No, but it does put pressure on your claim. You have to be very optimistic or very risk-seeking to ride your risky career all the way up past instant-retirement/fuck-you money levels (a few millions) to the billions point, and not sell out at every point before then to enjoy your gains. What fraction of the general population ever founds a startup or new company or takes an equivalent risk? Her career pushes Oprah way out onto the tail.
Now, maybe the average black pregnant teenager is so irrational in so many ways that their average problems make Oprah on net more rational even though she’s lunatically optimistic or risk-seeking (although here we should question how irrational having a kid is, given issues like welfare and local cultures and issues discussed in Promises I Can Keep and marriage gambits and that sort of thing), but it’s going to be much harder to establish that about an Oprah-with-lunatic-risk-appetite rather than what we started with, the Oprah-who-is-otherwise-looking-pretty-darn-rational.
On the other hand, how good are people who retire at finding what they want most to do?
A person who’s more rational than average (especially about introspection) might do well to retire, but most people might be rationally concerned that they’d just drift.
I don’t know what population-wide aggregates might look like. At least in Silicon Valley, there apparently are many people who have retired early and have the ability and inclination to express any dissatisfaction online in places where I might read them, but I can’t think of any who have said things like “My life has been miserable since I cashed out my millions of dollars of Google shares and I have nothing to do with myself.”
Retiring early means you have the money for doing a great many things, and you are still in physical & mental shape to enjoy it; Twain:
“The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”
And what factors enabled this early retirement in the first place? A motivated intelligent person (albeit with a bad appetite for risk and inability to cash out) can find plenty of rewarding things to occupy themselves with, like charity or education. Steve Woziak and Cliff Stoll immediately come to mind, but I’m sure you can name others.
There’s a selection effect on such wishes, though. Only a small fraction of humans ① survive to such an age and ② retire with “privileges and accumulations”; many who would desire such a goal do not achieve it.
I don’t follow. Everyone has wishes, the people who retire without privileges and accumulations tend to have started without privileges and accumulations but the opposite is not true (the elderly are wealthier than the young).
No, but it does put pressure on your claim. You have to be very optimistic or very risk-seeking to ride your risky career all the way up past instant-retirement/fuck-you money levels (a few millions) to the billions point, and not sell out at every point before then to enjoy your gains. What fraction of the general population ever founds a startup or new company or takes an equivalent risk? Her career pushes Oprah way out onto the tail.
Now, maybe the average black pregnant teenager is so irrational in so many ways that their average problems make Oprah on net more rational even though she’s lunatically optimistic or risk-seeking (although here we should question how irrational having a kid is, given issues like welfare and local cultures and issues discussed in Promises I Can Keep and marriage gambits and that sort of thing), but it’s going to be much harder to establish that about an Oprah-with-lunatic-risk-appetite rather than what we started with, the Oprah-who-is-otherwise-looking-pretty-darn-rational.
Is retiring relatively young a more rational choice than continuing to work at something you like?
It seems like pretty remarkable luck if the thing you want to do most in the world is also what you’re currently being paid to do.
On the other hand, how good are people who retire at finding what they want most to do?
A person who’s more rational than average (especially about introspection) might do well to retire, but most people might be rationally concerned that they’d just drift.
I don’t know what population-wide aggregates might look like. At least in Silicon Valley, there apparently are many people who have retired early and have the ability and inclination to express any dissatisfaction online in places where I might read them, but I can’t think of any who have said things like “My life has been miserable since I cashed out my millions of dollars of Google shares and I have nothing to do with myself.”
Retiring early means you have the money for doing a great many things, and you are still in physical & mental shape to enjoy it; Twain:
And what factors enabled this early retirement in the first place? A motivated intelligent person (albeit with a bad appetite for risk and inability to cash out) can find plenty of rewarding things to occupy themselves with, like charity or education. Steve Woziak and Cliff Stoll immediately come to mind, but I’m sure you can name others.
There’s a selection effect on such wishes, though. Only a small fraction of humans ① survive to such an age and ② retire with “privileges and accumulations”; many who would desire such a goal do not achieve it.
I don’t follow. Everyone has wishes, the people who retire without privileges and accumulations tend to have started without privileges and accumulations but the opposite is not true (the elderly are wealthier than the young).