[HN Gopher] Life is not short
___________________________________________________________________
Life is not short
Author : dbrereton
Score : 377 points
Date : 2022-06-26 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| himalayan_yak wrote:
| Different take - it is pointless to think life as short or long.
| Life just is. You ARE in this moment of conscious time (to borrow
| Descartes). Anything else is either memory (history) or future
| yet to be.
|
| You, your 'self' are defined by your memory that is the
| consequences of the paths you took and not the ones you could
| have, and just like that your future will be the paths you take
| in this moment. Some try to make effort to be the best version of
| themselves, some try to live in this moment and many are in
| between. I do not think there's anything wrong with either
| extremes as long as you consciously and willingly do it, and sign
| up for the consequences. But.. idk.. I find this 'life is long vs
| short' debate a bit besides the point. I mean we do everything to
| fit the curve of 100 years of life - first quarter: education,
| second quarter: career, start family etc. May be its a perception
| thing - you're 40 and suddenly you realize you didn't become the
| astronaut you thought you'd be when you're grow up: how quickly
| life has passed by. To me personally, framing life as short vs
| long doesn't provide much solace in this situation but rather the
| one with culmination of past choices does.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, there's not a lot of _real_ choices in life once you hit a
| certain age /condition.
|
| Once you get married and have a family, it's basically just
| grinding away at work, with chores, etc. Stuff that just has to
| get done, or the consequences are catastrophic (divorce, medical
| bill bankruptcy, losing the house, etc).
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| if your kids / wife aren't making you happy maybe you should
| reconsider the choices you don't think you have
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| This is the bleakest picture of family life I have ever seen.
|
| Certainly you have more choices/options if you have more money,
| right?
| adamdusty wrote:
| It is whatever you perceive it to be. Family life is not like
| that for everyone, and money is definitely not the only
| reason.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Not when that excess income goes directly into the kids
| mouths.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| You have more choices if you have more money. Most of the
| folly with divorce is still completely avoidable for the
| breadwinner (if the couple has one). I won't describe it,
| make enough to get your own set of lawyers and ask for the
| supporting case law before implementing any strategy. There
| are things that work equally as well in community property
| states and equitable distribution states. Having your own
| assets completely paid for _before_ the marriage is a great
| first step that most of the population cannot do and cannot
| relate to, so this influences the collective conscious. But
| there are also things you can do for assets you paid for in
| your marriage to keep as your own.
|
| Don't apply if you don't have money, and this has nothing to
| do with a pre-nup which you should also do.
|
| The irony, for those about to have a kneejerk reaction about
| merely considering the financial realities of marriage
| instead of solely the love partnership part, is that this
| kind of pre-planning actually allows you to focus on the love
| part. You don't have to be skeptical or worried about any
| partner or anecdotes because you have it all figured out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The irony, for those about to have a kneejerk reaction
| about merely considering the financial realities of
| marriage instead of solely the love partnership part, is
| that this kind of pre-planning actually allows you to focus
| on the love part. You don't have to be skeptical or worried
| about any partner or anecdotes because you have it all
| figured out."
|
| That's my basic opinion. My wife and her family had a fit
| when I suggested a prenup, even though it mostly followed
| the general guidelines in law with the removal of alimony.
| It was crying and "you don't know what you're doing" with
| not a logical argument in sight. I just wanted a calm,
| rational conversation. Instead I feel like I was
| emotionally bullied and manipulated. If only I realized it
| then.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah, on that topic, I wish alimony was modified more
| holistically at the state level to avoid this discussion.
|
| Proponents say "one person does more unpaid labor to
| support the breadwinner and the lifestyle they were both
| beneificiaries of", but why does seemingly nobody create
| a market value of that unpaid labor (feel free to correct
| me if I'm wrong). People act like this unpaid labor is
| the same value at any amount of money that the lifestyle
| costs, when that's not true.
|
| "You did the dishes most often according to these angry
| text messages, and also got to travel to Tuscany in
| luxury, so here is $800,000 for 10 years and if your ex
| has any disruption in income then they have to check
| themselves into jail, if they make more we can modify
| that amount upwards and assume their income never goes
| down"
|
| I would like alimony capped at the state level in both
| amount and time based on what the value of supportive
| household/emotional labor is.
|
| Monaco's alimony law is a decent rubric.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's the problem. It's not even based on unpaid labor.
| There are courts assigning alimony to support porn
| addiction and other lifestyle factors. If it were based
| on unpaid labor, my wife would be paying me for all the
| high-rate mechanic, handyman, tech support, accounting,
| etc work. By getting married the lower earner is
| basically taking possession of your earning potential.
|
| "You did the dishes most often according to these angry
| text messages, and also got to travel to Tuscany in
| luxury, so here is $800,000 for 10 years and if your ex
| has any disruption in income then they have to check
| themselves into jail, if they make more we can modify
| that amount upwards and assume their income never goes
| down"
|
| If anyone thinks this is joking, my wife's father was in
| an accident and then a coma. Lost his job and obviously
| wasnt making money in a coma. Apparently the child
| support payments emptied his account. He was arrested for
| not paying. He then couldn't find any decent job with the
| arrest record.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe. But usually that means you spend more time at work. I
| have two family members with medical issues, so we hit the
| out of pocket max in medical bills every year (and possibly
| more due to some things being coded incorrectly and nobody
| being able to fix it).
|
| Then there's the fact that you need concensus for things.
| Like can we move to another area? No, wife doesn't want to
| ever leave the county. Should buy an unaffordable house? No,
| that's financial suicide. Wife wants another kid, but also
| complains that I don't do enough (not going into it, but
| she's way off base). I don't want another kid due to all that
| I have to do for the current one and her (she needs help with
| many things).
|
| In theory, we could each pretty much decide these things
| unilaterally. In practice, that's likely to result in divorce
| even if we have more money.
| bwest87 wrote:
| > You should organize each day as if it were your last, so that
| you neither need to long for nor fear the next day.
|
| I've come to find this "live each day like it's your last" advice
| to be pretty unhelpful. My favorite quote about it is, "all that
| goes to show you is some people would spend their last day giving
| you stupid advice".
|
| The problem is that if it actually was your last day, most people
| would give the finger to all of their responsibilities and go
| party, eat cake, see friends, familiy, lovers, etc. Which is
| simply not an actual way to _live_ your life. It 's a way to exit
| your life.
|
| An alternative framing that I've come to find more helpful is to
| take your life expectancy, and cut it by 2/3. Now what do you do?
| For example, if you're 20 years old and your life expectancy is
| 80 (ie. 60 more years), pretend that you only have 20 more, so
| you'll only live until you're 40. It's nice cause it naturally
| adjusts as you get older. You'll have smaller windows to work
| with.
|
| This approach strikes a nice balance. It gives you enough time to
| be able to really do something and change directions if you want.
| But not so much time that you can really waste any. It forces you
| to ask the hard questions about whether your day to day is truly
| connecting with your dreams, and whether you're on a path to get
| there.
|
| Of course, Seneca didn't have life expectancy tables to work
| with. But I think he would have approved. :)
| YoniMessing88 wrote:
| You could live your entire life right. Save money, build a
| family, find the love of your life, and have it all come crashing
| down in a single instant for any number of reasons. That
| terrifies me for some reason.
| mib32 wrote:
| Hey, but what I should do, if, say, I don't have my own house and
| I really need to buy one? How can I just stop doing what I don't
| love in that situation?
|
| Also, what about the situation when one day you really love your
| work and find it very interesting and fulfilling, but the other
| day it's just the opposite?
| claylimo wrote:
| I talked with a financial advisor. He said for some of his higher
| end clients who have 25 million dollars that are simply sitting
| around in investments. The money is doing nothing for them except
| accumulate. He advises them to at least spend some of it.
| TimPC wrote:
| It's interesting how the amount of money involved can change
| your perspective. For me the single most important thing to do
| with money is save it. Nothing I can buy will give me as much
| happiness as being able to help make the lives of important
| people in my life easier. We have a broken housing system that
| screws over almost everyone who doesn't get help so I want to
| save a sizeable contribution to my son's downpayment. I want to
| help pay for his wedding. I want to pay for his education. I
| want him to have a better start to life than I did and I want
| him to have more opportunities than me. I guess once you
| accumulate enough money you can do all that and still easily
| have more left over for the nice to haves.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| https://dilbert.com/strip/1991-08-20
| paulpauper wrote:
| don't worry. the market decline will take care of that
| mjreacher wrote:
| I would like to add a comment for a perspective that's a little
| different to some of the others here. I'm sure many of you here
| are familiar with John von Neumann. He died in 1957 at the age of
| 53. Throughout his life he was a busy man, and many times he
| deferred doing things saying that he would do them at some later
| unspecified date. For example he once said he would write a big
| treatise on von Neumann algebras, a technical mathematical
| subject of his own creation. However once WW2 started his
| interests changed and he became very involved not just in applied
| mathematics related to the war, but in consulting and advising
| too. By the 1950s the majority of his time was not spent on
| academic work, but rather on this latter subject, advising big
| important agencies of the US military on various matters.
|
| Some of his colleagues at the Institute of Advanced Study and in
| other places resented this. They said he was wasting his time,
| wasting his talent, on this work that could be done by other
| people, while his mathematical brain could be doing academic
| research that others could not do. Just shortly after being
| appointed commissioner of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),
| the pinnacle of his non-academic career, he was diagnosed with
| cancer. Within 2 years he would be dead. At the time of his first
| diagnosis the main academic subject he was dealing with was his
| theory of automata, however at first he was optimistic about his
| cancer and continued working heavily on things to do with the
| AEC. After some time the doctors made it clear to him that he was
| going to die soon, and he should wrap up any affairs that he
| wanted to complete quickly before he died.
