
How to be mediocre and be happy with yourself - sjcsjc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37108240
======
CM30
I think the key point here is this one:

> social media ensures we're constantly exposed to the highlight reel of
> people's lives and that's leaving some feeling like they're not quite making
> the most of their time on this mortal coil.

Social media and the internet has made it incredibly easy to see the various
people out there who are in the top of their league at any particular hobby,
vocation or activity, and made it seem like that's the 'norm'.

If you're an entrepreneur, it can feel like everyone's making millions off
their startup ideas and that anyone who isn't is a failure. If you're a web
developer, it can seem like the majority of developers are experts in every
one of the latest trendy languages and frameworks and that you suck for not
being like that. If you're making a game, you might end up judging your worth
in comparison to say, the makers of Minecraft or Pokemon GO.

But keep in mind that these are outliers by default. The top percentage of
people in a field are overrepresented online and even then, they mostly only
post about the things going well in their lives.

Most people are average, and for any one thing you're interested in, there
will almost always be many millions of others who are either better or worse
than you at it.

And hey, you don't have to be 'great' or even 'good' at something to be
successful in it. Many people who were 'average' in a field ended up doing
really well in it regardless. Maybe they had a good team, maybe they put in a
stupid amount of time, maybe they simply had the right idea at the right point
in time. You can just as easily be an expert or prodigy toiling away in
obscurity as you can a celebrity with few skills to speak of.

In other words, don't worry too much about it.

~~~
agentultra
I think it's a little more complicated than that.

Let's take game development as one example. You can feel mediocre because you
wrongfully compare your progress and success against outliers like Minecraft.
However I don't think most people who want to be good at game development are
ignorant of what an outlier is. It doesn't take much to learn how big the
climb is once you start.

The real difficulty is that the tools have been democratized. The market is
flooded with games from developers of all skill levels. Even the most niche
games have so many options that most games have trouble distinguishing
themselves from the competition. It can be disheartening to realize that your
most unique and amazing idea is not unique or novel in most respects and that
it will be competing in a pool of several thousand games with similar ideas.

The other difficult factor is that the greatest games make the appearance of
being simple and effortless. We only see the end result... not the 200 games
the developer made before releasing the one we noticed. The myth that genius
is a gift you are born with can certainly make most of us feel mediocre.

That's even before we get to fear of failure, social pressure, and market
pressure! Many people _want_ to be good game developers but they also want to
feed their family and give their kids a good education... so they only have so
much time in their lives to dedicate to improving and developing. Even if they
are full-time game developers many of the same fears apply.

It's the tyranny of being just smart enough to know how much you don't know.
It can also be a comfort though if you're not worried about being the stand-
out genius and just like doing good work.

~~~
kewp
What about time and money ? Most people need jobs to pay the rent. But some
have cash from a wealthy family. It makes such a big difference but nobody
talks about it, which makes those who are trying to do it with no money and on
evenings and weekends feel like they're just not trying hard enough.

~~~
sprucely
That's been my situation. Rather than making just another crap platformer for
my first game more than two years ago, I started something a little too
ambitious for my experience and available time. And although I basically
finished the final touches (introductory tutorial) last night, I'm not certain
it will become popular enough to warrant additional effort to enable
monetizing through in-app purchases. (It's a rather zen game of flow, and ads
would be too intrusive)

------
SCdF
In my mid-twenties I had this peak of "I'm going to make the next Facebook for
cats and it's going to be amazing". After repeatedly trying to have an
enjoyable life and make the aforementioned Catbook* I realised that I'm
actually pretty OK with not being super duper rich and famous. I quite like
being out to chill out and watch some dumb youtube crap. Or actually spend
time with my partner. Or put my health (running, sleeping a good amount, not
using a computer too much etc) above some violent need to succeed.

In my early thirties I've now taken two pay cuts to move to jobs that I
thought would be more enjoyable, as opposed to more important / prestigious /
success signifying.

I still tinker around and would like to produce something all on my own, but I
don't really care if I don't. What I'm doing now for someone else is important
enough.

*Not actually it, obviously I'm not a complete failure

~~~
gutnor
That is harder to achieve that state of mind in the larger more expensive
cities. Everything around you always remind you how poor you are. I'm not
talking about the luxury thing, but stuff like renting/buying a flat were you
have enough space for your hobby while not commuting for crazy hours. Paying
for nursery, ... And of course, your monkey brain require constant reminder
that you don't actually care about whatever new stuff everything else seems to
care about.

