I've been using LibreWolf as my daily driver for a couple of years. Highly recommended!
Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Ranked as the highest for privacy protection in a 2022 study: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/06/15/privacytests-reveals-how-y...
Occasionally, you might get a broken website but to fix it you just click on the shield icon and lower the privacy settings.
Looks like plastics can enter the body through sweat glands. I threw away all my polyester workout clothing (which I loved to use) because of this concern.
Call me paranoid but I'm going 100% cotton and linen. Not keen on getting my hormones disrupted by inhaling and absorbing microplastics!
So many comments get caught on the wording 'deanonymization'.
Is there a standardized definition of 'deanonymization' accross industry experts, privacy-conscious people and hackers?
For many commenters, it looks like deanonymization means unveiling highly sensitive info like name, address, email, etc.
For privacy-conscious individuals and hackers, it looks like it means 'revealing a data point that shouldn't be revealed'.
As a signal or Discord user, I would expect my country location not to be revealed to a person I don't know. So the latter definition makes sense to me.
As you say, it depends on the person but I think for most people an acceptable definition is "deanonymization reveals PII". What qualifies as PII depends on the context/jurisdiction but typically an IP address would be considered PII whereas country (or a similar broad region) would not.
You're absolutely right it's dangerous. It's likely that I gave myself cancer by adopting this 'simplistic truth'.
A decade ago I read about the keto diet and thought "why not?". Lots of positive stories about dropping weight fast, getting mental clarity and starving cancer.
A few years later, I was diagnosed with a rare Leukaemia (with a distinctive BRAF mutation).
I was too young to have a cancer so I thought... maybe this keto thing is not so good after all?
Cue to several Pubmed rabbit holes, where I find studies suggesting that one of the ketones (acetoacetate) promotes tumor growth in BRAF-related cancers (melanoma, colorectal, hairy cell leukemia, and others).
Well, that was the moment I stopped doing stupid 'hacks' with my body and strictly adhere to the 'common sense diet' - ie eating like my grandpa did.
While I can't confirm 100% that my cancer was triggered by the keto diet, I have a strong suspicion it did.
So yeah, before going online and stating grandiose things like "cancer starve on ketones, they need glucose" let's all acknowledge that we humans know very little about what's going on with cancer, and the potential adaptations it can do.
It also doesn't pass the smell test for me because some of the most long-lived, relatively cancer-resistent populations like the Japanese eat carb based diets. That's hard to explain if it really is just a case of replacing glucose in the fuel mixture with fat and ketones.
+1 for the 'grandpa diet', I also feel best eating normally
Exactly... the whole point of the post is to elaborate on the problems of the modern internet (addiction, fakeness, shallowness...). It's not a subjective nostalgic rant but a good analysis of everything that's wrong with today's internet.
I get what you're saying. It has character, that's for sure :)
But have you tried to actually perform a task? Ie "I want to buy an animal-shaped robot".
Your eyes don't have anchor points in such a chaotic layout, it's very easy to get lost, miss items, and forget which items you already checked and which ones not.
Users probably get a brain seizure after 1 minute trying to actually find a product.
Beautiful writing. It comes at an interesting time for me.
I'm in a full blown mid-life crisis where my state of mind fluctuates between full contentment and wishing I was doing more with life. This article made me think.
On the one hand, I'm content because I come from an unprivileged background. My family was abusive. Me and my brothers struggled with mental health. We ran away from home as soon as we could. Where I was born there were not any decent jobs, so the future was bleak.
Today, I have a decently-paid job in tech, good life/work balance, a nice clean house, and self-caring habits. I have a great mental and physical health, good relationships and a decent financial position. I traveled the world and had incredible experiences. I've got everything I dreamed about when I struggled mentally, physically and financially.
On the other hand, achieving all my dreams took me to a place where my mind says "I've done it all, let's just enjoy what I've got. Let's enjoy life". And that works for a while but then one day I resent being too complacent. I want to do more. Launch projects, earn more money, live more experiences. The voice of ambition says: "you're 45 years old, stop thinking like a 80 year old, move your ass and live more life"
Still working to find that fine balance between contentment and ambition. As a human I'm skeptic I will find the right answer. We tend to work in cycles/moods...
I’ve achieved everything I set out to in life, at least everything I have control over and set out to do when I was in my 20s.
I’ve added a new ambition after some thought, not sure if I’ll manage to squeeze it in.
But I see the second half of my life now as predominantly about “service”. I think it’s important for everyone to have a life, to do the things they love, to follow some ambition or passion and take care of themselves. But we then need to ensure we help others do the same.
So my focus now is on my parents, family members, my partner, and society. I’m very grateful I had the health and opportunity to build and see what I wanted. Now it’s payback. I still do selfish things - I have to in order to stay sane - but the focus is on service.
I feel the same. I spent the first 15 years of my career climbing out of poverty. Now, I've got stability, so the last few years I'm focusing on service towards others.
I've been volunteering for the last two years as a firefighter, and yesterday just finished the required ride alongs to complete my EMT. It feels good to deeply integrate with my local community, caring for neighbors when they need help. Between emergency response and a software engineer apprenticeship program I run I am spending a significant amount of time each week on community service. I feel safer and more connected to my community than ever before. It's been amazing for my anxiety.
Very interesting. I just finished my EMT and starting OEC for ski patrol Monday. And interviews for volunteer EMT early may. Even though my grandfather was a firefighter but died early. I'm more interested in EMT. My dad did the climbing out of poverty but also died early so I don't know what he would have done "of service", maybe just left it to my mom who was a court child advocate.
So far just the ride alongs (you can help a little) at fire, EMT, ski patrol have been great. And the training as well. Much more interesting and fulfilling than just vegging out on Netflix after a week in tech.
