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What If You Could Do It All Over?
- person_of_color 6y agoDefinitely not be a software engineer. No one told me how incredibly low the social status is. EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.
- telesilla 6y agoCouldn't you build something beautiful and useful and add to the world's treasures? That's not the mark of a low status person.
- spacechild1 6y agoHow many software developers actually get a chance to “add to the world's treasures“? Building yet another CRUD web app doesn't meet the definition in my book. I'm not saying it's not possible, but you have to be rather lucky.
- bonoboTP 6y agoHow many normal people get a chance to work at a top law firm in a fancy position just because they graduated from some law school? Better jobs are competed for strongly. Good stuff is never free and never available by default.
- b3kart 6y agoYep, this whole thread is one big apples-to-oranges comparison. An average software engineer is lower status than a lawyer at a top law-firm with fierce competition for every position. Well, duh. Why don't we compare a senior FAANG engineer/manager to an average legal clerk or such then.
- onecommentman 6y agoThe really good stuff is always free. If you take a more expansive interpretation of “stuff”. The pretty good stuff is often in short supply.
- bonoboTP 6y agoSounds deep, you probably mean things like love and faith and kindness. But it's misleading. Friendships and relationships aren't "free" in terms of effort and achievement. They take the same kind of work/luck/genetics/network combination as getting an interesting and fulfilling job does. Sure, even the hobo on the street can have faith in Jesus and mental peace for free if you mean that sort of thing, but most things people want are scarce or at least aren't available by default, without either effort or connections.
- redisman 6y agoHow would working at a top law firm do anything “beautiful” or meaningful in the world anyway? You’ll basically be some oligarchs lackey
- api 6y agoHah. Nope. A career where you can make money and move up over time is not low status. Try being a blue collar member of the working poor, or someone deep in debt from a useless degree working a dead end service job. Software is a very cushy job compared with what more than half this country has.
- person_of_color 6y agoIt's the lowest of the white collar jobs.
- api 6y agoPostdoc, paralegal, architectural “cad monkies,” a lot of mid level administration... Depends on where you work too. Sounds like you may need a new job.
- phnofive 6y agoI think it may be on the lower end for a number of reasons which lead back to the low barrier to entry - there’s no need to pay your dues with a decade of schooling, in hundreds of thousands in tuition, and to professional associations, state boards of licensure, or both. However, there are crappy doctors and architects - just like there are famous software engineers. Prestige - outside the ingroup - is a function of the accessibility, value, and quality of your work. Like the Taiwanese folks who built a mask availability tracker...
- runawaybottle 6y agoIt’s fundamentally disrespected by people at a core level. I’ll prove my point with the one question they always ask us versus any other profession, ‘what is it that you actually do at the company?’. I swear, I’d never think to ask this of anyone, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, cops, literally, I can’t think of one profession that gets asked this, I’ll try again, pilots, chemists, diplomats, translators, artists, mechanics, it’s endless. What is it that you actually do? How about fuck you, I’m not answering that anymore. It tickles people the wrong way that you took software development into every possible industry you can imagine and not only started offering tech solutions, but business solutions too. Incoming projection - I see it as the most passive aggressive low ball attack on one’s profession. It’s karma too, because we do the same to sales/product/people management elements within our industry. I know why I’ve done it, and it’s mostly insecurity, ‘oh those people aren’t smart, will soon be gone’. ^ Now imagine the whole of society looking at you like that.
- imgabe 6y agoDon't get a job based on how impressive it sounds when you tell people about it at parties. You will spend far more time doing the job than you will talking about it at parties.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoYeah but you'll take home way more dates at those parties.
- mhh__ 6y agoOn the one hand it opens the door to (bluntly) "better" people, but equally will you have much in common?
- shrimp_emoji 6y agoThanks to our extreme gender partitioning of hobbies and professions, there's little hope of that anyway. ; p
- imgabe 6y agoThat's fine if you're OK with the kinds of dates that go home with you because of your impressive-sounding job.
- closeparen 6y agoI don't think that's as shallow as you make it sound. I'd rather have respect for being a successful adult who exercises a skill to create value, for doing something difficult and being good at it, than for my taste in music or something.
- imgabe 6y agoThose things are independent of status, though. You can be a successful plumber who exercises your skill to create value, but status-conscious types would still consider you low-status.
- selimthegrim 6y agoYou could try being a grad student in New Orleans. The James Earl Jones quote from Conan is apt here (my point being they will be thankful for what they have). If it makes them feel better I have to teach the 99% of their high school they are talking about and they all seem pretty one track minded.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoConan O'Brien or Conan the barbarian?
- selimthegrim 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn0td-xpl8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn0td-xpl8w
- Nav_Panel 6y agoStatus is always relative to social context. I'm sorry you feel that way about your place in whatever your local social world is.
- ronyeh 6y agoUpvoted though I disagree with you. I'm sure there is a wide variance of outcomes in software, but I think if you work at it, you can make a fulfilling career out of software. Don't give up, as it is possible your current job just isn't a right fit for you. Counter anecdote: I know law and finance and business folks who wished they studied more computers.
- sanderjd 6y agoIn my experience that's because they think our work is easier and that we do less of it than they do, for more pay. But that actually goes to the parent's point; lazy entitled and overpaid is part of the low status perception.
- Bakary 6y agoHaving a lot of money without working is a far greater sign of status. That's what being a noble is mostly about!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- konjin 6y agoJust curious what do you think a high social status position is and what does that entail?
- Tade0 6y agoCare to elaborate? I find this take really interesting, because my (and my peers') experience so far has been very different.
- mhh__ 6y agoAre you Indian by any chance? I'm curious because - at least from Indian people I've seen and met - it (social status) seems to be hugely more important than what I see around me locally. I do think about my literal social status (i.e. friends, sex, etc.) but I don't think thought along those lines has ever really influenced my decision making - beyond a vague desire to outdo people born better than me.
- Wilem82 6y ago“Social status” is an artificial circlejerk concept, why do you care?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoWhat exactly is the social status you were looking for?
- bcrosby95 6y agoFunny. I'm disappointed by the status it's gained over the last 20 years. I miss when it was even lower status than it is now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway189262 6y agoHaha do 500 hours of leetcode and go work for FAANG. It's a totally different level of social status than regular engineers and the only qualifications needed is leetcode mediums in 20 mins
- person_of_color 6y agoEr, I work for a FAANG, but I'll never reach investment banking status.
- akhilcacharya 6y agolol, which FAANG is this? I have friends that joined Goldman at the same time as I started working, and I make more and work less.
- person_of_color 6y agoIf you think everyone at FAANG makes 500k at mid-senior SWE (i.e Associate) level, you're smoking something.
- akhilcacharya 6y ago~$500k is what some Amazon L6's and most L7's make. Don't think you can hit that in most Finance positions until VP level, unless you're in Quant finance in hedge funds but then the SWEs make that much too.
