"If you lose everything you own, you generally still have your network and skills"

I get the general call to action that those who have excess resources should leverage that to take big risks, but this really undersells the possible consequences of losing everything you own. No, you don't always keep your network and skills. Sometimes, you lose everything. You lose friends from fallout or you belatedly realize that your network isn't as resilient to you becoming a penniless loser as you thought. Sometimes you go into debt and make enemies. Sometimes you become homeless and then develop a mental illness or a drug addiction. Sometimes you skip the homeless part and just commit suicide [1]. How many people can stomach that kind of outcome?

I do like the general message which I think should be said more often but I feel like people who charge ahead on this call to action should also triple check that they can truly accept the actual risk they might incur. I also think the amount of risk you take has diminishing returns. Making "fatal leaps of faith" doesn't seem to be as necessary or pragmatic as it's presented here.

[1] (heads up: this is a link to a suicide note) https://archive.fo/QaLIw

Great article. I can very much relate.

I’ve been writing open-source software for a very long time. This was mostly because I earned my pay as a manager. The job paid … not great, but enough to keep the lights on, and to let me save. It also wasn’t particularly demanding, and gave me time for extracurricular coding. I needed to code, to keep my chops up. Even in “nights and weekends,” I was able to get some fairly serious work done.

Then, in 2017, my company dragged all the distributed engineering back home (Japan). I knew it was coming for years, but had no interest in bailing. I had a team of engineers under my command, and would remain until the end.

Then, I found out that no one wanted me. Some folks were quite blunt about it.

After a few months of being insulted and patronized, I decided that, even if I found a job, I would be treated like garbage. I had no interest in that.

Fortunately, I am able to retire early (not that early. I was 55, when I left my job).

I need to work. If no one wants to pay me, I’ll do it for free; which is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. I took the first couple of years to learn up on stuff, and re-establish a full-time self-discipline.

These days, I work harder than I ever have in my life. I’m at my desk for at least eleven hours a day, seven days a week. It’s not all “production programming,” but most of it is.

The difference in productivity is astonishing. I often get more done by 8:30 AM (the standard start time for my day job), than I used to get done all day. My GitHub Activity Chart is solid green (and not “gamed,” either).

And I’m really enjoying it. I’m quite aware than many folks would find my life unenjoyable, but I’m weird. I like it.

The last year or so, I’ve been writing a fairly ambitious social media-like application, with some friends, as a 501(c)(3). It’s nearing completion, and is work that I’m proud of. Of course, like every project I’ve ever done, I’d like to rewrite it, using all the stuff I’ve learned, but I won’t do that. I’m pretty used to shipping, so we’ll have something nice.

I don’t know if the OP is the author of this article or not, but all I have to say I want to buy into the overall concept/ thesis. But the writing is so erratic and turbulent, it is really hard to follow the author’s train of thought.

It feels like they are trying SO hard to come across as deep and intellectual, that they lost sight of how it comes across to the reader. It’s like they are trying to force as many ‘big’ words into every sentence that it gets distracting. There is no cadence to follow, it just turns into this big word soup, and I was never able to extract the essence of their thesis.

I know it's bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site's supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity.

There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosophy in the spirit of this essay. Nietzsche and Bataille talked about work in a similar way. Cioran pretty explicitly embraced failure (or the risk of failure) as virtue, as this work does. This essay seems to be saying something like: take a big risk, quite possibly fail, live your principles even if it means being an "outcast", commit to it, and who cares what other people think, because in doing so you will find your people. The response in here seems to be "look at this guy taking big risks and failing, what an outcast." Of course, that is surely the point.

I have, as I'm sure many on here have, found success in grinding away at boring problems, suppressing any kind of "call of God" or desire to do something larger, so we could build a nest egg and stable future for ourselves with MAGMA money. This essay is sort of a direct assault on the aesthetics of that approach. As for me, I have grown quite tired of it, so this piece does resonate with me.

