I don't think you have to have Fuck You Money to get to this point. Most people eventually become disillusioned with work enough that they reevaluate what matters to them. Getting a very profitable exit is just one way to trigger that experience.
In my experience, a lot of people who get into this state start self-sabotaging hard as a way of rejecting what feels, ironically, like losing control. Sudden freedom can feel foreign and lot like your world got forcibly taken away from you. I'm not surprised the author is turning down opportunities and breaking off with his girlfriend. It's a way of taking back control.
When this happened to me, I pivoted hard from getting satisfaction out of what I built to getting satisfaction out of developing people. Now I take great pride out of the careers I've nurtured...a lot more than what I've built, in most ways. I've heard others express similar ideas in different ways, like "I now enjoy making other people rich."
No matter what, I encourage the author to use this time to build connections instead of destroying them (real connections...not work or SF acquaintances). Something I did not read in this essay is how he grew closer to anyone (in fact, I read the opposite). No path out of this valley involves traveling alone.
> No path out of this valley involves traveling alone
In my opinion, this is the big take here
When you have enough money to not work, it becomes very lonely fast
All of a sudden you have tons of time, but no one to share it with. Everyone is busy, mostly with work (also, most people probably can’t afford the same things you can)
If you could coordinate to stop working at the same time as your significant other, and a few friends, then you at least would have a group to plan and do stuff with
One of the biggest meanings we can find in life, is the feeling of belonging
OP seems to be going through a belonging crisis. Trying to figure out what group he wants to belong to
> When you have enough money to not work, it becomes very lonely fast
I haven't made enough to not work but once my US immigration was sorted out (H1B isn't very leisure compatible), I took a year off to rediscover what all passed me by when I was working.
This was a lot of alone time, but not true loneliness.
For example, I would set up lunch with a friend, they would bail due to work emergencies or something but I would go eat there anyway.
Quickly learned to go to a place where multiple people were scheduled anyway, like heading to Berkley for a tech talk on Byzantine block chains or vector search algorithms, hoping something would interest me.
> OP seems to be going through a belonging crisis. Trying to figure out what group he wants to belong to
The first three months were a strange struggle with my Ego, because a large part of my "Get up and do things" was the belief that what I had to do was very important to others and the whole world stops if I stop moving. To get through the waves in life without feeling self pity about it, I honestly felt my work was what made the sun rise and the rain fall.
Suddenly, my self importance was shot to pieces immediately.
I wasn't important anymore, what I did wasn't important to others but only to me. All the years of sacrificing my own wants (not needs) suddenly felt dissonant.
Plus a lot of activities aren't cumulative in the way work is - cooking dinner today does nothing for dinner tomorrow, there's no way to add up that to something.
Work is particularly rewarding because it checks those two boxes for me - it adds up to something, slowly every day, plus what I do is important to others in way where they want you to succeed (unlike say training for the SF marathon, where it's all "I could never" from people who could, but don't want to).
Eventually, I went back to work, but now I drink that workahol in moderation.
I read somewhere there are old money people in Europe faking that they are “working class” - not really to hide the fact that they are rich - to have people to hang out with in general.
If I ever got to the point of having fuck you money, I don't see myself stop hanging out with my friends. We all like movies and dinner and board games. That's all I need in order to hang out. My board game group as it is has a pretty broad spectrum of financial situations.
> Everyone is busy, mostly with work (also, most people probably can’t afford the same things you can)
I would think if one were rich, and you knew who you wanted to spend time with, you could simply buy their time through various means. Pay some bills, get them a more relaxed job with more time, pay for vacations for them to go with you etc.
But he was Sikh (Indian Indian), and arguing his proto-Indo-European ancestry qualified him. He was ‘acquitted’ of being ‘white’, and case thrown out. Really interesting case, actually.
Some pretty nasty stuff in there from the plaintiff about his revulsion too and not wanting to marry the ‘lower castes’ (and some argument regarding Mongoloids) to help quantify him as ‘white’ in case you get too sympathetic.
Yep. I am not even rich. In fact compared to US software engineers I am making pennies, but I am hitting above average for where I live. And at times it is hard to find meaning in every day life. I like my job, but realistically I could quit now and just about coast with my savings for the rest of my life. On other hand I could increase my spending and live more luxurious life style, but that isn't for me. I just like to code, play video games, and be alone in peace and quiet.
Almost at that point myself. Thinking about doing another year or two to save up an additional buffer, and make sure we're not right before another 2008-like event before I pull the plug. Start my own company, maybe make some money, maybe not. I'm tired of the grind. I'm tired every single day, and there's no time or energy to try to fix it. At this point I just want to be left alone, in peace and quiet...
Honestly, if I ever reach the point where my savings would keep me comfortable with a pension to look forward to pick up the slack at the end, I'd quit my job and just focus on my interests, providing a clean house and having a good meal ready in the evening for my wife and son, and develop some side gigs I can give up if they don't give me fulfilment.
As it is, I am acutely aware of my privileges as part of a household with two IT-based incomes and not too many worries, and that the world being what it is right now is giving rise to so many uncertainties that I wouldn't dream of abandoning this unless I had a really big bag of money like the author.
The big question for me has become health insurance. Yes, I know ACA plans are a thing I just <side eyes incoming administration> don't trust it not to be messed with. Protections for preexisting conditions are the only reason retirement is even an eventual possibility for me.
I worry that I don't have enough of a life outside of work to make retirement fulfilling, and actually, I don't actually mind working if I'm completely honest. I just never liked the stress of needing a job.
Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV."
Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job.
So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream."
Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals.
Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated.
> > but that isn't for me. I just like to code, play video games, and be alone in peace and quiet.
Lack of desires is the first canary in the coal mine of a decrease in mood.
As much as it sounds empty those who are able to distinguish between a 500$ TV and a 5000$ one have a very fine tuned sense of desire which doesn't collapse at the tail end.
Yeah. When you have to work in order to live, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that you would be happy if only you had money to quit your job and time do the things you want to do.
Once you get there, you have to face reality: while being poor leads to unhappiness, being financially independent does not lead to happiness either. Don't believe me? Look at billionaires out there; do all of them look like happy and well-adjusted people to you? Not naming names.
And that's why wealthy celebrities repeat again and again that "Money doesn't buy happiness". It's because they know from experience that it really doesn't help all that much.
I'm not sure I'm convinced. I guess I haven't had real money.
I had > 1m at one point. It was enough not to work. It wasn't enough to experiment with random things without risk. Couldn't buy a house in NYC,SF,LA,Seattle. Would just have to go back to work. Couldn't start a business for a project that required 10-20 people. Couldn't really start co-working space for 20-40 people at current rent prices without feeling like I'd probably just be throwing away a few hundred k.
What I could do is travel. Could also live anywhere for a few years.
OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more. I might hire people to do them. There are 5 to 10 apps I'd like to see exist. Would be happy to pay some people to make them and make them open source, if I had FU money. Would love to start a tech-interactive-art museum the size of at least most major museums in big cities. Would consider funding startups.
I have one friend, x-coworker, that picked a different path than me and made lots of $$$ (no idea how much). But, they invest in startups. Goal is to invest $1 million a year. They visit startups and pitch events once or twice a month. They also have a personal project. Otherwise they travel with their S.O. and visit their adult kids around the world.
> OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more
I get what you mean, but having enough not to work is the definition of FU money. It means you can just drop your things and leave when the boss demands you something you're not willing to do.
Nobody takes it literally like that though, because at least in a better job market way too many people have that money.
If you want to tie it to a single scenario I'd say it's taken on a meaning more like 'I'll do what I want to you/your business/parking because I don't care about paying to sort it out if I'm sued'. Parking where I 'can't' & paying the 100x fine seems better to me than finding where I 'can' and paying the 1x ticket sort of thing. Not to say everyone's morals would have them act like that, but illustratively.
> OTOH, if I had F.U. money, I would do those things and more
Sure, there's no lack of things that one can do with money. But would you be substantially happier? That's the issue at hand. Do you look at people with exorbitant wealth and see unlimited happiness? Do they appear to be in a permanent state of contentment and satisfaction?
What I've learned, both in terms of personal experience and from reading up on the psychology, is that to maximize happiness over time you need to optimize for ensuring you can maintain a steady upward trajectory.
Win the lottery or sell a company? Invest most of it, and allow yourself a "raise" you can permanently sustain every year.
It will do far more for you than raising your expenditure once, as you get used to it and return to near your baseline happiness very quickly.
Hah, the only time I had that kind of money was the 10 minutes my bank transferred the loan amount to my bank account so I could transfer it to the housing company. It didn't really feel like mine though, since they were both breathing over my neck to check I actually did so xD
1m is more then enough for some people to not work. You may need to be willing to be frugal and change your ideas about what comprises a good lifestyle.
I suppose it depends on a person. I am pretty sure the more money I have started to make throughout my life the happier I have become. Simply because of having more freedom over how I spend my time. I feel like there is almost infinite amount of things to do in this World, I just wish I was able to 24/7 do those things. I don't have enough to not work for rest of my life, but I have been able to buy my own apartment, house, which has given me a lot of confidence in my self and feelings of freedom. I started out with no connections or education though.
I am sure it can be different for everyone, people see the World differently.
All that sounds sadly familiar. Once you cross the threshold of not having to work for a living, the illusion fades away.
You are still you, your problems are still there, you are still bound to a slowly decaying body, there's no GAME OVER banner and credit roll proving that you have won the game of life. Because you haven't. Hah.
You can of course keep yourself entertained with all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter. Or you can accept that there are still only a handful of things that bring people contentment, and you don't need to be financially independent to do any of them. I'm talking about bland obvious stuff like spending some time with loved ones (including pets and plants), going out for a walk in the park, etc. Unsurprisingly, a ton of retirees do just that. It's not because they are old and can't do anything else, it's because they have finally figured out what works.
And it's not like doing five times as much of that stuff is going to make you five times happier, either. Anybody with a full time job can carve out some quality time instead of arguing with strangers online.
It's also the case that having enough money not to work makes it very simple to engage in self destructive behaviour.
If you have a 9 to 5 then you're waking up at sunrise and going to bed some time after sunset. You're probably commuting, getting out in the world, chatting to people even if it's just the colleagues, Starbucks drive through, supermarket checkout clerk, that sort of thing.
If you have retirement level money and you're alone there is absolutely nothing stopping you from waking up at 2pm, sitting on your computer playing World of Warcraft ordering takeaways, not going out for a walk or seeing the sunlight, getting slightly more depressed each day in a spiral.
There's also nothing stopping you from going out drinking every day or every other of the week, shrugging off the hangover then hitting the next one. And so on and so forth.
People easily underestimate how much their sense of well-being is related to simple things like just going for a walk in the sunshine every now and then or eating properly.
I have had multiple different life routines. Healthy fit, alcoholic, depression and self pity, video games no life, productivity hacking self help guru following, career climbing, start up attempting. Considering having been through all of these and knowing how each of them feel, I would hope I have enough experience and urge to opt for the healthy fit as baseline. I think it is still much easier to go for it having no work stress in life.
I find that having a daily schedule and trying to stick to it helps. Also, going for small quality of life improvements, trying things out to see what works and what doesn't, such as a different pillow, or replacing some foods with alternatives.
Having free time forces you to deal with all the emotional baggage you have accumulated over the years and it's a bit much, too. I was obsessed with saving money so that my family wouldn't struggle if I became unable to work; as a result, I didn't process the reasons why I had that fear in the first place. My dad became severely disabled when I was in college and it was a very traumatic experience for my family.
I think having kids should help a lot. I'm spending around an hour every evening with mine and a few hours during weekends, but neither me nor they feel this is enough. I would also go skiing for 2 weeks every winter with my family and rent a cottage in the countryside for whole summer holidays, but I have neither money nor time to do it.
The irony of the situation is that by the time I earn the money my kids will grow up, leaving me a sad lonely man.
I gave it some thought and overall I'm happy my kids have happened relatively early. More than money or anything they need your energy and enthusiasm. As much as I complain about the lack of time, I think it's better than lack of energy and stamina. At least that's what I extrapolate from my experience so far.
For example, even between my two children I noticed that with the second one I've had sleeping issues, while with the first one I couldn't understand what "sleepless nights" everyone talks about. Like, a newborn kid at night sleeps 50 minutes out of every hour and so did I at the age of 25, being fresh and well rested in the morning. Didn't work as well at the age 31. Can't really imagine what it must feel after 40. And in general I would prefer healthy sleep over money and time.
> More than money or anything they need your energy and enthusiasm
> I think it's better than lack of energy and stamina. At least that's what I extrapolate from my experience so far
I had children late --essentially retired when my second was born at 40-- and I completely agree: it would have been better to have the last kid before we turned 35. You made the right choice!
Is it because of the energy? At what age did you feel you started to lose this type of energy required? I have been planning around 35, although I don't think I will be completely FI by then.
If it is sleep I guess one potential way for me to deal with it is that my partner goes to sleep earlier, e.g. 9pm and I go around 4am or later, which is what we kind of already do anyway since I am such a night owl. We also sleep in separate rooms, so we could potentially have both deal with the baby at different times. Not sure if anyone has done anything like that?
There's other things I might want to do first though, like concern free travel, or side projects, attempt at a start up, etc.
Still I feel like there's a huge difference between having to work vs having knowledge that you have enough that you can sustain a healthy and comfortable lifestyle without having to work, and therefore can opt to choose exactly what you want to work on rather than what might pay the most.
Like all things, financial independence means it's one of the things you can stop worrying about, and focus on what you think matters. It means you don't have other people telling you what you must do 8 hours of the day. Of course, some very very rich people have decided what they want to do is argue with strangers online. But that's their choice to make ;)
Decaying body might be one of the toughest arguments there, which unless we find a way to stop this, my solution would be to have kids and develop them instead of myself. Since I do like competitive sports and it is kind of hard to accept that at some point I am no longer going to be able to improve.
It may be the case that once I reach complete and comfortable financial independence it will not be all I expected it to be, but right now I don't see myself not appreciating the hell out of it, however I am sure plenty of people have thought they would be happy when reaching X goal and they either weren't or it was fleeting. I do have to say that so far I have come a long way from where I used to be from what I consider a hopeless position.
But there is a difference in my view whether you can walk in the park knowing that you don't have any potentially stressful responsibilities and problems coming up or you are walking in the park and excited about working on a hobby project of yours since you can 100 percent focus on that.
> my solution would be to have kids and develop them instead of myself
I never understood that kind of argument. Your kids will have decaying bodies just the same. You're only recreating what you're trying to escape, in somebody else.
Having/raising kids has been the most rewarding and challenging experience of my life. I cannot imagine how meaningless life would be to have all the money in the world and no kids.
I couldn't have said it better. It is an immense change for the better and for the worse, and it made us feel like that's when we truly became adults. It's one of those experiences that you can't understand until you go through it.
And I say this as somebody who really did not want the responsibility of raising children.
One (or both?) of you is coming at this from the wrong angle. Faced with limitations, you have to find ways of living with them, working around them, and still living a fulfilling life.
That might mean you cannot travel the same way in retirement that you did in your 20's. That doesn't mean you still can't enjoy it, just that you need to take things slower and be gentler with your body.
I think that is most people's experience but it only works up to a point. you will get diminishing returns the more money you have until, in some cases, maybe negative returns.
Probably diminishing returns, but sometimes I think there is also selection bias, with ultra rich getting there because of never ending satisfaction, so it is contingent on the type of the human. Satisified person would stop sooner while never satisfied would naturally become the richest.
Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent.
That said, a lot of people who get rich, because status is their real motivation, are shocked by how horrible society still is. At first they get hooked on the drug of high social status, but then they learn to see through the flattery and realize that nothing has truly changed, and they’re just as miserable as before. It tends to take about two years, in my observation, for the “new life energy” to wear off. Money teaches you that there isn’t some “better” society to aspire to. The people “up there” aren’t the supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be, but they’re not better either.
My daughter is autistic and when she started to learn how to read social cues she realized that her so-called friends didn’t actually like her, which I suspected myself but never had the chutzpah to say, and it made her angry. Getting rich has a similar “learn what people are really about” curse.
> Money doesn’t buy happiness but most people are subjected to artificial misery by this society and money does make that go away… at least, a fair share of it, probably 80 percent.
I've been the young immigrant who arrived to a foreign country with the clothes on his back and whatever fits in a suitcase; occasionally splurging by buying used clothes at a thrift shop and buying a slice of cake at the supermarket once a month. If anything, I was probably happier then: healthy and hopeful for a better future. Now I'm in significantly worse health and rather jaded.
Being young and healthy goes a long way. I was happier when I was a poor ahh college student but that doesn't mean losing all my money and possessions would be good for my mental health.
>supervillains Redditers imagine billionaires to be
Sure, they are just people like you and me. Doesn't mean their mere existence isn't evidence of a major flaw in our implementation of capitalism. Our society is becoming far too stratified. Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development, it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs.
"Healthcare should be a right at this point in our society's development"
A 'right' shouldn't depend on someone else's labor.
"it's a stain on our country that we still carry on with a system that works for nobody except health insurance CEOs"
I do agree that we need to get rid of the middleman. Replacing it with another one (the government) is a mistake and leads to the same inefficiencies.
Common procedures should be charge directly to the patient. These prices will be forced to go down as there will be actual competition. This won't work in cases where the surgery is rare, and insurance will work here. This will cut most of the bloat out of of health care and reduce the costs for everyone.
Lasik eye surgery is a good example of this. It's not covered by insurance. A decade ago, it was $10,000. My parents just got it a year ago and paid less than $1,000 out of pocket.
Societies have made the poor better off by preventing people from becoming too wealthy, though. Specifically, I'm thinking of the very high high-end tax rates that were common 60 years ago.
I don't know about "too rich", but if you're looking at the distribution of income and wealth, you'll find an increasing divide between poor and rich over the last decades in pretty much all western countries at least.
What research there is suggests money/happiness follows a log-linear relationship.[1] So it kind of does buy happiness, but the rate of increase falls off pretty fast over the range most of us experience.
> suffer in relaive comfort which is the most that anyone can realisically strive for
If you have never met a person who is content with their life you may benefit from expanding your social circle. There are sincerely happy people out there.
Yeah, if only people who chase happiness their entire lives, just because they saw it few times in others and suffer immensely in the process had this insight ...
It can, if you use it wisely. It's just not that you eat the money yourself, you apply it to things you want to do. That could be buying guitars, or it could be setting up solar panels in Ghana. There's a lot of things you can do with money.
No, you cannot make the comparison between having money and not having money if you have never not had money. If you have always had money, you have never known the difficulty of living without it.
Being unhappy because you are homeless is not the same being unhappy because some woman doesn't treat you like she would do a man who looks better than you are just two different things.
I have rich and satisfying family and community life. Not having to work would mean that I can enjoy more of that. I'm confident it would be nothing short of fantastic in my case.
I did the same as OP. Quit my job then started distancing from everyone and removing responsibility in the pursuit of freedom to do what I want. But all I did was wallow and stay alone. Not sure what the answer is but your insights were very powerful to read.
I find this to be very familiar. I worked endlessly to be able to have no responsibility and endless freedom. My partner passed away several years ago now, and I still haven't filled that void. I'm not unhappy by any means, but money and freedom are a poor substitute for companionship.
Similar boat! I also worked hard to have freedom, and then my partner died, two and half years ago. I was left with a toddler, so don't have that much freedom. Sometimes I think perhaps it's ok this way...
The book of Ecclesiastes is about this. It makes more sense if you s/meaningless/vapor/g, i.e. we're all chasing after something like smoke that we can see but can't 'catch'.
Everybody here is catching smoke
Looking for the ephemeral
Swallowing the sun in a moonlit room
Standing at the foot of a rainbow
Everybody here is catching smoke
Looking for the ephemeral
Riding on a yellow-bellied brown snake
Sipping on hedonism
Fascinating that your version said "vapor". That's a much better translation. The versions I've read called it "vanity" which was even more obtuse. Once I figured out that they meant something insubstantial and fleeting, I found that particular book beautiful.
Having a spouse helps, but overall I think this is a road to depression. People are social creatures and you need to be proactive with friends especially in the adulthood and also participate in communities if time allows (sports, interests etc.)
I suspect it might feel indecent to tell others you suffer when you're both free and rich, and it's difficult for them to figure what's wrong with you.
Instead, people in such position should probably go out and join associations which distribute food to those who need it. At least they'll see that they're doing something good to improve others' condition and would probably feel better.
As someone who has not been successful in life but who is relatively intelligent do you have any recommendations as to how I can get my life on track?
I am asking because you said you like developing people. My persistent experience in life for almost 20 years post college has been nobody wants to develop me.
I am not in tech but I am generally interested in the area if it can lead me to greater independence and more interesting work.
I like jobs that are intellectually engaging and ideally somewhat physically active.
Right now I am working in a mechanical role.
Sometimes I like the work but more often than not I find that good problem solving ability is not valued and the pay is dismal vs. what people earn in tech.
I have a BA in economics but unfortunately have never used it. 37 years old.
Okay but for the vast overwhelming majority of people, what they actually need is "a helping hand, a business loan or grant etc"
You talk about this like this is trivial, but it's the kind of material help that would make a difference for almost everyone who is currently not doing what they want in life
Yes, no one can teach you to self-actualize. People's material circumstances are rarely a result of inadequate self-actualization or agency, despite what the self-help industry would like you to believe.
Most "high-agency" people who succeed started out with either adequate resources to at least support themselves while they tried stuff, reliable backup plans (like living with supportive family), or help in the form of stuff like grants or startup funding. People who don't have that need that, regardless of their mindset or abilities. There are exceptions who got incredibly lucky, and they are a rounding error among rounding errors. That is the world we live in. There are ways to engineer a world where this is less the case, but at least in the US, we seem to choose not to move in this direction at every opportunity, and freak out when even minor forms of the security necessary to act with agency take hold for large numbers of people (See: The business world's hysterical reaction to COVID relief)
Double down on that last bit: everything you learn and do adds to the equity that is you. That equity pays back in multitudes throughout your life, not just professionally but also socially and spiritually.
If you figure it out, pass it on to others. I haven’t been allowed to hire Americans in quite some time, and Covid destroyed any company support of an apprenticeship type setup.
The last time I was able to hire an American with a will to learn and an adjacent degree was over a decade ago.
I’ve hired dozens of smart Americans with the right degree and willingness to learn and I was not even American myself. I worked with hundreds more. Not sure what you’re talking about.
Excellent advice. For those for whom it's appropriate, do try it. As you suggest, therein lies that special essentially private pleasure of accomplishment in small things that doesn't depend on the approbation of others.
It’s unlikely you’ll find someone who takes an interest in developing you, who isn’t a personal connection or someone you pay, in my experience. You will probably have to take the first step yourself, either to develop yourself or to find and develop a nurturing relationship.
Choose companies to work for based on who you will be working with and what they can teach you, not by how much they pay. You never want to be the smartest person in the room.
I can't speak to your specific circumstances, but perhaps this will help.
I find that people I talk to with chronic job dissatisfaction have a difficult time taking risks, because despite not liking their current circumstances, the unknown can be scary.
There are known pathways to work in tech or other fields, such as coding camps or community college. It becomes a question of what you're willing to sacrifice to make that happen. Would you move to a new city? Go back to school? Give up your evenings and weekends? Usually, some kind of risk needs to be taken, and there's always a path forward if you look.
I didn't graduate college until I was 29, and now that I'm in my mid-40s I can say that while every risk I took didn't pay off, it was in the taking of risks that has left me feeling satisfied with where I am.
> As someone who has not been successful in life but who is relatively intelligent do you have any recommendations as to how I can get my life on track?
I'm not the OP, but instead just a person who thinks they might be of help. Caveat emptor and all that :-).
Success is what we define both in and of ourselves. Some use material measurements (money, titles, assets, etc.), which are intrinsically relative and thus ephemeral.
Another definition is establishing a sustained environment of happiness. This includes addressing immediate physical needs, such as a place to live, sustenance, and the like. More than that is finding happiness in how we live each day.
> My persistent experience in life for almost 20 years post college has been nobody wants to develop me.
While some may give tips and/or pointers as to how to develop oneself, IMHO, much like happiness, development comes from within. Seeking wise counsel is always a good call, but no one can develop another. All anyone else can do is give perspective from their own journey as it relates to you - mine is you have identified options above which are appealing, so pursue them as if no one else is going to anything to make it happen.
> I have a BA in economics but unfortunately have never used it.
You still have it and one never knows when the education we have helps out until it does. ;)
>Sometimes I like the work but more often than not I find that good problem solving ability is not valued and the pay is dismal vs. what people earn in tech.
I'm not sure the high wages in tech are going to last, universities having been minting new CS graduates like there is no tomorrow. Alongside that demand appears to be flagging. I'm sure you remember enough from your BA to know what the result of that is.
> Something I did not read in this essay is how he grew closer to anyone (in fact, I read the opposite). No path out of this valley involves traveling alone.
I think he needs to get closer to himself. I think he's on the right track.
Exactly this. Also, it is difficult to find those people when you're already rich and unemployed because most of us form these kind of meaningful relationships in school, at work etc.
I am drowning in debt since I graduated from my PhD, all I get is rejections for my job applications... I want to learn how to be rich because that is the only way I can get back to the US and live with my kids and provide for them (US born, living with their mom).
I don't think you have to have Fuck You Money to get to this point. Most people eventually become disillusioned with work enough that they reevaluate what matters to them. Getting a very profitable exit is just one way to trigger that experience.
I’ve seen a lot of people have random outlier success they didn’t earn and it seems to have the same effect as what most people get out of their careers: crushing failure they didn’t earn. By 50 or so, everyone figures out:
* it was almost all random.
* the things that seemed so important were not.
* working for money is a waste of time for almost everyone.
* you can count your real friends on two hands, whether you’re broke or a billionaire.
It’s surprising how the paths converge. There are differences, and the rich version of alienation is better than the poor one, but the mindset this society leaves people with is remarkably stable. No one feels like they won, which is why Musk and Trump are so full of rage at everyone. Either the gods shut you out or you are forced to find out that the gods never existed.
There's a lot of truth in what you are saying, but I also think this framing can lead to unnecessary nihilism and depression.
I think the simple reason that no one feels like they've won is because we're not biologically wired for that. Like all living things, we've evolved to struggle for survival in a harsh environment. Of course modern civilization has separated us from that harsh reality by layers upon layers of human systems and supply chains, so we apply the same instincts to games of our own devising. There's nothing actually wrong with this though. The problem comes from the belief that "winning" will make one happy. The reality is ones drive leads to engagement and perhaps accomplishment, but it can't answer the why. That is something every person with leisure time needs to work out for themselves.
> working for money is a waste of time for almost everyone
No. Chance doesn’t fall evenly. It falls more often on those who work.
Thinking that Trump is full of rage is missing the forest for the tree. It’s a forest of journalists who are full of rage that this race and gender unapologetically exists, who try to depaint Trump as full of rage. It’s a forest of selfish crowd who wants the fruit of the labor of the second half of people, who complain that Trump is selfish.
Looked at the tree. Missed the entire forest. Not surprising that you think people are struck by a lightening to become billionaire.
A world where I’ve done everything I could, that was wasted by everyone I know.
But hey, you choose what you do with the cards you’re dealt with, you still don’t choose in what kind of crossfire or revolution you were born in in. Even if you are my fellow citizen, relative or own mother, you may have chosen to commit war crimes like displacing populations, hating on whites, voting for islam, making us live under occupation, and not showing human traits. I didn’t.
My only choice was to keep doing my duties, providing wealth and safety to those around me, and explaining them the consequences of their actions.
Nothing else I can do. That was an awful life, thank you. Maybe one day you’ll wake up, look up for success measurements of your choices, and think: “Damn. We could have avoided all that. We could have saved that guy and that guy.”
> I don't think you have to have Fuck You Money to get to this point.
To add to this, the 'modern' use of the word 'millionare' started in 1850 (discounting first use in 1719 in France which was not in the context of 'rich' we know).
When you adjust for inflation, a comperable purchase power today would be an equivalent of having net worth of $250M. Anything below that and you aren't even a 'true' millionare. ($1 USD in 1850 is roughly ~$250 USD in 2024, taking 3.2% average historic inflation rate).
So, author, you are not even rich, still work to do ;)
In 1850, the US was home to 19 millionaires. But the years following the Civil War had seen a considerable increase in membership of that exclusive club. By the end of the 1890's the number of millionaires in the US had swelled to more than 4,000.
It also gives a strong impression of somebody who is afraid of asking for help. The entire post could be summarized as "I feel like an important self-made man and I'm scared of starting therapy that I clearly need to help me sort out my enormous insecurities"
How do you get to a point of developing people? What is that Job title? At work I'm the goto guy for junior engineers to ask questions to and I've been told I'm a naturally good teacher
Same situation, I truly empathise because it really does seem to take a lot of purpose out of everything. What I’ve found is that you need to replace money/salary/financial success optimisation (assuming you spent a lot of your life and energy to this point focused on these, much like I did) with something else totally unconnected with being measured in that way. For me, I am focused on proving myself as a guitarist in the local jazz and blues scene. These people have no idea how much money I have and wouldn’t give a shit if they did (I didn’t really change my lifestyle after getting lucky so it’s not obvious). So it’s an area I can be creative, grow, and still feel like I’m doing something. At the same time I’m doing part time consulting, mainly for people I worked with in the past who have started companies, just to scratch the tech itch. So far so good but I can’t say yet if it will stick. Maybe for you it’s art, music, going and getting another unrelated degree, or something along those lines? If you have more money than you know what to do with, fundraising and supporting good causes can be really rewarding. Both in terms of giving back something to your local community, and having really nice social elements to it.
One big piece of advice I have is to try to avoid letting others in your social network know exactly how successful you’ve been. Everyone starts wanting to pitch you their investment idea and it can burn down friendships when their ideas are bad. Being a VC to your friends is a path to sadness for everyone.
They already know who he is, he was a public figure executive that sold his company, everyone in his social circle would know what Loom was and would read in the news how much it sold for.
in this case (given it was reportedly sold for $975m cash), that would mean your friends think you either have $877m or $97m (he reportedly net $60m, which means your most pessimistic friend thinks you have more money than you actually have?)
How many new friends would look up what Loom was, though? This blog post was the first time I heard of it, so seems very unlikely that a random person would really care.
>Same situation, I truly empathise because it really does seem to take a lot of purpose out of everything.
Mainly though if all the purpose-giving focus was on just getting money and the related grinding to begin with.
Getting mega-rich didn't take the purpose out of Steve Jobs, for example, which was focused on building stuff with some specific twist (his idea of good design). Or Steve Wozniak for that matter, he found hobbies aplenty. Or take the Rolling Stones. Filthy rich, but did they ever give the impression they got bored? Or Dylan, equally rich, which doesn't even have the extravagant lifestyle of models and exotic vacations and high life the Stones had, but is still content to record, jam, play concerts etc. into his 80s.
If the person has other interests, from programming to mountaineering, and from politics to art, they can still be there with or without money. Like the "guitarist in the local jazz and blues scene" thing.
This is my dream. Having enough money to be able to dedicate to things I like, trying to be good at something without worrying about money, or time, or being tired after work.
Open a bookshop, being a rare book dealer, open a small museum about an author, research on a particular topic and write books...
That would be the ultimate dream, though I am sure I won't ever be near to fulfill it.
God, we use to have a street full of people running unprofitable stores. Some were deep in debt making the dream a reality.
Why not a functional bookshop? You don't need money, you need to work on the plan(s). How do museums work? Where is the crude draft for the book?
I had a chat with a guy once who had a laundry list of things he wanted to accomplish but had convinced himself non of it was possible without money. About 1/3 of the list were things one could just go do right now.I think a hundred life times worth of stuff It was mostly helping people in need. One could definitely not help anyone and convince the self it is because it always costs money????
Some non profit here was selling unwanted books for 1-2 euro. I spend an hour or so typing titles on my phone mostly stuff published long ago and bought a whole stack of 200+ euro books. I haven't looked at them and didn't try to sell any but I'm sure it was money well spend for an hour of fun.
You don't need a machine gun, fight with your bare hands.
Many people overly focus on what they want to retire FROM - work, but not what they want to retire TO - hobbies/volunteer work/etc.
Basic eating healthier, exercising more and consumption-based things like travel are not going to fill the gap left by a full-time job. One can quickly get bored and/or run out of money with that kind of mindset.
Given enough money, or whenever I do retire .. I'd spend my time making music, photographs, do even more reading, etc. Anything that occupies your time and exercises both your body & mind are important.
I once saw an article about apartments that NYC libraries used to have in the library for caretakers. My skipped a beat and I realized I'd never wanted anything more in the world than to just be able to 'pop down to the stacks' at 10pm to select my next read.
What amazes me is that between audible, kindle, libby, and a few other places, we live in a world where books are that available from the comfort of a cozy recliner. Truly the greatest wonder of the modern age.
As I recall from a similar article, some of those apartments still exist, and are no longer limited to librarians but may still allow access to the library. If living in NYC is an option for you, it's probably worth getting on their announcement list and be ready to move if they have an opening?
After you have the bookstore up and running, you could hire a few people to take care of daily operations. It would still be your bookshop, and you could drop by every now and then and just hang out in the store read some of the books, or you could even whenever you felt like getting more involved on some days tell your staff that they can take the day off if they like and they will still get their pay for the day and you’ll handle the customers and the register. I dunno, this is just how I imagine it could work. I’m not rich, and I don’t own any bookstore or any other kind of shop for that matter so maybe my idea here is off the mark.
Why would you think any of those things are not a lot of tiring work, emotional drain and expensive? I don't understand why you can't do any of these as a hobby now, and need to wait until you're "rich" and won't have any real skin in the game.
Running a bookshop is entirely possible without FU money, but it will be hard work and probably not make you much money. Read Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop for inspiration :)
> > Having enough money to be able to dedicate to things I like
Money doesn't buy time, whatever you like you'd be better off starting now then at some point in the future when you think you have enough money because you make the fallacious equation "enough money = enough time" but that is wrong because mental and physical acuity diminishes with time so a minute in your 20s is worth more than a minute in your 30s and much more than a minute in your 60s etc...also odds of mental/physical illnesses increase, life gets in the way in modalities that you don't expect yet, inflation, collapse of society...in one word entropy.
People need work to be happy. That doesn't have to be, say, office work necessarily: it can be making music full time, or volunteering at a hospital, or any number of other things.
But you have to have something keeping you busy that makes you feel like you have a purpose.
You’re on the right track, but I think it’s a bit deeper than just needing something to work on or stay busy with. I effectively retired a few years ago and have spent the time since engaging in various “work” across the kinds of categories you mention. Yet, all of these efforts have carried a sense of purposelessness—a lingering question of whether any of it truly matters, especially knowing I could stop tomorrow without significantly impacting my wellbeing.
This contrasts sharply with the purpose I felt when I had less money and was struggling to build my business. Back then, everything felt deeply do-or-die meaningful. Now, no amount of exercise, goodwill, or intellectual pursuits compares in terms of providing that same sense of purpose.
I don’t think humans need the pursuit of money itself to be happy, but once the foundational needs in Maslow’s hierarchy are met, the higher levels often feel less urgent—and, paradoxically, less fulfilling. There seems to be diminishing returns from “work” as a source of purpose.
As someone who kind of quasi temporarily retired early a few times this is the biggest problem I see. I learned foreign languages and programming languages out of pure necessity to survive and it was thrilling to succeed and make money with them.
So everyone (at least me) has this fantasy of how much better it would be to learn things on their own schedule for pleasure without undue pressure, but they don’t realize the pressure to survive was what made it feel so meaningful without that they soon fall into dilletantism.
For all his issues I think this is why Musk has gotten so much done, because he ups the ante enough to feel real risk if be fails.
> So everyone (at least me) has this fantasy of how much better it would be to learn things on their own schedule for pleasure without undue pressure, but they don’t realize the pressure to survive was what made it feel so meaningful without that they soon fall into dilletantism.
The trick is to find a place between dilletantism and burnout.
Our species, like all living things, has optimised towards struggling through life to the best of their ability (which was always limited). To "win" within the already apex species of humanity means you are hitting your head on the ceiling of what your body and brain was made for, hard.
This is why I stopped striving for success on that scale and returned to only work a small software job.
> a lingering question of whether any of it truly matters, especially knowing I could stop tomorrow without significantly impacting my wellbeing.
A suggestion for your consideration, or that of anyone in a similar position: give enough of the money away that this stops being true, and find fulfilling paid work (not necessarily in that order). I strongly suspect, from my own experience, that there's an amount of savings that you can keep that is adequate to remove any worry about winding up on the streets (or being stuck with work that actually turns out to suck, etc), without making further earning feel pointless to your own comfort. I think there's an ethical case for doing this even if it made you less happy, but even better if it's win-win.
Totally agree. But it can be surprisingly hard to find what this is for yourself when you are used to climbing the school / corporate / startup ladder your whole life.
Anyone who has "more money than they know what to do with" is a fool. There is an unlimited set of things to do with large resource allocation. Depending on the magnitude of that resource allocation, the set increases exponentially.
It shows a total lack of introspection as well as connections with the people, the Earth, and the universe as a whole.
Go eat some psychedelics and travel inside yourself for a while. Listen to what a tree far in a forest has to say. You'll know what to do with your dragon hoard in no time, I guarantee it.
It's true that there are infinite ways to waste a fortune, but that doesn't mean you're a fool for not having decided how to spend your money. I'd actually argue that it'd be more foolish to go figure out what to spend it on "in no time"
Yes, it is foolish to hoard allocation aimlessly. Anyone who amasses resources without a vision or for the sake of amassing it is a fool.
There is a sacred responsibility implicit in the acquisition of resources. It implicitly says "I know what to do better with these resources than others." To take on that responsibility then do nothing with it, and actually publicize you don't know what to do with it, is disgraceful. As long as there is suffering, there is more work to be done.
Move aside and let people who know what to do take over.
In the past, when people didn't know what to do with resources, the people would very loudly & painfully clawback the misallocated hoards and make better use of them. Recently, a CEO that didn't know what to do with resources & took active part in misusing them returned his misallocation to others.
This kind of misallocation is a universal crime. A life is nothing compared to the magnitude of this crime. Ideas of "ownership" and "it's my money" are irrelevant. The crime stands, and the justice of balance for this crime always comes, one way or another.
Escaping the responsibility of this duty, and the negligence of misusing funds, is easy; sell everything you own and reallocate resources to others who are better able to manage them.
Revolution is the "final" reaction to misallocated funds. It is when a mass of misaligned, foolish resource allocators who collectively lost their way and lack all vision to allocate, hoard most wealth. This misallocation chokes out the society they've hoarded from, like a blood clot, and leads to a death of the society if not addressed.
I would be very scared right now to be part of the group of people who have hoarded resources and mismanaged them, because this planet is on the cusp of a clawback.
Alternatively, if visionary resource allocators are allowed to operate, it brings wealth to everyone. It raises the standards of existence, brings about lasting peace, and makes for a prosperous existence. These visionary allocators are most definitely not in operation in these times, and it shows.
I will dream of a day when this changes. I hope that this change occurs peacefully, and with minimal suffering, even to those who has caused incomprehensible suffering due to their greed.
That last point is salient. I grew very rich in the last 3 - 4 years and I funded a bunch of my friend's startup ideas. Now I cannot bear myself to reply to their happy new year wishes because how the relationships have soured.
It's never even about forgiving. I am not even angry at them. What happens is there is now suddenly a pedestal. No matter what we do, they know I gave them money. And I know they took it. The relationships don't remain the same anymore. It's weird.
I can see that. I would personally feel really bad if I lost all the money someone gave me. I'd always feel like I owe it back. Only exception would be at the very beginning, if that was a possibility that was acknowledged. However, I've noticed people who start these things are always very optimistic and probably don't seriously talk about this. To the previous poster, the only people who seem to handle this type of thing well are the extremely blunt people who are brutally honest and upfront about everything. There aren't many of them.
Yeah, I wouldn't take money from people I wanted to stay friends with for this reason. It's just a bad idea. Introduce me to your acquaintances, sure, but lets stay friends.
I think this is the best advice. If you are going to fund a friend, give them a grant, no strings attached. They can return the favour if/when they have the means on their terms. Anything else is going to kill your friendship.
It seemed obvious that it was a small gamble for me, a big gamble for my friend, but he was doing all the right things.
VCs don’t waste time with concerns over failed investments.
When you hand over some money, you are accepting the risk.
Including complications, which are likely. Treat the money like a gamble, not the friendship.
I was really glad I did. My friend created a successful business after working toward that with major ups & downs for over ten years.
Then he got cancer, and died a year later. I got no money back. But it was the best investment I ever made. His dream came true and that mattered so much to him. That he pulled it off, and his customers loved him and his business.
Don’t invest in a friend if the investment isn’t about genuinely helping them.
I had a friend who I lent money to his startup during Covid. He promised would be paid back within a year. Multiple hard conversations and it’s 4 years later and not one cent has been paid back to me. We currently don’t speak to each other. He’s delusional with his startup ideas, lives in lala fantasy land. Refuses to get a job and take any responsibility. He has zero track record of success, so it’s somewhat my fault for loaning him money.
Never loan money to friends is like “having money 101.” You can gift it or you can invest it with appropriate caveats given to any external investor, but never lend it.
This is common advice because it turns good relationships bad, that manifests as viewing former friends as shysters
I think the main issue, is that most people are reluctant to ask a friend for a loan because its considered in poor taste. If they are asking they either have no qalms about asking which is a red flag, or they are super desperate which probably means its unlikely they would have the ability to pay back.
Of course not everyone is like that. The issue is you don’t know who is ex ante, and often people aren’t that way ex ante, but one thing leads to another to a total breakdown in trust and respect.
Even in the case you describe, it’s much better to gift it: “if you want or are able to pay me back some day, go for it, but I don’t expect or need it.”
> One big piece of advice I have is to try to avoid letting others in your social network know exactly how successful you’ve been.
Having lived through this arc myself, this is excellent advice. While the most enlightened/mature people have no problem just being happy for you, this still leaves a lot people for who a significant disparity in wealth/success becomes a problem. It ends up impacting the nature of your relationship with them in subtle but significant ways and it can be very hard to get past. I've found it's just better to avoid the issue by being as stealth as possible about wealth (while still being honest and true to yourself).
I'm good friends with some very rich people. Everyone knows they have money. They learned how to say no, and how to let go of people who just want to milk them for cash.