- person_of_color 6y agoSWEs working on infra dont make that at hedge funds or prop shops. It isn’t tied to PnL
- pizza_shit 6y agoGoldman banking associates do not make 500k lmao. you are smoking something 500 at Goldman is like VP with some tenure, which would be similar to E6 at Facebook Hell Goldman sales and trading managing directors make 750-900k a year, which is what a good E7 at Facebook makes, both usually reached by age 33-35 by high achievers.
- kulig 6y agoLmao. Start lifting weights and learn how to dress. Nobody gives a damn what your job is. If you actually think lawyer is a high status job then youre watching too many movies.
- selimthegrim 6y agoI don’t know why people are downvoting you, the median lawyer isn’t
- person_of_color 6y agoI'm thinking Big Law, Big 4 Management Consulting, BB Investment banks, private equity, etc.
- randomopining 6y agoYeah legit no one of importance cares. If you’re in good shape, look good, and have enough disposable income to do fun stuff when you want (any software engineer does)... anybody will find you interesting enough.
- offtop5 6y agoDepends on where you come from. Half my friends are doing service jobs or gig work. I can invest in my best friends studio , planing on seeing another friend in Asia next year, can take multiple international vacations per year. I have no credit card debt. All from wanting to learn a bit of Unity once upon a time. You can't compare yourself to the top 5% of income earners while ignoring the bottom 95%
- gen220 6y agoSome scattered thoughts. I'd recommend talking with your friends, and asking them if they find their work fulfilling. If it falls short of their expectations, ask which dimensions contribute the most to the diff. This might give you some perspective on what life would be like in another vertical. It probably isn't as rosy as you imagine, but you might have done this already. --- I would recommend to younger people, that they shouldn't make their career choice through the lens of prestige, because time has demonstrated that social standing is flimsy and unpredictable. A profession's relative prestige varies regionally, temporally, socioeconomically, and in the eye of the beholder. These are mutable dimensions for the duration of a normal career. It's kind of like the old advice: if you're interested in marrying someone for life, don't marry based on one dimension alone (looks, money, health, personality, family). Any of these can invert completely. In finance terms, it's like betting your financial portfoilo on the 40-year performance of a single ETF: not outright stupid because some people will be successful, but it's not super wise. If this doesn't help you feel better, maybe you should consider changing careers? As a SWE, you have enough intellectual capital, time and domain-specific education is the only thing standing in your way.
- saltyfamiliar 6y agoWhat are some higher status jobs where I can use my above average ability to work with computers and sheer tenacity to compensate for my woefully underdeveloped social skills?
- person_of_color 6y agoActuary.
- closeparen 6y agoSocial status associated with book-smarts and STEM jobs is very culturally dependent. Try hanging out with immigrants.
- Bakary 6y agoWanting high status out of just being a type of professional is like expecting status out of purchasing an iPhone.
- wait_a_minute 6y agoSoftware engineers in the USA get paid well enough on average that you can live a modest life, save up serious capital, and then bootstrap your own company or side hustle. That will get you more status.
- pdog 6y ago“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”
- sebmellen 6y agoThis reminds me of David Goggins talking about how he wanted to "do better than God's chart." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fx1mGhTXdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fx1mGhTXdg
- borroka 6y agoWhenever I get annoyed by the relentlessly banal life lessons of Goggins, I remind myself that his audience is mostly made up of troubled teenagers who took their latest shower 3 weeks ago and middle-age professionals of some sorts who cannot close their trousers anymore because of additional calories brought on by family life.
- sebmellen 6y agoI actually think Goggins's ideas are the opposite of banal. The concept of "limbic resistance", as brought up by Andrew Huberman when talking about Goggins, is really fascinating [0]. The concept that doing things that you hate doing is "exercising of the muscle of willpower" is very revealing. It's something I've tried to do adopt, and it's been a very powerful motivator in getting me to work out and reduce procrastination. As banal as it may sound — like the father in Calvin and Hobbes saying "it builds character" — it's also a great way of framing it. And I assure you I'm neither a > "troubled teenager who took my latest shower 3 weeks ago" or a > "middle-age professional of some sort who cannot close his trousers anymore because of additional calories brought on by family life". Your comment doesn't paint you as a very positive person. Of course, it's fine if you'd like to be that way, but my question is: why? What good does writing a comment like this do you (or me, or anyone reading it)? To me, these sorts of despondent and cynical comments seem to come from the very types of people you think listen to Goggins. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujz29rQvDvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujz29rQvDvA
- acwan93 6y agoThis reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”: > "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
- bmc7505 6y agoThis reminds me of a speculative fiction story by Ted Chiang called "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" which imagines an expendable device that gives users the ability to contact alternate versions of themselves in other branches, and explores the moral and psychological consequences of learning about those outcomes: https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-b5ab45cae2a5 https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freed...
- christiansakai 6y agoI always consider my life is strange. Born in a 3rd world country in a broken home, families fight like in drama, many divorces and remarriage. I went where whoever my current father at that time went, moving from city to city, school to school. Then I find myself in the US, from odd jobs such as dry clean, laundry, sushi, deli, to church admin, to now working as SWE in one of big US tech company in NYC. Married a wife from another country as well. Me and my wife are different culturally, language, faith, and socio-economic background. One day I woke up in a remote village where her grandparents cultivate rice, in a traditional home and where the bathtub is still traditional, hearing the sound of cicadas and see the morning sun, and I thought to myself "how did I end up here?" It's strange, I left my home country and now wherever I go I see people that speaks different language than me, buildings that I'm not familiar with. My community where I am active with is also different than me. It is a strange feeling. I hate airports because whenever I am in airports I always have a mixed feeling. The feeling of leaving my current place to visit another home in another place. Now my heart is in three different countries (or cities, to be precise). Every vacation season I have to decide which country to visit and to which family. Life is short. I saw my brother's baby, and then on the next vacation that baby already knew how to walk. My parents and grandparents are getting older. My kids and my brother's kids will speak different languages, grow up differently, and so does my wife's kids with her sisters'. I have a dream of uniting them in one place during vacation and see how those kids react to one another even though they can't communicate in one language, I think that'd be a hilarious sight but very wholesome. I hope there will be faster way to travel invented within our lifetime, maybe Concorde again? I guess this is the life of immigrants. We are immigrants, this is our way of life. I often asked myself what would happen if I stayed in my home country? I'd marry my current girlfriend at that time, maybe help my family's business, or do something else. I don't know. For anyone curious: I was born and grew up in Jakarta (Indonesia), and my wife grew up in Tokyo (Japan), and now I work in NYC. Life is surely strange. I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me. The world is is a strange place. One day, maybe we will retire in Japan, or in Indonesia. Who knows. It's too far in the future. What I do now is cherish every moment I have, knowing the future will be different.
- 6y ago
- quickthrower2 6y agoIt’s worth thinking about how we measure how “good” a life is and if that is superficial and too much influenced by fashion. For example the cliche is go travelling or get rich starting a business. “I raised kids” doesn’t have the same boastworthyness in a lot of circles, but arguably it’s more interesting. Or maybe not. What’s the life well lived metric?
