how many hours a day you waste or how
many hours a week you waste and the
classic answer is something like four to
six hours a day
you know inefficient studying watching
things on YouTube that not only do you
not want to watch that you don’t even
care about that make you feel horrible
about watching after you’re done that’s
probably four hours right there know it
you think well that’s 2025 hours a week
it’s a hundred hours a month that’s two
and a half full work weeks it’s half a
year of work weeks per year and if your
time is worth twenty dollars an hour
which is a radical underestimate it’s
probably more like 50 if you think about
it in terms of deferred wages if you’re
wasting 20 hours a week
you’re wasting fifty thousand dollars a
year and you are doing that right now
and it’s because you’re young wasting
fifty thousand dollars a year is a way
bigger catastrophe than it would be for
me to waste it because I’m not gonna
last nearly as long and so if your life
isn’t everything it could be you could
ask yourself well what would happen if
you just stopped wasting the
opportunities that are in front of you
you’d be who knows how much more
efficient ten times more efficient
20 times more efficient that’s the
Pareto distribution you have no idea how
efficient efficient people get it’s
completely it’s off the charts well and
if we all got our act together
collectively and stop making things
worse because that’s another thing
people do all the time not only do they
not do what they should to make things
better they actively attempt to make
things worse because they’re spiteful or
resentful or arrogant or deceitful or or
homicidal or genocide allure all of
those things all bundled together in an
absolutely pathological package if
people start really really trying just
to make things worse we have no idea how
much better they would get just because
of that so there’s this weird dynamic
that’s part of the existential system of
ideas between human vulnerability social
judgment both of which are major causes
of suffering and the failure of
individuals to adopt the responsibility
that they know they
and that’s the thing that’s interesting
too is that and like one of the another
thing I’ve often asked my undergraduate
classes is you know there’s this idea
that that people have that people have a
conscience
and you know what the conscience is it’s
it’s this feeling or voice you have in
your head just before you do something
that you know is stupid telling you that
probably you shouldn’t do that stupid
thing you don’t have to listen to it
strangely enough but you go ahead and do
it anyways and then of course exactly
what the conscience told you was going
to happen inevitably happen so that you
feel even stupider about it than you
would if it happened by accident because
you know I knew this was going to happen
I got a warning it was going to happen
and I went and did it anyways and the
funny thing too is that that conscience
operates within people and we really
don’t understand what the hell that is
so you might say well what would happen
if you abided by your conscience for
five years or for ten years what sort of
position might you be in what sort of
family might you have what sort of
relationship might you be able to forge
and you can be bloody sure that a
relationship that’s forged on the basis
of who you actually are is going to be a
lot stronger and more welcome than one
that’s forged on the basis of who you
aren’t now of course that means that the
person you’re with has to deal with the
full force of you and all your ability
and your catastrophe and that’s a very
very difficult thing to negotiate but if
you do negotiate it well at least you
you have something you have somewhere
solid to stand and you have somewhere to
live you have a real life and it’s a
great basis upon which to bring children
into the world for example because you
can have an actual relationship with
them instead of torturing them half to
death which is what happens in a
tremendous a tremendously large minority
of cases well it’s more than that to
because and this is what I’ll close with
and this is why I wanted to introduce
social nets as ratings to you you see
because it isn’t merely that your fate
depends on whether or not you get your
act together and to what degree you
decide that you’re going to live out
your own genuine being
isn’t only your fate it’s the fate of
everyone that you networked with and so
you know you think well there’s nine
billion seven billion people in the
world we’re going to peak at about nine
billion by the way and then it’ll
decline rapidly but seven billion people
in the world and who are you you’re just
one little dust mote among that seven
billion and so it really doesn’t matter
what you do or don’t do but that’s
simply not the case it’s the wrong model
because you’re at the center of a
network you’re a node in a network of
course that’s even more true now that we
have social media you’ll you know you’ll
know a thousand people at least over the
course of your life and they’ll know a
thousand people each and that puts you
one person away from a million and two
persons away from a billion and so
that’s how you’re connected and the
things you do there like dropping a
stone in a pond the ripples move outward
and they affect things in ways that you
can’t fully comprehend and it means that
the things that you do and that you
don’t do are far more important than you
[Music] you
