9 ms·

There's a place for everyone

92 points by yboulkaid 2y ago

grosjona 2y ago
I thought I'd found my place when I got into open source distributed pub/sub over WebSockets. I worked in this area for over 10 years but you won't find my project in the first 100 results on Google for those niche 7 keywords. Surprising considering that almost none of these terms even existed 20 years ago.
deleted 2y ago
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whack 2y ago
> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. > That’s a tragedy not just for Nicky, but for the rest of us, too. There’s a hole in the ecosystem where Nicky should be: there’s a hospital she should be running, or seventh-graders she should be teaching, or pizzas she should be delivering underwater. Wherever that hole is, everything else will be a little off-balance until Nicky fills it. Some interesting implications of this: 1. Any children you have, would be fulfilling a purpose in the world 2. If you decide not to have that child, you are depriving the world and everyone else of a person who would otherwise fulfill that purpose 3. Recall that no one is superfluous or redundant. So by depriving the world of a person who can fulfill that purpose, you are guaranteeing that the purpose will never be adequately fulfilled 4. The above applies no matter how many children you've already had. Already had 10 children and decided not to have a 11th? Man, you just created a Nicky-sized hole in the ecosystem. Now the whole world will be off-balance because of your tragic decision 5. So yeah, if you don't want the world to be off-balance, you better get out there and have as many kids as humanly possible
- autoexec 2y ago
  What if your purpose in the world is to not have any children?
- cardanome 2y ago
  Every person also has needs meaning they add demands for niches to be filled. So it balances itself out. If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take more than they give creating imbalance. So your implications don't really follow strictly from the stated axioms. Though yeah, generally, yes, more people are a good thing as it means more people that can help drive humanity forward. (Obviously there are factors why having as many children as humanly possible is not always a good idea though.) Also some religions strongly encourage people to have as many children as possible so it is not a super uncommon view.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    > If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take more than they give creating imbalance. This seems like harmful thinking. Should I feel guilty about being depressed? What about victims of circumstance? Do they owe society an apology for their trauma?
    - cardanome 2y ago
      The mistake you are making is thinking the sentence is meant to assign individual responsibility for finding your niche. Not at all. The article and I agree on that point is pretty clear that it is a societal responsibility. People not being able to flex their individual talents is a failure of society not the individual. And yes there are niches for depressed, traumatized people, there is a place for everyone.
- klntsky 2y ago
  5 is correct but for the reasons not related to niches or purposes
- Groxx 2y ago
  [dead]
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  It's interesting indeed, but is missing an important factor. Every niche requires resources for someone to fill it: time, at a minimum, but also raw materials (engineering, art), land (agriculture, wildlife preservation), power (pretty much everything) and so on. These are all finite, although some are now used more efficiently than they could have been in the past. By having more children, you contribute to more people fulfilling their purposes in the future, but this is true only to the point where resources would become too scarce when divided between the niches. I would guess that in the future, the Earth could sustain maybe double its current population, due to much more efficient resource utilisation and extraction, relieving the demand on these resources, and the large number of people who would prefer to live in cities, reducing the demand on land. But the Earth could not sustain such a growth of its population immediately; we need time to let society and technology improve and adapt.
- deleted 2y ago
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- pdonis 2y ago
  > Some interesting implications of this Not really. The article only says persons who exist have a purpose. It does not say that persons who do not yet exist must be created because there is a purpose waiting for them.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Doesn't that put a strange significance on making new people? There's some boundary where you can't abort or your child is born and then they definitely have a purpose, even though 5 minutes before reaching that boundary, they didn't
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > There's some boundary But there's nothing that says that boundary has to be birth. It would depend on when you think a person exists. Some people would say that happens at conception. Others would say it doesn't happen until well after birth (indeed some philosophers have said it doesn't fully happen until adulthood).
      - immibis 2y ago
        Is evolving into something with purpose also a purpose? Then unfertilized eggs have a purpose - to become fertilized - and if you aren't making that happen nonstop it's as bad as killing someone.
        pdonis 2y ago
