16 ms·

We’re Optimizing Ourselves to Death (2019)

• acalzycalzy 6y ago
  Turns out we are also over analyzing things to death... Maybe some tech people are over optimizing, but 99% of people in the real world do not. This article reminds me of some friends in tech who sit down and over analyze shit and never get anything done.
  • rantwasp 6y ago
    while i agree with you that we are overanalyzing things and are "optimizing" things that are not worth optimizing I believe the bigger point still stands: a collective strategy that would yield better results for everyone is not selected. instead a sub-optimal strategy is selected that attempts to maximize the outcome without relying on what others do. I would also go ahead and say that the "tragedy of the commons" is an even better way of looking at this (i think that's basically a N-player prisoner's dilemma)
  • vermilingua 6y ago
    Virtually the entire point of middle management, in any industry, across the world, is to over optimise. It also isn’t about who is doing the optimising, in the real world, but who is affected by it. Your 99% figure is a little off.
    • twblalock 6y ago
      The real point of middle management is to reduce the number of direct reports for upper management.
  • 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    It’s not a conscious optimization. It’s just having to compete with others. Same as needing a college degree for so many jobs, not because it’s going to teach you what you need, but because enough of the other applicants have one and it’s a tiny tiny signal. Imagine a world where you can get enough pay to eat and go out and pay rent in four hours of work per week. Your landlord can rent to you or to the person who decides to work eight hours per week, so he raises the rent and rents to the other guy who is willing to work more and needs housing as much as you do. So now you have to work more too. Everyone works more because everyone else works more, just like you have to not cooperate on a prisoners dilemma because you know the other guy won’t cooperate either (because he knows the same thing you do).
    • BlueTemplar 6y ago
      It's not that clear cut though, because as rents rise up, people are incentivized to build new, smaller homes. (Until we ran out of space, but we're very far from this happening.)
  • knuthsat 6y ago
    Yep, work in a bank is really stress free, especially in Europe. No one does anything, the hierarchical structure is so meaningless hundreds do nothing at all. People get stressed out when they are expected to work a little. Everyone is chatting on meetings about which button is the best. Yep, it’s a career suicide and leaves you with no future prospects but it’s pretty stable. Some play the politics to get higher paychecks, some squeeze the newcomers that actually do the work but things stabilize pretty quickly.
    • danielscrubs 6y ago
      This is false in the Nordics. Of my friends in finance 100% are working overtime on weekends as we speak. Banks are a heavily competitive field, try governments and unions instead. Which country and which kind of work? I might relocate when I get older so it’s good to know... ;)
      • knuthsat 6y ago
        Working overtime is a madman's choice. It's possible to work overtime but it's completely irrelevant. It's done mostly for politics. For example, you have small chances of a raise or a promotion if your overtime hours are small. Collecting overtime gives opportunity for under-performers to make progress in the company. I've been to more than 5 banks in Croatia and Austria (Most of the banks in Croatia are subsidiaries of Italian and Austrian banks). The contracts make overtime mandatory but one can negotiate to remove overtime completely. Most people that tell their wives and friends that they work overtime either do not work during the overtime hours, are unnecessarily inefficient for the purpose of collecting hours (unpaid) or have periods of struggle because most of the time they do not work and have no idea what's going on (so when they have to catch up, the stress and the lack of knowledge forces overtime). Some cases I encountered of people who complain about working too much in a bank are those that prefer the company of their coworkers more than that of their spouses.
        • danielscrubs 6y ago
          Occams razor, it’s just a very competitive field with salaries that reflect it. Heavy responsibility and slinging Petabytes of data. PhDs, suits and fpga developers in the same room. Insanely great mix in my humble opinion. I hope you find an area that you like.
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• dmitshur 6y ago
  The article mentions that if all seven billion individuals could communicate efficiently and agree to use extra time-saving services to rest, the rat race may be prevented. But I think it is incomplete: we may still need to rush in order to be technologically advanced in time to defend ourselves against an unknown future threat: an incoming asteroid, or an invading alien species. So it seems agreeing to slow down Earth-wide would still be insufficient. In theory, the same burnout problem may be affecting an independent alien life form far away, making this outcome an emergent property of any intelligent life form.
  • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    People get burned out because they don't have options. If you were rich and worked a job for the social parts, would you ever burn out? Doubtful, if you get fired, you're rich. If your asked to work extra hard, you don't, because you're rich. If you're not rich, you can't get fired: you'd lose your income, foreclosure, difficulty feeding your family, no retirement savings, can't afford to fix your car, lose your healthcare, etc. You can't say no. Debt is the primary driver of the economy in this country and the major reason why people are unhappy. They buy things they can't afford with money they don't have because of marketing and then are trapped in their jobs and treated like garbage.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    I would be much more concerned about much more likely threats like pollution and resource depletion, which instead require that we slow down...
• taeric 6y ago
  The constant appeal to the prisoner's dilemma feels off. Especially since it is more transactional, in action. That is, the confession to betray to get a reduced sentence had to be offered before it is taken. Neither has incentive to confess before being offered the chance to get a reduced sentence, unless they think they have no chance of completing a lie. Right? What am I missing?
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  Slightly tangential, I wonder if social networks will be looked at like the tobacco companies once the increased dopamine needs they cause and certain brain diseases are linked...
• ssivark 6y ago
  > Author’s Note: I’ve recently partnered with Project DigInThere, an online project to help people get more out of the articles they read. Project DigInThere enables authors (in this case, me) to create 3-4 question “quests” that readers (in this case, you) can review prior to reading an article. Doing so primes you with what to look for in the article, and then you can take the quest at the end of the article to test your recall. If you’re interested, you can review the quest I’ve built by clicking here, then take it after reading the article and see how you do. Optimizing much? :-)
  • Ericson2314 6y ago
    Came to say the same. Sheesh. Guess this is just yet another disingenuous piece on breaking off from the rat race.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • yawgmoth 6y ago
    I liked it because it made me really read the article rather than just scan it and move on. That said, I took the quiz and got 5/9 - but I didn't want to sign up so I don't know what I didn't comprehend/retain. I actually see this as a slowing mechanism rather than an optimization mechanism, too (thinking about when I first joined reddit and read every single submission and now I simply doomscroll, hmm).
    • taneq 6y ago
      A slowing mechanism can be an optimisation mechanism. Not everything has to be optimised for speed.
      • npsimons 6y ago
        This was my number one motivation for reading "How to Read a Book" (an HN recommendation, I might add). I can plow through texts without even trying (no effort to increase speed), but what's the point if I don't retain anything? I haven't read Newport's "Deep Work" yet, but I suspect the themes are what I'm aiming for; I like to be a jack of many trades, but mastery of a few (or even serial mastery) is my ultimate goal.
• deadlyllama 6y ago
  Zander attributes burnout (at root, excessive, sustained stress) to optimising our lives. There is some truth in that. But to write an article in late 2020 about excessive stress while ignoring the major stressor of COVID-19 is naive at best. Even in New Zealand where we're not in lockdown and life is pretty normal, there's still that "what if we get a big outbreak" sitting in the back of your head constantly. Modern life comes with a range of stressors and competing in the labour market is just one. There are loads more that we as individuals can do little about. Limited progress on climate change is another big one.
  • artaviia 6y ago
    > ...write an article in late 2020 The article is from Feb 2019
• citizenpaul 6y ago
  I've been banging this drum for years. Oh we can now get by with only X employees whom now have 95% of their work day spoken for. What happens when something goes wrong, what happens when someone quits or is sick? What happens when business needs to change/pivot/innovate? This idea that optimized time is somehow 100% wasted is killing a lot of people.
  • rubixdude 6y ago
    I run a support department for a SaaS product and we’re lean. Everything is fine unless someone is sick or wants to take vacation. Of course hiring another person is never the answer according to the budget gods.
    • nullsense 6y ago
      I'm in that position right now and it's massively contributing to burnout.
