15 ms·

Thin desires are eating life

• amosj 11mo ago
  Well written, this has given a concrete description to a vague notion that has been in my mind for a while
• hyperhello 10mo ago
  “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” T.S. Eliot
• nullorempty 10mo ago
  Thanks for this.
• carabiner 10mo ago
  This is the concept of hungry ghost from buddhism: https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/hungry-ghosts/ https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/hungry-ghosts/
• barfoure 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • tomhow 10mo ago
    Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. If you think a submission or comment is of low quality, just flag it, and if you really want to get the message across, email us – hn@ycombinator.com. Please don't respond to things you think make HN bad by posting comments that can only make it worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
    • barfoure 10mo ago
      Sigh. I get it. I just don’t agree with it but fair point.
      • tomhow 10mo ago
        Sure. Remember I have to read this stuff all day ;)
      • ewoodrich 10mo ago
        IMHO your comment would have been far more constructive if you actually explained what "copium factory" is supposed to mean in this context. As it stands I literally have no idea what you are trying to say except for the broad dismissal of the post as pop psychology. (And yes I'm familiar with the word, it still just doesn't make any sense to me).
    • ThrowawayR2 10mo ago
      It would nice if there were a way to downvote submissions to indicate they're of low quality that's separate from flagging. Flagging is rather heavy handed in that it can cause a submission to become [dead] since it seems to be mostly intended for marking submissions that break the guidelines.
      • tomhow 10mo ago
        I think after nearly 19 years it’s pretty well settled that downvoting of stories won’t be happening :) The principle is that we don’t want a battle between upvotes and downvotes to determine rank, because that would set the wrong incentives (e.g coordinated downvoting of stories to help a particular story move up the rankings). The guidelines include what is on-topic/off-topic, and the most significant criterion is whether a story gratifies intellectual curiosity. If you earnestly feel that it doesn’t, then it’s fine to flag it as being off-topic. Otherwise it’s just not to your taste, in which case hit “hide” and upvote stories you do like. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373801
  • ignorantguy 10mo ago
    Did you read the article? its definitely not bs.
• mtalantikite 10mo ago
  This is a core concept of Buddhism, called tanha, and has been contemplated for a couple thousand years at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%E1%B9%87h%C4%81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%E1%B9%87h%C4%81
  • dddw 10mo ago
    Interesting. Looked fornthe simple English version, alas.
  • agumonkey 10mo ago
    Everything new is old :)
    • moffkalast 10mo ago
      Try having an original thought after 110 billion humans have already lived entire lives thinking.
  • francisofascii 10mo ago
    This also sounds like one of the core themes of Augustinian philosophy. The idea of the "restless heart" in that we are never satisfied with earthly wants and desires.
  • rochak 10mo ago
    Doesn’t “tanha” mean “by yourself” in Hindi?
    • mtalantikite 10mo ago
      I don't speak Hindi unfortunately, but it's definitely on my list of languages to study (after Bangla)! It looks like the Hindi tanha comes from Classical Persian [1], whereas the Pali tanha comes from Sanskrit [2] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%B9%E... [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ta%E1%B9%87h%C4%81 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ta%E1%B9%87h%C4%81
• phito 10mo ago
  Very nicely written. I've been slowly removing thin desires from my life. It's hard to do at first, but what I've noticed is once I am free from them, I do not miss them at all. Almost like I was under a spell.
  • kalx 10mo ago
    I second this. Almost like I was under a spell.
  • jfindper 10mo ago
    What are some examples of thin desires you've removed?
    • ozymandias8 10mo ago
      I would watch YouTube for an hour before bed. It got to the point where I needed it to fall asleep, usually with it playing in the background. Replaced it with reading books and now I just read until I'm sleep enough, usually when I realize I have to reread sentences repeatedly. After about a week I had no desire to scroll my YouTube feed for videos. I didn't block YouTube or anything, I still watch videos from creators I follow, but I no longer instinctively reach for it to pass time.
      • jfindper 10mo ago
        Thanks for sharing, that's something I can probably draw some inspiration from. I never really thought about how often I reach to youtube to kill time, including putting something on when heading to sleep.
    • NegativeK 10mo ago
      I've slowly pushed away the classic attention manipulating applications -- basically anything that will find new content to keep you engaged. Tiktok feels like the maximalist example, but other similar apps, social media text feeds, and parts of Youtube (though, I've so aggressively tuned Youtube that it has a very limited content base to show me.) TV isn't for TV's sake; it's for relaxing a little with someone I care about. I can read longer form news articles and not need to stay abreast of what's happening daily. I've found that I'll eventually grow bored and annoyed with things meant to steal attention, at which point I'll excise them from my life. It just might take an unfortunate while to get there.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• 9Mfhf34U 10mo ago
  This is the second time I'm finding out Joan's moved her RSS feed without announcing it...
  • jamiedumont 10mo ago
    I’ve noticed a lot of changes on the site recently, which I believe is powered by Ghost which makes messing around with feed links a more advanced (for lack of a better word) tweak than many platforms as you download/upload a routes file. I’m a 10+ year developer and have found myself chasing route changes in Ghost with trial and error.
• jimbokun 10mo ago
  There’s nothing especially novel in here but she says it beautifully and succinctly.
• coffeecoders 10mo ago
  Us software engineers assume value comes from serving more people, faster, with less friction. But many of the things that actually make life feel coherent such as learning a craft, maintaining friendships and building tools for one person, only work because they’re slow and specific. Tech doesn't give us the wrong desires but the easier versions of the right ones, and those end up hollow.
• xpe 10mo ago
  > A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. > > A thin desire is one that doesn't. > > ... > > The person who checks their notifications is [a thin desire], > afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their > notifications five minutes ago. [I added the brackets] The author, I think, would label the desire for sugary drinks as a thin desire. However, that desire tends towards unfavorable consequences: mood swings, poor dental hygiene, weight gain. Thus it undermines one's body. This "changes you" -- for the worse, yielding a contradiction. If the preceding logical analysis is sound, the article's terms or argument are flawed.
  • renerick 10mo ago
    You said it yourself - "sugary drinks... tend towards unfavorable consequences". The change happens as the outcome of the desire, not "in the process of the pursuing it".
  • rpdillon 10mo ago
    The wording was very careful to say the pursuit of the desire changes you. That's very different than obtaining the desire changing you. It's not a real remedy for your comment because we could probably come up with an example where the pursuit of the desire changes you in a bad way. For example, if you're a heroin addict and you're breaking into homes to steal things so that you can buy drugs. But I think it does help narrow the scope enough that the intent behind the statement becomes more clear.