|
| Now he panicked, after living his life and having so many
| incomplete things he wanted to do he was going to die and he was
| running out of the one thing he could not escape from - time. He
| tried to finish the topic he was currently working on, the theory
| of automata, however cancer affected him quicker and quicker and
| he could not. He wouldn't even finish a lecture he was asked to
| give - Yale's Silliman lecture, although the lecture he didn't
| finish would be cobbled together and published as a book, The
| Computer and the Brain, as would his work on automata, which was
| edited by Arthur Burks. He had grand aspirations for his theory
| of automata, it would be his greatest work, something he created
| entirely on his own, combining mathematical logic, information
| theory and biology. However, he put other things first, and he
| never got to finish it, indeed it seemed like he wanted to write
| far more, the book edited by Burks covered only 2 or 3 of the
| planned set of 5 lectures, and this was only the first set of
| five.
|
| After he died several of his colleagues again made comments when
| interviewed that they felt that his talents were wasted.
| Considering his working life was only about 30 years they felt
| much of the last 10 years of his life, primarily spent consulting
| and working with the government, would be better spent on things
| that only von Neumann could do, his treatise on von Neumann
| algebras, his work on automata (incidentally, his theory of
| automata hasn't really made much progress since he died,
| especially in comparison to other fields), many other things that
| he worked on for a bit, got interested in other things, and said
| he would come back to later.
|
| I am not sure what conclusion I should make of this, but I hope
| this little story is interesting to others too.
| ulisesrmzroche wrote:
| Ugh Seneca. No gracias. Hard pass.
| netr0ute wrote:
| I like the article's perspective, but there's a rub. The Juanes
| song "La Vida Es Un Ratico" seems to say that despite the best
| efforts to not waste time, life is still short (the "ratico"
| part). And that was in 2007!
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think there's much overlap between those
| on HN and those listening to Colombian rock.
| hebrox wrote:
| They used this song in Spanish class I took in Medellin. I
| think I'm not the only one who spent some time there and spends
| some time here on HN. Don't underestimate that Venn diagram :)
| (Does early Shakira count?)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| It is uncertainty that makes us waste so much time. If you can
| focus early in your life, consider yourself lucky instead of
| being superior to your peels.
| almokhtar wrote:
| lwqt klsyf n lm tqT`h qT`k
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Would it have killed you to provide an English translation and
| maybe a few lines of context? It's especially poor form not to
| include an attribution.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I agree with this; I wasted so much time in my childhood and
| teenage years doing nothing and feeling bored. Eventually years
| later I realized how much destructive it was for me both mentally
| and physically. Children and young people need to be guided in
| the early stages of their life because they will be disoriented
| just like me.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have found that I sometimes need "down time." This may involve
| sitting in a recliner, reading junk fiction, or watching vapid TV
| shows.
|
| When I am "on," I am _really_ "on." I like to be constantly
| "producing" stuff. I tend to not do much "farting around." All my
| work needs to have some deliverable goal.
|
| It's not necessarily for the best. I probably miss out on a lot
| of creative exploration. I'm very empirical. I think that
| abstract thinkers may come up with some really cool stuff, and
| they may do that, while sitting in a coffee shop, staring
| vacantly out the window.
| verisimi wrote:
| I personally like the idea that, when this life ends we judge
| ourselves.
|
| Of course, I have no idea whether this is the reality. :)
|
| Regardless, it is a idea that I find motivates me in the here and
| now. I don't want to act badly, have regrets, do the right thing,
| etc.
| tomcam wrote:
| t-writescode wrote:
| That's gross.
| tomcam wrote:
| I hate myself
| marban wrote:
| _Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is
| Life 's change agent_
|
| -- SJ
| endorphine wrote:
| I watched this speech some 10 years ago and that quote has
| stuck with me. And particularly the subsequent sentence: "It
| (death) clears out the old, to make way for the new."
|
| This is from Steve Jobs' Stanford 2005 commencement address -
| https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc (at 12:03)
| th2398423984 wrote:
| Any advice for someone who has not done anything other than work
| in the last 15 years (weekends and vacations spent home indoors
| etc.)? I spend my free time obsessing how I'm pissing away my
| time on this planet and at the same time terrified of doing
| something else.
| rhexs wrote:
| Sure, see a therapist, find out why that is.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Start small and spend your weekend and vacation not indoors? :)
| if you are really afraid of getting away from a job then just
| bringing some reading material for the job outside could go a
| long way
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Time spent happily is the best possible way of spending it.
| Were you happy doing nothing? If so, perhaps it time was well
| spent.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Looks like you know what there are some problems (at least in
| your POV) with your current life.
|
| Take a sabbatical[0] and try to understand what do you need to
| be a happier person.
|
| [0] in my case it was a sessions of a late night and beer talk
| with a people who doesnt't know me, but was greatly supportive
| of my situation (beer hleped there). YMMV.
| chaps wrote:
| Hm. I dunno about others, but whenever I hear someone say that,
| what I hear is that _sections_ of our life are short. Childhood
| is short, teenage years are short, early twenties are short, etc
| etc. Cumulatively it 's "long", but that misses a lot of the core
| point.
| czbond wrote:
| Fair point - the sections we have to adjust to an be short,
| relative to how we figure them out.
|
| For example, one has to figure out how to be a man in some
| period of 15-23yro. Then live that. Then if one has kids, how
| to wholly be responsible for others in that 20's-30's range.
| Then wholly how to let them go, and then potentially to help
| one's parents after that. All while balancing self, identity,
| aspirations, dreams, adulting, and placing food on the table.
|
| Each period is short, in a long overarching "cumulative years"
| mcm1053_ wrote:
| These are truly my favorite types of articles on HN.
| globile wrote:
| Was waiting for someone to post PaulG's take on this. So here
| goes:
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
| ryandrake wrote:
| > It's even worse when people come up with deferred life plans.
| They'll say something like "When I'm forty, I'm going to retire
| and write a book" or "I'll do this thing I hate right now so I
| can make money, then in ten years I'll do what I really love".
| Seriously? You think that the universe is going to let your life
| proceed the way you want it to? What guarantee do you have of
| making it to that age?
|
| This is often used as a reason not to save when you're young, and
| to generally dunk on the the traditional idea of retirement.
| Believe this and in a few decades we're going to have a large
| number of people aged 80-120 seriously struggling. Apart from a
| recent dip, average life expectancy in the US has been going up
| pretty much forever. Life is not necessarily long, but it can be.
| Yes, you might drop dead of a heart attack the day before you
| retire, so all that saving was a waste. You also might make it
| past 100. Who among us has enough savings to last until they are
| 100? You won't if you're spending every penny you have when
| you're young.
|
| Thanks to compounding interest, the best time to save and invest
| is when you are young. A dollar earned and invested when you're
| 20 is many times more valuable than that dollar earned when
| you're 60.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Thanks to compounding interest, the best time to save and
| invest is when you are young. A dollar earned and invested when
| you're 20 is many times more valuable than that dollar earned
| when you're 60.
|
| And money spent on experiences in 20s can't be made up with
| experiences in 60s - plus the kind of experiences you have in
| 20s will define the person you'll be in 60s. Hell even in 30s
| you can't get your 20s back. There's a biological peak - saving
| money for your twilight years might make you safer in the far
| future but it's guaranteed to make you miss out on your prime.
|
| I'm willing to bet investing in yourself early will outperform
| the compounding interest you make on income you have at the
| start of your career.
| wwilim wrote:
| Depends on your definition of performance
| 8jef wrote:
| Exactly. And wonderfully, performance can be anything, by
| any measure. My preferred metric: time ratio for which I
| get to choose - or agree to - whatever I do. In my case,
| pretty much all my time. Because one day I decided to make
| my own choices, in regard to time allocations, occupations
| and general use of my time. Which means I'm almost never
| defaulting to other people's agenda, unless I agree to it.
| Everything is a choice, and I make it my own.
| adjkant wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet investing in yourself early will
| outperform the compounding interest you make on income you
| have at the start of your career.
|
| People present this often as a choose 1, but in reality
| there's a big gradient of options here. There's no reason you
| can't spend some money for experiences in your 20s and also
| save a good deal for compounding interest in the future.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >There's no reason you can't spend some money for
| experiences in your 20s and also save a good deal for
| compounding interest in the future.
|
| Well in my scenario (and that of most of my peers/siblings)
| income is low and cost of living is a large % - you don't
| have a lot of discretionary funds to manage so it usually
| is one or the other.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| JFYI you're writing from a very privileged perspective. I live
| in former USSR. My parents were robbed by the state of their
| life savings twice in their life (one day you have enough to
| buy a car -- a luxurious item indeed, next day you have
| nothing), and thrice their saving were depreciated by 30-60% in
| a single day due to shock devaluation of the currency. I think
| this is pretty typical for 'developing' countries.
|
| Most of my Russian friends have been working unofficially and
| haven't been paying anything to the retirement fund even before
| the war started (which just seems to have proven them right).
| dangus wrote:
| The article is extremely dismissive toward the real reason most
| people waste time. The vast majority of the world is working for
| basic subsistence.
|
| 60% of the world's population does not have a flushing toilet at
| home. Hopefully the author's magic wand is a hella good one.
| ozim wrote:
| Is that article target audience "whole of humanity"?
|
| That 60% of population is probably not going to read that
| article. They will be busy with more important things like
| living till next day.
