Sometimes it's possible to get a pretty good bead on someone's worldview from even a short excerpt. In this case, the author not only has a low internal locus of control, but seems to adopt it as a core belief. Here's the key part:
"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
I find this fatalism both increasingly common and increasingly odious. The opposite attitude may be irritating - Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" - but I prefer to reason from agency when there's a decent chance the more empowering view is right. Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?
It's my experience that when you find yourself thinking, "I can understand this person's entire worldview from a short statement, and I can use that to dismiss what they're saying," it's a sort of self-inflicted strawman to protect yourself from ideas that make you uncomfortable to the point where you refuse to believe they originated from a reasonable human being. It's simpler and safer to imagine they came from a caricature. (Not throwing shade, I'm describing my conclusions from observing this behavior in myself.)
That doesn't mean the idea is good, maybe it's a terrible idea, but you should seek to challenge your thinking on the subject, not protect it and keep it precious.
I'm not sure how under your view you could ever disagree with anyone at all then. To not fall into the same trap you articulate, could you explain what holding a viewpoint against another where you disagree with it for good reasons looks like? Maybe with an example that works here?
Great question. You disagree with them, but you don't expand the scope of your disagreement past the matter in dispute (eg, you don't go from "we disagree" to "this person's worldview is hopelessly flawed"). You don't tell yourselves narratives about why they came to that conclusion. Narratives about how they will always think in a certain way are especially dangerous. In practice, for myself, this means more recognizing that these things are happening & terminating that line of thinking, and reminding myself how little I know about people on the other end of a screen. Oftentimes these can be restated as constructive questions, like instead of saying, "you are a fatalist," you can ask, "this seems fatalistic, this doesn't match my own experience, can you help me understand?" Remember that most strong disagreements are a mild disagreement wrapped in a misunderstanding.
To give a concrete example, maybe you see someone say something you find deeply objectionable, like "I support affirmative action in college admissions" or "I support the right to bear arms." You could say to yourself, here is my political adversary, they're a snowflake or a nut job or a useful idiot, they are buying into this or that media narrative, I can discount them. And that could all be true, but you don't actually know any of that at this point. So you say to yourself, "the world is a big strange place, there are many paths to form this opinion and I don't know which one this person took, but if I ask questions and keep an open mind we both might learn something." That doesn't mean you have to agree with them, you're just not derailing yourself with narratives that only serve to reinforce your biases.
And to be honest a lot of people are nut jobs and a lot of people will bite your head off no matter how politely or open mindedly you disagree with them. Which makes it difficult to maintain this, and I won't pretend that I'm not a hypocrite who regularly fails in this respect. But it's important to maintain a headspace where it is possible to change your mind, as often as you are able.
> But it's important to maintain a headspace where it is possible to change your mind, as often as you are able.
Every single time I look at myself 5 years prior I always think that my opinions and ideas were stupid and how much more cult and evolved and smarter I am. And then I realize 5 years from now I'll think the same thing about today.
Best remedy to keep yourself from judging other's opinions too harshly and thinking too highly about whatever positions you hold. Big +1 to your whole sentiment.
That was a good comment for me to read. I like to think about myself that I am of a similar mindset to you but now that I think of it I very often discount others' opinions because of how I view them and don't catch myself often enough. Here's hoping I remember this comment next time it happens :)
You just skipped down the levels of abstractions in a way that does not address the OP's point.
> you see someone say something you find deeply objectionable, like "I support affirmative action in college admissions"
I have no idea why that person thinks that, and can form no opinions about them. Even more specifically, outside a US context they are meaningless.
Contrast that to the OP example:
> "Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
This is not a statement of opinion about a thing. This is not a "policy is X is good" statement. This is the framework for how this person forms ALL their opinions. This statement could be made by almost any human anywhere in the world.
There are, without doubt, things people can say that give you "a pretty good bead on someone's worldview from even a short excerpt". These are NOT "I support the right to bear arms." They are vey much "I am a strict and devoted Mormon and follow all the churches teachings", or "hard work is all that matters" or "no matter how hard you try, life is out to get you".
If someone can't deduce things about a person from those sorts of first principle short sentences, that is a bit of a worry to me.
My apologies to those for whom US politics isn't salient. Thank you for that feedback, I'll try to speak to a broader audience in the future.
There's a world of difference between a statement giving you a clue about someone's worldview and assuming you understand it's entirety. In not saying you shouldn't infer anything from anything, I'm saying you should be honest with yourself about what is knowledge and what is supposition.
Knowledge is justified, true belief. I can come to believe something as strongly as I may from scant information, and that thing could be true - and it still wouldn't have been justified. Alternatively, you could take those reactions and interpret them as untested hypothesis, and test them by asking followup questions.
I don't agree that this statement represents a broad assertion that life is out to get you, as much as that the author has made a decision about how to allocate their efforts because they observe rapidly diminishing returns in certain areas. I don't have a fatalistic attitude towards life broadly, but there are aspects of my life that are treadmills which I try not to step on to.
Yes! I feel like a good fraction of the content on Reddit and Twitter are people extrapolating on the world view and psychology of other people on the platform, and comparatively little on the actual content of what was said.
Or you've seen the same ideas over and over and once you spot the pattern you save yourself the time. Your approach sounds good if you're young or have infinite energy/time.
Dumpster diving is not a good way to find value even if you occasionally find gold.
I certainly feel this way regularly and choose not to engage with people when I don't believe it will be worthwhile. The nuance is that, if you tell yourself you have the power to see into people's hearts and understand what makes them tick - rather than you've simply chosen not to engage with this particular person at this particular time - you may exercise bad judgment in circumstances that require you to understand other people.
For instance, one that causes me problems personally is that I'm prone to doubting that people will change their mind no matter what evidence you present to them. And that's not a bad heuristic when you think someone is wrong on the internet and don't think that you'll be able to disabuse them of it. But I've had to learn to suppress this instinct when I get into conflicts with people, because I can't resolve a conflict if I'm convinced that it's impossible to come to an understanding. But this isn't just an irrational idea I've picked up, I have had conflicts that couldn't be resolved because the other party wouldn't give me a fair hearing. But I can't allow myself to believe that no one will ever change their mind, even if I see all the hallmarks of it.
And indeed I've had the experience more than once where I see someone dig in their heels, fully anticipate this matter is irresolvable, and when encouraged by mutual friends to try anyway (or, later, when I tried to be optimistic because I was aware of this pattern), I've gone on to be surprised for the better.
> The nuance is that, if you tell yourself you have the power to see into people's hearts and understand what makes them tick - rather than you've simply chosen not to engage with this particular person at this particular time - you may exercise bad judgment in circumstances that require you to understand other people.
eh. If someone says, and says it seriously so you know that they mean it, "I really love being a serial killer, it gives me a great feeling of freedom and relief."
I don't know about you, but I kinda am getting their entire worldview from that short statement. What else am I supposed to ask? If they like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain? If they're not into yoga, or if they have half a brain? If they like making love at midnight In the dunes on the cape?
I'll leave it to you to go to their house some some dark and stormy night and strip nude, lie down on their table, and put a cleaver across your chest, waiting to hear his story about his other thoughts.
I'm not trying to caricature. I'm just saying that you can go hang out with a serial murderers. I admit that you are a better person than I am because you are ready to hang out with serial murderers and I'm not. I'll judge the serial killer on just the one statement, thank you very much.
Not a strawman, I don't think. More like reducto ad absurdum. But in whatever case, I think what I wrote was kinda humorous, too, so I'll go with humor as an additional failsafe.
I interpreted this statement completely differently. The author isn't fatalistic at all, he's merely advocating for a more thoughtful approach to spending your time.
If the only reason you work on something is out of a fear of falling behind, then you ought to reevaluate your priorities and, if you deem it necessary, choose a path that seems more fruitful. "Getting ahead" implies judging your life relative to others, based on metrics that are societally accepted, but may be completely misaligned with your actual desires. Spending some time to introspect and to get a grasp on your own idea of a meaningful life can be very beneficial.
I think the treadmill analogy is a reference to the hedonic treadmill, where you may assume that spending oodles of your time pursuing greater wealth or reputation will surely be worth it in the end, but are faced with the reality of feeling the exact same way as before.
The author is suggesting finding a corner of the world where you can play a better game. The better game they are suggesting is to hop off the treadmill of external validation, and figure out how to find it internally instead.
Like many or most of us here, I spend a lot of my time around software people. But I just spent a bunch of time this weekend with a group of people for whom music is their way of making money in some way or another; teaching it, playing it, writing it, etc. Something very striking to me is how much different the internal vs. external validation thing is between them and me. These are people who get little external validation, always scraping by with unstable income, struggling for recognition in a crowded field. But they all do it because they just freaking love music, they're excited by the possibilities, and almost always happy when they're playing. On the other hand, most software folks I know are compensated richly externally, but often struggle to find peace and contentment internally.
To be clear, this was a "melding of the worlds" kind of event with different families and sundry friends coming together, not a "musicians hanging out with programmers" social event.
But as is always the case unless you work as a professional pollster, I don't have any idea how representative my samples are. It was just an observation from my experience.
There’s a lot we could learn from artists about creative practice and enjoying other people’s work. I often wish I could have gone to a programmer art school.
