[HN Gopher] The days are long but the decades are short (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
The days are long but the decades are short (2015)
Author : baxtr
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-02-08 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.samaltman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.samaltman.com)
| aerovistae wrote:
| I'll be honest, I really hate this guy's essays. Every single one
| is designed to make you feel like you're not good enough unless
| you're spending every day changing the world and being "high
| impact."
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Thank you for expressing this sentiment that whirled in my head
| when reading that particular blogpost.
|
| It felt like an impersonal scolding from a person I do not even
| know, a list of bullet points where you failed, or at least
| didn't do well enough.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I give him props for leading with the caveat, "I'm somewhat
| hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually
| seem hollow...". It'd be difficult for a list like this not to
| sound trite.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Keep in mind, Sam has started just one business and it failed
| (Loopt).
|
| I know what I'm about to write might sound like I'm trolling
| but hear me out because it comes from a genuine place ...
|
| His essays typically come across as "if you personally are not
| BUILDING something massive, you're wasting your time" ...
| though it's ironic since he himself doesn't build anything at
| all.
|
| Instead, he spends his day looking for wagers to bet using
| other peoples money in hopes he'll produce a positive return
| (and keep some of the proceeds). Much like going to a casino
| with someone elses money.
|
| Using his own definition of how people should spend their time,
| I don't understand how his own activities fall into that
| category.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
| somethoughts wrote:
| My take on the point of some of his (and PGs) essays is to
| roughly encourage the following set of actions:
|
| 1.) Make you uncomfortable staying at your current cushy
| FAANG company (or any "cushy" tech job) by encouraging you to
| work on the weekends with your friends to write a business
| plan
|
| 2.) Convince all of you to leave your comfort zone and quit
| your day jobs
|
| 3.) Apply to accelerators like YCombinator for additional
| runway and advice from people who have done it
|
| 4.) YCombinator can then potentially fund your idea
|
| And to be honest it is a win for society to create some
| discomfort among tech employees to dislodge them and turn
| them into potential founders as there is probably a
| significant amount of underutilized tech talent within
| "cushy" tech companies [1]. So its a triple win if it works
| out (tech employee who becomes a founder wins, YC wins,
| society wins).
|
| [1] There's probably some aspect of this Google strategy that
| goes on at lower levels of many tech companies.
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-a-secret-
| bench...
| Anon3343 wrote:
| You are ignoring Sam's objectively excellent performance at
| YCombinator.
|
| I have one big problem with Altman which sullies my otherwise
| incredibly high opinion of him: he explicitly denies the
| orthogonality thesis and has created a culture at OpenAI
| that, to analogize scaling modals with nuclear energy, feels
| like one that knows something cool will happen when you
| collide large enough enriched uranium lumps together at high
| speed, but does not believe nuclear explosions are possible.
|
| How he can deny the is/ought distinction when his own
| organization published Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild is
| beyond me.
|
| And now many of those most concerned with safety, such as
| Paul Christiano, appear to be leaving OpenAI.
|
| To accuse him of being incapable of building and scaling is
| incredibly obtuse. How much did YCombinator grow under his
| stewardship? I am more worried that he is too good at that.
| [deleted]
| rytill wrote:
| I am a safety advocate, and your analogy to nuclear
| explosions is pretty interesting. However, simplified
| analogies may be doing more harm than good because they
| fuel the straw-men people create of arguments for AI
| safety.
|
| I am not sure what the proper technique to get someone
| already entrenched in their perspective to broaden their
| possibility distribution is, though. Do you have any tips
| on that, as someone that appears to be engaged in the space
| and appears to advocate similarly?
| alecst wrote:
| I'll be honest, I have no idea what you're saying. Seems
| like you have some interesting points to make though.
| marvin wrote:
| The orthogonality thesis says that advanced artificial
| intelligence (yet to be built) can be both vastly
| powerful and have arbitrary goals -- in particular, goals
| that are catastrophic for humanity. (More specifically:
| capability and morality for AIs are not correlated).
