In my twenties I hated spending money on health-related stuff like dentist appointments new glasses and gym memberships. I wanted to blow it all on fun stuff. Now? I don't hesitate to plop down my amex if I think what I'm spending money on will make me physically better
Having screwed this up in my 30s and spent the first half of my 40s doing a desperate low budget TV montage, I agree with this entirely. Some things you can't undo and I regret that. Learn from my mistake :)
I just want to add before taking meds or any supplements make sure you research things on your to understand the risks. Sometimes even doctors are not aware of adverse reactions.
Your health should always come first before work. Try to exercise a few times a week, going for walk/runs or bike.
Also assume doctors won't care, won't do any homework for you, and will do the absolute bare minimum possible: nothing.
It's all on you.
Any statement or conclusion from a physician is not necessarily a fact, but only an opinion of some random person you may never see again, and may have been the worst student in their class.
I'm in my early 40s, I can't really think of anything, maybe because it's too close to realize what mistakes I might have made, and I don't really believe in that kind of retrospection generally.
FWIW, if you are in a position where you could potentially start a family (and want to some day), consider doing it in your early 30s (or earlier), there are a lot of things that get tougher as you get older. I don't regret putting it off until my 40s because it let me find a person I want to have a family with, but if you have such a person, my advice is do it now.
Obviously, people should not do it if they're not ready. But people think they need to have everything figured out (degree, career, house) first. You don't. And the younger you have kids, the longer you'll be around to spend time with them (or grandkids), and the less chance you'll have fertility issues.
+1 Had kids in late 30s, and now have young kids in my 40s. It is hard physically, mentally, career-wise and other dimensions. Only financially, I'd say I'm less worried than if I was in my early 20s. But my financial security was probably strong right after grad school (world was my oyster!)
Having children is hard. Why do you think it would've been easier physically, mentally, career-wise when you are a lot less established and more stressed in the early 20s?
Isn't the conclusion here "Young children will make your life worse, do not have them"?
Depends what field you are in but generally later in your career you have more responsibility and requirement to spend more mental energy on work that you could have otherwise put towards looking after a kid.
If you are only expected to show up for your 7.5 hours and wack out a handful of lines of code a day you have way more mental and time capacity for family.
Getting older has opened my eyes to the benefits of having kids young. For one thing, I had more energy and was more resilient to loss of sleep when I was younger. That would've been nice to pair with kids.
My mother had me at 30. My wife's mother had her in her late teens. There's a big difference in energy there too. My wife's mother has more time, and energy, with our kids.
I have friends who had kids in college and a friend who had kids in high school. It seemed like a mistake back then - they could never come hang out and had to leave early cause they were dealing with kids or a wife or whatever. I'm not so sure they made a mistake now.
I would guess that late twenties are the ideal time to have kids. Early twenties you wrap up your education and start your career, thirties and forties get the kids out the door, fifties settle your retirement, sixties and on enjoy your extended family and retirement. That's how I'd plan it if I were going again.
> I would guess that late twenties are the ideal time to have kids.
In hindsight, I'm thinking teenage years. For all practical purposes your days are wasted anyway, so you may as well waste it enjoying your kids. They'll be much more independent by the time you're deemed old enough to begin participating in society. You are also more likely to have a larger community of people in the household at that age to help raise the children.
I think it wouldn't be terrible to have kids as a teen - provided you have a supportive family and partner. Of course, I've never tried it for myself, but that's my general sense. If my children have kids young I won't be distraught and will provide as much help as possible - expecting it to be quite a lot for the first 5-10 years.
I imagine that dealing with the feelings of failing society, which has taught us that having children is the worst thing you can do in your life, would be the hardest part. It was still hard to deal with that sentiment when I had my children in my late 30s, even though by that time I had enough life experience to realize that it silly to worry about what other people think. The mind is an interesting thing.
welp i'm 33 and single and this hits home so hard. My younger brother is 30 with two under two and he looks like hell most days. I can't imagine 3 hours sleep a night when i'm mid to late 30s. christ.
Yeah it dramatically improves at 3-4 months. Then it’s the odd regression weeks but I get 10 hours of sleep now. The problem is I basically work, sleep and entertain/feed in an endless cycle until he’s old enough to go to daycare or we get a nanny.
I hear two kids is pretty brutal until they’re both 3+ years old.
Two kids is hard at the start, but now that one is basically 1 year old, I realized my older one is doing all the work I was doing with her. That is, the favorite toy of the younger kid is the sibling, not the daddy. Spares the boring part (repetitive boring play), gives more time for instructive play.
3 years old is a full time thing, but there are things that are quite fun to do together. We play videogames, board games, or I just let her climb on me and enjoy that.
Also going to the pool together is really nice and they get exhausted.
Sometimes you TAKE your free time. Kids are bored and want to play with you, but you haven't had time for yourself in 5 days, you just take it, even if they want to play with you. They will get bored, but more often they will figure out something to play together.
Overall, pretty happy, when they are both 3+ we can play a whole bunch of things together that I'm looking forward to!
I can't tell how it would be with just one, but there are tradeoffs to both sides.
We don't use much daycare, our 3 years old goes to school 4 days a week for 3 hours only (purpose was learning, not babysitting).
I don't regret putting it off until my 40s because it let me find a person I want to have a family with
Thank you for including this tidbit. I'm a man in my early 30s interested in having kids and recently discovered that I've poorly vetted my 5+ year SO's interest in having kids. Her "yeah, I'm hypothetically interested" has become "hard not interested".
The requirement to break up with her if I want kids is deeply painful, but the real source of my dread is the feeling that I won't then be able to find someone good in time. I'm very glad you found someone good to have a family with.
Break up with her now. There are plenty women your age of younger that know they are getting closer to the point of no return and are desperate to have kids. I’m similar age but my wife is 35 and lemme tell you what, she wants to have some dang kids now (and we’ll have one soon).
And what do you mean by “in time”? Assuming you are 32/33 you have plenty of time to find another partner. When you’re 50 you will feel so silly for feeling old at 32/33. Just make sure the next partner is on the same page relatively early.
It’s your life, not your partner’s, go live it how you want.
I just left a relationship for this reason, and it is so deeply painful. I wish you the best. I think it is the right decision and that making it sooner rather than later is best, but it is not easy.
Please google "future faking." It's a typical thing that people with narcissistic tendencies do. I don't know your situation or your girlfriend, of course, so I could be totally off-base. But the painful and avoidable situation you're in set off red flags in my mind. (I was in a long relationship with a narcissist and unfortunately had to learn all about their habits in order to figure out what was going on.)
> if you are in a position where you could potentially start a family
I'm in my 30s, and this seems to be the trickiest part that people older than me — sorry — seem to want to just pave over. House prices are bananas. Trump, COVID, Russia have erased years of investment gains. Student loans are a constant tax on my finances (that I'm almost free of… …soon…). Wage growth has been stagnant (my career has seen ~4.7% YoY gains, mostly me switching employers and trying to renegotiate higher; but I hear my father's career saw much faster progress, particularly in the earlier years…). Costs have not. (E.g., healthcare, and that's an incredible — and bad — incentive to marry.)
I imagine we'll hit a "it's now or never" point, and just sort of morally abdicate the idea of being responsible adults and "#yolo we're parents now" it. I don't really see the world changing for the better, anytime soon.
I could change a few words in your main paragraph and match them to any time in the last 40 years.
You seem to be hanging on for magic better times but at the same time not expecting things to get better. This doesn't seem to be a good strategy, especially in the case of having children where delaying a few years will very likely result in more difficulties.
I feel this living in London and seeing my parents having achieved a measure of success at a younger age far greater than my own. But not every country has seen this level of affluence for the generation before ours and indeed not every race.
Minorities in the US in particular might argue otherwise about whether the previous few decades were better than the current ones.
We are indeed in troubling times, but the Cold War wasn't so long ago and I recall a commentator speaking about how they'd read the newspaper each morning with a knot in their stomach, wondering if a nuclear mishap had occurred somewhere in the world.
> I recall a commentator speaking about how they'd read the newspaper each morning with a knot in their stomach, wondering if a nuclear mishap had occurred somewhere in the world.
Given the Russia, Ukraine, Chernobyl situation, I think my generation also has claim to worry about nuclear mishaps caused by geopolitical wars.
Yes, I'm named "Faith" because the Cuban Missile Crisis put such existential dread in everyone. Bomb shelters were built in all sorts of public buildings, and people dug underground bunkers in their backyards. They imagined they'd survive the nuclear winter like an underground rat, eating canned food and hoping their water didn't run out before it was safe to go outside again. It wasn't until the SALT treaty signed by Pres. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 - 10 years after the Cuban Missle Crisis - that tensions eased. It's hard for younger people to realize how dire this felt. The modern corollary is the threat of annihilation due to climate change. Some people wonder today why they are bringing children into a world that may be doomed, but that feeling is not new. It's just that older generations were more stoic. Most didn't talk about their feelings with each other, they just got on with life despite their dread. I'm so glad that stoicism is mostly a thing of the past.
If you try to get financially better off, in seven years you'll probably be only slightly better off if at all, and you won't have kids. At that point you probably can't.
If you have kids at 35, you may very well go bankrupt. It will be off your credit in seven years, and you'll have a seven year old.
The second option will be happier (if you want kids).
Watching friends struggle and work hard while making little progress for years as job after job rejects them for being overqualified or for not already having 30 years of experience tells me this is a reasonable expectation. If there was a ladder up, it's been conclusively kicked down. Some of them get lucky with a tech job and, if all goes well from here, might retire before 80.
This doesn't match my experience at all. My perspective might obviously be skewed by living in an emerging market economy but I don't know anyone who hasn't seen an improvement in their financial circumstances over seven years, Covid notwithstanding.
I really don't think there are a lot of people on HN who are stuck in dead end jobs with no growth.
And as harsh as it may sound, if someone can't retire before 80 despite working a tech job, I'm inclined to think they're just bad with money.
Who said anything about people on HN? The friends I'm talking about mostly work retail paying off degrees that were supposed to get them good jobs. The US is not an emerging market economy where there's a lot of potential growth. You either get a job in tech, probably moving away from everything and everyone you've ever known (hard), or you try to create some niche at the intersection of your skills and interests (still hard, but less dictated by random luck). There really isn't an option C unless you had a privileged upbringing.
