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Life Is Short (2016)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#121

Post by Nomentatus »

watwut wrote: post #112
Nomentatus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet there is a very large societal problem here worth pointing at. Parental time with children in this society is bizarrely low by anthropological standards. You can get a look at the stark difference by reading the book "The Old Way," about a nomadic society.

Traditional life involved kids being unsupervised at ages we find it unacceptable now (4 years old) and kids being in packed unsupervised for hours.

Not true in nomadic societies (too many predators.) Four or five year olds could tail along with older brothers when I was young.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#122

Post by rvba »

sofixa wrote: post #84
sinlar-multiple wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lmao @ UBI I can't understand how educated people can still gobble ubi propaganda up when it's proven that such model is completely unsustainable economically and socially

> when it's proven that such model is completely unsustainable economically and socially How exactly has it been proven? That's a very strong word to use for something that has never been tried on anything but very small scale limited pilots.

It hasnt been proven but those who live in Europe see families that get:

-free housing

-free money

-money for children (that they use for themselves)

-various other help (clothes, coal, christmas packages)

This had an unfortunate effect of creating a group of people who never worked and all they did was raise 3-5 children. Despite the parents not working (so having time to take care of their children) those children did not really get any education, often did not even finish high school. And guess what those children often got their own set of children early - who also will never work, live of social benefits and small time theft.

You dont exactly have to be a right winger to notice that the model is not sustainable. Especially as this group of people only demands more and they think that they "deserve" it. Also if you would try to teach the children that everyone should contribute to society by working, their parents/grandparents/even grand grandparents will protest. Since they lived this "parasite" lives forever and dont know better. How can someone demand that they work? They deserve higher social benefits and they deserve better housing. (While you are supposed to get a mortgage and slave to get a house). Also at some point the group will become so big that they can vote for politicians that will give them more (at the expense of those who work).

Of course perhaps maybe UBI can work and it will be all rosy, but it is just wishful thinking. Communism was also supposed to work.

Different problem with UBI is that middle class becomes nobodies - you are supposed to shut up because you get your dole. While I bet the rich people will still be rich.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#123

Post by markus_zhang »

ablatt89 wrote: post #63
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.

Funny enough, I know some engineers who go to work, non-remote, to escape from their wife and kids for a bit and work becomes an avenue to relax! And having to take care of an aging parent who lives with me, I can understand.

40yr old dad can relate. I need to leave the family and chill a bit once or twice a week and hybrid is a god send.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#124

Post by brutusborn »

NoToP wrote: post #89
brutusborn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's simple really. I want to exist because I exist. I exist because I want to exist. This mutually recursive loop belies the bottom of everyone's motivations for everything. All wants and urges, from an evolutionary standpoint, stem from wanting to keep existing. Wanting to exist stems from already existing, as anything which exists without wanting to will readily lose out to those that do exist and want to. That's…

I think your logic makes sense, but in some cases may be wrong. The underlying assumption is that living longer personally will lead to a longer existence for your descendants, which is probably true but not always.

E.g. life extension may accelerate resource extraction to the point that your descendants die out sooner than they would have if you had died normally. Although you are living longer, your lineage isn’t.

Also, I suspect that the cycle of life and death is like a computer reboot in that it is a reset of state. Leaving it too long without a reboot might cause existential level issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I support life extension research, but I’m just skeptical of how ‘good’ it would actually be for society and the life extender themselves. Hopeful, but cautious.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#125

Post by taneq »

Ma8ee wrote: post #23
tropicalbeach wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean most of the time there running around breaking things and being loud wouldn't say that's great. It's better when there older.

That mostly happens when they feel they don't get enough attention from you. Sometimes you really are busy with something else, like trying to prepare food for them or answering messages from your pestering boss. But often it is because you are trying to be clever at HN instead of giving them your undivided attention.

I'm curious just how many hours of undivided attention per day you think you have to give? Because most small children will drain you entirely dry within a week, and you have half a decade or more of that to deal with.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#126

Post by civopsec »

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…

> something that created us, is something almost all of us have.

Buddhism claims that nothing created us. Samsara is beginningless and wasn’t architected by anything. And that’s just 500 billion people or so.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#127

Post by watwut »

Nomentatus wrote: post #121
watwut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional life involved kids being unsupervised at ages we find it unacceptable now (4 years old) and kids being in packed unsupervised for hours.

Not true in nomadic societies (too many predators.) Four or five year olds could tail along with older brothers when I was young.

Nomadic societies are no where near standard of human society. They are more of an exception. Also, they are such due to lack of other choice. As in, they evolved when the option of staying long term was not there. The anthropological argument about our exceptionality should not start with outlier society where the world around is too dangerous and there is no way for adults to make it safer.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#128

Post by stormking »

onei wrote: post #46
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…

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 - n…

> 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.

WTF? "Skeptical", probably not "accurate"?

You have to be absolutely nuts to think that they're even remotely true.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#129

Post by stormking »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #59
selfawareMammal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>As knowledge and science advance, the need for religion decreases Citation needed, massively! If anything, the powerful technology and knowledge we now wield (weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance, modern logistics and coordination, global communications) only makes it more important that we don't forget the hard-earned scoial and moral lessons of our pre-scientific ancestors - lessons that were often encod…

Oh cut the crap, religious stories are fairytales and everyone knows it. And religious "truths" are either trivialities or simply not true at all.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#130

Post by defrost »

rvba wrote: post #122
sofixa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it's proven that such model is completely unsustainable economically and socially How exactly has it been proven? That's a very strong word to use for something that has never been tried on anything but very small scale limited pilots.

It hasnt been proven but those who live in Europe see families that get: -free housing -free money -money for children (that they use for themselves) -various other help (clothes, coal, christmas packages) This had an unfortunate effect of creating a group of people who never worked and all they did was raise 3-5 children. Despite the parents not working (so having time to take care of their children) those children…

Interesting opinion, nothing that meshes with the actual largely indeterminate results of the Finish experiment [1] [2] [3] nor with the bulk of the other small scale examples [4].

Countries such as Australia with robust (compared to the US) welfare safety nets (not perfect by any means, but not to shabby overall) have proven to have strong long term GDP growth and to be resilient in the face of various global crisis events.

Good safety nets provide a place to regroup and do better - without being reduced to homeless and struggling to meet basic food and clothing needs.

[1] https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/161361

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector...

[3] https://www.bruegel.org/blog-post/universal-basic-income-and...

[4] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer...

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