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I put my whole life into a single database

howisfelix.today

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Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#51

Post by criddell »

alex_duf wrote: post #46
lejalv wrote: post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

Exactly, I stopped reading when I saw the flying stats. There are people who still haven't clocked where our climate is headed. I get that you may have to see family abroad or maybe indulge for a holiday, but this is "I'm using an airplane to commute" kind of level. And here I am trying to book my train tickets to go to London instead of flying even though it costs three times as much just to avoid a few kg of CO2 (a…

> And here I am ...

Reminds me of the soggy straw memes floating around now. I've been having those why bother? thoughts as well.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#52

Post by fxwin »

brodo wrote: post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

extensive tracking of self-related metrics to improve ones health is the equivalent to reading tons of self-help books to improve ones life/social skills/...

We already mostly know what makes people happy/healthy: personal connections, physical activity, healthy diet and some sort of purpose/goal in life that goes beyond day-to-day activities. The problem is that these things generally require (hard) work and can be unpleasant sometimes, so humans do what humans do and spend unreasonable amounts of time doing the more pleasant things such as reading and gathering info rather than applying these and what they already know. (That's not to say that a project like this can't be fun or lead to insights, especially across longer time spans, but i feel like all of the questions in the first paragraph have fairly obvious answers if you know yourself at all, that don't require extensive tracking of stats to get)

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#53

Post by gardenhedge »

lejalv wrote: post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

Isn't this a drop in the ocean? Why would any 'normal' person forgo flying? How much CO2 emissions have 'world leaders' produced going to summits, or Taylor Swift and her fans flaying to concerts or war flights?

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#54

Post by Bullhorn9268 »

brodo wrote: post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

I too learned this the hard way. I still haven't figured out why this is the case - like, is the inherent incidental irreducible complexity of human life too high, so it dominates majority of our actions?

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#55

Post by flexagoon »

brodo wrote: post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

> The whole "quantified self" movement might be more about OCD and perfectionism than anything else.

Quantified Self, at least in the intended form, is focused on testing specific theories, not on collecting large amounts of data and trying to find something interesting in them.

See, for example:

https://gwern.net/zeo/zeo#what-qs-is-not-just-data-gathering

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#56

Post by terabyterex »

> Back in 2019, I started collecting all kinds of metrics about my life. Every single day for the last 3 years I tracked over 100 different data types - ranging from fitness & nutrition to social life, computer usage and weather.

I know this is the type of person i would not like.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#60

Post by vladms »

alex_duf wrote: post #46
lejalv wrote: post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

Exactly, I stopped reading when I saw the flying stats. There are people who still haven't clocked where our climate is headed. I get that you may have to see family abroad or maybe indulge for a holiday, but this is "I'm using an airplane to commute" kind of level. And here I am trying to book my train tickets to go to London instead of flying even though it costs three times as much just to avoid a few kg of CO2 (a…

Depends where you take the train to London, it is a much nicer experience anyhow than going to airports and people should consider that as well (ignoring climate stuff)!

On the price, the very annoying thing is that fuel for planes is not taxed! Changing this would require quite some effort (falls under some specific laws, that are old and nobody wants to touch, etc.) but I think everybody should just ask "honest tax on fuels!" as this will make less people say (or thin) "but climate change is a hoax". Planes are just unfair competition to other transport due to taxes!

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