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Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

42 points by examplary_cable ↗ HN
What's you life work?

What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life?

Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out of all of them is hard. But I plan on working on companies, causes, philosophies, books, areas etc.

Some of the areas I'm interested in are: Intelligence, IQ, Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Writing, Sleep, Comics, AI, Game Design, Meta Cognition, Zettelkasten, Linguistics, Design, Coordination etc.

My current project is: https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook. It's a mixture of Roam Research, Obsidian, Emacs, VSCode(in the future), Figma etc.

I plan on making an online mode for people to share and collaborate with other people being as easy as sharing a link. I don't plan on making this my "Life's Work" because I believe other opportunities will arise as I go in life.

Examples: - Minecraft(Notch) - RimWorld(Tynan Sylvester) - C++(Bjarne Stroustrup) - Java(James Gosling) - Linux Kernel(Linus Torvalds) - SpaxeX, Tesla(Elon Musk) - Growth Mindset(Carol Dweck)

So ... here it is, what's something you're so dedicated to that you're willing to call it "your life's work"?

91 comments

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082349872349872
I "do only what only I can do", which in practice mostly means grand-scheme-unimportant things for the animals (with people as a subset) in my life.
fuzzfactor
With me it's the science of natural resources and their derivatives, with a strong emphasis on chemicals.

Professionally applied over a lifetime focused on domestic & international commerce.

These are things I will not be retiring from.

When the ships get really big there will always be a situation where it's most valuable to have uniquely deep experience, now more than ever over a greater number of decades.

Many other unrelated and unscientific things I will also continue for life as much as I can, but for work that's how simple it is.

jstx1
Don't have one and don't expect to. Seems like an absurd expectation to have of oneself.
jameal
I'm not sure what form it will take exactly, but I would say my life's work is to live as fully into my values as I can.

I used to just want to have a nice job with autonomy and to be able to work from home, until I got it and I realized that it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I had security but I was disconnected.

There is so much disconnection in the world. We become disconnected from ourselves, from others and from reality. I think that it causes a lot of trouble for people personally and for society at large.

I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations. I want to help other people with their personal development because I see it as the greatest lever for creating a more connected humanity. I love development but this is what I'm truly passionate about.

examplary_cable
> I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations

I see this a somewhat of an identity problem. If you pick "shy" identities for yourself, then they all correlate on being shy( e.g: Autistic, Programmer, Nerd etc). So the more strongly you feel about being X, the shy-er you'll become. That's why I don't like to call myself too many things because I sub-consciously attach the sub-traits of the personality unto myself.

f0e4c2f7
I enjoy learning things and helping people. Most of what I do fits into one of those two categories.
throwaway22032
Chilling out, maxin, relaxing all cool.

More seriously, learning.

We have enough of everything. Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way, I'm quite content with just being.

qorrect
> Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way

What do you mean crippling ? We're living longer than we did 100 years ago through advances in science in medicine, I see a lot of tech as net positive.

badpun
How old are you? I was like that in my 20s and 30s, but in my 40s I'm becoming increasingly aware of my mortality. Just chilling does not feel like the best use of the rest of my time.
qdot76367
I suspect https://buttplug.io is gonna keep me busy. I’ve already been working in the intimate haptics field for ~18 years and it’s remained interesting the whole time, so no plans on stopping.
sshine
Don't you get numb at some point?

Sorry, this subject is too funny. :-)

qdot76367
That’s why it’s so fun to keep working on!
Decabytes
I've been trying to find my "life's work" for years. I've tried writing, painting, drawing, programming, linocuts, woodworking etc. I really want to find that thing but nothing has been fulfilling enough so far
ileitch
While I’m unsure I’ll be using Swift for the rest of my life, I’ll continue to work on my little tool to detect unused code for as long as I can. It’s my most popular open-source contribution, and it brings me joy knowing others find it useful.

https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery

jamil7
Thanks for your work on this I had no idea it existed, definitely going to try it out.
sassyonsunday
My family. I never thought I would be able to have a family when I was growing up but now I have a husband and we have a baby so I'll spend my life making sure our family is happy and healthy as best I can.
iancmceachern
My family.

I design medical devices, have designed many real good ones. But that is just work.

duringwork12
I'm trying to add a ping pong table to a park next to my house. Got like 2k of the 5k i need so far. After that probably will try to get a dog fence and a pickleball court.
CincinnatiMan
Is the ping pong table going to be outdoors? I've thought about pursuing something similar but I feel like playing ping pong outside would be an exercise in frustration if you had even the slightest bit of wind.
baandang
I grew up playing ping pong in the backyard because we had no room inside. It sucks just as much as you would imagine it would because of the wind.

It is not quite as bad as trying to surf on a pond but it is down that path.

CincinnatiMan
My children, and hopefully eventually grandchildren. Making sure they grow up to be good people and are happy.
collyw
It's quite encouraging to see a few answers like this.
Moxdi
happiness, i want to master happiness, i want to enjoy my life, be the happiest i can be, for as many prolonged lenghts i can have, recently i was happy for whole month while doing my skydiving course, i plan on doing more of that, once i get bored of it i will find something else but yeah

personal happiness

nisegami
I've posted some really funny tweets. I'm content with that being my life's work.
unintendedcons
Founding a school for future leaders, starting in Toronto.

Combining the Sudbury Valley School model with the Free Software movement, a democratic makerspace school.

hirvi74
My life's work is surviving. Everything I do and have done has been to keep myself alive to some degree or another. Everything else is just a bunch of distractions and abstractions that boil down to same thing at the end of the day.
ElevenLathe
Love this answer. Sometimes I feel like "merely" surviving is looked down upon, but the art of survival is the only lasting thing we can hand down the generations. The environment changes so rapidly (especially in the Anthropocene) that usually the best we can do is figure out how to survive right now. Anything else is superfluous if we can't do that.
hirvi74
As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, once said when asked, "What is the meaning of life?"

