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This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sur

by ggreer 12y ago

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. India and Canada may produce the same amount of wealth, but India has 35 times more people. Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. That's why it's used. Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! Many people, especially in technology, say their productivity is changing the world, and this is irrefutable. But no one seems to know what they’re changing it into, because no one can measure the world. When no one can measure the world, how much can it really exist? This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. Maybe they're missing or underweighting a factor. Maybe they just have different preferences than the author. But to suggest that the entire enterprise is bunk is to disregard centuries of progress across a dozen fields of study. If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right.[1] 1. http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%20(2011).pdf http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%... Edit: Pronouns fixed. Apologies, I thought Quinn was a male name.

antichaos 12y ago
The author, danah boyd, is female.
- onethree 12y ago
  medium is confusing, it was actually written by Quinn Norton. also female, so your point still stands
wodenokoto 12y ago
I disagree with you. I thought it was very clear and well written. > Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. > Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Which is what he is talking against. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.
- ggreer 12y ago
  It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. I didn't want to sidetrack my comment by getting into PPP and other adjustments[1], but suffice it to say that economists have been aware of these issues for over a century. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods. Even if your hypothesis is true (which I doubt), it still makes sense to measure and improve leisure. I think the old quote from Steven Levy's Hackers[2] is worth remembering: At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked. Our time on this planet is short, and there are no do-overs. There are certainly diminishing returns to improving aspects of one's life, but giving little thought to them or leaving things to chance is a great way to ensure we don't make the most of it. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...
arvinsim 12y ago
> Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! I am pretty sure that the agricultural, traditional type lifestyle of Okinawa(which is the region which has the famed life expectancy) is nowhere near the same as the lifestyle in Japan's urban cities where that workaholic ethic is.
pron 12y ago
> This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. In Notes from Underground the hero attains his own measure of happiness through spite, i.e. self harm, i.e. misery. Any measure of human happiness is contradictory, or it wouldn't be human. Try to imagine the most perfect utopia you can, where any measure you come up with is maximized, or optimized (to use the SV parlance). Then think if people would really be happy in such a place. Even if your measure includes just the "right amount" of misery, it would still be wrong, because, by virtue of its reality, it will no longer be optimal. If I were pressed to come up with one ultimate measure for human happiness, it is this: people are happy when they have what they don't have. Now optimize this. Of course, under this measure, people's happiness is constant at zero, but there are other (smaller) terms in this formula that basically amount to compromise :) I am sure you can appreciate the constant inner conflict of the human condition. Apparently you can't measure soul.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  You can have my Humanity Card, because that's a complete load of crap. You don't need to always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, especially because, if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Bloody hell, give me three months of vacation time to spend at the beach and I can make a solid start on coming up with an ideal way to spend the rest of my life. It's just a matter of resources.
  - pron 12y ago
    You completely misunderstood me. I'm not saying that you always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, just that human happiness is often a very complicated thing, and not one that should be viewed first through the SV prism of "optimization". > if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Actually, Daniel Kahneman has spent the last few decades showing that that's exactly what people do: they want something that they know will make them happy, but once they get it, it doesn't make them as happy as they thought, and they want something else[1]. It is called the focusing illusion and Kahneman summarizes it as "nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it." Stupid, I know, but that's how our particular species of apes actually behaves, and this is a lot more rooted in reality than optimizing happiness. Aside from the focusing illusion, Kahneman demonstrates that people's tastes change over time, and you might not even want what you want now by the time you get it. Again, this all simply shows that human happiness is complicated; not that anyone knows exactly how it works. [1]: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201204/nobel-prize-winner-weighs-in-don-t-worry-be-happy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201204/nobel-pr...
courtf 12y ago
Chiefly, the author is arguing against productivity as an ends to itself, but also against the reduction of human endeavors down to more easily digestible quantities. In essence, against measuring out our lives with coffee spoons. The author also argues that time she had previously considered wasted ended up being more fruitful than the prevailing culture would have us believe possible. This is, I think, the important message. The mind is often working when we are not consciously aware of it, and to discount leisure time not spent checking tasks off a todo list as having been wasted is not only tediously anal but also simply false. I was reminded of Peter Higgs' statements from around when he was awarded the nobel peace prize: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...
- rcyn 12y ago
  Nice reference to Prufrock
DennisP 12y ago
Note that the author partly justifies it by the writing she produced later, which wouldn't have happened without her "unproductive" time. Applied to programming, it seems to me the author is against measuring lines of code per day, and in favor of going for long walks and letting solutions pop into your head that don't require so much code. Or longer walks that cause you to realize the whole program is bunk and you ought to be building something different. It's pretty difficult to measure the productivity of this sort of thing (except perhaps after a lot of hindsight), but it can have a huge effect on your long-term results. Richard Feynmann wrote about this. He got burned out trying to be scientifically productive, started screwing around, got curious about the physics of something trivial, and ended up figuring out something important.
- cicatriz 12y ago
  See also Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
calinet6 12y ago
If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point. In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points. The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you lose an extremely precious thing by focusing on measurement and optimization and increasing quantity and productivity. She has an extremely clear and valid point, which lucidly carries so much truth in it, and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true. In fact, the clarity and style and beauty of this piece remarkably matches almost exactly how it feels. It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Even so, no one knows what, exactly, to do with it; so we call it unproductive and go on trying to live our highly productive lives. It's so much bigger than we are, this thing, and resistance seems futile. And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time, but you have a fleeting chance, at least, of converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time, and come just a bit closer, thereby, to the reality of things.
- lionhearted 12y ago
  > And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time [...] I hope you take this the right way, but this position is very California-ized pseudo-Zen. Many of the most well-regarded Zen practitioners and teachers very much would have savaged it, EX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22Do-nothing_Zen.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22D... > "One of Hakuin's major concerns was the danger of what he called "Do-nothing Zen" teachers, who upon reaching some small experience of enlightenment devoted the rest of their life to, as he puts it, "passing day after day in a state of seated sleep". Quietist practices seeking simply to empty the mind, or teachers who taught that a tranquil "emptiness" was enlightenment, were Hakuin's constant targets. In this regard he was especially critical of followers of the maverick Zen master Bankei. He stressed a never-ending and severe training to deepen the insight of enlightenment and forge one's ability to manifest it in all activities. He urged his students to never be satisfied with shallow attainments, and truly believed that enlightenment was possible for anyone if they exerted themselves and approached their practice with real energy." Hakuin, who is pretty damn amazing and certainly lived an amazing life by almost anyone's standards, wrote that after achieving some basic glimpses enlightenment, you ought to be out helping people and doing good things. You'll see that in non-priest Zen practitioners, too. Miyamoto Musashi's ink paintings show such a depth of clarity and a sort of both sad and beautiful aliveness: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Kobokumeigekizu.