> I’m doing part time consulting, mainly for people I worked with in the past who have started companies, just to scratch the tech itch
How do you pick you hourly rate? If a friend of yours of the past came to you and asked you to consult for him, and your friend offered you say $80 USD per hour, would you find it offensively low? For someone who doesn’t have a lot and wants to hire consultants for their small projects, I think offering $80 USD per hour is not bad. But I’m curious to know how that amount feels to a potential consultant if the consultant already had a lot. Or do you prefer taking a percentage of shares in your friend’s company as pay? Or something else?
I am happy to take whatever they offer (including helping for free) depending on where they are at. I don’t need it really and I’m happy to help. But most people at least that I’ve worked with are happy to do what’s fair. I haven’t ended up in a hostile negotiation or anything close to it.
FWIW I’ve done similar for friends who are on a tight budget , consulting for 1/2, 1/3 1/5 “regular” rate. Sometimes with equity but not always.
I’m nowhere near rich, but when I was consulting full time of I had enough hours to hit my “ok” target for the year, it felt right to be flexible with some of the rest of my time …
Take the annual salary you would be paid if you were an employee, add 30% to it for overhead/profit and divide by 48 (working weeks in a year) to get your weekly rate. Divide by 40hrs to get the hourly rate.
Another one is to take your annual salary, divide by 250 (working days in a year) to get your daily rate and increase that by 30%, billing in daily units.
The above formula can and should be tweaked based on the project, client, your needs etc.
The tricky thing about formulas like this is that it is very domain dependent.
What you describe is a reasonable approach for a freelancer who expects to bill most working hours. It falls apart for a lot of consulting scenarios where you bill fewer hours and spend more time generating work. In that case you may be better off setting rates so that e.g. 1000 billed hours will reach your base target salary equivalent...
I did say the formula would need to be tweaked as needed ...
OTOH, this is more or less how clients themselves expect to be billed so if you deviate too much without any logical explanation, they will simply go elsewhere.
If you are already “FIRE” and do it for fun, or you can schedule all 40h per week on billable work this works but I would increase by 50%.
If you need to do marketing to get clients, meet clients, etc to close contracts then I guess you should expect only about 20h per week of billable work as the rest is on you. So you need to at least double the hourly rate.
Music has been a huge discovery and joy for me too.
I left the tech world seven years ago after a "career" of five years, not super wealthy but having enough saved/invested that I could live frugally and it would grow slowly on its own. I've been doing a wide variety of things mostly outdoors, but these last three years I've been learning to play the fiddle and it's took over my life in a good way.
It's been a rich seven years and aside from occasional brief moments of doubt, I'm very glad I did what I did. I have had time to focus on:
- health (most awesomely, my eyesight has improved dramatically)
- family and community and relationships
- simply being in the real world (nature)
- learning about and changing my behaviors/habits to be more who I want to be
- passions - particularly trying to protect habitats from being destroyed, which is very rewarding even if they might still get destroyed someday, they've gotten to exist for years longer than they would have.
- each thing that's caught my curiosity: gardening, forest conservation, foraging and cooking, building and carpentry, learning various skills and now most of all, the fiddle.
I won't say it's all been easy. I've wrestled with a lot of questioning of what matters and what to give myself to - because I have the choice and there is no obvious default path anymore. But I always feel my way into an answer - even if it has shifted around over time.
I don't have kids, I want to, and I think about how I'll find someone to do that with. I bet it will happen, I live in a rural area though so I pretty much have to travel to meet someone. Meanwhile, I have a sweet nephew and I get to spend a lot of time actively being his uncle.
The world is far more interesting and wild and beautiful than I think most of us have been led to believe.
> you need to replace money/salary/financial success optimisation
Kind of ironic, but that kind of sounds like the people who've been saying those things aren't the most important in life might have been right all along?
we'd have to come to am agreement on what constitutes a need for therapy, but accidents/mistakes happen, and people die in countries that aren't America, people commit crimes of all sorts; theft, rape, murder, etc. people have childhoods that are less than perfect. PTSD isn't a uniqely American military problem either, nor is it limited to the military of America. Neither is depression. So chances are the need for therapy is universal. Not that therapy necessarily precludes such actions, but it helps in the aftermath.
Therapy requires there to be therapists, and for them to be recognized as a need, and for their expertise to be valued, and it's only in America, with it's patchwork of healthcare insurance, that therapy, as paid for by patients, could really take hold. Other counties have no such system, that individuals are used to paying $x00/session four times a month out of pocket. But in America, since other healthcare's expensive to access, paying for one out of pocket seems like par for the course.
Most countries then simply don't spend the money on therapy, hence fewer therapists. That's not to say those country are poor, just that they have other priorities.
Children are giver of immense sense of satisfaction that’s totally disconnected to wealth (though being wealthy certainly helps). Just remember - no short cuts.
I'm fairly certain children are a much greater giver of satisfaction without wealth, because when you have money you suddenly feel like you need to provide them all the best, whereas if you have none, you only feel like you need to keep them alive.
Like most things in life the need grows to just beyond the level you can supply. Maybe someone with nothing starts with "keep them alive" but once that's covered you move up the hierarchy.
Children are the best. The highs in life are orders of magnitude higher, and the lows are _so_ much lower. But the baseline is incalculably higher. My children have made me feel so much more fulfilled. And they have also made me better.
love to hear it! In that case, branching out to other peoples' children can bring great satisfaction. For example, volunteering to teach a class at a local high school
There's something off about the post that I'm not sure I can pin point, but it's there.
What are these oft referenced insecurities? It's hard to get a read on this without details, but dumping your girlfriend to do random selfish shit (climb mountain, go to Hawaii, etc.) - it's not a surprise he's unfulfilled (though working on doge would be exciting).
This trap of 'working on yourself' that leads to endless mindfulness and narcissism leads you to become aloof. People tend to derive purpose from community, friends, and family. This is what religion used to give people independent of the pseudoscience.
Being financially independent is great, but it doesn't bring fulfillment.
A long way to say spend time with friends, work on a relationship, get married, have kids. People can do what they want, but most people will likely be the most content doing this. If you can find something to work on you're also excited about great, can do that too.
You can only dick around traveling and 'finding yourself' for so long, it gets old and repetitive.
Not the OP, but after a certain
age (mid 30s in my case) traveling just becomes cumbersome, i.e. when you realize that there are no big insights about oneself that can be gained via traveling that can’t also be gotten back at home, surrounded by friends/family and a couple of good books.
This sounds an awful lot like you're generalising from your experiences to other people's.
I'm also in my mid 30s and I still find travelling eye opening in a way that books are not (and I do read a lot, including when I travel). And on my last trip I met a retired couple who spent three weeks traveling in their car and they told me they used to have a boat with which they'd sail around the world.
Well, i beg to differ. And i'm older than that. In my view, we have a very limited time to live, and experiencing the amazing planet we're on in all its variety is one of the best things one can do.
You're just scratching the surface of said amazing planet, you're not experiencing anything of value that you couldn't have experienced back home. There's a real good essay on the emptiness of tourism written by Siegfried Kracauer back in the 1930s, just as mass tourism was beginning to take off, Travel and Dance [1] is called, it is still highly relevant almost 100 years later.
Amen! Travelling is just virtue signalling and social posturing. I've travelled the world, way too much for both business and "pleasure" and there's nothing new, no hidden insights, that I couldn't have gotten at home.
I advice all people I meet to stop travelling, and to spend more time with themselves and explore their inside, instead of being captivated by the outside, like a child by a new shiny toy.
The world would truly be a better place if that ever happened.
One thing you could do is give me 20k no strings attached so I can stop paying for my parents screw ups from when I was 20 :)) that will make me a lot less resentful towards life's stupid dice.
Seems weird that you have to advice people that they should hide their success from people they're befriending.
Living a double life like that doesn't seem right to me. It has something to do, perhaps, with the type of people you're surrounding yourself with. If someone can't be friends with you without asking you for money why are you keeping such people around in the first place.
Using discretion or being modest isn't necessarily living a double life. I'm sure there are plenty of things you're not open about; that doesn't necessarily make you fake, does it?
I thought we were talking about friends? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the meaning of the word.
I wouldn't imagine being friends with someone and not trusting them with knowing how successful I am.
I think maybe, and this might be a cultural thing, a lot of people tend to use the word lightly. I simply wouldn't get to a stage of being friends with someone I am not able to trust in such a way that I have to hide how much money I have from them.
I think the issue here is that with retirement levels of money existing friendships can become strained.
If your high school friend earns 50k a year and you earn 100 then I mean sure, you have different toys, bigger house, whatever, but you're both existing in the same universe with similar constraints.
If your high school friend earns 50k a year and you suddenly have 60 million like the guy in the post then it's more of a test because your lifestyle can just differ hugely.
Some people can handle it but with others there will be an underlying resentment. There are lots of layers to it. They look for work - you look for suitable employees.
Having said that, in my experience there are only really a few major cut-offs, one between homeless/terminally skint and working, one between working and being able to live off of investment income, _maybe_ one at the sort of bodyguard required super famous level. Inside those it's just sort of like, yeah ok, your car/yacht/jet/whatever is better than mine, cool.
It doesn't have to be super drastic - When I graduated college and got a decent job, most of my social group was making less than a full time minimum wage salary, bouncing around couches, or staying with parents - with no hope of it improving. I felt the resentment a lot, even though it was subtle, and constantly felt obligated to pick up checks if we did anything I wanted to do, because what I could afford to spend on an outing was significantly different. Then that builds resentment over time, etc. People don't like seeing people with more "stuff" than they have at a really deep level. Looking back I am not sure that I could have done much to salvage it, the only friends that survived out of that era were the ones that were able to bring themselves out of their situation as well.
My friends can accurately assess my net worth within a factor of +/- 5, but where exactly in that range isn't necessary for them to know. Even my closest friends probably can't reliably put it within +/- a factor of 2 (nor do they need to for any valid purpose).
I’ve never shared my specific financial details with any friend, before or after, so perhaps a different definition of what it means to be a friend. I haven’t bought a bunch of expensive crap that would give it away.
It’s not about living a double life. I don’t secretly blow cash on hookers and blow, I just live a pretty modest normal life and don’t talk about the details of my investments or means. Mainly I don’t have to worry about anything really.
I think his problem is his identity (founder of Loom) suddenly disappeared.
Now he needs to develop a new identity.
This is especially difficult for single founders without kids (in the sense that people with spouse/kids already derive much of their identity from those 2 things).
Selling a company isn’t all that different from going through a divorce (in the sense that your identity needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch)
William Storr writes about this. His stance is humans are hard wired for status within their social group. The problem is when all your status eggs in one basket and it disappears, it’s not good for your mental health. He advocates for having your identity spread across many different pursuits and disparate social groups, although he admits he’s not very good at doing that himself.
> humans hard wired for status within their social group.
Not always "status". Humans benefit from cooperative behaviour but may have many reasons for joining and adhering or leaving.
Having varied interests means different networks. The important point is to see meaning and value. This is where ostracism and rejection can be most painful.
To put a finer point on it, Storr’s thesis is there are three main domains that humans try to achieve status: dominance, competence, and virtue. Same end goal, but different means to get esteem. Put differently, people ultimately need to feel valued by their tribe.
Thanks for clarifying. There must be more subtlety in the "end goal" of membership.
> people ultimately need to feel valued by their tribe
To the extent that people want to remain in a group ("tribe"), I agree.
But this holds only when people feel that they gain value from the group (or tribe). For some members, the sense of gain may be conspicuous prestige, but for other members it may be a humble gain or an unnoticed (inconspicuous) gain.
The quieter members (in O.P.'s narcissistic terminology, the "NPCs" in his company) may have insights that completely escape the O.P. and other prestige-seekers.
I took 1.5 years off to work on an open source project (also because I was struggling with health issues), and the hardest thing was describing what you're doing to other people. I thought I was "above" social status, that it wouldn't affect me, but it did. I was essentially unemployed, that's how it felt at least. It's so much easier just saying "I do X for a living, I work at company Y". It means some company thinks you're good enough to pay good money for.
Thoughtful approach in theory but, in practice, I've found people can be very intentional about trying to measure your value to the tribe (i.e., it's not only something we measure for ourselves). If the initial answers don't provide enough data, people will very often dig in.
> Oh yeah, for who?
$GitProjectName
> Oh, I'm not familiar. How big is that company?
It's an independent project, I'm just getting it off the ground.
> Do you have any customers?
... and so on.
Yes, it's easiest to change the subject but that also becomes an obvious signal. Repeating this dance a few times is enough to dampen one's sense of self worth.
I don't necessarily think this value-measuring is conscious or necessarily reflective of the person's character. It felt more like it's simply the habitual conversational pattern for a lot of people - we've been trained to quickly assess if someone is "like us" (based on very shallow criteria and heuristics).
There's also a difference between saying you work at $FAMOUSCOMPANY and knowing it's true, it gives you a kind of confidence that you don't have if you say "I'm the CEO of my own startup" or something like that. I think actually "I retired early, working on some of my own projects" might work, but all sorts of problems creep up when money is involved like that, especially with family.
if the first person to notice a correlation between alcoholism and cirrhosis was an alcoholic, you'd dismiss what he said out of hand and keep drinking?
The dude also dumped his long time girlfriend right after coming into a large chunk of money (and thinks she cares enough to read his blog!), and truly thinks he was going to "save our government". Also, the mountain climbing (IYKYK).
He sounds pretty full of himself and seems to struggle making personal connections with people. Being the founder of a startup gave people a reason to care about him, and now that he's lost that along everyone around him. He beat the game and now the characters in the story have nothing left to say to him.
The guy should put down the physics book and go learn to be a person that others enjoy being around. Go get a job waiting tables and hang out with coworkers after work, learn to surf, etc.
100% this! Calling one's colleague an NPC is not only demeaning but also shows a lack of awareness and empathy. Does the author even understand that by his logic, he is a NPC in his colleague's world?
You are misinterpreting. He’s talking about how at big companies, you always have people who don’t seem to bring any actual value. They're in every meeting, but don't say anything, don't set any direction, don't produce any documents or any code, don't exhibit any sense of urgency or even involvement, and don't contribute in any noticeable way. "NPCs." They are completely passive as far as you can tell -- or worse, they actively slow others down when they happen to be on some critical approval path.
I'm sure they are lovely people outside work, and loving parents and good citizens. But when the rest of us are busting our butts to get work done, they're unfortunately useless.
The guy who started a video conferencing app called Loom (2 years after Zoom came out) then miraculously sold it for almost a billion dollars has no business calling anyone an "NPC".
I goes to show that being 2nd to market or even 4th or 5th isn't a big barrier. Competitors have the advantage of an existing market, whereas the innovator has to explain to the customer what their product is.
It’s a very easy trap to think that all of these idiots aren’t doing anything. However, the more you talk to them, the more you realize that not only are they doing something, they’re definitely not idiots, and many of them are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given.
You get some leeches in there. You get some jerks. They’re the exception, not the rule, even in ur big globocorps.
They're still people. Just because the company doesn't motivate them or they have a bad manager or are on a bad team or a million other reasons they don't feel empowered to "participate" (specious since clearly they're employed) doesn't mean you can act like they're soulless bots ffs.
This whole mindset has got to go. You and OP going around like this, it's gross for the world and it's a bad look on you.
What matters is relative to one's perspective. Nothing objectively matters.
Nobody's saying everyone is of equal value, they're saying that reducing your perception of somebody into a 2-dimensional caricature because you don't perceive value in them is the type of disgusting mental habit of somebody who either has no real friends or soon will have none.
Have you ever said about someone, "that guy's an asshole"?
If so, you reduced them into a caricature, and you should have instead said "that guy behaved in the manner of an asshole, though I trust that he is otherwise a fully-actualized individual with a life of his own, and with factors outside my visibility that impact his decisions and behaviors."
>and don't contribute in any noticeable way.
>They are completely passive as far as you can tell
Fundamental attribution error strikes again?
Reminds me of the apocryphal/anecdotal tale of the management conultant who wanted to fire a "secretary" who he could only find taking coffee breaks and long lunches with lots of different people, only to be told (or finding out after the firing) that the person in question was critical to inter-team dynamics and functioning.
More generally, if you cultivate yourself you will get more pleasure from your activities. If you take time to learn an instrument, or listen to classical, or gardening (you can grow exotic plants for example), learn a new language, or anything else. The more you put into refining your appreciation and knowledge, the more value you can get back from your activities. It's a self cultivation problem.
Calling people NPCs is one of my biggest pet peeves and a dead giveaway that someone is a soulless narcissist. It is dehumanizing in the extreme, the same way Nazis characterized Jews as rats in propaganda. When people say eat the rich… this is who they mean
>a dead giveaway that someone is a soulless narcissist
You're engaging in the exact same behavior, are you not? NPC and soulless are the same fundamental concept, that there is a certain threshold of humanity people can fall below to be considered lesser. They're soulless, they're NPCs, they're untermenschen... whatever the word for it, there are "dead giveaways" that a person can lack that hidden quality that separates man from animal. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but from a certain reading, it seems like what you're saying isn't really all that far off from "calls people NPCs = is the real NPC".
I often see people decry specific terminology associated with dehumanizing beliefs without refuting the actual premise behind them.
Disagree. NPC carries a connotation that you are not even real. You do not have free will. You are there purely to serve their whims. You are an ephemeral nothing that does not exist when they look away. It is exactly what Andrew Tate preaches with his whole “matrix” schtick. It is the mindset billionaires use to excuse their bottomless greed.
Soulless was just a heavy handing way of saying it demonstrates a disturbing lack of empathy. Whether or not souls exist is debatable in the first place, so no I wouldn’t equate it with calling someone subhuman.
Yep. I don't understand why the technological community accepts essentially sociopathic tendencies as long as your idea (regardless of what that idea is) is rewarded by the capital system. It's pathetic.
In 2022, according to Forbes, the firm was valued at $1.5 billion, having secured $200 million in funding from venture funds such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ, Coatue, and Kleiner Perkins.[1][2] It is remote, but is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an office in New York.
Why would such a seemingly simple product need so much money? It seems like the business was already done. Web video recording or facetime has been around a long time, but somehow this company carved a niche in a crowded market.
They slapped the word AI on it and took advantage of temporary market conditions (wfh due to covid and AI hype), nothing more, nothing less. Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing special about this product and probably no one will remember it in ~15 years time.
Meanwhile OP seems to think he should have expected the same sense of fulfillment one might get from an actually meaningful contribution to human society, for some reason.
>Easily record and share AI-powered video messages with your teammates and customers to supercharge productivity
This is the first thing you see when visiting the website. Ctrl+F finds "AI" 10 times in the page. Like the other commenter said, it probably has nothing to do with AI, but this is what sells at the moment
It catered to the specific niche of screencasts and thus needed a lot of custom software written that doesn't already exist in Zoom/Teams. After development costs there's marketing/CAC costs to be considered. For those that don't "get it" upon seeing the product, you need to spend money on salespeople to convince them they do. After those expenses, their AWS bill surely wasn't cheap.
Finally though, you hope not to raise too many times, so that $200 million needs to last years. Let's say they planned for a round 10 years. that's 20 million a year. say half on developers, that's 10-40 software developers all-in (meaning after HR and health care for them and everything). 10-40 people isn't all that many, though clearly enough to build the product.
Since the author of the blog post walked away with $60 million, it's possible they could have developed the product for less, but it's hard to argue with the results he got. Spending less money would have been penny-wise, pound foolish.
True, i would still argue that your identity might be fogged by these things and come out clearer after lifting roles you may stumbled into more than you chose them.
So sure hope for him and others they survive their 7 years of catharsis!
The vast majority of men develop depression at retirement. So you can say this with scorn if it pleases you, but the group you’re talking about is massive and doesn’t deserve this derision.
This is straight up false, you are wildly overexaggerating with zero evidence to back it up.
Incidence of depression in retirement age populations are around 6 - 8%, and the correlation between retirement and depression is more pronounced in women.
There’s no need to make false claims about a real disorder just so you can feel persecuted as a man
My inaccuracy not withstanding, you supply the data to prove my point, that it is common for men to experience depression in retirement. And my suggestion that they should be considered seems just as true.
Your suggestion about my motives makes no sense, I made no comparison to women. It sounds like that may have something to do with you, not me.
Perhaps ask yourself: why does a suggestion that these men deserve some sympathy or at least consideration provoke you into harshly criticizing me?
If there is evidence my guess is that it’s likely due to the previous generation’s attitude towards work. My guess is that the previous generation (like my parents and their parents before them) lived to work, it was their whole identity, thus when they retired they had no idea what to do with themselves (like the Loom founder) and depression was common.
There has been a shift over the last decade or two likely in millennials who just work to live. They look forward to not working and living a life full of hobbies and social activities.
To be fair you are the first person in this thread to bring up gender, as if women don’t also feel depression in retirement, and indeed at higher rates. Why would you only mention men?
And when you consider that most people retire late in life when they are likely to face health issues, start losing family and friends, and that most people don't retire rich...
I think it is more that people who were married to their job find themselves suddenly divorced.
Without other activities to give them a reason to get up in the morning it is easy to fall into depression. There was even a movie that explores this situation: About Schmidt.
Retirement might be, in a way, a clear point in life when you get to actually think about your own mortality and life coming to an end in the next few decades. That alone could have a major impact in people developing depression at retirement.
What the poster says might still be true, people are being defined by their work and when that's over there's a huge gap they don't know how to fill. This might very well be a criticism on the role of work in society.
Ultimately though, you're right, there's no need to insult people when thinking critically about this issue.
I don't fault this guy for wanting to join DOGE and make a difference. The fact that he was able to make a few phone calls and actually get hired into an influential position despite having zero background in government, civics, economics, finance etc. should, however, tell you everything you need to know about the department and its brain trust.
I wonder what will happen to all these Signal conversations when the inevitable scandals/lawsuits/inquiries happen. Surely the public will be able to scrutinize them right?
Yeah I find that anecdote incredibly revealing as to the way wealthy people move through political spaces. No offence to the author of the blog post, but he was the CTO of a company that sold video conferencing software—what on Earth would he know about public governance? Pick a random student with a BA in public policy & administration off the graduating class of 2024's honour roll, and I bet they'd do a better job at doing whatever "DOGE" is supposed to do than this guy would.
You don't have to be convinced, but to present an argument -- He knows how to lead a team with disparate skills and motivations towards a complex, poorly defined end-goal. That might sound like corporate B.S., but I truly believe that's a useful skill that not everyone has. Of course I expect he is relatively weak in his understanding of law, the dynamics of different government organizations, etc, but I expect (hope?) they're hiring others to fill in these gaps.
Championship-winning 12th grade soccer captains probably have decent leadership skills, but that doesn't mean they can automatically succeed as M&A advisors at a multinational. We don't need a blitz version of the Peter principle where people skip n-levels at a time.
For those not familiar with the 1960s "Whiz Kids" attempts of "smart people" to use data and statistics to "fix" business and then government/war, there is a nice brief overview of pros/cons/lessons at:
Leading tech for a 250 person startup is surely different than wrangling the vast bureaucracy of the US Government, especially when the author says they didn't want to join Atlassian because they would have to deal with "politics" and "NPC coworkers". TBF DOGE as a non-governmental entity is just going to make bullshit recommendations to Trump and not have to actually deal with the consequences of things they recommend, so maybe it would have been perfect for this guy.
Fully agree. The academia gatekeeping in certain fields hasn’t served us well over the last decade or so.
Fresh ideas from individuals with experience from all walks of life should be entertained. Doesn’t mean they’ll be followed.
Furthermore, DOGE has no actual power administratively, really all they can do is advise. Congress would need to grant them power first. Saagar Enjeti gas a good take on this, he’s pretty well versed in Washington-Speak
The DOGE guys + Executive branch will try to get the Supreme Court to rule that the phrase "take care" in the Constitution means that the President has the power to fire any government employee at any time.
I enjoyed his recent conversation with Lex, but I lost quite a bit of respect for his opinion on politics when he called the Cambridge Analytica scandal nonsense.
For one, who said anything about "first principles thinking"? Elon Musk has a pronounced ideological bias. Anyway, first principles thinking is practically useless when it comes to highly complex systems, because such systems do not behave in self-evident ways. Empirical knowledge is the only thing that gets you anywhere.
Moreover, "DOGE" is not a break from the status quo in any way. Corporate interests have informed governance since long before either of us were born. That, rather than "policy wonks," is the rot at the heart of the government. Forever wars happen because they are extremely profitable for weapons manufacturers, not because warfare is a wonkish policy.
The only novelty "DOGE" brings to the table is the aesthetics of an SF tech startup, which won't help the government any more than it helped WeWork. It'll actually do less: WeWork was taken seriously, at least for a while. "DOGE" is impossible to take seriously.
And yet they're allying with Trump and his Republicans? Republicans are responsible for the most recent US "forever wars", and Trump has threatened to invade various countries Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, publicly proposed annexing Mexico, Canada, Panama, and Greenland, has fired missiles into numerous countries like Syria, assassinated an Iranian general, etc.
And Trump loudly opposes various orgs that are responsible for holding aggressive powers at bay, like how NATO represents a check on Russia's apparent violent expansionism.
Trump's approach to geopolitics seems just as violent as his predecessors but more mercurial and erratic.
I would venture that introducing fresh ideas and technologists with first principles thinking will yield better results.
It could, maybe. Provided the people you appoint have some measure of credibility and integrity. Or at least seem to have some kind understanding of the basic mechanics by which governments (even when reduced to a bare minimum) need to operate.
Elon and Vivek plainly do not fit this description, and that should be screamingly obvious by now.
> The fact that he was able to make a few phone calls and actually get hired into an influential position despite having zero background in government, civics, economics, finance etc. should, however, tell you everything you need to know about the department and its brain trust
I have no interest in defending Elon, but this assessment is unfair. Recall how during the Obama transition, a bunch of Silicon Valley'ers got hired in to help modernize government tech (and doubly so after the disastrous obamacare website rollout). Very few of those people had experience in govt, civics, etc.
You can listen to their own description of their strategy and tactics. It was every different from the contemporary counterpoint. They reformed one system one subsystem at a time by working with the current owners and tech staff and teaching them their approach.
I knew contractors in their wake working at companies that grew out of their work in CMS, such as Ad Hoc (a name of the original team to not be called WHITE HOUSE HOT SHOTS or DOGE or something similarly jarring to thereby take agency away from the people who had to you know do the work once they knew they'd roll off) and Nava as they expanded beyond that one system 5 years later.
Let's see how the braggadocios we'll solve all the problems at once flavor of the moment goes, then judge the healthcare.gov teams.
Crazy idea: work for DOGE but secretly just do whatever the most educated (and compassionate) people on the topic say to do. Don’t let Elon know you’re poisoning his well with good ideas.
A lot of people consider Elon to be highly compassionate (in the balanced sense of taking into consideration second-order effects) and educated (in the non-credentialled sense of being informed).
So comments like your are little more than flamebait.
His actions could reasonably be characterized as motivated for deep care for others, and that includes not just his work on popularizing electric cars and giving humanity better internet connectivity via StarLink, but also his political activism. Of course of all of this is subjective, which is all the more reason to not pretend your view of compassion is the objective irrefutable truth.
when this went from calling coworkers "NPCs" to "working" for DOGE, to "studying physics" and I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA
To be honest, this video was quite cringe, 50min of repeating the same thing over and over, repeating her opinion, saying ridiculous unsubstantiated things such as: “musk bought twitter because he was annoyed people were saying he was not a physicist “.
Let’s do better and post better content.
she's not wrong though. it's exactly like one the comments says: "It's the intellectual equivalent of the wannabe tough guy staple: "I almost joined the military.""
this part was disturbing. this guy cant run his own life but wants to dictate how others will live and get involved in government. the US is going to have to deal with real consequences from idiots like this.
I think running successful companies and making lots of money like this is just random luck sometimes. how did a person with no ability to introspect, surrounds him self with people that like and cant critically think manage to make so much money.
most of the startup CEOs I've met / worked for are actually comically inept as people lol. often their business success is clearly more luck than they want to admit, and they love to give lectures/post tweets [1] about things they know nothing about (e.g. ever notice how every CEO is also an enthusiastic authority on the future of population growth and space travel and the like? they're all Elon wannabes nowadays)
This is a facile dunk. Economics literature is filled with examples of debt destroying countries’ economies either through hyper inflation or default. Since the US controls its currency, it is very likely to take the inflation route, but if you get enough hawks they might choose to default.
But perhaps people supposedly becoming in charge of material results should in fact at least have a sketch of an actual nuanced understanding of things.
People who watched Europe through the Great Recession and walk away thinking "I guess austerity works" are not people seriously consuming information, they are ideologues.
The US is transitioning from being a dominant superpower to being one in a herd. Saying that the current approach is works is also difficult position to sustain. They probably should try something different.
The basic position is that a government should raise enough taxes to cover its expenses. You can call that ideological and suggest there are superior options if you want to. Maybe there are, a little debt can be a good thing. But to suggest it won't work is a bit out there. It works. It is one of those simple strategies that is too boring to fail.
Also, if the strategy switches from spending more than you earn to less, obviously there will be a period where people are worse off. It is the same with paying back any obligation. Overspending foolishly obviously increases living standards while it is happening - the problem is the part where people no longer fund the debtor and said debtor didn't invest in productive capital. You need an argument that accounts for that to claim austerity fails. It is expected to do worse than the status quo for a while. Saving money isn't much fun on Day 1 either, it can take a decade to pay off.
A good economics education would let someone be specific about what they think the problem is. What year will the US default on its debt? How much money needs to be cut from the budget to avoid that? To what extent will those cuts slow down the economy and be self-defeating?
If he arms himself with the right mathematical tools, he might just discover that the default he’s expecting is actually not imminent.
To me the elephant in the room is the cost of servicing the debt.
Even if the US has a bunch of runway before shit actually hits the fan, 2024 saw over a trillion dollars servicing the debt. That could be funding a lot of government programs instead.
Seems not ideal, but also not terrible. We have much less of a hole to dig our way out of than we did in the 1990s. Certainly doesn’t look like a crisis. The recent jump seems entirely caused by the response to the Covid crisis and not really a structural problem.
This is insane. Most countries are in debt and there's nothing wrong with that unless it becomes too high. Choosing to default is a choice with no benifits that would crash the world economy for no reason and permanently hobble the country
A default would be a silly thing on a national scale. You'd essentially reset your debt and piss off a lot of foreign powers, but the economy would continue working as before, since you'd immediately print a whole bunch of new (virtual) money. Chances are a great deal of countries will just go along with it to not grind their own economies into pieces when they suddenly can't buy/sell from/to the US any more.
This is assuming you never get to the stage of hyperinflation, but you can probably just print a whole bunch of new physical currency as well.
I have a few degrees in economics. You have absolutely zero idea what you're talking about if you think a US default would have the economy "continue working as before". A US default would make the 08 financial crisis look like a lemonade stand going out of business. This way of thinking is so dangerous because you people don't know what you don't know. Musk and the tech bros are playing Russian roulette with all of our livelihoods.
I don't fucking understand these people. They built a startup of questionable value which can be replicated with open source software, which is debatable if it even solves real world problem, somehow got a huge payday from freely printed VC money, and now they made it their life's calling to fire a bunch of people who don't make that money even it they worked for 10k years, but their livelihoods depend on getting paid.
Not just him, but the other 'smart people' who he mentions in the post who also work at DOGE (for like the 4 weeks he can dedicate his brilliance to solving the worlds burning issues, sorry world, if it takes longer than that).
You don't have to have a PhD in macroeconomics to have useful policy insights.
For example, I wish someone could convince my city to stop planting a specific high maintenance tree on my street that constantly clog sewers and crushes cars.
Policy is far from perfect and there is plenty of room for improvement.
Assuming that you are correct, you have observed (a) one or more problems (b) a proximal cause of the problem(s) (c) a potential solution. Congratulations!
None of that can be said for making a facile observation about US government spending.
I can think of dozens of similar examples from my local government where entrenched local incentives or disinterest lead to completely wasteful outcomes. All of my friends in government have stories of egregious waste, 8-9 digit programs where not even the people working on them think they are effective.
I think the salient observation is that there are abundant opportunities for improvement and cost saving if there is a stakeholder that actually cares about cost savings.
You've already started from a couple of assumptions that I don't believe are true.
> there are abundant opportunities for improvement and cost saving if there is a stakeholder that actually cares about cost savings.
This fails to explain why private corporations (which presumably have from one to millions of stakeholders that care about cost saving) would waste millions of dollars. The idea that "for profit" organizations have some builtin magic trick that means that they improve and save money in ways that other sorts of organizations cannot is just demonstrably untrue.
What is true, of course, is that no matter what the type of organization, if there are people who care about and are empowered to meaningfully tackle waste and inefficiency, then things can improve. And this happens, both in government and non-governmental organizations. You don't hear about it much, for broadly the same reason you don't hear about for-profit organizations wasting money: it just isn't news.
The second assumption that I think you're making is that "wasteful outcomes" are by definition a bad thing. The problem is that government often is tasked with tackling problems where wasteful outcomes are a more or less builtin part of the way things get done, and we accept that (sometimes) because the full cost (not just financial cost) of trying to reduce waste is higher than the waste itself. A typical example: yes, there's no doubt that some government benefits go to people who are not eligible for them. However, the task of identifying all those people has many costs, both direct and indirect. The whole system becomes massively more invasive of everyone's lives when one of its prime directives is "make sure that not one cent goes to some not entitled to it". So most societies accept that there will be a level of waste, which is made up for by the benefits of treating things as if they are closer to a universal benefit.
There are plenty of other examples of this in different domains where the government operates.
>This fails to explain why private corporations (which presumably have from one to millions of stakeholders that care about cost saving) would waste millions of dollars.
Of course it fails to explain something was wasnt talking about. I wasn't offering an explanation of private corporation waste. were you under that impression I dont think it exists?
I have a 50 million dollar project right now for a private corporation that I think is a waste, despite being the being the one to create and lead it. I'm doing it for short sighted reasons. My boss thinks it will make him look good, I expect a promotion out of it, and we will both be gone when it is cancelled with absolutely nothing to show for it.
This also happens in government. As a taxpayer, I dont want to pay it. I love the idea of someone looking out for waste and even counter productive spending.
>The second assumption that I think you're making is that "wasteful outcomes" are by definition a bad thing...
Please don't strawman me and put words in my mouth. are you arguing against points I didn't make.
My point is that true waste, however you want to define it, exists, and can be improved. Are you claiming there is no room for improvement?
> I wasn't offering an explanation of private corporation waste. were you under that impression I dont think it exists?
Earlier you had said:
> .... if there is a stakeholder that actually cares about cost savings.
which tends to be short-hand these days for "in the context of a for-profit company where people actually care about this stuff". I accept that you may not have meant it that way.
> Are you claiming there is no room for improvement?
Certainly not. But starting with the claim that a gigantic percentage of US federal government spending is wasted (as the whole DOGE thing starts with) is almost certainly not the way to find actual improvements.
>which tends to be short-hand these days for "in the context of a for-profit company where people actually care about this stuff". I accept that you may not have meant it that way.
Are you think of shareholders instead of stakeholders? Either way, that was not my intention. In terms government, there are lots of ways to introduce new stakeholders with different incentives. These can be inter-agency review, or as simple as a government employee who's job it is to save money, and gets promoted based on that.
>Certainly not. But starting with the claim that a gigantic percentage of US federal government spending is wasted (as the whole DOGE thing starts with) is almost certainly not the way to find actual improvements.
Not everything in a comment in a thread on HN is about the comment that immediately preceded it. This particular subthread has featured the so-called DOGE quite significantly, and that is how we've ended up talking about efficiency, waste, improvements. DOGE is the embodiment of the claim I'm describing, and that's not directly related to anything you've said.
Wouldn't this be the equivalent of telling someone "before you try and build a business, try to take some business courses and learn how business works. Perhaps even an MBA".
Most of the business is in the not-numbers stuff. If DOGE is specifically trying to fix the numbers, then it's far more important that they specifically are experts in numbers.
Not quite, because a successful business could be as simple as a lemonade stand. Government finance, on the other hand, is an exceptionally delicate game of safely maximizing spending to stimulate economic growth (and therefore future tax revenue).
Interestingly, China, who does capitalism better than the west, is not very concerned about short term voter happiness or placating special interest groups. So it's not a given that government spending must be constrained by historical assumptions, or that that model is even optimal.
I'd say many of the moves towards autocracy in the west are pointing in that direction, for better or worse.
That’s actually just categorically wrong and frankly easy to find out. First of all the one that jumps to mind is AOC, but also just in general apparently econ is the third most popular study for congress members, behind politics and law.
My state rep lives (more or less) across the street from me. He wins because he gets things done and is generally a nice and honest person. His educational background as a lawyer doesn't seem to enter into the reasons why any of us vote for him.
My congressional rep and our two senators - I couldn't even begin to tell you their educational backgrounds. I can tell you about their policy positions (and in one case, their abject failure to actually do anything related to them), and a little bit about their personal history.
I’d have to know your district to give you more details but I promise you there’s hundreds of positions across America in elections that get filled by people with a matching background college education. At the very least I can point to judges who have legal backgrounds.
This is so blatantly obvious it hurts. This person lucked out (of course most likely due to talent, opportunity and effort inclusive) in exactly 1 (one) thing and now believes he "can".
He states he learned that hiking without training was dumb and acknowledges it was dangerous. Good. Lesson learned?
No. Still has no clue GOVERNMENT - y'know, the most complicated thing in the world to do right - may be, bear with me here, just a tad bit more complicated than elementary hiking safety training (recall: the very basics of the thing he just learned he should have learned, and risked dying for not learning)
I'm sorry if I'm a bit harsh but god damned if this doesn't sound like a completely clueless person.
>experts in one field [assuming] their skills are transferable
That appears to be the premise of DOGE.
This sentence also killed me:
>working on various projects I’m definitely not able to talk about
It's not because they're classified. It's because a bunch of unaccountable private citizens are plotting behind closed doors to tear down the government.
It is a mark against our system that someone can get this rich without seeing a problem with all of this. We are told that capitalism makes smart people rich, but it does not appear to filter out gullible people.
Defaulting on the debt is not going to happen but the consequences of avoiding default will not be good.
Of course, DOGE isn't really going to do anything to fix this either. Complete theater that the fixes will low and behold happen to work in the financial interest of those running DOGE.
The young who don't think the debt matters are almost guaranteed at this point to have to deal with US fiscal dominance in their lifetime. That is going to be a brutal lesson in youthful ignorance and stupidity.
How will it be a brutal lesson in youthful ignorance and stupidity when the youth have nearly no political power? We have a full-on gerontocracy and the problem is youthful naivete?
He pulled millions from the economy and now wants to work with the oligarchs towards having even less redistribution. He is a small part of the reason why his country is going to s***.
Is this about the impossibility of a government defaulting on its debt if that debt is payable in currency that same government can print? Or is it some stimulus thing?
There is no upper bound on how much debt the US gov can carry as long as they're paying their interest and people still have trust that they will. Its the TRUST part that is at most risk right now.
The limit could depend on a lot of other things. In theory, it's possible that you are paying 100% of revenue on debt service yet still the best option is to take on more debt. This is if you believe that investing the money raised via additional debt provides returns that outweigh the increase in debt service costs. So in that situation, additional debt can even lower the debt service / income ratio.
So this is meant to illustrate that the limit on debt is more a function of the concrete circumstances. In this line of argumentation, debt is not limited by a mathematical formula that just takes GDP and similar statistics as input.
Your analysis leaves out one teeny tiny little thing--the ~6 Trillion dollar federal budget!
If you're paying 100% of revenue on debt service, taking on more debt isn't optional. All other federal outlays must either cease or be funded by new debt. Given current levels of federal spending, that would mean increasing the national debt by ~20% of GDP, per year.
More debt --> higher debt service costs --> even more debt --> even higher debt service costs --> et cetera
Yeah but that’s almost a tautology. This has been true for every government that ended up in hyperinflation (Germany in the 20s, Russia in the 90s, etc. etc.).
Those steering the ship have track records. I don't see anything prejudicial about evaluating the leadership of a government group w.r.t. their previous merits and shortcomings.
The people running it have track records we can assess, and have signaled their goals and in some cases stated them outright. This is simply judgement.
Elon's track record is to consistently succeed spectacularly with things that most people find laughably impossible to do. That's why I don't dismiss this project.
I missed there they stated outright that they're "only interested in enriching themselves and their cronies"?
There are two things rich Republicans hate more than anything in the world: the government spending "their" money on services for ordinary folks, and regulations preventing them from making even more money. This is often dressed up as "libertarianism," but in reality, it's simply worship of money as the ultimate virtue.
What sorts of organizations does DOGE want to defund? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the IRS, the Department of Education, Planned Parenthood, PBS and NPR: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lindseychoo/2024/11/27/elon-mus.... Nevermind that these make up a tiny portion of the intended 2 trillion in cuts.
Oh, I would not be surprised to see Musk "succeed spectacularly" in this endeavor. But that's because money is power, and Musk has more of it than anyone in the country. I mean, he even bought himself a president! It's difficult to lose when you can just keep throwing cash at the problem.
By the way, nobody is ever going to tell you outright that they're "only interested in enriching themselves and their cronies." An intelligent adult should be able to interpret reality based on available evidence. If you wait for someone to throw off their mask and reveal themselves a cackling villain, you will find yourself an easy mark.
That Forbes article is just a Forbes journalist guessing what DOGE might do, based on things they've mentioned in passing.
Of course that doesn't add up to 2 trillion in cuts!
The Reich article is mostly him making up evil things DOGE might do, and then criticizing them for these imagined plans.
Once DOGE has real plans and proposals I'll be happy to mock them if they don't make sense. I agree their goals sound very difficult, but I've learned that there are always smarter people than me out there. Maybe you can at least agree with that last part :)
I could imagine a world where trying to completely eliminate the deficit in a short amount of time does dramatically more harm than the increase in the debt.
> > Elon's track record is to consistently succeed spectacularly with things that most people find laughably impossible to do
Entrepreneurship should be about making people's lives better and the measure of such improvement is very hard but could be measured by imagining a company disappear and evaluate the consequences on society.
If Musk companies disappeared tomorrow nothing would substantially change, if you disappeared Microsoft, Google, TMSC, JPMorgan, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco... you'd have civil war within a week.
Having a rocket land on its butt might be technically impressive but so is a 23 minute guitar solo which doesn't push any emotional chord in the listener whereas a 20 seconds note bend by David Gilmour in the right moment of a song brings people to tears.
As of today Musk companies are mostly performance art that you could disappear without any real consequence, that could change in the future but it has been 25 years now, not gonna hold my breath on that.
