I honestly think that this is a very good reality check. I don’t think that most people should do it, as I think that there are many better options in the US, but I definitely think that anyone who doesn’t feel that they have better options than the one Louie is describing, for instance, anyone who thinks that they are trying to make money but doesn’t find that they can save $20K in a year, really should do it or ask themselves some serious questions about why they don’t.
I don’t expect anyone to do this, because I think people including people here have almost no tendency to actually act in ways that are theoretically more rational. I hope that rather than confabulating reasons whey they don’t though, people reading this can at least acknowledge the size of the gulf between their actual motivational structure and their story about it.
I think that there are many better options in the US,
Anything that will subsidise or cover your living costs while paying you a non-paltry wage (so something like the Army, or oil-rigs, or work in a remote area—surveying?) should be on the same order of magnitude as this idea. And it may be easier to get such a job in America rather than moving to Australia.
I think people including people here have almost no tendency to actually act in ways that are theoretically more rational
Truthful over basically every non-trivial situation I can think of. Once EY’s book is published this website should focus more heavily on instrumental rationality. Developing at least sequence-quality posts on that topic would be valuable.
Good point. I was thinking of the book as being a capstone or some end-of-the-road marker on the subject of epistemic rationality—like once it was published, LW could say “that’s that” and focus on something else. In retrospect, that is trying to make the world look like a story.
Anything that will subsidise or cover your living costs while paying you a non-paltry wage (so something like the Army, or oil-rigs, or work in a remote area—surveying?) should be on the same order of magnitude as this idea. And it may be easier to get such a job in America rather than moving to Australia.
I suggest easy, low-stress occupations like working at resorts because high-stress reduces cognitive performance… and many Less Wrongers want to do research or other intellectual pursuits when they aren’t working. For this reason, I think joining the Army or working on an oil rig is an inferior choice.
Joining an army, particularly the US Army, risks a very stressful situation, but I don’t think there’s much stress unless one gets deployed. All of my friends in the military have commented on how boring their days are when home, and most “work” (required gym time, inspections) only a few hours a day.
On the other hand, I don’t think joining the Army is quite as general as your proposal anyway. Unlike hotels in Australia, the Army is suspicious of overqualification and is unlikely to let you in unless you are applying to an officer candidate school. They also don’t let one quit quite so easily!
Regardless, I would be really surprised if police officers get to take home three times as much. A $20k salary is pretty small, but given a $12k housing allowance and a $3,500 food allowance plus special tax breaks and deals on everything from meals to airfare, I doubt many first-year police officers are that much better off.
If there wasn’t a possibility of getting deployed into a war zone, I think it might be an unreasonable choice. Soldiers really don’t have to do much, whereas most police officers seem overworked. Socially, I think people have a greater aversion to police officers and more praise for soldiers, though both sentiments apply to both groups. However, the prospect of deployment entirely shifts the balance to finding domestic employ.
Police officers in larger cities make decent scratch to start with (IIRC 60k in some areas of California), and then have significant opportunities for overtime and “moonlighting” as security. In some cases there are Bay Area police making over 120k a year.
And as far as “soldiers really don’t have to do much”.
Yeah, I don’t wanna get banned here, so let’s just say you have no idea of what you’re talking about.
Police officers in larger cities make decent scratch to start with (IIRC 60k in some areas of California), and then have significant opportunities for overtime and “moonlighting” as security. In some cases there are Bay Area police making over 120k a year.
Given cost of living adjustments, this is still nowhere near three times as much as soldiers start making.
And as far as “soldiers really don’t have to do much”. Yeah, I don’t wanna get banned here, so let’s just say you have no idea of what you’re talking about.
I haven’t the faintest idea why you’d get banned for correcting me. I’d be happy to have you give me greater clarity. Here’s where what I said comes from: I have a (half) brother and two good friends in the US Army; I of course have several other acquaintances in the Army through them. They report “not having to do anything”, and have talked about just hanging out all day on base. One friend is a medic; he works out for three hours a day, mans a medical station (where he reads, since people rarely come in) for another three hours a day, and then goes home. My brother maintains equipment, and I gather has a similarly uneventful schedule; I don’t know about my other friend, but he has lots of time on his hands and is usually bored and never stressed about work. My SO’s brother-in-law is a newer recruit, and currently deployed; he didn’t have nearly as much free time prior to his deployment, but he was in training constantly prior to that.
