Conversation and Ideas

But what about the conversations that make your ideas better and leave you pessimistic?

Or is that uncommon for other people?

I’ve now mostly figured out the right balance for me to do this in real life. Where I struggle is with conversations online. I think one reason HN has such a high quality of conversations, compared with other forums, is most people here are motivated by finding the truth behind ideas. Twitter, for example, is at the opposite end. It feels like a firehose of conflicting motives coming at me at once. The only solution I’ve found there is to stay logged out most of the time. reply

This will pass.

The author seems to have discovered how small and selfish a world most people inhabit, how unconstrained by logical consistency or concern for what happens to humanity as a whole, how trivial and reliant upon what others will think of them.

Yes, that is most people, most of the time :)

Thankfully - a good conversation, a meeting of the minds, is just one of many little joys life has to offer. I'd suggest finding joy in something that's unrelated to human beings acting in a rational manner.