Tips for a Better Life | Hacker News Reader

Tips for a Better Life

ideopunk.com

1,271 pointsCapitalistCartr463 comments

I think the compassion section has the most wisdom in it, especially the reasoning behind the recommendation:

82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.

83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.

84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, you’ll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, they’ve already learned the lesson they’re going to learn and it probably isn’t the lesson you want.

85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.

86. Cultivate patience for difficult people. Communication is extremely complicated and involves getting both tone and complex ideas across. Many people can barely do either. Don’t punish them.

87. Don’t punish people for trying. You teach them to not try with you. Punishing includes whining that it took them so long, that they did it badly, or that others have done it better.

88. Remember that many people suffer invisibly, and some of the worst suffering is shame. Not everybody can make their pain legible.

89. Don't punish people for admitting they were wrong, you make it harder for them to improve.

90. In general, you will look for excuses to not be kind to people. Resist these.

91. don't buy XRP

but in seriousness,

I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers. Look how often people lose patience with each other online.

>85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.

Interestingly, being smart does not protect one from scams. Look at all the smart people who got duped by Madoff. Smart people are just as inclined to believe BS as less intelligent people are , if the BS is dressed up in such a way to appeal to smart people. If anything, being dumb helps, because scams typically require forms and complex schemes, such as investment schemes.

Agree on both counts.

> I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers. Look how often people lose patience with each other online.

Your reply in particular, though also many of the bullet points themselves to an extent, feels like the Sermon on the Mount — no wonder Charlie Stross keeps comparing [Less Wrong, Rationalist philosophy, the Singularity] to Christian theology.

> Smart people are just as inclined to believe BS as less intelligent people are , if the BS is dressed up in such a way to appeal to smart people.

Indeed. When the Sequences talks of rationality still being rationality even when it’s wearing a clown suit and makeup, it drew my attention to the inverse case of intellectual fraud still being intellectual fraud when it’s dressing itself up like One Of Us.

It's the problem of trust. Even the smartest people on the planet have the need to trust someone. Trust can be abused, of course.

It's not just about being smart/dumb, it's also about being trusting and agreeable. I think falling prey to the occasional (hopefully not life-destroying) deception is part of the cost of being an easy to work with and trusting person. There are people who will take advantage of you, but most won't. On the balance, this leads to better relationships and a better life. OTOH you can be cynical and questioning of every persons' motives, and that can make many normal interactions exhausting, at work and in social contexts. It can add an edge to you that most people do not like.

The ideal would be to have perfect, instant judgement of character, knowing when to be open or closed with people in various contexts. That's the hardest of all, and comes from having great parents/mentors and making lots of mistakes.

The thing is that you can differentiate between contexts. No?

At work I'm learning to trust more and be kinder. I actually have colleagues today that are smart and seem to be kind too. Not always the case though before. Most people have been rather dumb so far. And I'm not particularly bright if you ask me.

Road: I'll let the guy in. I know how to do zipper style traffic. If the next guy tries to take advantage I'll be sure to try as hard as I can not to let him in. Eff him! The guys that get real close on the highway even though I'm already going 10% over the speed limit? I'll make sure to drop to exactly the speed limit or on the highway Match the speed of the truck right next to me. Back the eff off dude! If he does I'll accelerate and get out of the way. Most don't get it even with gestures. The guy coming on with 30% over the speed limit from behind but I see them or they slow down and stay 3 car lengths behind? I'll make room as soon as I pass the other traffic and might even go 15% over the limit. I'm not unreasonable.

Companies? I'll expect you to be unreasonable. You have to prove to me that you're worth it. Sorry but too many bad apples. You don't deliver in the time you said you would and then you don't answer the phone or call me back? Sorry but I will not assume that you are just having a family situation and it's taking you a while due to that. I will assume that you're out to gouge your customers and try to use the get out of jail free card all the time. If you don't call me back the day you said you would I'll assume you're a scumbag trying to cheat me out of my money or you don't want my business.

> Look how often people lose patience with each other online.

I think this is largely an issue of scale.

Say you are driving on a single-lane, one-way road, which ends at a T intersection with a stop sign. The other road is also 1-way, 1-lane, and does not have a stop sign. It has a traffic light around 20 car lengths after your road. You are waiting for a chance to turn in; the other road has a fair amount of traffic, but moving slowly since the light was red. A car stops (or moves very slowly) to make room for you to cut in, and waves you on. Very nice for you, and the cars behind you are not inconvenienced much.

In my experience, this kind of thing happens relatively frequently in rural areas, and quite the opposite in cities. For myself, that's largely because in the city there's always a car looking to get in, and if I stopped for them all, I'd never get anywhere.

In person, I am quite patient. Online, still relatively patient I guess, but less so, especially with strangers. There's just so many people who I could be talking to, that if I gave everyone I talked to the same attention that I do irl, I wouldn't have time to do anything else! My impatience translates more into "ghosting" a conversation if the other person isn't getting my point, vs snapping at them, but it's the same cause.

Sometimes I write long (as in time to compose) comments like this one, but that's partially for myself, to verify that my thoughts are logically consistent.

Interesting bit about the cars in the city. I've always let 1 or 2 cars in, but cut it off after that for the reason you mention.

My experience differs with the cars. During my life I have moved from very rural area to always denser places. The denser it gets the more helpful the other drivers are. Dunno why this happens.

IMO New York drivers are the least agreeable and a diverse sprawlscape like LA has all kinds, depending on the neighborhood (looking at you Glendale) so neither stereotype align with reality.

I suspect what the GP thinks of as rural is more exurban or even suburban, though IME they're often just as bad. Rural is when you see a handful of cars on an hour long drive so opinions will vary wildly

I’ve grown up driving in east coast cities and I will say that there is a lot of honking and anger and cutting off of people, but drivers in general are very spatially aware and there are unwritten rules about how to cut in/merge etc. so I’ve never taken any of it personally. It’s all part of the theater. Oddly I feel less comfortable in other regions out west where speeds are higher and people are sticklers for “rules of the road” (IMO feel like “right of way” casts a cloak of invincibility around them). I feel that those drivers don’t see driving for the complex, multi-person game it is and don’t play their part in the game. It’s like their playing in single player mode. I can see though if you’re unfamiliar with either perspective the other seems foreign and wrong. But then again I’m biased (just casting a different perspective on angry NYC/Boston/NE-US drivers)...