| WJW wrote:
| Interestingly, Seneca himself most likely did not have a
| flushing toilet at home.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| With all due respect, that is total bullshit.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Yes it is despite what seneca says.
|
| People obsessed about not wasting their lives are actually the
| ones that waste it.
| simmerup wrote:
| I suspect the only way to guarantee you've wasted a moment is
| to spend it in some unneeded state of distress.
|
| The more moments you spend worrying about whether you're
| spending the moment well, the more waste accumulates
| nnoitra wrote:
| Yes and if naturally wired to worry ceaselessly you need
| significant practice to overcome it.
|
| This world will teach you everything except how to be
| peaceful which is the most valuable skill of all.
| dinobones wrote:
| The good health/good energy/good looking period of life is like
| 30 years maximum. I would consider that pretty short.
| dangus wrote:
| You don't know any good looking 48 year olds? (18+30)
|
| If you stay thin and keep active, you could probably double
| that estimate to 60 years if not longer.
| ozim wrote:
| Well I am 35 and have good health/energy could drop some belly
| fat but I don't care.
|
| Look at the Hollywood stars 60 year olds looking still good.
| wwilim wrote:
| A few weeks ago I saw my parents, aged 60 and 61, dance at my
| wedding and I would like to disagree with your statement.
| spicysugar wrote:
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Everyone complains about how short life is, but that
| perspective is broken. Life is not short. The real issue is that
| we waste so much of it.
|
| > Life is long enough for you to achieve your wildest dreams.
| You're just so busy wasting it that you get to the end without
| living much of it.
|
| Hey guys, what kind of fallacy is this? This observation
| presented is saying its not _too_ short to live your wildest
| dreams, but isn 't refuting the idea that it is short, which is a
| common view of relative time that is shared amongst people.
|
| My observation is that we can spend too much of it chasing our
| wildest dreams, while their observation is that people spent too
| much time wasting it (as if that is exclusive from not chasing
| their wildest dreams).
|
| Kind of all points to the idea that it is short, and doesn't
| bother refuting the supposition.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| indeed, you could do one or the other, and you could fail at
| both.
|
| in fact for some having a decent place to live is a dream out
| of reach.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Anyone else been increasingly dissatisfied by Stoicism lately?
| It's been super in vogue for about a decade now in tech for some
| reason. I've read several books on it, and apply some of the
| practices, but there's something that doesn't sit quite right
| that I haven't fully been able to put my finger on it yet.
| ketanhwr wrote:
| Maybe you'll agree with this (really good) argument against
| stoicism: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/stoicism-is-not-
| enough
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Thanks, all those points track pretty well with how I'm
| feeling about it.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Life is infinitesimally short regardless of what anyone says
| sambapa wrote:
| Life is the longest thing in life
| chasd00 wrote:
| "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone
| drops to zero" - Fight Club
| phabricator wrote:
| "Today, men still quote 'Fight Club'" - Peter C. Baker
| paulpauper wrote:
| or the price of crypto
| tourist_on_road wrote:
| Looks like the site went down due. you can access the article
| here -- https://archive.ph/QQ5iV
| sh4rks wrote:
| > You should organize each day as if it were your last
|
| I never understood this. If you live every day as your last,
| surely you would only engage in short term pleasures instead of
| pursuing longer term hobbies/goals?
| leobg wrote:
| Perhaps you'll find Nietzsche's ,,eternal recurrence" to be a
| better approach to the same question. Which is basically to
| ask:
|
| ,,If I took this minute / this day / this month / this year of
| my life... and somebody were to tell me that I had to live it
| over and over again, ad infinitum, with everything exactly as
| it was, and nothing changed at all... would I be screaming Hell
| Yes, or would I be screaming Hell No?"
|
| To me, it's an appeal not to recklessness or consumption of
| short-term pleasures, but to living in integrity with oneself.
| Not to take shortcuts which you think you'll somehow be able to
| compartmentalizations out of your life. And I think he meant it
| also to be applied in retrospect: Whatver you did, and whatever
| happened in your life... can you ,,own" it, with all its
| apparent flaws, and pains and errors? Are you able to see
| yourself, and see your own life, beyond the categories of of
| good and bad? Can you, like a good author, take the good, the
| bad and the ugly from your past and create something of truth
| and beauty from it?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > If I took this minute / this day / this month / this year
| of my life... and somebody were to tell me that I had to live
| it over and over again, ad infinitum, with everything exactly
| as it was, and nothing changed at all... would I be screaming
| Hell Yes, or would I be screaming Hell No?
|
| If that argument were actually valid, it would be a fully
| general refutation of any possible use of your time
| whatsoever. There's a reason the narrative trope of "trapped
| in a time loop" contains the word "trapped".
| leobg wrote:
| 1) You'll die anyway. So what does "make use of your time"
| even mean?
|
| 2) There's an augment to made that anything you do or think
| is predetermined anyway, by past, biology and
| circumstances. Or, if you prefer, that it's all based on a
| fundamental randomness. Either way, that you are more a
| symptom of the universe than an independent agent. In that
| sense, Nietzsche's thought experiment might actually be
| closer to reality than we think.
|
| 3) How can you possibly know that your life right now is
| not actually just such a recurrence? The fact that you
| don't know that it is one would be, of course, part of the
| script. (Knowing that it is a recurrence would be changing
| something. And that nothing will be changed is part of the
| premise.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Either you are dying. Or you know you will be killed, so why
| not waste all the money and other property you have when you
| still have a chance... Seems like not really advise you should
| follow exactly.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I see it as, don't postpone the things you really want to do
| until some later day, that day may never come. Start on them
| now.
| layer8 wrote:
| Aka don't wait for the right time, because the time is almost
| never perfectly right.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Nothing to understand. It's poorly worded at best.
|
| How do you feel about "You should organize each day to be the
| best possible prototype for all following days?"
| layer8 wrote:
| That would imply that all following days have the same
| requirements, which is not the case at all, neither in the
| short term nor in the long term.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It does not. "each day" means you reapply the mantra every
| day to the then current state of your life. "for all
| following days" is the mechanism which forces you to most
| broadly consider the future and not just one day (as is the
| issue with "live every day as if it was your last")
| __s wrote:
| I recently reread Ecclesiastes & on the second reading came
| across what people tend to be trying to get at with that
| advice. I'll try give it from the Ecclesiastes perspective
|
| Whatever you go out & gather, is ultimately worthless. So if
| you're in a shit mood & thinking that some day this work will
| pay off, you'll find that your days are spent in a shit mood &
| thinking some day this work will pay off. & then you die &
| everything you did doesn't really matter, & you spent your time
| in a shit mood. So if instead you find enjoyment in the simple
| daily toll, that your work today is essentially paying for the
| food you'll enjoy today, then you'll find your days are spent
| in a good mood. & then you die & everything you did doesn't
| really matter, but at least you enjoyed your time while it
| lasted
|
| So "live it like your last" is a bit hyperbolic, but at least
| don't justify your suffering on the idea that life gets better
|
| To try make sense of "live it like your last", it might be
| better said as "go to sleep at peace with your life even if you
| were to die in the night"
| m3kw9 wrote:
| " everything you did doesn't really matter, but at least you
| enjoyed your time while it lasted"
|
| Problem with this statement is that what matters after
| someone does really doesn't matter to that person after only
| before, also, on a long enough time span nothing will matter
| after. Does what most people did 3000 years ago matter?
| 10000? A million? I wouldn't chase legacies
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think people 'chasing legacies' are generally
| concerned with whether 'most people' are remembered, that's
| exactly the point isn't it? Standing out?
|
| A better 'problem' to point out might be the timespan over
| which few legacies that are remembered originate. 'I want
| to be the Tutankhamen of my time' is all very well, but
| there's no reason to think there will even be one.
| varjag wrote:
| Some people have tamed fire, invented wheel and overcame
| population bottlenecks. We don't know their names but their
| legacy is profound.
| layer8 wrote:
| As a counterpoint, if they hadn't done it, someone else
| would very likely have done it. Individual artworks would
| be a more unique legacy.
| Deinos wrote:
| Stoicism appears to have had a great deal of influence on
| Jewish writing at the time. Have a look at "St. Paul and
| Stoicism" if you are so inclined. Interesting paper.
|
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/475275
|
| ------------
|
| Edited to correct attribution error.
| lisper wrote:
| Not sure if you meany to imply this or not, but
| Ecclesiastes is not Christian writing, it's Jewish.
| Deinos wrote:
| Dammit, was a mental lapse. Appreciate the correction!
| mad2021 wrote:
| That's a beautiful perspective. Thanks for your comment.
| beebmam wrote:
| Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes.
| It is: anything you do is meaningless compared to God, and
| you should fear him and therefore do what He has commanded of
| you.
|
| Excuse my French, but this God is a real asshole, and I think
| it's best that people ignored these threats.
| jdsnape wrote:
| God is an asshole if you read a random bit of the Bible in
| isolation of the theology/tradition that sits around and
| explains it. The way I've heard it explained by people who
| have lived this for a long time is a slightly different
| angle; which is that the way humans were created means that
| the way to be truely happy is to be aligned with God's
| will. At the start you don't really know what that is,
| which is why we have 'commandments'/instruction, but as you
| deepen that relationship it becomes more and more
| fulfilling.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Whatever happened to the golden rule? Do people really
| need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass?
|
| If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in
| getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with
| him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be
| happy.
| jhrmnn wrote:
| He doesn't need anything. The statement is that there's a
| way to live a good (satisfying) life, the God being the
| creator knows that way, and he reveals it to people, who
| should follow it (to live satisfying lives)
| beebmam wrote:
| It is not "to live satisfying lives". It is because God
| commands it, and you should fear him.[1] It's very
| explicit.
