Macrodata Refinement

You don’t know why the work is important, but it must be done so we can at least discover whether it was important. You may not get that information, but you can take comfort in assuming someone does have it.

You’re mostly disconnected from your previous life.

There is a guy in the next office feeding baby goats, and your reaction is: “Yes, it makes sense that we’re also exploring feeding baby goats.”

People come in as blank slates and you’re grateful to have their companionship in the shared madness.

Come in, go home, come back. Did something actually happen that wasn’t work? Unclear.

Mark my words.

Undergoing the severance procedure and having your "innie" work at Lumon is exactly akin to having your own personal slave. The innie does all the work, the outie collects the paycheck. The outie controls whether the innie lives or dies, since the innie literally does not exist outside of work.

I guess another part of the tradeoff is that you're giving up a significant part of your life time-wise. The number of waking hours experienced by the outie would be substantially reduced (presumably around 40 fewer hours per week). Overtime would really suck, especially if unpaid. From the perspective of the outie, working overtime would be exactly equivalent to the company taking away additional hours of their life.