This is a pretty weird take. Seems fairly obvious to me that the boringness comes from adults having to… make a living. And for most people that equates to a 9-5 job that demands conformity and leaves little room for other things after you factor in all the other things adults have to be responsible for.
I have an unproven suspicion that if UBI was a thing we would see a lot more “not boring” adults, “Social predators” be damned.
I think that's nearly the same thing, and in part related to what Robin is talking about in the article- people think they already have the answers, and talking about a weird idea is socially unacceptable, and automatically rejected as nonsense. This dynamic serves to lower the social status of the person proposing the weird idea, motivating them to keep quiet next time.
I am not familiar with all of Robin Hanson's work, but I have seen two other such cases that really stand out in my memory:
-He advocated for intentional covid-19 exposure as "variolation" before a vaccine was developed, suggesting this would save lives
-His book "The Elephant in the Brain" explains why virtually all of the supposed motives of people in public culture are dishonest, and the real motives are hidden, even from ourselves - and are mostly all about maneuvering for social status
A quote from Tyler Cowen on his wikipedia page:
Robin has strange ideas ... My other friend and colleague Bryan Caplan put it best: "When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'Eh, maybe.' Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'No way! Impossible!' Then I think about it for years."
Agreed that Job, Mortgage, Kids are a powerful normalizer in many places in the world.
(note, my 2 cents: It's not strictly "Adulthood". My wife and I settled "late" in our lives, so we both had very different lifestyle/priorities/hobbies in our 20s and 30s - I did rock climbing, rally racing, flying lessons, professional and art photography, Karate, skiing, guitar, video games, rollerblading and kangoo boots and dragon boating and myriad other activities plus constant little experiments and fun things - vs now in our 40's that we have two young kids, full time management jobs, mortgage and expenses. This is not to say we don't, theoretically, have power to still change some of our lifestyle; but the constraints on time, energy and money are legitimately one to two orders of magnitude different)
That being said, I think the blog has an interesting perspective about social normalization overall. Whatever one's inherent personal level of "interesting and exciting and weird" may be, there may be significant social pressure of various kinds to minimize it externally.
And FWIW, I think it works to different magnitudes in different places and times: in my old country, especially a few decades ago, adults did NOT try new things, and did NOT do exciting things. I love Canada because I can try all these crazy new things and hobbies and activities and suck at them, and average Canadian will still say "Good on YOU! Have fun!:)". Whereas in my old country people would gossip "Who is he trying to BE? He's a [Doctor|Teacher|Programmer|Manager|Whatever] for god's sake, he shouldn't be doing things like that!". You would be judged very harshly with tremendous peer-group pressure to stay in pre-defined zones of your station and lot. Heck, my mom, against all social norms learned to ride a bike when she was 38 in the old country and she was oh my god chastised and judged for that, which feels ridiculous from Canadian perspective.
> we both had very different lifestyle/priorities/hobbies in our 20s and 30s - I did rock climbing, rally racing, flying lessons, professional and art photography, Karate, skiing, guitar, video games, rollerblading and kangoo boots and dragon boating and myriad other activities plus constant little experiments and fun things
What you describe isn’t common for people who haven’t “settled” or who don’t have 40 hour per week jobs.
That extreme level of hobbies and activity, some of which aren’t cheap, would be an outlier for people in your position.
> This is not to say we don't, theoretically, have power to still change some of our lifestyle; but the constraints on time, energy and money are one or two orders of magnitude different.
As a counter example, I watched a number of my friends slide into complacency in their lates 20s and early 30s despite having very easy jobs. I can think of several people who worked remote or for family businesses and did little more than a couple of hours of “work” per day from their phones, yet that didn’t automatically translate into a diverse and outgoing lifestyle. It seems to translate more often to a complacency and inactivity.
Having kids was the catalyst for forcing these people to be active again. They now go out and do things, whether it’s going outside to go to the park or going on a mini-adventure somewhere because their kids are bored
The idea that “kids make you boring” hasn’t been true in the people I know. It’s true that kids change what you can do with your time, but it’s anything but boring. Getting out of the house and doing social activities with other kids/parents really opens a whole new world of activity and engagement, even if it doesn’t mean dragon boat racing every weekend.
If I'm reading this correctly, you mostly gave up those hobbies once you had kids. I want to encourage you to do them anyways, and find a way to include them.
I'm a single dad, and bring my toddler son on tons of outdoor adventures, and it is really good for both of our mental health, and reduces our stress a lot.
I do several hobbies that require a significant time investment. I heard a lot of “you’ll have to give that up when you have kids” when I was younger.
Then I actually had kids. It’s true that I can’t go do these hobbies every single weekend or wait until the last second to plan a spontaneous outing without preparing. However, it’s not true that they simply stop and become impossible. It takes a different approach to planning and prep, but it can be done.
It’s also interesting to learn how many of the other hobbyists also have kids. Before kids I just assumed everyone else was childless like myself, but it turns out a lot of people who do these hobbies also have kids at home once you talk to them.
Being outdoor with toddler is incomparable with being on adult hike or skiing or climbing. It just gets frustrating cause you see what you could do before and can't now.
That is cute. I would always worry about the joints and bones, because there is not much muscle yet and everything is still in the making. But then again, if i see, what toddlers all do and not break apart, i should be optimistic.
I don’t agree with this at all. First, it sounds like you are too focused on you own experience. Focus on being a good parent and giving them a good experience, and you will have a better time also.
Second, I did more outdoors with a toddler than most people would even believe. It took a lot of planning, and was very physically demanding but was worth it. Some examples:
-serious backpacking and hiking trips in remote places, mostly carrying them in an osprey child carrier pack, but having them walk as much as they can
-long, remote kayaking trips in a double kayak
-multi day boating trips exploring uninhabited islands and beaches together
Check out “outdoor boys” on YouTube for some examples of really serious outdoor adventures with toddlers.
The experience of adult is literally topic of the discussion. Second, no, when I focus on being good parent, I still did not had skiing fun when doing it with small child.
Second, I did not said impossible. I said it is entirely different experience. And it is. It is family experience and not sport adventure experience. Most of the time you spend supervising the kid and focusing on that.
You don't spend that time the same way as when you are adult and can actually relax, actually raise own adrenaline and so on.
I really hate to be this confrontational and negative online, but you have a negative attitude that is unbecoming of someone that is a parent and a leader, with little ones depending on and looking up to them. I was the same when I was a new parent, and I had to fix this for my son's sake.
My point is that the experience as an adult is better once you fully embrace the parenting role, stop resenting the fact that you aren't by yourself, and look for what is possible to do together. The attitude of comparing yourself as a parent to a solo person and longing for being solo is a really destructive narrative that will lead you to resenting instead of enjoying parenting, and make it impossible to be present as a good parent. Yes, parenting is much harder, and you can't do the same things... but you can grow as a person, and do different things, that are often even more awesome- especially in regards to extreme outdoor sports. Doing difficult outdoor sports with a young kid is the ultimate challenge, and requires you to cultivate a level of badass not needed or even possible as a solo person.
I can see how what you are saying is probably true for downhill skiing, but I certainly have been able to relax, get a serious workout, and raise my adrenaline doing other outdoor adventures with young kids. It's key to be able to carry their weight physically with your own body when they get tired, so that you are limited only by your own physical fitness, just like when you are solo only harder. I get this is probably not safe for downhill skiing- but can work with a sled (x-country ski), kayak, hiking, etc.
> That being said, I think the blog has an interesting perspective about social normalization overall. Whatever one's inherent personal level of "interesting and exciting and weird" may be, there may be significant social pressure of various kinds to minimize it externally.
Signal theory: I can't place a lot of eclectic or odd behavior or appearances. As in, I can place a lot of stuff like the business casual soccer parent demographic, or the hoodrat gangster demo, or the painfully hipster but-not-pulling-it-off demo, etc. I know before I talk to you, roughly, where you line up.
