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pas 2y ago
> There's a fundamental spiritual divide between people. One side hates being alive from the moment they are born, so everything is suffering, especially work. The other side loves life and loves doing things. [citation needed] :) So even if people end up in these very black-and-white groups it's doubtful that they are predetermined. But it's more like it's a spectrum, and some people start from a very good place some from a very hard one. And there are many important and distinct factors affecting one's relationship with work, success, motivation, diligence. Not to mention that luckily people's life (and relationship with work) can get better.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  You just cited it.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  It is a spectrum for a while, until people generally fall into one of the poles. And starting in a hard place or an easy place has no influence to this attitude, in my experience.
  - pirgidb 2y ago
    That's a story you tell yourself about the internal lives of others, but it is not knowledge. You don't actually know what's inside other people's minds. All we ever catch are glimpses of each other. It's tempting to make sweeping generalizations about others to explain the ways they confound and frustrate us. But it's essential to hew to the truth and accept that life is ambiguous, people are baffling, and simplistic narratives do more to give us comfort and reinforce our biases than they do explain the world around us.
    - ordinaryradical 2y ago
      I’m not sure this claim has any more validity than his. Calling people unknowable flies in the face of a bunch of modern disciplines. We can see people behave very predictably with Game Theory, for example. Still, I respect the view that the individual is private unto themselves in a profound way. But I would also say people tend to show you what they believe in how they act. If you pay attention you will begin to notice when someone has put their hopes in power, finances, achievement, or ideology, to give a few popular examples. And it’s not about what people say animates them, or even about what they believe about themselves—it’s how they act.
      - pirgidb 2y ago
        "People respond to incentives and we can model this with game theory" is a model that notably does not assume anything about the content of people's character or mind. And it frequently fails to explain the behavior of individuals, because you may not understand the incentive landscape they're in. You may offer to pay someone to do something, and it sucks the joy out of it for them, or they feel offended by your offer, and they become less likely to do it. There's light-years of difference between observing an individual person's actions and drawing conclusions about what they believe (this is in line with what I was referring to with "catching glimpses") and generalizing to conclude that everyone is predestined to be either enthusiastic and lively or a miserable wretch. It's far more likely you caught someone on a good or bad day, to pick just one alternative hypothesis. People contain multitudes. I also pay attention to the difference between what people say and what they do, and I agree it is meaningful and would even says it's a critical part of being around people. But it's easy to get carried away and pretend we know more than we really do, simplistic stories that explains everyone's behavior is very seductive. A model's ability to generalize is inversely proportional to how powerful it's predictions are. Stories like this that take people and bin them into two groups that control their destiny have huge predictive power - and apply to almost nobody. Whereas to return to game theory, assuming people are black boxes that optimize some unknown and idiosyncratic utility function which we infer based on their revealed preferences can apply to nearly everyone and everything. But it's predictions are very narrow in scope. You can use an A/B test to optimize any change to any UI flow, and it'll tell you which one converts better. But it won't tell you why.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  The problem is that "everything is suffering, especially work" is a mindset at the end of the day. Most of us live in free enough countries where we are not assigned a class/vocation from birth. If your job is so unrewarding or unfulfilling, try something else! You are not married to a job, you won't be court marshaled for leaving, and you likely won't be rewarded for trying to keep a "job for life" like our parents generation might have been. Maybe you burned out and simply changing scenery will improve your life. Maybe you are in the wrong type of role and trying something new helps. Doing nothing certainly won't help!
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Some suffer from learned helplessness. This turbocharges their resentment towards their boss, their company, and all of capitalism. Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly attitude.
    - steveBK123 2y ago
      > Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly attitude. Yes. Louis CK did a bit ~15 years back about someone throwing a tantrum on a plane when the (then brand new tech) WiFi broke down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4BZBsHwZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4BZBsHwZs
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Exactly. Each of us is standing on the shoulders of giants - technological, scientific, commercial, political, and many other kinds of contributions. Life may not be perfect, but we all live downstream from Ugh the Caveman who once held a blunt rock in each hand, decided to whack them together, and bootstrapped the entire human tech tree, all while facing lions, sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths, ice ages, terrible diseases, and hunger.
        steveBK123 2y ago
steveBK123 2y ago
Yeah I think you've sort of touched on something there. Many of my hardworking friends also have interesting hobbies/interests outside work they pursue and are known for. Arts, literary, cuisine, gardening, sports, charity, whatever. Generally putting more out into the world in other non-work venues. However practically none of my more "slacker" friends have anything to show for their time outside of work. They define life more in terms of what they are avoiding. Hobbies are more consumptive - watching TV/film, dining out, travel, etc. Maybe at the end of the day being good at any one thing takes some intellectual ability, commitment and effort.. so once you've applied that in one area you are likely able to do so elsewhere.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  And before I'm accused of moralizing - I'm not. The older I get the more I look at this bifurcation in terms of - wtf am I going to do in retirement. You read a lot of early retirement experiences and the people that "retire to something" (a hobby/volunteer work/etc) do much better than those that "retire from something" (can't wait to stop working!).
