This is a fantastic article - I wish I had known this guide when I was young. I liked it so much, I sent a link to my teenage son. However, if you would not mind, could this be edited so my teeanage daughter would also enjoy it? Unless, of course, she wants to be a "ladies magnet" - I support her life choices. But if we want more women entrepreneurs, we should encourage them to follow a path like this without the possible sexism.
While I think that you're heart is in the right place, an expectation that personal advice be written in a gender-neutral environment is excessive. Oliver is a man (I presume) writing a guide based on his experience.
Hidden handicaps can hinder some level progression (like jobs, social acceptance) may really frustrate some players. No mention of the luckless that spawn in unfortunate terrain/hostile environments.
Compared to similar players I feel like I need to level grind more than those that spent the same amount of time on it. And that's how I discovered the game is not balanced, which is sometimes rather depressing.
Thanks. I did agonise over that part at the time I wrote it. I couldn't think of a more inclusive alternative, and chose something a little comedic on purpose ('ladies man') in the hope it wouldn't be taken too seriously.
Sorry, you're on the frontpage, it's going to be taken too seriously.
I don't think anyone is actually going to catch the joke that generally speaking, entrepreneurs and ladies magnets are not actually "something bigger" at all.
I thought it was a great article, but I think it would be better if the image of the 'random character's at the start showed racial variation - saying that your character is totally random and then having a picture of 6 white people was a bit incongruent to me. Otherwise excellent.
I thought it was fun. But the protagonist in every screen shot appears to be a straight white male.
Depending on how you're counting, that's about 15% of the world population.
Why not make it interactive, and let the user choose who they are? Or add more variation to the images? Or talk about getting on with people who "aren't like me"?
I think you're right that life's character selection is a random number generator that is in some ways predictable. But I think PRNG usually stands for Pseudo Random Number Generator, which in this context seems different. Almost as if you waited long enough, the same people would start appearing again...
I see what you're getting at, but I disagree; you can't really chose your parents can you. So from your point of view, however you end up when you're born, is actually completely random and out of your control.
So Oliver had 86 karma before posting this. Assuming this marks the start of his intent to post all his 2014 articles, I shall enjoy observing how rapidly this number blossoms...
Thanks! I've not really posted much on HN before, although I've had a few of my posts turn up in here by themselves, and I thought it would be worth trying myself.
I think some crossing [of fingers] might be in order. HN has a weird hatred of Quora, so if anyone ever finds out how internet-famous you are there, there could be trouble!
How many of you clicked on the 'PRESS START' and then started to wonder if it's actually a key and realized you have no idea what you are doing like life itself.
Only 19,345 days remaining in your life (assuming there's no way to extend life beyond 80 in my life time and still be solid) how depressing is that? The only thing that now makes sense is go full out Skyrim, raids and pillaging, indulging in hedonism and a senseless pursuit of scarce material goods.
On another note, this site seems like a personal therapist. When I read one article I just feel calm and excited depending on the article. It's a freaking goldmine of life hacks.
"How many of you clicked on the 'PRESS START' and then started to wonder if it's actually a key and realized you have no idea what you are doing like life itself."
I clicked, but just because I wanted to make sure I don't miss an easter egg or something.
This is awesome. What I'd really like to have is an improved HUD for this game that permanently displays the internal states of Health, Energy and Willpower. Google Glass + some biosensors maybe.
Enjoyed all of this aside from the "finding a partner" section.
Finding a partner is trivial, keeping that partner is the hard part. Unless you want to keep finding new partners all the time (some do).
Maybe it's blasphemy for me to say this, but in my life it's been a lot harder to start a relationship than to keep one. Relationship books say that you have to work just as hard to keep one but that's nonsense. I don't need to buy my spouse flowers constantly or go on dates every weekend. (But surprise flowers are always a good idea.)
Well they're sort of right, but those material things aren't actually "working on the relationship", IMO. I've always taken it as "working in being the best person you can be" -- seems to have worked for the past few years for me so far :)
It's the same in my experience. It was very difficult for me to start a relationship, and much easier to keep it.
Starting one still looks rather random to me, you roll the dice until finally someone that you like likes you too, and that's most of what there's to it. Your attitude or effort can give you some small modifiers or penalties to the dice roll, but that's about it. It might sound childish but honestly, if I have to start a new relationship at some point, I'll be as lost in a sea of pure chaos as I was the last time.
On the other hand, keeping a relationship is pretty rational. Love the other person, care about her, don't be a dick, be emphatic, try to make her life as good as possible, and if you are not unusually unlucky you'll normally succeed.
Maybe it's also that as people that for one reason or other have a very hard time looking for relationships, we tend to value them more and make more effort to keep them than those who have it easier to get into one.
A lot of people try to figure out things by themselves, and some things have to be understood by oneself. But a lot of things can also be understood in books, or by listenning to the experiences of others that have failed where you are trying to suceed hundred of years before you.