Always exceptions, of course, but it's a reasonable shorthand. Dave is a sports guy who likes whiskey. That may not be true, and he may have deep, deeeeeep interests in esoteric Christianity, fractal math, and trainhopping, but most of that will never come up at work (or outside of it), and even if it did I don't have the cognitive space to care about except for people in my inner circle.
And that works both ways -- I have to hope that if I put on an outfit or present a certain lifestyle it will sell well on the street, at a store, at the office, etc. Both that the other person(s) understands what I'm giving off, and that they will respond to it with positive regard. Even if I'm an odd, eclectic dude -- and I am; most folks wouldn't believe my stories -- I have nothing to gain by broadcasting that fact, and it may interfere or cause misinterpretations of other honest signaling.
Couldn't you say that conformity necessity is the result of the "social predators", though? Your employer shouldn't need to care that you choose to shout crackpot theories from the rooftops. They do, but only because they don't want to catch the scrutiny by association. Further, retirees should be freed from that conformity need, yet still seem every bit as boring – if not more so.
No. I don't understand why this social predators thing is even a hypothesis; it seems totally unfounded to me. This essay starts from a what-if and then bounds forward with great leaps of logic...
What if "boring" social groupings have proven more stable over time than "lively and outraged" social groupings? Would evolutionary pressures start shaping our social structures over the millennia?
I think social predators are very real today.
That is very much what "cancel culture" is. Its people acting as bandits to those who have violated the "SACRED" whatever and they shout from the mountain tops to bring down whoever has transgressed. They even intentionally ping your employer to bring you down, attacking the very reason so many of us must lead boring lives.
Cancel culture only really pings on right wing culture issues. There’s plenty of exciting and quirky things people can do that aren’t that, like being really into taxidermy, or having a huge predatory insect collection. Or being into a scene like goth or raves. I would even consider, idk, having a huge passion in a specific country’s literature to be quirky, like imagine someone who is hugely in love with Congolese literature.
sure, but just because it focuses on a single culture issue does not mean the bandits are not real, they have just not focused on your area yet.
Does the fact its focused only on right wing cultural issues make it ok? Does that make the people attacking them and attempting to get them fired any less of a "bandit" to use the articles term?
There have been several articles on parents being arrested for allowing their kids to "free range". Right wing focuses on drag shows. Its all over the place. Bandits are everywhere.
I think where you're going off the rails is with the idea of "social predators" at all.
I mean, there are no bandits. A right wing racist is just a part of society, with the freedom and the right to express his/her opinion and associate with those whom s/he pleases. Where is the "banditry" in that?
The person opposed to the right wing racist is just a part of society, with the freedom and the right to express his/her opinion and associate with those whom s/he pleases. Where is the "banditry" in that?
Maybe it would be helpful if you could outline why you believe those exercising, say, Constitutional freedoms in the US, are "bandits" or "social predators", as opposed to being just regular members of society acting in the fashion their Constitution intended?
I think you're taking the term "bandit" too literally; I'm reading it as a metaphor, just like the use of the word "piracy" for "copyright infringement" — even though there are going to be some people who will look for the loud and open, and decide to literally rob them, I see the issues discussed in the post as being nothing to do with that dollar-money kind of thing, and all to with the loss of social capital.
And now I write that, I realise that what is here called "bandit" used to be called "troll" back in the late 90s.
And before the internet, "antisocial youths loitering in malls".
The quotation "cancel culture" may be associated with a particular tribe, just as the words "liberal", "conservative" are, but in all such cases the idea expressed is broader.
Just as the Republican party is big on personal liberty and the Democrat party is (I think?) trying to conserve the environment, today there are some people trying to "cancel" anyone who is pro-trans and others trying to cancel anyone who is anti-trans. I see stuff like this pop up in all sorts of surprising contexts, including someone who was convinced that "epileptics are all faking it", a parter's mother who thought I had to be lying when I said I was vegetarian, and some weirdo who began campaigning against all apps made in the Xojo programming language because he didn't like the company's decision to change the design of its IDE's user interface.
Gamer gate was literally opposite of liberal cancel culture. That was young gamers having feels hurt over an article and literally trying to cancel who they perceived to be too feminists.
The more I think on it, the more I see a society as a society. There is no such thing as a social predator. Everyone is part of a society. If women choose to boycott a company's products because they are upset at that company's lax attitude towards women's safety or whatever, that doesn't make half of society social predators. Women are a part of society, they're entitled to opinions, as well as the agency to engage in freedom of lawful action.
The company doesn't seem a predator to me either, as all they are doing is taking lawful action to protect their revenue.
There really are no social predators here, unless I've misunderstood the term.
Isn't that saying the same thing using different words? It is not like the "social predator" is some kind of distinct monster that only has to be slain and then all is right with the world. It is fundamentally just people being people and the observation therefore. Even if in some hypothetical way the "social predator" was something that was to be attacked, that would merely make the attacker a "social predator" too, rendering the whole notion an impossibility.
The difference is in judgement in words. When you say "social predator", the implication is that the person is doing something wrong and are bad in some way.
Retirees tend to be pretty boring because they can’t actually risk too much right now. Their income is limited, their health is limited. Very likely they are on medication they need regularly and so can’t afford wild trips.
On the other hand, old people are also famous for speaking their minds about things the modern world considered taboo — the trope of "racist granpa at Thanksgiving" was something I was aware of decades ago despite not being American and therefore not doing Thanksgiving (and not just because my British grandmother matched a similar pattern by using the word "Irish" as a synonym for "stupid" at a family dinner).
It is racist uncle tho - someone assumed to be in their 50ties max.
And they are not risking anything, because they are saying stuff rest of family does not mind hearing much. If you oppose then, you will be blamed for starting a conflict.
Which is why that trope exists, people are trying to figure out what to do in situation they are expected to shut up while they feel bad about own complacency.
What's really at risk beyond succumbing to the "social predator"? Say "strait laced" grandpa throws on grandma's frilly dress for the first time and goes for a stroll down the street. It doesn't cost anything and, for the sake of discussion, isn't anything he wouldn't otherwise do in his own clothing.
The only risk is that his social contacts start to cut him out of their life for his actions (i.e. social predators).
Yeah it's not so much social predators as ostracism by normal people. With loneliness on the sharp rise and people having fewer and fewer social groups it won't have as much of an affect in the future though.
> Seems fairly obvious to me that the boringness comes from adults having to… make a living. And for most people that equates to a 9-5 job that demands conformity and leaves little room for other things after you factor in all the other things adults have to be responsible for.
A full-time job and adult responsibilities still leave plenty of time to be “not boring” for people who make an effort to manage their time.
Many jobs also provide an opportunity for social exposure, get people out of the house (or at least out of their comfort zone and interacting with others remotely). I suspect a lot of people would actually become less socialized and outgoing if they didn’t have the structure of a job to make them adopt routine and discipline in their lives.
> I have an unproven suspicion that if UBI was a thing we would see a lot more “not boring” adults
The only remotely feasible UBI programs wouldn’t be supplying enough money for people to go out and live their best lives. It’s more of a subsistence amount of money.
In a theoretical world where large numbers of people received significant amounts of money and didn’t have to work, we wouldn’t all be going around doing leisure activities everywhere. The work of running, building, and maintaining the world we all inhabit must still be done, which would require significantly higher labor costs to make up for the decreased supply of labor. This would make everything more expensive, which means people would have to go back and get jobs if they wanted to have enough funds to do the “interesting” things beyond subsistence living on UBI.
It’s a common fantasy that removing the 40 hours per week of work would cause individuals to suddenly become more outgoing, adventurous, and interesting, but if people aren’t already doing those interesting and outgoing things on the weekends then I don’t think they’d suddenly start doing more of them with the job removed.
Right. It’s more of a fantasy where they don’t have to give up any of the things they enjoy about the world we inhabit, but the things they don’t enjoy (paying money and doing work) are shifted to the rich and robots.
UBI isn't going to pay for people to go on tropical vacations, people will still work, just less to survive.
