Your Life

[fizixer]

Every time an existential post is made here, I have to remind people:

As technologists you guys should have a little more confidence/faith/whatever in the progress we're making every passing day, than is evident from the tone of most of the comments here.

Smart-phones, social media, startups, IPOs, these are huge blind spots of technology. It makes you think that's all there is to it.

Technology is much more than that. In that regard I always remember the DARPA's 21st century forecast of what's the most relevant human progress:

- Info"Tech"

- Bio"Tech"

- Nano"Tech"

We're making huge advances in all three (another blind spot is linear thinking when technology actually progresses exponentially).

With regards to biotech:

- CRISPR has made huge advances

- stem cells are making rapid progress

- supercomputers and advanced algorithms (including machine learning) are getting to the point where we're putting human biology on solid "informatic" footing every passing year. (IMPORTANT: And this is without assuming onset of human-level AI, which in itself is forecasted to happen by 2030. If that happens, then the progress would be unbelievably faster!).

- but most importantly, people like Aubrey de Grey are "waking up" medical researchers and gerontologists from a narrow view of "cure cancer", "cure HIV" and asking them to treat "aging" as a problem and treat it as an object of manipulation.

If people like you (technologists) can get out of the pessimism of pro-aging trance, a lot can be accomplished in the next 20 to 40 years.

[true_religion]

> If people like you (technologists) can get out of the pessimism of pro-aging trance, a lot can be accomplished in the next 20 to 40 years.

I'm a technologist, but I'm easily admit I'm just as useful as a brick-layer when it comes to stopping the progress of aging.

[tangled_zans]

Well said. +1 for mentioning Aubrey.

[abootstrapper]

If you consider aging and death in old age as a negative, perhaps you should reconsider your philosophy, instead of chasing immortality.

[CullingTheHerd]

even if we accomplish all this and more, we have still not answered the question, "what is the 'good life'?" because that is not a technical question. we can put off death. we can increase quality of life during the later years of life. and this is important and beneficial work. but, nothing in this work intrinsically speaks to existential issues we face. we may use these technologies as a paradigm through which to attempt to grapple with existential issues, but none of these issues can only be 'solved' with the correct technical tools.

so when your comment begins: "Every time an existential post is made here, I have to remind people:"

I read that as a global claim (global claims are almost never true) and arrogant (in that you "have to remind people", "thank you for reminding us! what would we do without you!")

[some1else]

HTML infographic inspired by Tim Urban's Life Calendar[1]. Made this after seeing his TED talk[2].

[1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

[Romkinson]

Just watched his talk literally last night and ordered the same poster :) Thanks for sharing!

[tahon]

Great talk. I just ordered the poster.

[stared]

A good friend of mine has a 365x100 rectangle on his (high res) display. As a reminder that it is small, yet he has less days in his life than pixels in this rectangle. And every day spent not on a worthwhile project is a great loss.

A modern, sobering memento mori, I would say.

[coldtea]

Because in their death bed one often says "I wish I worked on more worthwhile projects"?

[wuschel]

I wonder if the 'tick a box per day' model is a proper visualization of your life. You age, health and knowledge define your potential of doing and accomplishing things e.g.

-- the majority of your top quality relationships are build in the first third of your life

-- you are very attractive for females between 25-40

-- you can learn certain things very fast as a kid

-- you age exponentially after a certain biologic age et cetera

[acqq]

> 365x100 rectangle

I like that!

> And every day spent not on a worthwhile project is a great loss.

Does anybody really values days of life based only on the "projects"?

[taneq]

And "entertaining myself" is not a worthwhile project? In a nihilistic way, it's hard to argue that anything's more important.

"Go now, and die in what way seems best to you." - Denethor

[nni]

that is also an interesting idea I may do

You might find this interesting - it adds a bit of dynamicness to it

http://learnforeverlearn.com/candle/

[daw___]

Would it be great if you could select ranges of blocks and assign a color to each range according to how you felt those days, i.e. green: good, yellow: not that good, red: not good.

I did something like this in past, with colors, and contrarily to the expectations it actually cheered me up to see all those green blocks making up a huge chunk of life.

Also, it reminded me of http://moriclock.com

[Retra]

Maybe I'm strange, but that seems totally useless to me, because I feel pretty much the same every day.

[omegaham]

Reminds me of Pixar's Inside Out, where memories are portrayed as little colored spheres, with different colors indicating joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger. These spheres end up getting stored in enormous warehouses, with enormous splashes of various colors.

[Jonovono]

hehe just came here to post my project - moriclock! Cool to know people still remember it.

I like your idea of coloring of the blocks. I had big plans of turning it into some sort of journaling application.

[banach2]

That did not cheer me up at all. Life's too short when you turn it into an empty rectangle.

[misingnoglic]

I think the website needs a better job explaining what it actually is. What's the point? I just drew a smiley face by clicking random squares.

[xiaoma]

> "I just drew a smiley face"

Well done. This is an excellent response to the page and to life.

