Life is not short | Hacker News Reader

Life is not short

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820 pointsdbrereton500 comments

At 35 I decided to fuck the "normal life" and just go RVing with my wife. We saw the country (US). Fast forward 7 years and we are now building our own house paycheck to paycheck. It's a beautiful property. I know there are people on here that have much, much more and could afford to buy an already existing house. But my dreams are to have a different kind of life, so in that sense I am definitely living that. Yes there are mornings I wish I can wake up and NOT want to install my own well pump, install mini splits in 105 degree weather, install siding, dig foundations, run 40 80-pound bags of cement in a mixer, 2 at a time. etc etc etc...

But my alternative life would have been spending the last 7 years playing new versions of Call of Duty and kinda pissing time away.

are you happy?

Definitely subjective. Sounds like hell to me. But i respect anyone with enough energy to actually do something.

Not the OP, but I did something very similar with my wife and daughter a few years ago. Each day was more enjoyable than the last, especially with the RV. That was the most enjoyable time, and that enjoyment came from just existing and taking things as they come. There was never any monotony.

I'd replace happy with content there.

Happiness comes and goes. Contentment runs a bit deeper and gets at it what this article talks about.

two of my uncles did this - plumbers until 50, then RV life for 20 years, then built houses. as a kid they were my heroes. older, I am not so sure it worked out, but they had a good time for a while.

What part(s) of it don't you think worked out with the benefit of hindsight?

Once they aged out of the RV lifestyle, they found themselves kind of rootless and wanting a permanent place that they had kind of grown into.

It’s honestly hard to say. I don’t think they would go back and change it, but it has its downsides. Especially for my aunts because they will outlive their husbands and find themselves needing to build a social network. I mean also true for the husbands, but they will not outlive.

Thanks. I often wonder about this. My mother is in her nineties and refuses to move to be closer to me and my family because she has a supportive community around her (including people decades younger than her). It makes my life more difficult as I have to drop everything and drive if there's a medical scare, which there have been a few of in the last few years, but I completely get how the community structure around her in many ways makes her day-to-day life easier and more fulfilling.

Is it really pissing time away if you're enjoying your time spent playing video games? While it's great that you found an opportunity to go RVing with your wife. Because such a feat is not really possible for everyone to do, less people do it so less congestion and you can make it enjoyable. Imagine if 100 million people in the US decided to all at once go RVing around the country. All the areas would be full of RVs and I bet it would not be as enjoyable anymore.

"Is it really pissing time away if you're enjoying your time spent playing video games?"

It depends on if you ever think you will regret it or not. I thought the same thing 10 years ago when I was spending years playing games and having fun. Now it feels like I wasted a colossal amount of time no matter how much fun it was at the time. I'd never made that choice knowing what I know now.

Interesting. I was very into PC gaming in my teens and look back on that time quite fondly. Certainly not with any regret or a feeling that I wasted my time.

Same here. If you're saying "that time I spend gaming was wasted time", you'd better have a really good story about what you would have done instead, excluding any kind of hindsight magic.

I don't think there's anything bad with gaming in your free time - at any age. In the end, why shouldn't one just enjoy whatever life's possibilities are? It's obviously important to keep all other areas of life under control, but what's bad about enjoying doing something - even if it's not productive - especially when you're young. This is quite philosphical, but I've found the idea of optimistic nihilism very helpful for having an overall more relaxed view on life https://you.com/search?q=optimistic+nihilism

Why "especially when you're young"?

Arguably, any consumption activities are better done when old, and investment activities when young. Effort when young pays off with tons of compounding over your lifespan. Effort when old is not as important, and so pure consumption non-productive activities are probably better enjoyed when old, are they not? Especially if it is something like videogames that doesn't exactly require some great physical abilities.

There are a ton of low-effort forms of entertainment available today. It's easy for them to dominate choice. If you take those away, other things will emerge and grab your interest. If you are even a remotely interested person you'll find stuff. A few months ago I was at the beach without as much technology access and enjoyed it so much that I put myself on a media diet after. I suddenly felt more excitement about programming projects I had started but not finished, reading books, cello practice, little projects around my house and garden. One thing all these things had in common is that they left be feeling better when I was done with them. That just doesn't happen for me with most video games and movies. But it's just so much easier to fall into the couch and watch Netflix or grab the controller.

I really think this thread has to specify the types of video games it speaks about. Because games range from CoD-like X-to-Win shooters with endless changing backgrounds to something more elaborate and harder than real life activities, while being relatively short.

You are right that this makes a difference. I think the difference might be relatively small though. At best the experience can be comparable to having read a great fiction book (Disco Elysium, Life is Strange) or a good social experience like playing with your friends online while using voice chat. Online games with total strangers can be challenging and fun, but also a blur. I've spent way too much time playing Rocket League for example and my experience in hindsight would have been the same off I had only played for like 5-10 hours. And then there are pretend-work games like Factorio, Kerbal Space Program or even more obvious Zachtronic games like Shenzhen IO. The latter might be great exercise for non-programmers, but you don't actually accomplish anything and still exhausted the same parts of your brain.

I like this post. It rings a bell with me when you wrote: <<But it's just so much easier to fall into the couch and watch Netflix or grab the controller.>>

I cannot put a finger on it, but what is the difference between (a) reading a newspaper, magazine, book (fiction or non-fiction) and (b) playing video games or streaming films / TV shows? I cannot put a finger on it, but (a) reading activates some part of my brain that (b) streaming does not. Why? I'm not sure. I never read any research about it. One thing I can say: Watching documentaries is different than other stuff. Again: Not sure why. It might only be me and my brain that feels this way.

Also, this part: <<I suddenly felt more excitement about programming projects I had started but not finished, reading books, cello practice, little projects around my house and garden.>> Again, I cannot put a finger on it, but what really is the difference between these activities and playing video games or streaming films / TV shows? On the surface, not much, but the emotional satisfaction is so different when finishing a cello piece or novel versus a streamed season of a TV show.

Playing a game means mastering skills in a purely fictional world with purely fictional sets of rules and challenges. It doesn't translate into your life, expect in the most abstract way [1]. Whereas reading a newspaper, magazine or a book deepens your understanding of the world you live in.

[1] The flipside is that it can teach you bad habits as well. If the result of the game does not matter in any way, you have no incentive to try hard at it, and can just coast, turn the game off when you're frustrated etc. This is not how real-life is (coasting and difficulty avoidance don't work as well), so games can teach damaging habits. It's better in team multiplayer games, because in-game peer pressure can make you get out of your comfort zone.

If you really think that games cannot teach you the same things as purely written words then perhaps you have a very limited view of what kind of games are out there.

Games convey very simplistic ideas compared to the full extent of human thought, expressed in spoken or written form. It's usually way more washed down than cinema, which is already incredibly washed down.

Not to mention the benefit of say reading about your country's history, as opposed to the history of some ficitonal world in a video game - with history books, you're learning about the things which actually happened and have had a direct, large impact on your life and the world around you.

Novels, while being ficitonal, allow you to explore inner worlds of other people and complex interactions between them (and there's nothing more complex in the universe and at the same important to us than humans and interactions between them), something that games are severely lacking (cue in people telling me about Nier Automata and one or two other story-based games which are approaching the level of a bad novel).

Most video games are spatially-oriented and are basically more sophisticated version of children playing tag, football or similar simple games focused around interactions in 3d space. And the ones that are not that, i.e. that try to be about humans and not simple spatial and temporal relationships, basically suck for the most part. It's clear that the medium is not meant for them.

The thing is, Nier Automata doesn't try to be a novel. I mean, it's not even that subtle, game all but tells you that it tries to experiment with storytelling in the medium in the first 30 minutes.

Also, you sound extremely prejudiced and close minded: > Novels, while being ficitonal, allow you to explore inner worlds of other people and complex interactions between them (and there's nothing more complex in the universe and at the same important to us than humans and interactions between them) How do you even argue with that? Can you somehow support this claim? Though from reasoning like this i can deduce that you must hate House of Leaves, and kinda understand why you dislike Nier Automata.

Nier Automata is an interesting example! It touched on a lot of interesting topics and did so in a very creative way. At the same time I also feel that the game wasn't mindful of my time at all. The stretches between the interesting story elements were frequently separated by long, often-repeating stretches of fairly simple hack'n slack gameplay. I'd hold up something like Outer Wilds or Disco Elysium though. But Disco Elysium is pretty close to an amazing book and doesn't do as creative work with the game medium as Nier does.

Imo most games are simply dopamine-sinks or reflex-based, which is fine, but you are not going to get the same brain activity as doing something which requires deep focus and that can actually be constructive. Games tend to be passive, in that once you understand how to win, you don't need to put in as much active thinking. You just need to know how to respond.

I think some of it might not be about reading activating part of my brain as much as it is about most video games and modern movies and tv shows creating some kind of dopamine feedback loop and dependence that makes other tasks less interesting and even reduces my ability to perform them as well.

> you'd better have a really good story about what you would have done instead, excluding any kind of hindsight magic.

Nah, that is not how it works. Effectively, you want people to tell you about some grand plan they would executed it, if they did not played.

The way it works when you stop gaming/reading too much facebook etc is that you start being more active in other areas. You get more fit, you suddenly read more about history without planning to, you do crafts here and there, learn to draw or play music instrument on and off. And overall you feel calmer, more creative, sleep better. And after after months/years it accumulate and you look back happy. It does not feel wasted, cause you have that picture on the wall, your dad has your the thing you created, you are really proud about that song you can play.

Same. If anything, my teen gaming years may have helped get me through school.

Because there isn't that much else to do as a teen. The opportunity cost of spending time on gaming is low. You could get a job and start saving or investing, or study harder and advance your education more quickly, but it's not the expectation that teens will do this in a significant way.

An adult who is free to do anything and chooses to spend a lot of time gaming has a higher opportunity cost and a higher likelyhood of regret later.

> You could get a job and start saving or investing, or study harder and advance your education more quickly

I see this more of a waste of teenage years time than playing videogames with friends

Learning responsibility? Learning how an organization functions? Perhaps learning a skill at the job (customer service, mental math, cooking, etc)? A waste?

> Learning responsibility? Learning how an organization functions? Perhaps learning a skill at the job (customer service, mental math, cooking, etc)? A waste?

but enough about being in an MMO guild

I see people argue for the real-world skills gaming affords— but when the biggest risk is embarrassment among people you’ll never meet, and the primary real world reward is inadvertently exercising a few organizational muscles in a vastly different context from the real world, I just don’t see it. Not saying there’s no benefit, but it’s not even in the same ballpark as actual work experience.

Not all jobs are boring. I worked as a life guard and taught swim lessons as a teen. I made great friends, we had pool parties, and I enjoyed teaching and it felt good to buy/save for things myself rather than always ask my parents for money

Working as a life guard taught you about skill building (life guards are usually well-trained / licensed) and responsibility (show up to work on-time and consistently; care for swimmers). Even if you found life guarding boring, you would still gain both of those experiences. If you stayed home and played video games instead, the result would be different. (I hesitate to use the term "less" here... else I would get a HN pile-on!)

What about people who read a lot in their childhood / teen years. Their minds seem to be wired differently than those who play video games. (Probably mistaken cause and effect on my part...)

> we had pool parties

if that's what you like, yeah. I prefer to have sat with my friends playing bomberman or fighting games, laughing at each other when they died, eating popcorn and chilling.

I did a lot of that type of thing too!

There is a ton of stuff to do as a teen. I spent a lot of my time getting into graphics. Other things to do could be sports of various kinds, music, making stuff, etc.

I look back on that stuff fondly, and I feel like doing that stuff helped me a ton today.

> Because there isn't that much else to do as a teen.

Whoa, that's a bold statement!

I think the key here is the regret. Is playing games alone, or with friends really that much different from some other activity, such as traveling, alone, or with friends? Sure you learn while traveling, but also get good at gaming the more you do it. You can even substitute traveling with some other hobby (playing the guitar, building legos, etc). Some may argue that the guitar is a "useful" skill but I'd argue that gaming can be a useful skill in the same sense.

There is also that aspect where doing the same thing everyday makes time seem short. Versus doing something new, which yeah do you have the money to take a vacation.

Everytime I finish a project I ask myself was it worth it. It's like buying a new device, you want it until you have it.

Could that possibly be a failure on the part of your future self rather than on your past self?

I think I am correct in my judgement that playing World of Warcraft for 300+ days of playtime was not a good use of my time. It is a failure of my past self for thinking that was a good idea. People make mistakes all the time. I don't believe anyone who says they have no regrets at all. You live with them though.

Before I started with my daily sports routine, at least one hour of biking outside every day (unless it's impossible due to health or schedule, but laziness, tiredness or season/temperature is not an excuse), I noticed that I have wasted the possibly best years of my life in front of a screen. Now I get to pick up what's left over and make the best out of it.

I really wish I had started with it when I was in my 20s, ideally as an early teenager or even kid, when breaking some bones is not something which keeps you concerned for many weeks.

I wish I could drive into the alps and ride the trails, but I'm currently "recovering" from a crash which ripped a tendon. In quotes because it can't really be fixed and I have to see if the system is still usable enough. But it is enough for having a lot of fun outside.

Today at 17:00 I was completely tired laying in my bed after watching hours of a TV series, half asleep and feeling badly rested, was struggling to motivate me to ride. But at 18:00 I pulled myself up and went, and I had a blast during those 1:30 hours, was even making screams of joy (I ride alone, so it's no show, but a feedback expression to myself). I was congratulating me for making the decision to go and ride, had super beautiful views of the nature at wonderful 27°C (80°F). Dry but planted fields, juicy green forests, sounds of birds and insects, breathable, clean air, warm wind being felt by the hairs on the legs and arms, what an experience.

I have a lavalier mic attached to my backpack's breast strap and an app where I can press record, to record notes of 1 minute length. I will quote you one of the recordings from today:

rec60s--1656265743723--19-49-03.q128.mp3: "Well, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you that you overcame yourself to then get up, go out and ride the bike, because it was really, really nice! Thank you very much! It was good, it was worth it, you have to do this, always, always. Always force you to do this. Regardless of how weary, how tired, how uninspired, you rode extra. Extra, because it was so nice. Other ways, new ways, new trails"

With "extra" I meant that I had initially decided to ride my minimum of 23 km in a relatively dull track which I know I will be able to complete under any circumstances (except when I have migraine), but then decided to leave the asphalt, ride up a hill through a forest into some fields, where I then took this photo.

https://imgur.com/a/HGQ55kQ

Maybe I'm a psycho for talking to me like that, but I know that I switch contexts very hard so that I'm a different person when I do different things and tend to forget the experiences. So this was a "thank you" and reminder from the biking me to the baseline me. Usually I only record new ideas or things I get reminded of which I forgot.

I wasn't really sure if I was going to ride today, I didn't yesterday, because I rode so hard and long distances last week that by butt was really hurting, and no amount deer tallow cream (Xenofit Second Skin) seemed to be helping. But it turned out that I had zero issues with it today.

Most of the riding time is a relatively hard exercise with heavy breathing and lots of sweating. No video game will ever be a replacement for such a thing.

But I know that I very likely already have my best years behind me (and lost them to a screen).

Thank you sharing that. It was lovely to read especially the part where you thank yourself, bought a smile to my face :)

It's a great way to think about it.

Really like the idea of having a mic attached to your backpack to record and listen back to things you sometimes just say randomly

I already tried to get it transcribed in Google Cloud so that I could get a summary email with a map, stats and the recorded notes in text form, but it didn't work. That was around two years ago, so maybe nowadays it could work. Also the notes are spoken in German which was bad back then and have some degree of noise in it (gravel, wind).

Edit: I just tested it with the recorder app on my Pixel 3 (played back via headphones pressed against the phone's mic) and it was able to transcribe it with almost no errors, so there is hope.

It seems silly to me to regret the past, as it cannot be changed. It can be used to inform decisions you make today or in the future, but regretting it is pointless.

May I ask how old you are?

A very inspiring story.

In the 45-50 bracket. I never did any sports, ate mostly junk and drank at least 3 L of softdrink a day. I started riding bike 3 years ago.

Thx! You seem on a good track now, and don't regret what's past! Anyway, good luck in your future endeavours.

Thanks. The same for you.

Well I don’t think you’re a psycho for talking to you. Say hi to you for me sometime.

Wow you must live in a good neighborhood

Regret isn't an problem with your past, it is a problem with your current self's opinion of the past. You are judging your past self based on your current self but that is unfair and you might want to think how that impacts your life going forward. Making decisions based on what you think your future self will approve of doesn't seem like it'd have the best results.

I vehemently disagree. Making decisions based on your future self would like is most generally the best thing you can do. Maybe you should really go out for a run even though you don't want to. Your future self will thank you. Maybe you should start working on that thing that is due soon. Your future self will thank you. And there are countless more examples. The practically write themselves.

The examples you've given here are both extremely short term and are presumably things that help you achieve goals now-you wants.

I know what I want for myself in five years. I don't and to large degree can't know what me-in-five-years will wish I had wanted.

My approach is to go for the things I want for myself now, while always being cognizant of providing options and opportunities for the future. It's not perfect, and it never will be because I don't have perfect foresight. But it works well enough.

None of those are future in a planning sense. They are immediate goals with immediate impacts. Getting exercise regularly pays off almost immediately and continues to pay of day to day. Finishing a project today has the immediate reward of finishing it and not having to worry about it anymore. The example was your 10 year from now self. And while you might come up with some 10-year span anecdotes, I don't see it being a good heuristic for living your life in general.