And the rich? The rich are going to replace the average person's job with a robot/software anyway. What's the point of all this automation if not to work less? I didn't realize The Jetsons was such a dystopian vision of the future. Well, as long as we're the Haves it's not our problem.
See my other post, but for many people, "do interesting things on weekends" is a fantasy for at least a specific period of their life that teens tend to comment/judge upon. You work 9-10 hours a day, you commute another 1-2, you pickup your kids after work/school and feed them and get them to bed; and weekend is about actually making connections with your kids and keeping them alive and healthy and taking them to their playdates and activities (not that you can't participate but THAT is not what'll make you seem cool to teenagers:), and then trying to catch up on stuff (impossible!) like fix up the leaky roof and vacuum the living room and wash the dishes and take car for maintenance and go to the doctor since your body is increasingly giving up and catch up with work because your kid was sick two days this week and maybe even get some sleep since your kids alternately wake up every bloody night at 1 3 5am to go potty / vomit / need water / are hungry / are scared / is it morning yet :D
I took 2 months unpaid paternity because I'm lucky and privileged that way, and let me tell you how much more interesting and outgoing and fun and exciting and involved I was :->
> and weekend is about actually making connections with your kids and keeping them alive and healthy and taking them to their playdates and activities
I’m in the exact situation you describe (mid-career, kids at home, demanding job). These weekend activities are still an opportunity to have fun and do interesting things.
Do interesting things with your kids! The weekend may not be the same opportunity to go out and do an unplanned adventure into the mountains or travel spontaneously, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go do something fun with your kids.
It gets better as you adapt and figure out parenthood. It also doesn’t last for very long, all things considered, so make the most of the time you have with your young kids.
Oh agreed, but there's a few lenses the article brings up and one of them is "would teenager find it boring", and that's both a very high and very specific litmus test. Taking my 4 and 2 year old's skating for the first time last weekend was... Exciting and interesting to say the least! :-) but would still be perceived as boring to average teenager, as opposed to the time I went night time snow car rallying etc:-D
It’s a common fantasy that removing the 40 hours per week of work would cause individuals to suddenly become more outgoing, adventurous, and interesting, but if people aren’t already doing those interesting and outgoing things on the weekends then I don’t think they’d suddenly start doing more of them with the job removed.
When work is over aren't there still tasks and chores that need to be done? You're assuming that outside of work is all free time. Maybe I'm painting my house on the weekend, maybe I'm taking my kid to a doctor
The fantasy is that just because you work only 40 hours you should have enough free time to be interesting. I also want to accuse you of assuming your lifestyle translates to everyone
Why not? I get the bit about chores and kids but don't you think an entire week of video games and Netflix would lose its allure after a while? This scenario plays out when people retire. In the absence of work many start to lose their minds from boredom and seek new hobbies/experiences.
> It’s a common fantasy that removing the 40 hours per week of work would cause individuals to suddenly become more outgoing, adventurous, and interesting, but if people aren’t already doing those interesting and outgoing things on the weekends then I don’t think they’d suddenly start doing more of them with the job removed.
Many people spend their weekends doing chores and relaxing--i.e. maintaining. You don't think having even, say, a four day weekend and ample time to go beyond that would result in more people spending more time doing interesting things?
The last 2-3 years, many people had much more free time because of home office and other reasons. Did it change things? I don't get that impression. The lively people shifted their places of actions. The boring people remained boring. Instead of doing interesting things, most people started renovating their houses, did more chores, and relaxed more.
There was a pandemic that occurred in the last 2-3 years that put a damper on social and outdoor activities. Also home office is less important than how available your work requires you to be. Constantly 5m away from your computer doesn't give you much runway.
"you don't have to commute, so that means you can be available from 8 to 6! and we know you can't go out many places, so let's do a maintenance window this weekend"
Renovating homes is interesting for a lot of people tho. They like doing that. They are proud about how result looks like. They are engaged, study options etc.
UBI may be infeasible today. There simply isn't enough wealth to redistribute to make it substantial, there are too few benefactors of wealth concentration at the top, and too many below the median wage.
But there probably is enough income. What if everyone had a robot who could do their job, yet still collect the pay check?
Yes, I'm already thinking of STNG:The Measure of a Man.
The company/organization/government capable of making the robot wouldn't hand it out to random people, and would instead reap the paycheck by themselves.
>A full-time job and adult responsibilities still leave plenty of time to be “not boring” for people who make an effort to manage their time.
It's not about "time management", it's about energy.
After a day at a stressful job, even if it's just 9-5, and with all the commuting, the chores, cooking, and things like working out, etc., you don't have energy to do much else. Add having young kids to the mix, and this gets even worse. Be above 35-ish, where every levels drop even more, and it's even worse.
>The work of running, building, and maintaining the world we all inhabit must still be done
A huge part of that work done today is BS busy-jobs, or redundant stuff we can without, and mostly buy as "shopping therapy" or fashion and fad, because we're too tired to do anything else for entertainment due to the rat race.
I am “above 35-ish” and have kids, and I disagree. Yes, jobs are stressful and demand energy, but they shouldn’t demand so much energy that a person is unable to do anything enjoyable on the weekends or pick a night each week to go out with friends.
If a job becomes so draining that it leaves no energy for anything other than work and chores, you might be describing more of a burn out scenario. Either than or you have a toxic 70-hour per week job. Either way, I’d encourage you to reject this experience as “normal” and take a deep, hard look at what you can change or other jobs that might be better.
Life is too short to spend it on a job that leaves you lifeless.
>I am “above 35-ish” and have kids, and I disagree. Yes, jobs are stressful and demand energy, but they shouldn’t demand so much energy that a person is unable to do anything enjoyable on the weekends or pick a night each week to go out with friends.
Some people have more energy naturally (some, for explanaible reasons: e.g. obese people have less energy to be that kinetic, same for depressed people, but some people also due to their genetics). And, of course, some people have easier jobs, or like their jobs more, or don't have to deal with BS at their jobs or family life as much. Or have small commutes, enough salary not to have money stress, and several other factors.
Some or all of which might include you, and place you I'd say in an outlier category. I'd bet the more universal "35 with job and kids" experience is not much energy and doing fun stuff around town.
>Life is too short to spend it on a job that leaves you lifeless
Yes, but is still long enough to risk spending it homeless, divorced, or with hungry kids. Especially as not all industries and skills are in high demand, and not all locations have jobs easy to come by. And not everybody has a cushion of money to spend months looking for a new job they'd like more, especially with rent, kids, and bills running...
I am pretty sure Hanson is talking about a subset of people and organizations that are vocal: i.e. they have something to say, or have to say something (e.g. issue a press release or they are journalists etc), and positions they have to take.
As for UBI - you might be right, but that depends on how truly "universal" it is. If UBI is made conditional on "good behavior" or "social score", it is going to further amplify the social "dark forest".
> If UBI is made conditional on "good behavior" or "social score", it is going to further amplify the social "dark forest".
This is true. Personally, it's hard to imagine the public supporting a UBI scheme that extends to ex-convicts, let alone the imprisoned. Ditto undocumented immigrants.
A bit of a buried lede to amplify to the mountain tops:
it doesn't have to be this way.
The lives of wage-slavery most lead is a manufactured state of affairs, very much to the liking of and very useful for the so-called 1%.
If you aren't aware, since 1971 the US reversed post-WWII decade of increasing widespread prosperity during which gains in GDP and hence quality of life were relatively equitably shared across wealth-holders and wage-earners, and social mobility was on the rise. Access to high-quality health care, home ownership, and world-class education was understood increasingly as a goal and staple of a growing middle-class—and that often in the context of single earner households.
In the last 50 years that story has changed profoundly for the worst. Why? Because the top 10% and most of all the top few % of wealth-holders found their (already biggest) part of the pie not big enough, and they have systematically and very effectively eviscerated the middle class and social mobility,
producing not just lives of economic desperation and despair, barriers to stability security prosperity health and happiness,
but deep political unrest.