many hours a week you waste and the
classic answer is something like four to
six hours a day
you know inefficient studying watching
things on YouTube that not only do you
not want to watch that you don’t even
care about that make you feel horrible
about watching after you’re done that’s
probably four hours right there know it
you think well that’s 2025 hours a week
it’s a hundred hours a month that’s two
and a half full work weeks it’s half a
year of work weeks per year and if your
time is worth twenty dollars an hour
which is a radical underestimate it’s
probably more like 50 if you think about
it in terms of deferred wages if you’re
wasting 20 hours a week
you’re wasting fifty thousand dollars a
year and you are doing that right now
and it’s because you’re young wasting
fifty thousand dollars a year is a way
bigger catastrophe than it would be for
me to waste it because I’m not gonna
last nearly as long and so if your life
isn’t everything it could be you could
ask yourself well what would happen if
you just stopped wasting the
opportunities that are in front of you
you’d be who knows how much more
efficient ten times more efficient
20 times more efficient that’s the
Pareto distribution you have no idea how
efficient efficient people get it’s
completely it’s off the charts well and
if we all got our act together
collectively and stop making things
worse because that’s another thing
people do all the time not only do they
not do what they should to make things
better they actively attempt to make
things worse because they’re spiteful or
resentful or arrogant or deceitful or or
homicidal or genocide allure all of
those things all bundled together in an
absolutely pathological package if
people start really really trying just
to make things worse we have no idea how
much better they would get just because
of that so there’s this weird dynamic
that’s part of the existential system of
ideas between human vulnerability social
judgment both of which are major causes
of suffering and the failure of
individuals to adopt the responsibility
that they know they
and that’s the thing that’s interesting
too is that and like one of the another
thing I’ve often asked my undergraduate
classes is you know there’s this idea
that that people have that people have a
conscience
and you know what the conscience is it’s
it’s this feeling or voice you have in
your head just before you do something
that you know is stupid telling you that
probably you shouldn’t do that stupid
thing you don’t have to listen to it
strangely enough but you go ahead and do
it anyways and then of course exactly
what the conscience told you was going
to happen inevitably happen so that you
feel even stupider about it than you
would if it happened by accident because
you know I knew this was going to happen
I got a warning it was going to happen
and I went and did it anyways and the
funny thing too is that that conscience
operates within people and we really
don’t understand what the hell that is
so you might say well what would happen
if you abided by your conscience for
five years or for ten years what sort of
position might you be in what sort of
family might you have what sort of
relationship might you be able to forge
and you can be bloody sure that a
relationship that’s forged on the basis
of who you actually are is going to be a
lot stronger and more welcome than one
that’s forged on the basis of who you
aren’t now of course that means that the
person you’re with has to deal with the
full force of you and all your ability
and your catastrophe and that’s a very
very difficult thing to negotiate but if
you do negotiate it well at least you
you have something you have somewhere
solid to stand and you have somewhere to
live you have a real life and it’s a
great basis upon which to bring children
into the world for example because you
can have an actual relationship with
them instead of torturing them half to
death which is what happens in a
tremendous a tremendously large minority
of cases well it’s more than that to
because and this is what I’ll close with
and this is why I wanted to introduce
social nets as ratings to you you see
because it isn’t merely that your fate
depends on whether or not you get your
act together and to what degree you
decide that you’re going to live out
your own genuine being
isn’t only your fate it’s the fate of
everyone that you networked with and so
you know you think well there’s nine
billion seven billion people in the
world we’re going to peak at about nine
billion by the way and then it’ll
decline rapidly but seven billion people
in the world and who are you you’re just
one little dust mote among that seven
billion and so it really doesn’t matter
what you do or don’t do but that’s
simply not the case it’s the wrong model
because you’re at the center of a
network you’re a node in a network of
course that’s even more true now that we
have social media you’ll you know you’ll
know a thousand people at least over the
course of your life and they’ll know a
thousand people each and that puts you
one person away from a million and two
persons away from a billion and so
that’s how you’re connected and the
things you do there like dropping a
stone in a pond the ripples move outward
and they affect things in ways that you
can’t fully comprehend and it means that
the things that you do and that you
don’t do are far more important than you
[Music] you
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