In a sense, this is the vision of UBI -- where basic needs were met, and people were free to self-actualize.
This is also the happy version of tenure in academia -- where you didn't have to worry about "publish or perish" but instead you get to work on really important ideas without showing results for years (multi year grants or being in a place like the IAS helps).
Google in some ways used to operate like this before the current pivot -- many googlers lived a life of "resting and vesting" while wandering about for years looking for a big idea with little pressure to deliver anything.
I definitely found this vision attractive, but as I grew older, I realized that it was not entirely tenable in it purest form. Yes, the best ideas certain came from having time to wander and work on different things (you get more creative working on multiple decorrelated ideas at the same time rather than one big idea), but in my experience, complete idleness without pressure to deliver anything does not work. I don't know if I believe the premise of In Praise of Idleness any more. We no longer live in a simple world. In a complex world, great ideas come from incrementalism, and keeping busy and making progress seems to be necessary in many domains in order get to the big idea because all the low hanging fruit have been plucked.
However, I think this takes for granted the primacy of "big ideas" as the sole organizing principle we should arrange the world to efficiently produce, by force if necessary. I think the real argument for UBI is that self-determination is a core value, that the negotiations we make to better society neither need nor should involve a gun to the head of every person not born into wealth. I also think that overvaluing efficiency, expediency, and generally speaking impatience is pushing our species off a cliff
- A larger number of people searching for the next Newtonian apple all over the place.
- A smaller number of larger groups that pursue a narrow area with intense focus. That’s more like “work” though.
- New areas. Especially software. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple were created by tinkerers with the privilege of free time. This process did not yet stop.
To your other point, not every idle person will pursue new knowledge. And that's ok. A larger number of idle people will contain a larger number of tinkerers.
Isaac Newton is regarded as a genius, but he worked on really basic stuff like calculus and Newtonian mechanics. Of course it was harder, when he and his competitors were inventing it.
Sure, we handle more complex stuff now. But modern highschool material used to be really complex. Eventually theory, frameworks, language, and pedagogy, develop around a field that make it look deceptively simple. That’s still incrementalism but incrementation comes from the next generation that grew up in an environment where our discoveries are table stakes.
Is it possible that you no longer live in a simple world, because you’ve become an expert, and moved on from ingesting the refined model from the previous generation, to either applying the current unrefined model to the hardest problems it can handle, or to building the model for the next generation?
I would say there's a mid-point somewhere between overworked 60-hour-a-week employees burning out and folks doing absolutely nothing productive. The nature and environment of work is important too, if you're tilling a farm there's an upper limit on your output, but with the internet anyone can be made to feel inadequate for not "hustling"/"grinding" enough.
He says the best inspiration comes from invoices, and deadlines definitely help.
In a complex, highly multi-dimensional space, yes, there's always a hill to incrementally climb. There are other hills.
Incrementalism gets you necessary data; but not necessarily insight.
EDIT Of course, following up an idea is work.
If you can be honest with such questions then the duality goes away and everything boils down to doing the right thing
If you mean lying in bed awake but not really doing anything, then (a) thinking is doing something, (ii) if you're not thinking and just moping then there's a reason why you are depressed and it's not simply that you are just lazy. Right now, the political climate is a big one for a lot of people. And (3) maybe you just haven't stumbled on the right inspiration yet. It's random. Give it time. Go and do some stuff that seems kinda interesting, in the meantime.
I've been in a similar state for several months; I've done some stuff but nothing that exciting. Attending FOSDEM for the first time this year inspired me to join a hackerspace, and to read the code of some open source projects to learn how they work. Some days I stay in bed most of the day or just graze YouTube whether in bed or not (and I hate that after the fact). Some days I want to do something so I do it.
Billionaires pay little tax so that’s not the answer.
You know, Einstein slept a lot.
Online dating for example is a complete hellscape and there's room for about a thousand passionate individuals to come in at various angles to try to improve it.
I think Valve works like this too (not sure if they stopped)
To connect with modern dialogue, we’re talking about the “idea guy”.
Why? Why are there men who demand 50-whatever billion payouts in a country where not everyone has a place to sleep?
It seems the same issue to me. We're not on the earth to "do great things" or "achieve progress" or any of that crap. That's for people who have some special enthusiasm which the rest of us need not share, or, as Bertrand Russell says, for the elite who want us to labor for them. If one builds one's morality or sense of virtue on doing stuff one is a self-whipping slave and probably ready to become a slave driver for other people too.
