This is a charming article. But it's somewhat sad to read. Because it operates on the nearly universal assumption that life is a game, or a battle, or a scavenger hunt—and the way to win is to maintain a high 'state' and get lots of 'achievements'. The reason this gaming terminology is so appealing to us is that it overlays nicely on the way we already think about life: you're constantly making some grade or another; you're constantly doing better or worse than your peers. A generation ago business was the most appropriate metaphor. But whether our obsession is with who's giving us a raw deal and who we're getting over on, or where we have advantages and where we have disadvantages (what am I at +1 for?), the basic sensibility doesn't change.
The perspective here is consistently egoistic. It's not even mentioned. It's just assumed that the way one goes through life is as an individual, with one's own interests solely at heart, and one's own state the only thing to be managed. You win by maximizing your own state, by grabbing as many achievements as you can before you die. And even if you're not a dick about it, your concerns are very much limited to your states, health level, and the contents of your inventory.
This is no way to go through life! It leads to suffering and a small view of things. I'm really interested to see, actually, what this community makes of that insight. It will dawn on people eventually—or at least its negative will: that everything we've been putting so much damned energy into isn't making us happy. But this community is so relentlessly introspective, communicative, articulate, well-equipped, and outright successful. And we have so many blogs like this one: so many people actively, sincerely, unabashedly interested in the science of happiness and fulfillment. So the potential there is pretty big. The potential for massive burnout and dissolution or massive reorientation.
Sorry, I couldn't find the alternative in your approach. Please reformulate for me what approach to life do you actually suggest. I'm really interested to see another point of view. My last years were mainly spent from switching to just living life to the style mentioned in the article and just everything feels so much better since. I am happy to go to work in the morning. I am happy to write my thesis. I am sometimes even happy to be critized by other people. And my social life also increased drastically since, containing more meaningful relationships to other people on all levels. And heck, I'm even doing sport because I know it ups my motivation, health and happiness.
I was used to being one of the least positive people about life prospects, now at least in my circles I am one of the most positive people and others are actually spending time with me just to grab some of the positive energy.
If you have a life style to offer that makes me and the people around me even more happy I would be really happy to learn more about it!
Be the change you want to see, and all that — right?
The metaphor in the article does not preclude non-egoistic play, it just suggests a another set of skills in the game: Diplomacy, Activism, Community Organization, Macroeconomics, History. Good-aligned players get Charity and Education skills. Evil-aligned players get Politics and Manipulation. Perhaps players have an additional statistic tracking Influence, and some will care more about it than others. Some statistics improve in groups.
Maybe the rules of life are competitive: you can only increase your score at someone else's expense. The score is either 0-1 or 1-0. (Maybe you're both starving but only have enough food to sustain one person.)
Or maybe they're cooperative: you can both achieve a >= score if you combine resources/knowledge/what-have-you. The score is 3-3 for cooperating or 1-1 for playing independently. (Take insurance, for example.)
In reality, the game is a complex mixture of these two extremes.
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
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.
> 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.
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)
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.
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.
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!!?"
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 ;)
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.
Very cool and fun. However, I think we need to stop talking about this 80 years nonsense. My grandad is 83 and ran a marathon last year. He still works everyday, and talks about where his company will be 15 years from now. I have 6 great aunts alive in their 90s or older (I just attended one of my great aunts' 100th birthday parties over the holidays).
The point is that the human body if treated well in the ideal conditions is meant to live 120 years or so. Over time, litte damages we do to it like not get enough sleep, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, eat trans fat, take drugs, stress at work add up to years off.
No one is perfect, and just about everyone will end up taking a decade or two off this max even if their goal is not to. But living to 100 while still enjoying life should be everyone's goal. Remember that having a 100 year life span gives you 25% more life than 80. That's a really big difference and enhances your perspective greatly. I don't feel that life is over at 35, in fact it's pretty much just getting started.
And this is all not counting any technological advances that may enable us to drastically increase our lifespans. I hope Mr. De Gray and Kurzweil are correct. But even if they aren't, you should shoot for at least 100.
What is the main goal? Some may think that it's getting better at something to get a raise and more money. First there is a school, then there is the 1st job, the you try to get a better one and you are trying and trying and trying to get higher. In my opinion, that's not the main point and it's just a side-effect of the life.
Article suggests that 1st 15 years of life is a training or a tutorial, but I disagree. They are as much as important as any other time period. Person should do what makes he or she happy. If it's playing video-games or spending time with friends at a bar, it's okay. Of course, it won't affect your skills on getting a better job (so more money), but if it makes you a happier person, do it! Life is all about being happy and doing what you love to do.
There is no magic-prize at the end of the life, only memories. What will be the point of having much money and good CV in you will sacrifice your happiness on it.
In my opinion, this video[1] nicely shows what I'm talking about.
