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Interview with gwern

(www.dwarkeshpatel.com)
308 points synthmeat | 26 comments | 14 Nov 24 08:56 UTC | HN request time: 2.071s | source | bottom
1. resiros ◴[14 Nov 24 10:15 UTC] No.42134728[source]▶
>Wait if you’re doing $900-1000/month and you’re sustaining yourself on that, that must mean you’re sustaining yourself on less than $12,000 a year. What is your lifestyle like at $12K?"

>I live in the middle of nowhere. I don't travel much, or eat out, or have health insurance, or anything like that. I cook my own food. I use a free gym. There was this time when the floor of my bedroom began collapsing. It was so old that the humidity had decayed the wood. We just got a bunch of scrap wood and a joist and propped it up. If it lets in some bugs, oh well! I live like a grad student, but with better ramen. I don't mind it much since I spend all my time reading anyway.

Not sure what to think of that. On one hand, it's so impressive that gwern cares only about the intellectual pursuit. On the other hand, it's sad that society does not reward it as much as excel sheet work.

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2. camillomiller ◴[14 Nov 24 10:18 UTC] No.42134748[source]▶
Or maybe, you know, that is not true and it’s part of a character?
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3. resiros ◴[14 Nov 24 10:21 UTC] No.42134770[source]▶
Could be, but he does not strike as someone who is looking for fame. Plus the whole discussion about why he would like to move to SF but can't seems pretty authentic.
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4. wslh ◴[14 Nov 24 11:04 UTC] No.42135045[source]▶
I don’t know Gwern (except for a small donation I made!), but I truly believe people can be that frugal if their inner self is satisfied. By the way, my father is an artist who feels completely fulfilled living a bohemian lifestyle, selling his work in two art markets and enjoying a vibrant social life there, even without fame.
5. blairbeckwith ◴[14 Nov 24 11:05 UTC] No.42135057{3}[source]▶
If you want to maintain anonymity, building a character with false traits could be a part of that with no desire for fame.
6. freefaler ◴[14 Nov 24 11:06 UTC] No.42135063[source]▶
From a resource point of view, time is one of the most precious we have and optimizing for "the most control over my time" by living frugally makes sense. If you put this time into your skills growth you may outperform in the long term for some fields (where skills matter more than social capital) the people who had to sell their time to pay higher bills.

It's a reasonable tradeoff for some circumstances.

7. bondarchuk ◴[14 Nov 24 11:10 UTC] No.42135088[source]▶
Many many people in the US live on that kind of money, it's not uncommon at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

"Among individuals living alone: 19.1% lived in poverty."

Poverty line (max yearly income) for single households: $14,580

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8. walthamstow ◴[14 Nov 24 11:42 UTC] No.42135257[source]▶
There's a bit in The West Wing where one of the characters finds out the US poverty thresholds are calculated based on work done in the 1950s by a woman named Mollie Orshansky, and that they can't be updated because then US would then have millions more poor people, and that's bad politics. According to your link that's still mostly true 25 years later.
9. gizmo ◴[14 Nov 24 12:01 UTC] No.42135384[source]▶
Gwern lives this way because he wants to. He has chosen this ascetic lifestyle. He could easily raise money if he ever needs it (he doesn't need it right now). He could easily do tech work in SF and set himself up for life. He also has many friends who got rich off crypto.

A room is only a prison cell when you're not allowed to leave.

10. jnsaff2 ◴[14 Nov 24 12:12 UTC] No.42135461[source]▶
> Dwarkesh Patel

> How do you sustain yourself while writing full time?

> Gwern

> Patreon and savings. I have a Patreon which does around $900-$1000/month, and then I cover the rest with my savings. I got lucky with having some early Bitcoins and made enough to write for a long time, but not forever. So I try to spend as little as possible to make it last.

Then Dwarkesh just gets stuck on this $1k/month thing when Gwern right out of gate said that savings are being used.

Who knows how much of the savings are being used or how big of a profit he got from BTC.

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11. nl ◴[14 Nov 24 12:21 UTC] No.42135525[source]▶
Meh.

He's living in a place where the floor collapsed and eats (good) ramen. If it's 12k or 20k I'm not sure it makes a meaningful difference to the narrative.

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12. raverbashing ◴[14 Nov 24 12:28 UTC] No.42135571[source]▶
Honestly I've become skeptical of people who end up in high-intellectualized "pursuits" neglecting their own personal and social interactions and the larger societal reactions

Maybe it works for maths, physics and such, and of course it's ok to philosophize, but I think those "ivory tower" thinkers sometimes lack a certain connection to reality

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13. sourcepluck ◴[14 Nov 24 13:14 UTC] No.42135868{3}[source]▶
Eating (good) ramen is being used here as evidence that he's doing poorly, or something? I don't get it. Ramen is delicious, and can be very healthy. I hereby politely demand that you explain what exactly you are insinuating about the wonder that is ramen.

A floor collapsing and not bothering to replace it sounds more serious, sure, but that can mean a lot of different things in different circumstances. Imagine, for example, someone who's an expert in DIY but also a devoted procrastinator. That person could leave a roof in the state described for months or years, planning to eventually do it up, and I wouldn't consider anything terribly revelatory about the person's financial or mental status to have occurred.

