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Your Life

some1else.github.io

199 pointssome1else124 comments

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.

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

Without having too much hope for it, it should be noted that the first one who catches immortality will make your post look very condescending and outright damaging to progress.

They'll have plenty of time to dig through old hacker news comments!

If you believe getting old, and sick, and miserable, and then dying, is good or natural or the way it is supposed to be, then I respectfully disagree with you [0].

[0] https://carcinisation.com/2014/07/13/an-anti-deathist-f-a-q/...

eventually even atoms will stop spinning. i think what the commenter was getting at, is that, immortality is impossible, and so finding meaning in a life that must eventually end, is still important.

also, your argument, red herring. the commenter didn't say, let's all be happy that old age is crap. at all. that was you. you said that. why? idk.

Again you're not making much sense. 'To reconsider getting old and dying as negative' is as close to 'consider philosophies in which old age and dying is not negative' as it can get.

Please look at a description of 'red herring' [0] and kindly elaborate how it applies to my response.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

The first line from Wikipedia:

"A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue."

And, this is exactly why I keep "losing my password" for my HN account, so that I have to take a break from participating. I didn't need to look to Wikipedia know what a Red Herring is. And it's a waste of my time spelling it out for others when they could figure it out themselves.

So, it works like this:

You said: "If you believe getting old, and sick, and miserable, and then dying, is good or natural or the way it is supposed to be, then I respectfully disagree with you."

But the person you were replying to said:"If you consider aging and death in old age as a negative, perhaps you should reconsider your philosophy, instead of chasing immortality."

their comment.. If P, perhaps Q. P = "you consider aging and death in old age as a negative" Q = "you should reconsider your philosophy" & "[not] chasing immortality"

and your comment... "If P, then Q." P = "you believe getting old, and sick, and miserable, and then dying, is good or natural or the way it is supposed to be" Q = "I respectfully disagree with you"

so, the "P"s are at issue, as both "Q"s can roughly be translated into, "no", "false"

P[1] = "you consider aging and death in old age as a negative" compared to... P[2] = "you believe getting old, and sick, and miserable, and then dying, is good or natural or the way it is supposed to be"

Not the same.

The original comment simply said, it's not necessarily bad. You said, "you're" arguing it is good, or natural, or the way it's supposed to be.

Again, red herring: "A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue."

You're misstatement of the original comment so distorts the issue that we're now arguing about whether "death is natural and inevitable" or "death is good". That is not what the original issue was. So, to reply to your comment, is to be distracted from a relevant or important issue. One would have been misled to go down that path.

logic 101. but hey, you have more karma points than me. so, what does logic really have against that.

If you consider aging and death in old age as a _positive_, well, go for it.

Well.

I think it has been a good thing so far. Considering who tends to get access to new things first the ones that would still be living would most likely not be the nicest men and women of all times but rather the greediest.

Exactly.

I don't understand this popular craving of immortality. If you look at the current society and add immortality, you just get horrific dystopian future, where by the way majority of the world is still mortal just enslaved by power-hungry immortal overlords.

Right now however sadistic regimes are, we still know that Stalins/Kim Jong Uns of the day will die and there is at least hope.

In currently(!) non-sadistic regimes we have inequality issue where richer just get richer and poor get poorer, but at least money can't be taken to the grave, how is it good to eliminate the grave?

And the reasons people usually give for immortality are either outright egotistical "I don't want to die" or a bit veiled "my grandpa/mother/Steve Jobs was a golden person, I wish they still were around".

Well, kudos to him/her, but I take your dead grandpa over suffering of the millions, thanks.

The same for your fear of death, deal with it.

There are some nuances though:

1. We definitely should work on non-suffering in old ages.

2. This grim outlook applies only if there is no other relevant technological revolution happening at the same time. For instance, if we have free nano-machines making everything out of thin air, hierarchy of the society will already alter enough as to allow immortality being thrown into the mix.

I think immortality, like flying cars, is a goal that will only come incremementally.