I’ve heard a magician claim PhDs are much easier to fool than children. The former can apparently rationalize any (wrong) scenario

James Randi said that about scientists. He has demonstrated a matchbox trick that fooled some of them into believing a person had supernatural powers.

Maybe some scientists get frustrated if they don't understand the trick. There are so many things that children don't understand that tricks have less effects.

> I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers.

This, and they're also easier to apply in person. It's a lot harder to be casually vicious to someone you're face to face with, for most people at least (although some are quite capable of such IRL).

> Look how often people lose patience with each other online.

Many of the most popular platforms implicitly or explicitly reward self-righteous moralizing, dog-piling, mean-spirited snark, glib context-insensitivity, baiting/provocation, appeals to emotion, etc.

I am not sure if that many smart people got duped by Madoff, surely not for significant %, of their net worth. It's just who the public considers smart often isn't that at all.

We had similar scandal in our country with tens of thousands of people being duped into buying some kind of gold secured deposits. We have heard how smart people like doctors, actors, lawyers invested significant % of their net worth on it. I see it differently. They are not smart. If you invest big % of your net worth into one thing, especially if that thing is not a huge publicly traded and regularly audited company/fund then you are not smart. If you're tempted to put a lot of money into some magic fund that trades gold you are just dumb.

Not putting all your eggs in one basket, especially if it sounds like some exclusive great opportunity isn't rocket science. It's just that vast majority of the population is clueless when it comes to thinking about money, probability and motivations of others.

I think the point about the compassion is great. Very small % of people can understand things like financial instruments, expected value or utility of money. We need a framework to protect less fortunate from scams because that's most people and no one wants the world where scammers reside at the top of the food chain.

Just wrt Madoff, a lot of people who were smart enough to make real money in their lives were taken by him. Some may not be too bright, but that would be a long tail and there were surely some at the other end of the curved too. I asked a bigwig at a legit hedge fund once how they never spotted that he was a fraud, and his answer was that they couldn't reproduce his returns, so they figured he was smarter than them.

It might have not been obvious it's a fraud but it was obvious not to put significant % of your net worth in his fund. It's basic risk management. Maybe I am biased coming from a gambling world where it's the very first lesson you get. Betting more than a few % of your net worth on one horse is just a judgement blunder.

A lot of smart people knew he had to be a kind of fraud, but they thought he was their fraud -- it was assumed he was making money through some kind of front running.

I've heard before that the smarter you are, the more naive you are. The way I think about it, the smarter you are the more often you are correct about something that no one else is, which causes you to rationally place your judgement above others, which causes you to believe a bunch of nonsense. When presented with counter-evidence, you are more likely to trust your own reasoning than to trust the evidence.

I was told long ago that con men like to target doctors, because doctors believe they are too smart to be scammed.

Rule number one, always find what people want and play on it.

Also they have lots of money.

money that they scammed from their poor patients

Smart is so easy to bypass. Put anybody in à New place with high emotional incentives and all of their side knowledge will fade when facing the fairy tale.

People that lose patience online are mostly teenagers or young adults. I think boys even in their 20's have hard time to learn compassion.

Part about strangers is that it is far easier to unload on someone you will never meet again. When you know you will have to face that person the next day you have to have really good reason to lose your tamper. You don't have to understand compassion to understand consequences of talking foul things to your father.

#82 is a Pinegrove lyric, great song.

Seeing this made me wonder if the author pulled it from the song _or_ if the song/author pulled it from somewhere else. A quick search seems to indicate it's a Pinegrove original, which makes me happy. One of my favorite bands!

Love that song! Noted it in the list but thought it was off by a word or two... guess not!

The number is in fact a link to the PineGrove video.

Many of the numbers are green ... try clicking them!

I am a Pinegrove fan myself, but that song sounds like Smashmouth sadly. "So what's wrong with taking the backstreets"

Thanks. The list started out so materialistic I quickly lost interest.

I lost interest when it stopped being materialistic.

I will exercise these tips for an otherwise sophomoric article

Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment

Honestly, be kind because the universe is cruel enough. Just step back and let entropy do it’s thing if you truly can’t be kind to someone, but there’s no need to hasten “the entropy death of the universe.”

Being mean hastens the heat death of the universe?

Of course! That’s why it’s called “roasting” people.

There's very good advice in there for people in leading or mentoring positions.

I am in academia and I noticed many professors are a mixed bag when it comes to such communication skills. They don't really compliment students much for their work or results. Basically all feedback is target at existing issues and how to improve things. I feel many people can quickly get discouraged by this.

When I give students feedback I always start with thanking them for the work and pointing out some things I think they did very well.. Most students seem to appreciate it a lot.

I really like it. Used GPT-3 to expand it (T=0.7, the first trial).

[PROMPT]

Compassion

82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.

83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.

85. [END OF PROMPT] When you’re arguing with somebody, know that you’re both right. Think about it this way: let’s say you really want to go to the movies, but your friend really wants to see something else. You both really want to see what you want. This means that you can’t really be right and they can’t really be wrong, because if they are right then you would be wrong, and if you’re wrong then they’re right.

86. When you’re arguing with somebody, know that you’re both wrong. Think about it this way: an expert is somebody who knows more and more about less and less. So, if you’re arguing with somebody you’re likely very ignorant about their subject, and they’re likely very ignorant about yours, so you’re likely wrong, and so is they.

87. If somebody is shouting at you, you can choose to be hurt or you can choose to be curious. If your curiosity wins, you’ll be better able to hear what they really mean, which is usually the opposite of what they’re shouting.

88. Think about people as all being like you, just with a different set of experiences and beliefs. This will help you to be more compassionate to their quirks and more forgiving of their mistakes.