This article resonates with me quite a lot especially after two years of repeated lock downs and travel restrictions, I reflected on my purpose more than ever during this period.

I came to realize that the most valuable possession I have is my time, that life is exceedingly short and that we can only really dedicate ourselves to one project at a time.

So, I reduced my hours down as a swdev to a handful of days every few weeks to pay the bills and maintain a humble quality of life and began building my own project relating to electronic music instruments.

The result is that I've become a much better engineer, learning embedded Rust, circuit and PCB design. These are skills I could never have learnt in my siloed web-development job, despite the pay being very reasonable.

But most importantly I am happier, less stressed, feel more connected and confident I'm building a vision for my own future that I can see myself doing into old age.

And I'm happy to announce that my first Eurorack instrument is in its final stages, it may not be an immediate financial success but life isn't about avoiding perceived failures, its about having a great time and pushing your own self-imposed limitations.

At the end of the day everyones path through this world is different, we all come from different backgrounds and we all face different obstacles and challenges, its important to stay true to whatever is true for you. Just don't accept a pay-check because society tells you to.

I was nodding along until i reached:

>Yes, even the bane of Darwin’s faith—the humble ichneumon wasp that lays its maggots inside the living bodies of caterpillars to eat them from the inside and burst out on maturity like some alien xenomorph—is a beautiful creature with a sacred task. Like many parasites, its role in the great chain of being is to test the health and defenses of its caterpillar host population. Its predation weeds out the sickly, preventing the much uglier injustice of collective weakness and disease, and spurring the evolution of stronger and even more beautiful life. Even fearsome Nemesis, born from chaos via night and darkness, is ultimately the hand of God and the minister of justice. Even the supposed exceptions to justice prove its rule.

Which sounds like a self-indulgent justification to hurt others for your own gain while still being able to sleep at night.

The author lives in a self-centered universe in which the virtues of service and responsibility to others count for nothing. Any goal associated with financial ends is reduced to a blind alley which obfuscates "true" goals but there are many charitable goals which involve exclusive focus on purely financial intermediate goals. Providing for one's family is the most basic of such goals but the author seems to be focused on self-centered goals.

Preaching about the "virtue of poverty" when you are privileged enough to be able to choose it instead of it choosing you is just so middle class. We had enough of that during the industrial revolution.

The author is Wolf Tivy, a cofounder of Palladium Magazine. Palladium Magazine is funded by Peter Thiel. The other cofounder of Palladium is Jonah Bennett; he now works at a stealth web3 startup and he says on his website he’s a political moderate. However, he also used to work at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller and pal around with white nationalists and neoreactionaries. He resigned from Palladium after those ties and several hateful emails came to light: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/03/04/emails-reveal...

So many wild things in this, but I was curious about this aspect:

> It also helped that I was unemployed. I had time to court her properly.

Does anyone find this kind of situation helps their relationship health? I've started relationships between jobs and started them with people who weren't working. It's not always long-term poison, but a big part of a relationship is figuring out if your two lives will work well together. I find that's easiest to figure out if neither of you is in a temporary situation that's radically different from your future. Sometimes you get lucky and you survive the transition - but in my experience you'll be on the strongest footing if you don't need to navigate a major transition!

This article makes me anxious that I just might not have any interesting ideas to share with the world, that I might be stuck in my own perspective and that others will see right through all the fancy words I come up with to masquerade it.

I think I might not be able to refrain from smiling when being called an intellectual. Only positive outlook: At least I do not think I will ever go as far as calling myself an intellectual in my own essay.

The "virtues" of poverty? Poverty is hell for people who can't choose it. What a cruel statement.

I'm conflicted by this article. I'm sympathetic to it, but some things just really push past my BS meter. For example:

>This is related to why man became stunted with the dawn of agriculture. We traded a life limited by the occasional violent struggle over bountiful surplus for a more predictable life limited by grinding labor after barely sufficient nutrition.