There’s a lot more options here. Being stuck in retail jobs sucks if that’s not something you want to do. And I get that. I worked in retail and other shitty jobs for years getting paid $12 an hour in my 20s. But you don’t need to have a privileged upbringing to progress. It 100% helps but it’s also possible without it. I know people who washed dishes for years, with no college degrees for them or their parents, and go on to do something like welding and making a lot more. People could also work in tech remotely now, so they don’t have to move away. For example, retail folks could get entry level customer support jobs in tech companies. Those people skills are certainly transferable. The support job could be their foot in the door to other tech positions.
If you want to be more optimistic... if you're at 35 and don't think you're financially ready for kids, look at the progress and accumulation you've done in the past seven years. If you need to increase the rate of change on those to hit your targets, you've got 17 years of experience as an adult to know if that's realistic or not.
Also, a lot of people get fixated on being fully prepared for kids. Like wanting to be in a 4 bedroom house before you have the first of three kids. That'd be nice, but you've got some time before you really need that space. I'd say if you're late 20s and have a stable living environment and a desire to have children, strongly consider doing it when you're sure, even if your living environment isn't perfect. You've also got some lead time, if you're worried about your kids going to a good (enough) school, that's not something that needs to be taken care of until close to them being school aged (although certainly, it doesn't hurt to let that influence earlier choices).
> Trump, COVID, Russia have erased years of investment gains.
I'm sorry, what asset classes did you invest in? Because Trump and the Covid stimulus were both very beneficial for my investments. Sure, the market has taken a beating of late but it most definitely has not erased years of gains.
Mixed; I have an account with Schwab that — beyond some basic information about my goals, age, investment risk tolerance and the like — mostly manages itself. I'm not even remotely a beginner, let alone an expert, in investments to trust myself to manage it. I figure I'd be even worse off if I tried that. (I do have some stock that is just mine, and it's done some good, and some bad. It's a nice amount, but the problem is not "housing is more expensive" it's housing is another order of magnitude so even "nice" is but a dent.)
That said, it mostly tracks the stock market, just sort of "dampened", since it has a mix of other stuff. The downswings from both Trump general craziness and COVID recovered, eventually (I was certain the downswings for things other than COVID would … COVID, I was less certain about, as this is probably the biggest thing that's ever happened in my life), of course, but it sort of feels to me like a detour where after several months you're like "yay, back to where were were". I'm a SWE, so I'm above the stimulus cutoff. (But that's the thing… well off enough that most things are fine, but … the housing market, practically speaking, wants millionaires, not "people doing decently".) But AFAICT, the cost of a home is keeping pace with gains in the stock market, particularly so if you're not in a sort of undiversified-yolo-all-in on the stock market position, which I've been told is poor form. But that makes investing for a home sort of a losing prospect: it's more just a savings account at that point, with the investment gains limiting the ground being lost. Conversely, AIUI, this is why there is so much speculation in the housing market; if the stock market were outperforming it, people would be speculating on that, instead.
What boggles my mind how anyone not in tech is making do. What I see both from people I know, and in the news, suggests they're really, really struggling.
Yes, I live in Pennsylvania. My husband and I are some of the very lucky ones, but there are many areas of the state that are just cataclysmically destroyed by economic hardship. Some people have no remote hope - ever - of doing a tech job, and need to do manual labor. These people vote, they are proud people, and they are ready to believe ANYONE, no matter how crazy, who will tell them that their precarious and depressing life situation is not their fault. This is how we got into our current political situation.
A lot of stocks have gone back to 2019-2020 levels. FB being a big one.
If you hold an index fund like VTI though, that's done well. These last few months really highlight the dangers of stock picking, even with big companies.
> Trump, COVID, Russia have erased years of investment gains.
I really, really, really hate to defend Mr. Trump, but on his first day of office the Vanguard total stock market index closed at $116.91; on his last day of office it closed at $198.86, a 70.01% increase (14.19% annualised). There are numerous reasons to criticise the former president, but the performance of the stock market during his tenure does not appear to be one of them.
If You only care for short term, then sure, You can try to use this argument, but in long term the division that his irresponsible political strategy fueled can only end bad for whole economy (who said there cannot be another civil war? last time I checked most people believed that war in Europe is impossible).
Those theoretical futures are possible (although less likely each day he's been out of office), however they're not relevant to the discussion at hand, which is that Trump did not erase years of investment gains, but actually did the opposite.
I took working and working hard (overtime, for that bonus, promotion, etc.) overboard and never looked back. I wish I would of taken more time to be social and enjoy life a bit more. Work to live, not live to work.
Having kids is a huge increase in responsibility and completely changes you as a person. you really can't take risks with out worrying about your kids.
Don't worry my youngest refers to me as a man-child(if he only know me in my 20s)
I had some early startup-ish projects in the late-nineties/early-2k's, they crashed and burned with the dotcom crash, and I felt like I had lost any chance at making something cool or any kind of impact. I even felt like, at the age of 28, I was too old for dating and had missed all my opportunities.
Things picked up for me in every respect — professional and personal — at age 35. You really are as young as you feel.
Don't. Take time to know your partner: minimum 2years, have vacations _and_ reflect on them -- if _anything_ heavily irritating or strong arguments arise trust your gust and don't marry, don't try to justify.
Married a paranoid schizophrenic with realising to late -- didn't know all family members (several relatives on the maternal and paternal side have it too)
Know the family. Don't try to justify think you picked a healthy exemplar too early -- again: wait 2y+, know their past. Any clinical interventions: stay away.
Otherwise as soon as children are involved this will be years of horror. Trust me.
This is one for me too. My whole adult life I’ve felt like I was “behind” in everything I was doing, only to realize with age that I was fine and there is no universal rule about where you should be at a given age. Make the most of yourself right now.
> I even felt like, at the age of 28, I was too old for dating and had missed all my opportunities.
I feel this immensely at 29, turning 30 this year. Especially after moving from another country and having all my friends in long-term relationships. Now just to get out there and have some confidence in approaching people.
Hey, I have a strategy for you that I used for dating. When I was 30, and still single, it was frightening and bewildering since all my friends were married or partnered, but I wasn't. The men my age that I was meeting were still single for a reason. Without internet dating (this was the mid-1990s) I was stuck relying on friends and colleagues, who all said they didn't know anyone suitable who was still single. My chances of meeting someone were dwindling, and I was getting older. When you're female, that's a death sentence for your wish to have kids.
As my life turned out, I'm glad I didn't meet anyone and have kids at that time, because I started a company that went from zero to half-million dollars-a-year in a few years. I poured all that energy that I would have invested in a family into my business. Still, the unknown about whether I would meet someone I could eventually marry did nag at me. I knew I was past the point of having children, but still...
Finally when I was in my late 40s, artificial intelligence had matured enough that I could rely on it to find me a mate. This was in 2011. I registered for OKCupid and, after a few good dates that were a breath of fresh air after not meeting anyone suitable for so long, I met my now-husband with seemingly little effort. As if that wasn't enough of a miracle, my now-husband was a widower, and had a 7 year-old girl he had adopted from Russia. We have raised her together as our daughter. She's now 17, and is the love of my life (besides my husband, of course.)
OKCupid has since been overtaken by Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and match.com. But that's because match.com realized OKCupid's A.I. was a much better system for meeting people, and it was free, too! Match.com bought OKCupid in 2011 with the intention of burying it by doing absolutely no marketing, which is where it stands now.
The great thing about OKCupid was the match score. A caveat here- you have to answer HUNDREDS OF HARD MORAL QUESTIONS for the OKCupid A.I. to work properly. I answered 800 questions over a period of 2 weeks at night, from 10pm to midnight, after I was done running my biggish small business. My husband was, at the same time, slowly answering 1000 questions. Even just the commitment level displayed by taking the time to answer the moral questions, and to take the exercise seriously, is in itself a good indicator of whether the person is earnest or not. It certainly guarantees you're not wasting time with a bot or a scammer. (Romance scams now support the economy of entire developing countries, and have gotten super out-of-hand.)
So, once you've answered hundreds of questions, I found the match scores to be totally trustworthy. The dates I mentioned that I enjoyed were over a 90% match score. (Being a confident and smart heterosexual woman who runs a successful business was lonely in the U.S. at that time. Feminism was still just an ideal, but not a typical lived experience like it is today. Less successful women were more fashionable as mates.)
My husband got an OKCupid match score of 99% with me! And, indeed, he's one of the best-matched people, male or female, that I've ever known. We have now been married for almost 10 happy years. I credit artificial intelligence with my happiness in my marriage and with my lovely daughter, too. Good luck to you. I wish for you the same success I had in my late 40s. Luckily for you, you don't have to wait for A.I. to develop. It's already here!
This advice goes back perhaps a little further into the mid 20s, but.. become aware of your personality, preferences, strengths and weaknesses, and live the (hopefully virtuous) life you want or need rather than the one you think other people want or need you to live.
I definitely feel that, but I think it has more to do with the routine that comes with a "normal" life. When I am doing the same thing every day, months or years feel like they disappeared into nothing. But new experiences still slow things down. I think a big part of the time compression phenomenon is just that there are fewer really new experiences
- If something isn't quite a regret but feels off, or like it's not working the way it's advertised: Make plans to try alternative(s) in earnest by a specific, calendared date in the future if things haven't changed (I did this with the religion into which I was born; sticking to the calendared decision was one of the best decisions I ever made and I ended up walking out)
- Think about the crazy ideas that never work for anybody, and start trying them NOW in little baby steps before you hate yourself later for being too closed-minded
- Spend more time and money on little daily comforts, the practically insubstantial, vain little anti-buddhisms that nevertheless can create a compounding comfort-debt over time (book 1, chapter 1, verse 1: Maybe go buy some new shoes that you like and then use them to walk to an ice cream parlor)
- Be more active in planning medical care, yeah you may get cancer but even in that case, it's better to schedule check-ups earlier than later
Really? Buddha legit allowed one to have small pleasures and advised to spend according to one's income- not be lavish nor meagre.
He promoted the middle-path (majjhima pantha) more than anything else- to not be too stringent nor be too lavish.
He even allowed monks to have communal properties.
I agree with your point, though. Wholeheartedly. With inflation, and for some economies, continued currency devaluation, it is not worth it to save a lot by denying yourself small pleasures.
I bought a more-than-expensive chair, and a high-end mechanical keyboard. I absolutely enjoy those. And, no, I did not go down a steep curve of spending that destroyed my finances.
