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I am a pragmatist that is accustomed to the physical, mathematical and social constraints of the world. One big constraint is the average attention span of your

I am a pragmatist that is accustomed to the physical, mathematical and social constraints of the world. One big constraint is the average attention span of your target audience. Do you have time to care whether a guy designing/manufacturing that USB cable on your desk got compensated well? Or the one making your clothes? Or cleaning the corporate toilet? You know, unless you have sewed your shirt yourself, it was probably made a by a person in a less developed country earning about $1 per hour [0]. The thing is, we physically don't have time to look at every situation from every stakeholder's perspective. There are just not enough hours in the day. Like it or not, that's a pretty hard constraint and there's no better way around it than understanding marketing and product management. So ultimately, it boils down to: * Strategy A that gives you a 10% chance of outperforming your corporate salary and 90% chance of getting bored and getting back to your 9-to-5. * Strategy B that gives you a 0.2% chance of changing the world, 49.9% chance of giving up and another 49.9% chance of seriously burning out and getting into depression. The actual world-changing chance is likely even lower. You can guesstimate it by dividing the number of Linus Tordvaldses by the number of Github users with 1 or more repository. Mind you, strategy A requires a lot of trial-and-error while learning how to do business (and getting burned multiple times), while the strategy B is about just doing what you like do and hoping that it will somehow bring the desired outcome. So please, please, please, be honest with yourself about wanting to change the world vs. just wanting to keep is as a stress-free hobby vs getting face-in-the-mud while learning an orthogonal skillset. [0] https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/sewing-machine-operator/india https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/sewing-machine-opera...

pksebben 6y ago
social constraints are only as strong as the amount of people who treat them as constraints. culture is recursively developed.
- asddubs 6y ago
  I would say a lot of the constraints are more based on the incentives given by our economic system, which naturally aren't necessarily fixed either, but pretty hard to change
laughinghan 6y ago
Sure, there aren't enough hours in the day for every person to fix every problem in the world. There are also not enough hours in the day to say everything worth saying about every topic on every forum on the Internet. But you took time out of your busy day to comment on this thread, out of all the threads on the Internet, about this problem, out of all the problems in the world. You even came back and replied to me. I am not suggesting you spend every waking moment of your life trying to solve every problem in the world. I am suggesting you divert a portion of the time that you're currently spending on advising people on how to live in this world, and instead spend just a little of it on thinking about how to build a better one. while the strategy B is about just doing what you like do and hoping that it will somehow bring the desired outcome Really? The only other option besides accepting the world as it is, is to do what you like and hope that the world changes to your liking, entirely on its own? You can't think of any other options?

pksebben 6y ago

social constraints are only as strong as the amount of people who treat them as constraints. culture is recursively developed.

asddubs 6y ago
I would say a lot of the constraints are more based on the incentives given by our economic system, which naturally aren't necessarily fixed either, but pretty hard to change

laughinghan 6y ago

Sure, there aren't enough hours in the day for every person to fix every problem in the world. There are also not enough hours in the day to say everything worth saying about every topic on every forum on the Internet. But you took time out of your busy day to comment on this thread, out of all the threads on the Internet, about this problem, out of all the problems in the world. You even came back and replied to me. I am not suggesting you spend every waking moment of your life trying to solve every problem in the world. I am suggesting you divert a portion of the time that you're currently spending on advising people on how to live in this world, and instead spend just a little of it on thinking about how to build a better one. while the strategy B is about just doing what you like do and hoping that it will somehow bring the desired outcome Really? The only other option besides accepting the world as it is, is to do what you like and hope that the world changes to your liking, entirely on its own? You can't think of any other options?