Firstly, "man" or humanity did all of their greatest work after the dawn of agriculture. Before agriculture, life wasn't bountiful. It was short and harsh. It's easy to see something good and say "well we became complacent" - well, sure, we became complacent because life got better. There's a certain type of public intellectual in our society who says things that sort of intuitively feel like they should be right, but if you actually stop and think about the explanations, you soon realise they're talking rubbish. I don't even think the conclusion is necessarily wrong, I just think the parallel it is drawing is really bad.

I'm sure that's all awesome if you can afford to live without income, but what about everyone else?

I have to say that the guy raised a huge red flag for me already in the first paragraph:

"I hit the gym, pursued the most interesting and important ideas I could find, and started looking for a wife."

Ho boy, I'm getting some Christian fundamentalist vibes with that sentence formulation. Like, a mix of a holy mission, an objectifying checkbox and a "time to get a wife to generate progeny".

So I continued reading:

"The squirrel has no way of knowing or checking that his instinct to bury the nuts will lead him to new life in the spring; he can only trust that God has given him what he needs."

"When we must we defer to a master who teaches us what to value, let us do that consciously and explicitly and personally. Let us aim to be uplifted thereby as we take responsibility for more and more of the task we are given, until the student surpasses the master to receive their visions directly from God."

"How does that project fit into creating a more glorious future? How is that future pleasing to God, the proper order of things, and your own felt value instincts? "

"God’s Trust Fund

The reason taking responsibility for the question of ends involves a leap of faith is that you actually have no sure-fire way to ensure that your visions are sound and good."

"Even fearsome Nemesis, born from chaos via night and darkness, is ultimately the hand of God and the minister of justice. Even the supposed exceptions to justice prove its rule."

"If your vision is beautiful and sound, it will flourish. Resources will unexpectedly come out of the woodwork to support it. If your vision doesn’t have that virtue, you will be struck down for its lack. That’s life. It is also justice. Where this justice conflicts with our own human desires, perhaps it is we who are wrong, not God."

"So take the leap, and have faith that God’s trust fund will come through with what you need."

Having read the whole article, the ongoing theme is "God" and "faith" and the whole article oozes with the unflinching conviction of a religious fanatic.

The man glorifies struggle and sacrifice for a "higher purpose" and then attributes good outcomes to the will of a divine being. I can't really stand behind that kind of reasoning, and I can't really understand how the HN audience resonates with this article. Maybe it's the hustle success story of an entrepreneur that is appealing to the audience, but the guy is actually sending a very dangerous and misleading message.

Tried this. Quit and lived a truly romantic life for 2 years. Most happy time of my life - really.

But my ventures didn't succeed. With no partner or family to fall back on, I did contract development to not piss away savings. Hated the work, ran out of novelties to indulge in my free time, and became severely depressed.

Suggesting that anyone other than himself should do this is naive.

"Do what most people are doing unless you have a really good reason not to." Jordan Peterson (paraphrased)

Privilege wasn't a good enough reason for me =\

I don’t get the obsession with building an “empire”. Why is that even something people find noble or the actions of a “responsible elite”? Imperialism quite literally has destroyed the lives of millions of people in the service of a privileged few.

If you really wanted to be a responsible elite build public goods, not an empire.

Read 1 paragraph before thinking “na I’m alright, you do you buddy”

I love this article. It feels like an articulation of the past 5 years of my life. Even the introduction to it mirrors what's going on with me the past year.

I certainly have periods of time where I doubt what I'm doing, where I wonder if I have what it takes to see my vision through. Articles like this help me to clear my head and keep going, and they're the primary reason I spend time perusing this site.

Despite sounding a little delusional, the author puts forth some good points. The evolution of our society depends on new ideas and in people who are willing to develop them. As the author points out, some of these ideas succeed, while some fail. The process works in a Darwinian fashion.