Why is the (class) enemy not known to the masses? Because this same period saw an intentional program of consolidated media ownership and the undoing of provisions for fair-and-balanced reporting, and the cooption even of national media like NPR and PBS, and the quiet acquisition of nominally "left" leaning bastions like the NYT and now CNN. Media market consolidation and the founding of FOX were literally, openly, intended to steer the discontent of the disenfranchised and increasingly desperate into tribal nationalist (and racist) action, rather than labor and class mobilization.
Seriously, if you aren't familiar with the ways in which wealth has been consolidated since especially Reagan, it's not hard to find. So to with correlated numbers on social mobility, media consolidation, percentage of full-time wage earners, etc ad nauseum.
This is not "Socialism 101," it's American history many of us have lived.
Things could be drastically better,
but we are right f---d now because wealth consolidation is now so total that both government and the media have been all but entirely captured.
There is no conspiracy, there is just the aggregated impact of decades of venal self-serving manipulation by wealth of the mechanisms whereby wealth is secured and its accumulation accelerated. 99% of those who played a part believed in good faith they were merely acting according to their self-interest, as "anyone would."
Anyone but the 90%+ of us being turned into miserable "boring" adults apparently.
Me? I'm part of the precariate, the 10% of white collar wage earners being brought to heel (so we read) by corporate masters discomforted by too much intrusion into the sacred space of the managerial 1% capital class—like most of you reading this.
We are part of the problem. We are the anxious halo around the truly rich, deeply enamored of and deeply dependent on our meager bag of formerly middle-class lifestyle affordances, like access to decent health care, decent education, and a modest amount of leisure.
I like you am in no way interested in losing those things.
I am interested instead of returning our society to one in which such things are vastly more commonly shared.
The problem is NOT wealth to support this.
It's there.
We just have smarmy self-satisfied very old white men sneering at the notion that the bounty is to be shared.
You know what's an X factor? The fascism lite and racist nationalism those men have unleashed, believing a seething mob of enraged deluded conspiracy theorists serve as useful shock troops...
...it may bring down the whole house.
They're going to bring it down it all down one way or another—if not with civil war lite, with the slow burn of climate change bred massive upheaval courting logistic collapse.
>Upon seeing the adult world in detail, teens often lament “But it’s all so boring!”
>I propose that the main reason that most of us look more boring in public is that social predators lie in wait there.
What a weird connection between two radically different aspects of life. I'm pretty sure it's not the _look_ that teenagers are intending when they conclude that grown ups are boring,
The fact is that what is interesting to a teenager and what is interesting to an adult are often very, very different. As an adult, the life of teens seems boring to me. I totally understand that teens would feel similarly about adults.
In a big city, you basically can. Go to a neighborhood you've never been in before and everyone (most likely) you meet is the first time you've ever seen them and vice-versa.
Speaking a different language works for me. I'm way more talkative when travelling abroad and speaking in English as opposed to travelling my home country barely meeting new people
Eh. That we are subject to opprobrium when we dissent is somewhat normal, and I do not believe social predators play much part in societal pressure to conform. Most people are good otherwise society couldn’t exist, and we can further assume that most people’s views are in a spectrum that doesn’t actually vary too wildly as society more or less seems to reflect a mild uniformity. If you want things to be “not boring” you would need to disrupt society severely. I have always felt that until Americans cannot feed themselves and send their kids to school, America would remain boring. Indeed, during the shelter in place orders when this began to happen, there was major social unrest… it took that much to make Americans care to do anything about serious social injustice.
If you combine the responsibilities and demands of adulthood with social pressure and mild uniformity, boringness is the result and it’s a good thing. When society falls apart, everything becomes unboring…
This is just an amateur view. Probably wise to talk to a sociologist or something about this topic.
When I read overwrought complaints like this, I can't help but wonder what heretical "revolutionary/exciting" thoughts they are "prohibited" from expressing?"
There are lots of courageous people out there challenging societal norms, but without fail it's reactionary conservatives complaining about being criticized for picking on them.
Trans kids in Texas? Unquestionably brave and very likely fascinating people.
Conservative lawmakers trying to legislate them out of existence and upset about being criticized? Not so much on either count.
If the author wants to meet interesting people, they're out there. If he's looking for permission to express his inner monologue, he's not one of them.
Or, hear me out, adults are boring, because they spend most of their lives in a job where they fulfill uninspiring, repetitive tasks.
More broadly, the real world seems boring, because your interaction with it is repetitive. You see, hear, do, talk about and think things that you've already seen, heard, talked about and thought before.
Things feel fresh, new and exciting when they're different from what you're used to, but not completely alien. E.g. travel to exotic places, fantasy novels, meeting new people.
Of course the theory about peasants on the road is an interesting perspective. But explaining social phenomena is not always possible using such parallels, neat as they may seem.
> travel to exotic places, fantasy novels, meeting new people.
Interesting for the actor, perhaps, but probably still boring for the observer. Generally, there is nothing interesting about people doing those things. They are common things people commonly do. A lifelong hermit who has never met another person finally deciding it is time to meet someone would be interesting, but that's an exceptional case.
Which brings us back to the article questioning why people don't shake things up sometimes. Like, why didn't the preacher at church not wear a KISS costume last Sunday? That would be interesting for me to see. It could become boring if done regularly, but one time out of the blue to the shock and awe of the congregation would be quite interesting. Is there some underlying mechanism that would keep said preacher from being willing to do that?
I don't know what religious community you're part of. Chances are, it's mostly adults and they have certain expectations about the attire of the preacher.
The community likely has its norms, and such a costume would violate them, i.e. be too alien for the participants to be able to appreciate it.
The preacher might still shake things up by introducing new subjects to a sermon or singing new songs, but there's only so much they can do. Which is why churches are usually boring.
> Chances are, it's mostly adults and they have certain expectations about the attire of the preacher.
Right, so he is worried that the congregation will become, as the article puts it, 'social predators' and use his actions against him. That's exactly it. It's funny that so many comments here deny that this would ever happen.
Most young people are also working. I don't see how that matters.
As you get older there are just less new first experiences to have.
Falling in love for the 20th time can never feel like the first. Another great Thai meal can never have the kick of the first with having no idea what to expect.
Having grown up with broken-glass-topped walls, and armed nightwatchmen, I can understand his take. It may apply in some cultures, and not in others.
"Boring" is in the eye of the beholder. I personally know some very interesting people. Many of them are reformed predators (of all types).
It may be as simple as the fact that being "not-boring" takes a lot of work. I suspect that most of us find that we aren't really interested in the rewards (and risks) of all the work. When we're insecure teenagers, we probably feel that it's worth the work.
> I propose that the main reason that most of us look more boring in public is that social predators lie in wait there. With friends, family, and close co-workers, we are around people that mostly want to like us, and know us rather well. Yes, they want us to conform too, but they apply this pressure in moderation.
> Out in public, in contrast, we face bandits just looking for chances to gain social credit by taking us down, vis accusing us of violating the sacred. And like townspeople traveling among the bandits, we are in public pretty vulnerable to the kinds of bandits that afflict us.
As someone else said, people have to make a living. If you don't have a job you cannot live, and most average people can't imagine surviving expulsion from society. Frankly, the people who belong to outrage cliques are generally toying with a weapon in capitalism that they understand well: if you cannot make money, you don't survive, even if you do your psyche and feeling of safety are likely lost.
We have no perfect barometer for what makes someone fireable under the right circumstances. I remember years ago a key Drupal developer was outted for having a Gorean relationship with his wife that was mutually consenting. The mob succeeded and he was fired. Last I checked his blog he's doing fine, but I attribute that to kink becoming more mainstream around the time. Had it been a decade earlier he would've been unhireable in any place that employed women for how those folks had postured him.
Anecdotally, this is the only place I talk about using mushrooms or LSD. I'm very selective, especially in tech, of going into any detail of my military service. There are some things you just know people won't know how to interpret or where their lack of familiarity will be a playground for their imagination.
