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ThrustVectoring comments on How can I spend money to improve my life? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Other people in this thread have gone down the obvious "spend money to pay people to do things you don't like doing but want done" route. My suggestion is to get hobbies. Awesome, awesome hobbies. Sure, there's a time commitment to continue with a hobby, but they can be put down with little ill effect.Here's what I'd start with:
Archery. Buy a bow and some lessons and perhaps a range membership.
Sailing. Sunscreen, clothing, and a Sunfish or other small dinghy. Maybe get lessons as well. I'd start at a lake.
Blacksmithing or welding. Take some fun classes along those lines at a community college or trade school or the like. Alternatively, you can get pliers and some metal wire and make chain mail (this, however, is much more time intensive, but cheap in terms of money alone).
Racing. You'd probably want to start with go-karts and the like.
Sports. Generally cheap and enjoyable.
As far as programming, writing, and people skills go, a big part of improving is spending time on it. Getting paid feedback can probably help as well.
For life-optimization in general, moving to a place closer to work and cutting down on your commute is worthwhile in general. You'd have to do the math to see how much you'd wind up paying for your time.
Getting rid of stuff to maintain is a freebie. Things are option-priced: owning something gives you the right to use it later. It also forces you to either maintain it or lose it. Keep track of the time and money costs as well as how often you use your car, and compare to the costs of renting a car instead.
I'd also recommend laser eye surgery, particularly if you have any amount of astigmatism or are clumsy. Financed over two years, my cost is something like $5/day. And as for clumsiness, well, a significant amount of that sort of thing goes away when things are the same shape across your field of vision. It's anecdotes, sure, but all four people (myself included) that I know that got lasik have better hand-eye coordination and significantly reduced clumsiness. It's hard for me to overstate how valuable laser eye surgery has been. My sister rates it as the third best decision she's ever made, behind marrying her husband and buying a house she loves the daylights out of.
choose your hobbies wisely. take ecstatic dance in oakland, for instance. its not very expensive, it will make sure your body stays a little fit, there will be great cahances to socialize and flirt. and you wont die.
compare that with motorcicle racing. it is competitive, male oriented, hard to find time and a place to do it, way more expensive, there are no women, it pollutes the earth, and you have to keep a motorbike in good conditions. not to mention you'll live 15 minutes less per hour ran, according to tegmarks old website.
The advice above of getting hobbies is a good one, but choose activities that are physical, social, and will make you healthy and sexy, unless you really, really, really love playing magic the gathering, like i do, then just nerd your money around and leave the other things to another time.
I completely agree with dance lessons as a worthwhile hobby to consider. The point I was trying to get at is that if you have disposable disposable income and free time and your hobbies are "books and computer games", you've probably not done worthwhile exploration as to what hobbies you enjoy.
When doing the exploration it makes sense to analyse the hobby beforehand. Motorcicle racing might be as fun as the ecstatic dance suggestion but it's still a worse alternative because fun isn't the only factor.
It depends on the relative costs of analysis versus just trying it, really. If it takes ten hours to figure out which hobby you want to try first, you could have already tried the top three gut-feeling hobbies out for three hours each.
How much do you learn about the value of motorcycle racing by trying it out for three hours? I don't think that provides much valuable information for a decision whether or not to engage in motorcycle racing.
It doesn't provide you any information about accident risks. It doesn't even provide you any information about whether it's fun once you developed a decent ability at it.
I get that some hobbies are better than others, and you can use analysis to figure out costs and benefits. I have a tendency to over-analyze things instead of actually going out and doing them, so I tailored my advice for someone that likely has the same issues (since they've got a list of hobbies that indicates not going out and trying things).
Some people need to spend more time figuring out what hobbies they want and their relative costs or benefits. The people that need this branch of advice have already tried several of the hobbies listed and aren't asking for advice along these lines.
A friend of mine got Lasik and deeply regretted it. So you should do lots of research and be sure to get it from someone competent.
Why does she regret it, specifically?
Since we're already at the anecdote level: A friend of mine saw a LASIK surgeons conference at his university and he says they're all wearing glasses.