Reading skill-building books is like grinding orcs for two hours to get to the next level. (Reading fun books is another mini-game. Every now and then, you can find a book or 2 that is both fun and skill-building, which is more fun than any game I've ever encountered).
Every time I see an article like this I just want to grab the readers and shout "Read a philosophy book!" to them[1].
Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right.
[1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy For Life (And Other Dangerous Situations)" by Jules Evans or "Consolations of Philosophy" by Alain De Botton as a starting point.
Basicaly those readers try not to waste time on reading old creazy guys from ancient past. It is easier to get pieces here and there on random internet sites.
I would sum this article with such quote:
"It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing." On the shortness of life - Seneca
Agreed, and I'd like to add that there's a reason why a few thousand years after Aristotle (and the rest) we still don't know a good recipe for a happy/whatever life.
On the contrary, we know so many recipes, and some have proven much better than others, while some have become obsolete. Its like asking for "the" (singular) recipe for cooking food.
What the philosophers are good at, is helping the reader come up with a logical method for making value judgments about those recipes. Its (mostly) not "here's a great piece of source code" its mostly more like "and this is why OO design is better (or not)".
I view it as a sanity check that's preventing us from transcending from reality into imagination, which might or might not have anything to do with how world works.
This article isn't interesting because of philosophy or because it says something important about life.
Nice thing is the way it shows life and computer game in parallel. So it has nothing in common with reading philosophy book. (unless you mean after reading philosophy book one won't waste his time on stupid things like this)
Aristotle (and Seneca but especially Aristotle) meticulously mentioned their sources. They had tons of original and unprecedented thoughts besides those anyway.
> At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again.
This implies that you have some sort of control between the start and the end - which is completely untrue, because:
What genes you get from your parents and in what environment you are put will determine everything that will happen in your head. And everything that happens in your life, has its inception in your head (over which you could never have the slightest control).
This is also the reason why whe should all have the same rights (and wealth), independently of the fact of how well we were (and therefor now are) "equipped": There is no such thing as a "free will".
Everything in your life is nothing but a function of 2 variables:
1) Your inherited genes
2) Your inherited initial location
It means we can never be judged by anyone.
EDIT: The above is not based on any beliefs (as in "religious" beliefs), it's pure logic. (So, when I wrote "is completely untrue", I meant "is completely illogic".)
EDIT II:
Sorry, I can't recommend any literature for this. It's all based on my own thinking.
But actually, you don't need any book, because I can't call this a "worldview", I can only call it: "100% pure logic". (Meaning: no cultural/religious/otherwise arbitrary beliefs allowed.)
So, if you can think logically and are willing to do some mental work, you - and everybody else who does it - will automatically get there. That's kind of the beauty of logic - it's the only thing/law in the universe that seems to be an absolute/unquestionable truth, everything else being invented by somebody.
Yes it does, it means every "frame" (yay video games terms) of your life, including the complete state of your mind, is a cause of the previous "frame".
Every decision is a product of your experience and state of mind, that are the product of you previous decisions, that are the product of your previous experience.. something, something!
Yes, but to speak in video games term, you can still move the arrow of your character. Of course your decision are the product of your previous experience + a lot of other factors. But I believe there is a random factor, when we make a decision, we do choose one over the other.
We'll never know anyway, but I feel like there would be nothing, no universe, no life, no space etc... if there was not this "random" thing.
Randomness isn't exactly how most people would define control either.
Nevertheless, I agree with your critique of determinism. Think outside the "system". Nobody knows why stuff exists or why it behaves the way it does, it's all just observation and ideas.
You can go get another beer, as would be expected given you had three previously and chose to come to a bar, or you can choose to go home and sleep, or get in your car and drive, or swear off drinking forever.
The fact that options are present to you because of your previous choices (causality) is irrelevant to the fact that you still have full control over what option you select (free will).
You're getting unfairly voted down rather than responded to.
A reasonable disagreement is pointing out you're assuming zero randomness in the universe (which includes in your head, and everyone elses head, I'm not a mind-body dualist) so no development of unique new ideas, or having unique new experiences or perceptions, both of which feed on each other to generate new echos of randomness long after something interesting happens. Also it assumes no social interaction with others however distantly linked to "interesting random people" even if the individual and their direct contacts are in fact really boring (aka effect of arts in general).
That is a much more productive form of disagreement than hitting the down button.
(Edited to add I think you're getting downvoted because of a cultural-linguistic meme or bug that whenever someone in the USA spins a story with "can't or don't judge" that usually means its a known and obvious statement of fact that they did something they and everyone else knows is wrong, and they have no better spin option. Last (modern) refuge of a scoundrel. Thus the downvotes)
Are there truly random events at the sub-atomic level? Or could it be simply that we don't understand yet what's happening but everything is deterministic? If it's the former, then there is no destiny, it is not determined.
The effect of these tiny random events would propagate upwards and perhaps cause an apple to fall from a tree. A sub-atomic particle vibrating randomly in a certain way could fire a neuron, giving you a new thought.
