[HN Gopher] There's a place for everyone
___________________________________________________________________
There's a place for everyone
Author : yboulkaid
Score : 77 points
Date : 2024-09-01 11:34 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.experimental-history.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.experimental-history.com)
| grosjona wrote:
| I thought I'd found my place when I got into open source
| distributed pub/sub over WebSockets. I worked in this area for
| over 10 years but you won't find my project in the first 100
| results on Google for those niche 7 keywords.
|
| Surprising considering that almost none of these terms even
| existed 20 years ago.
| whack wrote:
| > _every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or
| redundant._
|
| > _That's a tragedy not just for Nicky, but for the rest of us,
| too. There's a hole in the ecosystem where Nicky should be:
| there's a hospital she should be running, or seventh-graders she
| should be teaching, or pizzas she should be delivering
| underwater. Wherever that hole is, everything else will be a
| little off-balance until Nicky fills it._
|
| Some interesting implications of this:
|
| 1. Any children you have, would be fulfilling a purpose in the
| world
|
| 2. If you decide not to have that child, you are depriving the
| world and everyone else of a person who would otherwise fulfill
| that purpose
|
| 3. Recall that no one is superfluous or redundant. So by
| depriving the world of a person who can fulfill that purpose, you
| are guaranteeing that the purpose will never be adequately
| fulfilled
|
| 4. The above applies no matter how many children you've already
| had. Already had 10 children and decided not to have a 11th? Man,
| you just created a Nicky-sized hole in the ecosystem. Now the
| whole world will be off-balance because of your tragic decision
|
| 5. So yeah, if you don't want the world to be off-balance, you
| better get out there and have as many kids as humanly possible
| autoexec wrote:
| What if your purpose in the world is to not have any children?
| cardanome wrote:
| Every person also has needs meaning they add demands for niches
| to be filled. So it balances itself out.
|
| If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take more
| than they give creating imbalance.
|
| So your implications don't really follow strictly from the
| stated axioms. Though yeah, generally, yes, more people are a
| good thing as it means more people that can help drive humanity
| forward. (Obviously there are factors why having as many
| children as humanly possible is not always a good idea though.)
| Also some religions strongly encourage people to have as many
| children as possible so it is not a super uncommon view.
| mulmen wrote:
| > If someone doesn't fulfill their niche they tend to take
| more than they give creating imbalance.
|
| This seems like harmful thinking. Should I feel guilty about
| being depressed? What about victims of circumstance? Do they
| owe society an apology for their trauma?
| cardanome wrote:
| The mistake you are making is thinking the sentence is
| meant to assign individual responsibility for finding your
| niche.
|
| Not at all. The article and I agree on that point is pretty
| clear that it is a societal responsibility. People not
| being able to flex their individual talents is a failure of
| society not the individual. And yes there are niches for
| depressed, traumatized people, there is a place for
| everyone.
| klntsky wrote:
| 5 is correct but for the reasons not related to niches or
| purposes
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| It's interesting indeed, but is missing an important factor.
| Every niche requires resources for someone to fill it: time, at
| a minimum, but also raw materials (engineering, art), land
| (agriculture, wildlife preservation), power (pretty much
| everything) and so on. These are all finite, although some are
| now used more efficiently than they could have been in the
| past.
|
| By having more children, you contribute to more people
| fulfilling their purposes in the future, but this is true only
| to the point where resources would become too scarce when
| divided between the niches.
|
| I would guess that in the future, the Earth could sustain maybe
| double its current population, due to much more efficient
| resource utilisation and extraction, relieving the demand on
| these resources, and the large number of people who would
| prefer to live in cities, reducing the demand on land. But the
| Earth could not sustain such a growth of its population
| immediately; we need time to let society and technology improve
| and adapt.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Some interesting implications of this_
|
| Not really. The article only says persons who exist have a
| purpose. It does not say that persons who do not yet exist must
| be created because there is a purpose waiting for them.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Doesn't that put a strange significance on making new people?
|
| There's some boundary where you can't abort or your child is
| born and then they definitely have a purpose, even though 5
| minutes before reaching that boundary, they didn't
| pdonis wrote:
| _> There 's some boundary_
|
| But there's nothing that says that boundary has to be
| birth. It would depend on when you think a _person_ exists.
| Some people would say that happens at conception. Others
| would say it doesn 't happen until well after birth (indeed
| some philosophers have said it doesn't fully happen until
| adulthood).