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14. sourcepluck ◴[14 Nov 24 13:15 UTC] No.42135878[source]▶
Thanks for providing that context, which obviously completely changes the story. How that got left out by others is a mystery to me.
15. janetmissed ◴[14 Nov 24 13:39 UTC] No.42136038[source]▶
It does show how out of touch tech workers are that they are shocked someone is able to live off 1k a month. It sometimes feels like hn posters were born on college campuses and shielded from normal society until their twenties, after which they move to the Bay Area with the upmost confidence that they know everything there is to know about the world.

Especially if you are doing it voluntarily, 1k a month can provide you more then enough for a comfortable life in many part of the country. More so if you can avoid car ownership/insurance and health insurance (Which gwern seems to do).

16. tgaj ◴[14 Nov 24 14:03 UTC] No.42136212{4}[source]▶
I think the misunderstanding is caused by existing of two types of ramen - traditional, good quality is one, and another is instant - bad quality fast food.
17. michaelt ◴[14 Nov 24 14:09 UTC] No.42136249{4}[source]▶
Living on ramen by choice? Sure, you do you.

But living on ramen + $12k/year + no healthcare + collapsing floor? That's sounding a lot like poverty to me.

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18. mitthrowaway2 ◴[14 Nov 24 15:55 UTC] No.42137454[source]▶
It's not uncommon, but hopefully it offers some perspective to those commenters who say things like "this-or-that subscription fee should be trivial pocket change to the sorts of people who comment on HN".
19. sourcepluck ◴[14 Nov 24 15:57 UTC] No.42137484{5}[source]▶
I'm aware that it sounds like poverty. I'm just saying it's going to depend on the details. To people who live ordinary western lifestyles, everything outside of that sounds weird.

- ramen =/= cheap pot noodle type things. Ramen restaurants in Japan attest to this. It'll depend on context what that actually means in this case.

- 12k/year =/= no money, numbers like that make no sense outside of context. It depends on how much of it is disposable. You live in a hut with no rent, you grow food, you've no kids, no mortgage, no car, etc, these all matter.

- no healthcare =/= bad health. How many of the growing numbers of people dying from heart-related diseases in their 50s and 60s had healthcare? Didn't do much for them, in the end.

- collapsing floor =/= bad hygiene or something else actually potentially dangerous, as I said above, the nuisance this causes or doesn't cause depends on lots of actual real factors, it's not some absolute thing. It just sounds wild to people not used to it

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20. keiferski ◴[14 Nov 24 16:01 UTC] No.42137521{4}[source]▶
In America, ramen typically (or used to, at least) refers to cheap packages of noodles with extremely high amounts of salt. They are not healthy or considered anything other than “cheap” food. Hence the concept of "being ramen profitable."

https://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html

This is separate from Japanese-style ramen, which you can also easily get at many restaurants.

21. michaelt ◴[14 Nov 24 16:54 UTC] No.42138135{6}[source]▶
> 12k/year =/= no money [...] live in a hut with no rent, you grow food, you've no kids, no mortgage, no car, etc, these all matter.

I agree that 12k goes a long way when you're a subsistence farmer, living alone in a collapsing hut in the middle of nowhere, with no health insurance.

Nonetheless, that's sounding a lot like poverty to me.

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22. sourcepluck ◴[14 Nov 24 19:21 UTC] No.42140070{7}[source]▶
> a subsistence farmer, living alone in a collapsing hut in the middle of nowhere, with no health insurance.

"no health insurance" is the only thing in your list there that isn't hyperbole or a twisting of what was said. But anyway, again, no-one is arguing about whether 12,000/year "officially" is or is not below the poverty line, except you, with yourself.

Did you read the part about him having savings in bitcoin that wouldn't sustain him forever, but nonetheless for many, many years? If the bitcoin was worth 500,000, for example, would you then say "oh, that's a totally acceptable way to live now!", or would you still be belittling their life choices, insinuating there was something bad or wrong with it?

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23. michaelt ◴[15 Nov 24 08:36 UTC] No.42144966{8}[source]▶
I never said there's anything bad or wrong about living in poverty, if you choose to. Religious vows of poverty have a long history.

I'm just saying what's described in the article sounds a great deal like poverty.

24. nl ◴[15 Nov 24 12:21 UTC] No.42146246{4}[source]▶
I mean this politely and aware it's not great etiquette but have you read the interview or listened to the podcast? Because in that context it's pretty obvious this isn't the reason...

The narrative is that he isn't living a life of luxury or even comfort.

He has priorities other than his comfort.

That's the narrative and from that viewpoint it isn't important if he's living on 12k a year or 20k a year because of his BTC investment.

25. sph ◴[16 Nov 24 07:24 UTC] No.42155033[source]▶
Which reality? Does a middle class Californian FAANG worker spending its day on Twitter know more about, I don't know, the Congo or Thai mangrove forests than a philosopher in a hut?

Unless by reality you mean YOUR slice of the world, a sheltered place of its own.

26. nl ◴[17 Nov 24 05:28 UTC] No.42162194{6}[source]▶
He literally says:

> Yeah, it is mostly just money stopping me at this point. I probably should bite the bullet and move anyway. But I'm a miser at heart and I hate thinking of how many months of writing runway I'd have to give up for each month in San Francisco.

> If someone wanted to give me, I don’t know, $50–100K/year to move to SF and continue writing full-time like I do now, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

It sounds a little like you are arguing without any reference to the actual evidence here.