Even if life isn't determined, can you really say there is free will? You can't control the way that sub-atomic particles will behave, you may have the illusion of control in your head but at the end of the day it would come down to physics and randomness.
Personally, I don't find this opinion a healthy one, so I tend not to dwell on it much.
I like the idea of seeing life as deterministic or not. It's definitely a matter of "belief" when you put it that way. Although my scientific mind tells me nothing would exist if true random didn't exist. Thus the universe is not deterministic. But that's a question we'll never be able to answer anyway.
This is why I downvoted the parents by the way. I feel like there is no safe discussion when it starts with strong opinions ("which is completely untrue"). There is no right or wrong here so better be open minded.
No, actually not. The current state of research in quantum physics makes it look like there is randomness. But the thing about randomness is: Nobody has any control over it. So again, life (and the universe) may not be fully deterministic, but we have no absolute responsibility for whatever happens (only a relative one, relative to our culture, that is).
> Also it assumes no social interaction with others
No, of course we have social interactions, which influence us. But they are themselves a function of 1) our genes (i.e. whom we approach or not) and 2) our initial location (with all its properties).
> But the thing about randomness is: Nobody has any control over it.
Again, you're stating things as facts that there's no reason to believe are actually true. There are models in which quantum randomness does allow for free will, and no one knows whether they're right.
The multiverse theory, in case you're unfamiliar, says that each time there are different ways a quantum event could go, the universe splits into multiple universes, one in which it went each way. There is an extension to this in which free will is manifested by your consciousness following a given universe in each split.
This has the strange consequence that only you have free will, as perceived by your own consciousness. I don't think this makes any less sense than anything else related to quantum physics, but it is definitely weird.
I think that inherited genes and location only plays a smaller part - but it depends on the person. For a normal western person my personal belief is that it is less than 10%.
I am a strong believer in free will and it's what makes us so different than animals. Animals have insticts and very little free will.
The thing is that if you believe in free will you have more free will as you will change your way of thinking. At least I believe that.
And what makes the person? A Person is an amalgamation of inherited genes and collated personal experiences. Most of the personal experiences are a direct result of your location.
I think it is very important for us to go easy on someone who has gone astray or in our opinion is not living a life the way we think it is ought to be lived.
A Person who is a firm believer in free will would not judge anyone or for that matter force his/her view on anyone else.
> I am a strong believer in free will and it's what makes us so different than animals. Animals have instincts and very little free will.
Let me give you a friendly advice. Belief in free will has a purpose on it's own, just like belief in God. But if you choose to believe, stay away from attempts to explain it scientifically. You will only waste everyone's time and energy. Just assume free will as a fact and move on.
And keep animals out of it. They have as much free will as you.
Actually, the advantage of science is that it can predict the future in an accurate fashion.
Ergo: I know x will happen because when all the variables are the same in the past, x has always happened.
The accuracy of the prediction is what changes in science, which is why it is a better system to use for predicting future events than other dogma based systems.
Ergo: Recently discovered factor y can be changed as a variable, and this accounts for x sometimes not happening the same way. We must account for this as a variable too.
I've been looking for a book or other source that makes a case for this worldview in a straightforward, logical way that is as simple as possible (but no simpler).
If we can never be judged then you cannot judge those who support our current system of inequality of rights and wealth - they are just acting according to their two variables.
Wrong. When I say "you cannot judge", I mean "moral" judgment. Which is not to be confused with "sanctions" (like a criminal must sometimes be separated from society to protect the latter, via a prison sentence).
This is Determinism, which is a very old idea (not to say it's wrong - just that this is a philosophical debate that rages on). There are lots of interesting works written on it versus Free Will.
My main issue with it is it seems to discount random events - and at a quantum level, it seems like there are genuinely random events, like radioactive decay. So it's not really accurate to say there are only two variables, there are really countless ones, and even small changes (like a few atoms splitting here and there) could lead to something like cancer in a friend or relative, having a serious impact on one's life. Still isn't an argument for the existence of free will though.
In the end most of those books have a huge build-up, but if you truly understand them, you can sum them up in one sentence. "If you got hurt you will hurt others". "Everything you do is egoistical". "Everything is choice". "There is no choice".
But then again, you don't need books for that. If you have the luxury (or curse) of being rational, you're 10 (5 maybe) and you're already having fatalist/whateverist thoughts. Then the next day you think about it, and realize it doesn't change anything in your life, and you move on. Then 10 years later you finally get to study the concept (or read it on a blog) and, well, it still doesn't solve or introduce any problem in your reality.
People who think/act irrationally aren't sensitive and don't find revelation when they read or hear about those principles, only confirmation where they can. There are things that happen in life that can shake you up and change you, but from a piece of text you'll only assimilate what's aligned with your views, IMHO.
Sounds logical. But, and I'm not sure if it's correlated with gender, my mother and her mother both have several baby teeth with permanent teeth above them still, so there are cases like that screwing with the data.
One of the philosophy scholars you mention, Alain De Botton, wrote an entertaining and insightful book called How Proust Will Change Your Life (or something along those lines).