Then I have had the opportunity to work for a few months in the middle of
nowhere. (i.e. rural Spain) Having a relaxed perspective was way easier
without the constant reminder of your financial inadequacy.

~~~
SCdF
As we type I'm sitting in a cafe in central London. I agree. Was looking for
good repairable shoes on the weekend. El. Oh. El. Back to shoes that break
every 6 months for me!

It helps that I have a partner who also makes money. If she didn't I wouldn't
be here at all.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Repairable shoes are a lot more difficult to find, depending on where you
regularly need the repairs and how 'hard' you are on your shoes. I'd suggest
1) Ask about brands or what to look for in a shoe repair shop. This will
narrow brands down 2) Buy a brand that lasts longer than others on your actual
feet. So long as I have the funds, I tend to buy Dr Martins - even though
folks say they have changed over the years, I can get a few years of wear out
of them even with regular to daily use. Before this, my feet would eat a pair
every 6 months as well.

------
ThomPete
Normally when people ask me why us Danes are considered the happiest people in
the world I always answer the same way.

We have no aspirations and are totally fine with living a mediocre life. The
entire society is based on that (with the high level of wealth redistribution)

Good enough is almost the definition of Danish working culture.

It's not for everyone (I moved) but it sure is a good quality of life.

~~~
erikb
I really like that. But the thing is, even if we Europeans are still quite
protected from the outside world the outside world is still there. And there
are always people who try to take what you have. So having some fighting
skills is also necessary, I think. Life is not just about finding happiness.

~~~
ThomPete
Oh I agree completely. I believe it's a major risk despite Denmark doing quite
well on many other areas (design, gastronomy, sports architecture) it's size
taken into account.

I also think it's changing quite a lot because the younger generations grew up
with social networks and so a certain amount of equalizing between cultures in
certain areas is happening.

As an example x-factor the music talent show is still doing well in Denmark.
What is interesting is that over the years the quality of the contestants have
really improved especially in the young category.

My theory is that this is because the young generation is seeing how good
contestants from other countries are and so what's good enough changes.

My luck was that I did an internship when I was really young in the US and
learned just how good the good really are.

Their luck is that they are surrounded by talent which pushes everyones
understanding of "good enough"

------
doc_holliday
It's absolutely important to your well-being and happyness to understand when
something is enough and to be at ease with what you have.

Hedonistic tendancies teaches you to want more and more, you never appreciate
what you have because once you have got it you want the next thing. It becomes
a zero sum game and you've probably just sacrificed a whole heap of your
precious time and health to achieve it.

Many people fall trap to trying to beat others in what they have / what they
do.

They see their friend has a bigger house, they want a bigger house.

They see their friend had a big weddding, they want a bigger wedding.

They see their friend earns X a year, they want to earn X + Y a year.

Remember, there are 7 billion people on the planet, you will probably not be
the richest ever, so learn to be happy with what you have.

This is not to say do not strive for improvement, just allow yourself to be
happy.

~~~
treehau5
Travel to a country where the average monthly salary is what equates to a few
US dollars to do some charity/mission/volunteer work. Problem solved, at least
for people who have a heart, which is most thankfully. We need to actively
seek to humble ourselves. Now what I gave is an extreme example that only few
have the heart or time/money to do, but the lesson is the same -- help those
out who are less fortunate than you (other than sending money). It really puts
things into perspective.

------
ioda
"Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a
Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid."\- Einstein

"Mediocrity" arises only when compared.

And comparison is plain stupid. My genes are different. The life circumstance
through which I have gone through are different. My responses to various
stimuli are different. My pleasure points are different. My pain points are
different. My memory is different. The things that I consider important in my
life are different.Every single thing about me is different from that of
anybody else in this world. And yet, if I want to compare myself to some other
person on a specific domain, I should be plain stupid.

Instead I would happily compare myself with myself. Am I giving my personal
best? Am I getting paid in 'currencies that are important to me'?

Life is not single subject course. It is a multi disciplinary course. One may
have ideas about becoming the greatest entrepreneur, the greatest artist or
the greatest politician. But not many people talk about being a great child,
being a great brother, being a great husband, being a great friend, being a
great father or being a great grand father.

