For me it's Scott Smith's blog post series describing his current journey after being diagnosed with ALS (Stephen Hawking's disease) as a young father of two little girls. There are unique perspectives on gratitude and how to stand strong in the face of one of the cruelest afflictions life might throw at you.
Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
141–150 of 393 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#142https://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…
While I do agree with your first point, I think it's a bit .. obvious. Of course you need to create value in order to be great (or get rich).
Regarding the article, it doesn't match my experience. All the prolific creators I know (about) are prolific consumers as well. Writers are known to read a lot. The girl the author saw sketching on the bus probably loves looking at and reading about art and does it often as well as actually creating art.
The other issue is the amount of creative effort you can spend. For example, software engineering is a very creative job and often at the end of the day I just have no energy left to create more.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#143[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#144Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's very interesting and the term "aphantasia" only got coined in 2015, so it looks like a fresh area of research. Do you think that there are some advantages to being this way? For example, being able to live more "in the moment"?
I'm aphantasic, and I'd say one advantage is that I'm not bothered by invasive vivid memories or anxiety inducing imagery. Just on a hunch, I think aphantasics are probably less likely to develop PTSD after trauma, as a big component of PTSD appears to be just this kind of pervasive, invasive and hyper-vivid memories. I sometimes feel that I'm missing out on something, but from experiences on psychedelics, which give…
I'm curious what you mean by "soundless inner monologue"? I don't really experience much imagery at all but my inner monologue feels very close to how talking to myself aloud feels, so I wouldn't describe it as soundless. The verbal vividness of my internal monologue is actually how I imagined people with good imagery skills "see".
On the note of advantages, I know I have something weird going on with the back right of my brain specifically (focal slowing on EEG among other things), which I am pretty certain connects to my favoring of verbal over visual thinking. So I guess it depends on the cause of a case of aphantasia, but to me it feels a little like how blind people end up with heightened hearing. I think I've really developed strong verbal skills because of it, and there are definitely advantages to having strong verbal skills.
I recall a professor showing us a study once where students performed better on an exam when they were allowed/encouraged to talk out loud to themselves while they were taking it. He was encouraging us to talk through stuff with ourselves, but at first I found the result weird because I assumed everybody was always talking to themselves in their head. That was the first time it really dawned on me there may be large individual differences in how we experience thoughts.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, I have asked people “ can you visualize Obama’s face on this piece of paper?” They say “oh, yes-perfectly! -it’s like I’m looking at a photograph” “Could you trace it and come away with a drawing that would compare well with a traced photo?” They can’t, and I think they are over-reporting the fidelity of their visualizations.
Visualization is a bit confusing in the sense that I can perfectly "see" someone's image in my mind or on the piece of paper, but I cannot draw it that well. It is like a "floating image"? that gives me the person's face in my head, but I if I sit down and try to describe it with minor details or draw it, I cannot.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#147https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm I remember reading this first time in early twenties - it was mindblowing. After several years I can say that many things I’ve expierenced, noticed and learned are mentioned somewhere along these lines. ‚One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions or organizational charts. Responsibil…
> Unless the individual truly responsible can be identified when something goes wrong, no one has really been responsible. With the advent of modern management theories it is becoming common for organizations to deal with problems in a collective manner, by dividing programs into subprograms, with no one left responsible for the entire effort.
I was quite literally thinking about this exact problem at my organization last week. This quote is older than I am.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#148This one made the front page of HN : What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
https://www.thecut.com/article/what-its-like-to-have-narciss...
It made me realise that some people are wired differently. You can't interpret their actions with the same framework you interpret yours.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#149https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8055HIDm1A
Learned a lot from this fighting game community creator, Core-A gaming, video about community, and even tho I can't say it changed my life, it did change the way I see a couple of things forever.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#150https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... Now Then by Adam Curtis for really reinforcing my suspicion that algorithms that feed me more of what I like prevent me from ever experiencing things I havent before. Tasting new flavors means ordering what I am least, not most, familiar with. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... And although I Can Tolerate Anything Except the…
Thanks for sharing I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup - I'd never read it before, and it's worth reading the whole thing. It has me reflecting on who my "out group" is.