[HN Gopher] Life Is Short (2016)
___________________________________________________________________
Life Is Short (2016)
Author : NotYourLawyer
Score : 422 points
Date : 2022-12-25 05:51 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| jdkee wrote:
| "One great thing about having small children is that they make
| you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve
| as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?"
| And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option."
|
| This. He is right about this.
| tropicalbeach wrote:
| I mean most of the time there running around breaking things
| and being loud wouldn't say that's great. It's better when
| there older.
| hackernewds wrote:
| You will miss these interactions as they outgrow you. No one
| looks back at their time when their kids were little, to miss
| that didn't tap more in their screen
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| There are way more things to do than "raise kids" and "tap
| on screen"
| Ma8ee wrote:
| That mostly happens when they feel they don't get enough
| attention from you. Sometimes you really are busy with
| something else, like trying to prepare food for them or
| answering messages from your pestering boss. But often it is
| because you are trying to be clever at HN instead of giving
| them your undivided attention.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Or when they're hungry. Or over-stimulated, under-
| stimulated, tired, anxious over something that happened at
| school, hyped for the holiday season.
|
| Guilt-tripping someone who shares that they're not always
| having a good time as a parent is not cool. Your comment is
| over-generalizing, and IMO quite mean.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Yet there is a very large societal problem here worth
| pointing at. Parental time with children in this society
| is bizarrely low by anthropological standards. You can
| get a look at the stark difference by reading the book
| "The Old Way," about a nomadic society.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It's actually higher:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids
|
| I don't think nomadic parenting time is really a useful
| comparison.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| I suppose a typical nomadic society is not like "mother
| and father with kids, the nearest relative a few miles
| away".
|
| Childcare is easier when you have a group of adults
| taking care of a group of kids. And of course, parents
| have the primary responsibility, but it is not a 24 hour
| duty.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| That counts, but parents spend most of their time with
| their kids. Moms gather and the kids come along and help
| to an extent. If you can take your children to work and
| interact with them while you're working, that's huge.
|
| The upshot is that we have to do everything we can to
| give our children more of our time; we aren't a
| desperately poor society, we can do more. We have
| wandered far from our "species essence" and now wonder
| why so much is going wrong.
| watwut wrote:
| Traditional life involved kids being unsupervised at ages
| we find it unacceptable now (4 years old) and kids being
| in packed unsupervised for hours.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| Not true in nomadic societies (too many predators.) Four
| or five year olds could tail along with older brothers
| when I was young.
| watwut wrote:
| Nomadic societies are no where near standard of human
| society. They are more of an exception. Also, they are
| such due to lack of other choice. As in, they evolved
| when the option of staying long term was not there. The
| anthropological argument about our exceptionality should
| not start with outlier society where the world around is
| too dangerous and there is no way for adults to make it
| safer.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| While I somewhat regret the tone in my comment, the whole
| notion that pointing out that you sometimes at least are
| partially responsible for your circumstances is called
| "guilt tripping" is weird.
|
| It's not that my kids never are unruly. But I can almost
| always track it down to some failure from my side. I was
| too busy with something, or simply distracted, so I
| forgot to give them their snack in time, or they got to
| bed too late the day before, or I didn't pay attention
| when they tried to tell me something they felt was
| important, etc.
|
| And while I'm aware that my experiences aren't universal.
| The opposite notion that I often hear that tantrums are
| some kind of unavoidable natural disaster is even more
| absurd. Yeah, if I bring my kids to the store at 5pm to
| buy dinner without giving them any snack, while I'm
| hangry yourself, stressed, and trying to think of
| something not horribly unhealthy to eat, they might end
| up screaming on the floor in front of the candy shelves.
| But my thought then isn't "why am I cursed with such
| horrible kids". My thought is "ok, I screwed up today,
| because this was predictable and preventable, and by now
| I certainly know better than putting ourselves in
| situations like this."
| taneq wrote:
| I'm curious just how many hours of undivided attention per
| day you think you have to give? Because most small children
| will drain you entirely dry within a week, and you have
| half a decade or more of that to deal with.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| Be careful about the rosy picture he's painting for himself and
| others here. When he wrote this he was probably already rich
| and into the pontification phase of his career. I'm going to go
| ahead and bet had plenty of ways to escape his kids when
| desired, plenty of help with childcare, etc. If you are really
| just looking at your phone while you're at home, great, but if
| you are (like many people here , I'd guess) interested in doing
| creative or focus-intensive, non-kid things while at home,
| those things are seriously going to suffer when you have kids.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| This may be true, but this is not the majority of your life -
| unless you're on some mission to repopulate the earth, you'll
| have maybe 8-10 years when you have children who aren't babies
| who want to play with you. Apparently people become magically
| wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom
| after. If that's not true then you should be seeing a glut of
| extremely wise people who've been "corrected" by their child
| raising experience decades ago.
|
| The reality is, kids trigger happiness centers in our lizard
| brains. Enjoy the short time with them, but let's not fool
| ourselves that children fundamentally change your life view in
| any way. If anything the person you should be working to
| prioritize is your partner, who if you do it right will be with
| you fairly unchanged all your life. Given the divorce rates
| though, most people don't seem to have gotten that memo
| however.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Apparently people become magically wise during those years
| and then quickly forget these wisdom after.
|
| Sample size of 1, but there is a noticeable difference in my
| friend and family group between people with kids and without
| kids. Particularly around "having it together." Children are
| little logistical nightmares, more so the younger they are.
| From scheduling around the kids schedules (I.e when they wake
| up, have dinner, swimming lessons, when the bedtime routine
| starts, etc) to being prepared to leave the house for mundane
| things like grocery shopping (is the diaper bag packed, do we
| have milk, will we be gone long enough to need to pump,
| etc.). There is also much less agency as a parent, a good
| portion of every day is on the rails dictated by your kids
| schedule. You are also chronically sleep deprived for a
| window of 6-24 months around each pregnancy and the mother
| has a tonne of discomfort, weight, and a new balance of
| hormones for a large window around the pregnancy. You're
| operating in this degraded state and have to juggle the
| logistics of parenthood on top of the family budget because
| you still have bills to pay. Your kids finally go to bed, but
| you can't leave them at home alone (morally or legally) so
| unless you pay someone to sit on your couch for the night or
| find a relative who can pitch in, you are literally trapped
| in the house and can't leave until they wake up.
|
| People without kids say "thank god it's Friday!" at the
| office, people with large families call the weekend two days
| without child care. People without kids mention going to the
| movies, people with kids haven't been to the movies since
| their first kid was born unless they scheduled it a week in
| advance with their grandparents, and that movie had to be
| weighed against every other possible option for date night
| because you might not get to go out together again for
| months.
|
| I don't know how this _couldn't_ impact a human's behavior.
| To conflate it with "wisdom" might be incorrect but, at least
| from my personal observations, parents operate VERY
| differently in their day to day lives than their counterparts
| without children.
|
| To your point of that having a lasting impact, it's clear
| grandparents to these families have forgotten a lot of what
| it meant to be parents. Often suggesting unreasonable things
| in the face of the logistics of parenthood (like staying up
| late for a social gathering - as if they've forgotten what an
| over tired 20 month old is like).
| crtified wrote:
| What does "having it together" actually mean?
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the point.
|
| Most of the time, the things that are screaming for our
| attention are not the truly important things, so it's easy to
| get distracted and waste time. When we have little kids, they
| happen to be both important and screaming for our attention,
| which makes it much easier for us to focus on what's
| important. That's the point he was making.
|
| I actually observed this in my life a week ago. We just moved
| our toddler from the crib to a bed and he's been waking up in
| the middle of the night asking for attention. When this
| happened, my first instinct was like "ugh. I have to go lay
| down w him rather than doing advent of code". Then I realized
| that laying down w my 2 year old is so much cooler and
| meaningful than anything else I could be doing w that time.
|
| I heard the phrase sometimes "you don't _have_ to do this,
| you _get_ to do this ". That's what I think the quote is
| about.
| novok wrote:
| There is also something powerful to have kids who want to
| spend time with you on holidays and so on, because they had a
| good relationship with you. Kids are not just the time you
| raise them, even if they are mostly active in 20 year span of
| your life. And if you care about your children, treat them
| and raise them well, in some ways they will be the most
| stable relationship you ever have.
|
| A lot of relationships go sour, and IMO I think it's fairly
| difficult for even the married-forevers to say if their
| relationship stays good. There is also more conflicts of
| interest with your spousal partner than there are with
| children in many ways. Your partner is major, but so is your
| friends, your kids, your family and there isn't a silver
| bullet for any of them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| +1 based on (n=1) having two kids and being married 15 years.
| Being with your kids is a flash in the pan compared to
| decades with a partner. Don't neglect your kids, but the
| evidence is strong they're mostly on rails you don't control
| and as long as you care, that's most of where the effort
| needs to be. Finding good partners is hard. Keeping them is
| work. Losing them can be catastrophic (emotionally,
| logistically, financially) and leave you in a place it can be
| difficult to come back from. Operate accordingly.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Is being a caretaker for a small human the most important thing
| in life? Or is this some kind of default no one questions.
