Well… I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with employment. The last time I was employed, I sat in a cubicle and surfed the Internet all day while feeling guilty about not getting anything done. It was really awful. I once signed up with a temp agency. My first assignment lasted a week. After it was done, the customer complained about me (please don’t ask why) and I was fired from the temp agency. Another time, I worked as a cashier at a supermarket, and I lasted all of three days before being fired for insubordination.
Money’s never been a very big motivator for me. I’ve got over twenty thousand dollars sitting in the bank, so if I want to spend $50 on a video game, or $300 on a video game system, I can. And I have enough unplayed video games sitting on my shelf to last me a long, long time. What would I do with more money? Well, I did decide within the last 24 hours that I definitely can’t cope with being my mom’s caretaker any more, so I’d want to move out of my parents’ house, and I’d want to get a cat, and I once calculated that it would cost me a few thousand dollars a year to play Magic: the Gathering competitively, but that’s about it.
The usual “carrot-and-stick” approach to motivation doesn’t work too well on me; I just give up on getting the carrots and resign myself to enduring the sticks. Is that what they call “learned helplessness”? I’ve had people trying to drum the lesson “you’re going to have to do what you’re told, regardless of what you want to do, and fighting will only make things worse” into me my whole life, and it seems like they were mostly right: as a child, you’re pretty powerless to get what you want, if what you want is “not to go to school”.
What sense of valuable are you using here? I’ve seen very little evidence in my interactions with the education system that being good at teaching is highly valued either in terms of direct financial rewards or career prospects.
Effective tutoring would be very valuable to rich parents. Perhaps passively building your reputation wouldn’t work; self-promotion would be necessary.
Public school teachers are well compensated overall over an entire career (including pension), although I doubt the job is very fun, and you’re right that the rewards are in no way contingent on actually teaching well.
Effective tutoring would be very valuable to rich parents.
Are rich parents able to distinguish effective tutors? In my experience they largely hire based on elite education. Plus, most of their “tutoring” time is really guarding the child to make sure the child actually does homework. But there are also non-rich parents. I don’t think that DAS should have any trouble getting hired and keeping tutoring positions for $20 or maybe $50 hourly, if he can find parents who want a tutor. This is a very different skill and I think the main determinant of people actually tutoring. (ETA: I seem to have missed JG’s second sentence. Sorry.)
I poked around a little earlier today, and found a few sites that do paid online tutoring. This one was the most open about hiring new tutors of the ones I looked at. Their FAQ says that their most active Chemistry tutors earn $800-$1600/month. Even given that that’s an upper bound, it may be worth looking into. (I lived pretty comfortably on $1200/month last year, with about Crono’s expectation of lifestyle, and without having someone to share bills with.)
If you are really capable of playing Magic competitively if only you had the cards, etc., I would be glad to start you up, and you can pay me back whenever. But I would need to know that e.g. you are up-to-date on what decks/strategies work, tournament formalities (so you don’t lose because of using the wrong “done with turn” indicator or tapping rotation angle), etc.
(I made this offer over a year ago, but was strongly criticized for having the proviso that Crono put his karma at stake to indicate seriousness and as a motivator.)
I’m not yet capable of playing professionally. I might be able to reach that level, but I’m not there yet. And by “playing professionally” I don’t mean “play well enough to make a living at it.” There are very few people in the world who have ever made enough money from Magic tournaments to live on, although the number of people who at least manage to make back their expenses is much larger. (The “several thousand dollars a year” figure is an upper bound and doesn’t take into account potential winnings.)
I actually do have a plan to get better, though; if I can put up a good showing in a few tournaments, Zvi Moshowitz will let me join his Magic playing social circle. (I think.) The current plan is to wait for the next Pro Tour Qualifier season to start—it’s Sealed Deck with the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin set—and just attend as many as I can get to while also getting in plenty of practice by playing on Magic Online.
I once knew a gamer, indeed an MtG player, who made a decent (though certainly not extravagant) living out of playing online poker. Smart guy. I never observed his poker skills first hand but he certainly kicked the shit out of me in MtG.
I don’t know how difficult it is to use poker as an income source but you probably have the basic skill set (math/rationality/gaming) required for good poker playing.
...and I once calculated that it would cost me a few thousand dollars a year to play Magic: the Gathering competitively...
Unless Crono’s disregarding his potential winnings, your question about whether he thinks he’d be able to earn money that way seems to have been answered.
Yes, but from earlier discussions he had suggested he’d be able to play professionally, so that’s what I interpreted him to mean here, and the cost is gross rather than net, so he’d only need the first year’s expenses to be self-sustaining.
So I was indeed sneaking in assumptions from earlier exchanges.
If that is gross, sure. I did mention that he might be disregarding potential winnings. It seems odd to me that he’d word it that way in that case, though.
Learned helplessness applies more to specific stimuli and specific rewards; what you’re describing sounds more like general lack of energy. My advice is to tweak your biochemistry until you feel more energetic, and try the cubicle environment again.
Well… I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with employment. The last time I was employed, I sat in a cubicle and surfed the Internet all day while feeling guilty about not getting anything done. It was really awful. I once signed up with a temp agency. My first assignment lasted a week. After it was done, the customer complained about me (please don’t ask why) and I was fired from the temp agency. Another time, I worked as a cashier at a supermarket, and I lasted all of three days before being fired for insubordination.