When you name your enlightened government-saving organization after a memecoin you own a mountain of, only bootlickers are going to think you're in it for altruistic reasons.
This is similar to elon's tendency to dump boatloads of money in politics to beat the people he claims are cheating by... dumping boatloads of money in politics.
If he wants any of this to be taken seriously by anyone other than his horde of bootlickers he needs to make "earning people's trust" a priority, even when it's opposed to his own interest. Instead he acts as though he's entitled to the public's trust because (he's sure) he's such a good guy, and he's (he's sure) actually acting in their interest. Doesn't work that way. Trust is earned by listening to people and by taking seriously what you hear from them—not by egoistic paternalism.
Furthermore, these business people constantly talk in terms which reflect basically-wrong beliefs about how money works at a national level. A country is not a company. A dollar spent by a country can return to its coffers as taxes many times over, and this basic fact breaks any analogy between the two.
Because of the messaging, like cutting regulations, entire departments - things that have impact on the entire country and not just a company and its customer base.
I believe, there is certainly a lot of room for improvements in government functions. But I also believe, those improvements are hidden in details and require actual work, other than just slashing funds, regulations or entire departments. Things are how they are for reasons. And those reasons will probably withstand deeper scrutiny, but not populism and conflicts of interest.
The premise is correct, but the trust in the executors is misplaced. One made money via government so there is a certain conflict of interest, another one is an ordinary American businessman with a questionable track record on the edge of ethics. That's right off the bat, on the merits, not even going into the politics.
When the debt surety payments are higher than our national security budget i agree wholeheartedly. We are spending more than we are making and it's growing every year. We cannot continue like this or our surety payments will be higher than all distretionary spending by 2032.
I never understood the hate for Elon, vivek, trump. They aren't perfect people, but i'm really excited about the team he's been able to put together. Like who else has been able to hire every single person who ran against him? David sacs, elon, other extremely smart people....
Other people here seem to act like going to school and doing economics to be at Doge are just so incredibly niave... We need a huge diversity of people.
Despite all of trumps faults, he has built a powerhouse team that trancends party lines.
DOGE is not an official government department, it’s a presidential advisory committee. It’s not going to have taxpayer funding, oversight and no far-reaching powers over other official departments besides shit-stirring and distraction.
Initially only Musk was making a paycheck from DOGE - since you needed a X premium subscription to apply. So its more like applicants were underwriting Musk's paychecks - that's how a true-blue American capitalist operates.
He changed it after some blowback but I have to admit - American businessmen are always cunning.
I think you missed the point of DOGE. This isn't a problem about navigating and optimizing a complex bureaucracy, it's to call out that massive bureaucracy exactly where it comes at a high cost and little, perhaps even negative, value. This is a managerial problem and a political problem at its core. We should all be rooting for them to succeed and table their findings, in plain speak for all the public to see. Then it will be up to the elected officials to act on it.
Cutting funding to the IRS will increase waste; nobody outside of DOGE seems to think that spending more on enforcement will fail to pay for itself by finding more tax fraud. It's not a large leap to infer that at least some of those behind DOGE are doing this to enrich themselves.
Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget.
By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence.
Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
By American standards, Medicaid and Medicare are pretty efficient. So any cuts are going to mean that either doctors get paid less or fewer health services are provided. Yes, politically, Republicans can get away with cutting Medicaid, but it’s the much smaller piece of
the pie compared to Medicare. Good luck with either one of the options above with Medicare.
As for defence, procurement is a giant money tree for defence contractors, but a large part of the reason why it remains a giant money tree for contractors is that they build plants in every single congressional district there is, so trying to apply some sanity to the defence procurement process is politically untenable. Beyond that, are you going to be the one to tell the Marines they don’t need their own aircraft carriers?
Of course, tanking the American economy by removing a significant chunk of its labor force (undocumented immigrants) and increasing costs (by putting tariffs on things) is just going to make the problem harder by crunching revenue.
The right of politics has forever claimed that they can painlessly cut taxes, and it’s always nonsense.
> DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget.
It took me years to understand that this line of reasoning is why Trump won (twice). I noticed in my own job, that whenever someone would propose an moderate but still-obvious improvement, someone else would smack them down saying "that's not the highest priority!" In the end, nothing ever gets fixed.
I think people see Trump as that guy who steamrolls the naysayers and gets shit done.
Now, I disagree that Trump really gets any useful thing done, but I definitely recognize that constant naysaying against any improvement is a real actual problem.
The party Trump ran as a candidate for has spent at least 40 and perhaps 70 years insisting the government is your enemny and government cannot get things done.
The fact that is rather difficult to make changes to the government so that it runs more efficiently and gets better stuff done might - just might - be related to the fact that one of the two major political parties in the USA is absolutely bound to the "fact" that this is not possible.
It's like when an entire slate of candidates running on "elect me for a pure and uninformed outsider take!" get elected to the city council and suddenly you spend a year with council meetings turning into 101 lessons from the city staff on what the fuck the council is responsible for.
I disagree with this. Here are a few tidy Republican stances:
- Gun violence? Eh. Nothing we can do there. Best to just get used to it. Thoughts and prayers.
- Climate change? Nothing to see there. Drill baby, drill!
- Covid? Best to just ignore it, let it run rampant, let the weak die. No biggie.
- Universal healthcare? It'd totally suck. Wait times. Higher taxes. Pay no attention to the nearly 100 other countries successfully pulling this off.
The Republican Party is the party of maintaining the status-quo, insisting solved problems are unsolvable. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party's central thesis is: Government is inept. Let's neuter it as much as possible. Many of us see DOGE just as a cringely-named continuation of this mission.
>Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
Some ppl collecting SSI have other income over $400k. They won't miss $30k of SSI. The dem's plan was to tax that overage - not even remove it altogether - to maintain SSI, but "they're eating the dogs and cats" won and now the unelected guy who made his fortune on government contracts is in charge of choosing who to cut off from that government money supply.
> in a way that would leave government services unaffected
I’m not sure what “unaffected” means. Do you mean from the end user perspective? Or government employee perspective?
I think people underestimate the overhead associated with many government services. Even thing like social security disability have 30-40% of the money not going to the recipient, it’s going to the administration.
If you were able to improve social security administration efficiency (benefit validation, denial appeal, check mailing costs) by just 10%, you just reduced social the federal budget by a few percentage points. That’s huge.
My own experience with government services is that significant efficiencies could be squeezed out and keep the end user service the same (or better?).
So let's, for the sake of argument, say that there are two hundred similarly sized efficiency savings to be found in the US federal budget.
Congratulations, you just saved 200 billion dollars of expenditure.
The difference between expenditure and revenue in 2023 was 1.7 trillion.
Let me be clear - if money is being spent poorly, that is bad and it should be spent more effectively, or not spent at all. I'm just trying to demonstrate that "waste", at least waste as it is traditionally understood, is almost irrelevant in any attempt to balance the federal budget.
There absolutely are, but not all of them are good ideas for other reasons. One of the big things that I think many "run government like a business"-types fail to consider, is that fairness, equitability, checks-and-balances, democratic process, quality of life, etc are often inherently inefficient.
Every system has inefficiencies, including the government.
The fallacy is to assume that businesses inherently have less inefficiencies than government and/or that a government’s cost/benefit equation improves if it’s run as a business. Often, their functions overlap and this can be the case. Automated traffic monitoring is cheaper than having people count cars. But beware privatization that promises efficiency and lower costs—the result is almost always worse services, maintainable debt and in time a government bailout.
Often, their functions do not overlap. The purpose of social security is not to tighten spending as much as possible, it is to improve quality of life as much as possible.
Let me quote you: "Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?"
But DOGE is basically “make government more efficient”, so they are interchangeable.
Trying to give an analogy like “i don’t like football” and “we should kill all football players” for my statement is pretty disingenuous and a massive strawman itself.
We’re trying to explain to you that they’re NOT interchangeable. What you’re doing is applying a false syllogism, but in question form.
Let me illustrate with an example in a statement form: “A rock can’t fly. You can’t fly, therefore you are a rock”.
You’re saying “A wants to do X. You are criticizing A, so you must object to X being done.” That is making an unjustified leap to your conclusion. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, this is a logic error.
IF you spent a bit of time analyzing your statement you'd realize that the Government doesn't just take money but also give it out.
And not just to employees and benefit receivers but also entrepreneurs and companies.
It's by far the largest single economic actor and statistically speaking given the size of such a large actor it is more likely than not you ended up breaking even as far as quality of life (QOL) when considering all your transactions (in money and services) with the Government.
Given the economic growth measured by GDP in the period 2000-2024 even more likely is that you ended up ahead.
Except in many, if not most, cases a company’s inefficiencies IS your problem. The perfectly informed rational consumer doesn’t exist. We’re forced to buy what’s on the shelves that we can afford, and the water in the pipes and power on the grid. When the businesses collude and price fix and lower the quality of your goods you DO suffer and your only recourse is regulation.
And get out of here with that libertarian “services I don’t use” nonsense.
> Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
But surely that’s the only way out? Figure out some sane taper scheme by age or something. Social security was created when the old people population was a tiny fraction of what it is now, no way it would have ever passed it with today’s numbers. We’ll have to rip off the bandaid or face the consequences.
Taking money from one group of people and giving it to another isn’t “government waste”, though. It’s essentially zero-sum (unless you get way down into the details of the economic effects of how that money gets spent or saved.)
If you had told people when SS was passed that "granny doesn't die of hunger" is "zero sum", you might have needed martial arts skills to avoid the pitchforks coming your way.
And that's not "way down into the details of the economic effects" - it's the raison d'etre of SS.
I’m replying to the parent commenter and giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he’s talking only about social security payments which are beyond the essential, and which could “safely” be cut back. I recommend to you to also interpret comments generously before replying.
> By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence.
Sure..and all hidden waste projects can be fit into those 3 categories. Things like federal funding on hotels for illegal immigrants, including many millions on unused hotel rooms. ~$400 per person per night for illegal aliens. ~$80+ million USD in a few months.
> DOGE is BS.
Basically DOGE is only BS if you think fraud and waste are not BS. Why don't you actually look at the large number of waste projects on https://x.com/DOGE before saying it is BS ?
It is ~42 billion for welfame, $70 billion USD for schooling, $7.5 billion for the uninsured, etc, totaling to around ~150 billion. This is also around the figure confirmed by DOGE.
It would be nice if you can refute the data on facts.
It’s not an official figure. It’s a figure calculated by an anti-immigration “think tank”.
And even taking their numbers as gospel, it’s 1.1% of the federal budget - and it’s not like you can claw back that 1.1% either, because the enforcement mechanisms required to expel and keep illegal immigrants out of
the USA would cost very substantial amounts.
That is transparently not the point of it at all. Musk in particular is a proven self-interested liar and there's no reason to believe his stated intentions here. It's another right wing campaign to dismantle the parts of the state that benefit anyone other than investors.
- Most people who make a lot of money all at once blow it within seven years. Check out what happens to lottery winners, jocks, and rappers. As a rule of thumb, you can safely spend 4% of your net worth per year. Pay yourself some fixed amount each quarter.
- You don't have to get into complex investments. Half in some bond funds, half in some diversified stock funds will work out OK.
- Any investment where they call you is probably not very good.
Useful reading, although dated: "The Challenges of Wealth", by Domini et. al.
What to do with your life? No idea. What are you good at?
- I was a visiting scholar at Stanford for a while. But it was the "AI Winter" and not much was happening. Did robotics in the 1990s. Held patents on legged running on rough terrain, ragdoll physics. Ran a DARPA Grand Challenge team. Didn't really lead anywhere. Too early. Still programming. A metaverse client I'm writing in Rust is running on another screen.
- Horses have been good for me. Every day, I go out and spend time with a pushy alpha mare who keeps me in shape.
"Riding is the only art which princes learn truly". Horses are not impressed by money. Neither are most riders.
- I've known a few ex-CEOs. One did a lot of reasonable little stuff but never did anything with much impact again.
One founded a charity. Another was really into sailboats, and he just kept on with sailboats, crossing the Atlantic and such. He's lucky in having a wife who is also very into sailboats. One guy bought a nightclub, but it loses money year after year.
There's a legendary Reddit comment that lays out the many, many other ways winning the lottery (or, more importantly, letting people know you won the lottery) is bad for you. Can you debunk its claims as well?
That comment makes untrue claims and cites no sources. The claim about multi-million dollar jackpot winners is a viral meme that keeps making the rounds despite the people with the actual stats repeatedly trying to debunk it. It is not true that a huge percentage of winners go bankrupt.
I imagine that it's perpetuated by the myth that people who make a shitton of money "legitimately" (ie getting insanely lucky by inheritance, investing in a moonshot, or both) are somehow magically blessed with the wisdom to handle money in a way that commoners are not. Plus a dash of cope for all the people who will never touch that amount of money. Assurance that even those who gain a lot will be no better off (or worse off) than them.
The Reddit comment is interesting, and I think the advice that starts in the reply is sound. But this person's list of lottery winner failures is a small list of people versus a very large group of winners. Surely it's not hard to cherry pick a bunch of worst case scenarios.
Haha I read the article - not surprisingly they pick lottery winners in countries that provide anonymity to winners (unlike the US where you will have a target painted on your back).
> 2019 by researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Zurich, used a considerable dataset — fifteen years of the “German Socio-Economic Panel” (or SOEP). The SOEP has been surveying 15,000 German households since 1984.
> The second study, from 2020 by researchers from Stockholm University, Stockholm School of Economics, and New York University, surveyed 3,000 Swedish lottery winners
>EuroJackpot Countries (Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands*, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden): 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner.
Compare it to:
>California: Not Anonymous/Only individuals can claim. “ The name and location of the retailer who sold you the winning ticket, the date you won and the amount of your winnings are also matters of public record and are subject to disclosure. You can form a trust prior to claiming your prize, but our regulations do not allow a trust to claim a prize. Understand that your name is still public and reportable”.
(routing through refhide because otherwise you'll get a testicle in an egg cup; jwz is a principled man of strong opinions and one of many things he loathes is HN)
One did a lot of reasonable little stuff but never did anything with much impact again
This always stymies me. If I were to make it big, I’d want to go on to do other very useful things. But so commonly that doesn’t happen. Is it because they lost the fire? Because they were really lucky exactly once? Or perhaps their talents were suited only to that one thing?
Personally I get immense enjoyment out of not doing anything useful, especially not on a big scale. So if I were to accidentally "make it big", I'd most likely not do it again and keep enjoying the small inconsequential things.
This paper shows people winning less than $150k having bankruptcy rates drop for the first 2 years, and then return to normal 3-5 years later. Like, duh, a small amount of money will run out. This paper has been widely and wildly mis-quoted as bankruptcy rates going up after a few years, but everyone seems to leave out the part where bankruptcy rates went down first.
The percent of people in this study who had declared bankruptcy after 5 years was slightly over 5%, which is the same bankruptcy rate as the study cohort had 2 years before winning money. 95% of lottery winners did not go bankrupt, and no multi-million dollar jackpot winners are involved in this study.
If you were rich enough then having the new business lose money isn't that big of a problem, so long as it's not driving you to ruin.
"Sure it costs me a few hundred every month to keep the lights on, but it makes me happy."
Honestly, I wish more rich people did stuff like this instead of obsessing over making more money on the stock market or speculating on homes or whatnot. Learn to say enough is enough and switch to adding back to the world instead of leeching off of it.
As a way to rid yourself of excess funds, it probably works? Likely more effective than a sailing habit, unless you get into racing.
But there's no need for it in your investment portfolio. Pick a mixture between 20/80 and 80/20 stocks/bonds, buy index funds and you're good. Easy and scalable... This works for normal money too, but you probably want a meaningful amount of cash and you may want to more carefully choose your stock/bond ratio. Maybe if you've got tens of billions you might need something else, but it'll probably work for that too.
They say a sailboat is a hole in the water you throw money into, so having too much of it and not knowing what to do with it does indeed sound like a match made in heaven.
I retired four years ago just before hitting 50 years of age. There is no real purpose and never was. I got my degree, worked in a field I loved. I was good at it, learned and was successful. But there never was any real purpose except personal growth and being challenged in my field of expertise. I've seen CEOs come and go, engineers much smarter than me leave and poor replacements being hired. Nothing ever really changed. In the work setting nobody is truly important.
I don't know what Loom is and I don't really care. It was not spectacular. It doesn't matter. You succeeded. Now you can start on a new part of life. One where you do not have to prove your ability, you already did. So enjoy, you've earned it.
I am sitting in the cold, snowy Scandinavia. In a few days time I will be travelling to Spain. I cannot wait. When I leave the airport and walk into the sun and the heat, I will be grinning like a madman. After a week of hiking / running, exploring and drinking cold beers in sun I will return home and once I leave the airport I will sigh with relief, home sweet home. After a few days of chores at home I will start looking forward to the trip that is already booked for the next week.
Some people find this utterly depressing and nihilistic, but personally, I find it freeing.
The universe does not expect anything from you. That means you should do the most to simply enjoy life. Have fun and experience wonder. If you have the money to do whatever the hell you want, then do whatever the hell you want.
I already know what I'd do. I'd spend an entire summer on a massive road trip around the USA, visiting every major theme park. When winter hits, I'd go somewhere tropical and sip Mai Tais on the beach. Or travel to the north and drink a beer under the Northern Lights every night.
When free time becomes unlimited, I'd no longer feel like I need to min/max the usage of it.
Shit, just being able to go without an alarm clock for nearly every day of the year would bring immense happiness.
Sounds like you have had purpose for your entire adult life? What am I missing when you say "there is no real purpose"? Does the word "purpose" have some great significance that you feel a life lived well does not deliver?
What is a life lived well? It is very personal isn't it. There is no intended result or end goal. No greater meaning. I like my life but others may find it meaningless.
The poster asks "Why do I feel the need to only be on a journey if it’s grand?". Makes no sense to me. It is only grand in his head.
In the same situation, same age, I just didn't retire (but I can), because I still like my job.
I am mostly at home, working and doing hobbies, and most people would say that my life is lame and that I should travel more or something (and they do). But 2 me, it's the best life now ever and every day I say "everything is awesome", especially when I feel down a bit (hormones & friends, nothing else, waiting to pass).
You don't need anything except enough money so you don't have to micromanage your life expenditures (the only other thing money can't buy is love, and I was lucky there too (was it luck, really?))
I do have delusions of grand projects. But I don't mind that, even knowing the probability. Consistency needs to be practised anyway...
Probably not gonna get upvoted but I’m pretty surprised none of the the top comments mentions volunteering or philanthropy. I believe people who get lucky should land a hand in making the world a better place. We are facing huge crises (climate change to name one) and as a wealthy individual you have both the time to spend helping to fix that and the fortune to donate. Being a smart wealthy individual just makes everything more valuable
Right. There's no rule that if you get a hold of $XX million that you need to keep it. I'd argue, in fact, that there's a pretty good case you're obligated to give most of it away; you can keep single-digit millions and have total financial security for all practical purposes while sacrificing only a few luxuries that, as the author of this essay appears to have noticed, won't actually give your life meaning. Meanwhile, each $1M donated to insecticide-treated bednets (for one well-quantified example) could save hundreds of lives: https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf#What_do_you_get_for_y...
If there's a moral case for keeping the cash, it's the leverage it could provide to do something that (at least has a chance of being) even bigger. But few are the people who have legitimate reason to believe the expected value calculation comes out positively. People who feel directionless or jump on the latest Elon thing on a whim seem especially unlikely to be among those few.
(I'm not going to provide documentation, so take this for what little it's worth, but I myself gave away the majority of the several million I received for being a sufficiently early employee at the right startup. And I do not regret it.)
I don't think it was particularly brave, even. I mentioned it just to try to normalize it. I'm not exactly living like an ascetic and I don't understand why people feel they need so much more.
I recently read "The Life You Can Save" by Peter Singer, and it really does a great job of making the case for generosity even amongst middle class 1st world individuals.
I'm amazed he didn't even seem to entertain it as an option. It's quite unusual because even a total narcissist would eventually land on philanthropy as an ego-trip
Came here to say this. Money is a tool to make the world a better place. He could be funding schools, scholarships, research projects, new start ups, and so much more. This is what I have been doing, and it has given my life so much more meaning than anything else I have done. I work to donate because that is how I have the biggest impact.
Just an essay in ego-bashing and showing off. While I don’t deny the author is self-made, highly successful for his age and ultra-rich, this essay is just an attempt to stroke his ego.
It’s evident in the paragraph below where he said he’s leaving DOGE to “save our government”. The writer lacks clarity and coherence of thought. How exactly is he saving the government after his DOGE stint?
>>So, after 4 intense and intoxicating weeks, I called off my plans to move to DC and embark on a journey to save our government with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And I booked a 1-way ticket to Hawaii.
Studying physics in the jungle, focusing on my insecurities
So now I’m in Hawaii. I’m learning physics. Why? The reason I tell myself is to build up my first principles foundation so I can start a company that manufactures real world things. It seems plausible, but I’m learning to just accept that I am happy learning physics. That’s the goal in and of itself.
Have you ever written anything as introspective as this post, particularly about your own personal shortcomings in a public forum? He seems to still have ego in some sectors of life - as don't we all - but most of the blog was incredibly reflective and self-critical. Can you say you've endeavored to do the same?
How is any of this introspective, reflective, or self-critical? The author was a caricature of silicon valley tech bro-ness throughout, followed by a final return to form by deciding to "study physics" in order to start another company and sound smart at VC parties. He ended where he started, and managed to produce a carbon copy blog post about how great fortune doesn't solve all problems somewhere along the way. The only thing missing was spiritual enlightenment and self-discovery through some combination of drugs or a trip to burning man.
If you can't read the paragraphs where he goes over several of his flaws and how they led to his failures, shortcomings and misses in several aspects of his life - both personal and professional - I don't know what to tell you.
Yes, I read the whole thing, thanks. It's the standard form letter for people who beat the startup game after a life of mindless career-maxing. To me, this sort of thing reads as humble-braggy, faux-introspective slop. Now he can point to this blog and say: "I'm so brave for acknowledging my flaws", while avoiding any real effort to change.
Agreed. There's also a healthy dose of "My biggest flaw is that I work too hard."
The DOGE section is particularly cringe inducing, as it should have been 2-3 sentences, but is instead paragraphs of self-congratulatory filler the likes of which only politics can attain. Tangentially related (even though the article is purportedly about happiness), being involved in politcs is generally agreed as being a poor path to happiness (for well-adjusted people anyway, which perhaps the author isn't).
Having children would be the logical next step in a financially successful life, but it seems as though the author also probably burned that bridge.
There are many tactful, helpful articles describing why money doesn't buy happiness, this isn't one of them.
With that money, I'm sure the author will find a trophy wife, despite his personality flaws. It feels like that might all be part of the plan for his "next chapter" after leaving his girlfriend. "Sorry, it's not you, it's me". Classic.
As a young(ish) man with retirement level wealth personally I don't understand this primarily I suppose because my main passions in life are not profitable.
Great, so now I don't have to profitmax every single thing and can rely on my investments. That means I can study pottery, languages, learn about cars, guns, travel, spend time with my old mum, family, start a small business, whatever it is, without care for whether it contributes to the bottom line.
It kind of seems to me as if the poster here has some sort of savior complex - like they can't just be well off and enjoy it, they have to somehow change the world. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but at some point why not take time for you and yours?
I do however identify with the "it's not relatable" thing. If you live off of investments then suddenly you are, well, seperate, from people who can't, in a way that you can try to hide but it leaks out, you can't explain away being able to travel wherever whenever you want, etc.
tbh it sounds much more like he wants to be viewed as a saviour than actually improve anything significant to me.
"what I actually wanted was to look like Elon" feels like he's getting very close to grasping something fundamental about himself in a way that many similar dudes are incapable of doing.
This is how interpreted the post. Listing “throwing parties” as one of your hobbies shows they don’t really have deep passion curiosities like the things you listed can be.
Your parties must not be any good. People have entire careers just organizing events like weddings and corporate conferences. You can or as little or as much effort into throwing parties as you can pottery or any of the other things listed.
> you can't explain away being able to travel wherever whenever you want
Just lie and say you work for an AI startup that's in stealth mode and that they're sending you there for a work retreat to bond with your coworkers. Few people in your life care that much about your job to dig deeper.
Sure, you can do that. That's what I mean by being unable to relate.
It's not like it's a one off "I took a couple of days off to build a table" or "I used my X weeks holiday to go to Thailand", all of your hobbies, interests, travel, museum visits, etc etc happen all of the time when most people around you are doing a 9 to 5.
"How was work today?" It wasn't, I don't work, I haven't worked for years, I can tell you about my entrepreneurship or my studying or whatever but then again, now you know I don't work.
That's at a lower level. If you have 50 million like the author then you may well have multiple homes or just live out of hotels if you choose to, it's constant.
Sure, why don't I pop down to the spouse shop and pick one out from their extensive range?
There are almost no marriageable women around these days. Having $ does make getting laid very easy, but I'm not interested in that. Unfortunately it doesn't help at all in finding one of the good ones (perhaps it makes it even harder).
If I guess his views correctly and mix them with mine: women with an exemplary life hygiene - maintaining a near perfect body, no addiction or unhealthy obsession of any sort (tobacco, alcohol, drugs, TV, social medias, smartphones, travels, pets, etc...), chaste compared to nowadays' standard libertinage - intelligent and cultured (and I'm not talking about pop culture).
I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't know what to do.
There is diarrhea on my building, trash in the street, people needing medical help in the alley, and potholes in the street.
Just walk out your front door and start doing things.
My recent triumph was getting a building owner on my street to finally repair the hole in front of their building. Imagine what I could do with a backhoe.
Start small, think big. Help people who deserve it in real, honest (typically not through the computer) ways.
I'd much rather be less wealthy in that way to be rich in this way.
Author doesn't look like he cares much about other people. Dude left a job making 60 mil because of "NPCs and politics"... You could fund a school with that kind of many and still have enough to brag about your gaming setup
I always think if I won the lottery, I'd love to just make my local town awesome. Fund the schools, pay for parks, buy empty retail units and make them community spaces for artists. That sort of thing.
The author seems to wear their support of capitalism "on their sleeve", so acting in their self-interest is endemic. At the risk of sounding bitter, I imagine these problems aren't trendy enough to solve yet, or maybe they just had something akin to blinkers on en route to their hike.
I took about a year and a half off because I could afford it and I did so much and had such a good time I could do it forever. Freedom is wasted on this guy.
Therapy. Wealth and success is one of the most massive crutches there is. It can make it almost impossible to be truly in touch with your insecurities and pain because its simply too easy to hide in your victory. Your toughest challenge now is to, despite your wealth, find a way to contact the pain that drove you to your hunger for success. As the bible said, it's easier for a camel to get through the head of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. I interpret that metaphorically.
Therapy = Exactly. He thinks he has freedom and agency but he's just being puppeteered by conflicting subconscious forces he doesn't understand and seems to have no insight into. This is a man who's in a self-driving car turning a steering wheel that's connected to nothing.
"eye of the needle" refers to a small gate or passage in ancient city walls, used after the main gates were closed at night. A camel could only pass through this narrow opening if it was unloaded of its baggage and possibly crawled through on its knees.
Not as hard or impossible as it first appears but still harder.
From what I understand, this is actually highly debated among biblical scholars.
This idea that he meant "it's hard but not impossible" seems to generally be pushed by wealthy religions and "prosperity gospel" types.
Reading everything else Jesus said, I find it more likely that he literally meant the "eye of an actual needle". He did not seem to be a fan of the rich or powerful in any way.
It's not impossible for a rich person to develop spiritually and attain heaven. They just have to give up all their riches. So functionally it is easier for a camel to do this other equivalent nearly-impossible thing.
In a Catholic and the way those verses are interpreted is that it’s not that you have to give up all your money but give up greed, it basically means that you should not worship your wealth but place your highest of high towards God, then and only then you can use your wealth towards the Good as you have no more attachments.
I think Protestant have similar interpretations but I could be wrong as they have many denominations.
To be fair, needles at the time probably weren't as fine as they are these days, so you may still have a gap a millimeter across instead of a fraction of that.
A common myth! No, no gate or passage was ever referred to as "the eye of the needle" in antiquity. [1] That verse is intended to be taken literally. Jesus Christ was quite outspoken on his feelings about the wealthy, but of course, wealthy Christians need a way for him to have meant something figurative when he told them to surrender their worldly riches.
Jesus literally told his followers to give up their worldly possessions, but… sure. He intended to give a free pass to those who came after, that hinged on a quirk of city planning that would not exist until centuries later.
Oh yeah, I just clicked the link and it's Dan McClellan. Maybe TikTok isn't the best place to cite, but he's highly credible in terms of Biblical scholarship and history.
It's just an unsuitable, attention-zapping, toxic format for sharing information. It would be best to link to an article that can convey the full message. not a 15 second jolt which is what TT is all about.
Tiktok is particularly dangerous. And not because of the oft-repeated Chinese FUD (some of which may be true), but (my opinion here) it's the "crack" version of cocaine, or the "heroin" version of opium. Everything TT does goes straight to our psychological weaknesses.
Matters of religion (as well as philosophy) simply can't be covered in bite-size 2-minute "shorts".
If you prefer, he does a long form podcast called Data Over Dogma that is skeptical and informative. He uses TikTok because there are loads of people on the platform spewing misinformation about the Bible. He's meeting people where they are with empirical information
It's not true though (and no evidence that such a gate existed with that name).
It's more likely exaggeration referring to actual camel (the large animal of the area) and the eye of a needle (an example of the smallest hole one would be readily familiar with at the time).
If it was reffering to a named place, the very capable in both Jewish and Greek authors of the New Testament wouldn't have translated it as "τρυπήματος ῥαφίδος" (needle's opening) or "τρυμαλιᾶς ῥαφίδος" (needle's hole), as opposed to something like "narrow gate" or similar that would convey to people unfamiliar with Jerusalem the point.
A rich man won't be attracted to heaven in the first place, for it's a place for people who enjoy giving something to others and rarely think about themselves. Hell, on the other hand, would mesmerize a typical man of ambition for it's a world of selfish might and power.
This is pretty close to ancient eastern christian views on heaven and hell. In that view heaven and hell are the same situation: full exposure to the unattenuated light of god. A righteous & repentant person will experience that as love and mercy, and an unjust person will experience it as fear, shame & torture. But all get the same "treatment" so to speak.
This one was originally used to mock scholars who debated such seemingly obscure minutae at the expense of more pressing issues, the canonical example being theological debate during the fall of Constantinople. But I remember reading somewhere that this debate was actually for a good reason since Constantinople were looking for help from fellow Christians against the Ottomans but needed to convince the potential helpers that their beliefs were closely enough aligned enough to warrant them giving aid. Hoping someone here might know more (and apologies for derailing the thread even further...)
> it's easier for a camel to get through the head of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. I interpret that metaphorically.
I agree that there's a parallel between what Jesus meant and your comment—in both cases, wealth is dangerous because it distracts from what's important. To my understanding, Jesus meant that one's heart will be focused on money rather than wanting to follow God. And, like you said, it's really easy to be distracted by material success (money, degrees, fame, etc.). But, none of these things will follow us to the grave. IMO this sort of tunnel vision is really pernicious, because it's so, so easy to fall into.
If you'll allow a personal rant: I recently heard someone say that failure is—somewhat paradoxically—a crucial part of finding happiness, because it loosens our grip on things that are ultimately unimportant. I've been thinking about all this a lot recently myself. Last year I hit a bump in the road w.r.t. my career, due to factors outside of my control. So, for the first time, I was suddenly failing my subconscious goal to climb the ladder of achievement. I started feeling adrift and demotivated, and the obvious solutions (therapy, medication, more regular exercise) didn't help.
It eventually forced me to really sit down and take a hard look at my priorities in life. Speaking concretely, this meant 1) accepting that I might not get what I had wanted out of my career, and because I'm a Christian, 2) focusing instead on how I can serve God every day (love others more, be much more open about my faith, volunteer at church and elsewhere, etc.). That's much easier said than done, of course, but I've just gotta take the baby steps that I can and trust God with the rest.
It's only been a few months since I came to this conclusion, but I feel like it's changed my life. I've become much less stressed, and I feel much more fulfilled. Honestly, it's like I have hope again in my future.
Naïvely I want to say something like "therefore, everyone should try to find whatever brings them this fulfillment." But this might be too weak of a statement, because I really think there's only one true answer to this question.
P.S. As for the verse you quoted (Matthew 19:24), I'd be remiss not to point out what Jesus says a few verses later: "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." :-)
I'm not Christian but I definitely resonate with what you're saying about failure sometimes being a gift, if you can make use of it.
I wish I could be more religious, in a sense, but I just can't get my head around the concept of "serving" or "fearing" god. It's not how I relate to "the divine" at all. Power to you, though.
I can definitely sympathize with this guy. I imagine selling your company, coming into immense wealth, and losing your identity of ~10 years can really mess up an individual.
But at the same time... this seems rich coming from the dude who co-founded Loom. Calling his ex-coworkers NPCs and believing he's qualified to streamline the US government - all because he built a glorified screen recorder? Have some humility LOL.
After repeatedly mentioning talking/recruiting the "smartest people" around DOGE, that was enough to know this person's opinion isn't very important. Or more to the point, it's not an honest objective take.
Sort of like a TV or movie award show, with everyone praising everyone else's "genius".
Reads more like in-group flattery to establish position within the group.
Despite his best channeling of Russ Hanneman, he is one comma short of the tres comma club. Maybe his new passion in life will be getting his net worth to a billion dollars.
> Calling his ex-coworkers NPCs and believing he's qualified to streamline the US government - all because he built a glorified screen recorder? Have some humility LOL.
This is basically Elon Musk's MO. Except it was shiny cars and not a screen recorder.
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water"
You do what you were enjoying before, just now you don't need to get paid in money for it. May be you will get paid in fame, noble prize, smiles of people whose life you impact etc. The money you have can't buy those directly but only when you put effort.
It was only when I had kids that I understood what this means.
My children are not "my purpose." I mean, that would be a lovely sentiment, but it's not the actual truth.
But having kids (and being a hopefully-good father), means that no matter what else sucks at work, all the projects that didn't land, my boss's daily kicks to the crotch, and every multi-million job opportunity I stupidly turned down... I did right with those kids. If I had made any different choice in life --no matter how tiny-- those wonderful kids would not exist. And that satisfies my sense of Purpose.
SO true. I am having a midlife sort of crisis myself (lost as a founder a bit) but my kids keep me going with a purpose. When you have kids, you don't have the luxury of not doing anything.
One is some grandiose ill-defined thing. The other is housework.
I am certainly in the housework side right now with two kids under 5.
I am a dad, but I still derive quite a lot of identity from what I do for work. If anything, now that I am meeting more parents from nursery & school etc it feels it is almost more important for me now to be able to implicitly assert status through my work/wealth/house-in-desireable-location/car/etc than it was before kids.
I assumed those sort of feelings would dissolve with kids ("Purpose") but if anything the kids have magnified them. Potentially I am just a shallow prick, but I wonder if it is a "provider instinct" thing or perhaps just mini dopamine hits from feeling like I've got something desirable and meeting these other parents just reasserts that over and over.
“Two kids under five” is a tough stage, though (I can’t believe I’ve reached the point where I can say that retrospectively). Things come into focus a little more once your longest conversations with them aren’t about why they actually do need to wear shoes to school. You get hit with those moments where you realize the long term impact you’re having on their personalities and worldviews, and what an awesome responsibility that is.
Not totally unlike—and I get that this is peak hn, but since we’re talking work—building something and then seeing it run in the real world and having to live with your design decisions over the long term, etc etc etc.
Thank you for this, I'm glad to hear you acknowledge that having kids isn't a constant philosophical bliss. I have two under 5 as well and don't relate to the dozens of comments gushing about their kids, wanting to spend more time with them. A few hours a day with my 4 year old is plenty (and most days, too much).
No, the act of raising a kid itself gives people purpose, so it's not a pyramid scheme by any means, but let's not let facts come in the way of a zinger of a one-liner I guess?
it is, just like everything else, a manufactured purpose used to paper over the normal state of existential dread. just happens to be the one that most people default on.
NGL, still sounds like a pyramid scheme to me. I mean I like kids and I might have kids in the future. But I'd rather have purpose and joy and share that with future generations and keep it alive. I wanna be proud of humanity and what we are accomplishing and progressing into, not fix my own misery by bringing someone else into a world to distract me from existential dread.
It is perhaps a pyramid scheme if you look at it in a certain way. Which doesn’t mean it is bad (unless you are anti-natalist). It’s just funny that it can be conceptualized like that.
You spend 20–40 years trying various things, living for yourself, finding nothing that sticks. Apparently being an idiot, but you’re just inexperienced. There’s some hole in your life. Then you have kids. Aha! It makes sense. Living for others! This is it! The irony being that now those people-you-live-for have to go through the same process, where 1/3 to half their life they spend in that apparently meaningless phase where they haven’t found their purpose yet.
This is totally void if you are the kind of person who cruised by and was happy without children but then the transition to having children made total sense as well.
I personally don't want to have a kid of my own blood. But I want to adopt one or two and maybe foster a few IF I become financially capable, which is probably a decade or so away.
I do believe that having a kid of your own in this day and age (esp. when you are working day job and depending on that job for healthcare, housing, etc.) is unfair for the kid who will join you in your life. Sure you'll love him/her, but the reality is the kid will have to grind (again, assuming that you are not a multi-millionaire) when s/he reaches certain age. The best use of our resources, when we accumulate a good amount of wealth to sustain ourselves and have a bit more extra to spare, is to adopt/foster or do something philanthropic entirely (so many homeless, sick, hungry people that you can help).
"The point" for me would not be spreading my genes. It would be to spread my parenting and resources.
Possibly an easier idea for me because several of my many siblings already have multiple children that could be swapped in to my childhood photos without anyone noticing. My genes are pretty well established.
Well god what a fabulous thing that will actually be, if you can find the right ones to care for. I would not be telling neighbors or strangers though. Rather than seeing you as a kind or good person, others being stupid cunts will most of the time perceive you as a naïve "nice guy" or some sort of cuckold. But you have the capability of changing multiple kids lives for the better. Its a beatiful thing you are thinking of doing but also sometimes there's a line and you should be selfish like everyone else is. The likelihood is that those kids will grow up to just be like everyone else, selfish etc. So your decision should probably depend most on whether you find the right kids who will appreciate it.
You can start by taking out the trash, and if you are going to sit on your arse all day tomorrow then here is a list of stuff that needs doing around the house.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
I'm not sure if Mary Schmich (who did write it) takes pride in her words being frequently credited to an esteemed writer, or if it rankles. Later Baz Luhrmann made the words into a #1.
Anyway, I agree. You don't need to know where to go next, just be curious and find things as you investigate. Sometimes a project will call to you. Don't be concerned if it hasn't yet.
Your project does not have to be a business. If you wanted to embark on a Dwarf Fortress kind of project you could happily work at it for the rest of your life without needing it to be a money making venture. Your Dwarf Fortress might be A database of the world's cheese or a castle built entirely from synthetic diamonds you produce one at a time from your own machine. It doesn't have to be easy or even possible to complete. I don't think you can decide on something and go do it. I think your thing will tell you when it is ready.
Thanks for writing this. It reminds me of Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford.
> Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Agreed, but it’s remarkable how well this approach worked for him till then. No approach can solve every problem. I wonder if this one, on balance, was the right one for him, or for others.
He had an inoperable cancer and wanted to spend his remaining time doing what he wanted rather than sitting in a hospital getting ultimately fruitless treatments. Pancreatic cancer doesn't fuck around. It's not like he died of pneumonia because he loved sleeping outdoors in the rain.
What? That's not at all the case. The type of cancer that Jobs has could be surgically removed. He spent time receiving alternative treatments and delayed his surgery.
> Jobs had a rare form of the cancer, known as neuroendocrine cancer, which grows more slowly and is easier to treat
> GEP-NETs are slow growing tumors that have the potential to be cured surgically if the tumor is removed prior to metastasis.
> Many journalists mentioned and even focused on Jobs’ initial decision to forego conventional treatments and instead use complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies, including acupuncture, botanicals, and dietary changes.
Perhaps I missed something, but from what I saw none of his attempts to do something new seemed to involve any kind of genuine efforts to improve the lives of others...
Bit amazing that wasn't even something he would consider.
sounds more like he would to fire everyone (DOGE "efficiency") and let the robots do the work (transfer of wealth from workers to corporations); not sure where that leaves humans ...
Yeah, I was going to comment that doing volunteer work in some form could go a long way towards curing what ills him. Surprised that that wasn't even mentioned in TFA.
I get the impression his past ideology looked down on that kind of volunteering, this is someone who thinks working for DOGE (department of government efficiency) is a humanitarian action.
I suppose "the author can go fuck himself" is a frowned-upon response on Hacker News
Like what an incredibly egocentric, condescending, deplorable way to talk about other human beings with their own rich inner lives, desires, needs, relationships, etc.
"No, they're just pre-programmed, unthinking bots following basic algorithms."
Thank you for writing this. Not gonna cry for this guy, he clearly appears to be a POS who happened to sell a screen recording software company at an obscene price.
Same with Musk, same with Zuckerberg, these entitled twats then use their money to try and convince the world that they are enlightened prophets, all while contributing nothing to the happiness and beauty of the world.
I’ve long been of the opinion that you can’t love others until you love yourself. Between the NPC comment and breaking up with his girlfriend, I’d say he has a long way to go, if he ever gets there at all. Hope he does.
Hard to stomach but you can't deny honesty. I wouldn't be surprised that more business high brass people think that way about the workers but are smart enough not to be open about it.
Otherwise the guy doesn't seem to be having a crisis at all. The problem is he's been doing business for the past 10 years. Likely put in a lot more hours than needed. Now business is all he knows and catching up to doing something more meaningful is hard.
It reminds me of the Sheeple comic from xkcd. It's common for people to fall into the mental pattern of thinking everyone else is a mindless drone.
Our brains are not evolved for the scale of human civilisation. The mind rebels trying to accept that 8 billion people have as much going on (or more) than you do.
"NPC coworkers" is a provocative way of phrasing it, but yesterday I saw another HN commenter say "We all know that society is propped up by people going to work and doing nothing much of value". This is mostly the same mindset.
I disagree completely with the implication of last paragraph. For one thing, if an employee has only busywork to do, that is the fault of the elites running the company, not the employee.
To jump from "managers don't know how to allocate tasks" to "the employee being managed is an unthinking, fungible automaton" is enormous.
