10 ms·

The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

104 points by baxtr 6y ago

mrmonkeyman 6y ago
30? Life lessons? Give me a break.
aerovistae 6y ago
I'll be honest, I really hate this guy's essays. Every single one is designed to make you feel like you're not good enough unless you're spending every day changing the world and being "high impact."
- CharlesW 6y ago
  I give him props for leading with the caveat, "I'm somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem hollow…". It'd be difficult for a list like this not to sound trite.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Thank you for expressing this sentiment that whirled in my head when reading that particular blogpost. It felt like an impersonal scolding from a person I do not even know, a list of bullet points where you failed, or at least didn't do well enough.
- tiffanyh 6y ago
  Keep in mind, Sam has started just one business and it failed (Loopt). I know what I'm about to write might sound like I'm trolling but hear me out because it comes from a genuine place ... His essays typically come across as "if you personally are not BUILDING something massive, you're wasting your time" ... though it's ironic since he himself doesn't build anything at all. Instead, he spends his day looking for wagers to bet using other peoples money in hopes he'll produce a positive return (and keep some of the proceeds). Much like going to a casino with someone elses money. Using his own definition of how people should spend their time, I don't understand how his own activities fall into that category. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
  - Anon3343 6y ago
    You are ignoring Sam's objectively excellent performance at YCombinator. I have one big problem with Altman which sullies my otherwise incredibly high opinion of him: he explicitly denies the orthogonality thesis and has created a culture at OpenAI that, to analogize scaling modals with nuclear energy, feels like one that knows something cool will happen when you collide large enough enriched uranium lumps together at high speed, but does not believe nuclear explosions are possible. How he can deny the is/ought distinction when his own organization published Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild is beyond me. And now many of those most concerned with safety, such as Paul Christiano, appear to be leaving OpenAI. To accuse him of being incapable of building and scaling is incredibly obtuse. How much did YCombinator grow under his stewardship? I am more worried that he is too good at that.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - alecst 6y ago
      I'll be honest, I have no idea what you're saying. Seems like you have some interesting points to make though.
      - marvin 6y ago
        The orthogonality thesis says that advanced artificial intelligence (yet to be built) can be both vastly powerful and have arbitrary goals -- in particular, goals that are catastrophic for humanity. (More specifically: capability and morality for AIs are not correlated). GP says that Altman explicitly denies this theory and fosters a culture that might end up creating dangerous AI. Implied here is that there is a risk this might cause a truly catastrophic accident. The parts about "safety" refers to acknowledging this danger and attempting to mitigate it. I don't know enough about Altman or OpenAI to make any judgements on their approach, but that's a brief explanation.
    - rytill 6y ago
      I am a safety advocate, and your analogy to nuclear explosions is pretty interesting. However, simplified analogies may be doing more harm than good because they fuel the straw-men people create of arguments for AI safety. I am not sure what the proper technique to get someone already entrenched in their perspective to broaden their possibility distribution is, though. Do you have any tips on that, as someone that appears to be engaged in the space and appears to advocate similarly?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
CPLX 6y ago
I've always wondered how the philosophy and life insight of the ruling elite varies between public and private comments. Most of the advice here seems fairly anodyne and unobjectionable. Perhaps a little overly focused on a certain kind of "success" but still nothing I would think of as wrong or manipulative or anything. But when he goes to something like Bohemian Grove and has conversations to share insights and advice with the small transnational group that essentially rules the global political and financial system, do they also sound like this? I don't have any first hand knowledge whatsoever but my gut feeling says the answer is likely no.
- Bakary 6y ago
  If you are a very wealthy or influential individual, you are essentially trapped into certain sets of behavior. You can still relate to other people, but the fact that you could solve most of their problems on an individual basis with an instant donation that would take you all of thirty seconds creates a gulf that can't be reached over. You can do a variety of activities, but these probably feel much less interesting than doing things that have an influence over a very large number of people. If you are, say, a CEO of a successful company that CEO role will be the only source of a certain type of feeling that can't be achieved elsewhere. I'm certain you are right: within their technocratic circles, they probably make far less wholesome and family-friendly pronouncements about life. But it's not fundamentally contradictory, just like a person can be crippled by an addiction that turns them into a monster on a regular basis while remaining normal, wise and approachable the remainder of the time.
