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The happiest I've ever been

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Re: The happiest I've ever been

#91

Post by arealaccount »

whaleidk wrote: post #68
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

People who want to be childless usually champion the importance of building strong community through friends and neighbors, just because they don’t want kids doesn’t mean they don’t want to contribute to others’ happiness lol. People wanting FIRE is a lot more to do with the current economy and wealth of useless or harmful jobs than kids

> dont want to deal with kids

Someone has to bring up the next generation, the no kids crowd want all the luxury of having the next generation without putting in the effort or spending the money.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#92

Post by [deleted] »

nvarsj wrote: post #40
bengale wrote: post #35

In the nicest possible way, this is basically the oldest lesson there is. You weren’t happy because you optimized your feelings or had the right opinions. You were happy because you stopped focusing on yourself and became responsible for other people. Six kids needed you, in the real world, every week. That kind of outward focus kills emptiness fast. Chasing happiness, moral righteousness, or political engagement jus…

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

[deleted]

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#93

Post by EddieB »

sntran wrote: post #58
tayo42 wrote: post #12

I just wrote my own blog post thinking about this. I guess alot of us feel kind of weird right now.

I feel similarly. Being laid off and doing job search recently got me thinking about switching to become an electrician. I don't mind starting over and lower wage, but mortgage and family depending on me still hold me off.

Had this thought multiple times over the years. However, reality in the UK is training cost and time (~2 years with 2 days a week college + at least ~£5k cost and further 2 years gaining experience) can be quite a blocker- difficult to achieve with dependents for most. Then throw in the reality of domestic work and building up experience. Greener grass and all that

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#94

Post by idiotsecant »

nvarsj wrote: post #40
bengale wrote: post #35

In the nicest possible way, this is basically the oldest lesson there is. You weren’t happy because you optimized your feelings or had the right opinions. You were happy because you stopped focusing on yourself and became responsible for other people. Six kids needed you, in the real world, every week. That kind of outward focus kills emptiness fast. Chasing happiness, moral righteousness, or political engagement jus…

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

It's always funny how many people think that the only font of altruism is taking care of children who have your DNA, like that's some kind of selfless act. It is, in fact, the ultimate vanity of which humans are capable. Raising little variations of yourself might make you feel good, but if you think it's a unique path to a fulfilling life I suggest you are the one in the little bubble.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#95

Post by 0898 »

Shaan Puri has also talked about how he's been coaching a youth basketball team on the My First Million podcast recently. He says it's one of the best things he's ever done.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#98

Post by signatoremo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
internet2000 wrote: post #11

The moving tiny rectangles framing is interesting, it gets to the heart of why I find all the anti-AI takes so difficult to comprehend. If you never made any effort to connect what you do with what value is added in real life, then it's no wonder better tooling is leaving you lost. Programming (other than code golf) has always been an implementation detail for solving problems IRL.

The programming itself is the reward for people who love doing it. It attracts the sort of detail-oriented thinkers who enjoy the doing and don't frame everything in terms of "value added." AI is attractive to the sorts of people who have their secretary write their Christmas cards.

AI helps you to focus on the aspects that you are interested in. Perhaps you care about database nifty stuff, but you may need the front end to make an end to end solution. You can delegate that part to AI

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#99

Post by Aurornis »

nvarsj wrote: post #40
bengale wrote: post #35

In the nicest possible way, this is basically the oldest lesson there is. You weren’t happy because you optimized your feelings or had the right opinions. You were happy because you stopped focusing on yourself and became responsible for other people. Six kids needed you, in the real world, every week. That kind of outward focus kills emptiness fast. Chasing happiness, moral righteousness, or political engagement jus…

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

> but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

It's common in some tech and upper middle class bubbles, but outside of some startups and a few VHCOL cities most of the 40+ people in tech I encounter have families.

I think the mindset is most popular in internet bubbles like Reddit. Reddit went mainstream a decade ago and many people in their 30s and 40s grew up reading a lot of Reddit. Reddit cleaned up their popular subreddits list years ago, but for a while subreddits like r/childfree were constantly in everyone's default feeds. Redditors would talk about people who had kids as "breeders" as a derogatory term and treat them like they'd made terrible decisions with their lives.

I didn't realize how much this carried over into the real world until my friends and I started having kids. I knew a few people who treated our decisions like we were making terrible mistakes and throwing our lives away. I still encounter people from younger generations who are confused when I say that I like spending time with my kids. They can't imagine how that would be enjoyable in any way. When you grow up with your chosen social media telling you that the smart people are maximizing their bank accounts, minimizing their responsibilities, and doing as little as possible to get there, they can't fathom how someone could be happy with kids.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#100

Post by trgn »

pixl97 wrote: post #83
cheema33 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're retiring later and later, working more per week That may be true. But, if somebody offered me a time machine to travel back in time and live at any point in history, would I take it? Hell no. > purchasing power is going down That is not a new thing. > quality of goods is going down Phones are better. Computers are better. Cars, planes, washing machines ... > life expectancy is decreasing On the whole, this is…

Ya some people don't know the difference between their country falling apart versus the world falling apart.

What does it matter the world gets better when your neighbors do worse?
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