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The happiest I've ever been

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Re: The happiest I've ever been

#131

Post by Aeolun »

jnovek wrote: post #5
reconnecting wrote: post #3

The latest developments in digital culture are somehow more frustrating than anything I saw in the previous 26 years. Experience is replaced by prompts. Taste perfected over the years with defaults. I'm not afraid of competition with AI-driven competitors — I'm afraid of people replacing real beauty with A/B mechanics. Perhaps this is indeed a good moment to switch to offline. Thank you for sharing your inspiring exa…

I started programming when I was eleven years old and I’m now in my 40s. I have no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

Keep going? Just because there’s a different way to do what you like doing doesn’t mean you should stop.

Or become a carpenter. The world is going to be flooded by them.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#132

Post by Aeolun »

tap-snap-or-nap wrote: post #127

We are just priced out of having this type of happiness due to high cost of living in a first world urban environment.

Every single environment that has a critical mass of people will have an elementary and middle school. How could you possibly be priced out of this?

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#133

Post by steeleyespan »

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…

I’ve spent too much time talking to Claude, because this sounds exactly like one of its messages

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#134

Post by Aeolun »

light_triad wrote: post #115

Every generation of builders believed their tools defined their value. Then the tools got easier, faster, automated, and the definition had to change. But programming didn’t disappear. Writing didn’t disappear. Designing didn’t disappear. AI flips the equation: when creation becomes cheap, value shifts from how much you can produce to what changes because you showed up. The ability to have a positive impact has actua…

I don’t think this whole thing had anything to do with AI or not. It has to do with ‘teaching kids in a gym’ or ‘sitting in front of a screen in an office’.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#135

Post by roenxi »

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

I think more than FIRE people should just focus on FI. You still have to do something with your day after becoming financially independent and a job is still one of many good ways to contribute to the community even if you don't technically need one. So retiring is an option but not the only one.

On the other hand it remains quite confusing that after centuries of capital achieving vastly better results than labour people still keep going for labouring as their primary strategy. Building up a strong income-generating capital base is just common sense and it is an extremely good idea to have enough that you could technically avoid working if it made sense.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#136

Post by Aeolun »

freetime2 wrote: post #38

I honestly don’t understand how anyone has the time and energy to be a coach while working a full-time job. My kids practice three times a week, and usually have games on both Saturday and Sunday - sometimes several hours away. Just getting them to practices and games often feels exhausting to me - I can’t imagine all the planning and scheduling that goes on behind the scenes, or having to show up and actually run th…

Pretty certain the coaching is their job for the soccer coaches at our elementary school. 6 years of kids each with 3 practices a week + matches.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#137

Post by Cook4986 »

bengale wrote: post #62
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.

Yeah, and I do get it to some extent. Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard. Turns out it's doesn't feel anything like that and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. I wouldn't swap with another person on this planet.

Existence is suffering. But there are moments that make it worthwhile. When you have a kid, you not only get more of those moments, but you give those moments to people in the future.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#138

Post by bengale »

steeleyespan wrote: post #133
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…

I’ve spent too much time talking to Claude, because this sounds exactly like one of its messages

Absolutely! That’s a great point.

For real though, I’m not wasting tokens on comments. I do wonder if we will pick up habits when interacting with them a lot though.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#139

Post by deepsun »

lm28469 wrote: post #41
arjie wrote: post #21

Huh, strange. I remember when I was a little 9 year old boy typing in: FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 To get a square on the screen. And then I was slightly older boy destroying my dad's precious slides for his presentation by formatting the entire disk accidentally while installing Red Hat Linux 8 Psyche from CDs my dad got at the bazaar. I was so excited for Shrike to come out the next year. Then I…

We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mortality is increasing, teenage suicide is increasing, illiteracy is increasing, &c. But trust us this time we'll do incredible things, the same things but more of it, faster and cheaper, will automatically make things amazing!

Crime rates going down and down. Purchasing power grows everywhere in the world (but we want much nicer things now, so don't feel it). Travel is more accessible that it ever was in humanity history. Information keeps getting more and more accessible.

And literacy rates are increasing. I don't know why you say it's not, just google "literacy rates trend".

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#140

Post by paulryanrogers »

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.

No one chooses to be born. Once they are, they may find that procreation is impossible for them or just not something they'll do well or even want. None of these is necessarily depressing.

We have no shortage of humans, so there's no need to try to shame the childless. Nor those who focus on themselves.

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