His goal was to make notoriously dense writings accessible to everyday people who are interested in literature.
I think this piece about life as a video game has a similar goal. Just as I would rather learn about Proust through Alain De Botton, I would rather learn about philosophy through the contemporary vehicle of video games.
Sigh. Hacker News top comment. It's not "wow this is great!" or "nice work, great illustrations, I'll show this to my students!"
It's "I'm so irritated that I already knew what you just told me and I learned it from a better source that I want to assault you!! Why don't you read the same things I read!!?"
This is a fun little post. I did have a nitpick with the points about willpower, though. There's evidence that's it's limited if you believe willpower is limited, and nonlimited if you believe willpower is nonlimited (http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Publications_files/Job...). (And in other ego depletion literature, loss of willpower may just be reflecting lower glucose levels.)
> All players die after about 29,000 days, or 80 years. If your stats and skills are good, you might last a little longer. There is no cheat code to extend this.
I am curious. Are video games such an influential component of American twenty something year olds that every fucking thing has to be couched in terms of gaming lingo? I see this shit on Reddit all the time and it baffles me.
I think you're off-base. Rather, the conceptualization of game theory is so all-encompassing of the dynamics of agents interacting in a resource-rich environment, that it can't help but make an informative metaphor for 'life'.
On a completely different note, a lot of us grew up without fathers, or many adults paying attention to us. When I entered the world as a young adult, all I knew about making moves and talking to people was what I learned playing RPGs. And I wish I was kidding.
Did you seriously expect to learn a meaning of life from a blog post? Or you were expecting an advice how to live better, faster, happier life?
It's just a blog post that attempts to be fun. As much as can be expected is few nods and smiles while reading it, and a few seconds pause to think about it at the end. And that's it, it's not like author pretends he's Seneca or Aristotle or semeone else.
"Did you seriously expect to learn a meaning of life from a blog post? Or you were expecting an advice how to live better, faster, happier life?"
Sure. There's plenty of blogs like that, aside from fluffblogs. Almost no one will agree with any given collection but here's one anyway. Mrmoneymustache for personal finance and any generic paleo blog for food, health, and fitness (robb wolf used to be the center of that world, seems he's being out-SEO-ed by competitors now). How much money will improve your life is debatable nonetheless you've got the zerohedge and thehousingbubbleblog. I tend not to agree with them, but thousands (millions?) of religious bloggers at least think they're improving lives, even if I think they're generally doing the opposite. If you allow podcasts (close enough to blogs, read a blog post out loud) there are uncountable educational lecture podcasts (I have listened to about a dozen history related ones, why are history podcasts so popular?) and the survival podcast (which is almost surely not what you think it is, its sort of a how to prosper being a very small scale homesteader, basically this is how to be a non startup non tech non govt handout entrepreneur)
There's probably a difficult and complicated challenge for a startup to categorize blogs as either deep or fluff. In the spirit of PG, everyone thinking its too hard means its a great startup idea.
Author here. Originally I had a lot of blather in that section, but given:
1. It's a long post
2. Most of my readers are presumably >15 yrs old
3. I honestly think most people up to age 15 have limited control over their lives
I decided to trim it down. Obviously I am not literally saying that a 14-and-11-months year old has no influence over their destiny but a 15 year old does. But superfluous precision is the enemy of effective writing; you end up with a legal document.
That's because you're playing it on creative mode though. Starts you out as a white dude born in the USA and also turns off the mobs. Things get a lot more interesting in Survival mode where you could be born in a slum in and you start seeing mobs like "Birth Complications" right out the spawn zone.
Seriously, THIS is the advice that you'd give to, for example, your son? Views like that (both the content and the form that was used to present it) are a great example for why lots of people see the techies as detached simpletons.
It's not that hard - orienting your life around becoming rich is clearly a trap and, as for the remaining two options, it's better to make more money than less as long as the job doesn't suck too badly.
I'd say - set yourself a comfortable base by selling your time and talents (ex. by working as a programmer) and then, if you have enough spare time, do what you love. Going 100% after passion is as dangerous as going 100% after money.
Interesting point. I quite enjoyed it, but didn't take it as seriously as everyone else in this thread. I mean, it's relating life to an 16-bit computer game, what would one expect?
I expect perhaps there may be a few more like me, upvoting the article because they enjoyed it, but then leaving it at that. There's not much to discuss when you realise the true purpose of the article.
Negative comments seem to come from people who took it a bit too seriously, in which case it becomes easier to generate discussion points.
because the most vocal people are always a minority.
I'm not saying the article is good, but it's enjoyable and the comparison to life with a video game is fun to read. What most of the comments here fail to see.
Things that are popular are incendiary to those who don't like them.
If an obscure artist makes some music you don't like, nobody cares. But if that artist sells a million records, you'll see an online explosion of rage.
It seems we're wired to react when our tastes don't match those of the groups we hang around in.