Buddha the him-self is probably different from what I think of as "buddhism" with a small 'b'. Culturally-understood, outside-in, or maybe bookstore-quotes-buddhism, as opposed to the deeper, subjective, experiential, you-don't-know-enough-buddhism--which does harbor many, many contradictions on top of all the great lessons in there too. Like any belief system, religious or not.
I definitely don't remember the sectarian buddhists spending much time telling me to enjoy small pleasures! I think the closest analog to that in substance of belief would be more like "attend to your sensory interface to life." Ah? Much different in important ways. One of those approaches worked fine without buddhism in the picture. The other didn't, or so I was told. Funny memories.
This is where beliefs usually cross into no-true-(scotsman)-believer, or worse, victim-blaming.
You see? This is because _I_ misunderstood. The way it _really_ works is...
I studied all kinds of dichotomies in buddhism, from Batchelor to Nichiren etc. and spent hundreds of hours studying and writing about buddhism in general. I even baptized many lifelong buddhists into the home brand of religion I brought with me before I left that faith myself.
I believe I know many of the Top Sales Secrets for migrating buddhists between religions or to a religion of your choice.
But...I accompanied some of them on the way out, and buddhism as a single thing, as a belief that works like X...that's done for me except in general analogy, sorry.
Plus there need to be contradictions IMO, they are really important for contextualizing religion vs. sect. If you don't have contradictions you can't have internal structure. You'll never be able to add 1 + 1 and make anything new.
You don't have to _call_ it a contradiction though...you can say there are these "mysteries"... ;-)
For me, I limit myself to Theraveda Buddhism and especially to Buddha's teachings only.
Long before I grew an interest on Buddhism, I realized that very few people actually understand great people and their teachings. Normal people dilute, misunderstand, and misinterpret what great people taught and communicated.
Years before I started studying about Buddhism, I always read original sources- Russoe, Voltaire, Tagore, Smith, Lenin, Bose, and so on.
My understanding stood correct. Very few of the people who talk about great people actually undestand them.
So, when I started with Buddhism, I told myself that I will limit myself to Buddha's direct teachings only. It's not that I will not touch Great Vehicle stuff, but I will never go deep into it. But reading never hurts. Tibetan Buddhism is interesting, colorful, and exotic. But not for me!
There are people who understand the great people that came before them- but filtering them out is a lengthy and tiring process.
But I remain genuinely interested to study deep into Dingnaga and Nagarjuna, and their philosophy ajd works.
Ah, you have a PURSe, a Personally-Understood Religious Structure. My compliments on the way you've sorted your awarenesses into something that works for you.
(And, when you have listeners, co-believers, or followers, may you let yourself watch them both come and go, sensing no flaw in contradiction... --Marc)
I am both kinds of athiest (nastika and nirisvara). So, in that sense, I am not religious.
Theravedas do not believe in any conversion ceremony unless you are going to be a monk. I have no intention of becoming a monk, as Buddha taught about six-directional duties of a man, and he himself confirmed that thousands of people attained Nirvana while being in a family (was it to Batsagotta? My memory eludes me).
And I am not sure I deserve your compliments. I drink occasionally (intoxicating drinks were forbidden by the Buddha), and I keep eating meat and fish.
I reached the conclusion of absolute nothingness and human beings being not more than complex biological machines with Science only, and no Buddhism.
I started with Buddhism to figure out what to do with the knowledge.
So far, I am very glad, and I am finding what I was looking for and beyond.
I was completely blown away by the ehipassika (come and see) philosophy, lack of blind faith, and the inherent logical structure of Buddha's teaching.
In your 30s, if you are waiting to have kids for various reasons, you really need to stop delaying. Your probability of successfully having kids goes down every year, and by your early 40s your options for medical help if you have infertility stop being available because even those interventions lose effectiveness.
If you want kids, just have the kids. You're not going to care that you were being responsible and waiting when you find out waiting means you never get to have them.
> Kids from much older parents (40+) are also almost completely weird.
By what measure? I was 42 and my wife was 40 when we had our daughter who is now 13 and headed off to full time pre conservatory program in violin next year. Well adjusted, sensitive and empathic, I can’t think of any way in which she’s ‘weird’ Certainly not by any conventional definitions of the word.
> Kids from much older parents (40+) are also almost completely weird.
They are, in every quantitative and qualitative measure, far more well-adjusted than the poor children, like yours, who had no choice but to grow up with literal children as parents.
I think there could be a couple of confounding factors here:
1) What demographics are these older parents in? Are they basically baby boomers or Gen X having kids late? Milennials are approaching 40 years old, so they could potentially be more chill as first time parents perhaps or not.
2) If both parents are old, then I could see the mother potentially feeling overprotective, feeling like all her eggs are in one basket so to speak. I'd kind of think that an older father would probably be more chill.
In 2006 I worked with a software developer that was 50 years old and was equally new to Ruby on Rails and also had his first baby on the way. He was chill and young at heart.
Well, you’re clearly way of the mark here, since you completely missed my point.
The weirdness is in your head, mate. (Although the generalization is your responsibility.)
I mean, people like you, i.e. people who become parents at a relatively young age, literally have their brain chemistry altered to protect their offspring, WAY before you have actually experienced life as an adult.
I could make grand speculative declarations about your children based on this, but I actually realize it’s meaningless, so I won’t.
> people like you, i.e. people who become parents at a relatively young age, literally have their brain chemistry altered to protect their offspring, WAY before you have actually experienced life as an adult.
Do you have any links or terms to Google to support this? On one hand it sounds reasonable. But on the other hand for the entirety of human history up until the last several decades what you think of as "relatively young" would have been completely normal or even unusally old. So it wouldn't make sense evolutionarily for that to be disadvantageous.
Disclaimer: had kids young and I think people that want kids and are emotionally mature enough to handle the challenge with a similarly minded partner should not wait and do it young. What is a definition of "ready for kids" that wouldn't cause 99% of people in the world to never have the opportunity to have kids.
This information is the first result when you Google "fertility by age" [0].
This should be mentioned more often, not to be sexist, but so everyone has the complete information, it's way more cruel to allow people to be deluded until their forties just for them to realize one day they can't have children.
> While many sources suggest a more dramatic drop at around 35, this is unclear since few studies have been conducted since the nineteenth century. One 2004 study of European women found fertility of the 27–34 and the 35–39 groups had only a four-percent difference.
I don't think it's just fertility that people are talking about. In most cases that I hear this talked about, it's generally around the fact that pregnancies are riskier after 35.
From the article:
> Women who become pregnant after age 35 are at increased risk for complications that affect the parent and fetus.
Someone who refutes conventional medical knowledge, which was presumably crafted in part by women and is likely regularly scrutinized by a large body of female medical researchers, as sexist without any counter argument, does not sound like someone to take seriously, let alone are they a good partner choice.
This is the point I'd stress. There's never a "right time", you'll always wonder if you're doing the right thing, and there'll always be reasons why you should wait a year or two more.
That is not a good reason to have children when it is not the right time. You are gambling with someone else's life. Absolutely do wait until it is the right time, and if it never comes - do not have children.
I don't think you're quite following where I'm coming from and maybe because I didn't provide much detail. "The right time" is usually a moving target, right job, right house, right income, right mindset, right location... you can "just another year" things for a decade... if you wait too long that window won't come and you'll be too old. Having children gets much much harder if you wait until the last minute (in terms of biology).
I spent a lot of time wanting things to be perfect, but realized that there's never a perfect time. Other parents and prospective parents I know have said similar things.
Having kids is always a gamble, whether you've got a perfect life or not. You do have to decide if you're ready to shoulder the challenge, and don't force it if you're not, but if you're waiting for external factors to be just right you're probably wasting your time.
"Do not have children" probably isn't going to resonate with anyone. If someone wants that experience for their life it's going to be hard to dissuade, and who are you to make that decision? Should only the rich have children? only the fit? only the wise?
And why is this part of life one where selfishness - "I want that experience for my life" - is applauded and encouraged? Especially given that here, the child suffers if you make a mistake. Humans tend to be far more judgmental about selfish desires where mostly just the selfish person suffers if a mistake is made.
There are other ways to experience the joys of parenthood, especially given that most parents seem to look for any way they can find to offload such joys for some reason. Offer to look after your nieces and nephews for a time, for example. Run a volunteer daycare.
If you are not willing or able to be a good driver, you should not drive. If you are not willing or able to be a good parent, do not have children. Do think about the decision very, very carefully - the stakes are very high. If you don't end up having children - well, at least you didn't end up causing others any harm.
But I understand what you are saying - you should also recognize the situation where you are, in fact, ready. It's like being able to choose when to sit an exam - there is always another week you can spend studying, and at some point you have to decide you are ready once you are in fact reasonably prepared.
Just because it is a biological prerogative does not mean that it doesn't cause suffering. I've seen lions eat gazelle babies straight out of the womb, is that not suffering? Now, that is an extreme example, but people having kids in a bad environment, just because they can, can cause undue suffering to the child. That is why it is prudent to wait for the right time, is the parent commentor's point I believe.
There's an incredibly wide range of "bad environment" - where's the line (and who decides where it is)? Should only people living in the first world get to have children?
Waiting is not bad, most child abuse cases come from people who shouldn't have had kids in the first place. The worst case if you wait is that you'll have to adopt kids, which is arguably way more humane than introducing another hungry soul into the world.
It's not that we have too many mouths to feed, it's that we have too many selfish people in positions of leadership and authority who exploit the masses to line their own pockets.
Having 50% less people would reduce the overall hunger numbers, but not the ratio.
Yes, pollution and climate change affect everyone and I am saying that is entirely unfair because many people did not choose these things, do not contribute, and do not benefit. The loss of trees in Europe is due to global effects, not just pollution in/by Europe.
Sorry, there was a typo in my comment (very -> were). What I wanted to say is that the situation in Europe is actually better in most places now than it was in the past.
With respect to food poverty, the increase in logistics/technology/marketing productivity may well offset some (perhaps all) of the resource pressure that a growing population creates.
Generally speaking, logistics have huge economies of scale (see Amazon) so an increase in market size will reduce the logistics cost per each item of food. Especially, for cold perishable dairy foodstuffs like dairy the cold chain costs may well dominate the costs of cows.
IIRC the ratio of people at risk of famine as been going down steadily while the population increased until Covid (I assume it should get back on track eventually, though)
The older you are, the more likely that you will pass genetic abnormalities to your child. Sperm gene quality (i.e. the genetic version of not having bitflips in memory) deteriorates with age. If you have a choice it's probably better to have a similar timetable as women
If you want to participate in parenting, you'll want to be somewhat fit. You can expect a lot of lifting, carrying, squatting and sitting on floor, stroller pushing, running after etc. Better chance you won't get exhausted by that at your thirties than fifties.