89. Think about people as all being like you, just with a different set of experiences and beliefs. This will help you to better understand and appreciate their quirks and better forgive their mistakes.

90. Treat yourself as you would treat somebody you love.

91. Treat yourself as you would treat your best friend.

92. Treat yourself as you would treat somebody you’re about to have sex with.

Other than 89 I’m not impressed with the GPT-3 output here. In fact I would say it’s a good demonstration of the limits of this technology. While syntactically correct sentences that at the surface sound good, if you really think about them they’re not saying anything. They’re much more superficial and meaningless than the thinking that went into the original list.

I'd say that GPT-3 could probably beat a lot of the English-speaking (human) population at producing these though. I've read far worse on social media, that I've attributed to humans authors.

No doubt. Since it’s built out of a corpus of human produced text, it should be capable of producing human level text (but probably not often exceeding it). Yet many people are not capable of writing syntactically correct text.

As well as being syntactically correct, it also reflects the contextual patterns of the tokens used to train it and then prompt it, which is perhaps limited by both intelligence and knowledge in humans.

So GPT-3 could run for office.

It sounds like 95% of the conversations I hear at work.

In the same vein, one of my first experiments with GPT-3:

[PROMPT]

The following is short advice given by an omniscient AI acting as a spiritual leader similar to Buddha and Jesus.

[Human] Hello, what's the best piece of original, actionable advice you can give to humans?

[AI] [END OF PROMPT] The big tip is to stop looking at external validation for how good of a person you are. That includes money, fame, love, respect, being well-liked, sex, friends, whatever. None of those are your true rewards and all of them are dependent on your external environment. Even if you get 100% of them, the high is fleeting. Get into a flow of life where you get satisfaction from knowing you did the right thing in the moment and you have decent relationships, and you don't have to worry about "am I successful enough?" all the time.

lol 92 could lead to some pretty weird situations

86 is good advice for overly confident people, but destructive for people who are too agreeable or lack confidence.

In fact, sometimes you are right and it is ok too think you are right. It is also ok to want things, you don't have to step back every single time.

#84 is especially good advice. Bandwagon criticism and demonisation is very common in the workplace and pretty much every group environment I've been in, although to varying degrees. Definitely a deep-seated psychology/biological phenomenon at work.

Don't assume someone is not smart because they have trouble with something you find easy. People have different strengths and weaknesses and the same person you are tempted to look down upon as "dumb" may blow you out of the water on some other task.

This is so true. I had a college mate who was truly useless with academics - struggling with pretty much all the courses and math gave him nightmares. (But he did have the determination to retry until he passed).

Yet he could disassemble your computer, your motor-bike, your car, diagnose and fix any problem - all within a couple of hours. It was really fun to watch him work. This was sadly before the youtube era. Today, I would have taken videos of him doing this. It was amazing how he knew precisely where every part was and how smooth he was de-assembling and assembling. A mechanical savant. He always used to nail the practicals - welding, foundry, etc.

The game theory of this kind of enlightenment might not work for the majority of people. The null hypothesis is that default human behavior is near-optimal individually.

"8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online."

I'm finding, as I've gotten older, that almost every time I've chosen money over time I've made a bad decision.

And I see this among my family and friends, too. There's a mentality that emerges when exchanging time for money that somehow makes it so you waste your time and you end up spending almost or more money than you originally would have.

I'm known for saying, "There is a professional person for that... Let's get one," instead of trying to fix the water heater ourselves or get transport 2 tons of gravel. Others in my family would have dragged the old trailer out of the barn. Oh, it has a flat. Fix that. Oh, the trailer hitch doesn't fit the new truck, oh, get a new hitch (we'll use it someday again, surely). Or get the old truck working, or the older truck working (cause they keep buying cheap used trucks that break down and sit on the property for eternity). Then go get whatever, and deal with not knowing what they're doing. Me, just get it delivered. Maybe more money, waaaay less hassle. In the saved time I've polished up my CSS skills...

Time really is the most precious resource you have. Think hard before you trade it for anything else.

I disagree. I spent 20 hours installing a remote start on my wife’s minivan for $150 when it would have cost $400 to have professionals do it in 3 hours. My time was well spent.

Different strokes, of course. Find the balance : ) I think it’s healthy to realize that even things/chores you want to do and would enjoy doing you may be able to pay to have done both sooner and more professionally, allowing you to partake in activities you enjoy even more. I just moved and had new locks keyed and deadbolts installed for $200. I could have done it, and have before, but I got to work instead and take off early to go hike with the dogs. I think a lot of capable people feel guilty paying for stuff like that because they like to accomplish everything themselves, which can be exhausting in and of itself. That’s the pitfall to avoid, I think.

Yes, also try. We hired a nanny in the mornings to help care for the kids.

Yeah, it's not like I'm paying people to assemble my Lego sets or play my board games for me. But your example of 20 hours for $400 would definitely be one where I'd take that $20 an hour in a heartbeat and go do something else.

Right, definitely valid. But I could have spent that 20 hrs playing a video game, which has the same sort of feedbacks, but doesn't teach me a useful skill. If I reinterpret the installation as a meditative time of carefully learning and exploring, like playing an open world game like minecraft, it feels rewarding instead of tedious. Ideally I would do something similar for all my tasks so my life is very understandable and maintainable. Despite the normal call to just have a professional do it, many things are not so tricky to do one's self, and if I trick myself into thinking the time is worthwhile spent instead of wasted since I didn't do a preferred activity, I gain a sense of virtue and deeper satisfaction. Sure, I will miss out on financial and experiential opportunities. But, it seems with virtue and a sense of standing on my own feet, these missed opportunities don't bother me, which in turn gives me less anxiety over missing out on life overall, which is what I think I really want.

Yeah, and the point you make about satisfaction is important. If you're doing it for the satisfaction of learning and attaining some competence at it, that's time well spent I think.