> “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

abnercoimbre
I really like this view and have been adopting it often.
mark_l_watson
I want to be content almost all the time.

Professionally, around 1978 I had an epiphany: I realized that I was sometimes very good/lucky at solving ‘show stopper’ type problems at work, and I 99% freed myself from worrying about my job. I started a hard policy of working just 32 hours a week (taking 80% salary) and prioritized learning things that I cared about. I also became more generous in putting energy into helping coworkers; I have had 6 visits this year from old co-workers (I live off the beaten path in Sedona Arizona) so I don’t feel like I am just bragging when I say I have respected coworkers and cared about them.

So really, my life’s work is learning what I want to learn in tech and spirituality (mostly Self Realization Fellowship and also Buddhism).

EDIT: I forgot the ‘big thing’: I love my family and friends.

rmelton
COSMOS: An open source command and control software. Currently primarily used with satellites, but also great for home automation. https://openc3.com
zmgsabst
Explaining how the Curry-Howard square [1] relates to DNNs and AI more broadly.

Not a full time job, but been at it fives years and still going… so that seems the strongest contender so far.

[1] - Alegebra-geometry equivalence commutes with logic-computation equivalence; this provides a map between the world of type statements and the world of diffy-Q networks.

082349872349872
ok, I'll bite: algebraically logic is being and computation is becoming; how does this geometrically map into denotations and diffyqs?
zmgsabst
You have something like this [1], where you have clear maps from the type theory world into the typed representation of software and the category map structures to Euclidean VM/difference EQ representation of software. This is classic Curry-Howard.

And algebra/geometry split of being/becoming happens in both the type theory/category theory and typed program/difference equation relations.

[1] - https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/curry-howard-square-graphi...

082349872349872
could I get a quick example? let's say the top of the square is:

    A * A->B                 
    --------     <------>    f(x), where f:A->B and x:A
       B
what does that interval map onto on the bottom of the square? is the inverse map also interesting?

Edit: are you familiar with Vicker's work? if so, would it help understand (I have it saved off but have not gotten into it yet) the content of the square? https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/talks.php

zmgsabst
I have two white papers on transporting shape types to difference equations on images; and am working on a third related to models of Zn.

https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-as-digital-i...

https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-have-operati...

This is pretty new; but the main interest is actually the inverse mapping — can you recover a type theory that is the “internal language” of the diagram modeling the difference equations that (eg) represents a DNN?

That would be the “effective semantics” of the DNN, expressed as typed statements.

- - -

I’m following the work of (eg) Michael Shulman on attaching types to categories; and my own experience as an SDE on the logic, types, difference equation side. (There’s some papers on programs as Euclidean VMs I used as well, but I don’t have them handy.)

The weakest link is category to difference equations; but that exists to some degree already due to physics — and I’m muddling my way through implementing that to gain deeper insight myself.

082349872349872
Cool! Feel free to let me know when you've written up groups/Zn.
jcpst
I used to be into a ton of different things, I still find a lot in the world fascinating.

But it's too much. Over time I have been slowly carving out the life I want to live. Cutting out the distractions that are only mildly interesting.

It's down to:

* My family's well-being, which includes myself.

* My music career (composer/songwriter).

* A continual series of actions to keep tipping my work/life balance farther and farther to the "life" side.

* Camping.

ChrisMarshallNY
I'm writing software to help people Recover from drug addiction. I expect to be doing it until I pop my clogs.

The coroner will need to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

skhm
Do you have a link or anything you can point to? This is a great calling.
ChrisMarshallNY
I don't really take credit for that stuff in public, but it's not a secret. Feel free to contact me.
recursivedoubts
my children, first & foremost

technically:

https://htmx.org - bringing hypermedia back as a viable web architecture

https://hyperscript.org - bringing HyperTalk back as a viable scripting language

https://grugbrain.dev - bringing humility back as a viable programming vibe

examplary_cable
> https://htmx.org

I love htmlx. That you so much for this. I'm currently using https://alpinejs.dev/ because it allows me to work directly with HTML so I can have meta-programming capabilities that React.js/Vue.js simply could not handle.

That you for htmlx!

jonjacky
grugbrain.dev is wonderful. Also, it is an example of the simplicity it advocates: One file, simple HTML with a bit of simple CSS inline at the start of the file. That's all! Simple and effective.
profstasiak
just mindless grind. one hour commute 8 hours of mindless CRUD rest of the time spent in front of screens.
PainfullyNormal
I used to hate the grind, too. But, as somebody who's been out of work longer than he thought he would be and is starting to wonder how he's going to pay the rent, I long for a bit of the grind right now.
cwbrandsma
Raising my kids, and I have 5 of them. I've built some cool software, which has built companies and positively affected the lives of millions of people, but in the end that was just a paycheck.

One kid will be a nurse, another is in engineering school, another seems to be destined to be an artist, and the last two can do almost anything. But even more importantly, they are all kind people (nerdy, but kind). I will take that.

rektide
I'd like to work piercing the veil between user & software. The mechanisms & purpose of software should be made visible, and be up for live modification & experimentation, ideally in a semi-safe / isolated / containerized virtuality. At some point, we need to move beyond there being a scribes vs everyone else distinction, and start to have a more holistic engageable computing, and this seems like a strong requisite.

Presently, I believe client-side web, where computing represents itself as DOM (ex: react-router) serves as a good base to start to work from, where we can build more elements that help us view/examine/operate on the other elements.