[pcurve]

We always are surprised how quickly a week goes by.

I think the point of the web site is to let people know that there aren't that many weeks in one's life time.

nothing more... nothing less...

[some1else]

It's just an info-graphic. A reminder at how important it is to have weekly goals. The squares toggle, so I could mark the current week, or a short period. I think it's pretty awesome you drew a smiley face :-)

[alderz]

You are describing life, what's it? what's the point? It's a good thing you drew a smiley face :)

[joeyspn]

Ahh yeah, this is from Tim Urban's Your Life in Weeks post [0], and way before Tim discovered and wrote his awesome posts about the AI Revolution [1] and cryonics.... I guess he knows now that 90 might actually be quite short sighted.

So, I'm forking and adding the estimated date where we trascend from humans to cloud-beings (around 2045, Kurzweil's™ prediction) [2]...

[0] http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html

[1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu...

[2] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299...

[sampl]

Here's a similar project where the dots fade as you get older to indicate chance of death (the opacity is based on actual US mortality data from actuarial tables).

http://www.sampl.us/life-of-dots/

[nice_byte]

For somehing equally depressing, check out this comic by Abstruse Goose: http://abstrusegoose.com/51

[ams6110]

Someone once sold a desk clock that counted down until the end of your life.

Edit--now available as a watch: http://mytikker.com/collections/tikker

[jondubois]

On my death bed, my only regret will be that I didn't work smarter, harder and longer. That's why I work so hard now; to minimize the amount of regret.

[ak39]

I immediately began marking some memories of my early teen, a period when I remembered being genuinely happy (memories of growing up in Central Africa with my heroic elder brothers). But then I began marking several squares in my late teens for doing things I regretted. I marked a few squares in my mid twenties for doing things I regretted. I marked more in my early thirties for things I regretted. All dumb shit, nothing serious.

I was about to mark a few more blocks towards the end of my thirties too for things I regretted ... I had by then realised that I was one colossal self-bashing negative joy-sapping son of a bitch. How do I stop this self-criticism, dear lord?

Nice tool! Maybe it can be modified to aid psychotherapy.

[greggman]

There was this piece at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

http://i.imgur.com/6uVRUff.jpg

It shows 100 years of days with someone's life highlighted. Kind of sobering.

I want to be believe like fizixer but it's hard to notice any medical changes. I'm 50, what's changed since I was born? I'm no a doctor so I have no idea. Sure I know we've got CRISPR and we've mapped the genome but where are the actual changes? Friends have gotten cancer, AFAICT treatment hasn't changed much. I still get colds. My hair is still falling out and turning gray. Face getting wrinkles.

Life doesn't look like the Jetsons

[kaybe]

Well, over here we're shooting at people's heads with a particle accelerator beam to kill brain tumors. Works pretty well if the conditions are met. Next up: Moving targets you can't bolt to the table because the person will die from not breathing. (So the beam has to be moved.)

Biology is hard though.

[goblin89]

> There was this piece at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

> http://i.imgur.com/6uVRUff.jpg

> It shows 100 years of days with someone's life highlighted.

I wonder what do the darker-colored days stand for.

Thanks for sharing this shot.

[mentos]

Crazy to think how many people will get up tomorrow morning and hate the outlook of their day. To me that is insane and something that future generations will look back on in awe.

[matt_wulfeck]

Maybe they'll also wonder why our generation so easily judges others instead of looking inward first?

[namenotrequired]

Is there any indication this will suddenly stop being true in a few generations?

[partisan]

They will look back and be jealous.

[diegorbaquero]

The idea is nice (depressing, but nice). But what's the use, you can only turn tiles to red. Can't even drag the mouse to select many, state is also not saved :(. My 2c

[drworm]

There is a Chrome extension with a similar concept that I enjoy: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mortality-new-tab/...

[ghostly_s]

I made a script for shell profiles which does something similar last year: https://github.com/brightghost/memento-mori

[simplexion]

Why do people always feel like they are wasting time? How exactly do you waste your time? I ask people this every time I am told, by them, I am wasting my time playing games on my computer. I love playing games... why is doing something you love wasting time?

[Walkman]

Would be cool if we could write our own life events.

[some1else]

Noted.

[ps4fanboy]

I have printed out one of these before and it made me feel really crappy.

[atemerev]

Way too optimistic. Here, all rectangles look similar, but actually, quality of life in bottom rectangles deteriorates rapidly, medical expenses are skyrocketing, and basically everything sucks.

[sndean]

You could possibly say the same thing about quality of life in the beginning. Lots of necessary medical care, making your parent's lives miserable, can't get up and make a sandwich, higher likelihood of death [1], etc.

[1] http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/dyingage1....

[pcurve]

I get the feeling the creator wasn't trying to plot quality of life as data point here...

[duaneb]

Medical expenses only accelerate if you attempt to fend off death. There is no need for this with assisted suicide laws.

[a3n]

Maybe. Or quality of life might mean something different to people as they age.