11 ms·

I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give. My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of

I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give. My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable. By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not always right around the corner. Prior to SV eating the world, the only people that said that we all should be entrepreneurs really just wanted you in their Amway downline. Society doesn't like to show the magnitude failures out there, or worse, the getting-by'ers. There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN. Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look.

chosenbreed37 6y ago
> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look. I'd recommend the following: 1. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson 3. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham
- hckr_news 6y ago
  After my working life had induced anxiety, panic attacks, and a host of other issues which really started to rear their ugly head I’ve become a much more religious person. On top of the professional help I’ve sought out for these issues, it has also helped a lot in my case when you internalize deep that work/money/material success really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and there’s a greater goal to work towards.
  - whitebread 6y ago
    What is this greater goal you speak of?
    - edraferi 6y ago
      In my experience, religions are happy to hand out pre-baked sets of objectives. Live a life like X. Stay away from Y. Put your money in Z. If you have trouble deciding what direction you want to go, religion can point you somewhere and surround you with a community that will encourage you to keep moving that way. For some people, that’s really valuable. You see this especially with people who’s prior independent experience didn’t work out very well. Maybe they grew up in an abusive home and want instructions on breaking the cycle and raising their family better. Maybe there was criminal behavior, substance abuse, relationship or career stagnation. For many people, a pre-packaged world view from Religion X can be a big step up from their prior experience, ESPECIALLY when it comes with a supportive community. The problem, of course, is two fold. First, life isn’t one-size-fits-all. Eventually the pre-packaged beliefs will be sub-optimal for your personal situation. The better religious communities are flexible enough to accommodate this. The uglier ones lock you down or cut you out. Second, the pre-packaged beliefs usually assert their own universal and exclusive validity. Even if the one you pick happens to be correct about this, it encourages toxic behaviors that will isolate you from non-community members. And of course the claim is preposterous on its face; The interchangeability of religions undercuts their claims to universal truth. So, to summarize: Religion is a reasonable place to get a default world view and community, especially if you’re existing beliefs/community aren’t serving you well. Long term they are suboptimal because they don’t adapt to your personal circumstances very well.
      - kaitai 6y ago
        I've actually taken an essentially opposite view, interestingly enough. As a younger person I read widely, rebelled in a very thoughtful way against my religion (in my opinion! haha!), took things very seriously, tried to really understand both atheism and other religions, etc. I think all of that was important. Through life experiences I've come to appreciate, strangely, the rituals of religion and the not-making-sense-ness of it. So I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously. The concrete actions do something on a primordial level, as they're what my ancestors have done for oh about eight generations. The actual pre-packaged beliefs? Meh. I'm less interested than I ever was in arguing the particulars of Paul with anyone. So, to summarize, for me religion is a reasonable place to get a default set of rituals and perhaps community, and long term that's the useful part because the rituals can continue even as my beliefs and circumstances change. This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)
- loughnane 6y ago
  On par w/ Meditations I'd also add Self-Reliance, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- askdfjng 6y ago
  JBP's 12 Rules for Life is dangerous advice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtwP6AbbAUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtwP6AbbAUc
  - DanielLihaciu 6y ago
    I would be the devil's advocate and disagree with you. There are more dangerous self help books like The Secret who took the Bible quote about praying and it will come true out of context, and many other THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, LAW OF ATTRACTION....
  - Reedx 6y ago
    To dismiss as dangerous is silly. Here are the 12 rules. Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back Rule 2: Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you Rule 4: Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) Rule 8: Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t Rule 10: Be precise in your speech Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/jordan-petersons-12-rules-life.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/jo...
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
