Nine things I learned in ninety years • Hacker News Board

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#141

Post by burnt-resistor » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 10:55 AM UTC

ropable wrote: post #36

> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.

There is an idealistic fiction of "meritocracy" that doesn't really exist anywhere to varying degrees. Racism, sexism, poverty, sectarian, citizenship discrimination, lack of influential friends and family, and more biases exist and are very unlikely to ever disappear completely.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#142

Post by burnt-resistor » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 10:56 AM UTC

shark1 wrote: post #59

> "...happiness to become one’s default state of mind." I have read psychologists saying that "happiness as default state" is a social construct myth of modern times. You cannot be happy all the time, the fact of being unhappy sometimes is what drives you self-reflect and to chase meaning to your life. To feel pleasure you need to feel some pain.

That passage came across to me as toxic positivity, but I hope that's not the case.

Being real is perhaps healthier and more honest than completely avoiding anything that isn't pure bliss or joy.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#143

Post by lvl155 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 10:59 AM UTC

ropable wrote: post #36

> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.

And this is also why people resort to crime.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#144

Post by tonyhart7 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 10:59 AM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #130

flanked-evergl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Statistically, having children before you get married is much more likely to result in worse outcomes. Maybe cause and effect is inverted, but maybe the better option is to not run a social experiment in fatherless children as we have been doing for the past couple of decades with absolutely no research to suggest that it can result in positive outcomes and loads of data to show that it's almost definitely can'…

I don't think you need to run any experiment. Being married or not is just signing a paper. What matters is if the couple live together and in harmony. You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. That's why I'm saying you have cause and effect in the wrong order: children issues are tied to one or both parents not caring about them, and a symptom of that was having children…

"Nowadays things are different"

but is the modern way better??? or people just don't want to be held accountable if things go south in traditional way????

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#145

Post by dsiegel2275 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:00 AM UTC

Wow, I didn't realize at first this is Edward Packard - of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series fame. CYOA were the first real series of books that I got into and devoured, probably around age 9 or 10. Great to see that he is still writing.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#146

Post by burnt-resistor » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:02 AM UTC

10) Cultivate maximally useful, effective purpose(s) and reason(s) for living soon, but preferably, here and now. People without purpose tend to skew sad, chaotic, self-absorbed, and/or dangerous.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#147

Post by Neil44 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

ropable wrote: post #36

> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.

I agree. But there's different ways to respond to it. You can be fatalistic and say well I wasn't born rich or I'm no good at XYZ so why bother. Or you can do well and then say it wasn't luck I work hard every day. To me having had some people I've known a long time die or be debilitated by desease in recent years, I feel very lucky just to be alive and healthy with opportunities in front of me and people I love close to me. A lot of people don't have that and it's not their fault.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#148

Post by K0balt » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #93

K0balt wrote: post #81

I am happy that in my 60 years of life to have achieved most of this, but would have been glad and better off having read it in my early 30s.

That's the curse of wisdom, in your 60s you can tell it's advice that you in your 30s should've taken but probably in your 30s you wouldn't have had the experiences that would make them be seen as good advice at the time. Wisdom is frustrating since to be able to fully absorb it you need to have lived experiences that cements it, it can't be generally taught.

Definitely. It would take present-self visiting past-self to make me actually understand, to be sure.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#149

Post by latexr » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:06 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #56

ropable wrote: post #36

> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.

Yes but as the saying goes you also create your own luck with the way you act in order to get around more opportunities and then to seize them.

That’s true to an extent, but has severe limitations. Of the five thing your parent comment listed (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy), only one (geography) is truly under your control, and even then it can be very hard to change depending on where you start and the other four (and more).

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#150

Post by piva00 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

flanked-evergl wrote: post #97

piva00 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are just statistics describing what happens, not why it happens. Why does having children before getting married creates worse outcomes? Can individuals or society do something about the qualitative aspect of it? Quantifying something doesn't explain it, it just... Quantifies it, deeper inspection is needed to understand what the statistics says. You are prescribing what needs to be done based on something that…

Do we have any data whatsoever that would support the claim that whether you are married before having children has no impact on your life outcome or the life outcomes of your children?

I don't think you understood my comment, I will spell it out: data by itself just quantifies, doesn't qualify. It doesn't qualify why marrying before having children is better, it just states that, for some reason, the outcomes are better.

Now you need to do the qualitative research to understand what are the causes for it, it could be that marriage is a signal for stable relationships, in that case marrying doesn't matter but a stable relationship does (which is quite self-obvious, it's just an example). Marriage could also have tax implications in some countries, which in turn could help the average to better outcomes, so on and so forth.

The data on this is enveloping much more than just "marriage" as a virtue, or any other moral aspect of it, you are using the data to imply that marriage is virtuous and is the cause for better outcomes which doesn't hold by just quantification...

It's blindness by statistics, it's quite common when ascribing data as the sole truth. Data can guide you to investigate other aspects that will qualify why the data shows what it shows.