This is sweet news. I'm over 40. I enrolled at my local university in January and I'm studying (literally right now) for my linear algebra midterm [0] which is in 45 minutes! I'm on HN to calm my nerves.

I graduated high school in the early 2000s and graduated college with major in computer science and a minor in math. My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).

Wish me luck!

[0] Study guide: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Tests/Test%202/te... Course: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Administrative/M3...

I went to the University of Texas but I took summer courses in Houston Community College (calculus II, physics II, and more -- those classes were SO bad at UT).

It was insane how much better the courses were in the community college. Tiny class of 15. $300 or something. Amazing professor that you could ask questions to like you could in high school. Normal 20-30 question textbook homework where you just work basic problems and build confidence that you know the material.

Meanwhile UT was the opposite. I think I paid $1400/class/semester (and that's a bargain). Lecture halls where you couldn't possibly ask a question. Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing. Often a TA that could barely speak English. It's actually quite insulting.

I sometimes think about enrolling in a local college for fun, the experience was that good.

> Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing

Had this experience at an elite uni as well for math courses. At the time I felt like it pushed me to really grow, and it was absolutely necessary to do well in that specific course (tests often had questions that ~required you to know how to do all the uber-hard homework problems), but I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

I think it also depends on what the professor's and the student's goals are; and if they're aligned.

Is the course about learning the material at hand, or laying the foundation for graduate level courses in the same subject? About teaching the most efficient way or getting a student used to deriving equations when there's not a plug and play formula.

I'm sure we can draw similar parallels between csci college courses, big tech interviews, and professional software development. Even though it's all the same pipeline, each stage/stakeholder has different goals, motivations, etc... If you're having a discussion about the pros and cons of an approach, you have to make sure the goals are aligned else you'll just be talking past each other.

> I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

I have a vivid memory of one of the question on a final being basically “sketch the outline of this important thing we studied”. I couldn’t do it. I took the class but didn’t see the forest for the trees.

Later I met people who talked about things with each other, including the big picture. That’s the community I was missing when I took the class solo.

In retrospect, I could have gotten something more out of those problems that I thought were so hard.

I had classes with take-home tests of three impossible questions, and standard tests of disguised regurgitation. The impossible questions are the ones that will really test your understanding of the fundamentals. It's the different between "add two numbers together", and "what does adding mean"?

I found out I can't stretch my brain to truly understand the fundamentals, so I stopped after a bachelors and don't use my degree at all. I don't mind. It takes truly special people to push the limits, and a lot of not so special people to keep the world running for them.

I have wondered this too as a person who has attended a regular (non-honors) Calculus II course at a fairly top-rank private university and then again at a community college.

From what I remember, the university course also had some rote exercises for homework so it isn’t like everyone is only focusing on working the trickier exercises.

This also reminds me of the story Donald Knuth has around working every exercise in the book for a calculus class.

Large universities are focused on research, and they incur a lot of expenses due to administrators' egos (build build build), the number of administrators, and the range of microstate services offered, like their own health care system and mental health counseling (a major thing in universities now). Community colleges are focused on teaching.

> their own health care system and mental health counseling (a major thing in universities now)

Which would be a non-issue if the US simply had single-payer or universal healthcare.

Exactly the same experience. My AP Physics teacher in high school was incredibly better than university.

UT is research focused. Depending on the department, they make the professors teach classes, which is often not aligned with their interests at all. Sometimes I think they are actively trying for bad reviews from students to incentivize the university from making them take on course load.

I had a similar experience -- took physics at a community college when I was in high school. The 'up-side' of the overproduction of PhDs is that many people from elite backgrounds end up teaching at community colleges.

The only negative for me was that the students were pretty checked out.

> The only negative for me was that the students were pretty checked out.

I didn't put a lot of thought into where I went to school but if I could do it over again this is something I would have considered when I applied. The school I ended up at did not have many serious students. It was a night and day difference taking courses with even one or two students who were similarly engaged with the material, but most of those students ended up transferring to better schools after a year or two.

You also run into the issue later on that the people you went to school with wash out of industry (or never work in it to begin with) at much higher rates in comparison to those who went to more serious schools.

I had the same experience where community college teachers were vastly superior to my university teachers. Vastly.

It's possible that people who end up as teachers in community colleges actually like teaching and see it as a challenge they are willing to tackle.

Whereas in big universities the professors really don't much want to teach they want to accomplish scientific breakthroughs, themselves.

One possible reason is that the community college teachers -- at least in my state -- are unionized. This makes teaching as a career possible.

I had this experience too! My math professors in community college were much better than at my significantly more expensive university.

I went to a somewhat highly regarded (not MIT or CalTech tier) tech school, and then to a state university.

The tech school considered it a boast that it had more graduate students than undergrad. It was clear where the professors' emphasis was. I recognize the lecture halls where you couldn't ask questions, and the barely-anglophone instructors. (Everyone in the EE department, in particular, seemed to come "fresh off the boat" from China bringing precious little English knowledge with them. The prof for my introductory EE course mumbled on top of it.)

Then I went to state school. Ho-lee shit. Complete difference. The bad profs were incompetent chucklefucks who couldn't cut it in real academia. The good profs actually cared about teaching undergrads.

I learned a lot about choosing a college -- a few years and a few tens of thousands of dollars too late.

I hope it went well! I am in my fifties and enrolled in a master degree program for pure mathematics about 2 years ago (I don't need the degree, so I"m just taking all the classes they offer, so not about to graduate). It definitely took some time to get my brain sharper, but I am better each semester.

I hope people don't take away the negative side of the article, brain slows down, but the positive side: brain gets better with usage. Its uncomfortable, I can churn out programs as complex as programs I've already written and go to review meetings and planning meetings without much effort. But being able to solve PDEs reasonably quickly and accurately, I cannot, or have not without a great deal of practise. It's unconfortable in some weird mental but physical sense. But I'm sharper in everything else I do.

One interesting thing about software as career followed by math classes is that there's no compiler - you can type any janky thought into LaTeX and if you don't detect that it's bogus, nothing will, until you show it to a professor.

Also, the information density of maths notation is way higher than (good) code. We want code to be readable by some that doesn't know it; a lot of math seems to be readable when you sort of 80% already are familiar with all the prereqs. So no just skimming and then hitting compile/test/run (whatever validation you do). It's typing letter by letter and taking the mental effort to actually see and decipher the letter (at least, for me in my current stage; I'm trying to do novel research, but my demonstrated understanding of the details of the previous research is embarrassing low).

Also, weirdly, I still have the same fear of professors that I did as a young person. I manage it better with my decades of maturity (really) but it is still a part of my social interactions.

> But being able to solve PDEs reasonably quickly and accurately, I cannot, or have not without a great deal of practise.

No one - young or old - does well in math without a great deal of practice :-)

A related ancient XKCD with a slightly different take: https://xkcd.com/447/

The information density is incredible. A 2x2 matrix (Jordan constants) containing enough information to produce a slice of a hyperbolic paraboloid. Leaves me mesmerized...

It's funny, at the end of each lecture I just want to yell... "NO! Don't stop! I must see how this ends!"

Very similar to when I stop our children's movie and tell them to go take a bath.

I like your point about feedback. That's how I describe my difficulties with proofs, too. There is no way of knowing a proof is right without knowing it's right. (Or maybe I am just missing the point)

I will look into Lean that is mentioned here.

> One interesting thing about software as career followed by math classes is that there's no compiler - you can type any janky thought into LaTeX and if you don't detect that it's bogus, nothing will, until you show it to a professor.

The formal proof community is very interested in exactly this problem! It's not my specialty, but I believe that Lean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_(proof_assistant)) is one of the very active communities.

Good luck! You can do it! I started doing statistics classes three years ago when I was 45, continued doing a MSc degree, which I finished successfully a few months ago. I am now looking into doing a PhD. This is more fun than I ever imagined (fair enough: I was a teenager when imagining it).

Good luck! You should check out Math Academy, it's more effective/efficient/cheaper but also a good supplement since it's accredited.

I recently turned 40 myself and I'm working through their Foundations courses (made to help adults catch up) before tackling the Machine Learning and other uni courses.

Have you found Math Academy better than just prompting ChatGPT/Claude/etc. to be a math tutor?

I'll tell you my experience as someone who's been using Math Academy for past 6 months.

Math Academy does what every good application or service does. Make things convenient. That's it. No juggling heavy books or multiple tabs of PDFs. Each problem comes with detailed solution so getting them wrong doesn't mean looking around on the internet for a hint about your mistake (this is pre ChatGPT era of course, where not getting something correct meant putting down MathJax on stackexchange).

> better than just prompting ChatGPT/Claude/etc

The convenience means you are doing the most important part of learning maths with most ease: problem solving and practice. That is something an LLM will not be able to help you with. For me, solving problems is pretty much the only way to mostly wrap my head around the topic.

I say mostly because LLMs are amazing at complementing Math Academy. Any time I hit a conceptual snag, I run off to ChatGPT to get more clarity. And it works great.

So in my opinion, Math Academy alone is pretty good. Even great for school level maths I'd say. Coupled with ChatGPT the package becomes a pretty solid teaching medium.

