Out of curiosity, what does the vb in vb.html stand for?
Most likely, 'vita brevis'.
Life is Short
61–70 of 452 posts
Re: Life is Short
#62Summary:
- Poses the hypothesis that "Life is short"
- Proposes an 'objective' basis for this feeling: some of his most meaningful life events happen 8 or less times
- Transitions that the shortness of life justifies avoiding "bullshit," while acknowledging that's a loaded term.
- Proposes examples of "bullshit," traffic jams, unnecessary meetings, bureaucracy, and arguing online.
- Suggests arguing online is an example of a habit that is addictive, yet bullshit.
- Defines bullshit as things that won't matter to you in the future upon reflection.
- Proposes ways to avoid bullshit
- Proposes a way to savor time
Analysis:
- I'm not sold on the metric of measuring something by how much we value it upon reflection.
- I don't think the premise "Life is short" needs to be established to justify "avoid bullshit."
- The argument is fairly loose in that 99.9% of our lives are bullshit by his definition. Is 99% of sex bullshit?
Interesting piece, smarter than your average bear.
Re: Life is Short
#63Re: Life is Short
#64An experience feels meaningful only with respect to others that don't. If it wasn't for bullshit we would never know what to cherish. The bullshit and cherishable also seem to frequently reverse roles. Many things that seem like noise today, may return to foreground with profound meaning later. I wonder if perhaps nothing is bullshit or meaningful after all. Experience simply plays this game of light and shadow to ke…
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Re: Life is Short
#65This article resonated a lot with me. It verbalizes what I've been trying to do over the past year or so with my own life. For me a lot of the BS elimination on the first pass was just getting rid of distractions and interruptions, so I cut out the phone/email/chat, etc all during my working hours except for certain times, like 10 minutes after lunch and just before the end of the day. The noise was all driving me in…
I'm trying to achieve currently what it seems you have already achieved. The problem is I cut everything out, but then there will be a moment at work where you're waiting for something (in my job for example, waiting for RHEL to install), and you decide to glance at Facebook. Then you do it a couple of times. Then you get home and decide as it's raining you won't go cycling. It all builds back up and I'm back to squa…
I think the biggest thing is to start very small. Seriously, very very small. I had for years done more or less what you describe. So I finally just decided to start super baby simple and have one tiny little goal and accomplish it. For me it was hard to eliminate looking up my news sites when I had a free minute or two. Eventually, I just deleted my bookmarks and edited my /etc/hosts and that did the trick for me.
But I didn't try to cut out those distractions and start a workout routine at the same time.
Also I didn't try to start anything else until the last goal had become kind of routine (like brushing your teeth in the morning).
There are still many things on my list to see and do and there's still stress in my life, but I feel with this method of one micro step at a time you slowly chip away in unnoticeable steps until now for me a little over a year later you've made a big noticeable dent.
oh yea, I finally quit smoking too :)
EDIT: most of my goals also had to do with eliminating stress. For instance, my "learning the language" was to just turn on the radio and listen to interesting talk shows in swedish and occasionally look up words, all which was very relaxing for me. My exercise is swimming which is super enjoyable for me and something I always look forward to (even when I didn't have the time to do it). I don't know what it would be like if you do not actually look forward to or enjoy your goals...
Re: Life is Short
#66This article resonated a lot with me. It verbalizes what I've been trying to do over the past year or so with my own life. For me a lot of the BS elimination on the first pass was just getting rid of distractions and interruptions, so I cut out the phone/email/chat, etc all during my working hours except for certain times, like 10 minutes after lunch and just before the end of the day. The noise was all driving me in…
I'm trying to achieve currently what it seems you have already achieved. The problem is I cut everything out, but then there will be a moment at work where you're waiting for something (in my job for example, waiting for RHEL to install), and you decide to glance at Facebook. Then you do it a couple of times. Then you get home and decide as it's raining you won't go cycling. It all builds back up and I'm back to squa…
I think every human can identify with this.
I think it's time for us to start questioning if we really "Want" to do these things so much (exercise) why we don't do them. Do we just want to have done them (it'd sure be nice if I had a nice bod, I should workout. I should learn 12 languages and 3 instruments too!)? Or do we think we want them? Or is there some perverse reason why our body keeps us from doing what we truly want to do in that moment?
Re: Life is Short
#67And for a completely different perspective, we have Kurt Vonnegut:
[Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] “Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
Re: Life is Short
#68Mr Graham, I respect you and you've accomplished more that I will in my life, but I sincerely hope that this essay against "bullshit" and "arguing online" isn't you declaring that you'll be "bubbling" yourself after your last essay was met with wide disagreement. It's possible that sometimes, no matter how smart you are, your experiences have been limited in a way and you're missing a part of something everyone else…
I read some "rebuttals" to the previous essay, and while there were definitely some valid points brought up, a lot of them seemed to me to have misinterpreted a lot of what was said. PG tweeted about feeling like a lot of his side of the "debate" was pointing out that he hadn't said something. [1] [1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/688044252744527875
From PG's essay "Economic Inequality": "Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them... Variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, but it is the irreducible core of it, in the sense that you'll have that left when you eliminate all other sources."
This feels like the heart of that particular essay and displays a rather breathtaking misunderstanding of poverty, its causes and its inhabitants. This blames poor people for being poor.
How am I misreading this? I don't feel like I'm cherry-picking, I feel like I'm finding the theme of the text. If that's not it, then what is its theme? Its central idea?
From later in the same essay: "Louis Brandeis said 'We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' That sounds plausible. But if I have to choose between ignoring him and ignoring an exponential curve that has been operating for thousands of years, I'll bet on the curve."
Again: this sounds like PG saying "In the choice between fostering political power in people at large and concentrating money in the hands of those who already have it, I'll choose the latter." What's there to misinterpret?
I thought this essay, without context, was very sweet. Life is too short. But read as a non-response to critics of the "Income Inequality" essay it takes on a callous tone.
Re: Life is Short
#69An experience feels meaningful only with respect to others that don't. If it wasn't for bullshit we would never know what to cherish. The bullshit and cherishable also seem to frequently reverse roles. Many things that seem like noise today, may return to foreground with profound meaning later. I wonder if perhaps nothing is bullshit or meaningful after all. Experience simply plays this game of light and shadow to ke…
Bullshit :)
You can have no crime and still know that which is crime. I understand what you're saying though. The meaningless can become meaningful with chance, the right connection, or by repetition. Some view video games as wasted time, but how many gamers met their significant other or became a programmer in such situations?
Re: Life is Short
#70> We had the best time a daddy and a 3 year old ever had.
A couple of years back I was working remotely in UK for US clients - so my day started later. Which meant I woke up with the kids, fed them, played with them, walked them to school.
My abiding memories are cuddling a child in an arm each watching early morning TV before starting the day.
We should all be so lucky, except it's not luck - it's consciously as a society designing work around community and family not the other way round