|
| 1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesias
| tes%20...
| jhrmnn wrote:
| Well, yes, if you take the whole Bible literally, it's
| not very nice and not even self-consistent. But I don't
| think many reasonable people do that
| edgelard wrote:
| cs137 wrote:
| This is Hacker News. It is not a place for intricate
| theological debate. God is bad, money is good, the
| systemic failures of capitalism can be ignored as long as
| we get to the Singularity, and we're all going to freeze
| our heads and be immortal.
| someotherperson wrote:
| What you're describing here is Stockholm Syndrome
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's funny but I get what the person you were
| responding to means.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The last time it is recorded as coming here in the type-0
| state known as "God" was to make an unsolicited gamble
| with Lucifer for fun to ruin Job's life just for being
| God's biggest fan, a process so egregious even _literal
| Satan_ was like "maybe dial it back a bit"
|
| That species gains its power from attention, and that one
| got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic
| religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide,
| and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn
| (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace
| the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded
| history until that point. No other supernatural being
| aside from God or its current angels did _anything_ with
| their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book.
| They were just vilified for not being God or an angel.
| Nothing else killed babies if lamb's blood wasn 't
| smeared on the door.
|
| It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to
| our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human
| kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an
| national security effort to guard against it.
| nickthesick wrote:
| I'm curious in what you are talking about here. Where did
| you get these ideas?
| sireat wrote:
| You probably know that the ending to Ecclesiastes is a bit
| controversial in that it might not have been in the
| original treatise.
|
| It is possible that it was added by an later editor to make
| Ecclesiastes suitable for inclusion in the canon.
|
| https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y
| xhevahir wrote:
| I don't believe Ecclesiastes presents one central and
| unambiguous argument. Like a lot of books in the Bible, it
| may well have more than one author, too.
| [deleted]
| wwilim wrote:
| I think you might be taking it a little too literally
| beebmam wrote:
| Approximately two-thirds of all Americans, including non-
| Christians, believe that Christ was literally resurrected
| in the physical form.[1] It is terrifying how many people
| in the US believe the bible is literally true in every
| way.
|
| 1. https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-
| hold-compl...
| ziroshima wrote:
| I think there have been a series of misinterpretations that
| unfortunately result in a lot of confusion and (in my
| opinion) completely miss the point of these stories.
|
| I don't think 'God' is an 'entity' per se, I interpret
| 'God' as the reality one lives in. "God is an asshole", and
| "Life is a bitch" then become equivalent statements.
| Whether or not 'ignoring the threats' posed by 'God'
| according to this interpretation is wise is left as an
| exercise for the reader.
| czbond wrote:
| >but this God is a real asshole
|
| From His/Its/Her perspective, if I had Billions of life
| forms I was responsible for on each of millions(?) of
| inhabitable planets throughout just this Universe - I'd be
| crabby as $hit too. All of them needing constant resources,
| continually consuming energy to be used on everything from
| pissing it away, to working for money, or in the rare lot -
| improving the future of ones species. All while they're
| bitter and unhappy.
|
| And since I was infinite - I had to do that forever for
| some odd reason... I'd be bitter.
| WJW wrote:
| I'm not religious but this strikes me as an odd
| sentiment.
|
| First of all, if God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient
| then why would anything that humans can dream up surprise
| or annoy God? Surely it is the height of hubris to think
| that humans could surprise an omniscient deity.
|
| Secondly, if you are indeed infinite then even taking
| care of billions of lifeforms on millions of planets
| would be an infinitely small part of your attention and
| thus not worth being annoyed about.
|
| Thirdly even if would be so annoying to God to take care
| of all the species (not that God seems all that proactive
| these days) then He can just destroy the universe and be
| done with it?
|
| All in all, I don't think there is a lot of reason for
| God to be bitter or upset about anything that humanity
| does. After all, it was Him that put these urges into
| humans in the first place, so it seems kinda petty to
| then be upset about anything they choose to do.
| escape_goat wrote:
| This. Once one posits the abstract properties of God as
| infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and a priori to all
| things, a lot of religious presumptions look like
| failures of the imagination. It is trivially obvious that
| God is unknowable, that any God one claims to know is
| 'another' God placed before the true God. It is literal
| hubris to experience certitude about the nature of God,
| and there is therefore no exemption from culpability
| through the name of God for injuries done to another.
| Clubber wrote:
| I remember the question of if God is omnipotent, why does
| he allow such suffering. I believe this was explained
| away by God giving man free will. I'm not a big student,
| but I find theology interesting.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes.
| lins1909 wrote:
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Some long-term investments are not fun, but do pay off.
|
| As someone who put in the effort for many of these things and
| is now reaping the reward, I am certainly glad my past self
| got me here.
|
| Sure, a little misfortune could have led me to a drastically
| different state today.
|
| But as the saying goes:
|
| > God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot
| change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to
| know the difference.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Great comment. I've always hated that comment but your
| phrasing makes so much sense.
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. I think the description "live
| like your last" needs to be tweaked.
|
| Perhaps what is more productive is: live your days so that
| when you think back on them (let's say at a time horizon of
| months), you feel satisfied in what you've done and how
| you've grown.
| Frost1x wrote:
| As with most things in life, I think finding a balance between
| the two is most enjoyable. If you only focus on the long term
| and plan, unless you have a continuous set of long term plans
| set to culminate and actually do, you'll have gaps in your
| living experience. You'll always be saving and investing for
| that one golden day that you may never see for some reason or
| another.
|
| Meanwhile as you point out, if you focus on living in the
| moment only, you'll live on cheap small rewards in life.
|
| I think a lot of good long term strategy with allotments for
| little impulse to pepper life is the best mix, at least for me,
| so that's how I live. Every now and then I'll splurge and do
| something unplanned a little extravagant but that's because I
| already budgeted for that sort of stuff -- my little fun pocket
| change time and money. Meanwhile I have nice set long term
| goals that improve my overall life experience as I get older.
| Some may never happen and that's fine because I'm not living my
| life wailing for that special time.
| bwest87 wrote:
| Ok, echoing my top level comment... An alternative framing that
| I've come to find more helpful is to take your life expectancy,
| and cut it by 2/3. For example, if you're 20 years old and your
| life expectancy is 80 (ie. 60 more years), pretend that you
| only have 20 more, so you'll only live until you're 40. It's
| nice cause it naturally adjusts as you get older. You'll have
| smaller windows to work with.
|
| This approach strikes a nice balance. It gives you enough time
| to be able to really do something and change directions if you
| want. But not so much time that you can really waste any. It
| forces you to ask the hard questions about whether your day to
| day is truly connecting with your dreams, and whether you're on
| a path to get there.
|
| Of course, Seneca didn't have life expectancy tables to work
| with. But I think he would have approved. :)
| majani wrote:
| exactly. If I live till old age, I fully intend on living out
| my last days as a drug addict rather than some futile, painful
| attempts at curing a terminal illness
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I imagine my last day is going to be spent hooked up to a life
| support machine in a climate controlled environment as various
| close people trickle in to say farewell.
|
| I'd prefer to spend the close of my 20s doing something else
| like raving on a warm beach with a bunch of people who don't
| know me and won't miss me tomorrow, and hopefully finding one
| or two fellow travellers who I can keep in touch with until my
| dying days :)
|
| exploration vs exploitation
| lazide wrote:
| The real kicker of course, is for many people there is even
| more than a few folks coming to visit, especially for folks
| who don't do the hard and nasty stuff in like when it's
| necessary for others.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Whenever I hear/read that phrase, I always picture myself lying
| in a hospice bed, hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment.
| ergocoder wrote:
| This needs to be a post in r/comics
| 2arrs2ells wrote:
| <nit> The philosophy behind hospice is that you are *not*
| hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment. Rather, you only
| receive the minimal treatment needed to make yourself
| comfortable as you let your illness run its course. </nit>
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Fair point. I knew that, but my previous comment was poorly
| articulated in that regard. I meant something along the
| lines of: hooked up to an opioid infusion.
| beefield wrote:
| > I never understood this
|
| Me neither. I think there are two distinct possibilities you
| should consider when you think what to do today. First one is
| that you may die today. Second is that you may not die today.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| so the conclusion is that I should get life insurance and try
| all the drugs I always wanted to?
| OJFord wrote:
| If you have 'always wanted to' try a bunch of drugs.. yes
| probably you should (according to that advice).
|
| The thing to realise is that many people _don 't_ have any
| desire to try (the things that we call) drugs, so your
| comment isn't exposing some flaw in the advice.
|
| If an oracle told me it actually is my last day, I'm not
| suddenly going to smoke some weed, snort some cocaine, and
| shoot up some heroin. I wouldn't want to any more than
| knowing (or assuming, as I do) that I'll live until (at
| least!) tomorrow.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You really are sure you wouldn't do anything different if
| an oracle told you it is actually your last day? There
| are so may possibilities for making the most of it.
|
| You could take out every bit of loan or debt accessible
| and transfer all the money to charity. You could burn
| down the HQ of an oil company.
|
| If you live in a country without the rule of Law, like
| Russia, where known killers and criminals hold positions
| of power, you could try your hand at assasinating one of
| them.
| OJFord wrote:
| I said I wouldn't do drugs, not that I wouldn't do
| anything differently.
| xwdv wrote:
| It's a dumb statement. Better advice is to live a life worth
| reliving exactly the same way an infinite amount of times.
| adventured wrote:
| > I never understood this.