To get away from the anecdote level and bring in an empirical source, LASIK satisfaction rates are at 95.4%. [non-paywall pdf]
Thank you for a very interesting read, and especially for thinking to provide a non-paywall link.
That's the most impressive list of declared conflicts of interest I've ever seen.
That is good evidence, but I'd disbelieve its reliability a bit because it is so funny. Like obese dieticians, or non-rich investment brokers, or divorced marriage counselors.
Excellent point. I'd have difficulty believing this guy too, if he hadn't predicted millimeter wave full-body scanners wouldn't work before anybody in the media knew they wouldn't, based on the fact he'd been building them.
He says the main problem with LASIK is that when you correct myopia with it, your presbyopia (inevitable hyperopia from being over 40) is going to be worse by the same degree that the operation made the myopia better, and you're going to be stuck with it for much longer. Glasses or contacts for myopia you can just take off when you reach that age, but LASIK for myopia will need to be countercorrected. He didn't object to LASIK for hyperopia.
One possible reason is that (reputedly, among opthalmologists) one of the side-effects of Lasik is thought to be fractionally worse colour discrimination. Which might be fine for Joe Public, but very bad for people who spend their careers identifying and manipulating sub-milimeter structures.
How much of that is age-related? LASIK doesn't remove the need for reading glasses - it pegs your eyes to 20/20 if done properly, but as you age you lose the ability to alter focal distances, so you're only 20/20 at a particular distance(usually far-field).
Well, hindsight is 20/20.
Because my myopia is too high, laser surgery was deemed unsafe. I had permanent implants instead (they call them phakic intraocular lenses). It has much fewer secondary effects. It cost me 5x what the laser surgery would have, but I had recently got a windfall and it was the best of all things I did with that money.
What else did you do with the money? (If the answer is 'I blew it all on a Vegas weekend I can't remember', I will be much less impressed by the implants.)
Two words: book fair.
Also, I lived three months without working and helped a roommate with her share of rent during her rough spot (she eventually paid me back). I bought furniture and cold-weather clothes that I needed.
I don't remember the exact figures, but the risk of getting a persistent dry eye problem from laser eye surgery was significant enough to make me forget about it. My eyes are already pretty dry, and it's a very annoying inconvenience to have.
Why? Archery isn't a sport that builds muscle, fluent body movement or produces a high heart rate that helps the heart. To me it seems a suboptimal hobby for a rationalist.
That's pricing the risk that it messes up your eye at zero. I don't think that's the right way to go about it.
Because it's neat! I took glassblowing in college, and (a) it was fun, (b) I get to see glass objects and puzzle out how they were made, and (c) I get to tell people I took glassblowing which makes people do a double take.
(I mean, c'mon, I get opportunities to tell people that one of my final exams in college was making a Hero Engine).
Archery seems similarly likely to make you feel awesome.
Opportunity cost. An improv comedy course does this as well.
Years ago I heard an audio book by Jim Rohm in which he made the point that even people without near-death experiences have intersting stories to tell.
I said to myself: "I do have had sort of a near-death experience but I still feel like I have no intersting stories to tell." After that day I stopped making that excuse.
I do have plenty of stories that signal much more uniqueness because they are not easily reconstructed. Everyone can imagine just signing up for a college course or an archery class.
If you want to signal specialness experiences that aren't easily simulated are better.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but the risks were sufficiently tiny that I was not concerned about them. Anything that laser eye surgery can do to the outer layers of the eye I fully expect to be fixable in the ~30 year future before age-related eye issues become a problem for me. A great deal of the remaining "messes up your eye" scenarios are fixable by the surgeon. The truly horrific stuff means a malpractice lawsuit (or settlement under threat thereof).
I did some more reading on the risks from the website and handouts from the place I got my eyes done. 7% have their eyes over or under corrected and get re-correction in the first year. Serious complications are much more rare.
It goes without saying that you should do your homework and go to the best place you can find.
Persistent dry eyes is probably the most significant risk. Sounds minor, but isn't.