- jackcosgrove 6y agoI recently became acquainted with the teachings of Epicurus. He advocated living a simple life of simple pleasures surrounded by friends. It's almost a truism that seeking fame and fortune is a route to unhappiness. Not necessarily because these are bad things, but because the desires that drive these choices seem to be insatiable.
- sokoloff 6y agoFor me, (very) modest fortune and essentially zero fame seems to be the ideal situation. Like a paid off house, a nest egg that throws off $10K/month, and only family/friends know who I am.
- closeparen 6y agoMy goals are about the same, and sometimes I worry whether they're ambitious enough. But they really are. It takes a very particular reference frame to make them "simple" or "modest." $120k is a 90th percentile income! And that's among people working full time for it.
- onecommentman 6y agoYeah, I think $5K/mo with no mortgage is plenty in most parts of the US. In NJ with a big house, that can disappear into just property taxes... Regarding fame, I think the words of the late 20th Century philosopher David Cassidy summed it up best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cassidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cassidy If you are desperate for fame and fortune, try just fortune and see how that works out for you.
- rewtraw 6y agoI recommend the book "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch for a fun techno-thriller take on the idea of "alternative lives". Great read!
- buggy759 6y agoAgreed!
- ljm 6y agoWhat if I could do it all over? I wouldn't. I used to think I could, now I don't want to. Where would I like to be? Don't know that either. I'm happy with not knowing.
- Haul4ss 6y agoYou can't, so don't bother thinking about it. You can make changes today that will pay dividends in 10 years, so maybe focus on that instead. I was widowed pretty young (as widowers go), so I have done my share of playing the what-if game with the past. Ultimately it is not a productive exercise, and I try not to do it. If I catch myself dwelling in unlived lives, I try to refocus on the one still in front of me.
- antisthenes 6y agoI came to the same conclusion. It's tempting to lay in bed after a bad life event, thinking about turning back the clock, but that never ever leads to anything productive or positive. Best case scenario is you can't fall asleep until 4AM and screw up your sleep schedule for a week. Worst case is you start exhibiting learned helplessness and go into depression for a year or several. I always try to refocus and think about what I can do for the people who were there for me during bad times, and how I can learn from my misfortune. (Sometimes, there's nothing to learn and it's just a bad stroke of luck. Even then - it's not going to help playing the what-if game) Ultimately we are the people we are both because of good and bad things that happened to us.
- ImaCake 6y ago> You can make changes today that will pay dividends in 10 years, so maybe focus on that instead. Exactly this. No matter what your imagined and real futures turn out to be, the good ones all require effort and investment in the present. You can’t go wrong with making investments in your life now.
- Felony_Fred 6y agoThe best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. - Chinese Proverb
- ReactiveJelly 6y agoAnd if you've been trying to plant the same tree for 20 years, the second best time to treat your ADHD is now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- colmvp 6y agoI don't have a kid, but I tell my nieces/nephews that while they are young to search for and practice something that interests them. Could be painting, coding, dancing, chess, languages, music, karate... anything that they enjoy doing that involves being an active participant in the process. Because by the time they are in their late teens / early 20s, they'll have thousands of hours of practice under their belt and opportunities available to them by dint of that mastery. I don't regret my childhood largely because it's immutable, but when I reflect upon it I would've preferred to have spent a lot less time playing video games.
- brabel 6y agoEarly teens is a time when kids should focus on social activities, not be obsessed by some individualistic activity... because the most important skill they can develop at this age is their social skill. I would trade my best technical skills for better social skills (which I didn't manage to develop at this crucial age) as I can see from experience now that that's what brings you what really matters in life: good friends, success in romantic relationships, even success at work where I observe that most people who get "promoted" are the people who others like, not necessarily the best technically.
- tailspin2019 6y ago> Could be painting, coding, dancing, chess, languages, music, karate... > Early teens is a time when kids should focus on social activities, not be obsessed by some individualistic activity I don't think GP is suggesting they spend their time exclusively on these activities. But it seems like good advice that kids to spend some time on such endeavours! Besides, many of these activities could involve (or lead to) socialising with other kids in the process, towards a common goal. Which is an amazing way to develop social skills too.
- secondbreakfast 6y agoYou can do what you wish you did yesterday, today.
- WalterBright 6y agoIt's a popular fantasy. See "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. Or all those endless movies where someone gets to do high school over again, like "Peggy Sue Got Married". Or even "Groundhog Day". "A Christmas Carol". "It's a Wonderful Life". And on and on.
- dredmorbius 6y agoEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind another, with its own twist.
- Apocryphon 6y agoPalm Springs came out on Hulu this year and continues in that mold. I do think certain scenarios like Replay or Groundhog Day accord additional advantages because the relived lives stack up, and one’s knowledge, even mastery, accumulate.
- matwood 6y agoI came here to mention Replay. I’m glad someone beat me to it. Great book, and really made me think a bit more about what’s important.
- lovecg 6y ago“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” — Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- buggy759 6y agoGreat book
- aazaa 6y ago> It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives. “The elevation of choice as an absolute good, the experience of chance as a strange affront, the increasing number of exciting, stultifying decisions we must make, the review of the past to improve future outcomes”—all these “feed the people we’re not.” Advertisers sell us things by getting us to imagine better versions of ourselves, even though there’s only one life to live: it’s “yolo + fomo,” a friend tells Miller, summing up the situation nicely. The nature of work deepens the problem. “Unlike the agricultural and industrial societies that preceded it,” Miller writes, our “professional society” is “made up of specialized careers, ladders of achievement.” You make your choice, forgoing others: year by year, you “clamber up into your future,” thinking back on the ladders unclimbed. Freedom is a weird thing. Most would say that more personal freedom is a good thing, at least for themselves. Yet so many behave in exactly the opposite way. I'm reminded of Paul Graham's recent essay How to Think for Yourself, and this passage about ideologies: > The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith. To an independent-minded person that would seem revolting, just as it would seem to someone fastidious about food to take a bite of a submarine sandwich filled with a large variety of ingredients of indeterminate age and provenance. http://paulgraham.com/think.html http://paulgraham.com/think.html Nobody forces an ideology on someone, and yet the number of people who gleefully latch onto ideologies seems to be exploding. Could there be a connection between greater freedom and greater desire to restrict that freedom - not from the outside, but from within?
- Apocryphon 6y agoKierkegaard said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
- glovett 6y agoMeasures of happiness and satisfaction are subjective states of mind. This is what I try to remind myself when I am feeling wistful and longing. A relevant folktale: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/japan.html#stonecutter http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/japan.html#stonecutter
- JustARandomGuy 6y agoI used to think like this, but then I saw the Star Trek TNG episode Tapestry [1] where the premise is much like this question. Picard accepts Q's offer to relive his life, and it turns out that even the negative things in Picard's life help to shape the good qualities he has. I consider my life to be much the similar: even the negative things or the things I wish would change have helped shape qualities that I would not give away. [1]: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode)
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoI think about that episode a lot in perspective of my life. I actually lived my life like Picard reliving his life. What really hit home was when he was transported back to the present and was questioned Troi and Riker about getting into command. They pretty much laughed at him. To me that really opened my eyes about who I am as a person. I liked being wise even young that it almost has created a retroactive effect my future prospects simply because of it. I've often been told "are you an old man?" by many adults when I was younger and in hindsight now I understand why. However I find it very stupid that human culture (or just western values) find that as a negative. For some reason were supposed to waste our youth and engage in risky behaviors. I just never saw it that way.
- throwaway98797 6y agoYou aren’t “supposed” waste your youth. Those who waste can’t stand seeing others doing it differently. It does not mean that you live right, but people’s opinions are often reflections of their own insecurities.
- mikewarot 6y agoI watched said episode, and it does make you think.
- learnstats2 6y agoWhilst I enjoyed that episode, it was fictional. Did Picard really need to be stabbed in the heart, just to learn his lesson? (And, his 'unremarkable career' seemed to be a bigger criticism of Starfleet/the Federation than we normally see - what's wrong with an ordinary life?) I would be happy to remove the trauma that I experienced in my past. I'd take the risk of being a different person - with different good qualities.
- aurizon 6y agoWorld economic domination by foreseen stock booms/crashes etc...
- Swizec 6y agoThe best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best is now.
- sebmellen 6y ago> Unfortunately, the ways of men are such that we cannot truly be ourselves. How strange, that the very thing which makes us human, makes us so anti-human, and yet… In that case, is our anti-human-ness not also the most human thing possible? Never did I think it would pay to make such bad decisions, and never did I think that, had I made better decisions, I might have been worse off. Perhaps the very things that put me here are the challenges God has set out for me to face, and that means that I am right where I should be, and I always have been all along! > So what is there to do? Should I adopt a strategy of total non-action, of being a passive observer to my thoughts and my bodily emotions and my neuroses? Should I somehow elevate myself to a point beyond my own mind, where I am exposed to fewer neuroses? > No… I am in a checkmate, a cosmic checkmate. And the only thing to do is to do what I can as best I can, and hope the rest of my life may continue unfazed. [0]: https://bedaring.org/post/free-writing/2020-12-21/ https://bedaring.org/post/free-writing/2020-12-21/
- buggy759 6y agoMany people would say that if you do it all over it would end up exactly the same.
- offtop5 6y agoSkimmed over this. What an amazing way to make yourself sick. Remunerating is an absolutely horrible habit. Don't assume anyone else has a perfect life. My last partner was divorced, but put up a nice front for family and friends up until she seperated. As far as I'm concerned until the day I die I don't have a second to waste on things I can't change anyway.
- sevagh 6y agoDid you mean ruminating?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago>As far as I'm concerned until the day I die I don't have a second to waste on things I can't change anyway. This is the real ticket to happiness imo. Once you realize there are just an enumerable amount of things you cannot directly change and start thinking "Why am I so angry about this?" you eventually learn to be happy.
- kodah 6y agoMuch of my life hasn't played out how I expected. I had dreams like many people in high school and none of them came true. Instead of finishing college I joined the military after the stock market collapse in 2008/9. Impressions were left on me throughout my early life that I only came to know as an adult. My family got sick, I ruined the relationship that I'd worked for, and at times I alienated people close to me out of my own sense of self-defense. I pushed myself to the brink repeatedly. My twenties were filled with stress, frustration, confusion, and at times anger. These things taught me acceptance and forgiveness of both myself and others. Looking back, I would not trade them for an easier or more prestigious life. When I came back from Afghanistan I had to scratch, claw, and climb a ladder without a degree thanks in much part to people who saw in me what I could only hoped to have seen in myself. I looked around me when I arrived and I saw Ivy League and top school graduates with multi-million dollar homes, Teslas, and their own literal fig trees in their back yards that complained about everything in life. I've now had the opportunity to live in multiple cultures with varying degrees of prosperity. These things taught me to know my value but to have perspective on what I'm really asking for. Here I am considering selling all my belongings, buying a truck and an RV to go embrace the new open road that is remote work. Life isn't about looking back. It isn't even about getting what you want. It's about navigating the road in front of you and making the best of the opportunities in front of you and for everyone around you. All that to say, I've embraced the idea that whatever lies ahead is where I'm supposed to be and I needn't look at what my neighbors value or what they have because I don't care. This life is mine to live.
- AYBABTME 6y agoI've had a very strangely similar path, however I still haven't given up on my teenage dreams: call me delusional! I like to think the military gave me the will strength to push until I get some (imperfect) version of what I want, and not let setbacks paint my forward outlook too much. I'd agree with your conclusion and encourage you to sell everything and go have fun.
- kodah 6y agoI haven't given up, I'm still here, still working in software. I'm just doing it my way now, with some new priorities, I suppose. The military is a complex subject for me and my friends. There are good things I can say and there are awful things I can say. Regardless, I will always be proud of what I did and accomplished in that time. It makes me proud you've made something of post-service life though, veterans will always hold a special place in my mind.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pkid 6y agoAt some point you might find comfort in knowing you are on the right track, regardless of how far back in line you might be.
- handojin 6y agoYou could find yourself living the Strange Life of Ivan Osokin?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Impossible 6y agoI once pitched a startup idea that would enable this if I was given "infinite money and infinite time". Most folks ignored it, but my elderly parents still tell me to start a business to work on this right now
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/OiAdj https://archive.is/OiAdj
- whiddershins 6y agoI would do nothing differently. I’ve yet to meet someone I would trade lives with. What more can I aspire to?
- ddingus 6y agoFor a long time, I thought about this in terms of different choices. Truth is, one could make those choices and arrive at an outcome leading right back to this very question. Unable to resolve that, I started to think about the scope of human experiences. If I were to do it over, I would do it as a very different person. Roll the die, and go, same as happened this time. Even then, it could be very similar...
- war1025 6y agoMy dad got brain cancer when I was 25. That event accelerated our decision to have kids, and as a result our first daughter was born a few days after I turned 27. The reasoning I came to is that given the probabilities of how children are conceived, if my dad didn't have cancer, our first child would have been someone else than our daughter. So basically wishing anything different for my dad would be wishing that my daughter didn't exist. And I guess that made his death easier for me to accept.
- Bakary 6y agoAt the risk of sounding vulgar, moving your hips at a slightly different rhythm or conceiving half a second later or any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child. This reminds of the moment when Emil Cioran's mother mentioned how she should have aborted him outright. This led him to the insight that his life was largely an accident contingent on small factors, and that it therefore need not be taken so seriously.
- war1025 6y agoI guess that's my point. Wishing for anything different in the past means wishing away anything good that happened after that moment.
- missedthecue 6y ago"any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child." Can you prove this?
- Bakary 6y agoIt's the inevitable logical conclusion based on how human reproduction works. The chance of getting the same spermatozoon in there, the same random genetic variations, the same developmental conditions and so forth is infinitesimally small if the same exact conditions are not met. Even if we ignore all of that, there's still the swirling chaos of causality to contend with, forever altered by that small change...