|
| You're definitely understanding it correctly. It's atrociously
| dangerous advice for any manner of long-term well-being. Humans
| can reasonably live to 80-100 years of age. Trying to live even
| 18,000 days as your last is psychotic and impossible, it's both
| not worth attempting that and harmful to attempt it. Being
| healthy requires thinking and acting longer term; building
| savings over a lifetime requires long-term thinking; raising
| children successfully requires long-term thinking.
|
| Try raising children one day to the next with the guiding
| parental premise being: this is our last day on earth, what
| shall we do? It's a recipe for disaster to try to live in
| short-term thinking day to day.
|
| One of our greatest attributes is the capacity to think, plan
| and act for the long-term, as many of the things we want
| require such. Notice I didn't say everyone thinks long-term
| consistently; notice I didn't pretend all of our institutions
| think long-term all the time; both are standard issue sarcastic
| criticisms against long-term thinking, neither of which
| invalidate the value of long-term thinking.
|
| The correct answer is that some things benefit from (and or
| require) short-term thinking (particularly immediate focus),
| some things benefit from (and or require) medium-term thinking,
| some things benefit from (and or require) long-term thinking.
| Where thinking implies the comprehensive (thinking, planning,
| acting, etc).
| guerrilla wrote:
| I think what it means is that you shouldn't procrastinate
| anything or think that you can make up for things later. There
| may be no later, so just do your best here and now. That of
| course includes resting when needed, so it doesn't mean always
| be doing something.
| waingake wrote:
| Read Martin Hagland for a much more applicable take on this. The
| primary way we waste time is via waged employment. For this
| reason most people have very little control over how they are
| spending their limited time alive
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/if-god-is-dead...
| jcims wrote:
| Most of us would be lucky to have 500,000 hours of conscious
| thought.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| DKB.show must go on!
| xxxtentacijs wrote:
| AMAZING
| xchip wrote:
| Seneca already said all this 2070 years ago
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca)
| nostromo95 wrote:
| Literally that's the point of the article.
| Mortiffer wrote:
| I think it's worth talking to a few people who have master or
| phds in Philosophie. From my sample the general rule is that
| staying philosophy results in your have a huge set of new
| questions but no answers. So i am very skeptical of spending time
| on reading more philosophy than i have.
|
| Just a comment on that second to last paragraph. Rest is good imo
| throwaway23234 wrote:
| At 35 I decided to fuck the "normal life" and just go RVing with
| my wife. We saw the country (US). Fast forward 7 years and we are
| now building our own house paycheck to paycheck. It's a beautiful
| property. I know there are people on here that have much, much
| more and could afford to buy an already existing house. But my
| dreams are to have a different kind of life, so in that sense I
| am definitely living that. Yes there are mornings I wish I can
| wake up and NOT want to install my own well pump, install mini
| splits in 105 degree weather, install siding, dig foundations,
| run 40 80-pound bags of cement in a mixer, 2 at a time. etc etc
| etc...
|
| But my alternative life would have been spending the last 7 years
| playing new versions of Call of Duty and kinda pissing time away.
| foobiekr wrote:
| two of my uncles did this - plumbers until 50, then RV life for
| 20 years, then built houses. as a kid they were my heroes.
| older, I am not so sure it worked out, but they had a good time
| for a while.
| frereubu wrote:
| What part(s) of it don't you think worked out with the
| benefit of hindsight?
| rdudek wrote:
| Is it really pissing time away if you're enjoying your time
| spent playing video games? While it's great that you found an
| opportunity to go RVing with your wife. Because such a feat is
| not really possible for everyone to do, less people do it so
| less congestion and you can make it enjoyable. Imagine if 100
| million people in the US decided to all at once go RVing around
| the country. All the areas would be full of RVs and I bet it
| would not be as enjoyable anymore.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > Imagine if 100 million people in the US decided to all at
| once go RVing around the country. All the areas would be full
| of RVs and I bet it would not be as enjoyable anymore.
|
| Yes, I call this the "Dave Ramsey Syndrome". You know, he
| wants everyone to save money and not spend it so they can be
| debt free and have millions of dollars in the bank. But if
| everyone did that the economy, our consumer economy, would
| crash.
|
| And you are right. I have been living in my Van since before
| the pandemic. It is impossible to find camping spaces now in
| national parks and even the Wal Marts are starting to get
| pissed at all the RVs again. These people too, these rich
| people, sit out on BLM lands longer then allowed, because it
| is free and they could most likely afford an RV park.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I have been living in my Van since before the pandemic.
| It is impossible to find camping spaces now in national
| parks and even the Wal Marts are starting to get pissed at
| all the RVs again
|
| I've been doing #vanlife on and off since 2012. Camping
| spaces in most national parks were already hard to find
| most of the time. Municipalities and Walmarts made
| overnight parking illegal in their lots in many places
| years or even decades before the pandemic.
|
| What you're describing is real, but not new.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Come on, who would choose an RV park over BLM land? It's
| not about the money.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| The video game argument represents some kind of fallacy: A
| rational actor picks the best form of entertainment which
| turns out to be video games - how can that be wrong?
|
| However, there are many local minima in entertainment and
| life and many great things require going through a learning
| curve and preparation. Even the greatest couch enthusiast can
| remember, say, a magical moment during a pickup basketball
| game, and surely those kinds of moments are happening in this
| city right now...
| jnovek wrote:
| Yeah, no.
|
| I would see a pickup basketball game as "pissing my time
| away". I don't like basketball and loathe playing
| competitive sports.
|
| Further, I really enjoy doing things by myself. I often
| play video games to challenge myself -- it's me versus a
| previous version of me.
|
| Just goes to show ya -- those "magical moments" are highly
| personal and defined by the things that give a person joy.
| And for some folks -- like me -- that includes video games!
| havblue wrote:
| Frankl at least talks about life in terms of the
| responsibility you take on in your decisions. So in that
| sense video games are less likely to be meaningful than RVing
| with your main squeeze.
| theptip wrote:
| I don't think the point of the parent comment or the OP is
| that everyone should RV instead of gaming. It's that each
| individual should do what they find fulfilling, now not later
| because there might not be a later.
|
| I think the reply would be: If you get joy and fulfillment
| from gaming, do that instead of working really hard to earn
| money that you don't need. If you think you'd rather RV than
| work & play games, go RV now instead of putting it off for
| later/retirement.
| izzydata wrote:
| "Is it really pissing time away if you're enjoying your time
| spent playing video games?"
|
| It depends on if you ever think you will regret it or not. I
| thought the same thing 10 years ago when I was spending years
| playing games and having fun. Now it feels like I wasted a
| colossal amount of time no matter how much fun it was at the
| time. I'd never made that choice knowing what I know now.
| qwertox wrote:
| Before I started with my daily sports routine, at least one
| hour of biking outside every day (unless it's impossible
| due to health or schedule, but laziness, tiredness or
| season/temperature is not an excuse), I noticed that I have
| wasted the possibly best years of my life in front of a
| screen. Now I get to pick up what's left over and make the
| best out of it.
|
| I really wish I had started with it when I was in my 20s,
| ideally as an early teenager or even kid, when breaking
| some bones is not something which keeps you concerned for
| many weeks.
|
| I wish I could drive into the alps and ride the trails, but
| I'm currently "recovering" from a crash which ripped a
| tendon. In quotes because it can't really be fixed and I
| have to see if the system is still usable enough. But it is
| enough for having a lot of fun outside.
|
| Today at 17:00 I was completely tired laying in my bed
| after watching hours of a TV series, half asleep and
| feeling badly rested, was struggling to motivate me to
| ride. But at 18:00 I pulled myself up and went, and I had a
| blast during those 1:30 hours, was even making screams of
| joy (I ride alone, so it's no show, but a feedback
| expression to myself). I was congratulating me for making
| the decision to go and ride, had super beautiful views of
| the nature at wonderful 27degC (80degF). Dry but planted
| fields, juicy green forests, sounds of birds and insects,
| breathable, clean air, warm wind being felt by the hairs on
| the legs and arms, what an experience.
|
| I have a lavalier mic attached to my backpack's breast
| strap and an app where I can press record, to record notes
| of 1 minute length. I will quote you one of the recordings
| from today:
|
| rec60s--1656265743723--19-49-03.q128.mp3: "Well, thank you!
| Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you that
| you overcame yourself to then get up, go out and ride the
| bike, because it was really, really nice! Thank you very
| much! It was good, it was worth it, you have to do this,
| always, always. Always force you to do this. Regardless of
| how weary, how tired, how uninspired, you rode extra.
| Extra, because it was so nice. Other ways, new ways, new
| trails"
|
| With "extra" I meant that I had initially decided to ride
| my minimum of 23 km in a relatively dull track which I know
| I will be able to complete under any circumstances (except
| when I have migraine), but then decided to leave the
| asphalt, ride up a hill through a forest into some fields,
| where I then took this photo.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/HGQ55kQ
|
| Maybe I'm a psycho for talking to me like that, but I know
| that I switch contexts very hard so that I'm a different
| person when I do different things and tend to forget the
| experiences. So this was a "thank you" and reminder from
| the biking me to the baseline me. Usually I only record new
| ideas or things I get reminded of which I forgot.
|
| I wasn't really sure if I was going to ride today, I didn't
| yesterday, because I rode so hard and long distances last
| week that by butt was really hurting, and no amount deer
| tallow cream (Xenofit Second Skin) seemed to be helping.
| But it turned out that I had zero issues with it today.
|
| Most of the riding time is a relatively hard exercise with
| heavy breathing and lots of sweating. No video game will
| ever be a replacement for such a thing.
