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The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything

• mmcconnell1618 16y ago
  I realized long ago that the rate of change in technology makes it impossible to have a significant knowledge of something as varied as computer science. There are so many avenues to explore from electrical engineering to manufacturing to compiler design, languages, HTML, UX, design and color theory and that's just the surface. It is sad that one person can not possibly have the time to experience all aspects of their craft but it means that specialists become unique and important players.
  • hartror 16y ago
    Which is why it is an important ability being able to find, understand and implement stored knowledge. I mean "ability" in that it is both a human learned ability and an ability of our tools. Books did this for a long time. Printing improved books by distributing the data cheaply and widely. But humans also used books as tools to create more and more data. So pretty quickly the data grew to the point where everyone has the data but you cannot see the forest for the trees. So now the killer app for knowledge is no longer distribution of the data but contextual searching of data.
• gwern 16y ago
  The overwhelming amount of material has a number of implications; when I realized just how much stuff was out there, it occurred to me that this implied a lot of things about people's true esthetic preferences and the justifications for intellectual property. Ironically, I then wrote a long essay on it: http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20esthetics.html http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20esthetics.... (I include a number of statistics on how much stuff, exactly. Skip down to http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20esthetics.html#media-shock http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20esthetics.... where the numbers go into the billions.)
• davidrupp 16y ago
  This is exactly what I've been thinking recently about computer science / programming. There's just so much to read / learn / practice / improve. Nice to have it put in perspective. Gotta learn to surrender more.
• AngryParsley 16y ago
  Excellent article, although it seems to assume that the average quality of content has stayed constant over time. I don't think that's the case. Take music, for example. In the past, we were limited in the types of sounds we could make. Nowadays, with the help of computers, musicians can create any sound they can imagine. A similar thing has happened with television and movies. Technology has allowed a wider range of content to be created. It's also made it easier to create high-quality content.
  • brandall10 16y ago
    Interestingly enough, if you read The Beatles Anthology they make the case that they were so good _because_ they had little else to do. When we talk great composers, you might argue about Beethoven vs. Mozart vs. Bach... but would you throw anyone from the last 100 years into the mix?
    • jerf 16y ago
      Yes. But there are so many of them from so many different genres of music that being as skilled as Beethoven isn't as rare as it used to be. If it looks like nobody stands above the rest as clearly as Mozart or Beethoven once did, it is because the top end has become crowded, not because it was depopulated.
      • angus77 16y ago
        If you're talking in terms of technical skill, sure. If you're talking in terms of quantity of quality output, that's not quite so indisputable. You're not suggesting we're awash in 'Fur Elise's, are you?
        • colomon 16y ago
          If you'd said "Symphony #9", I might have granted you the point. But "Fur Elise" isn't particularly more complicated than a well-written rock or pop song, and yes, I'd suggest we are indeed awash with those. (Even if they only represent 0.01% of the music in those fields...)
• grellas 16y ago
  I truly believe nearly everyone realizes that it is impossible to experience all or nearly all of what is important to cultivate in one lifetime. Beyond that, perception tends to be affected by one's age. When I was young (e.g., in my 20s), all the possibilities of the world seemed open to me and it was just going to be a question of what I would do first - I put everything else into the category "I'll get to that when I have time." I had done a lot to develop my talents and knowledge base, and in a range of areas to boot. But my reading of the "great works" trailed off following college. Time was too limited to get to most of them. But, some day, yes, I would do so. I had never learned to play an instrument. But, when I had time, I would learn piano. I had limited time to do non-business travel, but some day I would make it up. Of course, "some day" one day comes and you quickly realize that many unrealized hopes and dreams would never in fact be realized. And that includes becoming cultivated in a range of areas. When this fact first strikes you, it truly is depressing. For me, it was the first time in my life that I started to feel "old" (feeling old is not so much chronological as it is a state of mind). You become overwhelmed with the fact that you will never keep up with all the new trends and you will never have the time to fill all the holes in your knowledge base or to do all the things you dreamed of doing. In time, though, I came to make peace with this sense of restlessness. Life is too short to do everything but life is more than ample enough to do important things, things that count beyond the mundane routines of daily existence. This life is but a breath or, as my 100-year-old grandmother said shortly before she passed on, everything that she had experienced to that point was "but a blink." When you can get to that stage and say, "no regrets" for a life well-led, you can have peace with your finite capacities and your finite existence in this world. There is much that is beautiful to do in this life. You don't need to do it all. You just need to do it well.
