Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy.
I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune on the stock market at the start of this millenium. Not filthy rich, but enough to never have to work again and live a comfortable, middle-class life.
I didn't "get out" because of greed, and voila, the bubble burst and the comfortable situation was over - I was at the mercy of my salary again, and everything that comes with it. Dumb colleagues, inept superiors, boring work, etc.
My employment situation didn't change - but when I had the theoretical opportunity to just quit with no financial worries, I was happy despite everything. Once that stopped, I became unhappy, or rather, baseline neutral again.
When I was in the comfortable situation, I was carefree and open to pursue ideas and projects brought to me which I knew were stupid and prone to fail. My colleagues loved it, of course.
I learned that worrying about whether I'll have enough money to live somewhat comfortably until death is what makes me unhappy, and extremely wary to avoid failure. There's nothing else to it.
It's not just a matter of precariousness. You just have a lot more time and energy for these things. You can always sleep a bit longer, or delay work to follow an impulse with your full energy. There's always time for projects, even if they're not part of some hustle. It's an incredible privilege.
Forget about the American dream. The Victorian dream is where it's at. I want to spend my days being a gentleman scientist and a student of the arts. I want my best work to follow my morning tea in the garden, and I want to join a Society of Likeminded Nerds to talk about it.
Atop a healthy and happy family, this is all I want from life. I would be honored to apply for membership at your Society if and when you ever start it.
>> I would be honored to apply for membership at your Society if and when you ever start it.
I'd argue this already exists. We're on it right now...
YES. Anyone know of a good place for this?
In another 1,000 years, think about who around you right now might have the chance to be remembered. Someone like Bezos or Musk? Those reading about our life in the year 3,022 might believe everyone in our time was a wealthy CEO funding rocketship companies if they go by the names that have stood through time.
Looking at your profile it doesn’t look like you have any favorites saved yet, so maybe you’re not familiar with that feature?
This is the myth that keeps people trapped in bad jobs, but it’s not true.
Yes, most of us have to continue working. But no, that doesn’t mean your job must be miserable and you must be surrounded by miserable people. Look around. Try something different. There are a lot of good jobs and teams out there.
Too many people in tech approach their careers as a simple compensation maximization problem and disregard everything else. They end up in companies that are happy to pay them 10-100% more but then demand they work 20-200% harder and deal with bad behavior and unrealistic expectations because the company knows they’re not going to leave behind that sweet total compensation to go somewhere less stressful.
You can have good pay and good working conditions, but you have to work to find it and keep it. The big company recruiters desperate to give you high total comp just to get you in the door (often to replace employees who turned over) aren’t necessarily the path to finding that optimal point, though.
I’ve taken a few salary down-steps in my career that felt scary at the time but ended up being well worth it for the increased quality of life.
Or put differently, we're not all around 30 anymore, live in the bay area, and might have family matters, e.hg. a wife that doesn't want to quit a job she loves so you can maybe improve your happiness by 10%.
Also, companies change over time. A great place can become hell with just one bad superior getting hired and poisoning everything.
This can also happen with lower paying gigs, so you still have to qualify your jobs appropriately, but prioritizing quality of life over raw compensation is a great trade in my book. With the high salaries of the current tech market, it's not actually that hard to make a very comfortable living while still staying sane/happy and avoiding burnout.
The upside being that you can also take some time to learn new tech / get your head out of the weeds, and often make much more important and broad impacts. Like Kent Beck used to say: "program as if you had enough time".
The existential unhappiness of work is from depending on it for your livelihood.
As PP described, he was perfectly happy with his job until he became dependent on it and no longer had the ability to walk away at any time without caring about the financial consequences.
Among other things, as you indicate, as soon as you become dependent on your job financially, you take on an additional, and unhappiness-inducing, maintenance burden of constantly working to keep your job and then working to find a replacement job when your job changes or vanishes due to business conditions or the economy.
(And, of course, the work becomes something that you have to do, which creates reactance, etc..)
This doesn't work if you're literally struggling to make ends meet to the point that you're actually not making ends meet. But you certainly don't need anything near "never have to work again" levels of wealth to have this freedom.
There is a risk of stepping outside. It's not all roses. People are not afraid for no reason and it's not just "all in the head" and an attitude problem.