|
| But I know that I very likely already have my best years
| behind me (and lost them to a screen).
| picozeta wrote:
| May I ask how old you are?
|
| A very inspiring story.
| qwertox wrote:
| In the 45-50 bracket. I never did any sports, ate mostly
| junk and drank at least 3 L of softdrink a day. I started
| riding bike 3 years ago.
| picozeta wrote:
| Thx! You seem on a good track now, and don't regret
| what's past! Anyway, good luck in your future endeavours.
| qwertox wrote:
| Thanks. The same for you.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Thank you sharing that. It was lovely to read especially
| the part where you thank yourself, bought a smile to my
| face :)
|
| It's a great way to think about it.
| april_22 wrote:
| Really like the idea of having a mic attached to your
| backpack to record and listen back to things you
| sometimes just say randomly
| qwertox wrote:
| I already tried to get it transcribed in Google Cloud so
| that I could get a summary email with a map, stats and
| the recorded notes in text form, but it didn't work. That
| was around two years ago, so maybe nowadays it could
| work. Also the notes are spoken in German which was bad
| back then and have some degree of noise in it (gravel,
| wind).
|
| Edit: I just tested it with the recorder app on my Pixel
| 3 (played back via headphones pressed against the phone's
| mic) and it was able to transcribe it with almost no
| errors, so there is hope.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It seems silly to me to regret the past, as it cannot be
| changed. It can be used to inform decisions you make
| today or in the future, but regretting it is pointless.
| tomcam wrote:
| Well I don't think you're a psycho for talking to you.
| Say hi to you for me sometime.
| 888666 wrote:
| Could that possibly be a failure on the part of your future
| self rather than on your past self?
| eikenberry wrote:
| Regret isn't an problem with your past, it is a problem
| with your current self's opinion of the past. You are
| judging your past self based on your current self but that
| is unfair and you might want to think how that impacts your
| life going forward. Making decisions based on what you
| think your future self will approve of doesn't seem like
| it'd have the best results.
| SamvitJ wrote:
| I love this take on regret, and it really resonates with
| how I reason about it.
|
| I wrote a short blog post on the idea of judging your
| past self based on your current values:
| https://www.samvitjain.com/blog/regret/. Curious what you
| think!
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I vehemently disagree. Making decisions based on your
| future self would like is most generally the best thing
| you can do. Maybe you should really go out for a run even
| though you don't want to. Your future self will thank
| you. Maybe you should start working on that thing that is
| due soon. Your future self will thank you. And there are
| countless more examples. The practically write
| themselves.
| eikenberry wrote:
| None of those are future in a planning sense. They are
| immediate goals with immediate impacts. Getting exercise
| regularly pays off almost immediately and continues to
| pay of day to day. Finishing a project today has the
| immediate reward of finishing it and not having to worry
| about it anymore. The example was your 10 year from now
| self. And while you might come up with some 10-year span
| anecdotes, I don't see it being a good heuristic for
| living your life in general.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| They are definitely future planning things. IF you don't
| go for a run now you won't notice tomorrow, you won't
| notice in a week. You won't even notice in a month. But
| compare a person who is 50 who was active for his entire
| life and one who isn't and the differences can be stark.
| wruza wrote:
| Can't we say that an inactive person just lived through
| their life quicker because they didn't spend time on
| these activities? Absolute years of life isn't a
| meaningful metric here, imo.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The examples you've given here are both extremely short
| term _and_ are presumably things that help you achieve
| goals now-you wants.
|
| I know what I want for myself in five years. I don't and
| to large degree _can 't_ know what me-in-five-years will
| wish I had wanted.
|
| My approach is to go for the things I want for myself
| now, while always being cognizant of providing options
| and opportunities for the future. It's not perfect, and
| it never will be because I don't have perfect foresight.
| But it works well enough.
| [deleted]
| orobinson wrote:
| Interesting. I was very into PC gaming in my teens and look
| back on that time quite fondly. Certainly not with any
| regret or a feeling that I wasted my time.
| chrischen wrote:
| I think the key here is the regret. Is playing games
| alone, or with friends really that much different from
| some other activity, such as traveling, alone, or with
| friends? Sure you learn while traveling, but also get
| good at gaming the more you do it. You can even
| substitute traveling with some other hobby (playing the
| guitar, building legos, etc). Some may argue that the
| guitar is a "useful" skill but I'd argue that gaming can
| be a useful skill in the same sense.
| xhrpost wrote:
| Same. If anything, my teen gaming years may have helped
| get me through school.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Because there isn't that much else to do as a teen. The
| opportunity cost of spending time on gaming is low. You
| _could_ get a job and start saving or investing, or study
| harder and advance your education more quickly, but it 's
| not the expectation that teens will do this in a
| significant way.
|
| An adult who is free to do anything and chooses to spend
| a lot of time gaming has a higher opportunity cost and a
| higher likelyhood of regret later.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > You could get a job and start saving or investing, or
| study harder and advance your education more quickly
|
| I see this more of a waste of teenage years time than
| playing videogames with friends
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Learning responsibility? Learning how an organization
| functions? Perhaps learning a skill at the job (customer
| service, mental math, cooking, etc)? A waste?
| pharrington wrote:
| > Learning responsibility? Learning how an organization
| functions? Perhaps learning a skill at the job (customer
| service, mental math, cooking, etc)? A waste?
|
| but enough about being in an MMO guild
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Same here. If you're saying "that time I spend gaming was
| wasted time", you'd better have a really good story about
| what you would have done instead, excluding any kind of
| hindsight magic.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| There are a ton of low-effort forms of entertainment
| available today. It's easy for them to dominate choice.
| If you take those away, other things will emerge and grab
| your interest. If you are even a remotely interested
| person you'll find stuff. A few months ago I was at the
| beach without as much technology access and enjoyed it so
| much that I put myself on a media diet after. I suddenly
| felt more excitement about programming projects I had
| started but not finished, reading books, cello practice,
| little projects around my house and garden. One thing all
| these things had in common is that they left be feeling
| better when I was done with them. That just doesn't
| happen for me with most video games and movies. But it's
| just so much easier to fall into the couch and watch
| Netflix or grab the controller.
| wruza wrote:
| I really think this thread has to specify the types of
| video games it speaks about. Because games range from
| CoD-like X-to-Win shooters with endless changing
| backgrounds to something more elaborate and harder than
| real life activities, while being relatively short.
| april_22 wrote:
| I don't think there's anything bad with gaming in your
| free time - at any age. In the end, why shouldn't one
| just enjoy whatever life's possibilities are? It's
| obviously important to keep all other areas of life under
| control, but what's bad about enjoying doing something -
| even if it's not productive - especially when you're
| young. This is quite philosphical, but I've found the
| idea of optimistic nihilism very helpful for having an
| overall more relaxed view on life
| https://you.com/search?q=optimistic+nihilism
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I thought the same thing 10 years ago when I was spending
| years playing games and having fun. Now it feels like I
| wasted a colossal amount of time no matter how much fun it
| was at the time.
|
| I don't think you should blame yourself for 'wasting' that
| time. I'm sure past you would have considered it a waste to
| do what you do now.
|
| There's many things I may wanted to do differently, but I'd
| never actually do so since they brought me where I am now.
| ge96 wrote:
| There is also that aspect where doing the same thing
| everyday makes time seem short. Versus doing something new,
| which yeah do you have the money to take a vacation.
|
| Everytime I finish a project I ask myself was it worth it.
| It's like buying a new device, you want it until you have
| it.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Yes, it is.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| I don't think his/her point is that we should all live an RV
| life. I think the point is that we should all try to live a
| fullfilling life. For some of us, it's going to be in an RV.
| For a lot of us, it could be in a very classical apartment
| building. However, what you do in this apartment building is
| (almost) entirely up to you.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd say there's two elements to fun - how you view it in the
| immediate, and how you view it further down the road. And
| given that the further down the road part is something that
| sticks with you on the order of decades, while the immediate
| part tends to be on the order of hours, it seems clear to me
| which should be given priority.
|
| For instance that's why I quit social media (excepting
| intermittent HN). I really enjoyed it in the shortrun, but I
| wasn't happy with what I was getting out of it in the
| longrun. We all convince ourselves we're making an "impact"
| by expressing ourselves, but I think that's something we all
| know is just a self delusion - we're just one voice ranting
| alongside a billion others doing the same. By contrast I've
| also spent tens of thousands of hours dedicated to chess, and
| it feels extremely good in both the short and longrun.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Though to be fair the economy would adapt to 100 million
| people RVing. Services would pop up, new taxes would be
| created I'm sure for driving x number of kilometres per year,
| etc, etc.
|
| I agree with your first point though. Perhaps the OP doesn't
| think playing COD is a great way to pass the time -- but
| video games are certainly not a waste of your life if you
| really enjoy them. This applies to any hobby.
|
| Ultimately we have a short time here and it's up to us
| personally to decide what is a waste of our time and then act
| accordingly. Judgement on these efforts is hardly effective.
| RVing with my wife sounds like an incredibly suffocating
| experience -- trapped with another person in such a small
| space -- akin to buying a boat and spending 3 years
| "sailing", without seeing land for many days on end -- just
| figuring out what to do with the day when you wake up. But
| some people yearn for it, and that's great.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I suspect a lot of competitive multiplayer games are pyrrhic
| in retrospect. That is, not necessarily fun to get there but
| with a promise of fun when you're at the top, but most people
| never really get there and so it was just kind of a waste.
| Especially games where you mostly play strangers and never
| really see them again.