|
| GP says that Altman explicitly denies this theory and
| fosters a culture that might end up creating dangerous
| AI. Implied here is that there is a risk this might cause
| a truly catastrophic accident.
|
| The parts about "safety" refers to acknowledging this
| danger and attempting to mitigate it.
|
| I don't know enough about Altman or OpenAI to make any
| judgements on their approach, but that's a brief
| explanation.
| elefanten wrote:
| Someone has to (intelligently and successfully) allocate
| capital. That's the first step to new things getting done in
| this world.
|
| The fact that he has an economic interest in doing so is very
| uninteresting -- everyone has an economic interest in their
| job. And when you're wealthy, the potential returns tend to
| be higher as well. I wouldn't confuse the fact that he stands
| to earn a lot of money from good bets with the fact that he's
| spending his time making bets that he thinks are impactful.
|
| Alternatively, your view could be stated as "only operators
| BUILD things, and capital does not." That's a fine
| perspective, but it seems like it comes down to semantics.
| You need both capital and operators working in concert to
| make things come to reality and fruition. Imo, that's a close
| enough proxy to "BUILDING" but, again, semantics..
| tiffanyh wrote:
| >>"That's a fine perspective, but it seems like it comes
| down to semantics. You need both capital and operators
| working in concert to make things come to reality and
| fruition."
|
| Just curious, do you consider bankers part of that
| equation. Because for either bootstrapped business or years
| ago prior to VC existed, bankers are the only channel of
| capital.
| elefanten wrote:
| In short, yes. You need capital willing to fund a given
| idea for it to happen.
|
| That doesn't have to come from a bank or a VC, but it
| can.
|
| So the capital allocators who allocate to successful
| projects are a necessary component of the equation.
|
| They may not "deserve" "most" of the credit, but you
| still need them around. So to loop back to your point --
| if people like Sam have convictions about what to fund /
| how to choose, they can be a useful (even integral) part
| of BUILDING things.
|
| Just because he's not an _operator_ in the equation,
| doesn 't mean that his exhortation is hypocritical. IMO
|
| edit typos
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| > intelligently
|
| As much as VCs would love to convince you they are oracles,
| the "Pros" often fare hardly better than chimps throwing
| darts at a board to pick investments.
| elefanten wrote:
| You can have a VC which never funds anything that ends up
| being meaningful. Or you can have a VC that hits a grand
| slam 0.1-1% of the time and helps bring world-changing
| businesses to reality.
|
| I'd rather have the latter kind.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| The difference between those 2 firms is almost certainly
| due to chance. Again, VCs will tell you otherwise until
| they are blue in the face.
| Bakary wrote:
| There are two points that come to mind here.
|
| The first is that, in the most literal sense, maybe 99.9%
| of the work/insight/decisions of such a capital allocator
| are going to be utterly useless since the creation of value
| will come from those rare investments that balloon out of
| proportion. I might be paraphrasing here as I recall a
| high-profile VC mentioning this exact concept. Maybe it was
| Altman himself?
|
| The second is that even in an optimal case, it's up for
| debate how exceptional capital allocators are. If 99.9% of
| their qualities amount to nothing, are they really useful
| or actually gambling middlemen that could be excised from
| the process? We could imagine for the sake of argument that
| they do in fact contribute quite a bit and generate the
| insight necessary for that fateful 0.01% to happen (in
| similar fashion to the apocryphal tale of the specialist
| charging $1 for the hammer and $9,999 for having learned
| where to smash it), but it's unclear that a moderately
| energetic and highly but not superbly intelligent
| individual couldn't also do the same if given the
| opportunity to do so.
|
| Even then, following the most charitable interpretation of
| the work of an allocator, is it efficient to give them the
| lion's share of the profits compared to those who do the
| actual work? I can't say I have the answers to these
| questions, nor am I advocating for an immediate Marxist
| revolution, but I am generally skeptical of the culture
| fostered in the tech world around this topic.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Even the best business plan with the most competent
| people behind it is a wild gamble filled with
| idiosyncratic risk and its success or failure will hinge
| on a substantial amount of luck. If professional hedge
| funds can't consistently beat a passive index fund, what
| makes VCs and bankers special?
