Readit NewsThat's a very patient and balanced response, which I appreciate!
I think that in the last few years Hacker News and Reddit have made me super jaded and that's why I communicated like this - I responded to a comment that was brief and amounted to a rich guy bitching that he can't afford a house.
It feels like these forums are filled with an endless stream of people who either don't work that hard or don't know how to manage their money, complaining about how the system is rigged against them.
That complaint is fucking dumb. I'm sorry, but "I'm rich but I can't afford to buy a house or take a risk pursuing my passion," is just a dumb take and not a real problem. For those of us who started out life on food stamps, and yet did also grow up in a house, it's kind of an offensive take, in fact. I can't imagine a worse possible excuse for not taking some risks in life -- like this is not someone who has a fire under their ass because they've realized they need to get out of the ghetto, that's for sure. Their problems don't sound serious yet here they are bitching.
Are you really sure the soft and considerate communication style is what people like this need? Maybe there are some out there who are a little too comfortable and just need to get whacked on the head.
I think it depends on the audience. I have some closer friends that I would be comfortable taking a more aggressive communication style because they know my intent is to help them and sometimes people do need someone to shock them into making a change.
For internet strangers, at least in my experience, I think putting people on defensive footing through more aggressive language makes it more difficult to get your point across to most folks. Your goal, however, might be to talk to a group out there that does respond to a more "tough love" angle.
I do find it can make productive discussion with those who are going to perceive the language as insulting more difficult if not impossible. Just something to keep in mind depending on your communication goals.
It's not a bad article, and right now there's a lot of hand-wringing in the comments by people who in all frankness probably just don't have the balls to pursue their passion.
Pretty early in my career I decided that the future of a tech bro at a FAANG was not for me so I quit. For one thing I saw that the men who were 10-20 years ahead of me on that track didn't actually have great personal lives. For another Big Tech was rapidly morphing into a net negative for humanity and I was sick of enabling it.
I knew I wanted to work with open source because it was ethically superior but didn't know exactly what or how.
It led initially to several years of wandering the world as a digital nomad and freelancing to pay the bills.
In the long run I started a bootstrapped open source company, now have about 12 people on payroll, and am 15 years expatriated and living in a country that I'm way way happier in with plenty of money and the markers of what people consider "success."
It also required me to do many many things that I didn't want to do or never thought I would do, a great example is learning how to sell things effectively, because initially if I didn't, I wouldn't eat. Then later, because it was the difference between just getting by and becoming rich.
It is completely possible to live your passion while being successful. To do it you have to temper your passion with realism. You cannot lie to yourself about what the world wants from you nor can you ever use it as an excuse for inaction.
Passion requires sacrifice, it's choosing A over B repeatedly, this is its definition. It certainly does mean that you might have to move, or make compromises in other areas of your life.
But if you're at the stage where you're still single and childless, and you're light years away from your passion because of money - frankly I think you're just a pussy. You have more freedom at that stage of life than any other. If you're doing something you don't care for, you have nothing to lose by blowing it to smithereens.
Or you can go on bitching about it on social media, like 95% of people do, and getting deeply involved in reasons that your dissatisfaction is someone else's fault. Look at older people who stayed in a situation they hated because that was where inertia and a lack of balls kept them. Get to know them. If you want their life to be yours soon enough then keep on doing what you're doing.
I think it's great that you had the conviction and risk taking appetite to find success and in retrospect be able to say it was the "right" choice for you. I also think there's some great advice in there about benchmarking the road that you're headed down and asking yourself if it is the right road for you.
However, I think this comment veers off into a tone that, for me, is a bit judgmental and prescriptive. Even out of the group of people who are single and childless people have different life situations, people have different risk tolerances, and there's not a one size fit all solution to quitting your job and chasing your passion for everyone. Not to mention unfortunately some people sacrifice a lot in pursuit of what they want and end up with nothing or very little to show for it in the end.
Again I think your comment comes from a good place and there's some useful advice here, but the unnecessary name calling is a bit of a turn off at least for me and overall reduces the effectiveness of communicating your advice.
jjxw commented on Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind thehobbyist.substack.com/... · Posted by u/jjxw
> I think a lot of people actually do get rich investing.
https://youtu.be/H5jPJQ5cVGU?si=KoXd4H3FOkLZ1y06 has an interesting counter-point. You need to fuel your returns with savings.
I guess it's a subtlety — in the end, since you said "for decades", and if you adjusted your wording sightly (such as "help you reach your financial goals", instead of "get rich"), the underlying message is similar. But I figured I'd share the link in case you find it interesting.
Yeah, agreed, love the Plain Bagel and the generally sane takes from that channel.
"Get rich" is definitely too broad of a target and probably has too many connotations with "mansion and luxury cars" when, as you identified, what I meant with that statement is closer to "financial goals" or, more tangibly, something like "comfortable retirement".
jjxw commented on Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind thehobbyist.substack.com/... · Posted by u/jjxw
> Once you have identified an activity as being more luck than skill driven, a person’s process for the activity starts to become a much stronger signal for whether or not they are actually any good.
This is the central point of the article, and I don't think it's true. If it were as easy as "following a good process", then anyone could get rich investing.
This is a point worth clarifying. I think a lot of people actually do get rich investing. It just turns out the "good process" in this case is leaving your money in a diversified portfolio for decades. This leverages making a bunch of bets that on average have a positive expected value over a long enough time horizon that you are able to realize the gains.
There are also certainly other ways to have an edge in investing (quant firms come to mind), but I think the most realistic option for "anyone" is readily available in the form of low fee index funds and a long time horizon.
jjxw commented on Tinnitus linked to undetected auditory nerve damage scitechdaily.com/tinnitus... · Posted by u/beefman
Reminder for folks who go to concerts or other events / areas that regularly have loud sounds - invest in ear protection! It is probably not worth it to risk your hearing for a slightly "better" listening experience. You will also avoid that partially deaf feeling after being exposed to loud music / sounds. There are a ton of reusable ear plugs on the market that you can easily keep on your person.
jjxw commented on Quitting the full-time poker scene team-bhp.com/forum/shifti... · Posted by u/ankit70
I’m genuinely curious—what makes for an “interesting line with a particular hand?” Do you have any examples?
I found this one [1] pretty interesting - finding a raise with top pair weak kicker is not intuitive. There is some solver work in this video which is probably overly technical for a casual observer, but will give a bit of flavor on how poker is studied at a high level.
jjxw commented on Quitting the full-time poker scene team-bhp.com/forum/shifti... · Posted by u/ankit70
Are you sure about that? If it was just for the intellectual pursuit and socialization, why are you playing poker and not, say, Catan?
Obviously not everyone plays poker in a smoky room with gangsters, or even with real money, but I think maybe that cultural context is part of the explanation. You absolutely can divorce it from that cultural context, if you like poker but hate gambling - but is that worth holding onto, when there are so many options to get similar intellectual and social pleasures?
Why does anyone choose to play any game instead of another? Catan has a chance element to it, isn't that gambling to try to win the game? Why not play something completely deterministic? For the record, we also do play Catan and other games.
We play poker because we enjoy the structure of the game and it is different to other things. Personally I'm uncomfortable with your insinuation that I, and the friends I play with, are somehow culturally brainwashed to be gamblers because we enjoy poker.
I'll end the conversation by repeating what I said above. If you look down on this type of activity then there's nothing I can do to change your mind.
Whenever I trade, I somehow always get an adverse price. I figure it's the "no fee" brokerage chiseling a bit off for themselves. I compensate by being a buy and hold hold hold investor, so paying very little in aggregate for that.
What I don't understand is how day traders avoid being eaten alive by this.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3423101