        The article says every person has a purpose. As I said before, people's opinions might differ on exactly when a person exists during the human developmental process, but as far as I know nobody has ever argued that unfertilized eggs are persons. (Note that unfertilized eggs do not "evolve into" humans--only fertilized eggs do. So even on its own terms your argument is not valid.)
        immibis 2y ago
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  I think you are taking the author's reasoning a little bit too literal. The gist is, Nicky is doing a job that she does not like, simply because she does not even know of the existence of a job that suits her better. The filling of that position would be a win-win situation. The current 'off-balance' ness is just a metaphor.
- mtVessel 2y ago
  The post doesn't explain how the niches themselves come into being, so an equally logical assumption could be that creating a person also creates a new niche, and their task is simply to find the right one. No new person, no niche. A less rigorous explanation, but probably more to the author's point, is that people who end up filling the wrong niche add more negativity to the world than those who find their place. This is a worse state of affairs than leaving some niches unfilled.
the_real_cher 2y ago
Well my place in the job world was just outsourced overseas to one of the billions of unique people over there.
- jfil 2y ago
  That sucks. I hope it leads to something good for you, eventually.
amadeuspagel 2y ago
Is there a place for people who disagree with the author on marginal tax rates and soybean tariffs?
deleted 2y ago
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atleastoptimal 2y ago
> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. Nice sentiment but wishful thinking lmao. At the very least there are some people for whom nowhere is a perfect fit, and there are people who would fit better in any place they could fit in. I.e. some people are not locally optimal anywhere. Another issue is we read this and imagine the happy smart consciousness people in our friend groups. What about the psycopaths? Serial killers? Do they deserve a place too? Any environment they would thrive in would be damaging to the general welfare of polite society. Is the point then that anyone can be molded to an ideal?
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  Oddly enough I think a lot of abberant personality types can fit into group dynamics. In fact go to any large, long running, stable, 3rd place and there will be some non violent psychopaths and narcissist in the community. Serial killers usually won't kill people within their own community. The BTK killer was president of his church council. Deserve really doesn't really enter into the equation. A serial killer might know a lot about webrtc or building operating systems and may be on this thread contributing niche info right now! Society isn't a friend group. A co-working, community or church space isn't a friend group. One of my most rewarding experiences was in a space where >20% of people were bidirectionally incompatible for personal friendship. This article isn't about the "whole self", it's actually the opposite in some ways, it's about how in a big world there is value in finding how a distinct and "flavourful" part of your interests has unexpected value.
- cardanome 2y ago
  Yes, there is a place for everyone. For some it might be prison but it is a place nonetheless. Everyone has the right to live. While psychopathy is relatively hard to treat it is worth noting that not all psychopaths are actively harming other people. They can also be functional and productive members of certain groups under the right circumstances. You might want to be more careful with stigmatizing a whole group of people.
  - morning-coffee 2y ago
mulmen 2y ago
I only skimmed but I don’t find this philosophy particularly interesting. The implication here is that everyone has one best place, but in reality there are many local maximums. The opportunity cost of traversing a valley for a slightly higher maximum may not be worth it. The post also conflates employment with happiness. Not having a paying job is a valid life choice. Stay at home parent is a completely valid niche. Picking a job or career based on the free time it allows to pursue hobbies is also valid. None of this is easy and the post doesn’t seem to provide any insight into finding a good fit. The idea that we have one “best” fit is the self-help equivalent of “perfect is the enemy of good”.
- siffin 2y ago
  It also ignores socio-economic implications which totally derail the argument. Underwater pizza delivery? Sounds great and fun, but is it actually profitable once everything is taken into account, including assets, depreciation, insurance, saving for retirement, job security etc. Pretty much anybody can do something they are more apt at and like better if they are willing to risk their financial security.
- bruce511 2y ago
  I'm not sure it conflates the niches with employment. Many of the examples given are specifically non-paying niches. (Starting with breakup-whisperer). Indeed for some percentage of people, employment is not fulfilling or satisfying. They turn to other activities to create significance in their lives. (Open Source software is pretty much built on this concept.) That said, I suspect the basic premise (everyone has a unique niche) is flawed. It's more likely that everyone has the opportunity to add value to society, and that value comes in various ever-creative forms. Many choose not to take that opportunity, and hypothetically we're worse off for that, but life pretty much still goes on.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    It’s obviously false in the literal sense, since some number of people literally lack the capability to remain alive. Not to mention the small fraction of adults that suffer serious brain damage and turn into vegetables.
