If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time. As writte

If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time. As written, this is a dangerously solipsistic statement. Transforming your mind, body, knowledge, opinions and philosophy is indeed helpful, but it is much less than half the problem: Unless you are content to live and die as a hermit, you must also seek to transform the world, even if it's just the world in your immediate vicinity. Learning is valuable, but teaching is just as valuable, if not more so. Teaching is hard, though. You have to do it in tiny pieces, applied one drop at a time over weeks, months, and years. One of the hardest things to learn is not to lecture. You think -- especially if you have spent years in school -- that you can just tie someone down and tell them the truth over and over until they get it, but it doesn't work that way in real life. Rather, it is both ineffective and rude to grab a piece of someone's attention and then attempt to deliver a big lecture. In face-to-face interaction, people deploy social signals to discourage this; on the web we must take more obvious measures, such as designing venues like HN where lecturing feels awkward and is therefore discouraged. But if you want to read incredibly long-form back-and-forth discussions that go on for pages the rest of the Internet is right there, one click away.