Something I learned a long time ago is that the labor market is 2d, not 1d.

The 1-d mental model most people have is:

REWARD = SKILL*MOTIVATION*TIME

SKILL is a parameter you set through pre-investment in learning up to aptitude limits, motivation is a modulating parameter you learn to control that’s useful to break out. Both mostly plateau by 30 and are de facto constants. You might learn a few specific new skills but not foundational ones. You might develop a radical new motivational scaffolding but it’s unlikely. Both are actually just externally unpriced front-loaded internal work, so you could make REWARD a constant first-order constitutive function of TIME with some delay elements. Constitutive because the constants will be specific to you, representing aptitude, psychological development/arresredness etc.

This model is deeply, fatally wrong.

The correct model is this 2d model:

E(REWARD) = SKILL*MOTIVATION*RISK*TIME

Most people seem congenitally incapable of treating risk as a controlled input variable. Instead they model it as an exogenous variable entirely controlled by nature. They think the shape of the output distribution is a natural one called “luck.” But skill and motivation being equal, a minute of effort in a high-risk activity might yield more rewards than a decade in a low-risk one. And you can control the shape of the output distribution far more than you think. You can make your own luck. And you don’t need to be a stock-market investor or in some other domain where RISK is naturally broken out and made legible. In fact those are degenerate domains. You don’t want to manage RISK directly, but the product RISK*TIME.

I propose the term LIVENESS for the product of RISK*TIME. It’s not an intuitive quantity. It reminds me of the trouble I had grasping the idea of momentum in high school. Why would you multiply mass and velocity? Why not mass cubed times velocity squared or something. What makes p=mv the right compound molecular notion? Well there’s reasons that took 17th century physicists decades of arguments to work out (hint: “energy” turns out to be 1/2mv² and differentiating gets you mv). I’m not actually sure of the correct functional form here. I suspect RISK might enter in nonlinear ways, due to compounding/parleying effects.

I also propose the term ZEMSER for the expected reward distribution of “manufactured luck” when RISK is an intelligently and indirectly managed (via LIVENESS) variable. For ZEMblanity-SERendipity. Ie deviation from unmanaged luck in either direction.

So our notional formula is E(ZEMSER)=SKILL*MOTIVATION*LIVENESS

I actually think this formula can be investigated and made rigorous. I suspect there will be some convolutions and exponentiations in there.

What’s the point of all this? What use is this 2d mental model?

One application is counter-programming the lump-of-labor fallacy, failure to appreciate Jevon’s paradox etc, during tech transitions. This is like the fifth tech transition in my lifetime where the majority of people are convinced this time is different and that $NEWTECH will eat their jobs and either end the world or usher in post scarcity where we all sit around doing shitty inconsequential hobbies for enrichment (the utopians are worse in many ways). Pointing to the glorious history of this expectation being wrong doesn’t help. Nor does exhortation to “work harder” and “learn new skills.”

I’m now convinced the problem is the 1d mental model. You don’t need to work harder or learn new skills. Ie you don’t need to fight a hopeless battle to radically reshape your SKILL and MOTIVATION near-constants at age 40. Nor do you need to spend significantly more (or not so obviously, less) time at laboring. What you need to do is reshape the RISK you are taking to reshape the ZEMSER distribution. But not RISK understood in the degenerate way investors do. RISK understood and managed indirectly through LIVENESS.

Philosophically, LIVENESS models the intensity with which you experience time. Elan vital. If you seek to feel more alive, you’ll reshape risk/reward. And a little intelligence goes a long way towards seeking serendipity rather than zemblanity (seeking convexity, avoiding shorts etc)