94 pointsby natean hour ago20 comments
  • WorkerBee284745 minutes ago
    For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

    2 Timothy 4 (NLT), circa 65 Anno Domini

  • neogodlessan hour ago
    The "read the rest" button seems broken in Firefox on Windows... so that makes for a very short post.
    • Wowfunhappy41 minutes ago
      I’m interpreting the submission as just what can be read on the page, but I still upvoted it. Brief and to the point.
      • dentemple22 minutes ago
        I appreciate brief and to the point. It's a world that's rapidly going away thanks to LLMs' love of over-explaining everything.
    • jolmg41 minutes ago
      The URL: #replace-with-the-found-url

      From searching the text, it seems it hasn't been published on the WSJ.

      • Gualdrapo30 minutes ago
        So the author lied and they are trying to get rich?
        • Aperocky26 minutes ago
          Author never told us what happens when one lies to those who seek the truth... is that on a different plane of reference?
          • prmph23 minutes ago
            You get paid, but it does not last
          • bigblind17 minutes ago
            Then you become a poletician, though I guess that could also apply to lying to people who want to be lied to.
    • jmkni41 minutes ago
      Ha I reached that and thought to myself "do I need to read any more?"
      • neogodless37 minutes ago
        Heh, well I was kind of thinking, this sounds like something someone in sales or content management or marketing might think is pithy and thoughtful. And we are (or just were) in the "Information Age", so that's what has value. But also, there are lots of other ways to um... make money. Unless you try to twist your brain around "well selling kids' toys to parents is selling lies to someone who wants lied to" or something perverse like that. shrug Maybe the big article does a great job of exploring these ideas, but I don't think they stand up to much scrutiny.
    • wmeredith37 minutes ago
      It's also broken for Safari (on Mac).
    • jmuguy42 minutes ago
      Same in Firefox on Mac. Links are hard, I guess.
  • mlhpdx9 minutes ago
    The wisdom from my Mom was “it’s better to be paid for what you know than what you do”. I’ve found it’s a bit more subtle than that, and enjoyed and learned a lot from piece work labor. But the sweet spot seems to be getting paid for what you do that uses what you know.

    AI notwithstanding, of course.

  • jaggederestan hour ago
    There's also good money to be made telling people what they already know, usually in the form of a report and/or powerpoint deck
  • beej718 minutes ago
    When I was a dev working with my business-oriented business partner, I had to get used to sitting in meetings where we promised the client the world having no idea if I could accomplish it or not.

    Made a lot more money than I could have on my own.

    "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'YES'!!"

  • kuanbuttsan hour ago
    There's got to be a variant that is a 2x2 matrix of this:

    Lie to others, lie to yourself (spiral together; either fantastically poor or spectacularly rich)

    Lie to others, tell yourself the truth (manipulation, morally broke, but materially rich)

    Tell others the truth, tell yourself the truth (integrity, barely scrape by)

    Tell others the truth, lie to yourself (be used by the system, usually end up poorly)

    • jaxnan hour ago
      I think the fourth would be "lie to those who want you to tell the truth".

      His father's saying may have been: "There are three honest ways to make a living".

      The fourth option is where scams and fraud live.

      • nyeah7 minutes ago
        Some might argue that lying to those who want to be lied to is still usually dishonest.
    • zaphar39 minutes ago
      It's not really a rule of thumb that "Tell others the truth, tell yourself the truth" means you have to barely scrape by. Plenty of people make good money that way.
      • badgersnake31 minutes ago
        It pays to be suspicious of those who tell you you can’t make an honest living.
        • c2227 minutes ago
          Huh, I've always been suspicious of folks claiming the opposite.

          For the downvoters, have you ever tried to explicitly map your externalities?

    • sidewndr4639 minutes ago
      oh god it's the Rumsfeld quadrants for truth....
    • cindyllm24 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • allenu20 minutes ago
    It sounds like another way to put it: tell people what they want to hear and you'll go far. Most people want their beliefs confirmed, whether what they believe is true or fiction. Unfortunately it can lead to an echo chamber-y world where people only associate themselves with others who have the same core beliefs, which is even easier when communities are online.
  • tombert24 minutes ago
    I've told this story before, but it's relevant.

    When I worked at BigCo [1], we were interviewing a candidate for a position. He was pretty good, and we were in the process of making him an offer, but he was asking for more money and trying to negotiate his salary higher.

    I don't have an issue with this, BigCo has plenty of money, but other people, including a manager, were complaining. They felt that this is a good job and he shouldn't be doing this for the money.

    I, not realizing that this was controversial, said "yeah, but come on, we all do this for the money."

    Some people got defensive, explaining that they love the job. I responded "sure, it's good to like your job and your coworkers, I'm not trying to discourage that, but if BigCo stopped paying you then you'd probably stop showing up for work. At least I would hope so."

    They kind of begrudgingly agreed, and the day went on as normal. The next day, I have an impromptu meeting scheduled with my manager's manager, explaining that I have a "bad attitude" and he mentioned that specific comment as a reason that this meeting was being called.

