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Your Most Improbable Life

kevinkelly.substack.com

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Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#111

Post by RetroTechie »

wowsig wrote: post #60

Perhaps for readers here, this would be often repeated advice, but I found it inspiring as a middle aged woman and also know in my bones that any version of it would help my mother immensely break her life patterns when they aren't serving her any longer. For people in mid-age and older, when they're at the stage where they've spend half their lives arranging and rearranging the world and its offerings in an altar of…

> At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door.

Why would you not do at 63 what you would do at 23?

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#113

Post by margalabargala »

slopinthebag wrote: post #109
margalabargala wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is contradictory. On one hand, you say that "you are your experiences therefore you're youness is absolute even if you're living out the instructions of a blogger" And then on the next hand you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you, which besides being without basis, contradicts the banal "you're you therefore you're you" of your first point. You can't have it both ways…

I never actually said those things, you're paraphrasing what I said in a specific way so you can dunk on me. This isn't X bruv.

> > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"?

> Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's.

For those of us having trouble, can you elaborate on how that isn't described by "you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you"?

Your answer there is directly at odds with saying that allowing yourself to be influenced by a blogger spewing mass-market pop-philosophy doesn't make the result less authentic.

The two original questions I answered are intrinsically linked. If your answers to the two are contradictory, then there's a fundamental integrity problem with the aforementioned pop-philosophy.

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#115

Post by slopinthebag »

margalabargala wrote: post #113
slopinthebag wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never actually said those things, you're paraphrasing what I said in a specific way so you can dunk on me. This isn't X bruv.

> > why does a broader, less likely mix of talents and experiences make you more "you"? > Because it's highly improbable that any one person's natural mix of talents and experiences would be narrow and similar to everyone else's. For those of us having trouble, can you elaborate on how that isn't described by "you seem to imply that being less similar to others makes you more you"? Your answer there is directly at od…

I don't see the connection. We are, at least in part (and some argue fully) a result of our past experiences, teachings, etc. I don't see how it's valid to argue that learning from an essay is somehow inauthentic.

This is different from the claim that people naturally have a unique set of traits, experiences, and desires, and you would expect people who have successfully self-actualised to express that uniqueness.

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#116

Post by OutOfHere »

zephen wrote: post #63
OutOfHere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to immediately familiarize yourself with the rules for comments on this site at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html especially: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. And as for your comment: > you should become a serial killer! Please not preach violence on this site, whether intended or no…

This is rich. "Assume good faith" and "Please not preach violence" in the same comment, when I was doing nothing of the sort.

No, you or anyone will not receive a good faith exemption when preaching violence as you objectively were via your quoted statement:

> you should become a serial killer!

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#117

Post by OutOfHere »

verzali wrote: post #86
OutOfHere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to immediately familiarize yourself with the rules for comments on this site at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html especially: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. And as for your comment: > you should become a serial killer! Please not preach violence on this site, whether intended or no…

This comment is the very definition of Irony.

There is never any good faith exemption for violent comments, not here, and not anywhere.

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#118

Post by zephen »

OutOfHere wrote: post #116
zephen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rich. "Assume good faith" and "Please not preach violence" in the same comment, when I was doing nothing of the sort.

No, you or anyone will not receive a good faith exemption when preaching violence as you objectively were via your quoted statement: > you should become a serial killer!

There are multiple possibilities for why someone might take quotes completely out of context.

The most charitable of those, in terms of evaluation of the capacity of someone to learn to stop doing that, involves bad faith.

Most of the rest involve some sort of cognition or psychological issue.

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#119

Post by nancyminusone »

RetroTechie wrote: post #111
wowsig wrote: post #60

Perhaps for readers here, this would be often repeated advice, but I found it inspiring as a middle aged woman and also know in my bones that any version of it would help my mother immensely break her life patterns when they aren't serving her any longer. For people in mid-age and older, when they're at the stage where they've spend half their lives arranging and rearranging the world and its offerings in an altar of…

> At the age of 23, ofcourse life seems improbable. At the age of 63, you don't even want to knock at an improbable door. Why would you not do at 63 what you would do at 23?

When you fall on your ass at 63, it hurts for half a month instead of half an hour.

Re: Your Most Improbable Life

#120

Post by coip »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #14
ElProlactin wrote: post #5

> Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be. Your life's goal should not be dictated by Substack philosophers. > Here is what you gain with your most improbable life: > The authentic you. Your particular mix of talents, native abilities, personal inclinations, genetic limits, life experiences, and ambitious desires points to a mixture that is distinctly unique – if it is allowed to bl…

The next level of realization is that every path you've been following your entire life has been laid out by someone else, or chosen due to the value system imparted by someone else, so there's not really an authentic "you" in the way that people like to believe.

Surely you appreciate our lack of free will, and how I have no choice but to leave this comment in the void as a sticker for the both of us to have as a token nod to such an existence.
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