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Kobokumei... In any event -- I think Hakuin, Musashi, Dogen, etc all would reject "clearer and muddier" intellectualism in favor of actually practicing and doing worthwhile things: Dogen: "To practice the Way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dgen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dgen Anyway, I mean this with all the most respect. The Zen practitioners that really stand the test of time and made a difference in their communities are ones that saw it less as an intellectual orientation, and much moreso as a very actionable way of life.
hrktb 12y ago
> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! There is a huge unbalance between men and women (which traditionnaly don't get the same chances to work in high pressure environments, and are less subjected to karoshi) and as someone else point Okinawa people won't have the same life expectancy as Tokyo area people. This is a factor in the juxtaposition of workaholism and high quality of life in the same country.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
"Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!" I had seen as many workaholics in the USA as in Japan. For different reasons, and in different ways. In the US you are supposed to do it because of ambition, in Japan you do it because of social pressure or constriction of the environment. Oh, never mind, in the US they have this beautiful two words that describe everybody: Loser or Successful, that does wonders to social pressure people to work more, but thinking "they actually want it", like in Japan, anyway. But food is much better in Japan. They also eat a lot of fish that before Fukusima, was the less toxic or industrialized food you could eat. No artificial feed(until recently), no genetically modified, no antibiotics, no hormones like US loves so much.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  The US doesn't love it, the food industry does because it allows them to produce higher volumes of food and sell it for lower prices, which (by extension) the consumer loves. I'd like to think people in Japan care more about the quality of their food, not so much the quantity per $ like I see in the US ($1 cheeseburgers and such). Another possibility is that the Japanese have more expendable income (also because of 12+-hour workdays), thus more budget for food, thus less of an inclination to buy the cheapest products. But, off topic.
zhte415 12y ago
I believe the article is full of astute thinking. > First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is. > The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries). > Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).
byEngineer 12y ago
To your Edit: yep, yep, yep. You asked for more women in tech. Here you go. Not knowing the difference between total GDP and per capita. Not knowing what to do with her life, etc, etc, etc. Guess what! She will know exactly why she is on this planet for once she gets her first kid. You see how lost she is?! When was the last time you saw someone not-driven to tech supposedly being in tech? By this measure! Almost like someone told her that she needs to do it (got to tech! study CS!) to be fulfilled and feel good. So instead of getting married and her first kid, she is lost in this world with diploma where she doesn't get even basics (i.e. GDP), sad and pathetic. And we as society did it to her. Actually, feminists and cultural marxists did it to her. It is akin to taking you, forbidding you to do the tech, and forcing (through social pressure) to spend all days taking care of kids. You would be totally lost too. So, don't be surprised. That's to be expected. If you start telling boys to be like girls and girls to be like boys, you will end up with a bunch of lost and confused people. Shoot, I can't believe she could have four kids by now, instead she totally wasted that time in lala-land. We should start executing these leftists for wasting human lives and potential. She has monthly period for a fucking reason.
dashboardfront 12y ago
I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP. I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
As Weird Al wrote, if money can't buy happiness then I guess I'll have to rent it.
Chinjut 12y ago
Re: "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right", that's the cheeky title of the article you link to, but not really the content of it. The article discusses how to get the best bang for your buck when spending your money. It may still be the case, however, that the best happiness bang for your buck is to do something with your free time other than seeking above all else to maximize your income in the first place, and the article is not intended to exclude this possibility.

