I wouldn't be so quick to divide the world so neatly into victims and perpetrators. Every FAANG engineer I know, for example, could easily retire by mid-40s by keeping consumption in check. Instead, nearly every single one chose instead to "improve their lifestyles." Not blaming them, either, because it's cultural programming -- but until we all learn to slow down a bit and reflect, the madness isn't going to stop.
Even if you knew every FAANG in existence that would account for a very small fraction of the population. It might be true for this class, but you can't expect everyone to be a able to retire by 40.
Even if everybody could, they wouldn't because they are immersed in a culture that celebrated consumerism at every instance. You can't just turn a switch and now you live self-sustainably.
My assumption here is that FAANG employees are not fundamentally different from the rest of the populace along that particular dimension (desire to inflate lifestyle). I chose them in particular to demonstrate that even when we have the choice, we can easily opt not to take it. Of course many do not have that choice.
And yes, I agree with your second paragraph. "The culture" celebrates it — but that culture is not violently enforced top-down by a handful of people twirling mustaches. We all participate in our own little ways — and the more of us that step off the treadmill, the less those messages find footing, in a virtuous cycle. Again, it's not about blame. But for those of us who have the capacity and desire to decondition ourselves, it's very much worth doing. It can affect the feedback loop more powerfully than we think.
> I chose them in particular to demonstrate that even when we have the choice, we can easily opt not to take it.
I see now. But I still think it's a side effect of what society currently celebrates which is consumerism.
> but that culture is not violently enforced top-down by a handful of people twirling mustaches
That's assuming it's the only way to force a population into a specific behaviour, by force. It's actually the least effective method in my opinion. There is also the digital panopticon.
Blame and victim is just a way to give structure to the world. It's not essential. Not even in violence, in the Roman republic it was very well accepted to put women and children to the sword when pillaging a city.
And sure, all changes start in the private sphere, even if it's a more general movement in society. If people stop buying stuff, there is someone consciously or not choosing not to buy that specific thing.
I just think that it's the same with clothing. If you leave for the people to choose not to buy clothing made by slaving children that's just not going to happen if they cost a fraction of clothing made otherwise. It's also not a matter of prohibition because that goes against people's individual freedom to choose. You just have to give society enough time so that it gravitates towards willing to choose differently, meanwhile advocating for the change you want to see in your immediate community.
Perhaps "retire" is the wrong word. One can still work (whether for pay or not) and improve the lives of the people around them without staying on the consumption treadmill. Very few actually do. Again, this isn't meant as a judgement — it's just highlighting that we each have a role to play in slowing down this insane freight train.
This is completely the wrong approach. You can't dedicate your entire life to one specific task and expect when you retire to suddenly be able to "improve the lives of the people around (you) without staying in the consumption treadmill" because all you know is the consumption treadmill. Thinking otherwise is just wishful thinking.
If you see yourself improving the lives of people around you later in life, which is commendable and the right thing to do, you have to start now, while you are still in your prime years. If you leave it when you are older chances are you'll be just another John waiting in line for the next Black Friday.
Have you tried doing anything other than work that isn't consuming something?
I have, from drawing to music, from writing novels to doing programming projects on my free time.
It's not very fun, you aren't good at most of it and it's very frustrating. It's also very rewarding being able to overcome limitations and building up skills. But it's first and foremost very demanding. You can't expect someone that just got retired to suddenly spark in creative energy, even if they intimately wanted to do everything.
Watching Netflix I suppose. Sleeping (although I'm sure some get paid for that in the right circumstance) ... Even watching Netflix could be a slog if you're doing it for some purpose (e.g. to clue up on cultural references) and it's an exertion of effort.
Don't you agree that this limits a lot the perspective of what you do when you retire, if retiring means not working anymore?
Maybe we agree that it's all work, but there are types of work that even though they're frustrating, they are also rewarding in specific ways that is interesting for those that retire.
Retiring is just retiring from employment. I suppose I'm drawing a distinction between formal employment and all forms of work. Yardwork is a nice example enjoyed by retirees.
Personally if I do anything for 8+ hours a day 5 days a week it starts to feel like a job around 2 or 3 months in no matter how much I love it, and if I do much less than that I start to feel lacking in structure and progress.
I’ve gone through extended periods of unemployment (by choice, not in a stressful way) before, and it’s wonderful but by month 3 I’m always kinda over it.
Retirement for me will probably look pretty much the same as working except I won’t necessarily pick a job that pays well.
I pretty much optimize for PTO when choosing jobs, so I really never have this dilemma. My current job offers 8 weeks PTO (but I make much less than I would at a FAANG). To me, that’s better than retirement.
If this were true, then why even bother to make atomic clocks? Why would an article about the "most accurate clock" be interesting to smart people like HN readers if there's no objective measure of accuracy (or if it didn't matter)? The correct answer is in a sibling comment to yours: we base it on other things we know (or believe, anyway) to be constant.
I'm fully aware, but you seem to have misinterpreted what I was saying.
If "all the clocks are wrong" it doesn't matter as long as they are consistent. (in the case of atomic clocks, frequency of energy transitions within atoms)
All ntp servers get the average of atomic clocks, which is then distributed to all phones and computers.
If the constants from these atomic clocks "are a little bit wrong" it does not matter (for most human activities)
That's why we average them and distribute the average.
For physics related research, this new clock being more precise does have use, but for pretty much everything else, whatever constant we have is good enough as long as it's consistently used.
Back in the day it was someone just running around with a pocket watch giving everyone the time from the clock tower which was calibrated from a sundial and that was good enough.
Replace the sun's shadow with electron transitions and the timekeepers with ntp servers and that's what you have today.
> Yeah, I don’t get how you distinguish between a correct visual proof and a visual proof that looks right but doesn’t actually prove what it’s trying to prove.
This problem exists not only for visual proofs, but for standard written ones too.
Not in the same way. For a written proof it can be hard but with effort and sufficient background knowledge you can figure out if it actually proves the statement or not. If the proof doesn’t prove the statement there will be a step that doesn’t follow from the rest of it. You may not be able to spot it but it can at least theoretically be spotted.
Ha, I was in charge of data quality for Google Maps going on 15 years ago. Addresses were hard then, and I'm sure they're hard now. Alas, Google didn't want to invest in keeping this data high quality — a fact to which I actually owe my first promotion at the company (since taking over Maps data quality was a job that nobody else particularly wanted — nor did they want to move to Seattle, where Google wanted the team — but it still gave a lot of room for impact).
Sometimes I dream of going back, but the culture has changed too much (and not for the better, I hear).