bradly 2y ago
>I love working (...) it's rewarding and mentally developing Some work may be these things, but not all work. If your work is consistently both then there is a good chance your work involves some creation that is satisfying you. I do agree that taking the morality out of our everyday tasks can greatly affect our outlook on life.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  If your work is not mentally developing anymore, it's time to look for the next thing to do. You've already conquered it completely.
  - bradly 2y ago
    That is a privilege not all have.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Does your comment have any other purpose than to try to shut down a conversation?
      - pirgidb 2y ago
        If you're not willing to engage with what they have to say charitably, maybe you should just leave it. Their comment is plainly relevant to yours, and "shutting down conversation" is not at all a good faith interpretation. It is a huge weakness in your argument that you say people should leave jobs that aren't stimulating to them, when we live in a world where people have to work to survive and frequently cannot make decisions on that basis. Imagine for a moment you are talking to someone who works a minimum wage job at McDonald's to provide for their children. How do you imagine they would respond to your suggestion they abandon their responsibility to their children to find a more mentally stimulating job? How would that be anything but patently absurd?
        carlosjobim 2y ago
Trasmatta 2y ago
Or maybe some people don't get the chance to work on things that are rewarding and mentally developing? Not all work is equal. Maybe have some gratitude that your work has given that to you, rather than assuming that other people who are drained by their work are somehow spiritually inferior.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Who should I be grateful to? These people are drained long before they enter the work force. And no matter what job they have they will be drained by it. You probably saw a good chunk of them in school.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    One of the things that opened up my eyes to how much of life is mindset & purpose was, ironically, dealing with some of the very wealthy in NYC. Some of the most anxious, unhappy, complaining people I met were the underemployed spouses of the very well off. And this isn't a sexist statement because it was both women and men. And some good percent of them had no kids either. Truly no responsibilities. The kind of people who I'd bump into at the gym just after sunrise on the way to a long day of work, and they lament to me how their weekly in-home massage got cancelled due to a scheduling conflict, and they just don't know what to do with their day. LOL. One can be happy or unhappy at any objective income/wealth/stress level. You'd be very surprised.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Couldn't agree more.
  - Trasmatta 2y ago
    Some of the people in this thread have apparently never had a truly shitty job.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
betterThanTexas 2y ago
ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply choose to not suffer and to enjoy life instead. Seriously, who do you talk to that enables such viewpoints? I suspect not many people want to talk to you after their shift. Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat. This has held true at every part of the pay scale. It's just the compensation on the upper end helps you have hope you may find meaningful work that can feed you. I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  > ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply choose to not suffer and to enjoy life instead. Exactly! You have to find that path before it's too late. Each one of us have only 80 years at most. > Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat. Agree. Doing dishonest or unethical jobs is not real work and makes nobody happy. > I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too. And within those two goals there is a great world of opportunities.
brokegrammer 2y ago
> I love working What if you needed to work for free?
DanielVZ 2y ago
I love working but, after two years of not taking vacations – due to several reasons that I should’ve anticipated – oh boy how much I’d like to take a rest. I counting the days until I can take a few weeks off.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> One side hates being alive > I love working You should stop hating being alive. There's so much more in the universe than work.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Work is part of the universe, it's not everything, but it is a key part. Exercising is hard work. Who lives life feeling better, the person who exercises or the person who just sits all day?
  - const_cast 2y ago
    It's not this simple. A lot of people revel in suffering because they have a faulty mindset that good things can only come from bad things. Meaning, success comes with blood, sweat, and tears. This is not true, generally. There is such a thing as free lunch. Not everything must be a battle, and not every battle has a winner. Some people lean into work because they believe that by sacrificing they will discover the key to happiness. So they sacrifice things that feel good, like spending time laughing with friends or maybe delicious food. In short, they shrink their lives, purposefully removing the good parts. Some go so far as to remove good parts for absolutely no gain. Maybe they're gluten-free, but they're not gluten intolerant. Some are even purposefully lonely in some extreme sacrifice of human nature. Almost like monks or cardinals - they believe if they sacrifice something so fundamental, like sex or love, that they will achieve something other's cannot. The truth is a lot of that sacrifice will be for nothing. Sometimes the right choice is doing something stupid, or doing something unproductive.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      That is a very deep truth that you're stating, and also very hard for many people to learn. I've tried asking these kind of people if they believe that Martin Luther or Vladimir Lenin is going to reward them after death for their faithfulness, but the thing most closely to an explanation that I've gotten is that they can throw it into the faces of the townspeople that they worked hard while the others didn't.