    • xpe 10mo ago
      I appreciate your clarity, thanks. There is something really interesting about people (which I think I'm borrowing from Atomic Habits by James Clear): Every time you take an action in service of a goal, it helps prove to yourself, a little at a time, that part of your identity involves pursuing that goal. For example, each time I spew out a journal entry or cobble together a blog post, it reinforces the belief "I am a writer." With this in mind, it suggests a theory: doing the thing itself changes you. After some suitable time delay, perhaps. (This is how exercise adaptation works at least.) But connecting this together still feels muddled. What is the difference between doing the thing and the consequences of doing the thing? The difference feels ... undefined? Maybe even arbitrary? All of this triggers my "inconsistency detectors" suggesting more thinking needs to be done. Maybe the difference is that some actions provide certain emotional states while we're doing them: satisfaction, flow, meaning -- and this is what people mean by the first part ("doing the thing"). Maybe we can define consequences as the things that happen after we stop acting. Like the royalty checks that hypothetically will clog up my mailbox one day.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• snarf21 10mo ago
  I find it ironic that this perspective is being shared in such a "thin" way. There are some insightful observations but the whole thick/thin perspective just doesn't resonate with me. As an old man (shakes fist at clouds), we have stopped prioritizing people. It is all about building and maintaining relationships and we've gotten lazy. And maintaining relationships is a lot of work and without it we do feel more isolated. So we try to fill that void with things that don't require effort like buying crap we don't need on Amazon and chasing likes on social media. We aren't happy so we try to be busy so we don't notice so much. We saw a bit of a teeny correction during covid when people starting going outdoors and baking bread and cooking home cooked meals. But now everyone is back to working from home in their pajamas and tell themselves how happy they are with all the time they save not driving but skip over the lack of adult interaction (both good and bad). But the problem is easily solved for each of us by things as simple as hobbies and volunteering and organizations (church, civic, etc.) Personally, I design board games and have friends over to test them and go to board game conferences. We've built a group that still test and communicate online but are happiest when we get to hang out and play games and go for dinner. There is no shortage of these opportunities but you have to get off the couch and join in. It is a place where you will make new friends and find happiness but you have to decide it is worth it.
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • morellt 10mo ago
    Completely agree! The moment after leaving an event/party/service I always feel a greater sense of purpose, contentness, or at the very least, less pessimistic about the state of the world
  • skeeter2020 10mo ago
    >> And maintaining relationships is a lot of work this is really true, and I'm hopeful that people will prioritize fewer, deeper relationships because it's so much work. I feels like networking in all the superficial ways has allowed people to (believe they) have way more relationships than is healthy or even possible. I don't know what the upper limit is (likely different for every individual) but it's way less than 500 professional connections on linkedin, or thousands of personal connections. For deep, meaningful, valuable - and rewarding! - relationships it's probably less than ten. If you're not prepared to let the rest just atrophy and even disappear, you're not going to be happy.
• xpe 10mo ago
  From "How to know what you really want" by Luke Burgis [1]: > There are two kinds of desire, thin and thick. Thick desires are like layers of rock that have been built up throughout the course of our lives. These are desires that can be shaped and cultivated through models like our parents and people that we admire as children. But at some level, they’re related to the core of who we are. They can be related to perennial human truths: beauty, goodness, human dignity. > Thin desires are highly mimetic (imitative) and ephemeral desires. They’re the things that can be here today, gone tomorrow. Thin desires are subject to the winds of mimetic change, because they’re not rooted in a layer of ourselves that’s been built up over time. They are like a layer of leaves that’s sitting on top of layers of rock. Those thin desires are blown away with a light gust of wind. A new model comes into our life; the old desires are gone. All of a sudden we want something else. Comparing the above conceptualizations with the ones offered by Westenberg (OP) could consume hundreds or thousands of words -- more than I want to spend at the moment -- but I will say this: both sets feel wrong, by which I mean they trigger my early warning detectors. I'm not asking anyone else to trust my intuition. But you should trust yours. Intuition is usually a good starting point, at least. With intuition alone -- without writing a full analysis -- we can see the above quoted explanations/definitions are highly complected. [2] Also, in my view, the offered metaphors don't carve reality at the joints. [3] When I put ~20 minutes of concentrated thinking into the problem, here are some of the constituent parts of "desire" that I can unpack. (These are only fleetingly glossed over in the article.) In no particular order, to what degree are desires: - conscious? - intentional? - intentionally trained and reinforced? - authentic? - ones we want to have? - situational? - pattern-matched responses? - evolutionarily-selected? - socially constructed? (imitative, mimetic) - moral? (positive, neutral, negative) - permanent, durable, lasting? - self-reinforcing? This is complex! Over-simplication can be a disservice. Adding another metaphor reminds me of the "N+1 standards" problem. [4] Maybe the new metaphor helps, maybe not. Either way, now we have more to sift through. [1]: https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/mimetic-desires/ https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/mimetic... [2]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/SimpleMadeEasy.md https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... [3]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/303819/what-do-the-joints-signify-in-the-metaphor-carve-nature-at-the-joints https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/303819/what-do-t... [4]: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
• Twixes 10mo ago
  Halfway the this post, I realized checking the HN front page was merely a thin desire – so I'm off to read a book. Farewell!
  • skeeter2020 10mo ago
    Like relationships I don't think it's either/or but rather prioritize. Make the book a priority, and make sure you do it, then go ahead and read/comment on HN. The extra knowledge/perspectives/experiences will make your contributions more valuable for everyone.
  • xg15 10mo ago
    I have bad news for you - you're not even just "checking" HN, you're simulating social interaction by writing comments for no one in particular.
    • ericmcer 10mo ago
      jokes on you I read this and am replying. But yeah it is an unhealthy way to scratch the itch.
  • cammil 10mo ago
    Just thought this as i glanced your post. See you later!
• keybored 10mo ago
  You are creating content[1] that is insightful. To everyone. Equally known. We all cheer. We know this. Then we move on. A catchy title. A novel enough term. That will hook them. We all read. We all smile. The daily grind. This insight is not original to me. [1] It’s just content now Not essays Not music Content
  • robinhood 10mo ago
    Thanks. It's exactly what I thought, but written in a funny way. I'm so sick of this way of writing, which is actually tuned to appeal to the broadest audience possible and follow every guide on "how to write efficiently".