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
Every time I read some list of advices on life I can't help but remember Mary Schmich's apocryphal speech "Wear Sunscreen" [1] (and made famous by Baz Luhrmann [2]), from way back when the Internet was young and wild. Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-sunscreen... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  This was great, thanks for the recommendation!
- svantana 6y ago
  In the same vein, I highly recommend the ironic self-help album "Dancing For Mental Health" by Will Powers (sic). https://open.spotify.com/album/4242hiYk7PAArDAd6XSWbZ https://open.spotify.com/album/4242hiYk7PAArDAd6XSWbZ
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  >Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice. Why not?
  - glial 6y ago
    One person’s answer: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I see. It wasn’t even until a couple years ago that non metal sunscreens were found to be useless.
  - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
    It's a bit complex, I'll try to summarize. Let's think of being exposed to the sun as a continuum with different risks: 1. The best you can do is sun bathe every single day, all year round, avoiding mid-day hours in summer. Think "a gardener who loves being shirt-less". This scenario is related to more non-melanoma skin cancer (survival rate >99%), but both a lower incidence of melanoma, and a higher survival rate for melanoma. 2. The worst you can do is never sun bathe except for occasional heavy exposures. Think a week in the beach during summer vacation, and the rest of the year completely indoors. This scenario is related to more frequent melanoma, and a lower survival rate for it. Sunscreen is great for #2 (people who can't or just won't be exposed often). But it's both unnecessary and undesired (since it limits the bening effects) in #1. And it also limits Vitamin D absorption. So a better advice would be "be exposed to the sun often, every day if you can, and don't wear sunscreen when you do it".
Bakary 6y ago
The advice isn't bad at all, but then you've heard it all before. Most people tend to figure most of this out by the time they are in their mid-thirties, or never do. I can only speak from my own perspective, but the irony is that the people I tend to be deeply impressed by don't tend to follow this sort of mechanistic or "optimized wisdom" approach to life. They tend to be more chaotic, less rational (sometimes dangerously so), often dickish but always displaying a vision of life that is deeply felt and never sterile. It may sound paradoxical and counter-intuitive, but you could follow all of the advice from the post and still lead an uninspired existence that doesn't amount to much in the end. Some other posters here mentioned how the list felt like an accusation, but I would say in my case that I felt a rush of melancholy from its superposition of being both solid actionable advice but also deeply wrong in ways I can't fully express. A person like the author does impress me, as they probably are living up to whatever potential they were granted. I envy their wealth, freedom to work on interesting things, and the fact that they worked towards something and achieved it. But I don't get that sense of unstoppable awe and desire that I get with people like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those few anonymous, adventurous and idiosyncratic souls you once met that you still think about from time to time. You probably have an example of the latter in your own life that instantly came to mind when reading this, or perhaps you can extrapolate a description of them through the knowledge of the world you've garnered so far.
- bumby 6y ago
  >But I don't get that sense of unstoppable awe and desire that I get with people like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those few anonymous, adventurous and idiosyncratic souls Here’s what I wonder: is it possible to admire such people while simultaneously acknowledging they live a semi-tortured existence that may not be worth emulating? I think the author was shooting for equanimity which may be somewhat different than how those types would be described
- matwood 6y ago
  Your last paragraph reminded me of this quote, It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention. --Malcom Muggeridge
neronero 6y ago
I find Sam Altman's essays completely devoid of any insight. He's trying really hard to be like PG, while he simply doesn't have the street-cred required. Case in point, when they did a series of Y Combinator interviews a few years back Sam apparently thought to himself that it would be appropriate for him to be interviewed third following Elon and PG - in what world does that make sense?
- karagenit 6y ago
  For me, the value of a piece of writing has very little to do with who wrote it. Successful people say silly or stupid things all the time, so I try not to get caught up in their echo chambers. Sure, most successful people are smart, but I'd argue most smart people aren't that successful. As for this essay, a lot of the points resonated with me, so I liked it. I have no clue who Sam Altman is, and I don't think it really matters.
