The exact example you mentioned (a person's weight being taboo) was my first "culture shock" when learning Japanese. My mind was opened to the multitude of prejudices carried just by speaking English many times after that.
At one point I kept a Twitter account where I tweeted random thoughts about the world only in Japanese. Even though it hardly had any followers, there was something really freeing about this. It forced me to choose my words precisely (lacking a deep abstract vocabulary, it required careful perusal of the Japanese dictionary), and I also didn't feel subject to the cultural burdens of English (as for the burdens of Japanese, I wasn't yet aware of what they were). I definitely recommend to language learners keeping a little diary in their second language, once they get to a point where they are able to.
SESTA and FOSTA are certainly DC's doing, but I think it's fair to say there is a serious aversion to sexuality and eroticism among incumbent platforms, that did not require any prodding from US lawmakers. For example, AFAIK, Instagram has never allowed "adult" content, since long before FOSTA; Steam has never allowed "pornography" on its platform, resulting in hundreds of games requiring patches [1] to play in the form the publisher intended.
Eroticism being a core component of art going all the way back to literal cave paintings, I am sometimes frustrated at the prudishness of the platforms we use in the contemporary age.
It has nothing to with "DC" (numerous anti-porn laws have been struck down by courts) and everything to do with the banking industry's moral codes, which is where the Christian Right shifted their moral crusade to after losing numerous legal challenges.
That's why you see platforms like Patreon crack down on adult content. The banking industry notices, the payment processors and merchant banks sit up and threaten to close the service's accounts, and the service instead capitulates and cranks up their rules around adult content.
They'll bray about fraud rates being high for adult content, but if high fraud rates were a concern, you'd think they wouldn't give the gym industry (for example) free license in credit card processing and ECH transfers...they're prolific scam artists. Ditto for all the as-seen-on-tv crap with outrageous shipping and "handling" fees and so on.
If the banking industry figures out that you're an adult media actor, you stand a good chance of getting banned from the entire system. What possible argument for fraud is there in that case? None. "Fraud" is just a cover for Christian moral code enforcement.
Edit: okay, maybe it's not the Christian Right influencing US banks rejecting porn stars for accounts for "moral" reasons. Must be the sentient Big Mouth Billy Bass units.
It’s the liberal that’s holding the power here, not the Christian that is fighting an uphill battle to preserve their religious lifestyle, and the right to parent their own children how they want.
It’s clear for all that opening the floodgates of porn into social media and platforms that both adults and _children_ use will cause this particular category of content to dominate the entire space. It’ll also lock out any children from most social media whose parents refuse (and rightfully so) to let them see porn. Not that this effort will always be successful, because children who don’t know any better will cave in to peer pressure from friends. This dystopia where what’s essentially filmed prostitution finds its way into almost all spaces in society, including children’s lives, is what the very powerful liberal wants.
Shouldn’t you be more concerned about the increase in women and girls forced to sell their dignity to survive? Is the suffering of people not more important to you than your cummies?
Outspoken Christians form 9 out of 10 members of Congress despite representing 65% of the US population [1]. Religiously motivated laws get argued and passed on a weekly basis, and Christian fundamentalist ideas are constantly in the media spotlight.
The point is in the US we do our best to avoid labeling people with religious beliefs as "tools of their religion" when they occupy political office.
You should try and see how many political leaders are Jewish and then compare that to the % of the population that are Jewish. Comes across as kinda shitty behavior no?
Plenty of government leaders are religious but that doesn't mean they rule according to those beliefs. To make the assumption they do is just a weak attempt to smear people based on their personal beliefs.
When laws are repeatedly passed that are consistent with a certain religious interpretation, at what point does it stop being an assumption? I'll grant you that it would still not be a good thing to point at a specific politician and claim that they're doing it (unless you have evidence). But that's different from speaking statistically about Congress as a whole.
Abolition? Christians in politics have done more good than bad, unless you hate America, which it honestly sounds like you do. Hating America is very hip in certain cliques but it’s pretty cringe to listen to from an educated adult who benefits greatly from the freedom they seem to hate.
"Christians in politics have done more good than bad"
Feel free to provide some actual substantive backing of that (correlation v causation is so much fun), otherwise you sound like another Xtian carnie with a very dull ax to grind.
I genuinely can’t tell if this is your legitimate view or if you’re moving the conversation along by making the religious right’s arguments for them. Either way, I’ll bite.
1. Nobody is arguing against a parent’s right to choose their parenting style. This is about altering society to fit their parenting style.
2. Permissive social networks (like Twitter) don’t have an issue with adult content overrunning the network. Furthermore, if adult content wasn’t roped off to all but a couple of mainstream social networks, isn’t it arguable that the reduced concentration will mitigate your hypothesised “overrunning”?
3. The implication that all sex work is exploitative is in 2022 untenable. There are myriad women out there who consensually do sex work when they could do something else instead. Sex work has pros and cons for the worker like any other job. The characterisation of this as “selling their dignity” is indicative of a view of sex and sexuality that is increasingly out of step with the attitudes of the young people who typically engage in sex work. The implication that sex work is exploitative or even “sad” is driven by the US’s legal stance on prostitution. I live in a jurisdiction with more permissive prostitution laws and the difference is night-and-day obvious. The (il)legality of full service sex work fuels the stigma, not the other way around.
No one is stopping Christians from preserving their lifestyle. No one. None. Zero.
What they are doing is not being held hostage to same said Christians from force-feeding it to everyone else. If you like it, fine. Have a biblically awesome life.
