This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!
Sure!
In brief: Kaczynski seems to have realized that economies are driven by wanting, not liking, and that this will lead to unhappiness. I think that that conclusion is too strong though - I'd just say that it'll lead to inefficiency.
Longer explanation: ok, so the economy is pretty much driven by what people choose to buy, and where people choose to work. People aren't always so good at making these choices. One reason is because they don't actually know what will make them happy.
Another reason why people aren't good at making choices is because they don't always have the willpower to do what they know they should.
Kaczynski seems to focus more on the first example, but I think they're both important. Economies are driven by the decisions we make. Given the predictable mistakes people make, society will suffer in predictable ways. Kaczynski seems to have realized this.
I avoided using the terms "wanting" and "liking" on purpose. I'll just say quickly words are just symbols that refer to things and as long as the two people are using the same symbol-thing mappings, it doesn't matter. What's important is that you seem to understand the distinction between the two things as far as wanting/liking goes. I do see what you mean about the term "wanting", and now that I think about it I agree with you.
(I've avoided elaboration and qualifiers in favor of conciseness and clarity. Let me know if you want me to say more.)
Edit: I'm about 95% sure that there's actual neuroscience research behind the wanting vs. liking thing. Ie. they've found distinct a brain area that corresponds to wanting, and they've found a different distinct brain area that corresponds to liking.
Note: I studied neuroscience in college. I did research in a lab where we studied vision in monkeys, and part of this involved stimulating the monkeys brain. There was a point where we were able to get the monkey to basically make any eye movement we want (based on where and how much we stimulated). It didn't provide me with any new information as far as free will goes, but literally seeing it in person with my own eyes influenced me on an emotional level.
Interesting, I've never smoked, drank or done any drugs at all for similar reasons. Well, that's part of the story.
I'm going to guess that the reason why you wouldn't want to do drugs even if you knew they'd make you happy is because a) it'd sort of numb you away from thinking critically and making decisions, and b) you wouldn't get to do good for the world. Your current lifestyle doesn't seem to be preventing you from doing either of those.
:) I've proposed the same thought experiment except with buying diamonds. Eg. "Imagine that you go to the diamond store to buy a diamond, and there were x thousand starving kids in the parking lot who you could save if you spent the money on them instead. Would you still buy the diamond?"
And in the case of diamonds, it's not only a) the opportunity cost of doing good with the money - it's that b) you're supporting an inhumane organization and c) you're being victim to a ridiculous marketing scheme that gets you to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a shiny rock. The post Diamonds are Bullshit on Priceonomics is great.
Furthermore, people do a, b and c in the name of love. To me, that seems about as anti-love as it gets. Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. It's amazing how far you could push a human away from what's sensible. If I had an online dating profile, I think it'd be, "If you still think you'd want a diamond after reading this, then I hate you. If not, let's talk."
I know I haven't acknowledged the main counterargument, which is that the sacrifice is a demonstration of commitment, but there are ways of doing that without doing a, b and c.
That sort of thinking baffles me as well. I've tried to explain to my parents what a cost-benefit analysis is... and they just don't get it. This post has been of moderate help to me because I understood what virtue ethics are after reading it (and I never understood what it is before reading it)
People who say "it just isn't" don't think in terms of cost-benefit analyses. They just have ideas about what is and isn't virtuous. As people like us have figured out, if you follow these virtues blindly, you'll run into ridiculousness and/or inconsistency.
However, this isn't to say that virtue-driven thinking doesn't have it's uses. Like all heuristics, they trade accuracy for speed, which sometimes is a worthy trade-off.
I'm glad to hear you disagree :) But I sense that I may not have explained what I think and why I think it. If you could just flip a switch and make everyone have equal preference ratios, I think that'd probably be a good thing.
What I'm trying to say is that there is no switch, and that making our preference ratios more equal would be very difficult. Ex. try to make yourself care as much about a random accountant in China as much as you do about, say your Aunt. As far as cost-benefit analysis goes, the effort and unease of doing this would be a cost. I sense that the costs aren't always worth the benefits, and that given this, it's socially optimal for us to accept our uneven preference ratios to some extent. Thoughts?
I interpret it as "Harry seems to think there are good reasons for choosing certain terminal values. Terminal values seem arbitrary to me."
Nope, your longer explanation was perfect, and now I understand, thanks. I'm just a little curious why you would say those things lead to inefficiency instead of unhappiness, but you don't have to elaborate any more here unless you feel like it.
Again, now I'm slightly curious about the rest of it...
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