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The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#71

Post by et-al »

JadedEngineer wrote: post #66

Here's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that y…

How did you do these things, though? E.g. traveling is incredibly easy nowadays with smartphones and flying by plane. Have you biked across Euroasia with no internet access and and paper guidebooks? There's a good chance that magic of not knowing what comes next will come back when you ditch the GPS and internet.

btw, I know the other commenters mean well with sharing their experiences, but to be blunt, folks should not be having kids because there's something missing.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#72

Post by voidhorse »

It's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice.

It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report.

I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they certainly aren't heading up tech companies.

Want life advice? Start looking into the history of philosophy and read it widely and deeply. The words are powerful and there's no underlying assumption that life is reducible to making it out the best way we can in the current dominant socio-economic structure; they actually suggest that, gasp dominant systems and structures might not be serving people well. People actually believed in this thing called meaning and thought about how to pursue it beyond fulfilling prescribed roles and desires.

It's so arrogant of these founders to suggest that their personal experience in capitalism is extractable to some set of general principles worthy of moralization. Worse, they do it with the literary style of a lemming. At least the moralists of the 16th and 17th centuries knew how to construct a pithy, catchy aphorism when they were dolling out vague advice. Sheesh.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#73

Post by smegsicle »

JadedEngineer wrote: post #66

Here's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that y…

> The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#74

Post by asdfman123 »

voidhorse wrote: post #72

It's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice. It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report. I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they…

The trick is spending a decade or more of your life inside of an office to the exclusion of virtually every other activity.

Your success will convince you you’re a genius, qualified to comment on anything, but you will have completely killed anything inside yourself that doesn’t involve corporate advancement.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#75

Post by dilyevsky »

winphone1974 wrote: post #36
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of money (relatively speaking, I don't make FAANG money but I don't worry about paying the rent or saving for a rainy day). I have real trouble spending it though. It almost causes me physical pain to spend money on something I don't regard as essential. I don't like to travel, or eat expensive meals, or go to movies, concerts, shows, etc because I hate to spend the money on it. Don't know what the root…

This is awesome! Your attitude and values are only recently "out of date"; previous to the current generation of zero percent financed lifestyles many people achieved success through slow growth savings. I think it's great that you reject the value derived from common consumption because it's less than the cost. I wish more people felt this way

It isn’t tho. You don’t win in life by having the biggest number in your investment account when they put you in the ground. Typical advice here is to spend money on experiences and not “stuff” but it sounds like gp cant even do that

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#76

Post by blackoil »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #34

Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"? All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.

Depends on your definition of successful. Will these advice help make you next tech billionaire. Most probably no, that requires too many dices to land in your favour.

But all of these advice while not novel and may sound superficial, will make you more happier and more successful if followed.

e.g. a ~20%(adjust by country/age) CAGR in income will make most feel monetarily successful no matter what the start point is. Spending less time on TV and more with family/friends will for most give them more happiness. Working hard may not be enough but almost always a pre-requisite.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#77

Post by fauxreb »

block_dagger wrote: post #13

Reminds me of Meditations, also an excellent read.

The thing about Meditations is that it's advice from a Roman Emperor, and, at first blush, more important than the advice of a 30 y.o. tech bro.

But only a few years later Altman has more influence and power than even Aurelius in his time.

We should all read Montaigne instead, the reflections of a man 1400 years later, isolated, considering his influence and how he lives/lived in the world.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#78

Post by [deleted] »

dilyevsky wrote: post #75
winphone1974 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is awesome! Your attitude and values are only recently "out of date"; previous to the current generation of zero percent financed lifestyles many people achieved success through slow growth savings. I think it's great that you reject the value derived from common consumption because it's less than the cost. I wish more people felt this way

It isn’t tho. You don’t win in life by having the biggest number in your investment account when they put you in the ground. Typical advice here is to spend money on experiences and not “stuff” but it sounds like gp cant even do that

[deleted]

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#79

Post by aziaziazi »

winphone1974 wrote: post #36
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of money (relatively speaking, I don't make FAANG money but I don't worry about paying the rent or saving for a rainy day). I have real trouble spending it though. It almost causes me physical pain to spend money on something I don't regard as essential. I don't like to travel, or eat expensive meals, or go to movies, concerts, shows, etc because I hate to spend the money on it. Don't know what the root…

This is awesome! Your attitude and values are only recently "out of date"; previous to the current generation of zero percent financed lifestyles many people achieved success through slow growth savings. I think it's great that you reject the value derived from common consumption because it's less than the cost. I wish more people felt this way

Thank you so much for those words, they are wise and re-fill my confidence level so much for today. Everybody should find it’s own way of “wining in life” as peer said, but probably not by listen and follow “typical advices” as a sole trueness.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

#80

Post by elcritch »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #40
atleastoptimal wrote: post #34

Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"? All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.

Eh, 95th percentile is probably more reasonable. You don't have to be super smart to be successful. In tech you probably have to be pretty smart, but I think being from a well-off family is more important in most cases.

Well we can add a postulate that if you really were smarter then you would’ve been born to a wealthier family to resolve the quandary. Quite elementary. ;)
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