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Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
101–110 of 124 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#102* On getting rich:
- If you focus on the money you won't get anywhere. You must focus on the creation of value for other people in an area that will allow for exponential customer growth. It's all about serving other people at scale. Getting rich is the side effect of this. The process accelerates if you love what you are doing and are having fun.
* On human relations:
- You are never too talented, too smart or too good looking to burn bridges, think less about others or not make an effort to be liked by all and treat everyone with respect and courtesy. Not doing this will always come back to haunt you.
- No matter how bad things get in your family never betray your family member's trust.
- Be as gracious as you can to those who are disrespectful to you, pivot in your mind and thank them for their encouragement. Use it as fuel.
* On getting stuff done:
- Focus. Multitasking is a myth.
- Forget doing stuff solo, you need a team to do anything really amazing. Each team member needs to know their strengths and weaknesses and your team should be a cohesive and complementary whole where strengths cover weaknesses.
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#103Death is inevitable and life is meaningless. Most people would be depressed with this epiphany but for me, it was liberating.
I'm sorry you feel this way. Death really is inevitable, but life is only meaningless if you think it is and treat it that way. My life isn't meaningless to my family, to loved ones I share memories with, and to people I've helped along the way. Or did you mean that life itself is meaningless (or rather: empty if you like), and that you have to make something out of it yourself?
My life is definitely meaningful on a micro level i.e. to my close family and friends and I owe them enough to have certain parts of my life actions and direction influenced by them, but in the larger picture over thousands of years, my life is pretty much meaningless.
Which means I obsess less and less over what others think, I compare myself less and less and I let things that I can't control influence my happiness less and less. Basically I'm a nihilist.
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#104Death is inevitable and life is meaningless. Most people would be depressed with this epiphany but for me, it was liberating.
If you had truly come to terms with death and believed life is meaningless you'd be unable to even so much as go to the bathroom. More likely, you've tricked yourself into thinking these things.
Or maybe tricked myself into attaching a meaning for life when I know its meaningless? :)
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you had truly come to terms with death and believed life is meaningless you'd be unable to even so much as go to the bathroom. More likely, you've tricked yourself into thinking these things.
Or maybe tricked myself into attaching a meaning for life when I know its meaningless? :)
That's just part of being human, everyone does that. If you didn't, I'm saying you would have no desire to physically move.
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#106You don't have to be good, you just have to be better than everybody else.
My way of re-phrasing "90 percent of success is just showing up".
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#107Compound interest works. Every penny you save before you're 30 has a dramatically large impact on your quality of life after 60.
"Every penny you save before you're 30 has a dramatically large impact on your quality of life after 60."
Either you're getting a much higher rate of return than the rest of us, or you're awfully excited about maybe 5 cents.
Or you're just being hyperbolic.
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was lack of food a factor in either the English Civil War or the American War of Independence? [NB I'm listening to the excellent "Revolutions" podcast at the moment http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ ]
This doesn't necessarily mean food. It also doesn't apply 100% of the time. Does anything?
"It also doesn't apply 100% of the time. Does anything?"
Yes. Either this maxim applies 100% of the time, or there is some other statement that does.
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#109I have a few off the top of my head: - Learned helplessness is one of the biggest enemies to learning, but it's insidious in that sufferers don't recognize it. Often, I'll try to teach someone something, and I'll know for sure that they can and will grasp a concept, but they'll just stop short on their own accord, chalking failure up to their own (imagined) inherent inability rather than a specific situational lack o…
I have an identical twin brother. We took separate classes in high school, he was really good at math, physics and science, while I really, really sucked at them. If you asked me at that time, I would tell you 'I just don't get math'. Those were my literal words. We are genetically the same, so it's impossible that his brain is somehow wired in a different way than mine, but I would still say the problem was me, inst…
"Bayesian flamewar detector"
Is that a Bayesian detector of flamewars, or a detector of Bayesian flamewars?
Re: Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
why didn't you go on the same classes/teachers ?
That was a conscious decision. Being twins and all is fun, but people (and thus, teachers), tend to see you as one entity. We split classes when we were 11 years old, we both felt like we had to be our own person, with our own friends, independent from one another. This also had some nice side effects, I was really good at languages, history and biology, so I could take my brother's tests. He was good at math and sci…
Do you have thoughts as to the complementary skillsets are/were in part identity driven? in some areas perhaps compete and in others complement other's skill.