They are definitely future planning things. IF you don't go for a run now you won't notice tomorrow, you won't notice in a week. You won't even notice in a month. But compare a person who is 50 who was active for his entire life and one who isn't and the differences can be stark.

Can’t we say that an inactive person just lived through their life quicker because they didn’t spend time on these activities? Absolute years of life isn’t a meaningful metric here, imo.

I've been thinking about this and IMO really it is more about the focus on regret as a motivator for action. Regret is a negative emotion, so this is basically a strategy of pain avoidance. I think it is this aspect that is the problem, not the future forecasting. That you are optimizing for pain avoidance and not your happiness.

I love this take on regret, and it really resonates with how I reason about it.

I wrote a short blog post on the idea of judging your past self based on your current values: https://www.samvitjain.com/blog/regret/. Curious what you think!

I think I agree with this; the usual clichés about regret place a sort of bias towards how one feels at the end of one's life, but just because it's the last opinion doesn't necessarily mean it should win.

> I thought the same thing 10 years ago when I was spending years playing games and having fun. Now it feels like I wasted a colossal amount of time no matter how much fun it was at the time.

I don’t think you should blame yourself for ‘wasting’ that time. I’m sure past you would have considered it a waste to do what you do now.

There’s many things I may wanted to do differently, but I’d never actually do so since they brought me where I am now.

In my thirties i regret not working more in my twenties, and in my forties i regret not working more in my thirties.

However upon introspection, i realize that this regret is always based on not wanting to work more now.

edit; to quote "The Idler" from the RT-11 operation system kernel source code (and my new favorite quote).."To be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy"

That quote parallels something that sticks with me from Umair Haque about how "the point of capitalism is to escape capitalism": https://kottke.org/18/10/if-the-point-of-capitalism-is-to-es...

Felt the same. I felt that if I poured that time to my other passion, music, I would be much more fulfilled now.

Though to be fair the economy would adapt to 100 million people RVing. Services would pop up, new taxes would be created I'm sure for driving x number of kilometres per year, etc, etc.

I agree with your first point though. Perhaps the OP doesn't think playing COD is a great way to pass the time -- but video games are certainly not a waste of your life if you really enjoy them. This applies to any hobby.

Ultimately we have a short time here and it's up to us personally to decide what is a waste of our time and then act accordingly. Judgement on these efforts is hardly effective. RVing with my wife sounds like an incredibly suffocating experience -- trapped with another person in such a small space -- akin to buying a boat and spending 3 years "sailing", without seeing land for many days on end -- just figuring out what to do with the day when you wake up. But some people yearn for it, and that's great.

100 million Americans RVing would certainly clog up the National Parks.

They are already overcrowded.

Only at certain times. If you travel full time, you can find times where even the most popular national parks aren't crowded at all.

Yes those times are called "Winter" and they aren't fun to camp during. Summer is the best time always, and summer in any of the popular national parks is miserable.

National parks in Spring and Fall can be great and aren't that crowded during the week. E.g. anything between Easter and Memorial Day tends to be nice weather, most roads are open and visitor numbers are low.

Recreational Vechile occupants do pay direct, and indirect taxes.

1. It's not cheap to park a RV anywhere. Pretty much every road is off limits to overnight parking. Those fines are very pricy too. (Watch Something about Schmidt.)

2. Living out of an RV is a pain. Stuff breaks down, and I don't know of one public street, or parking lot, that allows the owner to repair their disabled vechicle.

3. They get horrid gas mileage, and their are state/federal taxes on gas. Registration, Insurance. Plus because they are on the road, they are more likely to get one of those ever increasing traffic tickets. A parking ticket in SF is 80.00. Crazy! (Neusome has a bill on his desk that would do away with late fees on parking tickets. I hope he signs it.)

4. RV-ing is fine, but they pay in indirect ways.

5. I worked with a guy who tried to live cheap in a small camper truck. Every other night he would get a knock, and flashlight shined into his eyes. It was always, "move along, or I will ticket you!". He tried the shower thing at 24 hour Whatever gym. Once the manager figured he was just using the showers, he was told he needed to workout. (Yea--I can't believe how petty some people are.). We worked construction, and the last thing he needed was a workout before 7:00 am.

Another guy I knew tried the RV lifestyle. He too was harrsssed by cops. Cops would tell him straight up he was not breaking any laws, but if he didn't move along he would get another ticket. Oh yea, the next sentance I'm about to write still gets my blood pressure up. One night my friend was sound asleep on a rural county road. He tried to hide. He knew the drill. He did have a 25 lb dog. This cop pounded on the side of his camper. He opened the door, and the dog growled. The officer took out his side arm and shot the dog. I have so little respect for some of these cops.

The last time I looked at what it would cost to park/sleep in a private RV park it was $79 a night.

This is in the Bay Area though.

Their is a pilot program in the Bay Area for low income RV'ers. I believe it's near the bay? It basically a lot that RV'ers can park for free. It's only available to county residents though.

My point is uless you have money, that whole RV lifestyle can be a nightmare.

Walmart used to let RVers park overnight. I have a feeling that privilege is gone. America the great? Our biggest concern is finding a place to sleep.

Off topic, but the one thing Russia did well under Communism is build apartments. I didn't realize just how many units they built until I saw pictures of Ukraine.

It depends on the game.

Not facetious - for me it's all about whether you build memories,and whether you'll regret time later.

Mass effect, deus ex, back in the day Another World or Sierra's space quest and Rama etc - these are important memories and experiences to me.

Overwatch (nearest call of duty analog I played, maybe), let alone all the phone games, are just time killers in the sense I do them to pass the time. They are games I actively regret playing moments, not even years after I'm done.

Precisely this. Mass Effect in particular triggered some deep introspection that measurably improved my life. I suppose it's just like other forms of media. Some books are just time wasters, while others are deeply meaningful to their readers. And there's overlap in those groups.

Agree with this, though it's not necessarily about the game and it's more about what you put in and get out.

If you worked hard to improve at Overwatch and your goal was to make it to top 500 on the ladder, or join an amateur team and play in tournaments, etc - it's no longer the same time waster, you have goals to work towards.

Does any of that matter once you stop playing and do something else? Not really, but you can be proud of yourself, or thankful that you learned something about yourself, etc. I suppose it's about being active vs passive.

I don't have much time for gaming these days, and so when I do I want it to be good. So I browse the local buy-and-sell and pick up the classics every now and then.

This winter I picked up all three Mass Effects and played the first two through for the first time. Loved them, and will definitely get to the third when the snows come around again.

I think Deus Ex is one of those games every gamer should play through - it's like reading a classic - so what if the graphics and gameplay are a bit outdated, the philosophical debates with psychotic AI alone are worth it!

Just wait until the philosophical debates in games are with real AI.

The next 20 years are going to be quite the wild ride, even in contrast to the past 20.

I think that really depends on who has access to the AI, and what it will be used for. I've been playing computer games for 40 years, and have seen some highs and lows. But with all the technical advances over those years, the storytelling / character interactivity has generally stagnated or gotten worse.

Sure we've had a few gems here and there, but in general it's much more profitable for a company to cap any novel, exploratory gameplay or story at 10 hours, so that after a day of play it just becomes another online interactive generating subscription and DLC purchases.

Will AI be significant in improving game story quality and play-ability? Provide us with worlds we cannot even imagine, infinite explorations?

Or will AI be used as an excuse to avoid employing expensive and risky human imagination? Instead push everything to a bland middle-ground, lowest common denominator based on the safest and most profitable options determined from the training set...

We're already there, considering most games people play are some kind of optimized hyper-addictive candy crush with guns.

Sure, I can imagine a new Elder Scrolls installment where each npc was actually unique, with meaningful interactivity possible with every contact. Where every side quest is challenging, interesting, and fills out the story universe with depth.

But will we actually get that? Technology tends to be used to increase breadth rather than depth. Quantity, rather than quality. What we'll get is more of the same, Skyrims with ever bigger and more realistic (but not deeper) worlds, optimized to find the cheapest and easiest way to keep you subscribing.

Yes, it is.

I don't think his/her point is that we should all live an RV life. I think the point is that we should all try to live a fullfilling life. For some of us, it's going to be in an RV. For a lot of us, it could be in a very classical apartment building. However, what you do in this apartment building is (almost) entirely up to you.

I suspect a lot of competitive multiplayer games are pyrrhic in retrospect. That is, not necessarily fun to get there but with a promise of fun when you’re at the top, but most people never really get there and so it was just kind of a waste. Especially games where you mostly play strangers and never really see them again.

> Imagine if 100 million people in the US decided to all at once go RVing around the country. All the areas would be full of RVs and I bet it would not be as enjoyable anymore.

Yes, I call this the "Dave Ramsey Syndrome". You know, he wants everyone to save money and not spend it so they can be debt free and have millions of dollars in the bank. But if everyone did that the economy, our consumer economy, would crash.

And you are right. I have been living in my Van since before the pandemic. It is impossible to find camping spaces now in national parks and even the Wal Marts are starting to get pissed at all the RVs again. These people too, these rich people, sit out on BLM lands longer then allowed, because it is free and they could most likely afford an RV park.

> I have been living in my Van since before the pandemic. It is impossible to find camping spaces now in national parks and even the Wal Marts are starting to get pissed at all the RVs again

I've been doing #vanlife on and off since 2012. Camping spaces in most national parks were already hard to find most of the time. Municipalities and Walmarts made overnight parking illegal in their lots in many places years or even decades before the pandemic.

What you're describing is real, but not new.

Come on, who would choose an RV park over BLM land? It's not about the money.

#vanlife definitely has a tragedy of the commons problem.

It is. Or at least it is for a lot of us. In working through some things a few years back I realized that when I’m worn out I do certain activities to recharge myself, and some of them aren’t actually recharging, they’re just running down the clock and Time is doing the recharging.

Gaming was very much a pastime rather than a recharging time. Worse, with games it’s too easy to get sucked into a thread that keeps me up well past bedtime, in which case I’m more tired then next day, not less.

Other hobbies accumulate progress, and are sometimes more open to participation by friends and family. Now I spend a lot of time gardening or doing other hobbies, and more of my screen time comes when I’m resting or trying to limit my skin cancer risks (1 pm instead of 7 pm).

I like your phrasing here a lot. I have come to a pretty similar realization recently. For me a small about of gaming does recharge me, but as you say it’s really easy to get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise and socialization.

I think it’s possible to weave socialization and accumulated progress into the gaming experience and have it be a fully enriching hobby. But many (most?) single player experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.

When I was young I realized I was escaping into games and damaging my life and relationships (one of the tests for addiction) and so I’m always going to hold them at arm’s length.

When I realized I needed a change I latched onto the fact that most people wouldn’t understand my excitement for an accomplishment in a video game, it wasn’t something I could bond with people over. But if I stopped fucking around and put that energy into programming, I could have accomplishments people understood (that turned out to only be only partly true. I still have programming accomplishments that my peers and communities don’t understand).

Bonding over games has shifted a bit since then. I know a hard of hearing kid who socializes online because conference calls make everyone have the same problem: differentiating two speakers is difficult. Everything sounds like hearing aids sound.

But it’s still easier for people to comment on my garden than whether I have finished the Thieves guild or stormcloak quest line in Skyrim, as an elf.

But why is socialization recharging and “pastime” not? My bet is because the former allow you to talk through the issues.

Regarding that last sentence, it's the exact opposite experience for me.

I see multiplayer experiences as just a past time, and singleplayer experiences the one that can have a meaning and are valuable by themselves.

I think the key point here is what singleplayer games are we talking about, because the offer is more varied than ever.

> But many (most?) single player experiences are just a pastime for me, as you say.

By this measure reading books would also just be a pastime? I see gaming more like an interactive story (especially singleplayer).

I think Seneca would roll his eyes at most of these responses TBH. Who cares if you're just gaming to "pass the time"? When you're gaming, you're having fun and enjoying your life in the moment. It's only afterward when you start the cycle of criticizing yourself for not doing something "productive" with that time that the negative feelings enter. In fact, the whole exercise of feeling bad about yourself for playing a fun game and relaxing is exactly PART of the problem Seneca talks about - unless your gaming habits cause you to destroy your links to other important sources of joy and health, you shouldn't feel bad about having a fun "pastime" activity, that is just as valid as keeping a garden or reading a good book of fiction.

It's been a while since I read Letters from a Stoic, but I have a feeling Seneca would scoff at frivolous pursuits - leave such things to the Epicureans. He comes off as a bit of a (humorously) grumpy old man in that book though.

As an ex WoW player, I’m rolling my eyes and I haven’t been dead for 2000 years.

Many games turn into jobs. The sense of fun degrades over time, and the self recriminations aren’t baseless.

If you're not having fun with the game and you're extinguishing your social and physical health, then you have a gaming problem. If you're admonishing yourself for playing a single player game to recharge and relax, as in the cases I responded to, you have a self-admonishment problem.

Replace game with solitaire, is it now viewed differently?

Does every human activity need to be productive? Why would you care what others think about your hobbies?

My point was merely, some have a bias for types of hobby, not its healthiness.

I know someone who, while depressed was playing solitaire and one other casual game for hours every day, for months. It was definitely not healthy.

Specifically, commenter you responded to cares. Because, as he puts it "it’s really easy to get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise and socialization." He literally describes negative overall impact he perceives. He is not feeling bad for gaming for irrational reasons, he says it makes him tired and makes him sacrifice exercise and socialization.

He even admits it is theoretically possible to do it differently, but also observed people not doing it differently in practice.

The problem is that the things you think you enjoy and that recharge you may not actually be what you empirically enjoy and what empirically recharges you.

For example, playing a game, or browsing youtube, or scrolling through social media, or reading the news, or even browsing HN for that matter you may think of as something you do to relax. It could be, however, that actually, doing some woodwork, or practicing a musical instrument, or learning a language, or going for a walk in nature, empirically recharges you a lot better, and you actually enjoy the days when you get to do these activities a lot more - and it makes your time outside those activities more enjoyable too.

These are just examples, it may not work for you in the same way, and all of these activities can be done in 'recharging' and 'non-recharging' ways perhaps. The important thing here is that what you think recharges you and what empirically actually recharges you may be very different things.

The quote that resonated the most with me here went something like: Life is a series of bricks, placed day by day, to build the foundation of life.

I’d take it one step further and say life also has compounding returns. What you invest today yields returns tomorrow. Not all hobbies yield the same returns.

Gaming as a hobby offers a flat return. The time you put in is the time you get out. There is no progress outside the bounds of the game (except for some fuzzier returns about societal commentaries and personal growth on par with the returns on a fantasy novel - or the future returns of making a game yourself).

The returns of a hobby like glass blowing is the improved ability to create on the other side of engaging in the hobby. Every piece you make sets the stage for the next piece. It’s a compounding return where the investment you make today is part of the return you get out of tomorrow’s investment.

I still play games, watch TV, and read fiction. But I no longer engage with them the way I used to. Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

> Gaming as a hobby offers a flat return.

Not all games, and not for all definitions of playing them.

Some games are tests and potentially builders of skill of various kinds, and the investments made are compounding: self control in the face of stress, economic decision-making, system design, tactical thinking in 3D space, and so on. Some games allow us to go Elsewhere and we change profoundly as a result.

Games aren’t created equally!

You can set the stage for the next level so to speak in either glass blowing or some video game. Not really following your argument.

Blowing glass is a hobby. Today's multi-user video games are a competition.

That's the real difference.

Unless you're exceptional, no one cares about either one. So probably best to do whatever makes you happy.

> I’d take it one step further and say life also has compounding returns. What you invest today yields returns tomorrow. [...]

> [...] Now I engage with hobbies that yield compounding returns because tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

You may not realize it, but this defer-happiness-to-the-future attitude is what the original article is recommending against:

Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future. You’re relying on the future, which is outside of your control, and abandoning the present, which is the only thing you can control. The whole future lies in uncertainty – live immediately.

I wouldn't say that building on your skillset as (in this example) a skilled craftsman is deferring happiness. You still enjoy what you create today, even if its not as good as what you will create one year from now. I do woodworking and metalworking as hobbies - I've always enjoyed the process and the improvement I see in my work. Its about the journey not so much the end result.

Absolutely! But that's not what I was replying to. That was, roughly, about depriving you of certain joys today in order to increase potential for future joy. Which is what the "Life is not short" article is arguing against.

> tomorrow’s happiness is just as important as today’s.

Aye - I agree with you. The point I was trying to articulate: hobbies with linear returns traded tomorrow’s increased happiness for today’s happiness.

Hobbies with compounding returns still get me today’s happiness! But, after investing in that type of hobby, tomorrow I’ll be capable of more “hobbies” than I am today. Especially when hobbies begin to cross-over (I.e. chemistry and glass blowing)!

Games and TV may mostly give a flat return, but I don't think that's the case with reading fiction. That hones your linguistic skills, your imagination and storytelling skills, can sometimes give you critical insights (e.g., the classic dystopias), and last but not least, can enhance your attention span in an age where many of us are used to jumping from short piece to short piece online and it seems difficult to gather enough time or attention to read a book.

Of course you will learn even more if you read essays, but I think if reading books in general is widely regarded as a good thing to do, it's for good reason.

This seems like you're comparing the likes of 1984 to the likes of Genshin Impact. If we instead choose Opus Magnum as our example of a game, and 50 Shades of Grey for as our example of a book, one would conclude the opposite. Someone with a taste for timewasting games isn't going to suddenly become an intellectual because they picked up a piece of dead tree if the words written on said dead tree are as empty as the game they just put down, and there's more than enough bland genre fiction out there for them to be attracted to.