      • ddingus 6y ago
        I left a scene like that, and people I love dearly to avoid burnout. Ended up with some. Am healing. Will be OK. A decade ago many asked, "where is the new blood?" Could see it coming. Right now, people aging and burning out are super expensive to replace. In some ways they can't be. I consider failure to manage this kind of debt severe. When it comes due, it is brutal.
    • rocmcd 6y ago
      Support does not (directly) make money, so it is doomed to be seen as a drain. I’ve fought the same battle at every company I’ve worked at, and I’m starting to think it is hopeless.
    • npsimons 6y ago
      > Everything is fine unless someone is sick or wants to take vacation. That doesn't sound "fine" to me. People get sick. Vacations are necessities.
• ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I think something not mentioned here is competion. It seems to me like over the last ~20 years the world has become increasingly more competitive. So it seems likely that many people choose the path of optimization not out of want for wealth, but out of necessity to continue advancing somewhat. In a highly competitive environment I doubt both players will ever choose to relax, unless they are already comfortable.
  • tqi 6y ago
    There are nearly 2Bn more people in the world, so increased competition was probably inevitable?
    • Fnoord 6y ago
      That, and globalization. Mainly globalization. We got access to workforces which just were far less or not at all available 20-30 years ago. Remember the time when everything said "Made in Japan"? Remember the time when everything said "Made in Taiwan"? Now its all "Made in China", with "Support in India". Even Eastern Europe, much more local for Western Europe than Asia (plus the benefit of intra-EU), has a hard time competing with that. You could call it competition. I call it race to the bottom. Cause a lot gets sacrificed in the name of lower price. Repairability, source code, QA, tech support, environment -- all too often they're the losers.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Plus with instant communications and the consolidation of languages means that it’s easier for markets to be winner take all (or maybe two).
  • clankyclanker 6y ago
    I could be reading too much into it, but I thought that was literally the author's central point. > Hyper-rational individuals making hyper-rational decisions on how to spend their time by launching into an inescapable arms race of productivity. Burnout is inevitable.
    • 6y ago
• ehennenfent 6y ago
  I think the author’s analysis ignores an important facet of this problem - namely, the tremendous opportunity cost of burnout. In my time in this industry, I have seen burnout result in lost employment, failed startups, years-long mental health crises, and even total career switches. Even if the locally optimal solution is to prioritize work over leisure, most people who have been exposed to the idea of “burnout” at all seem to recognize that regularly trading leisure for productivity can result in significantly _less_ productivity over a five year period, even if seems optimal in the current month.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Indeed. AFAIK the psychological definition of burnout is something that you never bounce back from (to the same level). Something that you bounce back from is 'just' exhaustion – and burnout is something that happens when you're exhausted but still keep pushing. It's interesting how the author first uses sleep as an example of leisure, then something as akin to 'work' (before play), because undersleeping is pretty much the typical example of the kind of short-time 'benefit' thing that leads to very high long-term costs. But I guess that the first mention of 'sleep' might have meant "staying lazily in bed when you have already woken up" ?
• mdifrgechd 6y ago
  > The escalators I take to work are filled with the same desperate faces and vacant eyes I feel staring through me on the subway, except instead of standing still, they’re bounding up it, subconsciously aware that below their feet is yet another opportunity to optimize on an existing convenience. This is a super pessimistic take on what the author is seeing. I the last five years I have worked between two cities in my country, one where the federal government is the major employer, one the financial center. Getting off the train downtown in the financial core, I see engaged, enthusiastic, and hungry people heading to work to make something of themselves. They bound up the escalator because they have energy and drive and want to improve theirs and their family's lives. In the government town, I see lots of people with unfulfilling, boring, and secure jobs, and the whole vibe of the town is defeat. For many people, competition and pressure are essential to enjoying life, and we want to optimize what we do to support that. Without the pressure we atrophy. There are lots of places (like a lot of government work) where you dont have to work hard and can enjoy other parts of life. But what I've seen is that usually it doesnt work that way.