      Rule 12 caveat 1: If it lets you.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Rule 12 caveat 2: And wash or disinfect your hands immediately afterwards, because Lord only knows what that cat is carrying on its fur.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Dunno about Jordan Peterson. Some of his advice may be OK but he's also profoundly weird / not very self-reflective .... only eats meat? Meat cures all? IMHO the Socratic Dialogues, as basically the foundational text of all Western Philosophy, and being pretty friendly and approachable, are the right place to begin. Helps you figure out how to figure it out for yourself. You can make your own calls from there.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    > Meat cures all? When did he say that?
    - rhizome 6y ago
      Come on, all you have to do is google "jordan peterson meat" and you get pages and pages of when-he-said-thats.
      - burntoutfire 6y ago
        I've listened to probably hundreds of hours of JP and he never said that. He only said that, in his particular case, a lot of the terrible ailments he had went away after he switched to a meat-only diet. He doesn't say that meat is a cure for anything - his main theory is that he just has a ton of strong food alergies and, by eating only one thing he's not allergic to, he avoids them.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - adamsea 6y ago
      I’m making a point, not quoting the man.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - friendlybus 6y ago
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  > 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson yikes
  - worik 6y ago
    Well some people need to be told. In. Simple. Ideas.
    - lamby 6y ago
      Go tidy your room.
- wwweston 6y ago
  > 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson A note on this, since mentioning Peterson tends to spark controversy: I think I think the people who get the best out of Peterson don't treat him as a guru issuing rules written in stone tablets (in spite of the implication of the book title) but as a provoker of attention/reflection. This is probably generally true of anyone, but especially worth considering here. I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it.
  - akurzon 6y ago
    > I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it. I've noticed the same thing. I think he's gotten into bad habits commenting on subjects outside of his area of expertise, but I did enjoy his YouTube lectures for the reasons you mentioned
    - gonzo41 6y ago
      Cut him some slack. When he's on JRE his conversations should be thought of as some guy talking about how he feels about events. Just like you or I. He's smart and thinks. That guy also just happens to be an expert in an area of knowledge.
    - lamby 6y ago
      Whilst we're speaking philosophy... I think Pliny's "sutor, ne ultra crepidam" ("shoemaker, not beyond the shoe") might be the quip to match your comment.
  - friendlybus 6y ago
    He was always like that. His work with the UN and legal work had rough edges. The fame has made him bigger not different. His lectures go more in depth and are not trying to hit a peak of condensed information. As much as Peterson likes nietschze, he can’t write like nietschze, with highly condensed sentences. Peterson has always been better in the long form.
- ska 6y ago
  Without opinion on the particular value of this list, I'll advise that if you are exploring philosophy (even of the pop kind), especially if this is new for you, you'll probably get the best results out of reading contradicting and contrasting results. Be it foundational or just currently popular, following up a work by reading it's most talented detractors can multiply it's value to you. Learning about an entirely different philosophical approach will often be more useful to you than reading another book on similar ideas. Oh, and really good popularizors are rare. Usually the original sources are far better - but by nature much less accessible. So you have a trade off to make.
- miguelmota 6y ago
  I've read 12 Rules for Life and disliked that Peterson uses a lot of Disney movie and bible references to support his claims. He makes some good points every once in a while but the book is unnecessarily verbose. I recommend reading the cliff notes to understand 90% of the book.
  - FabHK 6y ago
    He uses Disney quotes to support his contention that there are profound, yet universal archetypes and myths that pop up everywhere - even in Disney movies.
KerryJones 6y ago
I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman. I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side: - Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't - Only keep friends around you that actually support you. It's really hard to try to make life changes when people are constantly telling you you can't or shitting on your parade. - Start making analytical choices. Certain fields pay more than others. Certain businesses treat their employees better than others. A lower position at a better company will increase your probability of "bumping" into those people who might be life changing. - Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.
- adamsea 6y ago
  IMHO we are not only discussing luck but also our imperfect and fallible nature as people. All you say is excellent advice, but -- sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
  - dwd 6y ago
    I've said this before, so apologies for repeating myself: Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete knowledge where each option appears equally valid. However, people generally are poor at calculating probability combined with risk/reward and simply make bad decisions. And sometimes, all choices lead to bad outcomes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323 To expand on this; if you are a healthy, intelligent adult I don't accept the idea that sometimes you don't have a choice, that somehow it is all out of your hands. That thinking leads to victimhood which is really an avoidance of taking responsibility for your decisions. Yes, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you - but you chose to take on the bear, whether directly or due to some previous decision (that didn't involve a bear at all). Enjoyed watching "The Gentleman" the other night and a fan of films like Lock Stock, Two Smoking Barrels and the idea of events snowballing from the choices people make (and then the interaction of each individual's ongoing choices). But the situations that they find themselves in were a result of something they did.
