dtcwee: The Value of Nothing

Is having children to care for you in old age a good strategy? The social contract, particularly in Confucian societies, is that adults are expected to care for their elderly, reciprocating the care received as children. But how well is this expectation played out in fact?

Why you should want to work. The fable of the 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' is often used to prime the work-shy for shame and deprivation.

Help stop the spread of social anxiety. A fact sheet.  FOMO (fear of missing out) and status anxiety are highly contagious social anxieties. 😨 What are they? The fear of being excluded from knowledge, experiences, and interactions (FOMO), and consequentially being considered unsuccessful by society (status anxiety). What Are the Symptoms?

What if it's actually the houses? I spent the last six months in Australia without a car, looking to do some travel, home repairs, and a little blogging about life without a car. That's all come to an end.

Did a lack of trust in governments exacerbate COVID-19 deaths? 'Hogwash', is my first response.

The cost of kids vs residential care. It used to be that children were a retirement strategy. You'd gently pass away in your mortgage-free bed surrounded by loved ones. Old folks' homes were for lonely deviants who failed at family formation. Let's compare ...

I used to agree with the mainstream view that an aging population was deflationary. The logic: old people don't buy new stuff. Real world examples: Japan, Singapore, Germany, etc. If inflation did pop its head up, governments would reflexively smash it with higher interest rates, never mind the resultant unemployment. Why? Well, the US did it in the 1970s. Since then, much of the neo-liberal project has been to transfer power from workers to consumers. Voters were happy with that trade-off then, so they probably would be again. The numbers stack up politically. Inflation affects everyone. Unemployment only affects workers. I don't work. I'm team higher unemployment. Anticipating a future of stable or falling prices, I relaxed going into the COVID pandemic.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 6 If the world of Genshin Impact is so good, why don't you just go and live there? Good question, but first, a digression for context. My spouse commented that video games are subversive by allowing people to become powerful alluring characters. Me, a superhuman anime waifu? Novel, but fleeting. Even with jiggle physics.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 5 Part of Genshin Impact's approach to its artificial scarcity is to bombard you with varied rewards so that, much like real life, there is always another way to progress. However, with that abundance comes complexity. The game's transparency only goes so far in helping you navigate it. Where else can you turn for help? Who else can you turn to for help? A lot of what makes the Genshin Impact experience great comes from outside the game.

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 4  At some point in Genshin Impact, as in real life, you will face running out of stuff.  What has that taught me about approaching that scarcity, and can I apply it to everyday life? Many Ways to Play

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 3 The drive to play on is supported by the constant accrual of rewards, plus the assurance - not mere promise - of future rewards. "Pfft." You may say. "How can one trust claims of certainty in a game genre explicitly run on chance?" Trust through Transparency 

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 2 Genshin Impact satisfies my craving to micro-manage. Even offline, planning my next moves in the game world displaces anxiety about what may happen in the real world. It exhausts my rumination like a mental chew toy, after which I have little urge to fret further. Nevertheless, should I be worried that I so easily place a trivial computer game before more mundane matters? A better question to ask may be, ' Why do I?' I have a theory:  Always Be Compensated

Genshin Impact Life Lessons 1. Genshin Impact is more than a gorgeous open-world fantasy game with deep lore and a stirring soundtrack. In a half-year or so of play, it has taught me... Fight Worry with Worry

Has someone ever told you, "Y'know, the Chinese word for crisis contains the word for opportunity"? Yeah well, as a card-carrying Chinese person I'm (belatedly) going to show you why that's BS.

TLDR: Copying is the fast track to immortality. Why go to college? Why get a good job? Why have kids, then send those kids to college? 🥅 Your default reason for those time-consuming and costly endeavours may be, 'because I want to'. But does that express true desire, or is it rationalisation after-the-fact? Was a concerted effort made to explore alternatives? After all, the virtue of conventional goals are taken as givens, such that non-pursuit - rather than pursuit - must be defended. Parents need not justify their choice to procreate, while the childless are expected to explain not having children. Arthur Schopenhauer enters the chat:

Which industries are ripest for technological disruption? Australia labour productivity and value-add by industry.

They've been using social media for centuries. My wife is an academic and constantly in fear of: Senior peers ignoring and not citing her work; Younger peers publishing more, faster; Anticipated critiques of her papers. She's not alone. Her colleagues also live in dread, and academia as a whole has long been described as 'Publish or PERISH.'

Don't hate on spenders. "What, like those folks who brag about taking the entire family to Disney World?" Yeah. Them. Those status-signalling conspicuous-consuming early-adopting aspirational arrivistes. They wanna flex buying SUVs on credit rather than a used station wagon with cash? Let 'em.

The space between us is smaller but the gap between our experiences is wider. How can science fiction help?

You miss 100% of the stupid decisions you don't make. Negative self-talk goes like this: I missed out on that opportunity because I'm too pushy/meek/vain/stupid/whatever. Astronaut, doctor, parent. There's no end to what could have been, but for some personal flaw.  The infinite number of missed opportunities far outweighs the finite number of wins attributable to your better characteristics.