  • bumby 6y ago
    I've noticed something similar but to align it with the post's optimization theme, here's how I previously thought about it: We, as humans, naturally try to optimize for the lowest energy output. Most people, when strictly externally motivated, will take the easiest path. People prefer to sit rather than stand, prefer to watch TV rather than do yard work etc. For those without ample job security, competition creates a bulwark against this by forcing people to try harder in order to get a reasonable level of security. Those who already have that job security (in government positions, for example) revert to that "lowest level of acceptable effort", which tends to be a bit lower without the added job security pressure. Of course, there's always those few who are intrinsically motivated and highly conscientious that try hard no matter the circumstances.
    • vncecartersknee 6y ago
      Do we? I'd prefer to do yard work than watch TV, but I don't have a yard and neither can I afford one.
• throwaway7281 6y ago
  I had an ok, low life once. Today I work 80h to catch up with capital gains of those who sell me food or own my place. The essence of capitalism is embodied in private equity today - a company is not there to make shoes or build a car - a company exists to make money. Everything else is rather accidental, which is my take on the uber-exhaustion of the western world. I work hard to catch up with capital gains, which I know I cannot. edit: What keeps me sane is that I basically reduced my life as much as I can. I life and work in a small room, have no car, I have clothing for a week, that's it. The flat I life in is about 70 years old and has hardly be modernized. I buy food and cook myself. I do not fly, my phone is old, I do not stream anything, I ad-block (otherwise I could not use the internet) and I support some core sites of the (old) internet with a bit of money. I do not crave any of the "niceties" of today's world (I use dish washer and washing machine, do not get me wrong), let alone the tech world. No social media, except HN and a few very specific sites. Basically a modern day recluse, as it is the only way I can implement sufficient distance to this world.
  • watt 6y ago
    And? Are you now closer to being an ownership class? Do you own shares, real estate, etc?
    • throwaway7281 6y ago
      No, I do not want a part in that.
• yawgmoth 6y ago
  I really liked this article, but I think it misses a couple things: the reality of the economy for millennials. Notes about how we might consider wage stagnation aside, cost of living and education skyrocketed for us. We also witnessed several significant economic events: the .com bubble's burst and the 2008 recession / depression -- a time when many millenials were looking for their first job post-college or at least a time when we were considering what to do post-college. Personally, I changed my plans entirely based on the 2008 depression (I'm in Michigan, where it was really bad). The psychology of frugality can extend to time, not just money.
• dmje 6y ago
  Amen to that. One life, live it well. To me that doesn't mean 80 hour weeks, 40 years of working and dropping dead of exhaustion the day I retire. I'm alright for that, thanks. Would rather be slightly poorer financially (some might say "less optimised") and richer for time. Time I can spend with my kids, looking at the sea, making music, reading. I'm ok for optimisation. If there's anything covid should teach us, it's that optimisation to the max leaves us collectively and individually extremely fragile. We all need time and space and quiet and contingency, not "optimisation" and "growth", not all the time, anyway.
  • peterlk 6y ago
    The irony here is that you're still optimizing, we're just arguing about heuristics. I find it to be a very difficult thought experiment to consciously avoid optimization. Maybe the key might be to stop thinking and/or live without intention...?
    • ddingus 6y ago
      Leave room for random time. Say 80 percent intent, 20 percent in the moment.
    • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      The author specifically refers to optimizing for wealth and working time though, so in the context of the article it is optimizing less.
    • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      This is true and a problem a lot of people who are trying to be mindful deal with. Many have "goals" to get "better at" meditating. This is due to our conditioning - we're convinced everywhere that we aren't good enough, in everything we do, from ads, to our boss, to our internal voice. Sometimes I find just saying "you're doing fine, whatever it is" can be really helpful.
      • dmje 6y ago
        Such a great point and one I had when I started seriously meditating a couple of years ago. It's only now really that I'm starting to be able to just sit, without a goal, without some sense of "am I enlightened yet" as a thought somewhere at the end of the tunnel. Of course, in sitting I am (as per above) optimising - optimising stillness and inaction but yes, optimising. But then as per reply below, the piece was specifically about wealth and working time which is a different beast. Man, interesting stuff :-)
• api 6y ago
  We are optimizing for the wrong things. Instead of optimizing for happiness, health, learning, or anything else like that, we are optimizing for GDP and killing ourselves to make abstract numbers go up.
