> This is the basic mistake they’ve made: they’ve fallen prey to the belief that money and meaning are two totally separate things.
Ah, what a terrible mistake to make! To think that one could derive meaning from one's life independently of wealth accumulation! What a ridiculous concept!
EDIT:
Here's another theory: what if the reason these people are miserable is because they made the "basic mistake" of assuming money would bring them meaning and/or happiness? They believed wealth would be an end-in-itself, and upon reaching that holy grail of financial security, they were struck with the terrible realization that there was no instant nirvana waiting for them. And now, having achieved the goal they were supposed to achieve, they're left wondering just what it is they're supposed to do now.
In other words, the problem wasn't believing money and meaning were separate. The problem was believing that they were innately connected.
I haven't had a job in over a year because I've been living at home in the middle of nowhere, but I have no dearth of purpose in life. It is a great time to commit to open source, learn new technologies and I developed a plethora of sysadmin skills in that time I never had anything close to when graduating college with a java degree while still dual booting Windows and Ubuntu.
While I intend to seek out employment this fall in Texas, right now I have a dozen foss projects I want to work on and have a larger issue finding the projects that most need the development effort and are willing to accept new contributions than finding things to do. I have patches in the works for 4 projects right now, in varying levels of bug tracker hell, and I'm eyeing another 3 for this weekend.
I'm much more concerned about looking lost after spending 6 months writing some java crapware for a faceless company 8 hours a day after losing all my passion.
So you are right, the money and the purpose are completely distinct, and for some they can completely conflict with one another. I always intended to try freelancing instead of going into a droll office setting to grind myself to hate my profession, but I've realized it takes way too much networking and social engineering to get a start that I just don't have, which sucks.
Hey, I'm in TX, too (Fredericksburg, though I used to be in Lubbock and Amarillo)... I found that about 8mos of stupid job BS was all I cold take. I haven't had a W2 job in 5 years, though I did spend 6mos getting screwed as a "1099" 9-5 on-site "contractor".
It really isn't hard to find a normal salary level of freelance gigs if you like working with other people making software, though you do have to want to do it and you have to be both open minded and (oddly) selective about the kinds of projects you take on. Not to mention that you do have to send out a lot of feelers and try and learn how to read prospective situations.
Most of what I do isn't as nice as adding features to FOSS projects, but it's fun in the same way.
... just an attempt to encourage you to freelance (even if you take a job first). To be honest, it doesn't take "social engineering"... it just takes a while to learn how to present yourself better than the alternatives and learn it as a business (it took me about 2 years). I work 3-6 billable hours a day, and spend the rest of my 8-10 hour work day (when I don't have a gig or go hiking) learning new stuff (which I find fun).
Personally, I like freelance developing a lot more than "passive income" strategies... I spend a lot of time working for people trying to flesh out those strategies, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think I have more fun, and will keep on this path until doing it when I'm 75 doesn't sound appealing.
I call it "what the hell do I do now" syndrome. If you make money so you can work on what you want, you're immune. If you work so that you can make money, you might one day be stricken.
Whenever people start acting all pomped up and talking about how the market chooses as though somehow a fiat zero-sum game is rational indicator I have to ask:
What percentage of the worlds GDP is founded in open source technology? How many people working for peanuts in their basements wrote code that changed the world for nothing? It's like economists don't understand that there are people who can create utility at an exponential, amplified, perfectly scaling rate and their only limit is their self-determination and the empowerment of their chosen language. And they work on their own time. What happens when programmers start truly proselytizing the power of digital creation to the horde of consumers?
Considering the lacking macro facilities in algol-syntax derivatives it's important to understand that programmers are not any more rational than economists. Complexity has gone from being a price of performance to being the crux of a fallen generation, of individuals unable to shower themselves of their neighborly turing tarpits.
I guess at this point what I am trying to say is that there are new fundamentals for the tech economy that are simply unknown. They aren't variables, they are completely off the board. I mean we use emacs/vim, pretend that virtualization can count as security and seem utterly choked in our own miasma of complexity. Integrating old ideas with new is not a matter of mixing software like a chemical mixture but a dick sizing competition without a ruler.
We are mechanics who barely understand our own tools and more than that are philosophically against questioning the separation between programming language/user. It is this behavior that puts more fear in me than what the government does or what tragedies may occur... because it is a sign that our communal process, despite making progress, is a frictional force that doesn't abide by logic.