The disdain of this shithead toward coworkers is misplaced. He accuses his coworkers who are being mismanaged of being NPCs when it's more apt to accuse the managers of being bad "game designers," to carry the analogy further.
It's also a weird analogy to make in 2025, when co-op games exist. What mental deficiency, what arrogance must you suffer from to analogize coworkers to pre-programmed non-humans when actual humans play the games with you these days?
Edit: His entire line of thinking reminds me so much of the stupid geeks in high school who looked at athletically-gifted classmates and said "they aren't deep like I am." Give me a break. The shallow ones are the ones incapable of identifying the spark of the divine in people different from themselves.
we're reading a lot into a two word phrase. NPC coworkers could mean a lot of things. For instance, in a world of gamers, it could just mean none of them are on an actual quest and only have menial tasks.
There's a lot of anger at this choice in wording here, but it seems very clear to me his mindset. He lacks empathy. There's a scale from sociopath to "I need to sit on all the cushions in my house an equal amount of time so they don't get sad", and it's clear he's further to one end.
If you can't empathise with someone and understand (to some extent) their world view, it would be very easy to see them as alien, programmed NPCs. Not everyone can easily train their empathy muscle.
Sounds a lot like the guy who said I have 23 gold medals and have no idea what to do (Michael Phelps). Although it isn't a DSM recognized condition, psychologists often refer to the depression of people who obtain the pinnacle of success as “post-gold medal depression.” Here is an article about it. [0]
"What shall we ever do?" -- T.S. Eliot - The Wasteland
"What SHOULD we do?" -- Dr. Seuss - The Cat in the Hat
Regarding the part of breaking up with girlfriend shortly after a winning startup exit, I'm reminded of a friend. (Different situation, but something to think about.)
She saw her bf through the difficult process of a developing a creative work, and eventually he completed it, won a prestigious reward... and he broke up with her.
He got invited to the White House because of the award, and I think missing out on that recognition and experience, where she could've attended as the partner, was symbolic for her.
It wasn't that he was upgrading, since she was an all-around catch, including probably being fabulous at whatever kind of cocktail party circles he entered.
It did seem like awkward timing, to decide that a relationship wasn't going to work out, after all.
(Don't worry, she's OK now: highly accomplished in her own career and creative side, and is also raising a family with a better match.)
> And suddenly wanting to "find yourself" when you don't need the support any more.
It's like you took away the literal opposite meaning of what OP wrote. The entire post is him sharing his personal crisis and total lack of purpose and motivation. He is literally saying he does not know what he needs to find his way out of that.
But he decided he needed to not be in a relationship (or in that specific relationship) at this time. How does that make him a shitty person?
Surely you're not suggesting he should stick with her so she can partake in the financial gains.
Life doesn't always play out with clean narratives. People change in unexpected ways and sometimes getting through a tough time is specifically what prompts growth.
Not surprising for someone who describes post-acquisition colleagues as NPCs. They do have a modicum of self-awareness around wanting to be Elon, so perhaps there's hope. I'm only realizing now how empathy goes a long way in giving a sense of purpose.
It reads like the first act for a movie that can go in one of many directions: a drama about a middle-aged, coke-fiend Miami "baller"; a tragedy about a bad Ayahuasca trip that leads to a psychotic break; or a heartwarming romantic comedy about an asshole with a heart of gold who finds themself (and true love) in Hawaii, with a quirky, doe-eyed British tourist as the love interest.
Edit: curious to know that the DOGE has ramped up and staffed with SV geniuses to be set loose on complex systems with long feedback loops. The next four^w few years will be interesting.
The whole post is Hannemanesque, isn't it? It could easily be a flashback episode (or prequel spin-off) of Russ' struggles after selling his Radio on Internet startup. For timeline purposes, he'd briefly work for VP Cheney's task Force on Iraq, until he gets bored.
When a relationship fails you can be certain about one thing: something wasn't working. Many bad relationships continue, but no good relationships end. There are many factors that can make a relationship bad that people will not talk about, like sex. You just have to give people the benefit of the doubt really.
Serious question, but how exactly does Atlassian hope to recoup that billion dollars?
Loom is useful, but given that Atlassian's investors are expecting a large return, do they really hope a screen recorder to eventually add 2B+ dollars to their value? The AI features will eventually be commoditized, so that can't act as a moat.
It will integrate with their other products and add value through lock in. Same as all of their other acquisitions. Atlassian is all about building an ecosystem so valuable you don't even want to escape.
it's not just the screen recorder: it's also the large userbase, the corporate connections, and the IP. if the stock goes up a few percent that alone covers the purchase
I think that a lot of people with money need to be reminded that having wealth is a social responsibility in itself. If you can live just from passive income maybe you should just gift interesting people the excess money and have them accomplish their goals.
Talk to a bunch of people and realize what you want to support. If some of them need 10k to start a business just give it to them. Or, if you want some equity, put it in a non-profit that reinvest its earnings. Go to a film school, organize a contest and fund the movie of the most promising students.
I was never rich like the author, yet I once gave a bookbinder that I had hired to make a cool leather-bound book the starting capital he needed to make his own shop just because it turned out so well and he was so passionate about it. Looking back, it still feels great to have helped someone like this.
Humans need activities that produce meaningful outcomes, they don't need careers or work.
Really beautifully said. Wealth does indeed carry the responsibility of giving back to your community the same way the community gave to you to gain the wealth to begin with.
Bettering your community not only benefits the receiver but also, I strongly believe, one’s own conscious and sense of belonging to said community.
> Humans need activities that produce meaningful outcomes, they don't need careers or work.
Human needs purpose in life, does not matter whether it activities for meaningful outcomes, careers, work, family or God, it's in our very nature.
The blog post appeared to me of someone who have achieved mostly what they have aspired to become (rich and freedom from jobs) and at their top apex from their own perspective, however the main dilemma is that after achieving the goals still something important is missing i.e. purpose.
Not sure if I agree with it in this form, as I think people can get by quite well without an explicit purpose. My grandparents were farmers, and I've never pictured them to feel any specific purpose. They were still content with their lives, as they simply didn't even considered the question of what their purpose was.
Modern success is all about fixating on a single measurable goal, and grinding that out. What if there is no single purpose but rather a diffuse set of meanings? Even worse, half the battle is you figuring out what this set of meaningful goals is, where before the goal was given to you (make lots of money).
Sorry, as a farmer you have a very clearly defined purpose (and it might be more implicit than explicitly said out loud, but it's very clear nevertheless). And that's to make sure that you have enough to eat for your family and your animals, and enough to sell, and enough seed for next year.
That's why there's no ruminating for a purpose - it never comes up, because it's so clear. And that's why we're often quite rudderless once the basics are secured.
My grandmother lacked vocabulary that can be used to describe 'purpose' -- or mental issues. One word she would very rarely use was 'dharma' i.e. duty. Though I am not sure if she used it in this way.
There were only a few things she really cared about: the health and general well-being of her children and grandchildren and when her grandchildren will have children. It seems to me it was her 'purpose', at least she values these things so much that can be easily confused as purpose.
Why do we need purpose beyond existence? We're here to experience a unique life that nobody else will experience, no matter how many commonalities are shared. Yet people are never content with that, and feel they must have a "greater" purpose, when reality is that there is no greater purpose than mere existence.
> having wealth is a social responsibility in itself
We even have a word for this, noblesse oblige. It used to refer to the aristocracy, but I don't see much difference between the aristocracy of old and the moneyed classes of today.
If you're smart you regularly walk through life seeing people hurt each other by letting screwed-up systems fester.
Even if you're really callous and rational about opportunity cost, you can only walk by so many systemic-equivalents of burning buildings before you're eventually like, "damn it, okay I'm going to save this kid but just this once".
Being smart and systems-aware in today's world is like walking by a burning building every day with very long, fireproof arms. "Noblesse" is the wrong word but something like this is a thing. Mathiness oblige?
Honestly for some people, just getting debt paid off might be enough of a life changer, in some cases the debt isn't substantial but the income / debt ratio is just not in the best spot. Heck having one or more less bills to worry about could be a tide changer with immense impact.
I know if I could worry less about my mortgage even for a few months, it would have major impacts on my family's life. I cannot imagine others on similar situations, or with way more debt but the income isn't enough.
>need to be reminded that having wealth is a social responsibility in itself
read up on the "is-ought problem": from whatever is, you cannot get an ought nor a should. You simply have to adopt them as beliefs, just like belief in a diety (though some might argue that's an "is" :) and others may not share your beliefs, nor... should... they
I'm not sure what you mean. I do believe this is essentially a value judgement, but one which I think is essential for any well functioning society, at least based on my personal interpretation.
> having wealth is a social responsibility in itself
Warren Buffet has said that every dollar he owns is an IOU that he owes to society - somebody worked hard, produced value, he is in custody of it for the time being, but it has to be paid back by him.
No. He wanted to help DOGE dismantle the US government. People like that should just blow their money on themselves and the people they like and leave the rest of us alone.
"Having wealth makes you responsible to others, therefore you should do arson."
If you manage to help make a powerful machine and then convert some piece of it into liquid value, you are probably good at stuff and whatever responsibility you have to others includes using that alongside the liquid value.
And worse, it's not just on you to do what people say they want. You're also actually responsible for trying to figure out what they would find most valuable. ("If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”)
You're making a strong implication that the companies that make money are the things that people need. The correlation seems to be growing weaker every year as far as I've seen.
Is your point that the money should go to companies that make things that people need as opposed to want? Or is your point that the money somehow flows to companies that make things that people neither need nor want?
Try to think about it in less capitalist terms. Say you built the world's first bicycle and can now move faster / more efficiently than anyone else.
What is the most likely thing that will happen if you give the bicycle away to the person who appears to need it the most and go do something else? (One broken bicycle.)
On the flip side, isn't the most important thing you can work on something like, "figure out how to make a bicycle—and maintenance supply chain—for everyone who wants one"?
The OP's whole point is that he has money, not ideas. Plus, in your example, you could literally do both. Plus, money is not the same thing as IP or creativity. Plus, the post you were responding to was literally advocating giving the money to the people with ideas of how to do good for the world.
There may or may not be a moral imperative to give away excess wealth, but there damn sure isn't any moral imperative to keep it.
If we take the post at face value, OP is saying that he has too many ideas (robots! DOGE!) to have conviction around any, which is a pretty normal predicament for founders.
He also has a track record of having an idea, figuring out how to make the idea useful to others, and turning that into a self-sustaining machine.
All of these are much more important than an idea alone.
As everybody here knows, just having an idea for, say, an app is of very limited value. The trick is being able to mold the idea into what people actually want it to be, and find some model that lets you and them split the value, so the work can continue. The same is true in any kind of political or social activity. Ideas are almost worthless.
As in software, people who are capable of actually executing on their ideas for making the world better are almost always also capable of getting the funding they need, one way or another. People are always the bottleneck, not funding. (Ask anyone who runs a grant program about how hard it is to find effective people to give to.)
Sure, if OP runs into an extremely skilled world-changer with a great track record he should donate 10-50k and introduce the person to some other post-exit friends. But will that skilled and effective person find funding whether he donates or not? Definitely.
The post I was responding to was advocating for giving money to people with an idea for how to make the world better who would otherwise never be able to do it.
The existence of such people is almost a myth.
They do exist, but they're impossible to find in the haystack of people who are guaranteed to fail at executing their idea. If you look for people with ideas for making the world better who aren't doing them because they don't have the money, and give them money, nothing will happen. That's arson.
Also, in my example, you can't really do both. The most efficient system for getting a bicycle to everyone who needs one will involve selling the bicycles. Without capturing some of the value of the bicycles you're making, you'll never be able to make as many.
> If you manage to help make a powerful machine and then convert some piece of it into liquid value, you are probably good at stuff
Not at all. Nobody is "good at stuff" in general. People have particular areas of competence at best. Disasters arise when someone who has achieved success off the back of one particular skill set assumes they have general competence at everything and then makes leadership decisions from a position of blind arrogance.
If you manage to help make a powerful machine, you are probably a good machinist. This does not mean you should become a CEO or a venture capitalist or some other sort of "value decider." Your skill is in making powerful machines. If you want to move into a new field, you have to do so as a beginner.
I stopped working over twenty years ago and it was the best thing to ever happen to me. I spent thousands of days with my children, paid off my house, we drove brand new cars for the first time ever.
Over time, I’ve just found things to do with my time. I try project Euler problems and I’m pretty interested in meteorology. The rest of the time, I just participate in things my kids are interested in or involved in, though it’s not as easy as when I was young.
Routine is key, and being honestly and wholeheartedly engaged is key. You gotta do the time, don’t let the time do you.
If it weren’t for my kids and my wife, I would’ve blown the money and ended up in poverty or something.
My heart goes out to people raising young ones in today’s world. Seems like things have only gotten harder and more confusing for young parents compared when my babies were young. We didn’t even HAVE smartphones when they were small.
Yeah; I have 2 kids in their 20s and 2 in elementary school, and can attest that all the "shiny tech" has made it so much more difficult for parents to raise kids. And their future is so much more uncertain and _not_ in a good way. I look around and don't see much effort into building a better world for our children. There's global issues like "how will climate change affect my kids when they're in their 40s trying to raise kids of their own", but closer to home there's more personal questions like "what should I encourage my child to learn or study when AI could plausibly take over many careers that seemed solid", not to mention that unless you are rich (which we're not), the cost of college is frightening (you want your kid to be able to go to a good college if they can get in, but not be saddled with debt on the way out; my elder daughter got a full academic ride in engineering but not everyone has those capabilities), and just the competition to get in is so much greater than it was. No regrets as my youngest are wonderful human beings, but so much more anxiety as a parent than 20-25 years ago :/
"Working at DOGE" for 4 weeks reminds be of "Teach for America"... maybe it's fairly smart people with decent intentions [1] but not what's needed - not people taking a break from getting rich to do some charity work - rather what's needed is dedicated professionals devoting their careers to teaching / governance.
[1] for the record, I don't think that DOGE has good intentions. A lot of the tweets are nonsensical and I think just a rebranding for typical Republican cuts to health and retirement spending in exchange for more tax breaks at the top.
Signal is widely used among high-ranking and/or appointed officials in the bureaucracy. From what I have observed, this is true on both sides of the aisle.
also we already know what Elon efficiency looks like: firing a bunch of people
I'd honestly prefer my tax dollars be spent creating jobs than going into the pockets of the billionnaires providing the "efficiency" (i.e., large corps offering AI/automation).
Not just rebranding, but it's going to provides useful decision-laundering political cover, similar to what McKinsey and other consultants offer management. They were going to do it anyway, but the public reason becomes "It's not our idea, but DOGE (or the consultants) recommended it."
I read the blog post and many of the comments and can’t help but think… how is it you guys are so smart you can create enormous amounts of wealth with no idea what to use it on?
There are millions of people struggling to survive and you have amassed a pile of resources you’ve determined the best thing to do with is bury?
There is a lot of luck involved in striking it rich and naiveté helps pave the way. Look at the section of the blog post on DOGE.
Doesn't it seem pretty childish and immature to think one is going to change the US with an organization that 1) isn't an official government agency and 2) has no political power. If Elon drops dead or falls out of favor with Trump the project is basically dead.
I felt similar when I finished my PhD. It was the singular “thing” in my life to the exclusion of all others. Luckily I was 150k in debt so I didn’t have the luxury of acting like a buffoon for months.
Man if I was rich I’d donate half, invest half, and go back to stocking a small family owned grocery store like when I was in high school. I really enjoyed that job.
It’s a weird post. Part cry for help, part not-so-humble brag, and 100% not something any close friend, significant other, or therapist would recommend you hit send on. Feels a little strung-out, to be honest.
“Rich guy is bored, you’ll never believe what happens next”
despite the title..i read this post as an exhaustion with SV culture. everything starting with the personality types that are elevated (ie some flavor of antisocial personality disorder) and ending with the activities that earn you social capital (ie identifying the next anti-consensus big industry).
i've seen this happen with people that have had much much smaller financial success in the industry..or even ones that haven't had any at all. you are either naturally inclined to identify with the culture or you trick yourselves into it so that you may belong.
<insert paragraph about social desire to be connected and how we construct an image of ourselves through others>
the culture of SV today is an amalgamation of Taylorist ideas, Randian objectivism, Utilitarianism etc etc. there is a lot of social capital to be earned by embodying the values of these currents. DOGE is a quintessential representation of this. it is not surprising at all that author had such a visceral reaction to it.
its important to emphasize that there have been very successful companies that have gone against the current (ie Apple), with an emphasis on craftsmanship, obsession with the process, taste-driven vs data-driven decisions and appreciation for things that are outside of profit maximization.
My take is the opposite of yours. The guy loves SV culture. Most of the article is a humble-brag about it.
His problem is that $60m is not enough to be an important player in that world. He was just a cog in the DOGE machine which wasn't enough after being number 1 at Loom.
He has now decided to study physics to try and be like the tech bro messiah Elon.
I find the tone jarring. The author is all over the place. It feels like the author is trying to brag with every quasi-unconventional activity they've taken. Hiking in the redwoods, climbing a 6800m mountain and joining DOGE are a trifecta of cliches.
It's sad that the author broke up with their girlfriend, who was likely the only source of reason in their situation.
Genuine, selfless, introspection might help find a path. Hiking in the redwoods doesn't automatically produce introspection.
> with all the mounting insecurities I had stuffed down over the past several years. I didn’t feel like I could work on them with her. So I broke things off after almost 2 years of unconditional love. It was extremely painful, but it was the right call. I needed to fully face myself.
You had something really special. You obviously miss her. I am not saying that anything will come from it, but why not try some therapy and see if you guys can work things out? What you had was harder to find than the dollar amounts in your blog post. A lot of people just don't find that at all.
Yeah it’s always interesting to me when people get rid of stabilizing social forces in their life to “work on themselves”. Changing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, in fact, it’s usually DUE TO those social forces that we learn, grow, and improve.
Gutting an otherwise healthy relationship to navel-gaze seems like a bad choice.
Source: My wife has absolutely pushed me to address hard things in my life and I’m better for it.
That's such a thoughtful thing to say! thank you for sharing that Adam. I hope you've told her this too, it would mean a lot for her to hear you say so. I find that a good encouragement as I seek to one day be married again :)
It's not a panacea, and the way people talk about it drives me crazy. There are many different modalities, with very different levels of effectiveness for any given person. CBT is awful for me, for example, and it's the most popular modality. I also did ketamine-assisted therapy and it absolutely changed my life.
There are definitely people who won't get anything from it, but the reflexive "therapy is useless" is a weird thing to perform when it's obviously helped a ton of people.
Everyone I’ve known to say they know all their issues has been blind to many obvious (externally) problems. I tried several different therapists until I tried psychoanalysis instead and it helped. That said, it’s true that many problems cannot be solved and must instead be grieved.
Doesn't sound like the author has any idea what issues plague them, based on what I read. Lots of plausible sounding ideas in this thread, if a therapist helps them figure out which ones are accurate, money can (probably) help them make the changes.
It certainly did for me. Practically the first thing my therapist said to me was exactly what he said to someone else before, since apparently it really helped the first person.
The next session was my last, when I told him I had figured out the issue. I don't even know what he said any more, but I haven't had that particular kind of depression recur for like 6 years now.
Gives no guarantees for your own experience of course, just wanted to give a different perspective.
If you believe that there are "good" mindsets and "bad" mindsets (relative to what you want in life), and that it's possible to change one's mindset, it follows that having guidance can help there.
Maybe you don't believe that a professional therapist can offer that guidance, of course.
It’s sort of like the parent whose kids have finally left home or the person who hits retirement after decades of routine. You spend so long in a role that demands all your energy—raising children, clocking into work, scaling a startup—that once it’s gone, it feels disorienting. It’s not really about the money he made; it’s about losing the sense of urgency and purpose that kept him going. Now he’s stuck figuring out how to fill that void, which is something parents and retirees often deal with, too.
Professional athletes who retire face a similar void after years of training for a single goal; military personnel returning from deployment often grapple with the loss of a clear mission; newly graduated students or PhD candidates who’ve just defended their thesis can feel a void, too. It’s the same pattern: once your main structure or purpose vanishes, you have to figure out how to fill the space it leaves behind.
His story is not about money. Although many see that as the main info here, it’s not. It’s about losing identity, the main goal in life.
I'm confused. He discovered robotics is hard/boring/silly/whatever--that makes sense. Now he moved to Hawaii to study physics (over mechanical engineering) so he can build physical things. It seems like he's relearning the robotics mistake.
He also had a moment where he realized how he wanted to look (or be seen) like Elon, and how that's so cringe. Then he goes and works for Elon on the "extremely important" mission of DOGE.
It sounds like what he really wants is a mission where he's learning.
I have the opposite problem: I’m dependent on my job’s salary but know exactly what I want to do instead. Unfortunately the job makes my life so drained I can’t pursue my true callings.
This is true pain. To think a rounding error could free grinders like us to solve Actual Problems like disrupting Chrome hegemony, building user-respecting OSes and relighting the now nearly dimmed torch dropped so many years ago by Mozilla.
Actual problems are things like extreme poverty, access to drinking water, deforestation and habitat destruction, climate change etc. Not internet browsers. Good grief.
I became debt free about a year ago and thought I should get into investing. It turned out that it's incredibly boring to me and because of that I haven't been able to learn it properly.
I also thought that if I became really good at it, I would just have more money that I don't know how to spend.
The classic rich guy to Himalayas pipeline. He went to the poorest country in Asia and was dragged up island peak and lobuche east by people making $1000/yr while he has $60m in his pocket and can't come up with anything worthwhile to do with his time or money beyond aspiring to be Elon. He can't even spell rappel correctly. What a coward
It’s always climbing mountains. Why does nobody ever go money-mad and excavate an exact replica of the dwarven city of Khazad-dûm in the Black Hills of South Dakota?
The mountains are loaded with metaphor, seem nearly insurmountable, filled with danger and excitement…
Turns out, of course, that they are less dangerous than in the past, money goes a long way, and the human body is pretty good at walking even without training.
Notice it’s never free climbing the nose in a day, which would require 5-7 years of dedicated training.
It's very interesting to see these same patterns at the micro level. Often, people start doing what other people are doing: book some massively expensive trip to go climb mount Everest, travel the world to snap a selfie at tourist traps, etc. You wont find happiness following the herd.
As I've become more successful, I've had similar problems. It's tempting to think "yeah just more money and I'd be happy". Instead, what has made me happy is much cheaper: general learning, and developing new physical skills. As my coworker put it, "I don't collect things or experiences, I collect hobbies".
If I had to pick a celebrity that seems to do this well, I'd pick Jay Leno (granted there's a lot of criticize him elsewhere, so maybe don't nitpick here). Watching him talk about his cars: restoring them, working on them, preserving them, trading, while ignoring a lot of other celebrity pleasures.
Finally, the other thing that has been extraordinarily gratifying is old fashioned advice: Live below your means. This by gives me more satisfaction than anything else and I'm not really sure why.
Also how many mouths his passion of cars must feed. I can't see how it could make money; clearly a passion project to drop $ for so much labour on restoring cars just for the pleasure of it and not the economics.
I believe one of the founders of Booking.com has had some similar experience (source: "De Machine", the book about Booking.com) and after 4 years of travelings & yoga etc. he sneaked back in into the company. Most of his coworkers do not know he's a founder. He's been fixing Perl bugs, writing scripts and coding some features at least for some years (maybe he's moved on already, don't know, the book is a couple of years old).
Sounds like a great book. Did you happen to read it in English? Ask because my brief search for it shows at least one review saying it's a bad translation.
I honestly cannot imagine living with these thought patterns, it truly sounds like hell to me. You don’t need to do hard things or overcome adversity every day to have purpose and find life fulfilling, it is an Infinite Game (read the book), not a Finite one.
If you are reading the comments, IMO these giant grand gestures to find some spark of insight (climbing mountains, moving to Hawaii, etc.) aren’t going to accomplish what you want. Ground yourself - go volunteer at a homeless shelter. Get a hobby that is social that you have no innate skill for, don’t tell anyone about your money, make some friends while learning a low-pressure skill. Don’t do anything until after the first day you didn’t worry about what you were going to do. Recover from your burnout.
same experience will give different teachings to different people. for you going to a homeless shelter may help you appreciate life more, see that you can make a change in others by helping them etc. for someone wired differently - it may be a yucky experience with smelly people. so ymmv
It's weird to me how often people come away from interacting with the poor with a reaction that would seem overly stilted and unfair if it was put in a cartoon
Im sorta where this guy is but not wealthy much and my money train could run out and I'd have to find a new one.
With that said I have lots of time on my hands, some work projects to focus on from time to time and currently single as of this summer. I live alone and a ton of my time is spent on apps connecting with people to meet up offline for adventure and adult fun in the hopes I will find my new person or new friend(s). It's a full time job but for me really worth finding my new person (or friends) to enjoy life with!
I definitely wouldnt be lost if I was completely set I'd have more resources to have many homes in different parts of the world, immerse myself in different cultures and enjoy my outdoor activities (skiing, hiking, kayaking, surfing, etc) with locals in different parts of the world (Iceland, Colorado, Miami, Hawaii, Australia) . As well turn my hobbies like songwriting and creating tech into more then a hobby and most importantly help people succeed!
There are 739 comments in this thread and only one of them mentions emotion. That comment is suggesting the appropiate emotion is gratitude.
I'd go further and suggest you take your time and resources to learn about your emotional state and regulate your emotions so you can help others do the same. Find what you want to be a student of from that calm, content emotional state and with less attachment on how to live your life you will likely find more clarity.
I'm not in the US or San Francisco, I totally don't get the purpose of this post. It's like dude's living in a bubble after all this time. Dude should travel to poorer countries (like where I'm from right now) and get some inspiration.
Everyone calling Loom a glorified screen recorder... there was a $975M dollar bill on the floor and no one else picked it up.
The technology was simple, but it solved a real problem for people. Solving well defined engineering tasks is vastly easier than solving a real problem.
Nobody said he wasn’t talented or hardworking, surely he is, extremely. It’s almost always a prerequisite for this sort of success.
But for every successful founder, there are thousands of founders who are more talented and more hardworking and ended up failing. There are so many factors at play and most of them are unknown or beyond your control.
What I’m saying is that this guy needs to learn humility and gratitude. This article reeks of Main Character Syndrome. Once he learns that his path to find happiness is going to be much easier (and I genuinely wish that for him).
If you are rich you have the ability to become a scientist without worrying about money. That is an absurd privilege that I am personally working towards. To contribute to science is one of the most enduring things you can do for humanity. The money will come and go. Even if you pass it down, it will be diluted away within 2-3 generations. But, if you contribute knowledge, it will forever be a brick in the edifice of humanity's collective knowledge. Please don't waste the opportunity.
Sounds like a good time to engage a professional coach or therapist, if you haven't already. Particularly to deep dive on the questions asked at the end of the post. In my experience, I often stalemate these kinds of internal debates on my own, but having a second player in the mix got me out of the gridlock.
How about "sharing your money back" ? Or "helping" other in any kind of way ? Focusing on something else than yourself ? You have immense freedom, but also incredible power given your wealth. Lots of things that would be hard choices for most people will be about pocket changes for you.
In the end, your life expectancy is finite. Add a couple of philosophy book to the physics regimen, find a cause where you money can be put to good use. And "live hapilly in the meantime".
Go read a book, contribute to linux kernel, eat a cheeseburger, get in a nice hotel, watch movies, learn to cook, drive though the country, befriend locals, start a wine collection, earn a master's degree, publish papers..
The author seems to put great value on doing grandiose things, so those suggestions may seem frivolous.
It's a respectable goal to pursue huge achievements in professional life, but please be aware that it involves lots of: (a) talk to other people and (b) doing mundane stuff most of the time. It all depends on how hard you want it.
One option not mentioned is to find fulfillment in helping others -- not "helping people making $200K be even more efficient" or "fixing the US government by making it more efficient (mostly by firing a bunch of people, which helps who exactly?)" but people who __actually__ need help -- and there is a very very wide spectrum to work with there of all types of needs. The freedom to deeply engage with that from some angle -- without having the burden of having to also make or earn money while doing so -- is a huge privilege.
I think OP's title itself answers the question — they're wealthy, and most if not all things that he could really want in the world is a transaction away. "Constraints" are key to finding purpose and direction. There can be a right/optimal set of constraints, but when there seems to be none, any is better. Constraints forbid us from being able to have something in life (things or experiences) that we also want. When we can satisfy any want, it doesn't feel like the wants matter anymore. The very reason the want existed in the first place was because it was not something that was possible at the time.
I'd advise OP to strategize smartly, given they have enough money to last a simple and full life, save, invest, donate, and keep the transactions small; ie. not investing or donating all or a majority of wealth into one thing, instead of a little bit here and a little bit there, every now and then, gradually and slowly.
Taking it slower itself is a form of constraint. And together with keeping relationships and connections, minimizing the noise in life, and making it simpler towards enjoying the truer pleasures of their life, they can grow richer and live more luxuriously, not just in terms of wealth, but also in a safer, more secure and a cozier human experience.
> "Constraints" are key to finding purpose and direction.
I would modify this as "externally imposed constraints w.r.t. socially validated goals". I had come to this conclusion long ago based on my study of philosophy and my own life situation. I had to give up a software career to become a caregiver; my needs and wants being few and frugal with no dependents i found myself in a situation where i had a place stay, clothes to wear and enough food to eat and no "goal" in life i.e. freedom. That was when i realized that every goal had been imposed from outside and i had simply followed a socially validated path taking it as my own. Breaking out of this cycle means you are suddenly in a situation where you have to define your own goal from a large options menu with no constraints pushing you one way or another. This is when a feeling of "emptiness" dawns on you i.e. everything feels unnecessary/empty/worthless without social validation. Note that it has nothing to do with the amount of wealth you have but having enough for oneself based on how you choose to live.
You did a speed run of what people discover when they work their entire life for retirement, get there, and realize they don't know what they were working for.
Retirement
F-U money ("FIRE" in modern parlance I guess)
Save n dollars
It's all the same: too abstract. That you were able to discover it now with plenty of life left and plenty of resources to figure it out is worth more than the money.
Personally, I always try to keep enough saved to replace my computer all at once if it dies on me. If I lose that, it's hard to pursue my hobbies and interests while trying to figure out which parts of them I can sell without losing what made them interesting in the first place.
For what to do with it, I found it helpful to pick a hobby, any hobby, and pursue it for a year. You probably have a lot of these left. For me: One for music. One for photography. One for writing (fiction). One for writing (nonfiction). All the skills complement each other. I'm about to pull the trigger on buying a set of tools for recording podcasts and audiobooks to help deal with my significant speaking anxiety. The skills from the writing and music eras are especially helpful here!
This process started back in 2017 when I found myself with no steering or engine power on my way into a turn lane in the rain and fog. I'm glad your existential crisis didn't start with a near death experience!
A lot of comments talking about having kids for purpose, so I thought I'd add mine. I don't have kids and when I compare myself to other friends that have kids I can see how having kids can add purpose (to some extent).
That said, personally I have found immense purpose in life by having a dog. My dog not only makes me happy he teaches me that it is okay to do mundane things in life everyday and still feel extremely happy and satisfied. Each day I look at him and I thank him for being there, for teaching me how to live life, how to love unconditionally and how to live in the moment. I know it's silly but I'm having tears of joy as I'm typing because he is sleeping right next to me at my work desk. Love you my best friend ever !
seriously, study after study shows that just giving people money is the most effective form of altruism. just give it away. go to your city's homeless shelter and give money away. write a check for your local school board. keep everything anonymous. give it all away.
When I was at Google during the IPO I saw people with similar challenges. I can empathize with what he's going through, it can be hard to find a sense of purpose when "the need to provide" is suddenly gone and you realize that many of your life choices were made based on that goal.
I can also empathize with those who consider him a whiny brat. It's hard to get someone to care about your plight when in their eyes you've achieved success. It's just different levels on Maslow's hierarchy.
DOGE already processed a lot of applications and set up the signal chats etc.
This guy applied and right away heard back, because he has millions of dollars, good reputation for having a large exit, and he "reached out to some people and got in".
I simply applied in the way they asked -- DMming them on Twitter -- the very next day, submitting a link to my resume, background and cover letter that fully spells out how exactly I could help them in their mission. And they didn't even bother to visit the link, let alone respond. (I know because I put in logging.)
Until now, I didn't know that DOGE was even hiring people yet. Now thanks to his story, I believe they've already hired the main people back in November.
I am going to take a different approach in life. Thanks guy :)
Capital matters. Connections matter. Timing matters. Substance doesn't matter as much, sadly. Don't simply follow instructions. Get unfair advantages.
I am definitely naive about the good faith of a lot of market participants.
But my motivations for applying have never been about "worshipping billionaires". If you have read anything I've ever written, I criticize concentrations of power, especially in the hands of billionaires, including Elon.
I am not even a fan of MAGA Republicans. However, I do think it would be great to make government more efficient. And my whole pitch was: we need to start using public blockchains for transparency, extending the legacy of Obama's data.gov which helped with transparency. By gradually moving budgets and payouts to blockchains and smart contracts, it would be much harder to sustain off-the-books excess and ineffiencies.
In fact, anyone who is for blockchain is for decentralization, not so much in favor of billionaire owners of centralized platforms. But anyway I digress, I don't think "blockchain" will find many fans on HN as it is...
Recent research from Killingsworth and Kahenman in 2023 [1] highlights that those most already happy have their happiness accelerated by money, while those most unhappy have their happiness plateau.
This makes some intuitive sense to me. Money provides freedom, but freedom is not happiness. It's freedom to explore, which is quite scary in and of itself. But if your mindset is proper, your creativity and appetite for exploration will be unbounded.
I would argue attention is more valuable than time. After all, if all your time is spent paying attention to the wrong things, how valuable can time be? I would urge the author to look at what is commanding his attention and that might give some insight into his malaise.
Excellent advice. I'd add, read a bunch of books. Not physics: history and biography. Learn about how other people live rather thsn how electrons behave. Nothing wrong with physics but unlikely to provide life guidance
My instinctive reply is - go back to work and fix Loom because it sucks. OTOH, it's super impressive that they managed to make such a success from a pretty bad realisation of a reasonable product idea. The founders clearly did a great job in terms of marketing/sales and selling the company. That is no mean feat.
My next suggestion would be to go give some of the money away to individuals who need it. There are many many homeless people in the US if you need somewhere to start.
Beyond that, where are your friends and family? Might need to address that. Therapy will help. The NPC comment is disturbing, no well-adjusted person would write that.
I remember the feeling of being 12 or so and lamenting that I no longer enjoyed the same kind of play in the (literal) sandbox any more; a bit of sorrow at the loss of a source of joy in my life that I had grown out of. It was an interesting realization that growing up means changing desires and priorities and that I should expect to reach plateaus where I would need to pick a new direction to go in. I've always followed my personal interests and hobbies since then; there seems to be a fairly broad line between nonproductive hedonism and goal-driven productivity where there's plenty of room for personal satisfaction without risking an identity/purpose loss when big goals significantly drop in priority.
Working on a particular goal to exclusion of all else sounds like quite a shock when that's no longer a driving priority.
I don't know anything about his situation, but I will say one of the lamest things ever when breaking up is to say it's not you, it's me heh. I mean that's probably something everyone hears face to face and I get it, nobody wants to hurt someones feelings to give their "real" reason when what's done is done, but to see it articulated on a blog post as some kind transparent confession is a little surprising.
Like unless maybe you were going thru some massive event that was very clearly damaging to your relationship (drugs, abuse, etc), the optics of finding yourself to end a seemingly great relationship after selling a company for mega millions isn't going to jive with a lot of people. But the again I guess that's the point of the post, there is no point or purpose. Alright, taking off my judgement hat now.
it's more about the reasons, not who is initiating it or wants it. in any case, i find more often it's just a generic line that people use when breaking up to spare the other party some grief. otherwise it ends up with the other person thinking about what they could have done differently to "keep" the other person.
Hmm, I feel like it might be something like "I have problems with you, but you have none with me. I have enough respect for you that I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you see things, but don't want to keep going with those different viewpoints?" with an addendum that "I don't necessarily want to force you to change." which leads to not saying anything about what those issues are? Potentially because those issues are things you don't actually want to utter, like "I can't bring myself to believe you aren't with me for my money."
i mean in the end, barring some big issue like addiction or something that's actively harming the relationship, often times you just aren't compatible. maybe you fell out of love or had different priorities. whatever the reason is, it's over, one or both parties don't want to try anymore, which is fine. if people want to go over the details as some kind of post-mortem sometimes that's appreciated but other times yeah, it's something you probably shouldn't say and it just makes the hurt worse.
i guess my slight issue with the post was just that he posted it for all the world to see as some kind of honest self-reflection when to me it was just some throwaway line. i know he didn't even intend for it to be anything so in the end it's whatever.
Of course it’s therapy. He should find a good non-rich CBT therapist (just for the sake of not falling prey of rich-man-wive’s leeches type) and start asking questions on why he’s not at ease with the success. Something sabotages it, and that something may be some a random (now obsolete) belief/mode he picked growing up. Uproot obsolete beliefs, these are drivers, not goals. This is absolutely manageable, especially with so much time on your hands and relatively limitless possibilities.
I don’t think that community/society advices itt are on point, because the author doesn’t express particular interest in socio things. Giving something up to feel good is not a bad thing, but it’s not a complete-able thing either. It’s still symptomatic despite being generally positive.
Focus on your mental and physical health. Your relationships especially family. And work on things that challenge your mind, if nothing does currently that’s ok something will peak your interest again, no pressure, in the mean time work on being the healthiest you can physically, that has a way of making sure other things fall into place.
For the author: Getting all that money without the life experience to build some values or ambitions for your impact on the world is proof enough that your fortune is just random luck. There are millions who have put more thought into life and had no financial reward for it. Give it to them, or get a life for yourself. Then you'll know what to do.
It's wild how a random tech millionaire can just walk into our government and start deciding how the rest of us get to live as part of a therapeutic exercise for his mid-life crisis (or whatever you call this).
The way this is written suggests there's still a little bit of self awareness left in him, but that's definitely on its way out the door. I wonder if there's a name for that phenomenon? If not, my suggestion is "Elon's Disease"
I hope if I ever reach that point that I have enough wisdom left to take my money and fuck off to an island somewhere.
You've won the competition, and you've found it meaningless. Maybe you could work on helping others do meaningful things with their lives, rather than being forced to grind and grind and grind their lives away.
I don't suggest mere philanthropy, but structural change. (The nature of which I will not attempt to dictate; after all, identifying the problem doesn't mean I know a solution.)
To me, it seems that the author previously focused on "making as much money possible". That is understandable as a driving force, as most people think to be rich is what it means to be successful. It is also very understandable in the context of "the American dream", which is all about this. But now that the author reached the place of being more than rich enough, this overarching purpose and goal is gone.
What I think is much better though, is to instead just have curiosity as a driving force. And I think many people here on Hacker News do have curiosity as a bigger driving force than becoming rich. It is curiosity that drives one to tinker around, make random projects, hack around. Making money in the process of this has just been a convenient side effect in our industry. The truth is, if you have insatiable curiosity you will never not have purpose because there will always be a "next day" that you do not know about yet.
It isn't just something intrinsic either, you can self-identify as being insatiably curious and try to live that way.
Having that said, there is a certain amount of privilege required to even be in a position where you can claim this without having to worry too much about your survival.
I'd start again buy volenteer work. Fixing things at the local youth camp could fill several lifetimes. or the food shelf needs help. Or admin work for united way if I decide a desk job is for me.
There was a founder in a similar situation who sold their company (Tsheets to Intuit) for $300m as part of an acquisition and checked out after. Employees say he lost his purpose and became unmoored, with no grounded next steps for years. He ended up attempting to kill his wife and killed himself.
Your capital has made you lonely, moreover, redundant as you have no needs. You cannot be coerced into a job, medical bills are no bankruptcy inducing issues for you (which is rather boring too), no need to work for the man.
And like a chipmunk sitting on a mountain of nuts anyone you meet wants one so nobody acts normal. Again how sad and lonely.
me i live in a blue collar neighborhood with people getting by and we look after each others kids and pets and gossip and share tools - trying not to sound too romantic but that's how it is. Sometimes I sweep the streets because I like it.
Please enjoy your capital. I’m not jealous at all, why should I? Don’t want to be a Midas, everything golden and hungry. I have community purpose and people to look after. For me, that’s wealth.
Points for realizing ego and musk complex is a problem.
Points deducted for still following through with musk complex
Big points deducted for
> NPC coworkers
I have no doubt that this guy is very intelligent and capable, but he's also a totally emotionally immature sucker. Guy's got a classic case of (Minecraft) Notch Syndrome.
Dear ChatGPT: please help me construct a HN posting that's purportedly about a rich guy at loose ends trying to figure out what to do since that's guaranteed to tickle most peoples' fancy, but ensure that the payload paints a favorable picture of the DOGE since that's actually the motivation for the posting.
Push past this thought. Take the final step you know awaits your reaction. It’s not parody. There are, honest-to-God, people like this aplenty in our world. Behold, we, as they, are borne back:
”Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning—- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
When you become rich you need to switch from a goal oriented mindset to a value based one.
There are no more goals for you to achieve. Instead, focus on values you believe in and try to live those values every day. It will be an endless journey that will last the rest of your life. Values don’t need a reason or purpose, they just exist.
For example, if I became rich my values would simply be traveling the world and dressing fancy. Easy.
I would recommend for him to visit a poor country and see how the people live and survive. He will find (I am assuming) find purpose. Maybe he will make his life mission to build and install water wells, or sponsor underprivileged kids education or something along those lines.
I'll never be rich but if I were I'd just travel. That's it. So many places to explore. Completing the 88 temples Shikoku Pilgrimage is one my lifegoal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikoku_Pilgrimage
If OP is reading the comments, I’d highly recommend developing a meditation practice. As you’ve already experienced, the quality of one’s experience of life is determined by one’s mind, regardless of possessions, achievements, etc. And meditation is the best way to “train” the mind.
Just a thought I’d like to share: the finish line to “Fuck you money” (FUM) isn’t even remotely close to the $60m mark. It’s not even beyond $100,000. Once you have no debts nor a mortgage, and you have $100k in savings, you have FUM, because suddenly you need $25k a year to live well.
I say this as a member of this community, who are (generally speaking) relatively well paid folk in IT.
If you have a partner in life then you’re even better off again.
I don’t believe it’s actually that hard to reach FUM if you’ve got your fair share of luck, discipline, a partner, and the stable environment. For those who don’t have those things, I respect your position and wish you the best of luck — I’m sorry life is harder for you.
