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Life Is Short (2016)

paulgraham.com

261–270 of 310 posts

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#261
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or when they're hungry. Or over-stimulated, under-stimulated, tired, anxious over something that happened at school, hyped for the holiday season. Guilt-tripping someone who shares that they're not always having a good time as a parent is not cool. Your comment is over-generalizing, and IMO quite mean.

While I somewhat regret the tone in my comment, the whole notion that pointing out that you sometimes at least are partially responsible for your circumstances is called "guilt tripping" is weird.

It's not that my kids never are unruly. But I can almost always track it down to some failure from my side. I was too busy with something, or simply distracted, so I forgot to give them their snack in time, or they got to bed too late the day before, or I didn't pay attention when they tried to tell me something they felt was important, etc.

And while I'm aware that my experiences aren't universal. The opposite notion that I often hear that tantrums are some kind of unavoidable natural disaster is even more absurd. Yeah, if I bring my kids to the store at 5pm to buy dinner without giving them any snack, while I'm hangry yourself, stressed, and trying to think of something not horribly unhealthy to eat, they might end up screaming on the floor in front of the candy shelves. But my thought then isn't "why am I cursed with such horrible kids". My thought is "ok, I screwed up today, because this was predictable and preventable, and by now I certainly know better than putting ourselves in situations like this."

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is inevitably going to sound facetious but you can always move back. Give up some things, gain others. Isn't that what this essay's about? I'm 40. My parents are 75 and I recently moved back next door to them. I expect to be here until they die. Is it my favourite place to live? No. Best for my career? Couldn't be worse. But I see my folks every day. I see my childhood friends every week. I see as much of my fam…

Not facetious at all. I call it "visiting Paris." A large number of people I grew up with "wanted to see the world." My younger self modeled a lot of my desired outcomes on people's externally stated desires. As I got older, I started realizing something: a lot of what people said they wanted was attainable for them and their socioeconomic status if they made different trade offs. So I started poking and offering adv…

It's clear you've put a lot of thought into the tradeoff between these mutually exclusive wishes but I'd still encourage you to look for ways to spend more time with your folks. It's not all roses but it's been precious for me, personally.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#263

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…

If you take a step back, it is a great and profoundly absurd mystery that there is existence at all.

So given this background absurdity, how do you even delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear it's sound reasoning when it comes to things like this.

And I say this as a rather staunch irreligious person.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#266
post #249

I really like this, but to to add an alternate perspective: I’m skeptical of deathbed regrets, and regrets in general. I don’t think your present self actually knows what your past self went through. We remember events but are bad at remembering emotions except in very broad, general ways. You might say “I wish I had spent more time with my kids and less time at work”. But you won’t remember the feeling of dissatisfa…

> the pride you felt when you delivered on a difficult project. Never felt that way. Which is why family always comes first for me.

I definitely don’t want to say that choosing family over work isn’t the optimal path to happiness. My point is that decisions are largely made on emotion, and we’re bad at remembering past emotion.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Apparently people become magically wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom after. Sample size of 1, but there is a noticeable difference in my friend and family group between people with kids and without kids. Particularly around “having it together.” Children are little logistical nightmares, more so the younger they are. From scheduling around the kids schedules (I.e when they wake up, have d…

What does "having it together" actually mean?

It sounds like the parents, quite understandably, develop common traits specific to the circumstances they share (that is, "raising human offspring"). To conflate those role-specific adaptations with any innate or generalised "superiority" or "special class" in any wider sense would be a mistake, I think.

We're all relative experts in the specific roles of our individual lives, and the very complex journeys they take us on.

As a parent we can only truly compare ourselves to our own past self. That is not the same thing as comparing ourselves to other people, who are on quite different, but similarly complex journeys. It's important to recognise the difference.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#268
Beautiful post, which I had not seen. Many thanks for (re-)posting. I often use the "seems critical now" vs "will be important in the future" test and marvel at how crazy different these are. As I get older, I seem to be getting better at telling the difference. The consequence of this attitude is that you have to get used to taking a lot of immediate flack for ignoring transitory bullshit.

I love the reference to children and their helpfulness in bullshit-shedding. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes, from a somewhat sick bird who nonetheless really got the value of both time with children and avoiding bullshit:

"A man's maturity consists in his finding, once again, the seriousness that he had as a child at play" -Friedrich Nietzsche

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#269

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…

I (not OP) want to see the death of a supermassive black hole, so 10^106 years or so. I'm sure I can figure out what to do in the meantime!

I hope you succeed! Just don’t park too close :P

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you take a step back, it is a great and profoundly absurd mystery that there is existence at all. So given this background absurdity, how do you even delineate what's absurd and what's not, when it comes to concepts relating to the nature of existence itself? It's certainly fashionable to attempt putting everything in terms such as "cognitive distortions", but it's not clear it's sound reasoning when it comes to t…

What kind of concepts would be hard to delineate?

I like the Zen approach to mystery, which is to accept it and resist the temptation to rationalize the mystery away. Thus no absurd concepts are needed, since concepts are not needed. (I’m relatively new to Zen so I may be off the mark a bit here, but I think I got the essence correct)

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