Right out of the site guidelines, "would find interesting". Not "dropping out of my religion to make him my new guru"
Also a long list of things I like is boring and not worth talking about, and probably about the same list for most of us. For example I liked his graphics arts style/technique and the story pacing cannot be improved, and I suspect I'm not alone in those opinions. This guy certainly knows what he's doing WRT those topics. Wasn't that boring to read? I'm sure he would feel better if every post was "dude, love your font choice" fawning, but if he wants blind unconditional love, he should buy a dog, not get submitted to HN.
Somehow nobody has brought up ties to the classic Hasbro "Game of Life" which is the very first thing I thought of when I saw the article. Now that is an observation of something weird happening. I can't be the only HN reader to have played the hasbro game and gotten a mild nostalgia kick...
My theory is that many of us (probably including myself :)) doesn't have much clue on the rules of the game. Imagine playing chess (something many of us are very good at!) and being unable to think one move ahead. The ability to visualize what will happen in the next move is not in your brain. No matter how much practice you put in or how many games you play, you still get beaten even by children because you make horrible blunders like placing your queen unprotected next to a pawn. Sounds frustrating doesn't it? Now imagine someone writes a short chess tutorial basically amounting to "Just practice and think logically!" It would rub you the wrong way, wouldn't it?
Graphics: 9/10
Pretty good, shadows and lighting effects portrayed quite well. Some really strange pixelation going on though. It's on a very small scale, but still noticeable with the right instruments and upsetting to the general public.
Sound: 6/10
Fantastic variety. Only works well for the first 2/3rds of the game or so, then becomes quite buggy.
Story: 2/10
It's not obvious if there is really a story going on here. Most players experience relatively little classical narrative, and that which does exist seems quite randomly or recklessly placed, possibly completely contrived from otherwise non-storylike events.
Multiplayer: 5/10
A wide variety of things to do with others, but many of them are considered quite boring or uninteresting. The gameplay mechanics sometimes seem to encourage active hostility or selfishness between players, which seems clearly suboptimal.
I really don't know how to say this without sounding like a complete bozo, but I really think that this is a very, very sad perspective on life.
It tries to quantify every aspect of life (or rather: disregards any aspect that can't be quantified) and therefore leads to a view of the world that is completely mechanic.
What's worse are it's dogmatic undertones. It kind of suggests that these are general rules that apply to everyone. And if you don't want to be a loser you have to play by those rules.
Games have winners and losers. Who is to become a winner or a loser is decided by some arbitrary rules that are predefined and can't be changed. Is that the kind of mental mindset that you want to equip yourself with? That you will be either a winner or a loser, by the standards of other people? Please, we already have a high chance of getting burnout in our profession. You don't have to forcefully increase it.
So as a little comic relief, here is a quote form the article:
> When your willpower is low, you are only able to do things you really want to.
By contrast, here is a quote from Bob Dylan that I happen like:
> A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
So if you want to be a success by the standards of Dylan, you know what to do ;)
It's because it is a sad depiction of life and totally misguided for the purposes of making a catchy post. He took the games analogy to far the way of mechanical games that emphasize the hamster wheel approach to life.
That's not to say game play doesn't provide a very good analogy. Life makes much more sense when you relate to it like a variety of games each with their own rules. When you know the rules, everything becomes more clear. What you do with it is still up to you, but it's better than being in the dark.
Having a more playful approach to life and finding the fun in the most trivial of activities is rewarding. But unlike what the author emphasizes the in-the-moment experiences matter more than the milestones one reaches for the sake of reaching milestones.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadhttp://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...
Hidden handicaps can hinder some level progression (like jobs, social acceptance) may really frustrate some players. No mention of the luckless that spawn in unfortunate terrain/hostile environments.
Compared to similar players I feel like I need to level grind more than those that spent the same amount of time on it. And that's how I discovered the game is not balanced, which is sometimes rather depressing.
Open to suggestions.
I don't think anyone is actually going to catch the joke that generally speaking, entrepreneurs and ladies magnets are not actually "something bigger" at all.
Depending on how you're counting, that's about 15% of the world population.
Why not make it interactive, and let the user choose who they are? Or add more variation to the images? Or talk about getting on with people who "aren't like me"?
Good fun piece though.
- Multiplayer is the only option you can select.
- There is no pause button.
- Your character is truly random selected so expect anything.
- There is only one map which is way too big, I haven't had time to go most of the places yet but not complaining.
- You only have one chance to survive the game, no 'save the state' option.
It is a unique game with unique rules. I like it!
Actually no, it's more like PRNG. Which stands for Predictably Random Natural Genetic.
Lack of save state is really bad though. Also humans are hard to grasp. Really poor UI.
Addendum: Article also forgets to mention the University stage, otherwise known as LFG.
crosses fingers
Only 19,345 days remaining in your life (assuming there's no way to extend life beyond 80 in my life time and still be solid) how depressing is that? The only thing that now makes sense is go full out Skyrim, raids and pillaging, indulging in hedonism and a senseless pursuit of scarce material goods.