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| See, antinatalism for probably a first principles reproach to
| the standard belief.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| My daughter is turning 5 in a few weeks. I realized I only have 3
| more of these until she's (likely) moving out. 4x5=20, and she'll
| likely be living her own life by 20. Most of the time you spend
| with your kids is spent by the time they're 16.
|
| I moved away from my hometown. I see my immediate relatives twice
| a year now, once at Christmas and once in the summer. Most of my
| family is getting old. I probably have 125 or so more visits with
| my parents, 20-50 with my grandparents, and less than 10 with my
| great grandpa. I keep these numbers in mind every time I go home.
|
| Life isn't short. Meaningful moments are. Don't take them for
| granted.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| This is inevitably going to sound facetious but you can always
| move back. Give up some things, gain others. Isn't that what
| this essay's about?
|
| I'm 40. My parents are 75 and I recently moved back next door
| to them. I expect to be here until they die. Is it my favourite
| place to live? No. Best for my career? Couldn't be worse. But I
| see my folks every day. I see my childhood friends every week.
| I see as much of my family as I can stand - I bump into a
| random cousin on the daily.
|
| Do you value closeness to family above other things and would
| you like your daughter to value closeness to you when she grows
| up? Choices are here to be made.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Not facetious at all. I call it "visiting Paris."
|
| A large number of people I grew up with "wanted to see the
| world." My younger self modeled a lot of my desired outcomes
| on people's externally stated desires.
|
| As I got older, I started realizing something: a lot of what
| people said they wanted was attainable for them and their
| socioeconomic status if they made different trade offs. So I
| started poking and offering advice on how they could "visit
| Paris."
|
| What I came to learn is that they wanted to be the kind of
| people that wanted to visit Paris. But they never would go to
| Paris. It was the idea they liked.
|
| I have well off family members who talk about wishing their
| son lived closer. They have the means to visit him. They're
| retired and live near an airport with direct flights, 3.5
| hours door to door. But they never go. That's their Paris.
|
| I don't want to live in my hometown. I don't kid myself - I
| value raising my family here where I live more than the extra
| time with family. But, at the same time, when I go back I
| spend that time in a way maximally meaningful to me.
|
| I try not to have "going to Paris" wishes. I sacrifice
| protecting my ego from my own decisions but it makes me
| reconcile my decisions with my desires before reaching the
| state of irreversible regret.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| It's clear you've put a lot of thought into the tradeoff
| between these mutually exclusive wishes but I'd still
| encourage you to look for ways to spend more time with your
| folks. It's not all roses but it's been precious for me,
| personally.
| sireat wrote:
| Life is ridiculously short once you move past the mid point -
| early 40s.
|
| Even the luckiest ones among us get to do a tiny fraction of
| personally meaningful activities.
|
| As I am piggybacking my youngest one up the stairs, I am
| enjoying the trek as much as she does. I have this illusion of
| immortality, surely nothing bad could happen to us this very
| moment.
|
| Surely that is my elephant/lizard part of the brain. My rider
| part keeps telling me I could be doing other more egoistical
| hedonistic activities instead.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Life Is Short (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313158 - Aug 2020 (164
| comments)
|
| _Life is Short (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 - April 2018 (184
| comments)
|
| _Life is Short_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845945
| - Nov 2016 (11 comments)
|
| _Life is Short_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446
| - Jan 2016 (408 comments)
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| An average-ish human lifespan of 80 years is approximately 1000
| months, or 4000 weeks, or 10,000 days. It's frightening,but my
| memento mori is to remind myself of this periodically.
| handzhiev wrote:
| 4000 weeks is 28,000 days :) Otherwise, you are right and we
| don't even have this granted.
| amrocha wrote:
| This seems like the exact kind of confident mistake that AIs
| make hahaha
| tracyhenry wrote:
| 80 years = 29,220 days
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I think counting visits or counting in general isn't as good as
| getting that one quality time you spend with that person that
| would remember for a life time. You could be visiting and just be
| around, while that is also good but you may wish you did way more
| henrik_w wrote:
| A similar perspective from Sam Altman that I like:
|
| "The days are long but the decades are short"
|
| https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...
| badrabbit wrote:
| 8 years with your kids is short, 8 years with cancer is long, 8
| seconds with your hands on a hot stove is very long.
|
| If you succeed in developing a good or at least occasionally
| enjoyable life, your perspective on life is different than others
| barely enduring it at all.
|
| In general, it is short in the way of a bell curve. It is long
| when you are a child or at the end of a long life enduring
| hardships of old age.
| kovac wrote:
| That's brilliant. Really put things into perspective.
| revskill wrote:
| The only way to lengthen the shorten of life, to me, is to
| improve education system.
|
| Education is the single most important reason we're born, lived,
| because it requires each of us to inherit human knowledge, and
| develop new knowledge for further generation.
|
| What a pity, that, the education system is mostly broken in
| several places.
| gallerdude wrote:
| There are a lot of great lines in this, but the one that's always
| stuck with me is simply "bullshit is the junk food of
| experience."
|
| It's a perfect metaphor in so many ways, there's some fundamental
| truth glowing behind it like a lightbulb.
| aryamaan wrote:
| Elaborate please
| SCUSKU wrote:
| The one I never forget is how PG describes his mother's death.
|
| "I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet
| way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was."
|
| I read this the last time it was posted and this scared the
| living hell out of me. It has reminded me to never take people,
| especially my family, for granted. I used to be much more
| reluctant to go home, but as I've grown older I now appreciate
| the finiteness of life.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Another line from that part:
|
| > After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with
| her.
|
| Sometimes I wonder this about my own parents. I haven't seen
| them in over a year. I have no desire to see them either, and
| am dreading the obligatory Christmas call.
|
| I see a ton of advice floating around these days about "make
| sure to visit your parents a lot, because you'll regret it
| after they die if you don't". But there's another side to the
| "life is short" coin: maybe it's not worth spending time with
| people that make you intensely unhappy, even if those people
| are your parents.
| rmckayfleming wrote:
| It's definitely context dependent. But I spent the last few
| years of my dad's life not really speaking to him much, and
| when he died - suddenly at the age of 53 - I realized it
| had been for really petty reasons. The things I disagreed
| with him on blinded me to what really mattered: he was
| still my dad.
|
| This year I sold my company, and as exciting as that has
| been, I wish I could have told him about it. :(
| gms wrote:
| This is rather true indeed. I would always visit home often
| as it made my parents happy but sometimes would wonder if I
| should skip a visit once in a while.
|
| My dad died this year and the result of all those visits is
| that I have zero regrets. I'm grateful I stuck with them
| because having regrets now, when it's too late, would be
| awful.
| tacocataco wrote:
| I'm glad you have good people in your life, but that isn't
| true for everyone.
|
| My life would improve immensely if I didn't ever visit my
| family. I see them once a year and it is once a year to much.
| I love them, but ideally it would be from very far away for
| the rest of our lives.
|
| The ones closest to you can hurt you the most.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| The Japanese concept of `Mono no aware` seemsto fit into this
| ideal. The tragedy and loss of life itsef
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Here's my question: why should you care what your future self
| thinks? Should avoiding future regret really be your primary goal
| now?
|
| This whole article seems a bit self-centered, in that it suggests
| you should first and foremost care about how things will affect
| you in the future, rather than caring about others.
|
| It seems to me like you should spend less time trying to prevent
| future regret, and more time trying to do right by other people.
| aktenlage wrote:
| If it was only a regret on the deathbed, I'd agree. But if
| these regrets are held for many decades, and thus the pain from
| them may well outweigh a sacrifice in the presence - if the
| regretfullness is high enough.
| carabiner wrote:
| Holy god this is terrifying. It gives way to a mindset of
| desperate minmaxing, when conventionally we are supposed to
| maintain a view of abundance towards life. How can we think life
| is abundant when it is in fact scarce?
| kubb wrote:
| This makes you think that Paul would be interested in fighting
| for a world where people don't waste most of their short lives in
| bullshit corporate jobs because the market demands it, and
| instead can focus on important things like their families.
| tome wrote:
| Can you say more about how that world would work?
| fsflover wrote:
| Fighting for a better version of this world does not imply
| having a utopia in mind. You can simply help people avoid
| bullshit as much as you can. In fact, this is what this essay
| does.
| ablatt89 wrote:
| Funny enough, I know some engineers who go to work, non-remote,
| to escape from their wife and kids for a bit and work becomes
| an avenue to relax! And having to take care of an aging parent
| who lives with me, I can understand.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 40yr old dad can relate. I need to leave the family and chill
| a bit once or twice a week and hybrid is a god send.
| Glawen wrote:
| Hybrid is the way to go! I do not like full remote because
| you get out of touch with the teams and office politics.
| When I'm full on site I cannot get my work done properly.
| Hybrid mode allows me to manage my schedule better, get
| shit done while remote, and keep up with office's politics
| while on site.
| weatherlite wrote:
| That definitely exists. But I think there's more people who'd
| prefer to work less hours (and keep their current salary)
| than people who simply want to stay in the office more.
| watwut wrote:
| I have colleagues like that. When we had kids, I started to
| feel sorry for their wifes and realized how egoistical those
| guys are.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Try not to judge, you don't know their circumstances. Some
| may have medical, family, or cultural challenges
| ("Homeschool is only way! Daycare is the devil!") that make
| time at home stressful.
| watwut wrote:
| > "Homeschool is only way! Daycare is the devil!"
|
| If they have either of those "cultural challenges", then
| they are literally dropping even more work and isolation
| on their wifes. That is why it is egoism.
|
| Because when they do this, their partner has no choice
| but to do it all. And the partner is getting no break.
|
| I do knows guys like that. They walk around happy. Their
| wife's walk around stressed, tired, loosing themselves
| while talking about how much their husbands need to work.
| While I know they slack around in work padding time cause
| chatting with friends is fun.
| nly wrote:
| Can totally see that. I see.work colleagues who are new
| parents who seem to enjoy spending as many hours at the
| office as possible.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Work is easy compared to parenting
| peteradio wrote:
| Work is impossible while parenting.
| Glawen wrote:
| When my kids were small, I used to work away 3 days a week.
| It was my resting days as I could sleep normally and
| recharge myself. I did not realize it until I spent 7 days
| a week at home.