Edit: I’m aware you need insurance too, for health, life/death, accidental, etc. Again, you need a stable environment to make this work and be easier to achieve — the USA is not a safe nor stable environment.
You need healthcare, you need an emergency fund, you need elder care, retirement. College fund for your kids. if you get hit by a freak meteor and become mentally/physically disabled, you're not going to be able to make $25k/yr.
For it to be FUM is enough to live off the interest at 4% withdrawal for the rest of your life. At an estimate, it takes between $250k and million dollars to get through a case of cancer. You're not getting through it on $25k/yr after you get fired because you can't work because you have cancer, and you won't be able to afford lawers to fight getting fired either.
$25k might be enough for a twenty year old with no responsibilities who can still eat dollar store ramen, but it's not enough for someone with responsibilities past subsistence eating.
I'm describing insurance not working. I'm explicitly saying you can't assume you'll be able to work the rest of your life. A hit-and-run drunk driver could hit you can run off, and you get paralyzed and your insurance denies your (very expensive) claim. Even if you sue them and win, that could take years before they pay out. $100k ain't gonna go very far.
I think it's implied with FUM that you have enough money to not work for the rest of your life. This is because without the need to work you have total freedom to set your schedule.
That’s never how it’s been described to me. That’s always been known to me as FI/RE or just being rich. FUM is simply the ability to walk away from a job and be very picky about where you work.
I do like that mindset as that definition of FUM is much easier to achieve than FIRE. However, I always assumed FUM meant you could be so unlikeable or disagreeable as to be unemployable and still be financially fine.
Do something to help everyone else stuck in the system. Hire lobbyists to improve healthcare in the US. All the other rich people are just trying to make things worse and extract as much as possible.
One of the most honest and thought provoking pieces I’ve read in a while.
Thank you so much for sharing. It really makes me think what I’d do if I were in your shoes.
For me a big portion would be family, and helping it thrive. And putting my time and energy into some of the crazier ideas I have about how to help improve the world for the greatest number of people.
I wish you serendipity in trying to find yourself, deeply, and in discovering what you truly enjoy.
I’d also say don’t give up on love. The most important part of it all are the people you share your life with. So once you are in a good place, fill your life with them. Keep channels open with those that you know check that box, as you go through this journey of self-discovery that may require more time for yourself.
This is very common among people who sell their companies. AJ Wasserstein[0] at Yale's school of management has written a few things about it. He built up and sold a (non-tech) business for a substantial amount of money, so he's not just theorizing. Here's one of the things he's written: https://yale.app.box.com/s/ye0naovus7anbz875vcrcpzrdskjskgf
If you want to see the picture of success in spending one's money, find the pictures of Lebron James surprising the kids in the school he built in his home town of Akron, Ohio. His smile is the verifiable truth of "you reap what you sow".
Find other people to make happy, by first reducing their misery, and you ensure your own luck and happiness. It's the most important magic there is, along with repeating a Holy Name of God, like Nyame in Ghanaian (I learned that today on a walk).
Lebron reaps the joy of those hundreds of kids that he makes happy every single day. It comes back into our inner peace and happiness. And power.
Succeed for others and your success will only grow. Because compassion. Always compassion.
Consider how rapamycin was discovered, by scientists traveling to distant Rapa Nui and sampling soil. There are lots of truly wild places left on Earth -- most of Papua New Guinea, the northwestern Bolivian Amazon, the deep interior of the DRC, to name but few -- places where civilization has yet to touch. Go out there, discover new plant and insect species, and fingerprint plant and soil samples. You might find some very interesting and commercially-useful small molecules. But, more importantly, it would be a lot of fun.
You'd need a team, but that shouldn't be too difficult to assemble.
Your tribe were the people you worked with at Loom. When you left your tribe became only your girlfriend. What are you going to do? Have perfect harmony with 100% of your tribe forever? Of course not. Of course you fought. Because on top of lover she now fulfils all sorts of roles including rival, competitor, and nemesis.
You need to pick a group, any group, and stick with it.
Jumping around both physically and vocationally is not only not going to help you, it's going to make integrating yourself in to a group way harder.
The author thinks this is a novel or rare position (†) to be in, however it's actually fairly common and most people resolve it relatively easily by being with other people. The point is integration, not separation.
Those chasing prestige, and programmed to chase prestige from childhood, often do not know that prestige is a form of separation. They think that once their respect with their peers rises they will feel more connected, or more connected with better people. This is all wrong – connection is fostered by humility. (Hiking large, easy mountains might look impressive yet it is not an antidote to loneliness and isolation.) Prestige is like a drug: attaining it often makes a person hungrier for more. Prestige, at its best, is a tool to accomplish good things, and nothing more.
I suggest the author find hyper-local challenges with direct and obvious impact... maybe volunteering with the mentally ill, or cooking for large groups, or tutoring in math/physics. Of course these aren't prestigious, and I sadly doubt the author will be interested (and hope to be proven wrong).
A note regarding "purpose": I believe purpose is a misleading solution. Most of us can conjure purpose – the key is to close the feedback loop by acting on it in a way that draws one closer to community.
(† Footnote: The author may think their wealth is a distinctive quirk of their predicament; it is not. The defining characteristic is freedom and space, and a lot of people are in this position, regardless of net-worth. I hope the author looks beyond other rich people to find solutions.)
I think it's strange that he rejected the idea of humanoid robots because it was "cringe" to copy Elon so instead he... studies physics with a goal of applying first principles thinking to manufacturing businesses? That's kind of Elon's whole thing.
To be clear I don't think any of it is cringeworthy at all. I just don't understand the reasoning there. Why not do humanoids, they're awesome, and Elon is hardly the only one who thinks so!
I am really, really eager and excited to see the result when these DOGE-istas cook up whatever insanely “rational” schemes they imagine will make government not completely “dysfunctional” roll them out to the people they actually need to implement them (i.e., Congress).
Surprise! Politicians only claim to care about budget and spending matters when the opposite party is in control.
But I think most of us aren’t so naive as not to realize DOGE is just and only another way to troll Democrats, not actually a serious way to tackle our fiscal and budgetary problems. The past n Comptrollers of the United States have been banging away on that policy drum for as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics (beginning ca. 2000). Nobody cares. They write nice reports though.
Agreed, but you have to look at this from “government and elites realized that we’re screwed, and need to just do whatever possible to see what sticks” perspective. This time banging the drums actually might matter because a competitor (China) has caught up in most of industries and playing the “win at all costs” mode. I have no idea how US is going dig itself out of this situation as there’s no cultural, economical, nor political alignment.
There is a genuine belief in some people that if you just put a few thousand smart people into work, they’ll have a solution. But what is lacking, I think, is boots on the ground employees for numerous amount of industries. They’re thinking of a financially engineered solution, but there’s no appetite to pay or maintain an industrial workforce.
There is also no financially engineered solution possible when one of the groups has final say on whether anything changes and if it does, what exactly—at least when that group gains from the status quo. Cut x number of federal programs? You’ve now also directly reduced the amount of money flowing into y number of Congresspeople, and the number of districts in which that reduction doesn’t also make reelection more (marginally) troublesome is asymptomatic to 0.
It’s hope and prayers kinda season, maybe bunch of people will figure out something. I have no clue what they can do, but I’m not a smart person with 6496493 IQ.
> a competitor (China) has caught up in most of industries
stop spreading misinformation. go look at largest companies by market cap in the world https://companiesmarketcap.com/ and you'll see US domination while China has a few handful of companies, mostly banks.
> government and elites realized that we’re screwed
That's more like China. That's why 15k rich chinese are fleeing the country in 2024 https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/07/03/high-ne..., the most of any country in the world. US isn't the one where the stock market and real estate has collapsed.
All those things you said are objectively true. But it’s literally US government who is up in the arms right now screaming left and right how “we have to win against China”. Not taking China as a serious competitor is just weird nowadays. Take most of top industries, and you can find its equivalent in China serving the same amount of people.
* Ruthless budget cutting. Import social programs that (purely by coincidence) don't alight with the far right's ideology will be cut because e.g. only 1% of the population uses them, ignoring that 1% of the population is still 3 million odd people.
* Lots of brain drain. There are good people in government. I suspect the good ones won't much enjoy being told that they're morons who are wasting everyone's money. The actual morons won't care much, and the people doling out the firings won't be around long enough to figure who is who.
* Some low hanging fruit that requires a dictatorship and wide-ranging mandate to achieve. There's definitely inefficiency in government that can be solved by pointing everyone in the same direction and telling them their jobs are on the line. But not that much. I'm sure much fanfare will be made of what is solved though.
* Lots of corruption, cronyism and people under-qualified for their roles but over-estimating their abilities. This is a playbook we've seen from Trump and from Elon "I looked at Twitter's code for 5 seconds and instantly made 100x improvements' Musk. Thankfully, government projects span years or decades, so the effects of these terrible contracts and inexperienced leaders will be felt for years to come.
Just curious: did you actually read the whole post?
When I got back home and regaled my friends with my mountain stories, one of my friends joked that I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get off its current crash to defaulting on its own debt. So I reached out to some people and got in. After 8 calls with people who all talked fast and sounded very autistic smart, I was added to a number of Signal groups and immediately put to work.
Working for DOGE for 4 weeks, remembering the power of urgency
Within 2 minutes of talking to the final interviewer for DOGE, he asked me if I wanted to join. I said “yes”. Then he said “cool” and I was in multiple Signal groups. I was immediately acquainted with the software, HR, and legal teams and went from 0 to 100 taking meetings and getting shit done. This was the day before Thanksgiving.
The next 4 weeks of my life consisted of 100s of calls recruiting the smartest people I’ve ever talked to, working on various projects I’m definitely not able to talk about, and learning how completely dysfunctional the government was. It was a blast.
I learned about the power of urgency and having an undeniable mission. Not by reading it somewhere. By experiencing it. I came to realize how laughable my robotics stint had been in comparison. And I started to realize that, although the mission of DOGE is extremely important, it wasn’t the most important thing I needed to focus on with urgency for myself. I needed to get back to ambiguity, focus on my insecurities, and be ok with that for a while. DOGE wasn’t going to fix that.
Yes, that’s why that section stood out so strongly to me, in contrast with the general frost of responses in this thread before I posted, which was, “Oh, you poor dear.” Peak HN in some ways I guess. :)
I have enough money that I probably won't need to work again, though I'm certainly not anywhere near as wealthy as this guy (I assume he has one or two more zeroes at the end of his bank balance than I do).
The first half of it just felt so... weak... to me. But I decided I'd give the author the benefit of the doubt. Findig purpose can be a really hard thing, and I suppose even people with a Scrooge McDuck vault deserve sympathy when they're trying to figure that out. (Spoiler alert: there is no Big Purpose; life is what you make of it, and nothing more.)
But then he talks about joining DOGE. Great, now you're a part of the problem. Part of the Silicon Valley know-it-all techno-dystopia crowd who thinks government can and should be run like a for-profit company. Disgusting. What a huge waste of an opportunity to use his wealth to help make the world a better place, as much as the wealthy philanthropist/savior concept makes me uncomfortable.
It also says a lot -- and nothing good -- that he was able to get hired by DOGE with his only qualification being "sold a tech company for a truckload of money". These people are clowns. The US is screwed for a generation or three if they're successful.
I have a solution. You can spend some money on me haha. I am the opposite. You know what they say “opposite attracts” and I am attracted to you being rich haha jk.
Jokes aside, it is wild to read comments like these. I guess I do not know that feeling. I come from a working class, I did good for myself but then got affected by the entire layoff wave which kind of sent me back to stone ages.
You could travel and you could invest in new ideas something that has potential to make a real life changes in our future. You could become Batman!
This post brings to mind people like Andrew Kelley, the guy who created Zig, who basically has foregone a lucrative career in software development, to work on his passion project (which is probably much more useful to the world than what he could've done otherwise). He lives off donations, and probably isn't lacking for a purpose.
nobody realizes it but this is an ad for having kids. if he had kids they would have helped him not be such a little bitch and continue doing productive things. when you are an evolutionary dead end you have the curse of excess productivity rather than the joy of investing in the future.
Sorry but I’m not going to upvote this, instead I’m going to act like the rest of the normal people and say WTF?
You have so many millions and don’t know what to do?
You’ve attained financial and work freedom and yet you complain?
What is wrong with you rich people?
If I had 400k I would live a trouble free and happy life and we have rich people coming here on HN to rub in our faces their zeroth world problems…
I don’t care if I get down voted or my comment gets deleted, but I feel sorry for the OP :-(
Just as a side note because you mentioned it in relation to DOGE: the US government cannot go bankrupt in its own currency. As long as prices are kept in check, there is no reason not to create more money. The fact that the US has to pay interest on it doesn't change that. If the government decides to spend more money than it takes in, the money is simply created by the central bank (through the detour of bonds). If you are interested, read up on Keynesian economics and Modern Monetary Theory.
I'm far from understanding economics but my understanding is that Modern monetary theory is a somewhat fringe theory that gained some advocates especially before post pandemic inflation while Keynesian economics is although maybe a bit modified from the original largely accepted as part of the base of mainstream economics. They are very different. Also vast majority of countries have central banks and spend more then then save, it's hardly specific to the US (although the US gets cheaper rates because of its position)or a major concern (at least if the debt to GDP percentage doesn't grow too high, or if you're Japan).
Ill fill in the blank - pushing it to far_________ inflation goes up
You meant to add " and in particular if other countries start refusing it because it has the same value as toilet paper, except the dollar will leave your butt stained of black in, when used for bathroom purposes,"
The Us is an outlier in this regard. Other countries have had major inflation and currency collapse. It's why predictions of 'US debt collapse' never come true although it is a real risk elsewhere.
If the US is an outlier.... then it's fine for the US to continue down this path?
Like in this supposed age of a US government spending crisis the dollar is extremely strong compared to other currencies. Where is the hyperinflation? How many decades will we need to wait?
Exactly. There was a time when the British pound was the world's reserve currency (coinciding of course with British global hegemony). Fast-forward to today and the UK's GDP per capita[1] is lower than the poorest US state's[2].
Japan has been at it for several decades. The US seems to have a debt of 120% of GDP, and Japan of 250% of GDP, so I guess you're still good for a few decades more?
MMT'ers act like they've discovered some new concept. MMT is not economics; its political spin, propaganda, down playing the harsh realities of economics (not just "late stage capitalism" or whatever the kids call resource constraints nowadays.)
MMT isn't a set policies. It's a description of how money works, when you have fiat currency.
Government is a source of money. Taxation is a sink. Too much money in the system you get inflation, not enough deflation.
When you can print money taxation is just a way of controlling the amount of money in the economy almost by definition because you don't need tax to fund yourself when you can create money. Bonds just provide a stable financial instrument rather than a source of funding because you can literally just print money if you wanted to.
The constraint on money is mainly inflation, and government debt and tax is used to control the money supply.
Odd that you think "late stage capitalism" describes resource constraints. It's really more a term to describe the bizarre economic consequences of increasing degrees of financialization turning every sector of the economy into speculative theatre.
MMT is an elaborate way of describing the process of taxing investment capital away from existing capitalists such that the state can invest it itself. You may complain that the state would invest that capital poorly (others would counter that private VCs already do it poorly), but the essential economics of it is dead simple.
Strongly recommend tiger21 - which is an amazing community of people dealing with the positives and negatives of wealth. I have found it immensely helpful.
To all those people speaking about this guy in the third person, I would just point out he is also the OP.
Hello Vinay.
I'm sorry you don't know what to do with your life, but I promise you it's nothing to do with being rich and successful. Lots of people who are not rich also reach a point in their life where they just don't know what to do next. I suspect a lot of the people we meet or read about who find their "life's purpose" have actually just latched onto one thing and decided it's super important or meaningful, deluding themselves into happiness. This is also why people find religion.
I don't have any great advice to dish out. I'm older than you but not by much. I'm not a rich founder of some company. I haven't travelled as much as you have. I would say, from reading your post, that it sounds like you're trapped in a few echo-chambers that influence your learning patterns.
If learning physics in Hawaii doesn't fill the void for you, maybe try some things that don't have an end goal of starting a company. Do some simpler, less extreme things. Read some fiction. Buy an old VW camper and drive it across Europe. Build a log cabin. Learn a new (spoken) language. Knit. Get out and meet some real people who do not know you are rich and don't expect great things from you.
> What is wrong with being insignificant?
We are all insignificant. Nothing we do matters. We're specks of dust that exist for a microsecond on a warm rock that will eventually be eaten by our star. And there is nothing wrong with that.
You don't need to find a purpose. Life doesn't have to "matter".
If you’re wondering why you still feel unsatisfied even after having gotten everything you’ve ever wanted and achieved everything you set out to do, consider reading about the story of Siddartha Gautama and his journey of discovery.
To me it sounds like he is rich but still hasn't earned enough to be extremely wealthy. The price of an nba team is about 5 billion. Price of a twitter is 25 billion. It's going to take a lifetime of 60 million a year salary to even get in that range. He can keep going if he wants to or retire. There is always bigger things to buy.
I would have taken the 60 million salary and changed the lives of many every year. That would give me purpose.. but that's not for everyone.
This is an interesting read. After years of conversations with folks in SV all over the socioeconomic ladder I've concluded they're 2 types of thinking:
- type 1 "employee thinking": focused on status, TC, consumption, vacation time, free time for hobbies
- type 2 "founder thinking": it's about how much value you create for other people
We (almost) all grow up and are formatted in type 1 - we look for a good "role" that brings wealth and status. The problem is when you have access to type 2 but are trapped in type 1, which seems to be the case here (the frame is about gaining money and status).
The funny thing is you can be incredibly rich, and a founder, and still think like an "employee" without ever being able to get out of it. Conversely you can be poor but think like a "founder" it's not so much about the money. In type 2, as you get richer, the scale of your impact grows and the value you can create gets bigger beyond your personal circumstances. Type 1 is not necessarily negative at all, but also can be a trap.
I think if you are doing things just to keep yourself busy or self-focused stuff like learning a language or playing an instrument, you will eventually hit the wall of motivation created by lack of necessity when your financial needs are already met forever. Definitely do them to keep life interesting but don't expect that much from these activities (unless you are like crazy passionate about any of them, in which case, congratulations, you found your true purpose).
I believe you'll need to have goals that involve improving lives of those that most need it. Of course it is more complicated than just that - there will be disappointments, betrayal and all other stuff that comes with getting other people involved but the key is to do it based on purpose, with a calm head, clear goal and less on fumes of emotion to manage such pitfalls better. You can let that emotion out when you see the unprivileged child you mentored succeed - I would wager that that moment will outweigh practically any joy you could feel from solely self focused achievements.
The hedonic treadmill runs both ways. I'd venture many people successful on paper are driven by the need to escape something, for me, it's financial insecurity even though I was never poor nor am I close to it right now. If I were to be as financially successful as this fellow, I think I would soon find myself back to having the same fear\ or finding something to substitute it, regardless, the feeling or mood would be the same
Radical acceptance with savoring the moment itself works for me but it's definitely a Sisyphean (to stick with the ancient Greeks) endeavor to keep up.
I would recommend reading "The Status Game" by Will Storr.
In short: try to join as many communities as possible, you will get emotionally rewarded just for being accepted. Eventually you will find ones where you really want to fight for status, and this will re-ignite your life.
This post is ultimately a scathing indictment of capitalism.
Money represents power. Our society let you have much more power than most individuals will ever have.
But you don't know what to do with it? Why should you have it then?
Capitalism at its best would allocate power to those who know how to use it effectively.
Look around you. Isn't there anything in the world - commercially, socially, culturally - you think should be better? And aren't any of those things in a domain in which you can be effective?
The legitimate capitalist would know the answer to those questions.
Have you read the subtle art of not giving a fuck? - you are a perfect example of what happens when someone achieve their goal. They feel empty, with nothing to do.
Sad
And alone.
https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
Now you need to find yourself a new purpose. Only you can find it, maybe that can help: figure out that plants are the top of the food chain, and the more we treat them well... the most fun we have around them!
Explore the spiritual world, help others who haven't been as lucky as you, be hurt, and heal again, that's life man.
*You could join me in a suicide/impossible mission to save the world, but i doubt you will - nobody is mad enough to follow me in this endeavour.
While I can't totally relate to this scenario I feel something like this playing video games. I'm happiest when I'm working towards the goal and once you defeat the big boss / get the best gems, etc you're just standing there wondering what now.
I think the most exhilarating part is before you are about to beat the big boss (which in this case would be the offer for acquisition i suppose).
I've always felt these stories can be summarized as happiness or fulfillment is derived from the (positive) rate of change in circumstances rather than the achievements a person has in a point in time, money or otherwise. Even if you have millions in your pocket but that amount is not changing or you don't have a way to make it go up, you won't be happy for long. Same goes for a less wealthy person who is moving up in their career or their life-goals, they would be happy from experiencing positive change.
I spent my 30s in a VLCOL (very low cost of living) city. I’m now in my 40s and each year my sentimental feelings somehow keep growing. The small things in life: a local art museum, the local YMCA and its pickleball playing seniors, sauna, inline skating around lake paths, road cycling, local coffee roasters, a small upstart Italian restaurant, and of course my young kids. I’m absolutely in love with these things in a way that isn’t directly coming from them or a product or service… it’s coming from within me. Deep satisfaction. Not necessarily happiness. Somehow, these things define me in ways my business never can/could. I’m a participant in my community and it feels SO GOOD. I could optimize for something else … something “out there” but then what?
If having a bunch of money is a problem, there’s a solution. Give it away and start again. It sounds stupid but a lot of people do it.
I’ve traveled a lot and opportunity is definitely not evenly distributed.
There are millions of people who have potential and can’t afford silly things like books, school, tools necessary to succeed. If I wanted to give away a bunch or money I’d found work training programs for blue collar jobs in some major cities of developing nations. Provide training and tools for capable youngsters who might not otherwise have opportunities.
Although… this is not a tale about having too much money. It’s a tale about not knowing what to do next.
You need to recapture the satisfaction of work. Your professional identity was a big part of who you were and you’re falling apart without it. Unfortunately the old one is dead so you have to create a new one. The good news is there’s a foundation to build in.
Track down half a dozen people you’ve enjoyed working with before and start a business with them. I also recommend working mentorship into the mix.
What you are chasing is your god or a spiritual quest.
As you don't have a conception of a global god on top of all the other you swing from one to another: finding myself, doing hard, things, robotics, climate change, girlfriend, pleasure, etc.
Those can all be good things, but they are not the top thing.
"You will have no other god beside me"
The central God is you idea of good, the things beyond your reach.
You keep your girlfriend, she become your wife and you have kids.
You can climb montains but it doesn't need to be himalaya, etc.
Maybe your big thing will still end up around physics
Everything in it's place. In the proper amount.
Now if you loose one thing it's not the end of your world.
This keep you centered and avoid the crazy swings.
As we can see in this tale, his god was the startup or money. Once he had more than enought no motivation was left, he killed his god and had to find another one. This happen to a lot of people that reach their goal, instead of being happy they are emotionaly destroyed.
What to do? Apparently long so overqualified that unemployable so am doing a startup. If it is successful, I'll pay off some old bills and loans. Then, sure, pursue mathematical physics, maybe get a modest house with a lake, woods, and fields, hope foxes, beavers, swans, etc. have a good home there. Did too well with education and technology but still wasted nearly all my life with nonsense from in too many respects being poorly informed (about people, academics, business) and would like to help some children in the family tree avoid the waste of the nonsense and get on with a good life, at least love, home, marriage, family, and some accomplishments in business, science, etc. Made enough progress with violin (easier to carry than a piano) to play the D major part of the Bach Chaconne but would like to return to music, on a piano and play through some Richard Wagner scores and try to learn what he did.
Do none of these people have any creativity at all? No artistic spark that wants to be brought out but never could because art isn't really a profitable career?
Like it's the same thing that boggles my mind with Elon. All that success and he seems to destroy it by making himself miserable begging for approval on Twitter.
There are so many incredible ideas, projects, inventions, songs, books, movies, video games, etc. that will never see the light of day because the brilliant person or team who could make it can’t afford to stop working for long enough to create them. Find things that excite you and help them become a reality.
I've always had philanthropic ideas that I will never be able to do, because I do not have the funds or the time. Metastatic cancer and alzheimers, on a cellular level, is an obvious pursuit. I would educate myself and get involved. I want to make a difference in the world, and not by monetary measures.
Read recently in Smithsonian about a founder in a similar situation (although I think he was still involved) who started an organization to find missing soldiers and return their bodies to relatives. Spent a lot of time and money finding MIAs lost in the Eastern theatre of war from WWII. (Dr. Patrick Scannon, Project Recover).
It’s very interesting to me that the author realizes he knows nothing about physics and robotics, but feels justified in talking about “saving the government” even though he also doesn’t understand economics.
This entire post is about having more money than you know what to do with. Very strange.
Give away your money and build a new company if that's the purpose you need to fulfill in life.
Being altruistic can be immensely rewarding.
You have tremendous privilege. Go help some people with that money.
Don't just think of yourself.
Try taking up meditation. Balance your mind. Try to stop your thoughts.
You are super lucky.
Also, consider your death. No matter how much money you have, you can't take any of it with you. One day you're going to die. It's all going away. Enjoy what you have now and ideally help some others. That will bring you purpose.
> To push myself to be completely (and awkwardly) vulnerable to a blob of nameless strangers over the internet.
This tone speaks to me, even if I have no desire to present myself in such a way. :)
> The immediate 2 weeks after leaving an intense 10-year journey, I did what any healthy person does and met with over 70 investors and founders in robotics. I had been learning about robotics for quite some time and was positive I wanted to throw myself into giving computers arms and legs.
FWIW, I see this a lot from normal-money people when they leave companies, even with shorter journeys. I've been that person, in more ways than one.
I also don't know what I should do with myself, but have considered doing an extra physics degree. Unlike you, my financial situation is currently only on the border of FIRE (and I've always been a low spender) and therefore not secure enough to actually drop off the labour market and into the second degree on a whim.
Not being American, the combination of you cringing about Musk and also finding the DOGE mission to be important is… surprising.
Although I've done quite well for myself, I'm not remotely near this level of wealth, so my insight and advice is likely just plain wrong.
Building on an analogy you used, you've let society dictate your "unattainable main quest", but then actually managed to attain it, losing your core sense of purpose in the process.
So pick a new unattainable main quest and internalize it, before proceeding with your life.
Easier said than done of course. You're fighting to replace a goal that was repeatedly forced into you from the early days of your conscious existence. How hard this will be comes down to your individual mental composition. It might be impossible. It might be easy and just require willful thought on your part. There are probably therapists that specialize in exactly this kind of situation.
I don’t believe in giving advice, I don’t assume to know what’s best for you. I’m not rich and have had a mediocre developer career but I have found contentment and fulfillment in personal development. I have learned to be an unconditionally kind and loving person to everyone, even the most difficult of people, and to me this is a forever challenging and fulfilling role to play that also provides me a sense of identity. I value developing relationships with humans. I like hearing their stories and getting to know them and learning to be mutually vulnerable in loving, kind ways. I think all we really have is each other, and I think a lot of people would find this to be a really fulfilling way to live their lives.
Was saddened to read this section in the post. You'd think that smart people would be able to see through Elon-ego-filled-bullshit; but I'm afraid many have been in that circle so long they've drunk the Kool-Aid. I'm not steeped in the wealthy SV community, but I can tell you that the few I've personally met or am acquainted with, make me want to run the other way.
On DOGE, I'm quite sure every Gov department could benefit from greater efficiency, no argument there. I'm also quite sure that it won't actually reduce the Gov budget all that much (just take a look at where most discretionary spending goes). And more importantly, would it make the lives of ordinary Americans (not rich Americans) better? Or would it just be some "achievement unlocked" type of thing. It's clear to me that Elon mostly cares about the latter.
Now if Elon were to cut our military budget in half, now __that__ could have a significant impact. Except that even if he wanted to, Congress (both parties) wouldn't let him: one does not kill sacred cows.
But you know what worries me more a lot more than government waste? The fact that the richest man in the world was able to pay $250M to sway an election. I'm not saying Elon bought the election, because maybe Trump would have won without Elon spending a dime -- but we'll never know, will we? If this were in some other country we'd be talking about "banana republic government corruption" and our "model" constitutional democracy, etc.
I think it is important to support what I call 'amplifiers' in the tech sphere.
I think the FSF is the number one for me[0]. They invented the GPL, got the ball rolling, and were very innovative with the creation of the AGPL.
If anyone has extra money and reads this, please do your own research into the FSF and figure out if it makes sense. They take extreme positions when it comes to tech software, but they define a point on the tech spectrum that in turn defines the whole spectrum. I hope that last sentence makes sense.
Man, this thread is a bit silly. Not having to worry about finances is a fucking miracle for most people.
I'd happily trade places with the OP, because there is so much I already do and would do even more with the free time.
Completely un-relatable. I have come across a sum of money once before, it was stressful initially but it gave us free time.
People saying money makes things harder, what a fucking stupid thing to say. Money makes EVERYTHING easier.
Learning for 1, I love learning. Being with family, and letting them have more free time. Starting an animal rescue shelter. Tinkering with retro-electronics. Hiking and walking entire countries and writing about it.
Unfortunately can't retire yet but have had enough time off to know how boring having no purpose is.
But I'm working on it anyway.
The only thing I want is to know my future is secure, have enough passive income/savings to be able to meditate.
I've seen for myself that thoughts just throw you off balance, and it's possible to be deeply contented just with the present moment. But the last thing I wanted to do was run a business or do work in that state.
I want to get loaded so I can just slip back into that state of contentment, then teach it. That's all.
But pursing experiences isn't the way to get there. I can see why someone would write a post like this.
The author has two choices:
1. Learn to enjoy the freedom gained from his wealth and not work another day.
2. Give away ALL of it to charity and start over again so he can prove to himself and the world that it wasn't luck that made him wealthy.
I am new here, but can I ask a serious question? How does a question like this even get listed?? Or responded to? I really would like to know the system here.
> I didn’t feel like I could work on them with her. So I broke things off after almost 2 years of unconditional love.
So really there were conditions as well as no commitment. The hidden condition was "If I don't feel like I can work on myself I will break it off". This is why I don't take people seriously who refuse to enter into a marriage covenant that actually means unconditional love regardless of sickness or health.
A couple other commenters mentioned seeking enlightenment. I cannot claim to have anywhere near OP’s amount of wealth, but something that weightlifting and yoga (and more particularly power lifting) have taught me is mindfulness, and contentment. That might seem strange but coming to terms with the limits of one’s own strength and then learning the limits of their body and pushing both of them requires lots of thoughtfulness and patience - especially if you want to do it for the long term (I’ve been doing it for ~10 years). In my mind there is no cheating either (steroids are not an option).
Whether it’s weightlifting, yoga, meditation, or chopping wood, I hope you can find your path to contentment OP!
I missed my chance like an idiot, but I originally was going to take a long vacation with a modest 50k saved up. I figured that's at least 6 months in less expensive countries with 20k remaining when I come back.
Then I basically had the worst year ever.
How I wish I took that vacation.
But here's a startup comp idea. Pay a 25% sign on bonus, with the expectation that your not allowed to do any paid work for 6 months.
Travel , spend time with family, work on that play.
Then when you get back to Soul Crush Inc you can present new ideas.
Some time ago I have watched an interwiew from Shia Labeouf on why he became catholic, for more that I think a good advice for everyone is getting closer to God, He said something that may help you:
"Purpose in life is when you get something you're good at or have a natual inclination to that and help people with that, that's porpose"
I'm very very far from getting rich but that's what I think that maybe help you
Start by doing a long walk, like the PCT or Te Araroa trail. 3+ months of hiking.
You are busy every day, get up, eat and start walking. Finish the day physically tired. Sleep rinse and repeat.
Have a break from news etc
You come out fit, mentally reset and have a good perspective. Just my 2c
There must be something like a "sudden wealth-life crisis", comparable to a midlife crisis. My only advise is to refrain from impulsive decisions in such a situation. But that advise is late here. I hope he has an environment that can ground him. Find productive work, but nothing that puts on too much of a burden (like this ultra-political "DOGE"). Always remember: your wealth is a result of luck and/or decent leadership and OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK. Be decent, be kind and BE REALISTIC. Please don't become Elon.
>There must be something like a "sudden wealth-life crisis", comparable to a midlife crisis.
I don't think that's the same thing. Unlike a midlife crisis a too-much-money crisis is eminently solvable, just give it all away. Traditionally the entire problem with being cursed with something is that it's really difficult to get rid of. Money? Very easy, I'm taking checks if anyone is plagued by this condition.
Spinoza thought money would disconnect him from the life of the philosopher so he just gave all of his possessions away and went couch hopping. If you're so serious about lacking meaning due to simply having too much money (these founders are not, they just like to brag) a good accountant and charity of your choice can help you out
I forget what show my wife and I were watching, but the running gag was that you turn into a psycho when you become a billionaire.
At one point, one of the characters is on a date with a very kind, modestly wealthy guy. Then, the guy has to take a call where he finds out his company just sold. In the very next shot, his head is suddenly shaved and he's raving about climbing mountains or something.
Earning gray hairs with blood, sweat, and tears is the natural way of marking satisfaction milestones. Most of us will not get a chance at steering just 1M in wealth without major struggles and juggles. But having 60M without any major struggle? Well now you have to struggle with an existential crisis. Here's the solution: Watch your children grow to adults, sail some seas, and fix anything that bothers you. Life always finds a way of keeping you active. Now it doesn't actually matter what you're doing, as long as you are happy to be doing it.
Why not map out suffering and ways people optimally can learn to solve it, using our collective intelligence? I mean, if you're looking for ideas. Hopefully someone gets around to that one.
Do you mean has anyone looked into making suffering models like people do weather models for regional / global maps to predict likely suffering and remediation? Or are you just pointing to touchy EA issues?
Just joking about EA, who did exactly what you are suggesting, then it went promptly off the rails. But maybe they’ve regrouped since FTX, I don’t know.
I'm thinking more like weather prediction with big ensemble models for human suffering prediction, you know, time series prediction, which need not be a monolithic ethical imperative with loads of subprojects and not so uniform initiatives. I guess Deepmind's SOTA weather transformers could indeed be a good starting point. I did find that an animal welfare org speculated about doing similar actually!
It sounds like the author is just trying to aimlessly find something to lose themself in, as if what they need to do has to be the most important thing ever done.
Maybe satisfaction comes to those who can make a difference with others more directly. Author should consider volunteer work, or working for a non-profit. Maybe just be a regular worker, and not the boss for a change. Learn to listen and be OK with following orders for once.
Ok, I did not see nearly ending up at DOGE coming.
> I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get off its current crash to defaulting on its own debt
Thinking that DOGE will somehow accomplish something important seems very naive. DOGE's purpose is to try to cut government spending so that Billionaires can get more tax cuts.
Well, at least he got over his "mission of DOGE is extremely important" phase quickly enough. May he go off and learn something about himself and the universe studying physics.
I think your problem is shared by a lot of rich people. I think a lot of them have no idea what to do with their lives.
Wealth is like a clicker game. As you work you earn money, like clicking the cookie to earn more cookies. Once you have enough surplus cookies, you can put them to work earning more cookies, and then put THOSE to work earning even more cookies, and so on. Eventually you're well beyond the point where clicking the cookie makes any damn sense, but you're still in the game, seeing how fast you can accumulate cookies and seeing how far you can go, just for the sake of seeing it.
Welcome to the life of the super rich. That's what investors do -- spend their time looking for ways to spend their money that will make them even more money, just to see how rich they can get and how fast they can get there.
If that doesn't sound like a fulfilling life, think of something challenging and beneficial you can do. Start a biotech startup. Look for ways to clean up oil spills. Invent a new battery. Build a toy for your kids with Arduino. You're smart, and in a position to do things many smart people can only dream of. Take advantage of it.
I'm pretty sure that you don't need to come into excessive wealth to go through this kind of identity crisis, but it does probably afford you a lot more free time to dwell on it (which probably makes it feel "bigger"). Here's hoping the author can settle on a new goal on which to anchor his identity, and here's also hoping that it's some kind of philanthropic/common good (helping move society towards low-carbon energy abundance would be my pick).
For the vast majority of people, becoming rich is a means to an end. More time to make art, freedom from stress, ability to travel more, or just the fun of buying lots of toys.
He keeps talking about wanting to do something "important." But I think he is conflating the "prestigious / expected" meaning of important with another interpretation: "meaningful."
Plenty of next steps for a founder are prestigious. But few are meaningful. Most new companies make money by finding efficiencies and disintermediating people from processes in various ways. This usually means pushing an entire sector (like travel agents) out of gainful employment. For whatever reason, Silicon Valley startups rarely punch up - they don't find efficiencies in health insurance or healthcare billing, they don't do "Moneyball" for CEO's and figure out how to run a company for less, they don't find efficiencies that cause us to pay less money to the rich (except Cost Plus Drugs).
No, they punch down, and make increasing numbers of the middle class into the new precariat. For that, the founders are praised and told that they are important. But the work, being morally questionable, is not meaningful.
By contrast, many meaningful endeavors are about charity - giving access, opportunity, dignity, and money to those on the bottom rungs of society.
The emptiness he feels is a lack of meaning, but he's trying to fill it with more prestige, and that's why it's not working.
The happiness state is not an absolute value, it is the derivative. It explains why even people in the most shittiest situation can be "happy". Otherwise, once you have your 5 basic needs you would become perfectly content.
We are not evolved to become happy, we evolve to strive to become happy. But this is a trick, there is not destination to this journey.
Work on affordable housing tech. There is a huge need for housing at all levels, and I really believe the lower end could be revolutionized by new materials and techniques, along with novel approaches to land use. You could make a real meaningful contribution and choose to make money or not along the way.
Or whatever you want really. I recently contemplated what I would do if I won the lottery and arrived at that conclusion. Hopefully you arrive at yours.
In SF for example, even after a housing project is approved, it can be challenged at any point for any reason by the community or politicians. Even projects that meet all regulations can be rejected for any reason, usually that vibes are bad. I think over half of SF is some kind of historical district. Way too much is zoned for SFHs in the city limits. etc.
It's little wonder why housing projects are so expensive in cities that have such strong NIMBYs. Like is it so unreasonable to ask for a bunch of 4 story single stair apartment buildings to be allowed to even be legal?
Of course not! Take the top N problems ordered by “impacted due to inefficient tech” and the top N ordered by social benefit. N has to be pretty large before anything interesting starts showing up on both lists.
The problem is that making tech more efficient is rarely anything more than a simple capital problem. So the real question is - where is there social benefit but no money?
This does add some validity to my belief that DOGE is full of wealthy mid-brains trying to convince one another they’re smart boys.
If you had tens of millions of dollars and wanted to help the world, there are a million legitimate paths. They might not be glamorous. You might not get to hang out with Elon. But you would actually make a huge difference.
I didn’t have DOGE on this bingo card (though Mt Everest certainly was).
It now sounds even more like a hobby club for Silicon Valley ultra-rich who have no interest to learn anything about how government works. Once they finish their beautiful “reinvented from first principles” decks of PDFs and Keynotes, they won’t get a second look from the elected politicians whose support they absolutely need to deliver any of this.
Or, as the meme would say, “men will literally pretend to singlehandedly save America from decades of deficits rather than go to therapy.”
Mount Everest is 2km higher than 6800m. Go walk for 25-40 minutes, and then imagine going that distance straight up instead.
Trying to climb it without any training and getting anywhere close to succeeding is probably at best suicidal and at worst endangers/kills a rescue team or some portion thereof.
Not a mountaineer, but relatively well read on the subject.
There are enough abuses, litter and other bad things you would contribute to if you climb it. I've concluded that a photo is all I need. I'll try to climb mt fuji which I understand is isn't abused - though I would double check that if I ever have opportunity (i'd have to live 2500 years for that to make it to the top of my todo list)
"Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed." - Paul Kalanithi
Perhaps you should consider exploring the path of religion or spirituality. Faith has a way of providing inner peace and grounding. As humans, we are inherently designed to seek meaning through connection, building a family, and raising children. Watching them grow can bring a profound sense of purpose and fulfillment that no material success can replace. This might be the key to rediscovering what truly matters in life.
> Faith has a way of providing inner peace and grounding.
The fact that people can believe things via “faith” that have no empirical basis in reality scares me. It certainly doesn’t provide any inner peace or grounding to me.
As for faith, why do we all toil when, in godless philosophy, everything we do is fundamentally meaningless? Why do you persist? What is that reason, if not illogical faith in some purpose. Read Camus.
I have no idea what “spiritual” means in this context, so until you can clearly define that, my position is: no, we’re just animals.
> As for faith, why do we all toil when, in godless philosophy, everything we do is fundamentally meaningless? Why do you persist? What is that reason, if not illogical faith in some purpose. Read Camus.
I don’t believe I (or anyone else) have any fundamental purpose for existing. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share.
“it is difficult to imagine how the human mind could function without the conviction that there is something irreducibly real in the world; and it is impossible to imagine how consciousness could appear without conferring a meaning on man's impulses and experiences. Consciousness of a real and meaningful world is intimately connected with the discovery of the sacred. Through experience of the sacred, the human mind has perceived the difference between what reveals itself as being real, powerful, rich, and meaningful and what lacks these qualities, that is, the chaotic and dangerous flux of things, their fortuitous and senseless appearances and disappearances"
Eliade, Mircea. The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion. University of Chicago Press, 1984
Now, while Eliade’s word is not final, I think it touches on your question of what spiritual means in the context of mankind. Being a spiritual animal means being an animal embodied with consciousness, an animal that is aware of its existence in both space AND time.
Eliade is a great read for a number of reasons but the best reason is because he can be read from an atheistic or religious perspective and his passages are no less revelatory. If you want to believe that there is no purpose to existing that is fine, I wouldn’t recommend it, but that is fine. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that consciousness transcends evolutionary necessity and by that nature alone deserves serious and legitimate thought and preservation.
This quotation appears to just replace the word "spiritual" with "sacred," another word that I find to have nebulous meaning. It contains a lot of words, but appears to be saying vanishingly little of substance. Or maybe it's just over my head.
> Being a spiritual animal means being an animal embodied with consciousness, an animal that is aware of its existence in both space AND time.
So, you're defining "spiritual" as "conscious." That's fine, but why not say "conscious"? It's clearer that way.
Under this definition, I agree that we are spiritual (conscious) animals.
But I'm willing to bet that the original poster I responded to used the word "spiritual" in a different sense than you do, which is a problem. When you both sort out what you're actually saying, let me know!