Yep. Single person with minimal responsibilities has more freedom/flexibility than someone with a family (for example) - kids/spouse mean your time is not just your own, and your decisions have direct (often immediate) impacts on those around you.
It blows me away how easy it is to grow your expenses right along with your income. I started in this industry making like $60k/yr and somehow managed to live and go on trips. Now that I’m older I make substantially more than that but somehow my expenses grew right along side. Car payment, expensive apartment, Uber eats, fancier groceries, lavish travel, expensive hobby stuff… shit adds up. Not to mention I’ve got graduate level student loans, maxed retirement, etc…
I dunno… I know for sure if push came to shove I could do away with a large portion of that. But man can your expenses blow up so easily if you don’t pay attention to them.
If one does not feel comfortable paying someone to do some of the work - it is a key tell the project may not be worth continuing. Momentum is key as projects natural state is "trending towards death"
Users have been burned too much by “lean startups” and “mvps” and have become wiser to their tricks.
Step 1 is validate your market and produce something of value - that is the focus of the MVP.
The MVP doesn’t need to go from $0 to $bln. and it’s a red flag in my opinion of something thinks it does. If the market is already established or there are established competitors, and you’re building out more capacity then sure - but then you should already be able to build a spreadsheet with all the market variables, or you’re fooling yourself.
If you can’t do that with 1 person and random tools, it doesn’t mean that isn’t a business. It does mean it’s a higher risk of failing, and failing catastrophically, and destroying a whole lot more money in the process.
Agree design is much more important than before. But you can still pay a designer $1k or less and it looks pretty nice. Maybe not "uniquely different", but nice.
Agree the days of "simply put it up and get users" is probably gone. One has to work it, which is what distinguishes a project from a business. Developers may be good at one, but not both.
I mean, if this is the kind of society that any poster of such advice has in mind than I won't complain. Who am I to dictate what the end goal is? If people want a society for winners, so be it. I just wish that advice givers were aware of that and would show it. As it usually sounds like such advice is given without any thought for scalability.
Or you subscribe to the idea that a huge number of people could indeed have this 0.1% super idea. I can't really disprove that this would be possible I admit, a huge number of people suddenly having crazy good ideas all at once, and all or most not requiring a lot of resources (which they would compete over, and with all the old industries).
"He lived deep inside things with indomitable curiosity and perpetual openness, surrendering himself to what Dostoevsky calls "the river of life", in the serene awareness that it always takes you somewhere".
It always takes you somewhere.
I think it's a mistake to think that captains of industry want productivity above all else. They'll happily sacrifice productivity for certainty and compliance.
Even idle noblity had expectations (military service, patrons of arts and society, etc).
a) either your standard of living is so high that a change to UBI-only would be very disruptive and you'd still be worried about losing your job,
b) or your standard of living is so low that you'd quickly accumulate enough of a financial buffer that you wouldn't have to worry about losing your job.
Therefore, a UBI wouldn't be better than a social safety net in this regard. In both cases you wouldn't have to worry about starving, but you'd still have to worry about losing your income.
With UBI you wouldn't need any bureaucracy, you would always get more money if you worked even a shitty job, and noone would be jealous that you are freeloading because everyone gets UBI.
You're comparing the imperfect reality of an actual situation (unemployment benefits) against the utopian fantasy of an imagined best case scenario (UBI) – of course the imagined scenario will come out on top. The real result of a UBI will almost certainly look less rosy than the picture you paint, just like every other plan once it gets implemented. For example, this:
> noone would be jealous that you are freeloading because everyone gets UBI
would likely be wrong, because people would instead be jealous because you're "freeloading" by not working and therefore not paying taxes. Other ways a UBI could conceivably be bad or even worse than the current status quo:
* Prices rise due to increased consumer spending capability, to the point where you have to work again to get above the poverty line.
* Any realistic UBI is too low for people with special needs (like disabilities), so you'll again need a bureaucracy to deal with those cases.
* If the UBI is independent of local cost-of-living, it'll most likely be too low to survive on it in high COL areas, like most large cities. If it's dependent on COL, the exact implementation won't please everyone.
By far this is the easiest to predict, but least likely to be addressed (by the proponents) concern I have with UBI.
A social safety net shouldn’t be a hammock, as it is said. I’m concerned with AI and what happens when it’s pointless to hire people because a $100k robot can do the same work as 3 of them and do so 20 hours a day. By then UBI may be our answer. But it doesn’t seem so now.