  • artmageddon 16y ago
    >There is much that is beautiful to do in this life. You don't need to do it all. You just need to do it well. As someone who's slowly but surely approaching that cusp of realization you describe, I thank you for putting this so eloquently.
  • dman 16y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to capture the sentiment so beautifully.
• JSig 16y ago
  While reading this, I kept thinking of the excellent Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last." In it, The book loving protagonist survives the "end of the world" and, after being all alone, is ready to kill himself. But once he stumbles upon the library, he realizes he has the rest of his life to read whatever he wants. Of course, things don't go as planned.
  • pstack 16y ago
    That episode always haunts me and it raised some other thoughts. If you were the last person on the planet, would you still read and listen to music? I mean, without being a member of a species and a society that contextualizes you, does music even mean anything to you anymore? Do stories? If you're exiled on an island somewhere, you know that humanity continues to hum along past your horizon, even if you're stranded from it. But once it's eradicated - along with the whole ambition and possibilities of it - do created works hold anything for the one remaining survivor?
    • cincinnatus 16y ago
      I think it is hard to get your head around the totality of it. I suspect that if I were to lose all my children to an accident I would have a hard time finding the will to live. Losing all of humanity would include them. If you managed to survive that despair long enough, you might come out the other end in some fashion but as you say the context and meaning of everything would be altered. This has been touched upon in speculative fiction, i.e. the library of knowledge remaining from a civilization that no longer exists. More than once. Not even including Kal El :-)
    • norswap 16y ago
      Probably reading, watching movies and listening to music would be in your best interest, as it would simulate some kind of dialog with a human being, maybe it would prevent you from losing your mind.
      • JoeAltmaier 16y ago
        And that matters why?
• jonnathanson 16y ago
  Certainly one way of looking at my time on Earth is to ask what I've consumed and what I haven't. What I've read and what I haven't. What I've seen and what I havent. In some ways, the more motivating question for me is: what have I produced? If time is an input, what is my output? I would hope that I'm converting time as efficiently as possible into great output, though I know that's often not the case. But framing my life in this way -- as the processing of time into something tangible -- keeps me focused, energized, and productive.
  • pstack 16y ago
    I spent most of my life being concerned with leaving some sort of immortalizing legacy behind. Some great work or impact on the world that would never be forgotten. Then I came to the conclusion that I'm a tiny life on a tiny planet in the arm of a huge galaxy in an infinite universe. That the entire planet - to the universe - is no more than a speck of sand is to the entire Earth. That on this planet, celebrities and accomplished scientists and creators will almost all be forgotten in decades; certainly a hundred years. A few will last beyond that. As the span of time grows, only a few names -- maybe Hitler, George Washington, Ramses -- will live on for hundreds of more years. Even thousands. And I'm certainly never going to amount to anything like those guys. And, when it comes down to it, all of human history has occurred on this tiny blue speck. Even the most monumental achievements and persons won't matter to anyone outside the planet and almost none will matter even to those of our own species who might continue on (assuming we aren't obliterated by some catastrophe and have spread out into the universe). So, I'm able to recognize that anything I accomplish will only have temporary meaning and that the both the most awesome and hideous legacies of all time will grow to mean nothing. So . . . why worry about my trivial actions? I'm like a bacteria on a counter waiting to be sprayed with Lysol. And no, that doesn't bum me out.
    • acangiano 16y ago
      How has this new perspective affected the choices you make in life?
      • 16y ago
• jswinghammer 16y ago
  What's more sad I suppose is that what a few people have decided to be worth reading is probably just a subset of what's actually great out there to discover. I read a lot of classic literature and philosophy not working through any list but rather trying to be less ignorant than I was yesterday. I routinely go back to re-read things I've read before though. That's really what defines what books I got something out of reading. I'm probably never going to read Plato again if I have a choice in the matter but I'm currently returning to Cicero and then reading Augustine of Hippo whose major works I read years ago. I've also read the Bible more times than I could count. Thankfully there aren't too many new computer books worth reading or I'd never get around to reading these old books.