"If you want kids, just have the kids" sounds very irresponsible - a good way to create a lot of suffering. It is not a decision you can reverse. You should give it a lot more thought than to choosing your career, where/how you live, or to getting a pet. It is shocking that so often it is the opposite, and people 'yolo' into this decision. If anything, you should err on the side of not having children, unless you are very, very sure:
1. You will still want to be spending overwhelming majority of your time on children in 1, 2, 5, 10 years at least and will be enjoying it.
2. You are in a position to be consistently spending enough time and effort and other resources on them.
3. You are very confident you will be able to be a good parent, and that you are bringing new life into a good environment that both you and them will enjoy.
You need to be in a very good, stable place both physically and mentally for sure before you even consider it.
This is the type of modern wisdom that the person you’re responding to is deliberately contradicting. This modern wisdom is why our birth rate (at least for citizens) is so catastrophically low. Sure, you can’t be a 20yo janitor with a housewife, 3 kids, a home, and new iPhones every 2 years, but plenty of people go for kids before they’re “ready” and make it just fine.
Why is it 'catastrophically' low? It is not obvious to me that the UK, for example, would not enjoy much higher standards of living if it had half the population. Technology and innovation does not increase the availability of good land and nice housing, but it does massively increase productivity in other areas.
I would also argue that plenty of people that go for children who are not ready for it don't make it just fine. More importantly, their children, that didn't ask for any of it, end up suffering because of their mistakes. Plenty of people have psychological issues of various degrees because of poor parenting. 15% of families in the UK are lone parent families! By age 12 a staggering 40% (!) of children are not living with both birth parents! [1] And these figures are almost twice as bad for low-income families. And out of the children that do live with both birth parents, 11-28% of the parents report an unhappy relationship. That is the catastrophe.
Humans have this strange blindspot where they tend to be irrational and irresponsible about the decision to procreate. Previous generations did not have much of a choice because of lack of available contraception, lack of knowledge. Our generation has no excuse.
Honestly, I find certain topics, like the need to procreate, are impossible to reason for or against; I might as well be handing out Bible copies. But, an obvious argument for procreation is an aging population, coupled with swelling national debt largely affected by the need to take care of them and a decrease in youth which can produce products to reduce this debt. I have not seen any intellectually honest way of dealing with this beyond “automation will solve everything”. That’s just one example, anyway.
Secondly, I don’t think your data on single parent families really disproves anything, specifically because that data is highly confounded by drug addicts, high school dropouts, unwed couples, accidental pregnancies, and dozens of other factors. If we’re to reason in good faith, the advice I and others are advocating for is that you don’t need to be a homeowner with a 200k+ salary, although of course you should be a reasonably mature, employed adult with a mature partner.
I think it’s in poor faith as well to reduce this to “if you feel a need to have children, you’re irrational and still stuck in go-forth-and-multiply mode”. But, again, this is not an issue anyone can find common ground over with reason or data (which you can find to support any conclusion), and I expect the HN crowd falls on a particular side of this on average, so I won’t argue further.
> It is not obvious to me that the UK, for example, would not enjoy much higher standards of living if it had half the population.
The problem is the transition to this lower population. You’d have a period of 40/50 years where older people severely outnumber those who are relatively young, leading to massive increase in per capita healthcare expenditures coupled with a decrease in productivity. So no, at least bot in our lifetimes.
I think your advice is correct for those that want kids. The issue becomes contentious when this is advocated to people who mostly are on the other side of that decision. Going for kids before you are ready is still aligned with ‘wanting kids’.
Wanting is only a part of the equation. You need to both be willing and able to be a competent parent. Some people lack the emotional stability required, for example. Others don't tend to see such long-term projects to completion, abandoning their hobbies even a few years in. Yet others just don't have the resources, unfortunately as it is, or have other factors significantly limiting their ability to be good parents.
Usually, when there is really, really never a good time for something, the answer is "don't do it", not "go for it ignoring all logic and reason".
Now, there is a difference between just getting cold feet and it actually never being a good time. For example, if you had a choice to sit an exam when ready, you could be tempted to always postpone it another week, because there is always more studying you could do. But realistically, at some point you are actually, objectively ready and should go for it.
So of course you need to consider that one of you will have to become a stay at home parent, or you will need to hire someone to do so instead. That may mean you would need to significantly cut your other expenses, have a much longer commute, live in much worse/smaller accommodation etc. Of course you need to consider if your neighborhood is child-friendly, so that your child can play outside and socialize with other children. If you are planning to involve your relatives, of course you need to first get their informed consent.
Having children is a decision and a choice. You are not forced into it. And it is a choice that must be made responsibly.
You’re over complicating it. If you *want* kids then have them. That’s perfectly reasonable. If you’re in you thirties and have the adult basics down you’re ready for kids. Kids are hard work but also they’re cute and add a lot of joy to life. They also put your own personal goals and other peoples goals in perspective. The other day in a meeting with my child’s teacher I was so proud that had to wipe away the tears. I don’t get that feeling from my personal achievements.
Avoid attaching your identity to people, other people's idea of who you are, your job, and to possessions. None of it is real or permanent. Say it like a mantra.
I thought that may have been confusingly worded. I think we agree that you continue to build intellectual power into your forties. Maybe not raw intelligence as studies have shown. But the ability to connect and integrate related Concepts more quickly.
There's this idea that men don't need to settle down because they can have children at any age, which I guess is technically true but it presupposes that a 30 y/o woman will want to have children with you when you're 45, but they are more inclined to go +5 years, not +15.
Also take prescription labels more seriously, like don't take Advil all the time, because you will get an ulcer and don't mix alcohol and aspirin because it causes liver damage.
Exercise and don't eat to much, and invest in your posture (don't get carpal tunnel, hunch over at the computer, etc)
I think you mean tylenol / acetaminophen (maybe aspirin is bad too?)
Even if you can find a younger mate, you'll want to participate in your kid's lives and that's much harder as an old man. If your kids are teenagers and you're in your sixties, I imagine it can be tough; and if they make the same choices as you, living to see grandchildren is unlikely
+1 for having kids at a younger age. My dad was 44 when I was born and he died when I was 16 -- that sucked a lot. I think you should have a fair idea you'll live long enough to see your kid "launched" into the world -- say 25 years old at a minimum. If you won't live that long, don't have kids.
Wait, what? There are states where I can buy a million dollar house with a loan, and if I default they can only take the house, not the value of the loan?
If someone told me that 10 years ago, I might have made different life choices.
> Wait, what? There are states where I can buy a million dollar house with a loan, and if I default they can only take the house, not the value of the loan?
Yes, and California is one of those states, for purchase-money mortgages on owner occupied properties; and after Jan 1, 2013, also for refinances of purchase-money mortgages on owner occupied properties. Foreclosing the property satisfies the loan, if there's excess from the foreclosure auction, you'll get paid; if there's a deficiency, you'll have taxable income for the amount written off. Word on the street is most California foreclosures go through the non-recourse process (private sale), even for loans that they could sue for deficiency (judicial foreclosure), because the process is quicker and simpler.
Use the bankers money to buy a rental duplex/triplex/quad I think is the shortest path to wealth, but atm I'm only interested in bitcoin, nvidia (watch GTC that came out yest) and SARK.
I joined the Orthodox Church in my 40s. I wish I would have known about it when I was younger, especially in my 30s, with my young family. The benefits that come from daily spiritual devotion both individually and a family, as well as the benefits that come from being part of a faithful community are impossible to list. Is it all easy and is it all benefits? Of course not. But centering my life around God through daily devotion to the practices that are part of that have brought so much more stability and fulfillment than I ever could have known.
I grew up Mormon, explored Taoism and Buddhism, but never felt "at home". I considered myself an atheist for many years after that, but never really gave up hope that I could find a spiritual path. My family was on the brink of falling apart at one point, and I had started listening to Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible. That led me to the work of Jonathan Pageau. Once I started to understand what he was actually talking about (by learning more about the traditional pre-Enlightenment worldview), I thought "what do I have to lose?" and went to a local Orthodox church. I began meeting with the priest, and it's now the foundation for my life, and it's a part of my life every day, and affects every decision I make.
I really want to become an Orthodox Christian but feel like I would struggle with the whole "believing in God" thing. Should I still try it? Is there any way that I could "come to believe in God" in time?
Orthodoxy definitely takes a different approach than just accepting a proposition. I was a staunch atheist for many years, after having grown up Mormon. I was bitter and felt betrayed as I fell away from Mormonism. Here's what changed for me: I realized that the Christianity I had been a part of was still rooted in the Enlightenment and in empiricism. It tries to prove itself to be legitimate and relevant by trying to use archeology or science to verify the Bible. It's completely backwards and futile.
I listened to the Bible lectures that Jordan Peterson made several years ago, and I was intrigued because I had never heard anyone putting aside the historical story of the Bible and instead focusing on its relevance from a neuroscience point of view. This led to me eventually finding the work of Jonathan Pageau. He's an Orthodox icon carver, and he talks about the traditional worldview, how to understand the Bible from an ontological point of view (a hierarchy of being) rather than from a "scientific" or empirical point of view. It took a year or two before I really started to understand what he even meant, but once I started to understand that way of looking at the world, my whole world changed and I quickly joined the Orthodox Church.
To be more specific, I would recommend finding an Orthodox Church local to you, and just go see what it's like. Introduce yourself to the priest after the service, and he would be happy to talk with you and helping you begin to see the Orthodox way of life. The Orthodox approach focuses much more on your relationship with God, rather than a list of checkboxes of do's and don't-dos. It's very participatory. It demands a lot from the followers, but the sense of meaning, being, and purpose that have replaced my old sense of nihilism, meaninglessness, and despair...I can't even put into words how much my life has changed.
Thank you for the great response. I am also not a fan of conflating science and religion, so this is a refreshing take. I will take a look into Jonathan Pageau and maybe even visit my local Orthodox church (although I'm very scared)!
If you have a hard time believing in God, then why limit yourself to just Christianity? Islam is ideal for exploring spiritualism through structure and discipline, Hinduism and Buddhism are great to explore spirituality from a psychological plane. This might offend some but while self-studying these religions, I found Christianity to be quite underwhelming, spiritually. In fact, if it wasn't for the writings of Desmond Tutu, I would have no appreciation of it. The only religion I haven't been exposed to is Judaism, as Jewish community are quite rare in India.
