You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Viliam comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 20 April 2015 12:02AM

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

Comments (350)

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

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2015 12:06:02PM 5 points [-]

Thought experiment. You are doing a really boring job you dislike like data entry, but so well paid you don't want to leave it. You cannot automate it. You cannot work from home. You sit in the office 8 hours Thankfully it does not take 8 hours, you can do it in 5 and then browse the web or something.

What do you do? Trying to spend the other 3 meaningfully like studying with Anki, and trying to find challenging games in the actual job part are two obvious ones, what else? E.g. would you listen to ebooks while doing it? What else?

Comment author: Viliam 20 April 2015 08:31:27PM *  1 point [-]

I would start programming mobile games, and would hope to make money from them. If I don't succeed, at least I had a hobby, and maybe can use the experience to get a more interesting job later. If I do succeed, then I do not have to solve the problem of boring job anymore.

That would require sufficient freedom to spend those 3 hours not just programming, but also painting pictures, editing 3D models, editing levels, and testing the game on the phone. Okay, hypothetically that is not necessary; there can be some parts that I have to do at home. But it would be much more convenient if I could do whatever is necessary for the game immediately when I need it.

Or, if I wouldn't have a specific plan, I would just learn random stuff from online universities. I enjoy learning, so I wouldn't necessarily care about how useful are those lessons. I would imagine that some part of that would be useful somehow later, if nothing else, then for impressing people.

Someone who is a buddhist could use those three hours to meditate daily, and achieve nirvana in a few years, while keeping a well-paying job. Also, being a buddhist could help with the feelings of boredom from the job. ;)

Comment author: ChristianKl 20 April 2015 09:35:53PM 4 points [-]

Someone who is a buddhist could use those three hours to meditate daily, and achieve nirvana in a few years, while keeping a well-paying job.

That's not how it works.

Comment author: Viliam 20 April 2015 10:54:25PM 5 points [-]

You are right, Buddha himself had to quit his job before he could achieve enlightenment.

Comment author: Elo 26 April 2015 10:24:14PM 0 points [-]

upvoted for the determined, "thats not how nirvana works".

Comment author: [deleted] 21 April 2015 04:21:27AM 0 points [-]

Why exactly mobile? From a user angle, it is super hard to fish out the borderline good ones from all the crap in Google Play, the search engine does not really help you find the unpopular good ones amongst the popular crap, so it is mostly from hearsay, and the UI has limitations. I guess I would go for the desktop.