pajeets 2y ago
tldr honest im sick of these blue pills
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I'm about ready for a good blue pill these days As a vegan who additionally hates eating and hates being around others when they eat, it's very hard to get along with anyone. Imagine a world where nearly everyone is a hypocrite and a murderer, and their hobby of murder is offensive to you, disgusting to you, and also seemingly the number one way for everyone but you to form social bonds of any sort. "Neo!! You have to wake up, Neo! Come live in a filthy cave and eat slop with us, Neo!" I really wonder if the Matrix gave my generation brain poisoning. Why do I greatly prefer to feel correct than to feel happy? Why does it seem impossible to accept other people and this alternate reality most of the world subscribes to? I think I would take the blue pill. The steak Cipher eats is vegan, it's made from ethically sourced human meat, the humans were not raised to be food like cattle are. The world inside the Matrix is not perfect, it's missing many things I'd like, but in that pre 9/11 dream world I could eat dairy cheese and maybe enjoy an easy life. Maybe in that dream I would be cis, even. If I take the blue pill, am I responsible for the machines killing runners? If I pay taxes, am I responsible for my countrymen voting in weird losers? The red pill is no longer a slam dunk for me. I wonder when my mind changed.
avazhi 2y ago
No, there’s not. The evolutionary process is pretty adept at rigorously excluding most personality and physical variants out of all the available options. Pretending otherwise is naive ahistorical nonsense.
- arthurofbabylon 2y ago
  But is that not a place? Our civilization has become infinite… “all the available options” is an enormous category that in some societies does include quite literally everyone. (I suggest reading the piece – the author deals with whether or not the underlying hypothesis is true versus useful early on.)
  - avazhi 2y ago
    I read the piece. Our society is certainly not infinite economically or as a matter of what is acceptable socially, and while different cultures have varying degrees of acceptability in terms of plausible occupations and behaviour, they are still obviously bounded. The hypothesis is neither useful not true, which makes the article uninteresting at best.
- deleted 2y ago
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- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Sometimes I think I must be an evolutionary dead end, and that gels with the fact that I don't want children. Or specifically, I wouldn't mind the good parts of having one or two children, but I could not bear the responsibility
jmann99999 2y ago
I'm not sure the author captures it perfectly, however... There is a lake in the U.S. that crosses the borders of Idaho and Utah. On summer weekends, you'll see the Bear Lake Burger Boat trolling the waters. Swim or float up to it, and they'll give you a delicious hamburger. I'm glad whoever runs it has found a fit in this world. I'm sure it's not what most of us on Hacker News would choose to do, but I am glad someone does.
harimau777 2y ago
How many of these niches actually pay enough (or provide enough other benefits) to have a decent quality of life? I think that's the real limiting factor in "finding your niche".
- abhayhegde 2y ago
  That's a fair point. I kind of hate that the world has come to this. Everything needs to be justified through an economic lens. I wonder if life was easier in the past with regards to this.
  - squigz 2y ago
    Certainly not. These days, with the Internet, social assistance programs, ability to run i.e. a Patreon account to make money from your hobby... It might not be "easy", but it's certainly easier than in the past, where taking a break from your farm to paint some trees would mean a very hard year.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Roughly which century was it when economics began to exist?
  - jfil 2y ago
    To some degree, "everyone in the village is a millet farmer" did make it easier in the past to fit into a niche: it's the ultimate detachment of "who you are" from "what you do". Your day job is never-ending, will never be fully done, and means nothing. Today, we have it a bit harder because we expect our job to give us meaning.
- pdonis 2y ago
  The article doesn't say your niche has to be how you make a living. Consider, for example, the Breakup Whisperer.
anon_cow1111 2y ago
Sort of off topic but this page links to a probably-pseudoscience rabbit hole. >As far back as the 1950s, it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. Does ANYONE know of reference for this? It seemed so bizarre I had to look it up but couldn't see anything obvious.
- jfactorial 2y ago
  I fed your question into perplexity.ai [1] and it appears from the resulting response that a youtube video [2] is responsible for this bit of misinformation. [1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/as-far-back-as-the-1950s-it-wa-9WOTgRdLQ0azVNQKhtQjtQ https://www.perplexity.ai/search/as-far-back-as-the-1950s-it... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNlf-Ar5oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNlf-Ar5oA
fishtoaster 2y ago
