[HN Gopher] Be wary of imitating high-status people who can affo...
___________________________________________________________________
Be wary of imitating high-status people who can afford to
countersignal
Author : jger15
Score : 421 points
Date : 2022-12-11 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (robkhenderson.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (robkhenderson.substack.com)
| ngoilapites wrote:
| On the first place why is this title so evocative?
| motohagiography wrote:
| Not going to university or dropping out of it is the most
| expensive countersignal of all, and it also knocks away the
| ladder for people who might try to follow you into your chosen
| endeavour.
|
| I've been articulating this dynamic for a long time and tell
| anyone who thinks I am an example that it's a terrible example to
| follow - mostly because the countersignals become the signal, as
| really, if you really want to prove how smart you are, go win a
| Fields medal, or perhaps you have a cancer cure to help my
| friend, or maybe you can make something somebody else actually
| wants for a change - and if you aren't that smart, then maybe you
| should work less on seeming smart and more on demonstrating you
| are good at something and use the opportunities that come from
| the respect of your competence and ability to share it with
| others, instead of affecting the aura of brilliance at being a
| failed or frustrated genius. These admonishments are as much to
| myself as anyone else who resembles them.
|
| Countersignals are vulgar artifacts of the 90s that a bunch of
| nouveau middle class people are just starting to figure out now,
| and they only fool rubes and are a way to figure out who to
| follow and how to climb socially, but never how to do something
| beautiful or great. I call them fart-connoisseurs because I know
| what it is like to be one. These days I use this quote a lot,
| which is, "Don't be so humble, you aren't that great."
|
| When I'm great, I will be humble. Until then, check out how
| awesome my effort that yielded something objectively crappy is,
| and even though it's not above criticism, it did the job, which
| is more than brilliance ever did. Maybe that is knocking the
| ladder away too, but that ladder went nowhere anyway. :)
|
| Big fan of Rob Hendersons newsletter. Recommend.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Wealth signaling and its effects are rather depressing. People
| going into debt to buy a Rolex and a sports car to create the
| illusion of success is bad enough. Someone falling for an
| individual mismanaging their own finances to create a lie is
| quite sad.
|
| I was listening to a pop station yesterday and a song was playing
| that was like a top 5 of fashion brands, they way the singer kept
| listing them off. So I think elements of our culture pressure
| people into doing this kind of painful signaling.
|
| I think signaling or counter signaling should be avoided if you
| want to preserve your sanity. Find something you're passionate
| about and find others who feel the same. Hang out. Make best
| friends. Date. Get married. Be happy.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Buying a Rolex today or for the past few years, would have
| actually been a pretty solid investment - it's hard to purchase
| a new one, because there's usually waiting lists, and most
| stores prioritize their VIP clients. Used market blew up around
| COVID, and people have made some pretty nice returns on
| flipping Rolex. Hell, I have a couple of co-workers that
| collect watches, and they mostly just store the real-deal in
| their safes, and wear high-end replicas in public.
|
| But I get your point. Unfortunately there seems to be lots of
| kids in the the lower socio-economic classes that spend all
| their money on expensive sneakers, hoodies, and other luxury
| brand clothes. Spending $1k on a designer hoodie, when you make
| $15k / year, isn't the smartest financial decision - to put it
| mildly.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Not really. You can't buy one at the stores - massive
| scarcity. And the grey market have appreciation priced in.
| Grey prices have dropped significantly in the past few
| months. The crypto bubble in watches has burst.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I saw this greatly affecting Eastern European youth, who have
| mostly no chance of ever wearing Balenciaga or LV. But they get
| this image blasted 24/7 on Instagram, so they are stuck forever
| in a sad feedback loop.
| rvba wrote:
| In Soviet republics you could be murdered by the state every
| day, or declared an enemy of the pepople, or sent to gulag
| for a thing you didnt do - and all of those negative
| experiences ingrained a type of short-terminism among the
| society.
|
| The state could take away your apartment and make you lose
| everyrhing apart the clothes on your back - so why bother
| fixing the apartment, go and buy some nice clothes... at
| least you look good NOW and maybe you can keep them.
|
| This negative trainig (easy to lose everything) makes people
| care more about looks. With so many relatively poor people
| maybe it is some sort of a "lipstick effect" too - for
| everyone.
| CyanBird wrote:
| It happens everywhere, specially around lumpenproletariats
| around the world, it is a foul situation without an honest
| fix.
|
| It Latam it leads to horrible levels of asocial behaviors,
| theft, drug trading to acquire money and use it to purchase
| luxury items with which signal success
|
| It is heart breaking
| bradlys wrote:
| Good thing that Turkey has plenty of imitation goods for
| cheap.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| One of the best examples of counter-signaling was Kim Kardashian
| at the Met Gala. She wore a black dress that covered her from
| head to toe, including her face. It was kind of a statement that
| "even my silhouette is famous".
| jerrygenser wrote:
| Just looked this up. This is surprisingly similar to how Kanye
| (Ye?) appeared on the Lex Friedman podcast recently. Even
| though they are split, is Kim still taking hints or strategies
| they learned or developed together? I actually could barely
| recognize Ye in terms of silhouette, but could understand his
| voice on the podcast.
| ealexhudson wrote:
| Since the Met Gala is in May, the causality must be the other
| direction..?
| jerrygenser wrote:
| I also went to a Kanye concert where he was putting a
| diamond studded full face mask on 5+ years ago in Philly
| where you couldn't recognize him. Should incorporate that
| into context as well.
| bikingbismuth wrote:
| Kanye has been fully covering his body/face for years
| (since at least the Yeezus tour in 2013).
| sys_64738 wrote:
| For those wondering:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kardashian
|
| Even after reading that I don't actually know what this woman
| is well-known for.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Originally this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kardashian,_Superstar
| booleandilemma wrote:
| She's one of those people who's famous for being famous.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Her father was a very prominent lawyer (including for OJ
| Simpson) so she had entry into "socialite" circles through
| him. Her fame increased when a sex tape involving her and a
| singer was published, and since then she has been a TV
| personality.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Trying too hard.
| intrasight wrote:
| Be even more wary of high-status people who cannot afford to
| countersignal ;)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| An extreme example of affording to countersignal were the
| "smarter" british cavalry regiments, which purposefully set their
| mess dues _significantly higher_ than the pay, thus keeping out
| the riffraff.
| [deleted]
| roenxi wrote:
| That isn't counter-signalling, that is gate-keeping.
|
| Counter-signalling: Signalling that you are adopting a sub-
| optimal strategy.
|
| Gate-keeping: Creating an environment that lower-class people
| can't survive in. This is more forceful.
| abecedarius wrote:
| That's signaling, like wearing expensive clothes.
| Countersignaling means dressing like a bum in high-class
| circles and getting accepted anyway.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Maybe I'd been overthinking it? I had been considering "I
| have a high-paying job" as signalling, and "My pay doesn't
| really cover the essentials, but I do it for our country,
| don't you know" as counter-.
|
| Edit: and otoh I would consider "Boss is in shorts, t-shirt
| and sandals" as just plain signalling, because I grew up in a
| world (my favourite anecdote was working with a Hawai'ian VC
| who would classify meetings as "socks" or "no socks") where
| in any given business situation, those who have the gold
| dress down and those who pitch for it dress up.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| You are under thinking it. Signalling is showing you have
| something high status (money, nice clothes, etc),
| countersignalling is refusing to show something to prove
| you don't need to.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Presumably the signal is actually "I'm independently
| wealthy, so I can afford to take this job that loses me
| money".
| abecedarius wrote:
| I think we agree about the phenomena, it's just that the
| word "signaling" has a false lucidity -- it has an everyday
| meaning and a related technical meaning that's easy to
| overlook. The technical meaning is about an equilibrium in
| a game where "talk is cheap", so that your message would be
| discounted by observers unless some cost (not necessarily
| in money) is tied to it.
|
| With countersignaling there's an extra level to the game
| where your message has the form "I have this quality over
| and above merely affording the first-level cost" -- now the
| cost you're paying is the risk of being taken for riff-
| raff. Those with more of that quality, whatever it is, have
| to be better at pulling that gambit off, for it to work as
| a countersignal.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification! _Sprezzatura_ might be the
| quality?
|
| conjugation: "They are riffraff. You are sloppy. I am
| sprezzatura incarnate."
| abecedarius wrote:
| I think that's a good example, yeah.
| somrand0 wrote:
| thanks for the succinct definition.
|
| essentially, more status game plays
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Interesting. I'm not sure I'd call that counter-signalling
| though. But it is similar to a lot of other practices that have
| the effect of erecting barriers to participation by working
| classes, but give the appearance of self-less-ness. For
| example, in many US states, legislators receive little or no
| pay and must be available for sessions of the legislature for
| weeks at a time.
| adventured wrote:
| > Humans haven't been successful because we are innovators.
| Rather, we are successful because we don't think for ourselves,
| and save time and energy by copying others.
|
| This is just plain incorrect.
|
| Humanity functions in three groups: creators, mimics and
| teachers.
|
| The creators are the less cautious types that strike out and
| build new things, attempt to invent or innovate. Their
| personalities and behaviors are quite often noticeably different
| from everyone else.
|
| Mimics copy, copy, copy. They're probably ~95-97% of the
| population. Their success depends on successfully copying other
| models that work.
|
| Teachers primarily exist to train mimics, to amplify knowledge
| out to humanity. They're mimics with bullhorns and a desire to
| pass on things that have worked and knowledge acquired broadly by
| the species (lessons learned, etc).
|
| This works, this is successful, initiate copy mode. And off it
| goes. Humans are exceptionally good at that for sure. We just got
| a remarkable, prominent, several decade demonstration of it at a
| global level in so called globalization. Creators are the ones
| that initiate the next things to be copied, the next things that
| get taught from a textbook in school, and so on (to be clear,
| most creators suffer terribly and never achieve much of anything;
| theirs is a low success rate, high reward path).
| osigurdson wrote:
| Pure trash. Be yourself, emulate whoever you want (or no one). Do
| what feels right. If someone looks down on you for riding a bike
| to work (regardless of your current "status"), #1 they are idiots
| and their respect and admiration is worth zero and #2 choke them
| out :). Life is too short for such ridiculous minutia.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Would love to set a 10 year reminder to check in on how this
| life strategy has worked out.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Right. Wow, look at me, I now have a cushy (soul crushing)
| job at the city just like my slightly wealthier neighbour.
| All life goals checked off now.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I knew you were someone who could afford to "ignore" social
| cues. I used to think the tech-type was not like that until
| I observed some common threads, at lest in the Bay Area
| (driving an EV or planning to buy one - likely a Tesla,
| Patagonia vests, _loves_ to hike, has an Apple watch)
| osigurdson wrote:
| Gorpcore
| wellbehaved wrote:
| Yeah. Look where this got Galileo. House arrest for the rest
| of his life. Bad call Galileo, you should have paid better
| attention to social cues! /s
| CyanBird wrote:
| Well... Copernicus did take a cue, he wrote his book and
| ideas and only published them when he was about to die (or
| postmortem I don't remember/can't lookup the details rn)
| wellbehaved wrote:
| The world needs more milquetoasts like Copernicus and
| less tall poppies like Galileo! /s
| wellbehaved wrote:
| How dare you express anything that resembles sincere courage
| here. Elon Musk can afford that, but if others were to follow
| his lead, imagine how bad that would be for Big Tech
| management! Who knows, they might even get fired and replaced
| by one of these Elon Musk "imitators". What a horrible,
| horrible thought. /s
| User23 wrote:
| I wonder how kids educated in the Montessori fashion would behave
| during the box experiment. Is this telling us about children or
| the educational system?
| helen___keller wrote:
| Wouldn't the best advice simply be to avoid unproductive
| signaling and be authentic when possible?
|
| It's one thing to signal by wearing nice clothes to a company
| outing where you make an impression on the person who can
| materially affect your future income.
|
| It's another thing to consider every aspect of your life in the
| lens of "what would the wealthy do?"
|
| I really have no interest in allowing others to make decisions
| for me, and I don't understand the mindset
| [deleted]
| theonemind wrote:
| Transparent counter-signalling by claiming not to care about
| signalling. Careful, I don't think you have the status to pull
| it off. /s
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Would this be counter-counter signalling then?
| [deleted]
| willmadden wrote:
| Every moment spent contriving and derisking a plan to virtue
| signal to born followers is better spent talking to leaders and
| figuring out which calculated risks to take.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Wonder how many people who are treating all this seriously and
| talking in the comments about cars and watches as status symbols
| on another day would be shrieking about "woke virtue signalling".
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _If a chimpanzee views a person perform a series of superfluous
| actions, along with one single necessary action, in order to
| obtain a piece of food, the chimpanzee will skip the superfluous
| action, and perform only the necessary one._
|
| > _In contrast, children will copy every single action, including
| the unnecessary ones._
|
| I watched the video, but I'm unconvinced. They tell the kid the
| box is " _magic_ ". Children know the box is not magic. Children
| know how spells work in cartoon and books. So " _magic_ " is a
| code word for " _please copy all the silly steps as accurate as
| possible_ ".
|
| The apes have no instruction, so they don't understand the _must_
| copy all the silly steps.
|
| I'll also blame school. Children are expected and trained to
| follow orders of adults even if they don't understand them,
| because it will be better for them in the future. Did you ever
| played basketball? Why should you put the ball in the basket if
| it has a hole in the bottom and the ball will fall down?
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Children know the box is not magic.
|
| are you sure about that?
| sircastor wrote:
| It's important to clarify this question. Children, especially
| young children, do not have a clear view of what is real and
| What is not real. The line is different for everyone, but I'd
| say at 7 or 8 that starts to come into focus. Even then,
| there are plenty of grown, intelligent adults who believe
| things without any substantial evidence.
|
| I will say that kids are way smarter than we often give them
| credit for. They're natural scientists, and I think we
| probably educate that kind of learning out of them.
| burlesona wrote:
| I also wondered about the difference between doing this with
| young children and adult chimps.
|
| I think it's fairly obvious that if you gave the clear box test
| to a teenager or adult and said "get the treat out" they'd look
| at you funny and then many or most would just reach in and grab
| it. I think even in the black box, they'd probably look at it
| real hard and maybe try going straight for the treat after
| investigating the box a bit.
|
| By contrast very young humans operate in "game mode" almost all
| the time, and are basically "playing along" with whatever game
| you put them in. It's a lot of fun, and often silly.
|
| So my question is, what about juvenile chimps? Do they also
| operate in game mode, or would they follow the adult chimp
| behavior of going straight for the reward?
| jterwill wrote:
| They have tried this with juvenile non-human primates! For
| example, Horner & Whiten (2005) tried this with 2-6 year old
| chimpanzees. Clay & Tennie (2017) tried this with juvenile
| bonobos. Neither group overimitated. They do play, but
| overimitation is probably underpinned by the
| ability/proclivity to infer Gricean intentions, which non-
| human primates lack.
|
| There is a strong normative element to this, as well as the
| play element you mentioned -- I expect, as adults, we've all
| engaged in some form of overimitation as an act of
| conformity.
| blagie wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| (1) It was presented as a game. It seemed like a game.
|
| (2) People like ritual. This was clearly ritual.
| Nemi wrote:
| I agree. The nature of our verbal communication is that they
| were implying to the children that this is a game and that they
| must copy each step. In contrast, had they said "your goal is
| to get the gummy bear. Do only those things necessary to get
| the treat" it would have gone much differently.
|
| Even by not using ANY words and only having then children watch
| a person and then leaving them alone with the contraption would
| have gone differently. Some would likely have "played the game"
| because that is what we teach children. But at least some would
| have likely just gone for the treat.
|
| In any case, it is an interesting thing to ponder!
| bg4 wrote:
| I'd recommend doing whatever the hell you want.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Seems decently researched but I don't know why the author felt
| compelled to add unsubstantiated and totally unnecessary
| hyperbole about humans only having succeeded because of imitating
| the whole shebang. It doesn't even make sense!
| usrusr wrote:
| That part the author only skipped over, but I think it's likely
| true: we are the species that does not just learn how to open
| boxes by imitation, we are the species that starts a cargo cult
| hoping for boxes to arrive.
|
| In earlier days, we understood very little of the technology we
| had, even on the highest expert level. A chimpanzee that does
| not imitate but only watches to pick up the elements it
| understands would never be able to become bronze age, no matter
| the abundance of ore and fuel. The human on the other hand
| apparently has the ability to trust the unknown and try.
| drooby wrote:
| It makes sense to me. When an indigenous tribe has some
| intricate process for transforming a toxic plant into an edible
| food, and also has no knowledge of the chemistry, the only
| solution is to copy the entire process unquestioning. We see
| the same behavior for hunting strategies, building
| strategies... social control.. religion.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Yep. Insecurity of being wrong and found out plays into it
| too
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Imitating the whole thing is critical when you don't really
| understand what is important. For example, Manioc requires a
| seemingly arbitrary and elaborate series of steps to prepare so
| it's not (long-term) poisonous.
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...
| mpweiher wrote:
| "Don't be so humble - you're not that great" -- Golda Meir
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| A key point in the article:
|
| >"...Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild
| success is attributable to variance."
|
| >Hard work increases the likelihood of luck finding you, and hard
| work also prepares you for when it does.
|
| You can't reliably produce luck, even by imitating people that
| are "lucky"; all you can do is increase the likelihood that you
| might capitalize on luck.
| indiogrindio wrote:
| I agree with the overall argument of the article, but some of it
| is confusing in the point it's trying to make:
|
| > In these studies, chimps are behaving more rationally than
| humans. There is no wasted motion to obtain the reward.
|
| > Humans haven't been successful because we are innovators.
| Rather, we are successful because we don't think for ourselves,
| and save time and energy by copying others.
|
| > In contrast, children will copy every single action, including
| the unnecessary ones.
|
| Isn't the chimpanzee the one saving time/energy in this case
| since it's not engaging in superfluous activities and only doing
| what it's necessary for its goal? I was expecting the article to
| state that the point of human superfluous activity is that it
| allows for a greater range of experimentation (a superfluous
| activity might lead to an adjacent innovative/novel solution for
| a new goal that was outside of the original scope).
| lqet wrote:
| > Humans are high-fidelity imitators.
|
| This is true in a very deep sense, and this human desire (let's
| even call it compulsion) to imitate others can be used to base an
| entire anthropology on, as Rene Girard did quite masterfully. For
| anyone interested, I strongly recommend reading "I See Satan Fall
| Like Lightning".