Please note, I’m not talking about danger and fighting! I was talking about a counterfactual world where soldiers are never deployed. This is not our world, and I thought I made it clear that this changes everything! All three men that I’m talking about, and most of their friends have been been deployed for several tours of duty. None of them have significant physical injuries, but all bear serious psychological damage. It’s broken their families and torn apart their lives. Each of them knows more people who have committed suicide than I hope to ever know. This is not okay, and not something I recommend as a “low stress” position.
You have to be careful with counterfactuals, as they have a tendency to be counter factual.
In a world in which soldiers were never (or even just very very rarely) deployed, what is the likelihood that they would be paid (between money and much of living expenses) anywhere near as well as current soldiers and yet asked to do very very little?
The reason the lives of soldiers who are not deployed are extremely low-stress and not particularly difficult is because of deployment. They are being healed from previous deployments and readied for future deployments. In the current environment where soldiers are being deployed for much longer periods with much shorter dwell times, it’s very likely that the services are doing everything they can to make the dwell time as low-stress as possible. 3 hours at the gym and 3 hours doing a relatively low-stress job in your field sounds like what a lot of people I know who are “retired” do. It sounds like a schedule designed to make your life as easy as possible while still keeping you healthy and alert, rather than falling into depression.
In a counter factual world where the army was almost never deployed, they would surely be used for some other purpose on a regular basis, police/rescue/disaster relief/etc. or simply be much much smaller, with pay not needing to be as competitive. We’ve even experienced this to an extent—during peaceful times, the active duty military shrinks dramatically, and most of our army is in a reserve or national guard capacity, where they have day jobs, and do not get full time pay from the army unless they are called up to active service. This is still to most accounts a pretty good gig (especially if you use it to get free college tuition) even though it can’t replace full time work—as long as you don’t get called up.
In fact, I think that’s what some of the people my age that I know in the service were expecting when they joined in peacetime. Very rare callups for crucial work they felt obligated to do well for the good of the country or world. Didn’t work out that way though.
I agree that this scenario is pretty unlikely; it seems at least possible if there was a high-level policy change that hadn’t caught up to military funding and structure, but made active troop deployment very unlikely. Your second to last paragraph disagrees with this; does the US military really shrink that much when we have fewer wars going on?
China seems much more the model of a country with a large military that rarely is deployed, and they do seem to match your description; lots of manual labor, disaster relief, building infrastructure, etc., with less competitive pay. I agree that this is the natural balance for a country that’s not engaging in wars on a regular basis.
In fact, I think that’s what some of the people my age that I know in the service were expecting when they joined in peacetime. Very rare callups for crucial work they felt obligated to do well for the good of the country or world.
This might not have been true, and probably won’t be true even once we get back to peace time, but if it was, it seems like a pretty good reason to join, and follows the OPs intention. Still not my recommendation!
I think Bay Area police get over $120k/year fairly quickly and reliably. Like soldier’s there’s retirement at near fully pay after 20 years, plus full benefits to begin with. Unlike soldiers there’s also overtime. Move up the career ladder quickly and work 60-70 hr weeks and it looks like LA cops can make over $300K after a decade’s experience by getting up to captain or commander (and advancement is largely IQ based with a typical incoming cop at IQ 100), then retire with over $200K of income after another decade.
http://www.joinlapd.com/career_ladder.html
I don’t have equivalent data for SF on hand, but I think the average in the Bay Area is 6 figures without overtime and without counting benefits.
Police or fire fighter in the San Francisco Bay Area is a low barrier to entry high salary high status job and not very dangerous.
I think small retail is an even better deal than that. Terribly run stores in SF stay in business and well run ones prosper ridiculously.
Many LW readers are coders who could be Google quality if they worked at it a bit, though the outback might be a good place to get practice without distractions.
PUA enthusiasts can obviously make money selling instruction in Game, and should be able to make money in sales in general.
Many LW readers are coders who could be Google quality if they worked at it a bit, though the outback might be a good place to get practice without distractions.
Given that being a good software developer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet, whenever possible one should make programming a social activity so one has a social obligation to code.