I do almost everything myself--a byproduct of being raised poor--and I never know what I'm doing. I watch some youtube videos, buy a fancy new tool, and away I go. I've had a couple epic failures but overall I've found that the more things you learn to do yourself the faster and easier it gets to pick up any new thing.

I'll add that learning some basic skills can save hassle as well. A few weeks ago a hinge broke on my bathroom door. The door dropped and was wedged on the floor so it couldn't be opened or closed.

My wife's answer if I wasn't here, would have been to call someone and wait a week for them to come, while just dealing with a broken bathroom door. Maybe if you are on your own thats no big deal, but what if it was a exterior door or window?

I spend an hour to swap the hinges around (there are three on the door, so swapped the middle for the bottom one which was broken), and voila, good as new until I get a replacement.

I still need to get around to ordering a replacement, but that's another story....

Exactly, having a professional do it not only is more expensive, but can be more time consuming and annoying.

Some people value that they can get stuff done for themselves. I've grown up helping with various renovations around our home (floor tiling, wallpapers, building kitchen furniture etc), and they are fond memories and it makes a difference to how you feel living in a place. I know today mobility and renting is everything, but there is quite a distinct feel of living in actually your own place that you've worked on over the years with family or friends helping out. Now, we were poorer than most people around here for sure. Still, it's not the same when you just pay others to do it.

What's life about? What do you buy that time for? To have more time to "consume content"? Or to go on a vacation and sit at the beach being served cocktails? For many people, these quests for finding good deals, fixing stuff, etc. is like a "side project" or a side quest that contributes to their self-image and life satisfaction long-term.

If you eliminate all hassle, you could just as much pay people to live instead of you.

Now if you really loath some ways of spending time, sure try to make others do those. But not every "hassle" is wasted time. You can even learn new interesting things, interact with different types of people, while getting advice for laying your floor tiles or whatever.

I don't think this super productivity focused view is healthy long term, that all time must be spent either on brushing up on new job-related skills to chase more money, or on actual work time to fight for higher job positions, to make your hourly time even more expensive, so you do even less worldly stuff...

I wonder if there will come a new celebrity-backed fad (following mindfulness, minimalism, normcore etc.) where people do these mundane tasks themselves and give it some cute snappy buzzwordy name and there will be scientific studies that it increases one's well being.

"If you eliminate all hassle, you could just as much pay people to live instead of you."

I take your point, but don't worry, I'm living with the saved time. The CSS example was probably not as good as it could have been. Instead I'd probably be visiting my kids or something like that. I don't think "super productivity" is healthy long term as well.

"I wonder if there will come a new celebrity-backed fad (following mindfulness, minimalism, normcore etc.) where people do these mundane tasks themselves and give it some cute snappy buzzwordy name and there will be scientific studies that it increases one's well being."

Would that be the DIY thing?

I think that's just DIY. Does doing the dishes increase happiness? Unlikely. But fixing something or cooking a new dish is going to venture into learning and thinking and hopefully some level of increased awareness of how other parts of the world work.

With that said, there can be real value to walking mindlessly behind a lawn mower for a few hours.

I find doing the dishes somewhat meditative. If I've spent the morning grappling with a difficult work problem then I need something mindless to do for 20 minutes.

> If you eliminate all hassle, you could just as much pay people to live instead of you.

There are still a lot of things to do even if you have eliminated all the hassles. Singing, writing, learning a new language, surfing, volunteering as a firefighter, just to name a few.

I get it. Some people likes fixing stuff, building stuff with their hands, and it's perfectly interesting to them. At the same time, it's not that interesting to other people. Just like not everyone cooks, and that doesn't mean they are not enjoying their meal.

Last week, I spent a few hours learning about plumbing, in an attempt to fix my disposal. My quest failed, and I had to call a plumber, who fixed it in under a minute.

Next time, I'll call her directly.

> volunteering as a firefighter

This seems like exactly the case where I would apply the "There's a professional for that" maxim.

There are not enough professional firefighters in some places.

There are too many in others. They mostly do housecalls, serving as ambulances, since house fires are rare today.

Too many in cities but in rural areas, there are never enough. And they are never close enough. Lots of those places, the volunteers train once a month and carry a pager. They are all spread out over the county. When the page goes off, they leave work or home and go to the scene to be useful.

This made me laugh my drink through my nose -- and I've had my life saved by volunteer fire fighters in the PNW backcountry. A gifted, timely amateur beats an absent professional any day.

And the selection and training for volunteers is as rigorous as for the professionals, for the obvious reason that they can't permit life and property to be endangered just because someone's a volunteer.

I had a workshop fire once. Grabbing the fire extinguisher and quickly putting it out was defintely a better idea than outsourcing that task.

There is merit to the parent comment advising that some DIY excursions are best left alone, but I appreciate the adventure that comes with grinding my wheels from time to time. Hassle builds character! My buddy is taking years to renovate his house, but it's a great story, like something you see in Architectural Digest.

The thing is that there's a difference between putting up a new wall (been there, enjoyed that) and hiring someone else to fix the toilet flange leak if you ask me :)

That's a tongue in cheek way of saying that I don't mind paying for the stuff that I would not enjoy trying to do myself. It's not limited to smelly stuff. I definitely didn't want to do the re-piping of the house (had Kitex) myself. But I definitely enjoyed the wall building and dry walling. I loved putting in the door and what I learned during that but I wouldn't want to do the window replacement even though it's kinda the same except for the insulation and water proofing part (which is where I want the professionals to do it). But then I will be looking into the shed water leak myself (wet garden tools and possibly some $$ spent on a new 2x4 or OSB roof board, sure). Leaky house with mold issues? Thabjs but no thanks. I got a day job :)

Sounds like you've struck a great balance between being unafraid to tackle some cool, challenging projects and sniffing out the tasks that aren't worth your trouble. Knowing the boundaries of your expertise is key, no matter the domain.

I think GP agrees with you because they said:

> In the saved time I've polished up my CSS skills...

I tried to tile a room in my basement once. Took forever and I only got half done. Hired a professional to finish the job, and it took him less than a day. Then he told me the things I had done wrong.