Same. Still climbing out. It’s been a decade for me, but that’s counting college where I was working to keep my family okay alongside school. Been a full time software engineer since 2020, still wading through debt and helping my family stay afloat. Reading this thread has done some good for my soul.
> I want to do more. Launch projects, earn more money, live more experiences.
The only thing you need is to stop this idea that living a richer life means earning/spending a lot of money / reaources. There's so much personal development you can do without participating in the materialistic rat race.
> There's so much personal development you can do without participating in the materialistic rat race.
That takes money, although in a different form: time.
I can only enjoy those experiences if I have time for them (and I’m not talking about enjoying them after working 8h during the day, because I end up exhausted and cannot enjoy anything at all).
So, in order to enjoy things I need to work less, which means less money. That’s the price. It’s always money
This exactly. I’d love to not have to work for a living so I could spend my days tinkering on projects, drawing, learning an instrument, etc. There’s so much to learn and resources to do so have never been more abundant or readily available. There’s enough to keep a person busy for several lifetimes.
But that requires money. A lot of it, if that’s what I want to do from today in my mid-30s onward.
I’m already doing some of this in my spare time and I’m grateful for the ability and opportunity to do so — having come from a poor background it’s absolutely not taken for granted — but having to work to live means everything else is pushed off into the margins with whatever energy and passion is leftover. I want to be able to get obsessed with and lost in whatever I’m pursuing like I did as a teenager, and that’s not feasible as long as a job is commanding most of my waking productive hours.
This is true for almost all of us though? Nearly everyone has to work at least 5x 8 hour days a week - some much more. Some have complex family needs that must be attended to before any personal time can even be considered.
There is always some time though, it just needs to be made and scheduled and worked on. We can choose to veg out in front of Netflix, or doom scroll, or peruse hacker news, but we can also choose to do something else possibly more fulfilling.
Of course not as good as having more disposable money and fewer work commitments but painting it as an all or nothing situation feels very defeatist.
My wife used to have a much harder job than mine. Social, active, moving around, thinking on her feet, lots of prep, high stakes sometimes, somewhat abusive environment. She left it for WFH and a non-programming computer-heavy office job.
After a couple weeks, one day she said to me, “Now I understand why you’re so worn-out after work hours”
I’ve felt a lot more refreshed and ready to do stuff after working physical jobs or (especially) lightly-physical jobs that involve little or no computer use, than after a day of cushy office work.
It’s not the sitting. Standing desks and walking breaks don’t help much. Computer work is just bizarrely draining.
I spent many years feeling guilty about this. Particularly during covid when, on paper, there wasn't a lot else going on.
Anecdotally, the thing to remember is that you brain is an organ - Even professional trainers can't do their workouts more then 3-4 hours a day. Why would one expect that the brain can magically work 8-10 hours at max intensity?
If you observe any job, workers have downtime - in the office, this would happen organically. Teams would get bored and chit chat, hallway conversations would go on too long etc.
With WFH - it's entirely possible to work 8-12 hours a day. This is the mental equivalent of endurance racing, burnout is inevitable at this pace - just like injury would be for athletes trying to train at that schedule.
That's the exact opposite of my experience. I grew up on a farm, and as you might imagine it involved hard physical labor daily. I would 100x rather do my current job as a systems engineer. It's so much easier than working on the farm that I feel guilty sometimes, because I know that I work 1/10 as hard as people making 1/5 of what I do.
They're not saying it's harder, just that it leaves you not wanting to do other things when you're done, and in a way that doesn't map to traditional physical fatigue, which is why it's "weirdly" taxing and not just taxing.
Mental and emotional fatigue accrue and exhibit themselves differently sometimes, but often matter quite a bit in the end. Plenty of people choose to leave well paid office jobs for more physical jobs that pay less. Unless you think they have a mental illness or are stupid, presumably they did it for a good reason.
I used to be a high school teacher and, though not as physically taxing as working on a farm, I feel the same about how much easier my current tech job is.
It depends upon the person and the exact situation, but it's a fundamentally different kind of tired. My students marvel at this.
They can tinker with mechanical things for a 12 hour crunch session before a robotics competition, and end up achy, hangry, and physically tired. But it might not be as exhausting as as an intense 1.5 hour math class or chasing a bug staring at screens for a couple of hours.
Computer work is so far outside the realm of what we as humans have been doing as “work” since the dawn of time. I wonder how significant that is? Could we be evolutionarily or culturally ill-suited to working this way?
I wonder if it's to do with always focusing on the same distance. When doing a job where you're walking, your eyes are constantly focusing at different distances and taking in lots of information that's more rich than any website can give you.
Maybe constant screen time just tells your body "hey you can relax, nothing is around to attack you"
I've noticed that too. Its an unnatural thing for the body to do, interacting with a computer or other digital device for that length of time. I've never walked away from using the computer feeling charged and rejuvenated, even when working on something I enjoy. Not mentally, I am referring to a whole body feeling.
I believe the vibrations emanating from digital devices is partly incompatible with human biology, so the body spends significant energy trying to maintain its default "state" so to speak, which is why it feels draining to use computer for long stretches of time. If you read a book for hours on end, it would not have the same effect so its not purely the sedentary nature of it.
In qi-gong practice, there is a concept known as "drawing" where you can increase your strength and vitality from being in proximity to different objects. For example, if I put you in a room full of plants and natural sunlight, you WILL become physically stronger instantly. If I put you in a server computer room, you will become physically weaker instantly. The body is constantly adjusting its "aura".
I don't know the science behind it, but it is easy to experiment with. Have someone resist a push while in a wide stance while holding in their left hand
1. a phone in their hand turned on
2. hold a living plant
3. glass of water
4. a battery
See if you can feel the difference in your ability to resist the push. It will change based on the object in your hand.