• RyJones 10mo ago
  I send postcards when I travel. I love doing it. https://findingfavorites.podbean.com/e/ry-jones-postcards/ https://findingfavorites.podbean.com/e/ry-jones-postcards/
  • skeeter2020 10mo ago
    I'm an Engineering Manager. I print out certificates for people on (and beyond) my teams, referencing something they accomplished (big or small), add one of the "boy scout badges" I bought in bulk from AliExpress (and then retroactively created & reference a set of values based on the iconography) and mail out "Engineering Merit Badges" to our remote employees. Maybe a few think it's dumb but the vast majority love it. The collector-types try to earn the entire set (I made one of the badges really hard to get because of this), while physically getting mail really seems to resonate with anyone under 35. A few people more distant from my teams (i.e. different departments) DID seems supsicious at first when I asked for their home address, and my boss wondered how I spent several hundred dollars in postage last year, but I try and send out at least a dozen a month while still keeping them meaningful. It's actually a bit of work (of course I wrote software to help manage and create everything) but I love it too.
    • RyJones 10mo ago
      One my convoys from Tallinn to Kyiv, I make little dog tags https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYSqxFiEeps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYSqxFiEeps and coins to hand out to drivers and staff. For work, I used to make poker chips: https://github.com/ryjones/recognition/blob/main/chips.md https://github.com/ryjones/recognition/blob/main/chips.md and coins: https://github.com/ryjones/recognition/blob/main/coins.md https://github.com/ryjones/recognition/blob/main/coins.md . When we did coins, I would custom engrave them for TSC/TOC/TAC members and people in the community I knew I would meet at events. https://youtu.be/0LXsauB5Qao https://youtu.be/0LXsauB5Qao See also gift boxes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21uGljlJVoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21uGljlJVoI
• bgnn 10mo ago
  Great piece! Made me reflect on my own persuasion of thin desires and my struggle to control them. It also made me see that my hobbies and my career are actually about following my thick desires. I'm in tech, yes. But I chose, among all the possibilities, to be an analog circuit designer. The analog part is what makes it a long hard skill to master, and my day job feels like constant learning from my interactions woth the world. I can't imagine doing anything which isn't interacting with the actual physical world!
• adim86 10mo ago
  I think this article is really true, and I think a consequence is that people are really hungry for thick desires these days but they cannot put a finger on it. They notice themselves not growing, they get the dopamine hit they were looking for but it feel like empty calories. As a software engineer, I decided to build an app about side quests. Reading this article I realized I could not put a finger on what I was getting at either, but I just knew I hadd to add wholesome activities that were not part of my life into my life and I kinda built this app for myself (initially for a hackathon) and just shared it with friends. Hopefully it's useful to someone else on here (nasty self promotion): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidequests-hq/id6751321255 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidequests-hq/id6751321255
  • keybored 10mo ago
    Thick hustle.
  • cammil 10mo ago
    It bothered me that you called your self promotion nasty. Not sure why. You made something, i see no harm in sharing it.
    • adim86 10mo ago
      I was being sarcastic, but I get your point
• impute 10mo ago
  Why is every sentence also a paragraph?
  • apsurd 10mo ago
    I find myself doing this for anything "work related" like slack. It's definitely a thing on Linkedin posts. The idea is it's like TikTok for text. Short self-contained visual "things" that keep grabbing back your fading attention. I don't like it, but I like that I think about why it is and that, in a "professional" environment, it somehow (sadly) makes sense.
    • skeeter2020 10mo ago
      In a post about how thin, superficial (and yes, lazy) things are destroying the value of your life, sigh...
      • mattbettinson 10mo ago
        Maybe it will reach the people most in need of it that way
    • nicbou 10mo ago
      When I come across this sort of writing I skip it. If the writer can't be bothered to organise their ideas I won't do it for them. I find that writing style oddly grating.
    • SchemaLoad 10mo ago
      I've only ever seen this style as a satire of hustle bros. So I assume it must be a real thing originally.
  • micromacrofoot 10mo ago
    when you write like this people think it's more profound than it really is
    • 10mo ago
• sans_souse 10mo ago
  Excellent piece, easy to read and I agree on most until this part: 'The surveys all point the same direction: rising anxiety, rising depression, rising rates of loneliness even as we've never been more connected. How could this be, when we've gotten so good at giving people what they want? Maybe because we've gotten good at giving people what they want in a way that prevents them from wanting anything worth having' As much as it is true we are technologically more connected than ever, I would argue that much was taken away in parallel to what was given. The capabilities came to fruit but at the same time the governance and politics thinned out much of our desires at their core; ie now we're being told we want more and more because it's been determined we can't have certain things.
  • switchbak 10mo ago
    I don't see governance and politics as being the primary movers in what I seek out. My experience is more: I find myself spinning my tires watching yet another youtube video instead of calmly deciding on a worthy investment of a deep pursuit. No government has forced that on me, that's mostly a corporate entity and platform making (automated, ML mediated) decisions on what I should consume. Of course governments are involved when deciding what I shouldn't be exposed to, but that's a different matter. We all have a limited reserve of energy, of attention and willpower. When you spend it on shallow desires, you have expended it and tacitly made a choice to not invest in a more meaningful path. If I were to summarize the time I've spent sitting on my ass watching YouTube the last N years, it's really quite depressing (even if it does sometimes provide some very real value).
• assemblyman 10mo ago
  Even with thick desires, I sometimes find myself day-dreaming about the state when I have mastered a skill or understood a topic deeply. At the same time, I know from experience that the process never ends. Even when one does master a skill, one is deeply aware of what one doesn't know or understand or what one is not good at within that domain. What helps me is to focus on today. If I can spend even an hour on a topic and get lost in it or even get frustrated by it, it is time well-spent. I was going to say "it is progress" instead of "time well-spent" but even that's a trap. Progress implies moving forward in a preferred direction. While I can't say I don't want to make progress, I am training myself to care less about it. It is really the time spent engaging that's most valuable (at least to me).
  • neom 10mo ago
    You might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up%C4%81d%C4%81na https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up%C4%81d%C4%81na and https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/bhavatanha https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/bhavatanha
  • nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
    Oh yeah decades in I still feel I know f-all about programming. Doesn't help the field keeps expanding expintentially. E.g. I look most things up. I am basicially a slow LLM!
    • bigfishrunning 10mo ago
      You're kind of the opposite of a slow LLM. LLMs don't look anything up, they enthusiastically assert that they're correct. They have no desire to know anything.
      • CamperBob2 10mo ago
        LLMs don't look anything up, they enthusiastically assert that they're correct. Says someone who lectures on how LLMs worked two years ago.