While I mostly agree with you, one could also argue that there is a meaning to life and that is not to be happy but is to instead do all that one can do to further human survival (or whatever we end up turning into). One person providing some obscure service eventually bubbles up to the guys colonizing other worlds.
There is a default meaning to our life, and it's merely survival. I believe there is a balance between giving into ones emotions and not; doing many great and small things which accumulate into mattering in the grand scheme of it all, determining ones worth.
You're lying on your death bed and you ask yourself; how meaningful were my actions to this universe?
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.
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.
> It’s almost impossible to get rich working for someone else.
A very minor nitpick, but this has been proven false so many times. If "rich" means $1M+ during the mid-life period (I think this qualifies as rich if you are willing to live outside of major cities), plenty of people have accumulated that level of wealth by working for others. Go work for a big tech company, save/invest all your bonuses (of which there will be many), and save/invest a good portion of your salary, and you could potentially be a millionaire in only 10 years (for a programmer with just a bachelor's degree, that could translate to early to mid 30s).
If "rich" means $10M+, then that is indeed quite a bit harder to do (unless we're talking about age 65+, in which case the above person will easily achieve it). It can still be done by joining the right pre-IPO company, working on Wall Street as a trader (admittedly, a very demanding career--but not "impossible"), achieving partnership at a major law firm, or working your way up the corporate ladder (Satya was making $8M/year before being promoted to CEO).
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
Life is not a game. And that's because, unlike any game, life has no rules. By following this strategy guide, there's absolutely no guarantee you will succeed (btw, what exactly is it to succeed in life?).
People might get a sense of comfort in thinking that life has a recipe, that it has some sort of inherent quest you must conquer. But there's isn't. Religion, technology, culture and art are our way to deal with that.
Life is open for you to make whatever you want of it. And this is the beauty of it all. Do you want to make it a game? Go ahead, lay some rules, build a strategy, get your achievements. But I think there's more to life than following rules and managing your resources. I wouldn't be surprised if the rules changed without warning or if my resources were suddenly depleted without apparent reason. Because life doesn't care about the rationalizations you came up with.
Life is a unique experience that, fortunately, cannot be framed within a metaphor. There are many ways to live (life as a game, life as a movie, life as a story, life as a poem, life as a checklist, life as a tough math problem) and all of them are right. So maybe we shouldn't bother too much about living the right way and instead just enjoy the ride.
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.
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.
[+] [-] crux|12 years ago|reply
The perspective here is consistently egoistic. It's not even mentioned. It's just assumed that the way one goes through life is as an individual, with one's own interests solely at heart, and one's own state the only thing to be managed. You win by maximizing your own state, by grabbing as many achievements as you can before you die. And even if you're not a dick about it, your concerns are very much limited to your states, health level, and the contents of your inventory.
This is no way to go through life! It leads to suffering and a small view of things. I'm really interested to see, actually, what this community makes of that insight. It will dawn on people eventually—or at least its negative will: that everything we've been putting so much damned energy into isn't making us happy. But this community is so relentlessly introspective, communicative, articulate, well-equipped, and outright successful. And we have so many blogs like this one: so many people actively, sincerely, unabashedly interested in the science of happiness and fulfillment. So the potential there is pretty big. The potential for massive burnout and dissolution or massive reorientation.
[+] [-] erikb|12 years ago|reply
I was used to being one of the least positive people about life prospects, now at least in my circles I am one of the most positive people and others are actually spending time with me just to grab some of the positive energy.
If you have a life style to offer that makes me and the people around me even more happy I would be really happy to learn more about it!
[+] [-] gcv|12 years ago|reply
The metaphor in the article does not preclude non-egoistic play, it just suggests a another set of skills in the game: Diplomacy, Activism, Community Organization, Macroeconomics, History. Good-aligned players get Charity and Education skills. Evil-aligned players get Politics and Manipulation. Perhaps players have an additional statistic tracking Influence, and some will care more about it than others. Some statistics improve in groups.
[+] [-] valtron|12 years ago|reply
Maybe the rules of life are competitive: you can only increase your score at someone else's expense. The score is either 0-1 or 1-0. (Maybe you're both starving but only have enough food to sustain one person.)
Or maybe they're cooperative: you can both achieve a >= score if you combine resources/knowledge/what-have-you. The score is 3-3 for cooperating or 1-1 for playing independently. (Take insurance, for example.)
In reality, the game is a complex mixture of these two extremes.
[+] [-] prostoalex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] theorique|12 years ago|reply
"This crazy Greek drank Hemlock. What happened next will blow your mind."
[+] [-] ozim|12 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] hawkharris|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] f_salmon|12 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] CmonDev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chr1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avenger123|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] datphp|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sz4kerto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jh3|12 years ago|reply
“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite.”
[+] [-] rikkus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merrua|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benihana|12 years ago|reply
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!!?"