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| In the same vein:
|
| - Don't hide your mistakes
|
| - Show that you are vulnerable
|
| - Be yourself
|
| Are all things that work best when you are (contextually) high-
| status.
|
| Yet we are still culturally promoting them as the things we
| should all strive for in any situation.
|
| However, it's way easier to be open about my professional
| mistakes now that I'm recognized by my peers and that I don't do
| too many of them.
|
| It's simple to expose my vulnerabilities now that I've built a
| social network that will not hurt me with it because they like
| and respect me.
|
| And it's certainly great to be able to be myself, now that people
| around me will say I'm eccentric, and not reject me.
|
| It's like the behavior of men in romantic comedy. If you were to
| be ugly and awkward, doing what they do would get you arrested.
| You don't get to play "50 shades" or "twilight" if you are the
| hunchback of Notredame. It's also why energy, humour and culture
| are such great assets, allowing you to somewhat help with social
| status.
|
| One day maybe we will stop selling to our children that life is
| about this one thing that works in all cases, and admit each life
| advice is highly contextual.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If
| you're a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a
| high-status activity because it was a choice and not a necessity.
| But if you work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you
| can't afford a car._
|
| It must be so tedious to live having internalized this
| perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not
| "signaling" when they do things, they are just doing things. This
| constant meta game mostly exists in the minds of this
| iamverysmart crowd. Most people who ride bikes to work just like
| to ride bikes and find it to be a convenient way to get to work,
| they aren't giving a single thought to how it plays in some
| status game that nobody else they interact with is thinking about
| either.
|
| I find this whole genre incredibly unrelatable.
| cma wrote:
| What about riding a $10,000 bike to work?
| jhrmnn wrote:
| Are there 10k commute bikes? I doubt people take 10k pro road
| bikes to work
| loeg wrote:
| I ride a $5k road bike to work :-).
| bradlys wrote:
| Usually closer to $5k but yes. I had coworkers who did this
| all the time.
|
| To be fair - these guys love riding. So, ride what you
| enjoy.
| cyann wrote:
| These: https://www.stromerbike.com/en/models/stromer-
| st7-launch-edi...
|
| Starting at USD 13 400.
| bagels wrote:
| There are people who do.
| lanstin wrote:
| Tho they worry so much about it getting stolen I think
| they enjoy biking overall less than they would a bike
| suitable for just hopping on and biking around to
| different places.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you count electric commuters you can get above $10k
| easy.
| beardedetim wrote:
| > The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when
| they do things, they are just doing things.
|
| I agree with you that most actors don't consciously make
| decisions based on how they will be perceived and instead just
| do things.
|
| However, I don't think that stops other actors from, without
| thinking themselves, taking those actions as signals and
| judging others by those signals.
|
| We as the actors being judged can choose to think through those
| things or not. Either way we're being judged by those
| "signals". And either way I'm judging others based on those
| signals.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when
| they do things, they are just doing things.
|
| I've read Sutherland's "Alchemy" book and that's not how I
| remember him framing signaling.
|
| Long to short, while - to your point - we are not all
| intentionally signaling, we are as receivers of inputs are
| constantly looking for and translating random input into
| signals.
|
| The point being, whether you like it or not, you're giving off
| signals. Be mindful, or not. But if you go with the latter then
| you might at times be doing yourself a disservice because we as
| humans self-generate signals.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Surprising-Power-Ideas-Sense/...
|
| p.s. I enjoyed the book. His is a very counter "conventional
| wisdom" mindset. That appeals to me.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _His is a very counter "conventional wisdom" mindset. That
| appeals to me._
|
| This is basically what I see going on here, and what I mean
| by "the iamverysmart crowd" (which to be clear: I am a part
| of). We _overindex_ on this kind of counter conventional
| wisdom because it 's more interesting. But I think it's more
| often the case that the boring conventional wisdom is closer
| to the mark.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You'd have to read the book.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Most of this is unconscious for the general population, the
| consequence of mimicry + social cues + emotional rewards. The
| person who shows up to Pizza Hut on a bicycle isn't thinking
| about social status consciously. Instead, they get slightly
| pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel slightly
| inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it again. The top
| executive who shows up on a bicycle gets no such feedback, and
| so they keep doing it.
|
| You see "accidental countersignaling" from people who are
| generally oblivious to social cues, like folks with Aspergers
| or recent immigrants to a country, because the subtle feedback
| from other people doesn't register for them. These people tend
| to exist apart from the social reality and inhabit only
| economic and physical reality.
|
| Articles (and comments) like this one are _describing_ what 's
| going on, not _prescribing_ it. Basically nobody goes into a
| social situation thinking "How can I raise my social status?"
| The people who do come off as phonies, because the emotions
| involved operate very subtly and quickly and if it's not
| unconscious it's apparent to other people. But you can analyze
| the situation _after the fact_ and describe what 's going on,
| as well as try to train your unconscious offline to have better
| responses to the situation you were in.
| ivalm wrote:
| > The person who shows up to Pizza Hut on a bicycle isn't
| thinking about social status consciously. Instead, they get
| slightly pitying looks from coworkers, which make them feel
| slightly inferior and ashamed, which makes them not do it
| again
|
| This is not how social dynamic at Pizza Hut works.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like some of these commenters have never
| worked a minumum wage job in their lives.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _Instead, they get slightly pitying looks from coworkers,
| which make them feel slightly inferior and ashamed, which
| makes them not do it again._
|
| No they don't! Is my point. This is almost entirely a story
| made up by this bizarro world of smart people who think
| themselves into circles (and aren't working at pizza hut).
| Nobody cares how someone gets themselves to their job at
| pizza hut; the other people working there aren't thinking
| about this, the person riding the bike there isn't thinking
| about this. This is just people like us with too much time on
| our hands to write substacks and debate silly things on
| internet message boards constructing castles in the sky.
|
| > _Articles (and comments) like this one are describing what
| 's going on, not prescribing it._
|
| I recognize that it is _attempting_ to describe what 's going
| on. I am saying that I think it is _failing_ to accurately
| describe what 's going on.
| dilap wrote:
| Check out the song "No Scrubs" by TLC for another angle on
| the same topic. It's a real phenomenon, not just something
| made up by nerds on substack.
|
| Some people are blissfully checked out enough from social
| competition dynamics that they don't notice it.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Riding your bike to work (what OP is talking about) and
| not having a car to pick up your date (what TLC were
| singing about) are two pretty different things. Coworkers
| don't care how you get to work. Dates care bacause they
| don't want to have to take the bus home afterwards.
| bnralt wrote:
| Yeah. Off the top of my head I can think two pieces of
| popular media - The 40 Year Old Virgin and Cobra Kai -
| that had a scene where a guy lucks out and meets an
| attractive woman, asks her out on a date, the woman asks
| when he'll pick her up, he awkwardly tells her he has a
| bike and not a car, she makes a "what the hell?!"
| expression and then says how she guesses she'll be the
| one picking him up.
|
| We can say that society exaggerates the importance of
| some of these things, or that they're less of an issue in
| certain circles. Or that it's easy to psyche yourself out
| about those issues and miss many of the opportunities
| around you. All true. But the issues actually exist, and
| aren't just from the imagination of a small group of
| people that overthink things.
| nkurz wrote:
| Equally, it's possible to go even further in the
| "bicycle" direction to end up ahead of those with cars.
| Here's a delightful example: Rubberbandits "Horse
| Outside" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8
| (NSFW at one point if you are listening closely and can
| understand the Irish accent, but unlikely to actually
| offend). The beginning might be boring, but it's short,
| so stick with it.
| abbadadda wrote:
| You seem to be in denial that this phenomenon exists. I'd
| suggest reading _The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We
| Are._ Quite insightful. Status matters more than you're
| letting on, and the perception of it is subconscious. No
| one (hopefully) is actively making an effort to look down
| on someone for riding their bike to their job at Pizza Hut
| - but many subtle things get registered by humans around us
| every day whether you or they are aware of it.
| JanSt wrote:
| Thank god I'm not living in a city with money as a first
| value. People would look down on you here for taking a
| car to your job if you can use a bike.
| abbadadda wrote:
| Missed the point by a mile.
| brewdad wrote:
| Which is the exact same phenomenon with the signals
| reversed.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It comes across as an obsession with image-management, rather
| than with skill-development or something similarly practical
| and useful. While there's some need for taking care of one's
| appearance (poor personal hygiene, for example, is unpleasant
| for the people around you), putting this at the top of the list
| of things to worry about doesn't seem very healthy.
|
| It's also a characteristic of con artists of the SBF/Holmes
| etc. variety. Patrick Boyle's latest video, "Why We Trust
| Fraudsters!" explores this in some depth:
|
| https://youtu.be/Wx51CffrBIg
| gist wrote:
| > The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when
| they do things, they are just doing things.
|
| Well forgetting the fact that neither of us can prove what we
| think about this I do believe it's a form of signaling. At
| least in the sense that someone who does not have status if
| (from my observation over the years) less likely to do things
| that could further confirm or lower their status.
|
| For example growing up my mom had a 'cleaning lady'. That
| cleaning lady would insist that when my mom dropped her off it
| was not in front of her house but where her neighbors couldn't
| see that another woman was dropping her off (because that would
| imply she was cleaning houses). Likewise an employee of my
| father (factory/warehouse work) would always change out of
| their clothes and travel home in something much nicer. And not
| because the clothes were dirty either.
|
| I dress in a t-shirt and dungarees everyday. When I was younger
| (and also in my own new business) I wore a suit. Sure times
| were different but for one thing now I don't need to prove
| anything.
| golemotron wrote:
| > It must be so tedious to live having internalized this
| perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not
| "signaling" when they do things, they are just doing things.
| This constant meta game mostly exists in the minds of this
| iamverysmart crowd.
|
| I think what you are missing is that they are signaling whether
| they realize it or not. A signal is just a discernible
| phenomenon that is given meaning by observers. It doesn't have
| be intentional.
|
| An example: social counter-signaling often arises naturally and
| unconsciously. Think about the rich person who would rather not
| be recognized as such, or the person who is a bit carefree
| because they are beyond the grind. They don't consciously adopt
| a 'carefree persona', they just feel more at ease because of
| their life situation.
| petercooper wrote:
| Agreed. He is just placing observations of real phenomena
| into a model. It's a bit like with economics. Prices "signal"
| all sorts of things that the entity setting the prices may
| not well be aware of.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The vast vast majority of people are not "signaling" when
| they do things, they are just doing things. This constant meta
| game mostly exists in the minds of this iamverysmart crowd
|
| I was telling my dad that we were going to try a new
| restaurant. "They churn their own butter," I pointed out
| excitedly. And my dad--who grew up in a village in Bangladesh--
| is like "why would they churn their own butter? You can buy it
| in a store."
|
| People convey all sorts of messages through subtle signaling.
| They have an image they try to cultivate, even if only
| unconsciously. For example, people on the west coast wear
| hoodies and T-shirts to signal a sort of casualness. Meanwhile,
| I don't wear hoodies or T-shirts because I'm worried people
| might mistake me for a day laborer.
|
| I don't think most people who say they're above it all really
| are. Maybe they are. Or maybe they're not as self-aware of
| their own motivations. Or maybe they're in a cultural bubble
| where they can't recognize certain social currents as
| signaling.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| That's an odd take on the butter scenario. The obvious answer
| to your dad's question is "because although churning your own
| butter is not necessary, it can make a fresher and more
| interesting-tasting product than mass produced butter you buy
| at a store". When I look for restaurants that churn their own
| butter, I'm not looking to show off my status as someone who
| can afford unnecessary labor, I am actually "just doing
| things"; I am just looking for interesting and tasty food
| with interesting and tasty butter, I'm not trying to
| cultivate an image of myself as a foodie or rich person or
| avoiding being mistaken for a day-laborer.
|
| I don't know why you've re-framed it into a status signal.
| Did you really value churning your own butter as a pure
| status signal and not for the benefits of artisinal butter?
| petesergeant wrote:
| > It must be so tedious to live having internalized this
| perspective on people. The vast vast majority of people are not
| "signaling"
|
| I can assure you that posting on a public forum that you think
| signaling is beneath you is signaling.
| paganel wrote:
| It's not tiring at all, it's just becoming acutely aware of the
| day-to-day socio-economic realities.
|
| Yes, a good friend of mine can afford to be a (rather poorly
| paid) journalist because said friend is in fact a millionaire
| when it comes to his inherited real-estate assets, but someone
| like me (my parents had to rely on subsistence agriculture
| until not that long ago) has to always have a decent-paying job
| available or else.
|
| Again, for people on the other side of the fence is not tiring
| at all, we're very much aware of it each and every day. It's
| not a new thing either, reading Balzac means reading about
| people on each side of the has real money/has no real money
| fence.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Your examples are not "signaling".
|
| A rich person being a poorly paid journalist because they
| want to and can afford to isn't signaling, they're just doing
| something they want to do and which they can afford to do.
| Very very few people do such things simply for the sake of
| appearances.
|
| You (and me, for what it's worth) always having to have a
| decent-paying job available or else is also not "signaling",
| it just is what it is, we have to work jobs because we have
| to work jobs, there isn't a status meta-game to it, it's just
| how we afford life.
|
| It's the mindset of looking at things like your poorly paid
| journalist example, and thinking "that person is signaling"
| rather than "that person wants to be a journalist" that I
| find tedious and unrelatable.
| paganel wrote:
| I don't think the author writes about the "in your face"
| signaling, because nobody does that anymore once a certain
| high socio-economic status is reached (mostly by birth-
| related accidents), but about the "implicit", for lack of a
| better term, signaling. Which most of the people the OP
| talks about certainly do in abundance. In other words I
| think the author talks mostly about that "implicit"
| signaling.
| bloqs wrote:
| You find it unrelatable (and most commenters on this website
| will too.)
|
| People can be broadly separated into 2 categories in terms of
| cognitive wiring for personality psychology. " _People_ people
| " and "Things* people". (Theres a lot of overlap between
| interest in aesthetics and interest in ideas here too, but a
| separate discussion) These map rather neatly onto other things
| like introversion and agreeableness, but parking that for a
| moment. Additionally, " _People_ people " can learn about
| 'Things' and " _Things_ people " can learn about 'People'.
|
| Things people (so lets say, your bog standard software eng.)
| And people people (communications director) do have one thing
| in common, which is assuming they understand how the other
| thinks. What is irritating minutae to one, is the essence of
| importance to the other. Talking about the superiority of UTF8,
| Linux or Vim might come across as repulsively "iamverysmart" to
| " _People_ people ".
|
| Observing social signals as signals, and the various
| hierachical cues that inform and are informed by them is the
| essense of being interested in other people. We all adhere to
| varying degrees of social order. To disparage the rules is
| perilous and risks ostracisation (in the olden days, this meant
| you didnt reproduce and died).
|
| This dichotomy is responsible for a lot of the mechanics of
| organisational hierachies. Not everything is a math problem.
| mikea1 wrote:
| This people-people vs. things-people dichotomy is an
| interesting theory. Did you read this somewhere or is this
| something you deduced?
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| It was at the "fashionably late" example where I started
| wondering if this chronicler of human behavior was themselves
| human, since arriving late to parties has very little to do with
| status and much more to do with not wanting to be one of the
| uncomfortable first or second guests. Late arrival is an
| expectation at ordinary parties, not a privilege.
| segmondy wrote:
| Depends on culture. In some culture arriving late is a
| privilege, since everyone will be there to observe your
| entrance. Seats, food, entrance will be guaranteed for you.
| Heck, we see it in the US with the clubbing scene.
| tptacek wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm just talking about parties in the US, and
| not dinner parties.
| viburnum wrote:
| On the other hand, don't worry about reproducing the class
| system. Maybe join a union or something.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > One form of countersignaling is excess humility. It increases
| status for those who are already high status, but humility
| decreases status for those who are not high-status.
|
| Great to see a scientific reason for one of my long held
| opinions: "humility policing" is a social tactic, and a very
| efficient one if you're high status. Don't fall for it. Resist
| the humility police. Give and claim credit where credit is due.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The problem with these online "status" discussions is that they
| discuss status as though it's independent of the hard work and
| talent that typically results in success. I'm not saying that's
| always present: some people just get lucky. But most of the
| people you probably want to emulate aren't "just" lucky.
| They're talented and worked hard to produce exceptional work
| over and over again, and then maybe also had some luck.
|
| Anyway, the point here is that I've been fortunate to meet a
| number of really talented people at various stages of their
| careers, and many of the most talented ones really are humble.
| They act that way because they don't need to be boastful about
| their work in the first place, and lack of humility is a really
| good way to make people resent you instead of helping you,
| which is counterproductive when you're good at what you do. It
| also signals that you aren't confident in your work, or that
| you're overconfident and not careful. Both can be red flags.
|
| Don't know why I'm writing this. I just wish someone had
| explained these things to me when I was starting out in my
| career.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Maybe a bit OT:
|
| The other day I read an interview with a local guy in his 20s
| that struck gold with crypto, he'd invest something like $20k,
| and turned it into $40M. He basically went all in on one alt-coin
| before the marked exploded late last year, and the coin went up
| 2000x.
|
| When asked about it, he of course came up with a narrative that
| this wasn't just dumb luck. He had had worked hard for those
| $20k, and he had lost his shirt many times prior to this. But in
| the end, he was patting has own back and saying that it was his
| savviness which resulted in his newfound wealth. And if others
| were to follow his steps, they'd need to spend countless hours
| watching the charts and reading whitepapers.
|
| He had now mostly exited from crypto, retiring from his "old
| life", and being a full-time investor (VC for startups).
|
| Can you imagine if some newspaper interviewed a recent lottery
| winner, with the winner detailing how he'd planned it all along?
| But to the ignorant, it all sounds very impressive.
| 627467 wrote:
| It takes a certain combination of work/knowledge/luck to profit
| from anything in life.
|
| Seems reductionist to equate buying low and selling at peak to
| buying a lottery ticket. But so it does to claim hard work has
| been the main reason why financial investors profit
| wildrhythms wrote:
| >It takes a certain combination of work/knowledge/luck to
| profit from anything in life.