"This dystopia where what’s essentially filmed prostitution finds its way into almost all spaces in society, including children’s lives, is what the very powerful liberal wants." As opposed to the Handsmaid Tale/Stepford/Leviathan-like dystopia every Abrahamic hardliner wants.
> Twitter has a lot of porn on it, and we don't see it as "overrun with porn"
That’s why I said “opening the floodgates”. Yes of course there is porn in social media already. It’s still a fact today that you wont see porn on Twitter/YouTube/Facebook/etc. unless you look for it. If you remove restrictions and push porn just like any other content, then all these platforms will essentially degrade into hybrid porn sites because this particular type of content will dominate the entire space. Some people here are upset that it’s even kept in check at all. SV are being called puritans for having some common sense and not letting this filth dominate their sites.
I'm actually more concerned about religion than i am about porn. Religion is a tool to manipulate the people through lies, and it relies on training people not to do any critical thinking. And the lack of critical thinking in the world today is very scary.
This is a classic case of an industry attempting to self-regulate in order to avoid legal regulation, with teeth. Even inconsistently-applied loose rules are good enough to keep the powerful Christian lobbyist pitchforks at bay.
There are actually strong, non-"puritanical" reasons for this. An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services.
So while Visa could simply charge more, there are numerous other headwinds that make this tricky. Political will, payments risks, brand risk, and deep rooted family/social stigmas that fuel the rest. They kind of all have to be dealt with at once for this to start making economic and business sense.
For proponents, it's going to take generational change to shake all of these network effects out. The first step of which is consumers (Gen Z?) publicly admitting that they see no harm in sex-related commerce and to begin showing this in their purchasing behaviors.
John Oliver recently covered this as it relates to sex work. Stigmas and dispositions are changing, but it's slow. A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.
None of this explains why the banking industry blacklists porn stars from having checking accounts, nor why they allow other high-risk industries wholesale access...the gym industry, for example, is incredibly fraudulent and yet the banking industry has no problem letting them use ECH, a system so permissive it's a fraudster's wet dream....or why the banking industry has done nothing to self-regulate payday lenders.
> An oft-cited anecdote is the spouse or parent that finds mysterious porn charges on the credit card. Sex-related services carry an extremely high rate of charge backs. The transaction risks are much, much higher than other categories of goods and services.
I'm not sure how they're working things on the payment processing front but Steam has sexual content on it's regular storefront now without requiring external patches. Heck some are even Steam Deck verified.
“A lot of signalling has to happen to a lot of people.” More signaling makes all signals weaker until everything is noise. Probably not the desired outcome.
...steam is covered in ads, even opening them in a separate window when you launch the client. They're only for stuff sold on steam, and publishers (supposedly) can't buy ad space, but they're ads nonetheless.
It didn't "require prodding" because it was assumed from the get go that there was more money (and/or less scrutiny) to be made 'playing it safe' than much else.
Sure I just wish for ONCE the goal of the hacking zeitgeist on here would be “how do we get around limits to do something good for society” rather than “how do we use our cleverness to exempt ourselves from the rules that enable society?”
Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. In my opinion, the world cannot sustainably support so many people. So artificial limits we like to defeat, natural limits are much tougher.
The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it.
Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield.
We are not using greenhouses everywhere right now, because that's a huge capital investment; and given current food prices, it's generally not worth it. But if push came to shove, we could totally do it. (Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.)
There's lots more techniques you can do to produce more calories. For example fusion power could help a lot to power lots of artificial lighting in vertical farms, and to purify sea water. (And even without fusion power, we could generate lots and lots of power from fission with current technology. It's just unpopular.)
> Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost.
I guess you would say that the suggestions I made above fall under the second clause of unacceptable costs?
Do you mean economic costs or some kind of ethical or moral or metaphysical costs?
I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere. But I don't really see anything against Dutch-style greenhouses apart from economic costs?
"The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it."
I've never seen anything that states that. Link? UN and others estimate 8-12 billion. And none of those estimates are accounting for sustainable population. You say 100s of billions, but with what quality of life? With scare resources comes conflict.
"we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans."
Most major fish stocks are down more than 90%. Farm raised means feed and and antibiotics. Sure we can increase stuff like seaweed consumption, but that's not very significant.
"Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield."
What are those greenhouses going to be made out of? Petroleum based plastics, glass (CO2 for melting), or cellulose/corn plastic (that requires chemicals that aren't environmentally friendly)? Where are we getting the nutrients? We already use a massive amount of petroleum based nitrogen.
"But if push came to shove, we could totally do it."
No, if push came to shove then people would start literally shoving in the form of a war.
"(Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.)"
That's another unsubstantiated claim. Even the EU says they cannot convert fast enough to get off of Russian gas. Let's see a link that says wind and solar are completely feasible to meet current power demands, including the energy storage required.
"I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere."
So are you changing from just the wind and solar mentioned earlier to include nuclear?
> Most major fish stocks are down more than 90%. Farm raised means feed and and antibiotics. Sure we can increase stuff like seaweed consumption, but that's not very significant.
I agree that hunter-gatherer tactics are beyond their limits.
> What are those greenhouses going to be made out of? Petroleum based plastics, glass (CO2 for melting), or cellulose/corn plastic (that requires chemicals that aren't environmentally friendly)? Where are we getting the nutrients? We already use a massive amount of petroleum based nitrogen.
I had mostly glass in mind. But whatever works, works. You can make your glass with any energy source, doesn't have to be CO2 producing.
You can take nitrogen out of the air. Also, the atoms that fertilizers are made of don't get destroyed.. so you can recycle them indefinitely (with some effort). We are also sitting on a huge ball of matter.