  - neronero 6y ago
    That's the correct way to look at it. You want to evaluate ideas on their own merits, but you also want to use heuristics and proxies when determining which ideas to consider in the sea of ideas on the Internet. A correct heuristic to search for good ideas is to seek the opinion of the previously successful people.
steve_adams_86 6y ago
> 5) On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom I strongly disagree, but only on a technicality or matter of perception of what freedom means. To me, money has nothing to do with true freedom. Money in and of itself is a prison, like any external currency, and something I have influence over but virtually no control. Today I have money. Tomorrow, my currency could become worthless or my home could burn down by no fault of my own. I could lose my job, and what money seems available for me to enjoy myself with will become essential for supporting myself in an uncertain future. There are other interesting facets of this, like - how many people do you know who have much more money than you, but still want more? How hard do they work for it, or how often do they think about it? Are we ever free from wanting more of this kind of freedom? Certainly if we find a good balance and we have the fortune of earning enough money to have disposable income, it can be freeing in a sense. But it's dangerous to conflate wealth with freedom in general. It requires a lot of good sense and responsibility to use wealth wisely, I think. I don't mean to be nit-picky or overly critical when the intent of communication was fairly clear. I'm sure Sam knows better than to equate money and freedom directly. I only think it's dangerous to use language like this in a culture like the one I live in, where people want more money so badly in order to be free, but it never affords them anything you'd recognize as freedom. > 19) Go out of your way to help people. Few things in life are as satisfying. Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn’t matter. 27) Forgive people. 28) Don’t chase status. Status without substance doesn’t work for long and is unfulfilling. 31) Be grateful and keep problems in perspective. Don’t complain too much. Don’t hate other people’s success 35) Don’t judge other people too quickly. You never know their whole story and why they did or didn’t do something. Be empathetic. I love this advice!
- Bakary 6y ago
  To come up with a definition of freedom, I'd say we have to start from the premise of a certain degree of reliability. If we take into account all the ways you can lose everything or die early, it will always seem like a meaningless concept. But in practice, these things don't always happen and many are able to live long lives as evidenced by actuarial tables. It's true that wealth can become a trap but it all depends on your inherent personality. Many would have no problem forgetting about the grind and be content using their newfound wealth to do what they want in their own zone. It just so happens that a propensity to be content is probably negatively correlated with amassing large sums so you hear about those people less often despite their great numbers. So I'd say that yes, a significant but not absurd amount of money can already go a really long way towards letting a person be free in a sense we'd all recognize.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Here's a trend I see repeating itself. People in their 20s and 30s tend to say things like: "work on what you love." But if you ask people in their 40s, 50s, even beyond, the advice is: "Learn to love what you do, no matter what it is."
- jefurii 6y ago
  This reminds me interviews with Japanese artisans who approach their swordmaking/pottery/baking/tofu-making as a spiritual practice. These all seem to be older people.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  "Do what you love" is advice that comes from the enormous privilege some people have to make money doing what they love. I'm one of those people, so I get it, but many, many people don't love computer programming or something else profitable. So yes, "learn to love what you do" is much, much better advice. I've watched people (younger than I am) struggle with being in jobs they didn't love, as if they were failing. The jobs may have been failing them, but they weren't failing the jobs. If you're lucky--as I am, as Sam Altman is--then you can do what you love. Otherwise, you have to do what pays the bills and leaves you enough free time to pursue what you love.
  - mqrs 6y ago
    “Do what you love” is not so much a privileged thing to say. It’s just an ideal to aspire towards, a north star of sorts, even if you’re currently in a position where you’re only doing what pays the bills. Doing what you love is life advice on how to live a good, happy, and fulfilling life—do what pays the bills isn’t.
jdlyga 6y ago
The 1990s felt like an entire lifetime. I was in Kindergarten though High School. The 2000s felt long too: High School through college to my first job. The 2010s was over super quick. I worked full time, changed jobs twice, and got married. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 still feels like yesterday. I can imagine the 2020s will feel even shorter. And now we know why all of our relatives always said "Wow you got so big!" every time they saw us.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  If you're really in need of a depressing thought, there will come a day when you actually ask the Internet: "How much longer do I have?"