| [deleted]
| serverholic wrote:
| This sentiment annoys me because this seems more like an
| inability to express one's needs and communicate.
|
| And it inevitably it gives ammo to those who want to take
| away remote work for everyone.
|
| "See, they don't actually want to work remotely!"
| Aeolun wrote:
| Certainly. When I'm at home I sometimes cannot wait to run
| off to the office. The feeling is often temporary though, and
| by 3-4 I'm basically waiting until I can get home :)
| semireg wrote:
| Life couldn't be sweet without the sour. I like to think
| that work life balance like this is self reinforcing. Happy
| holidays!
| breck wrote:
| The first years are brutally hard (the sleep deprivation in
| particular) and in my experience work is much easier than
| raising children, so there's definitely truth to that. The
| best is when you can do both at the same time. During COVID,
| for instance, I wrote code in one room while my 1yo played in
| the next (since everything was locked down). As she got
| older, she started asking questions and would even provide me
| advice "stop thinking daddy!" (just do, I assume she was
| implying). I think this is closer to how it was in the old
| days--where the kids worked alongside the parents in the
| farms or shops. You get to spend time with your children
| while teaching them your crafts and showing them the joy and
| passion of work. That is the good life, in my opinion.
| holoduke wrote:
| A personal take on this. I found myself allowing too much
| screen time for the kids while working at home and having
| the kids around me. I couldnt give enough attention to
| either work and kids. Its good for everyone that everything
| is back to (normal)
| breck wrote:
| Oh I would agree. Luckily we had dual income and hired a
| nanny 5 days a week from 8-4. Otherwise would have been
| impossible (at the time we lived far from family).
| [deleted]
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I was interviewing for a job in the middle and towards the
| end of 2020, and regardless of my chances of success or
| interest, I asked the interviewers how work from home had
| gone for them so far.
|
| I encountered this sentiment most of all - 40 year old dads
| who were suddenly stuck at home with the wife and kids,
| working from an improvised home office.
|
| When I asked about returning to the office, most of them were
| clearly looking forward to it, with a sentiment of "Of course
| working from home is less efficient and comfortable, what do
| you mean?".
|
| It was quite a surprise for me, who had finally gotten away
| from the noisy open-plan offices and meetings where everyone
| shouted at each other until the loudest person "won".
| helij wrote:
| I'm 40+ year old dad as well. I don't feel stuck at home
| with wife and kids. I don't want to ever return to the
| office. I'm in managerial position and know that WFH is not
| any less efficient or less comfortable. I find office to
| have more distractions. Sentiment is shared across the team
| as well.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I would guess that if we further split 40 year old dads
| into introverts and extroverts, the sentiment would also
| split into loving wfh and being happier working away at the
| office.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I found that most such people didn't originally plan for
| work from home, so their experience was predictably
| horrible. Also during the pandemic daycare/schools were
| closed, adding to the problem.
|
| Meanwhile me and other young dads who did plan for remote
| work have now a designated room for an office and children
| at daycare/kindergarten for most of the day.
|
| Until my child was old enough to attend daycare it was
| indeed chaos, but with just one you can get used to this.
| It's much like having a co-worker who likes to chat a
| little bit too much.
| Bouncingsoul1 wrote:
| I planned for this as well, 2 months before Covid
| happend, so a bit lucky. Anyway it works great and I
| don't want to go back. The thing I don't subscribe to is
| the "co-worker" part. you see if my child cannot attend
| daycare because she is sick, I cannot work full. we have
| an agreement at my work that in such cases we go into
| "50% or best effort"mode. I guess it depends on the child
| and maybe the job, but I cannot code/think/debug while a
| 4 year old wants to be entertained, also I don't want to
| sit her in front of a tv/mobile just to calm her down, so
| 50% it is
| twblalock wrote:
| If everyone behaved like that, our society wouldn't have the
| wealth needed to make anyone's lives comfortable and secure,
| except for the lives of the rich.
|
| A job that provides an income to a worker, and generates wealth
| for society, is not bullshit -- even if all it involves is
| making crappy consumer products, or working on an assembly
| line, or doing paperwork all day. In fact, such jobs are the
| reason the majority of people no longer live in 19th-century
| conditions -- and the lack of such jobs in regions that used to
| have a lot of them is a primary driver of populist politics.
| lwhi wrote:
| Your comment only stands if we continue with the system we
| have.
| nickpp wrote:
| Do you have another system in mind? Go ahead and propose
| it.
| [deleted]
| yarrowy wrote:
| Universal Basic income would solve those problems. Eventually
| AI and automation should perform all the mundane jobs which
| is a good thing but we need to provide basic sustenance for
| everyone.
| refurb wrote:
| How basic?
|
| We could have 75% of the population stop working now and
| the taxes on 25% could provide basic sustenance for
| everyone.. at 1910 levels.
|
| Same thing would happen with automation, some people would
| keep working, get 2-3x the wealth and everything that comes
| with and we're in the same spot we're in today.
| eastbound wrote:
| France has UBI in the form of "RSA" since 1981. It is
| proportional to the number of children, so you can live
| with children on it, and use the state-provided
| accomodations.
|
| For now it rather seems that it has created two sorts of
| populations: Those who live off it, and those who work, the
| two forever opposing each other, the latter literally
| enslaved by the masses of the former. The enslavement in a
| society which is ever-more reliant on the remaining workers
| meets another phenomenon: Shunning the workers who protest,
| because looks at all this poverty, why would you not accept
| to fund _them_.
| alexeichemenda wrote:
| France's RSA does not meet UBI standards that we're
| considering in the US / California because the amount
| paid is so small. If you live alone with 2 kids, RSA
| would be 899EUR/month in 2022, far below minimum wage.
| Glawen wrote:
| RSA is not only the monthly amount paid, the recipients
| also live in social housings paying next to nothing in
| rent, heating, healthcare and transportation.
|
| A similar thing exists in other country like UK or
| Germany
| eastbound wrote:
| And cost of living in France is very low. People are
| happy with 1800EUR, as long as they have the rebates for
| theater and transports.
| jefftk wrote:
| Do you mean housing and transportation, or is there
| really something specific to theater?
| eastbound wrote:
| A lot of things are cheaper when you have the RSA, but
| granted, it's mostly leisure and optional things
| (museums, cinema, holidays at ucpa.com, etc). (ucpa.com
| is an excellent sports camp address for 18-40, by the
| way).
| Glawen wrote:
| Not only optional thing. Metro/bus/tramway are nearly
| free for them. They also have reduced rate for utilities.
| Granted it is not easy to live with 500EUR a month, but
| you can get by.
| ido wrote:
| I assumed it was a mistranslated pun on "bread and
| circuses":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| 899EUR in France >> 899EUR in California
| nicksiscoe wrote:
| I understand the justification for UBI from a labor
| perspective if all "mundane jobs" are automated, but where
| I haven't heard convincing justification is on the more
| abstract "life purpose" side of things. What happens,
| regardless of UBI, if we move towards a system that
| provides little to no purpose in working towards anything,
| or at a basic level, working for a living at all? I know
| many friends and relatives who reached retirement and faced
| anxiety and depression due to lack of "a reason to get up
| in the morning" - it feels like UBI would introduce this
| problem at a larger scale, and I'm not convinced by the
| general "we'll all just be artists" concept either...
| chownie wrote:
| We don't have a fix for this problem _now_ , we barely
| paper these social cracks by requiring people to work
| extended hours in jobs they don't value at all. Most
| people don't even have the time to think about how
| unfulfilled they are.
| serverholic wrote:
| I don't think it's a true problem though, but a symptom
| of being raised in capitalism.
| gabaix wrote:
| We can do much better in automation.
|
| Entrepreneurs I know are reluctant to hire because it does
| not scale. Yet they do hire, slowly and surely. They need
| these jobs, as they cannot grow without it.
|
| Similarly they complain about the lack of talent. Most of
| the people they value do not want the regular job that they
| offer. They need the people who want the regular jobs.
|
| I am sure this will change. Yet today it is the reality.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Similarly they complain about the lack of talent._
|
| ...of people I _want_ to have around me...
|
| It's been my experience that "cultural fit" has been a
| much more important coefficient, than "talent."
|
| In my case, it's a bit of sour grapes, and I'll be the
| first to admit it. I have the talent and experience to
| pretty much singlehandedly "make" a smallish startup (I'm
| doing exactly that, right now, but for a nonprofit, for
| free), but found that my gray hair terrified prospective
| employers so much, that they ran screaming.
|
| There's plenty of talent out there, but it may come with
| things like self-assurance, confidence, and an
| unwillingness to put up with childish BS, or be a galley
| slave.
| scoot wrote:
| A world where the only thing that people contribute is more
| people.
| sinlar-multiple wrote:
| lmao @ UBI
|
| I can't understand how educated people can still gobble ubi
| propaganda up when it's proven that such model is
| completely unsustainable economically and socially
| Karsteski wrote:
| How has it been proven?
| sofixa wrote:
| > when it's proven that such model is completely
| unsustainable economically and socially
|
| How exactly has it been proven? That's a very strong word
| to use for something that has never been tried on
| anything but very small scale limited pilots.
| rvba wrote:
| It hasnt been proven but those who live in Europe see
| families that get:
|
| -free housing
|
| -free money
|
| -money for children (that they use for themselves)
|
| -various other help (clothes, coal, christmas packages)
|
| This had an unfortunate effect of creating a group of
| people who never worked and all they did was raise 3-5
| children. Despite the parents not working (so having time
| to take care of their children) those children did not
| really get any education, often did not even finish high
| school. And guess what those children often got their own
| set of children early - who also will never work, live of
| social benefits and small time theft.
