Comment by antics
2 months ago
You are catching a lot of flak for this, but there is one thing you are right about. If you make tens of millions of dollars, and can't figure out what to do with those resources, you shouldn't be calling your coworkers NPCs. You're the NPC.
I truly mean this in an entirely non-judgemental way. I wish the author luck in achieving his dream of becoming high agency rather than simply high freedom. I wish it for everyone who wants it.
I’m not afraid to be judgmental…
The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
The cringe comes in with the way he does it. He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
It’s amazing how even millionaires and billionaires don’t understand that national debt doesn’t work like personal debt.
But anyway, that’s a tangent. The guy dumped his girlfriend so he has no family to spend time with, and he’s wondering why he’s bored. His only attempts at stimulation involve self-service: how can I be smart and successful especially in a way that everyone will know it?
I can only imagine how being financially set for life would positively impact a typical fiscally responsible family (people with the restraint to hire a financial advisor). Imagine being able to cancel daycare and spend your days with your family instead of burning your life away in the office.
I even know a person who has no children but thanks to a windfall just does his hobbies and hangs out with friends. Still works a day job for health insurance but now work doesn’t define their life. They’ve done things like learn how to DJ and travel to see their international friends on longer visits and not just little two week vacations that corporate zombies get to take.
But the author is struggling to find a way to make work define their life, to get their life to return to capitalism that they have been blessed to escape.
Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
I am afraid to be judgemental.
> The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
> Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
That sounds like good advice for me, but not to the author. I sometimes follow orders from random people for fun, but I infer that the author does not.
The author traveled off the paved path. Reality gave him with wealth and time, but unsatisfaction instead of satisfaction. His role is now to figure out a path back to satisfaction, perhaps it will be a short path or a long path, a common one or a one the world hasn't seen before.
I think it’s the natural result of someone who has ‘won’ a game they have been obsessing about/that defined them.
People often find a similar lack of purpose (albeit much, much shorter lived) after being engrossed in a book series, very hard video game, or any other pursuit.
The big difference here, IMO, is this is a game that society is literally constructed around - for its own survival. The ‘rat race’ puts food on everyone’s table, provides care when we’re sick, defines what future our children can have (and if we can even have children) - even what rights we have (or don’t have) in many cases.
Is it so surprising that having won that game, some people - often the ones most obsessed with it - struggle to figure out what is next?
> It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
Unless you think one can choose to be a "fast technical leaner and builder", then that is still luck.
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> It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
I'm a fast technical learner and builder. I will never be where this guy is, in part because most of my resources are going into keeping myself afloat. I live my life as though "luck" isn't a factor (what's the use in declaring defeat?), but it's certainly not merit that separates the rich from the poor.
> It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
There are a lot of really, really, really smart people who never become generationally wealthy. Generational wealth almost always includes either luck, or intentionally heading down a morally reprehensible path.
You’ll have a tough time convincing me the guy who invented loom is smarter than or contributed more to mankind than Nikola Tesla.
Which is probably a perfect example because Edison took the morally reprehensible path.
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If he was a fast learner and thinker he would have figured out that DOGE is an illegal oligarchy scheme.
There is truth to what you say. But I sense what I wrote came off more negative than I intended, and I am not sure it makes any of our lives (our lives or his) better to be hard on the author. Self actualization is legitimately extremely difficult.
If I were you I wouldn’t worry about what you said coming across negative.
The article author is essentially on the wrong side of the class war. I don’t really care how well he self-actualizes and I don’t think anyone should.
At this point he’s a <1%er who essentially thinks it’s a good idea to help the richest man alive fuck up the government.
I think he IS special. You can't easily have $60m income and be this bored. He could probably, say, get a million dollar in $1 note and burn it dollar by dollar in the backyard one evening and be a YouTuber overnight. Getting exposure is stupid, so what, he could pay an "NPC" do it for him.
What this guy is missing is creativity. And we don't have data to determine if it's contributor, detractor, or tangent to the position where he is at. I'd bet it's a bigly contributory, as gains from x-factors are called gambling.
I suspect burning $1 notes one at a time might take a very long time (it takes longer than you might expect burning bundles of £50 notes [1]) and as you say "What this guy is missing is creativity", just burning $1m dollars just for the sake of it, unless you're making some creative comment some would probably see as pointless/divisive.
[1] See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...
See, what separates the special titans of startup industry from the rest of us is the creativity to burn those dollars at scale.
The girlfriend thing was very odd. At one time, "making it" meant now you can marry the girl, have a bunch of kids, and become a pillar of your community.
Get rich? Move to a small or mid-sized city, marry your girl, have some kids, and get involved. Need to be busy? Run a local business that hires locals. Use your money and expertise to improve your community, which is a lot easier to do as a big fish in a small pond.
Yeah, the "I dumped my girlfriend of two years as soon as things got a little bit hard for me, why is my life boring and meaningless?" thing also stood out to me. As well as this:
"Within 2 minutes of talking to the final interviewer for DOGE, he asked me if I wanted to join. I said “yes”. Then he said “cool” and I was in multiple Signal groups."
DOGE is run on Signal, and his conclusion is "so smart," not "that seems like a huge red flag." This guy sounds like he's in line to be the next George Papadopoulos, the guy who gets thrown under the bus when everything goes sideways.
Joining a group of rich tech executives on Signal and “learning how completely dysfunctional the government was” sounds like cult behavior.
What is sus about Signal?
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Yep the DOGE thing was crazy fucked up. You worded it very nicely.
there is a wonderful quote from a soviet movie called guest from the future, you can watch the whole movie on youtube with english subtitles here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BB6bwJ9agM
Anyways, the quote is:
>> You are a pathetic victim of an idle mind.