There is some challenges:
1. the pusher has to have correct form and measured strength. By correct form, it means you know how to correctly use your body to create an effective push (standing too close to not engage your legs, only using your arms to push, etc) Measured strength means similar force each time to have a base to compare to.
2. the pushee has to maintain a "neutral" state and provide the same amount of resistance on every push, to maintain the "control" group.
3. enough sensitivity as the pusher to feel the different levels of resistance provided by the pushee. On some pushes, the pushee might feel "heavier" or "lighter"
4. Patience. Whatever object you are holding has an effect on your body and most people cannot feel it initially. In fact, it takes years to cultivate enough sensitivity to feel subtle changes.
I think there has been some research on this topic in regards to wearing synthetic clothing made of nylon or polyester.
Plants, nature, etc. will for sure make people feel better compared to sitting in front of a computer. They will not make you instantly stronger or weaker... I guarantee that no double-blind experiment will ever show such effects.
Well, not entirely. What you hold subtly affects your response to a push, and the effect can be dramatic. The pusher, with eyes closed, will notice the difference.
In 1999, I started my first job out of college with a salary of $30,000 per year. I spent most of the day coding in a cubicle. It was analytically satisfying but not what I truly wanted to do. It was also quite stressful, and the hours were long. I had chosen computer science because I was moderately good at it, and I hoped it would help me pay off my $50,000 in college loans.
In my first week of work, I realized I needed to find a way out. I had a hunch that the path I was on would not end well. I found an online group of people with similar thoughts. They were into "simple living," inspired by a book called "Your Money or Your Life." After reading it, I created a spreadsheet and started plotting numbers. I calculated that by continuously reducing my expenses and saving everything beyond a minimal lifestyle, and investing it in index funds, I could reach a point where my investments matched my spending.
For the next 25 years, I kept reducing my spending and invested the surplus into the S&P 500. At the time, that was considered a very aggressive move, as a more conservative strategy was recommended. But, I decided to give it a try. I forwent a consumer lifestyle. I didn't travel much and spent most of my free time reading. When I eventually started a family, I devoted time to them. I had to put on blinders, though. The cars, houses, lavish vacations, fancy dining, clothes, gadgets—I ignored all that. I bought houses in the poorest neighborhoods and fixed them up. I drove the cheapest cars that were reliable. I adopted a simple wardrobe. I bought second hand. I figured out how to make nutritious, delicious meals from the least expensive ingredients. Often, I felt like I was missing out compared to my peers, especially as wages in the industry grew. But, I endured and stuck to the plan.
These days, this movement seems to have evolved into FI/RE. Although it's not quite the same, it probably has similar goals.
I saw a few people make huge payoffs from startups and IPOs, so I tried that too. But it was terrible for my mental health, and I quickly learned that the board and the CEO were not on the side of the common worker—they had no intention of sharing their payouts. I worked for four failed startups with some more steady work in between. In hindsight, I don't recommend it. It wasn't worth it. I made less money than my peers, and I put too much of myself into the products I helped build. In the end, only those with money made more money. The rest of us got shafted.
But the moral of the story is, if you have 25 years, you might also be able to do it. Times have changed, though. But there's still probably an intersection point. The opportunities are greater than they ever have been. Given today's wages, I could have probably reached my goals 10 years earlier.
The transition to retiring early wasn't without its pains. I hadn't fully envisioned a future, and when I finally met my goals, I realized time had changed. In the years that followed, I experienced significant anguish because the dreams I once had (becoming an artist, going into academia) were no longer realistic. I needed over two years just to recover from burnout. But now, I'm finally somewhat satisfied but still quite lost and with anxiety. But, I feel the best I've felt since my 20s, and things get better every day.
> it would help me pay off my $50,000 in college loans
If you have teenagers who want to go to university, consider encouraging them to learn German and then study in Germany. In 2021, the average monthly spendings of a student at a German public university were between 783 - 1.896 €, depending on the location.[1] (University fees are included in this number and range between 14 and 136 € per month. Sometimes there apply moderate additional fees for non-EU students, depending on their nationality.) Non-EU students are at least eledgible for working at the university as research assistants and thus, if they are clever, can earn an income to cover some of these costs.
German schools also ruthlessly cull students beginning in grade 4 or 5. Only a small number ever get the opportunity to go to university at all, let alone at those fees.
German universities are relatively cheap because they keep the eligibility pool small. That reduces the cost to the state.
> Only a small number ever get the opportunity to go to university at all
In 2022, 56.4% of people living in Germany of a yearly cohort started university (including universities of higher education/Fachhochschule). 51.7% of males, 61.5% of females. 473,665 people (this number includes some foreign students, though) out of a population of aprox. 84 million. All in all, 2,915,700 people studied in Germany. I would not call that number "small".
The student quotient for the US is somewhat higher, but German and foreign systems are often not well comparable, because there are a lot of advanced vocational training programs in Germany outside of university that are equivalent or even better than many university programs in other countries.
not needing to wait in line at a check cashing or payday loan office, not needing to wait in the ER because you can’t afford primary care, not needing to get your car fixed every year because you can afford one with fewer miles.
There’s a lot of hidden time costs if you’re not well off.
Hell just the time sink of using a laundromat with defective machines vs filling up your own machine and moving over loads when it’s convenient for you
> The only thing you need is to stop this idea that living a richer life means earning/spending a lot of money / reaources. There's so much personal development you can do without participating in the materialistic rat race.
If you launch projects to gain fame, sure it is materialistic. But you can work on projects that help you understand things better, or to build the personality you want to have, both of which are the opposite of materialism.
They aren't egoistic as well, because you can then share your solutions with others, which are also going to benefit from it.
> But you can work on projects that help you understand things better
Sure. Although it seemed OP mentioned this in a different context since it was immediately followed by "earn more money".