Yes, much better. ChatGPT/Claude/etc. are useful the times I want extra explanation to help connect the dots, but Math Academy incorporates spaced repetition, interleaving, etc. the way a dedicated tutor would, but in a better structured environment/UI.

Their marketing website leaves a lot to be desired (a perk since they are all math nerds focused on the product), but here are two references on their site that explain their approach:

- https://mathacademy.com/how-it-works

- https://mathacademy.com/pedagogy

They also did a really good interview last week that goes in depth about their process with Dr. Alex Smith (Director of Curriculum) and Justin Skycak (Director of Analytics) from Math Academy: https://chalkandtalkpodcast.podbean.com/e/math-academy-optim...

I used an early e-learning platform not because I wanted to but because I was one of its developers. I didn't develop the course-content just the technical implementation.

What I didn't like about the content is I often had questions about it but there was no-one to ask the questions from. Whoever wrote that material was no longer around. It's a frustrating feeling when you can't really trust what you're studying is factually correct, or is misleading.

I assume AI will have a huge improvement in this respect.

Given my ChatGPT and friends experience has been one of overwhelming frustration due to incorrect information, I would say Math Academy is in an entirely different galaxy. ChatGPT is great if you want to learn that pi is equal to 4.

Not OP, but I have found MathAcademy to be infinitely better. I really liked the assessment portion which levels you and gives you an idea of where you are are at the present. As someone who graduated with an engineering degree a while ago, there were things I realized I didn’t know as well as I thought I did and I probably would not have prompted an LLM to review.

Math is something that should be taught in an opinionated way with an eye toward pedagogy. Self study with GPT is an excellent tool in math, but only for those who have enough perspective to know which directions to set out on. I don’t think anybody who doesn’t know linear algebra should be guiding their studies themselves.

I haven't used it, but there was a big thread about it yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43241499

Keep making those pushes! I was a non-traditional graduate student because around 10 years I got very serious about going for my doctorate. I literally scheduled times with my friends to watch Khan Academy videos on upper level maths and spent time practicing those skills. Then grad school is just one intensive learning session.

Years of martial arts ingrained that sense of being a life-long learner. I was taught the mantra of "Progress comes to those who train" and "Practice makes permanent" and even though those phrases were focused on learning to beat someone up, I've carried them on into other parts of my life.

Good luck! I'm over 40 and just had my midterm for General Linear Models (statistics + linear algebra).

This YouTube playlist was invaluable for me: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmM_3MA2HWpYYo7QExaRvor_u...

Appreciating the link!

Congrats! It is never too late to be doing this type of study and work.

I'm doing something similar: I just turned 50 and have been taking graduate ML classes where I work (at Carnegie Mellon). When I finish the graduate certificate program in generative AI and LLMs that I am enrolled in, I will be only two semesters away from earning a full masters degree.

Great for you; that's really fantastic and by posting about it, I hope you make a lot of other middle-aged people comfortable with persuing education.

> My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).

Why not get a masters degree?

Edit: answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43282629

> Wish me luck!

You don't need it. :)

A masters in CS doesn’t interest me as much as pure math. Maybe when I’m 50…

> graduated college with major in computer science and a minor in math.

Me too. High five!

> My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).

But why? Wouldn't it make more sense to go for a master in computer science? Are you going to use it for work. Otherwise, aren't you going to "lose it" anyways? Also, is your job paying for the degree or are you paying out of pocket?

I’m self employed and this is “for fun.” My wife is a professor in another department and I’ve got a tuition waiver.

An academic pursuit can be done for sake of knowledge. Forcing your mind to constantly flex is never a bad idea.

It could be both, though.

Good luck! Are you in Winona, too? I live near the campus and have been considering taking some classes there, this was a nice surprise to see. :-)

Yes! I’ll send you an email.

Good luck! I'm 36 and still hoping to master Digital Signal Processing at some point even though I find the math extremely difficult.

> My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major)

Do colleges usually let you do this when you're adding to a degree you earned 20 years ago?

This college requires something like taking 30 credits from the institution to award a degree. That's somewhere between 7-10 classes (mix of 3/4 credits each).

Off-topic but this is a pretty interesting study guide format.

Maybe it's standard in lots of places, but I've mostly seen study guides where they just list a ton of topics and that's it.

It’s been twenty years so my opinion is skewed and my memory is quite faded, however, I’ve got opinions on the guide and class in general.

The main thing is there are no surprises or tricks. The exams are straightforward and EXHAUSTIVE. I do all the assigned homework twice. Once when we cover the material and again before the exam. Let’s hope that strategy pays off again.

I'm pretty sure it will. Sounds like you are putting some real effort so I don't see why you won't do just fine.

Good luck!

No doubt, a lot of us are greatly relieved to read this.

Good on you! Of course even after 40, it's still not the end of the world if you don't get what you're hoping first time, but I hope it goes well.

I will be 40 in 2 years and I also plan on going back for a masters in something :). Maybe CS, maybe business who knows.

Best of luck on your pursuit.

Kudos! Curious how you got back into classes? If you are getting another degree, sounds like you went back through admissions?

Yes, through admissions. Getting a degree in math, maybe... depends on how much stress this adds to my life. If I were retired I'd just take a full load, but raising a family and running my business I can only take it one class at a time.

Your school allows you to add a degree retroactively like that?

We will see. A degree is just the ends to justify taking math classes. My goal is to learn, if they give me a degree that’ll be a bonus!

Have one or more kids. Then you get to keep your edge teaching them linear algebra 20 years later..

I've used an LLM for tutoring, but it doesn't replace the experience of biking across campus, ordering a coffee, unpacking my TI-89/iPad, cracking jokes with the professor and other students, paying attention, taking notes, and having to remember the material until exam day. This process is culture, and it's honing my mental blade. Then, as a solo-entrepreneur, I go home and use Cline+Sonnet to hack on a few side projects. These two processes compliment each other, greatly. Like I've mentioned in other replies, this is for "#2 fun" and to see if the "old guy (me) has still got it."

  you can learn everything with latest llms

That's a good idea if your goal is a degree in hallucinations.

Can you provide an example where a top llm (sonnet 3.7, grok-3, o1, gpt-4.5) hallucinated a linear algebra answer?

Oh, I did... but it was more of a parsing error.

Prompt:

I have padlocks that I use to lock up my tools, or my bike, etc. The problem is, I often go several months without using some of them and forget the combinations. So, I decided to write down their combinations, but then I always lose the sheet. Being the math geek that I am, I decided on the following solution. I choose a 3 × 3 matrix and multiply this matrix by the combination and write the result on the back of the lock. For example, on the back of one lock is written “2688 − 3055 − 2750 : Birthdays,” indicating that the 3 × 3 matrix that I chose for that particular lock is the matrix whose rows consist of the birthdays of my brothers and me (from youngest to oldest). My brother Rod was born on 7/3/69, I was born on 7/28/66, and my older brother was born on 7/29/57. What is the combination of the lock?

Now, technically the LLM didn't quite know how to parse "2688 − 3055 − 2750" and ran the calculation with "[2688;-3055;2750]" and produced a response of, "These values are clearly not typical lock combinations, which suggests a potential issue with the encoding process."

Smart, kind-of. I reran with a more explicit prompt and it calculated the correct combination.

Overall though, I'm impressed with using ChatGPT as a linear algebra tutor. I wouldn't hesitate to use it in the future.

I just tried your prompt: o1, gpt4.5, gemini 2 pro solved it correctly (21-19-36), sonnet3.7 and grok3 failed because of the parsing error you described.

How did it go?

I didn't ace it, but knew immediately what I had done wrong as I rode my bicycle home. I kept checking my linear transformation matrix and the Eigen values didn't compute... Looked again at the TI-89 when I got home and realized I swapped the orientation on the Jordan constants. I wrote all the equations out, so maybe my professor will have mercy on me. Oh well, another case of elevator wit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

Is calculus included in your classes?

This sounds like a line from a Silicon Valley type TV series used to establish "character am smart"... and I love it.

Ha! I was so nervous writing it because I am not qualified to use the smart math words!

Break a leg and Good luck!

Cool, good luck!

Good luck!

Nice, good luck

I'd like to see a study on how the acute stress of living in survival mode for a lifetime affects the brain by using it too much for the wrong tasks.

The last 25 years have been particularly painful for people like me who favor academia and pure research over profit-driven innovation that tends to reinvent the wheel. When I look around at the sheer computing power available to us, I'm saddened that people with wealth, power and influence tend to point to their own success as reason to perpetuate the status quo. When we could have had basic resources like energy, water, some staple foods and shelter provided for free (or nearly free) through automation. So that we could focus on getting real work done in the sciences for example, instead of just making rent.

I've been living like someone from movies like In Time and The Pursuit of Happyness for so many decades without a win that my subconscious no longer believes that the future will be better. I have to overcome tremendous spidey sense warning signs from my gut in order to begin working each day. The starting friction is intense. To the point where I'm not sure how much longer I can continue doing this to myself, and I'm "only" in my mid-40s. After a lifetime of negative reinforcement, I'm not sure that I can adopt new innovations like AI into my workflows.