|
| You dont exactly have to be a right winger to notice that
| the model is not sustainable. Especially as this group of
| people only demands more and they think that they
| "deserve" it. Also if you would try to teach the children
| that everyone should contribute to society by working,
| their parents/grandparents/even grand grandparents will
| protest. Since they lived this "parasite" lives forever
| and dont know better. How can someone demand that they
| work? They deserve higher social benefits and they
| deserve better housing. (While you are supposed to get a
| mortgage and slave to get a house). Also at some point
| the group will become so big that they can vote for
| politicians that will give them more (at the expense of
| those who work).
|
| Of course perhaps maybe UBI can work and it will be all
| rosy, but it is just wishful thinking. Communism was also
| supposed to work.
|
| Different problem with UBI is that middle class becomes
| nobodies - you are supposed to shut up because you get
| your dole. While I bet the rich people will still be
| rich.
| argentinian wrote:
| > at some point the group will become so big that they
| can vote for politicians that will give them more (at the
| expense of those who work).
|
| This is exactly what happens in Argentina now.
| weatherlite wrote:
| Welp, soon enough us programmers might join this group of
| people you're describing...who would've thunk.
| defrost wrote:
| Interesting opinion, nothing that meshes with the actual
| largely indeterminate results of the Finish experiment
| [1] [2] [3] nor with the bulk of the other small scale
| examples [4].
|
| Countries such as Australia with robust (compared to the
| US) welfare safety nets (not perfect by any means, but
| not to shabby overall) have proven to have strong long
| term GDP growth and to be resilient in the face of
| various global crisis events.
|
| Good safety nets provide a place to regroup and do better
| - without being reduced to homeless and struggling to
| meet basic food and clothing needs.
|
| [1]
| https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/161361
|
| [2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-
| social-sector...
|
| [3] https://www.bruegel.org/blog-post/universal-basic-
| income-and...
|
| [4] https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer...
| argentinian wrote:
| You should check Argentina's example too.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > This had an unfortunate effect of creating a group of
| people who never worked and all they did was raise 3-5
| children.
|
| You dont seem to be aware that such programs are designed
| to have people raise such 5-6 children while doing
| nothing else in order to bump up the declining
| population. And if you think raising 6 children is not
| work... boy...
| rvba wrote:
| The problem is that (1) those programs seem to "produce"
| (as awful as it sounds) undesirable people who dont work
| nor contribute to society. There are entire families
| (grandparents, parents, children) who lived their whole
| lives on benefits. So for the society they are a net
| loss. And on top of that they often do petty theft.
|
| (2) if you are in middle class, or low class (but still
| working) you are contributing for others and dont get
| anything in return from them. I would argue that if you
| didnt have to contribute so much then those middle/low
| class families would have 2 children instead of 1.
| Children of parents that work and will raise them right.
|
| You seem to think that those low life people work hard
| raising their children? Lol, they dont care about their
| children.. those kids are raised by the streets.
|
| It is the same in UK where some families mass manufacture
| inbred children (seriously read about it) and same in
| Slovakia where alcoholics get more kids since they dont
| use contraception and having a kid allows more money for
| vodka.
|
| You assume that everyone wants the best for their kids,
| nope those people just have a strategy to pump few kids,
| who maybe will pump more kids. At thr expense of
| taxpayers.
| Glawen wrote:
| I believe these program exist in the sole purpose of
| reducing criminality, so that the poor don't start
| thinking of robberies.
| gptadmirer wrote:
| Because The educated is synonymous for woke politics
| bullshit these days. They got knowledge but they lack
| wisdom. They got their privilege living in safe 1st world
| environments but they forgot true human nature that 3rd
| worlders see daily.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > true human nature that 3rd worlders see daily.
|
| http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientis
| ts-...
|
| That's the objectively proven human nature. Not the
| randian nonsense. And that's what 3rd worlders see every
| day.
| gptadmirer wrote:
| [flagged]
| rrgok wrote:
| I'm not 100% pro UBI. But do you feel the current
| model/system is sustainable?
| unity1001 wrote:
| > when it's proven
|
| Don't invent false realities. Nobody proved nothing as
| such. The Finnish experiment and others showed that there
| is no relation in between ubi and unemployment.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| My opinion is that UBI would actually free people up to do
| the low-paying mundane job that they can't afford to do
| today. It would provide the _option_ of a normal work life
| that allows one to feel like they were productive, even if
| it is mundane work, and provide the human interaction by
| means of socializing at work.
|
| If I don't _have_ to work, I will probably enjoy my work
| more.
| matbatt38 wrote:
| Yeah beacause the system we live in does provide wealth and
| security for the poor, for sure!
| twblalock wrote:
| It provides more than they ever had in the past.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > If everyone behaved like that, our society wouldn't have
| the wealth needed to make anyone's lives comfortable and
| secure, except for the lives of the rich
|
| The society today already has the means to make only 1% of
| the population work, and still keep the comfort level for
| everyone as it is.
|
| We are making people waste their lives away creating
| imaginary wealth to bump up the stored imaginary wealth in
| financial institutions only to keep the existing economic
| system going.
| SimonPStevens wrote:
| I'm very sceptical about this claim. Would like to see a
| source.
|
| Sure, we may have enough "money" to redistribute it. But if
| 99% of the population stops working, who is going to make
| everything we use, produce food, run power stations, and
| transport everything to us. Automation is great, but it
| doesn't cover anywhere near 99% of necessary jobs yet.
| ip26 wrote:
| Source? Criteria for "The same comfort level"?
| [deleted]
| nickpp wrote:
| Do you know what families need? Food, clothes, heating and
| cooling, medicine, technology, mobility, various forms of
| entertainment and so on.
|
| Do you know how you make those? Mostly with those "bullshit"
| corporate jobs.
| Aperocky wrote:
| These two things are not mutually exclusive.
| vt85 wrote:
| [dead]
| odiroot wrote:
| Citation needed. Not everyone finds happiness in a life that
| you describe.
| blub wrote:
| Corporations typically provide actual value. Think machinery,
| chemicals, food production, etc.
|
| It's the bullshit software startup jobs that typically serve no
| purpose besides shuffling investor money from one place to
| another. Yes dear reader, that's probably you.
| nullcaution wrote:
| I feel that is kind of what we are seeing on mass in other
| sectors... quiet quitting, and the the like.
|
| People realized they don't have time for bullshit.
| sriku wrote:
| Somewhat related and somewhat tangential. Slavoj Zizek on the
| "tautological emptiness of the master's wisdom" -
|
| """ The tautological emptiness of a Master's Wisdom is
| exemplified in the inherent stupidity of proverbs. Let us engage
| in a mental experiment by way of trying to construct proverbial
| wisdom out of the relationship between terrestrial life, its
| pleasures, and its Beyond. If ones says, "Forget about the
| afterlife, about the Elsewhere, seize the day, enjoy life fully
| here and now, it's the only life you've got!" it sounds deep. If
| one says exactly the opposite ("Do not get trapped in the
| illusory and vain pleasures of earthly life; money, power, and
| passions are all destined to vanish into thin air - think about
| eternity!"), it also sounds deep. If one combines the two sides
| ("Bring Eternity into your everyday life, live your life on this
| earth as if it is already permeated by Eternity!"), we get
| another profound thought. Needless to add, the same goes for it's
| inversion: "Do not try in vain to bring together Eternity and
| your terrestrial life, accept humbly that you are forever split
| between Heaven and Earth!" If, finally, one simply gets perplexed
| by all these reversals and claims: "Life is an enigma, do not try
| to penetrate its secrets, accept the beauty of its unfathomable
| mystery!" the result is, again, no less profound than its
| reversal: "Do not allow yourself to be distracted by false
| mysteries that just dissimulate the fact that, ultimately, life
| is very simple - it is what it is, it is simply here without
| reason and rhyme!" Needless to add that, by uniting mystery and
| simplicity, one again obtains a wisdom: "The ultimate,
| unfathomable mystery of life resides in its very simplicity, in
| the simple fact that there is life." """
| [deleted]
| epicureanideal wrote:
| ...but it doesn't need to be. There are people working on real,
| scientific, anti-aging technology, like the Longevity Escape
| Velocity (LEV) Foundation, SENS Foundation (I prefer LEVF
| though), and the many individuals involved, but especially Aubrey
| de Grey.
|
| One of the reasons I got into software development was to try to
| make enough money to contribute to these causes, or to work on
| the problems directly in bioinformatics. Unfortunately I haven't
| reached the point where I would make much of a difference, but
| who knows what will happen in the next 10-20 years.
| xvilka wrote:
| Beating death is good. I think it will not happen any time soon
| though. In a few centuries, maybe. Certainly not in my
| lifetime.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| The leading organizer of research in the field thinks it has
| a 50% chance of being achieved in 15 years.
|
| Specifically, longevity escape velocity being achieved,
| meaning for each year you live the technology improves fast
| enough that you get another year.
|
| Whatever can be done to raise the odds is obviously
| preferable, because there's also a chance it won't happen in
| our lifetime and that would be really bad.
| brutusborn wrote:
| What got you interested in life extension? And how long would
| you want to live for?
|
| I've never understood the philosophy behind life extension
| research, because to me it seems like a case of spending a lot
| of resources in the hope of improving something that isn't
| really broken. However I love people with passion and I value
| freedom, so I'm glad that people get to work on it even if I
| feel like it's probably a bit of a waste.
| concordDance wrote:
| > it seems like a case of spending a lot of resources in the
| hope of improving something that isn't really broken
|
| This puzzles me. Ageing is extremely expensive to society.
| Healthcare and care for the elderly is often >10% of total
| expenditure. Surely that's pretty broken?