I think the real distinction whether these projects are outwards oriented or inwards. How do you measure the success? Is it by the adoption numbers or by the things you've learned and the time you enjoyed?
This is my focus. Though admittedly selfish, I'm spending time learning more songs on the guitar, improving my cooking skills, mastering a new language, etc. Once our children are out of the house, I plan to also become more involved in supporting our community.
It took time to understand that my time is better spent supporting our kids' activities and maintaining an organized home than chasing another promotion.
As a young cs students where even the uni professors tell us there's more about it than just money, what would you say is something regarding personal development to do?
Learning things for fun and not just for profit. Physical development, learning a new sport. Spiritual development, meditating, observing. Engaging in arts, creating, exploring. Helping the less fortunate, volunteering, teaching. Traveling, learning about different cultures, different languages. Cooking. Spending time in nature, watching animals, birds, mushrooms, sunsets. Photography. These are just some examples, the list is endless :-)
Personally I’ve grown a lot from gardening and weightlifting. Having children made me more human.
During my late 20s I realised I was very good at my programming job but not much use at anything else. It was quite a disappointing realisation.
I started to do less and eventually no programming outside of office hours and instead invest my spare time in different hobbies and experiences.
I found gaining these new skills really helped build my confidence. 15 years later I'm not just a programmer, I'm a also a motorcyclist, experienced carpenter, been a member of certain meet up groups for over a decade, travelled to a few exotic locations, flown upside down in a plane, the list goes on.
None of these things are exceptional but doing this extra stuff has given me enough dimensions that I kind of feel comfortable with the way I've done the last 15 years. This along with starting a relationship and building a family is enough for me now.
Sure, I could have done more but compared to the corporate quagmire of my 20s things are very different.
I can relate to this pretty strongly, although on a slightly earlier timeline. Went through a similar period of focusing entirely on coding in my teens and early 20s, always occupied by personal projects when not studying etc. Realized how much of myself I had cut off for that (and how little value it'd hold on its own) and started diversifying what I did in downtime, and now I seldom code outside of work.
I haven't outright dropped coding for personal projects, rather just that the singular task of coding doesn't define my down time. Instead I've picked up tinkering with electronics, building and playing with 3d printers, learning languages and drawing. I feel like as a result I've become closer to my idea of the kind of person I'd find interesting and attractive, someone who has a variety of aspects to themselves rather than just being defined by being a 'rockstar' at their job.
Initially I had worried that this would cause me to fall behind professionally, but so far that hasn't really been an issue, I still typically end up having tinkered with some new technology well before it becomes relevant professionally.
Get a hobby that you can do outdoors with other people. Hiking, hunting, paddling, sailing, bouldering, volunteering, playing sports, LARPing, reenacting...
Embed yourself into the local community, become a pillar of it.
Start a family and support your children, don't try to mould them into what you wish you could have been.
No distractions like friends? No awareness that Max has headlines like "forged by his father's beatings and humiliation?" You should probably seek a less results driven focus on life, perhaps with a therapist, unless just trolling in which case carry on. But regardless, there's an article called "Why we stopped making Einsteins" that you may find interesting.
I'm not trolling. I have been against having children in the past, doing the whole beta bucks provider role thing for a family, basically just other people living off me , well that seemed ridiculous to me. However when I reframed the situation as being able to respawn myself and achieve my dreams through my kid it makes it very interesting. Many other men have done this. Some may disagree but it's not illegal to do it. I had a quick look at "Why we stopped making Einsteins". Some good ideas there thanks.
A lot of footballers are only in the game for the money. I will manipulate the kid into being extremely materialistic and build his entire ego and self image around the football.
I would disagree. If you think only about yourself - yes, it's not about the money. But if you want make life of your children, grandchildren, etc better, the only answer is money, building generational wealth.
You can work a whole life for generation wealth only to have your kid spend it all in one month as soon as you die. Or to waste away not doing anything while receiving monthly from a trust fund.
Everyone decides what their life to be about, but I'd reflect on leaving too much of your life's meaning to "kick in" only when you're dead. If your whole purpose is to "set your family up forever", a lot of that is out of your control. Whereas if your purpose is to hang out have fun and support each other's goals, usually you can do that right away
Absolutely not. Children and grandchildren are their own persons. The world is full of people who got rich through heritage and who live miserable lives - even when being materially fulfilled.
I would add that this state of mind denotes a characteristic control anguish.
When you're dead, you're dead. You need to let go.
Depends on the definition of “success”. If it’s about raising good people, with decent values and a drive to make the world better, a fat inheritance is probably not a good predictor.
The single most impactful thing for making your children's life better is being a present parent. Be part of their life, be there when they have fun and when they have worries. Listen to them, help them navigate life. I've seen many parents chasing wealth, leaving their kids lonely and psychologically marked.
The obituary does not show Ray had any modern obsession with money - the article does allude to a couple of Ray's jobs.
“We’ve had a good life,” he said to me nearly every time I visited in his final year, and I knew it to be true even if it might have seemed odd from a distance. On paper, this small life above Clear Creek should have left a long list of regrets, of what ifs. But this life was the life, the very thing he and my grandmother Grace set out to make when they married in the little church up the road in 1954.
The best time of his life was when his girls were little, Ray said as he neared the end. He and Grace raised two daughters: Joy (pictured left) and Debbie.
The modern disease of setting money as a primary goal is missing the point of life. We use money for the things we want. Concentrate on the wants and consider why you want those things. Keep your eye on the ball.
> generational wealth.
What do your kids want that means they need your money? To go to university and join the same treadmill as you? Personally I wanted to earn my own way in life - I didn't want to live off my parents (although I probably could have). Independence is another modern goal. I have retired early, but money in itself brings many many unobvious problems. It doesn't magically give me an obviously better life than my friends (who are on a very wide range of incomes).