Luckily I got this advice early on, and I agree it’s aged well as I get older. It was given to me as “Time is your most precious resource. You can always make more money. You’ll never get back a second of your time.” Words I live by.

Some people have spent thousands of hours perfecting their craft. To think you can produce the same output with a few hours of YouTube tutorials is laughable.

I’m happy to pay these experts because I know I will get my moneys worth. It’ll also free up my time to explore things I have a higher interest and affinity for

If very high-skilled work is needed and/or specialized tools (replacing a front-door, plumbing a gas-line), I agree, it's hard to match a skilled professional.

In my experience, the vast majority of household diy/repair does not require that level of skill. It can also be hard to find a really skilled person that cares about your home as much as you.

For me, I tend towards fixing/making everything myself unless it requires high-skill or specialized tools.

> It can also be hard to find a really skilled person that cares about your home as much as you.

This is something I've found to be true.

We bought a house that we later found had some significant water damage issues. I hired a professional the first time we noticed it and he did little more than paper over the problem.

I ended up spending the next two years basically tearing the wall apart and redoing all the sheathing and insulation and house wrap.

Sure I could have hired someone and they would have eventually done all that for me, but I'm pretty confident it would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars by that point.

Caring about the end result will get you a long way.

But part of it is probably also that I come from a working class family and was immersed in the basics of that sort of work for my entire growing up time.

How do you know you're hiring an expert? It's easy to find people claiming to be experts who are willing to take your money. It's virtually impossible to evaluate whether they're any good or not when you're not an expert either.

If I do it myself, I might take three times as long, but at least I know what I'm going to get.

Somehow, it feels better if it's screwed up because I screwed it up rather than paying someone else to screw it up.

Word of mouth is a good way. Experts tend to have a portfolio of work so you can use that as your reference point.

I completely agree. I've found these are generally challenging tasks that pull you into a flow state, and when doing them with family, contribute to a great sense of accomplishment.

"If you eliminate all hassle, you could just as much pay people to live instead of you."

In general (90% of the time) I've found paying someone to do something merely alters the hassle. Now I have to deal through someone to get the desired result. And I'm paying for the privilege (increments hassle). There are very few times I've been able to pay money, state the desired result, and remain hands off.

Yep, it's easy to get screwed over. When we had major renovations, one knowledgeable family member always had to be around to make sure things are going well. The main repairs guy is obviously hostile to this, they are the pros after all, but if you take a hands off approach you can get screwed. And other handymen don't like taking up and finishing/fixing botched jobs. You can also try to run after your money. Sure you can delegate that too, pay a lawyer etc.

If you're really rich you can just have someone who does all this for you and you just sit in your chair and enjoy life and point to things in catalogues and everything else just appears around you.

There are ripple effects from discovering that you're capable of doing things that professionals get paid to do.

Good ripple effects.

My wife has not only embraced me doing more things around the house (and to me, this is getting to do more things) as she's seen what I can do, but she's also embraced her own capabilities more as she's discovered what she can do.

There's also cases where professionals have different skill levels, or just a bad day, and make mistakes working on your issue. But when you did the initial build or repair yourself, you often learn enough to come in and troubleshoot an issue that arises, without having to schedule a troubleshooting session (or five, as is the case of my brand new roof that still has a new leak after quite a few visits and failure to identify the cause.)

The more capable you find yourself, the more you can readily learn to shape your immediate environment to be the world you want to live in. And arguably, there's more satisfaction in that than paying others to shape the world for you.

Also, paying someone to care about it as much as you do may be out of your wallet (well, perhaps not the case for SV devs reading).

The attention to detail and actual time that you are willing to put into your own home is just different from someone for whom it's just another job.

I wanted to say great replies - thoughtful and reasoned and polite. I read them all. Thanks HN folks.

> Time really is the most precious resource you have. Think hard before you trade it for anything else.

Including money!

I personally would much rather spend a sunny afternoon with my nephew transporting 2 tons of gravel and playing outside than sitting inside an office to earn the money to pay someone else to do it.

That's a particular case where you'd get other benefits (spending time with someone you like when the weather is nice), you know that's not always the case. And for the cost of half a day's transit work a software engineer probably only needs to work for an hour (and a professional's half day will probably take a layperson a whole day).

If you enjoy the activity it's a whole different story.

Since starting on my own homeownership journey, I've often found it a gigantic hassle to find professionals who I can trust to do a decent job AND have time in their schedule to do the job... Hiring someone for any kind of plumbing requires both time AND money, so I find it just as well to try using time first, and then adding money if the job is too big/complex to solve with a few youtube videos and a wrench.

I recently spent $2500 having a "recommended" handyman paint the trim of a rental house I own because I was taking too long to get the house done by myself and I figured it'd save money in the long run to accelerate the timetable, but his work wasn't up to my standards and I still had to spend another week touching up his mistakes. Probably would've been three days if I just did the job myself, and I wouldn't have had to spend any time picking paint out of the carpet either...

To be fair, though, the other subs I hired worked out okay.

It's easy to recognize this but there really is something you miss by not having things you maintain yourself. It certainly doesn't have to be everything but if you outsource too much it's a lot easier to get depressed.

On the other hand, if you enjoy fixing old trucks and hauling gravel then you haven't really lost anything. You've got to spend your time doing something after all.

I just replaced my failed furnace with a used one from craigslist, cost me about $250 and 2-4 hours ¯\_(0.0)_/¯

I've applied this a lot in my life.

For example, holidays: Every day that I'm overseas, I lose about $1,000 because I'm a contractor and I'm not getting paid, plus the base expenses of the flights and hotel rooms. If I'm not getting a thousand dollars worth of value from a day, that money is wasted. Spending $50 at a normal restaurant is not "saving money", it's actually a waste of a day! Once you've sunk days into flying somewhere, and dedicated weeks of not working, you may as well spend $200-$300 on a really fancy dinner.

For a contrast, a friend of mine came with us on a trip and tried to save money by buying the exact same $5 takeaway budget pizza that you can get here. He got food poisoning from it and spent several days of his trip in his room feeling miserable. He spent the same time on the trip and spent the same money on flights and accommodation.

