

What should I do with my life? - vpdn
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/66/mylife.html

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euroclydon
I think it's evil the amount of energy and resources that go into creating
unnecessary desires in people in order to cultivate a consumer class. It's
time to reap the benefits of our technological advancements, by working
shorter weeks, finding less expensive ways to build shelter (houses), and
becoming more proficient in local food generation.

~~~
fnid2
Ways to do these things have been around for decades, but it's not in the
interest of the producers of homes and employers to do them.

Look into some of the inventions by R. Buckminster Fuller. He invented a house
that cost thousands, easily transported, made of aluminum, and sturdy, but it
never caught on. Probably because he didn't spend time marketing it, but the
mobile home and large home manufacturing companies did.

Evolution contradicts the desire for smaller. Consider Peacock tails, the
longer they are and the fuller they are, the more likely they are to mate,
because peahens like them -- even though rationally, they increase the
likelihood of death to predator. Turns out the offspring are in fact stronger,
because it takes a lot of strength to maintain those long tails.

Similarly, it takes a lot of "strength" to maintain a large expensive home and
accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff and the chicks dig it. A guy with a fast
car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a
girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means --
even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.

It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to
analyze the male by the female means the males could die.

Thus, it is a mathematical certainty that the world will continue towards
excessive shows of strength rather than the rational conservative opinion that
leads to storage of wealth -- which usually only happens after a mate is
found.

tl;dr -- The world will continue getting dumber.

~~~
theorique
"A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home
from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way
below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.

It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to
analyze the male by the female means the males could die."

This presupposes that women are selecting specifically for intelligence - or,
said slightly differently, that maximizing (rather than merely satisficing)
for intelligence is a better evolutionary strategy. Is that true in practice?

~~~
Psyonic
Women heavily select for intelligence when choosing egg donors. Eggs from high
SAT donors go for many times more than normal. Then again, choosing an egg
donor is much more cerebral than choosing a man. Not nearly as hormonal as
sex.

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Jun8
_Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling ! after great
difficulty ...the catfish farmer used to be an investment banker, the truck
driver had been an entertainment lawyer, a chef had been an academic, and the
police officer was a Harvard MBA._

Hmm, I think there might be some inherent bias here. These people were so
interesting because Bronson _chose_ the interesting ones (he says he selected
70 out of hundreds).

~~~
Psyonic
Ya, seriously. I'm pretty sure most farmers, truck drivers, and police
officers didn't start in lucrative careers first.

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goatforce5
Oooh. Po Bronson is probably my favourite author. There's something about his
writing style that pushes my buttons.

It's probably worth nothing that he used to do a lot of writing for Wired
magazine (eg <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/hotmale.html> ) and his
second novel, The First $20m Is Always The Hardest, was about a startup (
<http://pobronson.com/index_first_20_million.htm> ).

His site has lots of excerpts and monologues worth reading (eg
<http://pobronson.com/The%20Cooks%20Story.pdf> is totally awesome).

He's also has the distinction of being the author of my favourite novel.
Here's the first chapter: <http://pobronson.com/filth.htm> (love that first
line!).

~~~
quickpost
I also loved Bombardiers. Great book that didn't get a lot of traction -
highly recommend it for anyone considering a career in finance.

~~~
goatforce5
It came out at the wrong time - people didn't want to believe that the
financial industry was screwed up. If it got re-released now (or if someone
finally made a movie of it) people would probably be more receptive.

Pointless anecdote: went to see him give a talk a few years back in London. I
bought his new book, got him to sign it, and then whipped out my first edition
hardback of Bombardiers that I picked up in Oz years previously. He seemed
surprised(/touched) to see it, we had a little chat, and then he wrote a
genuinely nice message in the book.

He's totally a class act.

------
kunley
I like the general idea of making stuff which makes people spending _less_
time at a computer, not more. Like giving the information they need and can
use in daily life.

This approach excludes working on most social network stuff or things built on
the top of it just for the sake of being another 'social' thing.

Cmon people, what's 'social' is happening behind the scenes in our lives, not
in teh networkz.