We are all given approximately 70 years - be very very careful how you spend yours. Perhaps listen to a few good people that have spent more of their 70 years than you have, and learn what they have learned over time.
“A young boy became a monk. He dreamed of enlightenment and of learning great things. When he got to the monastery he was told that each morning he had to chop wood for the monks fires and then carry water up to the monastery for ablutions and the kitchen. He attended prayers and meditation, but the teaching he was given was rather sparse.
One day he was told to take some tea to the Abbot in his chambers. He did so and the Abbot saw he looked sad and asked him why.
He replied every day all I do is chop wood and carry water. I want to learn. I want to understand things. I want to be great one day, like you.
The Abbot gestured to the scrolls on shelves lining the walls. He said, ‘When I started I was like you. Every day I would chop wood and carry water. Like you I understood that someone had to do these things, but like you I wanted to move forward. Eventually I did. I read all of the scrolls, I met with Kings and and gave council. I became the Abbot. Now, I understand that the key to everything is that everything is chopping wood and carrying water, and that if one does everything mindfully then it is all the same.'” [1]
I’m not an expert on Buddhism but this anecdote/story has never been particularly insightful to me. One criticism I have is that it treats Enlightenment/knowledge etc. as a single transferable piece of knowledge, and seems to not notice the impact of process and undergoing the ritual. “The journey is the destination” and so forth.
Chopping wood and carrying water may be the answer, but you might not realize the significance of that answer without deeply probing the question.
The word "mindfully" at the end carries too much meaning that can't be unpacked without reading a bunch of books. This story looks identical to many stories told in the dzogchen branch of buddhism. The basic idea is that normal life is full of earthly activities: chopping woods and carrying water. An average mind gets distracted by those activities and is dragged passively from one distraction to another. An enlightened mind watches these earthly activities with full attention, like you would watch colorful butterflies, but is not carried away from deep realisation that these butterflies come and go as simple decorations of the neutral state of mind, which is often called "emptiness". When these two qualities meet - emptiness and clarity of perception - the mind enters the natural state and if you can stay in that state while chopping woods and carrying water, you're enlightened. If chopping woods carries you away from that natural state, you're said to be "distracted".
Right - in that story that requisite process has slunk into the background - that "everything is chopping wood" means something quite different to someone who has read all the scrolls, and counseled all the kings, and attained the role of Abbot.
The fact about wood-chopping is the product of enlightenment, not the cause of it.
It is because any task you have mastered is going through the motions. On one hand I agree that the Abbott is being trite, because the boy wants more variety. On the other hand, the Abbott's point is that each variety becomes stale as part of the experience. I think the boy should be given more variety earlier and the story is dumb.
I completely relate to this. At 41 years old, I met my life's goal, a goal I never thought I would attain (and it's not wealth). Rather than be empowering and celebratory, that turned out to be debilitating, taking me years, until I found a new path. I'm still starting down that path, but at least now I have a goal that will take me 20-25 more years.
People will tell you to focus on you. People will tell you to focus on money. People will tell you to focus on neither. The reality is that what motivates you, gives you meaning, and continues to propel you might change. There's no right answer, and that's healthy. The process, I think is the important part, no matter how painful that may be.
I used to struggle with this too, until I started studying Stoicism. Here's a quote from Marcus Aurelius’ meditations 6.15 that I think about often:
“Ambition means tying your well being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions."
>On the other hand, achieving all my dreams took me to a place where my mind says "I've done it all, let's just enjoy what I've got. Let's enjoy life". And that works for a while but then one day I resent being too complacent. I want to do more. Launch projects, earn more money, live more experiences. The voice of ambition says: "you're 45 years old, stop thinking like a 80 year old, move your ass and live more life"
Is that "voice of ambition" your voice, or just what society or peers or media influencers (like grind vloggers) conditioned you to want?
Im kinda in the same boat. Recently got a dog and have been finding absolute bliss in literally just sitting in the grass with him for like 30 mins at a time. Really is the highlight of my life at this juncture and im totally cool with that.
Have you considered getting into art? I find art projects to be big motivator and fills me with ambition. The great thing is I do it for myself so I can feel content knowing I don't need to fulfill the needs of an audience. You can be ambitious as you want. Making concrete sculptures, woodworking,oil painting, restoring old furniture, developing a game (physical or digital), writing short stories, researching and writing a book or zine on a random niche subject. I find that making art fills that hole that exists when I'm not doing much in life.
I tried getting into some forms of art (mostly drawing) many times, but in the end I always find it contrived and pointless. Basically a more taxing version of playing bingo to pass the time.
There is a discontent that is fundamental to creation. After all, if what exists was enough, then why create anything? The wide variety of human personalities (on a long timescale) and moods (short timescale) is nothing less than Nature performing a great Search. What She is searching for is unknown, past mere survival. It makes sense to me to place that discontent in the context of a broader survival, the survival of the species, long-term. Something that other life cannot contemplate or work towards, but we can. And insofar as we are embedded in an ecosystem, it means protecting Life on Earth, and also spreading it beyond Earth. Lives well lived, quietly, like this man's, are both a triumph and a dead-end, simultaneously. It seems reasonable that a wide diversity of lives are needed and wanted by nature, or we wouldn't have them, and all of them are useful in their way.
Everyone I’ve ever known who struggled in this manner has narrowed it down to lack of purpose.
If you have a reason to live, it’s not ambition that keeps you going, nor contentment. It’s a reason to do something. My buddy finds purpose in personal improvement (working out a couple hours a day), I find it in shaping the future and being with my little ones.
Traveling, luxury, comfort is not a purpose. It’s fine; but it’s not food for your soul, so to speak. One easy thing to do is join a community and contribute in someone (that breeds purpose as people rely on each other).