You can also use substantially less fertilizers and insecticides in a controlled greenhouse environment, perhaps with drip feeding.
I hope we both agree that those approaches take energy to pull off? So the question is whether humanity can get enough sustainable energy.
> Even the EU says they cannot convert fast enough to get off of Russian gas.
We seems to be talking about different time scales here? Getting off Russian gas is something they'd want to do in the next few months or years at most. I'm talking about decades at the least.
(And, the EU could totally get off Russian gas next month. It would 'just' make energy a lot more expensive at least in the short run, and likely put the EU into a severe recession for a while. That's a more painful than the shame of buying from Russia, so they keep buying from Russia.)
> No, if push came to shove then people would start literally shoving in the form of a war.
I don't think so. But for the sake of argument: a few wars here or there don't have much of an influence on carrying capacity. Unless, of course, the wars are bad enough to kill off a substantial fraction of humanity directly or even just destroy the economy badly enough to kill off indirectly.
(That's something we can argue about, if you want to. But we don't need to argue about a few minor wars.)
> So are you changing from just the wind and solar mentioned earlier to include nuclear?
Sorry for mixing examples. I used fission reactors as an example of non-monetary costs that someone might object to.
I suspect we _could_ run everything on wind and solar (especially if you also add solar in orbit via power satellites), if we really had to. But adding nuclear fission (or fusion) to the mix would allow us a higher standard of living.
> I've never seen anything that states that. Link? UN and others estimate 8-12 billion. And none of those estimates are accounting for sustainable population. You say 100s of billions, but with what quality of life? With scare resources comes conflict.
It's more than reasonable to ask for more background information. Sorry, it's a bit hard to Google for this stuff quickly.
So here are just two links that touch on the topics mentioned:
Also just to clarify: I am arguing that physically and technically we could support vastly more people on earth. I share your fear that people might blow each other up anyway.
There’s no way in the world voters will ever allow you to produce that much housing. There’s already a vast over population on this planet relative to number of shelters
I'm not sure about the latter. But I agree that political considerations are important, and I deliberately ignored them and only talked about technical feasibility.
>Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans.
Just to cite one of of your statements, the oceans have been decimated with countless species extinct and many more on their way there due to overfishing and habitat destruction. The oceans are also filled with industrial chemicals, plastics and have numerous massive "dead zones" due to nitrogen run off from the huge factory farms we run to sustain our massively overpopulated planet.
The suggestion that the earth isn't overpopulated, let alone the idea that the earth could support "hundreds of billions of people" is beyond absurd. We are losing biodiversity among animals, insects, fish and every other form of non human life due directly to massive overpopulation. Saying this ignores the decimation of our ecosystem and the food web that has left our planet teetering on the brink.
You are right that we are past what hunter-gatherer approaches can yield from the ocean. And that we are doing a bad job at protecting the habitat of wild-life.
However, there's vast patches out in the open ocean where almost nothing grows. Mostly because the areas with sunlight (at the top) are not where the minerals are that plants need to grow (mostly the sea floor). See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for an overview.
If you mind putting fertilizer directly into the open ocean, someone more clever than me can probably work out a scheme for enclosing some water in a giant floating bag, and growing your stuff in there. (Or something much better than this.)
"From April to June 1982, speed was monitored on New
York's Interstate highways, and an 83% noncompliance rate
was found despite extreme penalties"
There was a legendary coast-to-coast race in the 70s, defying the national 55 mph limit:
"Dan Gurney, winner of the 1967 24 hours of Le Mans...won
the second Cannonball in a Sunoco blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4
Daytona. Gurney said, "At no time did we exceed 175 mph"
"In May 2020, Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and spotter
Dunadel Daryoush set the new cannonball record of 25
hours and 39 minutes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a
modified 2016 Audi S6 disguised to look like a Ford
Taurus police interceptor. Police-evasion modifications
included brake light kill-switches, radar detectors,
laser diffusers, CB-radio, and a roof-mounted thermal
camera. Performance modifications included a trunk-
mounted 67-gallon auxiliary fuel cell..."
"JJ McClure, a famous racing driver and team owner
(Reynolds), and Victor Prinzi, his chief mechanic and
sometime co-driver (DeLuise), drive a Dodge Tradesman
ambulance fitted with a NASCAR engine (Hal Needham and
Brock Yates used the same vehicle in the actual 1979
race)."
"...it took two and a half hours to drive there from
Albany. And I was driving from Albany, New York at 2:00
in the morning, burnt from all the travel. Cop stopped me
for doing 62 on a four lane road when there was no one
else in sight. Then the guy gave me a ticket. I was doing
62. And he said, 'We give tickets around here for over-
60.' and I said, 'I can't drive 55.' I grabbed a paper
and a pen..."
Really, (and I just learned this) it says it all that there was a punk album titled as a reaction to "I can't drive 55" called "Double Nickels on the Dime". In Soviet America, the rebels drive 55!
I don't think the commenter you replied to was particularly set on the specific example of a 55 mph speed limit?
In any case, from what you quote here, it seems Americans driving fast occasionally is worthy the stuff of legend? In Germany those speeds would be just another Tuesday.
About half of German Autobahnen famously don't have a speed limit. The recommended speed is 130 km/h (~80 mph).
Of course, petrol costs a lot more in Germany than in the US. In practice, that tends to limit driving much more.
> Of course, petrol costs a lot more in Germany than in the US. In practice, that tends to limit driving much more
Not really. People that drive a lot or like to save money just buy more fuel efficient cars - whenever I read about fuel efficiency of US cars (and bother to convert gallons and miles to units I understand) I am shocked how super inefficient many vehicles on the US market are, especially given that speed limit - likely due to much lower petrol cost.