  • aaron-santos 6y ago
    GDP is an easy to calculate metric. Everyone here knows what happens when an easy to calculate metric becomes a target.
    • qznc 6y ago
      Is "easy to calculate" a necessary property? Is it ok to use a "hard to calculate" metric as a target?
      • aaron-santos 6y ago
        No, it is just casual word choice. The audience here, being mostly compsci oriented, likely consider metrics like happiness or fulfillment incalculable, when it is more precise to label them as latent as opposed to observable variables.
  • throwaway201103 6y ago
    > Instead of optimizing for happiness, health, learning, or anything else like that Humans didn't evolve optimizing for those things. We evolved hunting and scrapping for food and shelter, and looking for opportunities to have more. So that's what we're prone to do.
  • rubin55 6y ago
    Any individual would agree with you and herein lies the crux: who is "we"? If "we" is not "the entire earth population" those that optimize for "happiness, health, learning, or anything else like that" lose to those, for whatever reasons or circumstances, optimize on price alone (arguably to the detriment of their happiness, health, etc). Case in point: outsourcing: 10 devs in the west cost more than 10 devs elsewhere in the world, meaning a global market for dev skills will move elsewhere, where those devs are cheaper for a reason (quality of life, living standards, infrastructure, are not spent on, so labour is cheaper). Of course globalists will argue that this ultimately will "level", look at incomes going up where we outsource-to for example, but I think this misses the point. We will just keep optimizing, pointing the needle so to speak to the next cheapest place, which might in the future be a country that used to be "more expensive" but now, forced to compete, lowers its standards to accomodate the market. We're stuck in a Malthusian Trap. Thinking we can simply escape it by not playing the game is missing the point: the question we need to solve is: "how do we stop competing for resources as individuals or arbitrary groups (neighbourhoord/cities/countries/continents), and start having a real shared understanding of our habits, genetic behaviour and use of resources".
• heimatau 6y ago
  We have a tension between the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves. When someone chooses to focus on the worst of ourselves, their pessimistic perspective, generally speaking, doesn't bring out the best in ourselves. I do appreciate how they concluded: > When given the choice, we optimize. > > Then we work. Yes. Please focus on this. Our humanity is mostly best suited to receive positivity. Accept the negativity (read: unideal outcomes) but move forward with the positivity on building a better world. On building a world that understands more. On building a world that expresses abundance and joy. The author seems to equate that work is somehow inherently evil. I'd say this is only true if it's a zero sum game but if it's an infinitely unbounded game then I'd say it's profitable to everyone.
  • mementomori 6y ago
    This is the core of my own development: seeing the world and life in this world (or even beyond) as an unbounded game rather than a zero-sum game. A lot of times it's the perspective that matters. Maybe at times when we are overly focused on the "how" of optimization and lose sight of the "why," the human mind/body/soul becomes unable to metabolize it, and flips out.
    • heimatau 6y ago
      >when we are overly focused on the "how" of optimization and lose sight of the "why," I have full agreement with you except the quoted statement above. I would actually rephrase this to say: when we are overly focused on our own solution then we lose sight of other coherent variables/solutions that we didn't take into account. Some call this myopic, among many other terms. All our decisions don't exist in a vacuum, no matter how convincingly the perspective is.
• aaron-santos 6y ago
  Curious what would change for better or worse if computer professionals were reclassified as non-exempt. How would the change in dynamics affect the burnout economics? Edit(follow up): The history behind exemption stems from an amendment[1] to S.2930 - A bill to eliminate "substantial documentary evidence" requirement for minimum wage determination for American Samoa[2] (1990) of which there was no debate or objection. [1] https://www.congress.gov/amendment/101st-congress/house-amendment/887 https://www.congress.gov/amendment/101st-congress/house-amen... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/2930/all-actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/senate-bill/293...
  • analog31 6y ago
    They would be told that they are not required to work overtime, while every signal and clue would tell them that they are. Overtime abuse keeps the wage and hour divisions in most states working overtime.