For me, struggling and learning is what I enjoy. Within that framework, it’s not about payout or fame, only the worthy challenge. As I begin to realize this about myself, I have become less worried about measuring achievement, which removes a good deal of the pressure.
I'm not the person you asked, but for me it's that I'm interested in solving problems. Not for money or recognition, but because I don't want to tolerate the problem anymore. If seeing it solved means doing more, then I have to do more.
Listen to the call to do. Many great ideas and new business models came from those in their 40s. The other tack is to do some kind of giving back, not so much money but something for love not profit. You have perspective from arising from suboptimal conditions.
I took me a long time to realize it, but the "right" answer here is to focus on living one day at a time, regardless how far or close you're currently setting your aim towards.
I am also 45 and on a similar current situation as you (although I luckily come from a privileged background). One thing that is working a lot for me is trying to become a professional fiction writer.
There is a lot a of ambition and uncertainty in it. I always enjoyed writing (whatever the context, not only fiction) and now I enjoy getting better at writing fiction. I enjoy being part of a group of other wanna-be writers with the same goals and challenges. I made real friends this way. I enjoy listening podcasts, videos, interviews from experienced authors. I am even enjoying more working on some software side-projects that are related to literature (in general or my own).
At the same, there is very little chance that this endeavor will have any financial return. In Brazil, where I live, you can count in the dozens the number of writers that live solely from the income of book royalties and in the hundreds the number of writers that live from literature (royalties + workshops, online courses, literary services, etc).
So, even some successful authors that have decent number of readers (for Brazil's context) and some awards, have a day job.
This, interestingly for me, who has a well-paid job, removes the pressure of this project of mine. Since it is an art project, to not have the pressure of needing to earn money, actually makes my art better, I have more patience and time to reflect upon it (ironically, increasing my chances to earn money through my art).
But I still have the pressure to earn readers. It's not like I am painting paintings that I am happy enough to complete and leave them on my house studio. I am not doing art for myself, but for others. That's where the ambition part come from. Which I like.
I don't think this comes from a mid-life crisis, as I write short stories since my twenties. It's only now that I have the time, money, and, I might say, wisdom to be able to do it seriously. Writing is one form of art that benefits a lot from like experience.
Just to share what worked for me, and maybe you can find something for you that fits the bill of being an ambitious project that you hope to achieve something meaningful from, but that it's not necessarily attached to financial outcomes. The privilege of being able to be professional about something that might not return more money, even if successful, is something that I treasure a lot.
You've managed to move on from a situation where you were deprived of security, both with respect to love and money, to a new situation where you are secure at a relatively young age. That's a huge achievement. I would suggest first contemplating what you have achieved. You sound like an ambitious individual, and you should recognise how much you have done from a poor start.
It's natural that the things you once craved were things that would lead you to achieve your goal of security. It's also natural that now you are secure, you no longer need money etc. If you're still ambitious, then you are now in the lucky position where you can be a bit more playful. You have bought yourself the opportunity to try new things, to explore your values. To think about what really excites you.
Don't feel bad that you don't know what those are yet. You've gone from meeting existential needs to now thinking about fulfilment. What an exciting time of your life!
It's at this point that you may discover you have something you want to give, to your family, community, yourself. Your prosperity is the beginning of freedom. Very lucky position. Also very painful when you come into contact with others suffering, but this must be faced. You have something to give, which is full of meaning.
It sounds like you need a hobby, or some kind of activity that isn't work or to make money. Others suggested volunteer work, but it could be joining a hobby community or developing a hobby for that matter. I have colleagues that train for big sporting events, know nerds that organize get-togethers for their nerdy activities and work on outfits, and perhaps a previous generation, but people would go to the pub after work to chat shit and watch sports. A third place, as it's also called.
The article mentions a lot of family, I believe that's one thing my grandparents did as well; with seven kids, most of which who have kids of their own, that's a lot of birthday parties to attend.
I know what you are saying and the best I can come up with is to keep the ambition but give up on the result. I find this keeps me actively involved in things but with no expectation on outcome. When things do come to fruition I find I'm pleasently surprised that everything came together.
If that itch might be saying "do more to shape the future", one way to scratch it is by working with young people. Mentor a robotics team or something.
I agree. Very similar situation; I can't help but feel like I am the middle-aged trope in movies; best of luck finding the answer; if you do, please share!
And we all know how things go from there.
First, eID is implemented as "just another, more convenient way to log in to your online services". Then, private organizations get pressure to implement eID (through soft power or legislation). Major forums and news websites adopt eID. As the user base grows, legacy semi-anonymous ID systems get decommissioned progressively (i.e. simple email). Now every action you perform on the Internet, and every opinion you post is directly tied to your legal ID. Authorities can use that to prosecute dissenters, oppress voices and narratives contrary to their interests. The bad guys will still have their spaces as they will use their own tech.
Call me a conspiracist, cynic or pessimistic, but in some countries like the UK people are getting police visits for having the wrong opinion on Twitter. We're giving authoritarians way too much space and tools for oppression. We're building a shitty world where the powerful class will have even more power to do as they wish, and the man in the street have less and less rights and tools to fight against power.
What anonymity?
eID is used by government services (which already know who you are because they issue your ID in the first place) and 3rd parties which rely on this identity. They only get access to data they need, you always have overview and control of it, right to be forgotten etc.
Yes but it enables services like facebook to do ID validation on everyone. It'll be much harder to stay anonymous because it removes a barrier to identifying oneself.
It starts with the government's own services but random third party operators are not ruled out, this is a fundamental building block for an "internet access pass" for all but the most niche sites like this one.
Right now Facebook only asks for ID in case of obvious fake names, because it's a huge barrier to ask people to send theirs just to create an account. This should remain a barrier.
