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[I think psychologists have](https://alifeofproductivity.com/how-to-experience-flow-magical-chart/ https://alifeofproductivity.com/how-to-experience-flow-magic.

[I think psychologists have](https://alifeofproductivity.com/how-to-experience-flow-magical-chart/ https://alifeofproductivity.com/how-to-experience-flow-magic...) Basically, those that are more "brainy" need a higher level of mental stimulation in order to not be bored. Being given too much mental stimulation relative to your intelligence/skills results in anxiety. The sweet spot is somewhere in between and we seek this sweet spot (or at least stumble upon it and remain sticky to it). People then sort themselves over time into these buckets s/t (generally), the brainy people end up doing brainy things, and the not-so-brainy people do less-brainy things. Reversing of roles would be mutually detrimental to both parties.

javajosh 5y ago
The real truth is that brainy people need a way to blow off that brainy steam, and it kinda doesn't matter if it's designing a novel WMD or playing a board-game. I'd argue on that basis that stimulating board-games can save the world.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  I occasionally ponder whether this is the purpose of funding pure mathematics.
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    Another reason is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
rjbwork 5y ago
If I could make the kind of money I make in software doing some kind of hands on manual labor I'd be all over it, honestly. Or maybe I'm just romanticizing.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It's been 100 degrees here for a month. I wouldn't want any kind of an outdoor job here right now, not for any amount of money.
  - quacked 5y ago
    But you still think that someone should do outdoor jobs where you live. Why them and not you? Their jobs are open to you, but your job is not open to them. How do you reconcile expecting the rewards of other people's labor if you wouldn't be willing to do the same labor yourself?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      How am I "expecting the rewards of their labor"? And, reversing your logic: If my job is not open to them (presumably because they don't have the skills), and I do their job, who's going to do mine? They aren't. And they aren't going to do their job, either, because I took it. How does that make anything better?
      - quacked 5y ago
        Outdoor jobs: growing food, infrastructure repair, dock loading, police work, etc. If there's a big crash on the highway and it's 100 degrees out, someone's still got to go direct traffic, clean up the glass, etc. If you expect the cleanup to happen, you expect someone to do the cleanup, therefore you are expecting the rewards of the labor of people who do outdoor jobs. My apologies for not explaining my own thoughts clearly, but when you and I say "job", we're talking about two different concepts. You are talking about a 261-day/year 8-hour/day commitment to a set group of tasks, and I am talking about "the collection of tasks that end up providing a quantity of goods or service" without any of the expectations that it's full-time or year-round attached to it. This may seem like an asinine distinction, but I'm not proposing a vision of society where you leave your current profession and work full-time at some mundane outdoor job, but rather a vision of society where you are capable of rendering some assistance in order to offset the bulk of labor required to produce the goods and services that unpleasant "non-brainy" jobs currently produce. I don't want you to give up your current amount of free time, or your medical care, or your access to entertainment and food, but neither do I want you to remain satisfied that other non-smart people labor for you while you do smart-guy stuff that you enjoy. If you could learn the tasks that they perform, you theoretically could offset the amount of time they have to spend outside by occasionally performing those tasks. It likely wouldn't take away from your ability to perform the tasks at your current "job", whatever that may be. I am not a socialist or a communist, and as I've said in another comment I don't really have a full-stack solution built out in my head that would make all of this magically work out, but it seems very wrong to me that the electronic-gentry portion of society is comprised of people sitting in air-conditioned offices thinking "god, I'd never work outside", but still tweeting angrily when the power goes out during a heat wave and the city employees don't fix it fast enough.
quacked 5y ago
I don't think I agree with this assessment. I myself am "brainy", but working for actually useful endeavors is easy to balance with a rich, involved life. I can happily dig rocks out of the ground in the morning and write plays in the evening. The difference is that the rock-digging is primarily for myself and my family, rather than for shareholders. Would "brainy" people need a higher level of mental stimulation if they were doing road-building work on their own street? I certainly wouldn't be happy as a truck driver, but I could easily work as a truck driver for a month straight if the reward was significant time off that I could spend with my family and friends. I'm not doing a great job at explaining this- a lot of people have been trained to believe in the necessary division of labor, but their belief that they could never do manual labor allows the overlords of society to keep everyone in the rat race. If you think you could never work in a textile factory because you need more mental stimulation than that, then you won't ever consider a vision of society where you help produce textiles. If people really want a ten-hour work week, we need to be building everything that we use in our society for ourselves, not relying on serfs in foreign countries to do the grunt work while we do "stimulating work", i.e. building elaborate processes for white collar companies providing services that we don't actually need.
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  I really dig the comment about serfs. We’ve done a great job of hiding-away slavery in the name of consumerism and “uplifting” third world economies. Instead, I would love to see a world where repair and reuse is the norm. And chasing after the largest/outrageous/most-expensive/trendiest is nothing short of embarrassing.
  - NoOneNew 5y ago
    I watched a thing on youtube regarding luxury goods manufacturers as the ultimate slave makers. Not because of the obvious sweat shops, but because they can convince smart/rich people that they're still inadequate and need to work even more so they can buy whatever the hell is being pushed. I thought it was an interesting concept, not 100% onboard, but interesting.