It is my firm belief the US is only good if you’re rich. If you aren’t rich, well, you slave away to make other people rich.
The rich however need the poor to make their food, fix their cars, serve them lattes, deliver their groceries.
The only thing that will really effect change is if the poor (in vastly greater numbers) stands up and takes the boot off their necks.
Thank goodness there are people who do build their morality on "doing stuff": surgeons, cancer researchers, etc.
Some people innovate, and some (most) maintain. A healthy society needs a spectrum of endeavour.
I think our fundamental problem is that many of us do work that does not feel meaningful, and it seems that a lot of meaningful work is not respected and compensated as it should be.
So while yes some groups do good work under pressure, no one does their best work under pressure, the opposite in fact.
If you're actually interested in learning why the homelessness situation in a particular area is how it is, you can pore over the countless (politicized) discussions of the issue to start piecing together the concrete issues and factors that contribute to it, beyond the vague notion of "rich country has homeless". Alternatively, take a specific example of one of those "50-whatever billion payouts", and your idea for converting it into the right combination of land-near-San-Jose, housing construction, mental health care, actual improvements to mental health, caretakers, government workers, outreach, policing, jobs programs, public infrastructure, etc, etc that's supposed to solve homelessness there. The internet commentariat is bound to have people eager to impolitely point out the issues in that plan.
It will be interesting times once easy money dry up and US tells us to pay for our own defense.
I am trying to figure out how to employ my hands in ways I enjoy and that may be of net benefit to society at this time, and this essay touches on a lot of the concepts I've been thinking over. I'm actually surprised I haven't run across it; I should probably start my search by reading a little deeper into some philosophy.
Congrats on retirement :)
There will be hundreds of people here that fit this perfectly, or am I wrong about the demographics of HN?
There is a reason we work constantly and always. Nature is brutal, and if I am not among the best, I'm going to experience pain.
Or at least that is what my 'trauma' pushes me to do. I'm literally afraid not to be a 1%er. And if you lived my life, have my experiences, you'd probably come to the same conclusion.
They are afraid that they would be discarded by society if they fall too far behind.
Source: Thuc. 5.89, justification for Athen's invasion of Melos, 416 BC.
The full quote is even more brutal:
"We shall not trouble you with specious pretences—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Thanks for sending the whole quote, I don't think I read it.
Working so hard to get into the 1% is also very painful. Looks like, in your philosophy, pain is inevitable, and you only get to choose which form of it you take.
This is in contrast to being weak, and letting the strong decide my pain.
Why would there be people on HN not wanting people earning less than them to have leisure?
People are free to bicycle, hike, rock-climb, and do whatever the fuck they want.
The only thing I don't want is wage-earner longing for my savings through taxes so they can buy Luis Vitton man purses.
And I want to be free to buy whatever the fuck I want with my hard-earned money: be it luxury cars or audiophile (audiofool, I don't care) audio gear.
But I don't give a crap what others do.
If Zuckerberg or Musk (and everyone else) had to pick up trash one day a month they'd spend their capital solving those problems (automating them away) instead of whatever the hell they think is so important right now.
Work that is unattractive would presumably still be incentivized by higher wages.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp...
Now I'm working the same dead end job again and I don't mind it. When I'm not working I'm consuming YouTube, HN and reddit. Not sure how to love idleness again.
I used to be able to sit still for an hour at a time (meditation).
From the essay:
> It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency.
> ...
> When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.
Modern civilization's cult of efficiency combined with the ease of frivolous entertainment must have beaten the leisure out of me.
My comment was a self-reflection of my failures in taking advantage of leisure time.
I've backpacked for 8 months and moved to a different country. It's all pretty boring, and I haven't found a hobby to stick to.
It seems like your comment implies not only did I not read the article but that I misunderstood the premise.
on that note, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40256243
In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 - Nov 2021 (170 comments)
In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21509144 - Nov 2019 (82 comments)
In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876730 - Jan 2016 (25 comments)
In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310846 - Oct 2015 (24 comments)
In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092 - Feb 2015 (50 comments)
Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 - Oct 2013 (120 comments)
In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 - June 2010 (5 comments)
In Praise of Idleness - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 - March 2010 (4 comments)
In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 - Dec 2007 (1 comment)
> the background mind is good at synthesizing things. It's good about strategy
[1] https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...