If I flip the switch, one man will die because of my actions. If I don't flip the switch, 5 people will die because of bad luck.
I'm inclined to let destiny decide the outcome and save the one man. Am I alone here?
The concept you're describing is known as moral indulgence or moral self-indulgence: When a person refuses to do the right thing because they want to keep their hands clean. When you're standing at the switch you have agency and should be prepared to own your action. "Five people were struck by a trolley because I lacked the moral fortitude to save them."
>When you're standing at the switch you have agency and should be prepared to own your action.
The problem is people don't stand at these switches. They have to go out of their way to stand at them. They probably aren't even aware that there is a switch. They probably don't know what the effect of the switch is. Yet somehow they have to pull it and get it correct, with no one to support them in making that decision?
This isn't some amateur aircraft landing scenario, where you get assistance by the control tower.
This answer makes a lot of sense from an observational perspective because, in reality, a lot of people decide based on someone else doing something (or perceived to be doing something) instead of using the direct and relevant information at hand.
In other words, what I mean to say is that your response (and similar ones) are quite common.
Why are those 5 people there? How can I be sure they'd be killed? How can I be sure they don't want to be killed. It's not wrong not to kill the one man because you can't be sure of the situation.
There are variations of this (incredibly, incredibly boring) problem that consider this. The five people are workers, the one person is a trespasser, or they're all workers, or all trespassers and so on.
> It's not wrong not to kill the one man because you can't be sure of the situation.
People don't make decisions with perfect information. We make decisions based on the best information we have available. Refusing to sacrifice one to save five because you don't know how they ended up there smacks of making excuses to get out of making hard choices.
>People don't make decisions with perfect information.
That is exactly the reason why the trolley problem is bad. People don't make decisions with perfect information, but the trolley problem is such a perfect information problem.
The thing is, people follow some sort of behavioural pattern that simplifies reality. Shooting people with guns is bad, therefore killing people with switches is bad. Choosing to kill people with switches might make them more likely to kill people with guns and people with guns are more of a danger than people not flipping switches.
These heuristics aren't optimal in theoretical scenarios that test the limits, but they work in every day scenarios.
The trolley problem has more information and stats than someone is likely to ever encounter but it’s hardly an inconceivable level of information for a thought experiment
Assume all things are sure. The point of the moral conflict is to address the core problem of the moral dilemma not side details and speculative hypotheticals.
Thanks for your feedback. It's brave to judge a moral position as wrong, as that implies the judge is some sort of omniscient god :)
Thinking more about it, in my case it's the number of people what would push me to take action. I feel 5 lives vs 1 is not worth enough for me to change destiny. If it was 100 lives vs 1, I would definitely take action (sorry fat man). I'm not still not sure about 10 vs 1. I guess in the moment I'd go with my intuition.
Utilitarianism assumes we have all the facts, yet we never do. We talk of "saving" lives but that's incorrect: no life is ever "saved"; the inevitable moment of death can be postponed a little -- and with unforeseeable consequences.
Utilitarianism and its more recent avatars like "effective altruism" intends to replace moral questioning with math from elementary school. The world doesn't work that way. Never has, never will.
(It's also quite perverse, because there's this underlying assumption/insult that if you're not utilitarian, then it means you don't quite understand that 5>1, and therefore you're beyond stupid and shouldn't be part of the conversation.)
> Utilitarianism assumes we have all the facts, yet we never do.
All the facts, while helpful, are not necessary for utilitarianism.
> "effective altruism"
I think you're attacking a straw man. You won't find Peter Singer attacking people for engaging in suboptimal charity.
> there's this underlying assumption/insult that if you're not utilitarian, then it means you don't quite understand that 5>1, and therefore you're beyond stupid and shouldn't be part of the conversation.
You can certainly say you'd sacrifice five to save one, but you need to back it up. The moral indulgence critique says, more or less, if you refuse to do it because you don't want to do something distasteful you're being a coward, not stupid.
Rule utilitarians can coherently refuse to pull the switch. I happen to disagree with their moral framework, but they can mount a vigorous defense of the position. Personally I come down hard on the side of rejecting the status quo bias. Commiting to symmetry in moral decision making is useful for avoiding contradictions. I also don't care much for act utilitarianism, since it's susceptible to non-utilitarians putting their fingers on the scale (ex. "buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog".)
It would seem the whole setup of the experiment is designed to rule out personal courage. The question isn't "would you fight a terrorist" to save five people, or would you climb a dangerous mountain, or swim a violent stream, or defeat some incel with a machine gun...
The question is "would you flip a switch", and the subtext is "with zero risk to yourself". How does flipping a switch become an act of courage and not flipping an act of cowardice.
Also, movies. I don't think there's one (successful) movie where the hero voluntarily and coldly sacrifices even one completely innocent and unrelated individual, in order to save any number of people. When the hero kills someone, every movie goes to great lengths to explain that person somehow deserved it or was an enemy.
In movies, it's the villains who are utilitarians. That should tell us something.
I don't watch many movies but in the ending of the Spiderman video game (Spoilers:) there is a deadly virus going around and aunt May is on her deathbed from it. Spiderman gets just enough antiserum to save her or to study it and make more but she will not live long enough for that. It's an emotional scene and they don't weasel out of it by having her decide for him, or giving some signs that she wouldn't make it. He ultimately gives the vial to a doctor and the scene fades as he is crying on his knees over aunt May in her hospital bed.
> The moral indulgence critique says, more or less, if you refuse to do it because you don't want to do something distasteful you're being a coward, not stupid.
Logically it makes more sense to flip the switch. 5 lives vs. 1.
But when you change the situation. There's no more switch. Just a single track with 5 people tied to it. You're on the side of the track with a really fat man. You push the man onto the track you can save the lives of all the people because the really fat man stops the train. But the fat man will die.