As for me, I envy the inspiration and purpose felt by the author. I had the experience of living in leisure for a while, and while it was good, I certainly felt like the money slaves mentioned in the text. No matter how much I read, how much I talked to other people, no inspiration ever struck me - so I decided to keep working at a normal job.

Wow. This really spoke to me.

  This is a key part of what it means to be a responsible elite. You use your privilege and your personal judgment to explore and solve problems that no one else can.

The claim that structured 9-5 work doesn't bring about innovative breakthroughs needs a citation.

Sure, we all love to think that major innovations are drive by a small team of dedicated renegades.

But reality [citation needed] is that most innovative and breakthroughs comes as a result of gradual improvements stacked on top of each other.

Wind power, Battery prices, Computers, The internet, etc. none of these huge changes were brought about by a small team of thinkers working in their garage.

We tend to only notice breakthroughs when they happen suddenly -- but most of them are gradual, the result of hard work and competition.

Letting the fields go fallow to allow for rejuvenation rings like a very apt allegory to me. Breaking routines, finding out who you are outside of work is actually one of the most luxurious things one can do. It’s a great time for healing. But most can’t afford to do this at their lifestyle level.

There’s lots of cognitive dissonance over what makes our lives rich in the tech world.

However there also a lot in the post which seems to hold high minded eruditism as some peak of existence :) still some good point buried.

Prosperity gospel with a technical flavor. The assumption that any worthy cause will by financially self-sustaining as an 'empire' has led to a lot of value driven companies destroying all their good will and noble intentions.

To everyone complaining that this article is elitist, or written from a privileged perspective, that's beside the author's point. He even addresses this critique succinctly:

> This is a key part of what it means to be a responsible elite. You use your privilege and your personal judgment to explore and solve problems that no one else can.

It's clear that this essay is not aimed at the everyman who finds meaning in the routine of life. A small number of individuals will read this and find inspiration in its perspective and ambition, even if they might be slightly off-put by its delusional tone. Often an unshakeable belief in one's own ability to succeed against all odds is enough to push one to go try to build something radically new. Personally I've never experienced that sort of absolute certainty, but I have definitely seen it in action.

My most original and insightful ideas came to me invariably during periods when I was unemployed, spending my time reading and wondering about the nature of the universe. I've never had the courage to pursue them. I'm glad some people do, though.

Can't decide if I think he's trying to start a cult, or the next wework.

> If your role in the universe is structured work within order found and built by someone else, those off-road investments are pointless.

nobodies role in the universe is to work for someone else.

can we stop repeating the trigger phrases from our cbt sessions colloquialy known as school?

edit: PAH! elitist muck! he basically says: if you got money, just quit your job, through amassing wealth you have been chosen by the spirits of the iluminati and blessed by the rothschilds to quit your job and become the next edison.

you dont have money? ah, tough luck, look at the time, ciao

I wish I could, still paying student and car loans and rent and utilities bills, insurance, food

Such a wonderful read. Think of childhood or teenage years when you spent hours building things for the sheer joy of it, profit motive be damned. More of us could do with sabbaticals to explore projects like this as an adult. Build out in the open, perhaps it will work, maybe it won’t. But you’ll learn a vast amount, have fun along the way, and probably learn what you should be doing instead.

Bookmarked, because I know I’m going to have to re-read this.

> I’ve heard that middle-class people with respectable jobs have fewer kids than people who don’t work as hard.

how can someone in good consciousness write this? really blows my mind.

Lost me at California as center of universe. And again with the musk name drop. So much for off the beaten path.

Ah yes, the young, childless, mortgageless life of 'quit your job and find yourself'. I appreciate a lot of the ideas the author has, but in these stories there's rarely acknowledgement of the elephant in the room--it's a story mainly for the young and unencumbered, which is a small minority of people.

This article seems elitist to me. Not everyone is in a position to take "active unemployment". People are from different walks of life, it is a lot easier to become a thinker having large nest egg from either high earning position or inheritance than when juggling 2 full time jobs to provide for your children.