I find it weird that your gold standard of a good hobby is the ability to produce. I personally think those "fuzzier returns" you sort of disregarded are far more important.

Also, particularly in video games, each time you engage in it you get better. I've been recently trying to get back into video games after over a decade of off time. The gap I feel is tremendous. Gamers have advanced so far ahead that a good gamer from 2000s will have incredible amount of trouble playing newer games.

And yet, you are only "getting better" at the game. Your in-game skills don't translate to the real world. Games have psychological and social benefits, but I don't think getting better at a game skillwise has really any transferrable value outside of the game itself. In fact, if you put more effort into improving your in-game skill, your real-world life usually suffers. (In my experience.)

But to serious gamers, those interactions in and around those games are their real world. Say someone dedicates themselves to learning the piano, a Real World activity, and they enjoy it, and they can entertain others with their skill, why is that any more real than getting deep into a game? In the end we all die and take nothing with us, nor do we leave anything behind which will last all that long. If everything is ultimately futile, why make a distinction between one pursuit and another?

I second your sentiment, I think this articulates my thinking much better. I see people trying to prove that yes games have "transferrable skills" to "real life" and I am sitting here thinking, why does it matter? It's my hobby!

PS: Used those quotes because I don't think people have clear idea about what they mean by those terms.

> In the end we all die and take nothing with us, nor do we leave anything behind which will last all that long. If everything is ultimately futile, why make a distinction between one pursuit and another?

This viewpoint is destructive. Your actions affect your future and the futures of the people around you. They are not futile. When someone learns to play the piano, it becomes a tool that can be used in countless applications in a person's life. When you learn to wall jump in Metroid, you learn to wall jump in Metroid and maybe in some other games. The variety of application just isn't there. It's just not comparable.

Can you enumerate what tools you gain by learning piano?

Actually, a lot of skills used in video games do translate to the real world. Puzzle solving (aka logic), language, map reading, navigation, communication, working with a team, and more. Some games even have a particular bent towards 1 skill, such as programming games and geography games. And that's not even including all the games that are designed to be educational first and fun second.

They are generally soft skills because no games really let you physically do things yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful skills.

Games have helped me build a network of acquaintances that actually ended up helping my career/life.

You must be one of those people who think they don't need linear algebra in their life.

I played a lot of Rocksmith and it helped me a lot to play the guitar. I know personally some people who went from couch potatoes to mildly active thanks to Ring Fit. I met dozens of now long time friends online because we share this common interest in video games. I think you may have a bias against this media.

Love Rocksmith, I own a physical copy! I played a LOT of Guitar Hero as a teenager. Comparing the two: Rocksmith provides compounding returns - my time playing Guitar Hero did not.

I second dota’s take in a sibling comment, it was insightful. Not all games are created equally.

Both your examples are games that are built on real physical activities. It's no surprise that they teach you skills that are relevant outside of the gaming context. The majority of games aren't like that, which is what I was talking about.

I don't really have a bias against games and it's puzzling to me that most commenters here completely misread my comment to that extent. I used to be an avid gamer, until real life took over. Just speaking from personal experience having logged thousands of hours on and off Steam. It probably helped keep me sane, but I have a real hard time pinpointing how it has affected/improved/touched my current life now that I don't play games as much.

> And yet, you are only "getting better" at the game.

I don't get it, why is that not enough? Why can a hobby not be about only me and my personal growth/goals. Its a hobby, what I am failing to understand is why does it need to be productive? If I stick to playing challenging games, I feel a sense of growth which unfortunately I cannot articulate. That is enough for me, but yeah YMMV.

That the "real world" is actually "real" is a big assumption to make.

If that sounds weird, remember that a number people who were considered wise claimed that the "real world" is not as "real" as you'd assume and life is transient. And they'd probably say that it's not worth spending the effort to learn "real life", "productive" skills since they don't translate to the "meta-real-world" anyway, and the more you put effort into improving your "real world" skills, your "meta-new-world" skills suffers.

It feels like I might be paraphrasing some verses of the Bible at this point...

uh what? Games have definitely gotten easier since the 90s

I don't know man, I downloaded Cup Head because it looked cute and it has been kicking my ass since like a month. I know it is one of those notoriously hard games but I think the point stands.

I think games have moved away from precision challenges to more abstract ideas. Like Doki Doki Literature Club, I have no f'ing clue whatever that is all about but I am experiencing it. Challenge for me comes from the fact that it relies on peoples knowledge of tropes to enable different story progressions. I don't have that because last game I played was in like 2009.

Another game I am having trouble with is watch dogs 2. I know, AAA game, made for less than pro gamers. But again, they are relying on my knowledge of AAA games for conveyance. I regularly have moments where I am thinking, what do I do? where do I go? Now I have played GTA vice city, so open world is not an alien concept. But the scale of it all, its just magnificently complex.

Edit: I occurs to me all this can just be the fact that I suck at video games. But I used to be good at them, that's the point.

Edit 2: This video explains my feelings better than me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw

The productivity of most so-called 'productive' hobbies is an illusion. What does it mean to 'produce'? To transform something that doesn't have value into something that does have value? Value to whom? The output of the majority of hobbyists' work has no value to anyone but themselves, and if it has no value to anyone but the creator, it's just consumption with extra steps. And if it has financial value to other people, that's not hobby, that's a second job.

There's a reason why most artistic pursuits are either completely nonviable as a profession or are a lottery where the top 0.01% become superstars and the rest barely break even or lose money. When the thing one 'produces' is something people will do for fun, supply massively outstrips demand, and more entries into the hobby doesn't produce more valuable items, it produces more tat that nobody wants.

I don't think they're talking about a physical 'product'. They're talking about building character, making themself a better person, learning a skill etc

If it's all about perceived self-improvement with no consideration for real-world applications or end products, there's no difference between practical skills and virtual ones. All that matters is that the person in question believes the experience to be valuable.

EDIT: I guess it's worth mentioning a minor exception for basic life skills that some people do as hobbies, like sewing, gardening, DIY or cooking, but those have diminishing returns. You can probably learn everything you need to know to not be reliant on tradesmen or vendors for those sorts of things in a year, and beyond that you get stuck in the same place as the hobby craftsman or hobby artist, where the chance of real financial success is basically nil so you're just doing it because it's an activity you personally enjoy.

I can follow this.

But where I’m getting tripped up: today I smoked out of a glass pipe I made. I can’t smoke out of my level 80 night elf druid.

Nor can I combine my level 80 night elf druid with my Diamond IV rank in Halo to get a compounded return. Those two games and skills are isolated. But I can combine what I read in John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy with glass blowing to make interesting things that bring me joy (I.e. replicating experiments of John’s at home with purpose built glassware)

It’s not just production for productions sake, or production for the sake of society. It’s increasing my capacity to produce for myself. I feel like I’ve grown in a way that I can build on tomorrow after a session of practicing this class of hobby.

Maybe the distinction truly is arbitrary - but something about this path feels significantly more fulfilling the further down it I go vs. the literal years I spent in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds the potential felt roughly constant while these hobbies feel like they have an ever expanding horizon of potential.

MMOs and competitive online shooters aren't time-efficient games. They're live service games that are essentially built to be time-sinks. People who regret playing them do so because the regret is real. There's a lot of advanced psychology that's gone into ensuring that people play them for as long as possible. This leads to people playing the games long after they've stopped having fun, and only quitting when they realise they've not been having fun for months, possibly years.

But this isn't a problem specific to games; this is a problem with predatory marketing. If you'd instead spent that time playing a wide variety of shorter experiences without grindy filler, I wonder if you'd feel the same way. Maybe niche hobbies don't have the attention of same predatory actors because there's not the incentive for them to do so, but that's not an argument for productivity, that's just an argument for obscurity.

That's as may be, and especially true if you're playing them solo, but playing coop games online with friends, even "inefficient" ones are enjoyable social experiences that can be done even without being co-located, which isn't something that's easy to substitute with other activities.

I play games with friends and coworkers online that I wouldn't otherwise interact with much, and it helps us stay in touch with each other and foster a relationship that would likely otherwise burn out.

If I was playing the games alone, I'd maybe regret it over playing a different and "better" game, but I'd rather do inefficient things with friends than efficient things alone a lot of the time.

There are some of us who give advice to prospective college grads that they should do some volunteer work if they can't find any professional experience prior to graduation.

Lots of hobbies still tackle basic human problems like communication and organization, and getting any exposure to these is not only good, but it might take some of the pressure off by not mixing multiple things you struggle with at the same time.

so now they have a lot of things can give their grandchildren. yes, kids usually do not like them, but this still happy

I like how you expressed the first two paragraphs. Both I something I can completely relate to.

I'm going to add a second data point of deep regret over time spent gaming and playing sports in high school and college. They contributed negatively to my life and put me so far behind where I could have been socially and intellectually which are things older me cares about immensely and it is unfortunate that I wasn't able to consider the future when I was younger. The idea that all leisure activities are equally valuable is a fallacy in my opinion.

You just described a hindsight bias. They key point here which has already been discussed above is “older you”.

You didnt have that information when you were young and your worldview is fluid.

The idea that you can operate with the same amount of information when you were young with your brain and social circles still in development is a fallacy in itself.

I did think the same way as you only to realize that my caring for intellectual and social stimulation was sparked due to its lack in the past.

You have no guarantee that you would develop it in the first place if you would have taken a different path.

> They contributed negatively to my life and put me so far behind where I could have been socially and intellectually which are things older me cares about immensely

And even older you likely wont care much at all about those things and think you wasted your life away pursuing those goals instead of enjoying it.

I don’t think the point of the parent comment or the OP is that everyone should RV instead of gaming. It’s that each individual should do what they find fulfilling, now not later because there might not be a later.

I think the reply would be: If you get joy and fulfillment from gaming, do that instead of working really hard to earn money that you don’t need. If you think you’d rather RV than work & play games, go RV now instead of putting it off for later/retirement.

The video game argument represents some kind of fallacy: A rational actor picks the best form of entertainment which turns out to be video games - how can that be wrong?

However, there are many local minima in entertainment and life and many great things require going through a learning curve and preparation. Even the greatest couch enthusiast can remember, say, a magical moment during a pickup basketball game, and surely those kinds of moments are happening in this city right now...

Yeah, no.

I would see a pickup basketball game as “pissing my time away”. I don’t like basketball and loathe playing competitive sports.

Further, I really enjoy doing things by myself. I often play video games to challenge myself — it’s me versus a previous version of me.

Just goes to show ya — those “magical moments” are highly personal and defined by the things that give a person joy. And for some folks — like me — that includes video games!

I'd say there's two elements to fun - how you view it in the immediate, and how you view it further down the road. And given that the further down the road part is something that sticks with you on the order of decades, while the immediate part tends to be on the order of hours, it seems clear to me which should be given priority.

For instance that's why I quit social media (excepting intermittent HN). I really enjoyed it in the shortrun, but I wasn't happy with what I was getting out of it in the longrun. We all convince ourselves we're making an "impact" by expressing ourselves, but I think that's something we all know is just a self delusion - we're just one voice ranting alongside a billion others doing the same. By contrast I've also spent tens of thousands of hours dedicated to chess, and it feels extremely good in both the short and longrun.

Is drinking?

It’s easy to delude yourself.

Playing video games and surfing the web for fun, living with friends and family instead of having a large family and a consumerist lifestyle, would have a smaller footprint

Frankl at least talks about life in terms of the responsibility you take on in your decisions. So in that sense video games are less likely to be meaningful than RVing with your main squeeze.

This sounds like a fallacy to me. If everybody wanted to go see a concert, most people wouldn't get a seat. If everybody wanted to fly tomorrow etc. The good thing in the world is also that bit everyone dreams of the same thing.

This is the exact thing that happened to remote work.

Indeed! A food for thought: https://twitter.com/khemaridh/status/1538899517629640704?s=2...

I can't disagree more with many comments on here in response to if it's pissing away time playing video games.

I mean, I guess I don't really play CoD vs more narrative games, so I can't speak to that specifically, but I greatly credit my time in virtual worlds with a lot of my intellectual flexibility.

In my experience there's a palpable benefit to exploring impossible worlds and carrying out a personal story shaped by my actions within them. Making hard decisions that I would never be faced with in reality informs me about myself, and encountering stimuli well beyond what reality has on tap conditions me to look beyond the box in what reality does throw at me.

I can't really say that any other medium or activity offers the same mental exercise as an engrossing game.

To each their own, and people are welcome to decide that they found a greater purpose in a national park vs a spaceship exploring unknown worlds. But people are also welcome to find greater purpose in the other.

As someone who does (though I find variety the spice of life and also do enjoy national parks - just not as much), it's interesting the ways in which people pass judgment on each other, and themselves.

I'd value a gamer spending decades in video games over a monk spending decades mediating and in a vow of silence, and yet I suspect given the general fetishizing of traditionalism and demonizing of modernism many would disagree and see one as pursuit of a higher truth and the other as a pursuit of nihilism.

It's useful to check in with oneself as to if our choices are actually giving us value or are an escape from things that would give us greater value. But if they really do give you value, then value them. And if they do not, don't make the mistake of thinking that equation would hold true for others as well.

> Making hard decisions that I would never be faced with in reality informs me about myself,

This irks me wrong, because it does not distinguishes between reality and fantasy. None of the in-game decisions is hard the way real life decisions are hard. Just like, murder on TV is not the same thing as real life one. Real life combat situations frequently changes people, makes them bitter and forever angry or give them PTSD. People regret their real life decisions till the end of their lives - that is why those decisions are said to be "hard". Video games dont do the same thing.

You are not facing equivalent of real-life decisions. None of the decisions you made in game had any real consequences to the outside world and you know it.

There's a difference between realizing one's self-image vs one's self-actuality.

Most people when asked would say they wouldn't obey authority over their own conscience. And yet if actually put into Milgram's experiment most would likely result in different outcomes than they'd think.

The idea has certainly been put forward that there's a merit to the self-knowledge gained in real tragedy. A Hemingway-esque self-discovery in the trenches.

Arguably we could extend that to conclude that given the relative timeline of humanity, that anyone who doesn't end up slowly devoured by a pride of lions in the savannah or sees several of their children die to the elements hasn't really discovered their 'real' human self.

IMO that's a BS argument.

What games engage isn't the self-discovery of who we are, but the self-discovery of who we would like to be.

And frankly I think that pursuit in fictional worlds is both more worthwhile and of import than the lessons available to be 'learned' in a foxhole.

I can honestly say that some of the hard decisions in games had me reevaluating my personal philosophies much more than my experiences making harrowing medical decisions for family or life altering changes.

Reality is seldom ideologically binary enough as to prompt extrapolated self-reflection on the principles of decisions as opposed to the relatively much greater focus on the complexities of their fallout.

Triviality is a tool for archetypical self-reflection, and it is precisely the low stakes setting that allows for such rich self-discovery.

Yes! When I worked on FB games the internal running joke was our business was stealing people's life a second at a time and monetizing that stolen time. Our game was 'free' like in bait.

GAMES ARE FOR CHILDREN AND A WASTE OF YOUR LIFE :)

Getting outside is the best thing you can do for your health and the dog park next to a busy city street is not going to cut it.

Thinking like "But what if everyone did that?" or "is it fair that not everyone can do that?" are just ways to get you to 'agree' to take away other people's freedom or yours.

It's depressing that this question even had to be asked

I live my life in a similar way, at least at times. I decided decades ago that I didn't want to work five days a week taking two vacations a year for 20-30 years and then retire comfortably.

Every few years, I take a lot of time off. Months, sometimes over a year. If I plan well, I have money saved and I travel. Every time I do this, it sets me back financially; sometimes I'm completely broke before I start working again. I'd be well-served to balance it a little better, and only blow half my savings before going back to the grind. It's not easy for me to find that balance, and sometimes it's a real struggle.

I have a knack for poor timing (left a job right before the 2001 dotcom crash, left a job right before the 2008 recession, and left my latest job just now, when there appears to be a recession looming). I'm about to set off on a months-long RV trip, and for once I expect to have a decent amount of savings left at the end, and plan on buying a house some time next year. While I like my itinerant lifestyle, it's time to secure a base of operations, too. Something modest, so that it won't prevent me from doing another trip like this in a few years.

It's not for everyone; I get that. I don't think it's a better lifestyle than working hard and retiring in comfort. It's better for me, though.

You're only your current age once. If you wait until you're old, you won't have the same experiences. I'm not willing to deny myself these moments along the way in return for a potential future payoff. So many people die before they get to enjoy the fruits of their labor. It's possible to work full-time and simultaneously live a fulfilling life; I see plenty of people do it. I don't know where they get the energy, though; all I can manage while working is TV, video games, and infrequent weekend activities. Most of the time I feel like all I do is work. Big breaks are what keep me sane.

Good for you for chasing your dream

Do people who do this have kids?

Did the kids — nest is empty — time to switch gears on life and live the way I have wanted to for a long time (second best time to plant a tree and all that, you know).

I do this and I have kids. We home school and it has been going well. My oldest has spent a few years in various public schools and the education they get through online classes and parental teaching is far superior to a traditional public classroom. They are set to graduate high school at 16, through a GED of course.

Depends to what extent. I have three children (4-9yo) and take them out of school now and then to do trips from a week up to three months. When I was a teenager, my parents took our family (us kids were 9-14) to China for three months, and that was an amazing experience for which I'll always be thankful. I carried text books in my luggage.

