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Interview with gwern

(www.dwarkeshpatel.com)
308 points synthmeat | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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resiros ◴[] 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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1. freefaler ◴[] 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.