It may take 1000 years to make people who can live 10,000 years, and in the interm I doubt we can imagine the social and economic changes that will happen as people progressively live longer.

Take the current world, and allow everyone to live till they are 120 instead of dying in their 70s on average. Is it such a horrible thing?

You have not offered any argument, you have simply said "if you don't see it my way, you should reconsider".

Why should I reconsider? What about your view do you feel is better than living healthier for longer?

The way I see it, if you take advantage of doctors at all you are already competing against your own ideals.

We have made huge leaps in health such that even if we die at 80, our lives will have been much more healthy and active up until that point.

If I can be healthy and active until 80 and then die at 100, then I will do that. It isn't immortality they are after, it's just more high quality life.

There is nothing graceful, or more respectable, about succumbing to death because it is the social norm at a certain age. I will cling on to life until I can no longer.

One argument is that death and limited lifespans are advantageous for the species overall. More sex, gene mixing and having offspring is better and allows for faster adaptations.

Plus ideas can change faster as culture changes.

That said, there may be ways to overcome this and I still think it's worth working on not having to die. Though trying to determine purpose behind existential questions becomes difficult pretty quickly.

Even if we figure it out since sex and having children is core to biological life and the basis for the replicating genetic code that eventually lead to us - not sure how we'd solve that. Guess we also better get working on space colonization for our start trek future.

Advantageous for species in general, maybe, but for an increasingly knowledge-based species, I don't think this still holds true. We spend our first 20+ years in training just to be able to contribute to society, and then only have 40-50 productive years left to work. This seems incredibly wasteful.

I'd be interested to know how our species' life span has changed over the past few million years. We live significantly longer than other great apes, that's probably relevant.

> ...advantageous for the species...

What about saving premature babies and babies with congenital diseases?

Asking for someone to offer an argument for the claim that "it is worth while considering other life philosophies other than those that lead to chasing immortality and viewing the end of one's own life as a negative", is kinda, well, quite frankly you sound either too naive to the world to understand the wisdom in such a claim, or you are too stubborn to allow any world view other than yours to be entertained.

Either way, life philosophies that would reflect such a claim don't have comment length "arguments" that would be convincing to anyone on any level. Some things do not lend themselves to logic. Some things require more than a few paragraphs and an argument. And sometimes, those things, are best served by parsimony, rather than loquacious debate.

So your response is that if a cute soundbite is not enough to have me nodding agreeably maybe I am not wordly enough?

You have made the exact same argument that you are defending, it boils down to "you do not understand my world view, if you understood more maybe you would."

I understand not everything fits in a comment box, but when you choose to participate in a discussion then a one line excerpt of "wisdom" is hardly useful. You cannot just imply someone is wrong and not discuss why. This isn't twitter, there is room to get started.

All I ask is some substance above "Have you considered that you might be wrong?"

Because yes, I have considered that, and I am eager to talk about it.

HN is, barely, a step above twitter. If one were to pick the bottom 20% of comments from HN, it would be ignorant, biased, group think, poor logic, borderline bigoted (but mainly ignorant).

I don't expect that you'd be nodding agreeably. But I do think one with a bit more perspective might engage in a more productive manner.

All I have done is suggest that the parent comment's argument was shallow and ultimately unhelpful. The intention was to illicit some in depth discussion, hence my questions and my views added afterwards.

All you have done in both your comments is slight the platform and slight myself, adding nothing.

I believe I understand his argument; It would be a waste to spend life chasing immortality, as you would waste the only life you had in search of more of it, thus getting to truly enjoy neither.

But I am still glad there are people chasing it, as it means we get to enjoy more life than if they were not.

The parent comment's sentiment only really makes sense if you yourself are chasing more life, and even then only if you are destined to fail. The last 50 years alone should show us that more quality life is an extremely reasonable goal. Adding nearly 20 years to the average life expectancy, from 60 to 80 for males in Australia for example.

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!")

Existential issues are hard. You know what? I'd like a little extra time to work on them.

Me too. But, again, not the point the commenter was making. Just, noise.