I say all that to say that the wise man says fewer words. You don't know what tomorrow's weapon will be, so it's easier to be boring except among a select few. Even people who believe outrage cliques are exceptional or rare will follow these same patterns.
I think he's off base. There are lots of places on the internet I could go to where the users are anonymous and the conversations are frequently about sacred subjects. In this sense they would be considered 'lively' but to me they are also boring because they are all alive in exactly the same way. It's the same sacred cows being slain the same way, day after day after day. I think real liveliness doesn't come from avoiding social sanction per se, I think it comes from the interaction of different viewpoints in some sort of measured fashion (ie no one viewpoint overwhelms) and important that will include some degree of social sanctioning. But even that liveliness doesn't survive long because it's very uncomfortable. One side always overwhelms the other and when I see posts like this (there's lots of them) it always feels like the true reasoning underneath is: "if my ideas were considered fairly in a marketplace of ideas they would win and overwhelm." So no one is really seeking liveliness, just a boringness that they happen to agree with.
Adults don't care about impressing their peers by and large, whereas teenagers/young adults are singularly obsessed with it. At least I decided to stop caring about making it seem like I wasn't boring and I'm happier for it.
I 100% see where you're coming from, and I know I've missed professional opportunities because I refuse to play that game. But.
I know I'm happier that I can spend the weekend tromping around in the woods instead of dealing with whatever drama is currently happening at the Rotary Club or local Country Club. I know I'm happier that I can drink some beers with my neighbors instead of going to a wine mixer for whatever local 'name' is hosting one this weekend as a fundraiser.
So I have to buy a new mid-sized or compact car instead of the huge stupid truck I would like, and I can't afford a lawn tractor to help with jobs around my property. So what? Do those things mean I'm not living to my fullest?
I suspect many adults play status games to fill voids in their own small lives. This is seen as a socially acceptable and laudable thing to do.
I loathe the fact that ambition is often filed down to one-dimensional idea of making lots of money, dominating others in the workplace, and generally succeeding in the business world. It's little wonder there's so many people are on anti-depressants.
The authors book "The Elephant in the brain" argues that virtually all adult behavior is unconsciously about status seeking, while pretending and convincing ourselves that it is not.
In that sense, it's not that this goes away as you get older, but it becomes more psychologically sophisticated, and less transparent.
Yeah I'm not above some status games, but I think I'm more conscious of when they matter v. not, and their actual tangible benefits on my life (i.e. promotion = money or new opportunities open professionally).
Absolutely, nearly everything Robin Hanson says suffers from this dynamic, so he is very familiar with it. He is consciously trying to do this, and stands out as really really weird as a result.
This article actually makes a lot of sense, perhaps more so in our media driven, social media fueled society. Everyone has the responsibilities of adulthood, mortgage, job, kids, etc. and all of these things are very important. If one was to be not boring, acting in a new or exciting manner or a way in which might violate anyone's opinion of what is sacred, trans rights, racist, advocate that the poor 'pull themselves up by the bootstraps', attend drag shows, whatever. Each side has their sacred cows and any normal person that catches the eye of the media or socal media "bandits" runs the very real risk of being pulled down, called out and losing their job and career. You even have to fear the police deciding that they dont like you and arresting you as evidenced by multiple stories of parents being arrested for allowing their kids to "free roam". Anything outside of the norm is very much a risk and in todays social media wild west the "bandits" have more power than ever.
I don't need buying groceries to be exciting. I need it to be done.
I seriously don't need my drive anywhere to be exciting.
Also, I notice that for a lot of people, their definition of "boring" is some version of sitting at home and watching Netflix while their definition of exciting is sitting in a different building and watching people do things. What is the difference between seeing a movie in the theater and in your home? A play? A concert? Etc.
Anyone who is promoting replacing a passive activity with another passive activity is only offering the illusion of excitement.
I highly doubt that'll be the case. GPU memory and average RAM numbers have only increased by like 3-5x in the past 10 years. Even if we follow that growth rate while making models a lot more compact it'll still be nowhere enough.
It currently takes like what, 400 or 500 GB of VRAM to load ChatGPT according to some estimates? You can't realistically compress that data much further without final performance degradation.
I'd expect something one tenth as good as it running locally in 5 years at best.
As a teen I thought adults were boring because they didn't do any of the things I wanted to spend my time doing - as an adult, I have a bunch of hobbies that are pretty inaccessible to children and I think they're very neat hobbies, but I would also forgive a child for thinking that I'm boring because I like to drive my car or go on wine tastings instead of watching cartoons on saturday morning.
As I have gotten older, I have noticed a lot of people conflate 'boring' and 'stable.'
One of my friends who would air a complaint that everyone is 'so boring' is the same person that can't hold a job and still uses all sorts of drugs. When I was young, I would find myself attracted to potential partners even if they lacked stability. Now I can't even imagine that.
Stability is a great thing to have in life, but the price you pay for stability is having a plan and knowing what comes next. That might make it boring, but I'll make that trade every time.
That might make it boring, but I'll make that trade every time
I was just musing below that evolutionary pressures have very likely conditioned all humankind to make that trade every time.
The great advantage of "boring" social groupings is stability. Humans have discovered over the millennia that "lively" or "outraged" groupings find lots of adventure, but don't last very long.
Stable is boring when stable reflects what has been done time and time again. Interestingness requires novelty. Someone who seeks stability in living on the moon and has a plan to make it happen would be hard to call boring – until many more people follow the same blueprint, at which point it too will become boring.
This will vary greatly with age, location, culture, ethnicity, etc. But generally, the Western world, particularly the heavily industrialized corridors such as the US and Europe, are going through a tribalization phase. This is one of Marshall McLuhan's theories. In this phase, conformity is rewarded, because communications have "shrunk" the world, allowing almost anyone to reach other to other's as if they were in the same village. He called the networks formed by international speed-of-light communications the "global village." Since a village can be a harsh physical environment, it requires a strict social environment to survive. Therefore anyone branching out is own their own....
...unless of course, they're so far out that they're successful (e.g. Elon Musk), in which case they become the new center to rally around. You might call it the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer Effect[0]
But that's exactly what the author concluded: "It takes unusual art, allies, and energy, in a word “eliteness”, to survive while choosing lively."
Freud also discussed this balance between the individual and society in _Society and Its Discontents_. I personally feel the pull all the time. I want to be weird in certain ways I won't discuss here... But presently, deviation has an accepted form and that's not me.
The boringness comes from nuance, which this post seems to lack, and that truly revolutionary ideas are rare.
Sure, you can be not boring by shouting your hot take from the rooftops, bluster like trump etc, but the truth is that 'truth' is not absolute, everyone has a slightly different perspective, and adults take that into consideration.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadI have an unproven suspicion that if UBI was a thing we would see a lot more “not boring” adults, “Social predators” be damned.
I am not familiar with all of Robin Hanson's work, but I have seen two other such cases that really stand out in my memory:
-He advocated for intentional covid-19 exposure as "variolation" before a vaccine was developed, suggesting this would save lives
-His book "The Elephant in the Brain" explains why virtually all of the supposed motives of people in public culture are dishonest, and the real motives are hidden, even from ourselves - and are mostly all about maneuvering for social status
A quote from Tyler Cowen on his wikipedia page:
Robin has strange ideas ... My other friend and colleague Bryan Caplan put it best: "When the typical economist tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'Eh, maybe.' Then I forget about it. When Robin Hanson tells me about his latest research, my standard reaction is 'No way! Impossible!' Then I think about it for years."
If I did not need to get along with everyone at work, I could be more lively, even without quitting my job.