I think it's the opposite: the purpose here is to say that pursuing efficiency so that you have more time will not give you more time; it will just give you more work allotted to that time. Instead, you first need to prioritize your goals, giving your personal goals a relative weight to professional ones, or your personal goals will get lost.
But you are going to make more money, invest it and have your wealth snowball. Then you can retire earlier and choose to do the exact thing you want to do earlier since you have money.
And at certain curve the amount of money yoh make matters a lot, if you have base expenses. Making 4k vs 2k is technically infinite gains if your expenses are 2k. If you become more efficient, but don't make more money, then you clearly need to work on your ability to sell yourself. And if your expenses also grow equally to what you are making more, that is also on you.
First, it assumes that you will be paid for said productivity. If you are doing piecework or sales or something where your income has direct proportion to your paycheck, this is true. For most people working hourly or salary, this is not true. As you mention, you're paid by how you sell yourself. This is only nominally related to how well you do the job above what is expected.
(If you get a 2% raise for being adequate, 4% for going above and beyond, and 15% for working on your interview skills and jumping ship, your productivity system is not what matters.)
You are paid by a combination of how you sell yourself * the kind of work you do. It's not black and white. Work on grabbing the lowest hanging fruit and bottlenecks as in if you do a lot of good work, but no one cares, then work on presenting or finding a place that cares. Remove the block where good work is not valued.
True, but unfortunately we now live in a world where corporate landlords participate in a price-fixing cartel on regional basis and use income verification data to set your rent. This means, in many cases, an increase in pay means an increase in rent even if you change nothing else about your lifestyle.
Side note: price-fixing cartels are black letter illegal as fuck in the US, but we don’t seem to enforce the laws against corporate landlords
>Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
You got it backwards. The post specifically encourages the person to take action.
What they describe in that part is what happens when you're caught in that kind of work treadmill. In that case, anything you do within the context of the treadmill isn't going to make any difference. You need to escape/reframe the context.
>>"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
>>Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
It is also a statement of fact. Working hard on a job that pays a fixed salary is just pointless by definition after a while. Especially in a job that doesn't have overtime. The company has little incentive to reward free work they can get done, and get away with.
>>Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?
Yes. If you absolutely have to work hard, do it in a place that pays you for it.
You mean the author of the article or the book. It helps to know that author of the article started an Site Optimization platform and worked hard to build it, probably spending too much time on it as well.
Taking umbrage with any advice saying otherwise i.e don't spend too much time on performance, seems sensible since they took it personally.
It helps that inflation was very little and very uncommon at the time. Pikkety opens his book with a story from late 18th century, and if I remember correctly, he did look into this and found that for a centuries currencies hardly de-valuated.
I asked our all knowing friend to hash up the story for me, 'cause he remembers it better than I did:
Question:
Do you remember pikkety's book "capital in the 21st century", in which he opens with a story about people in french contemplating the best way to get rich. He also has a tangent about how money barely de-evaluated. Could you repeat that to me?
Answer:
Yes, I can certainly help you with that. In his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Thomas Piketty opens with a story about a dinner party in France in the early 21st century, where the guests were discussing the best ways to get rich. Piketty uses this story to introduce the central theme of his book, which is the study of wealth and income inequality over time.
In the book, Piketty also discusses the phenomenon of barely devalued money. He argues that in the post-World War II period, Western economies experienced a period of high economic growth, which allowed for the accumulation of significant amounts of capital. However, in the decades that followed, growth rates began to slow down, which meant that the returns on capital also began to decline.
Piketty notes that during this period, the value of money barely devalued, which had the effect of increasing the relative value of capital. This, in turn, contributed to rising income and wealth inequality, as those who owned capital were able to accumulate more wealth at the expense of those who did not.
Overall, Piketty's book is a comprehensive analysis of the history of wealth and income inequality and its impact on society.
The quote is more commonly attributed to John Steinbeck, who also wrote a (somewhat embellished) memoir / #vanlife travelogue in 1962, called "Travels With Charley in Search of America".
People err on different sides of issues. Some people struggle to get things done, other people struggle with a kind of productivity obsession. How people on the opposite sides of that spectrum cope is obviously going to be quite different and unhelpful to their counterparts.
Like how some people talk to me in response to my attempts at losing weight. I don’t have body image issues or an eating disorder, i don’t need to kind of self confidence or gentle speech someone in that situation needs. I’m just slightly overweight because I had too many cheeseburgers in Covid times. Different problems need different solutions.
I think this is why the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, and why casinos make money. Unreasonable hope is necessary if you are going to do anything interesting. Failure often teaches more than success. Knowing we will die is intimidating. https://www.google.com/search?q=wood+allen+the+universe+is+e...
"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
I find this fatalism both increasingly common and increasingly odious. The opposite attitude may be irritating - Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" - but I prefer to reason from agency when there's a decent chance the more empowering view is right. Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?