On another note, this site seems like a personal therapist. When I read one article I just feel calm and excited depending on the article. It's a freaking goldmine of life hacks.
I clicked, but just because I wanted to make sure I don't miss an easter egg or something.
Starting one still looks rather random to me, you roll the dice until finally someone that you like likes you too, and that's most of what there's to it. Your attitude or effort can give you some small modifiers or penalties to the dice roll, but that's about it. It might sound childish but honestly, if I have to start a new relationship at some point, I'll be as lost in a sea of pure chaos as I was the last time.
On the other hand, keeping a relationship is pretty rational. Love the other person, care about her, don't be a dick, be emphatic, try to make her life as good as possible, and if you are not unusually unlucky you'll normally succeed.
Maybe it's also that as people that for one reason or other have a very hard time looking for relationships, we tend to value them more and make more effort to keep them than those who have it easier to get into one.
Cheat codes: There are no cheat codes.
Or if you want to be controversial-
Cheat codes: - Find a rich partner - Win a lottery - Get born in a rich family (random)
A lot of people try to figure out things by themselves, and some things have to be understood by oneself. But a lot of things can also be understood in books, or by listenning to the experiences of others that have failed where you are trying to suceed hundred of years before you.
Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right.
[1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy For Life (And Other Dangerous Situations)" by Jules Evans or "Consolations of Philosophy" by Alain De Botton as a starting point.
I would sum this article with such quote:
"It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing." On the shortness of life - Seneca
What the philosophers are good at, is helping the reader come up with a logical method for making value judgments about those recipes. Its (mostly) not "here's a great piece of source code" its mostly more like "and this is why OO design is better (or not)".
Rationality is the main principle of "exact" science too, and is a good tool to work within what we know.
Unfortunately, it's also a limitation, and maybe what's preventing us from transcending our bonds[1].
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/
"This crazy Greek drank Hemlock. What happened next will blow your mind."
> At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again.
This implies that you have some sort of control between the start and the end - which is completely untrue, because:
What genes you get from your parents and in what environment you are put will determine everything that will happen in your head. And everything that happens in your life, has its inception in your head (over which you could never have the slightest control).
This is also the reason why whe should all have the same rights (and wealth), independently of the fact of how well we were (and therefor now are) "equipped": There is no such thing as a "free will".
Everything in your life is nothing but a function of 2 variables:
1) Your inherited genes
2) Your inherited initial location
It means we can never be judged by anyone.
EDIT: The above is not based on any beliefs (as in "religious" beliefs), it's pure logic. (So, when I wrote "is completely untrue", I meant "is completely illogic".)
EDIT II: Sorry, I can't recommend any literature for this. It's all based on my own thinking.
But actually, you don't need any book, because I can't call this a "worldview", I can only call it: "100% pure logic". (Meaning: no cultural/religious/otherwise arbitrary beliefs allowed.)
So, if you can think logically and are willing to do some mental work, you - and everybody else who does it - will automatically get there. That's kind of the beauty of logic - it's the only thing/law in the universe that seems to be an absolute/unquestionable truth, everything else being invented by somebody.
You're just saying you believing in destiny.
I believe the inverse. And we will never know the truth so please don't start with a "which is completely untrue" when it's just an opinion.
Every decision is a product of your experience and state of mind, that are the product of you previous decisions, that are the product of your previous experience.. something, something!
We'll never know anyway, but I feel like there would be nothing, no universe, no life, no space etc... if there was not this "random" thing.
Nevertheless, I agree with your critique of determinism. Think outside the "system". Nobody knows why stuff exists or why it behaves the way it does, it's all just observation and ideas.
You can go get another beer, as would be expected given you had three previously and chose to come to a bar, or you can choose to go home and sleep, or get in your car and drive, or swear off drinking forever.
The fact that options are present to you because of your previous choices (causality) is irrelevant to the fact that you still have full control over what option you select (free will).
A reasonable disagreement is pointing out you're assuming zero randomness in the universe (which includes in your head, and everyone elses head, I'm not a mind-body dualist) so no development of unique new ideas, or having unique new experiences or perceptions, both of which feed on each other to generate new echos of randomness long after something interesting happens. Also it assumes no social interaction with others however distantly linked to "interesting random people" even if the individual and their direct contacts are in fact really boring (aka effect of arts in general).
That is a much more productive form of disagreement than hitting the down button.
(Edited to add I think you're getting downvoted because of a cultural-linguistic meme or bug that whenever someone in the USA spins a story with "can't or don't judge" that usually means its a known and obvious statement of fact that they did something they and everyone else knows is wrong, and they have no better spin option. Last (modern) refuge of a scoundrel. Thus the downvotes)
The effect of these tiny random events would propagate upwards and perhaps cause an apple to fall from a tree. A sub-atomic particle vibrating randomly in a certain way could fire a neuron, giving you a new thought.
Even if life isn't determined, can you really say there is free will? You can't control the way that sub-atomic particles will behave, you may have the illusion of control in your head but at the end of the day it would come down to physics and randomness.