You may think that you got an "A' in a particular subject. But you may be a
complete failure in other. If you are OK with it, no issues. But make sure
that you scored 'A' in subjects that you thought important, and not someone
else thought important.

I would love to believe that there is no such thing as 'Mediocrity'. The
greatest tragedy is to not have lived the life that you wanted to live.

~~~
Luc
Not Einstein. It's never Einstein. The greatest tragedy in life is to misquote
Einstein.

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-
climb/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/)

~~~
dredmorbius
That was an incredibly insightful QI.

Helps even more if you've some idea what was going on in education, economics,
and industry through this period as well.

~~~
ioda
On Education let me quote a popular writer from my place , Kamala Surayya
(Madhavikutty) -

"I feel formal education here makes mediocrity's out of everybody. I don't
think any genius can survive caught in the machine of formal education. It
works like a bulldozer with which everybody is brought to a low level. They
won't tolerate brilliance, they won't tolerate independent thinking. I don't
believe that one can be a pundit, great scholar, by digesting what other
scholars have written. I think we must find our own conclusions from our
experiences."

On Economics and Industry - It is interesting to look at the fundamental
truths on how value get generated and distributed. But it calls for a
different write up all together

------
SmellTheGlove
Mediocre, or just average? Mediocre implies something, like you're lazy, not
trying your best or otherwise leaving something on the table that you should
grab. The outcome is being average, and there's nothing wrong with that at
all. I have for sure been gunning for the next promotion, but I've started to
question my motives there - I'm director level now, and is the personal
sacrifice really worth it to keep moving up?

I started to do the math for us. Public school starts in 2 years, there's
$1000/mo back in our bank account (private pre-k/preschool now). My federal
student loans can "only" go another 18 years max. Mortgage will stick around,
but isn't terrible. Cars are paid off. And my wife stays at home, which was a
goal for us (she was a director too, that was a fun adjustment financially).
Right now I spend every dollar that comes through the door on mostly non-
optional things. Some months a little more. But I'm realizing that in terms of
financial obligation, I may be at or near my high water mark. I never realized
that before. If I never get another promotion, we'd likely be just fine, even
improving financially over the next decade or two.

So the question becomes, do I really need to hit VP or whatever other level?
It's not to say I don't work hard now, but I mostly leave the office to get
home by 5. I take all of my vacation time and wish I had more. Maybe I have
the potential to keep moving up, maybe I don't, but the question is really
becoming more whether I'm willing to put in more time and energy here, rather
than outside of work. I think I'm pretty good at what I do, but does that
obligate me to go as hard as I can at that thing I do pretty well, and
subjugate everything else just a little more? I don't think it does.

~~~
Cyph0n
I completely agree with your viewpoint. Sometimes you have to weigh the time
commitment required to get more money against the time you currently have.

For me, the more off time I can get, the better. It's not that I'm lazy, but
it's just that I'd rather enjoy what life has to offer while I can. But if I
feel that I can get more money and satisfaction that's worth it, I'd go for
it.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
I hear you. I spent some time in big consulting before I became a lawyer (and
before I went back to tech), and the number of people that derive their self
worth from their work accomplishments was very high. That, in and of itself,
isn't surprising, but I theorize that many (most?) weren't always of the live-
to-work variety. However, they put in the mega hours in at work early on, kept
going, and by age 30 work was all that remained. So it became about work for
the sake of work, rather than the life outside. Having been in two of the more
soul-crushing industries, I'd rather find a better balance. I also realized in
typing this that I was a real glutton for punishment in my 20's.

------
jrs235
Seriously, everyone should read The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to
Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great[1] (after they turn 18, in hopes it
doesn't encourage them to drop out :). I'd recommend getting a used hard copy
and placing it on your coffee table. It's a quick and humorous read that helps
bring the lighter side of things back into perspective.

[1] [http://amzn.to/2bAi7dN](http://amzn.to/2bAi7dN)

~~~
tumbling_stone
It's really irritating when somebody recommends a book that really interests
me but I simply can't afford it here in India. My wish list is getting longer
and longer with each new book costing more than the cost of a whole weeks
worth of meals. Not one to download PDFs illegally or to read them on Kindle,
which again is not guaranteed to be within my means, I greatly limited in my
accessibility to paperbacks of my liking.