|
| And of course there's all the pain they're in, the things
| they wish to enjoy but can't (like football) and things like
| covid lockdowns that have to be done because the elderly are
| at risk (a 20 year old has a risk of death from covid under
| 0.005%). Lockdowns severely damaged the mental health of many
| people I know and being housebound due to age related
| infirmity causes depression in the elderly.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I meant the human life cycle wasn't broken, because I was
| only thinking of this in terms of preventing death. Framing
| it as a reduction in suffering helped me understand,
| thanks!
|
| I still have concerns that it would be used in such a way
| that people would live long despite intense suffering, thus
| increasing suffering overall. But hopefully that isn't the
| case.
| NoToP wrote:
| It's simple really. I want to exist because I exist. I exist
| because I want to exist. This mutually recursive loop belies
| the bottom of everyone's motivations for everything. All
| wants and urges, from an evolutionary standpoint, stem from
| wanting to keep existing. Wanting to exist stems from already
| existing, as anything which exists without wanting to will
| readily lose out to those that do exist and want to. That's
| all "point" there is at the bottom of it all.
|
| What's the point of extending our life? The same as the point
| of eating and breathing. I want to keep on existing.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I think your logic makes sense, but in some cases may be
| wrong. The underlying assumption is that living longer
| personally will lead to a longer existence for your
| descendants, which is probably true but not always.
|
| E.g. life extension may accelerate resource extraction to
| the point that your descendants die out sooner than they
| would have if you had died normally. Although you are
| living longer, your lineage isn't.
|
| Also, I suspect that the cycle of life and death is like a
| computer reboot in that it is a reset of state. Leaving it
| too long without a reboot might cause existential level
| issues.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I support life extension research, but
| I'm just skeptical of how 'good' it would actually be for
| society and the life extender themselves. Hopeful, but
| cautious.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| I (not OP) want to see the death of a supermassive black
| hole, so 10^106 years or so. I'm sure I can figure out what
| to do in the meantime!
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > What got you interested in life extension?
|
| Immediately when I first heard about it I thought, wow, this
| is fantastic, because death is a really bad thing. I believe
| it was mostly reading the book Ending Aging by Aubrey de
| Grey, although I may have heard about some related ideas on
| various websites before that.
|
| > And how long would you want to live for?
|
| Certainly at least a couple hundred years, and by that point
| I'd have time to think about how much longer I'd want. I
| don't really see a reason why I'd want less than infinite
| time if it were possible.
|
| > I've never understood the philosophy behind life extension
| research, because to me it seems like a case of spending a
| lot of resources in the hope of improving something that
| isn't really broken.
|
| I've spent several decades working really hard, or studying.
| Although I hope I'll have a great time in the next several
| decades, I sure do want more.
|
| Also, I have many things I want to do that I know I won't
| have time to do in one currently normal lifetime. There are
| several projects like books I'd write that I will probably
| not get a chance to do, because there are so many other
| things I want to do also.
|
| Basically the rough outline of my schedule for the next 40-50
| years is pretty packed. Obviously I'm going to prioritize and
| so a bunch of things will be pushed off the list, but I'd
| really like to do all the things on the list, plus have
| plenty of time for general entertainment, social life, and so
| on.
| jbaber wrote:
| I'm able to shorten life by doing mindless "have to" tasks and
| consuming distracting media (music, books, movies, games, etc.)
|
| I'm able to lengthen it by deliberately, reflectively doing
| anything (thinking, programming, breathing, etc.).
|
| I spent almost three decades in school -- grading and getting
| graded. I made that time race by as much as I could so I could
| get to the part where I have kids and a job that I can actually
| enjoy.
|
| Now I'm savoring every minute. I feel the natural compression of
| time that comes with age, of course, but I'm more than able to
| counter it by consciously enjoying life.
| althea_tx wrote:
| Well said. It's worth adding that various mood altering
| substances can speed up our perception of the passage of life
| while impairing our ability to remember what happened.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Some can slow it waaaay down too.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Does that also make those moments more memorable? I don't
| have any experience in it, but seems like an interesting
| possibility that when things seem to slow down you remember
| them better. Or maybe you remember them even less?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Is an experience only fun or valuable when you can
| remember it? What does that say about all the things we
| remember incorrectly?
| Swizec wrote:
| Life is short in many ways, but it's also the longest thing you
| will ever do. There's plenty of time if you prioritize and focus.
|
| No you won't be able to do everything. But you have enough time
| to do the things you care about.
|
| And the things that run out? Enjoy them! Running out is what
| makes them special.
| [deleted]
| alexchantavy wrote:
| > The "flow" that imaginative people love so much has a darker
| cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life amid the
| daily slurry of errands and alarms.
|
| This is a great sentence and I want to see it expanded on. I
| crave being in that flow state and enjoy what I do but it makes
| me very irritable to be interrupted and I realize needing this
| level of focus potentially takes me away from other aspects of
| life like spending time with my family. I'm wondering if others
| have dealt with these sorts of feelings. I love what I work on,
| sometimes to the detriment of other things and difficult for me
| to zoom out in the way described in the essay.
| [deleted]
| srb231 wrote:
| " I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet
| way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was. I think
| a lot of people make the same mistake I did."
|
| PG's writing style is excellent, conversational and clear
| expression of ideas.
|
| Profoundly written.
|
| Relentlessly pruning bullshit gets better with practice and age.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| According to this, first thing we should do is quitting hacker
| news.
| [deleted]
| digbybk wrote:
| I really like this, but to to add an alternate perspective: I'm
| skeptical of deathbed regrets, and regrets in general. I don't
| think your present self actually knows what your past self went
| through. We remember events but are bad at remembering emotions
| except in very broad, general ways. You might say "I wish I had
| spent more time with my kids and less time at work". But you
| won't remember the feeling of dissatisfaction you had with your
| home life and the pride you felt when you delivered on a
| difficult project. You could say "I wish I was more satisfied
| with my home life" but how much control do you have over that,
| really?
|
| I don't remember where I heard this: "every person you see is
| fighting a battle that you know nothing about, so be kind,
| always". I think we can extend that same kindness to ourselves.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| More like you might say "I wish I had spent more time with my
| kids and less time at work" but you won't remember the anxiety
| of planning for the future. In hindsight you managed to saved
| enough for retirement but it didn't always looked that way when
| you were laid off for the second time in 4 years in the middle
| of an economic crisis. Your kids grew without life changing
| injuries but you didn't know that and you didn't have to battle
| a cancer.
|
| So at the twilight of your life you might say that you wish you
| hadn't worked overtime for that startup or spent your weekends
| on side projects but at the time you were worried about paying
| your rent or a dead-end career path and you had to try to work
| harder because you had no way of knowing things would turn out
| fine. And maybe they turned out fine because of your efforts.
|
| Hindsight is 20/20 and this is just as true for your future
| self judging your current self.
| rscho wrote:
| > the pride you felt when you delivered on a difficult project.
|
| Never felt that way. Which is why family always comes first for
| me.
| digbybk wrote:
| I definitely don't want to say that choosing family over work
| isn't the optimal path to happiness. My point is that
| decisions are largely made on emotion, and we're bad at
| remembering past emotion.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I'd say you have about as much control over your career
| trajectory as you do your home life (arguably more control over
| how your home life turns out). And I agree that memory is
| fickle and weird but I think there is a reason you so rarely
| hear someone say, they wished they had spent more time on their
| career rather than family. They recognize what brought/brings
| them happiness.
| digbybk wrote:
| I suspect that a lot of deathbed regrets about not spending
| enough time with your kids is for the benefit of the kids.
| Who would say "I'm glad I didn't spent all that much time
| with you and your siblings. Frankly. I had better things to
| do."
|
| I'm not saying that you shouldn't spend more time with your
| family. I'm saying that we should give our past selves the
| benefit of the doubt when it comes to their decision making,
| whatever your present self decides to do. It's just an
| argument against regret.
| ido wrote:
| Not affirming or disproving anything you wrote, it just
| reminded me that my mother once told that in one of the
| last conversations she had with my grandmother, she told
| her she never really loved her as much as she loved my
| uncle (or maybe that she didn't really love her much at
| all, I don't remember exactly). She was eventually senile
| enough to be unable to talk towards the end of her life.
|
| I also found it interesting that my grandmother was
| _extremely_ loving and caring to me. And my grandfather
| (who was ever less kind to my mother than my grandmother
| was) was very affectionate to his great-grandchildren (but
| not his grandchildren). Maybe they both regretted it near
| the end of their lives and tried to handle things
| differently with the younger generations?
|
| But yes, I agree- I would guess most people had more tact
| and empathy than my grandmother apparently had towards her
| daughter, and wouldn't say something like that even if it
| was true. And if they did many their kids wouldn't be too
| quick to recount the experience publicly?
| msie wrote:
| At 51, I am trying to come to grips with wasting my life in my
| 20s, 30s and 40s. I don't remember doing anything memorable
| during that time. I spent too much time doing bullshit
| programming or doing the same old comfortable things with
| friends. I wish I dated more. Tried more things that young people
| can do. I was too scared to make mistakes. Now I can't go back.
| It's driving me nuts.
| handzhiev wrote:
| For bad (and for good), what you did in the past does not
| matter that much. Good memories can help your current moment,
| but only a little if you can't do the same now.
|
| For example, if you dated more and had more good relationships
| can do some good for your self esteem, but you'll still miss
| these things now if you don't have them.
|
| And the end of the day only the current moment really matters.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| What things do you wish you'd done, besides dating?