  - afdgadfgadfh 6y ago
    At least we can rely on fake news, spam and noise for one thing: getting the answer wrong.
hikerclimber 6y ago
both go at the same pace one just seems faster.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Look at any of his latest essays - its pretty hilarious how bad they are, and how much they try to sound like PG. Makes me think he landed the job by mimicking (and flattering) PG.
pizza234 6y ago
> Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. This is one of the things that sounds cool on paper, and make people feel inspired, but doesn't really work like that in real world. Being extremely good in something requires a resource (time, attention...) expenditure that easily eats the rest of life (unless you're one of the few geniuses who can afford a balanced life). In practice, if one aims really high, they will need to take a conscious decision to sacrifice a significant part of their life. This is in conflict with the "live a balanced life" message underlying many of the points of the article. This subject is in my opinion explored with much more depth (and honesty) by Carmack in his graduation speech. [I] Advocate long, hard work [...] embrace the grind :)
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  Are you referring to John Carmack’s speech at UKMC?
  - pizza234 6y ago
    Yes! Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc. It's a bit odd to hear, as it goes against conventional modern wisdom ("you hear a lot about work life-balance, work smarter not harder, and that's all fine, but there's is a quality to obsession, that is really hard to match"), but it's understandable from a position to somebody who's really trying to be "aiming to be the best in the world".
    - thundergolfer 6y ago
      Thanks for the confirmation. I've very much on Carmack's side of things, and I do often have to explain my 'unbalanced' approach to things.
sharkweek 6y ago
My god, am I feeling this right now. But absolutely not related to starting a company or anything of the like. Parent of a three year old and an infant. I cannot tell you how fast those three years have gone by relative to any other time period in my life. It is scaring me shitless if I'm being honest. I brought this up to my dad who laughed and was like, "How do you think I feel staring at my 30somethings son who now has his own kids?" When I remember to pause, slow down, and enjoy the littlest of moments I find I'm the happiest. Simple, but difficult to remember. Enjoy the long day as much as possible.
mistermann 6y ago
> 25) Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now. Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get that excited and happy now. I find this one to be interesting. We typically take such things as little more than obvious platitudes, but if you think about it from a psychology/neuroscience perspective, it's actually very interesting. Like, why can't the mind manifest such states as easily when it is older? What are the actual (as opposed to the "just so"[1] theories) underlying causes, and can they be circumvented? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story
readingnews 6y ago
"How to succeed: pick the right thing to do..." Yes. And when you wake up every 10 years and go "dang, that was not the right thing to do", you realize that, even if you were successful, you are now unhappy. This one statement "pick the right thing to do" is what mankind has struggled with for 1000s of years. I have had a number of jobs, all of my previous employers would tell you I am great, work hard, have exemplary output, but you know what, every 5 years or so, I wake up and go "wait a second, this is not what I want to do. This is not right". Not to bash the author, but "ok kids, be sure you are right, then go for it" is great... if only any of us knew what was right.
- samanator 6y ago
  I took it as "pick the right thing to do" as in what you personally feel is normally right. As in "do the right thing".
stanpinte 6y ago
looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuEEf4mGsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuEEf4mGsk
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
5) On money: ... it can buy freedom + 14) Summers are the best. = It's always Summer Somewhere.
- kaybe 6y ago
  I'm not sure whether the summer experience is the same without having lived through winter as well. In spring every bit of green is celebrated by the winter survivors, but if you just came in from the other hemisphere it just feels empty.
  - baxtr 6y ago
    Winter is Great, for exactly 2 to 3 weeks. That would be enough for me to appreciate the other seasons.
    - roland35 6y ago
      Winter to me feels like an annual cleansing, but then again when I lived in Florida I didn't really miss it!
cvaidya1986 6y ago
Timely read
nobodyknowsyoda 6y ago
37) If you find something “Open”, make sure to Close it /s
gautamcgoel 6y ago
Never quite understood this one: "13) Keep your personal burn rate low. This alone will give you a lot of opportunities in life." Does this mean that you should avoid making enemies?
- roland35 6y ago
  I believe "burn rate" is your monthly personal expenses. Having extra money saved up allows you to take advantage of opportunities whether it be take a few months to work on an idea or make an investment.