|
| Plenty of people 'profiting' on the wealth of their parents,
| grandparents, etc. when they themselves have never worked a
| day in their life and don't have much knowledge of anything.
|
| Inherited wealth is an obvious contradiction to the
| meritocracy that so many people believe we live within today.
| 627467 wrote:
| If my response seemed to support the idea of meritocracy as
| a fact it was unintended. Obviously I missed "inheritance"
| or family-estate from the triad.
| sbarre wrote:
| Rich people never want to acknowledge their luck, because it
| doesn't fit the "self-made" narrative.
|
| edit: to please the pedants, I should have said "many rich
| people", as to not imply "all". My fault.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "You know, some people got no choice, and they can never find
| a voice, to talk with that they can even call their own. So
| the first thing that they see, that allows them the right to
| be, why they follow it, you know, it's called bad luck."
|
| Lou Reed
| jl6 wrote:
| "Which contributes more to wealth: luck or hard work? Which
| contributes more to the area of a rectangle: height or
| width?"
| nightski wrote:
| By framing the problem like this you are making the
| assumption the variables are independent which is very much
| not the case. Your work can influence your luck, and even
| how much effect said luck has.
| redler wrote:
| Luck indeed finds you hard at work. But also, if you're
| not sitting at the table, you're on the menu.
| nightski wrote:
| That hasn't really been my experience, but ymmv. But it's
| also why we should fight so much against centralization
| in the economy even if it brings efficiency gains.
| Ideally you'd want to have as large of a table as
| possible.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| The nuanced take is that luck is something that can be "made"
| through putting oneself in situations conducive to getting
| lucky through exposure, networking, and repeated attempts /
| not giving up.
|
| You might be able to get successful people to admit that they
| were in the right place at the right time, but they'll almost
| always qualify that with how much effort they put in to be in
| that situation.
| atmavatar wrote:
| If you want to catch a MLB game ball, you have to a) attend
| a game, b) pay attention to every ball hit, c) practice
| actually catching a ball, and (for some) bring a glove. If
| you're particularly savvy, you can even purchase tickets
| for seats in an area to where balls are commonly hit, and
| if you're determined, you can go to lots of games.
|
| However, you're only getting that ball if it's hit in your
| direction. You can attend hundreds of games and still never
| have one hit close enough to catch.
|
| While missing one or more preparation steps (e.g.,
| attending a game) may rule out the possibility of catching
| a game ball, for every person who does catch one, there are
| dozens if not hundreds of people who prepare at least as
| much and still never do.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > repeated attempts / not giving up
|
| Being able to afford that wouldn't be lucky, it would imply
| some sort of per-existing wealth or at least a solid
| support network.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| That's true, and the extent of how necessary that
| existing wealth and support network is depends on the
| kind of venture. For starting a business, absolutely. But
| there are other kinds of success that aren't as
| entrepreneurial.
|
| I was presenting it primarily through the lens of a
| mindset that is undaunted by failure and having the
| motivation to avoid giving up prematurely.
|
| Successful writers and entertainers often share stories
| about how they were rejected dozens and dozens of times
| before finally getting noticed. I have friends who wanted
| to change careers by moving to a different industry and
| they must have submitted hundreds of job applications
| before they managed to get their junior level role.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Or that could be earned
| danaris wrote:
| ...Which you have in the first place by being lucky in
| your birth.
| corndoge wrote:
| Cynical but doesn't match my experience, plenty of rich
| people acknowledge luck
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jrm4 wrote:
| I bet there's a selection thing going on there. Most
| people, not being rich, aren't around rich people -- and so
| the rich people they "see" are exactly the type to not
| acknowledge luck, Trump perhaps being an extreme here.
| manigandham wrote:
| Many rich people do acknowledge it, because another way to
| say it is odds or opportunities. And you can absolutely
| increase the likelihood of getting "lucky" through work.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| The "luck" of many wealthy people is that they were born to
| wealthy parents (Walton family, Gates, etc).
| subradios wrote:
| Most of the richest people today were born solidly middle
| or upper middle class.
|
| Nassim Taleb again, after mere comfortability ita a long
| road of blackjack and 100 hour workweeks.
| [deleted]
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, this is generally underestimated. The closer I've
| worked with this class the more it becomes apparent in
| quiet anecdotes that don't always make the official bios or
| wikis.
|
| Most self-made billionaires came from at least millionaire
| families. Generally hard working, smart guys with a lot of
| skill & luck, but they start at a level we can only dream
| that maybe our children or grandchildren can start from.
|
| I once worked for a billionaire investor who told us how he
| got started investing when his father offered him the
| choice at 13 years old: have his birthday party at one of
| the most famous & expensive hotels in NYC, or take the cash
| value of that to invest in stocks. The dollar figure seemed
| to be something like the equivalent of $50k in 2020
| dollars. Much like orange man who got "a small loan of $1M
| from his father", I am sure the $50k given to a 13 year old
| was not the first or the last paternal investment.
|
| Another firm managing ~$10B there was a guy who
| unbelievably made it to the C-suite in his 20s. It was
| never clear exactly what the connection was, but he was
| some sort of family friend of the founder and worked for
| him as a teen. He was also related to a big bank CEO.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| > Another firm managing ~$10B there was a guy who
| unbelievably made it to the C-suite in his 20s. It was
| never clear exactly what the connection was, but he was
| some sort of family friend of the founder and worked for
| him as a teen. He was also related to a big bank CEO.
|
| Sounds like Matthew Grimes, lol
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-28/from-
| inte...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Actually a totally different guy, tells you how common
| the scenario is...
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| There are plenty of 1%-ers who work hard and they ascribe
| their success to their hard work and intelligence. But it
| ignores that there are many people who work harder, are more
| intelligent, or both, who don't get to those heights. That is
| the luck aspect.
|
| If one is on top of the heap, it is convenient to believe in
| meritocracy, doubly so. On the one hand, it makes the person
| feel they earned what they have, and second it means the poor
| are also getting what they deserve and so there is no need to
| artificially prop them up. "Those people" should have worked
| harder.
| nightski wrote:
| It's also because working "hard" isn't enough. You have to
| put your effort where it matters. That is so often
| overlooked.
| idlehand wrote:
| Working hard implies the labor theory of value, which is
| that all work is interchangeable. While that might have
| been closer to the truth during the first industrial
| revolution, the variability in the value of labor has
| never been higher than today.
|
| It's comforting to think that those that have achieved
| the best outcomes in life have simply sacrificed time
| spent on other things, and spent more time on work. There
| might be some truth in that, but often they have had
| better opportunities, due to both circumstance and luck,
| that they also have made better use of than average.
| CM30 wrote:
| Not just rich people, successful people in general hate to
| acknowledge the role luck played in their success. It's
| really obvious on communities devoted to becoming successful
| at a certain hobby or venture, like blogging, video creation,
| live streaming, SEO/marketing, game development, startups,
| etc. Those who made it big will talk about it's all skill and
| how their amazingly strategies and hard work paid off,
| whereas those who failed will be talking about its all luck
| based, how their timing was off and how they didn't have the
| connections needed to succeed.
|
| It's called self-serving bias, and it's everywhere in
| society.
| etherael wrote:
| Granted that based on probability alone he just got lucky but
| from the details of the story it's not possible to be certain
| of that. If he can offer a narrative about why and how he knew
| such a move would have such a result and the narrative fits
| with reality, then how is he not correct? Yes you can get both
| lucky and tragically unlucky when it comes to investments, but
| that doesnt mean there's no such thing as a rational investment
| with a high payoff. It's not impossible that's what he did,
| people do it, it does happen.
| hgsgm wrote:
| TrackerFF wrote:
| IIRC, he went all-in on HEX when it was dirt cheap and
| picking up volume, because it was a staking coin.
| etherael wrote:
| Got it, pure luck, no argument.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, in any cohort of investors, by nature some random sample
| or going to outperform in any given year. In fact,
| statistically the concept of "hot hands" will rear its head
| because.. some subset of the outperformers will actually
| outperform over multiple years.
|
| It may be skill, it may be luck, or it may be both.
|
| But consider that this outperformance & hot-hand phenomenon
| can be replicated even in purely random games like coin
| flipping.
|
| So sometimes taking the "winners" and trying to craft
| narratives of why they succeeded and what you should do to
| replicate them is a silly game.
| etherael wrote:
| I get what you mean and I agree to an extent, but to give
| an absurd example, if you knew of a company that had a
| patent on cold fusion, and you had watched it actually work
| yourself and deployed it at scale in a project
| successfully, investing in such a venture and having an
| outsized return would have absolutely nothing whatsoever to
| do with probability.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| For sure! The point is that simply replication the
| behavior of winners is not any guarantee of winning.
|
| Replicating SOME of the behaviors of SOME winners, upon
| careful study of what in their process actually allows
| them to differentiate themselves from others is the key,
| and is usually a process that requires a lot more work.
|
| The work here was that they had some sort of investment
| process that required time & effort evaluating projects &
| their prospects over long time horizons. These sorts of
| processes require entire investment teams and are not the
| sort of thing that make it into their Fortune magazine
| blurb or pithy twitter posts.
|
| The process cannot be summarized in a paragraph blurb,
| and even if you were to read a 300 page book you may not
| have the man-hours, technical skills or knowledge to
| replicate it.
| B8MGHCBekDuRi wrote:
| > Can you imagine if some newspaper interviewed a recent
| lottery winner [...] But to the ignorant, it all sounds very
| impressive
|
| the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect described by Crichton comes to
| mind here.
|
| It is quite potent when media talk about crypto and usually
| involves evident logical fallacies that are not dissimilar to
| Orwellian double-speak.
|
| Like the idea that cash is freedom so crypto supporters also
| support no cash limits, even though you can't buy crypto with
| cash and crypto cannot be converted directly to cash and people
| who won the crypto lottery keep their money in a good old bank
| when a good old investment manager handles them to buy good old
| banking products using good old FIAT money taxed by the good
| old government, because "freedom propaganda" is the best tool
| to sell a fraud to the ignorant.
|
| But media don't write about it, I don't know why.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > even though you can't buy crypto with cash and crypto
| cannot be converted directly to cash
|
| I have bought and sold crypto primarily using cash for the
| last ten years, what are you talking about.
|
| Yes, many people use an exchange. Many do not.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Physical cash? How?
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| Presumably a Bitcoin ATM
| none_to_remain wrote:
| One simple option: Hand someone some cash, they send you
| some BTC
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Precisely this. There's nothing complex about it either.
| You get a bunch of cash, they get btc, or vice versa.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Not that simple. You need to validate the transaction on
| the chain and that takes hours
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| You only need a single confirmation these days. It takes
| 10 minutes.
|
| Source: have been doing this for years.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| You arrange to meet someone online, meet up, exchange
| cash for btc/whatever, done.
|
| Never had a bad experience with it. You just sit in a
| coffee shop with the person for the few minutes it takes
| for a transaction confirmation.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Bitcoin Local offers the opportunity to meet a seller at
| a physical location. Same with Local Monero. If you're
| planning to exchange $10M, you'll probably need a couple
| of bag-carriers, and perhaps some muscle as well.
|
| You can also trade for non-physical "cash", e.g. local
| bank transfer via escrow. As far as I'm concerned, that's
| a cash exchange.
| ycombobreaker wrote:
| Won't the usage of escrow trigger a KYC/AML "event" of
| some sort? That would tie the two parties' identities in
| a way that a cash evades.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Really hard to underestimate how bad and old the doublespeak
| is.
|
| You ever thought about how a credit card is a debt card?
|
| Whereas, it's the debit card that actually spends your
| credits?
| ffggffggj wrote:
| Credit cards create credits (a liability). Debit cards
| create debits (a nearly immediate transfer from your
| account). Seems accurate enough to me although I can see
| how debt and debit could be confused.
| jrm4 wrote:
| But no:
|
| When your account is credited, that means you gain money.
| That's the definition of "credit."
|
| So yes, you are creating credits for the credit card
| company, against you. What you are gaining is _debt
| /liability_. Which why it's weird for it to be "your"
| credit card.
|
| If I have a Chuck E. Cheese game token card, that doesn't
| mean I owe Chuck E. Cheese tokens.
| hexane360 wrote:
| A 'debit card' is one where funds are debited from your
| account. A 'credit card' is one where you're buying on
| credit.
| kfarr wrote:
| Perfect example of fundamental attribution error
| lullab wrote:
| Maybe the real takeaway from his story is to bet big in a new
| market to get rich. And if you lose it all, earn more and do it
| again. It would have happened in the early days of the internet
| just the same.
|
| Yes, it's incredibly risky but at least it has a better chance
| than playing the lottery. Like Nassim Taleb says, bet on things
| with a limited downside and unlimited upside. And if you don't
| try, nothing will happen.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "things with a limited downside and unlimited upside"
|
| Penny stocks and junk bonds, a classic recipe for attaining
| mega wealth.
| lullab wrote:
| Theoretically yes. Even putting it all on black in Vegas
| could work. But it doesn't mean you should do it. Any
| investment is inherently a gamble, some are riskier than
| others and some have a too small payoff for the risk.
| eyphka wrote:
| That is how Warren Buffet got started, or as he called
| them, used cigarbuts.
| ffggffggj wrote:
| It also helped that his father was a congressman and
| stock trader who brought Buffet around his finance
| friends throughout his youth and helped him start buying
| stocks as a young teenager.
| doliveira wrote:
| That's a pretty big advantage rich people have as well:
| knowing they won't starve to death if they fail.
| hgsgm wrote:
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, lets get Taleb exactly right here: He basically says
| don't invest "moderately," -- like putting your large amounts
| of money in stocks, even index funds, is a bad idea.
|
| Invest in both extremes, barbell style. Put MOST of it in
| something bulletproof (he goes with Treasury Bonds) and then
| the rest as big bets on long shots.
| johanvts wrote:
| Really depends on you goals and also current financial
| security. I would rather receive 50.000$ than a 10% chance
| at 500.000$. But a richer person would probably choose the
| latter.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Sure, but one of the big points of "The Black Swan" is
| that your (and everybody's) percentages numbers are way
| less reliable than you think.
| laserlight wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd:
|
| https://xkcd.com/1827/
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Seen a lot of Substack stuff. Is it the new Medium?
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| This kind of signaling is the reason why I ended up voluntarily
| with no friends in my mid 30s, down from a pretty active social
| life in my 20s knowing hundreds of people and regularly hanging
| out with many dozens, mostly in the Bay Area but also in Europe,
| where I'm originally from.
|
| As people get older, I noticed they just can't stop flashing how
| successful they are, how they can afford this or that, and
| suddenly everything becomes a financial/status competition.
| People becoming small contract freelancers and flaunting to you
| how they are now "CEO and entrepreneur, what about you?". One
| time, after a lucky IPO having been at the company for less than
| 2 years, I was told by a friend who was typically present in my
| weekly social life, and with whom I shared a lot of fun
| experiences in my 20s: "why do you work so hard rather than
| choosing a good pre IPO company and stay at the bottom and chill
| and retire in a couple years?". No shit. That was the last straw.
| I voted with my feet and I am overall happier in a life of
| solitude.
| deebosong wrote:
| I'm kinda like this as well.
|
| I'm not a misanthrope, and still enjoy the company of people.
| But. I used to status-jockey and be unconsciously and
| consciously obsessed with all of that, no matter the arena/
| context/ subculture, etc. But doing a lot of inner work and
| unearthing what my core drives/ motives/ needs were, a lot of
| that status-jockeying and wanting to be in the in-group to feel
| this existential sense of acceptance and security started to
| come into focus, and a lot of old friendships became revealed
| as insecurity/ fear based (on both parties). And trying to
| introduce new paradigms to old friends became sort of the last-
| ditch effort to try to salvage relationships that were built on
| shaky foundation.
|
| It also made me look back on when people tried to speak truth
| into my beliefs when I was still caught-up in wanting to be
| relevant and seen as high-status & outwardly respectable, and
| how I couldn't hear what people were saying.
|
| I still wanna give people a chance, though, but accept them for
| where they communicate they are at and leave em alone if
| they're deep in that status-chasing game, and have no desire to
| explore getting out of that mess. There are still people out
| there who want to enjoy life and find meaning on other terms
| than getting validation from an anonymous audience/ jury that
| they believe has the power to approve or reject them.
| bradlys wrote:
| Confused on your last point. Joining a good pre IPO company is
| generally a good idea. The difficult part is to find the good
| company, IMO.
|
| Look at how many were considered good but _still_ haven't gone
| public.
| meindnoch wrote:
| His friend, who just won the lottery, told him that he
| shouldn't work that hard, instead he should just win the
| lottery, like him.