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI went to a specialized high school (as a semi-anonymous account don't want to give too much detail), and as such more than a few of my close high school friends went on to be famous in their chosen profession, and a couple starred in some fairly well known movies. I ended up going to a top university, and one of my roommates ended up founding a successful internet company you've all heard of. My first job out of college was at tech company with a "boot camp" like training program for new recruits. One of my close colleagues eventually co-founded a financial trading company that made him phenomenally rich in his late 20s, and another colleague founded a well-known unicorn. Perhaps because I was inculcated fairly early in a competitive environment, it's hard for me to look back and not woulda/coulda/shoulda it. Mainly I'd like to ask some of my successful ex-colleagues and friends (some of whom I'm still in contact with, so wouldn't be too hard I guess) if they have any significant regrets. One on hand they must know how incredibly lucky and fortunate they've been, but of course their lives have their own trials and tribulations. And my life is good, I have close friends and family, quite mundane, though at least a good mundane. But still, I find it hard sometimes to not at least wish for a future reincarnation, one where I have the natural talents or extra drive or whatever that is needed to grab that brass ring.
- Bakary 6y agoYou did win a lottery, just that it was against 99.999% of humans ever to live. It's natural to want more but it's also just as naturally feasible to bask in the lottery you did end up winning.
- rubicon33 6y ago> one where I have the natural talents or extra drive or whatever that is needed to grab that brass ring. It's interested that you didn't explicitly list "luck". I get that it's considered distasteful, but it's the reality of the world we live in - much of one's success comes down to dumb luck. That said... I feel the same way as you do. For some reason I have always wanted more than I seem able to achieve. I strive, and I strive, but because of this or that short coming, or chance, I don't seem to reach the "brass ring". I'm trying these days to just find peace and happiness with my life. I haven't jumped off the treadmill entirely, I've just turned down the speed. If I start a company and make millions some day, great. If I don't... if I end up a career man my whole life, but live comfortably with my wife... well, that's great too. I'm going to let go of the rudder a little bit and let the boat sail itself for a while.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoProbably wouldn’t change a thing. Everything that has happened to me; good and bad, has made me who I am today. I’m cool with that. I’ve had a pretty big share of bad, and there’s lots of folks who think I “haven’t lived up to my potential,” meaning that I didn’t give them what they wanted from me. At this stage in my life, I am strangely satisfied. Never thought I’d be happy, the way I am, but it’s a funny old world. It could have turned out a lot worse. I am truly blessed. Reminds me of Sliding Doors. Interesting movie.
- woahisme 6y ago3 years ago my marriage fell apart and few months after that my health fell. With a miracle I was given a second shot of life. What that meant however is that I lost a good part of my 30s. I sat there, 37, divorced and recovered from a major illness with nothing to show. My friends had kids etc and were getting in to the next chapter of life while I was left feeling what if I had done things differently, tried different things. BUT its not productive to do so. Every one does it and its ok, but it should not be an obsession. I realized that everything doesnt go according to plan and I need to chart my path, not compare to others. Whats good for others, might not be yours. You have to decided what you want to do in the future.
- klyrs 6y agoSometimes I encounter this thought and it trips a silly cycle. Maybe I'd go back and sink my money in bitcoin when it crashed at $37? But then I remember that I was an undergrad, so even at that price I could afford 10 BTC or so without regrettable consequences. Shit, that isn't even enough to buy a house. Turns out my education was the better investment. Placing my attention on today, and the future, is a better exercise.
- michaelsbradley 6y agoWhile everyone can look back with regret, wishing to correct one's mistakes or redo a failed attempt, we know that it is beyond our power to do so. But it is not beyond God's power to bring some good out of it. I don't see how we can read the Gospels and come up with any other answer. Nor do the lives of Christ's saints lead us to any other conclusion. If we do not always understand why God allows certain events in our lives — why He permits the evils we do or endure — the saint's witness assures us: the same mercy that restores life, that can reunite mother and son, may also permit death as the prelude to restoration. — Fr. John Henry Hanson, O. Praem., Saint Monica and the Child of her Tears, 2019 https://stjosemaria.org/saint-monica-child-of-her-tears/ https://stjosemaria.org/saint-monica-child-of-her-tears/
- benlivengood 6y agoThe Everett interpretation implies that I took most of the forks in the road.
- rdlecler1 6y agoMost of us feel this, but an Elon Musk or Bill Gates may find this thought of an alternate life foreign, or at least horrifying.
- xyzelement 6y agoFunny, I'd think the other way. Everything I know about these guys is they constantly want an alternate life - and they work to make it happen. They both could have "stopped" decades ago and have achieved more than 99.999999% of people who ever lived, but instead they are pushing against something different continuously.
- rdlecler1 6y agoDo they want an alternative self or an alternative world?
- xyzelement 6y agoWhat's the difference? :)
- fortran77 6y agoI'm wondering if the point of this article has been missed. To me the point was here: > We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space. That what we didn't do, the choices not made, are as essential to us being us as the choices we did. It's what "The Road Not Taken" is really about--as Joshua Rothman knows, but many people miss, including the guy who wrote that sticky-sweet self-help book.
- sircastor 6y agoI think if I could “do it all over” it wouldn’t be any particular life choices I’d make differently, but to seek mental health treatment earlier on. I learned only recently that I suffer from depression, and I feel if I would have learned that earlier, I could have/would have understood myself a lot better. I don’t know if that would have changed my decisions, but I can tell you just knowing that information has change my life.
- tailspin2019 6y agoGood luck with your treatment. Mindfulness, a bunch of good books, and later some drugs all helped me in different but significant ways!
- victorronin 6y agoThis is a fascinating subject. It looks like many people are commenting about alternative realities and that exploring them is a fool's game (BTW. I concur with that). The thing which bothers me is upbeat comments about living here and now and planting the seeds for future changes. It feels like current problems (and desire to wish them away via woulda/counda/shoulda) didn't happen entirely randomly. These problems are a result of systematic behavior/decision making. As an example, it's too easy to say to yourself, "I will start doing sport tomorrow". However, you wake up tomorrow and notice that your day is so busy that you don't have time to do sport until 9pm and by that time you are exhausted and can't do sport. And you repeat the cycle saying, "maybe tomorrow". You start teasing your day apart and find that to squeeze in sport won't require you just to add it, but also to kick something out. And that all the things you have the energy for in the day, you implicitly regarded as more important than sport. And as a result, you are stuck in the loop wishing to do something better but being limited by your other priorities. And frankly, this bothers me way more. The immutability of the past is normal. Being so set in your ways that you can't change the future - this is what scares the shit out of me.
- alltakendamned 6y agoIf everything is a priority, nothing is. For me it's been helpful to understand who benefits from my actions in that particular moment, and then prioritized the ones where I benefit too. In personal finance context they say to pay yourself first. I think this also applies when e.g. prioritizing health. And when paying yourself first, this also means doing things when most energy is available and leaving other things for when you're tired.