Personally, I don't find this opinion a healthy one, so I tend not to dwell on it much.
This is why I downvoted the parents by the way. I feel like there is no safe discussion when it starts with strong opinions ("which is completely untrue"). There is no right or wrong here so better be open minded.
No, actually not. The current state of research in quantum physics makes it look like there is randomness. But the thing about randomness is: Nobody has any control over it. So again, life (and the universe) may not be fully deterministic, but we have no absolute responsibility for whatever happens (only a relative one, relative to our culture, that is).
> Also it assumes no social interaction with others
No, of course we have social interactions, which influence us. But they are themselves a function of 1) our genes (i.e. whom we approach or not) and 2) our initial location (with all its properties).
Again, you're stating things as facts that there's no reason to believe are actually true. There are models in which quantum randomness does allow for free will, and no one knows whether they're right.
This has the strange consequence that only you have free will, as perceived by your own consciousness. I don't think this makes any less sense than anything else related to quantum physics, but it is definitely weird.
I think that inherited genes and location only plays a smaller part - but it depends on the person. For a normal western person my personal belief is that it is less than 10%.
I am a strong believer in free will and it's what makes us so different than animals. Animals have insticts and very little free will.
The thing is that if you believe in free will you have more free will as you will change your way of thinking. At least I believe that.
Back in 2007 I wrote an essay "Life As a Game of Chess": http://www.jimwestergren.com/life-as-a-game-of-chess/
And what makes the person? A Person is an amalgamation of inherited genes and collated personal experiences. Most of the personal experiences are a direct result of your location.
I think it is very important for us to go easy on someone who has gone astray or in our opinion is not living a life the way we think it is ought to be lived.
A Person who is a firm believer in free will would not judge anyone or for that matter force his/her view on anyone else.
Let me give you a friendly advice. Belief in free will has a purpose on it's own, just like belief in God. But if you choose to believe, stay away from attempts to explain it scientifically. You will only waste everyone's time and energy. Just assume free will as a fact and move on.
And keep animals out of it. They have as much free will as you.
The advantage of science isn't that it can proof stuff (which it can't) but that it is open for change instead of being dogmatic.
Ergo: I know x will happen because when all the variables are the same in the past, x has always happened.
The accuracy of the prediction is what changes in science, which is why it is a better system to use for predicting future events than other dogma based systems.
Ergo: Recently discovered factor y can be changed as a variable, and this accounts for x sometimes not happening the same way. We must account for this as a variable too.
Can you recommend one?
That is, why shouldn't people with genes more suited to the environment they live in enjoy more success?
To answer that question, you have to assign some values to things, which is not a strictly logical process.
My main issue with it is it seems to discount random events - and at a quantum level, it seems like there are genuinely random events, like radioactive decay. So it's not really accurate to say there are only two variables, there are really countless ones, and even small changes (like a few atoms splitting here and there) could lead to something like cancer in a friend or relative, having a serious impact on one's life. Still isn't an argument for the existence of free will though.
But then again, you don't need books for that. If you have the luxury (or curse) of being rational, you're 10 (5 maybe) and you're already having fatalist/whateverist thoughts. Then the next day you think about it, and realize it doesn't change anything in your life, and you move on. Then 10 years later you finally get to study the concept (or read it on a blog) and, well, it still doesn't solve or introduce any problem in your reality.
People who think/act irrationally aren't sensitive and don't find revelation when they read or hear about those principles, only confirmation where they can. There are things that happen in life that can shake you up and change you, but from a piece of text you'll only assimilate what's aligned with your views, IMHO.
His goal was to make notoriously dense writings accessible to everyday people who are interested in literature.
I think this piece about life as a video game has a similar goal. Just as I would rather learn about Proust through Alain De Botton, I would rather learn about philosophy through the contemporary vehicle of video games.
It's "I'm so irritated that I already knew what you just told me and I learned it from a better source that I want to assault you!! Why don't you read the same things I read!!?"
There is biking aphorism that comes to mind, if you stare at that stump you WILL hit it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation
is a great summary of Seneca and Aristotle's stoic perspectives. It's not a long book and gives a nice overview of the highlights of stoicism.
http://www.amazon.com/Stoic-Philosophy-Seneca-Essays-Letters...
“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite.”
> All players die after about 29,000 days, or 80 years. If your stats and skills are good, you might last a little longer. There is no cheat code to extend this.
Wouldn't that be a great hack, to extend this number indefinitely, and share the exploit with everyone else? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_Foundation et al. are working on it...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY
Of course you can't end up a person of color. Oh heavens no, anything but that!
Maybe I'm just becoming old, but I already hate this kind of arrogance.
Man, I don't want to get old.
On a completely different note, a lot of us grew up without fathers, or many adults paying attention to us. When I entered the world as a young adult, all I knew about making moves and talking to people was what I learned playing RPGs. And I wish I was kidding.
Umm... right. Seriously? That's all the advice this guy has on the first 15 years of life?
