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Ixiel comments on Open thread, September 8-14, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Could someone please give me some good arguments for a work ethic? I tend to oppose it, but the debate seems too easy so I may be missing something.
Having a work ethic might help you accomplish more things than you would without one.
It's a good reputation boost. "A highly-skilled, hard-working x" might be more flattering than "a highly skilled x."
Work ethic might be a signal/facet of conscientiousness, a desirable trait in many domains.
That makes sense; I hadn't thought of that. Thanks. Perhaps there would be a required critical mass of people to accept laziness as a virtue before it becomes "this good or that good" rather than "this good or lack of this good."
It'll build habits that also make it easier to do things you want when not at work?
That's the big one. I have things I want to do, in far mode, and I find that diligence at work translates to diligence off work. Admittedly I also love my job, but...
Thanks for reply! My question was unclear, but I meant the other meaning. I strongly do believe in doing whatever one does well, but not in seeking to do more work in the first place. I mean the idea that there's something more noble about working 40+ hours a week than not, and that people with sufficient means shouldn't retire in their thirties.
Sure, one can build habits at work, but one can do so cheaper than 2000 hours of one's life per year, net of compensation. Admittedly this does not apply so much if you love your job, but hypothetically if someone values leisure more, is there a way in which choosing that leisure is less ethical?
"Work" can mean different things, and so also "work ethic".
The way I use it, "work" is whatever you are serious (or at least want to be) about doing, whether it's something that matters in the larger scheme of things or not, and whether or not it earns money. (But having to earn a living makes it a lot easier to be serious about it.)
"Leisure" is whatever you like doing but choose not to be serious about.
In that sense, I'm not much interested in leisure. Idling one's days away on a tropical island is not my idea of fun, and I do not watch television. Valuing seriousness is what I would mean by "work ethic". What one should be serious about is a separate ethical question.
When other people talk about "work", they might mean service to others, and by "leisure" service to oneself. I score low on the "service to others" metric, but for EA people, that is their work ethic.
To others, "work" is earning a living, and "leisure" is whatever you do when you're not doing that. The work ethic relative to that concept is that the pay you get for your work is a measure of the value you are creating for others. If you are idling then you are neglecting your duty to create value all the years that you can, for time is the most perishable of all commodities: a day unused is a day lost to our future light-cone for ever.
That is an interesting use of "work" and "leisure," and one with which I was not familiar. I am very serious about my leisure (depending how you use serious... I love semantic arguments for fun but not everybody does so I'll cut that here). The more frequent use I have heard is close to its etymology: what one is allowed to do, as opposed to what one has a duty to do. That is anecdotal to the people I know so may not be the standard. I am much more serious about what I am allowed to do, and what others are allowed to do, than even a self-created duty.
Very interesting and I'd be happy to continue, but to restate the original question with help from noticed ambiguity: is there a strong argument why spending 80000 hours in a job for jobs sake is ethically superior to selling enough time to meet ones need and using rest for ones own goals?
To give a more direct answer, "a job for jobs sake" sounds like a lost purpose. In harder times, everyone had to work hard for as many years as they could, to support themselves, their household, and their community, and the community couldn't afford many passengers. Having broken free of the Malthusian wolves, the pressure is off, but the attitudes remain: idleness is sinful.
And then again, from the transhumanist point of view, the pressure isn't off at all, it's been replaced by a different one. We now have the prospect of a whole universe to conquer. How many passengers can the human race afford in that enterprise, among those able to contribute to it?
Meeting one's needs is, by definition, necessary, and one's goals are, by definition, what one pursues. Who doesn't do that, beyond people incapable of supporting themselves and people drifting through life with no particular goals?
Sure, that's true for both. The former is just more constrained, and I was looking for an argument for a over b.
And thanks for defining; I had thought those definitions too obvious to bear mention. My bad.
The answer really depends on the underlying value system. For example, most varieties of hedonism would find nothing wrong with retiring to the life of leisure at thirty. But if you value, say, self-actualization (a la Maslow), retiring early is a bad idea.
Generally speaking, the experience of the so-called trust fund kids indicates that NOT having to work for a living is bad for you. You can also compare housewives to working women.
If you want want to self-actualize in a way that does not (reliably, or soon enough) bring money, retiring early can be useful.
I think there's some lack of clarity in this thread about what it means to "retire". There are two interpretations (see e.g. this post):
(1) Retire means financial independence, not having to work for a living, so that you can focus your energy on what you want to do instead of what you have to do.
(2) Retire means a carefree life of leisure where you maximize your hedonics by doing easy and pleasant things and not doing hard and stressful things.
I think these two ways of retiring are quite different and lead to different consequences.
I meant to imply the former, albeit with the possibility "what you want to do" is not restricted from including leisure/hedonics/pleasure.
Technically, yes, though people mostly use (1) to mean doing something purposeful, an activity after which you can point and say "I made that", while (2) is essentially trying to get as close to wireheading as you currently can :-)
Fair enough :)
Thank you for responding. Is there a reason you think it is a bad idea beyond Lumifer says so?
I have thought about reading up on housewives, but not asking (the women's studies experts I know are VERY sensitive in their field, but quite engaging in others, so I'm afraid to talk shop). Could you recommend a source on each side?
Sorry, don't have any links handy, but you should be able to google up trust-fund kids' issues quite easily. With respect to housewives it's mostly personal observations aka anecdata. I would be wary of studies on the subject as it is a political minefield and a hard thing to research due to confounders and fuzzy definitions.
Yeah, likely to get hit over the latter :).
The former is very familiar to me in my circles, and if anything they are more happy/fulfilled/productive than the wage reliant, though both extremes exist in both groups.
I am not saying that working for a living is necessarily better, my point is that being financially independent has its own particular failure mode the existence of which should be taken into account.
That's a very good point and too often neglected. There's too much betterness in folks' thoughts, not enough differentness, and the "best" situations fail in different ways than the "worst," which can succeed spectacularly in their own right.
It's less ethical if you think that you can get more resources by working, and that those resources can be used to create an ethically superior world.
We might be mutually holding the others point equal. Sure one can get more money working, but I meant aside from that. Did you mean aside from the best alternative use of 40 hours per week?
I just meant that working might be an opportunity to better accomplish some goal you deem ethically relevant (e.g., by earning money and donating it or by developing FAI or the cure for some disease). I'm not arguing that it is. That depends on what the goals are and what your opportunities (both "work" and "leisure" using your definitions) are.
You shouldn't retire in your thirties because it limits the amount you can help others.
Aren't you assuming a particular value system?
Yeah. I don't know any good reason if you're an egoist.
Self-actualization, for example.
Are you saying the workplace is a uniquely strong opportunity to make the world better as opposed to other avenues, or more money more ability? If the former, why?
Division of labor. If you're not best suited to helping people, you're better off doing what you are best suited for and hiring someone else to help people.