by ggreer 12y ago

antichaos 12y ago

The author, danah boyd, is female.

onethree 12y ago
medium is confusing, it was actually written by Quinn Norton. also female, so your point still stands

wodenokoto 12y ago

I disagree with you. I thought it was very clear and well written. > Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. > Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Which is what he is talking against. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.

ggreer 12y ago
It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. I didn't want to sidetrack my comment by getting into PPP and other adjustments[1], but suffice it to say that economists have been aware of these issues for over a century. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods. Even if your hypothesis is true (which I doubt), it still makes sense to measure and improve leisure. I think the old quote from Steven Levy's Hackers[2] is worth remembering: At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked. Our time on this planet is short, and there are no do-overs. There are certainly diminishing returns to improving aspects of one's life, but giving little thought to them or leaving things to chance is a great way to ensure we don't make the most of it. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...

arvinsim 12y ago

> Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! I am pretty sure that the agricultural, traditional type lifestyle of Okinawa(which is the region which has the famed life expectancy) is nowhere near the same as the lifestyle in Japan's urban cities where that workaholic ethic is.

pron 12y ago

> This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. In Notes from Underground the hero attains his own measure of happiness through spite, i.e. self harm, i.e. misery. Any measure of human happiness is contradictory, or it wouldn't be human. Try to imagine the most perfect utopia you can, where any measure you come up with is maximized, or optimized (to use the SV parlance). Then think if people would really be happy in such a place. Even if your measure includes just the "right amount" of misery, it would still be wrong, because, by virtue of its reality, it will no longer be optimal. If I were pressed to come up with one ultimate measure for human happiness, it is this: people are happy when they have what they don't have. Now optimize this. Of course, under this measure, people's happiness is constant at zero, but there are other (smaller) terms in this formula that basically amount to compromise :) I am sure you can appreciate the constant inner conflict of the human condition. Apparently you can't measure soul.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
You can have my Humanity Card, because that's a complete load of crap. You don't need to always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, especially because, if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Bloody hell, give me three months of vacation time to spend at the beach and I can make a solid start on coming up with an ideal way to spend the rest of my life. It's just a matter of resources.
- pron 12y ago
  You completely misunderstood me. I'm not saying that you always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, just that human happiness is often a very complicated thing, and not one that should be viewed first through the SV prism of "optimization". > if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Actually, Daniel Kahneman has spent the last few decades showing that that's exactly what people do: they want something that they know will make them happy, but once they get it, it doesn't make them as happy as they thought, and they want something else[1]. It is called the focusing illusion and Kahneman summarizes it as "nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it." Stupid, I know, but that's how our particular species of apes actually behaves, and this is a lot more rooted in reality than optimizing happiness. Aside from the focusing illusion, Kahneman demonstrates that people's tastes change over time, and you might not even want what you want now by the time you get it. Again, this all simply shows that human happiness is complicated; not that anyone knows exactly how it works. [1]: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201204/nobel-prize-winner-weighs-in-don-t-worry-be-happy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/201204/nobel-pr...

courtf 12y ago

Chiefly, the author is arguing against productivity as an ends to itself, but also against the reduction of human endeavors down to more easily digestible quantities. In essence, against measuring out our lives with coffee spoons. The author also argues that time she had previously considered wasted ended up being more fruitful than the prevailing culture would have us believe possible. This is, I think, the important message. The mind is often working when we are not consciously aware of it, and to discount leisure time not spent checking tasks off a todo list as having been wasted is not only tediously anal but also simply false. I was reminded of Peter Higgs' statements from around when he was awarded the nobel peace prize: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...

rcyn 12y ago
Nice reference to Prufrock

DennisP 12y ago

Note that the author partly justifies it by the writing she produced later, which wouldn't have happened without her "unproductive" time. Applied to programming, it seems to me the author is against measuring lines of code per day, and in favor of going for long walks and letting solutions pop into your head that don't require so much code. Or longer walks that cause you to realize the whole program is bunk and you ought to be building something different. It's pretty difficult to measure the productivity of this sort of thing (except perhaps after a lot of hindsight), but it can have a huge effect on your long-term results. Richard Feynmann wrote about this. He got burned out trying to be scientifically productive, started screwing around, got curious about the physics of something trivial, and ended up figuring out something important.

cicatriz 12y ago
See also Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

calinet6 12y ago

If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point. In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points. The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you lose an extremely precious thing by focusing on measurement and optimization and increasing quantity and productivity. She has an extremely clear and valid point, which lucidly carries so much truth in it, and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true. In fact, the clarity and style and beauty of this piece remarkably matches almost exactly how it feels. It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Even so, no one knows what, exactly, to do with it; so we call it unproductive and go on trying to live our highly productive lives. It's so much bigger than we are, this thing, and resistance seems futile. And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time, but you have a fleeting chance, at least, of converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time, and come just a bit closer, thereby, to the reality of things.