• DarmokJalad1701 10mo ago
  > The yeast doesn't care about your schedule. > The dough will rise when it rises, indifferent to your optimization. Joke's on them! I run my oven until the temperature inside is ~100F - about a minute or so. Then I turn it off and set the dough in there along with some water (for humidity). It rises super fast compared to my kitchen which is ~65F in the winter and the bread is just as flavorful. Definitely not indifferent to my optimization.
  • jmathai 10mo ago
    I found this trick for store bought pizza dough as well. Instead of leaving out for 20 minutes, a warm oven helps it start rising a bit and results in a much better final product!
  • IceCoffe 10mo ago
    Im just learning this is a thing, tell me more, how long do you leave it in there? Any ratio's you use?
    • dmoy 10mo ago
      How long to leave in depends on the dough, but you can get a quick rise in like less than an hour in the right temperature. Definitely don't leave it too long. I routinely forget and then it rises too much and eventually collapses when you go to bake it. I use like 65% or maybe 70% hydration for bread, little more for whole wheat. Like 25:1 sugar (or less?), 100:1 salt, 100:1 yeast. High protein flour if you can. For just basic bread, no sourdough, not a sandwich loaf, etc.
    • lukevp 10mo ago
      Yep, some ovens (like mine) even have a Proof setting that keeps it at 100 degrees F automatically, for as long as you want. We make a lot of bread is how I know this
    • godelski 10mo ago
      Baking is weird. You first should start by following instructions to the letter. Then once you get it you'll be able to break all the rules. The bread rises because of the yeast bacteria eats sugar and expels carbon dioxide. So ask yourself, what does yeast like? Probably not hard to guess that it's a warm, moist environment with plenty of sugar. Too cold and they're slow moving. Too hot and they burn up. But the goldilocks zone is that of most bacteria, a hot summer day in the tropics. How long to rise? That's more a question of how fluffy you want the bread and how fast the bacteria eats the sugar. Follow instructions while you're learning but think about things like this while practicing and you'll get your answers pretty quickly. The problem is no one can actually give you a direct answer because there's variance. Besides, the more important skill is to learn to generalize and get the intuition for it. So pay attention to how sticky the dough is, how fluffy, how it stretches, and all the other little things. Think about it during and after. If you do this I promise you'll get your answer very quickly
• ianstormtaylor 10mo ago
  I can't help but feel that this article was written in a format that is the textual equivalent of thin desires… Every sentence is separated into its own paragraph, like each one is supposed to be revelatory (or maybe tweet-worthy). It's pretty common design knowledge that if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing. The result is that reading the article feels choppy, and weirdly unsatisfying, since the larger arc of each point is constantly being interrupted. Why choose such an antithetical form, to what is otherwise an important and deep message? The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.
  • nicbou 10mo ago
    It sounds like a Ted Talk with unnecessarily long poses to let sentences sink in. For some reason I just can't digest this sort of writing.
  • micromacrofoot 10mo ago
    It's basically the sort of rot writing that proliferates on linkedin
    • throwaway_2494 10mo ago
      I disagree. I feel there is a genuine insight at the core of it.
      • teekert 10mo ago
        Yeah me too. Lately LI is like: CMSs are done! Let that sink in! Some dude trew away his CMS and vibe coded some markdown based static stuff that does the same. No harddrive was wiped this particular time. The world is different now, reply in comments if you agree. Reply “airhead” for my 3 slides which are even more insightful than this post.
      • PaulHoule 10mo ago
        I think that LinkedIn writing style is so infectious that people who do have something to say wind up getting sucked into it and wind up dodging tomatoes in the comment section as a result.
• clowncubs 10mo ago
  This resonates. I work in web dev, and a little over 2 years ago I hit a wall. Everything was a screen. All day at work, at home, on the go. Everything felt hallow and unrewarding. I'm an introvert, so outside of my family, I didn't have many relationships. Of course, I was depressed. I began working on it by going to therapy and then one day I decided to try sculpting. This changed everything. I found I was pretty good at it. It felt good because it was tangible, and it required me to learn and probe and practice. I kept at it. This grew in ways I couldn't imagine. Now, I make collectible resin maquettes and busts and I even started making latex halloween masks. It's been a crazy journey to where I am now, with so much more ahead. I've met people and interact with people in ways I didn't just a short time ago. It's changed my life. It's thick. All of it.
  • agumonkey 10mo ago
    Kudos on your evolution. But this gets me thinking, remember when computing didn't felt "thin" ? even screen had a different feel. I don't know if it's our brain getting used and losing a kind of magic filter. Anyway, I should probably imitate you, every time I see some people crafting real things I have a little blip of envy.
    • clowncubs 10mo ago
      It definitely felt different to me in the beginning years. I've been at the web thing for about 12 years now. In the beginning, while it was often very difficult, there was an excitement and freshness. It could have simply been because we were moving to web 2.0, CSS and all of its "magic". While making stuff is only a side thing, it makes the grind during the week tolerable. I feel like I have something meaningful in my life (outside of my family) and it has given me purpose. I'm grateful for it. And it is so damn fun!
    • black_knight 10mo ago
      I still get that feeling sometimes, even after 25 years with computers at home. But it is so dependent on what I do. I get this feeling when I create stuff on my own terms, like making a game or a website. I also get this feeling when discovering other people’s personal creations online.
• delichon 10mo ago
  Desires to consume (create) are thin (thick). Thin: A desire to enjoy a book, video game, movie, musical performance, new technology, love, ... Thick: A desire to make any of the above. The cure for Dementors isn't chocolate, it's becoming a tiny god of creation. Meaning is in making.
  • bccdee 10mo ago
    True to an extent. But why would you want to create (e.g.) a movie if you don't think watching movies is worthwhile in and of itself? You're putting effort into creating something that you don't think is truly valuable. To a person with this mindset, the desire to create is cynical—they're only making movies in pursuit of extrinsic rewards such as money, fame, or success. If watching movies is thin to them, then making movies is also thin. Conversely, an authentic filmmaker is someone who values movies in and of themselves; therefore, the authentic desire to create a movie must be downstream of a passion for watching movies. I don't think you'll find many artistically inclined filmmakers who would denigrate the act of watching movies as "thin." It's the thickness they feel in the experience of watching movies which inspired them to devote themselves to making movies in the first place.
    • haritha-j 10mo ago
      I think, perhaps because the creation is the goal in itself, not the consumption by others. Because it is the change/improvement that the author mentions that we seek.
      • bccdee 10mo ago
        I think that leans toward a mistaken veneration of productivity. You don't have to make something to enrich your life. It's also valuable to connect with the things other people make, or with the world around you.
