What do you care about these days? The world feels so misaligned directionally and work is all in service of some esoteric AI that just strips the beauty from various crafts. What are you finding joy and purpose in for your own life and wellbeing?
Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
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Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#2I don't know how to answer this question.
I derive joy from writing about things I care about. I derive joy from writing code. I derive joy from working out and seeing myself getting stronger. I derive joy from knowing I'm becoming a better person.
My purpose? I don't know. I just want to be financially successful and help people who have known me when I was a nobody, and also people who need assistance.
I don't really know how to answer this.
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#3[dead]
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#4I don't know how to answer this question. I derive joy from writing about things I care about. I derive joy from writing code. I derive joy from working out and seeing myself getting stronger. I derive joy from knowing I'm becoming a better person. My purpose? I don't know. I just want to be financially successful and help people who have known me when I was a nobody, and also people who need assistance. I don't real…
and yet you have answered it beautifully
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#5I think it's important to focus on self-development / mastery of skills, even if they are theoretically replaceable by an AI or technology more generally.
For example – maybe AI will make 90% of video editing work unnecessary. But knowing how to edit video properly, when to cut, how to tell stories, etc. is an invaluable skill that is worth learning.
I think this applies to pretty much any skill. Just because a computer can do it doesn't mean it's not worth mastering on an individual level.
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#6I wrote this in my personal diary just today before going to eat for some french fries and coding some questions on codeforces: "I wish to code for myself, nothing else"
I do think that I have the privilege for doing exactly that as I am going to college and many people within the workforce don't exactly have that choice but I believe that long term, the consequences of completely using AI for anything and everything is going to bite, so I am comfortable for the next 4 years to come.
It's not that I dislike AI the tech, but I hate AI, everything surrounding it. We have the abilities to ask it customized questions to learn so much which we previously couldn't have, (Yes AI is still sycophantic and one can say that its a better search engine) but instead, we are using it to completely automate ourselves or creating a set of expectations and ineffectiveness around the competent management around it.
My purpose: I don't think that there's one. We all just exist and I don't wish to die. So I have constructed my purpose around staying alive as an absolute baseline. Everything is built on top of it.
I think that my purpose is to feel alive probably which requires passion,dedication,failure/struggle, acceptance and perhaps friendship and love. I recently heard a line which struck with me is that: "Life has so much to offer, why are we stuck at only one emotion of happiness, why not just be alive"
I want to do better and be more competitive for the sake of it because I like doing the thing and improving at it.
Thus, I wish to code for myself, nothing else, except eating french fries of course :)
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#7I care about being at peace; my entire life has been "the next thing". Started in my childhood and continues into my mid 40-s. Nothing is sweet, nothing is savoured. It's always "what's next?"
My joy and my purpose is to help those around me and to get the feedback that they appreciate it. My purpose is to earn money so my wife can do the things she loves and not have to worry about working, so my mom's health is looked after and so, at some point, I can go do something that brings me peace.
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#8AI is like a mirror reflecting the user. As I continuously improve my own capabilities, I am interested in checking how far the AI reflecting me develops.
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#9I think it's important to focus on self-development / mastery of skills, even if they are theoretically replaceable by an AI or technology more generally. For example – maybe AI will make 90% of video editing work unnecessary. But knowing how to edit video properly, when to cut, how to tell stories, etc. is an invaluable skill that is worth learning. I think this applies to pretty much any skill. Just because a compu…
I agree but differently. My opinion, is that we see soooo much of AI slop without any intent or taste behind it while being completely bland.
I think that it is just up to taking responsibility of your output which can be the key factor into what I call authenticity, because what I am seeing is people not take responsibility of AI generated output and sometimes even push it to production.
Tangentially, hackernews itself is sometimes filled with 100% AI slop articles/posts which is a bit sad... :-(
The latest term for this in the AI-hype-sphere seems to be "intent" but I like to call it authenticity behind who the person is behind any output perhaps IMO.
An article that I had written sometime ago: https://smileplease.mataroa.blog/blog/i-dont-want-brand-age-...
Simon's article about taking responsibility also is an interesting read and I still like his mostly nuanced opinions rather than complete AI hype which is a bit rare. I respect both simon and mitchell and their opinions for the most part regarding things in this space and its always good to have a discussion with them.
Edit: I have edited my post to explain better as to what I was saying.
Re: Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
#10I don't know how to answer this question. I derive joy from writing about things I care about. I derive joy from writing code. I derive joy from working out and seeing myself getting stronger. I derive joy from knowing I'm becoming a better person. My purpose? I don't know. I just want to be financially successful and help people who have known me when I was a nobody, and also people who need assistance. I don't real…
and yet you have answered it beautifully
Wow. Thanks!