[flagged]

pas 2y ago

> There's a fundamental spiritual divide between people. One side hates being alive from the moment they are born, so everything is suffering, especially work. The other side loves life and loves doing things. [citation needed] :) So even if people end up in these very black-and-white groups it's doubtful that they are predetermined. But it's more like it's a spectrum, and some people start from a very good place some from a very hard one. And there are many important and distinct factors affecting one's relationship with work, success, motivation, diligence. Not to mention that luckily people's life (and relationship with work) can get better.

carlosjobim 2y ago
You just cited it.
carlosjobim 2y ago
It is a spectrum for a while, until people generally fall into one of the poles. And starting in a hard place or an easy place has no influence to this attitude, in my experience.
- pirgidb 2y ago
  That's a story you tell yourself about the internal lives of others, but it is not knowledge. You don't actually know what's inside other people's minds. All we ever catch are glimpses of each other. It's tempting to make sweeping generalizations about others to explain the ways they confound and frustrate us. But it's essential to hew to the truth and accept that life is ambiguous, people are baffling, and simplistic narratives do more to give us comfort and reinforce our biases than they do explain the world around us.
  - ordinaryradical 2y ago
    I’m not sure this claim has any more validity than his. Calling people unknowable flies in the face of a bunch of modern disciplines. We can see people behave very predictably with Game Theory, for example. Still, I respect the view that the individual is private unto themselves in a profound way. But I would also say people tend to show you what they believe in how they act. If you pay attention you will begin to notice when someone has put their hopes in power, finances, achievement, or ideology, to give a few popular examples. And it’s not about what people say animates them, or even about what they believe about themselves—it’s how they act.
    - pirgidb 2y ago
      "People respond to incentives and we can model this with game theory" is a model that notably does not assume anything about the content of people's character or mind. And it frequently fails to explain the behavior of individuals, because you may not understand the incentive landscape they're in. You may offer to pay someone to do something, and it sucks the joy out of it for them, or they feel offended by your offer, and they become less likely to do it. There's light-years of difference between observing an individual person's actions and drawing conclusions about what they believe (this is in line with what I was referring to with "catching glimpses") and generalizing to conclude that everyone is predestined to be either enthusiastic and lively or a miserable wretch. It's far more likely you caught someone on a good or bad day, to pick just one alternative hypothesis. People contain multitudes. I also pay attention to the difference between what people say and what they do, and I agree it is meaningful and would even says it's a critical part of being around people. But it's easy to get carried away and pretend we know more than we really do, simplistic stories that explains everyone's behavior is very seductive. A model's ability to generalize is inversely proportional to how powerful it's predictions are. Stories like this that take people and bin them into two groups that control their destiny have huge predictive power - and apply to almost nobody. Whereas to return to game theory, assuming people are black boxes that optimize some unknown and idiosyncratic utility function which we infer based on their revealed preferences can apply to nearly everyone and everything. But it's predictions are very narrow in scope. You can use an A/B test to optimize any change to any UI flow, and it'll tell you which one converts better. But it won't tell you why.
steveBK123 2y ago