    • dominicrose 10mo ago
      The article's definition: "A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it." This definition is compatible with watching some films and not others. I think Alan Watts said something like that his job was that you no longer needed him. This implies that consuming his work would be thick until it wouldn't.
• moultano 10mo ago
  I wrote this following a similar line of thought, but with the root problem being a collective action problem around community rather than an internal psychological tradeoff between short and long term. https://moultano.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/the-dead-weight-loss-of-entertainment/ https://moultano.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/the-dead-weight-lo... I certainly think hijacking our short term rewards is a big part of it, but in addition, that hijacking prevents people from putting in the effort that make collective alternatives competitive.
• nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
  Coffee is for closers
• nicbou 10mo ago
  Thin desires are mental snacking. Thick desires are a full meal. I find it hard because thick desires require a lot more activation energy before it becomes pleasant.
• themafia 10mo ago
  > The defining experience of our age seems to be hunger. > We're hungry for more, but we have more than we need. You're describing consumer manipulation not an actual attribute of population. > And so the infrastructure for thick desires has been gradually dismantled. You're describing the consequences of inflation and manipulated market outcomes not actual desires of participants. > The thick life doesn't scale. This is almost entirely why we invented cities and society and put up with their consequences in our lives. > So: bake bread. So: stop making me pay taxes. Maybe it's just me. I get easily irritated when I detect casual misanthropy dressed up as a "think piece."
• xg15 10mo ago
  > Social media gives you the feeling of social connection without the obligations of actual friendship. Pornography gives you sexual satisfaction without the vulnerability of partnership. It feels weird how after a very good explanation of why thick desires are in the end more rewarding, she focuses on the (ostensible) negatives here, like some sort of obligatory tax or payment that you're evading by focusing on "thin" desire. Formulated like this, the obvious retort would be "yeah, so what? - why should I bother with obligation and vulnerability if I can have the same rewards without them?" Of course everyone who has 100 online friends but no one to go to a party with knows why this is bullshit - but it's not following from this paragraph. Maybe a better way would be to explain that the "negatives" are in fact positives: e.g. The obligation is what lets one build upon a friendship - both for you and your friends - but you do have to explain it, you can't just take it for granted.
• singlow 10mo ago
  Everything is about X, because I can redefine X to mean anything.
• JohnMakin 10mo ago
  > We're hungry for more, but we have more than we need. I do not have more than I need. Very much the opposite - despite making a decent living, I cannot afford the bulk of my medical care that makes my life a lot more comfortable and extends my lifespan. making ends meet is sometimes difficult. > We're hungry for less, while more accumulates and multiplies. See above. > We're hungry and we don't have words to articulate why. I can articulate why, and a lot of it has to do with the protestant work ethic hell we've decided runs the entire world. > We're hungry, and we're lacking and we're wanting. Ok, finally I agree. > We are living with a near-universal thin desire: wanting something that cannot actually be gotten, that we can't define, from a source that has no interest in providing it. I am pretty sure what I am wanting - security, healthcare, housing, food, reliable work/career can be defined, and can be gotten. > The person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago. Trivial counterexample and one that has happened to me - "Your father has had no pulse for 30 minutes, you need to get to the ER immediately." Definitely wasn't the same person 5 minutes after that. Or even, "Your role has been made redundant, please return your equipment to IT staff." Can probably think of many others. This seems like fluffery that ultimately isn't saying much or anything at all really. Of course, in an economy full of thin fulfillment supply (such as the examples given in the writing here - porn, social media, etc.) and lacking in thick fulfillment (loneliness epidemic, bad economy if you're not on the tippy top of it, etc.), people will reach for thin ones. You can't wish or grind or hustle your way out of some of this, it is systemic, and in that, I agree with the conclusion here. I just don't believe it really accomplishes much of anything. There are those of us alive who aren't really even that old that remember the world when it was not this way.
  • deleted 10mo ago
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• pseudosavant 10mo ago
  This post really resonated with me, and some lack of fulfilment I've been working through lately. It seems a lot of commenters felt the need to bikeshed it instead of just trying to understand the point being made.
• makk 10mo ago
  “Circling this territory for decades.” Try millennia. The world is filled with hungry ghosts. Ask a Buddhist.
• teleforce 10mo ago
  >A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. >A thin desire is one that doesn't. TL;DR Thanks OP for enriching my thin vocabulary today, pun intended.
• gynecologist 10mo ago
  2.5/10
• renewiltord 10mo ago
  What the fuck is this LinkedIn tier garbage. God help us.
• adamwong246 10mo ago
  Get a motorcycle. Learn to ride it. Learn to fix it. Obtain joy.
• coldtea 10mo ago
  Reads like AI slop.
  • adamwong246 10mo ago
    Everything is slop now.
• scotty79 10mo ago
  So hard drugs are a thick desire? After all who says change is always a good thing? When you are doing well maybe it's better to stick to thin desires?
• deleted 10mo ago
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• profsummergig 10mo ago
  Since the article mentioned enjoyment of calculus, Anyone got content suggestions or a syllabus I can use to learn to "enjoy" calculus? I understand the basics, what it is for, chain rule, power rule, product rule... but still, no joy.
• thisoneisreal 10mo ago
  My framing for this is "mass production of stimuli." Before industrialization, the number of things grabbing your attention at any given moment wasn't super high. But once you had mass production, and especially the innovation of extrinsic advertising (associating psychological properties not intrinsic to the product being advertised itself), we were all suddenly awash in stimulating signals. But like this article notes, those stimuli go mostly unfulfilled by the action we take (buying the thing, opening the app), and so we all have this low level background noise of frustration and dissatisfaction. EDIT: Some later posts mentioned it, but philosophers and religions have contemplated this stuff for centuries. Nevertheless I do think it's an exacerbated problem in the modern world due to technology and scale.
• workfromspace 10mo ago
  This reminds me of the definiton by Lionel Robbins: > Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. Or the simpler version I remember: > Economics is about allocating limited natural resources to unlimited human desire.
• stanfordkid 10mo ago
  What’s the point of this article — everyone knows desiring heroin is different from wanting to become an Olympic swimmer.
• yial 10mo ago
  I’ve heard of “Idiot wisdom” and “wise wisdom”. Idiot wisdom - is generic platitudes that sound nice, but aren’t actionable. Wise wisdom- might not always sound nice, but is actionable. My ego likes this article, if I believe that I pursue thick desires. But some part of me thinks (and perhaps due to the written style ). That this is idiot wisdom. Another commenter mentioned it ties to Tanha in Buddhism. I don’t know. But- off to read some Shunryu Suzuki….
  • VonTum 10mo ago
    What would be an example of "Wise wisdom"?