[+] [-] ozziegooen|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whizzkid|12 years ago|reply
- 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!
[+] [-] cell303|12 years ago|reply
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 ;)
[+] [-] Jach|12 years ago|reply
> 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...)
[+] [-] malka|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swombat|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pyrrhotech|12 years ago|reply
The point is that the human body if treated well in the ideal conditions is meant to live 120 years or so. Over time, litte damages we do to it like not get enough sleep, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, eat trans fat, take drugs, stress at work add up to years off.
No one is perfect, and just about everyone will end up taking a decade or two off this max even if their goal is not to. But living to 100 while still enjoying life should be everyone's goal. Remember that having a 100 year life span gives you 25% more life than 80. That's a really big difference and enhances your perspective greatly. I don't feel that life is over at 35, in fact it's pretty much just getting started.
And this is all not counting any technological advances that may enable us to drastically increase our lifespans. I hope Mr. De Gray and Kurzweil are correct. But even if they aren't, you should shoot for at least 100.
[+] [-] daGrevis|12 years ago|reply
What is the main goal? Some may think that it's getting better at something to get a raise and more money. First there is a school, then there is the 1st job, the you try to get a better one and you are trying and trying and trying to get higher. In my opinion, that's not the main point and it's just a side-effect of the life.
Article suggests that 1st 15 years of life is a training or a tutorial, but I disagree. They are as much as important as any other time period. Person should do what makes he or she happy. If it's playing video-games or spending time with friends at a bar, it's okay. Of course, it won't affect your skills on getting a better job (so more money), but if it makes you a happier person, do it! Life is all about being happy and doing what you love to do.
There is no magic-prize at the end of the life, only memories. What will be the point of having much money and good CV in you will sacrifice your happiness on it.
In my opinion, this video[1] nicely shows what I'm talking about.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
[+] [-] babby|12 years ago|reply
There is a default meaning to our life, and it's merely survival. I believe there is a balance between giving into ones emotions and not; doing many great and small things which accumulate into mattering in the grand scheme of it all, determining ones worth.
You're lying on your death bed and you ask yourself; how meaningful were my actions to this universe?
[+] [-] sz4kerto|12 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm just becoming old, but I already hate this kind of arrogance.
[+] [-] benburleson|12 years ago|reply
Man, I don't want to get old.
[+] [-] lgieron|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tloewald|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eshvk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilkn|12 years ago|reply
A very minor nitpick, but this has been proven false so many times. If "rich" means $1M+ during the mid-life period (I think this qualifies as rich if you are willing to live outside of major cities), plenty of people have accumulated that level of wealth by working for others. Go work for a big tech company, save/invest all your bonuses (of which there will be many), and save/invest a good portion of your salary, and you could potentially be a millionaire in only 10 years (for a programmer with just a bachelor's degree, that could translate to early to mid 30s).
If "rich" means $10M+, then that is indeed quite a bit harder to do (unless we're talking about age 65+, in which case the above person will easily achieve it). It can still be done by joining the right pre-IPO company, working on Wall Street as a trader (admittedly, a very demanding career--but not "impossible"), achieving partnership at a major law firm, or working your way up the corporate ladder (Satya was making $8M/year before being promoted to CEO).
[+] [-] notacoward|12 years ago|reply
* We all have to play in hardcore mode - death is permanent, no saves or restarts.
* Difficulty level is chosen for you at birth, and you can't change it during the game.
[+] [-] petsagouris|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugofirth|12 years ago|reply
Addendum: Article also forgets to mention the University stage, otherwise known as LFG.
[+] [-] girvo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceeK|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bjourne|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|12 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] oliveremberton|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] GBond|12 years ago|reply
BTW, the negative commentors need to work on building up their "humor" skill XP.
[+] [-] baby|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] guspe|12 years ago|reply
People might get a sense of comfort in thinking that life has a recipe, that it has some sort of inherent quest you must conquer. But there's isn't. Religion, technology, culture and art are our way to deal with that.
Life is open for you to make whatever you want of it. And this is the beauty of it all. Do you want to make it a game? Go ahead, lay some rules, build a strategy, get your achievements. But I think there's more to life than following rules and managing your resources. I wouldn't be surprised if the rules changed without warning or if my resources were suddenly depleted without apparent reason. Because life doesn't care about the rationalizations you came up with.
Life is a unique experience that, fortunately, cannot be framed within a metaphor. There are many ways to live (life as a game, life as a movie, life as a story, life as a poem, life as a checklist, life as a tough math problem) and all of them are right. So maybe we shouldn't bother too much about living the right way and instead just enjoy the ride.
[+] [-] opendomain|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seizethecheese|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliveremberton|12 years ago|reply
Open to suggestions.
[+] [-] l33tbro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robobro|12 years ago|reply