It's a hollow feeling to have so much experience in solving any problem, when problem solving itself will soon be solved/marginalized to the point that nobody wants to pay for it because AI can do it. I feel rather strongly that within 3 years, mass-layoffs will start sweeping the world with no help coming from our elected officials or private industry. Nobody will be safe from being rendered obsolete, not even you the reader.

So I have my faculties, I have potential, but I've never felt dumber or more ineffectual than I do right now.

>I'd like to see a study on how the acute stress of living in survival mode for a lifetime affects the brain by using it too much for the wrong tasks. The last 25 years have been particularly painful for people like me who favor academia and pure research over profit-driven innovation that tends to reinvent the wheel.

I suspected something very different based off the first sentence. Like someone living in a high crime area and trying not to get dragged into it. Or constantly struggling with poverty, food insecurity, etc.

I remember seeing a Ted talk on poverty impacting cognitive abilities.

A quick search returned some articles. Here’s one: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7525587/

A Ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...

You're not the only one that has had those kind of feelings, and I really relate to the movies you referenced.

Try to remember, AI is a tool, not a solution, and there will always be new problems. There's a strong case that unlike every other time people said that technology will kill all the jobs, this time it actually will. But a helpful framework comes from Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Solution (not the much more famous Innovator's Dilemma) - whereas a business has well defined needs that can be satisfied by improving products, customers (i.e. people) have ever evolving needs that will never be met. So while specific skills may lose value, there will always be a demand for the ability to recognize and provide value and solutions.

What makes a labor market for agents that recognize problems and provide solutions special or different from markets for other kinds of labor? If AIs get to a point where they dramatically outperform humans in other forms of labor, why not in this one?

I think some humans will be doing it well enough to keep themselves afloat the rest of our lifetime, and some will get fabulously rich building products as a one-man operation leveraging AIs. But there will be far more people failing at it. It will be like Youtube creators or Instagram influencers where there are few winners who take virtually all the rewards.

compared to the broadcast era aren't there way more winners -- with a smaller pieces of the pie -- nowadays?

it's still a Pareto distribution, I'm sure, but mega-stardom kinda died and was replaced by all these mini-stars, as far as I can tell. I'm not sure it supports your hypothesis.

Sure, there is some truth to this.

I'm not really in touch with other genres, but I like to watch chess videos/streams on Youtube and Twitch. The vast, vast majority of views and revenue are captured by about ten people.

I like those people too, but I've also watched a lot of smaller acts, even some amateur players not much stronger than me. So I get those recommendations, and I see their view counts. They aren't making anything at all.

There are other people who have some followers, but even 50,000 followers would be a dream for most people doing it and they will make next to nothing from that. I'd guess there are at least 30x the number of strong, titled players in the 50k group as there are in the 1MM+ group. These are all people who were chess prodigies as kids, won every scholastic tournament in their state, took gap years or went to colleges that let them basically major in chess, travelled the world for tournaments, with awe-inspiring skills, and they are not making anywhere close enough to live on.

And the thing is, I think software might even be tougher in twenty years. Its hard to get people to change from a system they use to another thing, much harder than recommending a new face on Youtbue.

Maybe someday they will. But the current run of LLMs are fantastic at regurgitating and synthesizing existing knowledge, and getting better all the time, but not so good at coming up with new ideas. As long as you keep to the realm of what is known, they can seem incredibly intelligent, but as soon as you cross that boundary there's a clear change - often to just meaningless bullshit. So, I personally don't think we're going to be outsourcing idea generation to LLMs (or AI in general) anytime soon. Though to be fair, I'm only about 75% confident in that, and even so, it doesn't mean they won't be hugely transformative anyway.

> When we could have had basic resources like energy, water, some staple foods and shelter provided for free (or nearly free) through automation.

I was inspired to get into programming by Star Trek in the early 2000s because I thought I could contribute to automation that would lead towards that kind of society; much like you've stated here. Some will say we're naive and unrealistic, but all the ingredients for having society function in this way are attainable with a bit of a cultural shift. I was fine with the idea that society could take baby steps towards it, but it seems the last 25 years have been a mixture of regressing and small incremental improvements to things that don't contribute towards that goal. Just like you, my expectations have been utterly destroyed and my outlook for the future is grim.

> but all the ingredients for having society function in this way are attainable with a bit of a cultural shift

It's awfully naive to think that you can solve the information problem with a "small cultural shift". Statements like this strike me as deeply ignorant of economics and the history of attempts to plan society. People are messy and their needs are hard to predict in any meaningful and responsive way that respects their preferences.

Imagine answering the question how many washing machines should we make. Assuming you could figure this out, you need to consider the different kinds of washing machines people may want and need. Apartment dwellers need small efficient one, and people with a lot of kids want big ones. This in turn has baring on the number of motors you have to make, feet of copper wire you need to product, plastics, rubber, and on and on. And don't forget that's just washing machines.

Now you need to figure out how to get these washing machines to people.

You just can't plan and automate everything, its far too complicated.

He's talking about automating labor, not economic planning.

It’s the same thing. Anything that could be automated but isn’t automated is because it isn’t cost effective to do so or there is insufficient capital to invest. These are resource allocation issues. You can’t just wave that away.

Hah, I wish that were the case. A whole lot more things would be automated if that were true.

Automation requires resources, but it also requires vision, cooperation among affected parties, a workable regulatory framework, maturity and availability of required solutions, and availability of competent integrators. There are all kinds of reasons something remains manual besides mere resource availability. And all those things change over time.

There's not much you can do about most of those things, but becoming a programmer and working to develop better solutions is one way to make a difference. Even if you don't work directly in automation, your work can trickle down to the people like me who do cencern themselves with automated sewing and strawberry harvesting.

What I mean by resources is the things you mentioned inclusive of vision.

I picked those two examples because you can literally build a robot to do it, but it is either unworkable in the case of the shirt or financially not viable like the strawberry robot.

Using your model, no technological development would ever occur because the fact that something had not happened yet would indicate that it could not possibly happen due to a lack of resources. This is the anecdote about two economists walking down the street and refusing to pick up a $100 because everyone knows that in an efficient market, someone would have already picked it up.

At some point the resources necessary for development are there but the technology itself has not actuated. This invalidates your original claim that: "Anything that could be automated but isn’t automated is because it isn’t cost effective to do so or there is insufficient capital to invest."

No it isn't. Using a script to automate a process frees me from having to carry out the process manually. It has nothing to do with central economic planning.

Most things in the world require physical processes. Automating those is quite a different task, and requires resources. How would you go about automating sewing a shirt? How about picking strawberries?

Again this is tech hubris and a lack of understanding of economics and history.

> Most things in the world require physical processes.

No one ever disputed that. The principle still holds if we apply this logic to physical processes; by automating or reducing the labor necessary to conduct a physical process, I can enjoy the benefits of the process without having to engage in the labor of the process.

> How would you go about automating sewing a shirt?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSu9Vcu0DU

> How about picking strawberries?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2gL6KC_W44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3SGScaShhw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyA9XnW6BV4

To respond to the edit you made to your comment:

> Anything that could be automated but isn’t automated is because it isn’t cost effective to do so or there is insufficient capital to invest. These are resource allocation issues. You can’t just wave that away.

This is true in the long run and I suppose the argument you are making is that any attempt to interfere with the present system of resource allocation will constitute a centralization that would be less effective than free market capitalism, so the notion that we could redistribute the surpluses generated by labor saving devices to the average person is inherently a call to economic centralization. This might be true, but I would propose an alternative reading:

The surplus of labor-saving devices has primarily accrued to the owners of these devices. You might then claim that these owners are owners because they have found a means of servicing a market demand. Each dollar they possess is a vote from the market that these guys really know what they are doing, and that the world wants more of it. If we were talking about spherical billionaires in a vacuum, I'd agree with you - but this issue is complicated by the compounding impacts of inheritance and its correlation with access to credit, as well as with the existence of competitive moats (e.g. network effects, intellectual property, sunk costs, natural monopolies, etc).

The optimistic read of the technology sector in the 2010s was that businesses would compete with one another to provide services that would ultimately improve people's lives. Instead, we got Windows 11. That wasn't a consequence of users voting with their dollars, it was a consequence of Microsoft entrenching itself into workflows that cannot be economically altered in the immediate future. There are lots of examples of the market not being particularly effective at economic allocation if we step outside of the logic that any purchase is a revealed preference which indicates approval of the good or service being purchased. Apply this logic to the purchases of gamblers, alcoholics, drug addicts, or murder-for-hire plots and the limitations of the logic become obvious.

No my argument is that trying at a broad systemic level to make specific outcomes happen is susceptible to the information problem. Trying like the op suggested to automate away work is utopian and improbable at best. If you squeeze labor out of one kind of drudgery you have no way of predicting the results, and you’re certainly not going to end up with Star Trek.

To my minor aside, look at that shirt. You have to essentially glue the fabric into a board and all the robot can do is a rudimentary set of side seams and sleeves on the tshirt. There’s no finishing work on the collar or hem so it’s useless. That robot exists as a demo and is used precisely nowhere. You could in theory do this, but it makes no sense economically.