saruken 6y ago
This is all-around great advice. I heard some similar things on Ricky Gervais' show After Life, and I wrote them down: > It's worth sticking around to maybe make my little corner of the world a slightly better place. > Happiness is amazing. It's so amazing, it doesn't matter if it's yours. > You may not like living much, but you can make the world a better place. So don't give up, because then they've won. And they grow in numbers.
blululu 6y ago
>> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. As the proud owner of a 2004 Toyota Corolla and a 2011 Philosophy Minor, this line made my day. Honestly it is just plain good advice.
- TurkishPoptart 6y ago
  I love my 2001 Corolla. It's got 164k miles on it (had about 140 when I bought it), and I hope to get another 100k out of it!
  - celestialcheese 6y ago
    Same here - except 220k. Still running great, but looking for a new-to-me car because i'm tired of driving it.
    - jrumbut 6y ago
      I feel like a used car underachiever right now, looking forward to 2025 when I get a back up camera and bluetooth.
      - xcasperx 6y ago
        You can always buy a new stereo and install it. If you buy it from Crutchfield, for like $19 extra, you can get it prewired/harnessed so you don't have to splice the wires. Pretty sweet deal. Also, some stereos come with a backup cam. This has to be spliced in though. HUGE NOTE: I bought a 4.5-star receiver on Crutchfield, but the receiver didn't have Sirius XM on it, so I basically don't have radio (unless I use an app on my phone to stream the radio). I don't listen to the radio often so it's not a huge deal for me, just something to be aware of.
    - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
      I have two cars. 03 VW Jetta TDI with 270k miles and an 09 Nissan Altima with 260k miles. Though I do get plenty of chances to try my hand at being a mechanic.
bpatel576 6y ago
Lots of good points about living below your means. Also define what you want. I'd hate for someone to live a safe and secure life and minimize risk only to get shafted by the system in the end. Some risk is worth taking. Taking on debt in certain situations is worth it. You just need to get aware of life in the event of failure and take that into consideration.
non-entity 6y ago
> There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN. Heh. Unrelated but I've been re-watching a lot of KOTH during quarantine and this line reminded me of a scene from the first season https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s
protonimitate 6y ago
Great advice. I see a lot of people in tech with inflated ideas of what success means, and they're almost all tied strictly to salary/net worth. Yeah, having money is nice, but if that's all you base happiness/idea of success on, its going to be a bumpy road. >There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures I understand how this can point of view can develop, but one of the things I'm most grateful for in life is struggling through a slew of minimum-wage jobs out of college before transitioning into tech. That first bump to "tech salary" literally doubled my income over night and it was only 70k in a high COL east coast city. I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke. Although I still pursue career advancement, it's not just for money. And if it were to all disappear over night (which is the case for a lot of people right now), I'm comforted by the fact that I've already had it "that bad".
- PiersPlowman 6y ago
  You gotta dig deep first if you want to build a skyscraper, as I always heard.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  > Yeah, having money is nice, As someone who was broke for many years and now is less broke (cash is flowing, there's money in my accounts, but I'm deeply in negative net worth due to student debt), I think you're understating the issue, vastly. Simply put, money is freedom. If you have it, you can do things people who don't have it can't. If you have enough of it, you can do just about anything. And, I'm not necessarily talking about luxuries, I'm talking about stuff like: * If you have enough money in the bank, an unexpected car repair is a hassle, rather than a disaster. * If you can afford to buy a home, then you don't have to worry about being evicted or not having a lease renewed. * If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a good school and get them off to the best possible start in life. * If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick. As I said, none of these things are luxuries, but, to reach "don't have to worry about medical bankruptcy" levels, or even "I get to own a home and nobody can tell me I can't paint my front door pink" levels takes a huge amount of money relative to the median income today. > I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke. That doesn't mean being broke is great, good, or even not all that bad. It just means you've gotten used to it.
worik 6y ago
"Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable." There is some good advice, for everybody!
maypeacepreva1l 6y ago
"Adjust worldview" sounds deeply pessimistic to me. Anyone can do make life better, specially at time when degrees mean less, they just need to persevere. Stay level headed. If I have to suggest I wouldn't say "Adjust Worldview" at all.