~~~
az0xff
I recommend checking out Libgen (libgen.io).

------
wazoox
There is a serious error in this article: by definition and etymology,
"mediocre" means "in the middle, average, ordinary", absolutely not "the worst
possible quality".

The "tyranny of excellence" undeservedly pushed "mediocre" meaning for many
people down towards "bad", but "mediocre" isn't really bad; it's just barely
average.

~~~
napworth
Welcome to the lack lust journalism of the BBC. I would call them mediocre,
but that's not the correct way to explain "the worst possible journalistic
quality."

~~~
toomanybeersies
The BBC has really gone downhill recently, especially the "magazine" style
articles.

A lot of their business and future articles are done by freelancers, and many
of them are literally ripper from Quora (albeit with attribution).

Their news coverage is still good though, Lyse Doucet is a great journalist
who did some fantastic coverage of the Arab Spring. They also manage to avoid
shitting the bed whenever breaking news happens, as CNN in particular tends to
do.

~~~
icc97
About the only thing I'd moan to the BBC about is that they still use flash
for the videos on their website.

The rest of the BBC website, Radios 1 - 6 + Asian, TV stations (perhaps some
of BBC 3/4 is bottom feeding), weather forecasts, world news, is awesome.
That's just all I can think of off the top of my head.

Their articles are still decent enough that they'll make it to the front page
of HN.

In specific areas they can be bettered, e.g. I prefer some specific football
(soccer) websites, but this isn't a moan just a fact that they have to cover
everything. As a general resource certainly for world news I think they're the
standard to match.

~~~
toomanybeersies
They only use flash on the desktop site. If you spoof your user agent to that
of a mobile device, you get exactly the same site, except with html5 video.

I don't fully understand the reason for not using html5 video when on desktop,
it functions perfectly.

I think their problem is that they've become a bit of a content factory, which
links back to the whole freelancers thing. They churn out a lot of articles,
and some are much better than others. It's the shotgun approach to getting
views.

------
teekert
I love this post: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-
are-u...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-
unhappy.html)

Hits home for me. Life expectations people. You're not great, your 35 and your
farther is still not driving your Porche as he always wanted. But hey, you
have a house, income and food every day. How beautiful is that?

Try to long for the things you already have (as it taught in this "always
popular on HN" -book [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to-
the-go...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to-the-good-
life))

------
katzgrau
Mediocre or not, my personal view is that everyone should envision themselves
as the person they want to be.

Being mediocre may or may not prevent you from achieving your highest goals,
but believing in your mediocrity will prevent you from setting out to achieve
those goals in the first place.

Tell yourself what a badass you are every day, surround yourself by the kind
of people you want to be, and keep persisting until you get what you want or
are simply satisfied by the effort you put it.

There are plenty of roadblocks between you and your dreams that are completely
out of your control - and the question of whether you believe in yourself
doesn't have to be one of them.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "believing in your mediocrity will prevent you from setting out to achieve
those goals in the first place"

Why is this a problem? I would really like to have a successful business, live
in a large house, and not have to worry about money. Achieving that is going
to require me to spend the next 20-40 years working extremely hard, I'll be
constantly stressed out, and in the end the chance of actually succeeding is
quite low. On the other hand I could earn a nice salary, work 9-5 mon-fri, and
live comfortably and happy for the rest of my life.

~~~
katzgrau
Comfortable and happy is a great place to be - no argument there. It's my
personal end goal.

But don't think that your idea indefinite comfort and happiness is everyone's
version of mediocrity - to many, it's the definition of _wild success_.

For the larger world population - not to be cliche - believe in your own
ability to achieve what you want. There are too many people (including
oneself) who want to tell you what you are and aren't capable of.

------
igf
The vast majority of people on the planet are mediocre, and many people seem
happy about it; or rather, if they're unhappy then they're unhappy about other
things rather than their own mediocrity.

But then you've got the interviewee for this article, who is probably _not_
happy with her own mediocrity. You can tell this by how hard she insists that
she is. People who are genuinely happy with their mediocrity don't go around
blogging about it -- in fact, they don't think about it.

~~~
erelde
I think you're mistaking someone who's happy but ignorant of their mediocrity,
and someone who's aware of their own mediocrity but learned to still enjoy
life despite the knowledge of their own condition.

