10 ms·
Ask HN: What are the most uplifting comments you've read on HN?
I was searching for something on HN and I happened upon this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262527
I thought the top comment by neilk was just beautifully written and really encouraging (with the slight irony that he encourages the OP to stop reading HN!). I have bookmarked it and resolved to re-read it when I'm feeling low.
It got me thinking, there's a lot of introspection and self-criticism here on HN, but there's even more wisdom and kindness. What are the most positive and uplifting comments you've read?
And to neilk and people like you, thanks. You've probably helped more people than you realise.
- legedemon 12y agoThis comment from antirez: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433770
- Red_Tarsius 12y agoI have a whole folder of help seeking Ask HNs. I think they are a big part of what makes HN a true community, not just a news stream. This whole discussion on depression was insightful and inspiring. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7891017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7891017
- Anand_S 12y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9325068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9325068
- acqq 12y agoThanks, the answer of the user blueprint is genuinely inspirational.
- bentcorner 12y agoI'm personally having a hard time grokking what blueprint is saying here. An example of formulating "good problems" would be somewhat helpful, although my gut feeling is that providing a concrete example would be as helpful as "giving me a fish" would be.
- blueprint 12y agoI think there are three questions at essence here. 1. What constitutes a good problem? A: Every problem/question includes its own answer. This is very helpful to realize. There's a principle by which the world operates. The principle of the world means that results are determined by problems of what happened. In fact, if you open your eyes to this principle, it will also be possible for to see the answer in any question without having actually learned that subject before. The quality of the answer we can get from a question depends on the quality of the question itself. Good questions are substantial, concrete, and precise. They contain matters, which can be confirmed. So, once this is understood, we can see that a good problem is simply one which has a good result/outcome/answer. You should know what result you want in order to check if your existing problems have results which match what you want. 2. How to distinguish good from bad? A: What are the criteria of good and bad? According to what I have learned, the more genuine something is, the better it is. For people, a person can only be a good person if they are truthful. Going to school, we might have different scores in different subjects, e.g. an A in English, a B in math, and a C in physics. But human beings are different. Every characteristic of an individual keeps up with every other characteristic within them. Would you suppose that it's possible for a person to be wise and yet not true? True and yet not conscionable? How about true but not courageous? To have a large amount of (bad) karma and yet be true? All the features of something which is good or bad are determined by degree of truthfulness. Incidentally, it's only possible to become more truthful after you undergo a particular essential process of learning by which you first realize that you don't actually perceive anything as it is, and later, after things that exist become visible to your eyes, you finally come to be able to speak about things that you really know. Generally, it's only possible to undergo this process when you meet and make yourself learn continuously from a truthful teacher. But undergoing this process is necessary in order to become someone who can be contributive to oneself and others. That is to say, we don't have the ability to guide our own lives contributively until we perceive what exists. What exists itself must be the standard for any judgement which is to be appropriate and contributive to existing circumstances. It's impossible to see what exists without truthfulness. 3. How are questions/problems themselves formulated? A: Quite simply, any problem is made by putting at least two things into contact. For (contrived) example, let's say I have some things that I have kept inside my consciousness from the past (causes), represented by the numeral 2. Let's suppose I meet a teacher, who could be represented as the numeral 3. The result/effect I'll naturally come to gain through the process which is determined by the factors in the problem will be 5. You can make problems that you need in order to get results you want by fixing (i) the causes you have in you at the moment, and (ii) the result you want, and algebraically solving for the cause you need to contact. In order to contact a cause you need you either need to find out how to form it through existent things, or you need to find it among what exists and go there. As mentioned, one of the real problems that general people face is that they can't see the causes they have in themselves. Does that help?
- shrikant 12y agoPatio11 on going to university: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1182552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1182552
- rndn 12y agoI also liked this comment by sillysaurus3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8592888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8592888
- h34t 12y agoEight years ago I was burning out in China and started a thread to ask for help. The comments were exceedingly insightful (the top-listed comment rang especially true for me): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69097
- patrickk 12y agoThis comment by jasonlbaptiste in response to "Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447467 Best comment I've ever read here.