chosenbreed37 6y ago

> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look. I'd recommend the following: 1. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson 3. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham

hckr_news 6y ago
After my working life had induced anxiety, panic attacks, and a host of other issues which really started to rear their ugly head I’ve become a much more religious person. On top of the professional help I’ve sought out for these issues, it has also helped a lot in my case when you internalize deep that work/money/material success really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and there’s a greater goal to work towards.
- whitebread 6y ago
  What is this greater goal you speak of?
  - edraferi 6y ago
    In my experience, religions are happy to hand out pre-baked sets of objectives. Live a life like X. Stay away from Y. Put your money in Z. If you have trouble deciding what direction you want to go, religion can point you somewhere and surround you with a community that will encourage you to keep moving that way. For some people, that’s really valuable. You see this especially with people who’s prior independent experience didn’t work out very well. Maybe they grew up in an abusive home and want instructions on breaking the cycle and raising their family better. Maybe there was criminal behavior, substance abuse, relationship or career stagnation. For many people, a pre-packaged world view from Religion X can be a big step up from their prior experience, ESPECIALLY when it comes with a supportive community. The problem, of course, is two fold. First, life isn’t one-size-fits-all. Eventually the pre-packaged beliefs will be sub-optimal for your personal situation. The better religious communities are flexible enough to accommodate this. The uglier ones lock you down or cut you out. Second, the pre-packaged beliefs usually assert their own universal and exclusive validity. Even if the one you pick happens to be correct about this, it encourages toxic behaviors that will isolate you from non-community members. And of course the claim is preposterous on its face; The interchangeability of religions undercuts their claims to universal truth. So, to summarize: Religion is a reasonable place to get a default world view and community, especially if you’re existing beliefs/community aren’t serving you well. Long term they are suboptimal because they don’t adapt to your personal circumstances very well.
    - kaitai 6y ago
      I've actually taken an essentially opposite view, interestingly enough. As a younger person I read widely, rebelled in a very thoughtful way against my religion (in my opinion! haha!), took things very seriously, tried to really understand both atheism and other religions, etc. I think all of that was important. Through life experiences I've come to appreciate, strangely, the rituals of religion and the not-making-sense-ness of it. So I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously. The concrete actions do something on a primordial level, as they're what my ancestors have done for oh about eight generations. The actual pre-packaged beliefs? Meh. I'm less interested than I ever was in arguing the particulars of Paul with anyone. So, to summarize, for me religion is a reasonable place to get a default set of rituals and perhaps community, and long term that's the useful part because the rituals can continue even as my beliefs and circumstances change. This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)
loughnane 6y ago
On par w/ Meditations I'd also add Self-Reliance, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
askdfjng 6y ago
JBP's 12 Rules for Life is dangerous advice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtwP6AbbAUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtwP6AbbAUc
- DanielLihaciu 6y ago
  I would be the devil's advocate and disagree with you. There are more dangerous self help books like The Secret who took the Bible quote about praying and it will come true out of context, and many other THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, LAW OF ATTRACTION....
- Reedx 6y ago
  To dismiss as dangerous is silly. Here are the 12 rules. Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back Rule 2: Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you Rule 4: Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) Rule 8: Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t Rule 10: Be precise in your speech Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/jordan-petersons-12-rules-life.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/jo...
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    Rule 12 caveat 1: If it lets you.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Rule 12 caveat 2: And wash or disinfect your hands immediately afterwards, because Lord only knows what that cat is carrying on its fur.
adamsea 6y ago
Dunno about Jordan Peterson. Some of his advice may be OK but he's also profoundly weird / not very self-reflective .... only eats meat? Meat cures all? IMHO the Socratic Dialogues, as basically the foundational text of all Western Philosophy, and being pretty friendly and approachable, are the right place to begin. Helps you figure out how to figure it out for yourself. You can make your own calls from there.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  > Meat cures all? When did he say that?
  - rhizome 6y ago
    Come on, all you have to do is google "jordan peterson meat" and you get pages and pages of when-he-said-thats.
    - burntoutfire 6y ago
      I've listened to probably hundreds of hours of JP and he never said that. He only said that, in his particular case, a lot of the terrible ailments he had went away after he switched to a meat-only diet. He doesn't say that meat is a cure for anything - his main theory is that he just has a ton of strong food alergies and, by eating only one thing he's not allergic to, he avoids them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamsea 6y ago
    I’m making a point, not quoting the man.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- friendlybus 6y ago
lovegoblin 6y ago
> 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson yikes
- worik 6y ago
  Well some people need to be told. In. Simple. Ideas.
  - lamby 6y ago
    Go tidy your room.
wwweston 6y ago
> 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson A note on this, since mentioning Peterson tends to spark controversy: I think I think the people who get the best out of Peterson don't treat him as a guru issuing rules written in stone tablets (in spite of the implication of the book title) but as a provoker of attention/reflection. This is probably generally true of anyone, but especially worth considering here. I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it.
- akurzon 6y ago
  > I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it. I've noticed the same thing. I think he's gotten into bad habits commenting on subjects outside of his area of expertise, but I did enjoy his YouTube lectures for the reasons you mentioned
  - gonzo41 6y ago
    Cut him some slack. When he's on JRE his conversations should be thought of as some guy talking about how he feels about events. Just like you or I. He's smart and thinks. That guy also just happens to be an expert in an area of knowledge.
  - lamby 6y ago
    Whilst we're speaking philosophy... I think Pliny's "sutor, ne ultra crepidam" ("shoemaker, not beyond the shoe") might be the quip to match your comment.
- friendlybus 6y ago
  He was always like that. His work with the UN and legal work had rough edges. The fame has made him bigger not different. His lectures go more in depth and are not trying to hit a peak of condensed information. As much as Peterson likes nietschze, he can’t write like nietschze, with highly condensed sentences. Peterson has always been better in the long form.
ska 6y ago
Without opinion on the particular value of this list, I'll advise that if you are exploring philosophy (even of the pop kind), especially if this is new for you, you'll probably get the best results out of reading contradicting and contrasting results. Be it foundational or just currently popular, following up a work by reading it's most talented detractors can multiply it's value to you. Learning about an entirely different philosophical approach will often be more useful to you than reading another book on similar ideas. Oh, and really good popularizors are rare. Usually the original sources are far better - but by nature much less accessible. So you have a trade off to make.
miguelmota 6y ago
I've read 12 Rules for Life and disliked that Peterson uses a lot of Disney movie and bible references to support his claims. He makes some good points every once in a while but the book is unnecessarily verbose. I recommend reading the cliff notes to understand 90% of the book.
- FabHK 6y ago
  He uses Disney quotes to support his contention that there are profound, yet universal archetypes and myths that pop up everywhere - even in Disney movies.