|
| Steps to being a VC:
|
| 1. Have lots of money
|
| 2. Establish procedures that filter out the obvious
| losers, increasing odds of success from 1 in a million to
| maybe 1 in a thousand.
|
| 3. Leverage said money and procedures such that you
| statistically make money on that 1 in a thousand.
|
| It's the same way someone with infinite money can keep
| going back to the Casino until they hit the jackpot
| (assuming no house limits, this is why house limits exist
| actually), or buy up all the lottery tickets until they
| find the winning ticket.
|
| So anyone who privately funds businesses out of their own
| pocket is gambling, but they can't be removed because
| where else is the funding going to come from? Maybe you
| can crowd source if you have really good marketing and a
| popular idea. Beyond that nothing really exists on the
| scale of what VCs offer. If you hypothetically created a
| government office with a large enough budget to replicate
| the various VCs, perhaps it would be slightly more fair
| in terms of who gets access, but it would just be
| bureaucrats doing the gambling with taxpayer dollars
| instead of private entities out of their own budget,
| which wouldn't necessarily be any better if you look at
| the current state of government contracting/grants.
|
| So sadly, their money and willingness to gamble is
| largely their use and why they're entitled to profits.
| The system isn't fair and it rewards the lucky more than
| the deserving, but without said system a lot of cool,
| revolutionary stuff would never have happened.
|
| Even SpaceX and Tesla are indirect effects of the success
| of Paypal, which was initially funded by Peter Thiel.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| > _On work: it's difficult to do a great job on work you don't
| care about. And it's hard to be totally happy /fulfilled in life
| if you don't like what you do for your work._
|
| Here's a trend I see repeating itself. People in their 20s and
| 30s tend to say things like: "work on what you love."
|
| But if you ask people in their 40s, 50s, even beyond, the advice
| is: "Learn to love what you do, no matter what it is."
| jefurii wrote:
| This reminds me interviews with Japanese artisans who approach
| their swordmaking/pottery/baking/tofu-making as a spiritual
| practice. These all seem to be older people.
| pwinnski wrote:
| "Do what you love" is advice that comes from the enormous
| privilege some people have to make money doing what they love.
| I'm one of those people, so I get it, but many, many people
| don't love computer programming or something else profitable.
|
| So yes, "learn to love what you do" is much, much better
| advice.
|
| I've watched people (younger than I am) struggle with being in
| jobs they didn't love, as if they were failing. The jobs may
| have been failing them, but they weren't failing the jobs.
|
| If you're lucky--as I am, as Sam Altman is--then you can do
| what you love. Otherwise, you have to do what pays the bills
| and leaves you enough free time to pursue what you love.
| neronero wrote:
| I find Sam Altman's essays completely devoid of any insight. He's
| trying really hard to be like PG, while he simply doesn't have
| the street-cred required. Case in point, when they did a series
| of Y Combinator interviews a few years back Sam apparently
| thought to himself that it would be appropriate for him to be
| interviewed third following Elon and PG - in what world does that
| make sense?
| karagenit wrote:
| For me, the value of a piece of writing has very little to do
| with who wrote it. Successful people say silly or stupid things
| all the time, so I try not to get caught up in their echo
| chambers. Sure, most successful people are smart, but I'd argue
| most smart people aren't that successful.
|
| As for this essay, a lot of the points resonated with me, so I
| liked it. I have no clue who Sam Altman is, and I don't think
| it really matters.
| neronero wrote:
| That's the correct way to look at it. You want to evaluate
| ideas on their own merits, but you also want to use
| heuristics and proxies when determining which ideas to
| consider in the sea of ideas on the Internet. A correct
| heuristic to search for good ideas is to seek the opinion of
| the previously successful people.
| mistermann wrote:
| > 25) Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend
| when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now.
| Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get
| that excited and happy now.