It's a fun, upbeat article, but as an actual case, I think it falls down here: > Our abundance of weirdos creates diversity not only in supply, but also in demand. That's certainly true (imo), but the author seems to implicitly expect the supply and demand to match up and I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that they do not. Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people that want to be artists than people that want to buy art, causing art to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in. This is equally true of any other niche where there are X people wanting it and Y people providing it: there's no reason to expect those to be equal and, as it turns out, they rarely are.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people that want to be artists than people that want to buy art, causing art to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in. The article does not say that your place has to be your job. Indeed, it gives examples to the contrary, such as the Breakup Whisperer.
- afpx 2y ago
  Yet, I go on art business forums, and businesses seems to be booming. It’s surprising to me how many profitable niche art genres there are. My guess is that many people (myself included) don’t know how to find a market, align themselves to the market and advertise. There are also a lot of people who ‘want to do their own thing’ and focus on making art that no one else wants. There are a lot of people in the world with very specific interests and lots of disposable income.
MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
Talking about purpose without mentioning spirituality is to me like talking about politics without mentioning wars : feels like a lot of the reasoning behind is missed, either by prudishness, ignorance or bigotry.
- Pat_Murph 2y ago
  We would need to start by defining what spirituality is... For me it's a vague, meaningless word that people like to use without ever defining it. And it's meaning ehen5rhere is one. Is completly diffeent9from person to person... So for me utterly useless.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    spirituality is just the modern word for religion. it's each person's deeper meaning to life beyond this material world, if there is one.
    - dalyons 2y ago
      “Religion” heavily implies an institution, an organization of people, buildings, etc. spirituality typically means none of this. “Unorganized religion” perhaps?
  - MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
    Etymologically speaking, spirituality is related to, well spiritus, related to soul, spirit, vital principles and so on. Religion on the other end comes from religare, which means to bind. Can you see the difference in meaning of this two words ? One talks about ethereal things without boundaries but the other bounds you to something… To answer your point, spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      It's purely material. When I see a beautiful sunset or listen to music I like, or fall in love, those are all material. I too do not understand spirituality
Aperocky 2y ago
> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. It be much nicer to start this statement from the reverse. Instead of justifying everyone has a purpose for a society, how about a society justifying itself based on the premise that every person has a purpose (could just be consumerism for all I know but hey).
cranium 2y ago
I prefer the completely opposite view: nobody is there with a special purpose, we are all trying to figure what the heck we should do. It seems less welcoming but if you haven't found your place, is it really helpful to be told "keep searching, somewhere the perfect job is waiting for you"?
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
The author had me with the hook. I wanted to know how this fundamental ethical difference arises and what its psychological and sociological implications are. Maybe I could compare it with other proposed ideological axes. But I didn't find any of that.
alphazard 2y ago
> We don’t talk much about this, because if the people on Team Overboard were honest about who they plan to purge, none of their intended victims would be friends with them, let alone vote for them. It's hard to take the piece seriously after that. Obviously a mischaracterization of the group he refers to as "Team Overboard". A steelman would look something like: "On the other team, they are indifferent as to whether people they don't know find a place for themselves. They are confident that all people they would want to potentially know will find places for themselves." Because that actually matches some commonly espoused philosophies. On the other hand, I've never heard anyone seriously call for a purge of undesirables, which is what the author claims.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  I've heard several people say that we are too many on this planet. Mostly older people tend to agree with this. For the record, I'm not one of them. Hence for those people there has to be a set of people belonging to the overboard side.
nilawafer 2y ago
Thank you for your inspirational words comrade. You are a beacon of hope for all workers of the revolution. Soviet Labor Committee has a place for you and all others! In fact we need 10,000 laborers to construct a new datacenter. Please report with a set of warm clothes. /s
nuancebydefault 2y ago
Personally I find this paragraph talking to newly arriving people a gem: “I’m so glad you’re here! I don’t know if they told you in there, but we’re all trying to do something crazy here, which is to build a place where we believe there’s somewhere for everyone. We have never once in our history even come close to doing this. We’re not close now. But the fact that you’re here means we haven’t failed completely, and maybe with your help we’ll succeed.”