I agree that most forms of Christianity can be underwhelming, but Orthodoxy has a rich tradition that dates back over two thousand years of a mystical relationship with God, rooted in prayer. It's very different than any other form of Christianity that I have ever heard of.
According to Hindu philosophy, there are 4 ways to explore spiritualism:
1. Doing one's duty with detachment - the mind is trained to detach from the results of one's action and not attach positive or negative associations to it, thus weakening the ego and leading to enlightenment.
2. Self-enquiry and awareness - Pursuit of knowledge, and understanding of your own self in relation to the world to achieve a heightened consciousness of how you perceive the world through your senses, leading to liberation of the self.
3. Meditation - Related to 2.
4. Devotion - Loving devotion and surrender of self to a God leading to enlightenment.
Which one does Orthodoxy fall under? (Sounds like 4).
In Orthodoxy, prayer is considered the "art of arts and the science of sciences". Everything in Orthodoxy is intended to improve your prayer life, and your prayer life is how you enter in and pursue a personal relationship with God.
Check out the Jefferson Bible. I'm a fan of Christ but consider him one of the great moral philosophers instead of the son of god. This reading of the surmon on the mount moves me even though I'm not religious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nN9-C1yKU
I could see the benefits of having a spiritual community around you, but, like, how do you convince yourself that supernatural things like gods exist? There's just very little tangible or logical there. Or would it be worth it to participate without really believing? Or you just somehow start believing? Frankly, for me doing that would probably be comparable to asking you to convert to Hinduism or something similar. Stability and fulfilment sound good tho.
That's the thing, most of these questions have been answered or at least heavily explored. Atheism is relatively new to the philosophical space, so I've found most arguments and thought exploration is based on ancient religions. After all, these same people founded most branches of science and math.
The first struggle (and it took a couple of years, and is still in process) is learning that my entire worldview is rooted in the presuppositions of the Enlightenment and of modernism (and postmodernism, to a lesser degree). That is not how people saw the world for most of the history of humanity. And most of the experiences of religion and God that I had growing up were through that same empirical, Enlightenment worldview.
Through the work of Jonathan Pageau, I began to learn to see the world through a more traditional mindset. And I began to look at my own thinking and my previous presuppositions more carefully.
For example, you said "convince yourself that supernatural things exist". But you already believe all kinds of supernatural things exist. You believe in numbers. You believe in categories. You believe in grammar. You believe in logic. You believe in cities. You believe in political offices. Those are all above the natural world. In philosophy, that's called "metaphysics". It's "above" the physical world. You have a hierarchy of values (which is not physical) that determines how you see the world, how you act in the world, and how you categorize what your senses are feeding your brain. This is completely in line with our current scientific understanding of how our brains work. The work of John Vervaeke can also be very helpful.
Anyway, once I got over my empiricism and began to see that empiricism is completely blind to very large swathes of the human experience, it got much easier to say "well, since I have a value system intrinsically, and since a value system is completely necessary, perhaps I should put more effort into structuring it around the highest good."
Please keep in mind this process took a couple of years and will last for the rest of my life, but I hope you can see the stepping stones along the way.
I cannot wrap my head around how can You throw away empiricism - for me this is the only working way to validate mental models. Without it You just have infinite space of possibilities that are based on some subset of axioms that You choose as You please. It becomes just a logical and emotional game of who says it better (have better stories to tell).
And I don't belive in numbers or cities - they are just useful abstractions that stop existing when I stop thinking about them (and I'm guessing this is not a property of any potential imaginery supreme being).
Numbers are useful abstractions with no empirical evidence to back them up. That's my point. Numbers are a way of interacting with the physical world and reproduce certain results, but numbers themselves are abstract and have no physical properties.
As for empiricism, I certainly did not throw it out. It's useful, but not for everything. Say I have three knives in my kitchen drawer: a butter knife, a steak knife, and a chef's knife. Empirically speaking, which knife is the best knife? You can tell me all the physical properties of the knife, and the metallurgy of the knife and the shape and weight of each knife, but which knife is the BEST knife, from an empirical point of view? Empiricism has no answer UNTIL you, a person, say "I want to dice this onion" and empiricism can then arrange the knives in a hierarchical order according to which one will work best. But science has nothing to say about "best" or "worst" until an agent in the world has a purpose for which they want to use something. Then empiricism is a wonderful tool.
Another, shorter example: empiricism can help you build a rocket, but has nothing to say about whether you should aim it at the moon, or at a neighboring country.
And one more, just for fun: the empiricism that was used to detect and classify climate change is the same empiricism that was used to make the internal combustion engine. Empiricism is blind as to intent or motive. Empiricism is a toolset, but has no tools for determining a value hierarchy within the bounds of empiricism itself. Empiricism can only go to work once a person has given it a purpose or goal to work towards.
Oh I think I can see whats happening here - You probably have strong emotional need for things to have purpose and meaning. Sure, if I haven't accepted that pure existence is enough (and depending on the point of view it has none or all the meaning that we want) then exploring pure models in search for purpose would be also what I would do. But since I believe that there are infinite number of abstractions with no real physical properties that can be interpreted as real through your reasoning, from my point of view, empiricism becomes the only real tool (because per Your first example even the best or worst ultimately comes down to preferences that were shaped by physical world).
Let's say your lover writes a poem for you on a piece of paper and gives you the poem. You find it to be quite lovely, and you memorize the poem. Then, in a tragic accident, the cleaning lady throws the paper with the poem written on it into the garbage incinerator.
The answer depends on what You are trying to prove.
If You define this poem as ordered list of words that can be interpreted trough cultural and local context, then it existed even before it was written down.
If You want to go more realistic way then this poem exists only through my memory (partly as memory and partly as an emotional association) and will disappear with my demise.
You have smuggled in a LOT of things that are not empirical in your response.
"Ordered" - what is the empirical evidence for order? How can one know the difference between randomness and order with only empirical evidence? Order requires a concept of "orderliness" that one is comparing the evidence to.
"Words" - the empirical evidence of a word is a squiggle on a piece of paper. Everything else about a word and its connection to a thing is purely abstract, and not empirically verifiable.
"cultural" - what is the empirical evidence for a culture? What empirical properties does a culture have? Can it be defined merely by its physical characteristics?
"context" - what does this even mean, empirically speaking. We have infinite number of facts. How does empiricism filter relevant and irrelevant facts? What does it even mean for something to be "relevant" empirically?
"existed even before it was written down" - so something existed with no empirical evidence? How can you say it exists then?
"Memory" - what is the empirical evidence for your memory? Can I hook you up to a machine and stimulate your brain in such a way that I could get the words of the poem to read out on the screen?
"emotional association" - what does that even mean empirically?
I could go on, but I have to get back to work. I hope I have helped you clarify your thinking about how "empirical" you actually are(n't), but I've probably just lost you, and for that, I'm sorry. Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.
> You have smuggled in a LOT of things that are not empirical in your response.
Those are mental models that are useful to me but unfortunately I'm not master at using them. And what is more they are inherently wrong (because they are models and not the real thing - putting aside if anything is real).
I do not believe in them more than I need to. But they are the only way that we can communicate on high level - by establishing common model and that talking about its properties. And then we can empirically test if they really behave as we believe (if we want to, otherwise we can just leave it be and use it as toys and as a way to spend our time waiting for nothingness to take us back).
> Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.
Likewise - as You may have guessed english is not my native language and those concepts that I speak about are not well developed in my mind - they are merly my intuitions (by which I openly admin that I use things that are not empirically proven - but only because that is the only way that our faulty mind can work - by substituting reality with simplified erroneous abstractions that sometimes work).
>I could go on, but I have to get back to work
Wish You a pleasant work! And thank You for good conversation.
This seems like a facetious word-salad. You asked if a poem that was written then burned, still exists. He answered that the poem exists in his memory.
It doesn't make any sense to say, what is empirical evidence for order or culture or context. You can't ask him to redefine literally everything, before you accept his answer.
I agree with your overall comment thread, that you separate empirical stuff like engines rooted in reality, from values like the highest good. You conclude that a way to achieve the highest good is to be religious. But are you sure? It's certainly good for you, your family and the community around you. But is it the highest good for the world? Across all nations, all the wars that have been fought over religion - I'd dispute that it's still the highest good.
I'm not sure I believe that any particular religion is correct, but it doesn't take very much faith to believe that there is a God.
Look at it this way: scientifically, the best explanation we have is that there was nothing and then from an infinitesimal point all of the entire universe sprang. For no discernable reason. That's pretty freaking wild.
The idea that there's a God out there past all that doesn't seem that much crazier.
Now whether or not you actually have a soul is a whole different discussion...
I always wonder - where do people get this intuition that something out of nothing is somehow more crazy idea than some supreme ephemeral being that existed before all this. The infinite regression argument is quite convincing that its rather the other way around - God is too complex idea to be the simplest possible answer.
As someone born in eastern EU country. I am well familiar with orthodox, so I really don't see what's good about it. In our countries the priests are one of the most corrupted individuals who are always fat (as opposed to generally skinny population of poor people that can't afford much food) and always drive the nicest cars. How spiritual they are is arguable. They don't pay taxes, still are allowed to have wives and families and their working hours is way less than 40/w. If that's the life you are going for, then being and orthodox priest is the way to go.
I guess everyone need to get his fix somehow. Some people play the Piano, some use drugs; and some devote themselves to a religion. The difference between the drug cartels and the religious priests is just the clothes. Both can also be very violent.
Have kids now so they are all teenagers or older by the time you are 50.
Start planning 5 or 10 years out; do things now that open opportunity later.
Build a reliable social network around you. Help others with no expectation of return. Reconnect with old friends and strengthen bonds with new friends.
Get and keep your body in great health; form good habits now. Fix your posture. Stretch.
Second, I'll throw some things out there, though, apart from what's already been said (like health and travel):
- Invest in therapy, if you haven't already. Learn your blind spots, your rackets, and your stories that hold you back.
- Make new friends with younger people, whether it's via mentorship or some other means. If you don't, you'll be an "out of touch boomer" before you know it.
Unlike my 20s, I feel like I navigated my 30s pretty well, so I don't have a lot of things I wish I had done/known that I didn't already. I think that's really the difference as you get older...you developer fewer new regrets.