|
| I find this one to be interesting. We typically take such things
| as little more than obvious platitudes, but if you think about it
| from a psychology/neuroscience perspective, it's actually very
| interesting. Like, _why can 't_ the mind manifest such states as
| easily when it is older? What are the _actual_ (as opposed to the
| "just so"[1] theories) underlying causes, and can they be
| circumvented?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story
| cvaidya1986 wrote:
| Timely read
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Look at any of his latest essays - its pretty hilarious how bad
| they are, and how much they try to sound like PG. Makes me think
| he landed the job by mimicking (and flattering) PG.
| CPLX wrote:
| I've always wondered how the philosophy and life insight of the
| ruling elite varies between public and private comments. Most of
| the advice here seems fairly anodyne and unobjectionable. Perhaps
| a little overly focused on a certain kind of "success" but still
| nothing I would think of as wrong or manipulative or anything.
|
| But when he goes to something like Bohemian Grove and has
| conversations to share insights and advice with the small
| transnational group that essentially rules the global political
| and financial system, do they also sound like this?
|
| I don't have any first hand knowledge whatsoever but my gut
| feeling says the answer is likely no.
| Bakary wrote:
| If you are a very wealthy or influential individual, you are
| essentially trapped into certain sets of behavior.
|
| You can still relate to other people, but the fact that you
| could solve most of their problems on an individual basis with
| an instant donation that would take you all of thirty seconds
| creates a gulf that can't be reached over.
|
| You can do a variety of activities, but these probably feel
| much less interesting than doing things that have an influence
| over a very large number of people. If you are, say, a CEO of a
| successful company that CEO role will be the only source of a
| certain type of feeling that can't be achieved elsewhere.
|
| I'm certain you are right: within their technocratic circles,
| they probably make far less wholesome and family-friendly
| pronouncements about life. But it's not fundamentally
| contradictory, just like a person can be crippled by an
| addiction that turns them into a monster on a regular basis
| while remaining normal, wise and approachable the remainder of
| the time.
| nobodyknowsyoda wrote:
| 37) If you find something "Open", make sure to Close it
|
| /s
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| Every time I read some list of advices on life I can't help but
| remember Mary Schmich's apocryphal speech "Wear Sunscreen" [1]
| (and made famous by Baz Luhrmann [2]), from way back when the
| Internet was young and wild.
|
| Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice.
|
| [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-
| sunscreen...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| This was great, thanks for the recommendation!
| svantana wrote:
| In the same vein, I highly recommend the ironic self-help album
| "Dancing For Mental Health" by Will Powers (sic).
|
| https://open.spotify.com/album/4242hiYk7PAArDAd6XSWbZ
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice.
|
| Why not?
| glial wrote:
| One person's answer:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-
| graduation...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see. It wasn't even until a couple years ago that non
| metal sunscreens were found to be useless.
| Bakary wrote:
| The advice isn't bad at all, but then you've heard it all before.
| Most people tend to figure most of this out by the time they are
| in their mid-thirties, or never do.
|
| I can only speak from my own perspective, but the irony is that
| the people I tend to be deeply impressed by don't tend to follow
| this sort of mechanistic or "optimized wisdom" approach to life.
| They tend to be more chaotic, less rational (sometimes
| dangerously so), often dickish but always displaying a vision of
| life that is deeply felt and never sterile. It may sound
| paradoxical and counter-intuitive, but you could follow all of
| the advice from the post and still lead an uninspired existence
| that doesn't amount to much in the end. Some other posters here
| mentioned how the list felt like an accusation, but I would say
| in my case that I felt a rush of melancholy from its
| superposition of being both solid actionable advice but also
| deeply wrong in ways I can't fully express.
|
| A person like the author does impress me, as they probably are
| living up to whatever potential they were granted. I envy their
| wealth, freedom to work on interesting things, and the fact that
| they worked towards something and achieved it. But I don't get
| that sense of unstoppable awe and desire that I get with people
| like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those few anonymous,
| adventurous and idiosyncratic souls you once met that you still
| think about from time to time. You probably have an example of
| the latter in your own life that instantly came to mind when
| reading this, or perhaps you can extrapolate a description of
| them through the knowledge of the world you've garnered so far.