| el_benhameen wrote:
| This is a grander version of what I do when I procrastinate:
| fret about the time I've wasted, beat myself up about what I
| wasted it on, and anxiously berate myself every minute that I
| don't _just stop wasting time_. None of that ever works, and
| nothing feels better than forgiving myself for it, forgetting
| all of it, and just getting started. You don't have any "then"
| left, but you do have "now" left.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| You still have plenty of time left to do cool things.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Hey man at least you've realized it now and not on your death
| bed. So now you have time to do the new things. You get your
| second life.
|
| You can't go back only forward, find peace with your past. A
| therapist can help. Put another pearl on the string of life and
| move forward.
|
| My biggest regret is not going to therapy sooner. I would've
| been so much happier sooner. Now I laugh at the irony of that
| statement.
| icelancer wrote:
| Don't be 68 wondering the same thing about the last decade and
| a half.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| That's the problem, now you can't know what you would regret
| in 20 years.
| Glawen wrote:
| What can young people do now that you could not do ? Internet
| stuff? The way I see it, young people now can do less than when
| I was young. For example lots of dangerous activities got
| prohibited (e.g. fireworks) or they added too much regulations
| (alcohol, cigarettes, mopeds). For good or worse, no more
| compulsory army at 18. We live in a very protective society
| where every threatening activity gets banned.
|
| As a European, I studied in the UK and got a masters, tutions
| fees paid by the European Union. My children cannot do this
| anymore.
|
| My young is 17 and spend his free time in the gym, and he is
| not alone. It is true I could not do this at his age, but I do
| not understand it.
| yef wrote:
| An antidote to bullshit (e.g., unproductive meetings that you
| still have to go to) is journaling. When you're writing to
| yourself, for no other audience but yourself, you can be 100%
| honest. So that helps serve to counteract it and give strength,
| sometimes you also see things from another person's perspective.
| e.g. the meeting may have some value to your boss, which has
| follow-on benefits to you that you hadn't considered.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Here's my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point
| of _your_ life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and
| conquering your fear of it. All other forms of "importance"
| derive from this root.
|
| - It is is unlikely anything you do will "matter". Out of ~117
| billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the
| lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if
| it's 1b meaningful lives that weren't just an aggregate in the
| wave of babies, you've got a worse than 1% chance of being
| meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we
| are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what
| is the use in crafting a meaningful life?
|
| - you have only the present, and your unreliable recollection of
| the past to mark your existence. The present is ephemeral, the
| past is mutable, and neither carry any clear indication that the
| experience of either matters beyond themselves. Time is sending
| us all beyond the threshold of both, as best we can tell. With
| such imperfect information, what planning can you rationally do?
| To quote Stephen Covey, if it is out of your hands, why worry?
|
| - some of the largest structural entities mankind has ever built
| are based on the "afterlife" (ie religion), and many possess a
| concept of heaven and hell. In addition, there are more modern
| attempts to inspect the qualia of death. The notion of going to
| heaven or hell intersects with the notion of having a good trip
| or a bad trip. And of course now I have my shining Joe Rogan
| moment where I cite the huge DMT trip awaiting most of us
| (assuming your death not by complete annihilation, such as
| nuclear explosion, or other).
|
| Therefore, the only thing that you really need to plan for is
| getting to the end of your road, and not having your exit DMT
| trip be sponsored by the ninth circle of hell, if you can.
|
| In conclusion it really doesn't matter. Time eternally marches
| forward, there are no actual stakes because everybody is damned.
| Include the notion that we as a society do a pretty dog job of
| (1) not producing fucked up people (2) not fucking people up as
| it all goes and (3) pledging to change that, so it's basically
| just a daydream that mankind will ever transcend to be anything
| of transcendent/indisputable value. Don't know how to phrase the
| last part.
| bombela wrote:
| DMT trip sounds rather nice. The closest I ever was to death
| was a simple fall into darkness. No more fear. Peaceful. With a
| single regret: leaving the family around in pain.
| loandbehold wrote:
| How is past mutable?
| xyzelement wrote:
| Probably not what the parent meant, but I think the past is
| "mutable" in that we can change how we see it through time.
|
| Example. A few years ago I was laid off right after my kid
| was born. Bad thing that happened to me, right?
|
| In retrospect, if I didn't get laid off from there, I would
| end up living in a different state, and my kids wouldn't live
| next door to their cousins. And I am fine work wise as well.
|
| So I retrospect, getting laid off from that job was the best
| thing that could have happened because it was a critical
| junction to my current life which I love.
| baliex wrote:
| It's a reference to your memories of the past not accurately
| reflecting what really happened
| poisonborz wrote:
| Your view of what matters is really narrow. Not everything has
| to have an impact in the style or singular magnitude how
| Aristotle, Charlemange or Muhammad did. You could edit a wiki
| article that inspires someone to contribute to a software that
| has a button that someone will push and change things. Human
| life has billions of nuances like this every minute. And even
| if most of that is ericadated by a catastrophe, some percent of
| this experience might continue, containing an essence of it
| all. We must drive life forward with such beliefs, thinking not
| just of ourselves.
| raydiatian wrote:
| > You could edit a wiki article...
|
| Yeah, "doing for others" is the point of life. I would argue
| it is an _avenue_ in life, a very good avenue, and I don 't
| discredit its morality, or correctness. But it is not the
| _point_ of life, per se.
|
| You do for others for your own peace of mind, so that you can
| live, day to day, as you approach your death bed. Your doing
| for others is your avenue to a clear conscience. Play the
| "why" game on that one for long enough and it ends in
| "because bad is bad, and I don't want to feel bad
| infinitely". This is why I argue that your death is the point
| of life. It's your destination, it's why people freak out
| about leaving a legacy. Death is the great motivator.
|
| You wouldn't "do for others" if it was established wisdom
| that "doing for others" meant some experiential equivalent of
| eternal damnation. It's not that doing for others is wrong or
| something, it's just that it has an ontological derivative.
|
| If we did for others despite our deaths, I think that Adam
| Smith would have been lambasted as a heretic, and I think
| communism would actually work.
| xvilka wrote:
| > It is is unlikely anything you do will "matter". Out of ~117
| billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the
| lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if
| it's 1b meaningful lives that weren't just an aggregate in the
| wave of babies, you've got a worse than 1% chance of being
| meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we
| are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension,
| what is the use in crafting a meaningful life?
|
| Forward few million years to the future. It turned nobody
| mattered, talented or not, recorded in history or not. High
| chances the whole civilization will disappear without any
| trace. So, essentially, nothing ever matters except now.
| netchkin wrote:
| I have recently started wondering about the nature of a very
| specific bullshit enabler these days, which is attention
| commoditization. It almost looks like in the pre-AI days, there
| was a surge of online marketers trying trying to learn about
| people and behavior, occasionally employing dark patterns to get
| you to click. Later, with the surge of social media use, AI
| models were used to recommend content incongruent with the user's
| best interest. And it worked as it becomes increasingly difficult
| to go out in the internet to get a particular job done, but the
| sheer amount of rabbit-holes ventured to must me astounding. And
| now the trend seems to be shorts/stories/tiktok, which only looks
| to me as means to groom human attention for even easier override
| with clickbaits and ads. I wonder how many people daily fail to
| focus on what matters because of the attention problems induced
| by the modern tech and is there any research about it?
| osrec wrote:
| > If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to
| choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no
| matter what your lifespan was.
|
| I find this argument strange, especially since he uses the word
| "seem". "Seem" does not mean "is".
|
| If you _really_ want to make life seem short, measure it in
| millennia. You only get a fraction of one.
|
| Personally, I feel it's about your state of mind. If you're
| depressed, life feels unbelievably long. If things are going
| well, then you don't want the good times to ever end, and it
| seems short.
|
| I don't really know how to conclude whether life is or isn't
| short. All I can conclude from the article is that PG is quite
| happy with his!
| aktenlage wrote:
| > I find this argument strange, especially since he uses the
| word "seem". "Seem" does not mean "is".
|
| As he writes in the beginning, there is no objective truth to
| answer this question. Since it is subjective "seeming" is all
| that matters. If life seems short to you, it is (for you). If
| not, it isn't.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // All I can conclude from the article is that PG is quite
| happy with his!
|
| A great sign that we should pay attention to his advice :)
| block_dagger wrote:
| Life is short if you're enjoying it. If it's full of unbearable
| torture, the opposite is true.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Not necessarily. There are options to make their life short in
| that circumstance. Horrible and unfortunate options, but
| options nonetheless.
| brainlessdev wrote:
| Related reads are Seneca's _On The Shortness Of Life_
| (appropriately only about 100 pages) and maybe also Marcus
| Aurelius 's _Meditations_.
|
| These are recommendations from a philosophy newbie.
| college_physics wrote:
| If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last
| century. Any feeling that it is "too short" is not an objective
| reality (compared to what?) but indicates the failure of
| collective societal mechanisms to put the individual at emotional
| ease with reality and their existence and role in it.
|
| Eliminating all existential angst of the human animal is likely
| impossible as various absurd religious constructs (after life,
| reincarnation etc) testify. But modern society performs
| significantly below par by failing in more basic ways.
|
| Excessive individualism, disconnecting and disregarding those
| living next to us, before us and those living in our future hence
| not living also _through them_ is the main cause.
| irl_chad wrote:
| I don't understand how anyone can call "various religious
| constructs" absurd. It's a very "Reddit moment" thing to do.
| Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal
| feeling that there is something more out there - something that
| created us, is something almost all of us have.
|
| As for the feeling that life is too short; I'll offer a
| comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons
| lived almost a thousand years. Noah the same. Isaac lived
| almost 200 years. Compared to biblical figures, we live very
| short lifespans.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Ah yes. Adam. Noah. Isaac. And yet, literally no historical
| record shows that anyone ever lived that long. And if you
| believe that the Bible is the only historical record we have
| of those times, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
| brutusborn wrote:
| That's why he said "religious constructs" and not
| "religions". I believe religious systems are useful, but I
| agree with the parent that concepts like the afterlife are
| absurd concepts used to alleviate existential dread. Maybe
| this utility means it isn't absurd, but I would say that many
| religions don't have the concept of an afterlife, so other
| less-absurd concepts may provide the same functionality
| without the same cognitive distortions.