| hinkley wrote:
| It is. Or at least it is for a lot of us. In working through
| some things a few years back I realized that when I'm worn
| out I do certain activities to recharge myself, and some of
| them aren't actually recharging, they're just running down
| the clock and Time is doing the recharging.
|
| Gaming was very much a pastime rather than a recharging time.
| Worse, with games it's too easy to get sucked into a thread
| that keeps me up well past bedtime, in which case I'm more
| tired then next day, not less.
|
| Other hobbies accumulate progress, and are sometimes more
| open to participation by friends and family. Now I spend a
| lot of time gardening or doing other hobbies, and more of my
| screen time comes when I'm resting or trying to limit my skin
| cancer risks (1 pm instead of 7 pm).
| theptip wrote:
| I like your phrasing here a lot. I have come to a pretty
| similar realization recently. For me a small about of
| gaming does recharge me, but as you say it's really easy to
| get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired
| or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise
| and socialization.
|
| I think it's possible to weave socialization and
| accumulated progress into the gaming experience and have it
| be a fully enriching hobby. But many (most?) single player
| experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| Regarding that last sentence, it's the exact opposite
| experience for me.
|
| I see multiplayer experiences as just a past time, and
| singleplayer experiences the one that can have a meaning
| and are valuable by themselves.
|
| I think the key point here is what singleplayer games are
| we talking about, because the offer is more varied than
| ever.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was young I realized I was escaping into games and
| damaging my life and relationships (one of the tests for
| addiction) and so I'm always going to hold them at arm's
| length.
|
| When I realized I needed a change I latched onto the fact
| that most people wouldn't understand my excitement for an
| accomplishment in a video game, it wasn't something I
| could bond with people over. But if I stopped fucking
| around and put that energy into programming, I could have
| accomplishments people understood (that turned out to
| only be only partly true. I still have programming
| accomplishments that my peers and communities don't
| understand).
|
| Bonding over games has shifted a bit since then. I know a
| hard of hearing kid who socializes online because
| conference calls make everyone have the same problem:
| differentiating two speakers is difficult. Everything
| sounds like hearing aids sound.
|
| But it's still easier for people to comment on my garden
| than whether I have finished the Thieves guild or
| stormcloak quest line in Skyrim, as an elf.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > But many (most?) single player experiences are just a
| pastime for me, as you say.
|
| By this measure reading books would also just be a
| pastime? I see gaming more like an interactive story
| (especially singleplayer).
| wruza wrote:
| But why is socialization recharging and "pastime" not? My
| bet is because the former allow you to talk through the
| issues.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| I think Seneca would roll his eyes at most of these
| responses TBH. Who cares if you're just gaming to "pass
| the time"? When you're gaming, you're having fun and
| enjoying your life _in the moment_. It 's only afterward
| when you start the cycle of criticizing yourself for not
| doing something "productive" with that time that the
| negative feelings enter. In fact, the whole exercise of
| feeling bad about yourself for playing a fun game and
| relaxing is exactly PART of the problem Seneca talks
| about - unless your gaming habits cause you to destroy
| your links to other important sources of joy and health,
| you shouldn't feel bad about having a fun "pastime"
| activity, that is just as valid as keeping a garden or
| reading a good book of fiction.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Is drinking?
|
| It's easy to delude yourself.
| ta988 wrote:
| This sounds like a fallacy to me. If everybody wanted to go
| see a concert, most people wouldn't get a seat. If everybody
| wanted to fly tomorrow etc. The good thing in the world is
| also that bit everyone dreams of the same thing.
| Xeronate wrote:
| I'm going to add a second data point of deep regret over time
| spent gaming and playing sports in high school and college.
| They contributed negatively to my life and put me so far
| behind where I could have been socially and intellectually
| which are things older me cares about immensely and it is
| unfortunate that I wasn't able to consider the future when I
| was younger. The idea that all leisure activities are equally
| valuable is a fallacy in my opinion.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Playing video games and surfing the web for fun, living with
| friends and family instead of having a large family and a
| consumerist lifestyle, would have a smaller footprint
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It depends on the game.
|
| Not facetious - for me it's all about whether you build
| memories,and whether you'll regret time later.
|
| Mass effect, deus ex, back in the day Another World or
| Sierra's space quest and Rama etc - these are important
| memories and experiences to me.
|
| Overwatch (nearest call of duty analog I played, maybe), let
| alone all the phone games, are just time killers in the sense
| I do them to pass the time. They are games I actively regret
| playing moments, not even years after I'm done.
| progman32 wrote:
| Precisely this. Mass Effect in particular triggered some
| deep introspection that measurably improved my life. I
| suppose it's just like other forms of media. Some books are
| just time wasters, while others are deeply meaningful to
| their readers. And there's overlap in those groups.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I live my life in a similar way, at least at times. I decided
| decades ago that I didn't want to work five days a week taking
| two vacations a year for 20-30 years and then retire
| comfortably.
|
| Every few years, I take a lot of time off. Months, sometimes
| over a year. If I plan well, I have money saved and I travel.
| Every time I do this, it sets me back financially; sometimes
| I'm completely broke before I start working again. I'd be well-
| served to balance it a little better, and only blow half my
| savings before going back to the grind. It's not easy for me to
| find that balance, and sometimes it's a real struggle.
|
| I have a knack for poor timing (left a job right before the
| 2001 dotcom crash, left a job right before the 2008 recession,
| and left my latest job just now, when there appears to be a
| recession looming). I'm about to set off on a months-long RV
| trip, and for once I expect to have a decent amount of savings
| left at the end, and plan on buying a house some time next
| year. While I like my itinerant lifestyle, it's time to secure
| a base of operations, too. Something modest, so that it won't
| prevent me from doing another trip like this in a few years.
|
| It's not for everyone; I get that. I don't think it's a better
| lifestyle than working hard and retiring in comfort. It's
| better for me, though.
|
| You're only your current age once. If you wait until you're
| old, you won't have the same experiences. I'm not willing to
| deny myself these moments along the way in return for a
| potential future payoff. So many people die before they get to
| enjoy the fruits of their labor. It's possible to work full-
| time and simultaneously live a fulfilling life; I see plenty of
| people do it. I don't know where they get the energy, though;
| all I can manage while working is TV, video games, and
| infrequent weekend activities. Most of the time I feel like all
| I do is work. Big breaks are what keep me sane.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Do people who do this have kids?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Did the kids -- nest is empty -- time to switch gears on
| life and live the way I have wanted to for a long time
| (second best time to plant a tree and all that, you know).
| badrabbit wrote:
| Good for you for chasing your dream
| foobarian wrote:
| I'd love to read the exit interview of your kids when they get
| to 30. Did anyone else go through this with their parents?
| Would you/are you changing anything as a result?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| 2 words for the path in the middle (sort of, at least for me) -
| adrenaline sports. I don't say which exactly should work for
| likes of others, that's kind of unique to each of us. For me
| its climbing, paragliding, skiing/ski touring, a bit of
| alpinism. Plus diving when near corals, also serious hiking.
|
| Apart from making me properly happy (and some of those are
| easily post-work ones if you don't have kids, like climbing or
| paraglide depending on your place), they keep me amazingly fit,
| which is source of long lasting content from oneself. Vacations
| spent backpacking in crazy exotics (mostly south east asia)
| help too.
|
| I can do boring and uninspiring software dev office job that
| pays the bills and some more (seldom intertwined with nice
| creative part when actually solving interesting problems,
| rather than drowning in processes and politics). It doesn't
| dent the content/happiness part a slightest bit.
|
| Also numerous side effects - one starts eating healthier. Any
| kind of gaming addiction I had before was cured too, now its
| just waste of life that repulses me (not making critique - if
| that's your real kick I guess go for it, but I can't anymore).
|
| There is one slight problem with this, although it otherwise
| worked me 100% for past 10 years - if you get kids and are not
| utter sellfish a-hole, you will lose most of this, at least for
| some (long) time. Positive side is, one day you will be one
| hell of inspiration for them. Other source of issues is
| accident - time off everything, for longer, can be depressive.
|
| Talking as proud parent of two small kiddos who exhausted me
| during WFH to max, and who after 4 month recovery of messed up
| wrist broke his foot in kindergarten and is on crutches at
| least for next 6 weeks of amazing summer. I think right now the
| lowest point in my whole life so far due to all above. But that
| means it will only go up, eventually. Life is funny.
| unemphysbro wrote:
| Are you me? I've been slowly getting into alpinism in the
| Sierras and looking into getting my p2 cert. (I'd love to
| combine the two...imagine climbing in the palisades then
| paragliding or base jumping off )
|
| I regrettably spent my 20s in academia and now I'm in tech
| and actually afford these hobbies. I'd love to have kids but
| I'm pushing it off because as you mentioned, it seems
| selfish.
|
| I'm thinking about a SEA climbing holiday during the winter.
| I'm eyeing Vietnam. Do you have any favorite locale?
| xur17 wrote:
| I started getting into skiing a few years ago, and within the
| last year have started climbing. I seriously enjoy it, but
| how do you get over the constant fear of a permanent
| debilitating injury? I've mostly rationalized this away by
| doing everything I can do stay safe (equipment, partners, not
| pushing the limits too hard), and realizing that life is here
| to be lived, but still..
