Many of these seem false to me, generally the ones that claim understanding things and curiosity will help you not make money. I think more than half of my free-time reading in the last several years has increased my money-making ability in my expected career (software) to some extent, and a sizable portion of that was probably pretty close to optimal among things I could realistically be doing with that time (admittedly, that is a factor in what I choose to read; practicality appeals to me). My infovorism has made me a good technical communicator, and my exposure to decision sciences and cognitive biases right here on LessWrong over the past few years seem to make up a sizable portion of what people learn in an MBA (granted, those are more about signaling and contacts than knowledge), to say nothing of all the computer science and software engineering and statistics knowledge I’ve accumulated.
One notable counterexample who is not me: Warren Buffett, currently the third wealthiest human.
Warren Buffett says, “I just sit in my office and read all day.”
What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80 percent of his working day reading and thinking.
“You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours,” Charlie Munger commented.
When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said he “read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”
Basically, a lot of your advice is heavily dependent on your interests. You might accidentally find that you have a ton of valuable technical skills and are an effective communicator with surprisingly good decision-making ability if you read the wrong things for too long.
(keeps sarcasm sign lifted): Yeah, well, you can’t win all the time right? If you happen to be curious not in general, but about the very few things that actually help you make money, then maybe, if you are lucky, over the long run, this may end up helping you make some money. Now think about the things you are curious when you are 15, or things you’d be curious even if you had 13 million dollars… Most people would take no interest in the things that would provide money to them if they didn’t have the 13 million. If you are one of the exceptions, as maybe Buffet (a notable exceptional human being in general) try to focus on the other things, and you’ll be able to not make money in no time!
Finally consider this basic argument against making money, which may help you in your quest: For things that enough people know about and want to do badly enough (going to waterfalls, bikeriding, reading great fiction, taking the subway) there is no incentive to pay people to do it. Money is invested to make sure people are coerced into doing something they would not have done otherwise. Wages are the way in which we coerce people to do things that not enough others were willing to do, but need being done by someone. Because humans share much of their historic, cultural and genetic profiles, and thus interests, it is very likely that the sort of thing people would pay John Smith to do does not coincide with the sort of thing John Smith would be doing without the finantial coercion.
If there was a twin earth in which this trend is reversed, where I would be paid to read intellectually stimulating stuff like LessWrong, date the most incredible people, design the coolest projects and have others implement them, hike to waterfalls where the sun is perfect and the water fresh. If such place existed, then maybe I’d be writing a “how to make money” internet blog post, like is everyone else in this universe. But who’d find the irony there?
Most people are primarily interested in things that won’t go very far in making money, and basically everyone likes to do a lot of things they won’t ever get paid for; both are undeniable. “Be interested only in things that do nothing to increase your ability to earn money” is a very good way, indeed just about the best way, to not make money.
I can only speak for myself. Unlike most people, I don’t “work” at all, in the sense of doing anything with the conscious goal of making money. All I do is think about what interests me, and discuss the results of that thinking with other people. As long as governments (and philanthropists like Mike Lazaridis) are willing to pay me for my non-work, I’m happy to take their money. If they ever stop paying me, I guess I’ll have to find some other source of income.
Many of these seem false to me, generally the ones that claim understanding things and curiosity will help you not make money. I think more than half of my free-time reading in the last several years has increased my money-making ability in my expected career (software) to some extent, and a sizable portion of that was probably pretty close to optimal among things I could realistically be doing with that time (admittedly, that is a factor in what I choose to read; practicality appeals to me). My infovorism has made me a good technical communicator, and my exposure to decision sciences and cognitive biases right here on LessWrong over the past few years seem to make up a sizable portion of what people learn in an MBA (granted, those are more about signaling and contacts than knowledge), to say nothing of all the computer science and software engineering and statistics knowledge I’ve accumulated.
One notable counterexample who is not me: Warren Buffett, currently the third wealthiest human.
Basically, a lot of your advice is heavily dependent on your interests. You might accidentally find that you have a ton of valuable technical skills and are an effective communicator with surprisingly good decision-making ability if you read the wrong things for too long.
(keeps sarcasm sign lifted): Yeah, well, you can’t win all the time right? If you happen to be curious not in general, but about the very few things that actually help you make money, then maybe, if you are lucky, over the long run, this may end up helping you make some money. Now think about the things you are curious when you are 15, or things you’d be curious even if you had 13 million dollars… Most people would take no interest in the things that would provide money to them if they didn’t have the 13 million. If you are one of the exceptions, as maybe Buffet (a notable exceptional human being in general) try to focus on the other things, and you’ll be able to not make money in no time! Finally consider this basic argument against making money, which may help you in your quest: For things that enough people know about and want to do badly enough (going to waterfalls, bikeriding, reading great fiction, taking the subway) there is no incentive to pay people to do it. Money is invested to make sure people are coerced into doing something they would not have done otherwise. Wages are the way in which we coerce people to do things that not enough others were willing to do, but need being done by someone. Because humans share much of their historic, cultural and genetic profiles, and thus interests, it is very likely that the sort of thing people would pay John Smith to do does not coincide with the sort of thing John Smith would be doing without the finantial coercion. If there was a twin earth in which this trend is reversed, where I would be paid to read intellectually stimulating stuff like LessWrong, date the most incredible people, design the coolest projects and have others implement them, hike to waterfalls where the sun is perfect and the water fresh. If such place existed, then maybe I’d be writing a “how to make money” internet blog post, like is everyone else in this universe. But who’d find the irony there?
Most people are primarily interested in things that won’t go very far in making money, and basically everyone likes to do a lot of things they won’t ever get paid for; both are undeniable. “Be interested only in things that do nothing to increase your ability to earn money” is a very good way, indeed just about the best way, to not make money.
Your sarcasm is appreciated :-)
I’d guess a sizeable fraction of LWers are interested in things other than those with the largest markets, though.
And here I quote this for the n-th time...
-- Scott Aaronson