| munificent wrote:
| _> They tend to be more chaotic, less rational (sometimes
| dangerously so), often dickish but always displaying a vision
| of life that is deeply felt and never sterile._
|
| Here's a chain of logic I'm pondering:
|
| 1. Few things cut as deeply and personally as failure,
| especially failure where the stakes are high.
|
| 2. That implies that our failures are our most meaningful,
| individual experiences.
|
| 3. Which in turn implies that a life with a minimum of failure
| is a life with little meaning or individuality to it.
|
| 4. Does that therefore mean that those who have failed the
| most, who have the greatest ratio of failure to success, are
| the ones who are living life most vividly? How should I balance
| that against the obvious reality that failing sucks?
|
| In other words, if your goal is to live a unique life, the Anna
| Karenina principle [1] implies that you should aim for
| unhappiness.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
| CPLX wrote:
| If that's true than the most meaningful failure will be the
| one with the highest stakes, which is your own death.
|
| Following from that first principle you rationally conclude
| you should kill yourself today.
|
| Which points to a useful insight -- when the real world does
| not agree with logic, examine your first principles.
| munificent wrote:
| Ah, no. The rational conclusion is that you should take the
| world down with you. Which, I certainly hope would be
| unsuccessful. But it would definitely be interesting!
| clairity wrote:
| that's putting the causality backwards. you should aim to
| have interesting experiences and thoughts. the failure and
| unhappiness will follow if that's what's in store. if you aim
| for failure and unhappiness (the poor proxy), it's likely
| you'll miss out on the interesting experiences and thoughts,
| which is the meaningful part.
|
| this is, again, how we get unintended (and unwanted)
| consequences in so many aspects of our lives (partisanship is
| another good example).
| munificent wrote:
| _> that 's putting the causality backwards._
|
| Sure, I didn't necessarily claim that my list was literally
| true. Just a thought exercise.
|
| _> you should aim to have interesting experiences and
| thoughts._
|
| I think is as prone to Goodhart's Law as my suggestion to
| aim for unhappiness. If you try to deliberately aim for
| interesting experiences and avoid uninteresting ones,
| you'll need to gather some data first. So you ask around
| and see what experiences other people find interesting.
| But, of course, what could be more uninteresting than doing
| what everyone else thinks is interesting?
| redisman wrote:
| I think that's true but people also need chances for the first
| time to find out about things so repetition is fine. I remember
| learning a few important things about myself from reading a
| dubious self-help book when I was a teenager. I wouldn't
| recommend that book to anyone as I now think it's mostly BS but
| it did give me a few pointers to guide my life. It was
| something akin to stoicism and hard work having meaning on
| itself. I just had never had anyone talk to me about such
| things. I really like posts that make you stop and think about
| your life for a second.
| bumby wrote:
| > _But I don 't get that sense of unstoppable awe and desire
| that I get with people like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those
| few anonymous, adventurous and idiosyncratic souls_
|
| Here's what I wonder: is it possible to admire such people
| while simultaneously acknowledging they live a semi-tortured
| existence that may not be worth emulating?
|
| I think the author was shooting for equanimity which may be
| somewhat different than how those types would be described
| matwood wrote:
| Your last paragraph reminded me of this quote,
|
| _It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits --
| like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war,
| seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or
| landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they
| must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to
| convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of
| failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel
| himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a
| Blake.
|
| Understanding is forever unattainable. Therein lies the
| inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is
| none the less the only one worthy of serious attention._
|
| --Malcom Muggeridge
| Bakary wrote:
| When I was younger, I was more impressed with the "second-
| rate" category. Then I switched to that "first-rate" ideal he
| describes. Now my understanding lies in the middle and I find
| both types to be awe-inducing as long as they testify to a
| lust for life or some degree of active curiosity. In fact, I
| came to reject the binary and hierarchical classification
| altogether. If you asked me to delineate precisely by what
| criteria I find someone impressive or not, I could not for
| the life of me give you a useful answer.