True sensible organization has never been tried!
To me the sin is not to get the most out of life and especially not devoted most of life to a passion. To me the sin is to stop "evolving". Getting sunshine is mostly for health benefit.
I keep asking myself: Did I learn more about the universe? Did I improve myself today? Of course most of the time the answer is no, but I still try to get some yes occasionally.
A bit of idleness for sure is an antidote for burnout, but the Mediterranean sunshine idleness is way way too much for my taste.
The business of busyness is a contradiction in terms. The more politics forces you to look busy, the less time there is for real business. An old joke to set the tone for this section:
A group of excited young curates crashes into the office of the Archbishop at St. Patrick’s cathedral. “Your Eminence!” one of them cries. “Jesus Christ has just appeared in lower Manhattan!” “What?!” “He walked across the water and came ashore in Battery Park.” “Oh my.” “And now he’s headed up Fifth Avenue toward St. Patrick’s. He could be here any minute!” “I see.” “So, tell us, Eminence, what do we do?” The Archbishop thinks that over for a moment and finally says, “Look busy.”
An apparent busyness can be a sign of deep and very professional engagement in an important task, vital to the long-term interests of the organization. Or it might be a sign of something else entirely. In a fearful organization it most likely implies a worry that it’s downright unsafe to seem unbusy. The unspoken rule that governs people in this case is:
Look busy.
Of course, the fear itself has already done damage to the organization’s culture. But obedience to the unspoken rule makes the matter worse. The consequences of everyone trying to look busy include:
• No time for reflection
• No time to confer with colleagues (which might be interpreted as “chatting”)
• No time for lunch
• No time for training
• Nobody willing to be away from his/her desk
• No off-site activities
• A general uneasiness with activities that might seem “passive” like reading, and research.
Most of the things that the rule makes impossible are culture positive. That is, they help the culture heal and improve itself. The more you find yourself and your co-workers compelled to look busy, the surer you can be that your working culture is damaged.
Also defending idleness seems like the sort of opinion the well-off espouse, Russell carried around accounting of every cent he made, just to cheer him up whenever he felt down.
329 Leisure and idleness. - There is something of the American lndian, something of the savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the way the Americans strive for gold; and their breathless haste in working - the true vice of the new world - is already starting to spread to old Europe, making it savage and covering it with a most odd mindlessness. Already one is ashamed of keeping still; long reflection almost gives people a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in hand, as one eats lunch with an eye on the financial pages - one lives like someone who might always 'miss out on something'. 'Rather do anything than nothing' - even this principle is a cord to strangle all culture and all higher taste. Just as all forms are visibly being destroyed by the haste of the workers, so, too, is the feeling for form itself, the ear and eye for the melody of movements. The proof of this lies in the crude obviousness which is universally demanded in all situations in which people want for once to be honest with others - in their relations with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, students, leaders, and princes: one no longer has time and energy for ceremony, for civility with detours, for esprit in conversation, and in general for any otium 2 ° For life in a hunt for profit constantly forces people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence or out-smarting or forestalling others: the true virtue today is doing something in less time than someone else. And thus hours in which honesty is allowed are rare; during them, however, one is tired and wants not only to 'let oneself go' but also to lay oneself down and stretch oneself out unceremoniously to one's full length and breadth. This is the way people now write !etters, the style and spirit of which will always be the true 'sign of the times'. If sociability and the arts still offer any delight, it is the kind of delight that overworked slaves make for themselves. How frugal our educated and uneducated have become concerning 'joy'! How they are becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work gets all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a 'need to recuperate' and is starting to be ashamed of itself. 'One owes it to one's health' - that is what one says when caught on an excursion in the countryside. Soon we may well reach the point where one can't give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa21 (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience. Well, formerly it was the other way around: work was afflicted with a bad conscience. A person of good family concealed the faet that he worked if need compelled him to work. The slave worked under the pressure of the feeling that he was doing something contemptible: 'doing' was itself contemptible. 'Nobility and honour are attached solely to otium and bellum'22 - that was the ancient prejudice!
The Gay Science
Bertrand Russell did a great disservice to philosophy by reducing great minds and talent to what he understood of them. Philosophy departments haven't recovered since and now we seem to be in full swing going back to... fucking religion for ethics and morality spearheaded by the likes of Jordan Peterson.
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