18/ It is fine to view paychecks as just a close-ended way to pay bills. It's dumb *not* to wish a book to be open-ended success
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19/ Similarly, close-ended "3x flip in 2 years" startup logic doesn't work for same reason "have baby and kill it at age 3" doesn't work
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20/ So ambition is best understood as your personal process of budgeting for *open-ended* commitments through life, predicated on success
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21/ Fewer people found startups at 40 than 25 (though more who do succeed) same reason fewer people have kids late (bio clock aside)...
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22/ You rationally estimate that your available rest-of-life open-ended best-case attention budget for "one more kid" gets lower with age
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23/ So to summarize: measure your ambitions in baby-equivalent units and take on what you think you can actually raise if successful
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24/ Oh, and one more thing... the way you compute ambition is marginal, same as kids. "Can I afford 1 more kid?" is always the question.
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25/ PS: choosing not to have kids/being anti-natalist is familiar.There is also choosing to have no memetic kids/being memetic-anti-natalist
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26/ Okay I'm not done. Couple more points. First r/K selection applies to baby-equivs too. Deep invest in 1 or shallow invest in 10 babies?
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27/ And finally, there's male (sperm) and female (egg+incubation) cheap/costly attitudes towards kid-equiv projects.
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28/ Many of both genders bring "deadbeat dad" sensibilities to baby-equiv projects (monorail!). Doesn't work unless someone plays mom.