And yes I’m aware of Japanese strawberry picking robots. You’ve clearly misunderstood what I’m saying. These thing may be technically possible but they remain infeasible for other reasons.

> No my argument is that trying at a broad systemic level to make specific outcomes happen is susceptible to the information problem.

This is exactly what I said you would say:

> I suppose the argument you are making is that any attempt to interfere with the present system of resource allocation will constitute a centralization that would be less effective than free market capitalism

Further:

> Trying like the op suggested to automate away work is utopian and improbable at best.

We are a long way off from the self-replicating systems that could feasibly make work effectively optional, but you haven't made a convincing argument as to why it is improbable that automation could reach that point.

> And yes I’m aware of Japanese strawberry picking robots.

You clearly were not aware of them or you would have picked better examples. Your original comment consisted solely of the statement: "It's the same thing." and now you're continuing with that flippant attitude by pretending that I'm misunderstanding your argument when I anticipated it in its entirety.

I clearly was aware of them. Do you think I just rattled of the bit about needing special glue to hold the fabric and only certain seam types being possible? There was a whole thing about these in the Economist last year and it was discussed on HN. While it’s technically possible you can’t deploy it. It turns out gluing an then applying solvents to fabrics doesn’t result in a product people want.

This Star Trek stuff is improbable because everything has to be coordinated somehow and waving your hand and saying magical future ai is the only proposal anyone ever has. So yeah, maybe super advanced AGI could do it, but probably not. We don’t even have good models now of how large economies work down to a granular level. People are like I said messy and respond in weird ways to their environments. The best we can do right now is working with prices as signals for the amount of effort other people are willing to put into something. And while that’s imperfect, it’s just improbable that we can do much better. Which is not to say that narrow objectives aren’t possible, only that the bigger and broader you aim the more impossible it becomes.

> I clearly was aware of them.

You cited them as examples of tasks that would be difficult to automate. The pickers have been commercially deployed for the last four years.

> This Star Trek stuff is improbable because everything has to be coordinated somehow and waving your hand and saying magical future ai is the only proposal anyone ever has.

Redistribution already occurs without the use of an AI.

> Anything that could be automated but isn’t automated is because it isn’t cost effective to do so or there is insufficient capital to invest.

Is there any evidence to back up this wildly huge assertion?

Milton Friedman's essay on making a pencil:

"Look at this lead pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore. This black center—we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite—I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? [Self-effacing laughter.] I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending … out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system: the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate, to make this pencil, so you could have it for a trifling sum.

That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world."

https://thenewinquiry.com/milton-friedmans-pencil/

Thanks. I'd wanted to search for this, but forgot who'd written it...

The Star Trek future does seem out of reach. On the other hand canonically they only got to fully automated luxury space communism after fighting a global nuclear war against eugenisists.

In Star Trek, people do actually work and have responsibilities with little (or no) leisure time or say over how they spend their days.

In Star Trek money exists but there isn't much use for it because technology has made material abundance cost approximately nothing.

Star Trek doesn't show the 50 billion landwhales watching Netflix all day, because it makes for bad television. It shows the 1% who still work even when they don't have to, who work because they want to.

Most of the characters in Star Trek are in the military. That's pretty much part for the course.

This is a rather simplistic view of life IMHO. What’s wrong with people working for rent or groceries? What do you expect everyone to work on?

> What’s wrong with people working for rent or groceries?

Many people are compelled to do that, but almost everyone wants more out of life. Strong evidence is that they take more whenever they can get it.

If you could get whatever you want out of life, right now, with no effort, what would you want exactly?

I'd travel the world, taking in diverse centers of culture, history, and nature. I'd try to learn new languages. I'd do more track days, karting, and Ultimate. I'd buy a shell and try to get back into rowing. I'd play more computer games. I'd play ping-pong, foosball, and board games with my kids. I'd coach kids' sports. I'd go to more plays and concerts. Even movies. I'd volunteer.

Of course I wouldn't do ALL of that, since even without work there are only so many hours in the day. But I certainly wouldn't want for things to do!

Some people do all that and still work, you probably just need better time management. You could study a language before work in the morning, and then go row for a bit. Then go to work. Then you could play computer games from 5 to 6, play ping pong with kids from 6 to 6:30, eat a dinner, coach kids soccer from 7 to 8, volunteer open source from 8:30 to 9:30, catch a movie at 10.

If you're wealthy and healthy, and even so only some of that timeline _may_ be possible, most just unrealistic.

>You could study a language before work in the morning, and then go row for a bit.

Ok, gotta be in by 9am, 30-60 minutes commute, 30 minutes learning a language, gotta eat, shower, coffee, get my row boat mounted and at the lake 20 minutes away, prep, do a 20 minute row, back again so realistically you'd need to be up at 6am, not unreasonable.

> Then go to work. Then you could play computer games from 5 to 6

Did you end work at 4pm or work from home, either way that is likely a short day but ok. A lot of people are forced to have commutes or work in a job that can't be remote, not to mention work much longer days. Hell isn't "60 hours is the sweet spot" for a work week now? (quoting Google's founder recent comments).

> play ping pong with kids from 6 to 6:30,

Have enough room to have a ping pong table at home, that must be nice, but yeah doable.

> eat a dinner, coach kids soccer from 7 to 8,

Who cooked dinner? Who cleaned up? That shit doesn't just happen by itself. So you prepped, cooked, ate and cleaned up, wrangled kids into car for soccer, and got the game field ready to play all in 30 minutes? Nope.

> volunteer open source from 8:30 to 9:30,

Game ended on time, kids didn't hang around to talk to team mates, straight in the car, no issues, and less than 30 minutes transport. Nope.

> catch a movie at 10.

30 minutes to get kids to bed, baby sitter on time (and you can afford one), doable at some ages sure. Movies are regularly 90-180 minutes so you're in bed at like 1am? For a 6am start? Again transport not taken into account.

The reason people think you can work 60 hours a week, every week, is because they don't do all the everyday things that need to get done, they have other people to do it. Also rarely do they leave enough gaps in their schedule for other peoples priorities.

So simple! Just as easy to do it as saying it right?

Exactly, saying it’s the easy part.

But even without a job, you still need energy and motivation. The tax of switching between tasks (or hobbies) doesn’t magically disappear. Neither does the time suck of social media.

It is really besides the point because of the way the dopaminergic system works.

What was good enough yesterday is expected today and won't be good enough tomorrow.

That is practically what makes us human.

Whatever you get today with no effort won't be enough tomorrow.

The ideal modern life is really one that is challenging enough that you don't get everything at once but not too hard that you can't make progress.

> with no effort

I want effort, lot's of it, but let's not nitpick ...

Off the top of my head: Nobel Prize winning, world-beneficial research; lots of loving, open, deeply connected relationships; grow rapidly; be someone people turn to for support (because I help them), ...

I already do at least one of those things. :)

> What’s wrong with people working for rent or groceries?

There's nothing wrong with people who have the ability to work for groceries being compelled to work for groceries. The rent issue is complicated by the fact that land ownership prioritizes those who have already had time to accumulate wealth over those who have not. There are some issues with abandoning prices on land entirely (e.g. if land has no cost, how do we decide who gets to live in the most desirable locations?), but there's a compelling case to be made that the contemporary system of real estate financialization is similar to the enclosure movement both in terms of its structure and impact. It becomes a question of those with good credit (typically the rich and old) being able to (in aggregate) buy up all of the desirable land and thus to set monthly claims on the income of those with bad credit over and above the level of claim that would be possible if the property purchases could not be financed by loans.

There is a legitimate cost to constructing a building and renting it out, but there is no real cost to land except the cost the market assigns to it. This might not be the worst thing (recall our example of allocating land in desirable locations), but when prospective landlords can take out loans against the property, the property's value is driven up beyond what any reasonable person would be willing to pay for the property's use. If you couldn't derive rental income from property, it would not make economical sense to finance these purchases beyond what you needed for your own use. This would (in theory) lead to lower prices.

Henry George is the figure to look at here.

Well, even if we agree that's the best we can aim for as a species (how sad), soon we won't even have that luxury.

I think if you let your imagination wander and you end up seeing the scale of potential we have and what we could really achieve, stuff like paying for rent and groceries starts to feel archaic and wasteful, or as some kind of artificial constraint holding us back as a species.

> What’s wrong with people working for rent or groceries?

Why should people have to work to be able to afford rent and groceries?

Poverty is difficult enough to escape--not having to worry about rent and groceries would sure help.

There is a reason why school meal programs are such a success.

AI didn't really mesh seamlessly with my work until I used Claude, I highly recommend it. If your current workflow involves googling, reading documentation and examples on github until you can put together a solution then AI should slot into your work nicely. It just does all those things but faster and can often surface what I want in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes of research.

I wouldn't worry though, if the last 4 years are any indicator, we will continue to see LLMs refined as better and better tools at a logarithmic rate, but I don't really see them making the jump to replacing engineers entirely unless some monumental leap happens. If AI ever gets that good it will have replaced vast swathes of white collar workers before us.