I think small retail is an even better deal than that. Terribly run stores in SF stay in business and well run ones prosper ridiculously.
You mean buying an existing business and running it better or starting a new business entirely? Either way, can 70th percentile instrumental rationalist LW folk realistically raise that kind of capital?
can 70th percentile instrumental rationalist LW folk realistically raise that kind of capital?
Almost definitely yes if they are old enough to have very good credit and are willing to take on the capital as a personally guaranteed loan. You typically don’t get startup type investments (where you aren’t personally responsible for losses) for starting or buying a small business.
PUA enthusiasts can obviously make money selling instruction in Game, and should be able to make money in sales in general.
I’m curious about this one (PUA-instructor) - it seems to be a limited niche (as a specialized personal training service), it’s already colonized by early adopters, and it requires artfully developed social skills. But sales—yeah.
Something pretty similar to Louie’s suggestion is working on cruise ships. There is a degree of premium pay because you have to be away from home for so long. And of course they provide you with meals and room and board by necessity.
I’ve only take one cruise in my life (2 or 3 years ago), but I actually got the impression that things were quite the opposite for a lot of cruise ship roles. The cleaning staff seemed to work hard and continually, and our assigned waiter worked his butt off amusing us and serving us, doing a remarkable job (everyone loved him) - as did all the other waiters. The acting troupe on board seemed pretty good to me as they put on multiple complex shows, and so on and so forth. And where I could tell, the workers were quite international, suggesting fierce and widespread competition.
A couple possibilities (I’m not yet fully decided). May do at least part of the time what the OP (Louie) did. At least part of the time will be staying with a friend in Adelaide (so, even though not explicitly heavily subsidized housing costs, the housing costs will be shared/divided) so depending what work was available there nearby at the time, that would affect things. Possibly some of the time doing harvest work/grape vine training/etc. (the grape vine training thing was actually suggested by my friend).
But I had to submit the visa application right away because in october I hit the age cutoff.
Huh. Actually, reading through this I’m actually considering it. Will need to research it a bit more, but it’s definitely something for me to look at.
Though I am concerned about what knb noted re tax laws and such.
(There is also, as far as longer term concerns, the issue of “distance to nearest cryo group”/”how quickly they can get to you if needed before it’s too late”)
I’m coming in late to this discussion but… The nearest cryo group will be located in South East Australia… if you have a medical emergency, you’ll be evacced to Adelaide—which isn’t that far away.
I honestly think that this is a very good reality check. I don’t think that most people should do it, as I think that there are many better options in the US, but I definitely think that anyone who doesn’t feel that they have better options than the one Louie is describing, for instance, anyone who thinks that they are trying to make money but doesn’t find that they can save $20K in a year, really should do it or ask themselves some serious questions about why they don’t.
I don’t expect anyone to do this, because I think people including people here have almost no tendency to actually act in ways that are theoretically more rational. I hope that rather than confabulating reasons whey they don’t though, people reading this can at least acknowledge the size of the gulf between their actual motivational structure and their story about it.
Anything that will subsidise or cover your living costs while paying you a non-paltry wage (so something like the Army, or oil-rigs, or work in a remote area—surveying?) should be on the same order of magnitude as this idea. And it may be easier to get such a job in America rather than moving to Australia.
Truthful over basically every non-trivial situation I can think of. Once EY’s book is published this website should focus more heavily on instrumental rationality. Developing at least sequence-quality posts on that topic would be valuable.
You’re not writing my book, so why not start posting on it now? (As indeed many are already doing.)
Good point. I was thinking of the book as being a capstone or some end-of-the-road marker on the subject of epistemic rationality—like once it was published, LW could say “that’s that” and focus on something else. In retrospect, that is trying to make the world look like a story.
I suggest easy, low-stress occupations like working at resorts because high-stress reduces cognitive performance… and many Less Wrongers want to do research or other intellectual pursuits when they aren’t working. For this reason, I think joining the Army or working on an oil rig is an inferior choice.
Joining an army, particularly the US Army, risks a very stressful situation, but I don’t think there’s much stress unless one gets deployed. All of my friends in the military have commented on how boring their days are when home, and most “work” (required gym time, inspections) only a few hours a day.