This reminds me of my 20yo self watching Fight Club for the first time. If you dont get the movie, you wont get this post, so dont bother arguing in the comments. Even still, the post kinda goes to far on some points, and uses a bit hard language for non native speakers (myself included).

In 2004, I quit my engineering job to work in humanitarian aid. I found a wife, a family and a new country.

You quit your job and started a blog. Wow. And then you wrote an article on your blog in a hypomanic state describing how you quit your job and started a blog. Amazing.

"Started looking for a wife"

No need to read further. I wonder if he already had a dog, or whether "looking for a dog" is an activity that requires a wife?

> You get good ideas from years of hard leisure.

The article seemed longer than it needed to be, but that's a good phrase, "hard leisure."

Two words: survivorship bias. How many people out there followed a similar strategy as the author, only to fail miserably?

The claim that innovative breakthroughs doesn't happen as a result of structured 9-5 work is missing a citation.

Privilege dressed up as purpose. Don't quit your job; find a job that fulfils you and change.

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not all leap of faiths are equal.

Such drivel. If you really want to move people to act give them a clear roadmap for a lifestyle that supports years without meaningful income.

Did you have $1M in savings? Did you have rich parents? Did you just live off your SO's income? Did you have financial dependants like children or elderly parents?

I hope I'm wrong but this just reeks of intense privilege being misconstrued as nonconformity.

I thought this fairy tale died with Peter thiels quit college for $100k disaster.

This is a very long article, and nowhere in it do I see how this guy supported himself after quitting his engineering job. He talks about a few vague references to situations that may be freelance paid gigs, but no specifics.

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I found myself wishing for hip waders to even try to get through part of this self-congratulatory pile of BS.

Reading between the lines told me he quit his job, mooched off of friends and girlfriend/wife, then managed to con people into investing in a magazine. I figure he had a trust fund somewhere, or has the gift of gab and could easily part fools from their cash.

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"Transform your perspective thus: rather than seeing the job as carrying out someone else’s will in exchange for money, see it as itself your sacred cosmic duty. What important task do you do for the project you work for? How does that project fit into creating a more glorious future? How is that future pleasing to God, the proper order of things, and your own felt value instincts? Your wage is just a budget given to you to help you carry out this sacred duty; give your whole life to the task at hand, and take responsibility for its whole logic. If something in that entire chain of purpose back to the highest purposes isn’t right, fix it. You own the task and the task owns you."

Wow, what is this even.

Had to double check to make sure it wasn't an Onion article.

He certainly has been having a crisis, and as someone else mentioned here, recently read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and tried to mimic the writing.

But instead, came across as another stressed, lost mind with their head too buried in social media, thinking they have to be at their absolute highlight of their life at any given moment.

I feel sorry for this wife he "courted", she probably asks him to at least help with the dishes sometimes but is responded with another tyrade of "You don't understand, woman, I need to focus on my God-given task of building my little blog with my intellectual friends"

"Never code in any language except Assembly. You should never willingly give up any control over your computer" - Wolf Tivy, probably

In 2022 who still uses the term "courting"?

I feel like it's a term used by somebody from the Edwardian era who needs a refill on their moustache wax.

Hahahaa, gotta grant it to the author, he has the rare talent to induce in me uncontrollable laughs with every single paragraph. The other "author" who comes to my mind now with that exquisite skill is Eliezer Yudkowsky, hell, I would pay some amount of money to watch a conversation between that pair. Not even 20 seasons of South Park would be that hilarious.

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Growing up poor white trash gives me a completely different perspective and makes me crass enough to say go fuck yourself you entitled prick.

So this is the male version of the trophy spouse stereotype. Focuses on lifting and courting, has an education just to check off a box, writes pseudointellectual drivel to pass the time.

Just as likely to be replaced by a fresher model in a few years.