• herbertl 6y ago
  This was a great piece, covering a really good topic. It's worth considering that work today is probably defined differently than before—and comes with different meanings and expectations to different generations. Would be good to pair it with this one: https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/03/02/why-do-we-work-so-hard https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/03/02/why-do-we-work-so-... Secondly, what do we lose at the expense of increased productivity/work output? What were the unseen fruits of chilling and leisure?
• mdiesel 6y ago
  Optimisation isn't the problem, optimisation is always a good thing. Deciding what the objective is on the other hand, that's the tricky part. Right now we're optimising to an incomplete or incorrect objective function. Of course it's not that simple, no doubt someone will be along to mention Goodhart's Law or the inherent problem with essentially quantifying the meaning of life. Still, I don't think people applying logic to their daily lives can be a problem on its own.
  • ssivark 6y ago
    Here’s the challenge: could you ever specify an objective function concretely enough to sustain an assault by aggressive optimization? https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-hate-your-family/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha... In all our mathematical experience, the answer turns out to be that we can only ever define an approximate objective function, and we almost always need some kind of “regularization” to constrain our optimization strategy. And in many cases, an effective regularization practically (which results in better “generalization” technically) might be “early stopping” I.e. not optimizing as hard!
    • mdiesel 6y ago
      But if the definition of "optimisation" is achieving the best solution for the problem, then regularization isn't constraining optimisation, it's part of getting to the best solution and so becomes a part of the better optimiser. I agree, any sufficiently complex problem is beyond what we can define as a concrete objective function and any of the solutions we have. So instead the best we can hope for is that today is closer to being optimal than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better still.
      • ssivark 6y ago
        Regularization might give better solutions, but it’s no more optimizing the stated objective, and often runs counter. In some cases, regularization is explicit and by choice, but it’s also often implicit and not under control.
• dustingetz 6y ago
  "Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys All Value" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-hate-your-family/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha...
• nicbou 6y ago
  This reminds me of Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch". It describes the same sort of competition where players sacrifice a value to remain competitive. After a while, the value is gone but the competitive advantage vanished, and everyone is worse off. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  • qznc 6y ago
    This is the one topic where there is no xkcd but SSC always comes up instead.
• dchasson 6y ago
  To say little of perfectionists/analysis-paralysis
• deleted 6y ago
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• Aeolun 6y ago
  I dunno, I saw those numbers on the prisoners dilemma and I immediately felt that I should lie just based on the off chance that the other prisoner does too. The difference between 8 and 10 years in prison is not enough to matter. But 1 is pretty good, and maximum utility for both of us. Of course they’ll probably end up confessing, but that’s no more than I expect anyway. Interesting how context is so important.
• foxfired 6y ago
  On a personal level, optimization is a game and it's easy to get addicted to the game and forget about the goal. There was a game called Vagrant Story on PSX where you can become invincible to all enemies. You can finish the game without this invincibility but it does look cool when no enemy can inflict any damage to you. So my older brother went for the challenge. You can do this by getting an armor that makes small enemies damages smaller than the normal health recovery rate. Every time they hit you, it makes you stronger towards their element. This meant, my brother would turn on the psx, find a weak enemy, turn off the tv and let them inflict damage. He would let the psx on for days at a time. Put a little fan on the console and a glass of water on top (another optimization). This also meant the rest of us couldn't use the PSX. Also, when my brother achieved his goal, he never played the game again.
• andrewjl 6y ago
  Enjoyed reading the post but find it glosses over the easiest way to escape competition, doing something unique. It's a safe bet that uniqueness will become ever more disproportionately rewarded in the near-future. This can mean developing a unique perspective or using your existing, unique experiences to do something no one else can. The trouble of course is that as general advice, it's all hand-wavy and each individuals specific situation has its own context and limitations. Everyone is forced to figure it out without the benefit of direct examples, by definition. I think the single best "starter advice" for someone interested in taking this direction is to train your mind to be habitually observant. Meditation is one way but other good techniques exist as well. Coming up with something unique almost always involves figuring out how a "weird" piece of external reality fits.
