army1987 comments on 2012 Winter Fundraiser for the Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

31 Post author: lukeprog 06 December 2012 10:41PM

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

Comments (126)

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

Comment author: pengvado 08 December 2012 09:51:53PM *  22 points [-]

I value my free time far too much to work for a living. So your model is correct on that count. I had planned to be mostly unemployed with occasional freelance programming jobs, and generally keep costs down.

But then a couple years ago my hobby accidentally turned into a business, and it's doing well. "Accidentally" because it started with companies contacting me and saying "We know you're giving it away for free, but free isn't good enough for us. We want to buy a bunch of copies." And because my co-founder took charge of the negotiations and other non-programming bits, so it still feels like a hobby to me.

Both my non-motivation to work and my willingness to donate a large fraction of my income have a common cause, namely thinking of money in far-mode, i.e. not alieving The Unit of Caring on either side of the scale.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 December 2012 11:54:26AM 1 point [-]

i.e. not alieving The Unit of Caring on either side of the scale

I don't, either -- possibly because I've never been in real economic hardships; I think if I had grown up in a poorer family I probably would. (I do try to be frugal because so far I've lived almost exclusively on my parents' income and it seems unfair towards them to waste their money, though.)