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Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

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Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#21
I see a lot of comments here criticising the post. May be my point of view is different on this, but I liked the post. It's raw and seems honest, like an un-edited version of a stream of thoughts (the author mentions he used speech to text).

The author may have been from a privileged background, but seems to have had his own struggles. I especially liked the following pieces:

>>>>>

1. I believe many young people struggle with the insecurity of being intelligent. They often feel the need to prove their intelligence by overthinking, excessively planning, and acquiring knowledge before taking action. However, this approach is a waste of time. The more you research, the more you realize how little you actually know. Instead, you just have to do it, even if you're scared.

2. Mike Tyson once said, "If you're favored by God, you're also favored by the devil." It's alright to strive for greatness, but it's equally important to choose goodness. Don't neglect your loved ones for work; time is fleeting. Appreciate people and sincerely express your love for them. Grief is the result of unexpressed love, and the key to avoiding grief is to love abundantly.

3. It is crucial to start practicing self-love. While successful people may attribute their success to their struggles, I believe a significant part of it is simply coming to terms with those struggles. Each person's pain is maximum to them. You have already endured hardships. Seek success because you deserve it and learn to love yourself, rather than punishing yourself for not being good enough.

>>>>>

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#22
The worse the advice the more generic.

Generic advice sounds like: “to get good at golf … you really just need to hit the ball more. With the club.”

Nothing was said. Nothing objectionable. Mass audience can understand it.

That is roughly the quality of most advice.

The really good advice in my experience is never popular or even said out loud.

The really good advice would make you dislike the person saying it, usually.

Example: “if someone is doing something valuable but they are really bad at marketing, if you can get away with it, steal their idea and remarket it and go to market before they find out what you did.”

I have seen many people get rich doing that approach.

I have never seen anyone getting rich off of Naval threads.

Another piece of actual advice:

“If you want to get rich, form a private group chat with your friends and coordinate to fool the general public and trade insider information.”

Because that is what the rich people actually do.

Would you say that out loud? No, everyone would hate you if you did.

Or maybe …

“If you want to create a popular fitness channel, do a little steroids (you can take smaller amounts) and pretend you just exercise and eat the supplements you are selling a lot. And rent a lambo for $2K and stand in front of it for Instagram photos.”

Or

“Go on shady websites and pay an engagement farm from India to like all your posts so you seem popular.”

All the shit that actually works and people actually do no one ever says out loud.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#23

This article has a section titled "how to get a job." The author then mentions straight away that he has never had to apply for a job in the traditional way. Following this, he questions his own success and implies that there may be factors other than merit that played a role. A few paragraphs down the author then laments people with imposter syndrome. Yup. I'm not sure how you can read this without being irritated.…

My impression: it reeks of someone who's self aware enough to know they're insufferable and privileged, but then goes on to be insufferable anyway. Evidence: jiu jitsu, Waterloo, free diving, refers to themselves as a "social media influencer" on their Twitter bio. Also, never interviewed for a job and says "oh, just be likeable," as if that's somehow the whole secret to life.

Sorry to say, but it is not. I won't hire a likeable bumbler, and I'd bet he wouldn't either. Merit does matter, but only once one reaches the point where merit can be demonstrated. That point is often not during the interview process, because interviews are very rarely all that much like the actual job one would be interviewing for.

And, nobody should listen to someone who's maybe all of 30 on how to live life, and especially not on how to be a father. Half of what's there isn't actionable; half of the other half reads like one of those "I just bought my first home: here's how I did it," articles that tries to bury the lede and stick the fact that their parents paid the down payment in the middle of so much inconsequential bullshit you'll skip over it.

It's pretty plain this guy has never seen the other side of what his life looks like. As the great Jean Luc Picard said, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life." For every one of him there are five others out there who committed as many or fewer mistakes as he did, but just lost out to dumb luck. But, it's pretty hard to see that being as far up one's own ass as he appears to be.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#24
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice. People get what they figure out how to get and they keep it as long as they figure out how to keep it. Random luck (good or bad) can happen to anyone at any time. It may not seem "fair" (whatever fair means), but it makes a lot more sense given the data than other expla…

> Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice. You’re right that it relies on a divine judge which is why there is a moral argument for the existence of God[1]. 1. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex...

Or, phrased differently: it's yet another reason why the teachings of modern religion, i.e. some are more deserving than others, is yet another piece of evidence they're a little questionable?

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#25
post #11

What really caught my attention was the date format: 2024/06/01, YYYY/DD/MM. This is first time I'm ever seeing anything like this.

Really? It's very common to use YYYYDDMM. It sorts well numerically if you're wanting to group them even slightly.

Uh, WHAT?

How at all is YYYYDDMM better than YYYYMMDD? Is there any single advantage?

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#26

This article has a section titled "how to get a job." The author then mentions straight away that he has never had to apply for a job in the traditional way. Following this, he questions his own success and implies that there may be factors other than merit that played a role. A few paragraphs down the author then laments people with imposter syndrome. Yup. I'm not sure how you can read this without being irritated.…

Yeah, the guy and I have lived completely different lives.

For starters, I've never gotten a job via referral, it's always been applying, busting my ass off during interviews and tests, and getting in...

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#28
post #11

What really caught my attention was the date format: 2024/06/01, YYYY/DD/MM. This is first time I'm ever seeing anything like this.

Really? It's very common to use YYYYDDMM. It sorts well numerically if you're wanting to group them even slightly.

YYYYMMDD sorts very well chronologically, but YYYYDDMM would only be useful in a very specific set of circumstances (generously speaking I can only really think of it being useful in cases where you have events that occur once a month on the same day, and for some reason it's more important to have those grouped together than to separate them by month).

I suspect you misread and mistyped, but if not, I'd be really interested to hear cases where YYYYDDMM is actually practically useful!

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#29
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice. People get what they figure out how to get and they keep it as long as they figure out how to keep it. Random luck (good or bad) can happen to anyone at any time. It may not seem "fair" (whatever fair means), but it makes a lot more sense given the data than other expla…

> Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice. You’re right that it relies on a divine judge which is why there is a moral argument for the existence of God[1]. 1. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex...

I do not understand how can anybody take seriously this simplistic dichtomic way of looking at world. It's like the only thing that you learned about abstractions/modeling is boolean logic and now off you go to proving there is supreme being that has properties you want it to have (like caring about you). What if the reality is really only probabilistic? Or just chaos all the way down with some general models only kinda working on top of that but only if you don't look hard enough?

Just taking this axiom into considetation : "Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the "religious" one" - what if we live on a world where its true for some people and not true for others - lest say that some are selected by some random beings and they have "moral obligation" imposed and others were not so lucky and are left to themselves without any judgment waiting.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

#30
post #4

> Seek success because you deserve it and learn to love yourself, rather than punishing yourself for not being good enough. The idea that I "deserve" success, and to be happy, is something I've heard repeated many times but have always struggled comprehending. I think to myself, well, why do I deserve it? Just for being alive? I feel like there's a better way to think about this, but it eludes me. Does anyone have an…

I'm guessing you're imagining an entitled person sitting around and demanding things.

But the advice is targeted to the kind of people who would pass up a job offer they want because "I'm not clever enough", or break up with their girlfriend because "they deserve something better." It is useful for them to realize that they deserve good things to happen to them just as much as other people do, not inherently less.

It is unfortunately common for abusers to attack their victim's self-worth. "If not for me you wouldn't have any friends", "You should be grateful I'm taking care of you, you horrible child" so people grow up thinking that way.

> why do I deserve it? Just for being alive?

Yes. Every person deserves love and happiness, as a baseline. That doesn't mean that they automatically get it.

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