(note, my 2 cents: It's not strictly "Adulthood". My wife and I settled "late" in our lives, so we both had very different lifestyle/priorities/hobbies in our 20s and 30s - I did rock climbing, rally racing, flying lessons, professional and art photography, Karate, skiing, guitar, video games, rollerblading and kangoo boots and dragon boating and myriad other activities plus constant little experiments and fun things - vs now in our 40's that we have two young kids, full time management jobs, mortgage and expenses. This is not to say we don't, theoretically, have power to still change some of our lifestyle; but the constraints on time, energy and money are legitimately one to two orders of magnitude different)
That being said, I think the blog has an interesting perspective about social normalization overall. Whatever one's inherent personal level of "interesting and exciting and weird" may be, there may be significant social pressure of various kinds to minimize it externally.
And FWIW, I think it works to different magnitudes in different places and times: in my old country, especially a few decades ago, adults did NOT try new things, and did NOT do exciting things. I love Canada because I can try all these crazy new things and hobbies and activities and suck at them, and average Canadian will still say "Good on YOU! Have fun!:)". Whereas in my old country people would gossip "Who is he trying to BE? He's a [Doctor|Teacher|Programmer|Manager|Whatever] for god's sake, he shouldn't be doing things like that!". You would be judged very harshly with tremendous peer-group pressure to stay in pre-defined zones of your station and lot. Heck, my mom, against all social norms learned to ride a bike when she was 38 in the old country and she was oh my god chastised and judged for that, which feels ridiculous from Canadian perspective.
What you describe isn’t common for people who haven’t “settled” or who don’t have 40 hour per week jobs.
That extreme level of hobbies and activity, some of which aren’t cheap, would be an outlier for people in your position.
> This is not to say we don't, theoretically, have power to still change some of our lifestyle; but the constraints on time, energy and money are one or two orders of magnitude different.
As a counter example, I watched a number of my friends slide into complacency in their lates 20s and early 30s despite having very easy jobs. I can think of several people who worked remote or for family businesses and did little more than a couple of hours of “work” per day from their phones, yet that didn’t automatically translate into a diverse and outgoing lifestyle. It seems to translate more often to a complacency and inactivity.
Having kids was the catalyst for forcing these people to be active again. They now go out and do things, whether it’s going outside to go to the park or going on a mini-adventure somewhere because their kids are bored
The idea that “kids make you boring” hasn’t been true in the people I know. It’s true that kids change what you can do with your time, but it’s anything but boring. Getting out of the house and doing social activities with other kids/parents really opens a whole new world of activity and engagement, even if it doesn’t mean dragon boat racing every weekend.
I'm a single dad, and bring my toddler son on tons of outdoor adventures, and it is really good for both of our mental health, and reduces our stress a lot.
Then I actually had kids. It’s true that I can’t go do these hobbies every single weekend or wait until the last second to plan a spontaneous outing without preparing. However, it’s not true that they simply stop and become impossible. It takes a different approach to planning and prep, but it can be done.
It’s also interesting to learn how many of the other hobbyists also have kids. Before kids I just assumed everyone else was childless like myself, but it turns out a lot of people who do these hobbies also have kids at home once you talk to them.
But, you know, not the same fun as when you go down on your own speed and have actual skiing fun.
Thanks for the video!
Second, I did more outdoors with a toddler than most people would even believe. It took a lot of planning, and was very physically demanding but was worth it. Some examples: -serious backpacking and hiking trips in remote places, mostly carrying them in an osprey child carrier pack, but having them walk as much as they can -long, remote kayaking trips in a double kayak -multi day boating trips exploring uninhabited islands and beaches together
Check out “outdoor boys” on YouTube for some examples of really serious outdoor adventures with toddlers.
Second, I did not said impossible. I said it is entirely different experience. And it is. It is family experience and not sport adventure experience. Most of the time you spend supervising the kid and focusing on that.
You don't spend that time the same way as when you are adult and can actually relax, actually raise own adrenaline and so on.
My point is that the experience as an adult is better once you fully embrace the parenting role, stop resenting the fact that you aren't by yourself, and look for what is possible to do together. The attitude of comparing yourself as a parent to a solo person and longing for being solo is a really destructive narrative that will lead you to resenting instead of enjoying parenting, and make it impossible to be present as a good parent. Yes, parenting is much harder, and you can't do the same things... but you can grow as a person, and do different things, that are often even more awesome- especially in regards to extreme outdoor sports. Doing difficult outdoor sports with a young kid is the ultimate challenge, and requires you to cultivate a level of badass not needed or even possible as a solo person.
I can see how what you are saying is probably true for downhill skiing, but I certainly have been able to relax, get a serious workout, and raise my adrenaline doing other outdoor adventures with young kids. It's key to be able to carry their weight physically with your own body when they get tired, so that you are limited only by your own physical fitness, just like when you are solo only harder. I get this is probably not safe for downhill skiing- but can work with a sled (x-country ski), kayak, hiking, etc.
Signal theory: I can't place a lot of eclectic or odd behavior or appearances. As in, I can place a lot of stuff like the business casual soccer parent demographic, or the hoodrat gangster demo, or the painfully hipster but-not-pulling-it-off demo, etc. I know before I talk to you, roughly, where you line up.
Always exceptions, of course, but it's a reasonable shorthand. Dave is a sports guy who likes whiskey. That may not be true, and he may have deep, deeeeeep interests in esoteric Christianity, fractal math, and trainhopping, but most of that will never come up at work (or outside of it), and even if it did I don't have the cognitive space to care about except for people in my inner circle.
And that works both ways -- I have to hope that if I put on an outfit or present a certain lifestyle it will sell well on the street, at a store, at the office, etc. Both that the other person(s) understands what I'm giving off, and that they will respond to it with positive regard. Even if I'm an odd, eclectic dude -- and I am; most folks wouldn't believe my stories -- I have nothing to gain by broadcasting that fact, and it may interfere or cause misinterpretations of other honest signaling.
This one got me thinking too.
What if "boring" social groupings have proven more stable over time than "lively and outraged" social groupings? Would evolutionary pressures start shaping our social structures over the millennia?
I mean, I think probably they would right?
Does the fact its focused only on right wing cultural issues make it ok? Does that make the people attacking them and attempting to get them fired any less of a "bandit" to use the articles term?
There have been several articles on parents being arrested for allowing their kids to "free range". Right wing focuses on drag shows. Its all over the place. Bandits are everywhere.
I mean, there are no bandits. A right wing racist is just a part of society, with the freedom and the right to express his/her opinion and associate with those whom s/he pleases. Where is the "banditry" in that?
The person opposed to the right wing racist is just a part of society, with the freedom and the right to express his/her opinion and associate with those whom s/he pleases. Where is the "banditry" in that?
Maybe it would be helpful if you could outline why you believe those exercising, say, Constitutional freedoms in the US, are "bandits" or "social predators", as opposed to being just regular members of society acting in the fashion their Constitution intended?
And now I write that, I realise that what is here called "bandit" used to be called "troll" back in the late 90s.
And before the internet, "antisocial youths loitering in malls".
Also, https://xkcd.com/677 comes to mind.
Just as the Republican party is big on personal liberty and the Democrat party is (I think?) trying to conserve the environment, today there are some people trying to "cancel" anyone who is pro-trans and others trying to cancel anyone who is anti-trans. I see stuff like this pop up in all sorts of surprising contexts, including someone who was convinced that "epileptics are all faking it", a parter's mother who thought I had to be lying when I said I was vegetarian, and some weirdo who began campaigning against all apps made in the Xojo programming language because he didn't like the company's decision to change the design of its IDE's user interface.
They like to shout about liberty tp cover themselve literally trying to outlaw whole range of ideas and harmless behaviors.
Yeah, like playing computer games, for example. And then you suddenly get Gamergate.
Or the knitting controversy.
A hobby can be harmless, and then suddenly it is not.
Probably true.
The more I think on it, the more I see a society as a society. There is no such thing as a social predator. Everyone is part of a society. If women choose to boycott a company's products because they are upset at that company's lax attitude towards women's safety or whatever, that doesn't make half of society social predators. Women are a part of society, they're entitled to opinions, as well as the agency to engage in freedom of lawful action.