Great advice - all of it. I like that you included how you dress matters, along with being nice and having empathy! :) I've learned this, too. Unless you're a billionaire who can get away with a hoodie and socks/sandals as a work outfit, dressing to aim for the level you want to achieve is always a good strategy. It will make you stand out in people's minds. Just like you can't see the outside of a house when you're living inside it, you can't see the impression you're making on others and how much of that is visual. It's probably more than you think.
Be honest about what you really value in your life and don’t let ego and status and expectations drive your decisions. Evaluate how you truly enjoy spending your time and work to create a life that lets you do as much of that as possible.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 357 ms ] threadMaintenance is easier than building things up; start early.
I just want to add before taking meds or any supplements make sure you research things on your to understand the risks. Sometimes even doctors are not aware of adverse reactions.
Your health should always come first before work. Try to exercise a few times a week, going for walk/runs or bike.
It's all on you.
Any statement or conclusion from a physician is not necessarily a fact, but only an opinion of some random person you may never see again, and may have been the worst student in their class.
FWIW, if you are in a position where you could potentially start a family (and want to some day), consider doing it in your early 30s (or earlier), there are a lot of things that get tougher as you get older. I don't regret putting it off until my 40s because it let me find a person I want to have a family with, but if you have such a person, my advice is do it now.
Obviously, people should not do it if they're not ready. But people think they need to have everything figured out (degree, career, house) first. You don't. And the younger you have kids, the longer you'll be around to spend time with them (or grandkids), and the less chance you'll have fertility issues.
Isn't the conclusion here "Young children will make your life worse, do not have them"?
If you are only expected to show up for your 7.5 hours and wack out a handful of lines of code a day you have way more mental and time capacity for family.
My mother had me at 30. My wife's mother had her in her late teens. There's a big difference in energy there too. My wife's mother has more time, and energy, with our kids.
I have friends who had kids in college and a friend who had kids in high school. It seemed like a mistake back then - they could never come hang out and had to leave early cause they were dealing with kids or a wife or whatever. I'm not so sure they made a mistake now.
I would guess that late twenties are the ideal time to have kids. Early twenties you wrap up your education and start your career, thirties and forties get the kids out the door, fifties settle your retirement, sixties and on enjoy your extended family and retirement. That's how I'd plan it if I were going again.
In hindsight, I'm thinking teenage years. For all practical purposes your days are wasted anyway, so you may as well waste it enjoying your kids. They'll be much more independent by the time you're deemed old enough to begin participating in society. You are also more likely to have a larger community of people in the household at that age to help raise the children.
I think you're from a different society than me! Most of the world doesn't think this way.
The first week of the first kid, we slept 3 hours in total (that is, 3 hours in the whole week)
I hear two kids is pretty brutal until they’re both 3+ years old.
3 years old is a full time thing, but there are things that are quite fun to do together. We play videogames, board games, or I just let her climb on me and enjoy that.
Also going to the pool together is really nice and they get exhausted.
Sometimes you TAKE your free time. Kids are bored and want to play with you, but you haven't had time for yourself in 5 days, you just take it, even if they want to play with you. They will get bored, but more often they will figure out something to play together.
Overall, pretty happy, when they are both 3+ we can play a whole bunch of things together that I'm looking forward to!
I can't tell how it would be with just one, but there are tradeoffs to both sides.
We don't use much daycare, our 3 years old goes to school 4 days a week for 3 hours only (purpose was learning, not babysitting).
Thank you for including this tidbit. I'm a man in my early 30s interested in having kids and recently discovered that I've poorly vetted my 5+ year SO's interest in having kids. Her "yeah, I'm hypothetically interested" has become "hard not interested".
The requirement to break up with her if I want kids is deeply painful, but the real source of my dread is the feeling that I won't then be able to find someone good in time. I'm very glad you found someone good to have a family with.
And what do you mean by “in time”? Assuming you are 32/33 you have plenty of time to find another partner. When you’re 50 you will feel so silly for feeling old at 32/33. Just make sure the next partner is on the same page relatively early.
It’s your life, not your partner’s, go live it how you want.
Can't this be a simple yes/no answer? I have never been a relationship. So pardon me if I am being ignorant.
I'm in my 30s, and this seems to be the trickiest part that people older than me — sorry — seem to want to just pave over. House prices are bananas. Trump, COVID, Russia have erased years of investment gains. Student loans are a constant tax on my finances (that I'm almost free of… …soon…). Wage growth has been stagnant (my career has seen ~4.7% YoY gains, mostly me switching employers and trying to renegotiate higher; but I hear my father's career saw much faster progress, particularly in the earlier years…). Costs have not. (E.g., healthcare, and that's an incredible — and bad — incentive to marry.)
I imagine we'll hit a "it's now or never" point, and just sort of morally abdicate the idea of being responsible adults and "#yolo we're parents now" it. I don't really see the world changing for the better, anytime soon.
You seem to be hanging on for magic better times but at the same time not expecting things to get better. This doesn't seem to be a good strategy, especially in the case of having children where delaying a few years will very likely result in more difficulties.
Minorities in the US in particular might argue otherwise about whether the previous few decades were better than the current ones.
Whenever I feel tempted to look at the past with rose tinted glasses I only have to look at infant mortality rates which were horrifically high in even affluent countries like the US: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487507/figure/...
We are indeed in troubling times, but the Cold War wasn't so long ago and I recall a commentator speaking about how they'd read the newspaper each morning with a knot in their stomach, wondering if a nuclear mishap had occurred somewhere in the world.
Given the Russia, Ukraine, Chernobyl situation, I think my generation also has claim to worry about nuclear mishaps caused by geopolitical wars.
If you try to get financially better off, in seven years you'll probably be only slightly better off if at all, and you won't have kids. At that point you probably can't.
If you have kids at 35, you may very well go bankrupt. It will be off your credit in seven years, and you'll have a seven year old.
The second option will be happier (if you want kids).
That seems rather pessimistic. You don't expect any career progression or wealth accumulation in seven years?
I really don't think there are a lot of people on HN who are stuck in dead end jobs with no growth.
And as harsh as it may sound, if someone can't retire before 80 despite working a tech job, I'm inclined to think they're just bad with money.
Also, a lot of people get fixated on being fully prepared for kids. Like wanting to be in a 4 bedroom house before you have the first of three kids. That'd be nice, but you've got some time before you really need that space. I'd say if you're late 20s and have a stable living environment and a desire to have children, strongly consider doing it when you're sure, even if your living environment isn't perfect. You've also got some lead time, if you're worried about your kids going to a good (enough) school, that's not something that needs to be taken care of until close to them being school aged (although certainly, it doesn't hurt to let that influence earlier choices).
I'm sorry, what asset classes did you invest in? Because Trump and the Covid stimulus were both very beneficial for my investments. Sure, the market has taken a beating of late but it most definitely has not erased years of gains.
That said, it mostly tracks the stock market, just sort of "dampened", since it has a mix of other stuff. The downswings from both Trump general craziness and COVID recovered, eventually (I was certain the downswings for things other than COVID would … COVID, I was less certain about, as this is probably the biggest thing that's ever happened in my life), of course, but it sort of feels to me like a detour where after several months you're like "yay, back to where were were". I'm a SWE, so I'm above the stimulus cutoff. (But that's the thing… well off enough that most things are fine, but … the housing market, practically speaking, wants millionaires, not "people doing decently".) But AFAICT, the cost of a home is keeping pace with gains in the stock market, particularly so if you're not in a sort of undiversified-yolo-all-in on the stock market position, which I've been told is poor form. But that makes investing for a home sort of a losing prospect: it's more just a savings account at that point, with the investment gains limiting the ground being lost. Conversely, AIUI, this is why there is so much speculation in the housing market; if the stock market were outperforming it, people would be speculating on that, instead.
What boggles my mind how anyone not in tech is making do. What I see both from people I know, and in the news, suggests they're really, really struggling.
If you hold an index fund like VTI though, that's done well. These last few months really highlight the dangers of stock picking, even with big companies.
I really, really, really hate to defend Mr. Trump, but on his first day of office the Vanguard total stock market index closed at $116.91; on his last day of office it closed at $198.86, a 70.01% increase (14.19% annualised). There are numerous reasons to criticise the former president, but the performance of the stock market during his tenure does not appear to be one of them.
Absent that, I wish I traveled more before I had young children (and before there was a pandemic).
Don't worry my youngest refers to me as a man-child(if he only know me in my 20s)
I had some early startup-ish projects in the late-nineties/early-2k's, they crashed and burned with the dotcom crash, and I felt like I had lost any chance at making something cool or any kind of impact. I even felt like, at the age of 28, I was too old for dating and had missed all my opportunities.
Things picked up for me in every respect — professional and personal — at age 35. You really are as young as you feel.
Married a paranoid schizophrenic with realising to late -- didn't know all family members (several relatives on the maternal and paternal side have it too) Know the family. Don't try to justify think you picked a healthy exemplar too early -- again: wait 2y+, know their past. Any clinical interventions: stay away.
Otherwise as soon as children are involved this will be years of horror. Trust me.
I had a talk with a friend the other day about how 50 year olds used to be old. They just don’t look or feel that way now a days
George Costanza is thirty in season one of Seinfeld. He could easily go for mid 40s.
I feel this immensely at 29, turning 30 this year. Especially after moving from another country and having all my friends in long-term relationships. Now just to get out there and have some confidence in approaching people.
- If something isn't quite a regret but feels off, or like it's not working the way it's advertised: Make plans to try alternative(s) in earnest by a specific, calendared date in the future if things haven't changed (I did this with the religion into which I was born; sticking to the calendared decision was one of the best decisions I ever made and I ended up walking out)
- Think about the crazy ideas that never work for anybody, and start trying them NOW in little baby steps before you hate yourself later for being too closed-minded
- Spend more time and money on little daily comforts, the practically insubstantial, vain little anti-buddhisms that nevertheless can create a compounding comfort-debt over time (book 1, chapter 1, verse 1: Maybe go buy some new shoes that you like and then use them to walk to an ice cream parlor)
- Be more active in planning medical care, yeah you may get cancer but even in that case, it's better to schedule check-ups earlier than later
Those are just a few that come to mind...
0. https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/regrets-a-powerful-plann...
Really? Buddha legit allowed one to have small pleasures and advised to spend according to one's income- not be lavish nor meagre.
He promoted the middle-path (majjhima pantha) more than anything else- to not be too stringent nor be too lavish.