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I think you are taking the author's reasoning a little bit too
| literal. The gist is, Nicky is doing a job that she does not
| like, simply because she does not even know of the existence of
| a job that suits her better. The filling of that position would
| be a win-win situation. The current 'off-balance' ness is just
| a metaphor.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Well my place in the job world was just outsourced overseas to
| one of the billions of unique people over there.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Is there a place for people who disagree with the author on
| marginal tax rates and soybean tariffs?
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| > every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant.
|
| Nice sentiment but wishful thinking lmao. At the very least there
| are some people for whom nowhere is a perfect fit, and there are
| people who would fit better in any place they could fit in. I.e.
| some people are not locally optimal anywhere.
|
| Another issue is we read this and imagine the happy smart
| consciousness people in our friend groups. What about the
| psycopaths? Serial killers? Do they deserve a place too? Any
| environment they would thrive in would be damaging to the general
| welfare of polite society. Is the point then that anyone can be
| molded to an ideal?
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Oddly enough I think a lot of abberant personality types can
| fit into group dynamics.
|
| In fact go to any large, long running, stable, 3rd place and
| there will be some non violent psychopaths and narcissist in
| the community.
|
| Serial killers usually won't kill people within their own
| community. The BTK killer was president of his church council.
|
| Deserve really doesn't really enter into the equation. A serial
| killer might know a lot about webrtc or building operating
| systems and may be on this thread contributing niche info right
| now!
|
| Society isn't a friend group. A co-working, community or church
| space isn't a friend group. One of my most rewarding
| experiences was in a space where >20% of people were
| bidirectionally incompatible for personal friendship.
|
| This article isn't about the "whole self", it's actually the
| opposite in some ways, it's about how in a big world there is
| value in finding how a distinct and "flavourful" part of your
| interests has unexpected value.
| cardanome wrote:
| Yes, there is a place for everyone. For some it might be prison
| but it is a place nonetheless. Everyone has the right to live.
|
| While psychopathy is relatively hard to treat it is worth
| noting that not all psychopaths are actively harming other
| people. They can also be functional and productive members of
| certain groups under the right circumstances. You might want to
| be more careful with stigmatizing a whole group of people.
| morning-coffee wrote:
| When you use the word "everyone", curious if you really mean
| it considering that set contains individuals like Adolf
| Hitler, Shiro Ishii, Josef Fritzl, etc?
| cardanome wrote:
| I mean I do consider a world where Adolf Hitler would have
| just been a unremarkable painter and Shiro Ishi doing
| boring research possible.
|
| Yes, sometimes you have to use force to keep people from
| harming themselves and others but I don't see how this is
| related to the topic. I reject any form capital punishment
| though obviously some situations require killing when a
| person can not be stopped otherwise.
| mulmen wrote:
| I only skimmed but I don't find this philosophy particularly
| interesting.
|
| The implication here is that everyone has one best place, but in
| reality there are many local maximums. The opportunity cost of
| traversing a valley for a slightly higher maximum may not be
| worth it.
|
| The post also conflates employment with happiness. Not having a
| paying job is a valid life choice. Stay at home parent is a
| completely valid niche.
|
| Picking a job or career based on the free time it allows to
| pursue hobbies is also valid.
|
| None of this is easy and the post doesn't seem to provide any
| insight into finding a good fit.
|
| The idea that we have one "best" fit is the self-help equivalent
| of "perfect is the enemy of good".
| siffin wrote:
| It also ignores socio-economic implications which totally
| derail the argument.
|
| Underwater pizza delivery? Sounds great and fun, but is it
| actually profitable once everything is taken into account,
| including assets, depreciation, insurance, saving for
| retirement, job security etc.
|
| Pretty much anybody can do something they are more apt at and
| like better if they are willing to risk their financial
| security.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I'm not sure it conflates the niches with employment. Many of
| the examples given are specifically non-paying niches.
| (Starting with breakup-whisperer).
|
| Indeed for some percentage of people, employment is not
| fulfilling or satisfying. They turn to other activities to
| create significance in their lives. (Open Source software is
| pretty much built on this concept.)
|
| That said, I suspect the basic premise (everyone has a unique
| niche) is flawed. It's more likely that everyone has the
| opportunity to add value to society, and that value comes in
| various ever-creative forms. Many choose not to take that
| opportunity, and hypothetically we're worse off for that, but
| life pretty much still goes on.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's obviously false in the literal sense, since some number
| of people literally lack the capability to remain alive.
|
| Not to mention the small fraction of adults that suffer
| serious brain damage and turn into vegetables.
| voiceblue wrote:
| Let me teach you a good philosophy. When you see an article
| that begins with "what do you believe without any evidence" and
| "this is what I said without thinking", do not expect good
| thinking to follow.