|
| Even if a person were to attain an understanding of life
| (which I agree is unattainable), they would still be faced
| with the impermanence of it and the fact that some actions
| are so intense and deeply felt as to need no further
| justification for their undertaking. Life still has to be
| lived after you come to conclusions about it. Or rather, the
| full expression of life as far as we can understand it isn't
| only to be found in contemplation but also in action,
| creation, and simple serendipity whether thoughtless or
| thoughtful.
|
| A bit like that joke where a person picks wisdom instead of a
| million dollars as a wish, then concludes that they should
| have picked the money. I mean this in a metaphorical sense,
| of course.
| stanpinte wrote:
| looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuEEf4mGsk
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| 30? Life lessons?
|
| Give me a break.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| 5) On money: ... it can buy freedom
|
| +
|
| 14) Summers are the best.
|
| = It's always Summer Somewhere.
| kaybe wrote:
| I'm not sure whether the summer experience is the same without
| having lived through winter as well.
|
| In spring every bit of green is celebrated by the winter
| survivors, but if you just came in from the other hemisphere it
| just feels empty.
| baxtr wrote:
| Winter is Great, for exactly 2 to 3 weeks. That would be
| enough for me to appreciate the other seasons.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > 5) On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy
| freedom
|
| I strongly disagree, but only on a technicality or matter of
| perception of what freedom means.
|
| To me, money has nothing to do with true freedom. Money in and of
| itself is a prison, like any external currency, and something I
| have influence over but virtually no control.
|
| Today I have money. Tomorrow, my currency could become worthless
| or my home could burn down by no fault of my own. I could lose my
| job, and what money seems available for me to enjoy myself with
| will become essential for supporting myself in an uncertain
| future.
|
| There are other interesting facets of this, like - how many
| people do you know who have much more money than you, but still
| want more? How hard do they work for it, or how often do they
| think about it? Are we ever free from wanting more of this kind
| of freedom?
|
| Certainly if we find a good balance and we have the fortune of
| earning enough money to have disposable income, it can be freeing
| in a sense. But it's dangerous to conflate wealth with freedom in
| general. It requires a lot of good sense and responsibility to
| use wealth wisely, I think.
|
| I don't mean to be nit-picky or overly critical when the intent
| of communication was fairly clear. I'm sure Sam knows better than
| to equate money and freedom directly. I only think it's dangerous
| to use language like this in a culture like the one I live in,
| where people want more money so badly in order to be free, but it
| never affords them anything you'd recognize as freedom.
|
| > 19) Go out of your way to help people. Few things in life are
| as satisfying. Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn't
| matter.
|
| 27) Forgive people.
|
| 28) Don't chase status. Status without substance doesn't work for
| long and is unfulfilling.
|
| 31) Be grateful and keep problems in perspective. Don't complain
| too much. Don't hate other people's success
|
| 35) Don't judge other people too quickly. You never know their
| whole story and why they did or didn't do something. Be
| empathetic.
|
| I love this advice!
| Bakary wrote:
| To come up with a definition of freedom, I'd say we have to
| start from the premise of a certain degree of reliability. If
| we take into account all the ways you can lose everything or
| die early, it will always seem like a meaningless concept. But
| in practice, these things don't always happen and many are able
| to live long lives as evidenced by actuarial tables.
|
| It's true that wealth can become a trap but it all depends on
| your inherent personality. Many would have no problem
| forgetting about the grind and be content using their newfound
| wealth to do what they want in their own zone. It just so
| happens that a propensity to be content is probably negatively
| correlated with amassing large sums so you hear about those
| people less often despite their great numbers. So I'd say that
| yes, a significant but not absurd amount of money can already
| go a really long way towards letting a person be free in a
| sense we'd all recognize.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm probably only remarking on this above because of my own
| personal struggle with a desire for "freedom" and a false
| equivalence of money and freedom at some point in my 20s. I
| really believed I needed to earn more and I was a slave to
| that notion without realizing it.