I agree with the end point you made but I think it's really unhealthy to think about any time not spent working as losing money.

I don't think parent means "every hour I'm not working I'm losing money", I think they mean "every day I spend on this vacation is a day I would normally be getting paid" so they need to make the opportunity cost assessment.

I'm not sure how $200-300 is "saving money" unless you're not enjoying your trip at all with a $50 restaurant.

Maybe your friend that spent $5 on pizza was on the trip for something other than food?

Also depending on destination, $200 / night on dinner is usually higher than my total daily incl amortized flights, and I don't really cut corners on anything (ie flights, hotel, activities, meals). Your friend with the $5 pizza could proportionally save a lot of money compared to me.

Of course, food poisoning is a pretty extreme example, doesn't make sense to order from anywhere if it seems undafe.

How do you factor in trips where being thrify - taking, for instance, public transport or staying in strange places or finding cheap back-street bars, are actually the way to have a far more genuine experience than throwing money at stuff? I've always found the trips I've taken when I've been broken to be the ones where I discover the most and immerse myself the most. When I've you're able to throw money at stuff you get lazy and don't get as much from it.

Understand what you are trying to say but maybe food isn't the best example. If i travel somewhere it's to enjoy a warm beach, the ski slope or something else unique i can't find at home. Not to eat. If i thrift on the food it means i can afford another day in slopes. (Assuming of course fancy restaurants is something that can be found at home and not a main unique attraction of the destination).

Often the cheap street food can also be the more unique local attraction when traveling somewhere!

Question is what do you spend your newfound time on. People usually like solving problems and proving to themselves and others they are capable. If I go and fix that broken chair myself, rather than toss it and buy a brand new one, you can say I’ve “lost” that time doing something unproductive, but I might consider it time well spent doing something I enjoy.

Also I think diversifying my competencies is also a good investment, as you get to exercise different parts of your brain and body.

And don’t get me started on the social aspect. Sure I’ll feel happy working on that toy recursive descent parser I’ve been thinking about. But I can do that at work too. But helping a friend do a paint job for that old room would help my well being even more.

I’ve largely stopped envying other people’s wealth at this point. I can see them having all the same problems as the rest of us - communication with partners or kids, “issues at work”, car problems, neighbor problems, substance abuse, just the details change, we’re all humans in the end. And thus trying to find joy in whatever I’ve set out to do this hour has helped me a lot with my general wellbeing.

I see this reacting depending on the interests, hobbies or identity of the person. The same people who decide to get a professional to paint their homes or install a heater can / will also rant about how you can save money by assembling your own server, driving an hour each way to a colo and installing it there, instead of using AWS. We all decide to do things ourselves if we're hobbyists, amateurs or have an vested identity (we think of ourselves as being handy with power tools or being the "man about the house") in the thing that needs to be done.

Relevant Malcolm in the Middle "Hal Replaces a Lightbulb" video. Sometimes I feel like this is my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance? Your attitude reminds me of the protagonist's friend.

When you do things for yourself, not only do you gain the experience when you have the agency and skills to add a layer of self-reliance, and not only do you have the beautiful experience of learning and appreciating the ins and outs of the things that contribute to your existence, but often when you achieve some degree of master of something you'll be building or maintaining things to a higher standard because you have a vested interest in keeping the tools around you that way as opposed to relying on a division of labour.

When it comes to buying things I find my satisfaction is much higher when I spend money to remove an irritant rather than get something completely new.

Our home has a long run from the water heater to basically anywhere it is used (This is in the USA where storage heaters are typical). When it died I had its location moved and got a model with a circulating system that loops around to the downstairs locations (kitchen/bathroom). Now what took 20-30 seconds to get warm water is 2-3 seconds. I spent a lot (for me) and it was worth it.

I replaced the 2 DIN radio in my car with an android head unit. Driving became much better with my personal audio selection rather than over the air radio (What's that?). A few years later I upgraded the unit and reduced the start time from 20-ish seconds to 2 seconds. Both changes removed irritants and noticeably improved my quality of life.

Previously I would wonder if getting a new car, or bigger TV, or going to Hawaii would improve my life. Now I am more inclined to seek out irritants and try to find ways of applying money or effort to reduce them. I'll still make the occasional new/splurge purchase, most recently Ring video cameras - they're fun, but that comes second and I'm happier for it.

> When it comes to buying things I find my satisfaction is much higher when I spend money to remove an irritant rather than get something completely new.

Really true for me as well. I recently bought a new guitar that is fairly similar compared to my old guitar. My old guitar is perfectly fine. The issue is that my old guitar is in a weird tuning since I'm practicing finger style guitar on it. And I hate retuning my guitar to a normal tuning all the time.

I told myself, if I'm still as irritated about this a year from now, I'm buying a new guitar. It's 2 years later and I'm happy I did it.

Both are true, but at different times. Eliminating an irritant or stressor can be an excellent use of money. At the same time, I get tremendous, continued happiness simply having a reproduction of my favourite piece of art in the wall in my office. Some things are just things, others are layered happiness and value. The same is true of irritants.

> 48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.

This is one I've been trying to emphasize with a few friends for a while. The act of labeling yourself is the act of restricting yourself to what you think fits that label. And unless that makes you happy, it's probably not what you really want, so change your perception of yourself by relabeling or (better) delabeling.

Its not attributed in the article but the Paul Graham article is where I first saw it: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

This is good advice, but separate from the labeling, it's also okay to not like things. If you actually don't like dancing, that's okay, and you shouldn't feel guilty about not forcing yourself to like it. And other people shouldn't feel obligated to "Green Eggs and Ham" you over it.

If somebody says they're not interested in something, don't try to force them into it. You're not really doing them a favor. The dancing example is appropriate, because for some reason people who love dancing have a hard time understanding that others might legitimately just not enjoy doing it.

The advice would be to not let a label tell you that you don't like it. If you don't like dancing because men don't dance then that's silly, no matter if it's your deepest held conviction or not.