I am somewhat optimistic, tech adoption is only going to go up, and the number of students pouring into CS programs is cooling off now that there aren't $100k jobs waiting for anyone who can open up an IDE. My ideal future is people who really love tech are still here in 10 years, and we will have crazy output because the tooling is so good, and all the opportunistic money seekers will have been shaken out.

Hi zackmorris,

If I may so bold as to refer to you as "my friend" (having never met you)...

My friend, I think I understand what you mean. I am about the same age too.

I would like to propose an idea to you - and it is something I have been exploring very deeply myself lately.. maybe the thing we need to start spending our time on is exactly this meta problem now. The meta problem is something like (not perfectly stated): we as humans have to decide what we value such that we can continue to give our existence purpose in the future.

I don't think AI is going to be the be-all-end-all, but it is clearly a major shift that will keep transforming work and life.

I can't point yet at a specific job, or task - but I am spending real time on this meta problem and starting to come up with some ideas. Maybe we can be part of what gets the world, and humans, ready for the future - applying our problem solving skills to that next problem?

I mean all of the above in 100% seriousness and I am willing to chat sometime if interested to compare notes.

I think (from personal experience) talking with a good mental health professional would really help with your current state of mind and the pressure you’re feeling.

Really? And how exactly?

"Just man up", maybe?

Sorry for the snark but I don't think they can just magically make you feel better. An example or two could change my mind.

> "Just man up", maybe?

That's the toxic stuff you get from society, which leads to you hiring mental health professionals that can teach you healthy, effective ways of dealing with stress.

This much I know and have heard. Still curious about some examples though.

Responding to your earlier comment, it's not magic and they don't do it, you do it. They help you learn how but it's up to you.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy can help with a wide range of issues. If there are worries that are not productive for you, that you can't get out of your head, a therapist can teach you how to use some basic tools to control that. And you'll probably only need a few visits. You can also read books, but given what you've stated I think you should start with a human.

My son went to a few sessions and completely got his OCD under control. He doesn't have to go anymore. I used similar technique to quit smoking 30 years ago after at least a half-dozen serious tries by other means failed. Still off them. It applies to all kinds of issues though, its also very effective for depression. According to the literature studies I did twenty years ago, it was the only technique that actually showed sustained benefit for depression other than medication.

My depression comes from super severe learned helplessness. I have been extremely stupid with money and career choices and nowadays things got hard, I have several chronic health conditions and the difficulty got up not by 2x, more like 20x. I just can't muster the will to even do one job interview, financial reserves are dwindling fast and, you get the picture.

I have zero faith any therapist can help me. They'll likely start with "but it's for your own good!" and I'll just say "yeah yeah, like 200 other things I have been told and zero of them turned out to be true". That's how I imagine it.

I am not against paying professionals. Obviously. I just don't believe in therapy at all.

What would you do to start with, with a guy like me? (I am aware you are not a therapist yourself.)

I am also not a therapist but I am a former tech founder turned executive coach so I do talk to people who are facing what feels like overwhelming challenges, risk, and uncertainty.

Even in the language you used "severe learned helplessness" and "extremely stupid", you are revealing a state of mind (cynicism, self-flagellation) that is not oriented to improving your condition.

You know you have a strong bias against therapists—given your seeming lack of knowledge about them, where do you think that bias came from? Fundamentally, we are a social species and evolved to live with strong connections to small groups.

Our society is no longer set up like that. So professionals like therapists and coaches provide the essential value of a caring, supportive, and helpful relationship that we lack. Like getting an essential nutrient that your diet lacks.

Do you have health insurance? Many of them cover mental health—the site Headway can help you find one that takes insurance. Try a few and gather some first-party data before writing them off fully. The downside is a few hundred dollars. The upside is a much brighter and materially better future.

To try to complement what other replies already said...

I think an important result of successful intervention is to awaken (or reawaken) the mind to the idea that thoughts and perceptions are internal and not always accurate representation of an objective, external world. Much psychological stress comes from these internal experiences, and subtle shifts in your mental posture can change this environment.

That's not to say that real stressors and stimuli don't exist. It's just that often times a person can spiral in a way that makes their internal reactions counterproductive and harmful to well being.

Another important result is learning better coping and adaptation strategies, so you can start to shift your mental posture or even change lifestyle and environment to reduce chronic stress.

It's not always easy, not magic, and not perfect. But, it can help...

The worst thing here is, from the beginner perspective it seems like simply reframing bad in a positive way, when bad was almost completely in their mind and didn’t exist that much. After the results you can see how twisted you were. I had my moments when I looked at the scheme of my mind on a whiteboard and had to admit how delusional I am, with zero pressure to do so.

I think its important to understand that CBT is a system, a set of tools for managing your thought patterns. Therapists who specialize in it are largely in the business of educating their clients, not having them lie on a couch and talk to the ceiling about their childhood. I'm not saying you won't have generic "talk-therapy" kind of conversations - those are still necessary for them to understand the specific issues you need to work on - but its not just someone helping you find insights that don't change anything.

If you are completely against meeting with a therapist though, you can start with books. I wish I could recommend one that I've used, but this is an example of one that looks really promising to me, with a practical approach: https://www.amazon.com/Retrain-Your-Brain-Behavioral-Depress...

This is not how therapy works. Although, tbf, it’s not hard to find a pseudotherapist who practices stereotypical bs.

What would you do to start with, with a guy like me

IANAT either, but mine would start with asking how I feel and then why. Then we’d talk about my vision of practical ways to stay afloat, the ways I maybe don’t see due to my focus, what exactly makes it hard to push through, in both known and never-tried situations. There would be some belief, avoidance, anxiety, algorithm, or a set of these. In CBT there’s a clear formalized method for each, which you can pick and work with until the next week or two. Examples are: logging your emotional responses, compiling a list of “musts”, start doing un-usual things, asking what exactly is wrong with something that seems bad.

That is, if my depression was on low. If on high, we’d address that first. Last time I pushed through it by following physical regime, a few supplements and lots of anger against it (depression can’t turn off my anger, ymmw as well as methods).

Every case is different. Therapists are brain debuggers. We don’t know what the bug is yet.

Look up "how to reduce salt" on YouTube. And remember, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Trust me, us Europeans are not exempt from the "everyone should see a psychologist" trope blasting social media the last decade. We are not blind to every Hollywood actor having a personal therapist either.

I think the main difference (speaking as a northern European) is that when you Americans speak of therapy you seem to mean the stereotypical "talk therapy" where as basically every therapy here is cognitive behavioral therapy.

Can cognitive behavioral therapy help someone who has a bit of existential dread about his tech job? Maybe. I don't think it's silly on it's face though to say "really?" if the poster's life is in order otherwise.

Perhaps your life is on the easy setting? Hungry people work really hard. Fearing destroying an entire family by losing my job allows me to find strength and courage.

> I'm saddened that people with wealth, power and influence tend to point to their own success as reason to perpetuate the status quo. When we could have had basic resources like energy, water, some staple foods and shelter provided for free (or nearly free) through automation

What you stated is true, but my disappointing observation is that the people with wealth/power are only marginally smarter than the rest of us on the topic you mentioned. And then I suspect that even if one had a rich benefactor, pulling that off is not easy. It takes a threshold number people who have a holistic view of things to pull of what you mentions i.e nearly free basics of life. Check my profile etc. - some of what I wrote may strike a chord with you.

Also the proponents on Technocracy (Hubbert etc.) about a 100 years back, essentially touched on the subject you state. Note: The word technocracy today has a different connotation.

As a researcher who changed career paths to teaching at a community college, I empathize. Twenty years ago when I graduated from high school, I was inspired by the stories I’ve read about Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and early Apple and Microsoft. I wanted to be a researcher, and I wanted to do interesting, impactful work.

Over the years I’ve become disappointed and disillusioned. We have nothing like the Bell Labs and Xerox PARC of old, where researchers were given the freedom to pursue their interests without having to worry about short-term results. Industrial research these days is not curiosity-driven, instead driven by finding immediate solutions to business problems. Life at research universities isn’t much better, with the constant “publish-or-perish” and fundraising pressures. Since the latter half of January this year, the funding situation for US scientists has gotten much worse, with disruptions to the NIH and NSF. If these disruptions are permanent, who is going to fund medium- and long-term research that cannot be monetized immediately?

I have resigned myself to the situation, and I now pursue research as a hobby instead of as a paid profession. My role is strictly a teaching one, with no research obligations. I do research during the summer months and whenever else I find spare time.

> acute stress of living in survival mode for a lifetime

For some perspective, bone evidence of pre-Columbian Indians showed that they regularly suffered from famine. There was also the constant threat of warfare from neighboring tribes.

The American colonists didn't fare much better, their bone evidence was one of extreme overwork and malnutrition.

I'm very sympathetic to your experience and agree with most of what you say, but as someone who has spend half his life in academia and half outside, "who favor academia and pure research over profit-driven innovation that tends to reinvent the wheel", I must say that 'reinventing the wheel' is at least as prevalent in academia than it is in business.