| feanaro wrote:
| If you take a step back, it is a great and profoundly
| absurd mystery that there is existence at all.
|
| So given this background absurdity, how do you even
| delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to
| concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's
| certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in
| terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear
| it's sound reasoning when it comes to things like this.
|
| And I say this as a rather staunch irreligious person.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Some might view something as a mystery that another views
| as an absurdity. I think a mystery is more interesting and
| less ... (Edits: hmm I don't know what the word is.)
| brutusborn wrote:
| In this case I think that the mystery of life requires
| something to avoid existential angst, and some people use
| the afterlife as that something. Other religions (like
| Buddhism) might view the entire question of "what is
| this?" as absurd, and so use methods like meditation to
| help alleviate the angst, thus avoiding absurd beliefs.
|
| TLDR: the mystery isn't the absurdity but our reaction to
| it might be absurd.
| feanaro wrote:
| Buddhism has plenty of "absurd" beliefs of this sort. If
| anything, the delineation of "absurd" is anything but
| simple.
| dfadgasfdads wrote:
| As you're portraying believing in the hereafter as a cope
| for existential dread, you could say the opposite.
|
| The disbeliever tries to ridicule the concept of an
| afterlife as to allievate the dread of being held
| accountable for their deeds on the day of judgement which
| would likely lead them to an eternal and painful hell.
|
| In Islam, it's very clearly mentioned that each individual
| will be judged according to their deeds. There are two
| destinations possible paradise or hellfire.
|
| Other religions that came before have often tried to tone
| down this reality by either removing accountability like
| Chrisitanity with the concept of Jesus (peace be upon him)
| having died for our sins or by simply removing the concept
| of an afterlife all together.
|
| The Quran clearly tells us that many prophets were sent in
| the past with revelation but as time passed on they were
| falsified by people. In light of this, one could easily see
| how polytheistic religions came about.
|
| In the end Islam is the last religion and it was intended
| to be preserved which makes it unlike any other religion in
| the world today. It has one book there a no multiple
| different versions. It is perfectly constructed and there
| are 0 inconsistencies and errors. No arab linguist can deny
| that.
|
| Allah sent the previous prophets specifically for their
| nations however the last prophet Muhammad peace be upon him
| was sent for all mankind until the end of times.
|
| Give the quran a read. https://quran.com Do some research
| on the topic. YouTube is a great ressource for this. Make
| your own opinion.
|
| In light of this, I still want to invite you to become
| muslim. Islam answers all the questions Chrisitanity and
| other religions couldn't. Most importantly it will save you
| in the hereafter. I'd suggest putting your hand on a hot
| stove (not too hot) and ponder. Do you really want
| something like this for yourself and for eternity?
| civopsec wrote:
| > something that created us, is something almost all of us
| have.
|
| Buddhism claims that nothing created us. Samsara is
| beginningless and wasn't architected by anything. And that's
| just 500 billion people or so.
| civopsec wrote:
| > 500 billion people
|
| * million
| onei wrote:
| Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe
| the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across
| different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. For
| instance, Eve picking an apple is not too dissimilar to
| Pandora's box. The flood in Noah's lifetime is also part of
| Babylonian myth where the protagonist was Gilgamesh. I recall
| even the concept of hell was taken from Greek mythology -
| notice how we call this mythology today instead of religion.
|
| Answering questions like "where did we come from" and "where
| are we going" have always existed. Passing knowledge down
| through generations has always existed. Treating these
| stories as gospel makes little sense to me.
| stormking wrote:
| > Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly
| believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come
| up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're
| accurate.
|
| WTF? "Skeptical", probably not "accurate"?
|
| You have to be absolutely nuts to think that they're even
| remotely true.
| ido wrote:
| I think you're taking a humorous tone[0] too literally.
| The poster you answer to was saying that they think the
| biblical stories are myths/legends.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
| stormking wrote:
| I'm usually very good at detecting irony, tongue-in-cheek
| and similar "humorous tones". I see nothing indicating it
| here.
| [deleted]
| selfawareMammal wrote:
| It's still a social construct. As knowledge and science
| advance, the need for religion decreases and it's really on
| us to accept there are some questions we cannot answer.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion
| decreases
|
| Citation needed, massively!
|
| If anything, the powerful technology and knowledge we now
| wield (weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance,
| modern logistics and coordination, global communications)
| only makes it more important that we don't forget the hard-
| earned scoial and moral lessons of our pre-scientific
| ancestors - lessons that were often encoded in evolving
| cultural systems like religion.
| tobylane wrote:
| Humanism fills that need. It doesn't matter that it's
| new, Islam and Christianity were new once, and corrupted
| since.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| There's an argument to me made that the age/popularity of
| a belief system does correlate with validity, given that
| their individual memes are subject to Darwinism.
|
| Of course it's not everything, but I don't think humanism
| on its own would work without an older religion as its
| "bootstrap".
| rablackburn wrote:
| I wouldn't say it necessarily correlates with validity -
| Darwinism is about one thing: fitness of survival.
|
| I feel like if you squint a little you can see all the
| positive-memetic adaptations that get bolted on to
| organised religion.
|
| A commandment to "worship no other god but me" is a
| classic example of something that seems less like
| profound revelation and more like an effective memetic
| adaptation.
| tobylane wrote:
| I don't consider myself a humanist, but I accept that my
| views are similar to them. I think humanism only exists
| because the way Christianity has been promoted recently
| forced the alternative to have a graspable answer rather
| than "I'm a good person for my own preference".
|
| UsefulChart's video on humanism may help.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWhz3SXPWkg
| stormking wrote:
| > There's an argument to me made that the age/popularity
| of a belief system does correlate with validity, given
| that their individual memes are subject to Darwinism.
|
| Absolutely not, because the fitness, in an evolutionary
| sense, of those memes does not correlate with their
| truthfulness but with how easy they are to believe
| because they appeal to our fears, hopes and dreams.
|
| Take that "life after death" trope. The hard truth is
| that there isn't any, when you die, everything that made
| up "you" will be gone for good. But no religion based on
| that truth would ever thrive because the thought is just
| too scary and bleak.
| fsflover wrote:
| Why should one choose humanism instead of personal
| prosperity (egoism)? Religions have an answer. Humanism
| AFAIK doesn't.
| lgas wrote:
| What is religions' answer? "Because Sky daddy said so"?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If "Sky Daddy" is the literal creator of the Earth who
| gave direct commands to mankind, then that alone is a
| pretty valid reason.
|
| If he isn't, then he's a powerful (yet imaginary) social
| construct that has evolved over the past 4,000 years to
| encode the wisdom of many past generations through a set
| of rules and stories that happen to match up with the
| stories and rules of many other cultures. It's also an
| incredibly fast and low-cost way to reach a solution.
|
| Either way, there's definitely some validity to the
| claims of any major religion.
| Lionga wrote:
| The claim of black or gay people beeing inferior had been
| there for more than 4000 years. Does that give any
| validity to you?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'm not sure these views are as consistent as you say
| they are.
|
| The Atlantic slave trade started in the 1500s and ended
| in the 1800s. Even then, it was controversial and faces
| opposition from certain Church groups (while getting
| support from others).
|
| Vilification of gays based on Christian religious grounds
| apparently goes back to the 11th century (based on a
| quick read of Wikipedia, TBF), and is only starting to
| come undone now. I don't really have an answer for this,
| it was unfortunate.
| stormking wrote:
| The answer is a family of simple heuristics like the
| "Golden Rule", "tit-for-tat" etc.
| fsflover wrote:
| I don't think it works well, or better than religion for
| many people.
| stormking wrote:
| How did you come to the conclusion that religion works at
| all?
| fsflover wrote:
| I know people who based their view of the world based on
| the religion.
| weatherlite wrote:
| In the West is it even debatable that christianity is on
| a decline? As for the muslim world its more mixed but I
| do think the younger genereation is less religious than
| the older ones. It has a long way to go though till we
| can say its a secularized society.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| "Religious-ness" has two contexts. One is for
| philosophical purposes, where a person agrees with a set
| of assumptions (aka beliefs).
|
| The other context is as a tribal marker, for practical
| purposes. In this context, the "religiousness" is not
| about agreeing with the set of assumptions, but
| pretending to agree and/or going through the motions of
| various customs as a signal of how committed they are to
| the tribe.
|
| In societies where individuals need to rely less on the
| tribe, it might be posited that there is less reason for
| people to put on a show for the latter reason, so they
| can afford to be less "religious". So if, on average,
| children of Christians are more likely to be economically
| independent, then they may tend to being less religious,
| and children of Muslims, who are more likely to be
| economically dependent on each other, tend to be more
| religious.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| Taking Christianity specifically as that's the only
| religion I know at least a little.
|
| A lot of the more specific day-to-day life advice in
| those texts are outdated because they're based on
| societal circumstances of the time, which have changed by
| now. Or they are explanations of phenomena that we have a
| much better grasp on now. Or they make claims that are
| implausible given today's understanding.
|
| Religions teach us some valuable high-level concepts,
| like love and compassion. Those values are extremely
| important, but also not terribly interesting. You can
| totally arrive at them through other means.
|
| I don't see how those high-level values help at solving
| modern crises of global scale. Believers searching for
| specific advise on modern day problems need to work hard
| and read though a lot of "code" to find a few nuggets -
| ultimately failing to get specific enough answers.