It is certainly harder and unless home schooling you want a home base/school, but you definitely don't need to be anchored to just school holiday periods. In our area, you file for a school exemption which is reviewed by the principal and, unless your child is lagging, they seem to approve it easily enough. You can find out what they'll miss in class and take materials along for the kids to do as activities.

Our holidays are more adventurous than sitting around a pool (usually roadtrips/hiking/camping) and we constantly talk about what's around us, so holidays are very educational and I don't feel like I'm letting the kids down long-term by pulling them out of school now and then.

Doing more than that though might be disruptive or difficult. You'd need to be travelling prior to school age, home schooling (adds extra workload for the parents) or switching schools/curricula frequently. I know home schooling is not entirely uncommon, but I think there'd be inevitable sacrifices if you were juggling that on top of work and travel.

It's easier if you don't.

Chances are that after a certain age you won't have the mental or physical energy to even desire to do all that much.

I know quite a few people who retired quite well off and instead of traveling the world spending all this money as they thought they mostly just watch a lot of TV and sit on their phone. They don't even spend their social security check a month and they are perfectly content with this life.

Many people have confused the reality of old age with marketing from retirement firms and mutual funds.

Kudos for living this kind of life. Inspiring for all of us.

You are just living your own meme. You got into RVing when the whole meme was taking off, #Vanlife! You were told you want a different kind of life. All the people not living your "different life" are working at the jobs you left and are supplying you with the things you need to live a "different life".

And you all talk about "wasting life" like at the end when you die you get to do something with it all with all the time you did not waste. You are still pissing time away, all you did was give your self meaning and that makes it feel like you are not.

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ― Seneca

Why so jealous though.

Probably has something to do with how much time he’s spent “following the DAO”

Certainly not the response I expected from someone following the Tao.

Why?

No answer, of course.

I prefer not to engage negative emotions.

Just as I thought, another thoughtless reaction comment. You had no reason to say what you did, I just exposed something about yourself you do not like.

But you are lying because you like to engage in negative emotions you agree with. I mean, all I am doing is venting, right?

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nso95 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Arguing about it on Slack isn't going to fix any of it thoug

JKCalhoun 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's venting. It's bonding with coworkers who also feel their world is collapsing.

Hard to focus on work, talk about the preso when, for example, people are storming our Capitol.

But I am imagining you saying this to your significant other...wow.

Sorry, your negative emotions.

Where do you get jealous?

Oh pay this comment no mind.

I have found that people who are greedy will often lob this comment at people who expose the truth and foolishness of their greed. It is the only way they can tell themselves that what they are doing is the correct way to live and anyone who criticizes them is just "jealous".

i get bitterness not jealousy

don’t worry, be happy

I’m not bitter, I’m upset that the world is being destroyed by greed.

"For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold." ― Seneca

Seneca also lived in comfort, so do as I say not as I do

Similar story here. We traveled with my wife for 3.5 years. Then we built homestead on 30 acres of forest land in rural WA. Now I am 36 and we bought land in HI to build our second homestead. And it is from scratch again! Most of our income comes from freelance gigs. The last time I visited big city was over 10 years ago. No regrets here.

I think the best framework is to not compare yourself to others. And fear of change is a normal, ordinary feeling. Comparing to others makes no sense, just try to do things that YOU will not regret and things that make you happy in long term.

How does raising kids work in this kind of regimen? How do you ensure they have a big social pool available to build peer relationships?

No kids for now but we are making plans. My wife is younger than me and we are planning to have kids in the next 1-2 years. Before we have kids we will decide and settle in one place. We will probably keep our second homestead since we are emotionally attached to it.

Home schooling was a requirement for us. Having a social pool has never been a problem, as our kids learn to make friends really quickly and continue to keep in contact via g-chat and email once we part ways. Living like this, you tend to find lots of others in a similar lifestyle, so the kids are all very well adapted.

Yes, but we are comparing ourselves to you right now and feeling the wanderlust.

Love to hear any thoughts you have on homesteading in Washington state. Specifically, areas you think are good.

For some reason I am attracted to the south-eastern area that is drier. Forests say "fire" to me (and I also love the sun too much to be "enclosed" by a forest).

North and/or high altitudes say "cold" to me.

Yes, we are North-East, not far from Canadian border. A lot of snow, cold winters. We haven't lived in SE WA but visited the area you mentioned 3-4 times. The area between Pullman and, say, Kennewick. Way fewer trees, lower altitude but winters are less cold and less snowy. I would say there is no perfect place. Once you checked your main checkboxes, paradise is a state of mind, not place itself. You will have hot summers. We are at higher altitude, I have tractor primarily for snow but summers are much cooler. And we like cooler summers. This June was mostly at 68-75F, our german shepherd and I love it. I talked to a person from Texas and he mentioned 90-95F in May and 95-100F in June - no, thank you very much. We even bought land in HI at 3000 ft elevation to have 75F in summer and 72F in winter for the same reason.

South-East WA will have hotter summers, no shade from trees and every time we visited it was windy. having said that rolling hills are beautiful, farmers are nice, some healthy rivers for fishing. Pullman and Moscow have shopping and amenities.

Fantastic, and congratulations! We did roughly what you’re doing but backwards, and still had a lot of fun doing it.

However, I’m deeply envious that you can just drill a well. I live in Seattle, where drilling the well requires that you blow the mayor, bribe an inspector or two, buy what they call “mitigating” land someplace else in the state, and sacrifice a goat. And after you found a suitable plot for the well, a $1 million drill has to be towed onto the property to make sure ground is preserved.

Where are you living this beautiful life of you’re?

Drilling a well in the city of Seattle ? Why would anyone ever do that?

Technically rural Redmond, a neighboring city. I bought some of the vanishing farmland.

Give it a year or two, you’ll be surrounded by apartments and then hookup will be easy

Not sure you can technically blow this mayor but I digress

I may have indulged in a wee bit of hyperbole

Head east. Or west. There are lots of wonderful places outside the I-5 corridor where I would argue our quality of life is at least on par. Different, and perhaps with fewer economic opportunities, but nonetheless a very high quality of life.

* yours not you’re. Thanks, Siri

2 words for the path in the middle (sort of, at least for me) - adrenaline sports. I don't say which exactly should work for likes of others, that's kind of unique to each of us. For me its climbing, paragliding, skiing/ski touring, a bit of alpinism. Plus diving when near corals, also serious hiking.

Apart from making me properly happy (and some of those are easily post-work ones if you don't have kids, like climbing or paraglide depending on your place), they keep me amazingly fit, which is source of long lasting content from oneself. Vacations spent backpacking in crazy exotics (mostly south east asia) help too.

I can do boring and uninspiring software dev office job that pays the bills and some more (seldom intertwined with nice creative part when actually solving interesting problems, rather than drowning in processes and politics). It doesn't dent the content/happiness part a slightest bit.

Also numerous side effects - one starts eating healthier. Any kind of gaming addiction I had before was cured too, now its just waste of life that repulses me (not making critique - if that's your real kick I guess go for it, but I can't anymore).

There is one slight problem with this, although it otherwise worked me 100% for past 10 years - if you get kids and are not utter sellfish a-hole, you will lose most of this, at least for some (long) time. Positive side is, one day you will be one hell of inspiration for them. Other source of issues is accident - time off everything, for longer, can be depressive.

Talking as proud parent of two small kiddos who exhausted me during WFH to max, and who after 4 month recovery of messed up wrist broke his foot in kindergarten and is on crutches at least for next 6 weeks of amazing summer. I think right now the lowest point in my whole life so far due to all above. But that means it will only go up, eventually. Life is funny.

Are you me? I've been slowly getting into alpinism in the Sierras and looking into getting my p2 cert. (I'd love to combine the two...imagine climbing in the palisades then paragliding or base jumping off )

I regrettably spent my 20s in academia and now I'm in tech and actually afford these hobbies. I'd love to have kids but I'm pushing it off because as you mentioned, it seems selfish.

I'm thinking about a SEA climbing holiday during the winter. I'm eyeing Vietnam. Do you have any favorite locale?

Step foot into any climbing gym in the Bay Area, and at least 50% of the folks there are SWEs. Probably the same with improv groups. We're not that unique. ;)

I am from Europe, so probably can't recommend anything useful for you. But if you ever come by Geneva, Switzerland, we have fine indoor and outdoor places. Next one could be Chamonix, any climb when you have glaciated giants 3800m higher than valley is pretty nice.

I started getting into skiing a few years ago, and within the last year have started climbing. I seriously enjoy it, but how do you get over the constant fear of a permanent debilitating injury? I've mostly rationalized this away by doing everything I can do stay safe (equipment, partners, not pushing the limits too hard), and realizing that life is here to be lived, but still..

If you do sport climbing with bolts drilled and glued in rock or in gyms, the chances of bad injury are super tiny, and sprained ankle would be the worst possible outcome. It never happened to me, and I overshot my level by mistake few times. The more you gain experience, the less the risk.

One thing that usually helps with fear is actually exposing yourself to it rather than avoiding it - you are afraid to fall. Find safe overhang (or vertical if unavailable) ie in gym, and just fall in it. Then fall again. Practice technique - push yourself from the wall with legs during fall, not too much just to avoid contact.

Its just like SIV course in paragliding - you learn about bad situations that can happen and how to handle them by getting into them on purpose (and then either managing them or throwing reserve, usually all done above lake for extra safety). This allows you to progress further faster and gain confidence in you and your wing.

At one point, its your choice - push things always to the max for whatever reason, or just enjoy good climb that can be challenging (or not) but not scary. Progress happens on both, usually a bit less on latter.

For me, I cut off all chasing for higher difficulties, if my skill drops I enjoy the challenge of trivial routes again. And even non-challenging climb is a very fine experience for me and that's enough (especially now).

Previously, I enjoyed actually overcoming of that ever-present fear as the best part of climbing, building character and shaping personality. I do honestly believe in it, I mean you expose yourself for 2-4 hours to acute (even if baseless, but your brain doesn't recognize it) fear of death, and you continuously overcome it to achieve your goal. If that doesn't teach you about yourself, nothing will.

> If you do sport climbing with bolts drilled and glued in rock or in gyms, the chances of bad injury are super tiny, and sprained ankle would be the worst possible outcome. It never happened to me, and I overshot my level by mistake few times. The more you gain experience, the less the risk.

I've just started to do sport climbing (like within the past 2 weeks), and my biggest fear is a screwup (equipment, amount of slack given out, belay device, etc) that results in me not getting caught. My mother likes to remind me that her friend's son was paralyzed from falling in a climbing gym (but unfortunately I do not have the details), which certainly doesn't help my fear. This fear isn't stopping me from doing anything, so to some extent I do think it's helpful / healthy since it's reminding me to be careful and limit my risks as much as possible.

That said, even just top rope climbing has significantly helped my fear of heights. Went hiking this past weekend, and I'm definitely more comfortable near cliff edges, etc (still fearful of falling, but not in a debilitating way).

> At one point, its your choice - push things always to the max for whatever reason, or just enjoy good climb that can be challenging (or not) but not scary. Progress happens on both, usually a bit less on latter.

This is a really good point, and something I do try and adjust for in both climbing and skiing. I like to improve, and push myself, but this is something I'd prefer to do for a long time, so I lean on the side of not pushing to hard and limiting risk whenever possible.

I'd love to read the exit interview of your kids when they get to 30. Did anyone else go through this with their parents? Would you/are you changing anything as a result?

There’s a documentary called Surfwise about the adult children of a couple who lived in an RV and traveled from beach to beach surfing waves and not doing much in terms of education.

They were various degrees of maladjusted if I remember correctly.

Right, the Paskowitz family. I thought the father was an especial hypocrite having grown up in a well off family and having attended Stanford.

It's a funny thing. I thought that I would have regrets playing World of Warcraft for years of my life, but looking back, I really enjoyed my time playing it even when it felt a little monotonous. I played from 2005-2007 pretty hardcore. No regrets.

I think you would have enjoyed either path you took. I've second-guessed some of my past choices and I'm not sure I would be happier than I am now, or a better person.

I believe it’s the story games that fit under “living” definition of the article - you merge the story experience into your life, making it richer. But online/MOBAs are more of a waste, at least for me.

Kinda impossible to do this with kids on the way, please blog your journey I will live vicariously through you. Also will donate coffee money often.

Actually, one period that suits a flexible lifestyle is from around 1yo until formal schooling starts. Could start earlier if you weren't fussy about consistent doctor/program/country for checkups and immunisations.

Generally, flights are cheaper before they 2yo. Food is cheaper for small kids. Accommodation is easier. Go now!

We did a trip to Europe and Morocco with our first child before he was 1. When our third was about the same age, we gutted/converted a bus and drove around the US for 2-3 months. Both of us have had fairly normal jobs throughout, and the three kids have had a pretty typical educational pathway (bit of childcare, kindergarten, school).

It gets harder the deeper into school they go IMO.

Super cool, I bet they really enjoyed the adventure. Hats off to you for taking the road less traveled.

Nice! I’m going to live by this wisdom. I’ve done plenty of solo/partner travel in the past, but with a kid on the way, I thought those days might be over.

But you’re saying I have 5 precious years left. I will spend them wisely. Thank you!

You have more than five years, but realistically five years of being able to do long trips without fretting about school hassles. How you survive long trips with a young kid is a different thing! At the early ages, you are travelling largely for yourselves, and the children are challenging baggage. Can be helpful to time trips when you're paying out most for childcare ($100+/day where we are) rather than public kindergarten/school which are cheaper.

From 3-4+ they'll have fond memories of your adventures so the balance shifts to the holiday serving all of you.

We have 4-9yo and are about to do a 2-3 month trip. This will be the first major trip where all three of them will have a decent idea of where we are, what we're doing, and the memories of each place.

You have to make the travel happen though otherwise the routine of schooling and work will have its way!

It is interesting how much everyone thinks these are the only two alternatives though. You can live an extremely fulfilling life out of the most boring Phoenix suburb, and you could (probably very easily) live a life with no meaning out of the most rustic cabin you can imagine.

I think you are supposed to be writing philosophy, not wasting time building a house that will be destroyed some day (footnote 16).

Marx has said: "Creative labor has become the primary need of life". I don't know if it's the original words, I translated it from Chinese. You think spending 7 years to build your own house is better than to play video games. But what if to create a video game? Creating a video game is too hard? How about to just write game reviews and walkthroughs in detail and combine them into a book. It's not that you think building a house is more meaningful than playing video games. It's that you want to create, but your job didn't give you a chance to create or what you create doesn't belong to you.

what is RVing?

Traveling and living in a recreational vehicle (RV). Often a motorhome or camper, sometimes a boat.

I don't subscribe to the idea of being always productive either. Humans need 'play time', whether that's a video game, bingo, or playing the lottery. I saw people in my circle ignore this and pretty much all of them became depressed.

> You should organize each day as if it were your last

I never understood this. If you live every day as your last, surely you would only engage in short term pleasures instead of pursuing longer term hobbies/goals?

I recently reread Ecclesiastes & on the second reading came across what people tend to be trying to get at with that advice. I'll try give it from the Ecclesiastes perspective

Whatever you go out & gather, is ultimately worthless. So if you're in a shit mood & thinking that some day this work will pay off, you'll find that your days are spent in a shit mood & thinking some day this work will pay off. & then you die & everything you did doesn't really matter, & you spent your time in a shit mood. So if instead you find enjoyment in the simple daily toll, that your work today is essentially paying for the food you'll enjoy today, then you'll find your days are spent in a good mood. & then you die & everything you did doesn't really matter, but at least you enjoyed your time while it lasted

So "live it like your last" is a bit hyperbolic, but at least don't justify your suffering on the idea that life gets better

To try make sense of "live it like your last", it might be better said as "go to sleep at peace with your life even if you were to die in the night"

Great comment. I’ve always hated that comment but your phrasing makes so much sense.

That's a beautiful perspective. Thanks for your comment.

Thanks for the clarification. I think the description “live like your last” needs to be tweaked.

Perhaps what is more productive is: live your days so that when you think back on them (let’s say at a time horizon of months), you feel satisfied in what you’ve done and how you’ve grown.

“ everything you did doesn't really matter, but at least you enjoyed your time while it lasted”

Problem with this statement is that what matters after someone does really doesn’t matter to that person after only before, also, on a long enough time span nothing will matter after. Does what most people did 3000 years ago matter? 10000? A million? I wouldn’t chase legacies

I don't think people 'chasing legacies' are generally concerned with whether 'most people' are remembered, that's exactly the point isn't it? Standing out?

A better 'problem' to point out might be the timespan over which few legacies that are remembered originate. 'I want to be the Tutankhamen of my time' is all very well, but there's no reason to think there will even be one.

Some people have tamed fire, invented wheel and overcame population bottlenecks. We don't know their names but their legacy is profound.

As a counterpoint, if they hadn’t done it, someone else would very likely have done it. Individual artworks would be a more unique legacy.

Quite clearly if population bottleneck wasn't dealt with noone else would be left to do it.

Sure, someone else would have overcome it. Could have been just around the corner. You don't know.

Exactly. Inventions, knowledge, and other things are all inevitable--rediscovered and recreated from scratch each time. Art is our only unique contribution/feedback to the universe.

If you subscribe to determinism, all art pieces are also inevitable.

> overcame population bottlenecks

Their names were Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.

Was more thinking about the Toba eruption bottleneck 75k years back, but sure :)

Stoicism appears to have had a great deal of influence on Jewish writing at the time. Have a look at "St. Paul and Stoicism" if you are so inclined. Interesting paper.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/475275

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Edited to correct attribution error.

