As another poster mentioned, I also wanted to add that this attitude is why there is so much stress and pressure on kids these days to figure out everything in their lives by the time they're 22. It's pretty amazing to me that anyone can look at a PhD in Chemistry and say that was a wasted decade. Why was he not competitive? What skills were you looking for? In what way are you already biasing candidates based on your preconceived notions about what makes someone helpful, useful, intelligent, etc.
I know broad generalizations aren't too useful, maybe this specific person had real significant shortcomings compared to the other 22 year olds you interviewed, but I encourage you to consider why we are doing "all of this" anyway (is it money? productivity? prestige? big houses?) and why someone might prioritize going so far in a field to actually CONTRIBUTE something new to the field (as one does through a PhD). Maybe consider why someone might not slot perfectly into your idea of the perfect economic pawn, though nevertheless have chosen an absolutely fine way to spend ones life (or ten years of it).
I agree with you. So many variables at play and every 7-10 year cycle stacks and compounds knowledge and skills if one does it right. A stint as a PhD in Chemistry is extremely valuable substrate to build upon, especially if the person was interested in it and understands it deeply.
I think if that time was spent productively, it's not a loss at all. With AI the coming iterations will favor different kinds of combinations of perspectives and experiences towards identifying esoteric solutions. Or otherwise stated, people who are deep learners will find that they are able to deeply learn faster and at a larger breadth now too and this will produce new kinds of solutions to problems that in some cases haven't even been defined yet.
I think this will be a critical thing in the near timeline that Elon and others predicted, when more things can be automated. There will still be a lot of increasing demand for thought workers and researchers and engineers including those who started out in other thought-based disciplines. I believe tokenization of financial instruments or for development of new ones means an additional productive substrate layer to the economy and that is why big/smart money are flowing into it. Those + AI will be a big driver in growing the power of that new layer and driving wages for those people/teams pushing the envelope further there.
We have a lot of control over this kind of thing these days...meaning we can be productive in creating such incentives and possibilities because the yield is far greater. It produces and will produce way more knowledge and products/services in the future. I think people are severely underestimating the potential of the American system to produce 0 to 1 innovation in literally everything at huge scale with the right incentives/environment set up for people. Productivity here is not the issue, the problem is legacy notions on what is valuable and how to fund it. Legacy meaning no longer functionally or logically sound due to the advanced possibilities afforded by decades of compounded gains since WW2 or the Industrial Revolution or the Printing Press.
Here's one interpretation though, for the discourse:
When given a task, some artists focused less on the objective and more on the process of observation. Observation of what, would be a logical next question. And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning. How to select some combination of objects, relative to the constraints of the circumstances for the task, paired with the skills they possess to produce the task at hand.
Given the proper acumen and a relatively subordinate task, I imagine some would tend towards Parkinson's law.
So following this, maybe problem finding could be seen as: how is this beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, or what do I really want to compose to fulfill this demand? What innate qualities do these things have which express some quality? Or maybe: how can I waste an hour of this man's time?
> And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning
I think one reason it may be so difficult to express this concretely, is that artists are often looking for an ineffable quality.
I took it to mean their process was more divergent than convergent. They explored some branches, felt one had life, or tension, and then unfolded from there.
My first answer was disingenuous, so here's another interpretation.
I didn't see a definition in the article, however I was reading Edgar Payne's Compostion of Outdoor Painting after reading your comment, and I was surprised to find the book talked about problem finding.
"Art is the art of disguising art". This means artists have to make a representation of a material object while obscuring all the rules and principles required to make the representation.
The problem is: how to make art without making it blatantly obvious it was an effort to make?
Wait this is really funny, it still just does what it wants, no matter what:
You can have it not use bulleted points, I turned this on, thinking it would be more concise and not so... listy. However, it just uses the same format, without the bullets. I was confused why it was writing 5 word sentences, separated by line breaks. Then I realized it was just making lists, without the bullets.
We always had the technology to do things better, it's the money making part that has made things worse technologically speaking. In this same way, I don't see how AI will resolve the problem - our productivity was never the goal, and that won't change any time soon.
I thought this was a joke ie you need to be a billionaire to be able to use agents like this, but you are correct.
I think we need to stop listening to billionaires. The article is well thought out and well written, but his perspective is entirely biased by never having to think about money at all... all of this stuff is incredibly expensive.
Define investment in this case. He's the cofounder of HashiCorp. I guess you could refer to his equity as an investment here, but I don't really think it tracks the same in this context.
He may have a vested interest, but he did cofound HashiCorp as an engineer that actually developed the products, so I find his insight at least somewhat valuable.
It's bad I can't say that I did it with willpower alone but Brick helped immensely. Their product is great, not a subscription, and even though there are competitors or you could build something like this for your phone, they're good with customer service and I would recommend their product.
Also, Unhook for removing suggestions/comments/etc from Youtube, you can basically turn everything off until it becomes a search bar and your subscriptions.
Get a good website blocking browser extension.
Remove anything that resembles a "recommendation" or avoid it like the plague.
I would say it's slightly worse but they're both not great, as someone who was addicted to being fed something at all times, I was really avoiding every having to spend time with myself if that makes sense. That being said, it's mostly about intention. Are you excited to finally listen to that amazing album or audiobook on your walk after work? That's usually more healthy than when I would scroll on tiktok during my day to avoid feeling anything other than dopamine and avoid bad feelings. It's really about self awareness for me.
I've found the best route at that point is just... copying people who are really good. For my interest (3d modeling) if you want voice-over and directions, those are all pretty basic, but if you want to see how someone approaches a large, complex object, I will literally watch a timelapse of someone doing it and scrub the video in increments to see each modifier/action they took. It's slow but that's also how I built some intuition and muscle memory. That's just the way...
For what it's worth, I have dealt with pretty severe depression for most of my adult life. I am only starting to have periods of coming out when I realized that most of depressed feelings come from a place of ego. I have an identity of who I am and what I like, and I seek things in the external world which might provide meaning for me. For me, it's because I always sought value from the things around me, rather than believing that I am already enough. Every single day, I have to beat down my instincts that tell me that I am worthless and remind myself that there is more beauty in the world and it's actually absurd that I am letting society tear away from me my natural instincts to want to live and enjoy life. You have to really sit with these feelings though... like really really get to know your voice vs the internalized societal voice. I have developed "tests" that help me discern which voice is which, but it has helped a bit. Also working out and taking care of your body is a bonus, and just taking pride in like... doing things to lead a peaceful life is underrated.
Hope you feel better.
I hope you can understand that this and other comments about needing to find meaning and needing to sit with inner feelings... It feels patronizing. I have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy analyzing my feelings and looking for meaningful experiences. I've sought relief in meditation, religion, therapy, yoga, travel, art, etc. Most people probably have in one way or another. It's not rocket science to know those activities may be beneficial. They undoubtedly do help some people overcome feeling depressed. But feeling depressed is different from having depression.
I'm sorry it came off that way, I really didn't intend it to be, it was actually a self call out because I actually never learned as a child to sit with my inner feelings. I attribute that to being more sensitive and probably more intelligent than my siblings and acting as a buffer for my parents and basically only ever wanting to make other people happy, I never developed an inner world like other kids do.
Also I noticed... yoga, travel, art, those are still external. Even meditation can be if you approach it from a standpoint of like... one that is about forming your ego around it rather than being present... not sure if this makes sense. Like you can approach anything from a negative or place of wanting to 'fix' yourself, which ruins the experience imo. For me I would ruin things that were supposed to be fun because I would tell myself I should do this because it's good for me.
That being said, there are really low days still when I will feel absolutely nothing, I will think to myself... if this psychological pain is so intense, why should I keep going? I don't have answers for that. I genuinely just have to make it through the day. I understand that with the pressures of a family and kids, it's not one of those things where you can easily tap out, medication makes sense for that. I was just trying to share how I feel because honestly for me there isn't anyone in my life who I can relate with on this deep of a level... of these feelings, and it's really alienating in itself.
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