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Life Is Short (2016)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#221

Post by sireat »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #210

My daughter is turning 5 in a few weeks. I realized I only have 3 more of these until she’s (likely) moving out. 4x5=20, and she’ll likely be living her own life by 20. Most of the time you spend with your kids is spent by the time they’re 16. I moved away from my hometown. I see my immediate relatives twice a year now, once at Christmas and once in the summer. Most of my family is getting old. I probably have 125 or…

Life is ridiculously short once you move past the mid point - early 40s.

Even the luckiest ones among us get to do a tiny fraction of personally meaningful activities.

As I am piggybacking my youngest one up the stairs, I am enjoying the trek as much as she does. I have this illusion of immortality, surely nothing bad could happen to us this very moment.

Surely that is my elephant/lizard part of the brain. My rider part keeps telling me I could be doing other more egoistical hedonistic activities instead.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#222

Post by fortuna86 »

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.

Is being a caretaker for a small human the most important thing in life? Or is this some kind of default no one questions.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#223

Post by feanaro »

brutusborn wrote: post #51
thinkingemote wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In this case I think that the mystery of life requires something to avoid existential angst, and some people use the afterlife as that something. Other religions (like Buddhism) might view the entire question of “what is this?” as absurd, and so use methods like meditation to help alleviate the angst, thus avoiding absurd beliefs. TLDR: the mystery isn’t the absurdity but our reaction to it might be absurd.

Buddhism has plenty of "absurd" beliefs of this sort. If anything, the delineation of "absurd" is anything but simple.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#224

Post by Jugurtha »

For anyone wondering why it is "vb.html", it certainly comes from "vita brevis" (life is short), often used as "Ars longa, vita brevis", which references Hippocrates[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis

"""

Vīta brevis,

ars longa,

occāsiō praeceps,

experīmentum perīculōsum,

iūdicium difficile.

"""

"""

Life is short,

and art long,

opportunity fleeting,

experimentations perilous,

and judgment difficult.

"""

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#225

Post by parthianshotgun »

fortuna86 wrote: post #222
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.

Is being a caretaker for a small human the most important thing in life? Or is this some kind of default no one questions.

See, antinatalism for probably a first principles reproach to the standard belief.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#226

Post by SyzygistSix »

althea_tx wrote: post #174
jbaber wrote: post #108

I'm able to shorten life by doing mindless "have to" tasks and consuming distracting media (music, books, movies, games, etc.) I'm able to lengthen it by deliberately, reflectively doing anything (thinking, programming, breathing, etc.). I spent almost three decades in school -- grading and getting graded. I made that time race by as much as I could so I could get to the part where I have kids and a job that I can ac…

Well said. It’s worth adding that various mood altering substances can speed up our perception of the passage of life while impairing our ability to remember what happened.

Some can slow it waaaay down too.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#227

Post by civopsec »

civopsec wrote: post #126
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…

> 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.

> 500 billion people

* million

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#228

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

hackernewds wrote: post #20
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.

You will miss these interactions as they outgrow you. No one looks back at their time when their kids were little, to miss that didn't tap more in their screen

There are way more things to do than "raise kids" and "tap on screen"

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#229

Post by passion__desire »

dynamite-ready wrote: post #96

Key point I think the article misses, is that 'bullshit', much like spacetime, is relative.

What did the Leviathan of Parsonstown teach us?https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk

I don't know what the above youtube short means for Gettier problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

Any thoughts?

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