I think this aptly describes the author.
Wasn't it pascal who said that all of our problems come from our inability to be bored.
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> Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
It's a common enough idea to tell someone rudderless to volunteer, but I feel like it's never tempered with the perspective of having volunteered and reflected on how the donated time has effected one's own life. Shaming someone rudderless into volunteering doesn't help them for exactly the obvious reasons it won't. At least no more than anything else you can lean hard into in life to avoid something else. Suggesting it as a fix to ennui is bad advice, the virtuousness of volunteering just masks how terrible it is.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. To share my experience as someone who volunteers, I find it to be one of the most gratifying (humbling, helpful, makes me see the value of life) things, and I think it's worthwhile to share the idea that it could help someone who is searching for meaning. I wholeheartedly recommend volunteering for everyone who can afford it (which I recognize not everyone can). I'm not sure GP here needs to necessarily state "I volunteer and found it worthwhile" every time they recommend it.
What are these "obvious reasons" that volunteering won't help someone seeking direction?
I also don't follow why you haven't stated whether you've personally tried volunteering and whether it's "worked" for you, particularly when you seem dismissive of it and seem to looking for personal reasoning from others.
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i volunteer.
my suggestion to the author would be: spend some time volunteering and get over yourself (by that i mean their own ego which seems to be putting them at the centre of everything).
in my experience, some things tend to come out of it
- gratitude for where i am at in life because i’m struggling less than the people i’m helping
- empathy because jesus yeah these people are struggling and i’m seeing just how much it’s affecting them
- humility because you know what, i really am limited in what i can actually do for these people, none of my “technical prowess” is actually useful here
- purpose because man i feel bad for these people and id like to do more to help than just showing up once a week
i don’t volunteer because it’s “virtuous”. fuck virtuosity.
i do it because i need to for my own sake — to experience the stuff above. it’s selfish-selflessness. by helping others i also help myself.
edit — added the one about humility which is quite important
edit 2 — donating money (philanthropy) is not the same as volunteering. in case there’s any confusion. boots on the ground are required.
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<< I’m not afraid to be judgmental
Is there any single daily life situation where any person from around the globe and in the entire history of humankind who is not judgemental? Perhaps not at a job interview? Or maybe at dating or when trying to sell or buy something or simply when looking at that person?
100s meetings on Signal with the 'smartest people I have ever met' is a big red flag for me.
I know I'm an asshole, but I've never had good experiences with people who call themselves super smart.
And of course, they were identifying all problems with the government on signal in very short, super effective meetings... yeah sure, dude.
Some of the smartest people I know are also the most humble. Everyone can tell they're extremely smart but they'll be the last to admit it.
> He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
Based on this blog and the needs of the overseeing oligarch, DOGE appears to be a therapy programme for millionaires and billionaires.
Now that is a hilarious take. It really is blatantly obvious how badly people like Elon Musk need therapy.
But we shouldn’t downplay what the program really intends to do: gut federal government spending rather than raising taxes on the wealthy to a sensible level.
Most federal government spending has very real benefits to the average person and should be thought of as more of an investment than a cost. But the DOGE mafia wants to cut programs that help the average person to protect their own fortunes.
E.g., the average person is harmed by shutting down the department of education. The wealthy who go to private school their whole lives are not.
>> still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
I'm not convinced it's the later. There IS a looming financial problem with our government and nobody else is doing anything about it. Federal spending is up trillions of dollars (per year) in the last 5 years with nothing to show for it. There is huge inefficiency and Elon wants to take a stab at fixing it. Yes, the man has his flaws, but he's trying to fix things nobody else will even try. Not sure why people have to hate on that.
BTW, I do expect so over-cutting will happen and there will be fallout from that. But hopefully the budget gets fixed and congress learns something about fiscal responsibility.
> He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
I'm confused by this belief. Anyone who has ever interacted with a big government in the West knows they are a knot of old and confusing regulations that cause every thing to be slow and expensive. A leftist should be happy that the state gets to accomplish more with it's existing budget.
The problem is that no one believes Elon and company are actually trying to "accomplish more with it's existing budget". That would be a great goal, but I don't believe that's what they're doing or even capable of doing.
Remember, Elon downsized Twitter by 80%, and then Twitter lost 80% of it's value. Simply firing a bunch of people doesn't accomplish more, it can actually destroy the value of the thing to begin with.
We've all seen this with republicans before. They take over, make things worse, and then use the fact that things are worse as an excuse for why the government shouldn't do the things it does. Elon isn't an expert in efficiency, he's an arsonist coming in to destroy the government so he and his buddies can extract more value out of this country.
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The problem isn’t that someone is trying to improve government efficiency.
The problem is that we picked a billionaire professional internet troll to do it whose stated goal is cutting 2 trillion from the budget.
And ignoring the fact that Elon is already running 3 companies, you couldn’t possibly find someone with more conflicts of interest than the richest man in the world.
Here’s a quote from Reason (hardly a left wing publication) that sums up how absurd their goal is.
“Musk and Ramaswamy's public pronouncements thus far do not inspire confidence. Musk's promise to save "at least $2 trillion" annually—approximately one-third of all (noninterest) federal spending—suggests a lack of familiarity with the federal budget. Roughly 75 percent of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans, and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, health research, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid, and disability benefits.”
Large organizations are inherently inefficient because id the non linear growth in communications overhead. If you don’t understand an organization, coming in and hacking away at it is insanely dangerous. How many companies have been ruined when hedge fund buys then and starts trying to “maximize efficiency”?
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