- victorronin 6y ago>If everything is a priority, nothing is. Other things could be a _higher_ priority than a new thing. Just to give you an example (for huge amount of people priority to earn money to be able to have food on the table trumps almost everything else). I answered below. I chose sport activity, because it's so simple and clearly benefits everybody and still only 30% of adults do it. If you go to more complex things and on the opposite side of scales put a lot of complex and tangled priorities, it becomes very unclear what benefits most and how to pay yourself first.
- stakkur 6y agoHappiness is giving up all hope of a better past.
- the_only_law 6y agoHell yes I would. Sure, you can’t change the past, sure , you can work now to try to correct those past mistakes, but often they’re made too expensive to be worth fixing now.
- Razengan 6y agoI for one would love to reincarnate with my memories from this life intact. The best combination of starting over + immortality. Funnily enough, this might actually be quite possible to achieve with sufficient technology.
- at_a_remove 6y agoPerhaps the only productive thought that comes out of ruminating on this topic is, come the revolution, the guidance counselors will be first against the wall. Honestly, I had no idea that the profession of actuary even existed, but I would have likely been rather good at it, having built my own primitive statistical laws as a kid playing with dice and taking grad-level courses in stats as an undergraduate. And gracious did I ask the guidance counselors what was out there. I entered college as a Nuke E, then rather quickly realized that (at the time), there wasn't much of a career in it if you didn't want to work in a submarine. A guidance counselor could have clued me in to that kind of thing. I switched to physics, as it would be more general, only to, after observing the actual lives lived by the faculty and the PhD students, that the competition was quite fierce for such meager stakes. Noticing that my brilliant professors might have second jobs or rustbuckets to get to work, noting that a few of them were looking a bit threadbare, it was quite a shock. Guidance counselors ought to have a lot of this information on tap. Perhaps they do now, but at the time, it wasn't available at my high school. Perhaps we are drawn to this topic if only for the younger generations.
- kortilla 6y agoGuidance counselors often have this but have to walk on eggshells because they can’t tell most kids that their parents’ careers were terrible decisions. That results in rage calls, complaint letters, etc. So they have to take this dumb approach of “assist the teenager with the barely developed brain do whatever whimsical shit he/she wants that might haunt them for life”. “Sure son, being a clown sounds pretty cool. Here are some 4 year acting degrees that cost $180k. That sounds high but don’t worry because you can easily take it all out in government loans. But it probably be worth it because these are the top schools in the country!”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- darren_ 6y ago“Did you ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d said yes?” said Ridcully. “No.” “I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing…” “What about the fire?” she said. “What fire?” “Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.” “What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire!” Granny turned around. “Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘if only I’d..’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.”
- rochak 6y agoHaha. This is exactly the kind of mindset I am trying to develop. I have spent a lot of my past overanalysing things and it has almost never helped me. All I got was tension, loss of hair and dark circles. I am going through the book “The Power if Letting Go” and it is fantastic.
- tailspin2019 6y agoHad to look this up. Looks like it's from Terry Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies"?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoHaving read every Discworld novel and without looking it up, that sounds right. As I recall Mistress Weatherwax had been seeing alternate timelines as part of a side effect of the Elve's world intersecting the reality of the Disc, and she's married to Ridcully in some of them, as they apparently were involved in their youth. She does later note to Ridcully that, from what she saw, their alternate selves that had married appeared happy. In my personal opinion it is one of the worst Discworld books, which still makes it pretty good mind you.
- kmlevitt 6y agoI used to daydream about what I would do if I woke up in my 17 year old body as a high school senior, complete with all the knowledge I had gained since. What would I do differently if I knew then what I know now? Getting married and having a kid killed it, though. Doing things from scratch would at a minimum mean having a different kid with the same wife, so now when I fantasize about this all I think about is what I would lose.
- cookingrobot 6y agoFive years ago I tried to rent a house I liked and didn’t get it. A couple months ago I saw it was for sale with two days left to the sale date. I bought it and am sitting in it now. It feels very strange, like I got on a train I missed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nraval1729 6y agoFor anyone wanting to have a fictional take on this subject, I'd recommend reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.
- jes 6y agoI'm 61, male, and started in software back in the mid 70s. First computer that I could physically touch was a PDP-8/M with an ASR-33 teletype with paper tape reader and punch. In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well. While I'm not paralyzed by it, I've come to think that we can't know how any decision we make is going to turn out. We can't know with certainty if doing X is going to be good or bad for us in the long run. All we have are our own estimates of probabilities, and I'm not sure how well we can estimate them, either, honestly. I also don't know who "I" am, or where I begin or end. In infancy and childhood, I think we come to accept a belief that "we" are individuals, each residing in our physical bodies. Yet I understand the Universe to be a single thing (a quantum field? a simulation?) and so the idea of us being individuals seems a bit off to me. I think we are far more connected and interdependent than we usually recognize. One good outcome of my world view is that I don't really worry about passing away. A less pleasant outcome is that my world view is so out of the ordinary that I don't often connect with people that I can talk about this with in any serious way.
- rorykoehler 6y agoI’m in my 30s and have a similar world view though I’ve never paid much attention to religion and just sort of landed here by default. The system we’ve created for ourselves doesn’t care much for world views though. Its important to adapt to our micro environment as well as macro. This is probably why it’s rare to bump into likeminded people. You probably wouldn’t know I think like this if you met me either.
- rubicon33 6y agoI share a lot with how you view the world, but could probably stand to learn a lot from you as well. I'm in my mid 30s, software developer, and generally open to spirituality but not in the conventional, western, judeo-christian sense. One of my foundations of belief is that life is entirely about probabilities and chance. It's a sort of guiding force that I follow. I view everything similarly to how you do, in that we cannot possibly know for sure it's outcome. By extension, we cannot possibly know what the right choice is for us. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes and roll the dice. I'm deeply interested in the random nature of the world / life. When you stop to think about it so much of our existence is truly random in nature right down to our conception. It boggles the mind to think how little control we had over even our own existence. As for identity I'm also a free will skeptic as you put it. Anyways, just thought I'd let you know that people like you are out there. I also find it a bummer that we're a huge minority, but such is life I suppose.
- seibelj 6y ago> ”It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives.” Wouldn’t be a New Yorker article without a dig at capitalism. Capitalism is individuals choosing how to invest their own money. Any deviation from private capital is socialism and we live in an extremely socialist society already.
- dokem 6y agoWhat if I could fly?
- dmje 6y agoLovely piece. I'm struck by how many of the comments revolve entirely around career choices. I wonder if that's a us bias or a world bias or just a HN bias. Career can be consuming but it's only a facet of life's choices, not the whole thing. Maybe it's the bit we feel we have most agency over. Either way, interesting.