On the other hand, I don’t think joining the Army is quite as general as your proposal anyway. Unlike hotels in Australia, the Army is suspicious of overqualification and is unlikely to let you in unless you are applying to an officer candidate school. They also don’t let one quit quite so easily!
There’s almost no reason to join the military for compared to getting paid 3x as much as a major metropolitan police officer.
I wasn’t actually suggesting it!
Regardless, I would be really surprised if police officers get to take home three times as much. A $20k salary is pretty small, but given a $12k housing allowance and a $3,500 food allowance plus special tax breaks and deals on everything from meals to airfare, I doubt many first-year police officers are that much better off.
If there wasn’t a possibility of getting deployed into a war zone, I think it might be an unreasonable choice. Soldiers really don’t have to do much, whereas most police officers seem overworked. Socially, I think people have a greater aversion to police officers and more praise for soldiers, though both sentiments apply to both groups. However, the prospect of deployment entirely shifts the balance to finding domestic employ.
Police officers in larger cities make decent scratch to start with (IIRC 60k in some areas of California), and then have significant opportunities for overtime and “moonlighting” as security. In some cases there are Bay Area police making over 120k a year.
And as far as “soldiers really don’t have to do much”.
Yeah, I don’t wanna get banned here, so let’s just say you have no idea of what you’re talking about.
Given cost of living adjustments, this is still nowhere near three times as much as soldiers start making.
I haven’t the faintest idea why you’d get banned for correcting me. I’d be happy to have you give me greater clarity. Here’s where what I said comes from: I have a (half) brother and two good friends in the US Army; I of course have several other acquaintances in the Army through them. They report “not having to do anything”, and have talked about just hanging out all day on base. One friend is a medic; he works out for three hours a day, mans a medical station (where he reads, since people rarely come in) for another three hours a day, and then goes home. My brother maintains equipment, and I gather has a similarly uneventful schedule; I don’t know about my other friend, but he has lots of time on his hands and is usually bored and never stressed about work. My SO’s brother-in-law is a newer recruit, and currently deployed; he didn’t have nearly as much free time prior to his deployment, but he was in training constantly prior to that.
Please note, I’m not talking about danger and fighting! I was talking about a counterfactual world where soldiers are never deployed. This is not our world, and I thought I made it clear that this changes everything! All three men that I’m talking about, and most of their friends have been been deployed for several tours of duty. None of them have significant physical injuries, but all bear serious psychological damage. It’s broken their families and torn apart their lives. Each of them knows more people who have committed suicide than I hope to ever know. This is not okay, and not something I recommend as a “low stress” position.
You have to be careful with counterfactuals, as they have a tendency to be counter factual.
In a world in which soldiers were never (or even just very very rarely) deployed, what is the likelihood that they would be paid (between money and much of living expenses) anywhere near as well as current soldiers and yet asked to do very very little?
The reason the lives of soldiers who are not deployed are extremely low-stress and not particularly difficult is because of deployment. They are being healed from previous deployments and readied for future deployments. In the current environment where soldiers are being deployed for much longer periods with much shorter dwell times, it’s very likely that the services are doing everything they can to make the dwell time as low-stress as possible. 3 hours at the gym and 3 hours doing a relatively low-stress job in your field sounds like what a lot of people I know who are “retired” do. It sounds like a schedule designed to make your life as easy as possible while still keeping you healthy and alert, rather than falling into depression.
In a counter factual world where the army was almost never deployed, they would surely be used for some other purpose on a regular basis, police/rescue/disaster relief/etc. or simply be much much smaller, with pay not needing to be as competitive. We’ve even experienced this to an extent—during peaceful times, the active duty military shrinks dramatically, and most of our army is in a reserve or national guard capacity, where they have day jobs, and do not get full time pay from the army unless they are called up to active service. This is still to most accounts a pretty good gig (especially if you use it to get free college tuition) even though it can’t replace full time work—as long as you don’t get called up.
In fact, I think that’s what some of the people my age that I know in the service were expecting when they joined in peacetime. Very rare callups for crucial work they felt obligated to do well for the good of the country or world. Didn’t work out that way though.
I agree that this scenario is pretty unlikely; it seems at least possible if there was a high-level policy change that hadn’t caught up to military funding and structure, but made active troop deployment very unlikely. Your second to last paragraph disagrees with this; does the US military really shrink that much when we have fewer wars going on?