> Prices rise due to increased consumer spending capability, to the point where you have to work again to get above the poverty line.
Governments will respond to economic factors that diminish purchasing power in order to maintain the effectiveness of UBI, as a part of UBI.
> Any realistic UBI is too low for people with special needs
Diminished support for disabled or sick people is not a part of UBI. UBI should become a part (within or on top of) of their support. Bureaucracy will still be diminished for non-disabled people.
> If the UBI is independent of local cost-of-living, it'll most likely be too low to survive on it in high COL areas
So people in those areas will have to have jobs. UBI still allows them to go quit their job and move out to the country if they want to subsist on it. UBI would go nicely paired with rent controls and maintaining individual purchase power, but it doesn't even need those things to be a net positive.
UBI should have been implemented 20-40 years ago, it will surely be necessary going forward, it's time to get on board.
How? Using which political, economic, and financial tools? And what will be the side effects of those policies? That's exactly the point I was making: UBI proponents assume a downright utopian best-case scenario where everything works as planned (even though those plans are vague at best, and wishful fantasies at worst), and politicians and voters behave perfectly rational.
There's a simple answer for that: please look at communist Poland 1980-1989 - trying to counter raising prices with government intervention leads to supply crisis (since production is not economically viable anymore). Imagine all stores having nothing to sell, literally empty shelves, forcing common people to fight for scrapes.
Ein Mann geht in ein Kaufhaus in der DDR. Er fragt den Verkäufer: "Gibt's hier keine Socken?" – "Nein, hier gibt's keine Hosen. Keine Socken gibt's in der zweiten Etage."
Translated (roughly): A man visits a department store in East Germany. He asks the shop assistant: "Do you have no socks here?" – "No, we have no trousers. No socks are on the second floor."
(The joke relies on the word order of German syntax; properly translated, the dialog would be:
"Don't you have any socks?" – "No, we don't have any trousers. No socks are on the second floor"
But then the joke doesn't really make sense anymore.)
When we control oil prices by using reserves and trading agreements, does that cause people to fight for scraps?
How about when we subsidize silicon chip manufacturing? Did that collapse society?
You cannot, in a serious conversation, compare Soviet Union economic policies to modern socialist ideas. It's just silly.
"Modern socialist ideas" are basically the same ideas that were already tried in Soviet Union, just dressed in fancier words.
Otherwise I could say "erasing money would make us live like aristocrats" without explaining how or why, and you should try to figure out why I could think that way, what kind of tools and mechanisms I thought of and after that, explaining why it would not work. Obviously, I could say those are not the right tools for my idea, so you have no real counter arguments, yada yada yada...
And as a proponent of UBI, YOU should explain how it would work, not the others. What financial tools or mechanisms would use a government to control the inflation or the rise in prices? I mean, even in the late Soviet Union had to look at capitalists countries to have an idea of the prices for basic products, because they coul not put a price that would make it work.
There's a precedent why I think that people will approve of "universal" income: We have "Familienbeihilfe" in Austria. It's a payment of roughly 200€ per child that parents get. Everyone gets it, regardless of income, so noone is jealous. It's the best way of distributing financial aid in my opinion.
Regarding special needs, in my experience it's much easier to get aid for disabilities. I have a kid with special needs, and it's incredible how helpful people are. Social workers are calling us to tell us what kind of aid we should apply for and help us fill out forms etc. It's completely the opposite experience of applying for unemployment or for aid with rent payments etc.
They pay for everyone else's children through their taxes. Money they could use elsewhere for their own needs or pleasure.
-- To be clear, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I don't have population charts of Austria on my desk and I'm too lazy to Google it right now, I'd assume it tracks a similar trend to the rest of the Europe and it's slowing down. In that case it might be for the common good and might come back as a positive to the individual at some point in their life.
I'm just saying it's not easy to come up with a scheme that is/feels fair to everyone involved, especially if there's no justification for it. One could find justifications for child support maybe, but can you justify freeloading just as easily?
I'm pretty sure people would be a lot more hesitant to complain about others getting UBI if they get it themselves.
And last one: as UBI comes from taxes (the state generates 0 money, just collect from others), what about those who decide not to work at all? How long until some of them stats asking for an increase in UBI because they cannot get a rent in the city?