What you describe is true; but petrol costs still limit driving. If driving was cheaper in Germany, more driving would happen. Especially more faster driving.
>I don't think the commenter you replied to was particularly set on the specific example of a 55 mph speed limit?
I was making a more general point too, and I'm sorry if you took my comment too literally.
In Germany it would be another Tuesday, because it would be legal. Driving fast according to the law doesn't represent the same thing, which is connected to that cultural difference I was observing.
Yes, you still have to drive safely. That's a lot more nebulous than just looking at velocity numbers.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that if you drive fast enough in Germany, and anything happens, the burden of proof shifts: the (extreme) speeder is presumed guilty of causing the accident until proven innocent.
Fun fact, the incident you linked to happened where I grew up.
Unsafe driving by itself is against the law in Germany. Even if no one was hurt.
You can argue that the law is bad and just be repealed, of course.
(Or like the guy in the article, you can have your lawyer try and argue in court that the law doesn't apply in this case. As a competent lawyer should in a fair trial.)
Not sure any politician was involved in the first place? Though of course politicians might utter opinions on the whole thing. As they should, so that voters can decide who to vote for, if they are in favour or against this law.
You will be happy to learn Cannonball Run movie script (also Smokey and the Bandit 2) was written by Brock Yates, original organizer of Cannonball Run :)
For more about the whole philosophy of the movement I recommend:
The change has been notable in recent years. This has always been a very libertarian forum but it's been drifting to the left at an alarming speed. Very dark times for entrepreneurship and society advances indeed.
I don't know how you are using ITT here nor is "criticism of vehicular personal transportation" all that common on this site. It does generate a decent amount of discussion but it isn't the prevailing attitude in my experience.
I also don't understand how that is "left" either.
Japan's expressways are privatized and tolled per-kilometer. They are competing with long-distance train lines, so the toll is in the same ballpark as a train ticket (about 13000 yen or $110 from Tokyo to Osaka).
The privatization of the expressways was pretty much enabled by the viability of the rail networks, which are also mostly privatized, mostly profitable, and extremely well-built.
I'm the furthest thing from a lawyer, but "knowingly and intentionally" sounds to my lay self like it's a test of mens rea. If I were operating a Tor node in the EU, I would probably assume until stated otherwise that operating a Tor node remained legal, as long as I wasn't operating that node with the intention of circumventing the ban on RT.
Agreed. There are already tons of laws on the books that prohibit "knowingly and intentionally" contributing to a crime. If simply being aware that a service you provide could in general be used to commit a crime, and likely was being used to do so, given the large number of users, then not only would every Tor node operator be considered an accessory to drug trafficing and child pornography, but every ISP would as well, and this new law would be the least of your worries. At least in the US, that wording implies more concrete knowledge of specific actions.
That said, like you and the OP, I am not a lawyer, or even a citizen of an EU country.
"Knowingly and intentionally" seems to apply to the operation (e.g. "you know that you're running a Tor node") - "circumvention" is on the basis of "object or effect". (For ESL speakers: "object" means "goal", "effect" means "result", and Tor obviously has a final, de-facto result of unblocking RT)
This is an overly broad reading. The hypothetical Tor operator's object (i.e. intent) is to run a Tor node, the contents of which they are entirely agnostic to (and may be formally agnostic to, if the traffic is additionally encrypted).
To use some abductive reasoning, think about how this would apply generally: the law is clearly not written to ban encryption, even though your interpretation would suggest that any encryption amounts to intentional circumvention. If that sounds wrong to you, it's because you've confused the intent/object that the law is concerned with.
No, encryption isn't going to help, because they can still block on IPs. Encryption plus eSNI helps, and if, for example, Yandex.Cloud sets up a big "shared host," I fully expect that to get the Kharkiv treatment, like Roskomnadzor tried a few years ago with Telegram.
Tor operators can see the IP, they can see the DNS, and their operation has the effect of unblocking RT.
Who can still block on IPs? An interior Tor node doesn't have the information available to do that.
I think you missed the point of the abductive argument: you're describing a cat and mouse game, one that is fundamentally unrealistic. The more realistic scenario is that the intent described in the article has nothing to do with encryption, Tor, or anything like that.
If you ran a tor node and piped the content of RT to newpipetoRT.com you're in violation, but having a tor node might be comparable to operating a ham radio relay. If someone in Moscow transmitted RT encrypted over radio and decrypts it in Germany, the radio relay wouldn't necessarily be in violation.
We live in a networked world. There's an unbroken physical connection between your hardwired ISP connection and every device connected to Russia (less so with starlink and woman and 5g, but still. )
It's resilient by design, and damaging that, even for good reasons, has secondary consequences.
Going after tor nodes would be overreaching and shortsighted.
Being able to send an SMS to a US phone number does not guarantee the ability to send an SMS to, eg, a Chinese phone number. SMS isn't even widely used in a lot of locales outside North America. Email works the same everywhere.
Email is not delivered reliably either. There are many blockers. Either you are not allowed to enter a perfectly working address. They might use some list of domains they think they are bad (happens to me increasingly). The programmer might have hand-crafted their own regexp for "valid" email addresses. The email provider might not accept certain incoming mails. I am on several lists that say, sorry our emails are not deliverd on hotmail, yahoo, whatever. Harmless hobby stuff, nothing spammy or illegal.
Peopleware is astonishingly relevant and short enough to finish reading over a weekend. Definitely recommend it to anyone starting a career in tech. Then give it a second glance 5-10 years in and see how many more workplace anti-patterns you recognize from your experience...
