cousin_it comments on Beware of Other-Optimizing - Less Wrong
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Do you believe that CronoDAS's interests would be served by this? If so, how is it not a problem with them? If not, why do you believe that CronoDAS's parents should or would be persuaded not to put CronoDAS's interests first?
Working for a living is enormously burdensome. Future generations won't be able to believe how much of our time it took up - and of course it takes up a lot less of our time on average than that of many other people, especially those in poorer countries or the people of the past. Still, I would argue that it's worth it, not because of the work ethic but just on a personal cost/benefit calculation.
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.
People can live fine without 40-hour jobs. If your life has little value to you, why not treat it as a venture and make some really daring moves that the rest of us find hard.
Such as?
For example... Ever read the story of the coder turned bike courier? You can do the same but skip the coder part. I especially loved the bit about traveling across the country, working for a little time in every major city along the way. And bike couriers don't seem to have akrasia problems.