falls into the thinking “pure math is ok, since it will often become practical on a long enough time horizon”. Why not “pure math is ok because that’s what people want to do”?

Whether you can get funded for your explorations is a separate question, but no justification is needed for them.

How much do you think Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy and friends mark up the products they sell?

> My question is rather about why HN would find this interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358111

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789

Wouldn’t you say something that has an equation that works but no theory of why is mysterious?

Mysterious doesn’t mean magical, it just means there’s an unexplained gap in what we understand, which is the case.

Short term, follow the advice here.

Long term, work toward financial freedom so you don’t need to contort your life to appease some HR gatekeeper.

Don’t get tricked into playing zero sum games.

Status, prestige, being the “best” are relative, not absolute measurements. Someone else’s gain is your loss.

Health, love, education (to build a skill) are absolute. Someone else’s gain can benefit and inspire you.

I hear you, same boat. Tried the big corp thing, startup lottery grind, settled on an easy remote gig (part time) while I run headfirst towards FIRE. Working great for stress levels so far.

I think total, not relative, suffering matters. Killing 10x the population of Mesopotamia in the Iraq war isn’t assuaged because it’s low as a percentage of the population. The amount of absolute suffering has increased drastically.

Yep, everyone seems to ignore that the AMA operates like a cartel. Hippocratic Oath my ass.

Not affiliated, https://30hourjobs.com/

You can get a full time job and negotiate to go part time after proving yourself for a year or two.

Yes, doing drugs in the 60s was a real privilege. He almost didn’t get adopted because his adoptive parents weren’t well educated enough. And he dropped out of college because he was burning his parents life savings.

He had a wonder years middle class life.

“You’ll care less what others think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”

I think gift cards have the implied context of “treat yourself”. Ie I might give a gift card for your favorite restaurant. The cash might just be used at the gas pump or buying groceries.

That you can examine your negative thoughts/emotions mindfully, let them play out and then pass away. They rarely return, and the number of thoughts that trouble me has dropped ~95% in the last few years.

I had a side project online which the CEO of a small company used (he mentioned it on twitter). We started a conversation, he was hiring and remote-friendly, so I joined. After a few years I asked to go part-time.

Not affiliated, but https://30hourjobs.com/ has a list of similar gigs.

I tried the corporate rat race, was not for me. Neither was the startup lottery ticket grind.

I work remote 3 days a week (for 75% salary) and it’s the perfect balance for me. 4 days off is enough to recharge and work on personal projects yet keep some structure.

You’ve realized the motivational power of having control over your time. Work towards financial independence and you can spend as much time as you want on things you enjoy.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

Your day job now has a deeper purpose: financing your freedom.

Don’t play zero sum games, like defining your worth by “being the best”.

Play games where you can advance independent of other people’s advancements (like being healthy, or able to perform some skill).

Yep, many think their single n=1 counterexample dismantles the truth of a general trend.

Especially when they fail to realize the selection bias of their commenting on a forum for curiosity-driven technology enthusiasts.

“ The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?”

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

If you aren’t honest with yourself about why you got into a profession it may wear against your psyche and burn you out. The lawyer knew chasing status would require a sacrifice of happiness, time, and relationships but didn’t want to admit it.

And when that guy’s roommate strikes it big, who gets the call to join the rocketship?

Steve Ballmer was Bill Gates’ roommate. You are getting free networking lottery tickets with high achievers at an Ivy.

"Broken" is one-dimensional-black-and-white-thinking-speak for "works for most, most of the time, but has some behavior I don't like so it's 100% useless."

So you can't perfectly compare an item that is cross-listed in multiple categories. Is that "broken", or not ideal?

Even ratings, the worst thing about amazon, are "useful" in that you can instantly look at the distribution. All 5's and 1's? Product sucks.

Thanks for the reference, that is interesting. I think that's what I was looking for in a theory of why things will be bad: it's not the temperature change itself (a few degrees is fine), or the atmospheric CO2 levels (still far less than 1%), or even the water levels (we can move, if painful economically), but the release of H2S, which kicks off a chain reaction of extinction, which may impact food supply etc.

I hardly know enough to comment on whether that is likely. But I think it's a much better argument about why the Earth will be uninhabitable for us specifically.

(That said, it doesn't really matter if the earth eventually becomes uninhabitable or not, we want to avoid the cost of having to move everyone for even minor sea level rises.)

Is sketchiness determined by an instantaneous feeling or a well-deliberated rational thought?