Sounds like you have chestnut syndrome.
Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
211–220 of 344 posts
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#212> Nothing I’m doing in my life are anything that people will remember me for. I've played RollerCoaster Tycoon, and I'm sure I've seen the developer's name more than once, but don't remember. You didn't repeat it in your post, so you probably saw it and immediately forgot. That's the extent of fame they got from that.
Chris Sawyer. I knew it offhand. It was a great game years ago and is so great that it lives on on the iPad. He also wrote Transport Tycoon (which is clear upon a casual glance, as they have the same UI.) The guy is definitely famous in his realm.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#213I have these kinds of feelings a lot. It is hard to feel useful in this day and age of a ubiquitous globally connected society because for anything you attempt to do you have instant access to the top 0.0001% of the Bell curve who you have no hope of ever beating. I find comfort in that I am not alone, thinking of all the peasants and regular workers across history who didn't amount to much either, but still mostly f…
>And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids. It may be a touchy subject or not for everybody. But raising a human with the best possible effort you can muster is an accomplishment at least one person will remember and value 100000x more vs. any world champion in solving IOI problems or writing clever functional code :-)
I know you are trying to be helpful but this is probably not a good answer. I don;t think we know enough about his background to be recommending such a major life choice. Although each kid is unique, there is nothing unique about having them.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#214I have these kinds of feelings a lot. It is hard to feel useful in this day and age of a ubiquitous globally connected society because for anything you attempt to do you have instant access to the top 0.0001% of the Bell curve who you have no hope of ever beating. I find comfort in that I am not alone, thinking of all the peasants and regular workers across history who didn't amount to much either, but still mostly f…
I think the commentary largely speaks for itself, but there is an aphorism that I think would be helpful: If you measure yourself by someone else's yardstick, you'll always fall short.
That is a good point, but also why settle for coming up short if you can improve yourself.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#215I have these kinds of feelings a lot. It is hard to feel useful in this day and age of a ubiquitous globally connected society because for anything you attempt to do you have instant access to the top 0.0001% of the Bell curve who you have no hope of ever beating. I find comfort in that I am not alone, thinking of all the peasants and regular workers across history who didn't amount to much either, but still mostly f…
What if getting a trophy at IOI is easier than making a kid? As for me it was...I got silver medal there, but I would have given it away easily for being able to date one of the many hot hostesses on the competition. My life would have been so much easier if I just spend my life in the gym instead of solving math and programming problems.
You do IOI in high school, so one would expect you to hit the gym regularly at that point.
Also going to the gym is pretty easy, so if you know “the path to happiness” why not just take it?
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#216I'm mediocre. So are the majority of people.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#217There's no such thing as "raw" intelligence. Those people you find so incredibly impressive who have done such worthwhile things? Every single one of them sucks ass at a multitude of things. Every single one of them would see something in your set of capabilities that would astound them. It takes a vast constellation of capabilities, including yours, to create and sustain our world.
"There's no such thing as "raw" intelligence."
Well, that's sure a bold statement. I suppose in order to have this discussion, we'd have to agree on a definition of intelligence. For me, it's one's intellectual capacity to learn. Emotionally, physically, mathematically, etc. I'd argue that there is absolutely a thing of "raw intelligence". If we have mentally handicapped and Stephen Hawking, there must be a standard bell curve of intelligence in-between.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#218Reading through the various comments, I wonder what happened to good old-fashioned ambition. Other than my post, all I can see are "it's ok, I feel the same way, don't change" replies. We used to admire our heroes and try to emulate them, and if fortunate enough, come as close to them as our talents and circumstances would allow. And we did that through hard work, through having lofty goals and working hard to achiev…
Why are we forsaking that in favor of a "you don't have to try so hard, it's ok to be mediocre" mindset? One reason many feel is the fact that being "the best" often just means making some crappy corporation richer; when you start to feel that the whole system kind of sucks it gets harder to care about accomplishing things within it. I grew up wanting to be a game developer, but what would that mean in a practical se…
> Working 80 hours a week and at the end of the day I'm just making Microsoft or Activision or somebody richer? Even John Freaking Carmack eventually wound up working for Facebook.
It appears you forgot the original motivation. You wanted to make games. That’s what you’d be doing besides “making a corporation richer”.
Similarly, Carmack is helping to shape the future of VR on the daily. I’m sure that’s why he does it and couldn’t care less how much money any corporation is making based on that.
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#219For this reason, I purchased a 5ft by 3ft canvas print of the Hubble Ultra Deepfield photograph and hung it on my wall.
Somehow being reminded that there are 5000 galaxies visible in a single 24 millionth of the sky makes me feel better about not having "accomplished as much" as some other members of my particular species on my particular planet in my particular solar system in my particular galaxy.
It helps keep things in perspective. That feeling of inferiority is just an evolved pressure to be the most worthwhile mating partner. It's not as big a deal as it feels like, just natural selection's unkind handiwork.
( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Hubble_u... )
Re: Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
#220Honest question: why do you care? What is it in your psychology that makes you want to do something that impresses the world? If you don’t like the struggle needed to achieve those things then accept that you deep down don’t really want what you think you want. Instead ask yourself: What makes you happy? What makes you be in the “zone” experiencing flow? That is what you really deep down care about.