The risk of dry eye is because LASIK cuts a flap in the cornea, severing many of the nerves that sense irritation and dryness. Other procedures like epi-LASEK or PRK don't involve cutting into the cornea, so their risk of dry eye is much lower. Unfortunately, those procedures are more painful and take months to heal. They involve scraping the epithelial cells off of your cornea, zapping your eye, and then letting them grow back. On the bright side, there is no flap that can be dislodged by a blow to the eye.
I got wavefront-guided epi-LASEK a few years ago. My vision went from 20/200 to 20/15. It can be pricey ($5k), but it's definitely the best money I've ever spent.
My eyes have gotten noticeably drier since I got laser eye surgery, and I consider it minor - it's significantly less annoying than glasses. I may not have as severe a version as some, though.
Reading novels, playing bridge, or playing the harmonica do none of those things either; would you recommend against these activities too for the same reasons? Hell, even commenting on LW does none of those things! ;-)
Well, what choice is optimal depends on what one's goals are, “rationalist” isn't a narrow enough category for this purpose, and in any event it's not like each person is only allowed to have one hobby at a time.
Than I'm happy to hear about which goals you achieve better by taking up archery than by taking up martial arts. For what goals does archery happen to be an optimal solution or even a good one.
We're kind of kicking at different goalposts here. You're trying to show that archery isn't the best possible use of time (presumably for fitness) and I'm skeptical of your specific claims about it.
A couple things to consider.
Hopefully that gives you some idea of why I don't think it's fair to dismiss archery as suboptimal.
Given that the whole thread is about ways a rationalist can spend money to improve his life, if archery isn't a good use of your time buying a bow probably isn't good use of your money either.
To the extend that I have used strong words to dismiss archery as suboptimal it's because I dislike the idea of people recommending activities like archery, sailing or go-kart racing without any thought about secondary benefits.
I do think it makes sense to think seriously how about one spends his time. I think I get around 8 separate benefits from dancing.
Fun
Physical Confidence with women. It both provides heavy reaction therapy and an enviroment where it's socially expected that the men leads the woman.
Physical exercise that improves body coordination. I think that leads to more expressiveness in my body language in tasks such as public speaking.
It's a general sport and fits the recommendation that one should do sport to be healthy.
It trains sensitivity of perception what happens physically inside other people.
Practical understand about human physiology that I can't get from a physiology testbook. A limit space to experiment and check theories.
I'm in an enviroment with woman that are potential romantic partners.
I learn to listen to music on a deeper level (but compared to the other points that's not really useful in other stuff I do)
That doesn't mean that I think everyone should take up Salsa. I don't even argue that it's the perfect dance but I do think I have much better reasons for it than were provided here for taking up archery.
I don't care for the semantics.
Even if it does grow some muscles, it doesn't grow them symmetrically. Good muscle training should train both sides evenly. Having uneven muscles distribution isn't good.
For certain people the former might be more fun (and for other people it might be the other way around).
Do you think that's genetic? I think its mostly learned behavior. If you hit a state of flow both will feel fun.
I don't know; I'd guess it's both. Why are you asking?
Sounds like the fallacy of grey / a fully general counterargument against ever enjoying one pastime more than another other than for its practical benefits. I mean, if you hit a state of flow cleaning toilets will feel fun, too, but for certain people it's easier to hit a state of flow with certain activities than with others.
That basically means that you don't take up hobbies that need a few months of learning before you are able to hit flow.
I think the average level of fun that a person who's into the hobby for a bit is more important than the level of fun you have when you start a hobby.
I also have control over what I feel. To me it seems much easier to simply choose to enjoy an activity by having control over my own state of mind than to sample a large number of hobbies, hoping that I accidentally find one that's fun.
I admit that the way I gained the belief that I'm in control was highly manipulative NLP but it's now real for me. I guess it's like the issue of believing in ego depletion. (Make a mental note to find someone sooner or later to remove my belief in ego depletion)
I'm not sure I understand this reply -- these two paragraphs appear to contradict each other.