• alecco 16y ago
  There's just too much out there. Try to make things that replicate (subjective|probabilistic) good in the universe. Also this: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ (It applies beyond academia, too)
• pstack 16y ago
  I'm not much for repeating content. That's why I don't like to buy DVDs or build a collection of things. Music is an exception, but as far as film and books -- I have zero interest in experiencing the exact same content repeatedly. I could not consume all the wonderful content in ten life times, so I'm not going to short myself something that I have yet to enjoy, because I have to read a book the fourth time or see a movie the tenth time. My first thought in response to this actually deviated from the intention of the topic. You see, I am constantly amazed at humanity. For all the stupidity and evil, we have a capacity for overwhelming kindness, compassion, ambition, and ingenuity. Few days ever go by that I don't see something that makes me have a moment of extreme pride in this species (and I wonder if other species from other planets out there in the great beyond would share any of the same appreciation). Anyway, those thoughts are usually followed directly by the realization that life is so painfully short. Too brief. No matter what fantastic accomplishments I witness in my few remaining decades on this blue ball, I will miss out on everything that comes after. I probably won't be alive when we discover other life in the universe. When we accomplish teleportation and long distance space travel. When we have kick ass robots that we can have conversations with. When we do everything that nobody can even conceive of, today. I wonder, would anyone take up the offer if it was given, to be in some sort of stasis that allowed you to awake for one year every hundred years? You'd miss out on all relationships and so much life, but you'd also experience a year of life every century, well into the 31st century (and probably beyond, if medical science could extend your life another forty years at some point, there). I'm tempted. I can't say I'd do it with absolute certainty, but I would have to think very long and hard about the chance for such a prolonged journey. Plus, I bet girls in 3011 are total sluts.
  • r00fus 16y ago
    > I wonder, would anyone take up the offer if it was given, to be in some sort of stasis that allowed you to awake for one year every hundred years? You mean like Brigadoon/Germelshausen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germelshausen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germelshausen (in the original german tale, the time-travel is a curse) Even if I were into that idea, I guess I just don't have your faith in humanity or modern society even. My bet is that some x<100 years after you've been put into stasis, the company folds, sells the bodies (assets) to pay off debt and you are forever lost. This of course, ignores the natural disasters, massive wars (we've had 2 in the past century), or other calamities that might completely destroy society/contracts as we know it... 100 years is a LONG time.
• aforty 16y ago
  I'm going to sound really illiterate but who reads two books a week? I read a ton, as most programmers do but I read perhaps one or two [fictional] books PER YEAR.
  • Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
    You may want to reconsider when you read. When reading non-fiction, I find reading for just enough time to get a clear idea of a concept that is being described to me allows for better integration and aha! moments during the day. So, I find it beneficial to read them when my life is busy. The fiction books seem to be needed, for me, to not exhaust myself on non-fiction. The best time for me to read these is when I am less busy and have down time.
    • aforty 16y ago
      I don't find myself exhausted by non-fiction and I also don't consider coding text books/articles/tutorials/documentation to be "books". When I say books I mean fictional texts. I find myself exhausted by fiction while I read, it feels like such a waste of time to me to read something that holds little to no value to me in the real world so it really needs to be an author that I like, thus only one or two books a year. I know many people are going to disagree with me but I just don't see the value.
  • cincinnatus 16y ago
    I'd shoot for at least one a month if you can manage it. You're missing out for certain.
  • arethuza 16y ago
    I have day job and a side project that I probably spend at least a couple of hours a day on and I still read on average two books a week. On holiday I usually take seven or eight books for two weeks - depending on the type of books.
  • GFischer 16y ago
    I usually do, but then again, I don't have a TV or watch movies. It's a matter of choice. It also depends on the writer and genre - for example, I could read several Terry Pratchett books in a week, but slug through a heavy novel. I know I'm missing lots of good entertainment, but TV series, for instance, always seemed like a huge commitment of time for me.
• Umalu 16y ago
  When I turned 40 I figured my odds of living another 40 years were pretty good. I then figured that if I continued to read one book a week (my average) for the rest of my life, I would read another 2,080 books. That sounds like a lot but really it isn't, especially when one considers how many great books there are out there that one hasn't read. Many more than 2,080! So now when I consider reading another book I ask myself if it looks good enough to be one of my 2,080. Many books do not make that cut. I think it's been a good filter and I expect as I grow older, and I have fewer and fewer books looks left to read, I will get even more selective in what I read.