Maybe it's time for me (40+) to go back to college. I want to pick up Mathematics and Physics up to the point of General Relativity. Since it's "use it or lose it", I better start reading now.

But I don't really have any time. There are so many things to do, to learn. Younger people who happen to stumble upon this reply, please please prioritize financial freedom if you don't have a clear objective in mind -- and from my observation many people don't have a clear objective when they are in their 20s! If you can retire around 35-40, you have ample time to pursuit any project you want for the rest of the life.

> up to the point of General Relativity.

Putting in a plug for MIT OCW 8.962 [1]. I also had this itch, and was able to find time during the pandemic to work through the course (at about 1/2 speed). But true to what others are saying, life intruded for the last few lectures, so still have some items on my todo list. I thought Scott Hughes laid out the math with terrific clarity, with just the right amount of joviality. It is not for everyone, but if you have a suitable background it may turn "scratch an itch" into the obsession that it has done to me.

And to make the obligatory on-topic comment: I'm 61yo. Now get off my lawn.

[1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-962-general-relativity-spring-...

Thanks! Yeah I planned to use MIT OCW for my education, at least the first 3-4 pre-requisite courses, before I even consider registering in an independent program in some University.

BTW I hope you are going to get more free time in a few years so that you can come back and enjoy the education again.

I've always toyed with the idea of studying Computer Science since I taught myself how to code.

Hell of a lot more difficult now when I need to work and don't really have the same amount of time to dedicate to studying. Hell of a lot easier when you're younger, your whole life basically revolves around the education, and any job you have generally fits around your school life rather than the other way round.

Yeah it was really a surprise to me when I realized that my energy declined to the point that I couldn't work on my side projects for the down days. Then I counted how many days I have for the rest of my life (up to 75) and this dreaded me a lot.

And it got worse after my son was born a few years ago. I would count the number of weeks available, not the days, because there has been whole weeks that I couldn't do anything. After all those are two full-time jobs.

As for your CS education, I'd recommend getting into some side projects and explore from there. If you go to a school, it's going to take too many courses.

I'm in my late 40s and I've found that my desire for working on side projects after work is affected by how engaged I am mentally at work. When I'm building new features/products from scratch and I'm having to figure out architecture and learn more about whatever language I'm coding in, I get more amped to do side projects at home. When I'm bored and just bug fixing and dealing with more mundane things, I have no desire to do any more coding after work. Something about being more engaged gets my brain in a state that I can keep going for the rest of the day until I need to pull myself away from the computer because it's 2am and I should have been asleep hours ago. I should note that I don't have children so the only "obligation" I have is to spend time with my partner and eat dinner, which I enjoy doing, of course. She usually starts getting ready for bed around 10pm and that's when I start coding. I do have some bad sleep patterns though, doesn't matter if I'm coding or not, which is probably not healthy. I have that revenge nighttime procrastination thing real bad.

Have you considered doing your side projects before work?

It takes me one call in the morning, of me saying for the hundreth time in the past 8 months that the integration is still missing data, to get me off the rails for the day. I know at 10AM that I won't touch anything else after work.

Been contemplating starting early and dedicating "the best hours" to myself.

That absolutely works for me! I play multiple instruments and have found that the early morning is the best time mentally for me to devote uninterrupted time to practice and playing. I’m also fortunate enough to have a basement with another floor between my cacophony and my sleeping family

(Not original replier)

That was something I have considered for a while, but then figured out it is unrealistic because I have a kid. But original replier probably can do if he/she doesn't have one.

I'm in the same boat.

I realized that frustration from work usually spills over to other parts of my life, not surprising as work is usually the first big thing we do during a day. I'm exactly like you -- when I have a lot of frustration from work, then I wouldn't want to work on side projects. It has nothing to do with how many hours I have.

I also have some bad sleep patterns as I only sleep about 5-6 hours every night most of the time.

I think, it might be useful to learn some mental skills to compartment one's mental state. If I could somehow put that frustration from work into a separate space without it spilling all over the ship, it would definitely help a lot. But so far I don't know how to do it -- plus I have a kid so I can't chill down after work until late night.

Exercise goes a long way to keep up energy levels after work.

Yeah being doing that for a while. Doesn't work as expected as the primary sources of frustration cannot be removed.

Plugging Georgia Tech's online masters program - I did it over the course of 4 years while working - can take 1 class a semester - and it's very cheap for a high quality masters

I'm going to second ativzzz. It's a great program. I did it the same way: 1 class a semester over 4 years.

I've been going through various MIT OCW lecture series as I work on a personal programming project.

Esp. good were:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretati...

and

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-042j-mathematics-for-computer-...

> Hell of a lot more difficult now when I need to work and don't really have the same amount of time to dedicate to studying.

Not really. You'll find that as an experienced programmer, you have a massive advantage at times in your classes.

Any time there's a question of "what are the expected value of the max eigenvalue for a random matrix from such and such a distribution" I can answer it in 5 minutes with matlab and ChatGPT (and I know I can answer it). Making a animated GIF with successive approximation of a function by Fourier transform, no problem. Integrating by parts with hyperbolic functions in it? so slow, I'm googling the quadratic formula while the kids are yelling out the integration steps in real time.

I'm over 40 and even though I mostly manage/lead now I have time to do programming and plenty of math. I still see improvement mentally (not so much physically anymore), but also a lot of improvement in skills I neglected when I was younger like interpersonal skills and sales. I'm also learning a new language and read more than ever. Sometimes I feel like I'm less sharp, but I wonder if that's because I'm doing so much more.

My tricks that I don't always follow, is work out every day, get enough sleep, and stay off of most short form social media. I realized when I was on short form social it would zap a lot of time and kill any focus I had.

"If you can retire around 35-40" really? If you can retire that young, you probably don't need any advice.

Achieving financial independence and early retirement does not mean one no longer needs any advice about life. Indeed, because those people have a longer retirement, they might ponder things like the meaning of life much more than someone who's living paycheck to paycheck and has to devote all brain cycles to survival. And there are so many options for those who retire at 40 that they genuinely need advice about what to do, how to find what matters most to them, and how to go about doing the things they had always wanted to do but couldn't.

These people have succeeded in making money and that's all. But life is so much more than just making money.

People's financial goals range wildly, which also impacts on when they can retire. Some people don't care about some combination of having a car, or expensive living quarters, or fancy food, or a family.

You can't blame an old man trying to give advices to people who don't need them...

I found 'So You Want to Learn Physics...' helpful: https://www.susanrigetti.com/physics

Agreed on prioritizing financial freedom.

Thanks. I did read that but found it to be too broad. I set a very narrow target and hopefully everything can be wrapped up in 8-10 Math/Physics courses.

If you’re going to try this route, I’d also recommend prioritizing your family and/or life partner with all your remaining energy.

Grinding is soul-sucking, and having someone at home was the only way I made it through the roughest patches.

I semi-retired in the 35-40 range, but if my choices were being retired and single or working but with my family, I’d 100% take the latter.

I often ponder if I have the energy to go back to school. I am employed by MIT at one of the labs where I do research for embedded security. As a consequence, they offer free classes you can pick up. I am yet to actually take advantage of that yet but your comment has me thinking the same thing. I turn 36 in a couple days!

> please please prioritize financial freedom

This advice could really backfire badly if taken literally by young people.

Optimizing for financial reward early in your career could be the surest way to end up in a dead end from a mission/purpose/domain/skills perspective.

20 years later, you realize you burned two precious decades accumulating money that, honestly, does not help you at all make sense or use of the next two.

> 20 years later, you realize you burned two precious decades accumulating money that, honestly, does not help you at all make sense or use of the next two.

Ah, but it does. Speaking as someone approaching fifty, you feel every penny. Everything about your financial situation weighs into your decision-making, makes different options possible or impossible. It changes which jobs you can take, and which jobs you can turn down. It affects how much time you can take between jobs. It affects how much energy you pour into keeping your job or chasing a promotion versus investing your energy in education or other things you find satisfying.

People worry that they will accidentally pursue money with such single-minded focus that they turn off every other part of their soul, and miss out on what they "really" want to do. But I don't think that's possible. Replace money with anything else: fame, family, intellectual achievement, hedonism. If you try to dedicate yourself 100% to one thing when something else is important to you, you'll hear the voice in the back of your head. You'll feel what it is, and if you ignore it then, that's on you.

If you don't hear that voice yet, lay down the foundation that will give you the freedom to follow it when you finally do.

Yea, there is a huge distance between "saving enough money to retire comfortably" and "letting wealth accumulation dominate every decision you make." And, honestly, most people don't even get to the first one.

You're absolutely right. I realize my comment could be understood in many various ways.

My point was that, at some point, money has a negative effect on your career. Shooting for the top percentile of revenue can take you off track for life.

But you are saying that having a few hundred thousands bucks when you hit 40-50 is a life-changer and you are absolutely right as well.

Our point of views are not incompatible and were not captured by my first comment.

Its easy to think you have too much money in your twenties. I used to save every other paycheck. But wait until you have a family and a mortgage. The money goes very quickly.

It might backfire for sure, but being financially independent gives you freedom to figure that out for the rest of the life.