92 points by yboulkaid 2y ago

I thought I'd found my place when I got into open source distributed pub/sub over WebSockets. I worked in this area for over 10 years but you won't find my project in the first 100 results on Google for those niche 7 keywords. Surprising considering that almost none of these terms even existed 20 years ago.

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whack 2y ago

> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. > That’s a tragedy not just for Nicky, but for the rest of us, too. There’s a hole in the ecosystem where Nicky should be: there’s a hospital she should be running, or seventh-graders she should be teaching, or pizzas she should be delivering underwater. Wherever that hole is, everything else will be a little off-balance until Nicky fills it. Some interesting implications of this: 1. Any children you have, would be fulfilling a purpose in the world 2. If you decide not to have that child, you are depriving the world and everyone else of a person who would otherwise fulfill that purpose 3. Recall that no one is superfluous or redundant. So by depriving the world of a person who can fulfill that purpose, you are guaranteeing that the purpose will never be adequately fulfilled 4. The above applies no matter how many children you've already had. Already had 10 children and decided not to have a 11th? Man, you just created a Nicky-sized hole in the ecosystem. Now the whole world will be off-balance because of your tragic decision 5. So yeah, if you don't want the world to be off-balance, you better get out there and have as many kids as humanly possible

autoexec 2y ago
What if your purpose in the world is to not have any children?
cardanome 2y ago
Every person also has needs meaning they add demands for niches to be filled. So it balances itself out. If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take more than they give creating imbalance. So your implications don't really follow strictly from the stated axioms. Though yeah, generally, yes, more people are a good thing as it means more people that can help drive humanity forward. (Obviously there are factors why having as many children as humanly possible is not always a good idea though.) Also some religions strongly encourage people to have as many children as possible so it is not a super uncommon view.
- mulmen 2y ago
  > If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take more than they give creating imbalance. This seems like harmful thinking. Should I feel guilty about being depressed? What about victims of circumstance? Do they owe society an apology for their trauma?
  - cardanome 2y ago
    The mistake you are making is thinking the sentence is meant to assign individual responsibility for finding your niche. Not at all. The article and I agree on that point is pretty clear that it is a societal responsibility. People not being able to flex their individual talents is a failure of society not the individual. And yes there are niches for depressed, traumatized people, there is a place for everyone.
klntsky 2y ago
5 is correct but for the reasons not related to niches or purposes
Groxx 2y ago
[dead]
seabass-labrax 2y ago
It's interesting indeed, but is missing an important factor. Every niche requires resources for someone to fill it: time, at a minimum, but also raw materials (engineering, art), land (agriculture, wildlife preservation), power (pretty much everything) and so on. These are all finite, although some are now used more efficiently than they could have been in the past. By having more children, you contribute to more people fulfilling their purposes in the future, but this is true only to the point where resources would become too scarce when divided between the niches. I would guess that in the future, the Earth could sustain maybe double its current population, due to much more efficient resource utilisation and extraction, relieving the demand on these resources, and the large number of people who would prefer to live in cities, reducing the demand on land. But the Earth could not sustain such a growth of its population immediately; we need time to let society and technology improve and adapt.
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pdonis 2y ago
> Some interesting implications of this Not really. The article only says persons who exist have a purpose. It does not say that persons who do not yet exist must be created because there is a purpose waiting for them.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Doesn't that put a strange significance on making new people? There's some boundary where you can't abort or your child is born and then they definitely have a purpose, even though 5 minutes before reaching that boundary, they didn't
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > There's some boundary But there's nothing that says that boundary has to be birth. It would depend on when you think a person exists. Some people would say that happens at conception. Others would say it doesn't happen until well after birth (indeed some philosophers have said it doesn't fully happen until adulthood).
    - immibis 2y ago
      Is evolving into something with purpose also a purpose? Then unfertilized eggs have a purpose - to become fertilized - and if you aren't making that happen nonstop it's as bad as killing someone.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        The article says every person has a purpose. As I said before, people's opinions might differ on exactly when a person exists during the human developmental process, but as far as I know nobody has ever argued that unfertilized eggs are persons. (Note that unfertilized eggs do not "evolve into" humans--only fertilized eggs do. So even on its own terms your argument is not valid.)
        immibis 2y ago
nuancebydefault 2y ago
I think you are taking the author's reasoning a little bit too literal. The gist is, Nicky is doing a job that she does not like, simply because she does not even know of the existence of a job that suits her better. The filling of that position would be a win-win situation. The current 'off-balance' ness is just a metaphor.
mtVessel 2y ago
The post doesn't explain how the niches themselves come into being, so an equally logical assumption could be that creating a person also creates a new niche, and their task is simply to find the right one. No new person, no niche. A less rigorous explanation, but probably more to the author's point, is that people who end up filling the wrong niche add more negativity to the world than those who find their place. This is a worse state of affairs than leaving some niches unfilled.