- gargarplex 12y agoI feel like I'd rather read advice from someone who actually has become a millionaire in 3 years.
- enraged_camel 12y agoHow do you know he hasn't?
- gargarplex 12y agotechcrunch.com/2014/08/12/beanstock-media-acquires-onswipe/
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y agoNot me. The chances are too high that they'll confidently say all the wrong things, and too many things too.
- bhayden 12y agoI don't think this is very useful. There are a lot of opinions here and I could guarantee there's plenty of successful people who would advocate the opposite. The real useful advice here can be summarized: * Look in obscure places * Productize a service * Stick with it
- eli 12y agoI think the point isn't so much "obscure" places as it is "unsexy". As a trivial example, developers who set out to work on payroll register software tend to make more money than those who set out to build video games.
- shubhamjain 12y agoThe thread itself and all of the comments : "I quit my job last March and it was a bad idea" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102143 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102143).
- bcgraham 12y agoThis one from zedshaw immediately came to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6805807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6805807
- bucky 12y agoI love Zed cause even when he's sincerely offering help to someone struggling, he's still 100% Zed; can't even offer help without mentioning how badass he is. Whether you like him or not, being completely and utterly yourself is an admirable trait I think.
- michaelochurch 12y agoZed Shaw is an inspiration because he has the courage to be a man in a boyish, neoteny-driven industry. Something tells me that even when he's 50 or 60, he's not going to get cosmetic surgery like most major players in the VC-funded world. I don't know him, but he strikes me as an actual badass. I mean, I'm badass as hell by tech-employee standards, but that's only because most tech-employees are happy corporate serfs and I stand out in relative terms by actually having opinions. Relative to full-grown men I am fairly average on the badass spectrum: respectable, but not quite Mike Ehrmantraut. Zed comes off as (and probably is) an actual badass. And in a world where there are self-flagellating or clueless young engineers actually advocating for Scrum to be imposed on them, that's an inspiration that we desperately need.
- gaius 12y agoZed comes off as (and probably is) an actual badass I think you may be using some different definition of "badass" than the rest of us.
- bentcorner 12y agoSo... what happened to themanthatfell? It's been nearly two years. Quite a few people reached out - were any of them able to help?
- marktangotango 12y agoThe world is full of people like Zed, only people like Zed don't typically hang around on the internet. They're at the bar, or playing is a softball or bowling league, yelling at enlisted in the military, pulling over speeders, driving taxis in New York, or selling pizza by the slice at a pizzeria. what ever. These guys don't give an damn about your sensibilities, they're going to tell you what they think, whether you want to hear or not, and if the language is too coarse, too bad. Dude can be an asshat no doubt. But that's allowed in my book.
- timdaub 12y agoThese from swamp40 and junto about habits, summing up the related article perfectly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852430
- gits1225 12y agoDanielBMarkham's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474454 in the thread Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474094
- whoeverest 12y agoI've had it printed and placed on the wall for over 5 years
- nsainsbury 12y agoI've got this comment from Jonathan Blow bookmarked and I like to read it from time to time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789438
- cgag 12y agoJonathan Blow's stuff (posts / talks) seem to be consistently excellent.
- gfisher 12y agoEvery few months I go back and read this thread to help center me again on expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473787 I have about 10 threads bookmarked, but this one gets the most views over time.
- antocv 12y agoCare to share more of your bookmarks?
- magic_beans 12y agoVijucat's comment (top comment) on this article really reworked my own perspective. I think it's probably the most inspiring comment I've read on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337863
- mion 12y agoPG's answer to my silly self-doubt question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220936
- classicsnoot 12y agoI am going to take a slightly different position. I am very new to all of this, and i learn more from the arguments that occur than the back slapping. This is because i am nearly ignorant of all the things i am interested in [crypto, mesh nets, managing Devs] and i personally learn more when verbal sabers are crossed. Obviously, i am talking fact +opinion v. fact + opinion, not troll v. snipe. i completely believe that positive comments have a larger net positive splash and i think the positivity push here on HN is great. Edit: Spelling
- bhayden 12y agoI really liked this comment from graycat, who was advocating for being a solo founder (which is what I'd like to do): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640126
- bhayden 12y agoThere was a discussion about the age of startup founders: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086670 I found this uplifting because being constantly barraged with the success of people 2/3rds your age can be depressing.
- peterjmag 12y ago"+100. I can tell the guy writing this essay is young. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'd love to be young again too. But when I look back over my twenties I don't find myself wishing I had worked more hours on my startup." [1] Perhaps not "uplifting" on the surface of it, but it had a rather profound impact on me nonetheless when I stumbled across it about three years ago. (See my reply[2] and the rest of the thread for a bit more context.) However indirectly, drumdance (among others) made me realize that I still had a chance to make my own path through my twenties. A couple months later, I decided to pick up and move to Berlin. Today, my life is full of the things that I decided would make up my personal definition of happiness: "I want to take advantage of my youth to discover more things that make me happy. I want to travel—a lot. I want to learn new languages. I want to meet amazing people. I also want to design and build things, but I don't think that it has to take over my life." [2] (Forgive me for quoting myself!) So thank you drumdance, mrooney, simonsarris, neilk, and michaelochurch. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't read your critical yet encouraging words. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4341926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4341926 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342680
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bhayden 12y ago>I want to travel—a lot. I want to learn new languages. I want to meet amazing people. I also want to design and build things It's cool if someone can do this, but who can afford to, especially in their 20s?
- scott_karana 12y agoA surprising amount of twenty-somethings, actually! Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_holiday_visa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_holiday_visa For example, as an American, you might be eligible for a two-year working vacation visa in Korea. The requirements vary, but you typically only need two-way airfare and a modest amount of cash to prove you won't become a hobo. :-)
- bhayden 12y agoThird comment, but I wanted to share this too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086475 It was the discussion asking founders what their lifestyle is like. I found it to be a really good glance inside their lives and it helps motivate me to continue working.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y agoMost of the comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291040 as they were quoting poetry.
- omgitstom 12y agoI like comments that hop out and look at the meta. I also like comments that confirm that I'm not the only one that thinks about things a certain way. For example, dimillian comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9341181&goto=item%3Fid%3D9338812 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9341181&goto=item%3Fid...
- minimaxir 12y agoHere's a spreadsheet of the most upvoted HN comments each month, which gives a sample size of good comments: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnVpdVRgu4LxldP74-c_kvOd5k/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZwonVX_KlDYhuhPnAAnV... Note: said comments may not be considered "uplifting."
- protomyth 12y agoI'm not sure its uplifting but it made me chuckle and is some pretty good advice https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=287767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=287767 anamax 2424 days ago | parent | flag If they don't have the money to pay you, you're not an employee, you're a founder and you get the same deal that they get. If they balk, suggest that they find another code monkey while you find another biz monkey and let the market decide who ends up with the bananas.
- LVB 12y agoI bookmarked this one from Arjuna as an antidote for bouts of "woe is me, everyone has more time and does more than me than me"-itis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143 A taste: "You have to do the work. There is no one else that can do it for you. It is entirely up to you; actually, it has only ever been you, because it is you that rolls out of bed early to bring it. No one is going to do that for you. If you want to do it, then you will figure out a way to make it happen."
- nosuchthing 12y ago"If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books. I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible. Learn how to hack people and understand how social structures work. Take that seriously. Most importantly, don't let anyone change who you are. Choose a path and follow it doggedly." Ironically, some of the best advice I've seen came from a book: "Who you will be in five years is determined by who you meet today and what you read today" [0]. But a 14 year old doesn't need to read a whole book to gain that particular pearl of wisdom, or many of the others. I read a lot now, several of the books mentioned on this thread and many others. But that's because I'm old, and it's too late for me. If I could talk to my 14 year old self, or any 14 year old, I would tell them that there is significantly more to life than what can be learned in a book. [0] The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp " [via] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268981
- Red_Tarsius 12y agoI 100% agree. I can't believe I was so stressed out for p.e.r.f.e.c.t grades. They HAD to be perfect. The extrinsic reward destroyed the very purpose of schools: learning.
- oxplot 12y agograndalf's comment on procrastination: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285481