104 points by baxtr 6y ago

30? Life lessons? Give me a break.

I'll be honest, I really hate this guy's essays. Every single one is designed to make you feel like you're not good enough unless you're spending every day changing the world and being "high impact."

CharlesW 6y ago
I give him props for leading with the caveat, "I'm somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem hollow…". It'd be difficult for a list like this not to sound trite.
inglor_cz 6y ago
Thank you for expressing this sentiment that whirled in my head when reading that particular blogpost. It felt like an impersonal scolding from a person I do not even know, a list of bullet points where you failed, or at least didn't do well enough.
tiffanyh 6y ago
Keep in mind, Sam has started just one business and it failed (Loopt). I know what I'm about to write might sound like I'm trolling but hear me out because it comes from a genuine place ... His essays typically come across as "if you personally are not BUILDING something massive, you're wasting your time" ... though it's ironic since he himself doesn't build anything at all. Instead, he spends his day looking for wagers to bet using other peoples money in hopes he'll produce a positive return (and keep some of the proceeds). Much like going to a casino with someone elses money. Using his own definition of how people should spend their time, I don't understand how his own activities fall into that category. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman
- Anon3343 6y ago
  You are ignoring Sam's objectively excellent performance at YCombinator. I have one big problem with Altman which sullies my otherwise incredibly high opinion of him: he explicitly denies the orthogonality thesis and has created a culture at OpenAI that, to analogize scaling modals with nuclear energy, feels like one that knows something cool will happen when you collide large enough enriched uranium lumps together at high speed, but does not believe nuclear explosions are possible. How he can deny the is/ought distinction when his own organization published Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild is beyond me. And now many of those most concerned with safety, such as Paul Christiano, appear to be leaving OpenAI. To accuse him of being incapable of building and scaling is incredibly obtuse. How much did YCombinator grow under his stewardship? I am more worried that he is too good at that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - alecst 6y ago
    I'll be honest, I have no idea what you're saying. Seems like you have some interesting points to make though.
    - marvin 6y ago
      The orthogonality thesis says that advanced artificial intelligence (yet to be built) can be both vastly powerful and have arbitrary goals -- in particular, goals that are catastrophic for humanity. (More specifically: capability and morality for AIs are not correlated). GP says that Altman explicitly denies this theory and fosters a culture that might end up creating dangerous AI. Implied here is that there is a risk this might cause a truly catastrophic accident. The parts about "safety" refers to acknowledging this danger and attempting to mitigate it. I don't know enough about Altman or OpenAI to make any judgements on their approach, but that's a brief explanation.
  - rytill 6y ago
    I am a safety advocate, and your analogy to nuclear explosions is pretty interesting. However, simplified analogies may be doing more harm than good because they fuel the straw-men people create of arguments for AI safety. I am not sure what the proper technique to get someone already entrenched in their perspective to broaden their possibility distribution is, though. Do you have any tips on that, as someone that appears to be engaged in the space and appears to advocate similarly?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

CPLX 6y ago

I've always wondered how the philosophy and life insight of the ruling elite varies between public and private comments. Most of the advice here seems fairly anodyne and unobjectionable. Perhaps a little overly focused on a certain kind of "success" but still nothing I would think of as wrong or manipulative or anything. But when he goes to something like Bohemian Grove and has conversations to share insights and advice with the small transnational group that essentially rules the global political and financial system, do they also sound like this? I don't have any first hand knowledge whatsoever but my gut feeling says the answer is likely no.

Bakary 6y ago
If you are a very wealthy or influential individual, you are essentially trapped into certain sets of behavior. You can still relate to other people, but the fact that you could solve most of their problems on an individual basis with an instant donation that would take you all of thirty seconds creates a gulf that can't be reached over. You can do a variety of activities, but these probably feel much less interesting than doing things that have an influence over a very large number of people. If you are, say, a CEO of a successful company that CEO role will be the only source of a certain type of feeling that can't be achieved elsewhere. I'm certain you are right: within their technocratic circles, they probably make far less wholesome and family-friendly pronouncements about life. But it's not fundamentally contradictory, just like a person can be crippled by an addiction that turns them into a monster on a regular basis while remaining normal, wise and approachable the remainder of the time.