| cardanome wrote:
| > None of this is easy and the post doesn't seem to provide any
| insight into finding a good fit.
|
| Oh it does:
|
| > So it's not that the world magically offers the lock to fit
| everyone's key. It's that everyone's key has a bit of give,
| enough to fit the locks available. We screw this up when we
| assume that our keys are made out of Play-Doh and they can fit
| anywhere, or when we assume they're made out of obsidian and
| they'll shatter if you try to stick 'em in the wrong place.
|
| It actually warns about having unrealistic expectations what
| fitting in means and encourages to have some flexibility but
| also not too much flexibility. I think that is a good approach
|
| > The post also conflates employment with happiness.
|
| The article doesn't talk solely about traditional employment
| but has a broader definition of niche.
|
| > And that's just thinking of niches in the dumbest sense
| possible, which is "things you can do in exchange for money."
|
| Later:
|
| > When I was thirteen, I got promoted to moderator of the
| "Flaming Chickens" forum of a Yu-Gi-Oh! message board, which is
| where people were allowed to "flame" things that they hated
| (stepdads, math class, low-quality English dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh!
| episodes). I was so excited because it meant I meant something.
| Was the job pointless? Yes. Was it not a "job" at all in the
| sense that it paid nothing? Yes. Did the forum eventually die
| because of an infidelity scandal inside the polycule of people
| who ran the message board? Also yes. But for a bit, I fit.
|
| You comment could be more insightful if you had read the
| article.
| derektank wrote:
| The piece sort of contradicts itself on this point though and
| explicitly conflates employment and finding one's niche with
| the tragedy of Nicky. Why is it a tragedy that Nicky finds
| herself employed as a consultant if she has no other
| particular career ambitions, if she can find her niche
| outside of work? The author even seems to suggest it's
| morally wrong for people to be employed in anything but their
| niche, lest they fall into, "build[ing] prisons or raid[ing]
| pensions or market[ing] vapes to kids."
| atoav wrote:
| I think it alludes to a lack of _any_ purpose in life. A
| friend of mine was like that and she was really unhappy
| with that.
|
| She had a job, but is was literally nust a way to get
| money. It wasn't a bad job, but it did not remotely excite
| her and if she was gone she would have been replaced within
| a week.
|
| She had zero hobbies and nothing she persued with a
| passion. That didn't mean she did not have talents, e.g.
| she was a great singer. But it did not mean a lot to her.
|
| Not sure if this is equivalent to Nicky here, but the
| tragedy isn't based on what we think about it, it is that
| these people feel homeless in their own lives. The
| relationship isn't causal in the sense of "people who have
| job X will feel like that" but more like "people who feel
| like that are likely to have a (to them) meaningless job".
|
| The girl from my story got out of the whole thing by
| traveling and leaving her comfort zone, she got a dog that
| she wants to care for and that pushes her to do things when
| she normally wouldn't.
| abhayhegde wrote:
| > The implication here is that everyone has one best place, but
| in reality there are many local maximums.
|
| This is even better than what the article argues and thus not
| an antithesis. The author tries to convince us that there
| exists atleast a place for everyone, not that there aren't
| many.
|
| > The idea that we have one "best" fit is the self-help
| equivalent of "perfect is the enemy of good".
|
| Again, it's not that there is one "best". The idea is everyone
| can be valuable through atleast one means. I don't see how that
| is related to perfectionism.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The implication here is that everyone has one best place_
|
| No, just _a_ place. There could be more than one, and they
| might not even be comparable in a way that would let you say
| one is better or worse than the other. The article talks about
| this when it says people 's keys have some give, they don't
| have to fit just one lock.
| pajeets wrote:
| tldr honest
|
| im sick of these blue pills
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm about ready for a good blue pill these days
|
| As a vegan who additionally hates eating and hates being around
| others when they eat, it's very hard to get along with anyone.
|
| Imagine a world where nearly everyone is a hypocrite and a
| murderer, and their hobby of murder is offensive to you,
| disgusting to you, and also seemingly the number one way for
| everyone but you to form social bonds of any sort.
|
| "Neo!! You have to wake up, Neo! Come live in a filthy cave and
| eat slop with us, Neo!"
|
| I really wonder if the Matrix gave my generation brain
| poisoning.
|
| Why do I greatly prefer to feel correct than to feel happy? Why
| does it seem impossible to accept other people and this
| alternate reality most of the world subscribes to?
|
| I think I would take the blue pill.