It seems you have an idealistic view about human nature and that everyone is good and honest, not greedy, etc. The reality is not bad, but not so naive.
It's nice to present a clean (modeled) plan, but it's something different when it hits reality. Social security now, is what UBI will look like a few decades down the road.
Somebody will find a way to exploit UBI and that hole gets patched, then there's another patch and another. Not to speak of how different political ideologies will apply their own modifications to previously established laws
Also, I would recommend to read "Debunking Utopia" about the social system Nordic countries implemented in the past, some kind of model for solving the problem of living decently for people without possibilities and/or problems to make a living. The countries are slowly but steady reducing that system because it solves nothing and creates extra problems. With UBI, which is a bigger plan than the system Nordic countries had, you would end up with the same if not worse problems than they faced: people decide not to work for low wages or in jobs that are needed but unappealing (and I don't blame them, for sure), but because someone has to do the jobs, wages increase a lot, which in turn, increases the costs and price of those services. And, voila, we are at the beginning of the problem, were people are stressed or unhappy because they have to keep jobs they don't enjoy or like.
The difference is that the UBI would be the new penny, because you could not buy anything. Maybe with AI and automation we would get there, as robots would not complain or care.
Will residents without citizenship receive the UBI? If yes, how long do they have to reside to be eligible? Will expats with citizenship receive the UBI? Will children receive the full UBI starting at birth? If not, when will they? Is it an abrupt step (if yes, at what age?), or is it gradual?
There are many subtleties to the meaning of "universal". And that's just what I've come up with in 2 minutes...
*for a while. Only very few people are able to save enough to never have to work again, even with a low standard of living.
It is not easy in any case, that's for sure. Besides, I sometimes think if I could get there, I would work time to time in interesting projects.
This is bleak way of looking at things. There's one thing to have f-u money but there's another base level of security that lets you leave a job or group and move on without too much disruption. Marriage helps there too. I'm nowhere near "secure for life" money, but if I was truly unhappy with my job I'd leave and find something else in a month or two. Around a quarter of people who left their jobs in the US don't have a new role lined up and turnover otherwise is pretty high telling me people do have a choice. [0]
> When I was in the comfortable situation, I was carefree and open to pursue ideas and projects brought to me which I knew were stupid and prone to fail. My colleagues loved it, of course.
I've found the reverse. When I was most carefree and comfortable as a child and young adult, I didn't pursue ideas or projects. I didn't do much of anything. I watched TV and hung out with friends. I went through the motions at work. Only later when I had actual responsibilities and had a partner did I get ambitious and pursued more ambitious projects. "Worrying" about making it is what gets me up in the morning and keeps me motivated and feel like I have a purpose
What stands out searching my memories at that young age is there was little cognizance or care about national/international issues, let alone survival. There was nothing particularly special about what I did with my time (some of it was creative, mostly not), but I was de-facto optimistic about my future. I may have had immediate concerns and worries (I was often lonely too), but they passed. Until they didn't. And I became sufficiently aware for social anxiety and fear of failure to take hold, alongside bad coping habits. Today I have stability, but learned conservative behavior. I have to be conscious about trying to shake things up now and then.
Yeah. My “wife” (girlfriend of 22 years) was recently able to say F-U to her old hated job and start part-time growing a private therapy clientele because my pay has gone up so much in the past four years or so. Having a support structure really helps.
> I've found the reverse.
Agreed. When I had nothing external motivating me I became largely idle, despite my best intentions. I joke about early retirement but I’m not sure it would be good for me.
If they're incapable of holding realistic employment, and it's all down to you, then you're in a worse situation than being single.
Possible requirements, from best to worst:
(A has job) || (B has job) // Robustness!
(A has job) // B won't have job, but A's is enough.
(A has job) && (B has job) // Cost of living is more than max(A, B) and less than A + B.
> Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy.
Not being secure for life is what 99% of the world experience their entire life and out of these 99% a lof them are happy. I know in the Silicon Valley microcosm the perspective of being secure for life is something everyone is after but most people are happy to live paycheck to paycheck, save a bit of their revenue every month and enjoy their life.
This is a move you can pull from almost any position. No need to score a stock windfall (though sorry to hear about your dramatic rise and fall)
/rant off.... Sorry just came out of a workshop where the presenter spent half the time trying to get a bunch of technical people excited rather than just presenting the information we came for. Very exhausting.