  • breck 16y ago
    I used to try and read many great books. As I got older I started reading fewer great books, many times. I think nowadays each year I read about 50% new books, and 50% books I've read before. I think you get more out of reading that way.
    • jacques_chester 16y ago
      We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
  • pasbesoin 16y ago
    It's an additional pause, for me, when I consider how many of those books may be technical books. A couple of hundred? That's 10 % of my remaining "quota". Which serves as a reminder to make sure those books count, as well. Top shelf, as it were.
• jroid 16y ago
  http://robertjhastings.net/ http://robertjhastings.net/ The true joy of life is the trip, not the destination
• dools 16y ago
  Forget books, I feel this way just about The Simpsons.
• teyc 16y ago
  I've just been discussing this point with my daughter a couple of weekends ago. The same I suspect applies to all the cool programming languages I wanted to learn.
• brianstorms 16y ago
  And the ironic fact is that I'm going to miss almost everything in that article because it is presented as faint grey text on a white background. TB;DR (too bright, didn't read)
• kingkawn 16y ago
  Imagine all the things that are as of yet unknown that we will miss. This dwarfs the knowable to infinity.
• te_chris 16y ago
  Reminds me of Umberto Eco's response when asked why he kept such a vast library and how many had he read: He responded (paraphrasing) that "the key wasn't how much I've read, but how much I've yet to read and learn". As far as I'm concerned abundance is great because there's just so much to learn and be surprised by in the world!
• coop11 16y ago
  For better and for worse, the tools that have come along with the information revolution foster what seems to be a much broader, yet more shallow perspective. For example, lets consider the fact that it takes .19 seconds to find someone's personal distillation of Darwin's Origin of Species. I can now get a summary of one of the great scientific discoveries in less than 1000 characters and be back to reading Facebook updates without blinking an eye. I didn't read a single word from the original work. I never touched on the years of toil, thought and research that become obvious only after you hear it in Darwin's words. To draw a relevant analogy, its like we are adding layers of abstraction to information. Wikipedia is just the high-level, interpreted view that hides all the nitty gritty details we don't need to worry about anymore. So how often will we need to dive into the inner-workings in the future? The question becomes is this satisfying? Is it "good enough" to just read the cliff notes? I hate to say it but I think yes. We will end up with an increasing number of "instant experts" who know a little about a lot. And the craftsman - the true specialists - will probably just fade away with the rest of the irrelevant details.
  • dman 16y ago
    Recent developments allow for efficient consumption of small replicas of big ideas. However if youre seeing life through these summaries and replicas then I think youre losing the work ethic required to create the big ideas.
• paganel 16y ago
  As far as classical literature goes, if you're read Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy then you've read them all. Problem solved :)
  • fagiano 16y ago
    ... and the two giants of western literature Shakespeare and Dante. We can't gloss over Joyce and Proust. And "Don Quixote", surely we can't miss that. Maybe Milton. Montaigne? And the Greeks, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides at least. Molière and Goethe...
• gordonc 16y ago
  Oddly enough, the more I read the more I become convinced that this may actually not be the case. Technology and our ability to effectively process information is growing at an exponential rate – of course, so is the amount of information. But logically, there will be a point in the future where the output of humanity in an hour will be greater than the sum total of all human knowledge prior to 2012. Some fans of the Mayan calendar say this date is December 21st, 2012. Kurzweil says more like 2045. Really hard to say, IMO. But still, if we have the power to create that kind of information then we'll have to be able to take in a lot more, so I'm not too worried about missing everything. I'm just concerned about the information pertinent to my health, career, and loved ones, which is quite readily available thanks to sites like this.
  • billybob 16y ago
    "...there will be a point in the future where the output of humanity in an hour will be greater than the sum total of all human knowledge prior to 2012" How much of that output is celebrity gossip and tweets about coffee and coverage of gadgets that will soon be forgotten? I'd say much of the "increase" is just us putting into writing the kind of daily chatter that ancient people didn't bother to write down. It just increases the noise-to-signal ratio for future historians.