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| That's the whole point, you can't deterministically know
| which company will make you rich in a couple years without a
| massive amount of luck (like my friend). My friend instead
| meant it as: "are you stupid? Why don't you just do like me?
| It's so easy and simple!".
|
| I clearly have a lot of startups and pre IPO companies under
| my belt, and he knew that.
| bradlys wrote:
| Got it. Makes sense. I figured maybe that was the case but
| the wording confused me.
| robocat wrote:
| Surely you must know people that just do-their-own-thing,
| rather than the fake aspirationals (often middle-class status
| seekers)?
|
| I don't think it is that difficult to tell the difference
| between the loving enthusiast (with say a gaming PC they built
| that looks like dreck using unpopular parts, with judicious use
| of expense), and the mere status chaser (with say a stupid
| expensive gaming PC with cliched blingken lights, plus an
| enthusiasm for high-status parts and ranking behaviours). If
| engineers, find the true engineer types, rather than the
| wannabes?
|
| I could imagine it is difficult in some suburbs that mostly
| have plastic people, but you said you are more worldly than
| that. There are poseurs everywhere, but there are definite
| patterns of behaviour that you can use to filter them out,
| regardless of their clique.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I was at a small dinner party recently and one of the guests
| arrived in a three wheel golf cart kind of thing. His other car
| is an orange Lamborghini Huracan. He got a degree in poli sci or
| some other liberal arts thing, but played in tech sales and
| eventually sold a gaming company to Google and has now worked
| with Google for several years. The conversation turned toward
| advice to our kids (everyone is 45 to 55 and has kids headed to
| college). At one point I said something to the effect of "The
| standard advise is that whenever you get to a fork in the road
| you should probably take the harder path."
|
| Without missing a beat, the other guest quipped "Yeah, take a
| nap".
| rakejake wrote:
| Unrelated, but your username is genius!
| HenryClerval wrote:
| I haven't heard "take a nap" before. What does it mean in that
| context?
| matwood wrote:
| The one that always bugs me is when rich, successful people tell
| others to follow their heart or passion. It's easy to follow your
| heart once you're already rich. The other one is that rich people
| don't think about money, which is bullshit. It's all they think
| about, even if they don't show it.
| s3000 wrote:
| If you interpret it generously, those rich people may
| acknowledge that it takes luck to succeed. If you follow your
| heart you at least have enjoyed the ride if luck doesn't
| strike.
|
| Following your heart can also be a great filter. If you
| maintain some level of compassion and integrity, you will
| create a product that customers want.
| teddyh wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrd5od9lyk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Rid9cI6AI
| swayvil wrote:
| Rich people are more dependent on their wealth than poor
| people. It's funny to think about.
|
| A poor person depends on a diverse array of skills,
| relationships and resources.
|
| A rich person depends on their account balance. They focus on
| that, basically in exclusion of all else.
|
| It makes the way they see and behave really different.
|
| It explains "wealthy miser" syndrome.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| A rich person has people who focus on their account balance.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The ape experiment seems like it's been misinterpreted badly -
| including by the linked video. The kids are told they are
| "playing a game" whereas the apes are trying to pull the treat
| from the box. The children aren't being outsmarted by the apes,
| they are doing a different thing. Many toys and children's games
| involve arbitrary and pointless actions. The kids have been
| taught to do something, are told to do something, and then do it.
|
| If you told the children their goal was to remove the gummy bear
| from the box with as few actions as possible they too would skip
| messing with the mechanism on top. The apes are playing one game
| (get the treat) and the kids are playing another (manipulate this
| box the way I show you). Comparing their actions and drawing
| conclusions is silly. It's like saying someone playing chess is
| missing a lot of moves that a checkers player made.
| ajb wrote:
| As always, context is everything.
|
| Not all countersignals are that costly. For example, casual wear
| is common among devs. This signals that our skill set is valuable
| enough that we don't need to comply with corporate dress codes.
| Sometimes someone from a poor background turns up in a suit - for
| example, we had a QA guy who did, having converted from some
| previous career via a short course. Sometimes new grads come to
| interview in one, having been poorly informed by their parents or
| whatever. Continuing to wear different dress to your colleagues
| just makes them uncomfortable and doesn't help you, even if your
| skill set is not yet that valuable.
|
| The more general piece of advice here is that you should take
| advice from those who have just succeeded at what you want to do,
| not someone who did so a decade or more ago (parental career
| advice is usually well out of date. For example, my parents
| imagined that an academic career was still the easier option)
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _This signals that our skill set is valuable enough that we
| don 't need to comply with corporate dress codes. Sometimes
| someone from a poor background turns up in a suit_
|
| And then there's Vint Cerf.
| tuukkah wrote:
| His approach may be something best described as counter-
| countersignalling.
| chris_j wrote:
| Around ten years ago, I worked for IBM as a software engineer.
| The dress code at work was pretty casual, so I tended to wear
| jeans and a t-shirt in the office. One day, I was asked to
| speak at an event that would be attended by a lot of our
| customers. I asked my mentor, "Should I dress up? Should I wear
| my suit for the first time in years?" His response surprised
| me. He said, "These customers have come here to talk to
| engineers. Do you want them to think we've sent a salesman to
| talk to them." He made it perfectly clear that I should dress
| like an engineer. I confess I did get rid of the t-shirt; I
| wore a casual shirt with my jeans that day, and the folks that
| I talked to went away satisfied that they had indeed spoken
| with an engineer.
| chewz wrote:
| Dressing casual, wearing glasses and not being too pushy was
| my secret sauce to selling software tools to chief
| engneers...
| borroka wrote:
| Perhaps dressing poorly (very common) and not being in shape
| (bimodal distribution, there are many in very good shape and
| many in very bad shape, few in between) started out as a
| counter-signal, but today it is just sloppiness, or
| convenience, like it is more convenient to order fast food
| instead of grilling chicken.
|
| I work in the tech industry, and although I don't usually wear
| a suit, I often show up in a spezzato, a pair of pants and a
| jacket of a different fabric/color. Nothing too flashy, but
| well put together. And I think that's the counter signal
| nowadays: show up looking good, feeling good, being what we
| want to be.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I've personally never understood the business world's
| obsession with suits.
|
| Like, what does a deal need to be signed in a suit? What does
| the suit contribute to the deal? If it's to convey
| "professionalism", surely a cheap $300 piece of attire
| shouldn't be a stronger signal than whatever due diligence
| the two parties have done already?
| throwaway821909 wrote:
| I think in the same way we have expensive cars or whatever
| to say "I have so much money I can afford to waste $x" we
| have suits to say "I'm so organised I can spare some effort
| dressing kind of impractically, just to look a bit better
| for you, my client"
| ajb wrote:
| A suit wouldn't be the last signal checked, but the first -
| back which most things were done in person. It's not the
| signing of the deal that needs the suit, but the
| introduction. And once you've been introduced in a suit,
| changing it later is another signal that you may prefer not
| to send. As well as that if you've gone to the trouble of
| having a suit and maintaining it, you may as well wear it
| all the time rather than waste time figuring out if you
| need to wear it that day.
| labrador wrote:
| "You got to be awful rich to dress as bad as you do"
|
| -- John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America
| spencerchubb wrote:
| This is talked about in left-leanong circles and there is even an
| idiom for it: "classy if you're rich and trashy if you're poor".
| bluedays wrote:
| I live in a poor area of the country. If I were to dress
| according to my income I wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Does
| this count as a countersignal?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Boss gives a dinner party at their home for their employees. All
| the guests show up in their best. Boss is in shorts, t-shirt and
| sandals.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Top shelf power play. This guy Zooms
| eternalban wrote:
| You missed the part where the maid serves little burgers on
| buns as lunch.
| brewdad wrote:
| The real power play would be if the boss's t-shirt is the 3
| for $10 variety from Target rather than a $200 bespoke one.
| borroka wrote:
| In my non-U.S. hometown (people in the U.S. are, on average,
| much more shy in this context, oddly enough), this would have
| been considered extremely rude and awkward, and the boss would
| have been made fun of forever.
|
| And not because he was in shorts, T-shirt and sandals, a
| respectable attire at the beach or pool, but not when other
| people are striving to present themselves at their best.
| Putting people down should never be fashionable.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Boss is a jerk.
| 988747 wrote:
| Or it's just a miscommunication: The boss was throwing the
| party with the intention of everyone having a chance to relax
| and have fun, but everyone else saw it as a career
| opportunity and "dressed for success".
| bulbosaur123 wrote:
| The poorer you are, the more you are interested in appearing
| rich. Higher EV in that play allowing increased chances to mingle
| with rich class.
|
| The richer you are, the more you are interested in appearing
| humble. Higher EV in signalling "money speaks, wealth whispers"
| message and appearing "down-to-earth" to win people over.
|
| Very often it pays to do the opposite of what is expected from
| you.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| > The richer you are, the more you are interested in appearing
| humble. Higher EV in signalling "money speaks, wealth whispers"
| message and appearing "down-to-earth" to win people over.
|
| Is that really the case though? Because I see a lot of
| university buildings and foundations named after really wealthy
| people. That's hardly "whsipers".
| themacguffinman wrote:
| If the actually rich people are dressing down-to-earth, why
| would you dress fancily to appear rich? Surely you want to also
| dress down-to-earth so you appear like the rich people do.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| because you and the actually rich people are not appearing to
| the same audience.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| "Dress for the job you want, not the one you have"
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| there's this paper scissors rock thing with wealth & money
|
| poor: got to say you work hard when talking to middle class
|
| middle class: got to say you work smart if you're talking to
| upper class
|
| upper class: got to say your work hard to peers, middle class,
| and poor, but reasons are different. for peers it's because
| nihilism isn't cool neither is being overly epicurean
|
| everyone says the right narrative to the right people, no one
| really knows the truth
| Spivak wrote:
| Oh I never lie about the fact that I don't work hard.
| Literally never worked a hard day in my whole life. Yet I
| make bank for some reason that still eludes me.
|
| I am painfully aware of my privilege working in tech which is
| why I don't hide it, and try my best to spread it around in
| ways that aren't self-gratifying. I've paid my friends' rent,
| car repairs, groceries, plane tickets so they could be home
| for the holidays, venmoed my struggling friends so they could
| go out with the group, hooked them up with jobs, bought
| concert and festival tickets. Literally no one in my social
| circle is allowed to say, "sorry I can't money's tight." My
| only conditions are that they not thank me, never pay me back
| in any way whatsoever, and tell no one.
|
| One of the managers in my office does the same thing since he
| also grew up poor and hungry. When your out to dinner with
| him you not escape without being stuffed to the brim, and
| dessert, and leftovers.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Some writers are so well known that, despite having millions
| of followers, they literally don't promote anything they write on
| social media. That is some strong countersignaling."_
|
| This was every writer until about 13 years ago. That's not a long
| time in a field where people can have 70 year long careers.
|
| It's interesting to consider how "doing the thing I've always
| done" can quickly become seen as countersignalling when society
| changes around you.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| "Tweeting, but not tweeting about your new book" is very
| different from "Not tweeting about your new book" when Twitter
| doesn't exist. One is lack of a signal channel, the other is
| spending time and effort on a signal channel and not
| transmitting your signal. Countersignaling relies on the SNR
| being biased against you; it's about noise floor vs signal and
| having no channel at all is very different.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| This could still be a conscious choice to counter-signal
| though. When society is changing, you can go with the flow or
| you can choose to stick to your guns, and if your position is
| solid enough, maybe you don't need to be on the front of every
| trend. Of course, like all the risky signals, you don't know if
| your position is actually strong enough until it's too late.
| usrusr wrote:
| But how is "I can get by very well without that newfangled
| thing" not countersignaling? Even if it's completely devoid of
| deliberation it still is. And from the upstart's perspective
| this is written for, they can certainly try to cosplay grey
| eminence from the start, but that sure has its price. If they
| succeed nonetheless, good for them, but telling them to try
| would be bad advice.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Yeah, and I don't think its counter-signalling either.
| Successful authors are likely to have people actively promoting
| their work for them; the one thing others can't do for them is
| write (unless they're willing to have other people perform the
| work they are known for).
| tgv wrote:
| It's seems to be hard for people to imagine there are more
| channels than Twitter. They are on twitter, everybody they
| know is on twitter, and by that they judge everything.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| And people on Twitter vastly overestimate Twitter's
| importance. That some people think it's a "public town
| square" is just laughable. It's the trash-laden alley
| behind an Arby's, at best.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> In contrast, children will copy every single action, including
| the unnecessary ones._
|
| The example that immediately springs to mind, in the tech
| industry, is the "Steve Jobs Asshole" archetype.
|
| Steve Jobs was a notorious manager, in that he made heavy-duty
| demands, did not suffer fools, and was blunt to the point of
| abusive.
|
| But he was also able to filter for talent, cultivate it, and
| encourage excellence. He wasn't just an asshole. He was really
| smart, driven, and impatient with things that got in his way.
|
| I have worked with two people, in my time, who worked directly
| with him at one time, or another, and they both _hated_ him, but
| I have also worked with a number of folks like Steve Jobs, and
| have learned how to navigate them. It isn 't pleasant, but it's
| generally worth it, to get on their good side.
|
| Unfortunately, a lot of not-so-smart, and not-so-creative people
| have picked up on the "demanding asshole" part, without the
| "smart, selective, and creative" part, so they are just assholes.
| They honestly believe they are channeling Steve, but they don't
| get the same results (for the record, Steve Jobs had a lot more
| failures than successes, but his successes were off the charts).
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Unfortunately I'm afraid the current version of this is the
| Elon Musk wannabes. What they don't know is that many people
| that have worked for Musk have come forward from SpaceX and the
| like that say the only way to progress projects is to avoid his
| interference and/or learn how to present things to him in a way
| that he doesn't sabotage it. I've worked for bosses like that
| before and it is terrible. Not only are you doing your
| difficult job task but you have a constant mini boss that pops
| up trying to spoil any forward progress.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| The Steve Jobs example I immediately think of when talking
| about imitating _unnecessary_ behaviors are all the people who
| started dressing like Steve Jobs. Elizabeth Holmes and Mark
| Zuckerberg come to mind as people who did this in an obvious
| way.
|
| But the 'asshole boss' or authority figure archetype is an old
| one, from long before Steve Jobs, and it can be an effective
| motivational tool, although many of us, myself included, don't
| have the stomach for it. Obligatory pop culture example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elrnAl6ygeM
| adventured wrote:
| > the people who started dressing like Steve Jobs. Elizabeth
| Holmes and Mark Zuckerberg come to mind as people who did
| this in an obvious way.
|
| Zuckerberg was never known for copying the look of Steve
| Jobs. I doubt you can find multiple photos from different
| dates that demonstrates the claim.
|
| Zuck wore zip hoodies and flip flops; the version of Jobs
| that Zuckerberg would have been exposed to did not dress that
| way (Jobs might have worn flip flops to work in the 1970s,
| given the era). Zuck wore plain, grey-blue, short sleeve
| shirts; Jobs did not. There isn't much to Zuck's sense of
| style beyond that it's simplistic and very casual - which is
| from the era he grew up in and how his young peers around him
| dressed.
|
| Holmes by contrast did attempt to directly mimic the look of
| Jobs.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| I'm not referring to copying the actual style but rather
| copying the habit of wearing the same thing as a way to
| avoid spending time making the decision of what to wear.
| This concept was written about ad nauseam about a decade
| ago, with Jobs as the inspiration.
|
| I don't assume Jobs was the first one to do it, and it's
| certainly more conspicuous that Holmes was copying Jobs'
| _style_ , but I do assume that people like Zuckerberg
| copied Jobs directly as a result of hearing that this was
| some little productivity hack for Jobs. I associate this
| period as the same time the 'personal brand' was becoming
| more popular, and people started aping Steve Jobs as a way
| to either deceive people just through perception or as a
| good faith attempt to be like Steve.
|
| https://medium.com/swlh/why-successful-people-wear-the-
| same-...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/highly-successful-people-
| lik...
|
| https://www.ctsolutionsglobal.com/post/2019/09/12/what-do-
| st...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-productivity-
| hack...
|
| Here's an article that includes a quote of Zuckerberg
| explaining himself, which makes my speculation less of an
| assumption:
|
| https://careers.workopolis.com/advice/the-reason-mark-
| zucker...
|
| > "I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have
| to make as few decisions as possible about anything except
| how to best serve this community. There's actually a bunch
| of psychology theory that even making small decisions,
| around what you wear or what you eat for breakfast or
| things like that, they kind of make you tired and consume
| your energy. My view is I'm in this really lucky position
| where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than 1
| billion people, and I feel like I'm not doing my job if I
| spend any of my energy on things that are silly or
| frivolous about my life, so that way I can dedicate all of
| my energy towards just building the best products and
| services and helping us reach our goal and achieve this
| mission of helping to connect everyone in the world and
| giving them the ability to stay connected with the people
| that they love and care about. So, that's what I care
| about. Even though it sounds silly that that's my reason
| for wearing a grey t-shirt every day, it is true."
|
| > _He then pointed out that others throughout history have
| done the same, like Steve Jobs, who was usually wearing a
| black mock neck._
| janef0421 wrote:
| I don't think that behaviour is an attempt to mimic Steve
| Jobs, or any kind of signalling strategy. It's an
| effective strategy for minimising cognitive load and
| energy.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Holmes yes, so obviously so that people remarked on it.
| Zuckerberg? The archetype of Steve Jobs' dress code is the
| black turtleneck and jeans. Zuck is famous for his consistent
| grey t-shirt and jeans, or sometimes hoodies.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> his consistent grey t-shirt and jeans_
|
| I'm pretty sure they were talking about that consistency.
|
| The story that I have heard, is that Jobs wore the same
| thing, every day, so his mind wouldn't be "bogged down,"
| with minutia, like what to wear.
|
| I think some folks also have superstitions about dress.
| teg4n_ wrote:
| If I were that rich I would just pay someone to learn
| what kind of outfits I like and pick out my clothes for
| me.
| begemotz wrote:
| this story has been around for a long time, and
| attributed to a number of people. As a student, I came
| across it being said of Einstein.
| stonogo wrote:
| It was also the explanation for the Incredible Hulk
| always wearing purple pants in the comics.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| Per my other comment, it's not the copying of the style but
| rather the copying of the behavior / habit:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946519
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Thanks, that makes sense and that quote you found seems
| to prove it.
| ozim wrote:
| There is also example of devs thinking they are another Linus
| Torvalds. Being assholes because they think they are brilliant
| coders. Unfortunately most of the times these people were
| inventing unnecessary complexity not writing some great code.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's an entire school of thinking that
| basically boils down to "pro-social behavior is ineffective and
| slows you down". Their take is the "creative, selective" Steve
| Jobs was part of the myth. His real key to success was being
| able to push people. We are seeing history repeat itself with
| Elon Musk: so expect a new generation of entrepreneurs who
| think being a hardass is the key to running a successful
| enterprise.
|
| Now, to be clear, shepherding great work out of your team is a
| hallmark of a good manager. But if you don't even know what
| "good" is your efforts are in vain and you'd be better offer
| handing that autonomy over to someone who does. You cannot
| verbally-abuse your way to greatness.
| ramblerman wrote:
| > In contrast, children will copy every single action,
| including the unnecessary ones.
|
| That video was super interesting but I'm not sure the
| conclusion is correct. In the experiment with the children an
| authority figure (including full medical suit) was put in front
| of them and told them "do these instructions".
|
| The chimp wouldn't have that pressure. It's not quite the same
| experiment.
|
| It would be interesting if you put 5 boxes in front of children
| and told them they had 1 minute to get as many sweets as they
| could, if they would still follow all the steps.
