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Is there anything you wish you knew at 16 as you made decisions that shaped the rest of your life?
- brianmckenzie 19y agoMake good friends. Hang around smart intelligent educated 'moral' people. Form networks - these networks matter to get jobs, etc. Remember, 90% of the good things you get in life (jobs, stock tips, hot dates) will be informally, via your network of friends/colleagues. On my first day of high school, my dad gave me a priceless piece of advice: Don't be friends with people just because they're available and easy to be friends with. Seek out the people worth befriending, and become their friend no matter how hard it is. I didn't really understand him at the time, but 15 years later it strikes me as one of the most valuable things anyone has ever told me.
- cglee 19y agoThis is expected advice from a father, as mine dispensed something similar as well. But those described are not friends, but merely partners. To me, friends are those who will be around during bad times as well as good. In other words, they'll be around even when your "worth" is very low.
- brianmckenzie 19y agoYeah, that is an important distinction.
- yters 19y agoBe very careful with advice from people who don't know you and don't necessarily care what happens to you, i.e. people on some anonymous forum. For example, #1 on the highest rated comment is horrible advice. It has screwed up the lives of many, many people and will adversely affect all the future relationships of anyone lucky enough to get away with it.
- rms 19y agoSeems like arbitrary morality is the only thing against safe sex.
- curi 19y agoWhat's for lots of safe sex, that makes it worth lots of time, and worth many repetitions? Shouldn't we have a DRY life?
- yters 19y agoWell, if sex is the only place you get wetness, then your life is kind of sad. I mean seriously, every time you want to get a drink of water you have to have sex? Or am I misunderstanding you here?
- euccastro 19y agoDRY: Don't Repeat Yourself. I'm not supporting the grandparent, just putting my 2 cents hoping that this branch dies a graceful, quick death. I don't have the inclination to address this seriously now, but I have scheduled, for less busy times, some serious rolling-in-my-grave over this.
- yters 19y agoEven if all you care about is yourself, this isn't true. Plato explains this in the Republic. Indulging in extreme pleasures dulls their effect, while making us want more extreme pleasure. This makes us more dependent upon the changing world and at the mercy of our bodily desires and others. Not a recipe for a fulfilling life.
- euccastro 19y agoYou're preaching ascetic suspension of earthly desire in the Make Something People Want forums?
- 19y ago
- jkush 19y agoI recently sent this link to my 16 year old brother: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html There's a lot in there I wish I'd known.
- cglee 19y ago- start your spiritual journey asap
- Goladus 19y agoNot all that much, really. I'm mostly satisfied with the decisions I made up until my 3rd year of college or so. And given that a lot of the problems that began then were related to a relationship, I'm not sure that there was anything I could have known that would have made a difference.