    • nickpinkston 16y ago
      Certainly you must be right that noise is increasing faster than signal, but signal is still growing massively if you look at research being done, etc. Also, not to be ignored, as stated, is our ability to find knowledge is making the filtering process far better than before. Sure, an ancient library didn't contain a lot of celebrity gossip, but good luck finding what you need amongst the available works - sans anything but the librarian's best remembrance of what a book contains and its value.
• bshock 16y ago
  I wonder if this is somewhat mitigated by Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."
• driekken 16y ago
  Great works (be they books, movies or art) should be treated the same way life is: as one more step on your journey. Overplanning will make your choices too selective, thus making you knowledgeable in some areas and totally ignorant in others (most of them). Underplanning will make your journey unfocused, conferring you some knowledge on everything, but not much else. So, I guess we should strive for a balance, but what this balance represents is distinct for everyone.
• BasDirks 16y ago
  Without exaggeration I can say that one line of Proust is worth more to me than 99.9% of all books out there. I am all for being open to "different experiences" (ie. reading outside the classical canon), but I have learned to be picky. Experience is not about quantity, it's about those magical moment when your world expands in a violent flight, and about learning to love the world in new ways.
• gambler 16y ago
  I think I read a lot. I also keep a list of the books I think everyone should read. That list includes around 20 titles right now. Twenty out of much, much greater number. Moreover, it seems that the rate at which new books are added to the list is slowing down. The article is a typical NPR piece in that the unproven, unexplained assumptions that the author makes in the process of writing are by several orders of magnitude more significant than the thesis of the text. The thesis seems to be "there are lots of books, and you won't read them all". The assumption is that all books have equal value. Frankly, if someone believes that any book has equal value to any other book, I wouldn't much care about that person's take on literature. To me, it's akin to listening to a "mathematician" who says that all proofs are valid. My point is, the number of books that I would really miss reading is very finite and manageable. My problem isn't in reading them all, but in finding them all amidst the ever increasing amounts of garbage.
  • robertk 16y ago
    The obvious question: what is your list?
    • fagiano 16y ago
      In "Genius" Harold Bloom lists 100 authors. I trust his judgement more than mine so I'm slowly working my way through his choices.
    • gambler 16y ago
      I would gladly discuss it, but I don't want to post like this (i.e. just to prove something).
  • zacharypinter 16y ago
    I believe the article's author refers to this as culling.
    • gambler 16y ago
      She spoke about filtering out unread books, but I'm speaking about books that I've read personally.
• becomevocal 16y ago
  And to think I'm going to miss out on something I'll never know because I've read something about missing so many things.
• scotty79 16y ago
  I don't miss so much all the things of today as all the things of tomorrow that I will never see the glimpse of. It saddens me whenever I think about this for a moment. Only hope is that humanity achieves singularity before I die which is in my opinion not likely.
• robertk 16y ago
  Time marches without apology.
• martinkallstrom 16y ago
  I thought this would be about the fact that all of us will miss the next thousand and million years and everything that will happen on earth during that time. I'm not at all as sad over missing most of contemporary culture as I am over missing what will happen beyond my life span. The technological marvels, the scientific advances, the development of new ways of looking at what life really means. The advent of new forms of life, perhaps alien or artificial, which is so unlikely to happen during the flash of time I get to spend here. In this perspective the article came across as very unimaginative and dull, but I suppose that's only me.
• bambax 16y ago
  > Let's do you another favor: Let's further assume you limit yourself to books from the last, say, 250 years. Nothing before 1761. That's the wrong way to go!! Start with Aristotle, rather, and read only books that have stood the test of time. What would be the point of reading every Kindle "space opera" priced at $0.99? If you read all of Plutarch, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Cervantès, you're fine, really.
  • xyzzyz 16y ago
    I read some books of them and did not like them. I am not so much into reading great books as I am into reading books I like. Wasting many hours of my precious time reading books I do not enjoy only to feel smug does not sound like a particularly good idea for me.
    • bambax 16y ago
      The authors I mentioned are thoroughly enjoyable, they're not Kant or Hegel... Also, in order to know whether you like something or not you have to experience it. You may not like reading (as opposed to watching movies for example), but if you do enjoy reading you cannot not like Plutarch for example?