The problem is that "everything is suffering, especially work" is a mindset at the end of the day. Most of us live in free enough countries where we are not assigned a class/vocation from birth. If your job is so unrewarding or unfulfilling, try something else! You are not married to a job, you won't be court marshaled for leaving, and you likely won't be rewarded for trying to keep a "job for life" like our parents generation might have been. Maybe you burned out and simply changing scenery will improve your life. Maybe you are in the wrong type of role and trying something new helps. Doing nothing certainly won't help!
- FredPret 2y ago
  Some suffer from learned helplessness. This turbocharges their resentment towards their boss, their company, and all of capitalism. Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly attitude.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    > Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly attitude. Yes. Louis CK did a bit ~15 years back about someone throwing a tantrum on a plane when the (then brand new tech) WiFi broke down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4BZBsHwZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4BZBsHwZs
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Exactly. Each of us is standing on the shoulders of giants - technological, scientific, commercial, political, and many other kinds of contributions. Life may not be perfect, but we all live downstream from Ugh the Caveman who once held a blunt rock in each hand, decided to whack them together, and bootstrapped the entire human tech tree, all while facing lions, sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths, ice ages, terrible diseases, and hunger.
      - steveBK123 2y ago

steveBK123 2y ago

Yeah I think you've sort of touched on something there. Many of my hardworking friends also have interesting hobbies/interests outside work they pursue and are known for. Arts, literary, cuisine, gardening, sports, charity, whatever. Generally putting more out into the world in other non-work venues. However practically none of my more "slacker" friends have anything to show for their time outside of work. They define life more in terms of what they are avoiding. Hobbies are more consumptive - watching TV/film, dining out, travel, etc. Maybe at the end of the day being good at any one thing takes some intellectual ability, commitment and effort.. so once you've applied that in one area you are likely able to do so elsewhere.

steveBK123 2y ago
And before I'm accused of moralizing - I'm not. The older I get the more I look at this bifurcation in terms of - wtf am I going to do in retirement. You read a lot of early retirement experiences and the people that "retire to something" (a hobby/volunteer work/etc) do much better than those that "retire from something" (can't wait to stop working!).

bradly 2y ago

>I love working (...) it's rewarding and mentally developing Some work may be these things, but not all work. If your work is consistently both then there is a good chance your work involves some creation that is satisfying you. I do agree that taking the morality out of our everyday tasks can greatly affect our outlook on life.

carlosjobim 2y ago
If your work is not mentally developing anymore, it's time to look for the next thing to do. You've already conquered it completely.
- bradly 2y ago
  That is a privilege not all have.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Does your comment have any other purpose than to try to shut down a conversation?
    - pirgidb 2y ago
      If you're not willing to engage with what they have to say charitably, maybe you should just leave it. Their comment is plainly relevant to yours, and "shutting down conversation" is not at all a good faith interpretation. It is a huge weakness in your argument that you say people should leave jobs that aren't stimulating to them, when we live in a world where people have to work to survive and frequently cannot make decisions on that basis. Imagine for a moment you are talking to someone who works a minimum wage job at McDonald's to provide for their children. How do you imagine they would respond to your suggestion they abandon their responsibility to their children to find a more mentally stimulating job? How would that be anything but patently absurd?
      - carlosjobim 2y ago

