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

291–300 of 310 posts

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#291

Post by photochemsyn »

sireat wrote: post #221
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 p…

For perspective:

> "After the larva stage, female mayflies usually live less than five minutes, while males can live a whopping two days. But they don't waste a single minute, spending that short period of time mating and reproducing"

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#292

Post by Nomentatus »

watwut wrote: post #127
Nomentatus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like you think I'm trying to argue that most people on earth in 2022 are still nomads? Really, this was about anthropological (and, unstated, evolutionary) averages. Nomad's evolutionary and genetic inheritance is our own, very largely. There hasn't been enough time since agriculture came, enough generations, for widespread genetic change.

Anthropology studies past societies as much as modern ones, although the evidence is thinner.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#293

Post by dorchadas »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #289
dorchadas wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually something that's been weighing on my mind heavily this holiday season, as I'm home in the first time for a year. It's...difficult for me. I love seeing my good friends and family, but there's also nothing in this town for me (apart from a job); it's in rural Kentucky, and there's nothing there to promote my interests (mainly academic) and good luck finding any long-term partners (I'm about as far fro…

Here are options you could consider if your career supports remote work, all with their perks: -Move to the nearest city that will support your interests and allow for weekly visits. Make Saturday or Sunday a family day. -Work from your parents' town during the week and escape to a place in the city on the weekend. -Spend different seasons in different places. I'm moving to Tokyo for 3 months next year as a breather.…

> -Spend different seasons in different places. I'm moving to Tokyo for 3 months next year as a breather.

As I was a teacher, this is what I did before I moved countries. I'd spend a month or two of the summer holiday in a different country doing language courses (I love languages and linguistics as well). It was a great way to have structure in a place as well as stuff to do, plus I've found they often arranged guided tours cheaply, so it always worked out well.

Might consider doing that again, but I'd likely need some extra income streams, which could be doable.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#294

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.

'Tis true. Even sixty years ago, kids (7 or 8 and older) walked long distances in cities to school and then hung out in packs for hours 'till the streetlights came on. Not every day but a lot. This does seem to be a pretty good (substantial) substitute for parental supervision/contact; and may well be normal for nomads some of the time (in high visibility terrain only lone predators could hide.)

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#295

Post by Nomentatus »

theGnuMe wrote: post #206
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.

It's actually higher: https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids I don't think nomadic parenting time is really a useful comparison.

Evolution prepared us for nomadic life, not this life. Do take a look at "The Old Way." How children are in a nomadic tribe; and our experience of what children are like is way, way different. They're better company, more mature, more useful, and vastly "better behaved" because they're not struggling constantly to compensate for weird raising conditions.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#297

Post by taneq »

Nomentatus wrote: post #68
isoprophlex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I don't think parental time is that much lower, but 'village time' is almost nonexistent outside of school.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#298

Post by thewakalix »

verzeichnis wrote: post #32
thewakalix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t want to die tomorrow. Is that desire “objective reality” or not? If it is, how is that different from not wanting to die a century from now?

The other comment was about disregarding reality, not about wanting to die. Most people don’t want to die tomorrow, at the same time we need to come to terms with the fact that we age and that our time is ultimately limited. Which is an objective reality. As I grow older, I am discovering that life has different chapters. Each with their benefits and challenges. The other comment is talking about us as a society fail…

“Life is too short” isn’t disregarding reality, it’s just having an opinion about it.

Re: Life Is Short (2016)

#299

Post by majestic5762 »

sriku wrote: post #140

Somewhat related and somewhat tangential. Slavoj Zizek on the "tautological emptiness of the master's wisdom" - """ The tautological emptiness of a Master's Wisdom is exemplified in the inherent stupidity of proverbs. Let us engage in a mental experiment by way of trying to construct proverbial wisdom out of the relationship between terrestrial life, its pleasures, and its Beyond. If ones says, "Forget about the afte…

Beautiful ! :)
Post reply on HN