|
| I grew up quite poor, and it took me a lot of years earning
| more money than I needed to realize the dysfunction that was
| occurring. I'm weary of it now, but having written that, I'm
| realizing that most people here and reading this article are
| likely well aware of this and the dissection of Sam's words
| is unnecessary.
| avrionov wrote:
| You are missing his point on money. He is talking for way more
| money than the regular person could get. In that case a person
| doesn't need a job and can rebuild his house easily.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Of course. I suppose what I meant to say too though is that
| having no job and rebuilding your house has nothing to do
| with freedom. At least, not the kind I want to exercise in my
| own life. These things have value, but they don't define me
| and they are almost entirely external. I don't want to define
| my happiness or value by my ability to retire and rebuild a
| house.
|
| I don't mean to say everyone should feel this way, but I
| think it's important to recognize the limitations of wealth
| within the extents of what freedom can mean.
|
| As I mentioned in another comment though, I'm realizing my
| comment was totally unnecessary here. I'll leave it, but in
| retrospect, it mostly served as a reminder to myself and
| probably belongs in a journal, not on Hacker News.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do
| professionally.
|
| This is one of the things that sounds cool on paper, and make
| people feel inspired, but doesn't really work like that in real
| world.
|
| Being extremely good in something requires a resource (time,
| attention...) expenditure that easily eats the rest of life
| (unless you're one of the few geniuses who can afford a balanced
| life). In practice, if one aims really high, they will need to
| take a conscious decision to sacrifice a significant part of
| their life. This is in conflict with the "live a balanced life"
| message underlying many of the points of the article.
|
| This subject is in my opinion explored with much more depth (and
| honesty) by Carmack in his graduation speech. [I] Advocate long,
| hard work [...] embrace the grind :)
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Are you referring to John Carmack's speech at UKMC?
| sharkweek wrote:
| My god, am I feeling this right now. But absolutely not related
| to starting a company or anything of the like.
|
| Parent of a three year old and an infant. I cannot tell you how
| fast those three years have gone by relative to any other time
| period in my life. It is scaring me shitless if I'm being honest.
|
| I brought this up to my dad who laughed and was like, "How do you
| think I feel staring at my 30somethings son who now has his own
| kids?"
|
| When I remember to pause, slow down, and enjoy the littlest of
| moments I find I'm the happiest. Simple, but difficult to
| remember. Enjoy the long day as much as possible.
| hikerclimber wrote:
| both go at the same pace one just seems faster.
| jdlyga wrote:
| The 1990s felt like an entire lifetime. I was in Kindergarten
| though High School.
|
| The 2000s felt long too: High School through college to my first
| job.
|
| The 2010s was over super quick. I worked full time, changed jobs
| twice, and got married. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 still feels like
| yesterday.
|
| I can imagine the 2020s will feel even shorter. And now we know
| why all of our relatives always said "Wow you got so big!" every
| time they saw us.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| If you're really in need of a depressing thought, there will
| come a day when you actually ask the Internet: "How much longer
| do I have?"
| afdgadfgadfh wrote:
| At least we can rely on fake news, spam and noise for one
| thing: getting the answer wrong.
| readingnews wrote:
| "How to succeed: pick the right thing to do..."
|
| Yes. And when you wake up every 10 years and go "dang, that was
| not the right thing to do", you realize that, even if you were
| successful, you are now unhappy. This one statement "pick the
| right thing to do" is what mankind has struggled with for 1000s
| of years. I have had a number of jobs, all of my previous
| employers would tell you I am great, work hard, have exemplary
| output, but you know what, every 5 years or so, I wake up and go
| "wait a second, this is not what I want to do. This is not
| right".
|
| Not to bash the author, but "ok kids, be sure you are right, then
| go for it" is great... if only any of us knew what was right.
| samanator wrote:
| I took it as "pick the right thing to do" as in what you
| personally feel is normally right. As in "do the right thing".
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