I'd say many people are aware (in some form or another) that they are in the
middle of the Gaussian curve, but live perfectly "happy life". If such a thing
exists, since I've yet to encounter someone "normal".

~~~
igf
>I think you're mistaking someone who's happy but ignorant of their
mediocrity, and someone who's aware of their own mediocrity

Not really, I don't think people are _unaware_ of their mediocrity, it's just
that it doesn't bother them.

For instance I'm not _unaware_ that I am mediocre at the 100m sprint, it's
just that it has never occurred to me to be in the least bit bothered by this
fact. There's plenty of people out there who are mediocre at sprinting _as
well as_ everything else, and are not bothered by their mediocrity along any
of these axes.

------
scythe
The dominant ideology of Western aesthetics in life is existentialism: the
idea of excelling by your own definition. But in order for this to be
meaningful, "your definition" has to be socially informed, and yet by
construction, it's not part of the theory. In some sense there's an essential
tension between the need to be free and the need to not be insane.
Unfortunately, succeeding according to a socially-informed but ill-defined set
of criteria basically always reduces to being socially successful in one way
or another, and it might be cheeky, but it's true, to point out that this is a
perfectly reasonable metric of success... for philosophers. However, the fact
is that everyone can't be socially successful, and the result is that many
people who are motivated by existentialism in its popular form end up
unsuccessful and unhappy.

Note that "social success" does not mean _socializing_ ; Paul Dirac was
extremely socially successful, yet nearly incapable of socializing. And
despite this it strikes me that he would have been less happy if he had not
been one of the greatest physicists in history: introversion or even
(possibly) autism is no antidote to vanity.

In light of this people point the blame at social media, but don't ideas
matter?

------
tibbetts
The article gets it at the end even if the author doesn't appear to: in order
to talk about mediocrity on an absolute scale you have to be thinking of
achievement on an absolute scale, and that a flawed approach no matter what
percentile you are at. Achievement, and happiness, and other metrics of
utilitarian outcomes, should be measured in context, against your inclinations
and potential and situation. Trying to grade yourself against an average or
aggregate scale will not only be disappointing, it won't even help you
accomplish the right things for yourself.

~~~
_0ffh
Also, you'd have to be thinking of mediocrity along a single (or very few)
dimensions. The more features of a person you look at, the more likely you'll
find they're special in some way. I thought we'd established that in [1]. :-)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287)

------
lambdacomplete
There has been a scientific study about what makes people "happy" [1]. It's
even something we can easily test personally: relationships. No matter what,
relationships create that emotional swing that makes our lives interesting
(assuming a psychologically "healthy" person, by today's standards).

That said, how many people actively pursue relationships? To me a person who
has tons of friends (the kind you spend time with on trips etc. not the kind
you text every once in a while to see how they are doing) but works a
frustrating 9-5 job at a bank is definitely not someone I'd look up to. On the
other hand a person who is extremely successful in his field, wins the most
prestigious award in that field, but does not (again, by today's standards)
live a healthy life does not set a good example either [2]. So what's the
optimal situation?

And appearances don't help. I have no idea whether Elon Musk (since he was
mentioned in another comment) is happy. I just know he _looks_ successful. In
my mind he's the kind of guy that enters a room and automatically and
instantly gets the respect and admiration of the "smart" people in there. Does
he even care about that? Am I being tricked into seeing Elon Musk as a status
symbol like I'm tricked into seeing the iPhone as one of the best smartphones
out there?

Happiness is definitely more complex than accepting what you do as "special".
Accepting your current situation is a great way to start clearing up the cloud
of things you consider important but if that was really the way to be happy
why would we even bother improving ourselves or society? I hate to say this
but I almost feel like this is the classic story of the fox and the grapes.
When the fox can't reach the grapes says they are not ripe.

What if happiness was about pursuing something, regardless of the end result?

