Henrik_Jonsson comments on How To Have Things Correctly - Less Wrong

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

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

Comments (218)

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

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: Henrik_Jonsson 18 October 2012 01:27:51AM 5 points [-]

Having worked for / talked to some people who became decamillionaires or higher through startups, a common theme seems to be just being really competitive. They don't care too much about money for money's sake - that's just what we currently use to send the signal "your startup is doing something we really like" in our society.