  • tokai 10mo ago
    Most definitely idiot wisdom. All the comments here lauding it, are pointing out first how they feel good about the text. That it resonates, that they like it. The importance of the content was that they felt good reading, not that they learned something.
• block_dagger 10mo ago
  Why the short paragraphs? They are hard to read. See: this post.
• dzink 10mo ago
  Yes, and… The thin is nowadays engineered to be addictive, so weaning off of it may be hard. Going cold turkey during a vacation or completely ditching devices for a while may help. Yes, but… The call to hipsterdom (doing something precisely because it doesn’t scale) may not be necessary - if a person has successfully weened themselves of the pacifier of cheap dopamine they should use all of that spare brain power to create things other people who are still addicted can use to get out of the quicksand of social media. Or to make things that will help the world - scaling is up to the creator. No merit to sealing off away from the world. Improve the world.
• ursAxZA 10mo ago
  Ironically, consuming essays about “thin desires” often becomes a thin desire itself.
• honkycat 10mo ago
  reads like an edgy high-schooler jerking off at how much better they are than everyone else. Its like reading Rick Rubin from a loser whose opinions I don't value at all.
• terrib1e 10mo ago
  Thin desires are just weak wills.
• euroderf 10mo ago
  > How could this be, when we've gotten so good at giving people what they want? > Maybe because we've gotten good at giving people what they want in a way that prevents them from wanting anything worth having. This has a political interpretation too. Have you noticed that online "petitions" have mostly disappeared lately ? Maybe this disappearance is based on now-widespread recognition that the way to get the attention and concern of the political establishment is to get out on the streets and make some noise. Online activity can _motivate_ protest, but it cannot really express protest in a way that "matters". It's busy work. Keep the monkeys at their typewriters. Online is the equivalent of hanging a sign in your window; it does not tell you whether your opinion is shared by most of your fellow citizens. Thousands of likes versus the knowledge that social media keeps each of us in our bubble, feeding us more. But a monster rally in your city and elsewhere can tell you precisely that your opinion is shared by most (or "sufficiently many") of your fellow citizens. Pithy placards to the fore!
  • haritha-j 10mo ago
    Looking at all the anti immigration protests, I kind of wish these people only had thin desires.
  • kelnos 10mo ago
    > the way to get the attention and concern of the political establishment is to get out on the streets and make some noise. Honestly I'm not even convinced this works so well anymore. (Not saying it never does, but I think it's effectiveness has dropped.) To me, it seems the main way to achieve political change is with money. More money than I have, unfortunately.
• dmje 10mo ago
  Terrific piece. Love her writing, recommend following her RSS.
  • dmje 10mo ago
    HN, why downvote that, you’re just fucking weird sometimes
• deleted 10mo ago
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• WhatsTheBigIdea 10mo ago
  I really like this article. I bake bread. I have spent a good deal of time optimizing the recipe for deliciousness but also for time efficiency. Proving in a warm oven is a great tip. Also baking two loaves at a time! All this nit picking about writing style is disappointing. I like that this person got their ideas out there. They are good ideas. Legible and easy to parse == good enough. I don't care about the writing style any more than that and you shouldn't either. It is a waste of everyone's time... yours especially. It's very nice to hear about someone else who is interested in doing hard things/real things. Seems like there ought to be a meet up or a get together opportunity for people working on stuff like that. Perhaps a get-together where everyone gives a 2-5 minute talk about something they are working on then we all hang out for another hour or two. Seems like alcohol might help get the wheels spinning? I fully appreciate the need for a catchy headline with a hook (it got me!) but I wonder if these ideas would be more powerful/useful if expressed in positive language rather than doom speak? I guess doom speak is the fashion these days and we all have to conform to the dominant paradigm... at least a little around the edges. Generally... Bravo. Nice piece. Nice ideas.
  • deleted 10mo ago
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  • arximboldi 10mo ago
    I really enjoyed the piece also, in spite of the off-putting writing style. It reminds me of the Epicurean hierarchy of desires, the genius Epicurus had it figured out more then a couple of millenia ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism The thing about "apps for one" actually resonated with me quite a bit. The last year I've struggled finding freelance work and I've found myself with more time (and less money) that I would like. I feel guilty, because one side of me feels like I should have spent this time to learn ML or to make an app that makes passive income. The thing is: I have no interest in making "apps" to make money. I wouldn't even know what app to make, because there is no quotidian problem for which I think an app would make my life easier. On the contrary, I don't have a smartphone and apps are making my life harder, as we move towards a world where apps are expected for everything. But instead, I have made a couple of games for my girlfriend's birthdays, and I also made her web portfolio, all forms, I guess, of "apps for one" made for love. Other than that, perhaps, I enjoy tuning my Linux system (recently migrated from Xmonad to Hyprland), a form of making, perhaps, an app for one, in the only tech device that still feels like I can control instead of it trying to control myself. Other than that, I use my time to go to the gym and sometimes to paint or DJ or just party, even though I often spend on Hacker News, Youtube, Wikipedia and other media way more time that I would like to. So all in all, I find it difficult to write code these days with the joy of when I was younger, and it is hard to motivate myself if there's no money involved, with the exception of those gestures of love. It saddens me, because I believe it is such a powerful and beautiful skill. But I just find the current state of world and how "technology" is used to extract capital out of all human relationships rather depressing. The current wave of "AI" only makes the problem worse, and adds an dark sense of impending doom...
• BiteCode_dev 10mo ago
  Always fun when geeks discover basic philosphical concepts like it's a new thing and not something greeks nailed 2000 years ago.
  • bunnybomb2 10mo ago
    But its on substack.. so its way different. And. Its worded, Like This. #Deep
• bunnybomb2 10mo ago
  Philosophy is so 2024.
• ensocode 10mo ago
  Nice to see that some people still feel the difference. I’m not sure whether the next generations will experience it as strongly, having grown up with much thinner lives. In my experience, deeper desires tend to emerge outside the comfort zone — a place fewer and fewer people seem willing to enter today.
• Popeyes 10mo ago
  A post destined to be a self-help bestseller. I look forward to the If Books Could Kill episode.
• revinary 10mo ago
  "The desire to master a craft, to read slowly, [...]" By the time I got to that part my reading had degraded to mere skimming - a perfectly placed reminder :-) Here's another angle on the issue: As humans, we evolved these useful litte machines of desire. Desires to feed, mate, socialize attend and get attended to. All of those came about because they had some utility, a purpose. Over time we found ways to exploit those machines using substitutes. - Sweets are a substitute for nourishing food. - Porn feeds on our desire to mate. - Social media overloads the fine-tuned machine meant to orient us in the tribe. I suspect a big part of capitalism is creating ever more efficient and subtle ways to highjack these aspects of our humanity on a grand scale. Damn.