Two situations with equivalent logical consequences but experiments show that people will consistently flip the switch but they will not push the fat man. Why do people act one way but not the other when both situations are logically identical?
This moral conflict is one of the greatest pieces of evidence that our morality is made up of biological instincts. First it shows morality is not logically consistent. Second the same moral hiccup is shown across all cultures and demographics consistently indicating that morality is genetic and biological and not learned.
That is the significance of this moral conflicts. It says something deep about humanity, biology and the true nature of what morality actually is.
The switch scenario implies that the individual has responsibility for the entire system. The switch and the train have a strong cultural component that implies responsibility for the system as a whole (employee). Even if you state it explicitly people simply don’t believe that a train switch is going to be left unattended and put into the hands of a completely independent third party. If you state that the train switch operator dies while you are visiting the station leaving the switch in your hands there is an implication that you are stepping into the switch operators role.
Society expects that someone with responsibility for the entire system would make trade-off decisions that would be immoral in the second scenario. For example, a politician would be expected to make policy of when it is acceptable to harvest organs from a donor while a doctor making a decision unilaterally would be morally repugnant.
The questions are more interesting in getting insights into cultural expectations of responsibility than deep biological biases about morality. It turns out that we have very finely tuned expectations on what rises to the level of “responsible” that moves a decision from one category to another. A health minister making a decision about which medical treatments are medically necessary are seen as less morally ambiguous than an insurance executive even if the process to make the decision and the outcomes are exactly the same.
So morality depends less on the choice and more about the role of responsibility? One would think that the focus is purely on the choice.
Anyway the point isn't to examine the details of the moral conflict. The point is to examine why the moral conflicts even exists. It points to the fact that morality is arbitrarily biological in origin. It's a set of random arbitrary behaviors that helped with our survival in the caveman days.
Thus given how arbitrary it is, it's sort of pointless to analyze morality too deeply as if there's some higher hidden meaning. There isn't, it's just random instincts with no logical cohesion. Pointless to explore philosophically.
How does it make logical sense? People are not numbers. What right do you, or anyone else, have to decide who shall live and who shall die?
Reducing people to numbers is a logical fallacy in itself.
Increase the numbers then it will become more logical.
Change the 5 people to millions. Now it's one person vs. millions.
The choice is now even more obvious. And if you don't consider the numbers in this case people will call you a psychopath if you can't see the difference in moral weight between millions and one life.
It is difficult to create scenarios that trade-off one life for millions without implying responsibility of the person being asked to make the decision. People are grappling less with moral trade-offs in these decisions than they are with the dual axis questions or morality and responsibility. Create a scenario that trades off one life for a million but doesn’t imply the person choosing is in a position of responsibility and it becomes morally unambiguous.
For example a researcher choosing to sacrifice a healthy individual to donate their immune cells to save a million terminal cancer patients is considered morally reprehensible because people can’t to see how the researcher could be considered responsible for the a healthy individuals life. If the individual goes from being healthy to being in a coma and researcher becomes family member the question then becomes morally ambiguous.
That's my point. Moral ambiguity is evidence for the fact that morality is an arbitrary biological concept. It stems from evolution. It's a set of competing instincts.
If morality was a universal concept there would be nothing ambiguous about it. It would be logically consistent. But what we observe is that we can trigger inconsistent moral situations.
The core formulation of law and our interpretation of morality is formed off of cultural cues. But our core moral instinct is biological and genetic.
This very example. This very topic is evidence to that fact. The moral conflict described as the topic of this HN article is consistent across populations across cultures. It is genetic. It is not learned.
In fact we can actually identify physical and structural difference in people who lack morals. Psychopaths, people who innately lack a moral sense. The differences can be literally seen as a physical manifestation of an actual 3D coordinate of the brain. A researcher who studies these things can actually tell you if you're a psychopath or not just by looking at a brain scan.
To me, it's your thinking that's unhinged. You seem blind to the reality we live in. In your country, Nigel Farage had his banking account cancelled because of having the wrong ideology. What you qualify as impossible is already happening.
People are already getting economically punished for opposing ideas imposed by the state and elites.
Don't trust me? Go right now to your linkedin and make a post saying: "I dislike homosexuality and I oppose LGTB rights." That's a completely legal statement, but if you have a typical employer (ie Fortune 500 corp) you're going to be out of a job pretty quickly.
For the record: I disagree with Farage and support LGTB rights. However it's messed up to impose ideologies through economic sanctions. And in western democracies this is already happening.
No, he didn’t. He had his bank account cancelled because he isn’t rich enough to bank with Coutts. Ironically, a retained EU law means he MUST be allowed to open a bank account, just not the business account he wants.
The difference is that I actually read their report, you didn’t.
Farage had a bank account at a very prestigious (i.e. image-conscious) bank. That bank decided to fire him as a customer because they perceived that being associated with him might harm the bank's reputation, and perhaps some personal vendetta against his politics by the bank's management.
On a purely objective level, the bank made the wrong decision, as it backfired rather badly. On the other hand, Farage as a neoliberal-populist should have been thrilled to be fired by his bank. Capitalism in action!
I don't disagree with your broader point, but it's nothing new. There are always things that you can't say. The creator of this website wrote an essay on the subject 20 years ago and it reads as true today as it did then. Before it was forbidden to say bad things about LGBT, it was forbidden to say good things about LGBT, indeed in many parts of the world that is still the case.
The thing that has changed is that while in the past people's political opinions would be something shared in private company, now we voluntarily broadcast them to the world. So people are more likely to find the limits of what you can't say today rather than in decades gone by.
Occasionally, you might get a broken website but to fix it you just click on the shield icon and lower the privacy settings.