Not sure if you meany to imply this or not, but Ecclesiastes is not Christian writing, it's Jewish.

Dammit, was a mental lapse. Appreciate the correction!

Some long-term investments are not fun, but do pay off.

As someone who put in the effort for many of these things and is now reaping the reward, I am certainly glad my past self got me here.

Sure, a little misfortune could have led me to a drastically different state today.

But as the saying goes:

> God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

Which is a saying attributed to Epictetus, written during his time, said that way before anything related to this God was even planned. It's his first rule in the Enchiridion (put to writing by disciples).

God was added there, in a very convenient rephrasing, as if to switch the responsibility from oneself (the core of Epictetus' stoicism, what he was talking about), to God.

I imagine my last day is going to be spent hooked up to a life support machine in a climate controlled environment as various close people trickle in to say farewell.

I’d prefer to spend the close of my 20s doing something else like raving on a warm beach with a bunch of people who don’t know me and won’t miss me tomorrow, and hopefully finding one or two fellow travellers who I can keep in touch with until my dying days :)

exploration vs exploitation

The real kicker of course, is for many people there is even more than a few folks coming to visit, especially for folks who don’t do the hard and nasty stuff in like when it’s necessary for others.

Whenever I hear/read that phrase, I always picture myself lying in a hospice bed, hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment.

<nit> The philosophy behind hospice is that you are *not* hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment. Rather, you only receive the minimal treatment needed to make yourself comfortable as you let your illness run its course. </nit>

Fair point. I knew that, but my previous comment was poorly articulated in that regard. I meant something along the lines of: hooked up to an opioid infusion.

This needs to be a post in r/comics

Either you are dying. Or you know you will be killed, so why not waste all the money and other property you have when you still have a chance... Seems like not really advise you should follow exactly.

Nothing to understand. It's poorly worded at best.

How do you feel about "You should organize each day to be the best possible prototype for all following days?"

That would imply that all following days have the same requirements, which is not the case at all, neither in the short term nor in the long term.

It does not. "each day" means you reapply the mantra every day to the then current state of your life. "for all following days" is the mechanism which forces you to most broadly consider the future and not just one day (as is the issue with "live every day as if it was your last")

Then I will argue that it doesn’t constitute a prototype, and it remains very unclear what criteria to apply for the day.

As with most things in life, I think finding a balance between the two is most enjoyable. If you only focus on the long term and plan, unless you have a continuous set of long term plans set to culminate and actually do, you'll have gaps in your living experience. You'll always be saving and investing for that one golden day that you may never see for some reason or another.

Meanwhile as you point out, if you focus on living in the moment only, you'll live on cheap small rewards in life.

I think a lot of good long term strategy with allotments for little impulse to pepper life is the best mix, at least for me, so that's how I live. Every now and then I'll splurge and do something unplanned a little extravagant but that's because I already budgeted for that sort of stuff -- my little fun pocket change time and money. Meanwhile I have nice set long term goals that improve my overall life experience as I get older. Some may never happen and that's fine because I'm not living my life wailing for that special time.

> I never understood this

Me neither. I think there are two distinct possibilities you should consider when you think what to do today. First one is that you may die today. Second is that you may not die today.

so the conclusion is that I should get life insurance and try all the drugs I always wanted to?

If you have 'always wanted to' try a bunch of drugs.. yes probably you should (according to that advice).

The thing to realise is that many people don't have any desire to try (the things that we call) drugs, so your comment isn't exposing some flaw in the advice.

If an oracle told me it actually is my last day, I'm not suddenly going to smoke some weed, snort some cocaine, and shoot up some heroin. I wouldn't want to any more than knowing (or assuming, as I do) that I'll live until (at least!) tomorrow.

You really are sure you wouldn't do anything different if an oracle told you it is actually your last day? There are so may possibilities for making the most of it.

You could take out every bit of loan or debt accessible and transfer all the money to charity. You could burn down the HQ of an oil company.

If you live in a country without the rule of Law, like Russia, where known killers and criminals hold positions of power, you could try your hand at assasinating one of them.

I said I wouldn't do drugs, not that I wouldn't do anything differently.

I see it as, don't postpone the things you really want to do until some later day, that day may never come. Start on them now.

Aka don’t wait for the right time, because the time is almost never perfectly right.

It’s a dumb statement. Better advice is to live a life worth reliving exactly the same way an infinite amount of times.

> I never understood this.

You're definitely understanding it correctly. It's atrociously dangerous advice for any manner of long-term well-being. Humans can reasonably live to 80-100 years of age. Trying to live even 18,000 days as your last is psychotic and impossible, it's both not worth attempting that and harmful to attempt it. Being healthy requires thinking and acting longer term; building savings over a lifetime requires long-term thinking; raising children successfully requires long-term thinking.

Try raising children one day to the next with the guiding parental premise being: this is our last day on earth, what shall we do? It's a recipe for disaster to try to live in short-term thinking day to day.

One of our greatest attributes is the capacity to think, plan and act for the long-term, as many of the things we want require such. Notice I didn't say everyone thinks long-term consistently; notice I didn't pretend all of our institutions think long-term all the time; both are standard issue sarcastic criticisms against long-term thinking, neither of which invalidate the value of long-term thinking.

The correct answer is that some things benefit from (and or require) short-term thinking (particularly immediate focus), some things benefit from (and or require) medium-term thinking, some things benefit from (and or require) long-term thinking. Where thinking implies the comprehensive (thinking, planning, acting, etc).

I think what it means is that you shouldn't procrastinate anything or think that you can make up for things later. There may be no later, so just do your best here and now. That of course includes resting when needed, so it doesn't mean always be doing something.

Perhaps you‘ll find Nietzsche‘s „eternal recurrence“ to be a better approach to the same question. Which is basically to ask:

„If I took this minute / this day / this month / this year of my life... and somebody were to tell me that I had to live it over and over again, ad infinitum, with everything exactly as it was, and nothing changed at all... would I be screaming Hell Yes, or would I be screaming Hell No?“

To me, it‘s an appeal not to recklessness or consumption of short-term pleasures, but to living in integrity with oneself. Not to take shortcuts which you think you‘ll somehow be able to compartmentalizations out of your life. And I think he meant it also to be applied in retrospect: Whatver you did, and whatever happened in your life... can you „own“ it, with all its apparent flaws, and pains and errors? Are you able to see yourself, and see your own life, beyond the categories of of good and bad? Can you, like a good author, take the good, the bad and the ugly from your past and create something of truth and beauty from it?

> If I took this minute / this day / this month / this year of my life... and somebody were to tell me that I had to live it over and over again, ad infinitum, with everything exactly as it was, and nothing changed at all... would I be screaming Hell Yes, or would I be screaming Hell No?

If that argument were actually valid, it would be a fully general refutation of any possible use of your time whatsoever. There's a reason the narrative trope of "trapped in a time loop" contains the word "trapped".

1) You’ll die anyway. So what does “make use of your time” even mean?

2) There’s an augment to made that anything you do or think is predetermined anyway, by past, biology and circumstances. Or, if you prefer, that it’s all based on a fundamental randomness. Either way, that you are more a symptom of the universe than an independent agent. In that sense, Nietzsche’s thought experiment might actually be closer to reality than we think.

3) How can you possibly know that your life right now is not actually just such a recurrence? The fact that you don’t know that it is one would be, of course, part of the script. (Knowing that it is a recurrence would be changing something. And that nothing will be changed is part of the premise.)

exactly. If I live till old age, I fully intend on living out my last days as a drug addict rather than some futile, painful attempts at curing a terminal illness

Ok, echoing my top level comment... An alternative framing that I've come to find more helpful is to take your life expectancy, and cut it by 2/3. For example, if you're 20 years old and your life expectancy is 80 (ie. 60 more years), pretend that you only have 20 more, so you'll only live until you're 40. It's nice cause it naturally adjusts as you get older. You'll have smaller windows to work with.

This approach strikes a nice balance. It gives you enough time to be able to really do something and change directions if you want. But not so much time that you can really waste any. It forces you to ask the hard questions about whether your day to day is truly connecting with your dreams, and whether you're on a path to get there.

Of course, Seneca didn't have life expectancy tables to work with. But I think he would have approved. :)

I often see the opposite in practice: young people living as if they were going to die tomorrow and old people living as if they were going to live forever.

Same. If today is my last day, I am sure as hell not going to work (even though I love my career). I am driving to have a huge party and spend every minute with my family.

My conclusion has been to not take the time scale literally. I find it useful to act as though I only have 3 years left. That’s a good timescale to have life operate properly, but also realize you need to make hard choices sooner rather than later.

> You should organize each day as if it were your last

We all do. Even if we choose to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life" much more inspiring

A famous saying in my culture goes, work for a better life as if you live forever; work for a better end as if you die tomorrow.

>If you live every day as your last, surely you would only engage in short term pleasures instead of pursuing longer term hobbies/goals?

Isn't that the entire point of the exercise? Is there necessarily any better payoff, either way?

It is meant as a guide and criterion for finding what matters the most in one's life and one's existence and organize their way of life around that. If it was your last day (and you were a philosopher) you would only concern yourself with the most fundamental and essential aspects of existence and questions of life. It is a reference to the Socratic question and quest: "what is the best course in life". He is instructing people to organize the totality of their lives, in answering and as answer to this question. Even if you do long term planning (and he is not saying you shouldn't) he is telling you to focus and concern that worthy life plan of yours, in answering and as answer to that question.

Implicitly, he is also saying that what drives people to waste their time and concern themselves with petty issues, unimportant to their fundamental existence and be drowned in "everydayness", is the ever-lurking-in-the-background assumption that "I have got plenty of time".

> You should organize each day as if it were your last, so that you neither need to long for nor fear the next day.

I've come to find this "live each day like it's your last" advice to be pretty unhelpful. My favorite quote about it is, "all that goes to show you is some people would spend their last day giving you stupid advice".

The problem is that if it actually was your last day, most people would give the finger to all of their responsibilities and go party, eat cake, see friends, familiy, lovers, etc. Which is simply not an actual way to live your life. It's a way to exit your life.

An alternative framing that I've come to find more helpful is to take your life expectancy, and cut it by 2/3. Now what do you do? For example, if you're 20 years old and your life expectancy is 80 (ie. 60 more years), pretend that you only have 20 more, so you'll only live until you're 40. It's nice cause it naturally adjusts as you get older. You'll have smaller windows to work with.

Of course, Seneca didn't have life expectancy tables to work with. But I think he would have approved. :)

I think it's good advice, when placed in the correct context.

Live every day as if it could be your last - to me it's about ensuring you always strive towards being your best self, in the context of the virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage and justice) and the Stoic duty towards society.

Giving the finger to the world and living a hedonistic lifestyle is decidedly not Stoic.

Putting aside the distraction of past and future and focusing on the present is a Stoic ideal though:

"I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later." ~ Epictetus

If you read Seneca that's not what he's saying. He says that you should live your life in such a way that if before sleeping someone told you that it had been your last day, you would feel content with what you did today.

He says that you have to remind yourself that you can die at any time. So before doing something ask yourself whether you'd be proud of you if what you were about to do would be the last thing you'd do.

He also says that you should strive for that life, to use this advice as a compass. Not to literally start each day and do what you'd do if you were going to die tonight.

Also a good life according to Seneca is not a life full of instant gratifications like drugs, party, food. It's a simple, ascetic life.

It's a bit contradictory to resist instant gratifications, because if you asked people if they would feel content with what they did that day, I guess more would say yes if the day was packed with instant gratification compared to more boring but good strategic activities.

> "all that goes to show you is some people would spend their last day giving you stupid advice".

That is brilliant. I'm stealing it immediately. Thank you for a bright moment early in the day!

"long for nor fear the next day" can be interpreted as to fulfill your responsibilities so that you don't fear the next day.

Here's a mundane (but I hope helpful) take on a portion of this:

> The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time

This line struck the strongest nerve with me. I've started to REALLY pay attention to this and fight back, where I can.

Example: I subscribe to a meal prep service. They recently stopped sending out the weekly reminder email to choose your meals, and I chatted with CS to figure out the issue. They said "we suggest you put a reminder on your calendar so you don't forget to order from us in case our email doesn't go out".

I explained to them: "Sorry guys, I am paying you to save time. You do not get to add an item to my to-do list" and cancelled my account.

This kind of thing happens SO often with businesses. "To fix your problem with us, please go through these series of steps". It's maddening.

There are only 4 entities that get to forcibly add items to my to-do list: Me, my wife, my CEO, and the US government ;)

>> The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time

> This line struck the strongest nerve with me. I've started to REALLY pay attention to this and fight back, where I can.

And at some point your time isn't even worth "Sorry guys..."

Hit unsubscribe.

What are you doing for meal prep now?

> It’s even worse when people come up with deferred life plans. They’ll say something like “When I’m forty, I’m going to retire and write a book” or “I’ll do this thing I hate right now so I can make money, then in ten years I’ll do what I really love”. Seriously? You think that the universe is going to let your life proceed the way you want it to? What guarantee do you have of making it to that age?

This is often used as a reason not to save when you're young, and to generally dunk on the the traditional idea of retirement. Believe this and in a few decades we're going to have a large number of people aged 80-120 seriously struggling. Apart from a recent dip, average life expectancy in the US has been going up pretty much forever. Life is not necessarily long, but it can be. Yes, you might drop dead of a heart attack the day before you retire, so all that saving was a waste. You also might make it past 100. Who among us has enough savings to last until they are 100? You won't if you're spending every penny you have when you're young.

Thanks to compounding interest, the best time to save and invest is when you are young. A dollar earned and invested when you're 20 is many times more valuable than that dollar earned when you're 60.

>Thanks to compounding interest, the best time to save and invest is when you are young. A dollar earned and invested when you're 20 is many times more valuable than that dollar earned when you're 60.

And money spent on experiences in 20s can't be made up with experiences in 60s - plus the kind of experiences you have in 20s will define the person you'll be in 60s. Hell even in 30s you can't get your 20s back. There's a biological peak - saving money for your twilight years might make you safer in the far future but it's guaranteed to make you miss out on your prime.

I'm willing to bet investing in yourself early will outperform the compounding interest you make on income you have at the start of your career.

Depends on your definition of performance

Exactly. And wonderfully, performance can be anything, by any measure. My preferred metric: time ratio for which I get to choose - or agree to - whatever I do. In my case, pretty much all my time. Because one day I decided to make my own choices, in regard to time allocations, occupations and general use of my time. Which means I'm almost never defaulting to other people's agenda, unless I agree to it. Everything is a choice, and I make it my own.

> I'm willing to bet investing in yourself early will outperform the compounding interest you make on income you have at the start of your career.

People present this often as a choose 1, but in reality there's a big gradient of options here. There's no reason you can't spend some money for experiences in your 20s and also save a good deal for compounding interest in the future.

>There's no reason you can't spend some money for experiences in your 20s and also save a good deal for compounding interest in the future.

Well in my scenario (and that of most of my peers/siblings) income is low and cost of living is a large % - you don't have a lot of discretionary funds to manage so it usually is one or the other.

> People present this often as a choose 1, but in reality there's a big gradient of options here.

The word you're looking for is "false dichotomy".

Agreed. In my early 20s, I spent a year backpacking around the world. I was fortunate enough to have the money, which I could have instead invested in property. Now I'm in my late 30s, I struggled to buy a home, I have a big mortgage, I'm getting by alright but I have very little in terms of investments.

I don't regret my choices for a second. My year spent travelling was the best experience of my life. It defined who I am. I learnt so much. I met so many wonderful people. I discovered so many amazing places. Wouldn't have been the same, had I deferred it until later in life (and many older travellers that I met told me as much).

I'm not an expert in Seneca, but from reading the article, I think he'd argue that time is much more valuable than money.

JFYI you're writing from a very privileged perspective. I live in former USSR. My parents were robbed by the state of their life savings twice in their life (one day you have enough to buy a car — a luxurious item indeed, next day you have nothing), and thrice their saving were depreciated by 30-60% in a single day due to shock devaluation of the currency. I think this is pretty typical for 'developing' countries.

Most of my Russian friends have been working unofficially and haven't been paying anything to the retirement fund even before the war started (which just seems to have proven them right).

A relative lived sensibly and modestly her whole life. Three years before retirement the Northern Rock collapse happened in the UK and she lost her entire pension. Even in the 'developed' world, don't be sure any sort of pension will be there.

> Apart from a recent dip, average life expectancy in the US has been going up pretty much forever.

I see no reason why life expectancy in the US will not continue to drop. At some level, we have made a conscious decision to rebuild our society with a greater emphasis on hierarchy and hereditary wealth. We should expect life expectancy for bottom 90% of Americans to continue to deteriorate, while those in the top 10% will continue to improve.

> Apart from a recent dip, average life expectancy in the US has been going up pretty much forever.

I'm worried that the "healthy at every size" movement means this is the beginning of a large drop, not just a little dip.

My retirement was just pushed up three years and the future is very uncertain due to climate change. I’ll feel privileged if I’m able to rearch retirement at all in a stable and functional society, even if I have to live off a small pension.

Hm. I dunno about others, but whenever I hear someone say that, what I hear is that sections of our life are short. Childhood is short, teenage years are short, early twenties are short, etc etc. Cumulatively it's "long", but that misses a lot of the core point.

Fair point - the sections we have to adjust to an be short, relative to how we figure them out.

For example, one has to figure out how to be a man in some period of 15-23yro. Then live that. Then if one has kids, how to wholly be responsible for others in that 20's-30's range. Then wholly how to let them go, and then potentially to help one's parents after that. All while balancing self, identity, aspirations, dreams, adulting, and placing food on the table.