Edit to add one more point:
> But that doesn’t take away from the fact that consciousness transcends evolutionary necessity
I think the phrase "evolutionary necessity" is problematic on its own from a biological perspective, but even if we ignore that, do you have any sources for this claim?
I believe the original quotation used sacred because “spiritual” implies spirit or soul, whereas all ideologies do not align with that specifically. I could be mistaken though.
I don’t think it’s over your head I just think it’s academic literary fluff from Eliade, but at its core it breaks down that developing consciousness meant that we also developed methods to conceptualize something that was more real than reality itself. For example, numbers do not “exist” in reality, but represent reality more accurately than it represents itself most of the time. That’s why they’re so useful.
There are truths that are abstracted out of reality, that is a commonplace in human existence - sacred, spiritual, divine, esoteric, whatever you want to call it, there is an innate connection between humankind and something that is beyond humankind (a sort of meta-reality) and that relationship has aided our development since the dawn of consciousness. Connecting that to any one religion would be a fools errand but it does describe how our very being is tied to something more than just the damned physical world, more than just animalistic instinct. It’s all abstraction.
That is my interpretation anyway.
>So, you’re defining “spiritual” as “conscious.”
Good callout, I wasn’t very specific. I think conscious is the baseline reality, it makes being spiritual a possibility. A prerequisite. Being spiritual would be the willingness to use that consciousness to abstract specifically on the human condition, and voluntarily conclude that we ourselves have a part to play in something that is more real than the reality in front of us.
I can’t speak for the original poster, but I am still developing what I consider to be my spiritual knowledge, and I don’t foresee myself learning all there is to be known any time soon. Still young in that regard.
Edit for your edit on transcending evolutionary necessity:
No sources, but let’s say even if, for example, the theory that consciousness emerged in early hominids as a side effect of a brain that rapidly grew to visually detect snakes[1], even in that scenario consciousness is still the side effect. And that means that a prerequisite to spiritual abstraction would be just an evolutionary side effect.
We still do not understand the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and why it appears to be so rare, so I’m not going to act like I have the answers there. But billions of years passed on earth before a human first questioned their place in the universe, and to me that is self-evidence of a lack of evolutionarily necessity. I understand if that conclusion is not solid enough for most though.
The study you cited doesn't appear to have anything to say about the general appearance of consciousness, so I don't think it's really relevant to our discussion here.
> We still do not understand the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and why it appears to be so rare, so I’m not going to act like I have the answers there.
Yes, I agree 100%. But because of this, I don't think you're correct in claiming outright that consciousness transcends evolutionary necessity (this is a positive claim that requires evidence). It's OK to say we don't know!
That example I gave of the emergence of consciousness being a result of a growing brain was just an example and not necessarily what I believe, but it was on based this article from 2016:
Which really just breaks down consciousness potentially being a byproduct of having a drastically higher number of neurological connections than lesser developed animal brains.
So combining the two, the growing brain, caused by an increase in size of the visual cortex to detect snake patterns, increased the number of neurological connections and as a result the brain gradually became consciously aware. That’s just one theory that I used.
And I 100% agree it’s okay to say that we don’t know, we don’t. And I don’t! But that won’t stop me from thinking about it like, a lot.
This is just changing your phrasing to say the same thing. It's still a claim unsupported by evidence.
My contention is that the absolute most we can say about the topic of the evolution of consciousness is "we don't yet know how or why consciousness evolved."
And we’re not in disagreement there, my grounds for originally giving the example was only in the fact that consciousness is a prerequisite for spirituality to occur. I was really only saying that it is unique to humans and allows for abstract thought on the human condition.
I respect your contention but I think we’re going in circles over semantics now.
Yeah, all of this gets a big fat [citation needed] from me. I don't even know what a bunch of this stuff means. "Conceptualize something more real than reality itself" is nonsensical on its face, and you go on to describe numbers, which are simply an abstraction we use out of convenience, not anything that is "more real than reality itself" as far as I'm aware.
I don't know what "beyond humankind" means in this context, and I don't know what "our very being tied to something more than the physical world" means.
Again, maybe it's just over my head, but can you clearly explain what you mean by all of these things?
> Being spiritual would be the willingness to use that consciousness to abstract specifically on the human condition, and voluntarily conclude that we ourselves have a part to play in something that is more real than the reality in front of us.
And yeah, I'm definitely not in agreement with us being "spiritual" under this definition, because the premise that it's possible for something to be "more real than the reality in front of us" doesn't make any sense to me.
I’m not sure what you would like in the way of citations. Abstracting on its own operates outside of the physical world, the world of ideas is different than the physical world of events. You can choose to believe these are just electrical signals in the brain, nothing more, and that is the physical world, but my entire tangent here has been that I don’t believe that, and why.
Abstractions, at least ones that survive over long periods of time, like the use of numbers, or like human spirituality, tend to contain within them a large collection of truths. Large collections of truths are what I mean by a greater reality, because they are not reality, they are abstracted ideas that are based on reality, but serve a greater purpose.
Something being more real than the reality in front of us is not a new idea, idealism was introduced by Plato 2,400 years ago suggesting that true reality lies in the world of perfect ideas, otherwise put, a reality more real than the physical world.
Like I said though, all of this is my interpretations of readings and based on my own years of thought and experience.
I'd caution against comparing an actual, useful-in-everyday-life abstraction like numbers, with a vague wishy-washy idea like "human spirituality."
I'm familiar with idealism and I definitely got the sense that you were coming from that perspective. As you might have guessed, I'm a naturalist, and probably also a materialist, because I think naturalism most closely comports with what we understand about how the universe works. While idealism is interesting to read about, I have yet to meet anyone that could provide evidence for the fact that it is actually correct and naturalism is wrong, so that's why I was asking. I'm personally not that interested in philosophical concepts that have no evidence or application in the real world.
I'm also not aware of evidence for any "truths" that are themselves inherent to any abstractions we use as a species. For example, I can write an equation like so:
x + 7 = 10
I can solve for X and find that it is 3, and verify that my answer is correct by checking it against the original equation. I can do all of that using the abstractions we've developed and nothing more. But none of these truths are actually inherent to the abstraction of numbers; I could just have easily put seven apples in front of me, and added apples to another pile until I arrived at a total of 10 to find my answer.
Could you give me an example of an abstraction which contains a truth that does not ultimately derive from the material, as in the example above?
The comparison was risky, I’ll give you that. I think we’ve both already come to the conclusion that neither of us is going to prove much to the other, as you’ve stated our belief systems clash in multiple important ways. I would argue that my idealistic and (more importantly but not yet mentioned) my humanistic views of the world are not wholly incompatible with naturalism, given you are willing to give wide berth to aspects of natural forces like consciousness and what we do with it, which you may not be. On materialism, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere.
And to your apple example, I never implied that numbers do not originate in the material world or are not derived from there, only that their true utility is realized when they have been abstracted over all the other types of fruit, and animals, and crops, etc. What started as piles of apples becomes something like one level of abstraction higher than a pile of apples, it becomes 10. But you have specifically said you have no interest in discussing things of this nature so I’ll stop. But I’m leaving this paragraph because I took the time to write it.
Your request for an abstraction that does not derive from the material is a bit of an impossible task isn’t it? And like I said I never claimed that these abstractions did not originate in the material, just that over time they accumulated related truths to become greater than the material itself.
It has become a meme at this point, but it seems men will do anything but go to therapy. Especially here, when the author can clearly afford it, and is going through a existential crisis.
Also, if this is the cohort of people joining the DOGE initiative, I'm even more afraid that I was before.
I have the opposite problem. I know exactly what I would do if I had enough money in the bank to live off the interest. I remind myself how lucky I am and to be grateful, which is probably the most helpful thing I do.
As someone who has developed software for almost 20 years, and who is also staying on top of LLMs because I genuinely enjoy it, I really feel like I will make some good money soon.
Fund something not necessarily tech related and be part of it, not some remote benefactor. That is the point of capital. It could be a problem that needs solving, or just some community/culture/industry. Earth is immense and spherical. Look beyond the concept of borders.
People always say that just making something open source doesn't entitle other people to something like support, but it seems like the consensus is that this doesn't extend to girlfriends?
Not being married implies the ability of either to leave whenever it suits them without any financial obligations to the other. She had nothing to fear if the startup failed and left him in debt, and conversely, she doesn't necessarily gain anything if the reverse is true.
I dunno, everyone dunking on him for this feels like a kinda shitty thing to do. It seems like he's self aware enough that he already knows this, and he'll undoubtedly find out later he regrets it when it's too late to fix it.
I'm not rich but after my first exit I went crazy investing in friends' ideas (including over-decorating my tiny SF apartment) and I actually came out a little ahead but I never bothered the failures because I was never expecting a return. It was super fun and I highly recommend it especially if you're rich.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Poor people have the same existential thoughts too. At least he has the freedom to choose what he wants to do and not to be beholden to anyone, which is the whole damn point of being rich. No one ever claimed wealth solves all of life’s problems. Anyway, his lack of grounding is most likely from lack of a family.
The start of the post literally begins with him saying he doesn't expect anyone to feel sorry for him, or at least, that it's a really silly problem to have.
Start nonprofit businesses that hire, train, and support people with physical and developmental disabilities. For example, the Adelante of New Mexico. They create companies to provide jobs to people with disabilities. They also provide health insurance, a living wage, and housing assistance.
Make more companies like that. Put money to doing good, not just being good.
He should put his money where his mouth is. Give it all away. That'll really change the world for the better and then he'll get to prove his entrepreneurial greatness by doing it all again without that gnawing sense of security.
It's okay. Keep learning, searching, asking questions, trying to find answers. Some questions are answered by starting a new company. Others are answered by going on a vacation to Hawaii and learning Physics in the jungle. Sometimes both. Sometimes neither. The idle mind is the devil's playground. So, stay busy, stay hungry, and keep searching.
If your problem is that you're rich and have no idea what to do, why not just spice it up and give away _all_ of your money, with no way back? That's too difficult? Well, try it. If you're lost and can't figure out any other option...increase difficulty level in this game and start again. Good luck!
Same situation but 10 years ago. My advice would be to put all your money in stocks and live just like you always did. Find a normal job. Buy a normal house and car. Its great to never ever think about money. Live moderate. Don't show off. You stocks income will be roughly 2.5m a year btw.
Vinay - would love to chat about what you learned about robotics. I am in the process of starting a robotics company (focused on software), and could use any advice you might have. Talked with plenty of investors, but talking to founders is much harder with this being my first startup. Is it alright if I email you?
I don’t get it… you can do whatever the hell you want now. What’s the problem? Surely you like do _something_?
And if you only want to do something for 4 weeks at a time then do that. Where’s the despair coming from?
Also, this person loves capitalism so much because it worked for them. But then the way they say like it’s the greatest gift ever seems so out of touch.
The problem is too many options and so he is stuck in analisys parallaisys. He could spend all is time trolling my posts to correct my spelling or start a company or ... so many options.
Read your blog post backwards. Paragraph by paragraph and you get the answer to your intrinsic question. And btw it would be a much better read at the same time
not rich and not lonely and I would learn something new every day if I could. Learn to be rich in ideas. If you already are, write them down and share them with the world. Or study an ancient civilization. Or learn to fly a plane. learn something that is difficult for you to learn. There are so many things to study and learn and teach.
If you don't want to live your own life, you can live it for others.
If you get tired of living for others, you can live your life for yourself.
There are a lot of philanthropic pursuits that could really use an extra million or two per year (LEVF would be my top pick), which is less than you'd expect to make from index funds returns.
He's describing what many of people FIREing experience, lack of purpose and direction.
This also scares me as someone who's been saving and investing for that purpose and I would not want to go through it. I have few ideas (similar to his with robotics) or different ventures, but it still scares me.
I feel like there's a weird psychology to these kinds of boo hoo posts that I see from rich people lamenting their good fortune. What's the actual sub-conscious impulse to flaunt your wealth in such a way that devalues it to the 99% of all humanity who weren't so lucky? I can only possibly conclude that the individual who does this is looking for ever more subtle and excusable ways of bragging while appearing to do the opposite. Really sad. If life is so hard when you don't have to work, please, oh virtuous one, do the selfish thing and offload the burden onto some other poor soul like myself. I'm sure I can find a way to bear it.
I'm not rich, but I have enough to live out my days [humbly], and leave something to my daughter.
But I get to write code, Every. Single. Day. Code that I want to write, the way that I want to work, at the Quality level that I want to deliver.
That's heaven.
I would not be here, if I had been able to find work, after leaving my last company at 55. So, I guess being frozen out of the tech industry is maybe the best thing that has happened to me. It was the kind of thing I wouldn't have known was possible, until I was forced into it.
But I wouldn't turn down a few extra mil. It's just that I don't think the fox is worth the chase.
Personally if I were in those shoes, I would focus on contributing directly to open source projects, both directly by volunteering, and financially. Its worthwhile work that has major impact, and you don't need to work 24/7 if you don't want to.
As someone who isn't rich, but has taken extensive time off work, I love not working. The last 18 month break I took may have been the happiest I've ever been. I'll never be rich, because I'm not motivated by money, but I've never been bored or rudderless.
I've done this and it's great, especially for travel, but I've notice that each time I do it, employers are more and more uncomfortable with the employment gap regardless of skills.
Just one idea for making a positive impact while meeting amazing communities of folks: Invest in early stage climate startups (and not just software ones). They’re struggling and they’re building stuff that we’ll desperately need to survive.
My dearest memories are with friends and lovers, I miss the former and can’t always have the latter; if I had all the money in the world I would use it to spend more time with the people I love and care about.
If you're feeling too rich you don't need to cure it by donating all your money etc. Simply buy a jet and make fancy friends. Soon you wont be rich anymore, your existential dilemma will vanish and you can get back to working.
Find something that other people would see as infeasible or inaccessible and work on that. You are in a position of privilege that can be used to advance well-being and knowledge.
Deciding whether to explore challenges solo versus as part of a team is a crucial differentiator.
Surprise, surprise, money and "success" are not the keys to happiness.
Sorry to be a bit harsh, but it's both hilarious and sad to me that people like this exist (people, who, no less, have the gall to call other human beings "NPC"s yet would be helpless and have no idea what to do in life were it not for the world telling them to follow the facile pursuit of extreme wealth—hah!) It's no wonder software is infested with technology that is, at best a hyper niche, lucky market fit that really doesn't need to exist and will not be remembered in a decade and at worst of products that are outright societal ills.
Well, such is life when we encourage people to be narcissistic, mindless, money-seeking drones instead of socially aware, emotionally intelligent, and caring human beings.
I'm happy you are finally on the way to reflection OP, but it really does depress me that there are so many "intelligent" people that seemingly don't bother to think about or question the motives of the socioeconomic system at large and whether or not the life the system is suggesting they pursue is really a meaningful one. Apparently for some it takes getting incredibly lucky (and hard work, let's not ignore that, but luck is a key component here too) and incredibly rich to even begin to start engaging in the level of self-reflection that scores of nameless barflies, poets, and yokels were capable of hundreds of years ago.
It's not really a lot of money, but it is a non-trivial management problem you'd have to spend more time than you think responding to- and at an opportunity cost against things that provide belonging, satisfaction, hope, and joy. With these new obligations, you need to manage them so that you can focus on those other good things.
Get it managed, out of cash, and get it planned for and pay yourself your old salary with a small raise for a bit. Be sober for a while. Avoid sex workers. Rent a supercar before buying one. Use a personal trainer to get fit. your job is "managing investments" to anyone who asks. Luxury is mostly symbolic. Family and friends are both free and irreplacable. Privacy and mobility are usually worth it.
It's not something you are, it's just something you manage now. There's a great quote from the BlueBottle coffee guys, "money in hand, not in heart" or somesuch. How to extract value from a big pile of cash is a challenging question that really smart wealth managers get paid stupidly well to solve, and there's zero reason why you should think you can do it without investing in some education. Take some time to grieve the attachments it has evaporated.
You're just you with a new and peculiar set of problems. Good luck.
(I don't have that money, but I've known it most of my life, and within my means I've just learned to do the things that people who can have anything in the world choose to do. they're pretty good.)
Read through most of these comments unsatisfied myself. Sad to see people be mean.
In my humble opinion, some spirituality gives one true purpose beyond this limited and at times unfulfilling material realm. It will provide compassion and gratitude for all beings. Buddha too was a Prince with unimaginable wealth. Wealth is not necessarily by itself a path to happiness.
I’d go find a spiritual space that appeals to you. It’s not easy as people with riches like the Beatles and people without like the hippies of the 60s too spent their life finding it. Read about George Harrison, for e.g.
FWIW I found my spiritual space at this tiny piece of heaven called Bhakti SF.
Well, if you are going to study physics somewhere, Hawaii seems like a great place to do it. It seems like a great place to do many things really. Hope new year's eve was just as fun for you as for me :)
This now is your moment to improve the lives of other people in scalable cost-efficient ways, in improving the human condition. It may not be obvious how, but it will come to you if you try.
And the point exactly is that one can often accomplish more when one has more freedom in a lead capacity, as opposed to being a random worker bee in a larger group. Things don't have to be this way, but they often are.
I guess im not rich as you so you can give me some of your money, because then I'll be able to think what rich people do so I'll give you some ideas what you can do m8.
Here's what I don't understand: Vinay, if what you loved so much was the journey, why would you sell the company?
Loom was your life, clearly. It meant a huge amount to you. You cared about it and the work you did there, so you... sold it to a giant multibillion dollar corporation and let them absorb everything special about it so they could make another buck.
Was there just no way to continue on without being acquired? If there wasn't, then what was the value in what you were building? Did you just luck into a fortune?
I am one of those people who thinks capitalism is largely worthless as a personal ideology (though not as an economic system). I think that because, as the author of this post has discovered, money is inherently worthless. Success means something, but money doesn't. Loom could have been a going concern. So many companies could have been. They didn't need infinite growth. They needed to do a good job to help their customers and make the world better by doing so.
Nobody seems to understand or care about that anymore.
If I were in your position, Vinay, I would quit my own retirement. I would give away as much of my money as I could, leaving only just enough to act as a safety net if I failed or had a true emergency. I'd put that money into some form of trust where it was difficult enough for me to access that I had to live within some limited means. Then I'd start another company, and, if it succeeded, keep it. No more acquisitions.
There's no point in money except what it buys you, but you already had what you wanted. You made a mistake and lost it. You'll have to start over to get it back.
(I also personally don't love AI and don't want more companies doing AI, but I am trying to focus on the point of this post, not an ex post facto discussion of Loom itself.)
My advice would be to touch grass maybe? Learn pottery or something, there's more to life than hoarding wealth. Read Camus. And if that money really is a burden, you can always donate most of it away.
Sorry for the vitriol, but I honestly lost all respect for OP after he mentioned joining DOGE. Working with oligarchs towards enacting austerity when you won't suffer from it makes me not care that much about how vacuous you feel your existence is.
> It seems plausible, but I’m learning to just accept that I am happy learning physics. That’s the goal in and of itself. If it leads to nothing, that’s ok.
This is it, the happy ending. Do things for the sake of doing them.
Adults of all stripes - and of all socioeconomic backgrounds - manage to pull themselves out of funks all the time without needing to write woe-is-me blog posts about it.
That our wealth-worship culture has gone so far and gotten so bad that we're supposed to give any fucks about this "zeroth-world struggle" is absolutely asinine.
We are truly on The Worst Timeline, without doubt.
(It shouldn't surprise anyone that OP "larped as Elon" and "had a brief stint at DOGE"...)
This is such an American thing that I find it hard to respond to, because these cultural things feel universal when you're swimming in them.
Wealth doesn't make it difficult to figure out what to do with your life if you never thought wealth is the goal. The problem is that the sole life goal for this person was to get rich, and now that's the endgame, and he doesn't know what to do.
If the goal, instead, was to have fun, to foster a strong social circle, good relationships, to do things for and with them, to have hobbies, to learn new things, to challenge yourself, etc, he'd just think "oh cool, now I can do more of those without having to spend X hours a day working".
Yes, feels like the invisible hand selects people to get rich based on how unfulfillable they are and thus how likely they are to keep working after they get rich.
I understand this serves an inflation control mechanism in our highly unequal system. The wealthy have comparatively so much money that the system cannot afford them to spend like normal people would. It would put too much currency in circulation and cause massive inflation. The system needs the wealthy to keep investing in ventures to create more busy-work, filled with NPCs and insatiable people who will also create more busy-work if they get rich.
The system needs to keep the money circulating in a very tight loop. Its journey from the money printer back to government hands needs to be very short in order to allow the government and corporations to retain the increasing degree of control that they need to maintain the status quo.
Unsuccesful and rich, depressing to read this garbage tbh.
I have thousand of projects i would do yesterday with proper money.
Buying and renovating or buying my own house. Creating a park with different influences (japan, china, asia etc.). Doing a lot of arts and crafts and experimenting with things. Building my own workspace etc.
And when everything is settled, having space for friends and family to visit and use this too.
And after that, helping people around me.
I'm also lost why this person thinks being rich is boosting. I'm very happy with my relationship with my wife and it doesn't sound like he has anything to really boost about.
Congratulations to the author! They basically "won" and did something that most people on HN can only dream of.
My 2 cents: I would devote the remainder of my life to solving problems that the current system is unoptimized for. Things that seem intractable like the housing crisis, homelessness, climate change, food insecurity. Like this guy who is trying to re-green a part of the Sonoran Desert after getting a windfall from helping the El Salvadoran government switch to Bitcoin [1].
I think ultimately the author is going to have to find a very difficult task/goal that will require similar if not greater effort compared to starting Loom.
What's loom? This app for screen recording?? A terrible product, I personally hated every second of using it, yet my bosses were pissing rainbows and insisted on everyone using it. Congratz on taking a shitload of corporate money in your pocket for this. Truly impressive job! And I'm in a good way envy you.
There is an impression that money made you unhappy, or at least it made you realise something. But you must always remember that loosing everything is just as easy as hard it was to get. Feels like you're really chill and sophisticated guy, but you need to spend more time alone and eventually you'll think these things through
help more people. Use your skills and resources to accelerate progress in the areas in which you are sufficiently competent. If my startup exits i have zero doubt that I will continue in this way.
Here’s a take I haven’t read yet: I have no sympathy to offer you.
Living organisms probably started as some self replicating RNA. Already a beautiful, complex creation of our Mother Earth.
After eons of constant struggle for survival and resources, miraculously the consciousness emerged. Our kind, of millions of distinct species is the sole avatar able to perceive just about every aspect our planet has to offer AND reflect on them and our own existence.
Tens of thousands of years of more struggle, each generation of our kin building on the teachings of generations past; from existing as specks roaming the face of the earth at the mercy of Mother Nature, to organizing as civilizations, and finally building robust systems that supply billions of people with necessities, give a voice to the people and escape serfdom and slavery (a process that’s still ongoing).
A quirk of our capitalist system is that it __allows for__ and __benefits from__ individuals like yourself who can work extraordinarily hard to create lots of value. And naturally, you are rewarded with the profound ability to DO ANYTHING YOU WANT, HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT, GO ANYWHERE YOU WANT (of the external aspects of your life). You have conquered all of existence.
You like climbing mountains. Imagine Everest but 1000 times higher. Imagine every living thing ever blindly climbing up with all their might, and their offspring spawns from their corpse when they die. Some fall. What you did was make it to the very PEAK of this impossibly, unimaginably large mountain of existence. You look out and you see nothing (because it’s so large, of course). Please, it’s okay to be confused. Don’t be scared. Take your time. You earned it. Don’t be upset that there’s nothing above for you to keep climbing. You have some options. Lay at the top forever (boring, lonely). Or, try to bring a few people up with you. Or, make it your mission to help as many people scale higher as possible. But what I think you might need, is to come back down - give up what you have or detach your self from the idea of being at the top. Much love brother, I think you are pretty cool. I would love to chat if you are down, I’ll send you an email.
I don’t think anything will help the author as much as giving a bunch of money away. I grew up in a community where I met good number of very rich people with inherited wealth and every one of them is depressed or has some other issue—hypochondria, feelings of inadequacy, or some strange striving for significance through conspicuous consumption which is, of course, ultimately unfulfilling, etc. The root cause in all these cases, in my view, is the money. Just give it away and face the fear of engaging with the world again.
Write Wikipedia articles. Volunteer at a charity. Go and do a PhD in whatever field takes your fancy. Take up auto racing. Learn an instrument. Have children.
The writer is in the incredibly fortunate position of being able to do whatever he damn well pleases, at an age where he is still physically able to do whatever he damn well pleases.
Good lord. I don't care if Silicon Valley was wrapped up in 2019. They need to make another episode which is nothing but a reenactment of this blog post.
I can't believe there is nothing a person would be interested in building/exploring with that much resources. I simply can't grasp it.
The expensive prostitutes and yachts and cocaine and butt kissing hangers on would get old very quickly. So you need something to do, a reason to get up in the morning. A project.
Understandably everyone doesn't want 12 kids and not everyone is altruistic. That's fine, the world might be better with less rich "altruists" pushing society around anyway in my opinion. But you have no curiosities? Nothing you have always dreamed of achieving? Nothing you can think of to achieve that would bring you joy?
Go to India, buy some property and have a giant pyramid built with a statue of yourself on top. You can employee thousands of people and act like a king and push local officials around with your money. People will remember you hundreds of years from now (if that is your thing). Work on bringing back the extinct Mastodon. Create an island quasi kingdom on a Pacific Island and build a little world how you always wanted it to be.
Honestly, this is one of the differences with the new immigrant rich people. They aren't the rich American immigrants of old. Look at what Andrew Carnegie did. Or even (for all his faults) Musk. Or Kellogg (of cereal fame, not an immigrant). He did all kinds of wacky stuff even developing his own religious texts. But point is, he did something he thought would change the world. These new rich are vapid uninteresting shadows compared to those guys.
> Within 2 minutes of talking to the final interviewer for DOGE, he asked me if I wanted to join. I said “yes”. Then he said “cool” and I was in multiple Signal groups. [...] So I reached out to some people and got in. After 8 calls with people who all talked fast and sounded very autistic smart, I was added to a number of Signal groups and immediately put to work. [...] The next 4 weeks of my life consisted of 100s of calls recruiting the smartest people I’ve ever talked to, working on various projects I’m definitely not able to talk about, and learning how completely dysfunctional the government was. It was a blast.
While I can attest that current day governments in general - some more, some less and I assume past governments as well - can be quite inefficient. I sometimes fantasize about making parts of it more lean and efficient because how hard could it be, right? And with the "right" kind of result evaluation it will not be that hard to score better than it does right now. But having silicon valley techbros apply their move fast and break stuff attitude to things that aren't tech startups has repeatedly resulted in awful results [1]. So I must say reading this passage is quite revealing in ways I think the author did not intend it to be.
Not to judge or sound condescending, but it seems like you’re lacking empathy and a community.
I know exactly what I’d do in your situation: help others. I live in a small city, and it has some problems and some opportunities. Even lacking funds I still do what I can to help the community around me. Spend some time with people who aren’t all in tech or on the beach and go find some reality. People like elon preaching doge are too far removed. Work on the ground. It’s hard and it’s real.
Thank you for saying what I didn't have the patience to say. Although I sincerely worry that empathizing with people like this is a trap. I hate that I have to think this way, but nothing is worse than feeling like a sucker. I only hope I'm elevated above all of this in the afterlife.
> Although I sincerely worry that empathizing with people like this is a trap.
I have a similar sense. However, I’m not sure empathizing with them is itself the trap. You don’t want your empathy to make you overly credulous. For example, while you might empathize with him feeling directionless at the acquiring company, I don’t think you should therefore conclude that he is right about the new coworkers being “NPCs.”
Empathy is about understanding people from their perspective. I would think that highly empathic people would be harder to scam, as they would recognise the con artists for what they are.
The trouble is, if you think in abstract terms at all you'll start seeing the patterns in the reasons many people are suffering, and the patterns in your relationship to them.
Then you'll have to ratchet up boundaries to address the relational patterns with people who are having a hard time, so that you're not a participant in their suffering.
And you'll have to start working on the patterns underneath the problems, which when you get into it starts to look more and more like the kind of megalomaniacal moonshot ("give computers arms and legs" / "fix the government now!") that the author ran out of gas on.
I think where you end up if you think about this is just recognizing that a) you probably should try to do some ambitious, high-leverage project to make the world better and b) reflecting about the world and about life in a thorough way is emotionally difficult for most people, so you also have to deal with those emotions.
The author's original somewhat manic intentions were probably right, and maybe he needed a bit more of a rest but was plowing forward out of fear that he'd lose his nerve. Now he's getting some rest and will probably figure out something big, important, and hard to work on in the next few years.
The barriers/boundaries thing I think is interesting.
I've never really been able to identify with this sort of "make money and then fix the world" stuff because I feel that everyone hugely simplifies every issue and looks only at first or maybe second order effects.
You fix malaria/give to the poor/raise the minimum wage/etc. Cool, now we have a wealthier population with more people doing more stuff to modify the environment. We accelerate biosphere collapse and global warming. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
I think that if you're being truly logical about these things you could just as easily come up with a grand solution that's something like drawing a graph of social connections from you, go out a few layers, and then press the button to delete everyone else on the planet and rewild most of it. Or go back in time and don't discover oil (or was the suffering of the pre-industrial era worse? maybe it was, probably it was...!).
I don't think I'd be chosen to go to Elysium but I can't really see the logical flaw in the argument either. Why should the super rich care about the rest? Move forward a few years/decades; why should superintelligent AI care about humans? We don't care about mosquitoes.
Making a company that makes a prettier table or a faster car or whatever feels like it's directly solving a problem. Making a company that aims to "improve the world" just seems like a fool's errand to me, second law of thermo, that sort of thing.
Raising the standard of living for the poorest people in the world does very little to increase the rate of climate change since these people have very little impact on the environment and consume so little in the first place. I'd argue that we also owe it to them because the poor are also least capable to handle the consequences of climate change and the other issues facing developing nations. I don't know why this needs to be said but those are real issues.
The flaw in Elysium is moral and practical. You have to accept that humans by virtue of being human deserve some consideration, and the well being of society deserves consideration. If a rich person don't believe this then they are irresponsible. Too much inequality in society makes it shittier for everybody for plenty of reasons.
Many people con others into giving their emotional currency. Rich people are the worst about this, because it's the only value from the world they've failed to actually extract. So they want it from everyone.
Rich people have problems. This dude is clearly focused on himself. He doesn't need the emotional currency of others unless he's willing to give a lot more his (love and empathy).
> Although I sincerely worry that empathizing with people like this is a trap
What exactly is "people like this"? I thought this was a very genuine account from a regular person who worked hard, made a ton of money from it, and now finds that the money didn't give him the satisfaction he expected. It's honest and, frankly, extremely unsurprising and straightforward.
Absolutely. Humans need real connection with other humans. Ending your one good relationship to join forces with a bunch of autistic internet trolls who think they’re smarter than everyone else is not a recipe for happiness.
to reference/recommend this book, I swiped a blurb from a ddg search:
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion is a 2016 book written by psychologist Paul Bloom. The book draws on the distinctions between empathy, compassion, and moral decision making. Bloom argues that empathy is not the solution to problems that divide people and is a poor guide for decision making.
This person is in a completely different class than 99% of HN readers. It is impossible for him to ever relate to others who are not like him because he is not like them, and not like us, the non-millionaire non-entrepeneurs. Unfortunately, this goes both ways, and is probably why I am not rich. Learning to bridge that human gap is far harder than becoming a multi-millionaire or climbing mountains in the Himalayas or working for DOGE for 4 weeks.
This guy perfectly represents Silicon Valley as a whole. I have no doubt that 70%+ of techies here would follow a similar path (call coworkers NPCs, break up with GF, live out Elon fantasy, pretend to do important/smart things but give up and move on to the next every few weeks) if given unlimited money.
If you have limited contact with coworkers outside of work, aren't they NPCs? For all intents and purposes they might be. You might still like them, but they don't really affect your life aside from giving you quests.
Referring to anyone as an NPC is really insulting. People are not algorithms in a video game. They are real and they have lives and dreams and hopes and problems. Show some respect.
100% this. Calling others NPCs is the same type of psychology as the people you meet who complain about how everyone in their life - parents, spouse, friends, coworkers is a jerk...
Then complain that they are lonely. One common trait of I have seen in those with good people skills, even those who use them for bad like pushy salesmen, is that they know how to treat people as if they matter simply because they are people.
Yes, and I think the percentage of the population with these abilities is diminishing over time. People are too used to having their interactions intermediated by screens.
I'd go a step further and say that I find it an extremely scary trend to call people NPCs. It's extremely dehumanizing and dehumanization always comes before acts of extreme violence. How many gamers treat actual NPCs in video games only furthers this.
Given the context (him not wanting to stay with the acquiring company), I'm pretty sure he was referring to the large number of people at big companies who don't seem to do anything, but get in the way.
I think most people who work at Big Co's have their share of meetings where half a dozen people attend regularly, but have never said a word and you have no idea what they actually do. Those are the "NPCs" he's referring to.
> I think most people who work at Big Co's have their share of meetings where half a dozen people attend regularly, but have never said a word and you have no idea what they actually do. Those are the "NPCs" he's referring to.
Have you considered that those “NPCs” have no idea what you do..?
I wouldn't care if they know what I do, as long as they do something actually productive.
You may disagree, but the "NPC" comment comes from the widespread belief that it's easy for low-performers to stick around at big companies, versus at smaller companies that live and die by their burn rate.
> … widespread belief that it's easy for low-performers…
The truth is that most high performers do menial busy work that doesn’t impact real bottom lines either. Everyone sits around doing things knowing that their job doesn’t need to exist and rather than call out the madness of a society focused on busywork for the appearance of “productivity” everyone just rips on each other instead… Society could use a lot more empathy and a lot less fear.
It's still pretty condescending. Don't know what someone's role is, but assume he doesn't do anything? Him calling other people "NPCs" is a pretty clear sign that he thinks he's the Main Character.
Not only that he's the main character but that they aren't actual humans who have their own experience and life and that it might even be ok to run them over with your car as long as you hide in the bushes for a few minutes after or get your car a new paint job.
I could say the same thing about the NPCs in a video game and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, because they wouldn't share any of their lives, hopes and dreams with you at any point.
Sure, people (probably) have their own lives; but believing this and being able to actually tell are two completely different things.
I dunno, there's something about the way you responded that rubs me entirely the wrong way. You seem to take my comment and then take the worst, instead of most generous interpretation of it. I posed a hypothetical, and it seems like you accuse me of considering every person in the world an NPC.
Calling people NPCs is a self-own and speaks to a persons inability to consider that everyone around them has some inner life, after work interests, etc. You don't need contact with coworkers outside of work to realize this. You just need to be a functioning decent human being able to make small talk.
While what you are saying is true, it’s a very unhealthy and inhuman way to view other people. I generally find this outlook is a sign of depression. It was for me at least
Truth is subjective and perspective is reality. These views are technically correct when approached from fist principles. the side effect of actually internalizing them is viewing people as NPCs
First of all that’s not what the original comment said. You’re changing the nature of the statement to be something else, but neither what you said nor what he said is technically correct “when approached from fi[r]st principles.”
You are not the main character in some narrative. We are all individuals interacting with each other, and if you lose sight of that it’s very easy to make selfish and immoral choices.
I appreciate the author’s openness in sharing their experience - it’s really worthwhile to share experiences where money isn’t everything, and that it can be a poor generator of meaning.
Speaking of meaning, I think it’s a task for everyone to find their life’s calling - something you’re uniquely suited to do. Sometimes that pays the bills and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m a bit surprised that “start another saas company” wasn’t really on the list for Vinay, but there’s probably a good reason for that. For me, I found that starting a family completely changed my life, as well as helping me appreciate more the family I already had - but I suppose that’s not something that lasts forever either. Good luck to the author.
We're all players in a game called evolution. This means we're biologically designed to cope with adversity, not success. The real contest in life is between closely matched organisms, each having only a small chance to survive.
Being a creature that's 1% more or less appropriate to its environment (not too smart or dull, not too strong or weak) is the actual game. Everything else is random noise. This means becoming spectacularly successful makes you irrelevant -- a spectator.
This can lead to artificial contests, between organisms that have already won the primary contest. So, after saying, "Wait, what now?", people invent make-believe goals -- climb mountains, make even more money, learn to cook a perfect omelette -- hoping to restore a sense of purpose.
In this non-contest, the least successful burn out, maybe even die prematurely. The most successful invent an imaginary, artificial goal that turns into a real advance. Transistors. Lasers. Antibiotics. Things that weren't really necessary until they appeared and, by existing, became their own reason to exist.
So ... done climbing mountains? Choose an important, unsolved problem and work on it. The problem list is long and deserving:
Batteries.
Cancer.
Population.
Late-stage capitalism.
People who want to kill everyone who doesn't share their beliefs.
I had the same thoughts, as some other people in the comments - there are so many problems to solve, so many people to help. It is hard to match the fulfillment that comes from helping someone less fortunate that you.
This essay has not-so-subtle shades of individualism and meritocracy which can warp ones views about self-worth. I do applaud his self-awareness regarding his own vanity.
As a side note, this is the first I am hearing of interviews for DOGE. Curious what that process looks like.
The unspoken and oft-forgotten part of the "immense wealth" agreement is that, unshackled from the need to work to survive in perpetuity, you are also free to give yourself and your time to causes who otherwise would never afford to pay for your skills. My plan - should I ever reach that level of unfathomable wealth, as statistically unlikely as it is even for my privileged upbringing - is to eventually divide my time between IT work for the local school system/town government and running a small, tech-focused community center (think LAN center + board game tables + maker lab) out of my own pocket; the former for the benefits more than the salary (healthcare is expensive), the latter to give the local youth a place to hang out that doesn't require continuous outflows of money or a credit card.
So my advice to anyone, really, is to always consider what you'd do with your life if money were no longer the chief concern of it, and to find more ways of incorporating that into your life until and unless such a time arises. Whatever you do, though, should be in the interest of uplifting others rather than yourself (you won Capitalism by reaching this point, after all). That provides a fulfillment every human ultimately needs in some form.
having a lot of money is crazy because there is literally nothing to do. there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. if you sit around all day then people who work at local restaurants will start to know you and people here and there will start to recognize you from wandering around between your haunts every day. its such a weird feeling when you realize that the world isnt as big as you thought it was. before having total freedom, you image that even a single metro like sf bay area is enough to swallow you up. its not. the reason it feels so big is because your are busy all the time. and the same goes for the entire world. theres nothing to do here unless you are busy with something. traveling and gawking at stuff is not going to get you very far. that is the terrible and insane reality of life. that life is an illusion. this is part of the reason why so many people buckle under the apparently feather-weight pressure of having lots of money. the other reason is that your sense of identity and self-worth becomes tied to your money. you find yourself completely unable to ask for a lower price, balk at a price or decide to not buy something if there are other people around. because after all you have the money. except nobody has enough money to behave like that. 60M would evaporate very quickly under someone who did not recognize and correct this effect. this is why so many rich people are so comically cheap. they have to be because you lose the ability to think rationally, to thread the needle. you have to just shamelessly be cheap.
elon musk said "vacation kills." hes one hundred percent correct. when you feel totally free you stop thinking in terms of how to protect yourself and begin to explore all possibilities in an unconstrained way. i dont have to be at work on monday so why not climb a mountain? why not go on safari? why not try this designer drug? logic could save you but without the impulse to protect your fragile life, not everyone is logical enough to sail those waters. i almost killed myself twice before i learned it.
the strange and absolutely unambiguous truth about life is that there is no such thing as not working. you must always be working. it doesnt matter how much money you have. the only way to live a good and satisfying life is to work and have enough at stake that you are afraid of failing. it is better to risk losing your money or even your life rather than stop working.
Society doesn't put money into some people's hands so that they use it to buy big shiny boats. Society trusts some people with money because they use it well. I also think that not using it is OK because it's a virtual thing anyway, so focusing on other aspects of life - like running a farm for example - is an option.
That kind of blog post never happened in the 1950 to 1980 era. It is so naive and selfish. But It might have been written in another era by Marie Antoinette. Avarice and decadence like this need to be taxed into oblivion
I was in a somewhat similar position as the OP, having had a successful exit many years ago and trying to figure things out. I was lucky that I still had a faculty position at a top university, young kids, and a good family to help ground me and guide me.
My general take on things is this: money is one of the closest things we have to a superpower in this world. With enough money, you can build new things, make steps toward solving hard problems, and influence people and organizations to do things you want.
Given all this, what kind of world would you want to live in? And with your newfound superpower, what kind of steps can you take that might get us closer to that world?
Now, of course, this path is fraught with many challenges and dangers (especially as evidenced by so many superpowered billionaires around the world that want us to live in an oligarchy, but that's a rant for another day). Instead, I'll end by sharing a few things that have helped shape my thinking about how I spend my time and what kind of positive impact I want to make on the world:
There's also an interview with a sci-fi author (Ted Chiang I believe, but I can't find it to confirm), that also posed an interesting question: what is your ideal world, and what steps are you taking to help us get closer to that world? For me, it's Star Trek, not the space exploration part (though that's cool), but the idea that Earth has become a planet where things like war, poverty, hunger, racism, and xenophobia are things in the far past, and every person can achieve their full potential. I know cynics will scoff, but that's a world I'd like to live in, and one I'm trying to use my superpowers to get to.
I have 500$ in my bank account and just got laid off. You can send me some money and get a sense of fulfillment you helped someone. Dont ever say you never had an opportunity to help anyone.
Anyway. As some people have touched on, service to others and evaluating unjust power structures can be a good place to look for fulfillment. Good luck
I was getting ready to pile on, but then saw the dude boxes. Anyone who voluntarily risks getting punched in the face gets my respect.
Sadly I'm not of independent means like him, so I can't really relate but good luck to him. He's managed what most of us here dream of.
TBH, I'd say to him to reach out to other ex-founders and chat to them. They'll probably have the best perspective. Or become a partner at YC or something.
Instead of engaging with others, you should’ve just stayed bold (or in your own words - foolish) and started the robotics company, pouring in whatever money you could. Sometimes other people are unintentionally demoralizing. Who cares if you’re burning through your own cash? In a few years, it might just turn into something big.
Post-scarcity world means that a large chunk of society has this kind of freedom, so there wouldn't be the same kind of isolation that goes along with currently being one of the few rich people.
you have a lack of purpose, sorry buddy but finding one is a life's work. you'll never fully admit it even if you write blog posts like this, but you basically got fooled. happens to lots of people
I may sound very arrogant and I am, but I am shocked how clueless one can be about themselves and what they want, while still being clearly very competent and intelligent.