I have to agree, I have a lot of respect for McKenzie but this advice seems unwise. I've landed four jobs (including my longest-lasting gig to date) by sending in resumes to job listings without knowing anyone internally.
I know it's bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site's supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity.
There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosophy in the spirit of this essay. Nietzsche and Bataille talked about work in a similar way. Cioran pretty explicitly embraced failure (or the risk of failure) as virtue, as this work does. This essay seems to be saying something like: take a big risk, quite possibly fail, live your principles even if it means being an "outcast", commit to it, and who cares what other people think, because in doing so you will find your people. The response in here seems to be "look at this guy taking big risks and failing, what an outcast." Of course, that is surely the point.
I have, as I'm sure many on here have, found success in grinding away at boring problems, suppressing any kind of "call of God" or desire to do something larger, so we could build a nest egg and stable future for ourselves with MAGMA money. This essay is sort of a direct assault on the aesthetics of that approach. As for me, I have grown quite tired of it, so this piece does resonate with me.
It is fairly easy to understand the hostile reaction to this.
This guy did exactly what he said and something many, if not most, of the people who comment on HN would have the means to do (take some time off, live frugally on savings, attempt something he had passion for). His success was by no means guaranteed but he had the guts to take the risk and make it work. And as he said if worse comes to worst, he can always go back to his old career/job (which is likely true of everyone here).
Most people are not risk-takers and are mainly status-seekers. They live their lives in ways to reflect this and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there is always the niggling feeling for many (I am one) that while I may be making the "smart" choice the real reason I don't do something like this is that I am afraid. I don't like having that pointed out, and so react with hostility.
This isn't to say the path taken by this author is for everyone (especially those with dependents etc), but for many it grates that it would be something they could easily do if only they had the guts. It is also quite telling to see how many of the biggest successes of Tech did something similar to what this guy is saying (Elon Musk as mentioned, Jeff Bezos quitting his finance job, Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard, Sergey Brin/Larry Page abandoned their PHDs, etc).
TL;DR: People don't like being told that their "smart" life choices are as much made out of fear of failure and status-seeking as from calibrated decision-making.
P.S. To anyone reading, none of the above is a personal attack on you or your circumstances. Everyone is different, everyone's story is different, everyone's circumstances are different. But this is still a valuable piece imo as there are plenty of us out there who could quite easily do what is mentioned and probably benefit from the experience but don't due to fear or just following a comfortable groove.
There is a lot of goodness in this article. I can see why many people don't enjoy the style, but its essence is inspiring and positive.
You don't need to risk bankruptcy to follow the article's main idea, which is to try to use your available resources to invest in high risk, ambitious projects. Criticizing the article as speaking of "privilege" misses the point entirely - this is starting from the assumption that you are able, through networking, excess savings from previous jobs, family connections, etc, to amass the resources for this kind of investment.
Most people in this "privileged", or well deserved, position DO NOT invest their lives and talent in these big projects. Instead, they increase consumption and get tied to over-insured, materially comfortable lifestyles. And I'm not talking about the ultra rich here, but simply the top 20% in disposable income of the developed world. Tens of millions of people could use the article's ideas to better themselves and the world around them by spending a part of their life invested in high risk, high potential benefit projects.
The author sees their magazine as one such project. Maybe they are right... Who knows? I think the world is a tiny bit of a better place because they are trying to do it.
What about those who can't afford to do this? I don't think the article is for them (yet!), and that's okay. From time to time I see articles here about web development, these don't do anything for me because I'm not a web developer. Not every idea needs to benefit every person.
I agree with everything you are saying. I'd like to share my perspective.
I quit my job for about 2 years, thinking I would never go back to full time. It was extremely liberating but also a somewhat scary experience. The reason for this is I think delusional thinking unfortunately plays a big part in what happens to people who stop working for long periods of time.
There are many, many people in my experience who stop working at some point, have nonwork become a big part of who they are, and never go back. They realize their current mode of work and life are making them miserable, so they throw out work complety instead of finding something more balanced.
I've met probably a dozen people like this and most if not all of them are in a deep state of laziness that is probably also a certain category of depressipn. Its quite sad when they realize they are 50, have no money, no way of making money, and no family because they couldn't afford one.
The author to me seems like a very delusional person. I hope I'm wrong but it just comes off as very naive. Is this magazine going to somehow change the world? How is he going to make money? How long has he not been working? How much savings has he lost in opportunity cost?
There is nothing more liberating than not working and convincing yourself that you don't need to work. For every 1000 people who think they are going to do this about 1 succeeds, and 100 manage to support themselves by living cheaply, contributing nothing to society, and mooching off of their relative, friends, and social safety nets.
I should also say I think taking time off, even long periods of time, is one of the best things that people who can afford to can do. It changed my life. I just wanted to point out there is a dark side to this, that a lot of people fall prey to. I could be reading too much into the article but I thought I'd give my perspective as I've thought a lot about this.
Not working a job simply reveals your inner character. When you work a job, you're an instrument of the will of your bosses. When you don't work a job, you're free to have a will of your own. So what you choose to do reflects completely on you. Sadly due to oppressive hierarchies many people have needed to exist in environments where willfulness is punished. Since all their past experiences acting of their own volition resulted in punishment, many people become afraid to do things, once there's no longer anyone responsible for telling them what to do. That makes it difficult for the person's inner creativity and independent motivation to emerge. There's nothing delusional about that. It's just a sign of how unfairly people in our society have been victimized. If you want to help such people, then rather than telling them to get a job, you may want to consider helping them to conquer their fears.
