181–190 of 268 posts
I find Andreas's short non-technical posts to be fairly unenlightening, and am consistently surprised to see them attract so much attention on HN. The information value here is low.
I'm reminded of people who ignored "clean your room" every time their parents told them until Jordan Peterson said it.
Life is about taking risk. We make daily decisions that involve big and small risk constantly. Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn't a failure , it's a choice. It comes with risk and tradeoffs. Everyone thinks there's a magical line that everyone else should take that straddles that line between enjoyment today and tomorrow. That lines doesn't exist, and isn't even the…
Is that a happy life? For every decision you take, every thought that crosses your mind, making a concious cost-benefit analysis?
> According to the author that's a failure, but I had a lot of really, really enjoyable meals. I ate the vast majority of them with friends and family. Many of them were either cooked by family, or were special occasions. Calling those meals "failures" now would be saying that it was a mistake to enjoy that time with my family and friends, and it absolutely wasn't.
Perhaps it wasn't the meals that were the failure, but the lack of compensating physical activity? Discussions of body weight issues seem over-emphasize blame of too much on food and diet and neglect sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity. In other words, barring serious medical conditions (many of which are treatable once diagnosed properly), you can have it both, enjoy good times with friends that includes eating really tasty food as well as not into health-affecting weight issues.
I’m continually struck by how brave Andreas is for talking about his addiction problems out in public. In most every interview he leads with it when he could just easily say a vague: “I found myself with a lot of free time”. Addiction can come with a LOT of shame baggage. To embrace vulnerability over it is quite substantial. Thank you Andreas for being a positive example for the world! Keep up the great work!
Especially since most CEOs are at a minimum work addicts. Most probably use various chemical “enhancers”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The resulting grooves tend towards virtue or vice. Virtue & vice are kind of an arbitrary way to device up those "grooves", and what constitutes virtue or vice varies by context/perspective. I would argue there are a LOT more dimensions to character, and some are arguably more important than that one, but I otherwise agree with your metaphor. I wear a platinum wedding ring for much the same reason. While it's reall…
> Virtue & vice are kind of an arbitrary way to device up those "grooves", and what constitutes virtue or vice varies by context/perspective. Would you care to provide a few examples?
Examples: compassion, loyalty, endurance/perseverance, social/independence, love/hate, trusting, cynicism/optimism, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn't a failure, it's a choice. This conveniently papers over a critical mechanism of how biological brains operate: we do not choose 99% of our actions. It would be extremely inefficient and energy-consuming. 99% of our life we are on autopilot, driven by our habits engaged as response to sensory and internal stimuli. Habits explain ne…
Hmm.. I’m torn because on the one hand, you’re definitely correct that a non-trivial amount of our lives is subconscious, which is different from auto-pilot in my pedantic opinion. However, anecdotally I’ve found that whether you think you can do something or whether you think you cannot—you are correct. That is to say, I feel like admitting to the biological truth actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which ca…
Here's an example from my life: I used to go the gym every Wednesday night after work. Several times over the course of this habit, I realized at the end of a long day that I would be better off going home and getting some rest, and decided to go home instead. In nearly every single instance I still drove to the gym, even though I had decided to go home. Because I was on auto-pilot. If we're talking about willpower, I would have say that it was my lack of willpower that led me to going to the gym and working out that day.
I think the new generation of weight-loss drugs are going to be a revolution because they give you power over bad habits, wholesale. ICYMI: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/05/ozempic-a... Anecdotally, they really work. It’s not just your food cravings that are mostly stopped in their tracks. But in some miraculous fashion it seems all your “bad” cravings are squashed, while your good ones (side projec…
Life is about taking risk. We make daily decisions that involve big and small risk constantly. Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn't a failure , it's a choice. It comes with risk and tradeoffs. Everyone thinks there's a magical line that everyone else should take that straddles that line between enjoyment today and tomorrow. That lines doesn't exist, and isn't even the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a similar idea from another culture, see the ancient definitions of karma : Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be; a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad; he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds; And here they say that a person consists of desires, and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed…
oligarchs who were killing, stealing, raping and betraying their whole lives, now are laughing on this joke so hard, on their super-yachts.
No yacht, but no enemies either.
Never have to worry about novichok or a drone hitting me.
It’s not bad at all.
Pertaining to habits, this stuck with me from James Clear's Atomic Habits [1]: > Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your identity. This is why habits are crucial. [1] https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
The problem is you don't know the result of your actions. Many bad things happened because of good intentions and vice versa I remember a story about a neo nazi who travelled to Africa to buy weapons and felt in live with a black woman.
Like obviously there are edge cases, but for the most part consequences aren't a surprise. Eat too much, you get fat. Fail to work out, your body goes to hell. Fail to sleep and your mind goes.
I think the new generation of weight-loss drugs are going to be a revolution because they give you power over bad habits, wholesale. ICYMI: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/05/ozempic-a... Anecdotally, they really work. It’s not just your food cravings that are mostly stopped in their tracks. But in some miraculous fashion it seems all your “bad” cravings are squashed, while your good ones (side projec…