The company doesn't seem a predator to me either, as all they are doing is taking lawful action to protect their revenue.
There really are no social predators here, unless I've misunderstood the term.
And they are not risking anything, because they are saying stuff rest of family does not mind hearing much. If you oppose then, you will be blamed for starting a conflict.
Which is why that trope exists, people are trying to figure out what to do in situation they are expected to shut up while they feel bad about own complacency.
The only risk is that his social contacts start to cut him out of their life for his actions (i.e. social predators).
A full-time job and adult responsibilities still leave plenty of time to be “not boring” for people who make an effort to manage their time.
Many jobs also provide an opportunity for social exposure, get people out of the house (or at least out of their comfort zone and interacting with others remotely). I suspect a lot of people would actually become less socialized and outgoing if they didn’t have the structure of a job to make them adopt routine and discipline in their lives.
> I have an unproven suspicion that if UBI was a thing we would see a lot more “not boring” adults
The only remotely feasible UBI programs wouldn’t be supplying enough money for people to go out and live their best lives. It’s more of a subsistence amount of money.
In a theoretical world where large numbers of people received significant amounts of money and didn’t have to work, we wouldn’t all be going around doing leisure activities everywhere. The work of running, building, and maintaining the world we all inhabit must still be done, which would require significantly higher labor costs to make up for the decreased supply of labor. This would make everything more expensive, which means people would have to go back and get jobs if they wanted to have enough funds to do the “interesting” things beyond subsistence living on UBI.
It’s a common fantasy that removing the 40 hours per week of work would cause individuals to suddenly become more outgoing, adventurous, and interesting, but if people aren’t already doing those interesting and outgoing things on the weekends then I don’t think they’d suddenly start doing more of them with the job removed.
the magic that UBI proponents bank on is automation and increased productivity of the remaining workers. And also taxing the wealthy.
And the rich? The rich are going to replace the average person's job with a robot/software anyway. What's the point of all this automation if not to work less? I didn't realize The Jetsons was such a dystopian vision of the future. Well, as long as we're the Haves it's not our problem.
I took 2 months unpaid paternity because I'm lucky and privileged that way, and let me tell you how much more interesting and outgoing and fun and exciting and involved I was :->
I’m in the exact situation you describe (mid-career, kids at home, demanding job). These weekend activities are still an opportunity to have fun and do interesting things.
Do interesting things with your kids! The weekend may not be the same opportunity to go out and do an unplanned adventure into the mountains or travel spontaneously, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go do something fun with your kids.
It gets better as you adapt and figure out parenthood. It also doesn’t last for very long, all things considered, so make the most of the time you have with your young kids.
When work is over aren't there still tasks and chores that need to be done? You're assuming that outside of work is all free time. Maybe I'm painting my house on the weekend, maybe I'm taking my kid to a doctor
The fantasy is that just because you work only 40 hours you should have enough free time to be interesting. I also want to accuse you of assuming your lifestyle translates to everyone
Many people spend their weekends doing chores and relaxing--i.e. maintaining. You don't think having even, say, a four day weekend and ample time to go beyond that would result in more people spending more time doing interesting things?
Really?
But there probably is enough income. What if everyone had a robot who could do their job, yet still collect the pay check?
Yes, I'm already thinking of STNG:The Measure of a Man.
It's not about "time management", it's about energy.
After a day at a stressful job, even if it's just 9-5, and with all the commuting, the chores, cooking, and things like working out, etc., you don't have energy to do much else. Add having young kids to the mix, and this gets even worse. Be above 35-ish, where every levels drop even more, and it's even worse.
>The work of running, building, and maintaining the world we all inhabit must still be done
A huge part of that work done today is BS busy-jobs, or redundant stuff we can without, and mostly buy as "shopping therapy" or fashion and fad, because we're too tired to do anything else for entertainment due to the rat race.
If a job becomes so draining that it leaves no energy for anything other than work and chores, you might be describing more of a burn out scenario. Either than or you have a toxic 70-hour per week job. Either way, I’d encourage you to reject this experience as “normal” and take a deep, hard look at what you can change or other jobs that might be better.
Life is too short to spend it on a job that leaves you lifeless.
Some people have more energy naturally (some, for explanaible reasons: e.g. obese people have less energy to be that kinetic, same for depressed people, but some people also due to their genetics). And, of course, some people have easier jobs, or like their jobs more, or don't have to deal with BS at their jobs or family life as much. Or have small commutes, enough salary not to have money stress, and several other factors.
Some or all of which might include you, and place you I'd say in an outlier category. I'd bet the more universal "35 with job and kids" experience is not much energy and doing fun stuff around town.
>Life is too short to spend it on a job that leaves you lifeless
Yes, but is still long enough to risk spending it homeless, divorced, or with hungry kids. Especially as not all industries and skills are in high demand, and not all locations have jobs easy to come by. And not everybody has a cushion of money to spend months looking for a new job they'd like more, especially with rent, kids, and bills running...
As for UBI - you might be right, but that depends on how truly "universal" it is. If UBI is made conditional on "good behavior" or "social score", it is going to further amplify the social "dark forest".
This is true. Personally, it's hard to imagine the public supporting a UBI scheme that extends to ex-convicts, let alone the imprisoned. Ditto undocumented immigrants.
it doesn't have to be this way.
The lives of wage-slavery most lead is a manufactured state of affairs, very much to the liking of and very useful for the so-called 1%.
If you aren't aware, since 1971 the US reversed post-WWII decade of increasing widespread prosperity during which gains in GDP and hence quality of life were relatively equitably shared across wealth-holders and wage-earners, and social mobility was on the rise. Access to high-quality health care, home ownership, and world-class education was understood increasingly as a goal and staple of a growing middle-class—and that often in the context of single earner households.
In the last 50 years that story has changed profoundly for the worst. Why? Because the top 10% and most of all the top few % of wealth-holders found their (already biggest) part of the pie not big enough, and they have systematically and very effectively eviscerated the middle class and social mobility,
producing not just lives of economic desperation and despair, barriers to stability security prosperity health and happiness,
but deep political unrest.
Why is the (class) enemy not known to the masses? Because this same period saw an intentional program of consolidated media ownership and the undoing of provisions for fair-and-balanced reporting, and the cooption even of national media like NPR and PBS, and the quiet acquisition of nominally "left" leaning bastions like the NYT and now CNN. Media market consolidation and the founding of FOX were literally, openly, intended to steer the discontent of the disenfranchised and increasingly desperate into tribal nationalist (and racist) action, rather than labor and class mobilization.
Seriously, if you aren't familiar with the ways in which wealth has been consolidated since especially Reagan, it's not hard to find. So to with correlated numbers on social mobility, media consolidation, percentage of full-time wage earners, etc ad nauseum.
This is not "Socialism 101," it's American history many of us have lived.
Things could be drastically better,
but we are right f---d now because wealth consolidation is now so total that both government and the media have been all but entirely captured.
There is no conspiracy, there is just the aggregated impact of decades of venal self-serving manipulation by wealth of the mechanisms whereby wealth is secured and its accumulation accelerated. 99% of those who played a part believed in good faith they were merely acting according to their self-interest, as "anyone would."
Anyone but the 90%+ of us being turned into miserable "boring" adults apparently.
Me? I'm part of the precariate, the 10% of white collar wage earners being brought to heel (so we read) by corporate masters discomforted by too much intrusion into the sacred space of the managerial 1% capital class—like most of you reading this.
We are part of the problem. We are the anxious halo around the truly rich, deeply enamored of and deeply dependent on our meager bag of formerly middle-class lifestyle affordances, like access to decent health care, decent education, and a modest amount of leisure.
I like you am in no way interested in losing those things.
I am interested instead of returning our society to one in which such things are vastly more commonly shared.
The problem is NOT wealth to support this.
It's there.
We just have smarmy self-satisfied very old white men sneering at the notion that the bounty is to be shared.