- fy20 6y agoLast year I had my first kid, and it has really got me thinking about a lot of things in life including whether I want to continue my career in software developer. Sure the pay is good, it's a pretty cushy job (compared to something like a labourer), and I feel I'm pretty good at what I do... but I wish for something more fulfilling. I just feel that in my career path, all my jobs have been about making other people (investors) more money and extracting value from markets rather than building something truly valuable to the world. I did actually work in a stint at an NGO, but that was so filled with a bureaucracy and wasting money I had to go back to a for-profit company. I'm feeling that maybe I should leave the software engineering career and do something completely different (what I don't know), but I'd still like to do programming on the side. I just fell into this career as it was what I was good at. How anyone here been at a similar cross roads in life? Which path did you choose?
- ck425 6y agoI'm in the same position. No advice yet. I've been trying to figure out why I want a meaningful career/job so much (rather than being satisfied with cushy) but no insights yet.
- redisman 6y agoI would recommend keeping it for a few years. Working from home is a godsend for infants and toddlers. I’m also often thinking what else could I do but the problem is that almost no career is portable like software engineering. There are credentials and local requirements and relationships which are not as important in software. My current thinking is to de-emphasize work for the kid years. Maybe get a more boring stable job with minimal hours and focus on the kids. There are a lot of adventures and experiences with them that no job will replicate.
- spidey1 6y agoI, very fortunately, landed a small NGO as my first dev job out of boot camp. We're a team of 3 with full autonomy over how we structure ourselves and the tools we use. Also, the bureaucracy is little to none. Based on what I've read here, other sites, friends and colleagues, I should have changed jobs at least a couple of times by now but I've been here almost 4 years now and don't regret it. If you've found a place that you find fulfilling then I don't think I need to follow conventional advice. The downsides are less exposure to different project types and not working with a bigger team of experienced devs. I need to compensate for this by putting in extra effort on my side but I still think I've made the right choice for now. I think if I ended up in a commercial dev job, I would have started looking at other options as well. It makes a real difference when you see you work being used for a greater good. While you're considering other options, maybe also consider joining a smaller dev team where you have more autonomy and less red tape.
- Jaxtek 6y agoI am in my early 20s and in my first job.This thread is eye-opening.I am gonna pay my loans,quit the job and build (or start) something.I didn't know if it's the right thing to do.But after reading this thread,I feel like I am in the right path.Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts.
- rochak 6y agoI am glad you are attending to your calling, but do take time to analyse everything - pros and cons - before making any rash decisions.
- Jaxtek 6y agoYes sure! I don't have any responsibilities at this age.So there can't be a better time than now to try things out.We (I) have the energy ,time and "freedom" required to do something crazy.I might lose some time and energy but there can't be a better time than now.So we (I) should keep building things and learn a lot.Many millionaires wish they started earlier[1].I already regret wasting my college years.So I don't wanna "miss out" this time.Thank you everyone for your advice [1]https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/heres-what-these-20-millionaires-wish-they-knew-when-they-were-20-a3c33e3b3a57 https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/heres-what-these-20-million...
- ZephyrBlu 6y agoI'm also in my early 20s. Don't quit your job. Your job is stability. If building/starting something doesn't work out then you'll be in a bad position. Build/start something on the side, then if it becomes successful you can safely quit your job. You might also find inspiration, collaborators or opportunities from your job. It's not all bad.
- Jaxtek 6y agoThanks! I am building something on the side and I'll quit my job only if the side project gains some traction. Also finding a job is not that tough in my area.
- galeos 6y agoKen Grimwood's book 'Replay' [1] tackles this subject, with the story of a man who is able to relive his life and take different paths. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/068816112X https://www.amazon.com/dp/068816112X
- ahoyhoy 6y agoI think about this book all of the time. What rang true to me is that the protagonist never really "figures things out".
- rklaehn 6y agoI wasted a lot of time in my life. I was into C++ programming many years before the first dotcom boom. But I did not really profit from it. Instead I studied for many years, then slacked off for a few years, and only started working full time as a software engineer at the age of 30, working on satellite operations and the ground system of the international space station. I could have been a millionaire many times over if I had realised how valuable my skills at the age of 16, 18, 20 were. On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with. Now I work at a startup at an age where most software engineers in SV are retiring. So it's all good.
- rochak 6y agoIt all works out in the end, I guess. If it hasn’t, it isn’t the end.
- tailspin2019 6y ago> On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with. This is inspiring. Thanks for sharing!
- honkdaddy 6y ago> On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with. This got me choked up. You're a richer man than just about anyone else in this thread, my friend.
- redisman 6y agoI wasn’t working yet in 2000 but I’ve talked to a lot of people who were and the median outcome was that your stock wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on in the end.
- te 6y ago"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” — C S Lewis
- yason 6y agoIf you really could go back and choose differently the first thing that would happen is you would eventually become lazy. You wouldn't have to think too deeply or listen to your guts in making your choices because you could effectively just undo and retry. Your life would basically revert to depth-first search instead of carving out your own, unique path in life. This would also mean it would be much, much easier to be unhappy because you could just switch to another branch and see if the grass is greened on the other side instead of having to learn to see the green you have now. The inability to redo choices is like death: without death, life itself would be dead. It could not pressure you to make choices, to overcome yourself, dare to go for the love of your life or that enormously ambitious career, and eventually navigate yourself into a life where you grow to be happy with what you have instead of what you want. Without the clock ticking you wouldn't make the best of you in life. Similarly, if you could backtrack to your old choices you wouldn't be compelled to learn from them and they would be rendered worthless.
- grenoire 6y agoI do agree to some extent, but depth-first search is not the correct allegory for the algorithm. You do follow a node to the end with depth-first. I think you meant breadth-first.
- jeffe 6y agoI think it would be most accurate to say its a backtracking algorithm, since you presumably would be exploring a certain path continually until it becomes unsatisfactory.
- XorNot 6y agoPontifications on the idea that life is meaningless without death are a bit rich coming from members of a species which is still mortal. Get back to me when it's choice not an inevitability and I bet we find much different answers.
- unixhero 6y agoGreat discussion here and interesting topic too. But I am out, trigger warning, may cause depression.
- jjklmn 6y agoRobert Frost's The Road Not Taken revolves around the fact that both pathways inevitably lead to the same end though: >" Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same," >" I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." Ironically, a close friend of Robert Frost joined the army and died in WW1, as a result of Frost's poem, believing he had to choose another path as well. [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken]
- _leo 6y agoI used to wonder about the different life paths I could have taken, or could take in the future, and it would make me very anxious. Anxious that I would "waste" my life, that I wouldn't seize the opportunity to make the absolute best of it, that I would fail the only thing that mattered in my existence. I changed my perspective. In a way I now compare life to what it would have been to never have been born, and it's wonderful. I feel privileged and gifted to have been "given" (metaphorically for me, but it's up to one's beliefs) the chance to live, to experience the truly insane thing that it is to be a human being! Sure, maybe I could've had more, but in a way it's like being upset because you sold your startup for 1 billion instead of 2 billion...