lionhearted 12y ago
> And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time [...] I hope you take this the right way, but this position is very California-ized pseudo-Zen. Many of the most well-regarded Zen practitioners and teachers very much would have savaged it, EX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22Do-nothing_Zen.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22D... > "One of Hakuin's major concerns was the danger of what he called "Do-nothing Zen" teachers, who upon reaching some small experience of enlightenment devoted the rest of their life to, as he puts it, "passing day after day in a state of seated sleep". Quietist practices seeking simply to empty the mind, or teachers who taught that a tranquil "emptiness" was enlightenment, were Hakuin's constant targets. In this regard he was especially critical of followers of the maverick Zen master Bankei. He stressed a never-ending and severe training to deepen the insight of enlightenment and forge one's ability to manifest it in all activities. He urged his students to never be satisfied with shallow attainments, and truly believed that enlightenment was possible for anyone if they exerted themselves and approached their practice with real energy." Hakuin, who is pretty damn amazing and certainly lived an amazing life by almost anyone's standards, wrote that after achieving some basic glimpses enlightenment, you ought to be out helping people and doing good things. You'll see that in non-priest Zen practitioners, too. Miyamoto Musashi's ink paintings show such a depth of clarity and a sort of both sad and beautiful aliveness: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Kobokumeigekizu.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Kobokumei... In any event -- I think Hakuin, Musashi, Dogen, etc all would reject "clearer and muddier" intellectualism in favor of actually practicing and doing worthwhile things: Dogen: "To practice the Way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dgen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dgen Anyway, I mean this with all the most respect. The Zen practitioners that really stand the test of time and made a difference in their communities are ones that saw it less as an intellectual orientation, and much moreso as a very actionable way of life.

hrktb 12y ago

> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! There is a huge unbalance between men and women (which traditionnaly don't get the same chances to work in high pressure environments, and are less subjected to karoshi) and as someone else point Okinawa people won't have the same life expectancy as Tokyo area people. This is a factor in the juxtaposition of workaholism and high quality of life in the same country.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

"Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!" I had seen as many workaholics in the USA as in Japan. For different reasons, and in different ways. In the US you are supposed to do it because of ambition, in Japan you do it because of social pressure or constriction of the environment. Oh, never mind, in the US they have this beautiful two words that describe everybody: Loser or Successful, that does wonders to social pressure people to work more, but thinking "they actually want it", like in Japan, anyway. But food is much better in Japan. They also eat a lot of fish that before Fukusima, was the less toxic or industrialized food you could eat. No artificial feed(until recently), no genetically modified, no antibiotics, no hormones like US loves so much.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
The US doesn't love it, the food industry does because it allows them to produce higher volumes of food and sell it for lower prices, which (by extension) the consumer loves. I'd like to think people in Japan care more about the quality of their food, not so much the quantity per $ like I see in the US ($1 cheeseburgers and such). Another possibility is that the Japanese have more expendable income (also because of 12+-hour workdays), thus more budget for food, thus less of an inclination to buy the cheapest products. But, off topic.

zhte415 12y ago

I believe the article is full of astute thinking. > First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is. > The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author! It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries). > Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).

byEngineer 12y ago

To your Edit: yep, yep, yep. You asked for more women in tech. Here you go. Not knowing the difference between total GDP and per capita. Not knowing what to do with her life, etc, etc, etc. Guess what! She will know exactly why she is on this planet for once she gets her first kid. You see how lost she is?! When was the last time you saw someone not-driven to tech supposedly being in tech? By this measure! Almost like someone told her that she needs to do it (got to tech! study CS!) to be fulfilled and feel good. So instead of getting married and her first kid, she is lost in this world with diploma where she doesn't get even basics (i.e. GDP), sad and pathetic. And we as society did it to her. Actually, feminists and cultural marxists did it to her. It is akin to taking you, forbidding you to do the tech, and forcing (through social pressure) to spend all days taking care of kids. You would be totally lost too. So, don't be surprised. That's to be expected. If you start telling boys to be like girls and girls to be like boys, you will end up with a bunch of lost and confused people. Shoot, I can't believe she could have four kids by now, instead she totally wasted that time in lala-land. We should start executing these leftists for wasting human lives and potential. She has monthly period for a fucking reason.

dashboardfront 12y ago

I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP. I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

As Weird Al wrote, if money can't buy happiness then I guess I'll have to rent it.

Chinjut 12y ago

Re: "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right", that's the cheeky title of the article you link to, but not really the content of it. The article discusses how to get the best bang for your buck when spending your money. It may still be the case, however, that the best happiness bang for your buck is to do something with your free time other than seeking above all else to maximize your income in the first place, and the article is not intended to exclude this possibility.