First to respond to reasoning behind my first line, maybe I should've said "Every time an existential post _like this_ is made." It's pretty clear that one of the points of the website showing the 52x90 grid is to remind us that we have only a few decades of life left. (And I believe that's the wrong way to look at it in this day and age.) And people responded accordingly in a depressing manner. This has happened multiple times in the past, hence my "I have to remind people".

As for the rest of your response (and after reading your other comments), honestly you're not making a whole lot of sense. Should we stop using technological solutions to make our lives better as much as we can, because they don't solve all your existential issues? (or did I commit a red herring again by thinking you might be committing a 'perfect solution fallacy'?).

Also thanks for the ad hominems.

Re: ad hominem critiques. I thought they were duly deserved. Your comment came across, to me, as condescending and arrogant, both qualities of the person putting forth the argument, rather than the argument. So, the critique will by necessity be "to the man" (or woman).

As to, you not being able to make sense out of my other comments. That's not necessarily my fault.

Well said. +1 for mentioning Aubrey.

> 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.

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...

Great talk. I just ordered the poster.

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

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.

> 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"?

I keep a journal since three years and I mostly write about current "projects" (be them work or my own things) and future ideas.

To answer, yes, a day in which I haven't done anything useful is not really worth as much as a day in which I have, and it will be forgotten (unless I happen to be traveling (rare) or have met someone interesting (rarer)).

It depends on how you define "project."

Most people have life goals that filter into professional, personal, family, etc. Some goals might not sound like projects "go on more vacations with the kids," but require a sequence of things to be done in order for them to be feasible.

In "the end," the ones that are most valuable will probably not be the professional things, particularly in the technical space. Most because they'll feel especially inconsequential 10 years out. The professional projects I spent weeks and months on a decade ago are problems largely solved and turnkey in 2016. That said, they're fulfilling, and that's why we enjoy doing them and challenging ourselves.

So unless you're doing some really monumentally important-for-humanity professional projects, their value is probably ephemeral. They should play into a larger set of life goals.

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

The inverse being: Why don't I just end it all right now?

One answer possibly being: Hmmm, better find some stupid project, and occupy myself, before I really consider whether I'd find a convincing answer to that question. Oh cool, they open sourced this childhood video game!

There is an enormous range between working on a worthwhile project and end it all right now. The point was that very few people lay on their death bed and wish they spent more time working. Typically they wish for more time with their family, or in the general sense more experiences.

Personally, I love the experience of learning something new and hence enjoy a lot of programming. I will not be wishing on my death bed to have written yet another CRUD app. If I die before my wife, I will have wanted more time with her - traveling if possible.

Oh, so that was the point?

An e-mail I received right before reading this post:

"THANK YOU for your excellent customer service. Your videos on YouTube -- while I little over my head -- tell how you have a passion for electronics and creating solutions. I have told several people about you and I hope it brings you business.

Thank you for sharing your talents with the world."

It is so hard to imagine that reflecting on this e-mail might bring me some satisfaction on my death bed ?

I never understood the big deal about death bed. I don't care much about what I think when my i am old and senile.

I'm sure I'll have huge regrets no matter what I do.

I've watched both my parents as well as several other close friend die, and none of them really expressed any regrets. What's the point? Most people live the best life they can, and I've never known anyone to spend their last years or hours mired in regret. They actually seem to mostly reminisce about the highlights of their life, whatever they were.

There's no guarantee that you'll be old or senile when you're ok your deathbed. If you are, great. If not, the regrets will sting a lot more.

Found your channel for those who might be interested. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRzx5KAxuUZAjiXbaJpVxuw

Cheers mate :)

Life is a series of projects.

Seems sensible to make them as worthwhile as possible.

That's a good way to look at it.

To me, worthwhile projects is about personal achievement, reaching your potential, and giving back to society. So yes, I do wish I had more time to work on more worthwhile projects.

No. It can be assumed that people here enjoy working on projects. Projects that interest them. The deeper meaning of this statement, in my opinion, is that every day you spend doing something that you dont like is a very big deal because, as this graph illustrates, there aren't really that many days available to waste.