Your response seems too generalized as if it relates to everyone. Let me disagree.
I myself can be considered that kind of genius OP is talking about, at least in my earlier days. First 15 years of my career I've never had any (ANY) savings, and most of the time had some amount of debt. But I always felt simple enough to walk away from any situation I don't want to be in and was ready to live in any condition. But I always loved my job, always was super-curious and eager to learn, and employers were always looking for me not the other way around.
I can say that OP is right, at least for some subset of people.
I got the money to get out and that's exactly what I did. I got out of everything. I'm not any more open than I was and I'm not happier. I just feel more secure and comfortable.
I have a bit of time I could reserve personal projects, as a means to bridge myself to more interesting things, but I usually don't bother with much. This becomes a source of pressure on myself. I see it as my only viable option for deviating from things as they are. I have to fight through fatigue and search through crumbs for sparks of interest.
It doesn't seem to me that anyone was saying it was a guarantee. Rather, that being able to say "I'm out" is in something along the lines of the "necessary, but not sufficient" category.
It probably a mistake to try and project this too broadly though. I'm sure there are lots of people who would respond similarly to the way that you did, but also lots that would not.
- a rich kid wastes 3 years on drugs and partying, gets caught once or twice, gets bailed by parents, moves on to do something productive
- a poor kid wastes 1 year on drugs and partying, gets caught once, it snowballs from there, recovery is very hard if at all possible
We used to have to collect change at McDonald’s for lunch. Eventually I graduated from MIT.
I understand it is not the norm… :)
The complete answer is probably that it goes both ways. People have a natural tendency to be more anxious or more energetic or happy or sad, a baseline if you will. If you take care of your body, it helps. If you're exposed to stressful situations, especially in childhood, that can become a risk factor later. But, IMO, there's definitely people out there who are genetically lucky in this area, and others less so.
I'm going to note that just suggesting that there's a genetic component is controversial because it goes against the modern day idea that "you can do anything if you just try hard enough" a little bit. The fact is though, we're all genetically unique. I think it's a good idea to acknowledge that we all start in a different place. That doesn't mean you can't work on yourself. Even short people can run a marathon and develop a lot more endurance if they train as opposed to playing videogames all day.
It also comes down to knowing your strengths and weaknesses. I feel like I have a natural tendency to feel more down and tired than others. I've developed healthy coping strategies and structured my life in a way that I can minimize stress. Being aware of my own limitations makes me better able to cope with them. Pretending that I'm one of those always happy people would not.
Although personalities tend to be sticky throughout life, that some people can substantially change their personalities is also quite obvious to anyone with (figuratively) open eyes.
Dudes who make bank almost always have to work really hard to get there. Or at least make a lot of sacrifices (for example trade most of your social life / relationships / etc for work).
Personally I just want to make enough to enable me to buy shit for my hobbies and personal projects. I’d like to do that while maintaining the ability to take lots of time off. I’d trade hobby money for time off. I’d trade a lot for time off…
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the moment my company comes to me and says "would you be interested in taking a 50% pay cut to work 20 hours a week?" I'm taking it. Even though I'd get the short end of the deal by doing more than 50% of what I'm doing now.
I think the study source is questionable as well. Perhaps the soldiers were happier because they got acknowledgement for their work?
Most intellectuals don't get noticed because they are positively beaming, even if that is a likable truth for management... Or is it just to get management to make people happier?
That said, people that are always happy are often not the brightest in my experience. But maybe they do perform well.
I haven't worked with a lot of very obvious geniuses, strictly speaking, but I've known plenty of very smart people who weren't particularly happy. And I've known several people that I absolutely would not consider geniuses who were nevertheless brimming with curiosity, successful, and quite outwardly cheerful (though at least one suffered from anxiety and depression).
Heck, going by IQ I'm only, what, 15 points off from genius and I'm not particularly happy either. Nor am I that smart for values of "smart" that people would traditionally associate with genius, but maybe that makes all the difference? I can barely do tips in my head ...
More likely it's "well enough", and that matches the needs of most organizations just fine.
I know one guy who rushed through bachelor, master, and a PhD in mathematics in like half the regular time without ever breaking a sweat. Sometimes, you'd meet him in the cafeteria reading research papers for fun. You could mention any topic, and he'd know something related that one time he was super curious about and he spent an evening reading through Wikipedia. He's like a sponge who soaks up useful information. That made him an interesting person to be around. And it seems that it's also working exceptionally well for him career-wise.