Yep, agreed. I only point it out because there are certain types of activities where others will assume you only dislike it because of the label, and not because you actually don't like it. Dancing seems to be one of those.

That's fair. But I know a number of men (to go with the example) who think it's unmasculine to dance (or to dance in certain styles and settings). However, as a single guy taking up ballroom and tango dancing was a great idea for meeting women (along with, at that time in my life, getting in better shape and starting to dress better). The notion that "real men don't dance" (like real men don't eat quiche) is harmful to many individuals because it's become internalized as a quality of themselves due to identity and not due to actual preference.

That's the problem with labeling and holding onto an identity too strongly. It can contradict the actual desires of the individual and can often contradict reality.

But I agree, don't force it on people. I've never tried to force anyone into something they don't want to do. When they, on a rare occasion, participate in something they ostensibly hate and express real joy in the experience, it's obvious that it's not the activity that's the problem but something else.

Yeah, I definitely agree with this. My pet peeve is just when people assume you're not doing something because of the label, not because you actually just don't enjoy the thing.

Yeees, but the problem Jtsummers mentions is that often the label gets “internalized as a quality of themselves”, so especially men sometimes thing that it’s their own preference, when they just never had the right space to discover the joy of dance. I think that dance is actually a very universal human thing and that there’s a strange alienation from dance and our bodies going on in western culture, especially for men. This cultural alienation is so deeply embedded in our identity that it’s often a blind spot, where we don’t even notice what we miss.

I myself thought that I didn’t enjoy dancing, would never be able to enjoy it and that I had zero interest in learning dancing until I eventually discovered that I do actually want to learn to dance, which started a journey which ended up with me becoming a professional dancer.

But I agree both that not everyone has to dance and that pressuring people to dance is not the right strategy for showing them the joy of dance.

Mean while I love to dance, but absolutely lack to necessary coordination and motor skills to engage in more structured dancing like ballroom, tango, salsa, ballet, etc.

This isn’t through lack of trying, but rather through the act of trying and suffering excessively before ultimately giving up and just moving to the music in my own way.

> I think that dance is actually a very universal human thing and that there’s a strange alienation from dance and our bodies going on in western culture, especially for men.

This is kind of what I mean. Humans are very diverse, and I don't think dance is actually a universal thing. (You could probably argue it overall as a species, but not for every individual.)

Because of this, too often the attitude is "well you WOULD like dancing if you just loosened up and stopped worrying about what people think!". I'm sure that's true for some people, but definitely not all.

I realize, based on your last paragraph, that you're not the type of person to try to force someone into dancing. It's just similar to the line of reasoning I've encountered when other people can't seem to understand that I don't like it. It's like they can't compute the idea that it's just not something I enjoy. So many people seem to assume that the only possible reason is "a label you've internalized as a quality of yourself", and it comes off as condescending.

> The notion that "real men don't dance" (like real men don't eat quiche) is harmful to many individuals because it's become internalized as a quality of themselves due to identity and not due to actual preference.

Yeah toxic masculinity sucks. Both as a thing and as a term.

The masculine label is not one that’s easy to achieve so fulfilling everything the label demands is actually a huge achievement. Things have specifically been excluded from the label for a reason, whether they resonate with you or not.

"All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you." - Shirō Masamune. (Ghost in the shell)

It's annoying to see people signalling social status, but in reality that does have an effect. So keep identity small is good for the individual but not good for society.

“I’m not the kind of person who does things like that”

This can also be not misbehaving or betraying your own values. It's not about you though. It should always be about actions. Not about "is" but about do's and don'ts

Self-identification manifests the ego. You want to identify yourself as others do, based on your actions and not an idea you have about yourself. And especially not an idea driven by impulses. These build the worst egos.

And those who generate ideas about others can be the most dangerous. They will embed an ego they can fight with their own, and even choose to fight it just so they can win.

I find it interesting, that you can (and should) use this as a hack for good qualities: "I AM the kind of person who doesn't lie". Cultivating such a stance makes it easier to do the better thing in challenging situations.

I disagree.

I think developing a durable character with strong preferences is what makes you a genuine being. Saying hard NOs to things that don't fit well in your life and not having to come up for excuses for declining.

If you are constantly saying yes to everything and everyone and trying everything then you'll never really be complete.

The key here is to not blatantly reject anything in front of you but rather respond with "Maybe".

95. Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.

I agree with the conclusion of this one, though I think it oversimplifies the problem.

Cultivating taste in something (be it food or drink, music, literature) is absolutely a valuable thing, and one of life's great pleasures. With it comes that awareness that some examples of the thing you have learned to appreciate are much better than others. The challenge is to not let your appreciation for the best dampen your enjoyment of the common.

I may be no cicerone, but I've developed a relatively discerning palate for beer. What I've had to learn, though, is how to still enjoy a mass-market beer when that's all that's available. I've found that reframing, thinking "I'm not drinking this Miller Lite because it's great beer; I'm drinking it because I'm here with people I like spending time with" allows me to let go of the beer-snobbery for the totality of the experience. The best has its place, and so does the common.

I don’t know how I feel about that advice. I’d think a better one is: don’t get too snoby. It was shown that wine experts can’t tell between a very expensive wine and a good wine with a normal price. It’s all a matter of taste. Same for movies: sure that movie has been done a thousand times, but watch it like you were watching this genre for the first time.

I do not mean to either encourage or discourage the taking of any kind of nutritional supplements, but I strongly caution anyone from looking to lists like the one on LessWrong for specific advice on health issues.

> 23. (~This is not medical advice~). Don’t waste money on multivitamins, they don’t work. Vitamin D supplementation does seem to work, which is important because deficiency is common.

From The Physicians’ Health Study II - PHS II (https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/clinical-trials/201...):

"The results of the PHS II trial in middle-aged to elderly male physicians demonstrate that daily intake of a multivitamin results in a small, but statistically significant decrease in all cancers over 11 years of follow-up, especially nonprostate cancer, with numerically lower cancer-related mortality."