      • xyzzyz 16y ago
        The thing is, you may enjoy it, but I not so much. I read Shakespeare and Montaigne and they had not impress me as much as some recent hard s-f did. I really like reading books and I see that Dostojewski's, or Hemingway's, or Kafka's etc books are really good, because I have read enough books in my life to be able to distinguish good writers from bad ones to a certain degree, nevertheless reading their books does not give me as much pleasure as reading hard s-f sometimes does, and this is the reason I read books at all -- to feel good. Some people may (and surely do) take pleasure in deconstructing classical writers to pieces, or learning from them what was the zeitgeist back then, or finding hidden senses, but all these things are not for me. That's why I don't think that "you should read authors XXX and YYY, because it is good for the development of your literary taste" is a wise thing to say -- it surely may be, but this may not be the point of reading.
• csomar 16y ago
  When you think of it, the human spirit is a combination in the human brain. That is, you can create a human inside a computer. You'll just need powerful and may be crazy processing power. Now if we figure out a way to read the human brain configuration and data, and then transfer it to another body (the same body as the person) that you constructed it biologically, you can make the same person alive again. I'm dedicating my whole life in an attempt to live again.
  • yason 16y ago
    the human spirit is a combination in the human brain Is it? How do you know?
    • csomar 16y ago
      A huge number of neurons interacting with each other giving you the ability to see, sense, hear... With a network that loops and give you illusion of your existence. The human spirit is just another human invention that was made to explain the human existence. I don't find actually any clear definition to it.
      • Panoramix 16y ago
        Yes, but the actual being human is the result of a long time of evolution of the physical human body i.e., there are no indications you can recreate a human mind without having a human body attached to it. This is in fact a tough question in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience (see mind-body problem).
    • khafra 16y ago
      In 99.9% of things someone might be asked to explain, it's noncontroversial that at the bottom level it all runs on physics. csomar is extending that well-warranted assumption to one of the places it's sometimes contested.
• yason 16y ago
  I fully trust that I will bump into things, ideas and people relevant to my life without explicitly sorting through nearly everything or filtering out the crap. I've found that it works well. It also converges: by not filtering out crap I'm not in contact with crap and I see very little if any crap in my life. And whenever I find a new thing, most of the time it truly is something wonderful and comes up pretty much at the right moment when I'm most receptive to it. I would feel very anxious if I kept thinking and worrying myself about what I might be missing.
• JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  I've often wondered if we have "enough". Enough movies, enough books, enough poetry. More than several lifetimes' worth. Why not stop? Replay from, say, 1910, in an infinite loop. Nobody would notice, and we could all get on with other things.
  • zacharypinter 16y ago
    I think Hollywood has caught on to this idea :)
  • khafra 16y ago
    Producing a good "creative work" is a useful enough signal that it's not a practice likely to die out: http://sarkology.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/why-creative-domains-are-prototypically-creative/ http://sarkology.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/why-creative-domai...
• michaelochurch 16y ago
  A friend of mine (raised Jewish, but deist/agnostic) came to the conclusion that the most reasonable cosmology is one in which each person reincarnates as every human ever to live before passing on to the next world or becoming a god. This probably rules out free will, but it gives hope that, maybe, we do get to experience at least the entire human world... we just don't have the luxury of perceiving it all at once. It also solves the karma/ethics problem neatly. This is a tough realization, in any case. Even a million-year lifespan wouldn't help, because all of the books we were reading now would be likely to fade if we were to live another million years. As humans, we're innately finite in all sorts of important ways (e.g. attention, memory) that have nothing to do with lifespan. I have to agree with the people who've said that "it's the journey, not the destination". It's all we can control, and it's what we actually experience. As a deist and Buddhist, I've often wondered why God wanted us to evolve in a world where lives are so short and death happens all the time, instead of one in which humans could get a more reasonable 10,000 years (or process information and experience 100 times faster, which would have the same effect). It's infinitely frustrating and reminiscent of Sisyphus (probably, in fact, a Greek metaphor for the reincarnation of the spiritually lazy, noting that ancient Greeks did believe in reincarnation) but it also has a certain beauty to it: getting to go through childhood and to re-learn all of the great things in this world again, and again, and again.
