131–140 of 460 posts
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The nice thing about a culture that exalts “I raised kids and they turned out well” as a “life well lived metric” is that its broadly accessible. You can be born below average in intelligence and creativity and still be a good dad or mom, participate in local civic organizations, etc.
What if your kids reject you and want nothing to do with you?
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> What’s the life well lived metric? I grew up Christian, and among Christian young people a common question was "What's God's plan for my life?" In that context, I came across Micah 6:8 which spells it out about as plainly as you'll find anywhere: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" That seems like a…
with your God is a rather major point you just ignored from that line. No offense intended, I simply thought it was quite interesting.
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How many software developers actually get a chance to “add to the world's treasures“? Building yet another CRUD web app doesn't meet the definition in my book. I'm not saying it's not possible, but you have to be rather lucky.
How many normal people get a chance to work at a top law firm in a fancy position just because they graduated from some law school? Better jobs are competed for strongly. Good stuff is never free and never available by default.
Definitely not be a software engineer. No one told me how incredibly low the social status is. EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.
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I think it may be on the lower end for a number of reasons which lead back to the low barrier to entry - there’s no need to pay your dues with a decade of schooling, in hundreds of thousands in tuition, and to professional associations, state boards of licensure, or both. However, there are crappy doctors and architects - just like there are famous software engineers. Prestige - outside the ingroup - is a function of…
It’s fundamentally disrespected by people at a core level. I’ll prove my point with the one question they always ask us versus any other profession, ‘what is it that you actually do at the company?’. I swear, I’d never think to ask this of anyone, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, cops, literally, I can’t think of one profession that gets asked this, I’ll try again, pilots, chemists, diplomats, translators, artists…
In my experience, most people (i.e. sans pathologies) ask this question because they are ignorant and curious.
They are trying to integrate the unknown (you and your craft) into the known, not trying to challenge your ego.
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A story that might be illustrative.
A close relative of mine came to his current country from another country, but is a citizen of his new country. At social gatherings over the years, a not-uncommon question, asked by immigrants and born-citizens alike, was "Where are you from?"
There was no quicker way to become his mortal enemy, and to ruin a party!
He thought people were trying to parade his otherness, with the intent of making him feel out of place, not welcome, lesser-than, etc.
From another perspective, each question was an opportunity to educate people on his heritage, and an objectively-fascinating component of his identity (that of "The Immigrant").
It’s worth thinking about how we measure how “good” a life is and if that is superficial and too much influenced by fashion. For example the cliche is go travelling or get rich starting a business. “I raised kids” doesn’t have the same boastworthyness in a lot of circles, but arguably it’s more interesting. Or maybe not. What’s the life well lived metric?
Raising kids is the "default" choice. More than 50% of people do it. Getting rich or traveling for your life are much rarer, hence more interesting Edit: ah yes downvotes. Think about it this way. You meet someone with 6 fingers on each hand, kinda interesting right? Minutes later you meet someone with 5 fingers, also interesting?
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I tell any young adult who will listen the mistakes I made. It's nice when they stop by with stories and whiskey the days before Christmas and see them come up strong, happy, and on a solid path towards success. It's only through the stories of our mistakes that we can escape the clutches of time.
I agree, partially, I'm adamant about the fact that it's even more important to talk about successes, than failures. "Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the studyof failures. As I will several times say, there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more effi…
I’ve yet to meet someone I would trade lives with. What more can I aspire to?
This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”: > "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,…
Excellent break down of the concept by Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto ( 9:18 ); Jordan Peterson Pick Your Sacrifice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--W9mhC4zA
I know there are people who hate on him for basically misinterpretations of things he has said regarding transgender issues.
But then on top of that, there are right wing people that hate him equally much and think he's basically a nonsense-spouting sycophant.
I guess listening to the things he has to say, I think they are on par with the more useful things I ever heard from a professor at university.
Anyway, he seems to be someone people love to hate.
This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”: > "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,…
And, it has to be a single specialty. In my particular case, it was hard to accept that I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer.