Why Do I Exist?
He's doing most of what I have been wanting to do (cheap access to space, resilient internet and power grid, making stuff in the USA, green tech, autonomous vehicles; you probably know me and my work, no need to relist it) but he has been doing it better than I have.
On top of that, he has been doing it more efficiently than I have from a financial perspective, meaning that my own efforts' opportunity costs and benefits balance out to a net negative.
Therefore, the most rational thing for me to do is to give him all my money and intellectual property, and then go away.
Do I have the fortitude?
I've spent weeks arranging a small apartment for two homeless people, they move in on the 8th and are in a motel for a few days to clean up and so on. I funded it with meme stocks, and it cost me time. It dawned on me that an Elon Musk or even a Mitch McConnell could have dealt with it with one phone call. What's the use of me?
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20140927.png This was me 2 months ago. I made a bunch of PPE last year, at my expense. My dad got a civic award for it. Again, all my efforts could've been replaced by one phone call from someone younger and richer.
What's the point of me? I am not suicidal, but is it not my professional duty to make room for those who can do things so much more efficiently than I?
48 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadEven if you have no chance of winning, you are still making a difference.
But did they?
And even God doesn't usually just fix things. He uses people to do the fixing. Even the biggest fix - salvation - was wrapped in flesh.
https://www.deviantart.com/spiritplumber/art/Left-Beyond-Add...
This is the story of that person and, most importantly, of that organization. They have 7 years in which to figure out how to cancel the Apocalypse even as it happens all around them. Beating up God is hard, especially if God has control of the narrative...
I do however believe that IF a Devil or a God or a Thanos were to show up and try to kill most of humanity (Which... if it's an actual divine being, incidentally would mean that I'm wrong about being a Deist, but I can live with that!) it would be a moral imperative to prevent them from doing so.
In that sense Avengers Endgame is a better Rapture movie than the Left Behind movies...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn7KTOLbyfQ&t=1s
But as you were charitable and suspected that I wouldn't like your theology, I recognize that you probably won't like mine, either...
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2032%3A...
According to the ending, Jacob's only injury is a really big thing:
"Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon."
It would be interesting to see if that is still true. And a theory of what Jacob did to make God call "Give!"
There are exceptions, such as Terry Pratchett's meteoric-iron sword (taken to have Captain Carrot's characteristic of "being the least magical sword you could think of"); retrieving it is in itself a subplot. :)
You can find the whole thing (stories and RPG worldbooks) here: https://www.deviantart.com/spiritplumber/art/Left-Beyond-Add...
But Elon Musk can't be a better you than you are, either. OK, there's some overlap. Be you anyway - all of you, the parts that overlap and the parts that don't. You can't do what Musk is doing in rockets? OK. Don't give up in despair. Especially don't give up on all of you because someone is doing what a part of you wanted to do. Take that part of you and find a worthwhile place to use it.
Anyway, I clearly don't have the right skill set :)
Don't beat yourself up because you think that someone younger and richer can solve the problems that you are solving more effectively. The reality is that someone younger and richer is not interested in solving the problems that you are actually solving. Elon is working on space, but he's not working on helping the homeless.
The world is bigger than it seems and your impact on it is beyond what you can see. Don't worry that you aren't Elon Musk. Your post, thus your existence, reminded me to get back to looking into emergency mesh networks. (I looked at your submissions and comments.) One of my clients is a clinic in a place that is expecting a natural disaster and will likely lose communications when that disaster happens. Your work on LoRa and ESP32s may end up saving the lives of people you've never known.
You have done for those people what folks like Musk and McConnell did not and probably would not do for them. And you did it more efficiently than the people you helped could. Without your efforts, they'd probably still be homeless. You might be comparing your efforts to the wrong side of the scale. At least to the people you helped, you were far more important and useful than Musk or McConnell were.
It sucks that your dad usurped the recognition. There's probably more to that story that we haven't been privy to, though.
> I made a bunch of PPE last year, at my expense. My dad got a civic award for it.
If you go into consulting, this will pretty much define your life.
> How do you mean about consulting?
You described it how I meant it. It happens to everyone in consulting every time you end up sub-contracting, unless you're a Musk or McConnell with a high level of name recognition.
It's a waste of self-worth to wallow around lamenting a lack of public credit and/or fame. By asking "Why Do I Exist?" you are not giving yourself credit for what you've actually done.
Those two people, and your roommate, aren't thinking "Gee, I wish I got someone rich and famous to help me more efficiently!"
The people I mentioned are currently mildly worried about my mental well being. I'm not. I just don't see the point in continuing to do stuff like this; maybe I'd be happier being a fisherman or a cobbler, is all.
To be fair, they do things that benefit others, too. Lil Nas X and Captain Highliner are already getting all the credit for shoes and fish, though.
Try not to paint everyone with the same brush stroke. Your use of the word "others" ignores the fact that the people you impact are the ones that count, and yet you're allowing yourself to get hung up on not getting patted on the head by people outside that loop. Are you doing these things for the other person, or for you?
Also: If people you know personally are questioning your mental condition, it's usually a good time to get a second opinion. Talk to your GP. There can be changes that occur over time that you may not notice, out of daily familiarity, but are stark to people who don't see you daily. You've mentioned it enough that it seems you are also concerned, even while passing it off.
And yeah, that's a thing about a society that has fully globalized. There's only room for one set of glory hounds. Kids who want to get into building stuff are inspired by Colin Furze, not by the guy down the street who makes wheelchair ramps out of pallets.
That's pretty dystopian. Kids have to be exposed to causes before they can possibly develop compassion for them. That puts it square in the parent's department.
I guess if you need to be that glory hound, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way: by earning it through your works. Whining extensively about it won't get you very much glory. Completely the opposite, likely.
And yes, it is dystopian. It's also what I observe. As for me being a glory hound, I'm fully aware that it's not a virtue, but I'm motivated more by notoriety than by, say, riches or patriotism.
Whining extensively seems to work pretty well for a narrow category of people, although they tend to do it on Twitter, not HN, admittedly.