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago

Every time I read some list of advices on life I can't help but remember Mary Schmich's apocryphal speech "Wear Sunscreen" [1] (and made famous by Baz Luhrmann [2]), from way back when the Internet was young and wild. Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-sunscreen... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

gautamcgoel 6y ago
This was great, thanks for the recommendation!
svantana 6y ago
In the same vein, I highly recommend the ironic self-help album "Dancing For Mental Health" by Will Powers (sic). https://open.spotify.com/album/4242hiYk7PAArDAd6XSWbZ https://open.spotify.com/album/4242hiYk7PAArDAd6XSWbZ
lotsofpulp 6y ago
>Even though I think "Wear sunscreen" is not a great advice. Why not?
- glial 6y ago
  One person’s answer: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I see. It wasn’t even until a couple years ago that non metal sunscreens were found to be useless.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 6y ago
  It's a bit complex, I'll try to summarize. Let's think of being exposed to the sun as a continuum with different risks: 1. The best you can do is sun bathe every single day, all year round, avoiding mid-day hours in summer. Think "a gardener who loves being shirt-less". This scenario is related to more non-melanoma skin cancer (survival rate >99%), but both a lower incidence of melanoma, and a higher survival rate for melanoma. 2. The worst you can do is never sun bathe except for occasional heavy exposures. Think a week in the beach during summer vacation, and the rest of the year completely indoors. This scenario is related to more frequent melanoma, and a lower survival rate for it. Sunscreen is great for #2 (people who can't or just won't be exposed often). But it's both unnecessary and undesired (since it limits the bening effects) in #1. And it also limits Vitamin D absorption. So a better advice would be "be exposed to the sun often, every day if you can, and don't wear sunscreen when you do it".

Bakary 6y ago

The advice isn't bad at all, but then you've heard it all before. Most people tend to figure most of this out by the time they are in their mid-thirties, or never do. I can only speak from my own perspective, but the irony is that the people I tend to be deeply impressed by don't tend to follow this sort of mechanistic or "optimized wisdom" approach to life. They tend to be more chaotic, less rational (sometimes dangerously so), often dickish but always displaying a vision of life that is deeply felt and never sterile. It may sound paradoxical and counter-intuitive, but you could follow all of the advice from the post and still lead an uninspired existence that doesn't amount to much in the end. Some other posters here mentioned how the list felt like an accusation, but I would say in my case that I felt a rush of melancholy from its superposition of being both solid actionable advice but also deeply wrong in ways I can't fully express. A person like the author does impress me, as they probably are living up to whatever potential they were granted. I envy their wealth, freedom to work on interesting things, and the fact that they worked towards something and achieved it. But I don't get that sense of unstoppable awe and desire that I get with people like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those few anonymous, adventurous and idiosyncratic souls you once met that you still think about from time to time. You probably have an example of the latter in your own life that instantly came to mind when reading this, or perhaps you can extrapolate a description of them through the knowledge of the world you've garnered so far.

bumby 6y ago
>But I don't get that sense of unstoppable awe and desire that I get with people like Hemingway, Napoleon, or even those few anonymous, adventurous and idiosyncratic souls Here’s what I wonder: is it possible to admire such people while simultaneously acknowledging they live a semi-tortured existence that may not be worth emulating? I think the author was shooting for equanimity which may be somewhat different than how those types would be described
matwood 6y ago
Your last paragraph reminded me of this quote, It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention. --Malcom Muggeridge

neronero 6y ago

I find Sam Altman's essays completely devoid of any insight. He's trying really hard to be like PG, while he simply doesn't have the street-cred required. Case in point, when they did a series of Y Combinator interviews a few years back Sam apparently thought to himself that it would be appropriate for him to be interviewed third following Elon and PG - in what world does that make sense?

karagenit 6y ago
For me, the value of a piece of writing has very little to do with who wrote it. Successful people say silly or stupid things all the time, so I try not to get caught up in their echo chambers. Sure, most successful people are smart, but I'd argue most smart people aren't that successful. As for this essay, a lot of the points resonated with me, so I liked it. I have no clue who Sam Altman is, and I don't think it really matters.
- neronero 6y ago
  That's the correct way to look at it. You want to evaluate ideas on their own merits, but you also want to use heuristics and proxies when determining which ideas to consider in the sea of ideas on the Internet. A correct heuristic to search for good ideas is to seek the opinion of the previously successful people.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