javajosh 5y ago

The real truth is that brainy people need a way to blow off that brainy steam, and it kinda doesn't matter if it's designing a novel WMD or playing a board-game. I'd argue on that basis that stimulating board-games can save the world.

kevinventullo 5y ago
I occasionally ponder whether this is the purpose of funding pure mathematics.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Another reason is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...

rjbwork 5y ago

If I could make the kind of money I make in software doing some kind of hands on manual labor I'd be all over it, honestly. Or maybe I'm just romanticizing.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
It's been 100 degrees here for a month. I wouldn't want any kind of an outdoor job here right now, not for any amount of money.
- quacked 5y ago
  But you still think that someone should do outdoor jobs where you live. Why them and not you? Their jobs are open to you, but your job is not open to them. How do you reconcile expecting the rewards of other people's labor if you wouldn't be willing to do the same labor yourself?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    How am I "expecting the rewards of their labor"? And, reversing your logic: If my job is not open to them (presumably because they don't have the skills), and I do their job, who's going to do mine? They aren't. And they aren't going to do their job, either, because I took it. How does that make anything better?
    - quacked 5y ago
      Outdoor jobs: growing food, infrastructure repair, dock loading, police work, etc. If there's a big crash on the highway and it's 100 degrees out, someone's still got to go direct traffic, clean up the glass, etc. If you expect the cleanup to happen, you expect someone to do the cleanup, therefore you are expecting the rewards of the labor of people who do outdoor jobs. My apologies for not explaining my own thoughts clearly, but when you and I say "job", we're talking about two different concepts. You are talking about a 261-day/year 8-hour/day commitment to a set group of tasks, and I am talking about "the collection of tasks that end up providing a quantity of goods or service" without any of the expectations that it's full-time or year-round attached to it. This may seem like an asinine distinction, but I'm not proposing a vision of society where you leave your current profession and work full-time at some mundane outdoor job, but rather a vision of society where you are capable of rendering some assistance in order to offset the bulk of labor required to produce the goods and services that unpleasant "non-brainy" jobs currently produce. I don't want you to give up your current amount of free time, or your medical care, or your access to entertainment and food, but neither do I want you to remain satisfied that other non-smart people labor for you while you do smart-guy stuff that you enjoy. If you could learn the tasks that they perform, you theoretically could offset the amount of time they have to spend outside by occasionally performing those tasks. It likely wouldn't take away from your ability to perform the tasks at your current "job", whatever that may be. I am not a socialist or a communist, and as I've said in another comment I don't really have a full-stack solution built out in my head that would make all of this magically work out, but it seems very wrong to me that the electronic-gentry portion of society is comprised of people sitting in air-conditioned offices thinking "god, I'd never work outside", but still tweeting angrily when the power goes out during a heat wave and the city employees don't fix it fast enough.

quacked 5y ago

I don't think I agree with this assessment. I myself am "brainy", but working for actually useful endeavors is easy to balance with a rich, involved life. I can happily dig rocks out of the ground in the morning and write plays in the evening. The difference is that the rock-digging is primarily for myself and my family, rather than for shareholders. Would "brainy" people need a higher level of mental stimulation if they were doing road-building work on their own street? I certainly wouldn't be happy as a truck driver, but I could easily work as a truck driver for a month straight if the reward was significant time off that I could spend with my family and friends. I'm not doing a great job at explaining this- a lot of people have been trained to believe in the necessary division of labor, but their belief that they could never do manual labor allows the overlords of society to keep everyone in the rat race. If you think you could never work in a textile factory because you need more mental stimulation than that, then you won't ever consider a vision of society where you help produce textiles. If people really want a ten-hour work week, we need to be building everything that we use in our society for ourselves, not relying on serfs in foreign countries to do the grunt work while we do "stimulating work", i.e. building elaborate processes for white collar companies providing services that we don't actually need.

nobodyandproud 5y ago
I really dig the comment about serfs. We’ve done a great job of hiding-away slavery in the name of consumerism and “uplifting” third world economies. Instead, I would love to see a world where repair and reuse is the norm. And chasing after the largest/outrageous/most-expensive/trendiest is nothing short of embarrassing.
- NoOneNew 5y ago
  I watched a thing on youtube regarding luxury goods manufacturers as the ultimate slave makers. Not because of the obvious sweat shops, but because they can convince smart/rich people that they're still inadequate and need to work even more so they can buy whatever the hell is being pushed. I thought it was an interesting concept, not 100% onboard, but interesting.