[Mo3]

I'm sure many of us have figured this out, it's just that there's no alternative for most.

I live in Europe and we are all unionized and I hate to break it to you but we're still creating much more value than we earn for someone else. Our work conditions may be significantly better - I work 40h/week with unlimited vacation (within reason ofc) and sick days - yet still burnout happens frequently and necessitates costly rehabilitation trajectories.

We deal with the consequences better, and I'm grateful for the conditions here, they may well be much worse elsewhere, but the core issues remain. Humans aren't built to work mentally straining jobs for 8 or more hours per day, and the fruit baskets and vacations only do so much. I believe a four day work week would help some of it.

[namaria]

Turns out when your work is thinking, you end up thinking a lot about the alienation of your labor's fruits.

Burnout isn't about pace of work or ability to take vacations. Burnout is about a disconnect between effort, meaning, and rewards.

[rhubarbtree]

I disagree.

Burnout is caused by your body running on adrenaline and cortisol for too long as you’re pushing past what is sustainable. Eventually your body says - enough! And it forces you to stop.

The _symptom_ of burnout are as you describe: essentially you no long see the point of what you’re doing.

Speculatively, I believe the drop in motivation is your body’s way of stopping you pushing it any further. It’s a defence mechanism.

[namaria]

Hm I see. You have a point that the causality is not necessarily how I described. But I am not convinced it is the opposite.

What causes the workplace to make you have high adrenaline and cortisol for too long? Stress is perceived by the body as a threat and it subsidizes when the body perceives that the threat is overcome. If we exert ourselves for a while but then we have a good outcome and we celebrate with our colleagues, we will have dopamine and oxytocin levels rise and adrenaline and cortisol subsidize. Something one might say makes the exertion meaningful.

So I hear what you're saying but I think we're both describing the same thing from two perspectives and not actually different causality directions. I described the subjective interpretation and you described the biochemical process underlying it.

[MichaelZuo]

What is “the alienation of your labor's fruits.”?

I haven’t heard of any way for objectively measuring the value of anything, or whether that is even a logically coherent concept.

[namaria]

> I haven’t heard of any way for objectively measuring the value of anything

Really?

[MichaelZuo]

If you know of some way that is logically coherent, and can demonstrate it via standard proof notation, then you should definitely publish it.

And become the most famous human being to have ever existed…

[namaria]

There's no need to be snarky. The values of things can most definitely be objectively measured, otherwise there would be no transactions. Objective is not absolute, the objective evaluation might change when the agents involved have new information.

I also don't thing it contentious that the stockholders pocket some of the results of the workers labor. That is the whole point of employing people isn't it?

[MichaelZuo]

Why do you think I am being “snarky”?

I meant it literally. I genuinely believe that if you could demonstrate the proof and publish it… then you would become so.