|
| The steak Cipher eats is vegan, it's made from ethically
| sourced human meat, the humans were not raised to be food like
| cattle are.
|
| The world inside the Matrix is not perfect, it's missing many
| things I'd like, but in that pre 9/11 dream world I could eat
| dairy cheese and maybe enjoy an easy life. Maybe in that dream
| I would be cis, even.
|
| If I take the blue pill, am I responsible for the machines
| killing runners?
|
| If I pay taxes, am I responsible for my countrymen voting in
| weird losers?
|
| The red pill is no longer a slam dunk for me. I wonder when my
| mind changed.
| avazhi wrote:
| No, there's not.
|
| The evolutionary process is pretty adept at rigorously excluding
| most personality and physical variants out of all the available
| options. Pretending otherwise is naive ahistorical nonsense.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| But is that not a place? Our civilization has become
| infinite... "all the available options" is an enormous category
| that in some societies does include quite literally everyone.
|
| (I suggest reading the piece - the author deals with whether or
| not the underlying hypothesis is true versus useful early on.)
| avazhi wrote:
| I read the piece.
|
| Our society is certainly not infinite economically or as a
| matter of what is acceptable socially, and while different
| cultures have varying degrees of acceptability in terms of
| plausible occupations and behaviour, they are still obviously
| bounded.
|
| The hypothesis is neither useful not true, which makes the
| article uninteresting at best.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Sometimes I think I must be an evolutionary dead end, and that
| gels with the fact that I don't want children.
|
| Or specifically, I wouldn't mind the good parts of having one
| or two children, but I could not bear the responsibility
| jmann99999 wrote:
| I'm not sure the author captures it perfectly, however...
|
| There is a lake in the U.S. that crosses the borders of Idaho and
| Utah. On summer weekends, you'll see the Bear Lake Burger Boat
| trolling the waters. Swim or float up to it, and they'll give you
| a delicious hamburger.
|
| I'm glad whoever runs it has found a fit in this world. I'm sure
| it's not what most of us on Hacker News would choose to do, but I
| am glad someone does.
| harimau777 wrote:
| How many of these niches actually pay enough (or provide enough
| other benefits) to have a decent quality of life? I think that's
| the real limiting factor in "finding your niche".
| abhayhegde wrote:
| That's a fair point. I kind of hate that the world has come to
| this. Everything needs to be justified through an economic
| lens. I wonder if life was easier in the past with regards to
| this.
| squigz wrote:
| Certainly not. These days, with the Internet, social
| assistance programs, ability to run i.e. a Patreon account to
| make money from your hobby... It might not be "easy", but
| it's certainly easier than in the past, where taking a break
| from your farm to paint some trees would mean a very hard
| year.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Roughly which century was it when economics began to exist?
| pdonis wrote:
| The article doesn't say your niche has to be how you make a
| living. Consider, for example, the Breakup Whisperer.
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| Sort of off topic but this page links to a probably-pseudoscience
| rabbit hole.
|
| >As far back as the 1950s, it was known that garlic reduced
| reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots
| taking flight tests.
|
| Does ANYONE know of reference for this? It seemed so bizarre I
| had to look it up but couldn't see anything obvious.
| jfactorial wrote:
| I fed your question into perplexity.ai [1] and it appears from
| the resulting response that a youtube video [2] is responsible
| for this bit of misinformation.
|
| [1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/as-far-back-as-
| the-1950s-it... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PNlf-Ar5oA
| fishtoaster wrote:
| It's a fun, upbeat article, but as an actual case, I think it
| falls down here:
|
| > Our abundance of weirdos creates diversity not only in supply,
| but also in demand.
|
| That's certainly true (imo), but the author seems to implicitly
| expect the supply and demand to match up and I'm pretty
| thoroughly convinced that they do not.
|
| Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people that
| want to be artists than people that want to buy art, causing art
| to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in. This is equally
| true of any other niche where there are X people wanting it and Y
| people providing it: there's no reason to expect those to be
| equal and, as it turns out, they rarely are.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Thinking narrowly about jobs, there are a lot more people
| that want to be artists than people that want to buy art,
| causing art to be a pretty hard industry to make a living in._
|
| The article does not say that your place has to be your job.
| Indeed, it gives examples to the contrary, such as the Breakup
| Whisperer.
| MailleQuiMaille wrote:
| Talking about purpose without mentioning spirituality is to me
| like talking about politics without mentioning wars : feels like
| a lot of the reasoning behind is missed, either by prudishness,
| ignorance or bigotry.