• wxce 10mo ago
  It was amusing to see a 'Sign Up' prompt right as the blog ended.
• hamonrye 10mo ago
  [dead]
• megamix 10mo ago
  I appreciated the post, this is just not correct thought if you've heard about Open source. "The entire economy of software assumes that code should serve millions to justify its existence." Maybe she points to /tech industry/ and not /software/
  • Jolter 10mo ago
    Where is this ”economy of software” which is not part of the ”tech industry”?
• almost_usual 10mo ago
  It comes down to dopamine and if there was friction involved to get that dopamine.
• derekenos 10mo ago
  Reminds me of what Frithjof Bergmann called our "poverty of desire" in his (excellent) book: New Work New Culture: Work We Want and a Culture that Strengthens Us
• Europas 10mo ago
  My thick desire is unfortunate a 40h grind to pay bills. If i would have money tomorrow, i would know immediadly what i would do: Slowly and steadily renovate a old house, building a park/garden, having greenhouses and doing pottery. Having a workshop and doing everything thick. I hope i can achieve this before i'm 45 because i have the slight worry, that either AI will take over and my dreams break or i'm to old/fragile/broken to enjoy that.
• ragazzina 10mo ago
  >The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package. I expected the author to have language learning as an example, but they did not include it. I wonder where Duolingo fits in this, I see a new language learning app every week.
  • beaker52 10mo ago
    It feels like someone trying to kick the starter on a bike, but it won’t start.
• cynicalsecurity 10mo ago
  The irony is thick here. The author's railing against scalable thin desires... by writing a scalable viral essay that delivers the neurological reward of "deep insight".
• tekawade 10mo ago
  Resonates well with me. I was thinking same lately as many other comments. Random stranger on Reddit mentioned - *The art of frugal hedonism* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216874949 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216874949 This book is indeed eye opener. Though I am too deep to turn around quickly without crashing I am well on may way and there is many more miles to go. Hoping to take few of my friends with me too.
• ggillas 10mo ago
  I've always liked this song from the Cure, we're hedonists on a treadmill: I'm always wanting more, anything I haven't got Everything I want it all, and I just can't stop Planning all my days away but never finding ways to stay Or ever feel enough today, tomorrow must be more Drink, more dreams, more bed, more drugs More lust, more lies, more head, more love Fear more fun, more pain, more flesh More stars, more smiles, more colors, more sex But however hard I want I know deep down inside I'll never really get more hope Or any more time Any more time Any more time I want the sun to fall in, I want lightning and thunder Blood instead of rain, I want the world to make me wonder I want to walk on water, take a trip to the moon Give me all this, give me it soon More drink, more dreams, more drugs More lust, more lies, more love But however hard I want I know deep down inside I'll never really get more hope Or any more time Any more time Any more time Any more time
  • pimlottc 10mo ago
    I'm reminded of the song Small Bill$ by Regina Spektor: His destiny was just too big to spend / So he broke it into smaller bills and change By the time he'd try to buy the things he needed / He had spent it all on loosies and weed and He had spent it all on chips and Coca-Cola / He had spent it all on chocolate and vanilla He had spent it all and didn't even feel it / He had spent it all and didn't even feel it
• peterbonney 10mo ago
  I like this piece. Doing hard things for the simple reason that they're hard is good for the psyche. I truly believe that.
• lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
  Imperfections aside, the article is hitting on something quite real. If only we had been studying the received wisdom of the ages instead of warping it into dismissible caricatures and smearing it with black legends, we would have learned about things like virtue and natural law. We would have understood the nature of sin and immorality, and conversely, the moral and the good life. We would have looked at the vacuous and empty temptations of "the world" with contempt and disdain, as vain things beneath human dignity. Instead, we convinced ourselves that "morality" is a prison, that "freedom" is the ability to do whatever we please, that "happiness" is to be found in degrading and perverse gratification, worthless trivialities, and illusion. We laughed at the straw men that we erected of our forefathers to justify our depravity, calling them "prude" or "square". We embraced meaninglessness and gave it the veneer of intellectual respectability, because if life is meaningless, then what does it matter that I "get off" or how I do so? And when meaninglessness wore us down and left us empty and feeling like rubbish, we convinced ourselves that we are gods, that we can pull meaning out of a hat. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven!" we declare. The stronger among us became practicing tyrants. "Submit to me and I will give you your meaning! I am your god now!" In overtly brutal regimes, those who didn't submit kept quiet or else perished making their refusal known. So we consume and consume and consume. We consume to fill a void that consumption cannot fill. We consume, because we are small souls terrorized by the opinions of others in this race of material acquisition. We worship consumption, destroying all that is human and noble and good in the process. As the blog post notes, we are richer than ever. And yet, having children is now deemed "too expensive". Indeed, if consumption is your god - your ultimate imperative - then children are indeed "too expensive". They will always be "too expensive", as children eat into the resources that you could otherwise be using to consume. They are competitors eating into your advantage! And careerism? The means. The middle classes suffer from this one the most, as the poor don't have careers and the rich don't need them. The careerist toils endlessly and fritters away his life so that he can consume, and consume, and consume... And what about debt? Debt, especially at our scale, is the result of not being able to live within our means, of consumption taken up a notch. To "keep up", to "have" more than we can afford, we go into debt, and the usurers are more than happy to oblige. No one saves anymore, few really invest. We live in terror of losing our jobs, because without them, that monster of debt will get us. It will come for us, that is to say, it will come to collect those things that truly belong to it but in terms of which we have defined ourselves. We are lead back to careerism, to which debt chains us with relish and verve. Everything is commercial. Everything is commoditized. Relationships are no exception; they are now commodities as well. Sex is transactional, a service, an infertile and sterile exchange of selfish gratification. When a spouse is now deemed useless, when the voracious hunger returns and torments us once again, demanding satisfaction, we reach for divorce, and a whole industry stands ready to assist us in expediting this process, for a price. People are disposable. People are things. People are up for auction. And when we prideful, slothful, lustful, gluttonous, greedy creatures don't get what we want...envy and wrath rear their ugly heads to complete the magnificent seven. Our idolatry of consumption is finally crowned with hatred, fear, and despair. Someone once asked: what is the difference between Christ and a vampire? The answer: Christ sacrifices his blood for your good. The vampire, on the other hand, sacrifices your blood for his good. We are vampires.