When you have no job and "infinite" money (for most purposes) and you don't even know what you like doing, you should really spend some time just thinking. It's telling how the next arbitrary opportunity presents itself and the author is immediately 100% on it, possibly changing their entire life immediately after it. As someone that likely thought too much and did too little (I don't have millions), I think this is a case of someone that does too much and thinks too little.
Sitting on a beach and studying physics is probably good start, but it might be better to study nothing and just think about what you like and why you do things. And when you figured it out, keep sitting there a while more (weeks, months, I don't know).
It's a bit disappointing that we live in a system that rewards behavior like this so much and unfortunate for everyone that they often end up with power.
I studied philosophy in college and grad school, mainly because I was raised extremely religious and couldn't figure out what was real and what was bullshit.
Every time I read something like this I think to myself 'just please go get a degree in academic philosophy.' It teaches you how to think.
The type of folks who were incredulous about the idea that someone would study something so useless and naval-gazing, I see many of them unsatisfied with life because they have taken the world as it comes, and haven't taken the time to read the existentialists, specifically the ones who wrote about success. I would recommend Tennessee Williams "The Catastrophe of Success": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catastrophe_of_Success
Understanding existentialism, understanding absurdism, these are really useful things to being able to live a satisfying life but in abundance and in a lack of abundance. My partner is really into yoga and meditation and stuff, and much of what I've read about buddism is basically just religious existentialism and absurdism.
All the best to the author, I hope you are able to do well. Life is hard, and success isn't always what we wanted.
I have a similar background. I think the fact that philosophy is not required learning in all schools is part of the reason the US, at least, is currently in such a pitiful state. The OP is a perfect example of the kind of mindless, soulless drone servicing the machine you become without philosophical tutelage. I would feel sorry for these people if they weren't in a position to cause so much damage. We don't need fools like this to have so many resources at their disposal.
I mean if you're looking for a todo list, travelling to third world countries and tipping just like $5 for normal service and seeing people's eyes light up is fun.
I did this once in a restaurant in a small town in Mexico. I called one of the service people (not even a waiter, this was a casual joint where you order at the counter), slipped them $100, and watched their face light up. it was cool.
"Ambition is the first curse: the great tempter of the man who is rising above his fellows. It is the simplest form of looking for reward. Men of intelligence and power are led away from their higher possibilities by it continually. Yet it is a necessary teacher. Its results turn to dust and ashes in the mouth; like death and estrangement it shows the man at last that to work for self is to work for disappointment."
Step one is to take down the post saying you have $60 million. Step one in every. single. guide. on what to do is to not to do when you make it big is advertise how much money you have. Holy hell, just ask for "what to do if I win the lottery"
Step two is to find new friends. No, not to ditch your old ones; for being relative to you, poor, but to find other millionaires you can bitch about "zeroth world problems" with. If I told my friends that my Ferrari is going to take 2 years because there's a list, they're not going to have the remotest bit of sympathy, OR be able to help in any way. But if you make friend ym who are in that scene, they'll at least remember what it was like for them to get their first one, and maybe let you borrow theirs. (obviously Ferrari's aren't everyone's thing. The point is not the specifc brand, or even cars in general, but that, rich or poor, find community that you share interest with. You don't have to, but you can develop new, previously too expensive hobbies and will need new people who like those hobbies.
Form a foundation through which to give money that doesn't have your name on it. It'll come in handy for GoFundMe's for people you liked before you got rich. The anonymous button still gives your name to the organizer.
Take some time off to get utterly bored of not working. It's fun for a bit, but it gets old. After that, go find a job. Doesn't have to be a full time job,
doesn't have to be paid, doesn't have to have anything to do with your. previous career, but trust me, you'll get bored having nothing to do eventually and need something.
One thing sticks out in that article though, and that's not doing something because Elon's cringe. If someone had said how cringe it is to record a video yourself reading slides, would he be where he is today?
Don't be Elon if you don't want to, but if you want to work on robotics, go work on robotics. Who gives a shit what that egomaniac does?
The bigger advice there is find a therapist and talk it through with them. find one through your new wealthy friends for someone that's experience in your new problems. Just like there are therapists rush specialize in bullying or sexual abuse or divorce, there are those who specialize in other areas.
The purpose of life is ultimately to acquire internal resources.
First, hunter-gatherer internal resources (we are all still hunter gatherers after all, biologically speaking). The kind that makes you a capable hunter, i.e. the ability to acquire food/goods:
- Self-confidence
- Self-belief
- Patience
- Ability to acquire new skills
- Charisma/EQ
- Ability to succeed in society and on earth
Then, the qualities preached in religion:
- Peace
- Love
- Kindness
- A teaching and empathetic heart towards others
- Compassion, etc.
Once you've acquired these things, you will no longer be afraid of death. Because you will have accomplished what you were born to do.
TLDR: Study the qualities that martial arts masters have. Because they are the people most at peace with death, which likely means they have accomplished what they were born to do. Then, acquire those qualities. Finally, teach others those qualiites.
The author knows exactly what he wants to do. He wants to be Elon Musk. Sadly despite his successful exit he is still many orders of magnitude away from that level of wealth and power. I hope he can find satisfaction in lesser causes, otherwise he is going to live an unhappy life.
I'm living a pretty okay life, I need money for certain things and helping my friends and family takes a lot of money. I think the guy in this article and some of the people in this thread have their perspective warped by the amount of money they have. (This has been proven time and time again: https://caldaclinic.com/the-psychology-of-wealth-and-how-it-... )
Try making some friends with people who aren't as wealthy as you and try to help them out, maybe they need something that is out of their reach, maybe their family needs expensive medicine or something. Anyways, my TL;DR is make friends, spend your money on others and stop hoarding it because it won't make you happy.
Before I get banned, kicked off Twitter, I’d like to imagine a better world waking up to Talulah Riley and and Grimes like white collar crimes and a savage diss like I got Wiley in your harem while you missed it and you raise what I’m baking.
I find that there are limitations of satisfaction from grand accomplishments or capitalistic success.
At the end of the day, we are born naked, die naked and decompose.
Doing what you want to do without some grand goals, interacting with others, helping others, joking around with friends and family with no other “grand” purpose, or just reconnecting with someone you haven’t for a while, all these things shouldn’t be tucked away completely in the name of “achieving more”.
I do not have anything to add to this beyond pointing out that it is an incredibly ironic first post for someone who loudly states how much they love capitalism on their about page
8/10 people I'm friends with who have been through an exit could write this post. It's a very, very, very, very common. The questions at the end too, two hands to count the times I've been asked those questions. I think the answer is, because: because those are what got you to the point of where you are right now, they are in fact just you, there is no why, they are not questions they're statements, that's who you are. Why are you that way? does it matter? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (oh, and letting people down is hard because you're not just letting people down, you are letting yourself down too)
Everything in this post is about how you keep tripping over your own bullshit and don’t know what you want. The only difference between you and everyone else having an existential crisis is you won the lottery before you ran out of ways to lie to yourself. The good news is you’ve apparently got enough money to pay for the help so many other people need but can’t get. Go find a therapist and figure out why you’re so goddamn miserable (emotionally, not as a person) and what stupid stories you’ve been telling yourself to make you that way so you can use all the wealth you’ve accumulated to do something fulfilling, instead of trying to cosplay as the most visibly miserable person on the planet.
The biggest challenge I see - the economy is about to be transformed dramatically. AI systems may replace much or all of cognitive labor, and soon afterwards manual labor via robotics. Labor displacement, inequality, hupercapitalism, you name it.
We have no good theses on how to handle this transition, or the role of governments in making sure this goes well for people. We need economic policies and strategies to improve human outcomes post-transition.
If you don't care about money, I can't think of anything more impactful than this work. Ping me @ Convergence Analysis if it's of interest
I mean if you wanna angel invest I have some backburner projects I can't get done without some funding for hardware and time spent not earning an income, which I could probably spin into startups
Mike Cannon-Brookes is pursuing Suncable and other energy projects for the future, he's partnered for periods with non software billionaires from the hard resources world (eg: Andrew Forrest) ... there's no shortage of big projects that take big commitments .. even while ensuring you still "never need to work again" (ie. don't push all the chips in).
If you want to see how shallow and utterly stupid anyone in tech is that has money, read this post. It is golden. I was doubled over laughing at the DOGE part. What a chud. And they say the rich know how to use capital. No, they don’t. They’re just like you and me and it’s mostly just to get their rocks off. Typical HN trash.
Clearly this is a joke, and you're all missing the point! He decided to fill in the void left after HBO's Silicon Valley and take up startup stand-up comedy, and this essay is his entry into the space :)
Using the correct words such as "gratitude" but pretty much missing the point. I no place do you mention you took help or how it affected your pre startup personal life.
If one doesn't have principles based on life meaning, optimizing metrics is a good way of calming down your urges but it the end it does not work. How can you tell it doesn't work? Simply because your feedback loop stops giving you the dopamine response you expect and you need to escalate just to calm down. Far away travels, dangerous actions, more expensive stuff even tried to get into an DOGE without even knowing what the problem with DOGE -smart- thinkers is because philosophy, political science or history apparently hasn't been your life's focus. You still consider it important, that it was a very intelligent group they allowed you in, without figuring out what was wrong with their whole premise. It would be apparent to a first year social sciences student, someone who has visited a Tesla factory o to someone from a country with a sizeable functioning government that has not been a victim of corporate capture for decades.
Money is important, but if I were I would beg my girlfriend back if it was a relationship of feelings, try to reconnect with some friends and family that were probably lost during this multi year grind, people you will be considering as boring because no dopamine. Ask then how they are doing, play with their kids see why they are not boring. Read some Gabor Mate and Irvin Yalom and have just one main goal: Being able after 2-3 years to lie down in the grass for a couple of hours,doing nothing, just looking at the stars, being calm without your nervous system randomly spiking and pushing you towards chaos. Talk to people who don't know you are rich, try to learn from them. Avoid extreme environments.
Currently you describe a nervous system that seems to be taking important decisions for meaningless actions which you then rationalize. Not admitting any mistakes, not failing since there were no goals in the first place other than grinding.
I know that, been there, done that, I am still there, I am not getting out anytime soon either. There are many people in that status, that is not special either.
Dude is burned out, he needs to relax a bit and stop drinking coffee if he does, cause it is probably giving him overdrive to the tired mind. Stop and smell the roses for a bit is true in this case.
Why the hell does this crap have 940 comments, lmao? Why would anyone seriously spend any amount of time discussing this nonsensical crap of man-child?
I'll take the money. I've got a bajillion things I want to work on and not enough time because I have to spend 40 hours a week at my day job. Give me enough money to live on passive income, and I will just work on self-directed interesting things.
I mean I will also probably spend about the first three months just catching up on video games, but after that I have a couple of mpd plugins I've been meaning to write, and that's just for starters.
Man if tech bros could pull their head out of their asses for one second and value an opinion of someone who was not themselves (or Elon). They would find that this feeling is perhaps the best documented feeling in philosophy.
A man’s search for meaning is perhaps the best book on a cure for this affliction. I have a hard time taking seriously people who believe their problems are unique
You are talking about money.
You are talking about girlfriend.
You always think about possessing.
If you are fishing for some suggestions I’d first find a good personal trainer and fix the body. At the same time join a career change counseling group workshop.
Don’t let others do things for you. Walk everywhere, use a bicycle. Also cooking kills some time.
So, while I do not agree with everything Jordan Peterson says (or even most), his writing/speaking about “take responsibility for something meaningful”
is good advice.
You want freedom, but that is a freedom to choose. It is not an end goal to never choose anything.
This person is obviously mentally disturbed. Freedom awarded by recent lucky windfall resulted in detriment to him. It already costed him his only deep relationship with a peer and almost costed him his life.
I'm really happy that he ended up learning physics. It's probably safes activity of all mentioned given his specific brain.
To bad he didn't meet someone he wanted to stay with before the money. I would say have a family. The next best thing he could of done. Its going to be hard to find someone that can't see past the money.
I lost it all. I spent some time grieving, did some crazy things, decided to build wealth all over again, but then didn’t. I instead picked a topic and started learning. Three degrees later I’m pushing the boundaries of a field I had never heard of in that past life.
I struggle to understand stuff like this (to be honest, it makes me feel a little angry):
> We started getting into regular arguments, and I knew it wasn’t on her. It was me. I was starting to come to terms with all the mounting insecurities I had stuffed down over the past several years. I didn’t feel like I could work on them with her. So I broke things off after almost 2 years of unconditional love. It was extremely painful, but it was the right call. I needed to fully face myself.
Relational experiences are why and how you're encountering your repressed shadow or confronting the false self in the first place. Don't you face yourself by staying and accomplishing your promise of truthfulness and learn how to practice real love through e.g. honesty, courage,….
I found this lecture once on a webpage that has since disappeared....
"Enlightenment isn't a thing that you can get abandoning family and undertaking mountaineering asceticism. Enlightenment can be attained having family, and is a thing that cannot be attained through mountaineering asceticism. Enlightenment starts from accepting Truth and process of understanding Truth." https://web.archive.org/web/20090805085956/http://www.ircsc....
Please sell off extra real estate. We're paying too much to live. Please stop figuring out ways to make more money. Enjoy your wealth. You don't need any more from our blood sweat and tears. We're already suffering enough at the whims of the idle rich.
Wealth only makes it hard to figure out what to do with your life if you believe wealth is a goal.
Wealth is something that removes obstacles to figuring out what to do with your life. If you had "being wealthy" as the goal itself, no wonder you're now feeling aimless. Instead, you should have been living your life, and now you'd think "great, now I can continue doing what I've been doing, except I don't need to worry about money".
Work shouldn't be your life. At most, work should be an interesting thing you do for the challenge, and which you'd do even if you weren't getting paid to.
His attention span won't be enough to stick with physics for longer than 4 weeks.. he should just apply his skills in building companies to hire a couple of people to work on cool stuff that he is excited about. A good approach is to find some smart grad students at a local university who are in electrical engineering probably since you have to know lots of physics to get there and say "hey i have some money, want to build some cool prototypes?" and the best part is you can just ask those grad students how all this physics stuff works and they will happily tell you whatever you want to know.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
— T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, first stanza (1925)
This past decade I repeatedly found reality to be its own parody. Even the South Park authors admitted to it in 2017 (!).
> The Donald Trump administration is too difficult to satirise because it is funny enough on its own, say Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park.
> While the most recent series of their animated sitcom featured a character that clearly resembles Mr Trump, the pair made the decision to "back off" making fun of the latest US political events.
> "It's tricky now because satire has become reality," Parker told 7.30.
This is the most childish thing I’ve read. And shows a lot about he doesn’t have any people relying on him or community to support. He takes one hike and throws away 60m. Doesn’t try to find anything interesting to do at Atlassian just calls his coworkers NPCs. This is zero-empathy Peter Pan syndrome at its worse.
Sad how he just goes adventure hopping to try and find meaning. The problem is no matter where you are you are also there. Time to look inward and not outward.
You are catching a lot of flak for this, but there is one thing you are right about. If you make tens of millions of dollars, and can't figure out what to do with those resources, you shouldn't be calling your coworkers NPCs. You're the NPC.
I truly mean this in an entirely non-judgemental way. I wish the author luck in achieving his dream of becoming high agency rather than simply high freedom. I wish it for everyone who wants it.
The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
The cringe comes in with the way he does it. He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
It’s amazing how even millionaires and billionaires don’t understand that national debt doesn’t work like personal debt.
But anyway, that’s a tangent. The guy dumped his girlfriend so he has no family to spend time with, and he’s wondering why he’s bored. His only attempts at stimulation involve self-service: how can I be smart and successful especially in a way that everyone will know it?
I can only imagine how being financially set for life would positively impact a typical fiscally responsible family (people with the restraint to hire a financial advisor). Imagine being able to cancel daycare and spend your days with your family instead of burning your life away in the office.
I even know a person who has no children but thanks to a windfall just does his hobbies and hangs out with friends. Still works a day job for health insurance but now work doesn’t define their life. They’ve done things like learn how to DJ and travel to see their international friends on longer visits and not just little two week vacations that corporate zombies get to take.
But the author is struggling to find a way to make work define their life, to get their life to return to capitalism that they have been blessed to escape.
Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
> The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
> Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
That sounds like good advice for me, but not to the author. I sometimes follow orders from random people for fun, but I infer that the author does not.
The author traveled off the paved path. Reality gave him with wealth and time, but unsatisfaction instead of satisfaction. His role is now to figure out a path back to satisfaction, perhaps it will be a short path or a long path, a common one or a one the world hasn't seen before.
I think it’s the natural result of someone who has ‘won’ a game they have been obsessing about/that defined them.
People often find a similar lack of purpose (albeit much, much shorter lived) after being engrossed in a book series, very hard video game, or any other pursuit.
The big difference here, IMO, is this is a game that society is literally constructed around - for its own survival. The ‘rat race’ puts food on everyone’s table, provides care when we’re sick, defines what future our children can have (and if we can even have children) - even what rights we have (or don’t have) in many cases.
Is it so surprising that having won that game, some people - often the ones most obsessed with it - struggle to figure out what is next?
I don't know! But I don't think that changes the argument very much. Unless one thinks that we can choose to be smart or a fast learner or have interests that happen to be lucrative, we should be very thoughtful about how we choose to reward people who are successful. This isn't a new or original idea, it's an old debate.
There is an implied collectivism in your statements. The idea that "we choose to reward people who are successful" implies there is a collective with the legitimate authority to make such determinations. I reject this idea. Instead I propose that legitimate authority only exists to create a liberal ecosystem, not to meddle in the outcomes that ecosystem produces. A person's fortune (or misfortune) to be born with particular traits, into a particular childhood environment, is entirely their own. I see no source of legitimacy to redistribute that fortune to other people without explicit consent.
This view makes no sense given any cursory view of history. What about European countries going to the Americas, taking people's land (with out consent) and gold (without consent) to enrich themselves? Or what about the relative success of any tribes in the Americas prior to Europeans showing up by defeating other tribes?
At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting as to where we should start respecting this "consent"? Do you want to undo any previous actions or should we just take whatever arbitrary power structures we've landed on and start? C'mon, this is ridiculous.
We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating. Your right to consent (or not) sometimes doesn't exist because society takes priority. There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
First of all, I'm not talking about international conflict, where the law of the jungle still effectively applies to this day. I'm talking about domestic liberalism, where ideas like the fundamental equality and the consent of the governed are held to be self-evident. If you disagree with these ideas then I suspect you will be intractable.
> At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting
There is no need to keep count. We are all born into this world with no possessions, and we all negotiate with those already here for everything we come to own. It is true that people and circumstances vary widely, but that doesn't provide legitimacy for one person's claim over another (equal) person's legitimate good fortune.
> We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating
It is exactly the nature of this participation which I am litigating. I hold that it should be maximally voluntary and consensual. The only justified violation of fundamental liberty is in defense of liberty itself. Drafting people into the army (effectively enslaving them) is justified in direct defense of the nation (not to attack eg. Vietnam). Redistributing legitimate (earned through consensual exchange) wealth by force simply doesn't pass this test.
> There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
Funnily enough this is the exact sort of reasoning has been used to rationalize the most horrific atrocities ever perpetrated.
> First of all, I'm not talking about international conflict, where the law of the jungle still effectively applies to this day.
Then why should we take this seriously? Some huge disparities in outcomes in this world are the consequence of "international conflict". What do you want to do about Native Americans in the USA, for example?
> We are all born into this world with no possessions, and we all negotiate with those already here for everything we come to own.
This is not meaningfully true. If you are born into a rich family, you almost certainly are going to live a life with more access than those who are not. If you are born into a country with socialized medicine you are going to have access to opportunities that someone who isn't does not. We are not born equal in any way that is meaningful.
> It is exactly the nature of this participation which I am litigating. I hold that it should be maximally voluntary and consensual.
It isn't and can't be. Any right of consent you are given in society is society choosing to give you that right. It doesn't exist above society. That's just the breaks.
> Funnily enough this is the exact sort of reasoning has been used to rationalize the most horrific atrocities ever perpetrated.
People find any reason to justify their actions. You'll find a lot of terrible things have justifications that overlap with non-terrible things. It doesn't really say much.
Yes, it does. Or at least that's the line of reasoning you seem to be disagreeing with.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The entire line of enlightenment liberal thought that gave rise to our society fundamentally disagrees with your position. The right to liberty is not bestowed by the good graces of society, but is fundamental and unalienable.
> That's just the breaks.
This isn't a justification, it's a rationalization, and not a particularly good one. I am arguing that liberty, ie. the right to interact with other people on a consensual basis, ought to be the primary determining factor as to whether any particular action is legitimate. You have not replied with an argument on why this ought not to be.
> It isn't and can't be.
Yes, it can. Or at least, it can be more consensual. I hold that charity is a more ethical means of wealth redistribution than taxation, exactly because of charity's voluntary nature. I also hold that before the New Deal, the status quo was much more liberal. Government was a small entity mostly charged with administering the vital institutions that maintained the liberal order. There were of course still overreaches and failures, as with any human system. Do you really think that tearing down much of the New Deal can't be? I think it can, whether it will remains to be seen.
> You'll find a lot of terrible things have justifications that overlap with non-terrible things.
Then the justifications are wrong. The ends do not justify the means. Legitimate action should be possible to justify from first-principles in a manner that precludes illegitimate action. Otherwise how could we possibly come to an agreement on a distinction between the two? I would also note that the ideas I'm articulating do exactly that: provide a concrete, universalizable framework to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate.
> The entire line of enlightenment liberal thought that gave rise to our society fundamentally disagrees with your position. The right to liberty is not bestowed by the good graces of society, but is fundamental and unalienable
You're quoting a document that is defining what rights it will give to the people. Whatever language you want to add around it can't get past the point that the document is giving rights to people and we as a society are agreeing to follow that document.
And please, this document is written in a time where many of its signers were holding slaves. Clearly not every man was considered equal.
The document does not give any rights to anyone. It is a piece of paper. What it does is describe an idea. The idea is that there are certain unalienable rights. You may disagree with that idea, but you cannot deny its existence.
> many of its signers were holding slaves
I can separate the idea from the people that held it. Can't you? I think this idea of liberty was a very good idea, and I support the expansion of those who qualify to be as free as described. What I'm arguing against is the erosion of the definition. We are not nearly as free now as free people were when the document was written. We are subject to much more authority.
It seems as though in your view, anything "society" does is legitimate, is that so?
My claim, this entire time, is that the reality is that you, as an individual, have no rights to consent or volunteer beyond what society bestows upon you. Your usage of documents from the founding of the United States of America, if anything, entirely support my argument. The Declaration of Independence might talk about equality but the reality is that blacks and women were not equal. It took society choosing to give them rights for them to receive them. That's not an idea, that's the reality. Whether or not you like it or not or think it's a good idea doesn't get in the way of that is what reality is.
> We are not nearly as free now as free people were when the document was written. We are subject to much more authority.
Tell this to a slave in 1776.
> It seems as though in your view, anything "society" does is legitimate, is that so?
No, "legitimate" is a judgement, I'm saying that what society does is what society does and there is no philosophy or higher abstraction defining it. It's just reality. I think if society is functioning in a way we disagree with, our only option is to try to convince enough people to change it. We can use language that tries to define philosophies around consent and individual rights in order to be persuasive but if society doesn't agree then you don't get those things, even if you really think that's how it should work.
It depends wether you believe in determinism. If you do, then everything is just "luck". If you believe that your mind is something special that can come to conclusions truly independently (create information out of thin air) then the consequences of actions are skill or intelligence.
Or whatever. "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
It does not require believing in determinism to believe a majority of one's outcome is based on context that they do not control. For myself, I didn't choose which country I was born in (I happen to be born in a wealthy country). I also was not born into abusive parents but rather parents who valued science and school. We happened to get a computer early because of my dad's job and I happen to have enjoyed it. That doesn't mean it's a deterministic outcome, but it is chaotic, in the sense that given all these inputs it's not possible to predict the outcome. And small perturbations can have significantly different outputs.
> "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
Or maybe this view is just people who really want to believe there is something else. What is that something else?
Luck is a combination fortune and the ability to exploit it. We all have examples of the right ideas at the wrong time, as well as serendipity dropping the right circumstances at the right time.
> It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
There are a lot of really, really, really smart people who never become generationally wealthy. Generational wealth almost always includes either luck, or intentionally heading down a morally reprehensible path.
You’ll have a tough time convincing me the guy who invented loom is smarter than or contributed more to mankind than Nikola Tesla.
Which is probably a perfect example because Edison took the morally reprehensible path.
Your examples are at the extreme end. You can be a fast technical learner or builder which does make you special but not be an inventor or someone who can grok science and systems similar to Tesla / Edison.
Loom != DC or AC electricity its a helpful tool not transformational technology such as electricity.
Op said he got lucky, the response implied he didn’t. My example is extreme because the circumstances of making several hundred million dollars on a startup exit is EXTREMELY rare, and has far more to do with luck than skill.
> It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
I'm a fast technical learner and builder. I will never be where this guy is, in part because most of my resources are going into keeping myself afloat. I live my life as though "luck" isn't a factor (what's the use in declaring defeat?), but it's certainly not merit that separates the rich from the poor.
There is truth to what you say. But I sense what I wrote came off more negative than I intended, and I am not sure it makes any of our lives (our lives or his) better to be hard on the author. Self actualization is legitimately extremely difficult.
I think he IS special. You can't easily have $60m income and be this bored. He could probably, say, get a million dollar in $1 note and burn it dollar by dollar in the backyard one evening and be a YouTuber overnight. Getting exposure is stupid, so what, he could pay an "NPC" do it for him.
What this guy is missing is creativity. And we don't have data to determine if it's contributor, detractor, or tangent to the position where he is at. I'd bet it's a bigly contributory, as gains from x-factors are called gambling.
I suspect burning $1 notes one at a time might take a very long time (it takes longer than you might expect burning bundles of £50 notes [1]) and as you say "What this guy is missing is creativity", just burning $1m dollars just for the sake of it, unless you're making some creative comment some would probably see as pointless/divisive.
The girlfriend thing was very odd. At one time, "making it" meant now you can marry the girl, have a bunch of kids, and become a pillar of your community.
Get rich? Move to a small or mid-sized city, marry your girl, have some kids, and get involved. Need to be busy? Run a local business that hires locals. Use your money and expertise to improve your community, which is a lot easier to do as a big fish in a small pond.
Yeah, the "I dumped my girlfriend of two years as soon as things got a little bit hard for me, why is my life boring and meaningless?" thing also stood out to me. As well as this:
"Within 2 minutes of talking to the final interviewer for DOGE, he asked me if I wanted to join. I said “yes”. Then he said “cool” and I was in multiple Signal groups."
DOGE is run on Signal, and his conclusion is "so smart," not "that seems like a huge red flag." This guy sounds like he's in line to be the next George Papadopoulos, the guy who gets thrown under the bus when everything goes sideways.
Federal entities require transparency and various rules to be followed to enable investigations and oversight. Remember when a certain political party was concerned about somebody’s emails?
The signal of using signal for running the business is that by working there you’re likely committing a crime every day by working there. If you’re not DJT’s bff, or when Elon gets kicked out of cool kids club, you’re boned.
The funny thing is that the "Department of Government Efficiency" is not a government department, or any kind of official government entity. It is probably (or will be) a federal advisory committee. Federal advisory committees have official rules on open meetings and reporting.
So the fact that they think it's a good idea to just start a bunch of chats on Signal should be surprising, but it's Trump and Elon, so I guess it's just another thing in a long list of insane things that just happen, and we just kind of ignore them and pretend that everything is fine.
I think he's saying that "running" DOGE via a messanger app sounds more like some cryptobro hustle university / shitpost chat group than a serious organization. The description in the blog of working there that sounds like cokehead bender doesn't help.
there is a wonderful quote from a soviet movie called guest from the future, you can watch the whole movie on youtube with english subtitles here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BB6bwJ9agM
(en français, of course. I link to it in its original language as I take issue with the usual translation of the very title as "Diversion", which immediately lacks the double-entendre of "Divertissement", which in french stands for both "diversion" and "entertainment")
Maybe what TFA author should do is spend some time standing on the shoulders of giants and read some philosophy?
> Tel homme passe sa vie sans ennui en jouant tous les jours peu de chose. Donnez-lui tous les matins l’argent qu’il peu gagner chaque jour, à la charge qu’il ne joue point : vous le rendez malheureux. On dira peut-être que c’est qu’il recherche l’amusement du jeu, et non pas le gain. Faites-le donc jouer pour rien, il ne s’y échauffera pas et s’y ennuiera. Ce n’est donc pas l’amusement seul qu’il recherche : un amusement languissant et sans passion l’ennuiera. Il faut qu’il s’échauffe et qu’il se pipe lui-même, en s’imaginant qu’il serait heureux de gagner ce qu’il ne voudrait pas qu’on lui donnât à condition de ne point jouer, afin qu’il se forme un sujet de passion, et qu’il excite sur cela son désir, sa colère, sa crainte, pour l’objet qu’il s’est formé, comme les enfants qui s’effrayent du visage qu’ils ont barbouillé.
I wouldn't be so sure about this, this might depend on the personality of the player. Some might think that introducing monetary stakes in fact ruins the game itself. And you can even take it further : the winning itself might become secondary - at which point playing the game is probably more akin to a form of artistic expression, infused with a different kind of meaning. (There are also games where you win, but in cooperation with others rather than against others.)
But then this passage also reminded me of this recent thread :
"More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market"
> Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
It's a common enough idea to tell someone rudderless to volunteer, but I feel like it's never tempered with the perspective of having volunteered and reflected on how the donated time has effected one's own life. Shaming someone rudderless into volunteering doesn't help them for exactly the obvious reasons it won't. At least no more than anything else you can lean hard into in life to avoid something else. Suggesting it as a fix to ennui is bad advice, the virtuousness of volunteering just masks how terrible it is.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. To share my experience as someone who volunteers, I find it to be one of the most gratifying (humbling, helpful, makes me see the value of life) things, and I think it's worthwhile to share the idea that it could help someone who is searching for meaning. I wholeheartedly recommend volunteering for everyone who can afford it (which I recognize not everyone can).
I'm not sure GP here needs to necessarily state "I volunteer and found it worthwhile" every time they recommend it.
What are these "obvious reasons" that volunteering won't help someone seeking direction?
I also don't follow why you haven't stated whether you've personally tried volunteering and whether it's "worked" for you, particularly when you seem dismissive of it and seem to looking for personal reasoning from others.
>I also don't follow why you haven't stated whether you've personally tried volunteering and whether it's "worked" for you, particularly when you seem dismissive of it and seem to looking for personal reasoning from others.
I do. I did not start to distract myself from other life issues, I joined because I wanted to help the org accomplish it's mission. It's rewarding and fulfilling, but I'm not using it as a mental defense from something else in my life. Whether or not it "worked" in that sense is simply not a thing for me.
It certainly shifted a lot of my mental focus. That's why I mentioned you can lean hard into things in life as a distraction for what's consuming you. And I've certainly used that mental defense over the years, it just happened that the things I used didn't include volunteering. And over the years I've noticed through others that volunteering is a particularly good way of self-deception that you're not just employing that defense.
That's why shaming someone into volunteering when they're rudderless bothers me. It's hard to argue against because it has intrinsic value AND can work in the "the true $whatever was the friends we made along the way" sense, plus the slim chance they find a new life purpose. But also maybe it doesn't and they really should have been shamed into joining the clergy instead because that's where they would have found their calling.
How do you find a good volunteer organization? I volunteered for a couple years at different orgs, and it was a bad experience. All the bad parts of the workplace but with worse people and no pay.
my suggestion to the author would be: spend some time volunteering and get over yourself (by that i mean their own ego which seems to be putting them at the centre of everything).
in my experience, some things tend to come out of it
- gratitude for where i am at in life because i’m struggling less than the people i’m helping
- empathy because jesus yeah these people are struggling and i’m seeing just how much it’s affecting them
- humility because you know what, i really am limited in what i can actually do for these people, none of my “technical prowess” is actually useful here
- purpose because man i feel bad for these people and id like to do more to help than just showing up once a week
i don’t volunteer because it’s “virtuous”. fuck virtuosity.
i do it because i need to for my own sake — to experience the stuff above. it’s selfish-selflessness. by helping others i also help myself.
edit — added the one about humility which is quite important
edit 2 — donating money (philanthropy) is not the same as volunteering. in case there’s any confusion. boots on the ground are required.
Is there any single daily life situation where any person from around the globe and in the entire history of humankind who is not judgemental? Perhaps not at a job interview? Or maybe at dating or when trying to sell or buy something or simply when looking at that person?
> He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
Based on this blog and the needs of the overseeing oligarch, DOGE appears to be a therapy programme for millionaires and billionaires.
Now that is a hilarious take. It really is blatantly obvious how badly people like Elon Musk need therapy.
But we shouldn’t downplay what the program really intends to do: gut federal government spending rather than raising taxes on the wealthy to a sensible level.
Most federal government spending has very real benefits to the average person and should be thought of as more of an investment than a cost. But the DOGE mafia wants to cut programs that help the average person to protect their own fortunes.
E.g., the average person is harmed by shutting down the department of education. The wealthy who go to private school their whole lives are not.
>> still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
I'm not convinced it's the later. There IS a looming financial problem with our government and nobody else is doing anything about it. Federal spending is up trillions of dollars (per year) in the last 5 years with nothing to show for it. There is huge inefficiency and Elon wants to take a stab at fixing it. Yes, the man has his flaws, but he's trying to fix things nobody else will even try. Not sure why people have to hate on that.
BTW, I do expect so over-cutting will happen and there will be fallout from that. But hopefully the budget gets fixed and congress learns something about fiscal responsibility.
> He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
I'm confused by this belief. Anyone who has ever interacted with a big government in the West knows they are a knot of old and confusing regulations that cause every thing to be slow and expensive. A leftist should be happy that the state gets to accomplish more with it's existing budget.
The problem is that no one believes Elon and company are actually trying to "accomplish more with it's existing budget". That would be a great goal, but I don't believe that's what they're doing or even capable of doing.
Remember, Elon downsized Twitter by 80%, and then Twitter lost 80% of it's value. Simply firing a bunch of people doesn't accomplish more, it can actually destroy the value of the thing to begin with.
We've all seen this with republicans before. They take over, make things worse, and then use the fact that things are worse as an excuse for why the government shouldn't do the things it does. Elon isn't an expert in efficiency, he's an arsonist coming in to destroy the government so he and his buddies can extract more value out of this country.
Many people believe Elon in that he's trying to right the ship. Elon has been very clear on his ambitions and he isn't what you are trying to paint him as (a political republican). And the counter point is that Elon and large portion SV have remained in the center while the Dems marched steadily left leaving everyone in the center without a party.
Twitter was broken and full of bloat as is clearly obvious given that it is performing in many ways better than before engineering wise. It has become much more of a wild west given his free speech absolutism perspective but you can't possibly argue that what he didn't proved all the critics wrong - lights stayed on, kept shipping products. It certainly hasn't lost 80% value from his actions - he bought it at the height of ZIRP mania.
Now whether Elon has a enough inertia to actually be able to tackle some of the truly endemic issues of the Federal government is another question. Some of his new found friends will certainly poison the water but my take is he is authentic in his attempt to reduce deficit and lower the debt for the US while increasing growth.
>he is authentic in his attempt to reduce deficit and lower the debt for the US while increasing growth.
The only way he is being authentic is if he is an idiot.
If he knew what he was talking about and was being authentic, he wouldn’t be publicly stating that he is going to cut $2 trillion from the budget.
Payroll for the entire Federal civilian workforce is only $300 billion.
I guess he could just be suffering from delusions of grandeur and he think he’s going to be able to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, or the Military.
He's planning on going after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That's the only way to cut that much from the budget. Republicans have been transparent about their desire to remove the social safety nets for awhile now.
Yes, the republicans will cut spending. Next election cycle the Democrats will be able raise spending, but now from a more sound basis. The deadwood will be pruned. DOGE is good for both the left and the right.
xAI and X are two separate companies. xAI is raising funds with a target valuation of $40b, but that has nothing to do with X. The article you linked to makes this pretty clear and validates what I said about the 80% lost.
> The new valuation means xAI has surpassed the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter in October 2022. X was valued at $9.4 billion by Fidelity, one of its investors, in September. The firm, which invested $19.6 million in the platform, has written down the value of its investment by nearly 79% since 2022.
Cutting 80% of the staff happened during the same time period when Fidelity dropped the evaluation by 79%. Cutting the staff doesn't seem like a good move at all.
The problem isn’t that someone is trying to improve government efficiency.
The problem is that we picked a billionaire professional internet troll to do it whose stated goal is cutting 2 trillion from the budget.
And ignoring the fact that Elon is already running 3 companies, you couldn’t possibly find someone with more conflicts of interest than the richest man in the world.
Here’s a quote from Reason (hardly a left wing publication) that sums up how absurd their goal is.
“Musk and Ramaswamy's public pronouncements thus far do not inspire confidence. Musk's promise to save "at least $2 trillion" annually—approximately one-third of all (noninterest) federal spending—suggests a lack of familiarity with the federal budget. Roughly 75 percent of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans, and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, health research, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid, and disability benefits.”
Large organizations are inherently inefficient because id the non linear growth in communications overhead. If you don’t understand an organization, coming in and hacking away at it is insanely dangerous. How many companies have been ruined when hedge fund buys then and starts trying to “maximize efficiency”?
Yes cutting $2T is not realistic. If they manage to do a few percent of the goal it is still going to be good for everyone.
Bloat is a major issue that prevent anglosphere societies from achieving goals that poorer societies do easily. Ex: Spain or France do awesome public transit for 3 or 5 times less than we do.
You don’t accomplish things by setting wildly unrealistic goals that you know are unobtainable.
And he’s not going to completely reorganize society so that we can build cheap public transit. Especially not by running a “government agency” that can’t do anything other than make recommendations to the president.
Do you know how many similar commissions we’ve had to reduce waste and spending?
I don't know i agree. I think its brave to be honest about it. Being able to acknowledge you don't have it together is the first stage of growth.
Most people struggle with meaning, most people don't have it figured out.
So what, dude who suddenly fell into massive wealth tried a bunch of cliched things to find meaning. Did they work? No, these types of cliched things usually don't. However you don't find meaning without trying things. You have to fail before you suceed.
It would be interesting to learn what a bunch of people actually do with found wealth.
I've read that lottery winners frequently become seriously unhappy.
Maybe some of us aren't ultra-rich like this guy, but we might deal with some of the same existential issues either planning or encountering retirement.
My intuition is that (sudden) wealth causes some amount of additional isolation (for different reasons: jealousy, privacy, security, etc), so if you are not someone with preexisting social bonds that are strong enough to weather that change, you’re going to ultimately feel emotionally worse off once the quick pleasure hits start to fade. If you’re someone going into that situation without strong social bonds, you end up even further isolated.
But both of you can be right. I would not judge the author for their attempt to find meaning but it is hard to read something like "all coworkers are NPCs" and dehumanizing expressions like that.
No, your coworkers are complex human beings with complex lives of their own seeking stability and a content life for themselves and their families. Blaming people for not always maximum pushing and risk taking is very simple minded. It is fine to enjoy a content, stable life without aiming for the stars all the time. It doesn't block you from being a star seeker yourself.
Responsibly raising a family is a massive and tiring task on its own but of course you can take the easy way out like Elon and delegate "family" to others starting at insemination because you burned your brain with drugs and had too many conversations with Peter Thiel. Most people don't want that.
And when he mentioned DOGE it was an immediate red flag. These people do not care why or for what purpose governments exist. They only see the inefficiencies and blockers and fail to understand that governments are not profit oriented companies. This is pretty much like failing pre-school. These folks belong in emotional special needs schools.
> but it is hard to read something like "all coworkers are NPCs" and dehumanizing expressions like that.
They did not say that all coworkers are NPCs.
What they said is "I knew that staying at the acquiring company was not it for me for the big company reasons you might suspect (lots of politics, things moved slowly, NPC coworkers, etc.)".
You should read that as "in a big company, there are more coworkers who don't do anything useful" rather than "at a big company, nobody is doing anything useful".
I read it more as - in a big company there are a lot of people there just to get a paycheque who don't really care.
Which isn't really surprising. That is kind of what a job is. Company gives you money in exchange for them telling you what to do for a little while. There is a very real way where "becoming an npc" for 8 hours a day is what it means to be employed for a lot of people. That is not a dig at the person; we all need to do what we need to do to put food on the table.
Yeah that comment just reads like someone who is pointing down at how unenlightened someone is, when that someone just finished telling you that they don't know what they are doing and being honest about it.
Would it be so much better for the author to hide this phase of personal growth, and then later on comment on other people's struggles to mock how far they are from them?
While the tone of the post might come off as childish, I don't think it should be dismissed quite so off hand, because I think there's a lot more behind it than one might think.
I cannot but help think that there's a fair bit of truth behind Terror Management Theory [1], which paraphrased states that a lot of human activity is centered around the need to get our minds off the topic of our mortality, or to find something meaningful in it. I can totally see that someone who spends much of their life working towards a goal of essentially getting rich now finds that he is somewhat rudderless after that point. Is finding something interesting to do meaningful? I mean, it's completely subjective.
Nihilism when understanding/dealing with the problem is also a common trap in Buddhism, and a big reason why Monks will often discourage unguided meditation practice. The Void is a powerful thing to grasp, and can very much be ‘held wrong’ [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81]
Ultimately, that nothing ultimately matters, also does not really ultimately matter.
All we really have is now, and the conditions which have led to now, and our ability to do things within our power now. And that does matter, as much as anything ever can. Which is something. Getting through to that point is not a given.
IMO, part of what made the Buddha, well, the Buddha, is he tried to make it better. Despite knowing all this. And despite it being much, much harder, messier, and more painful than the path he could of taken - which is opting out.
Will you make it better (in your judgement)? Make it worse (in your judgement)? Rely on someone else’s judgement? How accurate is your judgement?
Or opt out (and what does that mean)?
Buddha (depending on the tradition) taught a path to reduce pain, and in some cases opt out (for Monks, at least, to some extent) by hopefully seeing the truth as best as one can.
That form of Buddhism is not very popular.
Religions that give a narrative involving conquering (Islam, Christianity in the recent past), surrendering (Modern Christianity, Jainism), or being chosen/made (Judaism/Hinduism) for/by a deity to achieve heaven or have one’s fate decided are much more popular.