Also, it seems orthogonal to what I said. How long it takes before the average person is able to enjoy X and how much people vary in how much they'll eventually enjoy X sound like different questions to me.
How do you decide whether archery is fun for you?You could use the first lesson of archery to make the decision. You could make that decision after a month. I don't think either of those tell you how much you will enjoy it after a year.
To the extend that you can't predict how you will feel after a year you can look at what the average person who takes it for a year feels. That means you don't get to base your decision on how different people enjoy different hobbies.
Well, okay, so you're a highly unusual individual and on the basis of this, you're arguing about the advisability of various things for other people... Your advice kind of boils down to "become like me", doesn't it? Which, of course, is a whole other issue.
What's wrong with that? First, I have no good evidence that I would, after a couple of months, be able to hit flow with it. Second, I can't and am unwilling to take arbitrary hits to my well-being even for restricted periods of time by engaging for a hobby that makes me miserable for the first couple of months. (Sounds a bit exaggerated, to be sure, but it was exactly what I thought when I read your salsa example somewhere else in the comments here.)
No. My advice is to look at the various possible usages of your time and rationally access which benefits they provide. To the extend that challenge is "please become more like me" I find it surprising that someone raising that objection against myself at lesswrong. Maybe I take some ideas about rationality too seriously?
I don't do martial arts classes (for complicated reasons that don't generalize well to the general population). I don't to improv comedy classes yet you will find that I recommend both of those activities because I consider them high value.
If you aren't a person who's good at telling jokes your first improv comedy classes might not be very funny for you. They might be highly challenging. If you take that to conclude that improv comedy classes are the wrong thing for you, then I think you are missing an experience that will bring you forward.
Still, you cannot just learn at will to find arbitrary things fun. So what's your point?
Actually, I can if I put effort into it. Especially if the activity has a purpose for myself.
But even if you can't, you won't know how an activity will feel after a year by taking a lesson in it. My first month of dancing Salsa was horrible. In the Salsa community the first months for males get called "beginner's hell". If you only engage in hobbies that are fun the first time in which you engage them I don't think you optimize happiness and more importantly you probably won't engage in activities that challenge your weak area's in a way that makes you improve on a more general level.
Are you sure? Archery requires a lot of strength and full-body coordination. Archers that I know have to do strength training for it. I'm not going to make any claims about how optimal it is, but that seems untrue on its face.
Exactly. Archery doesn't provide strength training if you have to do strength training to do archery. If it would be good at strength training than archers wouldn't need separate strength training.
Yes, there might be some effects but if your goal is strength training I would guess that there are better ways.
As far as full-body coordination goes, archery forces you into being still in a quite unnatural position. I don't think that's what you want to train. A good martial arts or a good dance class provides you with better training.
That's incorrect. Every sport requires additional strength training in order to perform at a high level. Even in strength sports, supplemental strength training is required beyond practicing the sport itself. This doesn't mean that the sport itself doesn't provide a strength adaptation response. Yoga counts as strength training for the sufficiently weak.
In Olympic weightlifting, the contested lifts are the snatch and the clean and jerk. Even minimalistic weightlifting programming involves squatting, and most programs include pressing, rows, deadlifting, and other strength work as well.
Powerlifting is a much simpler sport, testing only the squat, bench press, and deadlift for one repetition. Just practicing the sport would involve doing single reps with squats, bench presses, and deadlifts. Virtually no successful powerlifters train this way. Basically all of them do multiple repetitions on the main lifts, and the majority do other exercises as well.
That still doesn't seem right to me, but I should point out that a good motivation to do a thing is as valuable as the thing itself, if otherwise you wouldn't.
Taking a hobby costs a lot of time.
For me I don't see any reason to prefer archery over a martial art. The martial art does provide a bunch of secondary benefits.
And there might not be any reason to do it for you, but other people might be uncomfortable with hitting other people, concerned about their hands (much easier to break a finger or twist your wrist if you're doing martial arts than archery, I imagine), be looking for a relaxing rather than exciting hobby, etc.