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Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#221

Post by elptacek »

joelmichael wrote: post #188
jdietrich wrote: post #157

Never, never, not in a million years, listen to a single word of advice uttered by someone who isn't happy with their life. They have absolutely nothing to teach you. This is strong stuff, granted, but I think it is tremendously important. Every single piece of bad advice I have ever received was from someone who didn't like their life. If you're unhappy, you have two basic options. You can do something to make yours…

I completely and profoundly disagree. Why do you think many great philosophers, intellectuals, and achievers have struggled with depression? Because they made bad decisions? There are plenty of idiots dispensing awful advice while wearing a smile on their face, as well. If you want to feel good, talk to a happy person that will tell you what you want to hear. If you want the truth, talk to a thinker.

There's a difference between being "unhappy with life" and being "unhappy with your life." Maybe folks who style themselves as philosophers and intellectuals are incapable of making this delineation -- or that we, reading their writings, do not see them as having done so. Time, cultural shifts, language.. these things are all dense filters.

You will gain something by listening to anyone. "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And even though THAT advice is thousands of years old, we are nothing to each other if we cannot learn vicariously from shared experience.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#223

Post by Tycho »

hackerblues wrote: post #211
Tycho wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Automatically loving thy neighbour (ie. everyone) is a ridiculous notion. You love the people that are most important to you, that deserve your utmost respect and kindness, so of course this will mean you love a select few. Furthermore, trying to think up reasons why you should love any random neighbour would be an exhausting exercise in self-deception. Plus if you don't love people for their qualities, but instea…

It appears that you think loving your neighbour means trying to generate an artificial emotion, as if the goal is to become so smitten you spend all day writing them poems and blowing kisses. To see that this is ridiculous, try substituting other emotions in for love: Happy thy neighbour, Angry thy neighbour, Sad thy neighbour. In the phrase love is a solid verb. It is about taking the time to help the person out whe…

Just because you can ascribe a more sensible interpretation to a Bible verse doesn't change the nature of how it's usually taught. The verse says essentially you can never love enough, no matter how considerate you are towards others you can always do more, and the ultimate example would be Jesus who loved us enough to die horribly. Even if you try to follow this, you'll come up against people who simply do not deserve your care/assistance, but by this doctrine you must not only help them but strive to harbor positive loving emotions towards them whilst doing so (and no, that doesn't mean writing poems, but it does mean feeling love in your heart and limitless good will). A real blast.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#224

Post by Tycho »

bg4 wrote: post #182
Tycho wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm taking things too literally, although obviously I'm focusing on the negative impact, as per the original question. 1. Sorry, but the verse isn't 'try to get along with thy neighbour' or 'tolerate thy neighbour' it's love thy neighbour. I'm all for amicable and polite relations with people/strangers, but as far as i can tell the teaching really aspires to a sort of 'what would Jesus do?' level of car…

1. Start with empathy and compassion and go from there. 2. The rising tide lifts all boats. 3. "Rosebud" 4. Mercy leads to dysfunctional relationships and communities? I'd hate to forget to return a library book in your town... ;)

1. My point is there needs to be a cap, otherwise it would take over your life and/or leave you with feelings of guilt

2. Historically, the tide of people demanding sacrifice for others' sake tends to be a bloody one.

3. It's not a binary choice. The advice should be something like 'pursue wealth until it gives you the freedom and comfort you need for happiness, but be careful about pursuing more wealth than you know what to do with whilst neglecting your spiritual wellbeing.' But instead the advice is that beyond basic necessities, you shouldn't care about worldly possessions. This is really bad advice, it says nothing about what money can do for you.

4. Not mercy in itself, but the neglect of justice, which comes about readily when people can't make confident judgments. Mercy is desirable, but at what price?

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#225

Post by Evgeny »

Tichy wrote: post #62
Jach wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not buying it, old people get married all the time and some even adopt kids. But I'm in the camp that thinks one should wait for marriage and kids, not horribly long, but wait, so don't listen to me. :) I know a lot of people in Utah who got married way too soon and suffered for it.