    Now, to be fair, at the time I did have a bad attitude (in no small part due to at-the-time-undiagnosed sleep apnea), but the fact that I got in trouble for mentioning something that is objectively true really confused me. We weren't working for a charity, we weren't trying to cure cancer, we were working for a for-profit corporation. Of course we were doing it for the money, just like the corporation hired us so that they could make more money.

    But I guess people just like to believe a collective lie.

    [1] I'm sure you might be able to go through history and find the specific BigCo, and that is fine, but I politely ask that you don't post it here in relation to this comment.

    • wrs19 minutes ago
      I've been at BigCos in times past where there was some plausibility to this, but in the current BigCo workplace climate, anybody who tries to claim it's not about the money has a long row to hoe!
      • tombert8 minutes ago
        This would have been 2019. Even then, I feel like anyone who had been in the industry long enough should have developed some level of cynicism.
  • riazrizvi30 minutes ago
    Thanks. I keep doing 3. I needed this.
  • js228 minutes ago
    Copy/pasta of the entire post:

    My father, who died in 1981, was an inexhaustible font of wisdom and wit. I don’t know when he told me this particular three-part rule, but I’ve never forgotten it. I tweeted it three years ago, but people keep asking for it in one place, so here it is. There are three ways to make a living:

    1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.

    2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.

    3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

    The rest is commentary.

    ---

    That last line is undoubtedly a reference to:

    > When someone challenged Hillel the Elder (b. 110 BCE) to teach the entire Torah while his listener stood on one foot, he famously replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

    https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/5410546/jewis...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_the_Elder

    Aside, I've always seen it spelled "fount of wisdom", but either spelling is acceptable and this seems to mostly be an American/British spelling difference:

    https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/font-knowledge-fount-wis...

  • andai30 minutes ago
    In this thread: dang, I wish I was evil too!
  • quotemstran hour ago
    Is it me, or have HN submissions gotten shorter and shorter recently? At this rate, top-scoring articles will consist of a single word in a few years.
    • officialchicken4 minutes ago
      It's already about 85%: (Look at) me - with charts. We can replace those with TikTok dances instead.
    • toast044 minutes ago
      Could be worse. They could have padded this out a ton with emojis and dashes.
    • darepublican hour ago
      This title makes you want to click the article. Other titles that give away the lede influence people to just directly hit the comments section
    • AndrewKemendoan hour ago
      To wit:

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368059

      There’s basically no content in that one

      At least this one has reasonable content

      • wl41 minutes ago
        What little content is in that one is a quote by a fraudster.
    • an hour ago
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  • whalesalad40 minutes ago
    My first thought was "cash, grass, or ass" but this works as well.
  • ThrowawayTestran hour ago
    I wish I didn't have any scruples, I'd be so rich.
    • claytongulick35 minutes ago
      I was offered a project to develop a game for this sweet old lady once.

      She'd heard that if you made a video game and sold it, you would make a lot of money, so she'd decided to take her life savings, $200k, and hire someone to make a game. She didn't know what kind of game or anything, just "make a game".

      I was really worried about her and spent two hours on the phone with her trying to educate her and help her protect herself and her savings.

      At the end, she just got sort of mad at me and I could tell she was just going to get someone else to do it.

      Was so sad. Wish I could have helped her more.

      • andai30 minutes ago
        "A fool and his money are easily parted."
    • Andrex41 minutes ago
      The scruple-to-dollar exchange rate is just the worst. Or the best. Whichever makes more sense in this analogy.
  • tim-projectsan hour ago
    I can already think of 5 jobs this doesn't apply to in the slightest.
    • brailsafe32 minutes ago
      These are "ways to get paid", but "jobs" implicitly may or may not be relevant to the topic. If there's no game, politics, or sales aspect whatsoever, which is rarely but not never the case, then it's kind of irrelevant.
    • andai32 minutes ago
      There are slightly more than three ways to make a living.
    • tweakimp42 minutes ago
      and they are?
      • tim-projects39 minutes ago
        Day trader Garbage collector Zoo keeper Tennis player Lifeguard
        • apsurd33 minutes ago
          They're all making a living by telling people the truth that want the truth. The more money they make the more they deviate being solidly in camp #2.

          It's an aphorism. I enjoyed it. It's not a proof of the Universe.

          • tim-projects29 minutes ago
            I didn't realise this was Facebook
      • echelon_musk40 minutes ago
        Fruit picker.
  • waqarjaved31 minutes ago
    Hi I read the article. It's good
  • Forgeties7943 minutes ago
    There are very rich/powerful people that do #1 shocking well and I kind of wish I had figured it out sooner. Having a moral compass apparently set me back irreparably. I could've been somebody!
  • jubilanti40 minutes ago
    Apparently if you're a YC alum you can get to the top of the front page of HN posting an advertisement to go read someone's paywalled Wall Street Journal op ed, with a broken link when you click "read the rest".
    • tiffanyh37 minutes ago
      This is spelled out on the FAQ page:

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

      • gghh31 minutes ago
        Can you please spell out the spell out? You're linking 1300 words.
        • dewey24 minutes ago
          Cmd +F "Paywall"

          > Are paywalls ok?

          It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

          In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.

  • hootz41 minutes ago
    Ooooooooh, so that's how sociopathic CEOs and directors of big companies get rich!
  • 12 minutes ago
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