|
| If I do a web search on what the bible says to
| homosexuality, for instance, I get walls of text
| discussing precious few bible verses. In effect the
| bible, being what it is, allows those in charge to impose
| their individual preferences and opinions on their
| believers by means of laying out suitable interpretations
| of the code.
|
| I am tempted to conclude that there is less collected
| wisdom in the bible than you might think, and more
| potential for harm than you like to admit.
| anhner wrote:
| Ah yes, the hard earned social lesson of not wearing
| mixed fibers. Or not allowing women on their period to
| share the bed of their husband.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Please don't make comments like this on HN.
|
| Nobody was making the argument that extremely specific
| religious quirks like this are encode knowledge important
| to the wise use of modern technology.
| Lionga wrote:
| It is valueable as the comments shows so easily how wrong
| religions get it, when many take religions as truths
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That's a valid comment to make - religions do get things
| wrong, but GP is plain old "look how smart I am"
| strawmanning.
|
| It doesn't make the discourse more interesting or
| enlightening, and frankly doesn't belong on this site.
| anhner wrote:
| On the contrary, I think comments that push religion as
| some kind of romantic enlightenment of the past as
| opposed to science are the ones that don't belong on this
| site.
| Lionga wrote:
| You deciding what belongs or does not belong here, what
| is allowed to be said or what is interesting or
| enlightening is the terror tactic almost all religions
| used to suppres people and ideas they do not like
| stormking wrote:
| Oh cut the crap, religious stories are fairytales and
| everyone knows it. And religious "truths" are either
| trivialities or simply not true at all.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| As the unit cost of destruction constantly decreases,
| logarithmically; we might guess instead that keeping the
| mental attitudes of individual actors in line is more
| important as tech surges forward. If you have a better
| method than religion to do this (and I don't discount the
| possibility) do drop a description of that.
|
| "Humanism" highly correlates with lock sales worldwide as
| far as I can tell. It's not defense at all vs drug
| addiction. Humans feel great when drugged up.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| "Life is short" isn't meant to be a philosophically rigorous,
| consistent logical statement.
|
| It's just a common saying that's meant to remind us that we
| have a tendency to spend huge amounts of time and emergy on
| things that ultimately don't matter, and hopefully sometimes
| short-circuit the thought process that causes us to do this.
| the_af wrote:
| PG seems to be putting it in very concrete terms. For
| example, he mentions spending only 8 Christmas with a young
| kid who feels it's "magical". 8, he argues, is an objectively
| small number for lots of human experiences, like "8 books" or
| "8 times I dined my favorite meal".
| ElFitz wrote:
| > If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last
| century.
|
| Well, yes and no. That we live longer than our ancestors seems
| obvious and is a very common belief.
|
| And average life expectancy has indeed increased.
|
| But it really isn't that clear cut.
|
| For example: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-
| long-did-anc...
| keewee7 wrote:
| Everytime someone posts the correct fact that average
| lifespan has drastically increased in the past century
| someone will wrongly claim that it is only because we got
| better at lowering child morbidity. They might even link to
| the garbage BBC article that only looks at data for rich
| privileged people who did indeed live long lives centuries
| ago. However the rich and privileged of old times were not
| representative of the general population.
|
| Why do people so aggressively deny that things have been
| getting better in the past 100 years?
| jaakl wrote:
| The only thing what has changed is childhood mortality. If
| you take statistical lifetime of most animals (say frogs) and
| count in all offspring with hope to describe their average
| life duration then it would be low number of seconds. Human
| as such seems to have always same lifespan programmed in,
| just natural early mortality has been taken away. Basic
| statistical bias. Does almost removed early mortality really
| make our species stronger/better is another question. Removal
| of one natural survival test may have its own consequences.
| okaram wrote:
| Definitely not the only thing. Maternal mortality is
| another big thing. War, famine, malnutrition....
|
| Although the max age hasn't increased, the proportion of
| people who reach it has.
| jaakl wrote:
| There are other factors too, sure. But I'd like to remind
| here that wars killing people too soon are still a thing,
| now even in the Global North. If you have any means to
| help to bring end closer to these current issues, please
| do so.
|
| We have tech community (some of them YC alumni)
| delivering essential equipment (trucks, generators) to
| the chrisis zone for example. Today west seems to be
| already tired of the news and this is exactly what the
| conflict starter counts on.
| watwut wrote:
| This is not true. Humans died on injuries and sickness that
| are easily treatable now. They used to be more frequent and
| deadly.
|
| Humans got frequently born with disabilities because
| malnutrition in pregnancy (like a lack of iodine) that just
| don't happen anymore in West.
|
| There were whole classes of these issues that killed people
| and just don't exist anymore.
| jaakl wrote:
| In the other hand they were not dying from technology
| induced accidents, like traffic :) Sure it is
| simplification, but the point is that statistical average
| life duration and total lifespan of adult person have
| quite weak correlations.
|
| Actually even now these early years are most risky ones,
| just the scale is different. Now I have witnesses bias
| here also - in my 40ies I can expect to live 50 years
| more, very different from a newborn with immediate
| terminal condition. So lifespan does have different
| meaning for us.
| watwut wrote:
| It does not cancels out. It is not just simplification,
| you have to grossly overestimate traffic deaths now and
| underestimate accidental deaths in the past. (Basically
| regardless of when and where you place "the past".)
|
| > Actually even now these early years are most risky
| ones, just the scale is different.
|
| Babies mortality used to be huge too. And maternal
| mortality used to be huge by our standards too.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| People used to die from transportation, drowning when
| crossing rivers, accidents around horses, etc... were
| very frequent. Safety codes are fairly modern.
| 10x_contrarian wrote:
| I feel it's destructive for people to hold this incorrect
| belief. People living into their 60s and 70s was very common
| for all of recorded history. By ignoring this, modern people
| are less incentivized to criticize and challenge their modern
| lives and the societies we live within.
| stavros wrote:
| Nobody says no people lived to their 70s. Just like the
| fact that people live to their 100s now doesn't mean that
| it doesn't matter if _most_ people live to their 100s.
|
| Then again, I'd rather be young for 50 years than old for
| 70.
| watwut wrote:
| Average person lives longer new. Literally deadly diseases
| are non-issues now. Whole classes of malnutrition related
| disabilities that used to be frequent basically don't exist
| anymore, to the point where many people don't even know it
| existed.
| thewakalix wrote:
| I wouldn't want to die tomorrow. Is that desire "objective
| reality" or not? If it is, how is that different from not
| wanting to die a century from now?
| verzeichnis wrote:
| The other comment was about disregarding reality, not about
| wanting to die.
|
| Most people don't want to die tomorrow, at the same time we
| need to come to terms with the fact that we age and that our
| time is ultimately limited.
|
| Which is an objective reality.
|
| As I grow older, I am discovering that life has different
| chapters. Each with their benefits and challenges. The other
| comment is talking about us as a society failing to integrate
| and value each chapter and instead focusing on youth and
| youth alone. There is nothing desirable in age for western
| societies (probably others too, I just don't know enough).
| [deleted]
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Life is finite. Long or short is all relative and depends on your
| state of mind.
| do_nothing wrote:
| This is the way.
| davidmpaz wrote:
| > If you're a freelancer or a small company, you can do this at
| the level of individual customers. If you fire or avoid toxic
| customers, you can decrease the amount of bullshit in your life
| by more than you decrease your income.
|
| This have been proven true to me so many times!
| [deleted]
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Life is not short [0]: we just waste most of it.
|
| [0] https://dkb.show/post/life-is-not-short
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Started reading then realized it is def. too short to waste on
| pgs thoughts.
| stormking wrote:
| It obviously isn't too short to leave a mean comment
| testmasterflex wrote:
| :D
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I never feared death until I had children. Yes, life is short,
| and you don't even get to know exactly how short.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| For anyone wondering why it is "vb.html", it certainly comes from
| "vita brevis" (life is short), often used as "Ars longa, vita
| brevis", which references Hippocrates[0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis
|
| """
|
| Vita brevis,
|
| ars longa,
|
| occasio praeceps,
|
| experimentum periculosum,
|
| iudicium difficile.
|
| """
|
| """
|
| Life is short,
|
| and art long,
|
| opportunity fleeting,
|
| experimentations perilous,
|
| and judgment difficult.
|
| """
| [deleted]
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Key point I think the article misses, is that 'bullshit', much
| like spacetime, is relative.
| passion__desire wrote:
| What did the Leviathan of Parsonstown teach
| us?https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk
|
| I don't know what the above youtube short means for Gettier
| problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem
|
| Any thoughts?
| robg wrote:
| Another stat I read recently: Parents spend ~75% of their child's
| life with them before the age of 12. Puts into perspective the
| good and bad influences long before they fly from the nest.
| user5678 wrote:
| [dead]
| jmathai wrote:
| I was explaining to my 12yo son when he wanted to play video
| games instead of hanging with the family that I only had 6 more
| Christmas eves while he lives at home.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Cousins is the solution: kids get bored hanging around with
| olders talking about interest rates etc. Mixed age play
| amongst kids is magic.
| ckaygusu wrote:
| It's really not a great argument considering that's all he
| had.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| Children live with their parents until their thirties
| nowadays. You mean he still has another 18 Christmas eves
| left.
|
| That is why life is short. The barriers to young people are
| growing bigger and bigger. Their adult lives keep getting
| shorter faster than their lifespan increases.
|
| 80 years is not a short period of time by any stretch of the
| imagination.
| Nomentatus wrote:
| The lifetime of a galaxy isn't that much different than 80
| years, right? Right? As Lincoln said, everyone's legs are
| long enough to reach the ground; but even so, mine are
| short compared to his.
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| [flagged]
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