There are many people who have conquered their fears, and are simply bad at whatever they are trying to do. Either that or they aren't really trying to do anything except enjoy themselves, and they don't care / are oblivious to the fact that their lifestyle is a net drain on society that will eventually land them in a very bad spot.
How do you think about the risk of turning into one of those non-work people but also valuing long periods of not working?
When you initially quit, were you thinking you'd find a new position that you were passionate about and then it didn't materialize, forcing you to go back to your previous life?
When I initially quit, I thought I was going to do something similar to what the author here was trying to do, after taking a couple of years off. I had some fantasy of being an artist. I don't believe the notion that there is a position in tech that I would be passionate enough about that I would really care all that much, but I work remotely for about 5-6 hours a day now and have plenty of time to do the things that I care about.
My perspective now is that there are two ends of the work/life balance spectrum you should avoid. The first is not working at all, or working as little as possible. This would include doing something far below what you are capable of like working at a grocery store just because there is no stress and you can manage to get by on that type of income. Lots of people fall into a lifestyle where they realize they don't want to be materialistic, so they never get a career going, and then they pay serious consequences as they get older and have no money or freedom.
The other end of the spectrum to avoid is materialism. Measuring your self worth in status, or seeking status, especially through money, is a challenging thing to avoid at least in the US. Being close minded and materialistic, in my opinion, is robbing yourself of experiencing life in the way it can be experienced, because it makes it hard to build good relationships or empathize with people. Materialism is a huge huge issue in our society and it is something that too many people who start making lots of money take for granted, and this is ultimately rooted in fear and insecurity.
I think I was pushed down the path of materialism by default. I was an insecure twentysomething who was working hard at something that didn't make me happy, and everyone was telling me how well I was doing and to keep at it. The more I made it a part of me the more unhappy I became until I eventually quit.
When I quit and started hanging out with people who had also quit (or never started) I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me and that I was now living the dream. Eventually I realized how lucky I had been to have the career I had, and backed off of the path I was on by starting to work again, but with a much better sense of balance and perspective.
Definitely not saying that. I would also argue that I am contributing less than a majority of my non tech friends, who all make less than me aside from a couple of doctors.
First you challenged the idea that everyone who earns money contributes to society.
Then you changed your argument to challenge the idea that everyone who earns money is a net positive to society.
Those two things are not the same, and moving the goalposts in this way is intellectually dishonest.
A lobbyist contributes to society insofar as that they spend their money in their local community on food and shelter, and in most cases also pay taxes. Whether or not every earner is a net positive to society was not my argument.
It's really really uncommon to use "contribute to society" in any sense other than "contribute positively/constructively to society". It's clearly a misunderstanding here.
a game that my parents like to play:
never have i ever:
- owned an emerald mine.
- been born to one of the largest landowners in Texas.
- looked on as my child swindled their friends out of a project to get rich quick and kept looking when their business model became a danger to democracy.
i dont think musk, bezos or zuck are good benchmarks for people taking risks.
i imagine them having about as much anxiety about which project next to fund as i have choosing socks. the striped ones that go over the knees but slip a little and have to be tugged upwards every now and then, or the short cute kitty socks that are a bit cold though?
Asserting most people choose the "smart" path as much out of fear of failure as by making a calibrated decision seems more like projection than observation.
The GP wrote, "But there is always the niggling feeling for many (I am one) that while I may be making the "smart" choice the real reason I don't do something like this is that I am afraid."
He or she seems to be projecting rather than observing. That is: it might apply to them, but there's nothing in the GP's comment supporting a more general applicability.
> Most people are not risk-takers and are mainly status-seekers. They live their lives in ways to reflect this and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there is always the niggling feeling for many (I am one) that while I may be making the "smart" choice the real reason I don't do something like this is that I am afraid.
This very much resonates with me. I've built up healthy bit of equity (few hundred thousand), earn double the average wage, and own my own home (mortgaged), I'm still young and have no kids. I really do hold all the cards to take more risks, but I don't. And I very much feel like a status-seeker, not in the social media popularity contest sense, but in the sense that I don't want other people to see me as a failure. That makes the status of a senior job at a big firm, living in an own house in the capital city something to be afraid of losing.
It also resonates with me that trying to iterate on my quality of life, e.g. finding a bigger purpose, passions etc, probably isn't going to happen while working the job that I do. It consumes much of my week and energy, and I find I have little energy or interest to seriously pursue 'big thoughts'. I still enjoy my life quite a bit, but it feels pretty mundane.
So I can very much imagine that quitting my job would be the only realistic path to a different life.
I'm not at all hostile to these ideas, in fact I support them. And I'd gladly read about them in a succinct article. Yet I found the writer to come across as overly intellectual, self aggrandizing, and at times downright weird and full of nonsense.
Here's a direct quote from the article, I'm sure that it speaks to something and to someone, and I'm sure I can find meaning in the analogies and examples, but it's not the type of writing I appreciate:
> Yes, even the bane of Darwin’s faith—the humble ichneumon wasp that lays its maggots inside the living bodies of caterpillars to eat them from the inside and burst out on maturity like some alien xenomorph—is a beautiful creature with a sacred task. Like many parasites, its role in the great chain of being is to test the health and defenses of its caterpillar host population. Its predation weeds out the sickly, preventing the much uglier injustice of collective weakness and disease, and spurring the evolution of stronger and even more beautiful life. Even fearsome Nemesis, born from chaos via night and darkness, is ultimately the hand of God and the minister of justice. Even the supposed exceptions to justice prove its rule.