Each period is short, in a long overarching "cumulative years"

> potentially to help one's parents after that

Tangential discussion: I have two teenaged kids, both my parents are still alive and healthy enough to look after themselves and go on overseas holidays every couple of years (pending COVID), and both of my grandmothers are still alive although neither able to look after themselves. We utilise both my parents and my wife's parents to help with school drop-offs / pickups and appointments every now and then, plus my parents have to also look after their respective mothers, including dealing with their financials and moving "homes" and what to do with their belongings etc.

My mother, bless, complains about having to look after their mother's. This is a little coarse, but also understandable in that they're in their mid-70's and struggle enough with their own health nevermind the power of attorney kinds of issues required of looking after their elderly parents. Both my parents are getting noticeably older, decreasingly able to deal with their own issues.

With an aging population, retirement isn't what it used to be. Retirement is ferrying grandkids and juggling not-yet-deceased estates, whilst having an increasingly full calendar of appointments with doctors and specialists to keep your own machine running.

There's a potential scenario that could play out in only a few years where I could be responsible for both my parents and my grandmothers' welfare at a time my children will be in late high-school.

I'm not being woe-is-me, I'm trying to explain what 'normal' may already look like for Gen X-ish, and how different it may be from expectations.

The shortest period I've experienced is pre-10-years old kids, when they're in that beautiful unsuppressed-by-societal-norms personality discovery mode. I took lots of home video footage of my two "in their natural habitat" and goddam I miss being in the midst of it, and goddam they had a great time being free to be themselves.

Everything is short when it's over. Even pain.

I like this quote from an otherwise terrible Chris rock movie:

"Some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it's your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You're probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you're gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years."

Oh, I was thinking of Chris Rock too, but his stand up album "Roll with the New", and his spiel about commitment vs "new women" (not the word he uses, obvs). https://youtu.be/VJpKAk4E5_k?t=130

Yeah, there's not a lot of real choices in life once you hit a certain age/condition.

Once you get married and have a family, it's basically just grinding away at work, with chores, etc. Stuff that just has to get done, or the consequences are catastrophic (divorce, medical bill bankruptcy, losing the house, etc).

This is the bleakest picture of family life I have ever seen.

Certainly you have more choices/options if you have more money, right?

Not when that excess income goes directly into the kids mouths.

Maybe. But usually that means you spend more time at work. I have two family members with medical issues, so we hit the out of pocket max in medical bills every year (and possibly more due to some things being coded incorrectly and nobody being able to fix it).

Then there's the fact that you need concensus for things. Like can we move to another area? No, wife doesn't want to ever leave the county. Should buy an unaffordable house? No, that's financial suicide. Wife wants another kid, but also complains that I don't do enough (not going into it, but she's way off base). I don't want another kid due to all that I have to do for the current one and her (she needs help with many things).

In theory, we could each pretty much decide these things unilaterally. In practice, that's likely to result in divorce even if we have more money.

Mostly just sounds like you don't like / get along with your wife, which sucks for you but isn't true for a lot of people.

The reasoning still stands that two people will not always agree, and that difficult situations (medical) can exist in a relationship and reduce the viable options.

Yes, but you said "life becomes this" not "life could become this", and ignored the fact that this "could" can definitely be made more or less likely through your own actions and the actions of those around you.

Please, show me where I said/ignored any of this.

> Once you get married and have a family, it's basically just grinding away at work, with chores, etc

It's basically not, that's just a summary of your experience.

It is whatever you perceive it to be. Family life is not like that for everyone, and money is definitely not the only reason.

You have more choices if you have more money. Most of the folly with divorce is still completely avoidable for the breadwinner (if the couple has one). I won't describe it, make enough to get your own set of lawyers and ask for the supporting case law before implementing any strategy. There are things that work equally as well in community property states and equitable distribution states. Having your own assets completely paid for before the marriage is a great first step that most of the population cannot do and cannot relate to, so this influences the collective conscious. But there are also things you can do for assets you paid for in your marriage to keep as your own.

Don't apply if you don't have money, and this has nothing to do with a pre-nup which you should also do.

The irony, for those about to have a kneejerk reaction about merely considering the financial realities of marriage instead of solely the love partnership part, is that this kind of pre-planning actually allows you to focus on the love part. You don't have to be skeptical or worried about any partner or anecdotes because you have it all figured out.

"The irony, for those about to have a kneejerk reaction about merely considering the financial realities of marriage instead of solely the love partnership part, is that this kind of pre-planning actually allows you to focus on the love part. You don't have to be skeptical or worried about any partner or anecdotes because you have it all figured out."

That's my basic opinion. My wife and her family had a fit when I suggested a prenup, even though it mostly followed the general guidelines in law with the removal of alimony. It was crying and "you don't know what you're doing" with not a logical argument in sight. I just wanted a calm, rational conversation. Instead I feel like I was emotionally bullied and manipulated. If only I realized it then.

Yeah, on that topic, I wish alimony was modified more holistically at the state level to avoid this discussion.

Proponents say “one person does more unpaid labor to support the breadwinner and the lifestyle they were both beneificiaries of”, but why does seemingly nobody create a market value of that unpaid labor (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). People act like this unpaid labor is the same value at any amount of money that the lifestyle costs, when that’s not true.

“You did the dishes most often according to these angry text messages, and also got to travel to Tuscany in luxury, so here is $800,000 for 10 years and if your ex has any disruption in income then they have to check themselves into jail, if they make more we can modify that amount upwards and assume their income never goes down”

I would like alimony capped at the state level in both amount and time based on what the value of supportive household/emotional labor is.

Monaco’s alimony law is a decent rubric.

That's the problem. It's not even based on unpaid labor. There are courts assigning alimony to support porn addiction and other lifestyle factors. If it were based on unpaid labor, my wife would be paying me for all the high-rate mechanic, handyman, tech support, accounting, etc work. By getting married the lower earner is basically taking possession of your earning potential.

If anyone thinks this is joking, my wife's father was in an accident and then a coma. Lost his job and obviously wasnt making money in a coma. Apparently the child support payments emptied his account. He was arrested for not paying. He then couldn't find any decent job with the arrest record.

Co auld prenup have helped? Crypto?

> If it were based on unpaid labor, my wife would be paying me for all the high-rate mechanic, handyman, tech support, accounting, etc work.

Great rebuttal I wonder if this has been successfully argued by a breadwinner in calculating alimony payment amounts or alimony reform

Too bad all of this is stuck in family courts at the municipal level and not publicly indexed, the information is fragmented

My cynical guess is that if you argue that you did all these tasks, then the spouse will argue that it's part of their lifestyle to not handle that. That they will have to pay someone to do all that for them, and thus the breadwinner who did all that work should give them money to hire someone.

That is quite cynical, but I could see it being argued especially if there isn't a scenario to cancel costs out.

> But there are also things you can do for assets you paid for in your marriage to keep as your own.

Having separate accounts? What would you suggest

I'm guessing they won't answer. Separate accounts and such only works for assets you already owned or gifts/inheritance. Even then, the court will factor those in and likely increase the amount you owe in child support or alimony on your income because you're less needy. There's really not much you can do about anything you've earned during the marriage or after (alimomy). The only stuff you could do would be arguing why you deserve more of it based on things like future earning potential, lifestyle, child support, etc. But usually the bread winner is at a disadvantage for these arguments.

Nope, it actually challenges everything you thought you knew about everything.

Want to hang out with your friends? Good luck on agreeing on a place to rent that's in budget for all of you if you have £1m+ in the bank.

Want to treat your wife? Good luck she is already accustomed to nice meals. It's unlikely you'll surprise her with something special.

Kids birthday? Good fucking luck. He's got the latest of everything.

And so it goes...

> Want to hang out with your friends? Good luck on agreeing on a place to rent that's in budget for all of you if you have £1m+ in the bank.

What? Is the wealthier person in this scenario too much of a snob to stay in cheaper accommodations that everyone can afford, or pay a little more than their "fair share" to help book nicer ones that everyone can enjoy?

I would not want to be friends with that person.

Poor rich man.

> Want to hang out with your friends? Good luck on agreeing on a place to rent that's in budget for all of you if you have £1m+ in the bank.

If i had the luck to have £1m+ in the bank and if I wanted to hang out with my friend, i would happily let them pay what they can afford and pay for the remaining.

> Want to treat your wife? Good luck she is already accustomed to nice meals. It's unlikely you'll surprise her with something special.

My wife don't need nice meals to be happy, just some time together is enough.

> Kids birthday? Good fucking luck. He's got the latest of everything.

It's not because you are rich that you have to buy your kids anything they want. You can have positive experience with your kids everyday without buying anything.

Sorry if i sound harsh but it's really strange reading this when you DON'T have 1m+ in bank. And I'm not especially poor.

if your kids / wife aren’t making you happy maybe you should reconsider the choices you don’t think you have

As i advance the more i realize time is not my friend nor my enemy. Maybe it is just a big dance between energy and matter. Until the end it is what i had. I have no ambition to be remembered for a very long time, but even that is ultimately beyond my control.

My time is mine. I will keep using it however i can and see fit. Should that create unexpected results in this universe, i hope they were fun or helpful ones.

I have found that I sometimes need "down time." This may involve sitting in a recliner, reading junk fiction, or watching vapid TV shows.

When I am "on," I am really "on." I like to be constantly "producing" stuff. I tend to not do much "farting around." All my work needs to have some deliverable goal.

It's not necessarily for the best. I probably miss out on a lot of creative exploration. I'm very empirical. I think that abstract thinkers may come up with some really cool stuff, and they may do that, while sitting in a coffee shop, staring vacantly out the window.

Related: it strikes me as a paradox that we are envious of people in their 20s because they have their whole life ahead of them, and feel sorry for people in their 80s who have their life behind them. Does it mean we value the potential more than the realized? Is a potential life worth more, perhaps because it still contains all the promises of potential futures, while a life lived has been whittled down to a single path, with all the mistakes and regrets that it entails?

I think it might even just be that living life is awesome in general (overall, though there are obvious ups and downs). So the more you have left to live, the better

True, but the 80-year old is guaranteed to have lived that many years, while the 20-year old could die tomorrow...

Isn't there a bit of a sunk cost fallacy there? You can't influence the past but you can influence the future. That's why we care more about the future than about the past.

> Does it mean we value the potential more than the realized?

Yup, just like a pitch to a VC is easier with magical future potential numbers, rather than realised numbers.

Potential is only limited by imagination, and realised numbers can’t be changed!

"No one is willing to hand out their money randomly, but that’s exactly what you do with your time. You’re very frugal with your physical possessions, but when it comes to your time, you’re wasteful of the only thing in the world that you should actually be frugal with."

This is something where I frequently have arguments with my wife (mild and civilized, not that it's a real problem or anything). For example, suppose that we buy something online that is, say, $20, and it isn't up to our (or her) expectations. She will want to return it, and ask for my help. But my position is: returning it takes time (going to the website and finding out how to make a return, preparing the package, possibly waiting in a line in the post office), and for me that time is worth more than $20, so I'd rather lose the $20 and not do it (time has grown increasingly valuable in the last few years because we have a kid, so while we have decent savings, our amount of free time for ourselves -not kid-related- is close to zero).

I'm pretty sure my position makes sense, but it's difficult to convey it in a way that doesn't seem like I'm just "not caring" (I think part of the issue might be that for me, devoting time to things like doing a return, taking more time for a purchase to find a discount, etc. is just a chore, and she somewhat likes it) so we end up in a middle ground where each gives in a little.

PS: I am fully conscious that I'm writing this from a privileged position as there are people for whom those $20 would be a godsend, and it does make me feel somewhat guilty to take positions like this sometimes, but it's inevitable that one judges with respect to the scarcity of each resource in their own circumstances... and in my case it's free time which I consider to be very, very scarce. The fact that the $20 could be highly valuable to other people doesn't make it more senseful for me to spend some of my scarce free time on them if I need the time more.

Just throwing out as a thought, but as an alternative you could spend a minute putting it for sale online where someone would come pick it up, or even just put it up for free so someone that may need it more can get it. It can be a very quick process, especially with smaller things like that. You might even be able to just throw it on the porch when they say they’re coming.

Read Martin Hagland for a much more applicable take on this. The primary way we waste time is via waged employment. For this reason most people have very little control over how they are spending their limited time alive https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/if-god-is-dead...

Why is waged employment a time waste? It allows me to browse Hacker News, and take a coffee at some fun new bistro in the city center of Lisbon! ;-)

Jokes aside, I'm asking this question sincerely.

Life is short because society takes so much of it. School wastes so much of your time, employment likewise. Some sort of drastic change is needed.oog

Society can only give what it takes (from you and others).

I dont think that is true, society can create value from trade and good organization providing more resources to everyone for collectively the same amount of work.

In the sense that the whole is more than the sum of its parts? Of course!

This is incorrect.

No synergy to be had?

Yes these kind of discussions are often useless to me because they ignore the things in life we don't choose. They're written as if someone has complete agency and is just choosing between easier and less reward versus harder and more reward. For me at least the real difficulty is dealing with broken systems and all that's needed of you from them, when rejecting the system can mean complete failure of the worst kind.

People don't let others steal their time because they're weak, it's because the system is so broken.

It's not so much "do I put this effort into building a ship and charting new territory" it's "do I chart this ship into pirate-infested waters when then outcome could mean death, and shipbuilders are defrauding people about the safety of materials?" The correct analogy in contemporary society often isnt builders or explorers, it's refugees.

Yes I'm cynical. I wish I weren't.

Life is short because of senescence

If only as a society we could put some effort into that instead of pretty much everything else for a little while. If we solved anti-senescence we'd have all the time in the world to fix everything else

I really like how society provides libraries/internet - well you still have to spend some time on banal things like learning reading or filling in forms in writing to have access.

School is also useful to learn about mistakes or shitty things people did in the past so you don't do the same in your life. Without society you would not have access to great minds of the past which might be even more useful.

Unless you know you are kind of prodigy that without learning reading or writing you could build modern washing machine from raw materials available in your area.

My point is that school is just a baseline for living in a modern society.

If you by any chance live in a first world country maybe you should be ashamed of yourself. Maybe you should watch some documentary about how barely literate people struggle in 3rd world countries and how much of their life is wasted on meeting basic needs and they did not have time to attend the school or there was no school available at all.

It also takes fucking forever and it gets you nowhere.

They’re not saying “don’t educate yourself and take advantage of your privileges”, but “school as we know it sucks and I could have done a lot more with the time.” At least, that seems like the generous reading.

That’s the correct reading.

Yes, looking back I cannot believe I did not just walk out of high school each day. I could have headed to a library and learnt a lot more in a fraction of the time. I could have become incredibly physically fit with the remaining time, or improved my guitar playing.

I guess I just didn’t have the confidence to think - well, actually, this is stupid and walking out is a smart thing to do.

This is giving me a bit of a Zizek-ian "wisdom" feeling. E.g. in "Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future." one can make the counter-argument of the entire marshmallow experiment with children where the whole point is to actually put things off for the future!

Yeah, those who refuse to bargain with the future end up the same as those who refuse to bargain at car dealerships. They pay the worst prices.

Even hunter gatherers sacrifice for the future. I haven't read much Seneca, but this article strikes me as a shallow interpretation of him just from its Instagram-quote-ey notes that are thrown in every now and then

I've always liked the marshmallow experiment, but it turns out less clear than we may have thought.

If a child trusts the adult will be back shortly with marshmallow in tow, they may wait. But if adults in their lives are less predictable, they may reasonably choose to eat the marshmallow before the adult returns.

The marshmallow experiment may show that kids that can trust adults do better in life.

I've found you have to balance the 2 sides- saving for the future while enjoying the present. Doing both at once is not impossible.

My perspective:

No, take things now if you can. And I can, with a very small amount of creativity involved. I realized recently I don't need to be rich/financially independent at all.

I work 4 days per week, I'm living the dream as I've realized that I want to work for 3 days per week. I want to crack my brain on something for 3 days per week that I'm not necessarily passionate about, but that feels as "good brain exercise" (aka programming).

So I only have to put up with 1 day per week, but I also want a bit of that I need to "put up with something", so 4 days per week is my jam, apparently. Programming allows me to stay mentally sharp, so it's a health thing as well.

My free day is on a Wednesday, so my rhythm literally is along the lines of:

work, work, rest, work, work, rest, bonus rest*

* Aka go nuts/crazy since I'm already rested.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Provided if you're Dutch, because a 4 day work week is easy to fix there.

4 days means you make about 85 to 90% of your 5 day net salary anyway, so you're not losing too much cash. It's easily doable if you spent 70% of your income anyway, which is what I was doing (and that is me being wasteful).

Life is beautiful :)

Any advice for someone who has not done anything other than work in the last 15 years (weekends and vacations spent home indoors etc.)? I spend my free time obsessing how I'm pissing away my time on this planet and at the same time terrified of doing something else.

Start small and spend your weekend and vacation not indoors? :) if you are really afraid of getting away from a job then just bringing some reading material for the job outside could go a long way

Sure, see a therapist, find out why that is.

Time spent happily is the best possible way of spending it. Were you happy doing nothing? If so, perhaps it time was well spent.

Looks like you know what there are some problems (at least in your POV) with your current life.

Take a sabbatical[0] and try to understand what do you need to be a happier person.

[0] in my case it was a sessions of a late night and beer talk with a people who doesnt't know me, but was greatly supportive of my situation (beer hleped there). YMMV.