I would.

Here "worthwhile projects" is not about more clients, money or the HN front page. It's not about work - it's about passion (often - hobbies, side-projects, etc).

Isn't really that no-one says at h[ei]r deathbed "I wish I wrote that book; now this story is lost forever."?

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

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

I guess you can s/worthwhile project/entertaining myself, and the message stays the same.

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/

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

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

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.

I'm not sure what it's attempting to do, but the data it provided me was completely wrong. It was claiming there were only 6 days left in the year, for example. (It's April 10th, so there are many more than 6 days left.) It said 20 minutes left in the hour, but it's 8:22, so there's more like 38 minutes left. WTF?

Weird. Looks correct to me. Is it possible your system time is weird? It might be based off of that.

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.

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

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.

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...

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

> "I just drew a smiley face"

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

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 :-)

I think these things are kind of grim. Living life without considering its length as a motivation to do things is perfectly fine.

Ever since the 60s, epiphanies and ideas like this are fads, fashion statements. How did George Romero say it? Something like "it was the 60s, everyone had something to say." The 60s never ended, people keep thinking they have something to say, and since nobody's listening to them on Twitter and Facebook anymore, they're just getting more creative.

People will always have something to say. That's the nature of being thinking beings.

Say someone decides to mark all the significant events in his life. And notices that it's beginning to spell words.. maybe a neat story?

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...

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/

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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

Or indeed that it hasn't always been true.

"Man will always have shit days." -- Greek proverb

They will look back and be jealous.

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

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

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

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?

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

Noted.

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

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.

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

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

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

I am living in the country with such laws in place (Switzerland); but most old people I talked to really want to live. Nobody wants to die, unless they are in great pain.

> quality of life in bottom rectangles deteriorates rapidly, medical expenses are skyrocketing, and basically everything sucks.

That sounds pretty painful.

There is no need for this even without assisted suicide laws.

Choosing between months of dying painfully and years of dying perhaps marginally less painfully is not a choice anyone should have to make.

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....

This is really profound. I made a rough estimate of when I will die and ticked the box that corresponds to it. Being able to see each individual week that I have left really gave me pause. Wow. And this graph is generous. Your perception of how long a week is decreases with time. So if this were a graph of how much perceived time you have left it would be even smaller...

Buster Benson made something similar but much more interactive http://busterbenson.com

If you want a customizable life calendar like this as your homepage, I made one that's usable as a bookmark or Chrome extension: http://count.life

> <div class='week'></div><div class='week'></div><div class='week'></div><div c

Why was THAT not implemented in JavaScript?

I feel bad for myself.

I first thought this was a Google Calendar view for some reason.

fork here, make it more alive https://github.com/some1else/life

This is a somewhat alarming site to view without javascript.

Aw, I thought this was some kind of colorful Conway's game of life and spent a while looking for a play button after drawing a bunch of gliders and such.

.simple-life { background: linear-gradient(360deg, #975162, #956282, #85769E, #688CAF, #45A1B2, #37B2A6, #56C08F, #87CA74, #BDCF5E, #F6CE59); }

this is interesting. colors are an important addition. i made a demo of the same concept a few months ago. i wrote up a few notes.

http://galaxybuster.net/notes/thoughts-on-timeleft

I don't believe in gods, but if I did, I'd pray that I don't live to 90. Yikes.

I hate stuff like this.

"Tick tock" et cetera. I get terribly depressed thinking too much about it.

this is amazing. It so clearly shows the human aging process and why 27 is the hardest year/color. But if you survive it, you break on through to the next color. I think around 87 there is another tough year.

Live as if you will die tomorrow and learn as if you will live forever - Ghandi

Life is effort and I'll stop when I die!

Yup. Almost there!

Hey bud, I'm not too far. Can I sit next to you? We can throw crumbs & seeds for the birds together.

Assuming you're going to live to 90

Cut it off where you like.

Does everyone die at 91?

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