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Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

oliveremberton.com

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Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#71

Post by VLM »

levosmetalo wrote: post #52
swombat wrote: post #39

The first 15 years or so of life are just tutorial missions, which suck. There’s no way to skip these. Umm... right. Seriously? That's all the advice this guy has on the first 15 years of life? Reading the rest, it doesn't look like he has much of use to say about anything else either.

Did you seriously expect to learn a meaning of life from a blog post? Or you were expecting an advice how to live better, faster, happier life? It's just a blog post that attempts to be fun. As much as can be expected is few nods and smiles while reading it, and a few seconds pause to think about it at the end. And that's it, it's not like author pretends he's Seneca or Aristotle or semeone else.

"Did you seriously expect to learn a meaning of life from a blog post? Or you were expecting an advice how to live better, faster, happier life?"

Sure. There's plenty of blogs like that, aside from fluffblogs. Almost no one will agree with any given collection but here's one anyway. Mrmoneymustache for personal finance and any generic paleo blog for food, health, and fitness (robb wolf used to be the center of that world, seems he's being out-SEO-ed by competitors now). How much money will improve your life is debatable nonetheless you've got the zerohedge and thehousingbubbleblog. I tend not to agree with them, but thousands (millions?) of religious bloggers at least think they're improving lives, even if I think they're generally doing the opposite. If you allow podcasts (close enough to blogs, read a blog post out loud) there are uncountable educational lecture podcasts (I have listened to about a dozen history related ones, why are history podcasts so popular?) and the survival podcast (which is almost surely not what you think it is, its sort of a how to prosper being a very small scale homesteader, basically this is how to be a non startup non tech non govt handout entrepreneur)

There's probably a difficult and complicated challenge for a startup to categorize blogs as either deep or fluff. In the spirit of PG, everyone thinking its too hard means its a great startup idea.

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#72

Post by datphp »

CmonDev wrote: post #41
onion2k wrote: post #22

Every time I see an article like this I just want to grab the readers and shout "Read a philosophy book!" to them[1]. Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right. [1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy…

I would rather read a short article with pictures then read a 300+ page book. Both of them are subjective views anyway, it's not an exact science.

It's actually as objective as you get, if there is such a thing as "rational".

Rationality is the main principle of "exact" science too, and is a good tool to work within what we know.

Unfortunately, it's also a limitation, and maybe what's preventing us from transcending our bonds[1].

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#73

Post by datphp »

baby wrote: post #66
f_salmon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's a major logical error in it: > At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again. This implies that you have some sort of control between the start and the end - which is completely untrue, because: What genes you get from your parents and in what environment you are put will determine everything that will happen in your head…

> This implies that you have some sort of control between the start and the end - which is completely untrue. You're just saying you believing in destiny. I believe the inverse. And we will never know the truth so please don't start with a "which is completely untrue" when it's just an opinion.

Causality (in which most people believe, even though they never abstracted it far enough to realize the implications)

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#74

Post by VLM »

f_salmon wrote: post #59
onion2k wrote: post #22

Every time I see an article like this I just want to grab the readers and shout "Read a philosophy book!" to them[1]. Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right. [1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy…

And there's a major logical error in it: > At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again. This implies that you have some sort of control between the start and the end - which is completely untrue, because: What genes you get from your parents and in what environment you are put will determine everything that will happen in your head…

You're getting unfairly voted down rather than responded to.

A reasonable disagreement is pointing out you're assuming zero randomness in the universe (which includes in your head, and everyone elses head, I'm not a mind-body dualist) so no development of unique new ideas, or having unique new experiences or perceptions, both of which feed on each other to generate new echos of randomness long after something interesting happens. Also it assumes no social interaction with others however distantly linked to "interesting random people" even if the individual and their direct contacts are in fact really boring (aka effect of arts in general).

That is a much more productive form of disagreement than hitting the down button.

(Edited to add I think you're getting downvoted because of a cultural-linguistic meme or bug that whenever someone in the USA spins a story with "can't or don't judge" that usually means its a known and obvious statement of fact that they did something they and everyone else knows is wrong, and they have no better spin option. Last (modern) refuge of a scoundrel. Thus the downvotes)

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#75

Post by oliveremberton »

swombat wrote: post #39

The first 15 years or so of life are just tutorial missions, which suck. There’s no way to skip these. Umm... right. Seriously? That's all the advice this guy has on the first 15 years of life? Reading the rest, it doesn't look like he has much of use to say about anything else either.

Author here. Originally I had a lot of blather in that section, but given:

1. It's a long post 2. Most of my readers are presumably >15 yrs old 3. I honestly think most people up to age 15 have limited control over their lives

I decided to trim it down. Obviously I am not literally saying that a 14-and-11-months year old has no influence over their destiny but a 15 year old does. But superfluous precision is the enemy of effective writing; you end up with a legal document.

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#76

Post by CJefferson »

oliveremberton wrote: post #75
swombat wrote: post #39

The first 15 years or so of life are just tutorial missions, which suck. There’s no way to skip these. Umm... right. Seriously? That's all the advice this guy has on the first 15 years of life? Reading the rest, it doesn't look like he has much of use to say about anything else either.

Author here. Originally I had a lot of blather in that section, but given: 1. It's a long post 2. Most of my readers are presumably >15 yrs old 3. I honestly think most people up to age 15 have limited control over their lives I decided to trim it down. Obviously I am not literally saying that a 14-and-11-months year old has no influence over their destiny but a 15 year old does. But superfluous precision is the enem…

I would say "pay attention to the tutorial missions. The main game assumes you completed all the tutorials well."

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#77

Post by oliveremberton »

girvo wrote: post #55

This got a whole stack of upvotes, reached #1 on HN... But most of the comments here are super negative. That's weird, why would that be?

Things that are popular are incendiary to those who don't like them.

If an obscure artist makes some music you don't like, nobody cares. But if that artist sells a million records, you'll see an online explosion of rage.

It seems we're wired to react when our tastes don't match those of the groups we hang around in.

Re: Life is a game, this is your strategy guide

#79

Post by VLM »

girvo wrote: post #55

This got a whole stack of upvotes, reached #1 on HN... But most of the comments here are super negative. That's weird, why would that be?

Right out of the site guidelines, "would find interesting". Not "dropping out of my religion to make him my new guru"

Also a long list of things I like is boring and not worth talking about, and probably about the same list for most of us. For example I liked his graphics arts style/technique and the story pacing cannot be improved, and I suspect I'm not alone in those opinions. This guy certainly knows what he's doing WRT those topics. Wasn't that boring to read? I'm sure he would feel better if every post was "dude, love your font choice" fawning, but if he wants blind unconditional love, he should buy a dog, not get submitted to HN.

Somehow nobody has brought up ties to the classic Hasbro "Game of Life" which is the very first thing I thought of when I saw the article. Now that is an observation of something weird happening. I can't be the only HN reader to have played the hasbro game and gotten a mild nostalgia kick...

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