SoullessAutomaton comments on Beware of Other-Optimizing - Less Wrong

79 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2009 01:58AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (117)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: CronoDAS 10 April 2009 08:16:15PM 7 points [-]

Exactly!

I don't want my parents to stop supporting me, because I don't want to get stuck in some 40-hour a week job that I can barely tolerate.

For reference, modern-day hunter-gatherers "work" twenty hours a week on survival, and that's on the kind of marginal land which civilization didn't bother to invade until relatively recently. I don't think humans were designed to spend 40 hours a week doing such things as sitting in a cubicle or waiting tables.

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 10 April 2009 08:30:05PM 3 points [-]

I don't think humans were designed to spend 40 hours a week doing such things as sitting in a cubicle or waiting tables.

You are probably correct, and there is some research to support this; unfortunately, I don't have easily-availible references and can't turn anything up quickly on Google. If memory serves me, the short version is: individual productivity per hour is optimized with a shorter workweek and longer workdays. Total productivity per person peaks at a little over a 40-hour work week and also longer workdays.