China seems much more the model of a country with a large military that rarely is deployed, and they do seem to match your description; lots of manual labor, disaster relief, building infrastructure, etc., with less competitive pay. I agree that this is the natural balance for a country that’s not engaging in wars on a regular basis.
This might not have been true, and probably won’t be true even once we get back to peace time, but if it was, it seems like a pretty good reason to join, and follows the OPs intention. Still not my recommendation!
I think Bay Area police get over $120k/year fairly quickly and reliably.
Like soldier’s there’s retirement at near fully pay after 20 years, plus full benefits to begin with. Unlike soldiers there’s also overtime. Move up the career ladder quickly and work 60-70 hr weeks and it looks like LA cops can make over $300K after a decade’s experience by getting up to captain or commander (and advancement is largely IQ based with a typical incoming cop at IQ 100), then retire with over $200K of income after another decade. http://www.joinlapd.com/career_ladder.html I don’t have equivalent data for SF on hand, but I think the average in the Bay Area is 6 figures without overtime and without counting benefits.
Same, but I couldn’t come up with any low-stress jobs in America that would subsidise your living costs.
What, for example?
Police or fire fighter in the San Francisco Bay Area is a low barrier to entry high salary high status job and not very dangerous.
I think small retail is an even better deal than that. Terribly run stores in SF stay in business and well run ones prosper ridiculously.
Many LW readers are coders who could be Google quality if they worked at it a bit, though the outback might be a good place to get practice without distractions.
PUA enthusiasts can obviously make money selling instruction in Game, and should be able to make money in sales in general.
Given that being a good software developer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet, whenever possible one should make programming a social activity so one has a social obligation to code.
But traveling to a different part of the world to work on something specific sounds like an experiment worth trying. I’m adding it to my list.
Thanks for that. Getting back to work now.
You mean buying an existing business and running it better or starting a new business entirely? Either way, can 70th percentile instrumental rationalist LW folk realistically raise that kind of capital?
Either and ‘yep, if they tried at all’. I’ll be happy to talk in some detail with people who are actually serious about doing so.
Almost definitely yes if they are old enough to have very good credit and are willing to take on the capital as a personally guaranteed loan. You typically don’t get startup type investments (where you aren’t personally responsible for losses) for starting or buying a small business.
I’m curious about this one (PUA-instructor) - it seems to be a limited niche (as a specialized personal training service), it’s already colonized by early adopters, and it requires artfully developed social skills. But sales—yeah.
Something pretty similar to Louie’s suggestion is working on cruise ships. There is a degree of premium pay because you have to be away from home for so long. And of course they provide you with meals and room and board by necessity.
I’ve only take one cruise in my life (2 or 3 years ago), but I actually got the impression that things were quite the opposite for a lot of cruise ship roles. The cleaning staff seemed to work hard and continually, and our assigned waiter worked his butt off amusing us and serving us, doing a remarkable job (everyone loved him) - as did all the other waiters. The acting troupe on board seemed pretty good to me as they put on multiple complex shows, and so on and so forth. And where I could tell, the workers were quite international, suggesting fierce and widespread competition.
Well, as far as expecting anyone to do it or not, I just submitted my visa application.
What do you plan to work at in Australia?
A couple possibilities (I’m not yet fully decided). May do at least part of the time what the OP (Louie) did. At least part of the time will be staying with a friend in Adelaide (so, even though not explicitly heavily subsidized housing costs, the housing costs will be shared/divided) so depending what work was available there nearby at the time, that would affect things. Possibly some of the time doing harvest work/grape vine training/etc. (the grape vine training thing was actually suggested by my friend).
But I had to submit the visa application right away because in october I hit the age cutoff.
So… how did this go? (Note: for all I know I’ve met you in person… I’m not good with names/pseudonym matching) :D
Huh. Actually, reading through this I’m actually considering it. Will need to research it a bit more, but it’s definitely something for me to look at.
Though I am concerned about what knb noted re tax laws and such.
(There is also, as far as longer term concerns, the issue of “distance to nearest cryo group”/”how quickly they can get to you if needed before it’s too late”)
I’m coming in late to this discussion but… The nearest cryo group will be located in South East Australia… if you have a medical emergency, you’ll be evacced to Adelaide—which isn’t that far away.