I sort of feel similarly. I do wonder if it would be more meaningful to engage in a dialog with someone on HN beyond just one off replies.

Just small talks on Discord for example. I'm pcurve#3558

In a way, HN is a forum with built in common interest.

Anyone else been increasingly dissatisfied by Stoicism lately? It's been super in vogue for about a decade now in tech for some reason. I've read several books on it, and apply some of the practices, but there's something that doesn't sit quite right that I haven't fully been able to put my finger on it yet.

Maybe you'll agree with this (really good) argument against stoicism: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/stoicism-is-not-enough

Thanks, all those points track pretty well with how I'm feeling about it.

Thanks for posting, it was an interesting read. I agree with the premise "stoicism is not a sufficient philosophy for a good life, only a survivable one."

The rest of the article seems like a misinterpretation of Stoic ideas. For example "Our emotions and intuitions are not something to be set aside" which I think the stoics would agree with: "Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, “Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test." – Epictetus. Initial emotions should not be 'set aside' but should be 'seen for who they are and what they represent'.

He admits that "Learning to tame your emotions through willpower is helpful, but your emotions themselves are still an asset." Which sounds stoic to me?

Finally he provides an alternative "Instead to live well we must learn to create things outside ourselves, through ritual and poesy." Why ritual and poesy? Why not philosophy? I would love to know the reasoning behind this but none is provided.

My knowledge of Stoicism is limited, but I think my criticism is on the mark. I'd love to hear the opinions of more informed HN people.

Maybe you're just a contrarian. Anything that's fashionable, especially when it's corpo-speak, rubs you the wrong way.

I'll hazard another guess why you may feel this way. The current discourse around stoicism is essentially aspirational. We no longer recognize the internal fortitude stoicism requires, neither in ourselves nor our peers, so we desperately cling to its ideals. Much like toddlers repeating they're not afraid in the dark when going into the basement.

See similar motivations around how all corpo-speak is now all about empathy, kindness, tolerance, and other traits we are really bad at putting into practice, but feel compelled to reiterate.

It's not just being contrarian, because I was on the Stoicism bandwagon for a couple years.

> See similar motivations around how all corpo-speak is now all about empathy, kindness, tolerance, and other traits we are really bad at putting into practice, but feel compelled to reiterate.

Yeah, this feels closer to how I feel.

Life is short in a sense that I know I won’t have time to learn about everything there is to learn. I won’t have time to study and understand the proof of Fermat Last Theorem, the latest breakthroughs of physics. I won’t be able learn piano like a professional or violin. I know that I won’t have time to read many classic of literature, etc. I can choose to do certain things but now I have to choose where to focus my time.

> Everyone complains about how short life is, but that perspective is broken. Life is not short. The real issue is that we waste so much of it.

> Life is long enough for you to achieve your wildest dreams. You’re just so busy wasting it that you get to the end without living much of it.

Hey guys, what kind of fallacy is this? This observation presented is saying its not too short to live your wildest dreams, but isn't refuting the idea that it is short, which is a common view of relative time that is shared amongst people.

My observation is that we can spend too much of it chasing our wildest dreams, while their observation is that people spent too much time wasting it (as if that is exclusive from not chasing their wildest dreams).

Kind of all points to the idea that it is short, and doesn't bother refuting the supposition.

indeed, you could do one or the other, and you could fail at both.

in fact for some having a decent place to live is a dream out of reach.

The article is extremely dismissive toward the real reason most people waste time. The vast majority of the world is working for basic subsistence.

60% of the world's population does not have a flushing toilet at home. Hopefully the author's magic wand is a hella good one.

Is that article target audience "whole of humanity"?

That 60% of population is probably not going to read that article. They will be busy with more important things like living till next day.

That's my whole criticism: that the target audience only consists of people who have the excess wealth to have these options.

I might as well read an article about how to spend my time on my yacht wisely and not waste it in the wrong tropical islands.

Interestingly, Seneca himself most likely did not have a flushing toilet at home.

He did have access to Roman toilets, which were about as advanced as it got for that time.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ancient-roman...

The guy wasn't exactly a peasant, being a senator and an imperial advisor.

Don't like most "progress people," don't like most philosophy, don't like most self help.

If you have "it" figured out, why is that not enough? All I can see are ulterior motives: a desperate need to feel seen or remembered or virtuous or important, something to sell, an attempt to elevate one's status, etc.

I agree with this; I wasted so much time in my childhood and teenage years doing nothing and feeling bored. Eventually years later I realized how much destructive it was for me both mentally and physically. Children and young people need to be guided in the early stages of their life because they will be disoriented just like me.

Hey, but what I should do, if, say, I don’t have my own house and I really need to buy one? How can I just stop doing what I don’t love in that situation?

Also, what about the situation when one day you really love your work and find it very interesting and fulfilling, but the other day it’s just the opposite?

Different take - it is pointless to think life as short or long. Life just is. You ARE in this moment of conscious time (to borrow Descartes). Anything else is either memory (history) or future yet to be.

You, your 'self' are defined by your memory that is the consequences of the paths you took and not the ones you could have, and just like that your future will be the paths you take in this moment. Some try to make effort to be the best version of themselves, some try to live in this moment and many are in between. I do not think there's anything wrong with either extremes as long as you consciously and willingly do it, and sign up for the consequences. But.. idk.. I find this 'life is long vs short' debate a bit besides the point. I mean we do everything to fit the curve of 100 years of life - first quarter: education, second quarter: career, start family etc. May be its a perception thing - you're 40 and suddenly you realize you didn't become the astronaut you thought you'd be when you're grow up: how quickly life has passed by. To me personally, framing life as short vs long doesn't provide much solace in this situation but rather the one with culmination of past choices does.

Lots of comments here about tradeoffs between having fun and working hard. I'd say work hard, but take a year off every decade or so and just enjoy it.

Personally, I find it hard to get away from work, because getting away means changing mindsets and changing mindset takes longer than 48 hours or even a week of vacation. If you've ever quit your job voluntarily and lived in another country for a bit, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I was just complaining to my wife about this.

A vacation is never a vacation. I need at least 3 months off based on how the past chances for a few weeks off has went.

I just finished a three month vacation between jobs and I agree. Getting (what felt like) so far away from my career, I really got to interrogate my dreams, goals, and plans.

I’m still battling with some tough realizations from this time, but I am glad I had the opportunity to do some self exploration.

Even though it’s not in my contract, I am going to negotiate a one month sabbatical every three or five years where ever I am working.

That's called the yearly summer vacation in Europe. Why only every three to five years?

Taking a month long vacation in summer would leave exactly zero days off for the rest of the year, for most people I know (not counting weekends and holidays).

I'm in Europe.

`Life is not short if you're lucky?*` I think that's what Seneca would have said back in the day. Nowadays, at least for the developed countries we could state `Life is not short if you're not unlucky`.

That said, many good things in life require time, work and careful planning (for somebody this could be building a house, finishing uni, perhaps raising a kid, tons of examples apply). Those that really bring fulfilment and satisfaction, where you can look back at this and say "I did that myself". Moment and day-like successes feel often like a serotonin hit, but do not persist long. So, I may say that I disagree with the premise of the article. What is often perceived as wasting time aka "watching Netflix", "playing games", "drinking with friends", turns out to be indispensable for us when we need to chew through mundane chores to reach the long-term goal we really strive for. But, if we're unlucky, we don't get to see the final result. A middle ground would be to start enjoying the small milestones?

You could live your entire life right. Save money, build a family, find the love of your life, and have it all come crashing down in a single instant for any number of reasons. That terrifies me for some reason.

Why do you think there is a 'right way' to live life?

'right' needs to be 'inherent'. There is no 'inherently right' in life. So where does that come from that you think there is a 'right' in life?

Sure, but that realization is also somewhat liberating.

Yes it is despite what seneca says.

People obsessed about not wasting their lives are actually the ones that waste it.

I suspect the only way to guarantee you’ve wasted a moment is to spend it in some unneeded state of distress.

The more moments you spend worrying about whether you’re spending the moment well, the more waste accumulates

Yes and if naturally wired to worry ceaselessly you need significant practice to overcome it.

This world will teach you everything except how to be peaceful which is the most valuable skill of all.

In this sense, TV and smart phone waste people much of their lives. And it’s only going to get worse for the coming generations.

I talked with a financial advisor. He said for some of his higher end clients who have 25 million dollars that are simply sitting around in investments. The money is doing nothing for them except accumulate. He advises them to at least spend some of it.

It's interesting how the amount of money involved can change your perspective. For me the single most important thing to do with money is save it. Nothing I can buy will give me as much happiness as being able to help make the lives of important people in my life easier. We have a broken housing system that screws over almost everyone who doesn't get help so I want to save a sizeable contribution to my son's downpayment. I want to help pay for his wedding. I want to pay for his education. I want him to have a better start to life than I did and I want him to have more opportunities than me. I guess once you accumulate enough money you can do all that and still easily have more left over for the nice to haves.

https://dilbert.com/strip/1991-08-20

don't worry. the market decline will take care of that

This is making me want to quit my CS program: I asked about that here recently... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284802

This makes me want to quit University RIGHT NOW...

In 2 years what will your perspective on your decision be either way? Assuming all other things are equal...

Drop out: You most likely won't have wild success 2 years from now. Building marketable experience is a long uphill battle and if success were easy, then it wouldn't be considered so valuable.

Or don't drop out: You'll have a better marketable baseline. School and certifications make it easier to cold-apply to places. The more relevant they are, the more they help you avoid relying too much on social networks to move up.

The interviewee is talking about people who make a 10 or 20 year plan and then act surprised when life changes and they look back and feel regret over missed opportunities. They're not saying to forego building safety nets.

If you have concrete opportunities that you are giving up in order to complete school, then that's a different position than simply wanting to be available for opportunities that have not yet been offered.

That's a nice perspective, thank you. And you are right, I expect to graduate within 1.5 years with a Masters degree, which is a vastly superior outlook than just working an average job with no Masters.

But still, it's just a bit depressing having to study for random exams that are for the most part just academic acrobatics as I call them, rather than having a free mind to be able to work on and learn whatever I want.

I do have time for that stuff in-between exam phases but usually that time flies waay too fast because I enjoy it so much, and before I know it it's time to grind for the exams again...

> This makes me want to quit University RIGHT NOW...

I remember that feeling. If I could give advice to my younger self, it'd be: fast track uni as fast as possible. Bachelor + master takes 5 years? Do your best to do it in 3. Try to keep some room for social stuff. Yep, it's going to be a busy 3 years, but when else do you get to try to bring out your A-game? It won't happen during work as an employee, since you won't be rewarded for it. For uni, the payoff is clear: you go faster through the bitter pill that you don't want to swallow, and by going faster it's actually more interesting and therefore less bitter.

My opinion as a long time gaming "connoisseur:" there are many games that can engage with your sense of empathy, wonder, reconsider your and society's ethics, and build your creative and logical problem-solving skills. All good things, but there comes a time when you are just trying to get blood from a stone. When you feel like you aren't getting as much out of gaming as you used to, retire. There's so much more to life than gaming.

Life is infinitesimally short regardless of what anyone says

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” - Fight Club

"Today, men still quote 'Fight Club'" - Peter C. Baker

or the price of crypto

Life is the longest thing in life

I like the article's perspective, but there's a rub. The Juanes song "La Vida Es Un Ratico" seems to say that despite the best efforts to not waste time, life is still short (the "ratico" part). And that was in 2007!

Unfortunately, I don't think there's much overlap between those on HN and those listening to Colombian rock.

They used this song in Spanish class I took in Medellin. I think I’m not the only one who spent some time there and spends some time here on HN. Don’t underestimate that Venn diagram :) (Does early Shakira count?)

I think it's worth talking to a few people who have master or phds in Philosophie. From my sample the general rule is that staying philosophy results in your have a huge set of new questions but no answers. So i am very skeptical of spending time on reading more philosophy than i have.

Just a comment on that second to last paragraph. Rest is good imo

That paragraph is strange to me, too. First he says you should not waste time or let others steal your time. But then he goes on that you definitely should spend time on philosophy. And when philosophy raises more questions than it answers, isn’t it the also a waste of time?

This person obviously has never had life catching up to him. My wife's parents where both diagnosed and died of cancer over an 8 year period. First my father in law had a brain tumor, went through extensive radiation an chemo therapy and when he was dying my mother in law was diagnosed with colon cancer. She also underwent extensive chemotherapy. Both were depressed during their sickness, never wanted to leave the house but where dependant on others to take care of them. Me and my wife were caretakers and simply did not have a choice to leave for the white sandy beaches whenever we wanted; thus this author's argument of "it's a choice" clearly does NOT apply.

What would happen with them 100 years ago? There was no chemo or radiation.

I personally like the idea that, when this life ends we judge ourselves.

Of course, I have no idea whether this is the reality. :)

Regardless, it is a idea that I find motivates me in the here and now. I don't want to act badly, have regrets, do the right thing, etc.

Stoicism is a dour, striver philosophy….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

I like this comparison, wikipedia can be too technical. https://dailystoic.com/epicureanism-stoicism/

Looks like the site went down due. you can access the article here -- https://archive.ph/QQ5iV

I would like to add a comment for a perspective that's a little different to some of the others here. I'm sure many of you here are familiar with John von Neumann. He died in 1957 at the age of 53. Throughout his life he was a busy man, and many times he deferred doing things saying that he would do them at some later unspecified date. For example he once said he would write a big treatise on von Neumann algebras, a technical mathematical subject of his own creation. However once WW2 started his interests changed and he became very involved not just in applied mathematics related to the war, but in consulting and advising too. By the 1950s the majority of his time was not spent on academic work, but rather on this latter subject, advising big important agencies of the US military on various matters.

Some of his colleagues at the Institute of Advanced Study and in other places resented this. They said he was wasting his time, wasting his talent, on this work that could be done by other people, while his mathematical brain could be doing academic research that others could not do. Just shortly after being appointed commissioner of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the pinnacle of his non-academic career, he was diagnosed with cancer. Within 2 years he would be dead. At the time of his first diagnosis the main academic subject he was dealing with was his theory of automata, however at first he was optimistic about his cancer and continued working heavily on things to do with the AEC. After some time the doctors made it clear to him that he was going to die soon, and he should wrap up any affairs that he wanted to complete quickly before he died.

Now he panicked, after living his life and having so many incomplete things he wanted to do he was going to die and he was running out of the one thing he could not escape from - time. He tried to finish the topic he was currently working on, the theory of automata, however cancer affected him quicker and quicker and he could not. He wouldn't even finish a lecture he was asked to give - Yale's Silliman lecture, although the lecture he didn't finish would be cobbled together and published as a book, The Computer and the Brain, as would his work on automata, which was edited by Arthur Burks. He had grand aspirations for his theory of automata, it would be his greatest work, something he created entirely on his own, combining mathematical logic, information theory and biology. However, he put other things first, and he never got to finish it, indeed it seemed like he wanted to write far more, the book edited by Burks covered only 2 or 3 of the planned set of 5 lectures, and this was only the first set of five.

After he died several of his colleagues again made comments when interviewed that they felt that his talents were wasted. Considering his working life was only about 30 years they felt much of the last 10 years of his life, primarily spent consulting and working with the government, would be better spent on things that only von Neumann could do, his treatise on von Neumann algebras, his work on automata (incidentally, his theory of automata hasn't really made much progress since he died, especially in comparison to other fields), many other things that he worked on for a bit, got interested in other things, and said he would come back to later.

I am not sure what conclusion I should make of this, but I hope this little story is interesting to others too.

I found this interesting, thank you. I am familiar with Von Neumann's reputation as a genius but haven't read much about his life. A few biographies of him are on my to-read list. Do you know which ones have more detail on this portion of his life and his thoughts on time?

From studying other historical figures, this phenomenon of "dying before the Great Work is done" seems to be a common theme. Alexander, Caesar, and Nietzsche come to mind.

I'm not sure what to make of it. On the one hand, most such figures still end up being influential, so if your goal is to be remembered by others, you mostly just need to do something important, at some point in your life.

On the other hand, if you feel that the most important part of your work is continually being pushed to "some point in the future", then it would be fruitful to take a step back and figure out how to minimize the "not really important work" (running government agencies in Von Neumann's case.)

On a society-wide scale, I think there are quite a few adjustments that I wish would be implemented to minimize this "wasted administrative time." Things like waiting in traffic and cities oriented toward cars, software that is designed to be addictive, and so on.

Yes definitely, but I feel that the mindset is to make a lasting contributions, something significant enough that it would remain important even one hundred years into the future. For example von Neumann had incredible respect for Kurt Gödel and said his incompleteness theorems were a "landmark in space and time", he wanted to make discoveries on that tier, and I am not sure he felt he did. Of course the way technology and computers panned out he ended up being more famous than basically any other mathematician for his role there, but obviously he couldn't have known that at the time. I would also add getting rid of bullshit jobs to the adjustments that you have listed as examples.

Most biographies of him strangely enough don't really go into too much detail on his work at the AEC, perhaps because there's already so much to talk about but also perhaps because a lot of this stuff was classified. It doesn't help either that the earliest biographies were only written more than 20 years after he died, and back in his lifetime in the first half of the 20th century not as much was written down as these days. I am assuming you are talking about his life in the 1940s and 1950s when you say "this portion of his life" so I'll give recommendations based off that. All the main biographies generally cover it but I'll give a few notes to help you make a decision. Not in any particular order.

- The Martian's Daughter: A Memoir

His daughter's autobiography, first part of the book talks about their relationship and given she was born in 1935 most of it covers the last parts of his life.