Trasmatta 2y ago

Or maybe some people don't get the chance to work on things that are rewarding and mentally developing? Not all work is equal. Maybe have some gratitude that your work has given that to you, rather than assuming that other people who are drained by their work are somehow spiritually inferior.

carlosjobim 2y ago
Who should I be grateful to? These people are drained long before they enter the work force. And no matter what job they have they will be drained by it. You probably saw a good chunk of them in school.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  One of the things that opened up my eyes to how much of life is mindset & purpose was, ironically, dealing with some of the very wealthy in NYC. Some of the most anxious, unhappy, complaining people I met were the underemployed spouses of the very well off. And this isn't a sexist statement because it was both women and men. And some good percent of them had no kids either. Truly no responsibilities. The kind of people who I'd bump into at the gym just after sunrise on the way to a long day of work, and they lament to me how their weekly in-home massage got cancelled due to a scheduling conflict, and they just don't know what to do with their day. LOL. One can be happy or unhappy at any objective income/wealth/stress level. You'd be very surprised.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Couldn't agree more.
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  Some of the people in this thread have apparently never had a truly shitty job.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

betterThanTexas 2y ago

ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply choose to not suffer and to enjoy life instead. Seriously, who do you talk to that enables such viewpoints? I suspect not many people want to talk to you after their shift. Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat. This has held true at every part of the pay scale. It's just the compensation on the upper end helps you have hope you may find meaningful work that can feed you. I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too.

carlosjobim 2y ago
> ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply choose to not suffer and to enjoy life instead. Exactly! You have to find that path before it's too late. Each one of us have only 80 years at most. > Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat. Agree. Doing dishonest or unethical jobs is not real work and makes nobody happy. > I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too. And within those two goals there is a great world of opportunities.

brokegrammer 2y ago

> I love working What if you needed to work for free?

DanielVZ 2y ago

I love working but, after two years of not taking vacations – due to several reasons that I should’ve anticipated – oh boy how much I’d like to take a rest. I counting the days until I can take a few weeks off.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> One side hates being alive > I love working You should stop hating being alive. There's so much more in the universe than work.

carlosjobim 2y ago
Work is part of the universe, it's not everything, but it is a key part. Exercising is hard work. Who lives life feeling better, the person who exercises or the person who just sits all day?
- const_cast 2y ago
  It's not this simple. A lot of people revel in suffering because they have a faulty mindset that good things can only come from bad things. Meaning, success comes with blood, sweat, and tears. This is not true, generally. There is such a thing as free lunch. Not everything must be a battle, and not every battle has a winner. Some people lean into work because they believe that by sacrificing they will discover the key to happiness. So they sacrifice things that feel good, like spending time laughing with friends or maybe delicious food. In short, they shrink their lives, purposefully removing the good parts. Some go so far as to remove good parts for absolutely no gain. Maybe they're gluten-free, but they're not gluten intolerant. Some are even purposefully lonely in some extreme sacrifice of human nature. Almost like monks or cardinals - they believe if they sacrifice something so fundamental, like sex or love, that they will achieve something other's cannot. The truth is a lot of that sacrifice will be for nothing. Sometimes the right choice is doing something stupid, or doing something unproductive.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    That is a very deep truth that you're stating, and also very hard for many people to learn. I've tried asking these kind of people if they believe that Martin Luther or Vladimir Lenin is going to reward them after death for their faithfulness, but the thing most closely to an explanation that I've gotten is that they can throw it into the faces of the townspeople that they worked hard while the others didn't.