  • rgraham 16y ago
    If you choose to believe that the world was created by an all-good, all-knowing God then you must believe that the world God created is the best possible of all worlds. God would be capable of nothing else in that scenario. Whatever your beliefs I've always thought that was an interesting concept to illuminate 'what if' discussions.
    • narrator 16y ago
      Well even the most lenient interpretation of the old testament leads one to believe that God is angry and vengeful, especially if not respected. I think the idea that God only exists if he's a nice guy is a bit of a strawman argument promulgated by atheists.
• Tycho 16y ago
  I think saying 'think of all the wonderful books I won't have time to read' is a bit like saying 'think of all the great wine in the world I'll never get a chance to drink!' It's something to enjoy in your liesure time, you don't need to worry about consuming it exhaustively. The only sad thing would be if you never had any liesure time at all (you missed all your opportunities to have some).
  • fagiano 16y ago
    It's leisure I think.
• deleted 16y ago
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• FiZ 16y ago
  Now I feel much better about missing Mad Men.
• orblivion 16y ago
  Consider the alternative for a moment: You can read everything. So can everybody else. Sortof boring in the end, isn't it?
• heliodor 16y ago
  Good points in the link. The only thing I'd like to point out is that the author starts with the assumption that BOOKS are what we WANT to read. Just because they've been the norm, does not make them the best method of knowledge transfer. I'd argue that 90% of each book is fluff. Back in the day, Charles Dickens and Co. were getting paid by the page, hence why all the classics are lengthy. Add to that the fact that school essays come with size requirements (a poor way of making people iterate on their thoughts), and we have a system where size is king. We've gotten used to a book being 100 pages or more, but knowledge can be transferred a lot more efficiently. Hacker News is one example of a better method, which really brings us to the following (incomplete) list of more concise writing methods: - Cliff Notes - Pamphlets - Blogs Some people see reading as a leisure activity. I see it purely as a knowledge transfer method, hence I prefer it to be concise and to the point. The only argument I can think of in favor or lengthy books is that by spending more time on the material, it sinks into your head better.
  • zipdog 16y ago
    Agreed, for many books. I'd also add the book digests (especially for Management books), and then diagrams and charts, which can convey so much more. But on top of that, I think the framework/lens you have when you're reading makes a big difference too. Biggest advantage of a Cliff Notes-style is to add an opening paragraph saying: this author was writing in a time of social change X or common belief Y, and most of this book addresses their concerns related to that (many of which were unfounded).. or something. On your last point: I think reading as leisure is a wholly worthwhile pursuit in its own right - tacitly feeling the experience of the world through another perspective - though I'm not sure I'd need to read more than a book a month for this
    • heliodor 16y ago
      Absolutely! I completely overlooked it: more diagrams, please! more bulleted lists! more pictures!
    • heliodor 16y ago
      It would be great if each book came with a hierarchy of summaries. A 1000-page book would have a 100 page summary, a 10 page summary, a 1 page summary, and a single paragraph summary. Whatever the right factor is: 3, 5, 8, or 10. If you like any given part, you can go down that branch and read the details.
• godDLL 16y ago
  I'm only 27 years old, but it is my firm conviction that 99% of stuff out there is utter shit. Not just mediocre, not just unnecessary, but genuine bollocks. And I think that's fine. It's important we try new things before we completely understand them. My adrenalin levels are way up though, as I'm typing this. It sure doesn't _feel_ fine.
  • bluekeybox 16y ago
    Worse than bollocks. 99% of stuff out there (even literature) is someone trying to sell you something. Propaganda, in short.
• narrator 16y ago
  If you want to miss as little as possible, find the most advanced technical material you can possibly find that interests you and read all the pre-requisite material until you can read and fully understand it. That way, you take the most direct path to at least having the tools to understand everything that interests you.
• pmsaue0 16y ago
  "But what we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can't change that." Powerful
• nazgulnarsil 16y ago
  why would I want to bother trying to exhaust the sphere of possible human experiences before the heat death of the universe when there is a much larger space of possible modes of existence? Oh I guess this article was written by someone who plans on dying :p
• bostonpete 16y ago
  Nothing before 1761. This cuts out giant, enormous swaths of literature... I don't think it cuts out all that much. I would assume that the number of books published before 1761 would be a tiny fraction of a percentage of all books ever published.
• ares2012 16y ago
  Very well said. Great article.