the_real_cher 2y ago

Well my place in the job world was just outsourced overseas to one of the billions of unique people over there.

jfil 2y ago
That sucks. I hope it leads to something good for you, eventually.

amadeuspagel 2y ago

Is there a place for people who disagree with the author on marginal tax rates and soybean tariffs?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

atleastoptimal 2y ago

> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. Nice sentiment but wishful thinking lmao. At the very least there are some people for whom nowhere is a perfect fit, and there are people who would fit better in any place they could fit in. I.e. some people are not locally optimal anywhere. Another issue is we read this and imagine the happy smart consciousness people in our friend groups. What about the psycopaths? Serial killers? Do they deserve a place too? Any environment they would thrive in would be damaging to the general welfare of polite society. Is the point then that anyone can be molded to an ideal?

fellowniusmonk 2y ago
Oddly enough I think a lot of abberant personality types can fit into group dynamics. In fact go to any large, long running, stable, 3rd place and there will be some non violent psychopaths and narcissist in the community. Serial killers usually won't kill people within their own community. The BTK killer was president of his church council. Deserve really doesn't really enter into the equation. A serial killer might know a lot about webrtc or building operating systems and may be on this thread contributing niche info right now! Society isn't a friend group. A co-working, community or church space isn't a friend group. One of my most rewarding experiences was in a space where >20% of people were bidirectionally incompatible for personal friendship. This article isn't about the "whole self", it's actually the opposite in some ways, it's about how in a big world there is value in finding how a distinct and "flavourful" part of your interests has unexpected value.
cardanome 2y ago
Yes, there is a place for everyone. For some it might be prison but it is a place nonetheless. Everyone has the right to live. While psychopathy is relatively hard to treat it is worth noting that not all psychopaths are actively harming other people. They can also be functional and productive members of certain groups under the right circumstances. You might want to be more careful with stigmatizing a whole group of people.
- morning-coffee 2y ago

mulmen 2y ago

I only skimmed but I don’t find this philosophy particularly interesting. The implication here is that everyone has one best place, but in reality there are many local maximums. The opportunity cost of traversing a valley for a slightly higher maximum may not be worth it. The post also conflates employment with happiness. Not having a paying job is a valid life choice. Stay at home parent is a completely valid niche. Picking a job or career based on the free time it allows to pursue hobbies is also valid. None of this is easy and the post doesn’t seem to provide any insight into finding a good fit. The idea that we have one “best” fit is the self-help equivalent of “perfect is the enemy of good”.

siffin 2y ago
It also ignores socio-economic implications which totally derail the argument. Underwater pizza delivery? Sounds great and fun, but is it actually profitable once everything is taken into account, including assets, depreciation, insurance, saving for retirement, job security etc. Pretty much anybody can do something they are more apt at and like better if they are willing to risk their financial security.
bruce511 2y ago
I'm not sure it conflates the niches with employment. Many of the examples given are specifically non-paying niches. (Starting with breakup-whisperer). Indeed for some percentage of people, employment is not fulfilling or satisfying. They turn to other activities to create significance in their lives. (Open Source software is pretty much built on this concept.) That said, I suspect the basic premise (everyone has a unique niche) is flawed. It's more likely that everyone has the opportunity to add value to society, and that value comes in various ever-creative forms. Many choose not to take that opportunity, and hypothetically we're worse off for that, but life pretty much still goes on.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  It’s obviously false in the literal sense, since some number of people literally lack the capability to remain alive. Not to mention the small fraction of adults that suffer serious brain damage and turn into vegetables.