There's seven references to God, for example. I'm not just interested in this type of writing style or type of magazine. I think that's what most people trip over, not the basic message, nor half of the philosophising surrounding it.
The quote resonated with me so well that I decided to read the article. It is telling that individual failures do not make _risk_ undesirable if it strengthens the community as a whole. OP is not communicating information but emotion which is _much_ harder task with language defined by the common denominator and for me as a reader, he is quite skilled at it.
Your post is interesting but I think you're looking too deeply into it. The pushback in this thread is almost entirely a reaction to the self-assured and self-aggrandizing tone taken by the author. I think on a software startup forum we can all appreciate the tension between the stability of a large consistent salary and the fear/risks associated with striking it out on your own, but the lack of humility and self-awareness in the article just rubs people the wrong way.
The writing is a piece of philosophy discussing topics of such importance as the meaning of life. If you don't want to look deeply into it, it's not written for you. In which case, the lack of... Nevermind. Have a nice day :)
If we're going to talk about polarization, it behooves us to bring up that this isn't a either-or topic: you could take risks and succeed, avoid risks and stagnate, but also take risks and fail as well as avoid risks and succeed.
If we're really going meta, it might also be appropriate to think about our tendency to attribute causation to simple inputs (i.e. either X or Y), when in reality, there may have been a mix of multiple things.
For example, the author attributes the existence of the palladium site to be a result of interest in governance, but wouldn't his background in engineering (instead of, say, rice farming) also logically have something to do with the physical manifestation of a website?
The idea that I think should be questioned is the one about "hacking life" in the sense of going all in on a single thing. In investment, that's called diversification. In nutrition, it's called a balanced diet. But for some reason, in some endeavors, moderation gets shunned (work hours in startups come to mind)
Just doing your well-paid job until a comfy retirement, taking regular vacations throughout the years and overall just having a normal boring happy life also falls under this umbrella.
It's HN comment sections this one that make me really sad.
Like, there's nothing actually wrong with anything the author said or did, but a lot of what I'm reading here is just snark. I can even tell just how little of it many of us actually read, seeing as how he's admitting to privilege yet some know-it-alls still need to point out privilege as if that invalidates the whole thing. You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't, which is why the whole issue of privilege is a bullshit waste of time.
Post-PayPal Musk or for instance a big movie star risking every dollar of their life savings in a venture is different than the worker who has saved up their stake over 30 years.
2000’s Musk from his Paypal reputation can easily get a very lucrative job if things go completely to zero. Current day Musk can make six or seven figures just by sending a couple tweets. The movie star with nothing other than their name land a job or six or seven figure deal. They’re never really risking it all.
I dunno. Movie stars are always just a couple of flops away from becoming a has-been. There’s plenty of stories of stars branching out, even financing their own films, to have them crash and burn, and take their careers down with the dud movies.
Musk was notorious for being fired from multiple jobs before he did his own thing. If he lost his wealth suddenly over a few bad bets, I doubt anyone would want to hire him. Why would they? He’s unlikely to listen, to do things their way and they know that. That makes him unemployable.
Nobody risks it all unless they bet their life, everyone can go back making salary doing basic work. For example, if a software engineer risks their life savings on a project and they lose all of that money, they can still go back and make $300k a year just doing basic work, that is hardly "risking their all" either.
Where the hell do you earn 300k per year?
In Europe most certainly it this is not possible.
Also don't forget life style creep and risk of loss of social circles.
This is much easier to achieve at big tech companies in the US than you think. Look at levels.fyi and you'll see many examples of people with only a few years of experience making $300k. I personally know many people making that much three years after graduating from a coding bootcamp, and a few people who make $450k-$550k after only a couple more years than that.
To me this piece talks to people who have at least a years income in their bank account and thus don't have to worry about failing. even dont have to fret much about getting a new job.
worse, they are basically saying that, if you are not one of them (who has a nice thick buffer of money in their account or other assets generating income), shut up, sit down, you dont get to have ideas, get back to work your tickets are late... what? no, sorry, i dont make the rules and i dont have the money to get a ladder long enough to change them.
Of course, the opposite is also true - many of the pro side see this article as the road not travelled, and are lamenting not following a romantic vision of what could have been, without thinking too hard about what it might cost.
> I have, as I'm sure many on here have, found success in grinding away at boring problems, suppressing any kind of "call of God" or desire to do something larger.
What a profound statement. This is the sentiment of a generation of tamed hackers.
If it does, you will be extremely delighted knowing there is a book by Marcus Aurelius called Meditations. The book withstood the test of time. He has written it clearly and explained his reasons in a proper manner. He was a roman ruler and everything is from that perspective. Most of the people here are probably not making enough money to get by the everyday mundanes of life. So things like self-actualization are far away from reach. Therefore, when someone drops in an article like this, saying to quit job, isn't it disrespectful for those trying to get their needs? Sure, if everyone had a comfort cushion, I guess internet would be a better place. But the reality is quite harsh! Therefore, people may say harsh things but they don't mean it. It's just to get by.
The notion that one has to take care of one's "needs" before pursuing anything "higher" is a lie and an excuse. The number of great intellectuals and writers who lived at least a portion of their lives - and often more - in absolute penury is testament to this. Einstein for example nearly died of starvation, yet he kept working.
One could make an argument that it is because of real world difficulties that one is able to do great work. What did Jesus say about the rich man and the kingdom of heaven? The times in my life when I've lived on the edges are the ones that have laid the groundwork for everything worthwhile I've done in my life. Success and comfort too often bring stupor and cowardice, and not worthy ambition.
How will you know which one you are - or which one you could become - if you don't try it?