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Kudos for living this kind of life. Inspiring for all of us.
| nnoitra wrote:
| are you happy?
| IncRnd wrote:
| Not the OP, but I did something very similar with my wife and
| daughter a few years ago. Each day was more enjoyable than
| the last, especially with the RV. That was the most enjoyable
| time, and that enjoyment came from just existing and taking
| things as they come. There was never any monotony.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I'd replace happy with content there.
|
| Happiness comes and goes. Contentment runs a bit deeper and
| gets at it what this article talks about.
| iasay wrote:
| Definitely subjective. Sounds like hell to me. But i respect
| anyone with enough energy to actually do something.
| nnoitra wrote:
| People are so jealous of what you wrote lol.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| You are just living your own meme. You got into RVing when the
| whole meme was taking off, #Vanlife! You were told you want a
| different kind of life. All the people not living your
| "different life" are working at the jobs you left and are
| supplying you with the things you need to live a "different
| life".
|
| And you all talk about "wasting life" like at the end when you
| die you get to do something with it all with all the time you
| did not waste. You are still pissing time away, all you did was
| give your self meaning and that makes it feel like you are not.
|
| "True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious
| dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either
| hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which
| is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest
| blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise
| man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without
| wishing for what he has not." -- Seneca
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Seneca also lived in comfort, so do as I say not as I do
| nnoitra wrote:
| Why so jealous though.
| s5300 wrote:
| Probably has something to do with how much time he's spent
| "following the DAO"
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Certainly not the response I expected from someone
| following the Tao.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Why?
| eikenberry wrote:
| Where do you get jealous?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Oh pay this comment no mind.
|
| I have found that people who are greedy will often lob
| this comment at people who expose the truth and
| foolishness of their greed. It is the only way they can
| tell themselves that what they are doing is the correct
| way to live and anyone who criticizes them is just
| "jealous".
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| i get bitterness not jealousy
|
| don't worry, be happy
| IncRnd wrote:
| "For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter,
| while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold." -- Seneca
| tima101 wrote:
| Similar story here. We traveled with my wife for 3.5 years.
| Then we built homestead on 30 acres of forest land in rural WA.
| Now I am 36 and we bought land in HI to build our second
| homestead. And it is from scratch again! Most of our income
| comes from freelance gigs. The last time I visited big city was
| over 10 years ago. No regrets here.
|
| I think the best framework is to not compare yourself to
| others. And fear of change is a normal, ordinary feeling.
| Comparing to others makes no sense, just try to do things that
| YOU will not regret and things that make you happy in long
| term.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, but we are comparing ourselves to you right now and
| feeling the wanderlust.
| foobarian wrote:
| How does raising kids work in this kind of regimen? How do
| you ensure they have a big social pool available to build
| peer relationships?
| tima101 wrote:
| No kids for now but we are making plans. My wife is younger
| than me and we are planning to have kids in the next 1-2
| years. Before we have kids we will decide and settle in one
| place. We will probably keep our second homestead since we
| are emotionally attached to it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Love to hear any thoughts you have on homesteading in
| Washington state. Specifically, areas you think are good.
|
| For some reason I am attracted to the south-eastern area that
| is drier. Forests say "fire" to me (and I also love the sun
| too much to be "enclosed" by a forest).
|
| North and/or high altitudes say "cold" to me.
| tima101 wrote:
| Yes, we are North-East, not far from Canadian border. A lot
| of snow, cold winters. We haven't lived in SE WA but
| visited the area you mentioned 3-4 times. The area between
| Pullman and, say, Kennewick. Way fewer trees, lower
| altitude but winters are less cold and less snowy. I would
| say there is no perfect place. Once you checked your main
| checkboxes, paradise is a state of mind, not place itself.
| You will have hot summers. We are at higher altitude, I
| have tractor primarily for snow but summers are much
| cooler. And we like cooler summers. This June was mostly at
| 68-75F, our german shepherd and I love it. I talked to a
| person from Texas and he mentioned 90-95F in May and
| 95-100F in June - no, thank you very much. We even bought
| land in HI at 3000 ft elevation to have 75F in summer and
| 72F in winter for the same reason.
|
| South-East WA will have hotter summers, no shade from trees
| and every time we visited it was windy. having said that
| rolling hills are beautiful, farmers are nice, some healthy
| rivers for fishing. Pullman and Moscow have shopping and
| amenities.
| tomcam wrote:
| Fantastic, and congratulations! We did roughly what you're
| doing but backwards, and still had a lot of fun doing it.
|
| However, I'm deeply envious that you can just drill a well. I
| live in Seattle, where drilling the well requires that you blow
| the mayor, bribe an inspector or two, buy what they call
| "mitigating" land someplace else in the state, and sacrifice a
| goat. And after you found a suitable plot for the well, a $1
| million drill has to be towed onto the property to make sure
| ground is preserved.
|
| Where are you living this beautiful life of you're?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Drilling a well _in the city of Seattle_ ? Why would anyone
| ever do that?
| tomcam wrote:
| Technically rural Redmond, a neighboring city. I bought
| some of the vanishing farmland.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Not sure you can technically blow this mayor but I digress
| tomcam wrote:
| I may have indulged in a wee bit of hyperbole
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Head east. Or west. There are lots of wonderful places
| outside the I-5 corridor where I would argue our quality of
| life is _at least_ on par. Different, and perhaps with fewer
| economic opportunities, but nonetheless a very high quality
| of life.
| aaraujo002 wrote:
| Life is short in a sense that I know I won't have time to learn
| about everything there is to learn. I won't have time to study
| and understand the proof of Fermat Last Theorem, the latest
| breakthroughs of physics. I won't be able learn piano like a
| professional or violin. I know that I won't have time to read
| many classic of literature, etc. I can choose to do certain
| things but now I have to choose where to focus my time.
| zandjager wrote:
| This is giving me a bit of a Zizek-ian "wisdom" feeling. E.g. in
| "Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a
| life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future." one
| can make the counter-argument of the entire marshmallow
| experiment with children where the whole point is to actually put
| things off for the future!
| adamwong246 wrote:
| I've found you have to balance the 2 sides- saving for the
| future while enjoying the present. Doing both at once is not
| impossible.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Yeah, those who refuse to bargain with the future end up the
| same as those who refuse to bargain at car dealerships. They
| pay the worst prices.
|
| Even hunter gatherers sacrifice for the future. I haven't read
| much Seneca, but this article strikes me as a shallow
| interpretation of him just from its Instagram-quote-ey notes
| that are thrown in every now and then
| sethammons wrote:
| I've always liked the marshmallow experiment, but it turns out
| less clear than we may have thought.
|
| If a child trusts the adult will be back shortly with
| marshmallow in tow, they may wait. But if adults in their lives
| are less predictable, they may reasonably choose to eat the
| marshmallow before the adult returns.
|
| The marshmallow experiment may show that kids that can trust
| adults do better in life.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Life is short because society takes so much of it. School wastes
| so much of your time, employment likewise. Some sort of drastic
| change is needed.oog
| randomsearch wrote:
| Yes, looking back I cannot believe I did not just walk out of
| high school each day. I could have headed to a library and
| learnt a lot more in a fraction of the time. I could have
| become incredibly physically fit with the remaining time, or
| improved my guitar playing.
|
| I guess I just didn't have the confidence to think - well,
| actually, this _is_ stupid and walking out is a smart thing to
| do.
| derbOac wrote:
| Yes these kind of discussions are often useless to me because
| they ignore the things in life we don't choose. They're written
| as if someone has complete agency and is just choosing between
| easier and less reward versus harder and more reward. For me at
| least the real difficulty is dealing with broken systems and
| all that's needed of you from them, when rejecting the system
| can mean complete failure of the worst kind.
|
| People don't let others steal their time because they're weak,
| it's because the system is so broken.
|
| It's not so much "do I put this effort into building a ship and
| charting new territory" it's "do I chart this ship into pirate-
| infested waters when then outcome could mean death, and
| shipbuilders are defrauding people about the safety of
| materials?" The correct analogy in contemporary society often
| isnt builders or explorers, it's refugees.
|
| Yes I'm cynical. I wish I weren't.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Life is short because of senescence
|
| If only as a society we could put some effort into that instead
| of pretty much everything else for a little while. If we solved
| anti-senescence we'd have all the time in the world to fix
| everything else
| andi999 wrote:
| Society can only give what it takes (from you and others).
| scsilver wrote:
| I dont think that is true, society can create value from
| trade and good organization providing more resources to
| everyone for collectively the same amount of work.
| andi999 wrote:
| In the sense that the whole is more than the sum of its
| parts? Of course!
| sethammons wrote:
| No synergy to be had?
| adamnemecek wrote:
| This is incorrect.
| ozim wrote:
| I really like how society provides libraries/internet - well
| you still have to spend some time on banal things like learning
| reading or filling in forms in writing to have access.
|
| School is also useful to learn about mistakes or shitty things
| people did in the past so you don't do the same in your life.
| Without society you would not have access to great minds of the
| past which might be even more useful.
|
| Unless you know you are kind of prodigy that without learning
| reading or writing you could build modern washing machine from
| raw materials available in your area.
|
| My point is that school is just a baseline for living in a
| modern society.
|
| If you by any chance live in a first world country maybe you
| should be ashamed of yourself. Maybe you should watch some
| documentary about how barely literate people struggle in 3rd
| world countries and how much of their life is wasted on meeting
| basic needs and they did not have time to attend the school or
| there was no school available at all.
| randomsearch wrote:
| They're not saying "don't educate yourself and take advantage
| of your privileges", but "school as we know it sucks and I
| could have done a lot more with the time." At least, that
| seems like the generous reading.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| It also takes fucking forever and it gets you nowhere.
| groffee wrote:
| 692,040 hours. That's short.
| glouwbug wrote:
| Not when you're constantly assigned backlogged busy work JIRA
| tickets
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| The days are long but the years are short.
|
| It's all about time scales.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| "People overestimate what they can do in a day and
| underestimate what they can do in a year"
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