handoflixue comments on How To Have Things Correctly - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Alicorn 17 October 2012 06:10AM

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Comment author: gwern 17 October 2012 11:01:21PM 2 points [-]

A billion dollars would give you all the freedom you need to be happy -- but going from that to "a billionaire must be unusually happy", or even "most billionaires are unusually happy", seems to depend on a lot more self-awareness and agency than I think most people of any income actually have.

One thing I muse over sometimes in the context of billionaires is that, by and large, we should expect them to be strange and often unhappy people - simply because anyone more normal and well-adjusted would have stopped at, say, $10 million and $10 million typically doesn't accidentally turn into billions. Continuing past the point where all one's real needs are met indicates a bizarrely low estimate of the utility of switching to consumption and away from earning additional money (or perhaps the inability to stop working).

Comment author: handoflixue 17 October 2012 11:21:38PM 5 points [-]

Or they just enjoy working... I've read quite a few accounts of work being a fairly meaningful part of life, and when you're worth billions, you probably run the company, set your own dress code, can casually fire anyone that annoys you, etc..

I'd also suggest that being a billionaire and enjoying your work probably go hand in hand - it would explain why so many of them work 80+ hours a week...

Comment author: Swimmer963 18 October 2012 12:14:16AM 1 point [-]

Agreed that being a billionaire and enjoying work go hand in hand–obviously they enjoyed it enough to put in the work required to earn billions. It's not impossible that someone could say "well, I sort of got dragged into working 80-hour weeks running my company and making billions, but I wish I'd just worked 9-5 for $100,000 a year and spent my leisure time doing x, y, z." But I doubt you hear it often–if they were the kind of person who enjoyed leisure activities more than working, earning, and promotions, they probably would have ended up in the 9-5 job by default–it's hard to accidentally get to be a billionaire.