• ryanjshaw 10mo ago
  Is reading HN a thick or thin desire? If you say thin: I say, what if today I find an article about thick and thin desires that changes me?
• yunnpp 10mo ago
  I don't know who this Joan is, but this blog is a gold mine. This other post on the infantilization of failure is very well-put: https://www.joanwestenberg.com/uh-oh-the-infantilization-of-failure/ https://www.joanwestenberg.com/uh-oh-the-infantilization-of-...
• adamhartenz 10mo ago
  Wow, this seems like a lot of folks first encounter with a lyrical essay. I won't hold that against anyone. I have heard many things about the American school system. Writing like this is meant to be felt as much as evaluated. The argument matters, but the cadence and emotional momentum matter just as much. The author give you are chance to think about each point that is being said. Our dopamine addicted brains can't deal with this well anymore unfortunatly. Which is I guess why people feel uncomfortable, and don't know why.
  • justonceokay 10mo ago
    It’s uncomfortable for some people to experience an idea they can’t fit in their head all at once
  • canyp 10mo ago
    It also reflects how very little some people have read.
• highfrequency 10mo ago
  A useful angle: does doing this thing make me more able to enjoy it over time (eg by increasing the subtlety and dimensionality of perception), or less able to enjoy it over time (eg by desensitization)? This is the practical reason to favor “thick desires” over thin ones: they slope upward over time.
• djaouen 10mo ago
  Has no one considered the possibility that those with the intent of learning new things still do learn, many times because of technology? Sure, there are millions who doomscroll pointlessly, but the solution to that is simple: put down the phone and read a book. Moreover, the fact that I now have access to international publications & journals, as well as the ability to learn foreign languages literally at my fingertips, does not somehow deplete my human needs, any more than reading a newspaper depleted the need to read long-form books did a century ago.
• deleted 10mo ago
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• dangus 10mo ago
  This article feels judgmental, off-putting, and condescending to me. It is especially so because it chooses real examples to put down. Why is the author’s philosophy the arbiter of what we are allowed to enjoy? Why is basic shallow pleasure in life looked down upon? It even feels condescending to people who have actual serious needs like hunger and disease who may turn to some of these “vices” for an escape. Meanwhile, thick desires are available for those privileged with free time, energy, and money. By the end of the article I almost felt like the author was trying to evangelize a religion to me, in a really icky way.
• conqrr 10mo ago
  Liked reading this piece. Thin Desires, Shallow work, Chasing Glitter, Mindless optimization on result, Non virtuous, Dopamine chasing. All are but the same. Burnout is our body's response to it. Philosophers have said this for thousands of years that they all lead to anything but happiness.
• tonymet 10mo ago
  Thick and thin in both cases, without purpose, is still hedonistic. Learning calculus sounds more magnanimous than checking notifications, but what's the purpose? She says you're better off after a year, but in what way? What if the person checking notifications is waiting on a delivery for a soup kitchen. and the person learning calculus just wants to brag about it or talk down to others because of their credentials? The purpose matters more. You have to have a purpose. Both "thin" and "thick" desires can be very meaningful with purpose. Even desiring a donut with a lonely neighbor can be better than a year learning calculus -- with the right purpose. The issue with her approach is it assumes virtue in collecting diplomas (or activities that lead to them) : learning math, languages , getting a masters. It's still feeding the ego using this thick/thin framework. But if you don't have a purpose, that's just as vain as showing off your car or your watch. It's just another embellishment.
• andai 10mo ago
  I'm reminded of this video on the legal definition of chicken broth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar7zddMDwcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar7zddMDwcI >Noah has a good point. He says they're not making soup. They're making savory taste solutions. Tastes like chicken, but has virtually no actual substance. Same idea.
• andai 10mo ago
  >From the perspective of a frictionless global marketplace, all of this is pure inefficiency. The frictionless traps you in an infinite web of bullshit. We need more friction at this point, not less. A frictionless todo app affords cognitive bloat. A frictionless communication medium affords noise. Friction is natural and healthy and we heave deleted it.
  • andai 10mo ago
    To expand on this, friction is merely selection pressure. That which filters the signal from the noise. The gems are lost in the sea of bloat.
• GMoromisato 10mo ago
  This is an interesting piece, and it resonates with me. I remember when Guitar Hero came out and I shook my head at all the kids spending hours mastering it instead of just picking up a guitar and practicing. But maybe our dissatisfaction isn't about thin vs. thick desires, maybe it's that we're exposed to a world (via the internet/social media) in which everyone is more successful than us. Even/especially on Hacker News, we're hit over the head with all the YC companies raising money, hiring A-players, releasing world-changing products. When the world makes you feel like a slacker, it's no wonder we value thick desires. They become the lifeline to get out of our hole. If only I knew calculus, I could work for SpaceX and launch rockets. If only I understood gradient-descent, I could get hired by an AI company. If only I took the time to bake my own bread, maybe I wouldn't feel like such a loser. This is a relatively new phenomenon, I think. Growing up in the 80s, before the internet, we could only compare ourselves to our friends and classmates. With such a small pool of people, we could always stand out at something. Maybe we were in the top three at basketball, or maybe we always got As in history, or maybe we were good at making girls laugh. And even if there was nothing special about us, it didn't matter: there was nothing special about anyone! We were happy to pursue thin desires because we didn't need to be more than we were. If we worked hard, it was to earn more money. If we practiced an instrument, it was because we enjoyed it. No one ever worried about "what it all means". There's a reason we called such philosophical musings "sophomoric". And if you think about it, there's nothing special about "thick desires" either. Yes, learning how to play piano changes us. But so what? Why do want to be different? Is it to stand out? Is it to impress others? Is it to be able to say, "I can play piano"? Maybe they are all thin desires. Maybe it's all just a way to pass the time. Is learning about all the Impressionists really any different than memorizing the fire-type Pokemons? I think having kids fundamentally changed my brain. Once you have kids and get exposed to the firehose of emotions they elicit, everything else becomes shallow. There is no 3 Michelin Star meal, no trek through the rainforest, no mastery of unusual skills that brings me as much pleasure as making my daughter laugh. We used to know that. We used to know what it meant to live a good life. But now it's a mystery.
• mbrochh 10mo ago
  Wow. Very cool to see one of Joan's posts here on HN. I have discovered his videos on Youtube half a year ago and every single time I think to myself "wow, what a banger". No idea if he uses AI to craft his scripts, but every single time I feel like he brings his arguments across extremely eloquently. Such a joy to listen to. And of course one of the top comments is... shitting on the way this is written. HN never changes.
• damethos 10mo ago
  Loved the article. I completely agree. We ALL need more thick days.