> 5) On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom I strongly disagree, but only on a technicality or matter of perception of what freedom means. To me, money has nothing to do with true freedom. Money in and of itself is a prison, like any external currency, and something I have influence over but virtually no control. Today I have money. Tomorrow, my currency could become worthless or my home could burn down by no fault of my own. I could lose my job, and what money seems available for me to enjoy myself with will become essential for supporting myself in an uncertain future. There are other interesting facets of this, like - how many people do you know who have much more money than you, but still want more? How hard do they work for it, or how often do they think about it? Are we ever free from wanting more of this kind of freedom? Certainly if we find a good balance and we have the fortune of earning enough money to have disposable income, it can be freeing in a sense. But it's dangerous to conflate wealth with freedom in general. It requires a lot of good sense and responsibility to use wealth wisely, I think. I don't mean to be nit-picky or overly critical when the intent of communication was fairly clear. I'm sure Sam knows better than to equate money and freedom directly. I only think it's dangerous to use language like this in a culture like the one I live in, where people want more money so badly in order to be free, but it never affords them anything you'd recognize as freedom. > 19) Go out of your way to help people. Few things in life are as satisfying. Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn’t matter. 27) Forgive people. 28) Don’t chase status. Status without substance doesn’t work for long and is unfulfilling. 31) Be grateful and keep problems in perspective. Don’t complain too much. Don’t hate other people’s success 35) Don’t judge other people too quickly. You never know their whole story and why they did or didn’t do something. Be empathetic. I love this advice!

Bakary 6y ago
To come up with a definition of freedom, I'd say we have to start from the premise of a certain degree of reliability. If we take into account all the ways you can lose everything or die early, it will always seem like a meaningless concept. But in practice, these things don't always happen and many are able to live long lives as evidenced by actuarial tables. It's true that wealth can become a trap but it all depends on your inherent personality. Many would have no problem forgetting about the grind and be content using their newfound wealth to do what they want in their own zone. It just so happens that a propensity to be content is probably negatively correlated with amassing large sums so you hear about those people less often despite their great numbers. So I'd say that yes, a significant but not absurd amount of money can already go a really long way towards letting a person be free in a sense we'd all recognize.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Here's a trend I see repeating itself. People in their 20s and 30s tend to say things like: "work on what you love." But if you ask people in their 40s, 50s, even beyond, the advice is: "Learn to love what you do, no matter what it is."

jefurii 6y ago
This reminds me interviews with Japanese artisans who approach their swordmaking/pottery/baking/tofu-making as a spiritual practice. These all seem to be older people.
pwinnski 6y ago
"Do what you love" is advice that comes from the enormous privilege some people have to make money doing what they love. I'm one of those people, so I get it, but many, many people don't love computer programming or something else profitable. So yes, "learn to love what you do" is much, much better advice. I've watched people (younger than I am) struggle with being in jobs they didn't love, as if they were failing. The jobs may have been failing them, but they weren't failing the jobs. If you're lucky--as I am, as Sam Altman is--then you can do what you love. Otherwise, you have to do what pays the bills and leaves you enough free time to pursue what you love.
- mqrs 6y ago
  “Do what you love” is not so much a privileged thing to say. It’s just an ideal to aspire towards, a north star of sorts, even if you’re currently in a position where you’re only doing what pays the bills. Doing what you love is life advice on how to live a good, happy, and fulfilling life—do what pays the bills isn’t.

jdlyga 6y ago

The 1990s felt like an entire lifetime. I was in Kindergarten though High School. The 2000s felt long too: High School through college to my first job. The 2010s was over super quick. I worked full time, changed jobs twice, and got married. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 still feels like yesterday. I can imagine the 2020s will feel even shorter. And now we know why all of our relatives always said "Wow you got so big!" every time they saw us.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
If you're really in need of a depressing thought, there will come a day when you actually ask the Internet: "How much longer do I have?"
- afdgadfgadfh 6y ago
  At least we can rely on fake news, spam and noise for one thing: getting the answer wrong.