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| Your "for the record" doesn't work even for that. Failure does
| not offset success.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Your "for the record" doesn't work even for that. Failure
| does not offset success._
|
| I'm afraid that I don't understand the comment.
|
| Sorry. I'm stupid that way.
| fallingknife wrote:
| In business, failure is the default outcome, not a
| negative. Someone who has failed 9 times and won big once
| is pretty much in the same place as someone who has tried
| once and succeeded once. Both are way ahead of someone who
| is 0-0.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Ah. That makes sense. Good point.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've seen the same. People see that to get things done, often
| you need to be unpleasant. So through logical acrobatics being
| unpleasant means they get things done. It even works for a
| while because it's true that if you're unpleasant you must be
| getting things done or you'd be gone.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| There's no excuse to tolerate bad behavior. It's like an
| abusive relationship. When such a situation happens, you should
| start thinking of an exit plan ASAP.
| taeric wrote:
| There are also shockingly few areas where zero tolerance
| works. That is, don't silently tolerate bad behavior, but
| realize that many punishment oriented corrections are
| themselves bad behavior.
| [deleted]
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I will tolerate W amount of X bad behavior for duration Y if
| I receive Z million dollars at the end of duration Y, for
| values of Z that equal or exceed 1.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| "An example from Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland: If you're
| a top executive, turning up to work on a bicycle is a high-status
| activity because it was a choice and not a necessity. But if you
| work at Pizza Hut, turning up on a bike means you can't afford a
| car."
|
| This tidbit reminds me of a similar anecdote (that my experience
| aligns with) re: the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex
| or driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon. But instead they have
| eccentric "hobbies" requiring $10ks of of equipment, inclusive of
| "needing" $10k viking stove/range, and $10k subzero
| fridge/freezer in your kitchen because you are a "foodie" and
| doing a $500k home Reno because you have good architectural taste
| and style. They probably still own a $70k Volvo (or now Tesla)
| anyway :-). In these scenarios I think it's because the $2k watch
| or $70k car is too easily attained by lower classes that they are
| no longer considered signals by the upper classes. However
| blowing $500k renovating a perfectly livable home, or $10k on an
| appliance you could spend as little as $1k on.. is not.
|
| Another countersignal that the article points in the direction of
| is level of professional vs casual attire in the workplace. My
| friends and I are far enough in our careers that personally I've
| worn sneakers to work for the last 10 years, no business slacks,
| and sporadically tuck in my collared shirt. The last round of job
| searching doing zoom interviews, I wore my hoodie for half the
| calls. If I had done this while job searching out of college,
| during my internship, or at my first job.. I would not be where I
| am today.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > In these scenarios I think it's because the $2k watch or $70k
| car is too easily attained by lower classes that they are no
| longer considered signals by the upper classes.
|
| Or it's about signaling that you're "in the know" with the in-
| group.
|
| I read some list from (I believe) the 1800s that listed the
| different vocabulary used by aristocratic vs. middle class
| English people. It wasn't anything fancy (e.g. graveyard =
| aristocrat, cemetery = middle class). But as soon as that list
| was published and the middle class strivers knew to imitate
| those parts of the dialect, I'm sure the aristocrats quickly
| deprecated those signals.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| if you're thinking U vs non-U it was mid-XX, and a bit of a U
| joke[0] that non-U peeps took way too seriously.
|
| I wonder: has anyone made a list of all the different ways we
| Sneetches have besides our bellies, to distinguish in- and
| out-groups?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English
|
| [0] when Jilly Cooper shows up in the References of a
| Wikipedia page it's all a bit of a lark
| cracrecry wrote:
| >the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a
| $70k BMW is frowned upon.
|
| There was a time, not that long time ago in which good clocks
| were expensive and expending 2ks on a good clock was similar to
| expending 2k on a laptop today, a functional, reasonable
| decision.
|
| My uncle earned a much more expensive Rolex than 2k in a Golf
| tournament and wearing it nobody believed it was genuine, even
| a watchmaker could not differentiate it from sight, there are
| very good Chinese knockoffs for cheap anywhere.
|
| Also, after quartz oscillator clocks, a 2k clock does not work
| better than a 100 one.
|
| People spend their money on whatever they see fit. One of the
| great things of having money is having freedom in your life but
| few people knowing that you have it.
|
| In places like Spain or France people do not admire you for
| having money, on the contrary they envy you, and you better not
| show off. Also gold diggers and interested parties like banks
| start to harass you all the time. And criminals what to take it
| from you by force.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I bought a fake "Rolex" in Thailand, for $10.
|
| It actually didn't work very well. I guess there's a
| hierarchy even among the fake.
| mozman wrote:
| I bought a $400 fake rolex. Aside from the glass not being
| sapphire you cannot tell the difference visually
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Is the escapement running at the same rate? A big part of
| the "rolex" appearance that is very hard to copy is the 8
| ticks per second that the second hand goes through. I
| have seen very high quality Rolex copies before that
| don't do that, and are instantly recognizable as a fake
| to people who know a little bit about watches.
| dagw wrote:
| _Is the escapement running at the same rate?_
|
| Absolutely. Modern fake Rolexes can only be told apart
| from a real one by an expert examining it with a loupe.
| And 8 tick pr second isn't that hard to replicate.
| Several ETA and Sellita calibers do it as well.
| moneywoes wrote:
| From whereabouts?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I got some fakes from a big warehouse in Shanghai. They
| had all levels of prices/quality. Our corporate guide
| found the shop for us. They had a whole wall of fake
| watches of different brands. My ex-wife got purses. I
| much preferred my real watches, but the fakes were for
| fancy dinners downtown in the big city in case I got
| mugged.
| mozman wrote:
| Look for fake watch forums and their trusted vendor list.
| That's how I found the seller I bought from.
|
| Took 4 weeks to arrive direct from China
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Back in the 1990s my dad's oldest brother went to the
| outskirts of NYC and was really impressed with the fake
| "Rolex" he bought. My mom was indignant about it because
| she sold men's clothing for a living and could tell you
| exactly how a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt was worse in so
| many ways than a real one.
|
| Two weeks later the watch stopped running.
|
| Around the same time, though, my mom's youngest brother was
| driving on the cross-Bronx throughway, stopped to help
| somebody whose car was pulled over on the side of the road,
| and found the driver had been shot dead.
| GTP wrote:
| >Around the same time, though, my mom's youngest brother
| was driving on the cross-Bronx throughway, stopped to
| help somebody whose car was pulled over on the side of
| the road, and found the driver had been shot dead.
|
| I don't get what this has too do with the fake rolex.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The outskirts of NYC were pretty rough back in the day. I
| don't think the guy got shot because he was involved in a
| fake Rolex gang though...
| notart666 wrote:
| Run on sentence makes you wonder.
|
| 7/10 meme
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My mom was indignant about it because she sold men's
| clothing for a living and could tell you exactly how a
| fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt was worse in so many ways than
| a real one.
|
| _Gomorrah_ opens with a description of Italian clothing
| manufacturing. As described there, the difference between
| a fake shirt and a real shirt is that they were made to
| the same specifications under one and the same contract,
| by different factories, and the real one got delivered
| faster than the fake one did. Only the first guy to
| deliver gets paid.
|
| It's an interesting book.
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250145031/
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > It's an interesting book.
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250145031/
|
| They also made a movie of it [0], I lived in Italy during
| the financial crisis and it had become commonplace to see
| large migrating Chinese coming from the North (likely
| illegal migrants in Milan's clothing factories) come to
| the central part of Italy looking for work on farms and
| restaurants. It was hard times as this was taking place
| as the large migration from N. Africa was happening and
| they were living in the parks and making the locals
| irate.
|
| It all came to light when our resident cheese maker, who
| used to work in the fashion Industry, had to tell them in
| broken Mandarin that we were fully staffed and couldn't
| accommodate them, but to try elsewhere further South--a
| typical way to brush-off a problem as is the running
| theme with Gomorrah.
|
| I soon realized how dirty the Fashion Industry was as the
| Zara scandal was ettin into full swing and the workers
| were taking to writing messages about not being paid for
| the garments they made [1] as the factories were in
| sweatshops in Xinjiang or Brazil.
|
| I wouldn't all it interesting so much as it is sobering
| and eye opening to the perils of offshore manufacturing
| practices and Italy's fashion Industry was just one of
| many of these horrors; Foxxcon's electronic manufacturing
| reliant on African rare earth mine exploitation make all
| of this pale in comparison.
|
| 0: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdNvPSD8H1k
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That's Italy!
| pvaldes wrote:
| > In places like Spain or France people do not admire you for
| having money, on the contrary they envy you
|
| Or maybe not. You mileage may vary.
|
| This would depend a lot on how do you earned it.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm going to make the assertion that personal clocks were
| basically never with that much. They were as functionally
| useful as a gold bracelet for the best majority of owners.
| g42gregory wrote:
| Last time the lowest-end Rolex was $2k was probably 30 years
| ago. :-)
| trasz2 wrote:
| Technically a Rolex, however expensive, will always be much
| worse as a watch than a 20$ Casio. But recently there's
| another aspect to this: there are now watches that are
| technically (mechanically) identical to rolexes. Same design,
| same mechanics, virtually impossible to tell the difference
| when you tear it apart. Rolex has always been more about
| marketing (artificial scarcity, waiting list etc) than
| mechanics, but now it's pretty much exclusively about
| marketing, since you can get the same engineering orders of
| magnitude cheaper. It's like DeBeers' diamonds.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I have a more obscure watch, but one that those that care
| recognize. It has signaled me as part of the 'correct'
| crowd more than once and definitely done it's purpose.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| What purpose is this? What happens when your watch
| signals that you belong to the correct crowd?
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| People with money and power respect you more and are more
| likely to drop their guard in some ways. This applies to
| in-group signaling generally. In this case the in-group
| is the rich and powerful.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Where can one get those similar Rolex's? For science
| vba616 wrote:
| Invicta has made some watches that are pretty similar for
| a long time. They aren't "high quality" replicas or
| counterfeits, but if you just like the look of a
| Submariner they seem to have similar watches for well
| under $100.
| bri3d wrote:
| The search term you want is just "Replica." RWI, RWG,
| RepTime on Reddit, and other private forums will analyze
| the quality and details of these clones in ridiculous
| detail. They also have reviews of each reseller and each
| factory.
|
| I don't even own any fake watches at this point and I've
| found these forums highly addictive/interesting -
| honestly, the average skill/knowledge level is quite high
| compared to most "watch enthusiast" forums.
| maigret wrote:
| Thanks for the hints. About the replicas: Yes but usually
| you'll find a few challenges with those. First, pure
| replicas are illegal, so what you can find legally are
| called hommages with another logo. That doesn't make them
| worst by itself, but here are the drawbacks:
|
| First the maintenance. What is the probability those
| watches will still be serviceable in 50 years? I own a
| watch that's more than 50 years and wear it regularly
| because it is still maintained by the company who made
| it.
|
| Second the value holding. Sure you can sink your money in
| any gear. The special value of great mechanical watches
| is that they maintain their used value well on the second
| hand market for decades. An hommage will have little
| reputation of its own to maintain.
|
| Of course this is all subject to special cases, but, etc
| because the watch world is very complex. For example many
| brands copy each other, some replica brand make great
| quality, and some great brands barely hold their value
| (which is a good thing for passionate collectors).
|
| No doubt there is a great skilled and passionate
| community around reproduction, like in music or art. To
| build a replica you need way more skill than the average
| watch enthusiast. They rarely outskill the examples they
| copy still.
| rosnd wrote:
| >First the maintenance. What is the probability those
| watches will still be serviceable in 50 years
|
| Extremely high, given that they tend to run on clones of
| incredibly popular movements like the ETA2824.
| rwmj wrote:
| Have a look at this guy's AliExpress watch reviews:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/JustOneMoreWatch/videos You
| should be able to get a reasonable Rolex hommage well
| under $500.
|
| (Not a Rolex immitation, but I'm wearing a JDM Casio
| Oceanus S100 which is all the watch that anyone would
| ever need.)
| vba616 wrote:
| Somewhere I read that a Rolex has a very practical purpose
| - a real one is a commodity that can fairly easily be
| turned into cash or a bribe in an emergency, but as a
| watch, it's not susceptible to being seized by authorities
| in many circumstances where cash or gold might be.
|
| I don't know if this is true, but it makes a good story.
| hammock wrote:
| Applies to jewelry in general, however Rolex tends to
| hold its value better than most jewelry (vs price paid)
| fnbr wrote:
| What's an example of a watch that's mechanically identical
| to a Rolex?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| It's pretty common now to find "Super Fakes" of designer
| brands, that are very difficult to tell apart from the
| real thing. They'll be expensive but not as expensive as
| the real thing.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Tudor, but it is a different division of Rolex
| coredog64 wrote:
| A Seiko SKX (or a spiritual successor) with a regulated
| NH35 will fall into the same "100m water resistance,
| accurate to within 10 seconds per day" category as a
| Rolex for about a 10th of the price.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| >...accurate to within 10 seconds per day
|
| That is hilarious to me. A quick search is showing one
| can expect a POS Casio to be +/- 15 seconds per month.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Correct, a G-shock would get the job done better.
|
| I always viewed watches as the only mainstream sociable
| acceptable form of male jewelry.
|
| And regardless of which model, generally no more expensive
| than a woman's engagement or wedding ring, and actually
| usually cheaper.
|
| Plus it does something other than look pretty - tells time
| & date!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Prestige cars, mega yachts, private jets, and
| corporations that make rockets and satellites are also
| male jewellery.
|
| But the article: it's repetitive and slightly rambling
| and reads like it was written by some variant of GPT.
|
| The point is fair, but it's also well known to class
| watchers. In the UK nouveau means a gigantic new build
| mansion full of chrome and glass, a private gym, and
| plastic and dental surgery. Old means a small country
| estate, a Georgian pied-a-terre somewhere near the City,
| tweedy clothing, and perhaps some pedigree dogs. And
| horses.
|
| Old money tends to underdress - sometimes sloppily - and
| on casual acquaintance is indistinguishable from the
| merely middle class.
|
| It's not until you get an invite to the manor house that
| you discover the ridiculously impractical and expensive
| Aga stove, the collection of wildly expensive antiques
| whose prices are never mentioned [1], the relaxed air of
| charming quizzical bafflement. (Very few of these people
| are unusually bright or talented. But socially polished -
| yes.)
|
| The visuals are not the point. Anyone can tweed, but not
| everyone can tweed like they've been doing it their
| entire lives and really mean it.
|
| [1] A 17th century silver spoon for PS5000? How
| _fascinating!_
| notinfuriated wrote:
| > Prestige cars, mega yachts, private jets, and
| corporations that make rockets and satellites are also
| male jewellery.
|
| If we're going down this line, why stop here? You forgot
| the 'trophy wife' which is definitely more prevalent than
| the dig at Musk/Bezos.
| Animats wrote:
| > I always viewed watches as the only mainstream sociable
| acceptable form of male jewelry.
|
| Now we have iDweebs, those Apple ear things.
| papandada wrote:
| Watches, pens, pocket knives, flashlights, seem to be a
| cluster of male jewelry. Fidget spinners too, at one
| time.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Is it envy, or disgust? If someone tells me they live in a
| castle, my initial instinct isn't "wow I wish in a castle
| too", but "wow what a wasteful needless thing to brag about".
| i0null wrote:
| Be cautious, the word "envy" is typically thrown around by
| folks that want to justify "greed". OC, there are
| reasonable scales between the two but equating success to
| having nicer material things is really a subjective value
| judgement.
|
| In all honesty the salient points in the OP about judging
| instead of thinking, is a commonly attributed aphorism to
| Carl Jung yet there is no reference to it. The point about
| tardiness and drawbacks this apparently has on socialising
| and career progression comes across as utilitarian to the
| point of sounding sociopathic.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| Rolex hatred seems like it is about expressing contempt towards
| the previous establishment. Presidents used to wear them (still
| do actually) but it's not uncommon to see very rich politicians
| wearing very cheap watches probably deliberately. Same goes for
| suit wearing.
|
| I think pg wrote an article on his blog about how suit wearing
| was for people who thought like conformists and obviously being
| a conformist was not for hackers. I am paraphrasing because I
| can't remember now exactly what he said. But I just think it
| was contempt of previously established people working in
| finance or law. Now, the largest companies in the US skew
| towards tech companies.
|
| I don't know why that happens that newly successful people seem
| to dislike the symbols of the previous elite rather than just
| mind their own business. Wearing a suit to a tech company will
| probably get you ostracized even if you just like wearing
| suits. This is in spite of the claim that the hoodie culture is
| not concerned what you dress up in, in fact they are. Maybe you
| could call that counter counter-signalling. It's just like
| taking a large salary at a tech company instead of having a $1
| salary and getting enormous options and stock payouts. Somehow
| taking a large salary is worse despite that being normal for
| CEOs previously.
| lazide wrote:
| Interestingly, the $1 salary (with large equity) gives you
| massive flexibility in how and when you get taxed, and also a
| lot of additional negotiating power and flexibility with ex-
| wives (and the Court) on child support and alimony, at least
| in California.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I've never understood where this meme came from of hoodie
| culture having some kind of disdain for suits. I enjoy a nice
| suit when the time calls for it! Say, a wedding or a holiday
| party.
|
| The reason I prefer a hoodie to suit on a daily basis is that
| putting on a suit is kind of arduous and owning 20 well-
| fitting suits gets expensive. It has nothing to do with
| signaling or whatever. Hoodies are far more practical and
| comfortable! They're a continuation of what I wore in high
| school and college, though sadly the skateboard logos have
| been replaced by tech company logos.
|
| Anyway, if you want to wear a suit, that's fine, just don't
| expect it from me.
| pfisherman wrote:
| > Wearing a suit to a tech company will probably get you
| ostracized even if you just like wearing suits.
|
| Not true. If you are a menswear enthusiast who is genuinely
| into fine tailoring, then people will respect it and even
| show interest. Generally, having hobbies and interests adds
| to one's character. Now wearing a suit because you think it
| will make people take you more seriously will get you some
| side eye.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Which is a shame. Someone wearing business casual is so
| much more pleasant to the eye than typical sloppy hacker
| wear. Especially once you start getting older and flabbier.
| nostrademons wrote:
| These are also culturally dependent, and are in-
| group/out-group signals. Many people in Silicon Valley
| explicitly want to keep people _who believe that business
| casual is more pleasing to the eye_ out of their social
| circles. It 's a value judgment; to them, hoodies are
| more pleasing to the eye, _and_ more comfortable, and
| they don 't want people who believe otherwise in their
| companies.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Right, that's the point of the parent of this subthread.