I know most people are going to latch on to stereotypes or how the models used by an editor/os are still useful... but that isn't the point. The point is that the dynamics and decisions we see reflected everywhere are issues of personalities and groups, and thus the source and solution is via communal interaction. The solution is of course deeply unsettling but luckily novelized throughout our televisors in the form of AI systems that are doing there best to hide their HAL face.
When google shows you custom results, what are they doing? They are acting as a moderator or parent would. But it has always been seen under the guise of the friendly mentor. What happens when our mentors start making suggestions? Do you think that same data could be used to find the most efficient manner to shift your opinion? How deeply does the ranking of links affect your judgement about a subject? Are these new questions to you, or have you simply been holding your hands over your ears?
This isn't about google being malicious, or about another entity forcing their hand. The point is much more unsettling... that there are incredibly important and influential decisions being made not by individuals or beliefs, but by circumstance and yet they remain unquestioned despite their significant social and economic impact. I am supposed to be afraid of the NSA or some entity but what I truly fear is how blinded we all our own confidence with predicting the next day of this collective delusion.
I do not fear the man in Washington, the man in the Vatican or the man in Moscow. Instead I fear our inability to hold ourselves accountable as individuals and as a community to taking the stance for quantifying decisions based on potential impact and not limiting the debate to mob rule or to hand picked numbers. It is only through the somehow supply/demand immunized Moore's law will humanity be given its mirror, and that truly is an act of a fearful god if there ever was one.
> What percentage of the worlds GDP is founded in open source technology?
Everything built on the Internet, to begin with.
> I mean we use emacs/vim
Because they work.
> pretend that virtualization can count as security
No one thing can 'count as security' but virtualization makes a lot of secure systems easier to build.
> and seem utterly choked in our own miasma of complexity.
You are, maybe.
> Integrating old ideas with new is not a matter of mixing software like a chemical mixture but a dick sizing competition without a ruler.
This sounds profound but means nothing.
> We are mechanics who barely understand our own tools and more than that are philosophically against questioning the separation between programming language/user.
This is wrong. On every level, it is wrong. It is fractally wrong. Worse, parts of it aren't even wrong.
> The solution is of course deeply unsettling but luckily novelized throughout our televisors in the form of AI systems that are doing there best to hide their HAL face.
What? Are you saying nothing again, or are you implying you believe that Strong AI exists and is running the world?
> What happens when our mentors start making suggestions? Do you think that same data could be used to find the most efficient manner to shift your opinion? How deeply does the ranking of links affect your judgement about a subject? Are these new questions to you, or have you simply been holding your hands over your ears?
None of these ideas are new. You're saying absolutely nothing that hasn't been said thousands of times before, and you're saying it much, much worse.
> that there are incredibly important and influential decisions being made not by individuals or beliefs, but by circumstance and yet they remain unquestioned despite their significant social and economic impact.
Well, no shit. Why did humans end up in the Americas? Was it by planning or was it just following the game and winding up going across the Bering Land Bridge?
> It is only through the somehow supply/demand immunized Moore's law will humanity be given its mirror, and that truly is an act of a fearful god if there ever was one.
Waffle waffle whine. You have a platform. By all means, use it to say something.
> > What happens when our mentors start making suggestions? Do you think that same data could be used to find the most efficient manner to shift your opinion? How deeply does the ranking of links affect your judgement about a subject? Are these new questions to you, or have you simply been holding your hands over your ears?
> None of these ideas are new. You're saying absolutely nothing that hasn't been said thousands of times before, and you're saying it much, much worse.
Maybe not new, but I think this may be the first time I've thought that anything other than a godlike AI may have enough foreknowledge to usefully manipulate our view of reality through carefully curated content presentation.
I think we're really just a bit of research and applied knowledge away from the beginning of this, if we haven't already arrived.
Ah, what a terrible mistake to make! To think that one could derive meaning from one's life independently of wealth accumulation! What a ridiculous concept!
EDIT:
Here's another theory: what if the reason these people are miserable is because they made the "basic mistake" of assuming money would bring them meaning and/or happiness? They believed wealth would be an end-in-itself, and upon reaching that holy grail of financial security, they were struck with the terrible realization that there was no instant nirvana waiting for them. And now, having achieved the goal they were supposed to achieve, they're left wondering just what it is they're supposed to do now.
In other words, the problem wasn't believing money and meaning were separate. The problem was believing that they were innately connected.