hikerclimber 6y ago

both go at the same pace one just seems faster.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Look at any of his latest essays - its pretty hilarious how bad they are, and how much they try to sound like PG. Makes me think he landed the job by mimicking (and flattering) PG.

pizza234 6y ago

> Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. This is one of the things that sounds cool on paper, and make people feel inspired, but doesn't really work like that in real world. Being extremely good in something requires a resource (time, attention...) expenditure that easily eats the rest of life (unless you're one of the few geniuses who can afford a balanced life). In practice, if one aims really high, they will need to take a conscious decision to sacrifice a significant part of their life. This is in conflict with the "live a balanced life" message underlying many of the points of the article. This subject is in my opinion explored with much more depth (and honesty) by Carmack in his graduation speech. [I] Advocate long, hard work [...] embrace the grind :)

thundergolfer 6y ago
Are you referring to John Carmack’s speech at UKMC?
- pizza234 6y ago
  Yes! Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZnqjHkULc. It's a bit odd to hear, as it goes against conventional modern wisdom ("you hear a lot about work life-balance, work smarter not harder, and that's all fine, but there's is a quality to obsession, that is really hard to match"), but it's understandable from a position to somebody who's really trying to be "aiming to be the best in the world".
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    Thanks for the confirmation. I've very much on Carmack's side of things, and I do often have to explain my 'unbalanced' approach to things.

sharkweek 6y ago

My god, am I feeling this right now. But absolutely not related to starting a company or anything of the like. Parent of a three year old and an infant. I cannot tell you how fast those three years have gone by relative to any other time period in my life. It is scaring me shitless if I'm being honest. I brought this up to my dad who laughed and was like, "How do you think I feel staring at my 30somethings son who now has his own kids?" When I remember to pause, slow down, and enjoy the littlest of moments I find I'm the happiest. Simple, but difficult to remember. Enjoy the long day as much as possible.

mistermann 6y ago

> 25) Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now. Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get that excited and happy now. I find this one to be interesting. We typically take such things as little more than obvious platitudes, but if you think about it from a psychology/neuroscience perspective, it's actually very interesting. Like, why can't the mind manifest such states as easily when it is older? What are the actual (as opposed to the "just so"[1] theories) underlying causes, and can they be circumvented? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

readingnews 6y ago

"How to succeed: pick the right thing to do..." Yes. And when you wake up every 10 years and go "dang, that was not the right thing to do", you realize that, even if you were successful, you are now unhappy. This one statement "pick the right thing to do" is what mankind has struggled with for 1000s of years. I have had a number of jobs, all of my previous employers would tell you I am great, work hard, have exemplary output, but you know what, every 5 years or so, I wake up and go "wait a second, this is not what I want to do. This is not right". Not to bash the author, but "ok kids, be sure you are right, then go for it" is great... if only any of us knew what was right.

samanator 6y ago
I took it as "pick the right thing to do" as in what you personally feel is normally right. As in "do the right thing".

stanpinte 6y ago

looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuEEf4mGsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuEEf4mGsk

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

5) On money: ... it can buy freedom + 14) Summers are the best. = It's always Summer Somewhere.

kaybe 6y ago
I'm not sure whether the summer experience is the same without having lived through winter as well. In spring every bit of green is celebrated by the winter survivors, but if you just came in from the other hemisphere it just feels empty.
- baxtr 6y ago
  Winter is Great, for exactly 2 to 3 weeks. That would be enough for me to appreciate the other seasons.
  - roland35 6y ago
    Winter to me feels like an annual cleansing, but then again when I lived in Florida I didn't really miss it!

cvaidya1986 6y ago

Timely read

nobodyknowsyoda 6y ago

37) If you find something “Open”, make sure to Close it /s

gautamcgoel 6y ago

Never quite understood this one: "13) Keep your personal burn rate low. This alone will give you a lot of opportunities in life." Does this mean that you should avoid making enemies?

roland35 6y ago
I believe "burn rate" is your monthly personal expenses. Having extra money saved up allows you to take advantage of opportunities whether it be take a few months to work on an idea or make an investment.