Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Life Is Short (2016)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 310 posts

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#41

Post by baliex »

loandbehold wrote: post #31
raydiatian wrote: post #24

Here’s my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point of your life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and conquering your fear of it. All other forms of “importance” derive from this root. - It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that…

How is past mutable?

It’s a reference to your memories of the past not accurately reflecting what really happened

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#42

Post by poisonborz »

raydiatian wrote: post #24

Here’s my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point of your life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and conquering your fear of it. All other forms of “importance” derive from this root. - It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that…

Your view of what matters is really narrow. Not everything has to have an impact in the style or singular magnitude how Aristotle, Charlemange or Muhammad did. You could edit a wiki article that inspires someone to contribute to a software that has a button that someone will push and change things. Human life has billions of nuances like this every minute. And even if most of that is ericadated by a catastrophe, some percent of this experience might continue, containing an essence of it all. We must drive life forward with such beliefs, thinking not just of ourselves.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#43

Post by SCUSKU »

gallerdude wrote: post #18

There are a lot of great lines in this, but the one that’s always stuck with me is simply “bullshit is the junk food of experience.” It’s a perfect metaphor in so many ways, there’s some fundamental truth glowing behind it like a lightbulb.

The one I never forget is how PG describes his mother's death.

"I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was."

I read this the last time it was posted and this scared the living hell out of me. It has reminded me to never take people, especially my family, for granted. I used to be much more reluctant to go home, but as I've grown older I now appreciate the finiteness of life.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#44

Post by brutusborn »

irl_chad wrote: post #33
college_physics wrote: post #9

If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last century. Any feeling that it is "too short" is not an objective reality (compared to what?) but indicates the failure of collective societal mechanisms to put the individual at emotional ease with reality and their existence and role in it. Eliminating all existential angst of the human animal is likely impossible as various absurd religious constructs (after…

I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal feeling that there is something more out there - something that created us, is something almost all of us have. As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a t…

That’s why he said “religious constructs” and not “religions”. I believe religious systems are useful, but I agree with the parent that concepts like the afterlife are absurd concepts used to alleviate existential dread. Maybe this utility means it isn’t absurd, but I would say that many religions don’t have the concept of an afterlife, so other less-absurd concepts may provide the same functionality without the same cognitive distortions.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#45

Post by thinkingemote »

brutusborn wrote: post #44
irl_chad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal feeling that there is something more out there - something that created us, is something almost all of us have. As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a t…

That’s why he said “religious constructs” and not “religions”. I believe religious systems are useful, but I agree with the parent that concepts like the afterlife are absurd concepts used to alleviate existential dread. Maybe this utility means it isn’t absurd, but I would say that many religions don’t have the concept of an afterlife, so other less-absurd concepts may provide the same functionality without the same…

Some might view something as a mystery that another views as an absurdity. I think a mystery is more interesting and less ... (Edits: hmm I don't know what the word is.)

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#46

Post by onei »

irl_chad wrote: post #33
college_physics wrote: post #9

If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last century. Any feeling that it is "too short" is not an objective reality (compared to what?) but indicates the failure of collective societal mechanisms to put the individual at emotional ease with reality and their existence and role in it. Eliminating all existential angst of the human animal is likely impossible as various absurd religious constructs (after…

I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal feeling that there is something more out there - something that created us, is something almost all of us have. As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a t…

Biblical lifespans seem nice, but only if you wholly believe the stories. Given how often the same stories come up across different civilisations, I'm sceptical they're accurate. For instance, Eve picking an apple is not too dissimilar to Pandora's box. The flood in Noah's lifetime is also part of Babylonian myth where the protagonist was Gilgamesh. I recall even the concept of hell was taken from Greek mythology - notice how we call this mythology today instead of religion.

Answering questions like "where did we come from" and "where are we going" have always existed. Passing knowledge down through generations has always existed. Treating these stories as gospel makes little sense to me.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#47

Post by vt85 »

kubb wrote: post #38

This makes you think that Paul would be interested in fighting for a world where people don't waste most of their short lives in bullshit corporate jobs because the market demands it, and instead can focus on important things like their families.

[dead]

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#48

Post by selfawareMammal »

irl_chad wrote: post #33
college_physics wrote: post #9

If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last century. Any feeling that it is "too short" is not an objective reality (compared to what?) but indicates the failure of collective societal mechanisms to put the individual at emotional ease with reality and their existence and role in it. Eliminating all existential angst of the human animal is likely impossible as various absurd religious constructs (after…

I don’t understand how anyone can call “various religious constructs” absurd. It’s a very “Reddit moment” thing to do. Religion has existed since the dawn of man. The internal feeling that there is something more out there - something that created us, is something almost all of us have. As for the feeling that life is too short; I’ll offer a comparison to the early biblical figures: Adam and his sons lived almost a t…

It's still a social construct. As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases and it's really on us to accept there are some questions we cannot answer.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#50

Post by brutusborn »

epicureanideal wrote: post #39

...but it doesn't need to be. There are people working on real, scientific, anti-aging technology, like the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, SENS Foundation (I prefer LEVF though), and the many individuals involved, but especially Aubrey de Grey. One of the reasons I got into software development was to try to make enough money to contribute to these causes, or to work on the problems directly in bioinform…

What got you interested in life extension? And how long would you want to live for?

I’ve never understood the philosophy behind life extension research, because to me it seems like a case of spending a lot of resources in the hope of improving something that isn’t really broken. However I love people with passion and I value freedom, so I’m glad that people get to work on it even if I feel like it’s probably a bit of a waste.

Post reply on HN