KerryJones 6y ago

I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman. I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side: - Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't - Only keep friends around you that actually support you. It's really hard to try to make life changes when people are constantly telling you you can't or shitting on your parade. - Start making analytical choices. Certain fields pay more than others. Certain businesses treat their employees better than others. A lower position at a better company will increase your probability of "bumping" into those people who might be life changing. - Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.

adamsea 6y ago
IMHO we are not only discussing luck but also our imperfect and fallible nature as people. All you say is excellent advice, but -- sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
- dwd 6y ago
  I've said this before, so apologies for repeating myself: Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete knowledge where each option appears equally valid. However, people generally are poor at calculating probability combined with risk/reward and simply make bad decisions. And sometimes, all choices lead to bad outcomes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323 To expand on this; if you are a healthy, intelligent adult I don't accept the idea that sometimes you don't have a choice, that somehow it is all out of your hands. That thinking leads to victimhood which is really an avoidance of taking responsibility for your decisions. Yes, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you - but you chose to take on the bear, whether directly or due to some previous decision (that didn't involve a bear at all). Enjoyed watching "The Gentleman" the other night and a fan of films like Lock Stock, Two Smoking Barrels and the idea of events snowballing from the choices people make (and then the interaction of each individual's ongoing choices). But the situations that they find themselves in were a result of something they did.

saruken 6y ago

This is all-around great advice. I heard some similar things on Ricky Gervais' show After Life, and I wrote them down: > It's worth sticking around to maybe make my little corner of the world a slightly better place. > Happiness is amazing. It's so amazing, it doesn't matter if it's yours. > You may not like living much, but you can make the world a better place. So don't give up, because then they've won. And they grow in numbers.

blululu 6y ago

>> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. As the proud owner of a 2004 Toyota Corolla and a 2011 Philosophy Minor, this line made my day. Honestly it is just plain good advice.