Refs:

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good...](https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness?language=en)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/news060821-5.htm...](http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/news060821-5.html)

~~~
papapra
In the ted talk, he doesn't explain why this is not just a correlation. Maybe
there is something else that makes you happy and makes one better at having
relationships. For exemple, someone who has anxiety disorder will not be good
with relationships and most probably will be unhappy. But the root cause of
unhappines is anxiety.

------
JMCQ87
>I put it to her that all of that doesn't sound very average to me. >She
pauses and laughs sheepishly. "I guess it just depends on who you're comparing
me to."

That's the key thing. If I compare myself to the average person, I'm obviously
not "mediocre". However, compared to some people who (I think) have had
similar opportunities and potential, I probably am.

------
cko
I really have to internalize this message. I always feel like I have to be
better and smarter than everyone around me just to feel adequate. I guess
that's one characteristic of insecurity.

Is this why romantic relationships seem to kill ambition? I've seen this in
myself and some of my friends.

~~~
mberger
Maybe it's lowering the testosterone?
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483)

------
khaledh
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvos4nORf_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvos4nORf_Y)

How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston

This is a very inspiring presentation, especially towards the end. The take
away is that it's not important how high you went up a certain hierarchy or
how much money you have in the bank. The important question is what did you do
with your life to make other people's lives better? When you're put in certain
situations that touch other people's lives, it's for a reason, and your life
will be measured by how you did in those situations.

------
isuckatcoding
I think this is getting a little too much into semantics but I see people here
using "mediocre" as being synonymous with being "average". What if I'm feeling
BELOW average?

:-)

------
guard-of-terra
How to be reasonably good and productive while having a life and not
cannibalizing your time with work? (or anything else for that matter)

That's what should have been asked.

~~~
mrleinad
Maybe "having a life" could be replaced with "being happy". It's different for
each one and in the end it's the actual result of having a life that matters.

------
Kenji
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. - Oscar Wilde

------
advertising
Had to be a CEO and rich until I tried being both of those things and realized
it wasn't as important as I thought. Pursuit of those things was quite an
unhappy pursuit. But I needed to know I had tried before I was comfortable not
being those things.

Maybe instead of being average, focus on your average of the 5 people you
spend the most time with. :D

------
DrNuke
Social gamification is almost impossible to evade but you can still disconnect
and carry on with your own local life.

------
jokoon
Mediocre falls along the "good versus bad" metric, which honestly is not the
most valid.

It's true, it's easy to feel like society and capitalism in general are
becoming a rat race. Excellency is neither subjective or objective, it's just
a made up social norm that people create in their head for competitive
purposes.

What do you want millions of dollars for? To travel the world for all the rest
of your life? I see so many people fighting during their vacations.

If you're the best at your job, will the world really be improved by your
contribution?

Innovator tend to explore beyond what society wants, and when it works, it
works great.

------
sixhobbits
"Mediocrity" is such an ill-defined concept. As you advance out of being
mediocre, the pool of people you compare yourself to gets smaller, and you
still end up feeling mediocre. When you get to Elon Musk levels, I would
assume you switch from comparing yourself to those you know and instead
compare yourself to historical figures (e.g. Henry Ford) and perhaps still
feel mediocre.

Then add in the Dunning-Kruger effect (the real one, not the popular
misinterpretation of "you're so dumb that you think you're smart") and judging
what exactly mediocre means becomes even more difficult.

But in the end, sure you can convince yourself that the negative feeling of
not achieving as much as you might have been able to isn't worth losing sleep
over, and you might end up 'happier'. You can also try to leverage the feeling
to stop yourself from wasting those 50+ hours rewatching Game of Thrones and
instead putting that time into becoming more like someone who you perceive as
being less mediocre than yourself.

~~~
J-dawg
Could you explain what the real Dunning-Kruger effect is? I always thought it
was pretty much "you're so dumb that you think you're smart".

Wikipedia says: "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-
ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing
their ability as much higher than it really is"

Which, to me at least, pretty much reads as "you're so dumb that you think
you're smart". (Or, to be slightly more accurate, "Your ability is so low that
you think your ability is high")

I don't claim to know anything about this, just genuinely curious what you
mean.

~~~
4ndr3vv
Dunning–Kruger showed that less competent individuals in a sample thought they
performed much better than they actually did, whereas more competent
individuals thought they had not performed as well as they actually did.

The less competent individuals did not think they were "smart" or on the same
level as those that performed better in the tests. Just their perception of
where they were was markedly different to the perception of those that did
well in the tests

~~~
gr33nman
Or as Donald Rumsfeld would say, the less competent individuals are suffering
from unknown unknowns

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns)

------
Artoemius
I'm surprised that not a single comment here suggested that mediocrity is
boring.