I expect for much the same reason that action movies, dramas, and epics are more popular than quiet walks in the woods.
I read "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts and it completely changed my existence. It really got me away from concepts like searching for meaning, purpose, and making things better.
Indeed, and I think your comment throws some light on the depths of the topic. It's easily one of the most profound topics, and is worth exploring in and of itself (even if in this case the blog post author came off extremely tone deaf).
You can see that's what OP did: he watched a youtube video about robotics (door fixtures), immediately wrote to 70 people (bought a nice old house) to start working on it.
But then he realized it's not what he wants to spend his time on
Nope. His motivations are capitalstic in nature and his idol is Elon Musk.
He doesn't care to help people or getting into robotics because he is interested in it.
He doesn't have a real deep relationship with someone to share his live with (he mentions his ex-girlfriend).
He is the type of human being who got lucky rich, but doesn't realize he is empty inside. Elon Musk is even worse.
Captialism as an endgoal for society doesn't bring us any closer to a Star Trek future and there are probably a Billion happier but a lot poorer people ou tthere than him.
He doesn't want to spend his time on it because his capitalistic thinking is so narrow that he doesn't care about the things which are already around him.
When you read the last thing from him " It’s the only thing that feels authentic." even his 'just learning physics' is not even authentic. He doesn't do it for being curious, he does it to " I can start a company that manufactures real world things. "
And the only interesting thing about this blog post, which i will forget tomorrow, is because we tent to like to read things which are more rare than others. There was not much insight or brilliance in his live at all.
OK, but what is the solution? To get a (or multiple) child(ren)? Make a "family" that you don't actually want just so you can have people who rely on your support? And what then when you use your millions to support and nourish your kids? Then you get to read on HN about how they are "nepo-babies who did nothing on their own and are worthless human beings".
How do you know what he did at the company? When you get acqui-hired for large sums you are dropped somewhere in the management block where lets be real most people have no idea what they are doing and they dont even care they are there just for the money.
Buy a RocketLab Electron launch and insert a literal hunk of lead or a beam reflector cube into geostationary graveyard orbit. They never had GTO launches before, let alone direct GEO, and I think no one had ever done an intentionally passive object into GEO let alone commissioned by an individual, it'll be an all around achievement. It's going to stay there for a geological timescale with negligible risk of space junk and gets its own Gunter's Space Page and Wikipedia article with legitimate interest from public.
There are countless stupid fun in the world that money can do that isn't about buying out a human or legally punching an NPC in face. As well as legit meaningful businesses that may or may not make money but kinda fun and useful. The fact that this person is being unable to come up with such a task suggests existence of a problem, though I wouldn't know if it's mental or developmental or physical or circumstantial.
That’s said, if you’re struggling with humility and connection, legally punching someone in the face and being punched in return can be quite rewarding.
So, go join that boxing/bjj gym and learn just how pathetically average you really are!
David Brooks has a good book called “The Second Mountain” where he details the shift of priorities later in one’s life. The “first mountain” is what this guy achieved, monumental material success and freedom in pursuit of the “aesthetic life” that is overly portrayed in social media as the ultimate goal. But Brooks’ position is there is a “second mountain” to climb focused on commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves. Somewhat paradoxically, the second mountain is defined by a constraining of the freedom we pursue originally because it requires dogged commitment.
Familiy is an option. But being curios and having hobbies also. Or helping people around you. Or starting to think about the people around you and enjoying the support you can provide.
I had my nihilistic depression phase for a decade. There is not much to it.
i know therapy has helped a lot of people in my personal life, which is why i tried it, but i think it really made me feel alone that the only person i can talk to is someone that i pay to listen to me.
i went to therapy for 2 years with this perspective that the therapist would fix me like the mechanic fixes my car. I spent 2 hours a week with a psychiatrist & therapist bitching about my life thinking eventually I would get "better".
but then i realized that wasn't getting any better. it's not their responsibility to "fix" me. the only person that could help me was me.
the first thing we reach for is an external solution to solve or escape our current problems and everything is so commoditized that there is something that we can fixate our attention on.
i think that reflecting this fixation inward has made all the difference for me personally.
The hard part is finding a therapist that works for you.
Therapy is such a broad spectrum from psychoanalysis to behavior therapy. It is very unlikely that you just click with the first therapist that you visit, it can take years to find someone.
Two years without any tangible progress sound extremely unethical from the therapist. Yes, therapy takes time but it still something you do for a fixed time period with hopefully clear goals where you track your progress.
And yes, the actual work is done by the patient. Just like a personal trainer can not just work out for you.
Therapy isn’t a social relationship. What you’re paying for is someone to be non judgmental as you unpack things. They can help talk you througj it. Friends don’t know how/wouldn’t want to do that.
I mean yeah? He clearly needs to talk to someone and feels isolated. A neutralish third party to talk to (and is trained to help!) is a excellent suggestion. Therapy isn't a cure all, and is expensive (not that it matters in this case) but your comment sounds like:
> The modern cure to all problems. Going to the gym if you feel unfit. Incredible insight.
Abstracting out the details, it’s the same theme as the general who wins the war and now there’s no war to fight and thinks to himself, “Now what?”
There are many people struggling with far greater challenges in life and with far less support, but feeling directionless and without a purpose is a common struggle that many people go through.
Many "generals" turn to crime because it's largely compatible in the way things are achieved, types of rules in place, and the rewards (at least here in the Balkans).
Possibly speaks more of the culture I am surrounded with than "generals", but maybe not.
David Stirling, who is currently being lauded in a show on BBC One for creating the SAS, spent his later life running mercenary companies and, in one particularly ignoble episode, organised a coup against the British government.
To be fair, he was not calling people at Loom NPCs. He was saying that he didn't feel like joining a big company Atlassian coz he feels he would be surrounded by "NPC coworkers" there.
> So I reached out to some people and got in. After 8 calls with people who all talked fast and sounded very <strike through>autistic</strike through > smart
Dude really sounds like a bozo again, being brutally honest is no excuse to be unkind
Atlassian presumably also hired a bunch of his people from Loom, so to some extent he is implying that all the Loom folks became "NPCs" during the acquisition.
I've seen several founders who kept their team together within a bigger company after a buyout, and went on to do pretty significant projects together with big company resources. It's not a given that you have to be swallowed up by the bureaucracy
Because most men can't admit they need purpose or what's lacking. Therapy isn't the cliché of bawling into your therapist's shoulders (although it can be that). It's often them telling and pointing out to you what others, including friends, won't. And an experienced professional can be excellent at bringing that out. It's also not for everybody, but often the most hostile people to it are the ones who'd benefit the most.
From what I've gathered in his post, this guy needs to be told he pushes people away and has trouble forming non-professional relationships (platonic and romantic) as well as as a deep seated desire to be liked, which he can't get out of a professional setting that he was at the top of. But it could also be much more deep than that.
Of course, finding the right therapist is like finding the right mechanical keyboard. You'll go through tons you hate before you find the right one.
Many people, myself included, are skeptical of "therapy" and do not automatically consider its practicioners to be legitimate authorities. These are people who need a job just the same as you, and this is the one they landed in. Whether they do anybody any good is hard to say.
One source of skepticism is that they are not really invested in you. If you succeed or if you fail, if you're happy or if you're sad, what's it really to them? Will they have to live with the consequences? At least in a relationship the "therapist" maybe "has some shares" in the other person. (Granted, you can also reverse the logic, e.g., "my parents didn't pay attention to my happiness and just pushed me to become a doctor" / "my wife just wanted me to have money because she wanted to spend it".) This is also why I am skeptical of startup advisors: I'm sure they mean well, but, if you really don't know what you're doing, it's probably better to be an employee for a while, under a boss who succeeds only when you succeed.
Another is that, when I hear therapistic language, a lot seems to embed assumptions of omnipresent psychic violence, and this disturbs me. Perhaps there are people who truly are trapped in situations of "psychological abuse", "gaslighting", and so-on, but my sense is that these words usually become weapons that people wave around, as they adopt darker and darker interpretations of their own, imperfect but basically good, relationships. Then the cynic in me says: Wouldn't causing people to reject their "organic" relationships, create dependence on the relationship with the therapist?
That "therapy" grew out of psychology also is grounds for caution, to me. There is an underlying manipulativeness in the field. Many of the famous experiments, stories of which attract students into the field, were quite manipulative. Some of the core theories of psychology that you learn in school, like operant conditioning, are fairly inhumane. If this is the ground that you build on, what kind of structure do you get? Who is attracted to the field to begin with?
Also, the very fact that the meme is gendered tells you something. Sure, men don't trust therapists, any more than college-educated women trust bearded imams. If a whole school of thought seems somehow not to be on your side, you're not going to trust it. (And I do not mean to imply that to be "college-educated" is ideology-neutral, or that the hypothetical imam is not actually on the hypothetical woman's side.)
...
In the context of this blog post, though, I kind of get it. The guy literally climbed, if not Everest, then some similar peak in the Himalayas. So when you focus on that it's kind of funny.
I'm not sure how what he's doing is "wrong" and what other thing he could be doing would be "right" though. What is the therapist going to tell him to do, and why would that thing be superior to climbing mountains at random? Does existential angst even have a solution?
...
Some of the religions have their own answers, which would encourage different behavior, I suppose. E.g.:
a.)
> 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
> 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
> 38 This is the first and great commandment.
> 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
> 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
If the author of the blog repeated the second half of verse 39 to himself over and over, he might do something different. You do pushups, you develop muscles. You repeat mantras, and, if those mantras are really meaningful, you can shape your own mind.
Or, the works of mercy:
> feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead
> admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offenses willingly, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead
Add in Galatians 3:28 and you've got the high points of Christianity. If you take the words seriously they can affect how you think and what you do: "Right thought, right speech, right action".
One virtue that it emphasized, which is not emphasized to the same degree in Christianity, is honesty. Yes, Christianity inherits the Ten Commandments (which are actually good), but "thou shalt not bear false witness" seems like a somewhat more narrow thing. In much the same way that "though shalt not kill" is really, debatably, the more limited "though shalt not murder". Indeed, Jainism seems to go further than Christianity in many respects. Those virtues, by the way, are (per the previously-linked text):
> 2. Mardava - Tenderness or Humility (To observe the virtue of humility subduing vanity and passions.)
> 3. Arjaya - Straight-forwardness or Honesty (To practice a deceit free conduct in life by vanquishing the passion of deception.)
> 4. Shaucha - Contentment or Purity (To keep the body, mind and speech pure by discarding greed.
> 5. Satya - Truthfulness (To speak affectionate and just words with a holy intention causing no injury to any living being.)
> 6. Sanyam - Self-restraint (To defend all living beings with utmost power in a cosmopolitan spirit abstaining from all the pleasures provided by the five senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing; and the sixth - mind.)
> 7. Tapa - Penance or Austerities (To practice austerities putting a check on all worldly
allurements.)
> 8. Tyaga - Renunciation (To give four fold charities - Ahara (food), Abhaya (fearlessness), Aushadha (medicine), and Shastra Dana (distribution of Holy Scriptures), and to patronize social and religious institutions for self and other uplifts.)
> 9. Akinchanya - Non-attachment (To enhance faith in the real self as against non-self i.e., material objects; and to discard internal Parigraha viz. anger and pride; and external Parigraha viz. accumulation of gold, diamonds, and royal treasures.)
> 10. Brahmacarya - Chastity or celibacy (To observe the great vow of celibacy; to have devotion for the inner soul and the omniscient Lord; to discard the carnal desires, vulgar fashions, child and old-age marriages, dowry dominated marriages, polygamy, criminal assault on ladies, use of foul and vulgar language)
In particular, I note both Arjaya and Satya.
(A new thing to me, that I notice now, is the inclusion of abhaya (fearlessness) as a kind of tyaga -- a kind of renunciation, a giving-away, a charity. This is food for thought.)
(And personally I would moderate Sanyam.)
My point is, if one needs direction, perhaps these are where one should be looking?
Depression doesn't care about how mundane your problems are. Some people have horrible things happening to them and they don't get depressed - while others struggle with common setbacks that everyone experiences.
IMHO, the author sounds like he's missing a lot of perspective on things, and talking to other people could help with that - preferably even in a group setting.
Victor Frankl, psychotherapist, wrote "Man's Search for Meaning" in which he propones "logotherapy", which is literally a therapeutic regimen based on finding meaning.
I agree, but rather than just laying into them, perhaps it's a symptom of too much money. Perhaps that's the cause, not something that has happened upon an already vapid simpleton.
It follows that completely removing any potential scarcity might separate you from other people. And how long would you last stewing in your own mental urine before you started thinking of others as less?
Honestly I read this as something to pity; a situation to avoid. Megalomania robs otherwise interesting people of all their humanity and having read a few more comments here , the best thing he could do would be to throw as much money as possible into therapy. You don't have to spare any sympathy for him but Vinay desperately needs help.
I agree. He could give the money to greater causes and start over. That’s a challenge worth a post and a read and good use of time instead of what he just did.
Even beyond trying the min max strategy and finding an effective charity you can like, fund free daycare for your community or something. This a really lazy reason to not donate money if you are rich.
Not all charities are created equal and you can find rankings of them to see which would make the best use of the donated money. There are whole organizations designed around tracking this. But one thing to be thoughtful about is it a charity can handle a sudden influx of money. It might be better to make a fund that invests the money and feeds it into various charities over time.
As a founder, the people relying on him would have been the employees at Loom. But now that’s done. Far from the first story about a founder feeling unmoored after a buyout.
To me it reads like the author wants you to think this way. There's more than a little self loathing in there, starting with the title.
But IMO it's not surprising. When I left my first "real job" after ~4 years, it took months before I stopped dreaming about that job. I was amazed how wrapped-up I was in it.
What is surprising is that they put this out there so plainly. Unless they're just trolling .. but I'm going to go with "not trolling", because cynicism just leads to sorrow.
I have a different take. Most people in corporate jobs are NPCs, me included. I don’t mind it. My meaning and purpose is the family I’m trying to support. If that means things at work are on autopilot so be it. It’s just a matter of priorities.
So yeah - it’s fine to call me an NPC. I just have my priorities figured out better than the author.
That sounds like the opposite of an npc. Someone with a personal life. One of the reasons its a stupid insult. If you want to rag on people for being shitty or minimumn effort workers then do so. NPC implies you cant tell the difference if they were replaced by a shitty program that repeats the same lines over and over.
The irony of calling other people NPCs is that a player character in a computer game barely has any more freedom. All the possible actions and end states are pre-designed and scripted.
If you think of yourself as “Player One”, you are literally thinking inside the box. The first step to freedom is to stop thinking about games and scores because they are not the world.
Well, most people in society are forced to repeat the same behaviors as every one else for a minimum of comfort: friends, family, etc. For the college-educated in the US that often means getting a professional job and joining a hobby club of some sort and getting married and having one or two kids. Most of them are happy with that, but most of them also remember the freedom they had in college and know that deep down they are settling for less than the most they could have, because they’re probably afraid of what that would mean. I can understand why someone who is freed from that world of the “normal” might not know what to do outside of it.
> Most of them are happy with that, but most of them also remember the freedom they had in college
The freedom you have in college is a shallow, parasitic kind of freedom. College is the apex point of your being an uncontributing member of society. Up to that point all you've done is receive. Becoming an adult is taking on responsibility, contributing to society and earning the real freedom to live a life you value. If you maintained the supposed freedom you have at college you're just blind to the fact that you're totally dependent on other people. A more authentic version of the college freedom would be to go live in the woods and forage for sustenance.
With the amount of excess wealth in today's society we can afford to give everyone that same level of freedom that people experience in college; there is no need to have people "go out into the woods" if they don't want to, that's insane! I'd rather people go out into space or explore new territories than just try to survive on their own, starve to death meaninglessly. We do not live in wandering bands of hunter-gatherers, we live in an advanced capitalist society with the most marvelous technological capacities in history--your imagination is limited to survival alone?
Plus, you're ignoring that in college many students have the opportunity to spontaneously begin working on projects together that they would never be able to outside of a college campus. I remember reading on here even that a student team broke a world record for a rocket launch I believe, and all the commenters agreed, it could not have happened outside of college, it could not have happened with those exact "responsibilities" that you refer to. Elon Musk has eleven kids just because, you know, he can--many aspiring parents in this country today struggle to have just one.
Those responsibilities? They are the crushing of individual creative potential in society through the extraction of wealth via wage-labor. Oh, but it's "privileged" to be a creative, its privileged to build something on your own for your own sake, its privileged to go out and explore and discover new things, its privileged to have children; perhaps you might see why many believe their own society has it out for them, and why this whole logic of "building character" is just a horrific repetition of their daily lives filled with meaningless toil just to survive so some millionaire can have an existential crisis because they can't imagine a world outside of it.
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Being insecure is indeed a pretty basic human "drive", but I don't think it's particularly mature either. I don't have any data but my intuition tells me that those tend to wane over time.
Human drives are reproduction and power. Or maybe just only reproduction actually?
This guy blatantly and strategically got himself talked about and you guys call it "insecurity" and "childish".
It is a meme that guy in loud ferrari has a small something but we poor people say it to each other to cope. it is a working mechanism to get noticed by girls and girls will look on that ferrari. These are facts.
"insecurity" is not it. "childish" is not it.
"poor taste" maybe it. "selfish" maybe it. Try those instead.
Edit: yes, maybe guy in ferrari has a different taste than you. But also he will get noticed by more girls and that is just fact. Another fact: getting noticed is first step to talk about how sophisticated you are with someone who already has 100 people competing for attention and full DMs. If you ignore those facts and you think you are not the one being childish, I don't know...
> It is a meme that guy in loud ferrari has a small something but we poor people say it to each other to cope. it is a working mechanism to get noticed by girls and girls will look on that ferrari.
That's the thing, mate, this is attractive to a cohort of people but this adolescent view of the world is, well... Rather childish.
I know many women in my adult life who are absolutely put off by a guy flaunting how rich they are, it does attract some others but it isn't this zero-sum game where the rich guy has all the attention and is so much more attractive to everyone.
It's not a cope, I used to think like that when I was young but it's all quite bullshit being force-fed to insecure guys, it's childish to see the world like that since there are so many different types of people that might like/dislike very different stuff.
But good luck, get yourself a Ferrari and go get the girls you want to be attracted by it, I realised that those are really not the girls I'm attracted to in the end :) and that's fine, there's people for almost all tastes.
Just shed away this adolescent worldview, it makes you look pretty insecure and immature.
Great post this helps me reflect with my own insecurities about freedom vs agency. I think what you’re experiencing is very human. Finding meaning in life is in fact the most human thing I can think of. The answer is not clear but the beauty in the answer is it’s very open ended.
Thank you to the author. I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Boo fucking hoo. Oh, pity me, I'm rich and sad. What ever will I do with all my money that will make me happy?
You don't need purpose, you need perspective.
Instead of benefiting the billionaire class by working with DOGE to tear down what little safety nets we do have, go volunteer to pack meals or drive a truck at your local food bank.
https://www.sfmfoodbank.org/volunteer/
I found myself burned out and with enough money from video game development at the age of 17 to “retire.”
I thought that having lots of time and quiet to read and write code and not worry about money would be wonderful. Instead, I fell into depression and isolation.
I need to feel that I’m helping people. I need to be part of a project. I need people who rely on me. That’s what I learned. That’s where life’s meaning comes from.
I met a girl and married her. She spent my money so I went back to work with new vigor and purpose. All that happened about 40 years ago. My first marriage ended amicably a few years later— and while briefly single again I once more felt depressed. I spun into more wild things. Eventually sold everything and was about to go trekking around the world when I met and married my current wife. That was 34 years ago.
I settle down again. No one is going to make a biopic of my life of not drinking, not doing drugs, and not having fights with my family. But I tell you, it looks boring from the outside— yet from the inside every day is full of contentment. Life is a struggle, because I am NOT rich, but it’s not an emotional struggle. I feel lucky.
Nothing beats reasonable health and a family that loves each other.
Lmao nobody truly earns that much money, it's theft from the people, plain and simple.
Sure, DV me tech bros. You all create the foundation for all the MBAs and C levels to make 10x more than even you do, people who don't even understand the tech behind the product. Yet y'all think it's a great deal bc you're still richer than the "poors". Wealth inequality is going to eat the world very soon.
Pathetic. This is a failed education, producing classic "dumb money" that in a planet in dire straights with dire problems left and right, this clueless dope can't figure out how to keep himself satisfied. Boo hoo. If I were physically in the presence of this individual, verbal if not physical slaps to the face as I explain what their education failed: empathy and a sense of duty to others.
yes I knew that, because I took the trouble to read his about page and some part of the article before I commented. and i have some judgement and radar, you know.
the article has nothing to do with philosophy. it is just about common sense, which as voltaire said, is not very common.
Go America.
Go capitalism.
Go free markets.
Go hard work."
So if everyone works as hard as him, then everyone can become rich and retire early?
Instead of studying physics in the "jungle" he should be studying logic, ethics, and history. Pay your goddamn taxes, elect uncorruptable politicians, and support free open source software.
"billionaires want you to know they could have done physics." —Angela Collier, physicist; https://youtu.be/GmJI6qIqURA
Very poor spiritual or philosophical foundation. Why not dedicate a year or two studying meaning itself from many diverse sources? Reminded me of a friend who told me once: Mount Everest is full of dead bodies of bored millionaires.
But this case is totally innocent, continuing with DOGE would have been great tho. The dangers come when they start using networking and political power to play god and plan on eugenics or eco-communist kind of ideas/projects hallucinating they are "saving the world" as ants hallucinating the jungle needs them.
The author is a self-proclaimed "big fan of capitalism". Turns out capitalism doesn't provide a meaning in life. The author should put down the physics books and pick up some books on Stoicism instead. Learn what a good life really is. There are so many problems that people have that they need help with and of course you won't see any of that while studying physics in the jungle.
I very much dislike the trend of calling other people NPCs.
When you feel tempted to see someone else as an NPC, it might be helpful to remember the concept of "sonder":
> the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
I don't see any need. The thread is ok on the whole.
On HN, the onus is on commenters not to react to the bits they find most provocative. There's even a site guideline about that: "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I am referring to the post itself, not the thread, where the writer seems to be pretty sociopathic in his dismissal of the inner lives of others as NPCs.
I don't think it makes sense to weight that one detail more than the entire rest of the article. It's better to drop the worst outlier, as the guidelines ask, and focus on the rest of the content.
There's another point too: it's easy to misinterpret what someone means by a single token like that. It may have an obvious meaning to you, but it isn't clear what the author had in mind. This isn't nearly enough information to justify an extreme conclusion like "sociopath", and when you jump to such a label, what you're doing is not so different than what you're complaining about in the OP.
Great example of tech bros getting way to much compensation for not much ... and also not knowing how to live a basic human life. I would like to see their wealth taxed to the hilt so they can go back to work and stfu.
I can't remember the last time I read something this tone deaf and obnoxious. It reads like a 13 year old's journal. And a selfish 13 year old at that. Guy is so devoted to capitalism that he can't conceive of any way to do good in the world if it doesn't involve starting a business (or trying to make the government run like one).
Maybe try helping people without expecting or even wanting any financial return.
So, I managed to get in the same situation last year too. Not as much $$$, but still in the 'no longer have to work' and 'my family will never be poor again' camp here.
Honestly, yeah, I feel you man. I'm a bit adrift. I had a bad childhood too. I largely defined myself through my work and effort. I saw other people (mostly older co-workers in my career) as NPCs. I majored in Physics, PHD in neuro. I might get it, I dunno.
But I have a family, and that changes things a lot for me. I have built in 'purpose' in my life that is orthogonal to my 'work life'. So, caveats there. Now, work life comes after kid-time, in terms of priority.
The things that I can say that are different is that I'm finding purpose through others. The way I see it: We're all just naked beach apes on a soggy rock flung through the void, telling stories to each other around the fire.
So, tell the stories that matter.
I.E. get to work trying to help other people. You have the fuck you money now, like me, it would be a shame to not say 'fuck you' a few times. To the people that really need it said to them. This is gonna sound really strange for HN, but, maybe start going to religious services. Generally, religion is there to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That's maybe something you sound like you need. Shop around for churches/mosques/etc. Unitarian Universalist is the 'church' for atheists, pretty old too, not a 'new' thing. It's good to get into a community that does a lot of volunteer work, FYI.
You said you found an iota of purpose with the DOGE thingy. Maybe try breaking that down a bit for yourself, explore why those feeling came up. You're a go-getter, ready and willing to work hard. It does sound like some sort of public service (define that as broadly as you can) would be good for you, and for all of us.
Still, we're both 'babies' at being rich. It's gonna take some time, maybe longer than we have left, to figure that out for ourselves.
One real thing though: Get your GF back, fast. Grovel. You'll find nothing but gold-diggers now, it's just a fact, I'm so sorry about it. She was there before you were rich (I think I read that right?), you know she's in it for you, not the cash. From what you said, she doesn't mind the hours you work. Or just you in general. That's a tremendous gift. If you want the kids, she's the best path you got for a family you're not paranoid about. Really. Marriage is a market, and you're hot property now, be very careful. Honestly, if you can get her back, fuck that pre-nup shit too. Jump in with both feet, never leave, tie yourself up, make it really hard to go. Your future self will hate you, but that guy's future self will love you.
Best of luck man. Take the time, forgive yourself for dumb shit as you get used to it. Get back to work and say fuck you a bit more for the right reasons. You sound like a chill dude who is trying hard. Keep that vibe.
"I am rich and yet find it to be unfulfilling and not the ultimate goal of human existence"
and yet,
"I am a big fan of capitalism" and repeat wholesale its most puerile, naive ideological propaganda mantras (see his about page) which are meant to justify _exactly_ that.
Bud, seems like you have some more thinking to do if you think those two positions are perfectly congruent.
The company got nearly 2B of dollars in investment, was acquired for half the price, and the founders somehow managed to make a profit. No wonder he's a fan. Which other system would allocate resources so effectively?
Given that this forum is the news/blog discussion forum attached to a startup accelerator and VC fund, what I find pleasantly remarkable — and I mean this sincerely — is how open people here are to the idea that capitalism might possibly not be perfect.
If I had not seen this forum for myself, and only read about it second-hand, I would have assumed that most here would indeed think they are "perfectly congruent" (which itself is a much starker position than simply "being a fan").
'Capitalism' is a broad umbrella - the G20 countries are capitalist to varying degrees with a variety of emphasis and regulation.
'American Capitalism' isn't a peak form for delivering life expectancy, broad health outcomes, general happiness, and other measures on global indexes.
I am a fan of capitalism because, as a former poor person, I think it's the best system for poor people. Not because I think it will eliminate the existential woes of the affluent.
If I did not have to work I'd probably get a dog and start a kayak and paddle board rental center near some scenic lake, along with a small fishing tackle shop. Screw Elon, robots, DOGE, AI, Mars and other stupid tech bro ideas.
In fact I already did the dog part, but I'd probably get an Aussie instead if I did not have to work, had more space and more time on my hands to keep a more active dog engaged.
Putting aside the whole "I'm rich and aimless, what should I do" thing the author's got going on, I found the product they got rich for (Loom) to be fascinating as a statement on where we are right now.
It's essentially just a program that allows you to record a video of yourself while iterating through a presentation or screen share and then share it for feedback.
Powerpoint has this as a native feature with OneDrive. There are other screenshare programs that do the same thing.
The whole incentive for using it (according to the video) is to "avoid another all hands meeting." And AI is involved somehow?
I find it so fascinating how companies seem to be aware that the way many big companies work (usually in office, in meetings, sometimes on video calls) is flawed, but rather than revisit the model, we just try to map the existing structure onto new expensive shiny tools.
The only benefit I see to having someone send me a video of them reading their presentation or narrating their screen share is that I can watch it on 2x speed asynchronously. At that point, why not just send me a set of bullet points and the presentation or screenshots?
I look at these products and I get the same feeling I do when I watch a road worker paint a tiny bike lane on an existing 4 lane megaroad with no barrier. You're not fixing the problem - you're just causing new ones. The whole system has to shift somehow.
Loom is one of my least favorite products because it enables lazy creators to offload the work of organizing and editing their thoughts onto the viewers. So instead of one person spending 30 minutes distilling their thoughts into a coherent narrative once, each member of their audience is forced to do that work separately.
Its helpful in certain cases for sure but you hit the nail on the head. Totally enables a lazy approach where everyone now needs to waste time watching a video so collectively the cost is much higher in terms of time spent.
Many people don't absorb information the same way. A visual demonstration tends to help me understand things in a quarter the time reading about it might. I know I'm not alone in this regard. You can always increase video speed to increase information density. Being able to accommodate folks with different learning styles is part of being in a team.
I 100% agree that a visual demonstration is very valuable, however my objection is less about information density and more about structure and clarity. In my experience these videos are rarely carefully planned and structured keynotes, but rather improvised, meandering, stream of consciousness brain dumps.
Sounds like a proverbial multibillion dollar todo list SaaS.
Kinda wish big money would have left the CS-related space right about ~10 years ago, when things weren't quite as nonsensical (and culturally decrepit), so all the serial careerists would have chased something more viscerally useful, like maybe bracing us for the impacts of global warming.
Our company is currently six people. We have a software-updates channel in Slack where I post our changelog for the team to read. I am very meticulous about these posts because I know very frequently we'll get asked "when did such and such change" and I can go back and reference these posts. And also its frequently the only way sales and our executive will know about changes, having not been directly involved. So yeah - I take a lot of time to make these posts concise, easy to understand etc.
I constantly get asked to make a Loom demonstrating the changes. Which makes sense... but is also frustrating. And I always make the point that these videos aren't searchable (sure they have AI summaries or whatever but those are in Loom, not Slack).
I used to work for a company that used Loom. It was always used for internal demos, ie "I made a new feature" or "I encountered a bug." It was perfect for that. That being said, we probably weren't the target market because we didn't pay for it.
Everything and everyone seem to only be concerned about money. In music, in art, in popular culture, in the contemporary "thought leaders"..
It was the inevitable but hard to predict outcome of capitalism, the utter dissolution of everything that cannot be converted to capital, and the monetisation of everything else that could.
The zeitgeist is a thin, inconsistent and ever changing set of ethics (which of course are also swayed wildly by capital) and everything else is about money.
All the previous values are not only waining, they are also mocked.
A lack of greed is considered a lack of ambition, piety is disregarded as antiquated and evil, honour and shame are non existent.
We are living through tremendous sociopolitical changes, the most substantial and the most high paced humanity has ever faced.
I just hope it goes the right way eventually, although it is almost certain that none of us will be here to witness it. The only thing we can do is surf the wave and do our best to make things better.
One thing he does is “trying to be Elon” in robotics. (But what impressive things has Elon or his underlings done in in robotics? Or just outside of Spacex?) Because the “world is going through a labor shortage”. So the save the world shtick here is to solve propaganda-problem (fake) of there being a labor shortage, in other words get rid of needing workers. I bet that will change the world for the better in this time of massive inequality.
Then he wants to work for the upcoming US government spearheaded by two billionaire robber barons, one of which made his fortunes by pump and dumping a worthless Alzheimer drug. The other one has a very suspect track record and is a very big government contractor (but for some reason we don’t call people like him oligarchs). “Government is dysfunctional”. So let’s, as billionaires (and financially independent multi-millionaires) take a sledgehammer to government and remake it how we want it to be. Oh boy. And attract all the “smartest” people to this project.[1]
I’m not afraid that some small number of financially independent, Scrooge McDuck ideologue techbros have the power to make the world significantly worse (although it is a bit concerning). I’m also not upset that they don’t plan to do something “philantphtropic” (i.e. main dish of ego-stroking and PR with a side-dish of actual good work). And I’m not upset that they don’t go into something hands-on with a direct positive impact on people’s lives (c.f. “solving the labor shortage”) by volunteering themselves.
I’m just upset that these ideologues just don’t spend their money on one or five yachts, a private plane, their friends/family/entourage, and leave the rest of the world the fuck alone.
[1] “All the brightest minds of my generation who venerate Musk and billionaire-world problems like “labor shortage” are going to work for robber barons in order to dismantle the US goverment...” wait maybe these people are not the brightest lightbulbs after all.
I find it a little unsatisfying when people write these things without telling me roughly what they're worth. "Rich" can vary wildly depending who you ask.
edit: according to another's comment referencing a $56m payout, it now occurs to me that his confusing mention of a $60m figure may have been exactly that
>I find it a little unsatisfying when people write these things without telling me roughly what they're worth. "Rich" can vary wildly depending who you ask.
As long as they don't need to work for a living ever again, and they'd still have a house, health coverage, food on the table, vacations at will, new clothes, new cars every few years, money for their kids and their kid's college, and diversified enough for covering whatever market issue, that's rich enough - doesn't matter if it's $20 million or $1 billion for the purposes of "I'm bored with no purpose" the author is getting at.
Yeah, to most of the world, I’m rich. To a significant portion of other Americans, I’m rich. Yet, my lifestyle is wholly dependent on working for somebody else. No work, no house, no car, no medical care, no fun.
“I’m so rich I’m lost” - worst humblebrag ever. Get a therapist. Or go for a long walk in the woods. Sheesh.
I know that people like me do not belong on HN anymore, but:
Calling people "NPCs" is vile.
And, the entire ideology that makes it okay to say that one's fellow earthling is just an NPC? That is probably a major component of this person's problems.
It's probably impossible to counter-act the aggressive reactions here on the "NPC" term. But the way people interpret his phrase, and how I read it, seem very different?
People seem to read it as him saying "colleagues are NPCs".
I read it as 'in your life, you will come across co-workers who appear to approach their jobs as though they were NPCs'. IE, you will experience some colleagues who act as if they were controlled by bad game AI.
The point then is: If you are one of those who care about "the ball/the game", it can be very aggravating to "play the game", when some of your coworkers act with an "NPC attitude" ("I can't go into that other room, there is an obstacle blocking my path").
So I read it as him saying "staying at the company where I am no longer in control, would drive me nuts having to tolerate groups of colleagues who insist on behaving like NPC's / show up to work on auto-pilot".
As an example, the company where I work recently had an AI hackathon event, where we could work together on AI prototypes on company time.
Some of us were thrilled to be given these tools and opportunities. And then there were some other colleagues, whose enthusiasm could be summed up as "Whatever, I'm out the door at 15:30 afternoon, I'm not paid after that".
In short, being annoyed at NPC coworkers is not the same as believing "coworkers are only NPCs".
That is a more optimistic read of what he might mean by NPC. I cannot possibly know for sure, but I don't think so.
NPC is a meme with shifting meaning, but I have never seen NPC used as an adjective for an activity or aspect of someone's life. It is invariably used to condemn an entire person as unworthy of consideration, and maybe even subhuman.
It is frequently used by tech leaders that Vinay apparently admires, as a term of disdain for large groups of people. The analogy is that the person appears to be human, and go through the motions of being human, but they don't actually have thoughts of their own. Graphically they are represented by a primitively drawn grey figure who has limited capability for expression, just varying the eyebrows. The NPC is often presented in a group of identical figures.
Musk uses "NPC" loosely, often to refer to the media. His critics are always NPCs, as is anyone to his left. He implies they merely act in lockstep with whatever is trending on social media. For Musk, people who believe there is a genocide in Gaza are NPCs. Amazingly, even when a person who formerly idolized Musk begins criticizing him, it is because they are an NPC.
Sam Altman does not seem to have as open a problem with narcissism. But he also seems to be suggesting that many humans are more machine-like than AI:
> in a few years, the important distinction won't be bot vs. human, but NPC (human or AI) vs. not"
> we won't be able to be sure if text is human-generated or not, but it also won't be the most important question. 'independence' will be a very important metric."
It seems to me that the tech-right, rationalist, EAs, TESCREALists, whatever we're calling it now, value agency above all. They often describe themselves as "high agency" people. And so the NPC, someone incapable of agency and maybe even lacking a soul, is the worst possible fate.
Musk claims to love humanity, but I would be curious to find out how much of humanity he thinks are NPCs. Are NPCs just a particular species that have taken over academia, the media, and government? Or are the majority of people NPCs and only a few high-IQ and high achievement individuals are really fully human?
That kind of callow, callous indifference towards the lives of others is the kind of thing that could get a healthcare ceo assassinated while the country cheers on the assassin.
TLDR, I've let how I think and what I value to be entirely determined by capitalism. I then (essentially) won capitalism. Hence I don't know what to do since capitalism has no meaning beyond achieving extreme relative wealth accumulation.
People want a proven method for finding a niche... which is an oxymoron at some level. The proven methods that are accessible are already taken and used.
Yeah, how did a screen recorder get $200 million funding or was acquired for $900 million? The tech was already saturated and old at the time. Skype and others were already established. Makes me think "been doing it all wrong" meme. I think the $60 million weas pre-tax? After tax oud be $40 million?...still a lot.
Something I always try to remember that has really served me well, from when I grew up dirt poor to eventually having success, is that life is hard for everyone in different ways and more often when I assume how easy or hard someone has it, I’m wrong.
You ain't wrong, but I think it rather goes like this:
The core problems (health, relationships, love troubles, depression, and so on) can be the same in both poor and rich.
But the poor additional have all kinds of very heavy problems that the rich have solved. Hate your boss/job? They have "fuck you money", they don't need to work. Your kid needs surgery? They can afford many times over what would kill you financially. Trouble making rent? Not a problem for them. And so on. Stuck in a warn torn country? Not a problem for them. Wife wants a divorce and half the fortune? No problemo, you're still rich after giving that away.
Don't the rich also have some unique-to-the-rich problems? Yes, but of the nice-to-have (e.g. "people approach me just because I have money") or "I'm too adjusted to this level of the hedonic treadmill, woe be me" variety.
Even something like rich with an incurable disease (or maybe your spouse/child has one) that’s going to take you out in a few months than poor? Having lived a bit in both worlds I’m not really sure it’s so simple as you’re making it out to be. I’d agree that generally of course it’s better to be rich than poor, I’m just saying every individual person can’t be judged solely on that basis.
>Even something like rich with an incurable disease
The contest is between being rich and poor with "all other things being equal". Anything else doesn't make sense, might as well ask: do you prefer being rich facing the firing squad, or poor having drinks with friends?
So, compared to being poor with an incurable disease? Yes, 100 times over.
>Having lived a bit in both worlds I’m not really sure it’s so simple as you’re making it out to be.
Rather it's so simple a choice that you had to add the "incurable disease" to the rich side to tip the balance.
My point was just that all things aren’t equal when judging individuals - life is hard for people in unexpected ways you may not immediately see from their socioeconomic status. My original comment at the top of this thread was about how treating individuals as individuals has served me well, and was explicitly not to set up a contest between whether it is always better to be rich than poor. So if I failed to do so to your satisfaction, I suppose that’s why.
>My point was just that all things aren’t equal when judging individuals
They're not, but for comparing one should only account for things that are different because of being rich vs poor. Having an incurrable disease is not that, as it can perfectly well happen to both rich and poor (and the rich would get better treatment for it anyway, and it wont cost them their house or savings).
Okay, thanks. What is your takeaway in the end, in contrast to my suggestion about empathising with people individually instead of judging them as part of a group based on their socioeconomic status or other outward indicators?
Idk read ”the monk who sold his ferrari” or something not that i have (read book, or ferrari)
Also youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA&t=15m14s but for millionaire equivalent instead of billionaire
e: advice comes in all shapes and forms. you want me to lie to him? what would buddha do
So I put this into my (WIP) AI writing app, and these were its thoughts on seeing the first paragraph:
{
"reflections": [
{
"text_snippet": "Life has been a haze this last year. After selling my company...",
"response": "This reminds me of Joseph Campbell's concept of 'hitting the wasteland' - that disorienting period after achieving what society told you was the ultimate goal. Campbell wrote about this in 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces,' describing how many mythological heroes face their greatest crisis not in battle, but in the emptiness that follows victory. There's a beautiful quote from his lectures: 'If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take.'"
},
{
"text_snippet": "Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way",
"response": "This evokes Viktor Frankl's concept of the 'existential vacuum' - the state of emptiness that comes when our primary drive is satisfied but we haven't yet found what he calls our 'will to meaning.' You might find resonance in his lesser-known work 'The Unheard Cry for Meaning' where he writes: 'What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal.'"
},
{
"text_snippet": "I have infinite freedom, yet I don't know what to do with it",
"response": "This reminds me of Kierkegaard's meditation on anxiety and freedom. He saw anxiety not as fear of external threats, but as the dizzying awareness of infinite possibility. In 'The Concept of Anxiety,' he describes it as 'the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility.'"
}
],
"questions": [
{
"personal": "What did you imagine freedom would feel like before you achieved this level of it?",
"philosophical": "When you say things feel like 'side quests,' I'm curious - what would a 'main quest' feel like to you now?"
}
],
"closing_thought": "Your situation reminds me of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha after he became a wealthy merchant. He had everything, yet felt a profound emptiness that eventually led him to his true path. Sometimes the void itself becomes the doorway to something deeper."
}
---
Really cool to read the comments in this thread & see the real-life advice of people who have been in these situations too!
I think you should start investing in companies and then possibly get some drive there helping others make it. Sometimes it is nice to give back to the community I think
If you do think that can be given a try then hey.. we (my wife and me, my wife more than me) are looking to build something and could do with some investment to take that risk.
the critics in this section about doge are absolutely dumbfounding. it seems to be hiring the smartest people from the industry, and yet people complain it didn’t recruit people with education or exp in state administration / bureaucracy ? which is precisely the field which in fact needs a cultural shakedown ?
Are you people out of your mind ? this is the passage that in fact made me the most impressed about this DOGE project. They seem 100% focused on agility and velocity, that’s just crazy when you think about how those kind of projects usually work in other countries (like france, which would have a commission created with long pompous ceremonies of hearings of pseudo-experts)
In my experience, a lot of people who get into this state start self-sabotaging hard as a way of rejecting what feels, ironically, like losing control. Sudden freedom can feel foreign and lot like your world got forcibly taken away from you. I'm not surprised the author is turning down opportunities and breaking off with his girlfriend. It's a way of taking back control.
When this happened to me, I pivoted hard from getting satisfaction out of what I built to getting satisfaction out of developing people. Now I take great pride out of the careers I've nurtured...a lot more than what I've built, in most ways. I've heard others express similar ideas in different ways, like "I now enjoy making other people rich."
No matter what, I encourage the author to use this time to build connections instead of destroying them (real connections...not work or SF acquaintances). Something I did not read in this essay is how he grew closer to anyone (in fact, I read the opposite). No path out of this valley involves traveling alone.
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