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Life Is Short (2016)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#191

Post by tacocataco »

SCUSKU wrote: post #43
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 a…

I'm glad you have good people in your life, but that isn't true for everyone.

My life would improve immensely if I didn't ever visit my family. I see them once a year and it is once a year to much. I love them, but ideally it would be from very far away for the rest of our lives.

The ones closest to you can hurt you the most.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#192

Post by noisy_boy »

yarrowy wrote: post #76
twblalock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone behaved like that, our society wouldn't have the wealth needed to make anyone's lives comfortable and secure, except for the lives of the rich. A job that provides an income to a worker, and generates wealth for society, is not bullshit -- even if all it involves is making crappy consumer products, or working on an assembly line, or doing paperwork all day. In fact, such jobs are the reason the majority o…

Universal Basic income would solve those problems. Eventually AI and automation should perform all the mundane jobs which is a good thing but we need to provide basic sustenance for everyone.

My opinion is that UBI would actually free people up to do the low-paying mundane job that they can't afford to do today. It would provide the option of a normal work life that allows one to feel like they were productive, even if it is mundane work, and provide the human interaction by means of socializing at work.

If I don't have to work, I will probably enjoy my work more.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#193

Post by toomuchtodo »

ramraj07 wrote: post #169
jdkee wrote: post #4

"One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option." This. He is right about this.

This may be true, but this is not the majority of your life - unless you’re on some mission to repopulate the earth, you’ll have maybe 8-10 years when you have children who aren’t babies who want to play with you. Apparently people become magically wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom after. If that’s not true then you should be seeing a glut of extremely wise people who’ve been “corrected” by…

+1 based on (n=1) having two kids and being married 15 years. Being with your kids is a flash in the pan compared to decades with a partner. Don’t neglect your kids, but the evidence is strong they’re mostly on rails you don’t control and as long as you care, that’s most of where the effort needs to be. Finding good partners is hard. Keeping them is work. Losing them can be catastrophic (emotionally, logistically, financially) and leave you in a place it can be difficult to come back from. Operate accordingly.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#194

Post by the_af »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #37
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…

"Life is short" isn't meant to be a philosophically rigorous, consistent logical statement. It's just a common saying that's meant to remind us that we have a tendency to spend huge amounts of time and emergy on things that ultimately don't matter, and hopefully sometimes short-circuit the thought process that causes us to do this.

PG seems to be putting it in very concrete terms. For example, he mentions spending only 8 Christmas with a young kid who feels it's "magical". 8, he argues, is an objectively small number for lots of human experiences, like "8 books" or "8 times I dined my favorite meal".

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#195

Post by keewee7 »

ElFitz wrote: post #21
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…

> If anything, human life got remarkably longer in the last century. Well, yes and no. That we live longer than our ancestors seems obvious and is a very common belief. And average life expectancy has indeed increased. But it really isn’t that clear cut. For example: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...

Everytime someone posts the correct fact that average lifespan has drastically increased in the past century someone will wrongly claim that it is only because we got better at lowering child morbidity. They might even link to the garbage BBC article that only looks at data for rich privileged people who did indeed live long lives centuries ago. However the rich and privileged of old times were not representative of the general population.

Why do people so aggressively deny that things have been getting better in the past 100 years?

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#196

Post by ido »

stormking wrote: post #128
onei wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're taking a humorous tone[0] too literally. The poster you answer to was saying that they think the biblical stories are myths/legends.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#197

Post by eastbound »

jefftk wrote: post #173
eastbound wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cost of living in France is very low. People are happy with 1800€, as long as they have the rebates for theater and transports.

Do you mean housing and transportation, or is there really something specific to theater?

A lot of things are cheaper when you have the RSA, but granted, it’s mostly leisure and optional things (museums, cinema, holidays at ucpa.com, etc). (ucpa.com is an excellent sports camp address for 18-40, by the way).

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#198

Post by ido »

jefftk wrote: post #173
eastbound wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cost of living in France is very low. People are happy with 1800€, as long as they have the rebates for theater and transports.

Do you mean housing and transportation, or is there really something specific to theater?

I assumed it was a mistranslated pun on "bread and circuses": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#199

Post by thenoblesunfish »

jdkee wrote: post #4

"One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option." This. He is right about this.

Be careful about the rosy picture he's painting for himself and others here. When he wrote this he was probably already rich and into the pontification phase of his career. I'm going to go ahead and bet had plenty of ways to escape his kids when desired, plenty of help with childcare, etc. If you are really just looking at your phone while you're at home, great, but if you are (like many people here , I'd guess) interested in doing creative or focus-intensive, non-kid things while at home, those things are seriously going to suffer when you have kids.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#200

Post by xvilka »

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…

Beating death is good. I think it will not happen any time soon though. In a few centuries, maybe. Certainly not in my lifetime.
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