You know what's an X factor? The fascism lite and racist nationalism those men have unleashed, believing a seething mob of enraged deluded conspiracy theorists serve as useful shock troops...
...it may bring down the whole house.
They're going to bring it down it all down one way or another—if not with civil war lite, with the slow burn of climate change bred massive upheaval courting logistic collapse.
Don't forget the emp...
Companies want boring robots, and schools produce them.
They're driven by efficiency reasons - narrow specialization can improve performance on a narrow range of tasks, but increases boredom.
Working at your own business, while perhaps more interesting, still constrains many of your working hours to specific activities.
Humans are so much more capable, but generally the working world isn't structured to support human creativity and potential.
>I propose that the main reason that most of us look more boring in public is that social predators lie in wait there.
What a weird connection between two radically different aspects of life. I'm pretty sure it's not the _look_ that teenagers are intending when they conclude that grown ups are boring,
If you combine the responsibilities and demands of adulthood with social pressure and mild uniformity, boringness is the result and it’s a good thing. When society falls apart, everything becomes unboring…
This is just an amateur view. Probably wise to talk to a sociologist or something about this topic.
There are lots of courageous people out there challenging societal norms, but without fail it's reactionary conservatives complaining about being criticized for picking on them.
Trans kids in Texas? Unquestionably brave and very likely fascinating people. Conservative lawmakers trying to legislate them out of existence and upset about being criticized? Not so much on either count.
If the author wants to meet interesting people, they're out there. If he's looking for permission to express his inner monologue, he's not one of them.
More broadly, the real world seems boring, because your interaction with it is repetitive. You see, hear, do, talk about and think things that you've already seen, heard, talked about and thought before.
Things feel fresh, new and exciting when they're different from what you're used to, but not completely alien. E.g. travel to exotic places, fantasy novels, meeting new people.
Of course the theory about peasants on the road is an interesting perspective. But explaining social phenomena is not always possible using such parallels, neat as they may seem.
Interesting for the actor, perhaps, but probably still boring for the observer. Generally, there is nothing interesting about people doing those things. They are common things people commonly do. A lifelong hermit who has never met another person finally deciding it is time to meet someone would be interesting, but that's an exceptional case.
Which brings us back to the article questioning why people don't shake things up sometimes. Like, why didn't the preacher at church not wear a KISS costume last Sunday? That would be interesting for me to see. It could become boring if done regularly, but one time out of the blue to the shock and awe of the congregation would be quite interesting. Is there some underlying mechanism that would keep said preacher from being willing to do that?
The community likely has its norms, and such a costume would violate them, i.e. be too alien for the participants to be able to appreciate it.
The preacher might still shake things up by introducing new subjects to a sermon or singing new songs, but there's only so much they can do. Which is why churches are usually boring.
Right, so he is worried that the congregation will become, as the article puts it, 'social predators' and use his actions against him. That's exactly it. It's funny that so many comments here deny that this would ever happen.
As you get older there are just less new first experiences to have.
Falling in love for the 20th time can never feel like the first. Another great Thai meal can never have the kick of the first with having no idea what to expect.
"Boring" is in the eye of the beholder. I personally know some very interesting people. Many of them are reformed predators (of all types).
It may be as simple as the fact that being "not-boring" takes a lot of work. I suspect that most of us find that we aren't really interested in the rewards (and risks) of all the work. When we're insecure teenagers, we probably feel that it's worth the work.
> Out in public, in contrast, we face bandits just looking for chances to gain social credit by taking us down, vis accusing us of violating the sacred. And like townspeople traveling among the bandits, we are in public pretty vulnerable to the kinds of bandits that afflict us.
As someone else said, people have to make a living. If you don't have a job you cannot live, and most average people can't imagine surviving expulsion from society. Frankly, the people who belong to outrage cliques are generally toying with a weapon in capitalism that they understand well: if you cannot make money, you don't survive, even if you do your psyche and feeling of safety are likely lost.
We have no perfect barometer for what makes someone fireable under the right circumstances. I remember years ago a key Drupal developer was outted for having a Gorean relationship with his wife that was mutually consenting. The mob succeeded and he was fired. Last I checked his blog he's doing fine, but I attribute that to kink becoming more mainstream around the time. Had it been a decade earlier he would've been unhireable in any place that employed women for how those folks had postured him.
Anecdotally, this is the only place I talk about using mushrooms or LSD. I'm very selective, especially in tech, of going into any detail of my military service. There are some things you just know people won't know how to interpret or where their lack of familiarity will be a playground for their imagination.
I say all that to say that the wise man says fewer words. You don't know what tomorrow's weapon will be, so it's easier to be boring except among a select few. Even people who believe outrage cliques are exceptional or rare will follow these same patterns.
Very true, and a reason I’ve been trying to “clean up” older posts in various places from when (I thought) I was an un-boring youth.
Religion Can Divert Sacred Energy
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2023/02/religion-can-divert-s...
Middle aged garbage fire. I've been there. Outta marshmallows.
I 100% see where you're coming from, and I know I've missed professional opportunities because I refuse to play that game. But.
I know I'm happier that I can spend the weekend tromping around in the woods instead of dealing with whatever drama is currently happening at the Rotary Club or local Country Club. I know I'm happier that I can drink some beers with my neighbors instead of going to a wine mixer for whatever local 'name' is hosting one this weekend as a fundraiser.
So I have to buy a new mid-sized or compact car instead of the huge stupid truck I would like, and I can't afford a lawn tractor to help with jobs around my property. So what? Do those things mean I'm not living to my fullest?
I loathe the fact that ambition is often filed down to one-dimensional idea of making lots of money, dominating others in the workplace, and generally succeeding in the business world. It's little wonder there's so many people are on anti-depressants.
In that sense, it's not that this goes away as you get older, but it becomes more psychologically sophisticated, and less transparent.
If you conflate “the world” with “social media”, sure, I guess
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
I don't need buying groceries to be exciting. I need it to be done.
I seriously don't need my drive anywhere to be exciting.
Also, I notice that for a lot of people, their definition of "boring" is some version of sitting at home and watching Netflix while their definition of exciting is sitting in a different building and watching people do things. What is the difference between seeing a movie in the theater and in your home? A play? A concert? Etc.
Anyone who is promoting replacing a passive activity with another passive activity is only offering the illusion of excitement.
If there was a paid plan for ChatGPT that eliminated the lame content filters, it would sell like hot cakes.
All of us collectively have about that long to decide how to deal with this.
It currently takes like what, 400 or 500 GB of VRAM to load ChatGPT according to some estimates? You can't realistically compress that data much further without final performance degradation.
I'd expect something one tenth as good as it running locally in 5 years at best.
One of my friends who would air a complaint that everyone is 'so boring' is the same person that can't hold a job and still uses all sorts of drugs. When I was young, I would find myself attracted to potential partners even if they lacked stability. Now I can't even imagine that.
Stability is a great thing to have in life, but the price you pay for stability is having a plan and knowing what comes next. That might make it boring, but I'll make that trade every time.
Edit: spelling
I was just musing below that evolutionary pressures have very likely conditioned all humankind to make that trade every time.
The great advantage of "boring" social groupings is stability. Humans have discovered over the millennia that "lively" or "outraged" groupings find lots of adventure, but don't last very long.
...unless of course, they're so far out that they're successful (e.g. Elon Musk), in which case they become the new center to rally around. You might call it the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer Effect[0]
But that's exactly what the author concluded: "It takes unusual art, allies, and energy, in a word “eliteness”, to survive while choosing lively."
Freud also discussed this balance between the individual and society in _Society and Its Discontents_. I personally feel the pull all the time. I want to be weird in certain ways I won't discuss here... But presently, deviation has an accepted form and that's not me.
[0] https://miro.medium.com/max/720/1*nLHfkNG67b6fi-ccF_G4yA.web...
Sure, you can be not boring by shouting your hot take from the rooftops, bluster like trump etc, but the truth is that 'truth' is not absolute, everyone has a slightly different perspective, and adults take that into consideration.