  • jrumbut 6y ago
    Uniqueness to the point that it can beat optimization is a very high bar to clear. Think of the wonderful galaxy of unique internet databases that were supplanted by Google's relentlessly optimized text field, how many unique communities got overrun by Facebook and Reddit, optimization really chases uniqueness out. You need a little slack to leave oxygen for new ideas.
    • 10000truths 6y ago
      And how do you think Google, Facebook and Reddit became dominant in the first place? They didn’t overrun their competitors by being just like them.
      • jrumbut 6y ago
        My argument is they beat them by being a better optimized version of what came before.
    • andrewjl 6y ago
      There's a distinction to be made in corporate vs individual uniqueness. It is easier for an individual to pivot and try something completely new. And on communities or databases, I think much of the story remains unwritten and current circumstances aren't permanent.
• imgabe 6y ago
  There's so many faulty assumptions here and so much more variety in the paths you can take through life than are proposed in this article. You have more choices available than either climbing the corporate ladder or sitting on the couch watching Netflix. Neither of those lead to any sort of fulfillment in my opinion, so I don't know why you would limit yourself to those options. Also the idea that if you don't win the competition and reach the top of the corporate ladder you're doomed to a life of failure and misery is just pure nonsense. By definition, the vast majority of people will not reach the top. Life is not a constrained game like the Prisoner's Dilemma, you aren't limited to "lie" or "confess", you can also tunnel out with a spoon, bribe the guard, find a loophole in the law, etc, etc. You're only limited by your imagination. > billionaires can optimize for the sake of optimizing, rather than to keep their head above water No, I would imagine billionaires optimize for the sake of being better able to do whatever made them billionaires in the first place, not just for its own sake.
  • chongli 6y ago
    I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. — Kurt Vonnegut A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein The key to a happy life is to let go of your status anxiety, get out there, and really start living. There’s an effectively infinite number of things to learn, books to read, places to go, people to meet, landscapes to explore, cuisines to taste, animals to see. There’s just so, so much to experience in life, and so little of it has anything to do with money.
    • taigeair 6y ago
      I like those quotes!
    • selestify 6y ago
      > There’s just so, so much to experience in life, and so little of it has anything to do with money. You say that, and yet > places to go Travel is expensive. > people to meet If you live in a small town and want to start meeting people radically different from the people you usually meet, you should probably move to a larger city. Large cities are expensive. > cuisines to taste Eating out is expensive. > things to learn, books to read These are perhaps the ones that require the fewest resources, and even these require enough of a work-life balance that you're not completely exhausted by the time you finish at your third job. Depending on how your economic circumstances are, a healthy work-life balance might not pay the bills. Now, for the upper middle class readership that HN is most likely composed of, sure, the costs of all these activities are negligible. But I think it's a stretch to say that a homeless person on the street should "get out there and really start living." To do that, they need enough money to get to a stable situation first, and the sort of money that's trivial for us to come by is not always so trivial for everyone else...
• data4lyfe 6y ago
  I think the idea of relaxation seems to even be pretty optimized. Meditation is objectively the act of doing nothing. And yet to me it's the ultimate optimized relaxation. "Do it every single day for twenty minutes and you'll feel amazing!" Maybe humans are getting better at treating what used to feel tough as relaxing. And if not, then society has to figure out how to deal with people that need to spend 95% of their day fishing or staring at a wall to function and be happy.
• nathias 6y ago
  Optimization is always a multiple choice that depends on your concrete process, not only your purpose.
• pontifier 6y ago
  Competition has increasingly become "winner take all". In this type of cutthroat world, the value of work is not correlated with total output. Luck begins to play a much more important role, as it's no longer enough to perform well. You must perform well and have nothing go wrong. When margins become this thin, contingency plans become unfavored wastes of resources. After recovering from a setback you're unlikely to win, and when second place doesn't pay the bills, it's better to conserve resources so you "Fail Fast". Second place shouldn't mean death. Social safety nets seem to be a possible solution to this competition dilemma. I believe we should strive to help everyone in our society build the lower levels of their Maslow's Hierarchy on a solid foundation. I believe that a Universal Basic Income could be a major component in a strategy to accomplish this goal.