IMO it's a lot better than the situation I myself am in right now, when I can clearly see myself working my ass off for the next 20-25 years in domains I totally hate, and then hopefully I can start working on interesting things when I'm ... 65?

I'd further argue that the only downside of my strategy is that you already have a clear non-monetary objective but decided to go with the money for 20 years. That's definitely a bad thing, and that's why in my original reply I rooted this out -- if you already have an objective, go for it.

Only if you get a rest of your life. While most do I've known more that one person who didn't make it to 40. Worse those that do all srart reporting their body is starting to fail. If you have not done some things by 40 it may be too late to ever do them.

Won't expound on my life story, but this is massively overlooked. You can't just prioritize money without taking into account the massive sacrifices it will require in your life. I spent a long, long time becoming successful in careers that I hated, only to burn out and do the career I knew I wanted to do since I was old enough to think and remember. Except now I have wasted decades of my life that I will never get back.

The majority of your life is spent working so you absolutely MUST find it fulfilling or you will burn out (at best) or destroy your body and mind as a sacrifice to the insatiable Mammon.

There is nothing wrong with doing a job you don't like. However you need to ensure that it doesn't burn you out. Work enough to get the money you need to live. Then do things you like. Many people do this: there are a lot of jobs people don't enjoy but they have to be done so someone does them.

Even people who find a job they love often find after 10-15 years they are sick of doing it all the time. This is likely to happen to you unless you are careful not to let your job alone be what defines you. This is normal.

Don't get yourself into a job you hate. (part of this is not being so picky you hate everything!) however liking - much less loving - your job is optional. Then go home and do something else for fun.

You can't forego savings because "I might die at 40". That's really not a sensible plan. It's a balancing act, but I'd rather have saved too much and die a little early, than not save enough and somehow live to 100.

I agree 100%. There is a balance you want enough savings for 'a rainy day' and also enjoy the rest of your life. retirement is only part of enjoping your life.

the important point is don't get so lost in saving money that you don't enjoy now.

But accumulating and saving always comes at a cost. Is it worth to earn more money, but spend less time with your family for example? It's a delicate balancing act and you never know where the right balance is

It depends a lot of where you came from. If you are coming from a poor background, without any perspective of the occasional help from parents or a possible inheritance, I'd say prioritize financial security. Of course, you can accept the occasional lower salary but with better career prospects here and there, but sometimes this is a mirage, and a lot of time, better pay comes with better career prospects.

If you didn't come from a somewhat privileged background chances are you started your career with more professional debt, without a rich contact network, you're probably a bit too humble to negotiate wages and even narratives like "when I started my business I had come from a working class family, and had to scrap by raising 80k from my relatives to start my business" are out of your reality. So, prioritize being financially secure first.

This angst about a sense of purpose is basically a privileged class malady, if you are poor our friend Maslow will ensure you have more pressing issues to care about first.

I mean school debt where I said professional debt.

I made a lot of sacrifices and experienced some serious personal pain to achieve modest financial independence by age 35 (not "FAT" by any means, but well beyond the average American), and it was worth it. I'm still working, but only because my former career momentum has carried me into a position where I'm paid a small fortune. I would never do any kind of normal engineering job for a normal income these days.

My attitude and the way my brain processes things is completely different. Getting laid off or fired goes from something you might fear or see as a bad thing to a neutral or even positive event that just encourages you to go spend your time in a different way for as long as you want.

20 years of bad habits facilitated by a given lifestyle can also be very hard to break. Not many can manage duly accumulating the savings while completely isolating themselves from what they work on, who they work with, and how all of that impacts their worldview.

And that's not even considering health. 20 years of being in a bad mental place (stress is bad, but a perceived lack of purpose and agency might well be worse) will leave its marks.

There's also a non-zero chance you'll die before year 20. I agree with the premise that seeking financial independence should be a significant factor in career/life decisions, but if you would be filled with regret by finding out it will be cut short at year 18, you're too singularly focused.

Having the money is far, far better than _not_ having money to help you "make sense or use of the next two decades". If you don't, both the sense and use are narrowed to being chained to a job indefinitely into the future.

> you realize you burned two precious decades accumulating money that, honestly, does not help you at all make sense or use of the next two

You are describing some extreme case of money chasing and/or complete ignorance to everything else. Having the "luxury" to be covered financially for the rest of your life allows you to pursue whatever goals you have in mind at mid-life. If you are susceptible to not knowing what you want, having less money won't help you find out but having more money might.

Is it any better to know what you want to do for the next 2 decades and not ever be able to afford do it? From a practical perspective you are still missing the opportunities you want or dream of, except you're also doing it with little or no financial buffer for the things you need.

I see this argument a lot, i think no one is right. you just need to pick a away to approach life and deal with it.

> honestly, does not help you at all make sense or use of the next two.

Why?

Money can't buy you a sense of purpose, especially if that purpose would largely involve non-monetary aspects.

The thing, being poor doesn't buy one a sense of purpose too. Money for sure doesn't solve the issue, but it gives you all the freedom to solve it for the rest of your life.

Damn I wish I had a million so that I could just drop my job and twitch my coding and gaming streams 12/7. I can't do that.

Absolutely. Money (at least some amount, at least for most people) is necessary, but not sufficient for a fulfilled life.

I believe most people having that million wouldn't spend it to find the fulfillment in life, but would end up increasing their life style by slacking off, drugs, expensive cars and items, etc. And the million would be gone in months and you would be left with just bad habits, dopamine hangover and no idea of the further direction in life.

Yay, do it! I'm in linear algebra right now (midterm in 40 minutes) and I'm over 40. I went back because I always regretted not taking more higher level math. It's been a lot of work, but very rewarding. My kids (age 7 and 5) think it's pretty cool to see dad working on his TI-89 and Notability on iPad.

I was running into the same issue. I wanted to get into deeeplearning but my math skills had atrophied. go check out mathacademy.com. its no where near the level of time investment that going back to college is and you will learn a lot!

If you have the discipline, you can create a lesson plan with an LLM without spending an arm and a leg.

Thanks. I definitely will teach myself some of the pre-requisites before registering in University. I need to prove to myself that I can sit down, take some course, complete the coursework + assignments + exams on MIT courseware, before committing anything that costs $$.

Math Academy is really all you need. 30 minutes per day is enough, though more time will mean faster progress.

You would still very likely need human input and help. LLMs will hallunicate badly on problems just a bit more difficult than the very standard ones (first-hand experience with math).

>>please please prioritize financial freedom if you don't have a clear objective in mind

This. To Infinity.

Please prioritise financial freedom. I missed a few steps, but as I get old, I realise this is the biggest blocker to almost anything.

Money == Free time.

I got excited to do this a couple years ago. (early 30s) Time and energy were a real killer.

Physics and Math in a formal setting like school is rigorous, not fun. I found it really hard to stay motivated. I don't know how I would practically use that knowledge, i would never contribute anything scientific. It would take years of grinding through foundational math and physics to get there.

I wish I had all the money and all the time! I don't, alas...

I know it sounds stupid but I started to but lottery tickets, not to win, because statistically it is impossible, but just to give me hope, because lottery is the only thing in the world that can land a mountain of cash in one shot, with a very small investment. Nothing else can do that.

That's why humans purchase lottery tickets all the time throughout history. It's too cheer themselves up.

I found a cheaper way. I walk around the city for a couple hours every weekend with the hopes of randomly finding a winning lottery ticket.

Why not buy out of money options in companies that you know with spare money? Better odds and good payouts if you hit it right.

Needs too many correct bets or too much $$ to get a few million of returns. You can win a lottery of 50 million with just a few dollars! But I do think this is an interesting strategy. I might try it out just for fun.

Anyway I'm half joking. I do buy lottery but it is just to improve the mood of the day. Oh a good mood for a few hours is so important to keep being sane.

I strongly doubt this. It’s rare and we have all sorts of credible theories about why it’s rare, but the decline of so-called fluid intelligence is mostly Flynn Effect: people are getting better at taking tests.

It is a possibility I actually agree with, because a true understanding probably requires a lot more than taking some classes. It probably needs a PHD on Cosmology or something else.

But let's say a shallow understanding is good enough...even just completing a General Relativity graduate course with good mark is good enough.

You should not have entertained that comment.

There is absolutely zero evidence that 35 is some mystical cut off for "understanding." That poster has NO clue what they are talking about. Seriously, feel free to ignore that comment.

As for practical advice for learning, you should look into learning how to learn and then spend about 1-2 year habituating to the proper way to acquire knowledge. The science says your (not just you, practically everyone) current intuitions and habits are incorrect; as evidenced by almost everyone in this post. Youtuber Justin Sung is pretty much second to none in terms of a practical program for acquiring these skills.

If you want general guidelines to follow to determine who's telling you the truth and who isn't use the following wikipedia article to guide you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning#The_principles...

Note: Simply reading that article and "understanding" what it is saying is not equivalent to having a study program that implements these things, and having a program that implements these things is not the same thing as actually executing on and habituating to said program. This process takes many months to years.

Best of luck.

