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IlyaShpitser comments on The Craft And The Community: Wealth And Power And Tsuyoku Naritai - Less Wrong
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I don't believe you.
Many of your goals can be accomplished without being rich: PhDs in technical fields are gotten "for free", learning languages is very cheap, etc. Why aren't you checking them off your list now?
Reminds me of Thoreau:
Writers say this a lot to anyone who 'wants to be a writer' - 'just' start writing!
They also say "What? Are you mad? That's a terrible idea and it's ridiculously hard to break into the field. But if you insist..." ;)
What about spending the whole of one's life living the life of a Hero of Science and a Captain of Industry?
cringe
Disclaimer: not a Randian. Though, well, changing the world with SCIENCE, for SCIENCE, is kind of what I'm all about. :P
Anyway, what I meant to say was that "accumulating riches so you can relax later on" isn't exactly the way I've planned my life. When I'm old I want to be a mentor, not a perpetual tourist.
I can how one might get Rand out of that, though this was not why I cringed.
I'm curious -- why such an enthusiasm for science? I like sciencey stuff too, but (aside from playing with science-related stuff as a hobby) I see its value as being mostly instrumental rather than terminal -- useful in steering humanity into world-states where we're not dead and/or suffering, but that's pretty much it.
The number one virtue of a rationalist is curiosity. I am practically a curiosity elemental. And Science sates my curiosity like nothing else in the world.
I'd continue onto a flowery tirade about how much I have always loved science since I was a child, and that I delight in its rationality-enhanced version even more, but look at me here talking when there's science to do...:P
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1777
Have you considered a career in science? (Or do you have one now?)
I'm happy enough with being an Engineer.
By definition, that seems guaranteed to prevent one from living the life of a poet, unless I have been grossly misled by the media about what titans of industry do in their offices and boardrooms!
You'd be right. For one thing, they don't starve in there.
Being an artist on the side is a great thing (see Thomas Jefferson), but being a pure artist usually seems to lead to a very miserable life.
And yet scores of thousands of people still want to do it each year, which suggests that the intangibles must be incredible.
It might be a case of being attracted to something that otherwise doesn't bring satisfaction in some fundamentally important ways? I can think of quite a few human activities and hobbies that would fit that bill; we call them "passions" or "obsessions".
How about learning languages fast?
Note the quotes: opportunity costs tend to be heavy.
Why would having more money make those opportunity costs worth taking on (or remove them)?
You can afford the risk this investment entails, for starters.
People who haven't won a lottery typically need to spend several dozen hours per week to earn a living.
And even people who have won a lottery still need to spend several dozen hours per week earning their living...