- mvellandi 6y agoI would have punched a kid at 16 and kissed Cassandra at 19. That's about it -- many years later, I'm happy with a family today :)
- tailspin2019 6y agoThis made me chuckle
- beardyw 6y ago"What If You Could Do It All Over?" - well without the benefit of hindsight it would be exactly the same of course. Free will exists up to the time we make a choice, but that is just the weighing up of the situation. The choice itself is inevitable. When we release a dice from our hand it could land on any face, but the face it lands on isn't truly random, it is just too hard to establish the factors which caused it. So with our choices. A sure belief that my choices right or wrong were all I could do at the time has saved me from endless doubt and speculation. The only choices I can make are today. I saw the film About Time recently which is based on this whole idea of going back and doing it differently - with hindsight. Whilst it was quite enjoyable, the inconsistencies caused by the idea just shouted out throughout. Life isn't and can't be like that.
- mikhailfranco 6y agoThe strong divergence of paths in the state space of life, based on small random serendipities reminds me of the film: Run, Lola, Run https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/ On the general midlife crisis of regrets and time-running out, see: 2019 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar lecture: Life begins at 40: the demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2020.0008 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2020.000...
- jwilk 6y agoI also recommend Kieślowski's "Przypadek" ("Blind Chance"): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084549/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084549/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu7Z3uOLWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu7Z3uOLWg (full movie with English subtitles)
- cubano 6y agoIf only. I'd love more, judge less. Laugh more, perhaps even cry more, but yell less. I'd listen more, speak less. And finally, I'd be so much less selfish, and so much more giving. If I could do it all over.
- paulpauper 6y agoHow does this guy know so much. Reading this article is like an phone book of name drops and references. I know ppl with master's degrees who do not even know nearly as much. I should have stayed in school longer and done more reading so I would know more. I guess that answers the question of what I would do I if had to do it allover again. Sure beats what I am doing now. I think being a success writer is one of the best jobs in the world even if the pay is not that great because it is high status and you have an impact, whereas many tech jobs may pay better but it feels like you are sometimes working in a vacuum and not getting recognized for your contributions.
- TrackerFF 6y agoSome thoughts on that 1. This is likely not some stream of consciousness piece, where he basically writes his article as it comes up with stuff. It takes time, it has probably been edited numerous times, there's probably been lots of research, etc. 2. He writes that he studied English in grad. school, so I'm just going to assume that he's well-read. Probably had his fair share of exposure to the classics, as well as modern literature.
- redisman 6y agoI thought it was a bit too referential and it kept breaking the flow of the article. I get it you got an advanced English degree now let’s get on with it
- borroka 6y agoThe personal references were interesting, the literary references were way too many. This was not a scientific paper in which it is important to present what was done and when and how; here, the author is talking about a very common thought or reflection for any of us (what could have become of me if...?) and what a particular author thought about their un-lived lives at a certain point in time is largely irrelevant.
- tluyben2 6y agoMove away from my homecountry and from the city far sooner and care far less about money.
- 20thCB 6y agoMy 20s were spent living the single bachelor party life in London in the 90s. Noughties I had 3 kids and emigrated to Australia. Then I hit 40...then 50. Now I'm 52, still in good health. I have a job, a partner, family, a few savings. Sure I haven't written the next great novel or got a PHD, but I sure as hell don't worry about what might have been.
- ilamont 6y agoI look at how my high school friends ended up and it’s amazing how personality traits/biases, career choices, life partners, residency in certain cities and fate (or chance) altered our trajectories. One person who I thought would go very far has struggled terribly after he and his spouse were dealt a string of bad hands. Another made a career choice that is poisoning mind and body but is too late to leave now. Others have done well and I don’t think would change anything.
- cushychicken 6y agoOne of the wisest things my dad has ever said to me: "Don't worry so much about whether you made the right decision. Instead, focus your energy on making the decision you made, right." It's fruitless to think about making a different choice in hindsight. It's really empowering to assign yourself the agency to make the best choices you can from the options ahead of you.
- nullc 6y agoI don't often experience anxiety. One day I came across a silly writing prompt thread on Reddit along the lines "What would your mind was transported back to you as a 14-year old?"... Presumably anticipating lots of comments about buying Apple shares and Bitcoin. I was struck by the sheer impossibility of retracing my footsteps to get back all the things I've liked about my life, the loss of loved ones who only exist as they are as a result of interactions with me I could never reproduce. It's just a silly hypothetical, but I find it crushing to even describe it in a comment. The anxiety it produces is physical, distracting, disorienting, and reliably predictable. It made the article even difficulty to skim. Like the author writes, I find it easier to imagine different lives for other people. I like what I've lived very much and the people in my life. What If You Could Do It All Over? -- I say: Thanks but no thanks. ... and please don't mention the idea again! :)
- nullc 6y agoI feel less anxious about the form of this idea expressed by the artsy film Mr. Nobody.
- hindsightbias 6y agoThe guys who stuck with mainframes have more hair, money and toys.
- wyclif 6y ago“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” ~ Mae West
- criveros 6y agoThere is nothing to do over, as I have not done anything. I am here through a series of events that have been out of my control. As I currently lay on a bunkbed on a little cottage on a mountain somewhere in Europe, I could have never predicted or actively have made a choice to bring me here. If I believe I did, through consciously setting a goal, the series of events or choice to get me to that point would have been out of my control. There is no control. Our decisions are influenced by all the previous decisions, decisions of others (our parents, our significant others, our bosses, etc), and external events outside of our control. External events as insignificant as bus being late. Such an insignificant event but it could prevent someone from having meet their significant other, or to have lost a job, to have escaped a traffic accident, or to have heard an idea that completely changed their lives. There is no free will. This is freeing and humbling. Freeing because you know you are doing the best you can, with the capabilities you have at this moment. Humbling because you know other people are too. Sure my life would have been better had my parents stayed together, and my mom not immigrated but then I would have grown up in a third world country and would be confined to that normal life. Sure I went through a lot of trauma, but I have now the ability and freedom to travel the world. All the trauma of my childhood and teenage years left me with intimacy issues, unable to sustain a long-term relationship. Do I wish that was not the case? I'm not too sure. I like my life, with the travelling and chaos. Had I not had emotional issues, I would probably have a family and kids by now, and be settle down. It's likely I would have enjoyed that, as I would be that guy who wants the family life, but I'm glad I'm this guy. It was not up to me anyway, who I will be in 10 years it's not up to me either.
- creature_x 6y agoThis article is a somber reminder of the evanescent and translucent nature of potential. As I was reading it, I was reminded of a stanza from Woolsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
- taylorius 6y agoAn excerpt from "The Blue House" by Tomas Transtromer, which talks about this. ----- The house is like a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness that grew because someone—much too soon— gave up his mission to be a child. Open the door, step in! In here there’s unrest in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed hangs a painting of a ship with seventeen sails, hissing wave crests, and a wind that the gilt frame can’t contain. It’s always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real. A ship’s engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew’s magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.
- lajt 6y agoThe book "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig does a good job easing that "what if" regret. It shows how each "ideal/better" life can come with its own major negative consequences.
- TrueDuality 6y agoCame here to say that, I just finished it a couple of hours ago. It's very bitter sweet, but I'm very glad I read it.