- John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death

This is the first biography by Heims; goes more into detail about their war work but I would point out though that Heims pretty clearly aims to denigrate von Neumann as a war hawk, none of the quotes are false or anything like that but when the book first came out several of von Neumann's colleagues criticized the book for trying to character assassinate him.

- The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann

Goldstine talks about the history of the computer but about two-thirds of the book covers work von Neumann and him both did together and there is plenty of biographical material on von Neumann. Obviously more focused on computers though.

- John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing

Unlike Goldstine's book this is a biography von Neumann, however unlike Goldstine Aspray didn't know von Neumann as a close collaborator. Like Goldstine's it also focuses more on computing, not as much Goldstine however a lot of von Neumann's automata work is tied up with computers so it's a good read regardless.

- Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

This book focuses more on game theory with less biographical material on von Neumann, however it does have a dedicated chapter to his last years and what he was doing then.

- John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More

This is probably the biggest biography, it is very even describing each stage of von Neumann's life. It is a bit more of a hero worship compared the other books which you'll notice if read the reviews of the book. Less technical compared to the others too.

- The World as a Mathematical Game: John Von Neumann and Twentieth Century Science

This one tries to evaluate von Neumann's contributions to 20th century science overall, as it was written in 2009 it does source to the previous books quite a bit. Shorter compared to the others.

- The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann

This one was only released this year, it's a biography but it kind of tries to describe the world around von Neumann at his time and how he fits into it. Obviously by now almost everyone who knew him personally aside from his daughter and a handful of others are dead so it focuses more on his technical contributions rather than anecdotes on his influence.

- Turing's Cathedral: the Origins of the Digital Universe

This one is also more focused on computing, has some things that aren't written in the others as Dyson did a particularly good job going through some of the archives, but not as much focused on von Neumann compared to the others.

- A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

Isn't a biography of von Neumann but of Schriever, who worked with von Neumann to setup the first ICBM programs in the USA. Obviously the main focus here is on the military and political side of von Neumann's work in the 1940s and 50s, and not much else in terms of his life. However contains lots of information on this particular part of his life that other books lack.

If you look at the "Further Reading" section of his Wikipedia page there is a long list of books that feature him heavily in case you want more. Happy reading!

This is really helpful, thank you! By "this portion of his life" I meant his realization that he wouldn't be able to accomplish all of his goals. It looks like some of the books you mentioned do cover that.

It is uncertainty that makes us waste so much time. If you can focus early in your life, consider yourself lucky instead of being superior to your peels.

The days are long but the years are short.

It’s all about time scales.

"People overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year"

Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent

— SJ

I watched this speech some 10 years ago and that quote has stuck with me. And particularly the subsequent sentence: "It (death) clears out the old, to make way for the new."

This is from Steve Jobs' Stanford 2005 commencement address - https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc (at 12:03)

Was waiting for someone to post PaulG's take on this. So here goes:

http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html

Journey > endpoints

"Live each day like its your last" is just as bad as "sacrifice everything so that when you turn 65 you can retire and finally be happy"

The troll clickbait titles always get the most comments

Was gonna write my disagreements with this article, but i think this quote sums it up:

"There’s no better way to spend your time than studying philosophy."

I don't like the quote either, but if you expand the reasoning it makes sense.

Spending time on philosophy is valuable because it can prevent you from wasting time on things that don't matter. It is like an investment, spend 2 days on philosophy now and save yourself 10 days of pointless activity. Like an investment, it can result in negative returns if not managed well.

Everyone uses some form of reasoning to guide their decisions, even in the absence of philosophy. Most people take whatever philosophical / religious system they are given at birth (which is likely to be suboptimal) or invent their own from scratch and figure out the downsides the hard way. The point made in the article is essentially: "Why reinvent the wheel when you can read wisdom of people who spent their whole lives thinking about this stuff"

E.g. people who try base their life on Hedonism (sex, drugs and rock'n'roll) often overindulge and eventually find it to be 'empty' in some way. If they had read some of the Stoics or Epicureans they may have discovered the reason for this emptiness and avoided the downsides of overindulgence.

These are truly my favorite types of articles on HN.

This article just stole 10 minutes of my precious time. But I would not know if it was wasted or worth it until the time is actually spent.

The good health/good energy/good looking period of life is like 30 years maximum. I would consider that pretty short.

Well I am 35 and have good health/energy could drop some belly fat but I don't care.

Look at the Hollywood stars 60 year olds looking still good.

You don't know any good looking 48 year olds? (18+30)

If you stay thin and keep active, you could probably double that estimate to 60 years if not longer.

A few weeks ago I saw my parents, aged 60 and 61, dance at my wedding and I would like to disagree with your statement.

With all due respect, that is total bullshit.

To me, the stoics come across as privileged dudes who have the resources to while away their time at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy, trying to self-actualize their way into a sense of purpose.

Whenever I hear the Tim Ferriss' of the world using a stoic as a motivational lever, all I can hear is "just lift yourself up by your bootstraps."

Ugh Seneca. No gracias. Hard pass.

692,040 hours. That's short.

Not when you're constantly assigned backlogged busy work JIRA tickets

Most of us would be lucky to have 500,000 hours of conscious thought.

Seneca already said all this 2070 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca)

Literally that’s the point of the article.

DKB.show must go on!

sorry, what does 'dkb' stand for?

AMAZING

Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes. It is: anything you do is meaningless compared to God, and you should fear him and therefore do what He has commanded of you.

Excuse my French, but this God is a real asshole, and I think it's best that people ignored these threats.

Why do you have this level of vitriol? Surely if there is a "one true God", this instruction will not seem out of place coming from them? Like it would make sense that this God will say this?

And given that we don't know for sure whether or not there is a one true God, why exactly are you so angry about Ecclesiastes?

God is an asshole if you read a random bit of the Bible in isolation of the theology/tradition that sits around and explains it. The way I’ve heard it explained by people who have lived this for a long time is a slightly different angle; which is that the way humans were created means that the way to be truely happy is to be aligned with God’s will. At the start you don’t really know what that is, which is why we have ‘commandments’/instruction, but as you deepen that relationship it becomes more and more fulfilling.

What you’re describing here is Stockholm Syndrome

That's funny but I get what the person you were responding to means.

Whatever happened to the golden rule? Do people really need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass?

If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be happy.

He doesn’t need anything. The statement is that there’s a way to live a good (satisfying) life, the God being the creator knows that way, and he reveals it to people, who should follow it (to live satisfying lives)

It is not "to live satisfying lives". It is because God commands it, and you should fear him.[1] It's very explicit.

1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...

Well, yes, if you take the whole Bible literally, it’s not very nice and not even self-consistent. But I don’t think many reasonable people do that

Alas, the majority of Christians are not very "reasonable" in that way today. Fosdick was asking 100 years ago (1922) if the fundamentalists will win[0], and it is pretty clear today that they have[1].

[0] http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/s...

[1] https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamental...

God commands it for our own benefit, not because he needs it.

The Bible wasn't written in English.

> The Hebrew word translated into ‘awe’ in the Bible is yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah). It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it can also mean respect, reverence, and worship.

https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-co...

>John Mallon writes that the "fear" in "fear of the Lord" is often misinterpreted as "servile fear" (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as "filial fear" (the fear of offending someone whom one loves).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_God

> Do people really need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass?

Actually, yes. We all do.

Maybe as a child, but as a grown ass adult? Don't be ridiculous.

The last time it is recorded as coming here in the type-0 state known as “God” was to make an unsolicited gamble with Lucifer for fun to ruin Job’s life just for being God’s biggest fan, a process so egregious even literal Satan was like “maybe dial it back a bit”

That species gains its power from attention, and that one got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide, and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded history until that point. No other supernatural being aside from God or its current angels did anything with their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book. They were just vilified for not being God or an angel. Nothing else killed babies if lamb’s blood wasn't smeared on the door.

It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an national security effort to guard against it.

I’m curious in what you are talking about here. Where did you get these ideas?

ultimately what it comes down to is "who did what"

This is Hacker News. It is not a place for intricate theological debate. God is bad, money is good, the systemic failures of capitalism can be ignored as long as we get to the Singularity, and we're all going to freeze our heads and be immortal.

Do you know any good places that would be suited to this topic?

A lot of debates around christianity seem to resolve around the back and forth between "the Bible is really dumb and filled with insanities" and "people with two brain cells don't take it at face value, and only take away the parts that don't make them assholes".

I always wonder, if these people are smart enough to sift through all the insanities and come up with a safe path that makes sense, couldn't they just stare at the world for a few years and come up with their own sane path that only contains stuff that make sense for them...

Im(vh)o, all you need to do is stare long enough to realize how easy it is to get lost in a world in which you are constantly, intentionally exposed to calculated manipulation of human psychology to see how valuable it is to have a unwavering, structured approach to life and morality.

Hmmm...you're still choosing among a set of systems that were also designed to manipulate human psychology, but survived a few centuries, potentially getting refined.

One argument is that a system that survives that long can't be full blown toxic (would destroy itself in the process), but it's still not guaranteed to be better than any other system that also aren't full blown toxic (include one you make up by yourself), until you dig really deep into it.

To take an example from another field, full-blown royal/aristocracies government went on for centuries in France, and the country was quite successful from several metrics. But looking back we wouldn't argue it was a pretty nice system that could still be chosen today, just because it wasn't outright toxic.

I think the utility of religious systems can be determined by looking at the reason for their continuity: Abrahamic faiths tended to continue via wars and forced conversions. Dharmic religions such as Buddhism tended to continue because adherents saw such immense value in the teachings that they spread them even despite resistance from authorities. They have both existed for millenia but I see eastern faiths as more useful because they were rarely forced on their adherents.

As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy.

Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.

Where did Judaism spread via war and forced conversion? Your historical claim is not entirely accurate and seemed very biased.

Buddhism was spread by missionaries throughout history. At times, much in the same way as Christianity. Undoubtedly the missionaries from both Buddhist and Christian societies thought they were spreading enlightenment and to some extent they stuck because other people agreed.

Lots of times, but much less than the Christians or Muslims. There's a lot of it recorded in the Bible: "When Judah attacked, the Lord handed over the Canaanites and the Perizzites to them, and they defeated ten thousand men at the city of Bezek."

You are correct about the Buddhist missionaries, but the critical point for me is Buddhist missionaries generally did not bring weapons, whereas most Christian and Muslim areas today are so because of invasions.

A better method to compare is to look at the actual scripture. All Abrahamix faiths have some equivalent of "worship no gods before me" and various levels of actions towards this (ranging from killing non beleivers to not eating with them). The Dharmic relgions do not have this requirement, so are less likely to be used as justification to subjugate another people.

I think religious systems have primarily been useful for community management, and religious beliefs being passed down generation from generation works well in that context. Same way, religious persecution is more often than not a proxy for eliminating a group's identity and cultural assimilating it into a conquering group.

In that sense, a religion's continuity is basically that group's continuity. Individuals within that group can switch to another religion, same way people move countries, but I'm not sure there are any case of a group switching wholesale to another religion by it's own decision. A king changing faith could be the closest to that, but I think it's usually a political move to join a bigger group, more than just independently switching for the sake of it.

> designing your own system

In general I don't think a "system" needs to be complicated, all ecompassing, nor needs to be fully from scratch. I'd compare it to cooking, you could look at a steak and carrot recipe and decide to try arrangements, and end up with mushrooms instead of the steak. You're still not building a new school of cooking, just doing your stuff on your own, eventually mixing and matching recipes you've seen elsewhere, without having to tag yourself with any specific cooking style.

You are right in that generally a whole group does not spontaneously decide to change faiths, but there are plenty of examples of a gradual erosion of a faith in communities .

"The vast majority of U.S. adults (85.6%) say they were raised as Christians. But more than a fifth of them (19.2% of all adults) no longer identify with Christianity." [0]

I think a ~ 20% change within a single generation is pretty significant. And most of these people will use the 'recipe' method you describe because it is easier than learning an entirely new system. There are many historical examples of this. E.g. Taoism + Buddhism -> Chan Buddhism -> Zen Buddhism.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/chapter-2-re...

Gods will is for gay people to be murdered and to burn in hell, so Gods will is a very bad example to follow.

I don't believe Ecclesiastes presents one central and unambiguous argument. Like a lot of books in the Bible, it may well have more than one author, too.

Fundamentally I think you missed the point of Ecclesiastes.

I think you might be taking it a little too literally

Approximately two-thirds of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe that Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form.[1] It is terrifying how many people in the US believe the bible is literally true in every way.

1. https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-compl...

It feels disingenuous to come to the conclusion that Christians take all / most of the bible "too literally" on the evidence that they believe Christ was literally resurrected in the physical form.

If you were unaware, belief that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected is taught as the prerequisite to salvation and entering Heaven upon death. Given this fact, I would expect 100% of Christians to believe this.

As an additional note, modern Christianity (except maybe Catholicism) brush a lot of the old testament under the rug, of which includes Ecclesiastes I believe? Some churches teach Matthew 5:17 as support for doing so. Catholicism seems to have a more nuanced take: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-r...

Please look at the source I linked. 48% of all Americans, including non-Christians, believe "the Bible is 100% accurate in all it teaches".

100% accurate and 100% literal are far from the same thing.

I have no clue how the surveyors or surveyees interpreted this, but "100% accurate in all it teaches" does not necessarily mean Biblical Literalism. A Christian probably should believe that the Bible is 100% accurate, but Biblical Literalism has many flaws that should be quite obvious to anyone who has read it.

That’s consistent with all the varieties of inerrancy, but those are often very different than literalism. It is, for instance, consistent with the decidedly non-literalist Catholic doctrine of inerrancy, to wit, “The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

I can believe the teachings are accurate without losing the ability to understand that the teachings are sometimes conveyed via parable or metaphor. "That it teaches" is doing a lot of the lifting there.

Not sure about you but people with beliefs I don’t agree with don’t keep me up at night.

Who cares?

It absolutely matters what other people believe if they also want to make laws and rules based on those beliefs.

If they believe that Christ was resurrected in physical form what impact does that have on laws?

>but this God is a real asshole

From His/Its/Her perspective, if I had Billions of life forms I was responsible for on each of millions(?) of inhabitable planets throughout just this Universe - I'd be crabby as $hit too. All of them needing constant resources, continually consuming energy to be used on everything from pissing it away, to working for money, or in the rare lot - improving the future of ones species. All while they're bitter and unhappy.

And since I was infinite - I had to do that forever for some odd reason... I'd be bitter.

I'm not religious but this strikes me as an odd sentiment.

First of all, if God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient then why would anything that humans can dream up surprise or annoy God? Surely it is the height of hubris to think that humans could surprise an omniscient deity.

Secondly, if you are indeed infinite then even taking care of billions of lifeforms on millions of planets would be an infinitely small part of your attention and thus not worth being annoyed about.

Thirdly even if would be so annoying to God to take care of all the species (not that God seems all that proactive these days) then He can just destroy the universe and be done with it?

All in all, I don't think there is a lot of reason for God to be bitter or upset about anything that humanity does. After all, it was Him that put these urges into humans in the first place, so it seems kinda petty to then be upset about anything they choose to do.

This. Once one posits the abstract properties of God as infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and a priori to all things, a lot of religious presumptions look like failures of the imagination. It is trivially obvious that God is unknowable, that any God one claims to know is 'another' God placed before the true God. It is literal hubris to experience certitude about the nature of God, and there is therefore no exemption from culpability through the name of God for injuries done to another.

I remember the question of if God is omnipotent, why does he allow such suffering. I believe this was explained away by God giving man free will. I'm not a big student, but I find theology interesting.

A good exercise I found was to imagine that you are God. How would you create the world differently?

No earthquakes or volcano eruptions seems like a good place to start. In fact, natural disasters of any kind seem pretty useless, philosophically speaking. Just random and pointless misery.

Yes - I do this! I actually do it to reason to why the Universe is as it is. It helps me to see the groups universe systems as essentially recurring code. It helped lead to a belief as an eternal force rather than some ethereal figure in the sky.

It also led me down "scarey paths". Such as.... the most logical existences are "0, or plurality". One is therefore less likely than 0 or 2+. Thus, shouldn't no God's or many Gods be more likely than 1?

I think there have been a series of misinterpretations that unfortunately result in a lot of confusion and (in my opinion) completely miss the point of these stories.

I don't think 'God' is an 'entity' per se, I interpret 'God' as the reality one lives in. "God is an asshole", and "Life is a bitch" then become equivalent statements. Whether or not 'ignoring the threats' posed by 'God' according to this interpretation is wise is left as an exercise for the reader.

You probably know that the ending to Ecclesiastes is a bit controversial in that it might not have been in the original treatise.

It is possible that it was added by an later editor to make Ecclesiastes suitable for inclusion in the canon.

https://books.google.lv/books?id=TX9DuDb9hgQC&redir_esc=y

IMO it's a useful lens to think of religion as an operating system for a society, and the Bible as the source code for an OS specifically for an agrarian society.

Agriculture only works if a lot of people do a lot of work which has mostly future payoffs, if they stick around in one place, form stable relationships, and so on. Individual selfish desires must be suppressed to some degree for the greater good of the society.

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want flamewar here generally and the religious sort is particularly pernicious and also particularly avoidable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625.

الوقت كالسيف إن لم تقطعه قطعك

Would it have killed you to provide an English translation and maybe a few lines of context? It’s especially poor form not to include an attribution.

From Google Translate:

"Time is like sword: if you do not cut it, it will cut you."

It appears to be an Arabic proverb.

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