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Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

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111–120 of 171 posts

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#111
post #74
post #59

Life is simple.. If you aim lower. There was a psychology research on how people even billionaire form a baseline similar to a homeless dude. All the stress, pressure you have is the same as everybody else and it will never change. So the goal should be do whatever you enjoy while doing the minimum effort.. Of course this type of thinking would immediately hamper progress everywhere.

> Of course this type of thinking would immediately hamper progress everywhere. Yes. Would it be a problem though? If everybody is happy with what they have, then progress is unnecessary or even harmful.

There's a ceiling to happiness, though, that's predicated on your tolerance of death and suffering around you. You can't punch through it without advanced technology. But I guess people could instead live their lives stoned on their local mushrooms to achieve the same feelings of happiness.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#112
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the dog. Get a terrier. Best of both worlds. You have to earn their love, and they're as prickly as cats sometimes. But you can also take them hiking, skiing, biking, or just chilling by a campfire growling at hypothetical bears in the dark forest at night.

> Get a terrier. Best of both worlds. You have to earn their love, and they're as prickly as cats sometimes. Yes, might be really the case. I'm pretty much a cat person and when I'm thinking about getting a dog, then terriers are pretty much on top of the list.

What about Burmese cats - which act pretty much like cat shaped dogs - at least in terms of sociability and playfulness.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#114

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

> happiness actually derives from having cats

Not if you're part of the massive destruction of wildlife wrought by these biodiversity annihilators masquerading as cute pets.

'As an invasive species[1] and superpredator,[2] they do considerable ecological damage.[2] In Australia, hunting by cats helped to drive at least 20 native mammals to extinction,[3] and continues to threaten at least 124 more.[3] Their introduction has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world.[2] Feral and domestic cats kill billions of birds in the United States every year, where songbird populations continue to decline.[4]'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#115

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

You know what drives me crazy? All these people talking about how great technology is and how it saves all this time. But what good is saved time if nobody uses it? It just turns into more busy work, right? You never hear somebody say, "Well, with the time I’ve saved by using my Word Processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out.” (Jesse)

As long as workers who trade their labor time for money do not participate in the productivity gains at a rate that sufficiently outpaces wage adjustments to the new productivity, this will continue.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lazyness is a big driver for invention What? I can’t see it being a good invention driver for anything other than the category of “tools for lazy people”. How was the invention of the OLED driven by laziness? How about the high bypass turbofan?

OLED: Performing in theater live is laborious. Also, getting there and waiting for actors. Turbofan is way out of my area of expertise. Still, I guess planes are less hard than breeding, riding a thousand horses, sailing ships, and so. And waiting, waiting is not for lazy.

way harder to invent something like OLED..... unless you're massively ignorant to the huge logistical supply chain needed to make something like this economically possible and technological advances that took hundreds of years for it to happen

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#117
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the other side of that is you can often take a dog or kids with you in the car or train but with a cat it’s a bit trickier. That being said my mum used to throw (kinda literally) the cat in the back of the car when I was a kid and we’d drive 2 hours to my grandmas place. The cat didn’t seem to care much and went to sleep.

A dog on the train? In what country and what dog size?

In what country can't you?

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#118
Examples:

Would it make sense to have more fields visible at once? Maybe making users not have to dig though 10 pages to find the “Covid” checkbox would be better.

Would it make sense to have a single schema monolith with simple HTML forms vs microservices, 100 schemas, persistent connections, streaming, and burn-rate-heavy cloud infrastructure?

Do you need all of those JS libraries that look simple but are actually more complex than vanilla JS to setup and maintain?

Object storage seemed simple, but how will you translate all of that JSON later when the model must change over and over again?

Is that code that uses lambdas and annotation-based cloud logging that is so much more readable and maintainable generating frequent delays for customers due to GC and latency than the loop and shared variable equivalent that writes to file?

Counter-examples: code that could be simplified without cost, storing customer data whose structure is out of your control, use of well-maintained libraries that save time and add value, and relatively low cost use of the cloud services due to good planning and design.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#119
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the other side of that is you can often take a dog or kids with you in the car or train but with a cat it’s a bit trickier. That being said my mum used to throw (kinda literally) the cat in the back of the car when I was a kid and we’d drive 2 hours to my grandmas place. The cat didn’t seem to care much and went to sleep.

A dog on the train? In what country and what dog size?

For the UK:

https://www.seat61.com/dogs-by-train.htm

> This bit is easy. You can take dogs, cats and other small animals with you free of charge on all British trains, up to a maximum of two per passenger, as long as they do not endanger or inconvenience passengers or staff. Dogs must be kept on a lead at all times unless contained in a basket. Dogs without leads, cats, birds and small animals must be carried in an enclosed basket, cage or pet carrier which must be rigid and not open (to prevent escape) and the animal able to stand and lie down in comfort. Animals and containers must not occupy seats, otherwise a charge may be made. If you want to use a Caledonian Sleeper to or from Scotland, you'll need to pay a fee, see here. For full details of dog & pet regulations on British trains see www.nationalrail.co.uk/passenger services/luggage animals.html.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is simple* * YMMV. You might need to live in a developed world that assures you won't be left to die, that is not at war, that you can find a way to sustain yourself, and that you're not involved in any accidents that drastically change your otherwise simple life.

I have been in countries at war, like Congo, and life there was the simplest thing you could have. In fact, all the complexity appears when there is peace. People do not save or study or anything secondary when there is war. Are you going to study when you don't know where your family is? When your mother or sister or daughter has been raped and you have to protect her for being raped or killed? When they go after yo…

> People at war, they need something, they take it(with automatic weapons). Super simple.

That is not actually true. Most people in war zone are civilians without weapons. The survival depends a lot on navigating power structures and negotiating. And luck. But it is not simple and everyone speculates.

> When your mother or sister or daughter has been raped and you have to protect her for being raped or killed?

How exactly would you protect them? You don't. Cause I had relatives survive war and read memoirs from civilians and it was more that everyone was looking for source of income. If males had to join army or guerilla (or died), then it is women trying to survive and trying to care for those who stayed (children, old, themselves). And that is not simple.

> Are you going to study when you don't know where your family is?

Hardly. But school systems in war countries and occupied countries do somehow move on, as malfunctioning as they are. People leave them to search for income and food. People clinge on activites too.

Mental health issues get worst under those conditions. The conflicts between people escalate while everyone being even more dependent on each other. People live in cramped conditions. And none of that is simple. Living in one household with mentally ill or abusive relative you would normally cut off is opposite of simple.

> When they go after you because you abandoned guerrilla (or the army)?

Majority are civilians.

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