| Pat_Murph wrote:
| We would need to start by defining what spirituality is...
|
| For me it's a vague, meaningless word that people like to use
| without ever defining it. And it's meaning ehen5rhere is one.
| Is completly diffeent9from person to person...
|
| So for me utterly useless.
| fragmede wrote:
| spirituality is just the modern word for religion. it's each
| person's deeper meaning to life beyond this material world,
| if there is one.
| dalyons wrote:
| "Religion" heavily implies an institution, an organization
| of people, buildings, etc. spirituality typically means
| none of this. "Unorganized religion" perhaps?
| MailleQuiMaille wrote:
| Etymologically speaking, spirituality is related to, well
| spiritus, related to soul, spirit, vital principles and so
| on. Religion on the other end comes from religare, which
| means to bind.
|
| Can you see the difference in meaning of this two words ? One
| talks about ethereal things without boundaries but the other
| bounds you to something...
|
| To answer your point, spirituality is broadly speaking your
| relationship with the invisible world. Is life to you purely
| material, explored only through the senses or is there more ?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It's purely material.
|
| When I see a beautiful sunset or listen to music I like, or
| fall in love, those are all material.
|
| I too do not understand spirituality
| jfactorial wrote:
| > spirituality is broadly speaking your relationship with
| the invisible world. Is life to you purely material,
| explored only through the senses or is there more ?
|
| By "invisible" I doubt that you mean simply "unable to be
| seen with the naked eye," since there are of course many
| things that are only visible using tools (microscopes,
| telescopes, infrared cameras, etc.)
|
| By "invisible" you might mean aspects of the world which
| cannot be sensed with any of our human senses using any
| technology at all, you have a challenge before you: proving
| they exist.
|
| Perhaps by "the invisible world" you're referring to
| abstractions or concepts, e.g. "altruism" or "love" or
| "evil"? But if so, in this instance I think there must be
| material evidence for these things for one's belief in them
| to be rational.
|
| The assertion that an immaterial thing exists, but its
| existence and any effect of its existence are utterly
| unobservable, is no different from asserting that the thing
| does not in fact exist.
|
| So life is effectively purely material. One may assert that
| there is an unobservable unsensible immaterial reality, but
| this assertion is ultimately meaningless to us.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > every person has a purpose, nobody is superfluous or redundant.
|
| It be much nicer to start this statement from the reverse.
| Instead of justifying everyone has a purpose for a society, how
| about a society justifying itself based on the premise that every
| person has a purpose (could just be consumerism for all I know
| but hey).
| cranium wrote:
| I prefer the completely opposite view: nobody is there with a
| special purpose, we are all trying to figure what the heck we
| should do. It seems less welcoming but if you haven't found your
| place, is it really helpful to be told "keep searching, somewhere
| the perfect job is waiting for you"?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| The author had me with the hook. I wanted to know how this
| fundamental ethical difference arises and what its psychological
| and sociological implications are. Maybe I could compare it with
| other proposed ideological axes.
|
| But I didn't find any of that.
| alphazard wrote:
| > We don't talk much about this, because if the people on Team
| Overboard were honest about who they plan to purge, none of their
| intended victims would be friends with them, let alone vote for
| them.
|
| It's hard to take the piece seriously after that. Obviously a
| mischaracterization of the group he refers to as "Team
| Overboard".
|
| A steelman would look something like: "On the other team, they
| are indifferent as to whether people they don't know find a place
| for themselves. They are confident that all people they would
| want to potentially know will find places for themselves."
|
| Because that actually matches some commonly espoused
| philosophies. On the other hand, I've never heard anyone
| seriously call for a purge of undesirables, which is what the
| author claims.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I've heard several people say that we are too many on this
| planet. Mostly older people tend to agree with this. For the
| record, I'm not one of them. Hence for those people there has
| to be a set of people belonging to the overboard side.
| nilawafer wrote:
| Thank you for your inspirational words comrade. You are a beacon
| of hope for all workers of the revolution.
|
| Soviet Labor Committee has a place for you and all others! In
| fact we need 10,000 laborers to construct a new datacenter.
| Please report with a set of warm clothes.
|
| /s
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Personally I find this paragraph talking to newly arriving people
| a gem:
|
| "I'm so glad you're here! I don't know if they told you in there,
| but we're all trying to do something crazy here, which is to
| build a place where we believe there's somewhere for everyone. We
| have never once in our history even come close to doing this.
| We're not close now. But the fact that you're here means we
| haven't failed completely, and maybe with your help we'll
| succeed."
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(page generated 2024-09-04 23:02 UTC)