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Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#131

Post by okareaman »

I came of age before blogs and frankly, don't see any blog posts that could be life changing for an older person, so I'll add a life changing book and song.

The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, the sequel to Future Shock. I was a nuclear trained engineer in the Navy. This book convinced me not to pursue a career in nuclear power after the Navy, which was the standard career path for guys like me, because it was "Second Wave." The Third Wave was information technology, which I pursued despite having no training in it.

At the height of my success, "The Arrangement" by Joni Mitchell made me realize that money hadn't made me happy and pursuing more was not something I wanted to do.

    You could have been more
    Than a name on the door
    On the thirty-third floor in the air
    More than a credit card
    Swimming pool in the backyard
    
    While you still have the time
    You could get away and find
    A better life, you know the grind is so ungrateful
    Racing cars, whiskey bars
    No one cares who you really are

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#132

Post by adwn »

jerf wrote: post #111
adwn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to rethink aligning your life to a Cracked listicle, in particular this one. For example: > For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job." But, well, actually, you totally are. Well, actually, you totally aren't. The next part is even worse and downright dehumanizing: > you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful ski…

Having just read it for the first time, I'd characterize that article as the metaphorical slap to bring someone to their senses. It is not enough on its own to build a philosophy on, and it isn't necessarily representative of all of life, but that article is a slap a good number of people need. But then there's also people for whom it will be the worst thing ever, who have already completely organized their lives aro…

Thanks, that's an insightful take on it. You bring up a good point, which is that reading this article can be healthy for some people, and unhealthy for others.

I don't think there's a solution for this, because any kind of disclaimer would dilute its message for those that need to hear it, and do nothing for those that shouldn't hear it. And what would such a disclaimer even look like? "Disregard this article if you're not an entitled, selfish man-child"?

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#133

Post by packetlost »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #103
ripitrust wrote: post #46

https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more This article inspired me on two things : 1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they st…

>I realized that reading a book was really just like reading Reddit—both were consumptive activitives. I disagree on this but I love and agree with the premise of the blog post. Comparing reddit to Moby Dick could not be further off. reddit (or any similar site) is a shill/bad actor/agitator/troll cesspool full of memes and clickbait. It is important to learn to tell good shit from bad shit. Consume things produced b…

The quality of consumption is different for sure, but I would argue that certain areas of reddit are of high value to my job, hobbies, etc. and Moby Dick is of little value those areas and quality of life in general. You could perhaps make arguments about historical value, context, or benefits to reading comprehension, but at the end of the day, reading anything is about only as good as the information you're taking in.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#134

Post by yewenjie »

ema wrote: post #128

7 years ago I had just aborted an internship, my foray into being an employed adult, because I found myself unable to deal with disagreements. Contrary to my naive hope that the confidence boost from being a Professional Software Developer(tm) would solve all my emotional problems I now knew that my limitations would follow me around anywhere I would go. But I had no idea how to change and was too stuck in my own anx…

Also a fan of David Chapman here. Really looking forward to him finishing at least one of the books.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#135

Post by rchaud »

qnsi wrote: post #3
iamthemonster wrote: post #2

I don't look back on it that fondly nowadays, but it would probably be Mr Money Mustache's classic "The Simple Math of Early Retirement". I am not on a path to FIRE really, but in my early twenties it was really incredibly eye-opening. At that age, I had very much assumed that the world had to work according to "work hard for 45 years, get the biggest house you can, buy as much stuff as you can, on your 65th birthday…

Link here: Basically he talks about how when you retire depends on one number, percentage of money you can save from your pay. If you save 50% of your pay and invest it, you can retire in 16 years. Pretty eye openning https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

But isn't this just the financial equivalent of "lose weight by consuming fewer calories than what you use"? It's far easier said than done.

If you lose your job, or spend a chunk of your savings in a family emergency of some kind, then what? Do you have to save 80% of your take home to make up for the lost savings?

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#136

Post by Nemi »

This post on social mobility. It really made me think about where I came from and how different it is from my wife and why we are comfortable in different situations.

More specifically, the post explains the difference in Social Class and Working Class and how we often conflate those two things when in discussion. We often talk about “lower”, “middle” and “upper” classes, but the author proposes that those are actually Working Classes and not necessarily related to Social classes. We often migrate one or maybe two social classes higher or lower in our lifetime, but movements more than two rungs is prohibitively difficult.

It is an interesting way to look at society.

https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light&fb...

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#137

Post by frutiger »

ripitrust wrote: post #46

https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more This article inspired me on two things : 1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they st…

> And in this current society, there is a huge buyer side trap, the whole idea of consumerism and social media is to trap you inside the buyer side, so you keep buying, you keep consuming.

Aside from bankruptcy, buying and selling are actually completely balanced in a modern market economy. Even “saving” money is actually best considered as selling it. Earning money is obviously selling your time and bodily energy (those are the only finite things you have that are inputs into the system).

Borrowing is selling your future money to someone who wants to take on the risk.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#138

Post by caddemon »

bemmu wrote: post #23
shaneos wrote: post #20

Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind By Blake Ross https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... Before reading this post I had no idea I had aphantasia and thought everyone else was the same as me, unable to see anything when they closed their eyes. This helped me understand myself and my relationships so much better than ever before. Thanks Blake!

I still can’t quite believe there are people who can see clear images in their minds. Maybe it’s more a matter of how you report your experience? I’m very conscious of how poor my mental images are, but maybe with a little less introspection I would also say I have great mental imagery.

What's more convincing to me than self report of image quality is self report of imagery use. Whether it should be described as aphantasia I don't know, but I never think in a visuospatial way unless I consciously stop and try because the problem really requires it (and even then I feel I'm pretty bad). On the other hand I have friends that describe their ideas in such a visual way almost instantly, and report having imagery pop into their heads naturally.

To me it seems really obvious that relative to my internal monologue, my imagery is much weaker and quantifiably less frequent. So I think at least people that report having imagery much stronger than internal monologue likely have something different going on for real, not just with reporting.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

#139

Post by avnigo »

barrenko wrote: post #88

This still haunts me https://www.nashvail.me/blog/stop-learning . You got to build stuff too, not just learn. Still, you also have to figure out if you're a builder or a "learner". I like to figure stuff out, once I know the solution, my interest is minimal.

I took "looping" and "incapacity" to mean not taking a leap. Growth usually happens outside your comfort zone. Remove the safety net and ask, 'what's the worst that could happen?'
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