Although the very idea of "trying it" like one tries on a pair of pants is absurd. Either a people has the moral fortitude to recognize and live that there are things more important than mere survival or it doesn't.
And if it doesn't, ironically we're already fucked.
Worth pointing out that Starbucks and restaurants around Hollywood are staffed by actor-wannabes hoping for a big break in the movie industry, many of whom never end up amounting to anything. On another corner of the spectrum, you get Paris Hilton, who frankly doesn't have to put effort into anything she tries.
Point being, depending on who "you" are and what "it" is, the advice of "why don't you just go for it, everything else be damned" may or may not be callous/tone deaf/etc.
Maybe being a waitress is not the worst thing in the world? Billions of people can only dream of being a waiter/waitress in LA, and the lifestyle that goes with it.
You need to look at things relative to something that makes sense in the context of the conversation. Obviously, it's better to be a barista in LA than a starving kid in a war zone, but the context here is that we're talking about people who want to be famous actors and can't, so they take on minimum wage jobs to survive until eventually bitter disillusionment hits.
These people are victims of today's culture, which glamorizes wealth and fame above all else... Before they realize that they've been duped, they waste many years of their lives.
Startup culture is similar BTW - people who take moonshots to try and become obscenely rich, only to realize (if they're in the tiny minority that succeeds) that having so much wealth is not really making much of a change in their life and they've spent important years of their lives focusing on stuff that's not important (see Notch's wailing on Twitter for an example of that realization).
Einstein is, in fact, a counter example. He was working at the patent office as a 'technical examiner' for seven years, including throughout his 'annus mirabilis' when he released his most famous papers.
Not offended at all. I do see some Meditations showing through here. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in that work, and plenty of parallels to be drawn to the modern world -- Aurelius was, after all, dealing with the Antonine Plague just before dawn in the decline of the Roman Empire.
My biggest issue with Stoicism is that it is, at its best, basically therapy. Most of the advice in Meditations revolves around putting things into various perspectives that make a challenging situation not feel so bad. This can be quite valuable! However I think there's only so much therapy a person can do before they want to start actively changing their situation. I think the essay wants to go beyond Stoicism, to illustrate a radical path one can take to hopefully alter the circumstance of their existence positively.
I have absolutely no qualms with anyone who takes the "boring" path to provide for themselves or their family (to say otherwise would make me a hypocrite). However I think we tend to vastly overestimate what our needs are. The average yearly median in the US in 2019 was $35,977 according to the Census. This is the median, so 50% of the population lives on less than that! Probably most of the people at that wage want to make more (don't we all?) but I think the author is making the case for giving up on the luxury of tech pay in exchange for finding some actual purpose in our lives. I don't think that's disrespectful, it's just another option.
Isn't this one of the most common criticisms of the US: that its median/common income is miserably low? That's why there's so much polemic about a "living wage" and "debt crisis" in US politics. You're assuming that the low median income of <$35k is enough and that's why "provide for themselves and family" is a low bar, but actually a lot of Americans don't think it's enough.
Your assumption about the demographics of HN is counter to everything I've seen. Most of these people do have money. Simply by virtue of being professionals in the US, they are part of the 1%.
If someone was really inclined, $20k USD would pay for a year's rent in a comfortable apartment. $20k for other expenses. A year of grinding is open to a lot of people here I bet. They just don't want to do it.
The fear is too large, the inertia of normie life too great.
> Simply by virtue of being professionals in the US, they are part of the 1%.
most white collar professionals, SWEs included, are not even close to being in the 1%. the 1% income bucket for the whole country starts around $350k, so roughly an L5 at google.
You need to add another $20K for taxes. And potentially another $10K for health insurance, depending on location. At $70K/yr you’re well into the top tercile in the US.
If you only make $40k a year you aren't going to be paying very much in taxes at all. You also want be paying very much for healthcare as it will be subsidized by the ACA.
>If you only make $40k a year you aren't going to be paying very much in taxes at all. You also want be paying very much for healthcare as it will be subsidized by the ACA.
ACA subsidies (at least in NY) are in the form of tax credits. If you don't have any (or not enough to pay taxes on) income, those tax credits are useless.
If you have no (or very low) income, the state will instead put you on Medicaid. Which has mostly terrible healthcare providers.
As such, if you go the "quit my job and go my own way" route, expect to pay USD$600-1000/month (for an individual, families will be much, much more) for decent health insurance or deal with the huge pile of crap that is Medicaid.
If you're young, single and healthy, perhaps that won't matter to you. If you're not, that could be a big problem.
If you're self-employed your FICA rate basically doubles. Depending on your state, that means your tax burden at $40K could be ~$9-12K. Even with a subsidy you're looking at another $2-3K for health insurance. That makes your take-home less than $30K, 25% less than what GP proposed was sufficient income for basic comfort.
Except for severe chronic health issues, healthcare can probably be handled by walk-in clinics for a year. Those are generally $100-$200 per visit. Medication costs can be lowered with services like GoodRX, which I think even has a trial month for even lower costs.
With taxes, wouldn't you be able to defer them? Just track what you owe or whatever. It might be different in other places because in Nevada we only pay sales tax.
At one point I kept a Twitter account where I tweeted random thoughts about the world only in Japanese. Even though it hardly had any followers, there was something really freeing about this. It forced me to choose my words precisely (lacking a deep abstract vocabulary, it required careful perusal of the Japanese dictionary), and I also didn't feel subject to the cultural burdens of English (as for the burdens of Japanese, I wasn't yet aware of what they were). I definitely recommend to language learners keeping a little diary in their second language, once they get to a point where they are able to.