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Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
381–390 of 460 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way How does one regret hanging himself?
There is a opportunity for regret in the short moments after kicking the stool away.
Possibly quite long moments, depending on how well you prepared everything.
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#383A quick tip used by the first VC (George Doriot) was to ask people what would they do with $1b for example. This is a good way to know your natural north. If you don’t know that then I guess try to know the people you enjoy / admire. Also a last good motivation is to read Seneca on the shortness of life : https://archive.org/stream/SenecaOnTheShortnessOfLife/Seneca...
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#384I have been in your situation before. You must first understand you goals. Do you want to help humanity, explore science, become rich, explore only what interests you, etc.? Do you want to be alone in this journey (like a mathematician or philosopher could be) or in a research group or new company?
You don't have to be interested in altruism to get important ideas out of the 80000 hours site: https://80000hours.org/ In a nut shell they suggest what you are best at, not what you necessarily what interests you the most. Global Healthcare is high on their list of important areas to work in.
For myself, I decided what is important is working on problems I find exciting which is why I'm going back to school for a Masters in Statistics. I've tried working on problems or in areas that are important to humanity such as coding for open source projects and non-profits, but keeping up motivation is difficult.
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#385I want to be careful with this decision, to avoid any future regrets Don't forget to consider that you may regret whatever you do - by human nature, the grass is proverbially always greener on the other side. People who have kids may wish they hadn't, but if they hadn't, they may have regretted that - in both cases thinking they'd made the wrong choice. Socrates and Kierkegaard, among others, discussed this as a basi…
There's a great episode of the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders by Dave Evans on "Designing the Life You Really Want" where he suggest applying design thinking to designing your life. Including how to use rapid prototyping for life choice questions such as this.
https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcast/designing-the-life-you-...
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#386You need to some psychologist!
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#387I want to be careful with this decision, to avoid any future regrets Don't forget to consider that you may regret whatever you do - by human nature, the grass is proverbially always greener on the other side. People who have kids may wish they hadn't, but if they hadn't, they may have regretted that - in both cases thinking they'd made the wrong choice. Socrates and Kierkegaard, among others, discussed this as a basi…
I wonder if Kierkegaard being Danish is at all related to Danes being the happiest people in the world.
I'm Danish, I didn't really understand that for a long time. I would say that it doesn't mean Danes are super happy, it's just that the good economy, free education, free health care and strong social benefits makes it much harder to be very unhappy. So just happier on average.
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#388My recommendation is to be honest about your desires and value system and see which path lines up best with that. For example, it could be that AI provides the most potential monetary reward by a large margin if you do it well. But maybe it's not the most interesting to you based on the options you have. It could also raise the risk that whatever you create is used to displace people from their jobs and that might not appeal to you either (even if it may very well be done by someone else down the road and could be inevitable). Maybe healthcare provides a more emotionally rewarding experience but is less profitable in the long run and may or may not have the same level of scalability as AI. Maybe it's more labor intensive which creates jobs and requires more day to day oversight, involvement, and less creativity but ends up being more fulfilling. Perhaps your energy option lies somewhere between those two. I don't know. But you should honestly evaluate the long-term road map and impact of your plan to see how you imagine things shaking out in the end and see which of those visions seems more fulfilling. It's possible going for whatever is the most profitable is what you want and that's fine. It's also possible that you may find the impact of one of the options to be more emotionally fulfilling and might value that much higher than just seeking the highest income.
Another, simpler version of that recommendation I've seen is the old advice of trying to imagine what your ideal work day looks like and see what path can best provide that to you. But I find that advice to be a little superficial in that it only takes into account what your schedule and tasks may look like, not what you get out of the job. So it's also something to consider, but along with everything else.
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because something is social signaling (which it undoubtedly is in Theils case), doesn't mean it isn't true, and that you shouldn't follow the advice.
Just because a "virtue signaling" statement can also be true, doesn't in any way infer that his advice is good. If anything, it gives him a motive to say it (virtue signal) which is not "to tell the truth". So, the advice might very well be true and we should very well follow it. But thus far we have absolutely no arguments as to if that's the case.
You're prematurely moving the debate one abstraction layer up, making the issue about the whether a general virtue signal can ever contain truth. (That's an interesting discussion and I agree with you that it's definitely likely that virtue signaling statements are less truthful in general than "honest" statements.) Had you looked down on the concrete statement we're discussing, clearly no argument would be needed. Clearly it's good advice to "do things which wouldn't be done if you wouldn't be there to solve it", what's there even to argue about.
Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if Kierkegaard being Danish is at all related to Danes being the happiest people in the world.
I'm Danish, I didn't really understand that for a long time. I would say that it doesn't mean Danes are super happy, it's just that the good economy, free education, free health care and strong social benefits makes it much harder to be very unhappy. So just happier on average.
Coming from Sweden I very much relate to this. For what it's worth I've also often wondered to what degree these types of polls control for a societal aversion against / lack of comfort with expressing displeasure and unhappiness.