TurkishPoptart 6y ago
I love my 2001 Corolla. It's got 164k miles on it (had about 140 when I bought it), and I hope to get another 100k out of it!
- celestialcheese 6y ago
  Same here - except 220k. Still running great, but looking for a new-to-me car because i'm tired of driving it.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    I feel like a used car underachiever right now, looking forward to 2025 when I get a back up camera and bluetooth.
    - xcasperx 6y ago
      You can always buy a new stereo and install it. If you buy it from Crutchfield, for like $19 extra, you can get it prewired/harnessed so you don't have to splice the wires. Pretty sweet deal. Also, some stereos come with a backup cam. This has to be spliced in though. HUGE NOTE: I bought a 4.5-star receiver on Crutchfield, but the receiver didn't have Sirius XM on it, so I basically don't have radio (unless I use an app on my phone to stream the radio). I don't listen to the radio often so it's not a huge deal for me, just something to be aware of.
  - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
    I have two cars. 03 VW Jetta TDI with 270k miles and an 09 Nissan Altima with 260k miles. Though I do get plenty of chances to try my hand at being a mechanic.

bpatel576 6y ago

Lots of good points about living below your means. Also define what you want. I'd hate for someone to live a safe and secure life and minimize risk only to get shafted by the system in the end. Some risk is worth taking. Taking on debt in certain situations is worth it. You just need to get aware of life in the event of failure and take that into consideration.

non-entity 6y ago

> There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN. Heh. Unrelated but I've been re-watching a lot of KOTH during quarantine and this line reminded me of a scene from the first season https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s

protonimitate 6y ago

Great advice. I see a lot of people in tech with inflated ideas of what success means, and they're almost all tied strictly to salary/net worth. Yeah, having money is nice, but if that's all you base happiness/idea of success on, its going to be a bumpy road. >There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures I understand how this can point of view can develop, but one of the things I'm most grateful for in life is struggling through a slew of minimum-wage jobs out of college before transitioning into tech. That first bump to "tech salary" literally doubled my income over night and it was only 70k in a high COL east coast city. I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke. Although I still pursue career advancement, it's not just for money. And if it were to all disappear over night (which is the case for a lot of people right now), I'm comforted by the fact that I've already had it "that bad".

PiersPlowman 6y ago
You gotta dig deep first if you want to build a skyscraper, as I always heard.
pmiller2 6y ago
> Yeah, having money is nice, As someone who was broke for many years and now is less broke (cash is flowing, there's money in my accounts, but I'm deeply in negative net worth due to student debt), I think you're understating the issue, vastly. Simply put, money is freedom. If you have it, you can do things people who don't have it can't. If you have enough of it, you can do just about anything. And, I'm not necessarily talking about luxuries, I'm talking about stuff like: * If you have enough money in the bank, an unexpected car repair is a hassle, rather than a disaster. * If you can afford to buy a home, then you don't have to worry about being evicted or not having a lease renewed. * If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a good school and get them off to the best possible start in life. * If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick. As I said, none of these things are luxuries, but, to reach "don't have to worry about medical bankruptcy" levels, or even "I get to own a home and nobody can tell me I can't paint my front door pink" levels takes a huge amount of money relative to the median income today. > I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke. That doesn't mean being broke is great, good, or even not all that bad. It just means you've gotten used to it.

worik 6y ago

"Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable." There is some good advice, for everybody!

maypeacepreva1l 6y ago

"Adjust worldview" sounds deeply pessimistic to me. Anyone can do make life better, specially at time when degrees mean less, they just need to persevere. Stay level headed. If I have to suggest I wouldn't say "Adjust Worldview" at all.