Money’s never been a very big motivator for me. I’ve got over twenty thousand dollars sitting in the bank, so if I want to spend $50 on a video game, or $300 on a video game system, I can. And I have enough unplayed video games sitting on my shelf to last me a long, long time. What would I do with more money? Well, I did decide within the last 24 hours that I definitely can’t cope with being my mom’s caretaker any more, so I’d want to move out of my parents’ house, and I’d want to get a cat, and I once calculated that it would cost me a few thousand dollars a year to play Magic: the Gathering competitively, but that’s about it.
The usual “carrot-and-stick” approach to motivation doesn’t work too well on me; I just give up on getting the carrots and resign myself to enduring the sticks. Is that what they call “learned helplessness”? I’ve had people trying to drum the lesson “you’re going to have to do what you’re told, regardless of what you want to do, and fighting will only make things worse” into me my whole life, and it seems like they were mostly right: as a child, you’re pretty powerless to get what you want, if what you want is “not to go to school”.
On the plus side, I think I could probably teach or tutor math without going crazy.
Most people find teaching (well) to be difficult. If you’re good at it, then that’s quite valuable.
What sense of valuable are you using here? I’ve seen very little evidence in my interactions with the education system that being good at teaching is highly valued either in terms of direct financial rewards or career prospects.
Effective tutoring would be very valuable to rich parents. Perhaps passively building your reputation wouldn’t work; self-promotion would be necessary.
Public school teachers are well compensated overall over an entire career (including pension), although I doubt the job is very fun, and you’re right that the rewards are in no way contingent on actually teaching well.
Are rich parents able to distinguish effective tutors? In my experience they largely hire based on elite education. Plus, most of their “tutoring” time is really guarding the child to make sure the child actually does homework. But there are also non-rich parents. I don’t think that DAS should have any trouble getting hired and keeping tutoring positions for $20 or maybe $50 hourly, if he can find parents who want a tutor. This is a very different skill and I think the main determinant of people actually tutoring. (ETA: I seem to have missed JG’s second sentence. Sorry.)
I poked around a little earlier today, and found a few sites that do paid online tutoring. This one was the most open about hiring new tutors of the ones I looked at. Their FAQ says that their most active Chemistry tutors earn $800-$1600/month. Even given that that’s an upper bound, it may be worth looking into. (I lived pretty comfortably on $1200/month last year, with about Crono’s expectation of lifestyle, and without having someone to share bills with.)
If you are really capable of playing Magic competitively if only you had the cards, etc., I would be glad to start you up, and you can pay me back whenever. But I would need to know that e.g. you are up-to-date on what decks/strategies work, tournament formalities (so you don’t lose because of using the wrong “done with turn” indicator or tapping rotation angle), etc.
(I made this offer over a year ago, but was strongly criticized for having the proviso that Crono put his karma at stake to indicate seriousness and as a motivator.)
I’m not yet capable of playing professionally. I might be able to reach that level, but I’m not there yet. And by “playing professionally” I don’t mean “play well enough to make a living at it.” There are very few people in the world who have ever made enough money from Magic tournaments to live on, although the number of people who at least manage to make back their expenses is much larger. (The “several thousand dollars a year” figure is an upper bound and doesn’t take into account potential winnings.)
I actually do have a plan to get better, though; if I can put up a good showing in a few tournaments, Zvi Moshowitz will let me join his Magic playing social circle. (I think.) The current plan is to wait for the next Pro Tour Qualifier season to start—it’s Sealed Deck with the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin set—and just attend as many as I can get to while also getting in plenty of practice by playing on Magic Online.
I once knew a gamer, indeed an MtG player, who made a decent (though certainly not extravagant) living out of playing online poker. Smart guy. I never observed his poker skills first hand but he certainly kicked the shit out of me in MtG.
I don’t know how difficult it is to use poker as an income source but you probably have the basic skill set (math/rationality/gaming) required for good poker playing.
Right now, I’m pretty bad at poker, and I never found it to be all that fun when I played it with my brother and his friends.
Just curious, do you name Zvi Mowshowitz because he comments here? :)
Sort of. I see him at the NYC LessWrong meetups.
Erm...
Unless Crono’s disregarding his potential winnings, your question about whether he thinks he’d be able to earn money that way seems to have been answered.
Yes, but from earlier discussions he had suggested he’d be able to play professionally, so that’s what I interpreted him to mean here, and the cost is gross rather than net, so he’d only need the first year’s expenses to be self-sustaining.
So I was indeed sneaking in assumptions from earlier exchanges.
If that is gross, sure. I did mention that he might be disregarding potential winnings. It seems odd to me that he’d word it that way in that case, though.
Learned helplessness applies more to specific stimuli and specific rewards; what you’re describing sounds more like general lack of energy. My advice is to tweak your biochemistry until you feel more energetic, and try the cubicle environment again.
Interesting. For sure you will need to save more money than that in the long run (when you are older and really not able to do much work).
It sounds good that you’ve decided that you need to move out, provided you actually do so.