| They (the hoodie-wearers) would probably insist that they
| don't judge based on dress or appearance, but they do,
| and maybe more harshly than the suit-wearers. It's just
| what people do. I grew up wearing suits to work, shaving
| every day, and wearing a short neat haircut. I don't as
| much anymore, but I don't wear hoodies with pizza sauce
| stains either, and I don't respect the people who do as
| much as the ones who look like they at least glanced in
| the mirror before they left the house.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| You'll meet suit-wearing people, business casual people,
| and pizza-stained-hoodie people. Some will be
| conventionally attractive, some not. Some old, some
| young, some male, some female, some of one race, some
| another. Some will be skilled, diligent, and productive,
| some will be well-spoken and good communicators, some
| will be honest, some will be punctual... some will be
| not.
|
| Some of those things are choices that matter and should
| impact your respect for someone else. Some are not, do
| not, and should not.
|
| Personally, as a controls engineer who frequents messy
| manufacturing facilities, dressing in a suit gets in the
| way of getting work done. It subtly conveys "I'm too
| important to get my hands dirty, I'll leave the grunt
| work to the grunts." That kind of unwillingness to do
| whatever's required to get the job done is a point
| against those folks in my circles. I do understand that
| people who come to work in a suit may have different
| struggles vying for status and trying to send the right
| social signals in conference rooms, and I don't envy them
| those tasks - but please don't think less of me as a
| human because of what I choose to wear.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| It's more about the effort I think than the style. Well
| fitted suits and business casual looks good, but so does
| a well fitted shirt and jeans. On the flip side, a poorly
| fitted suit looks only marginally less sloppy than poorly
| fitted hacker wear. Comp-sci types who don't put effort
| into their wardrobes don't really look any better in
| business casual, at least in my experience from working
| in places where such clothes were required.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Doesn't business causal mean like slacks and a lame
| tucked in pastel polo shirt? I think both a suit and
| hacker wear are more interesting
| gnicholas wrote:
| Depends on the context. When I was a SV biglaw associate,
| I wore slacks and button down, generally without coat
| (only for meetings). On 'casual Friday' I wore polo,
| typically with jeans. Basically, SV law firms are always
| 'business casual' unless you're going to court or a
| deposition. And on casual Fridays, it's even less formal.
|
| I assume tech companies are more casual than big law
| firms, and that things may have gotten more casual in the
| decade since I left the law.
| officialchicken wrote:
| Don't forget about the Patagonia fleece vest! Many VC
| firms require someone to wear one to every meeting.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I think it's more like slacks and a button up. Polo
| shirts are super casual.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| maybe. I'd like to think that is true but was not in my
| experience but I wish I had experimented more before
| everything went remote so maybe take what I am saying with
| a grain of salt on this matter. I definitely took shit for
| it although some people were fascinated. I think the
| exception is if you have long hair or are a steampunk
| enthusiast. I am not really kidding. Even then you might
| come off as odd.
|
| I sometimes would have to go to nearby tech companies we
| worked with and the leads who would greet me would mention
| something like "oh sorry we didn't tell you that you don't
| have to wear a suit". You have to explain yourself and
| there is the implication that wearing a suit is somehow
| inappropriate.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think there's a bit of an idea now that you should be
| expressing yourself with your money, not expressing society's
| ideas. Around cars and watches, this creates a little bit of a
| "dead zone" for prestigious professionals.
|
| For example, if you aren't showing up in a $200k Maserati, your
| car had better be under $50k (maybe $70k with inflation). Only
| posers who aren't really into cars but want to show off their
| wealth spend $120k on a car.
|
| For watches, the same thing happens: if you're wearing a watch
| less than $50k, it had better be under $500. Otherwise you
| probably don't care much about watches.
|
| Clothing seems to be the same at many companies: you had better
| wear tailored suits and shirts or be less dressy than "business
| casual."
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Clothing seems to be the same at many companies: you had
| better wear tailored suits and shirts or be less dressy than
| "business casual."
|
| There's a running joke in my circle about the "dad
| professional class". People who are older (40-60s) and go to
| the office in a remote-work-accepting world mostly because
| they seem to want to leave their family at home. They all
| dress like shit in ill-fitting clothes, but because they're
| older than the "office casual" dress code, they tend to dress
| in overly professional button downs and slacks. The business
| attire that look out of place in tech next to a 25yo in a tee
| shirt. They don't seem to know people don't always take them
| seriously, and think "they're not here to [change the
| world/be the best/rise in the ranks/etc], they're here to
| avoid their wife and collect a salary".
|
| TLDR: stop telling people you try to avoid your family, and
| start tailoring your clothes, it's honestly not expensive.
| cafard wrote:
| Or maybe by their 40s-60s they have lost all interest in
| what 25yos, tee-shirted or not, think about their attire.
| They have seen the fashion wheel spin more than once, and
| are no longer compelled by it.
|
| (Source: upper 60s, go into the office mostly because a)
| it's not far, b) my office setup is a bit better, c) I
| don't want to wake my wife with Zoom calls. I do have some
| tailored shirts but seldom wear them.)
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > maybe by their 40s-60s they have lost all interest in
| what 25yos
|
| Its not about the fashion, its about looking put
| together. Its signaling that you care. Of course, there's
| the article which says that people who made it can stop
| signaling, so maybe that's you.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You can tailor your slacks and shirts too, and it's
| pretty cheap. It will make you look a lot better than
| what most people expect if you're the type to dress
| business casual. That is, if you care.
|
| Suits are very expensive to tailor by comparison.
| thelittleone wrote:
| I had a business associate point out once how my mont blanc
| watch didn't have its own movement.
|
| Singapore is an interesting place in this regard. We had
| several young guys in our office who wore $10k plus watches
| while still living with their parents.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes this is very well put, you really hit the nail on the
| head here on the sort of reverse bell curve of signaling..
|
| For the very wealthy.. If you show enough interest in
| something to make signaling purchases, it's expected to be
| "up to snuff" .. this can mean very very high expense or high
| esotericness.
|
| So that might mean a $200k sports car, or it might mean some
| uncommon though inexpensive limited production vintage
| vehicle even though it may be of reasonable price, the time &
| effort you took to acquire & maintain it is a signal of
| taste.
|
| Otherwise you'd be better off signaling complete disinterest
| with a very vanilla middle of the road options.
|
| On menswear I think to your example, you could say you'd be
| better off not wearing a suit than in wearing a $200 Men's
| Wearhouse suit. To that end, these days, the type of people
| you tend to see in suits are either security / front desk
| staff or very senior corporate executives. Those in the
| middle have enough labor negotiating power to not be required
| to wear a suit, but probably not the desire/wealth to spend
| $2k on a properly tailored suit.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Very senior/wealthy people can get away with whatever they
| want. It's why Zuckerberg can look like a total slob at
| Facebook (notice he still wore a suit while testifying to
| Congress though).
|
| If a senior executive wore a $200 suit to work, nobody
| would say a word.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > Zuckerberg can look like a total slob at Facebook
|
| Huh, custom tshirts and well fitting jeans counts as
| "looking like a total slob" now? Fwiw I'd rather work
| with / for someone that dresses like that over formal any
| day of the week.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _(notice he still wore a suit while testifying to
| Congress though)._
|
| Don't like the guy, his company, his policies. And I tend
| to repect our elected officals more than most.
|
| But the idea of showing up dressed in a t-shirt and
| jeans, and/or a hoodie, make me smile broadly.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| True, but they are more likely to wear a $400 hoodie than
| a $200 suit.
|
| Outside SBF, even the executives dressing "casually" are
| still doing so expensively.
| Reebz wrote:
| Zuckerberg wears $800 tshirts amongst other carefully
| selected pieces of his wardrobe. He isn't rummaging
| through a local Target for a basic tee and jeans. I think
| this is a good example of countersignal interpretation!
| hammock wrote:
| If a sr exec wore a $200 suit to work, it would be
| noticed. Maybe in a warren buffet folksy sort of way. How
| they tell defense attorneys not to dress too flashy
| elevaet wrote:
| The "uncanny valley" of wealth display.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But instead they have eccentric "hobbies" requiring $10ks of
| of equipment, inclusive of "needing" $10k viking stove/range,
| and $10k subzero fridge/freezer in your kitchen because you are
| a "foodie" and doing a $500k home Reno because you have good
| architectural taste and style.
|
| Or maybe they just like to cook and enjoy having good hardware?
|
| Not everything is for signaling purposes. It's really cynical
| to start viewing everyone's personal expenditures as some sort
| of socially manipulative tactic. This is especially true when
| it comes to people's hobbies, where many of us are just trying
| to enjoy ourselves and appreciate having good hardware around.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Let's take a step back from the signalling perspective and
| recognize that hobbies (expensive or not) are a lot more fun
| than watches, which provide almost nothing _but_ status. The
| same goes for remodeling, which is an extended form of
| decoration and also a hobby for some people.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Unless watches are a hobby.
|
| I find mechanical watches to be fascinating. This is obsolete
| technology, and yet, innovation continues. This is precision
| engineering, but at least for the high end, mostly done by
| hand. A lovely anachronism, which is a fitting word for a
| timepiece. It is like real life steampunk. I fully understand
| the appeal beyond status signalling. How can geeks _not_ be
| at least a little interested in watchmaking?
|
| I know some people don't care and for them it is just status
| signaling. But it the same as for supercars: just because it
| is status doesn't mean there isn't something behind it.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Watchmaking and watch buying are different things.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >inclusive of "needing" $10k viking stove/range, and $10k
| subzero fridge/freezer in your kitchen because you are a
| "foodie"
|
| Haha, don't forget the classic combo of the $10k Caesarstone
| countertop plus half a dozen blunt knives.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| LOL yes, thank you. People might argue somehow the appliance
| makes them cook better but the countertops and cabinetry is a
| pretty tough sell.
|
| Every time I look at my 30 year old kitchen & bathrooms, and
| tally up what it would cost to update them, I can't help but
| think I'd rather just retire a bit earlier.
|
| Yes things need to be replaced as they break, and ultimately
| some renovation will be needed.. but I know people gutting
| 10-15 year old kitchens & baths purely for aesthetics every
| time they move. Full employment for tradesmen.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > * The last round of job searching doing zoom interviews, I
| wore my hoodie for half the calls. If I had done this while job
| searching out of college, during my internship, or at my first
| job.. I would not be where I am today.*
|
| That's not just status, it's got change over time mixed in.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's partially status in that, I'm advanced enough in my
| career that I don't really care to work anywhere that would
| ding me in a zoom interview over my outfit. Earlier in my
| career I could not have afforded to be so picky.
|
| One of the starkest power dynamics in dress code I've
| observed is in non-tech firms that have large tech orgs to
| support the revenue generating roles. While there were
| official dress codes that tech largely abided, our internal
| customers who generated revenue often showed up in tee shirts
| or wore ball caps in the office ...
| mrexroad wrote:
| I've heard someone say a few months back that a zoom setup
| is the new business suit/attire. After spending the
| pandemic working from an unfinished/unheated garage near a
| loud expressway, I definitely felt there were situations
| where I was "dinged" for it at a FAANG company.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I don't really care to work anywhere that would ding me
| in a zoom interview over my outfit
|
| I've often found that people who say (and believe) that
| they don't ding people who dress poorly, do ding people who
| dress poorly.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| >$2k Rolex
|
| I thought the cheapest Rolex is substantially more expensive.
| Am I wrong?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| New Rolex watches are more expensive (around $6k I think),
| but the Rolex to happy meal ratio is lower than it has ever
| been.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Fair point. My numbers are probably off on everything now.
|
| Before the 2020s era inflation you could definitely pick up a
| mens one used for $2k, like a Datejust model for example.
|
| Likewise a $70k car is neither particularly rare or exotic
| now with how much the average car price has been pushed up by
| big trucks and EVs.
| perardi wrote:
| I'm...old now? Old enough to be shocked how much car prices
| have gone up. And I follow the industry.
|
| Why, back in my day, you could get a "stripper" model of a
| truck (my dad's term for the most-basic-possible model with
| crank windows and a stick shift) for like $15,000. Now?
|
| https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/
|
| Good luck getting off the lot for less than $40,000 for a
| full-size truck.
|
| ...though to give Ford some credit here:
|
| https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/
|
| They do still sell a truly cheap-and-cheerful truck. Will
| it tow much? No. Is it going to take you to the bottom of
| the Grand Canyon or whatever off-road macho fantasy? No.
| Will it get several bags of mulch back from Home Depot?
| Absolutely--which is what people actually use trucks for.
| (If that.)
| billjings wrote:
| "2020s era inflation" started just this year. And it's,
| what, 11%?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Well its nearly 2023, and we have had 10%-ish inflation
| going on about 2 years.
|
| In specific areas such as cars, you had complete
| dislocations. For example used cars which normally
| depreciate 15-20%/year, instead inflated about 15%/year
| for 2 years.
|
| Over the summer I traded in a 4 year old car at the end
| of its warranty of 85% of what I paid for it new. I
| probably could have sold private party and haggled harder
| to get closer to 90%+ Normally 85% is what you can expect
| to sell your car for right after you drive it off the lot
| on your second day of ownership.
|
| This was a knock on effect of new car production
| shortages, and pent up demand from low 2020 sales and
| people having a lot of cash on hand.
|
| Related to this you had dealers adding market (ADM) on
| not even luxury/exotic vehicles of $10-15k in some areas.
| So never mind not being able to negotiate a few $1000
| off, people were paying sticker+$15k for new vehicles for
| the privilege of being able to buy one. And this was on
| top of the sticker prices ticking up over the course of
| the pandemic and related inflation.
|
| So no, for many things, it was not "just a year of 11%
| inflation".
| doubled112 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to add a few options and pay $70K or more
| for a Ford F-150 these days. At least here in Canada.
|
| People love their pickup trucks.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's truly crazy to me how quickly pricing has ramped up
| especially in EVs. Imagine telling someone 10 years ago
| that people would line up to buy a $60k Hyundai EV, or
| $80k on a luxury Hyundai sub-brand EV?
|
| The Tesla Model 3/Y range can easily run up above $70k
| with options now, and the bigger Tesla Model S/X is a
| six-figures vehicle!
|
| Likewise, gas powered BMWs seem to have disappeared in
| the $30-40k range and pretty quickly get into the $50k+
| range.
| coryrc wrote:
| I figure GP's talking about gas trucks. We're talking
| working class people spending over a year's gross income
| on a truck, when in the past they'd be buying a "work
| truck" with a single bench seat, no A/C, and an AM radio.
| ehnto wrote:
| I don't want to make assumptions, but it's my
| understanding that they're usually on finance which means
| they're paying much more than sticker price.
|
| I certainly don't know many middle class people with 70k
| in savings to throw around, either everyone is doing a
| lot better than they otherwise expose or there's easy
| money on the table.
|
| I think we'll see price corrections downward for cars
| over the next 5 years, as interest rates change. I've
| asked a handful of importers while I try and source a car
| from Japan, with the Japanese import market being hyper
| inflated. They've all suggested that during the pandemic,
| financed purchases were making up the majority of their
| sales. I imagine that's set to change as interest rates
| change and loans get harder to acquire.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Of course people are financing them. Vehicles are
| expensive. I believe the average used car price is over
| $40K now here. Even an average used car was about $20K.
|
| Let's stick to the truck, though. F-150s are everywhere.
|
| If I head to the Ford Canada website, an F-150 XL (the
| cheap one) is $39K before you get started. A Platinum
| brings you up to $87K, and the Limited brings you up to
| $98K.
|
| The website is definitely NOT including taxes, licensing
| fees, financing fees, interest, etc.
|
| I couldn't imagine paying that for a work truck. The
| trades are fairly well payed, but to that extent?
| nradov wrote:
| The average new car transaction price is currently $48K.
|
| https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-
| september...
| tomrod wrote:
| What's the histogram? Surely the mean is highly skewed.
| ehnto wrote:
| I can't see the logic in it either, by the time they're
| done paying off a typical loan even for the $87k variant,
| you would be up into triple figures for it. It could have
| cost as much as some people's homes.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Isn't the average price of a F150 is like 55-60k so
| that's pretty damn close. An F250 can easily run over 100
| shakow wrote:
| > Likewise a $70k car is neither particularly rare or
| exotic
|
| Just for the sake of nitpicking, but going back to the BMW
| example, you could get a well-optioned Z4 in this range,
| which I would argue is rather exotic and will make heads
| turn, if not very expensive.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You CAN get something rare/exotic for $70k these days.
|
| However you can get a lot of pretty surprisingly run of
| the mill vehicles at that price range as well, especially
| for at truck or EV. Like a Ford F-150, Tesla Model 3/Y,
| entry level Mercedes or BMW electric car, even a Ford
| Mach E, etc.
|
| The slowing inflation, high interest rates and collapse
| of the economy in the coming 6-18 months will probably
| wind some of that back.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The food part is big. It's wild how in the US especially there
| are about three classes of grocery stores and each cater almost
| exclusively to a certain social class. You don't see many
| laborers or fast food workers grabbing a meal from the local
| co-op or Whole Foods and the local Aldi or Walmart rarely sees
| an executive unless they're infamously stingy
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You see this A LOT in food spend in US especially in rich
| urban areas.
|
| I have friends who would kind of scoff at a Rolex but proudly
| describe the latest $500-for-2 dinner they went to last week.
|
| Similarly I had a friend who only upgraded his iPhone with
| hand-me-downs from his teenage daughter, so he'd be like 3-4
| years behind the curve. Meanwhile he owned like 4 homes and
| dined out similarly to my other friend.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > You see this A LOT in food spend in US especially in rich
| urban areas.
|
| This won't resonate withh you unless you are or were ever a
| cook, I fear we had so much more left to capture and were
| forced to leave on the table that was taken away because of
| COVID, but this transition in the US food culture was paid
| with lots of hard work and countless sacrifices that most
| will never get beyond watching an episode of The Bear.
|
| Two big blows came in hard after Bourdain's death (so many
| concepts and projects were abandoned that never came back)
| and then followed with COVID destroying the Industry in
| such a way that I'm doubting will ever get much further
| than this in my Lifetime any more: food culture in the US
| still has so much left to catch up with Asia and Europe but
| we were making massive progress towards that, but I'm
| staring to accept this will probably be the high-water mark
| that the next generation of tech workers and cooks alike
| will need to build off of. And no, ghost kitchens and
| burning VC money from Softbank on DD is not a solution.
