tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post7666072616236221365..comments2023-05-28T17:47:26.943-07:00Comments on A Nice Place To Live: Investing in YourselfAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-2268444991349513202014-12-13T20:45:52.418-08:002014-12-13T20:45:52.418-08:00I think my argument is pretty dependent on context...I think my argument is pretty dependent on context. I'm a recently graduated college student, my career is in film, I live in a hipster part of town, and almost everybody I know works in the arts. Different people probably have different baselines for how nice their stuff needs to be in order to avoid negative judgment. There's also a disparity in what people's peer groups are impressed by. Personally, I feel disadvantaged by having mostly cheap, generic stuff and divergent interests. Maybe this post isn't very generalizable across EAs but I stand by the main claim: "I don't think pinching pennies is the necessary way to live as an EA."Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-33073640121856065052014-12-13T20:05:55.074-08:002014-12-13T20:05:55.074-08:00I think we ought to require unusually high burden ...I think we ought to require unusually high burden of proof from arguments like these, as it's very easy to use them just to rationalize unnecessary selfish spending.<br /><br />> Whether or not you are materialistic or superficial, most other people are. Possessing nice stuff makes you come off as more impressive, more competent, more self-aware, and more attractive. ... Overspending on nice stuff has social repercussions that most EAs could probably use.<br /><br />There are many people who want you to believe this, but I think most of them work for companies that make nice stuff. I think it's basically an illusion. You can get stuff of average niceness--enough to at least stave off the anti-halo-effect--for a basically trivial amount of money. Beyond that, the halo-effect returns diminish rapidly.<br /><br />(I guess it's not totally obvious that you can get average-nice stuff for a basically trivial amount of money, so maybe we actually agree on the optimal level of stuff-niceness to have. But if you live with housemates a lot of things become very easy. As for clothes, I went through a period of trying to optimize them, realized it didn't really do very much, and switched back to mostly nice t-shirts and jeans, for an annual budget of about $200 plus some upfront investment.)<br /><br />Aside from achieving baseline niceness, if you actually want to come across as impressive, competent, self-aware, and attractive, there are much better ways to optimize these directly. Only a tiny part of these things can be manipulated by buying nice stuff, *especially* if you're buying nice stuff in an attempt to manipulate these things (people can tell). The rest of it is from, like, actually doing impressive things and understanding yourself and stuff.<br /><br />I think there's a better case for spending your time on non-altruistic things than your money. I guess this is probably because not everyone wants to separate you from your time the way everything wants to separate you from your money. We aren't consumerist about time the same way we are about money, so the norms about how to spend your time aren't as badly wrong.Ben Kuhnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07350732655981572902noreply@blogger.com