He even allowed monks to have communal properties.
I agree with your point, though. Wholeheartedly. With inflation, and for some economies, continued currency devaluation, it is not worth it to save a lot by denying yourself small pleasures.
I bought a more-than-expensive chair, and a high-end mechanical keyboard. I absolutely enjoy those. And, no, I did not go down a steep curve of spending that destroyed my finances.
I definitely don't remember the sectarian buddhists spending much time telling me to enjoy small pleasures! I think the closest analog to that in substance of belief would be more like "attend to your sensory interface to life." Ah? Much different in important ways. One of those approaches worked fine without buddhism in the picture. The other didn't, or so I was told. Funny memories.
But, Buddhism is anti-faith. You are supposed to experiment and verify.
Want to read a very short book?
Try "What The Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula. No BS, carefully explained guide to Buddha's own teachings.
If you limit yourself to Buddha's own teachings, there are little to no contradictions.
> Buddhism is
This is where beliefs usually cross into no-true-(scotsman)-believer, or worse, victim-blaming.
You see? This is because _I_ misunderstood. The way it _really_ works is...
I studied all kinds of dichotomies in buddhism, from Batchelor to Nichiren etc. and spent hundreds of hours studying and writing about buddhism in general. I even baptized many lifelong buddhists into the home brand of religion I brought with me before I left that faith myself.
I believe I know many of the Top Sales Secrets for migrating buddhists between religions or to a religion of your choice.
But...I accompanied some of them on the way out, and buddhism as a single thing, as a belief that works like X...that's done for me except in general analogy, sorry.
Plus there need to be contradictions IMO, they are really important for contextualizing religion vs. sect. If you don't have contradictions you can't have internal structure. You'll never be able to add 1 + 1 and make anything new.
You don't have to _call_ it a contradiction though...you can say there are these "mysteries"... ;-)
You clearly know more than me about Buddhism.
For me, I limit myself to Theraveda Buddhism and especially to Buddha's teachings only.
Long before I grew an interest on Buddhism, I realized that very few people actually understand great people and their teachings. Normal people dilute, misunderstand, and misinterpret what great people taught and communicated.
Years before I started studying about Buddhism, I always read original sources- Russoe, Voltaire, Tagore, Smith, Lenin, Bose, and so on.
My understanding stood correct. Very few of the people who talk about great people actually undestand them.
So, when I started with Buddhism, I told myself that I will limit myself to Buddha's direct teachings only. It's not that I will not touch Great Vehicle stuff, but I will never go deep into it. But reading never hurts. Tibetan Buddhism is interesting, colorful, and exotic. But not for me!
There are people who understand the great people that came before them- but filtering them out is a lengthy and tiring process.
But I remain genuinely interested to study deep into Dingnaga and Nagarjuna, and their philosophy ajd works.
(And, when you have listeners, co-believers, or followers, may you let yourself watch them both come and go, sensing no flaw in contradiction... --Marc)
Theravedas do not believe in any conversion ceremony unless you are going to be a monk. I have no intention of becoming a monk, as Buddha taught about six-directional duties of a man, and he himself confirmed that thousands of people attained Nirvana while being in a family (was it to Batsagotta? My memory eludes me).
And I am not sure I deserve your compliments. I drink occasionally (intoxicating drinks were forbidden by the Buddha), and I keep eating meat and fish.
I reached the conclusion of absolute nothingness and human beings being not more than complex biological machines with Science only, and no Buddhism.
I started with Buddhism to figure out what to do with the knowledge.
So far, I am very glad, and I am finding what I was looking for and beyond.
I was completely blown away by the ehipassika (come and see) philosophy, lack of blind faith, and the inherent logical structure of Buddha's teaching.
I remain deeply impressed by the same.
If you want kids, just have the kids. You're not going to care that you were being responsible and waiting when you find out waiting means you never get to have them.
Kids from much older parents (40+) are also almost completely weird.
My experience is that kids from older parents are wise beyond their years, and tend to be far more well-adjusted adults.
By what measure? I was 42 and my wife was 40 when we had our daughter who is now 13 and headed off to full time pre conservatory program in violin next year. Well adjusted, sensitive and empathic, I can’t think of any way in which she’s ‘weird’ Certainly not by any conventional definitions of the word.
I'd say that's an unfortunately rare outcome.
Perhaps even a "weird" one.
They are, in every quantitative and qualitative measure, far more well-adjusted than the poor children, like yours, who had no choice but to grow up with literal children as parents.
(Or maybe we shouldn’t generalize like this…?)
The weirdness comes from the social disparity and disconnectedness from peers their own age due to different social attitudes from parents.
The generalisation comes from the observation that older parents tend to lead to less progressive attitudes.
1) What demographics are these older parents in? Are they basically baby boomers or Gen X having kids late? Milennials are approaching 40 years old, so they could potentially be more chill as first time parents perhaps or not.
2) If both parents are old, then I could see the mother potentially feeling overprotective, feeling like all her eggs are in one basket so to speak. I'd kind of think that an older father would probably be more chill.
In 2006 I worked with a software developer that was 50 years old and was equally new to Ruby on Rails and also had his first baby on the way. He was chill and young at heart.
The weirdness is in your head, mate. (Although the generalization is your responsibility.)
I mean, people like you, i.e. people who become parents at a relatively young age, literally have their brain chemistry altered to protect their offspring, WAY before you have actually experienced life as an adult.
I could make grand speculative declarations about your children based on this, but I actually realize it’s meaningless, so I won’t.
Do you have any links or terms to Google to support this? On one hand it sounds reasonable. But on the other hand for the entirety of human history up until the last several decades what you think of as "relatively young" would have been completely normal or even unusally old. So it wouldn't make sense evolutionarily for that to be disadvantageous.
Disclaimer: had kids young and I think people that want kids and are emotionally mature enough to handle the challenge with a similarly minded partner should not wait and do it young. What is a definition of "ready for kids" that wouldn't cause 99% of people in the world to never have the opportunity to have kids.
Yeah, I love you too.
I mentioned it off-hand to an ex-girlfriend and was called a sexist (not in an angry/confrontational way, but pretty much dismissed equally off-hand).
This information is the first result when you Google "fertility by age" [0].
This should be mentioned more often, not to be sexist, but so everyone has the complete information, it's way more cruel to allow people to be deluded until their forties just for them to realize one day they can't have children.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility
> While many sources suggest a more dramatic drop at around 35, this is unclear since few studies have been conducted since the nineteenth century. One 2004 study of European women found fertility of the 27–34 and the 35–39 groups had only a four-percent difference.
From the article:
> Women who become pregnant after age 35 are at increased risk for complications that affect the parent and fetus.
I spent a lot of time wanting things to be perfect, but realized that there's never a perfect time. Other parents and prospective parents I know have said similar things.
Having kids is always a gamble, whether you've got a perfect life or not. You do have to decide if you're ready to shoulder the challenge, and don't force it if you're not, but if you're waiting for external factors to be just right you're probably wasting your time.
"Do not have children" probably isn't going to resonate with anyone. If someone wants that experience for their life it's going to be hard to dissuade, and who are you to make that decision? Should only the rich have children? only the fit? only the wise?
There are other ways to experience the joys of parenthood, especially given that most parents seem to look for any way they can find to offload such joys for some reason. Offer to look after your nieces and nephews for a time, for example. Run a volunteer daycare.
If you are not willing or able to be a good driver, you should not drive. If you are not willing or able to be a good parent, do not have children. Do think about the decision very, very carefully - the stakes are very high. If you don't end up having children - well, at least you didn't end up causing others any harm.
But I understand what you are saying - you should also recognize the situation where you are, in fact, ready. It's like being able to choose when to sit an exam - there is always another week you can spend studying, and at some point you have to decide you are ready once you are in fact reasonably prepared.
Having 50% less people would reduce the overall hunger numbers, but not the ratio.
This argument is flawed because of the we're consuming significantly more resources then our planet could provide sustainably.
Increasing the quantity of consumers will always be detrimental for as long as resources are finite.
That is not true of everyone. Billions live on/with very little, sustainably.
Generally speaking, logistics have huge economies of scale (see Amazon) so an increase in market size will reduce the logistics cost per each item of food. Especially, for cold perishable dairy foodstuffs like dairy the cold chain costs may well dominate the costs of cows.
And don’t forget minimizing waste - which is another major part of the picture.
1. You will still want to be spending overwhelming majority of your time on children in 1, 2, 5, 10 years at least and will be enjoying it.
2. You are in a position to be consistently spending enough time and effort and other resources on them.
3. You are very confident you will be able to be a good parent, and that you are bringing new life into a good environment that both you and them will enjoy.
You need to be in a very good, stable place both physically and mentally for sure before you even consider it.
I would also argue that plenty of people that go for children who are not ready for it don't make it just fine. More importantly, their children, that didn't ask for any of it, end up suffering because of their mistakes. Plenty of people have psychological issues of various degrees because of poor parenting. 15% of families in the UK are lone parent families! By age 12 a staggering 40% (!) of children are not living with both birth parents! [1] And these figures are almost twice as bad for low-income families. And out of the children that do live with both birth parents, 11-28% of the parents report an unhappy relationship. That is the catastrophe.
Humans have this strange blindspot where they tend to be irrational and irresponsible about the decision to procreate. Previous generations did not have much of a choice because of lack of available contraception, lack of knowledge. Our generation has no excuse.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Secondly, I don’t think your data on single parent families really disproves anything, specifically because that data is highly confounded by drug addicts, high school dropouts, unwed couples, accidental pregnancies, and dozens of other factors. If we’re to reason in good faith, the advice I and others are advocating for is that you don’t need to be a homeowner with a 200k+ salary, although of course you should be a reasonably mature, employed adult with a mature partner.
I think it’s in poor faith as well to reduce this to “if you feel a need to have children, you’re irrational and still stuck in go-forth-and-multiply mode”. But, again, this is not an issue anyone can find common ground over with reason or data (which you can find to support any conclusion), and I expect the HN crowd falls on a particular side of this on average, so I won’t argue further.
The problem is the transition to this lower population. You’d have a period of 40/50 years where older people severely outnumber those who are relatively young, leading to massive increase in per capita healthcare expenditures coupled with a decrease in productivity. So no, at least bot in our lifetimes.
There are definitely bad times. But many of the things you mention contradict each other?
Can I afford children? Get a well paying job. Well paying jobs require more hours. That means you have less time to dedicate to your kids.