I also believe it's an easy date tactic to ask the other person to teach one of their hobbies to you. You'll have lots of stuff to talk about, so you don't need to worry about what to say next. And that makes everything more relaxing and, hence, more enjoyable.
Explore and nurture one's motivation (the "for fun"), else the years of time/effort won't be allocated. Including topics, environment, tooling, metacognition, enjoyment, etc, etc.
Emphasize integration, making connections. As merely accumulating disconnected trivia provides less leverage for understanding and play, for engaging with and informing new observations, and for interesting storytelling. Rough-quantitative understanding can be helpful (eg Fermi questions), but utility seemingly plateaus low absent accompanying integrated conceptual understanding.
Integration seemingly requires surfing primary-ish literature (the "reading research papers"). Using paper intros, journal "in this issue" summaries-with-context, survey articles, definitive doorstop tome on topic X, etc. Because outreach and education content is very not sufficient (example: 5-yr old Q: What color is the Sun? 1st-tier astronomy grad student pervasive A: Yellow! Q: And sunlight? Common A: white. And then, not infrequently, a pause, and: That doesn't make sense, does it??? Two incompatible conceptions, perhaps first learned in K, persisting unintegrated into grad. Helped by popular intro astro college textbooks having it wrong, remaining decoupled from the science, for decades. The distance/gap between "science" education content, and science, can be very large. Despite some overlap in personnel, their goals, institutional support and infrastructure, culture and incentives, are rather divergent.
Integration can benefit from sheer quantity of material chewed on. Jim Keller (chip designer) commented his superpower was reading books, IIRC a book (or few?) a week, since he was 8 yo.
Cultivate storytelling skills (the "interesting person to be around").
Excellence is far easier if you can do playdates with excellent people. Especially in math. The delta between "I read the book and saw the lecture" and "I worked the problems" and "I did hours with someone wizzy in front of a blackboard" can be vast. And then there's people who could have a clue, but are babbling history/economics/policy nonsense to praise at DC dinners, lacking folks to push back. Being non-nutter can be hard without a good community. Witness researchers respected on their research focus, but gone nutter on some nearby-but-not-their-research-focus side interest. Or non-tech discussions on HN. ;)
What else...?
Some more details: Setting was evening/night at an european university college dorm.
We were both not poor, as we could go to university , but we both had a governemental scholarship, so not rich either. We had food and a bed, but not much money for anything hobby or party related. Sometimes a side job, and that's it. Both our dads had corporate jobs, and moms at home. I'd say all of us were middle class.
He had no special connections or privileges, except what he buikt up himself in the scientific world while being there. He was average looking, not specifically beautiful or ugly. He was healthy and quite sporty. A bit lower than average height.
I don't know what's the criterium for declaring someone a genius. He was a topper in the math olympiads, while I made it rarely out of the second round. He was good at a lot of other olympiads too. He also won a frw competitive sports. But it was the generality of the interest. He could do with particle physics stuff what he did with the map. Or astronomy, physics, every hard science. Or something completely non scientific. I had to take the equations and try to calculate, slowly, while he could feel where some phusics stuff was going to end up. He'd mix knowledge, probably learn something from the map and use it in his quantum stuff. He's a professor now.
The attitude was easygoing, good natured, no bullshit, honest. He was competitive, but if he lost he had just as much fun.
He was part of a loose group of like minded people all behaving like. I'd consider most of them geniuses.
Maybe I'm idealizing, or he had other characteristics I didn't notice. He was described as genius by other people than me, and when we talked about him, similar stories pop up.
And indeed, I was humbled, not humiliated. Gratefull for the experience, but it was clearly a height I would never reach. Oh well.
In Dutch we have a word "relativeren" which I think loosely translates to "being able to put things in perspective". I think that is a really important super power. It has helped me immensely whenever things got bad, or I got into a depressing mood.
I'm not sure how you can "grow" these attributes, but I'm willing to say that travelling, seeing the world, discovering other people, other cultures, other habits probably contributes a great deal. Having open-minded parents and an education that doesn't stigmatise helps a lot too.
I don't think that travelling necessarily helps. Only having the time and resources to travel also means you probably have some leeway to pursue hobbies and follow your curiosity.