Boredom is of course a subjective state of mind, but I have a feeling that the
average and the boring cannot be entirely statistically unrelated in humans.

------
ObeyTheGuts
This read was 100% onion article

------
andrewclunn
I was going to write a lengthy in depth comment, but this is good enough.

~~~
mildbow
Yes, I do find your comment mediocre. Hope you're happy!

------
throwaway991199
This sort of article should really serve as a wake up call to this community.

There was another article here recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12329255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12329255),
where some comments mentioned that people should retrain once jobs become
available for consistent automation.

Lets take the simple example of the machine that picks apples:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I)

Typically immigrants do this work, low educated immigrants. They do it because
they can't get any other work in higher skilled professions. Sure they could
be a driver, oh wait soon that will be autonomous. They could work in a
warehouse, oh wait Amazon is doing it's best to disrupt that. They could be a
cleaner? Oh wait, companies like Roomba and Dyson are working to disrupt that.

The point I'm trying to make here, is for all the poorly/low educated people
and lets be really, seriously honest are in the tens of millions. What are
they going to do?

I've traveled all over the world, all the continents. There are segments of
the population that can't read, can't write, can't even grasp basic maths.
They are the ones who depend on these low end jobs.

Are you going to tell me with a straight face they they can re-train, go back
to school and work in STEM? It's just not feasible. Also, who is going to pay
for all these millions to retrain for years. Remember, they'll probably have
to restart their education, basic maths, basic science, then college, then
university. That's what 7 years? Who will pay for their living expenses for
them and their family?

There is a ticking time-bomb coming soon. Where we'll have an OMEGA man type
of situation. All sorts of jobs will be automated and people won't have
anything to do.

What are the solutions?

1) Do we implement 1 child per couple policy? To lessen the burden on the
state? 2) Do we provide free schooling with a zero-tolerance on NO child left
behind? So that they can go on to STEM fields? 3) Are there enough places in
STEM fields for those who do retrain to move into? Is this another thing for
government to throw money at? 4) Does society move from a capitalist to a
socialist/communist system? But what happens when government runs out of
money?

What are we going to do?

Just saying people will retrain is just utter folly.

There is a time-bomb ticking and some of you just don't realise it.

Want to know the result of no jobs, low educated populous, government with no
money, socialism failed. Oh yeah. Greece. How's that doing for the last 10
years? It will be like that for another 25.

~~~
toomanybeersies
We need to work less. Society has become more and more productive, but we
still work 40 hours a week. There's this obsession that everyone has to be
constantly working and then using this money to pay for things. We work to
live and live to work.

People used to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. One of the effects of the
industrial revolution was the 40 hour work week.

It takes less man-hours to create physical products than ever before. A man
and a horse used to be able to work an acre a day, a man and a tractor can do
150 acres in a day, and the tractor drives itself.

That's a 15 000 % increase in productivity.

Clothing production has seen similar increases in productivity, so has mining.

We as a society are literally making work for the sake of it.

~~~
bobthedino
I agree, and am intrigued by where the 40 hour/5 day work week came from and
what the consequences would be of reducing it. Why can't we aim for a world in
which people can live happily by only spending half their time working,
freeing up more time to actually enjoy ourselves? Is it because some people
will always out-compete them by willingly working longer hours? Or something
else?

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Historically, union-drived pressures and left wing politicians is what made
the 40 hour week a thing from the previous 48/56/whatever. That's also how
most European countries got paid vacations, ...

They have been completely neutralized since, especially on the "asking better
conditions for everyone" front (a perfectly valid strategy when you think
about it, companies will in the short term, especially for low skilled
workers, make less money (that's ignoring the positive externalities from
working less of course) ) hence why you don't see better living and working
conditions.

Also, there is more mainstream media penetration, which leds people to be more
exposed to the "working more is better" ideology.

------
touristtam
Why is this on HN?

~~~
Jaruzel
From the FAQ/Submission Guidelines:

 _What to Submit_

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

\---

I think the amount of comments on this post satisfies the criteria.

~~~
touristtam
I find it disappointing as much by the quality of the submission as by the
interest it is receiving on HN. That being said, thank you for replying to a
honest question. :)