|
| So far, outside of small boutique restaurants and kitchens,
| all I've seen is a race to the bottom profit seeking with
| almost no motivation other than to capture what marketshare
| remains from corps who benefited from PPP and ZIRP at
| whatever cost it takes and cutting corners until they got
| bought out by a large Restaurant group. This may seem like
| hyperbole but ~60% of all restaurants shutdown forever [0]
| after covid in what was already I high-failure sector with
| incredibly costly CAPEX/OPEX business models and low profit
| margins even during the best of times.
|
| My last encounter with a delivery driver from a large
| vendor (think Shamrock or Sysco type corp) brought it all
| home: they had essentially succumb to the same exploitative
| delivery and monitoring systems that an Amazon delivery
| driver has, which was a stark contrast to getting
| deliveries from local farmers for produce/protein ha were
| the highlight of the menu and accompanied with items from
| small artisans and purveyors for cheeses, deserts breads
| etc...
|
| We've lost something very vital coming out of COVID, and
| I'm not sure what can be done to not undo the progress that
| was made since the culture-shift has swung so hard to this
| Amazonification of this Industry.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Really really depends on areas.
|
| In the US, there was clearly a consolidation where the
| big corporate run restaurant groups were able to weather
| the storm better nationally in the early COVID days.
|
| However, pretty quickly in NYC by say summer 2021 the
| industry seems to be back and stronger than ever.
| Everyone was dining indoors again, they kept their
| expanded outdoor space, maintained their new more
| extensive to-go services, and did it all with reduced
| staff never seeming to re-hire their pre-pandemic staff
| levels.
|
| NYC restaurants are once again annoyingly crowded and
| hard to get reservations to, with eye popping prices
| compared to 2019.
|
| So great for restaurant owners but not great for
| employees.
|
| That said, the wages being offered are crazy compared to
| 2019 and they are still unable to fill roles. So one
| would take it that they've found better employment
| prospects elsewhere, so good for them.
| blagie wrote:
| Doing something for pure status signalling is considered crass.
|
| Expensive hobbies are not. I think they should be, but they're
| not.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly. To me, a $500k unnecessary renovation throws more
| money away than a $70k vs $40k car. At least with the car you
| are likely getting safety features and extensive sensor
| suites for driver assist for the money, that have tangible
| impact on your driving experience.
|
| Or Spending 5-10x on a $10k appliance where a $1-2k one would
| do. These people tend to get the whole set, so it's a good
| $30-40k worth of kitchen appliances that could easily be
| replicated for $5k total otherwise. Does a better
| fridge/freezer really help you cook better? Do even most
| experienced cooks get noticeable benefit of a $10k range or
| oven?
| prpl wrote:
| One slight different is that spending on your home will
| generally add value to it. It may not be necessary, and you
| may not get a dollar-for-dollar out of it, but it's added
| value nonetheless.
|
| I cook a lot, I personally would like a higher quality
| stove - I've killed one before because I (an)use the
| broiler a lot (it wasn't terribly old), but I probably
| would do an NXR or something. maybe in the $2k. Or a used
| Wolf/viking from one of the people you mention
|
| I'd rather buy a nice oven than a bunch of shit appliances
| though. People love their air fryers, over the stove
| microwave, countertop oven, instant pot, etc...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think most people delude themselves that their big
| renovations added any incremental value to their home.
| Usually the cost was financed and thus even higher than
| the sticker price, all-in. Further, the holding periods
| are measured in a decade +/- often, so the general market
| moves contribute more to the sales price than whatever
| you'd done to the kitchen/bath.
|
| On the margin, having a move-in ready home that's been
| renovated well enough recently enough, generically
| enough, ensures reasonable liquidity of being able to
| sell the home for a reasonable price reasonably quickly.
|
| For many this means replacing some dated appliances,
| repainting, and strategic spending on a few items that
| may be out of style or more aged, like bathroom vanity or
| replacing a linoleum top.
|
| Extravagant, expensive, specific renovations may actually
| detract because the general markets taste are not your
| taste and so you've either reduced the number of likely
| buyers, or half the universe of buyers are going to
| actually deduct value of your renovation because they may
| want to undo whatever you've done.
|
| Spending $2k replacing a worn appliance or buying a $200
| air fryer are two orders of magnitude off from the
| expenditure levels I am referring to.
| neon_electro wrote:
| >On the margin, having a move-in ready home that's been
| renovated well enough recently enough, generically
| enough, ensures reasonable liquidity of being able to
| sell the home for a reasonable price reasonably quickly.
|
| This is the motivation I have to invest further in what
| already feels like a generally "move-in ready" home; my
| "move-in ready" is not others' "move-in ready", so my
| goal is to find all the objections and invest in making
| them less objectionable :)
| blagie wrote:
| In my area, if I were to spend $50k renovating my home,
| the value would increase by approximately $0.
|
| If I were to spend $300k renovating my home, the value
| would increase by approximately $100k.
|
| The only real increase in home value comes from additions
| which add bedrooms. If I were to spend money converting
| an attic, a basement, or adding an add-on, I'd probably
| come out even at the sale.
|
| And renovations are quickly depreciating assets. I'm much
| better off doing that right before a sale. A new
| dishwasher will be an old dishwasher before too long.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 500k or 500m in renovations will increase the value of the
| property. A car is worth 20% less the day you drive it off
| of the lot and keeps losing value. Having freezer space can
| save you thousands of dollars in food.
| ejb999 wrote:
| of course it will, but spending 500K in remodeling,
| doesn't mean the house is necessarily going to be worth
| 500K more - it might, it might not.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Cars are absolutely depreciating assets.
|
| However a $70k car generally has a much better set of
| class leading accident avoidance & safety features than a
| $25k car which will generally be minimum legally required
| for compliance. A new car has a much different safety
| profile than a 10 or 20 year old car. Watching crash
| videos on YouTube is very illuminating as to how far
| we've come even versus a car from 2000.
|
| Modern advanced cars will warn you about rear & front
| cross traffic, actively keep you from driving off the
| road if you fall asleep, emergency brake for obstacles,
| keep you from changing lanes into a car in your blind
| spot, and many other things that were pretty unheard of
| 10-20 years ago. My car even flashes lights and beeps at
| me if I am opening the door and it detects oncoming cars
| or bikes.
|
| A $500k renovation of a home is usually financed and adds
| less than the $500k of value to the resale price to the
| homes (lets say, $400k to be generous), while costing
| north of $750k by the time all the payments are made. So
| $100-350k of waste, conservatively.
| kens wrote:
| The crash videos of old vs new cars are very interesting
| (and scary). Especially 1959 Bel Air vs 2009 Malibu. In
| the older car, you smash into the dashboard and then the
| passenger compartment collapses and crushes you. In the
| new car, you hit the airbag. Of course you don't expect
| much from 1959, but even 1992 Nissan vs 2016 Nissan is a
| huge difference in survivability.
|
| I highly recommend the video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TikJC0x65X0
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > However a $70k car generally has a much better set of
| class leading accident avoidance & safety features than a
| $25k car which will generally be minimum legally required
| for compliance.
|
| That's empirically false. Toyota and Subaru both make 25k
| cars with vastly better active driver assistance features
| than Tesla, as shown by every independent test that's
| ever been done.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I dunno. We recently bought a house where the kitchen had
| been recently renovated. I don't know if our appliances are
| super high end but they are definitely on that side, and it
| makes the kitchen feel great. We probably wouldn't spend as
| much time in it otherwise. So let's say that kitchen cost
| 40k (I have no idea)...but lasts us 20 years. That's 2k a
| year for a very enjoyable part of our house, probably the
| most used space by far.
|
| On the contrary, if we had spent an additional 40k on our
| car, how much of a game changer would that have been and
| how long would it have lasted?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Again you are talking a $40k renovation, I am talking
| $500k renovation.
|
| $40k for a kitchen is on the order of magnitude of
| getting all your appliances reasonably up to date,
| plumbing/fixtures, electrical and cabinetry/countertop
| refreshed, without anything being exotic or luxury. The
| bare bones one could probably refresh everything in the
| kitchen has to be easily $20k, so the incremental "above
| bare minimum spend" here is only $20k and therefore very
| reasonable.
|
| That is a reasonable level of taking something outdated
| which is hard to market and making it up to date move-in
| ready and therefore quicker to sell.
|
| To contrast for example in my experience, a Miele
| dishwasher for $800 washes dishes vastly better than a
| $400 GE. To the point it is significantly labor reducing.
| On the other hand, does a $10k subzero freezer/fridge
| keep my vegetables better than a $2k Samsung?
|
| Most people underestimated how much of their homes value
| appreciating over the 5-20 years of ownership is purely
| the land value increases over the long term due to real
| estate inflation and the relative performance of their
| local markets. Ie - if all the condos in NYC went up 2x
| from 2004-2007, mine going up similarly isn't because I
| put fancy tiles in my toilet.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| That renovation probably paid for a lot of renovators
| Raptors.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| exactly, which closes the circle explaining how average
| car prices have gone up so much.. largely driven by
| expensive pickups hahaha!
| ejb999 wrote:
| when I had my last kitchen remodel done (a modest one,but
| very nice), the builder that did it said with all his clients
| there is an inverse relationship between how much people
| spend on their kitchen and appliances, and how much cooking
| they do - i.e. the people who spend the most, actually do the
| least cooking, and vice-versa. In my own limited experience,
| I tend to agree.
|
| I'll take an awesome cook (my spouse in this case) and a
| modest kitchen, over a modest cook and an awesome kitchen any
| day.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I was appliance shopping recently and it seems like the
| most expensive appliances are often _not_ the best. If you
| just want to cook, you 're usually better off with a good
| LG or GE oven than with a Viking, which test notoriously
| poorly. Same with many consumer products - a Honda or
| Toyota will be more reliable with more convenience features
| than a BMW or Rolls Royce; a Chicco or Britax carseat is
| often safer, more comfortable, and more convenient than a
| Peg Perego; a Samsung or Apple smartwatch has a lot more
| features than a Rolex. A good rule of thumb I've had for
| getting good consumer products is to buy the high end of
| the mass market; don't skimp on budget items, but also
| don't buy products that are priced so the average person
| can't afford them.
|
| Makes sense economically. Mass market manufacturers can
| amortize their R&D and quality control over many more units
| than luxury brands. The point of the luxury brand is
| explicitly countersignaling, showing that you can afford to
| spend more money on an inferior product.
| rosnd wrote:
| > - a Honda or Toyota will be more reliable with more
| convenience features than a BMW or Rolls Royce
|
| What convenience features? Is the Honda or Toyota really
| meaningfully more reliable during the first couple of
| years of ownership?
| nostrademons wrote:
| More cupholders, the ability to seat 3 carseats abreast,
| fabric rather than leather seats, better gas mileage,
| fits more easily in tight parking spots (and you care
| less if it gets dinged because you didn't pay $70K for
| it). Only thing the BMW really has on them is
| soundproofing (and probably acceleration & handling, but
| I don't care much about that).
|
| And I care more about how reliable it is at > 10 years of
| ownership, not < 3 years (when nearly everything is
| reliable). My Honda Fit is coming up on 14 years old and
| runs like new.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, many of the more expensive finishes are extremely
| cosmetic and have negative utility.
|
| Stone backsplashes require frequent maintenance and special
| chemicals. If you don't stay on top of it, they are
| basically impossible to keep looking clean.
|
| A lot of newer kitchens have wooden floors, which is
| insane.
|
| I've seen kitchens with thin coated bright shiny
| copper/brass handles on everything which immediately
| tarnish and can never be maintained in new looking shape.
|
| A lot of modern gas ranges are fairly hard to clean with
| lots of parts you have to remove, while a solid middle
| class electric glass countertop one is zero effort.
|
| I once rented a place where the guy had wooden edges on the
| kitchen counters which of course aged poorly, plus a
| porcelain kitchen sink which immediately broke any glass
| wear that dropped even a couple inches while cleaning.. and
| was impossible to keep clean looking.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| When I worked at Google I always had the distinct feeling that
| my hard work was paying for some manager's $500k home
| renovation. I'm way more interested in working hard to help
| people who really need it, and I'm glad I'm not working at a
| place like that anymore.
| boringg wrote:
| Where did you end up that is helping people who really need
| it?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm doing an open source solar powered farming robot
| nonprofit thing! [1] It's an amazing feeling finishing a
| huge PCB design project for work and then immediately
| pushing the changes to GitHub. I've got a new brushless
| motor controller in the works that costs under $40 per
| board fully assembled for high current dual motor control,
| and anyone can order them (ideally wait till design is
| slightly more mature). [2]
|
| [1]
| https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-
| simu...
|
| [2] https://github.com/Twisted-Fields/rp2040-motor-
| controller
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| _> re: the modern upper class that wearing a $2k Rolex or
| driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon._
|
| always has been moon meme.
|
| unless you're neveaux rich or stupid or both it is in your
| absolute interest not to show what you have. driving a Prius
| used to be that signal but today it has shifted. My direct boss
| was a Schenker heir (the freight forwarding company) and the
| only way he showed off is by living in a rental house (albeit
| manged by his management company so he essentially paid rent to
| himself), drove a Nissan, didn't spend unless you took a closer
| look (art purchases for his 4th wife) didn't brag with fancy
| dinners in Michelin star places (but certainly bragged to his
| wife about putting her on the map with her silly paintings as a
| wannabe artist - lol "Sex rules everything around me C.R.E.A.M
| get the money").
|
| Only lower ranks criminals and new-rich idiots show what they
| have. Everyone else has learned the lesson: if you show it (the
| plebs and the IRS), they'll come for you.
|
| Also all the people who're truly rich do NOT play by the same
| rules as the rest of you. YOU decide where, and how much tax
| you pay, if you have the cash to pay lawyers and accountants to
| insulate you from the Plebs.
|
| The US is the biggest tax[1] haven in the world today forget
| the Hollywood propaganda about Cayman or Panama - only idiot
| cartels and Victor Bout use these jurisdictions but not the
| white collar crime lords ...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > driving a Prius used to be that signal but today it has
| shifted
|
| The new 5th generation that just came out looks amazing, so
| it wouldn't surprise me if Priuses eventually become trendy
| again.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| The Toyota Land Cruiser has been a popular car in certain
| upper-class circles. At $87k it's fairly expensive, but it
| doesn't _look_ expensive.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| However, the Land Cruiser will be passed down for many
| generations, so the amortized cost of a Land Cruiser is not
| expensive.
|
| Also, Land Cruiser has apparently been discontinued.
| aix1 wrote:
| > the Land Cruiser will be passed down for many generations
|
| Wait, what sort of longevity are we taking about? 15 years?
| 20?
|
| I don't think we humans can reproduce quickly enough for
| that to span "many generations". :-)
| coredog64 wrote:
| We came close to that with a Camry my mother-in-law owns.
| She drove it, my sister-in-law drove it for a while, and
| then they tried to pawn it off on my oldest. At the end
| of the day, I didn't want my kid driving a car missing
| out on 25 years of safety enhancements.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You made the right decision. Watching YouTube crash test
| videos of a 2022 vs 2000 vs 1980 car is extremely
| illuminating.
| ww520 wrote:
| That sounds like a response from a Large Language Model.
| aix1 wrote:
| Nah, it's from someone who hasn't owned a car in over ten
| years.
|
| I can totally see how a car could get passed down from
| father to son, but a single car and "many generations"
| doesn't really add up in this part of the world (could be
| totally different in other parts of the world, of
| course).
| rasz wrote:
| Vintage Land Cruiser is even bigger status symbol.
| jakear wrote:
| Way more. Land Cruisers can last 40+ easily. Do a
| craigslist search and you'll find them in fully working
| condition.
|
| I don't think the so-called "safety features" developed
| in the next 20 years are as valuable as the others
| predict. We're already very safe in cars, especially
| massive modern ones like the cruiser. If you're driving
| fast/reckless enough to get killed in one today more
| safety features aren't what you need.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Both of my Range Rovers are 25 years old. One's heading
| for a light refurb and overhaul at nearly 300,000 miles,
| the other has just had its first "big" service at 100,000
| miles.
|
| Fuel availability considerations notwithstanding, there's
| very little that would stop them going another 25 years.
| angled wrote:
| Not in Australia?
|
| But then you do get articles like
| https://www.betootaadvocate.com/uncategorized/brisbane-
| accou...
| hulahoof wrote:
| For anyone not from aus the Betoota is a (great) satire
| publication similar to the onion
| rayiner wrote:
| And even one that's 6 years old with 100k miles is still over
| $50,000 lol.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Precisely!
|
| Not to mention a fully specced out Tesla Model 3 is $80k and
| Model Y is now.. $90k, and the tax credits are basically
| gone! I remember getting a pretty well configured Model 3 for
| $50k after tax incentives in their first year of production.
|
| For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now
| STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range
| now.. insane.
| asoneth wrote:
| Agreed that they are expensive cars that have gotten even
| more expensive over the last decade.
|
| But comparing absolute numbers for a car you bought five
| years ago may be misleading because the majority of the
| increase is likely due to inflation.
|
| Back of the envelope math: If you were in CA and got $7.5k
| federal and $2.5k state credits that means the Model 3 you
| bought in 2017 was ~$60k or ~$73k in today's dollars. If
| it's now $80k then that's a real price increase of ~$7k in
| today's dollars.
|
| That's certainly an increase, but making an expensive car
| slightly more expensive doesn't seem particularly insane to
| me.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Inflation is a huge factor here for sure. Most people
| probably can't get their heads around a well equipped
| Toyota Corolla approaching $30k or Honda Accord hitting
| $40k. Mentally to me these are BMW 3-series prices, but
| that's not been true for some time!
|
| If you are in the market for a 3-row / 7 seater, you can
| spend $55k on a Toyota Highlander SUV or $40k on a Toyota
| Siena minivan.
|
| It's genuinely pretty challenging to spend under $30k on
| a new car now outside fairly basic 2-4 door smaller
| sedan/hatchback vehicles in their base trim without
| options.
| logifail wrote:
| > outside fairly basic [...] vehicles in their base trim
| without options
|
| Nothing wrong with basic vehicles "in their base trim
| without options", we have two parked outside the house
| right now, and the vehicle we owned before them was
| similar.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I am only trying to illustrate that the line between
| luxury/excess in autos has shifted substantially in the
| last few years partially inflation driven and partially
| cheap credit / long loan terms driven.