Realistically, unless you have at least $500,000 saved up, you’re taking a financial gamble having kids.
If they have serious medical issues, any amount of money could be wiped out.
I’d argue there are probably too many people who should be having kids not having kids, than people who shouldn’t be having kids having kids.
Both are obviously happening. And in probably biased because I know so many childless software engineers who make six figures.
But there really, really never is a good time.
Now, there is a difference between just getting cold feet and it actually never being a good time. For example, if you had a choice to sit an exam when ready, you could be tempted to always postpone it another week, because there is always more studying you could do. But realistically, at some point you are actually, objectively ready and should go for it.
So of course you need to consider that one of you will have to become a stay at home parent, or you will need to hire someone to do so instead. That may mean you would need to significantly cut your other expenses, have a much longer commute, live in much worse/smaller accommodation etc. Of course you need to consider if your neighborhood is child-friendly, so that your child can play outside and socialize with other children. If you are planning to involve your relatives, of course you need to first get their informed consent.
Having children is a decision and a choice. You are not forced into it. And it is a choice that must be made responsibly.
- Exercise regularly (doesn't mean hours a day in the gym, just make it a regular habit)
- Don't eat so much junk, don't drink so much
- Have a regular sleep schedule and stick to it.
- don't sacrifice for your work, unless your work is also part of your recreation.
- conversely do prioritize your relationships
- max out your retirement contributions as best you can
Age: 50s; some of above are what I did and some are what I wish I had done.
There's this idea that men don't need to settle down because they can have children at any age, which I guess is technically true but it presupposes that a 30 y/o woman will want to have children with you when you're 45, but they are more inclined to go +5 years, not +15.
Also take prescription labels more seriously, like don't take Advil all the time, because you will get an ulcer and don't mix alcohol and aspirin because it causes liver damage.
Exercise and don't eat to much, and invest in your posture (don't get carpal tunnel, hunch over at the computer, etc)
I think you mean tylenol / acetaminophen (maybe aspirin is bad too?)
Even if you can find a younger mate, you'll want to participate in your kid's lives and that's much harder as an old man. If your kids are teenagers and you're in your sixties, I imagine it can be tough; and if they make the same choices as you, living to see grandchildren is unlikely
If someone told me that 10 years ago, I might have made different life choices.
Yes, and California is one of those states, for purchase-money mortgages on owner occupied properties; and after Jan 1, 2013, also for refinances of purchase-money mortgages on owner occupied properties. Foreclosing the property satisfies the loan, if there's excess from the foreclosure auction, you'll get paid; if there's a deficiency, you'll have taxable income for the amount written off. Word on the street is most California foreclosures go through the non-recourse process (private sale), even for loans that they could sue for deficiency (judicial foreclosure), because the process is quicker and simpler.
What inspired you to join it?
I listened to the Bible lectures that Jordan Peterson made several years ago, and I was intrigued because I had never heard anyone putting aside the historical story of the Bible and instead focusing on its relevance from a neuroscience point of view. This led to me eventually finding the work of Jonathan Pageau. He's an Orthodox icon carver, and he talks about the traditional worldview, how to understand the Bible from an ontological point of view (a hierarchy of being) rather than from a "scientific" or empirical point of view. It took a year or two before I really started to understand what he even meant, but once I started to understand that way of looking at the world, my whole world changed and I quickly joined the Orthodox Church.
To be more specific, I would recommend finding an Orthodox Church local to you, and just go see what it's like. Introduce yourself to the priest after the service, and he would be happy to talk with you and helping you begin to see the Orthodox way of life. The Orthodox approach focuses much more on your relationship with God, rather than a list of checkboxes of do's and don't-dos. It's very participatory. It demands a lot from the followers, but the sense of meaning, being, and purpose that have replaced my old sense of nihilism, meaninglessness, and despair...I can't even put into words how much my life has changed.
1. Doing one's duty with detachment - the mind is trained to detach from the results of one's action and not attach positive or negative associations to it, thus weakening the ego and leading to enlightenment.
2. Self-enquiry and awareness - Pursuit of knowledge, and understanding of your own self in relation to the world to achieve a heightened consciousness of how you perceive the world through your senses, leading to liberation of the self.
3. Meditation - Related to 2.
4. Devotion - Loving devotion and surrender of self to a God leading to enlightenment.
Which one does Orthodoxy fall under? (Sounds like 4).
https://www.provingislam.com/
The door is always open. Please check out: https://www.provingislam.com/
Through the work of Jonathan Pageau, I began to learn to see the world through a more traditional mindset. And I began to look at my own thinking and my previous presuppositions more carefully.
For example, you said "convince yourself that supernatural things exist". But you already believe all kinds of supernatural things exist. You believe in numbers. You believe in categories. You believe in grammar. You believe in logic. You believe in cities. You believe in political offices. Those are all above the natural world. In philosophy, that's called "metaphysics". It's "above" the physical world. You have a hierarchy of values (which is not physical) that determines how you see the world, how you act in the world, and how you categorize what your senses are feeding your brain. This is completely in line with our current scientific understanding of how our brains work. The work of John Vervaeke can also be very helpful.
Anyway, once I got over my empiricism and began to see that empiricism is completely blind to very large swathes of the human experience, it got much easier to say "well, since I have a value system intrinsically, and since a value system is completely necessary, perhaps I should put more effort into structuring it around the highest good."
Please keep in mind this process took a couple of years and will last for the rest of my life, but I hope you can see the stepping stones along the way.
And I don't belive in numbers or cities - they are just useful abstractions that stop existing when I stop thinking about them (and I'm guessing this is not a property of any potential imaginery supreme being).
As for empiricism, I certainly did not throw it out. It's useful, but not for everything. Say I have three knives in my kitchen drawer: a butter knife, a steak knife, and a chef's knife. Empirically speaking, which knife is the best knife? You can tell me all the physical properties of the knife, and the metallurgy of the knife and the shape and weight of each knife, but which knife is the BEST knife, from an empirical point of view? Empiricism has no answer UNTIL you, a person, say "I want to dice this onion" and empiricism can then arrange the knives in a hierarchical order according to which one will work best. But science has nothing to say about "best" or "worst" until an agent in the world has a purpose for which they want to use something. Then empiricism is a wonderful tool.
Another, shorter example: empiricism can help you build a rocket, but has nothing to say about whether you should aim it at the moon, or at a neighboring country.
And one more, just for fun: the empiricism that was used to detect and classify climate change is the same empiricism that was used to make the internal combustion engine. Empiricism is blind as to intent or motive. Empiricism is a toolset, but has no tools for determining a value hierarchy within the bounds of empiricism itself. Empiricism can only go to work once a person has given it a purpose or goal to work towards.
Does the poem still exist?
If You define this poem as ordered list of words that can be interpreted trough cultural and local context, then it existed even before it was written down.
If You want to go more realistic way then this poem exists only through my memory (partly as memory and partly as an emotional association) and will disappear with my demise.
"Ordered" - what is the empirical evidence for order? How can one know the difference between randomness and order with only empirical evidence? Order requires a concept of "orderliness" that one is comparing the evidence to.
"Words" - the empirical evidence of a word is a squiggle on a piece of paper. Everything else about a word and its connection to a thing is purely abstract, and not empirically verifiable.
"cultural" - what is the empirical evidence for a culture? What empirical properties does a culture have? Can it be defined merely by its physical characteristics?
"context" - what does this even mean, empirically speaking. We have infinite number of facts. How does empiricism filter relevant and irrelevant facts? What does it even mean for something to be "relevant" empirically?
"existed even before it was written down" - so something existed with no empirical evidence? How can you say it exists then?
"Memory" - what is the empirical evidence for your memory? Can I hook you up to a machine and stimulate your brain in such a way that I could get the words of the poem to read out on the screen?
"emotional association" - what does that even mean empirically?
I could go on, but I have to get back to work. I hope I have helped you clarify your thinking about how "empirical" you actually are(n't), but I've probably just lost you, and for that, I'm sorry. Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.
Those are mental models that are useful to me but unfortunately I'm not master at using them. And what is more they are inherently wrong (because they are models and not the real thing - putting aside if anything is real).
I do not believe in them more than I need to. But they are the only way that we can communicate on high level - by establishing common model and that talking about its properties. And then we can empirically test if they really behave as we believe (if we want to, otherwise we can just leave it be and use it as toys and as a way to spend our time waiting for nothingness to take us back).
> Please forgive my inability to speak more clearly.
Likewise - as You may have guessed english is not my native language and those concepts that I speak about are not well developed in my mind - they are merly my intuitions (by which I openly admin that I use things that are not empirically proven - but only because that is the only way that our faulty mind can work - by substituting reality with simplified erroneous abstractions that sometimes work).
>I could go on, but I have to get back to work
Wish You a pleasant work! And thank You for good conversation.
I agree with your overall comment thread, that you separate empirical stuff like engines rooted in reality, from values like the highest good. You conclude that a way to achieve the highest good is to be religious. But are you sure? It's certainly good for you, your family and the community around you. But is it the highest good for the world? Across all nations, all the wars that have been fought over religion - I'd dispute that it's still the highest good.
Look at it this way: scientifically, the best explanation we have is that there was nothing and then from an infinitesimal point all of the entire universe sprang. For no discernable reason. That's pretty freaking wild.
The idea that there's a God out there past all that doesn't seem that much crazier.
Now whether or not you actually have a soul is a whole different discussion...
Start planning 5 or 10 years out; do things now that open opportunity later.
Build a reliable social network around you. Help others with no expectation of return. Reconnect with old friends and strengthen bonds with new friends.
Get and keep your body in great health; form good habits now. Fix your posture. Stretch.
Second, I'll throw some things out there, though, apart from what's already been said (like health and travel): - Invest in therapy, if you haven't already. Learn your blind spots, your rackets, and your stories that hold you back.
- Make new friends with younger people, whether it's via mentorship or some other means. If you don't, you'll be an "out of touch boomer" before you know it.
Unlike my 20s, I feel like I navigated my 30s pretty well, so I don't have a lot of things I wish I had done/known that I didn't already. I think that's really the difference as you get older...you developer fewer new regrets.
People matter, even if you're an introvert. Make friends. Don't be a jerk to people.
How you dress matters, even if you think it doesn't (or shouldn't). You don't have to "dress to impress", but don't look like a slob.
Develop empathy. Don't be so focused on getting your code to work, or your hobbies, or whatever, that you don't notice when people are in pain.