I wouldn't advise to marry and have children age 18. But I just had my first child and I am 38, wish I was younger. If my son had children at the same age I do, I would be 76. Will I still be a fit and healthy grandfather by then? Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy? Better late than never, though - I am certainly happy.

Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy?

Please try to use this as a source of motivation for staying fit, rather than as a reason for sorrow.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#226

Post by Tichy »

Evgeny wrote: post #225
Tichy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't advise to marry and have children age 18. But I just had my first child and I am 38, wish I was younger. If my son had children at the same age I do, I would be 76. Will I still be a fit and healthy grandfather by then? Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy? Better late than never, though - I am certainly happy.

Also, how fit will I be age 50, to play soccer with my boy? Please try to use this as a source of motivation for staying fit, rather than as a reason for sorrow.

I do, but there is probably a limit as to what is achievable (or at least some random luck is required).

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#227

Post by l0nwlf »

nostrademons wrote: post #61
mduvall wrote: post #2

Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.

It's funny, all the advice I had from upperclassmen when I started college was "do your homework and go to class", and I did neither, and I don't regret it at all. Yes, it hurt my grades. However, I've found that my grades haven't mattered at all.

I am graduating from CS, currently in my final year. GPA does matters a lot when you are a fresher. Companies which visit universities for hiring (Campus recruitment drive) places a GPA cutoff, henceforth making low GPA fellas ineligible to even appear in their hiring process. All the big guns do so (Google, Y!, Amazon etc etc).

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#228

Post by djacobs »

paolomaffei wrote: post #189
kriru wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lmao

You might not understand why you are being downvoted since you are new there. Don't take it personally, is just that we don't want any kind of humour or otherwise pointless (as in: adds nothing to the conversation) informations. We are trying to keep the signal to noise ratio high, just say something only when it adds to the conversation and you'll do great!

I don't think it's that we don't want humor—there is plenty of that on HN. I think it's that "lmao" is better conveyed (and with less noise, as you say) by an upvote.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#229

Post by petercooper »

sagarm wrote: post #201
petercooper wrote: post #108

I wouldn't go quite as far as "messed up" but between 2003-2007 I was frequently hassled by people to "buy a house" because it "never goes down (much) in value." I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30 years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and bit the bullet. Naturally, I ex…

Your obligations are spelled out in the contract, and defaulting is (normally) a legitimate course of action. The bank and you made a mutually beneficial contract: the bank loans you money, and in return you promise to give them back their money plus interest or your collateral. If you've elected to assign a moral value to one of your options, it can only hurt you. I've never done this myself, so definitely make sure…

That is not true in the UK (or much of the world). Indeed, people here are typically shocked to learn how flimsy US mortgages are, though I'm aware of abandonment as an option there (and I think it's totally crazy that they allow it - it's not at all beneficial for them to make a loss due to falling house prices).

You can, of course, default but if they sell your property for less than the outstanding amount, you're still on the line for the difference and can be bankrupted over it. Hardly a moral choice when so much of your life can be disturbed over it.

The "principle" I was referring to was not "not defaulting", btw, but not making a loss. I could sell, move, and take the loss, but I refuse, considering it'd put me in the tiny percentage of home owners who've ever made a loss. Sunk cost fallacy, sure, but I don't need to move yet, luckily.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#230

Post by malloc »

noname123 wrote: post #131
ericb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an opposing viewpoint, every major advance in my life has come from stepping outside of my comfort zone and tackling something in which I had no idea what I was doing. -public speaking -asking women out -learning to dance -socializing/making friends -lifting weights -starting a business -doing sales work -learning to program edit: The vast majority of these made me very uncomfortable and awkard, not "a little".

To piggyback off your example to make a point, 1) public speaking: preach to the choir or speak your mind? 2) picking up women: be a nice guy or be assertive about your needs? 3) socializing/making friends: manipulate to get ahead or be loyal and get snubbed? 4) lifting weights: long day at work, go to the gym anyways? 5) starting a business: when to quit your job or when to admit that your project is a dead-horse 6)…

mind telling more about your experience on this? how far would you say "getting out of your comfort zone" did you reach? how did programming affected your life (seems like you meant you spent too much time doing so before getting to that... how was it?)
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