pajeets 2y ago

tldr honest im sick of these blue pills

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I'm about ready for a good blue pill these days As a vegan who additionally hates eating and hates being around others when they eat, it's very hard to get along with anyone. Imagine a world where nearly everyone is a hypocrite and a murderer, and their hobby of murder is offensive to you, disgusting to you, and also seemingly the number one way for everyone but you to form social bonds of any sort. "Neo!! You have to wake up, Neo! Come live in a filthy cave and eat slop with us, Neo!" I really wonder if the Matrix gave my generation brain poisoning. Why do I greatly prefer to feel correct than to feel happy? Why does it seem impossible to accept other people and this alternate reality most of the world subscribes to? I think I would take the blue pill. The steak Cipher eats is vegan, it's made from ethically sourced human meat, the humans were not raised to be food like cattle are. The world inside the Matrix is not perfect, it's missing many things I'd like, but in that pre 9/11 dream world I could eat dairy cheese and maybe enjoy an easy life. Maybe in that dream I would be cis, even. If I take the blue pill, am I responsible for the machines killing runners? If I pay taxes, am I responsible for my countrymen voting in weird losers? The red pill is no longer a slam dunk for me. I wonder when my mind changed.

avazhi 2y ago

No, there’s not. The evolutionary process is pretty adept at rigorously excluding most personality and physical variants out of all the available options. Pretending otherwise is naive ahistorical nonsense.

arthurofbabylon 2y ago
But is that not a place? Our civilization has become infinite… “all the available options” is an enormous category that in some societies does include quite literally everyone. (I suggest reading the piece – the author deals with whether or not the underlying hypothesis is true versus useful early on.)
- avazhi 2y ago
  I read the piece. Our society is certainly not infinite economically or as a matter of what is acceptable socially, and while different cultures have varying degrees of acceptability in terms of plausible occupations and behaviour, they are still obviously bounded. The hypothesis is neither useful not true, which makes the article uninteresting at best.
deleted 2y ago
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01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Sometimes I think I must be an evolutionary dead end, and that gels with the fact that I don't want children. Or specifically, I wouldn't mind the good parts of having one or two children, but I could not bear the responsibility

jmann99999 2y ago

I'm not sure the author captures it perfectly, however... There is a lake in the U.S. that crosses the borders of Idaho and Utah. On summer weekends, you'll see the Bear Lake Burger Boat trolling the waters. Swim or float up to it, and they'll give you a delicious hamburger. I'm glad whoever runs it has found a fit in this world. I'm sure it's not what most of us on Hacker News would choose to do, but I am glad someone does.

harimau777 2y ago

How many of these niches actually pay enough (or provide enough other benefits) to have a decent quality of life? I think that's the real limiting factor in "finding your niche".

abhayhegde 2y ago
That's a fair point. I kind of hate that the world has come to this. Everything needs to be justified through an economic lens. I wonder if life was easier in the past with regards to this.
- squigz 2y ago
  Certainly not. These days, with the Internet, social assistance programs, ability to run i.e. a Patreon account to make money from your hobby... It might not be "easy", but it's certainly easier than in the past, where taking a break from your farm to paint some trees would mean a very hard year.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Roughly which century was it when economics began to exist?
- jfil 2y ago
  To some degree, "everyone in the village is a millet farmer" did make it easier in the past to fit into a niche: it's the ultimate detachment of "who you are" from "what you do". Your day job is never-ending, will never be fully done, and means nothing. Today, we have it a bit harder because we expect our job to give us meaning.
pdonis 2y ago
The article doesn't say your niche has to be how you make a living. Consider, for example, the Breakup Whisperer.

anon_cow1111 2y ago

Sort of off topic but this page links to a probably-pseudoscience rabbit hole. >As far back as the 1950s, it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. Does ANYONE know of reference for this? It seemed so bizarre I had to look it up but couldn't see anything obvious.

jfactorial 2y ago
I fed your question into perplexity.ai [1] and it appears from the resulting response that a youtube video [2] is responsible for this bit of misinformation. [1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/as-far-back-as-the-1950s-it-wa-9WOTgRdLQ0azVNQKhtQjtQ https://www.perplexity.ai/search/as-far-back-as-the-1950s-it... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNlf-Ar5oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNlf-Ar5oA

fishtoaster 2y ago

It's a fun, upbeat article, but as an actual case, I think it falls down here: > Our abundance of weirdos creates diversity not only in supply, but also in demand. That's certainly true (imo), but the author seems to implicitly expect the supply and demand to match up and I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that they do not. Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people that want to be artists than people that want to buy art, causing art to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in. This is equally true of any other niche where there are X people wanting it and Y people providing it: there's no reason to expect those to be equal and, as it turns out, they rarely are.