Reading the rest, it doesn't look like he has much of use to say about anything else either.
It's just a blog post that attempts to be fun. As much as can be expected is few nods and smiles while reading it, and a few seconds pause to think about it at the end. And that's it, it's not like author pretends he's Seneca or Aristotle or semeone else.
Sure. There's plenty of blogs like that, aside from fluffblogs. Almost no one will agree with any given collection but here's one anyway. Mrmoneymustache for personal finance and any generic paleo blog for food, health, and fitness (robb wolf used to be the center of that world, seems he's being out-SEO-ed by competitors now). How much money will improve your life is debatable nonetheless you've got the zerohedge and thehousingbubbleblog. I tend not to agree with them, but thousands (millions?) of religious bloggers at least think they're improving lives, even if I think they're generally doing the opposite. If you allow podcasts (close enough to blogs, read a blog post out loud) there are uncountable educational lecture podcasts (I have listened to about a dozen history related ones, why are history podcasts so popular?) and the survival podcast (which is almost surely not what you think it is, its sort of a how to prosper being a very small scale homesteader, basically this is how to be a non startup non tech non govt handout entrepreneur)
There's probably a difficult and complicated challenge for a startup to categorize blogs as either deep or fluff. In the spirit of PG, everyone thinking its too hard means its a great startup idea.
1. It's a long post 2. Most of my readers are presumably >15 yrs old 3. I honestly think most people up to age 15 have limited control over their lives
I decided to trim it down. Obviously I am not literally saying that a 14-and-11-months year old has no influence over their destiny but a 15 year old does. But superfluous precision is the enemy of effective writing; you end up with a legal document.
Not all the people in the world live such mechanical, predictable lives.
I expect perhaps there may be a few more like me, upvoting the article because they enjoyed it, but then leaving it at that. There's not much to discuss when you realise the true purpose of the article.
Negative comments seem to come from people who took it a bit too seriously, in which case it becomes easier to generate discussion points.
I'm not saying the article is good, but it's enjoyable and the comparison to life with a video game is fun to read. What most of the comments here fail to see.
If an obscure artist makes some music you don't like, nobody cares. But if that artist sells a million records, you'll see an online explosion of rage.
It seems we're wired to react when our tastes don't match those of the groups we hang around in.
Also a long list of things I like is boring and not worth talking about, and probably about the same list for most of us. For example I liked his graphics arts style/technique and the story pacing cannot be improved, and I suspect I'm not alone in those opinions. This guy certainly knows what he's doing WRT those topics. Wasn't that boring to read? I'm sure he would feel better if every post was "dude, love your font choice" fawning, but if he wants blind unconditional love, he should buy a dog, not get submitted to HN.
Somehow nobody has brought up ties to the classic Hasbro "Game of Life" which is the very first thing I thought of when I saw the article. Now that is an observation of something weird happening. I can't be the only HN reader to have played the hasbro game and gotten a mild nostalgia kick...
BTW, the negative commentors need to work on building up their "humor" skill XP.
Graphics: 9/10 Pretty good, shadows and lighting effects portrayed quite well. Some really strange pixelation going on though. It's on a very small scale, but still noticeable with the right instruments and upsetting to the general public.
Sound: 6/10 Fantastic variety. Only works well for the first 2/3rds of the game or so, then becomes quite buggy.
Story: 2/10 It's not obvious if there is really a story going on here. Most players experience relatively little classical narrative, and that which does exist seems quite randomly or recklessly placed, possibly completely contrived from otherwise non-storylike events.
Multiplayer: 5/10 A wide variety of things to do with others, but many of them are considered quite boring or uninteresting. The gameplay mechanics sometimes seem to encourage active hostility or selfishness between players, which seems clearly suboptimal.
It tries to quantify every aspect of life (or rather: disregards any aspect that can't be quantified) and therefore leads to a view of the world that is completely mechanic.
What's worse are it's dogmatic undertones. It kind of suggests that these are general rules that apply to everyone. And if you don't want to be a loser you have to play by those rules.
Games have winners and losers. Who is to become a winner or a loser is decided by some arbitrary rules that are predefined and can't be changed. Is that the kind of mental mindset that you want to equip yourself with? That you will be either a winner or a loser, by the standards of other people? Please, we already have a high chance of getting burnout in our profession. You don't have to forcefully increase it.
So as a little comic relief, here is a quote form the article:
> When your willpower is low, you are only able to do things you really want to.
By contrast, here is a quote from Bob Dylan that I happen like:
> A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
So if you want to be a success by the standards of Dylan, you know what to do ;)
That's not to say game play doesn't provide a very good analogy. Life makes much more sense when you relate to it like a variety of games each with their own rules. When you know the rules, everything becomes more clear. What you do with it is still up to you, but it's better than being in the dark.
Having a more playful approach to life and finding the fun in the most trivial of activities is rewarding. But unlike what the author emphasizes the in-the-moment experiences matter more than the milestones one reaches for the sake of reaching milestones.