|
| The universe of under-$30k cars is now quite limited
| whereas 5 years ago, one could possibly describe $30k+ as
| being luxury.
| kelnos wrote:
| Hell, somehow my brain is still stuck in the 90s, where
| $30k would get you a very nice car indeed. I was a
| teenager then, so perhaps I'm anchored there because it's
| when I first started getting interested in things like
| that, and first started driving. (Gas was also 92 cents
| per gallon for a bit while I was in high school, oof.)
|
| My family also always only bought used cars (and I
| continued this practice), so I guess that further skewed
| my conception of car cost downward. I only just bought my
| first new car recently, and I still haven't really
| adjusted to the reality of both what current prices are
| like, and how much more expensive a new car is.
| nradov wrote:
| Franchise dealers typically stock few if any vehicles in
| their base trim without options. Those vehicles often
| exist only in token numbers so that the manufacturer can
| advertise a low starting price, but they're not readily
| available to most consumers. Of course that varies by
| brand.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now
| STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k
| range now.. insane.
|
| For a shit car with the interior fit and finish of a
| poverty-spec Skoda, and all the important controls replaced
| with a bloody great iPad that blinds you at night.
|
| Oh, and it's from an obscenely "techbro" company.
|
| Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm impressed in the sense that Tesla has done amazing
| things with battery technology, and has made EVs "cool".
| It's sometimes easy to forget, but before Tesla, EVs were
| ugly and nobody wanted them.
|
| But yeah, whenever I'm in a Tesla, the interior looks
| cheap, and the giant iPad (in the Model 3 at least) looks
| bolted-on rather than designed-in. Not to mention the
| real-time display of what's around the car is laughably
| bad, with cars and pedestrians flickering in and out, and
| sometimes not even showing up at all.
|
| I'm glad people drive them, though; more EVs on the
| street is a good thing.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| No, you're not alone, but they still have a cachet in a
| certain crowd (the "green" and "forward-thinking" types
| love them). Hopefully it goes away soon.
| teg4n_ wrote:
| i dunno my parents fit in that category and told me they
| will not consider a Tesla as long as it's associated with
| Musk. EVs of other companies are really quite nice these
| days so i don't think they are losing anything. Right now
| that have a new plugin hybrid RAV4.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by
| Teslas_
|
| I could excuse the drawbacks you cited and the cost if
| they were the Framework laptop of the automotive world.
| But at those price points, and a repairability narrative
| that is not much better than, "out of warranty and one
| accident away from into landfill", there isn't a
| snowball's chance in hell I'll buy a Tesla.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > repairability narrative that is not much better than,
| "out of warranty and one accident away from into
| landfill"
|
| I have a couple of old Range Rovers. There are very few
| things you can't fix with a half-inch spanner and a
| hammer, and those you can fix with a 7/16th spanner and a
| bit of sticky tape.
|
| They run on propane, so they get cheap tax and can be
| registered as Low Emission Vehicles, which is pretty
| hilarious for a 4-litre V8.
|
| Combined they probably still have a smaller ecological
| footprint than making one Tesla Model S.
|
| They've also got far comfier seats.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Which specific models are your units?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _They run on propane_
|
| How does fueling work? Perhaps I just haven't noticed
| (because I have to reason to), but I have never seen a
| fueling station advertise propane, outside of tanks for
| grilling and similar.
| MandieD wrote:
| LPG (liquified propane gas) stations are slowly on the
| wane but still common enough for practical use in
| Germany.
|
| Common enough and cheap enough that I still feel a bit
| prescient for buying a 2017 Ford Focus wagon with about
| 30k km on the clock that was factory modified for LPG, in
| August 2021, for about half what the original owner paid.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?
|
| I am very impressed by their batteries and I like the
| look of the Model S but I'm utterly unimpressed by the
| build quality of the interior and the cheap materials
| used.
|
| At that price I'd except to be entering a comfortable car
| using luxurious materials.
|
| FWIW I tried the Porsche Taycan and the interior is leaps
| and bound ahead of the Teslas (but the batteries aren't
| up to par yet and the software ain't either I think).
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Look at really any of the competition at the Model S
| price level from the Germans and the interior is
| spectacular. Honestly the battery range on the Germans is
| also better than you realize.
|
| Tesla exaggerates their range and few actually achieve
| the quoted EPA range, so you can deduct 10-15% for real
| world.
|
| The Germans, especially Porsche undersell their range and
| real world you can get about 10-15% longer out of the
| BMWs & MBs and something insane like 35% more out of the
| Taycans.
|
| InsideEVs has a nice real world 70mph highway range
| comparison, and the ranking would surprise you compared
| to the advertised ranges.
| https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-
| results/
|
| So an advertised 350mi Model S and a 225mi Taycan in fact
| meet somewhere in the middle, closer to 300mi +/- for
| both.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > wearing a $2k Rolex or driving a $70k BMW is frowned upon.
| But instead they have eccentric "hobbies" requiring $10ks of of
| equipment, inclusive of "needing" $10k viking stove/range, and
| $10k subzero fridge/freezer in your kitchen because you are a
| "foodie" [...]
|
| Isn't this conflating status signal with lifestyle?
|
| The wealthy have always enjoyed expensive lifestyles and
| hobbies. In and of itself, expensive hobby equipment is not a
| status signal (it can be, of course, if you plaster it all over
| your personal social media)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There are different audiences.
|
| I worked for a company that sold products and services to
| sales managers. The CEO and his wife (who was also an owner
| of the company) lived in a house in Rochester that had the
| biggest kitchen I'd ever seen anyone actually use. We would
| have holiday parties there and it was clear cooking was a
| hobby they liked to but that entertaining is also a way to
| enjoy your status.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes I think my point is that they simply signal differently
| by for example regaling you about how they spent $5000 on
| custom designed esoteric tiles from a local artisan for their
| shower.
|
| Personally I don't think things that are 90%
| purchase/consumption (housing/renovations/appliances) are
| hobbies in the same way as
| photography/kitesurfing/gardening/cycling which may be
| expensive but have some sort of skill/learning/activity
| attached.
| closeparen wrote:
| Renovation isn't the hobby here, they're not doing it
| themselves. But a passion for cooking justifies the high
| end kitchen. An interest in architecture and design
| justifies bringing good examples of it home.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Sure, if you have the money and interest, spend it.
|
| But people often conflate "investment" & consumption when
| its anything related to home renovation. I'd still argue
| these types of "hobbies" are 90% consumption, and for
| most of the people I know.. usually financed with loans.
|
| No one I know with a $100k kitchen cooks any better than
| my poor immigrant grandmother did.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Think of it like a machine shop. Expensive tools work
| way, way better than cheap ones.
|
| I also have a restaurant grade toaster. It costs quite a
| bit more than the usual toasters do. But the usual ones
| would always break after a year or two. The restaurant
| toaster makes better toast, and has worked fine for 25
| years now. It was actually cheaper to get the restaurant
| grade one over the long haul.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned,
| was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots,
| for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus
| allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost
| fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which
| were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like
| hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.
| Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and
| wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell
| where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel
| of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted
| for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars
| had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry
| in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only
| afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on
| boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
| This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of
| socioeconomic unfairness.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| WalterBright wrote:
| On the other hand, if the wealthy person bought the $10
| boots and _invested_ the other $40, the investment could
| throw off enough money to keep him in annual $10 boots
| forever.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I worked for a wealthy man.
|
| I remember two stories among many:
|
| He once told me he was upgrading the doorknobs and hinges
| in this house. The bill just for those items came to $45K.
|
| We were both getting coffee in the office once, and he
| looked towards me and ask, "My socks cost more than
| everything you're wearing."
|
| And he _liked_ me.
| swayvil wrote:
| I have a couple clients like that. 40k on this, 25k on
| that. Doinky little overpriced home-improvement geegaws.
| And I'm thinking, "I could pay off my credit cards and
| take a year off for my own serious projects, for what
| you're spending to upgrade your stupid crown molding".
| varjag wrote:
| Two nouveau riches run into each other shopping on the
| Fifth.
|
| - Look at this, got me this tie for $1000
|
| - Hah what a dummy you are, they sell them for 1200 two
| blocks away!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Nono, the price of his socks were more than everything
| you're wearing. They probably cost the same as your socks
| :)
| ww520 wrote:
| > "My socks cost more than everything you're wearing."
|
| That's a strange thing to waste money on for signaling.
| It just showed the lack of understanding on marginal
| utility on commodity items.
| mlyle wrote:
| > It just showed the lack of understanding on marginal
| utility on commodity items.
|
| I think you're showing the lack of understanding of
| marginal utility.
|
| By the time you're spending $45k on doorknobs, $400 on
| socks might offer equal marginal utility per dollar.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think a lot of what this thread shows is that everyone
| has a different utility function.
|
| That's kind of whats interesting about the modern economy
| is we can all express our preferences in how we spend.
| The bottom end has gotten much cheaper and the top end
| has gotten exponentially more expensive, and in many
| markets the middle has sort of disappeared.
|
| This contrasts a lot with the 1950s boom era where there
| was a big thick middle end and not a huge range from
| bottom to top.
| MandieD wrote:
| I have a t-shirt I bought at the Gap around 1996 that is
| still wearable, though a bit worn-looking where the
| collar meets the shoulder seams. Thick, sturdy cotton. It
| was probably around $15, which would be about $30 today.
|
| There is no such plain ladies' fit t-shirt consistently
| offered anymore. Either tissue-thin and less than $20, or
| involves a silly print and/or ruffles and lace.
| [deleted]
| idiocrat wrote:
| > The wealthy have always enjoyed expensive lifestyles and
| hobbies.
|
| Sorry to jump in.
|
| There is a 2003 documentary by the name "Born Rich".
|
| This is about the children from the wealthy people and how
| they are coping with the boredom of being able (afford) to do
| anything.
|
| Many are naturally isolated and invent obscure hobbies and
| life-styles not fitting their "wealthy statuses".
|
| Not sure how it is changing in more responsible adulthood,
| when it is becoming their turn to manage the estate. I guess
| this is then mostly about turf-wars among relatives.
|
| (edit: formatting)
| BarryMilo wrote:
| > This is about the children from the wealthy people and
| how they are coping with the boredom of being able (afford)
| to do anything.
|
| See also the excellent Korean documentary "Squid Game"!
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> ...coping with the boredom of being able (afford) to do
| anything._
|
| That's mostly a lack of sufficient education and rearing to
| arm them with enough knowledge and grit to choose and
| tackle from an infinite number of problems to advance
| towards a possible solution. Most of those problems don't
| take generational wealth scale money to make a dent into,
| but a tremendous amount of hard work for years and even
| decades without expectations of acclaim commensurate with
| their generational wealth background.
|
| Which points out the other problem: most of them want (or
| are pushed since childhood to want) the acclaim accrued by
| their inherited wealth also attached to their efforts in
| whatever direction they choose. It's why we get the
| dilettante phenomenon among them so much.
|
| Tightly coupling wealth to accomplishment across
| generations is possibly a very leaky abstraction.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| A sociologist would tell you that there is no such thing as a
| lifestyle which isn't a performance of one's status.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think there are some people who are fine with exhibiting
| themselves (and their status) as they are without it being
| performative.
| nostrademons wrote:
| There are but it's considered a personality disorder.
|
| There are folks that are genuinely uninterested in social
| status, and it usually goes along with being uninterested
| in social relationships. Think of autistic/Asperger's
| individuals; certain psychopaths & sociopaths; people with
| schizoid, schizotypal, avoidant, or antisocial personality
| disorders; et al. No relationships = no status = no need to
| worry about social status and social signaling.
|
| It's much like how where there's people, there's politics.
| Where there's social, there's status. Take away the social
| and you take away both the performance and the status.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Saying more about their frameworks/models/worldview than
| reality.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| For example I would contrast the following three scenarios of
| people in my circle.
|
| * Having professional landscapers plant grass and plants on
| an outdoor terrace of a penthouse apartment for $100k
|
| * Growing a large vegetable garden from seeds & seedlings,
| from your vacation home outside the city
|
| * Raising houseplants in your apartment windowsill
|
| All three of these people may describe themselves as having
| green thumbs or being into gardening as a hobby...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I am into collecting slightly obsolete audio gear, I've
| spent maybe $600 on the hobby in the last six months.
|
| I know some people would think $120 is a lot for a minidisc
| player since you can get a flash player for so much less.
| Other people would think it's a trivial amount of money.
| Like all these things it comes in multiple scales: back in
| the day there were people who would spend 50x that on audio
| gear (there are some $20,000 speaker sets that sound great)
|
| I don't expect to impress anybody: the last person I showed
| my portable minidisc player was a professor in the music
| department who's won one more than one Grammy award and
| teaches sound engineering who I ran into at the bus stop
| and his comment is "God, how can you listen to something
| compressed like that?" ("... yeah, I've been wondering
| about some of the coding tools they use.")
|
| We are probably going to have some people over for a party
| and I don't expect many people to notice the difference
| with the 5.1 DTS discs I have in my CD changer but I do.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I love & miss minidiscs :-D
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Used ones cost slightly less than they cost new,
| particularly considering inflation.
|
| I started watching Techmoan and similar YouTubers. I have
| some nostalgia for compact cassettes and saw a video
| where they used a Dolby S deck and metal tapes and made
| very good recordings... Hardware like that came in around
| the time I was in grad school and went into a hole so it
| was "better than I remembered". There are Dolby S decks
| on the market for prices that seem within reach but the
| metal tapes are like $40 a piece now.
|
| Optimal cassettes might sound as good or better than
| minidisc but rewinding is a hassle. They still make
| cassette decks and tapes but they are much worse than
| what was made 30 years ago. With NetMD you can record
| audio from your computer to a MD the same way you do with
| a computer which is easy: there's something to say for
| media that let you record your own music so you aren't
| stuck with what got released on SACD or can find on vinyl
| (which isn't too bad.)
|
| It still seems silly when I've got several devices in my
| backpack usually that can play music including the
| Tracfone I use for emergencies.
| mrexroad wrote:
| I've been tempted to dig out my minidisc recording deck
| and player from storage, and use them for to add a bit of
| friction for more constrained listening. I'm probably
| projecting other problems onto music streaming services,
| but I often shut down with the endless choices and
| frustratingly flippant auto-generated playlists. Of
| course I can, and do, curate playlists for specific moods
| and tasks, but I also seem to lack self-control these
| days to not jump to another music tangent without getting
| lost from my original intent.
|
| The nostalgia/quaintness of burning/updating a dozen or
| so minidiscs seems like an "fun"enough construct to build
| a deliberate ritual that outweighs the friction--similar
| to friction of making a pour over coffee helps force a
| nice 10min break and tends to limit number of cups/day to
| something reasonable. Either way, just more of a thought
| exercise at the moment.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| In my case it is YouTube I am trying to get away from.
| Really listening to music on YouTube is a pretty good
| experience, it is great for discovery, and it even does a
| good job of making mixes for me. For many reasons though
| I don't want to be plugged into it and I try to listen to
| files on my computer, jellyfin or minidisc when I use my
| computer.
|
| Upstairs I have a home theater receiver, I also have one
| downstairs where the HDMI out is burned out but it is
| good for music. I have an XBOX ONE plugged upstairs and
| it works for games but it seems to get worse all the time
| as a media player, it doesn't even play CDs although it
| plays DVD and Bluray. Upstairs I have the minidisc player
| for stereo music and one of these
|
| https://www.crutchfield.com/S-92WonNqYEjS/p_158CDPX355/So
| ny-...
|
| which is connected to the receiver with an optical cable
| and is full of 5.1 DTS discs which I am a huge fan of.
| There are some good 1970s quad recordings such as
| _Fragile_ by Yes but also a lot of good stuff in the the
| 2000-2010 period such as _Supernature_ by Goldfrapp and
| some artists like Donald Fagan who always believed in
| multichannel. Like stereoscopic cinema I think a lot of
| people don 't see a big difference but I like it a lot.
| api wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a deliberate form of counter signaling, but...
| I see a lot of people emulate the antisocial or neurotic traits
| of the highly successful based on the faulty premise that these
| are causal for their success.
|
| Will doing heroin make you a rock star?
|
| Might it be that Steve Jobs and Elon Musk succeeded not because
| of but in spite of some of their antisocial traits? Maybe you
| should emulate their work ethic and skills instead.
| greggarious wrote:
| >Will doing heroin make you a rock star?
|
| No but the trauma that makes you do heroin can produce
| beautiful lyrics. (Or so I'm told.)
| andsoitis wrote:
| > emulate the antisocial or neurotic traits of the highly
| successful based on the faulty premise that these are causal
| for their success
|
| I believe that's "cargo cult"-ing.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Elon Musk was reading books all the time when he was young...of
| course it will lead to even less social skills than what he
| would have had as he was growing up.
| greggarious wrote:
| If you don't read books when young it'll be difficult to go
| to uni, and "reading books" isn't particularly unique among
| gifted kids.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| cpsempek wrote:
| I do like this type of reminder, it's a good and clearly
| communicated message. It's interesting to me because at some
| level what the author is communicating is metrics 101 - when
| comparing performance across products/features/content/etc,
| normalize the timeline to time since launch. This is a simple
| principle and one that I apply often to work specific settings,
| but can easily forget to apply in social settings like the author
| describes. There's a lot of value to applying a semantic layer to
| your life, which is obvious but challenging due to influence of
| emotions and the lack of clear goals.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Some interesting pearls in the article. Not sure I endorse non-
| nuanced extension of the idea to entire societies as the author
| does.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > Successful people can afford to engage in countersignaling--
| doing things that signal high status because they are associated
| with low status. It is a form of self-handicapping, signaling
| that one is so well off that they can afford to engage in
| activities and behaviors that people typically associated with
| low status.
|
| This analysis assumes that the successful person who engages in
| an activity is doing so because they are "signaling", not just
| because they like to do the activity. When they do something to
| signal, it's almost certain that the successful person's
| "success" is driven by their ability to get others to copy their
| behavior, or put another way, they're selling the activity or
| things related to it.
|
| Edit: Examples are all over, but think of any product that a
| celebrity sells. (Heck, people even read HN because pg told them
| that smart, interesting people do it ;-) )
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