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Four thousand weeks

leebyron.com

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Re: Four thousand weeks

#81

Post by kirso »

localghost3000 wrote: post #3

I’m impressed by the beauty of this site and sophistication of the UI. However I _hate_ this type of messaging that does nothing for you except make your mental health worse. I don’t want to think about how many weeks of life I have left! Inducing existential dread is NOT what any of us need to start living our lives more fully (which I assume is the intent of this site). You wanna zone out on YouTube? Go for it. Tha…

The thing is, it can be both stress and revelation depending on how you look at it. Part of 4000 weeks is a chapter that is called "Cosmic insignificance therapy" which goes along the lines of nothing we do really matters in a grand scheme of things.

Again, depending on how you see it - it can be both shackling but also liberating.

The both of extremes of:

- I want to put my head in the sand and ignore the reality (we are mortal)

- YOLO

are not exactly ideal. As you said yourself => balance.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#82

Post by lossolo »

AngriestLettuce wrote: post #74
deanCommie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone needs to find the level at which they are content with asking no more follow up questions. Happiness and fulfillment are both choices. Otjerwise where does it end? You start worrying about the purpose of your legacy since what does it matter anyway the sun will explode, swallow the earth whole, and eventually the whole universe will go through heat death.

Why does it need to end?

Does it lead to anything good if you will not stop it at certain point? Will you not end up with pure nihilism if it does not end?

Re: Four thousand weeks

#83

Post by bobsmooth »

lakeshastina wrote: post #60

There are a few ways people take such a message - yes, life is precious, be conscious of what we invest our time in. This part makes sense. Yet, it is worth asking, what makes for a meaning life? What makes the 4000 weeks worth it? For some, they chase wealth, power, career success, get one's name recognized, etc - these are milestones to be achieved. Things to accomplish. Others will say, such accomplishments are no…

I've said it before and I'll say it again, hedonism gets a bad rap.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#84

Post by wnolens »

infamousclyde wrote: post #56
Thorentis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sad indictment on modern society that this paragraph is able to be written.

Why did you find the parent comment sad? I'm not sure I understand your sentiment.

The thing that most makes this poster's life worth living is caring for an animal which was engineered to be pleasant to care for. And a lot of people use these animals to replace human relationships (I've seen it quite a few times, so blatantly) as they are simpler and more stable. And the indictment is about society (in which human relationships are really hard to have for so so many reasons), not this poster, who has figured out a real cheat code to life and love (and more power to them)

Re: Four thousand weeks

#85

Post by narrator »

lakeshastina wrote: post #60

There are a few ways people take such a message - yes, life is precious, be conscious of what we invest our time in. This part makes sense. Yet, it is worth asking, what makes for a meaning life? What makes the 4000 weeks worth it? For some, they chase wealth, power, career success, get one's name recognized, etc - these are milestones to be achieved. Things to accomplish. Others will say, such accomplishments are no…

One way to counteract fading memory of events is to sit down and write a few thousand word diary entry when something great happens. Describe the whole experience from start to finish in as much detail as possible. File it away with the time it happened and an appropriate title. I've done this for great experiences in my life. I go back and read them on a regular basis.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#86

Post by lovecg »

Aeolun wrote: post #69

> We treat our time as something to horde I’m having a hard time understanding how this mistake is made. Hoard and horde are not even close to the same. They sound the same, but before you write it, shouldn’t you have read it at least once? Or consider that maybe ‘mass of people’ is probably not the same word that’s used for ‘amass a a bunch of stuff’? Actually, now that I consider it, it makes total sense that you’d…

Some people learn language primarily by sound. Most native speakers learn that way. They’re more likely to swap their/they’re or horde/hoard as for them the scribbles on paper are secondary.

Some people learn language primarily through writing - a lot of non-native speakers learn this way. To them someone making a their/they’re mistake is bewildering, but they mispronounce words in ways that seem strange to the sound-learners.

The two groups don’t under each other’s struggles and often look down on the other’s language ability.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#87

Post by leebyron »

Site creator here! Thanks to all who spent some time reading and scrolling through. I’m happy to see such great discussion here, and gives me some confidence the excerpts pulled were the right ones to get the core ideas across.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#88

Post by AngriestLettuce »

lossolo wrote: post #82
AngriestLettuce wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it need to end?

Does it lead to anything good if you will not stop it at certain point? Will you not end up with pure nihilism if it does not end?

Yeah. Absurdism is pretty rad. Embrace the abyss, and you will never have to gaze directly at it again. Life is inherently meaningless. That means it has any meaning you want it to. Comparing it to the alternatives of what I'm told life is supposed to be all about and mean, I have to say I like making it up as I go along far better. I'll never know everything, and that means I'll always have something to live for. That makes me feel at peace.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#89

Post by sk1pper »

Man, yeah, I feel that; I just don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.

- me, laying on my couch and mindlessly browsing HN

There are things I want to do that I legitimately don’t have time for, even though I have time to browse HN. Or at least, I won’t make time for them, because they’re quite time consuming. I want to learn Japanese, make my own top-down RPG, get a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Build some cool woodworking projects. Start a blog. Photography. Get better at golf. I’m interested in everything, I could rattle off tons more things that I would love to spend time on.

But these must compete with other things I love to do, as well as things I must do.

I’ve been doing some game programming recently and have gotten really excited because I finally have grokked Godot. But, I’m not sure I have the time to actually make my own game of any quality.

Actually just giving up on that project might be freeing. Like when I gave up on Advent of Code on Day 17 due to problems taking me too long, I was more relieved than anything. I think this is what’s behind giving up on the idea of being able to do all of the stuff you want to do.

The problem is that this is fairly soul-crushing. When I have a side project going that I’m really interested in, it’s quite fun and energizing.

But I can be obsessive, so all of this extra energy goes towards the project. I think I end up netting negative, because I’m spending so much time and energy on the project. I will also start to abandon other responsibilities and fall behind in other areas of life. Exercise, chores, other but less sexy projects I care about (meditation is always the first to get discarded).

Eventually I hit a point where I realize I need to get my act together, and by then, letting go of the big project is relieving, but sad.

I guess the problem here is more with the obsessiveness than topics in the article, but they might be related. Like, I‘m constantly chasing novelty. This is probably common nowadays due to the internet. I’m a true geek who loves learning stuff, and I like doing it in a hands on fashion. Having an effectively infinite stream of novel things I can teach myself (minus BJJ and such) to do is just plain addicting.

I’m not quite sure what to do about this. This habit has made me a much better programmer. And I’m always doing something I love doing. But there’s collateral damage to other things I care about. And eventually I start feeling like I have no time to do what I need to do, and also what I want to do.

Re: Four thousand weeks

#90

Post by idiotsecant »

localghost3000 wrote: post #3

I’m impressed by the beauty of this site and sophistication of the UI. However I _hate_ this type of messaging that does nothing for you except make your mental health worse. I don’t want to think about how many weeks of life I have left! Inducing existential dread is NOT what any of us need to start living our lives more fully (which I assume is the intent of this site). You wanna zone out on YouTube? Go for it. Tha…

If you don't feel some existential dread at some point it's because you aren't being honest with yourself, which is a prerequisite to moving past that dread. IMO reminding people that they are mortal and that they should find a way to deal with that is a public service. So many of the strange things we do are because we're afraid to confront the reality that we too, some day, will die.
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