pdonis 2y ago
> Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people that want to be artists than people that want to buy art, causing art to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in. The article does not say that your place has to be your job. Indeed, it gives examples to the contrary, such as the Breakup Whisperer.
afpx 2y ago
Yet, I go on art business forums, and businesses seems to be booming. It’s surprising to me how many profitable niche art genres there are. My guess is that many people (myself included) don’t know how to find a market, align themselves to the market and advertise. There are also a lot of people who ‘want to do their own thing’ and focus on making art that no one else wants. There are a lot of people in the world with very specific interests and lots of disposable income.

MailleQuiMaille 2y ago

Talking about purpose without mentioning spirituality is to me like talking about politics without mentioning wars : feels like a lot of the reasoning behind is missed, either by prudishness, ignorance or bigotry.

Pat_Murph 2y ago
We would need to start by defining what spirituality is... For me it's a vague, meaningless word that people like to use without ever defining it. And it's meaning ehen5rhere is one. Is completly diffeent9from person to person... So for me utterly useless.
- fragmede 2y ago
  spirituality is just the modern word for religion. it's each person's deeper meaning to life beyond this material world, if there is one.
  - dalyons 2y ago
    “Religion” heavily implies an institution, an organization of people, buildings, etc. spirituality typically means none of this. “Unorganized religion” perhaps?
- MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
  Etymologically speaking, spirituality is related to, well spiritus, related to soul, spirit, vital principles and so on. Religion on the other end comes from religare, which means to bind. Can you see the difference in meaning of this two words ? One talks about ethereal things without boundaries but the other bounds you to something… To answer your point, spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    It's purely material. When I see a beautiful sunset or listen to music I like, or fall in love, those are all material. I too do not understand spirituality

Aperocky 2y ago

> every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant. It be much nicer to start this statement from the reverse. Instead of justifying everyone has a purpose for a society, how about a society justifying itself based on the premise that every person has a purpose (could just be consumerism for all I know but hey).

cranium 2y ago

I prefer the completely opposite view: nobody is there with a special purpose, we are all trying to figure what the heck we should do. It seems less welcoming but if you haven't found your place, is it really helpful to be told "keep searching, somewhere the perfect job is waiting for you"?

MathMonkeyMan 2y ago

The author had me with the hook. I wanted to know how this fundamental ethical difference arises and what its psychological and sociological implications are. Maybe I could compare it with other proposed ideological axes. But I didn't find any of that.

alphazard 2y ago

> We don’t talk much about this, because if the people on Team Overboard were honest about who they plan to purge, none of their intended victims would be friends with them, let alone vote for them. It's hard to take the piece seriously after that. Obviously a mischaracterization of the group he refers to as "Team Overboard". A steelman would look something like: "On the other team, they are indifferent as to whether people they don't know find a place for themselves. They are confident that all people they would want to potentially know will find places for themselves." Because that actually matches some commonly espoused philosophies. On the other hand, I've never heard anyone seriously call for a purge of undesirables, which is what the author claims.

nuancebydefault 2y ago
I've heard several people say that we are too many on this planet. Mostly older people tend to agree with this. For the record, I'm not one of them. Hence for those people there has to be a set of people belonging to the overboard side.

nilawafer 2y ago

Thank you for your inspirational words comrade. You are a beacon of hope for all workers of the revolution. Soviet Labor Committee has a place for you and all others! In fact we need 10,000 laborers to construct a new datacenter. Please report with a set of warm clothes. /s

nuancebydefault 2y ago

Personally I find this paragraph talking to newly arriving people a gem: “I’m so glad you’re here! I don’t know if they told you in there, but we’re all trying to do something crazy here, which is to build a place where we believe there’s somewhere for everyone. We have never once in our history even come close to doing this. We’re not close now. But the fact that you’re here means we haven’t failed completely, and maybe with your help we’ll succeed.”