The reason that you're friend was so magnetic was because they could look at an old tattered map, be entertained for an hour, and be open to sharing that experience with those around them.
If what they're interested in interests you too.
Or as happened in this map genius story, if they're charismatic enough to convince you (and the gathering crowd) that it's interesting. Professor sounds like an ideal place for that skillset to end up.
I know people who are profoundly interested in certain things but you learn not to touch the topic because they'll deep dive on something you don't care about, and they aren't socially skilled enough to keep you engaged despite that.
Can confirm. Had a friend for awhile (she and her husband moved to NZ, and I barely hear from them now) who had this same "wonder at everything / happy with anything" aspect, and her entire life is practically magic; her father is similar, both in success and vibe.
> am humiliated (in a positive way)
I think the word you're looking for is "humbled"?
A lot of resource —> happiness.
A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity.
A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work.
So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek.
Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you perform worse, which leads to problems with employers, which males you even more worried. Unlike poverty, this potentially could be countered by antidepressants.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with...
There are plenty of people with hereditary wealth who are otherwise very ordinary, and not particularly happy, too.
Think about good health, no depression, loving parents and/or partners, no previous crippling / traumatic experience, absence of all these things that drain energy from a human being.
Sometimes your mental state is so bad you can't make any decision or improve your current situation. Maybe you're working during the day and dealing with your family the rest of the time and feel stuck and sinking. Antidepressants can help dissipate the fog in your mind, allowing you to think clearly and actually make the decisions you needed to make and improve your live to a point where they are not needed anymore. You also talk with the doctor prescribing the drugs, if it's not improving how you feel they will suggest other solutions.
Also I totally agree with parent. Decent material conditions and the knowledge that they are stable are absolutely needed for a healthy and flourishing mind.
Anecdotally, I’ve gone off Zoloft after years of daily use without any side effects more seriously than temporarily being a little mopey.
As for benefit … we’ll, in raw numbers plenty of people see some benefit. Given the low side effect profile they’re worth trying as a first line of defense for therapy-resistant anxiety and depression. Particularly severe depression may require interventions such as ECT, but for mild to moderate cases a combination of an SSRI and CBT is often pretty effective.
I would add: and the ability to share that enthusiasm with others. I consider myself a very average person, but from time to time I do experience what I have highlighted from your paragraph. Most often than not, I keep that enthusiasm to myself. I don't have the ability to share it with others, and when I try, it's not like you have described it.
How tall?
Did he have any speech impediments?
Obviously "happiness" is not the reason he is so popular, since "happy" dorks are openly mocked throughout culture (at least in the USA) if they aren't physically attractive, and loved (Henry Cavill) if they are physically attractive.
Unless those were Russian spies confusing you two for Ukrainian generals planning for the upcoming battle, that seems rather unlikely.
Humiliated can almost never be positive, but people often conflate these two words.
For me it’s quite humbling to be around people who can connect with others almost instantly, seemingly with no effort at all.
I’ve resigned myself to accepting I’ll never really be like that. It’s quite exhausting, at least for me. I dunno, maybe it is just a skill I could learn but the desire to do so isn’t there and so here we are…
Some people here suggest that privilege helps and I agree, but is there something else? Is there a way to develop this trait?
I think that the 99% Impossible podcast helped me look closer at certain things. I could also name a few YouTube channels. I certainly got a lot about film and literature from dating an art student.
Saying this as somebody who used to fit your description, and noticed a hard toll on his performance after a few years of setbacks and bad experiences
Then he unlearns that optimism because he is alone and loses that "happy" attitude.
"Enthusiasm is worth 25 iq points".
From 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice by Kevin Kelly
Humbled I think you mean
For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year.
He checks it out, and starts noticing a lot of semi-interesting factoids about names, merged cities, obscure places, old mapping conventions, etc... All of this with an absolute positive energy of pure interest. We spent a fun hour just looking at it. I should have known all this, and yet an hour with him makes me look at it with new eyes.
Wherever he was, he instantly attracted a group of friends and wannabe girlfriends, and never really seemed to notice. Same in this case: There was a group of beautiful partygirls we'd never met before, no nerdy interests at all, which accreted around the map in less than 5 minutes. They loved the situation just as much as us nerds did.
I learned a lot from him, and try to follow this example, but I still can't do this today and am humiliated (in a positive way) by this way of living.