3 ms·

It’s not just attention. It’s time in general that people have no respect for; their own time, and the time of others. In a way this is not new, you can read S

It’s not just attention. It’s time in general that people have no respect for; their own time, and the time of others. In a way this is not new, you can read Seneca complaining about this in his essay On the Shortness of Life: “Men do not allow anyone to take possession of their estates, and, if there is the slightest dispute about the limit of their property, they rush to pick up stones and weapons: but they allow others to make inroads into their life, even extending personal invitations to those who will one day possess it. No one is found who would be willing to divide up his own money: but when it comes to his life, each one of us gives others a share in it, and how many others! …How many have plundered your life without you realising what you were losing?…You live as though you were going to live forever.”

bumby 3y ago
I wonder if this is, in part, to the fact that we have an unknown quantity of time. It seems when people put a more finite value to it (through a prognosis, or even just regularly marking off 1 week of four thousand), they seem to attach more value to it. It seems to transition it from the abstract to the concrete.
- svilen_dobrev 3y ago
  "The only technology that you need is deadlines" discused a few days ago.. https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/
namaria 3y ago
The more I study History, the less convinced I am "progress" is a real thing. We keep unfolding all these technical achievements yet struggle with the very same issues as 2, 3, 4 thousand years ago.
- ycombinete 3y ago
  We are very much the same animals, biologically speaking, as we were then. With the same built in proficiencies and deficiencies. To me that's one of the great values of these old philosophical/psychological texts. They can reveal what is essential and what is accidental in us.
  - namaria 3y ago
    For all the convolution Nassin Taleb has published (you really have to put what he publishes in the perspective of a guy who thought up a bet against the grain of the conventional thinking in financial markets, won big and got to live off that and just publish opinion pieces forevermore), I think he hit the nail on the head with the idea that very old books still in print are worth reading. The older the better, precisely because of what you said. I got more insight from reading Gilgamesh than from whole semesters of my college years.

bumby 3y ago

I wonder if this is, in part, to the fact that we have an unknown quantity of time. It seems when people put a more finite value to it (through a prognosis, or even just regularly marking off 1 week of four thousand), they seem to attach more value to it. It seems to transition it from the abstract to the concrete.

svilen_dobrev 3y ago
"The only technology that you need is deadlines" discused a few days ago.. https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/deadlines-as-technology/

namaria 3y ago

The more I study History, the less convinced I am "progress" is a real thing. We keep unfolding all these technical achievements yet struggle with the very same issues as 2, 3, 4 thousand years ago.

ycombinete 3y ago
We are very much the same animals, biologically speaking, as we were then. With the same built in proficiencies and deficiencies. To me that's one of the great values of these old philosophical/psychological texts. They can reveal what is essential and what is accidental in us.
- namaria 3y ago
  For all the convolution Nassin Taleb has published (you really have to put what he publishes in the perspective of a guy who thought up a bet against the grain of the conventional thinking in financial markets, won big and got to live off that and just publish opinion pieces forevermore), I think he hit the nail on the head with the idea that very old books still in print are worth reading. The older the better, precisely because of what you said. I got more insight from reading Gilgamesh than from whole semesters of my college years.