50 Things I Pretend to Know Now That I Am Nearing 50 | Hacker News Reader

50 Things I Pretend to Know Now That I Am Nearing 50

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22 pointsric3rcar25 comments

"Richard Branson started Virgin Air by putting up a sign when his plane was cancelled, selling tickets. He used the money raised from the tickets to rent an airplane. You can start an airline like that also."

And selling his empire of retail stores, he got a few pieces of silver from that too.

My thoughts exactly. I recently read Branson's own account of this event, and no - he did not raise money from the tickets. You cannot start an airline on the money raised from <100 tickets. He didn't actually make any profit from the event at all - he simply organised a private jet for him and the other stranded businessmen and got them to split the cost. Which supposedly led to him starting Virgin Air, but still a huge misrepresentation.

I've learned to stop reading as soon as I know it's by James Altucher. He's done some interesting things, he says some interesting things, but by and large, personally, I find his writings to be a net negative. What appear to be gems are often costume jewellery, and there's a lot of manure to get through to find them.

Usually I'll read things and assess them on their merits before I correlate them with their author - this article is making me reassess that approach.

I read something about Thomas Pynchon the other day, so I borrowed one of his novels [from the library] and started reading. I spent about an hour and a half and went about 70 pages and it was clear why people regard his writing.

He's a very good writer and I didn't care about the story he was telling and I put it down and then took it back and I'm unlikely to pick up another of his novels. Ever. But I can appreciate why some people [including people I know] enjoy reading him.

Not judging a book by it's cover, isn't all it's cracked up to be because covers often reveal the author's name. What I appreciate about Altucher is that I know that there're going to be gems and going to be manure and the sense that he'd be the first to confess to the charge of producing a lot of manure along with the gems. What I know I'll get is not get an argument or a three point essay or an editorial.

> 29) The Bible, The Bhavagad Gita, Buddha, The Koran, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, are all the same book.

Apparently, Buddha is a book.

It's fun to peddle motivational pap.

Who your spouse will be is the most important career decision you will ever make.

Surely, ^career^life?

All diets are BS. Avoid processed sugars. Eat less.

Not really. If you are overweight (as I once was) going on a diet can be very helpful as it creates a structure and gives you a plan to follow. Once you reach your ideal weight then you can concentrate on eating the right amount of food.

I lost almost 70 lbs on prescription pills and then Weight Watchers. I've gained about 10 lbs back (over a year, when I stopped doing WW!) but I can say for certain that WW definitely gives you good information to help you lose weight, including telling you how to pick appropriate foods and calorie amounts per meal.

It's not the typical "Eat this exactly" diet, but it is a diet, and it works. If you stick with it. But you'll need to continue eating healthily afterwards. You will never again be able to just eat whatever you want, if you want to maintain that weight loss. (And it's totally worth it!)

WW is hardly unique here, either. Any plan that gives you good information and processes will work the same way, assuming it's not based on pseudo-science.

Cutting down carbs (especially processed sugars) has been great, too. Cutting them out completely is dangerous, but I was definitely eating way too many carbs.

> Surely, ^career^life?

Not really, if you have a supportive spouse who can help you make the right job decisions through discussion (who hasn't discussed their job change with their other halfs?), then they /are/ the most important career decision you'll make.

> Physics and most of biology are just opinions that will change every few years.

Err ok, whatever.

It would be nice if there was such a list, where people can continuously up/down vote items, and add new items.

Oh! How about a github awesome-life list?

Don't dream it.... do it.

23) War is never justified.

I had to stop there.

And oddly enough I stopped at this one:

13) Anger is not a real emotion. It is fear clothed. Figure out what you are afraid of before you get angry.

Anger is a very real and one of the most useful emotion, because it's so easy to recognize. It tells you something important is going on and might as well stop what you are doing for a moment and figure it out.

Anger only happens because you fear something bad might otherwise happen again :)

For that statement to be true you would have to generalize the definition of fear to "anticipation of undesired outcome" and that entire quote reduces "there are things we like and dislike". Sounds like pretentious bullshit to me rather than an insightful quote.

I tend to agree with the statement that anger is just fear without knowing the reason. It might be that the thing you fear is justified, but even then the anger becomes a concrete fear that you can act upon.

Anger clouds judgement and suspends rational thought. I struggle to see how being angry myself might be useful to me. Of course like with NLP that knowledge can be useful when dealing with another who is or gets angry.

You didn't make it to

> 48) Physics and most of biology are just opinions that will change every few years.

then?

Oh my god, exactly this. This one pissed me off so much. Made the OP sound like a pretentious know-it-all who actually doesn't know it all, or even any of it.

> The prequels were not as bad as you think. Don’t be a generational elitist.

i made it to 44 ;)

After 18 I decided to stop. As I was closing the tab I caught 23 out of the corner of my eye and realized stopping was the right decision.

I don't understand how you can reconcile 1 and 18.

Definitely a minority opinion and one that breaks down when you bring up the inevitable argument: would you let Hitler conquer the world and exterminate its non-Germans?

Flagged for being abject nonsense.

> The Bible, The Bhavagad Gita, Buddha, The Koran, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, are all the same book.

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