Is the joke because Einstein published his findings on General Relativity at 36?

Devil's advocate: how many years did it take him to get to publishing this work?

Echoing the sentiments of others here, this is why I firmly believe that public college should be free, for all, for life. Formal education just works better for some of us than video tutorials or self-paced learning, and ensuring everyone is able to learn new things and practice their skills in a consequence-free environment benefits society as a whole.

Think about the tech nerds (me) who never learned how to cook, and are in their thirties. Or lawyers and Doctors who are sick and tired of feeling like they don’t understand how computers work, and want to learn. Or an accountant who loves maths, and wants to get into the scientific side of the field. Or the homemaker who wants to re-enter the workforce now that their kids are grown, and wants to pick up carpentry and welding to become a tradesperson.

If cognitive decline comes from failing to practice it regularly, then the cheapest solution is free education for life to encourage as many people as possible to keep learning new skills and remain cognitively engaged.

> I firmly believe that public college should be free, for all, for life

I just don't understand these statements that "this or that should be free". Do you plan to enslave the people who would provide this education? Do you not subscribe to the saying "You get what you pay for?". Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations. Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"? (Hint, you're not going to pop-out of those 4 years with any skills that are differentiated enough from everyone else who took-up the "free" education and not be right back in the same position you are now.)

If you don't have the motivation to prevent your own cognitive decline by taking advantage of a plethora of already free (high quality) education (e.g. https://ocw.mit.edu), then taxing the rest of us so you can be spoon-fed all the free "formal education" you want for life isn't the answer either.

> Do you plan to enslave the people who would provide this education? Do you not subscribe to the saying "You get what you pay for?". Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations.

Do you believe that the people who provide public education through High School are enslaved? If yes, how? If not, why do you assume providing free public college education requires enslavement?

> Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations. Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"?

No need to wonder. Tuition for bachelor's degrees is free in multiple countries, for instance Germany, Finland, Sweden, Scotland and Norway. What happened there?

I assume the “enslave” question is meant to allude to the fact that, since nothing is actually free, when demand outstrips supply, at some point “making it free” can only mean forcing people to provide it (financially or personally).

If “x should be free” was a solution to anything, why stop at education? Let’s make everything free!

> Tuition for bachelor's degrees is free in multiple countries...

For the longest time, it used to be free for state residents attending State colleges in California.

> Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"?

A high school diploma used to mean something because it was a filter. Once graduation rate became the goal, standards were lowered, and just showing up became enough to graduate.

Higher education does some filtering. Either they filter aggressively at admissions and graduate everybody (Ivies), filter with weed-out classes and lesser degrees (respected public universities), both (other public universities), or offer a middling education and are ranked accordingly. So the degree means something.

I agree that degrees can be filters, but I question what "filter" they represent in modern contexts. From my experiences, the modern degree is little more than a gatekeeping credential to demonstrate you either took on substantial student debt (and thus likely to take lower pay or more precarious employment) or come from a wealthy background (stronger social networks for other rich folks/Capital types; a "pedigree", in other words, a la a caste system).

You're 100% right that a modern American High School Diploma does not reflect any degree of basic competency, because standards were constantly refined downward to promote graduation at all costs; I argue college degrees (and many technology certifications) are much the same, providing little more than a demonstration of taking on debt and rote memorization capabilities, rather than being a functional worker.

So if that's the case, and they're not of practical value as credentials anymore, it could be argued there's no harm in opening fundamental/foundational courses in skills to the entire populace, paid for through taxpayer money and restricted to State/Public non-profit Institutions. If we're really concerned about costs, we could implement caps on consumption unless part of a degree program to ensure those taking the advanced courses for employment prospects are given priority over those seeking non-professional growth. There's a lot of wiggle room to be had, if we're serious about opening this up.

I don't understand this sentiment. You have no problem spending $800 billion in tax payer money on military in a country that hasn't fought a defensive war in 200 years but as soon as the same concept is applied to education or healthcare it's somehow wrong?

> I just don't understand these statements that "this or that should be free".

Because you're focusing on the accumulation of a finite resource (currency, land, etc) as the sole barometer for success, and then conflating "freedom for use" with "freedom from cost". Obviously salaries have to be paid, buildings maintained, and improvements paid for. Obviously this all costs money, which is a finite resource. Obviously that money has to come from somewhere. Taxation enables everyone to contribute a fraction of the cost regardless of use, and an effective social program (like free education) distributes that cost effectively over time since there's zero chance 100% of the population will consume that resource at the same time, or even in the same year.

It's basic societal maths. If we accept forgoing a profit on the consumption of the resource (healthcare, roads, mail service, education, defense), we can lower the cost substantially and concentrate on its effective utilization. If we do that, we can carve up the cost across the widest possible demographic (taxpayers), and assign a percentage of it as taxation relative to income and wealth. It's how governments work.

> Do you not subscribe to the saying "You get what you pay for?"

Does anyone subscribe to this in the current economy? Everything has record high prices, yet still bombards you with advertisements, sells your data, and requires replacement in a matter of years instead of being repairable indefinitely. University education has boiled down to little more than gargantuan debt loads to acquire a credential for potential employment, a credential that often has no relevancy to the field you actually find work in.

So no, I don't subscribe to that, and I haven't for a decade. My $15,000 used beater car is literally more reliable than a six-figure SUV, and it doesn't keep mugging me for more value to the manufacturer through surveillance technology and forced-advertising.

> Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"?

Yes. I imagine much of the populace would be better educated and informed about how modern, complex systems work. More people would be fiercely resistant to the low-wage, high-labor jobs that flood the market, forcing a reconciliation of societal priorities. I figure we'd have more engineers, and artists, and accountants, and tradespersons. We'd have more perspectives to existing problems from a broader swath of the economic strata, instead of the same old nepobabies from a lineage of college graduates making the same short-sighted mistakes.

The question is, have you considered what might happen if we made a four-year degree more economically accessible?

> If you don't have the motivation to prevent your own cognitive decline by taking advantage of a plethora of already free (high quality) education (e.g. https://ocw.mit.edu), then taxing the rest of us so you can be spoon-fed all the free "formal education" you want for life isn't the answer either.

Now you're just insulting people because they lack means, and conflating it with lack of motivation. I've lived with people whose sole education was reading books in Public Libraries because they never had public education, with Section 8 housing recipients hammering online learning courses from shared computers to try and find a way upward and out of poverty. None of that gets them a foot in the door, because they don't have the physical piece of paper that says "University Graduate" and the social networks you build from physically attending school - which adults cannot do without money or taking on substantial debt, that in turn jeopardizes their ability to survive.

If you want a society where only those of monied means have the ability to succeed, well present-day America is certainly an excellent demonstration of that. I'd rather build a society where all of us contribute a part of the proceeds of our labor to build a more equitable society for all, so everyone has an opportunity to found that new business, make those social connections, or try new ideas, without worrying about losing their home or paying for healthcare treatments.

> Does anyone subscribe to this in the current economy?

Not anyone whose net worth is under -say- fifty- or a hundred-million dollars and is older than their mid-thirties, that's for sure.

If you're not rich enough to routinely afford very well-made things, and you're old enough to know that very many things legitimately used to be far, far higher quality for not that much more inflation-adjusted money [0], then you sure as shit don't subscribe to that saying anymore.

[0] And sometimes, far less... especially when you factor in the cost of continually replacing the garbage that's all that you can afford.

Chat gpt is already free to a very generous extent, and covers 80% (if not more) of the learning resources you could need for almost any topic, theory-wise. I'd risk saying it can adapt for most people's needs.

For practical knowledge you just need to do it over and over. A good mentor/teacher would help a lot, but the very very basics I'd say are learnable by yourself. It's as simple as doing it over and over and keeping a critical eye on what went good and not.

As a result, I don't think free public colleges would enable more people to -actually- learn compared to what we have today. However, I find it would be a great place to build community and find people with similar interests to you, which is quite rare to do without an app these days.

See, I'm worried about relying on LLMs for learning given their penchant for hallucinations and the early studies showing they're actually bad for learning or cognitive improvement, since they remove the "research" and "critical thinking" phases of problem solving for entry-level stuff - fundamental skills that are necessary to put something into practice independently and learn from mistakes. Sure, teachers/professors can also make stuff up (and often with more damage given their position as a "reliable authority"), but in a classroom setting it feels like that'd be found out faster than using a ChatGPT that's spitting out bad results.

> However, I find it would be a great place to build community and find people with similar interests to you, which is quite rare to do without an app these days.

This is what a lot of detractors seem to miss about the benefits of in-person learning. Team projects force you to interact with strangers and cooperate for the benefit of the whole. Campuses increase the likelihood of chance encounters. They get you out of your home and into the community, which helps you feel connected to your actions and their outcomes.

The knock-on effects are often greater than the immediate benefits.

I don't think I should be paying for others to study simply because they prefer a different modality of learning, especially when it has been found that learning modality selection has nearly zero impact on actual learning outcomes.

Now, if this was structured as a negative tax system, where eg everyone after graduating high school starts with -$10k in taxable income for a handful of years, perhaps that could avoid punishing those that choose to self-study.