It is usually unwise for anyone to take any sort of medical advice from postings on the internet. This includes advice that claims it is not really advice. What you put into your body is your own personal decision, and if you want to better understand the implications, discuss it with a qualified medical professional.

I didn't take one until my physician casually asked if I were, when I said "No." he told me to start. I did. It aligned with my inclination since it was inexpensive, almost assuredly would do no harm, and might do some good. Now you've given me a concrete reason to continue taking a multivitamin. Thanks.

Agree about not taking medical advice from people on the internet.

It's also best not to form life decisions on any one study. This includes studies that show multivitamin benefits as well as those that show slight increase in mortality rate.

For multivitamin studies, it seems to be so hard to show any effect that people think we should stop looking for it:

"The probability of a meaningful effect is so small that it's not worth doing study after study and spending research dollars on these questions"

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/news/20131216...

So your medical advice for us is to not take medical advice from the internet?

These are really great! I imagine one could write a paragraph (or more) on each, and one could setup a whole process of following through with all of them.

In fact, this is inspiring: I'm going to put these in a list and review them regularly and try to take a (small) action on each. Anyone wanna try it with me?

BTW - only two that I disagree with:

> 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

No. You'll find recipes whose authors did bare-minimum SEO, not produced better recipes.

> 25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.

Yes BUT: First-mover advantage is a thing, but it is by no means THE thing. Ship ship ship, but don't sweat being first. Build something better and ship it. Don't perfect it endlessly. But don't worry if you're not the first!

98/100 ain't bad.

I'd like to search videos for recipes. It's reassuring when I can see whether the author is capable of cooking, and whether the result looks appetizing (to me subjectively).

For instance, I've found that Jamie Oliver, despite his big names, makes food that doesn't make sense to me. If I only read the recipe, I might not figure that out. But watching him cook and seeing the product, I'm pretty confident that I won't like it.

I just watch Kenji Lopez-Alt's late night gopro videos. The guy has epitomized bachelor meals (though he's married). His tortilla pizza is brilliant.

I like Kenji, too. His analytical approach is very helpful for a home cook.

Tip 13 should just be tip 1 applied to recipes. Searching reddit for recipes can yield ones that many people have actually tried and feel like opining on. The downside of Reddit opinions is that it heavily weighs the enthusiasts' point of view, not the once-in-a-while dabbler. You might get a solution that's grander, more expensive, or more complex than your needs. Someone might swear by a vacuum cleaner or pot roast recipe with a million bells and whistles when a basic version would have worked for you just fine.

When I get bored I really want to put together a review site for recipes and cookbooks. Basically a yelp for recipes.

I find reddit to be tue worst of both worlds in many ways. For the handful of areas I'm qualified to judge, it seems to me that you get the enthusiasts' view, but neither the dabbler's nor the professional's view. The typical reddit pot roast recipe has more bells and whistles and yet it isn't nearly as good as mine.

I really agree with this. In areas you are an expert in you quickly learn that reddit is the land of the enthusiast or the expert beginner across all fields. It feels like a lot of people on there internalize the mainstream advice, but not the fundamentals or reasoning behind the advice. What I really want is somewhere where I can find the true expert/professional recommendations and advice. Curious if anyone knows of great places like that online for things like cooking, programming, technology, music production, etc.

Another internet recipe tip is to read the comments before diving in to the directions. Particularly for brand-new dishes, reading the comments can help you make informed changes to better suit your tastes.

My big recipe secret from this year:

Take the top N divergent recipe results (with some filter to prevent issues with the next step)... and average them. (More important for ingredient quantities and cook times, assuming similar heating protocol.)

This will approximately never get you something great, but is often a decent way to get a baseline you can improve yourself. Sometimes it's best to use the inputs for inspiration only, and trust your technique. The time this sort of approach doesn't work well is if it involves a technique that is new to you, in my experience.

Also this doesn't work well for baking, sometimes averaging two perfectly good recipes will get you only failure.

My advice is that recipes are best used as inspiration. Rather focus on learning how to build flavour (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat is a good reference on this), and then have a solid reference cookbook and/or website to refer to (e.g. The Joy of Cooking, Serious Eats). Once you get familiar with cooking rather than following a recipe, it becomes really easy to branch out while identifying which recipes you find online will be crap.

I'd say history remembers those who were successful. Being first doesn't matter if you can't sell what you make: Steve Jobs didn't invent the GUI and Henry Ford invented neither the assembly line nor the car. The LG Prada was the first phone with a capacitive touchscreen and nobody gives a crap about that.

100% agree. Better and more succinctly said than what I wrote :)

But you were first! ;)

And by tomorrow I'll have forgotten both of you.

My recipe finding tip: google translate the thing you want to cook into the language of the cuisine you want, then search the result in youtube for an authentic recipe.

I learn by reading, but when cooking videos seem to work best.

My hot recipe tip: Get a cookbook or three, and don't bother with the SEO cesspool.

- I'm Just Here for the Food (and the sequel)

- Six Seasons

- Cook's Country

- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

And others, but those are the ones I use most. Especially Six Seasons -- if you are interested in reducing the amount of meat in your diet but find the vege/vegan web sphere too annoying, that's your ticket.

I just checked out six seasons now. My first thought was that this is such a newbie book. It was so...male.

I am not saying this to be disrespectful or rude to you because you did mention that you enjoyed it..but I literally had to skim 10% of the book to hear the authors wax poetic about ..I don’t know what?

Cookbooks should be about recipes ...and recipes should be about methods. Not endless words and sentences about nostalgia. There is a place for that...and that’s not a cookbook. And the nostalgia is not even interesting.

And it treats the reader like they have never seen a vegetable in their lives. And images. There weren’t any that made me want to cook them.

And it comes off a little twee and precious mentioning ‘salt’ as an important ingredient. Seriously? Wtf?

I seriously recommend any French book for cooking. Because they codify methods. None of these are recipes per se ..’torn croutons’ is not a method.

If it’s for vegetarian/vegans learning to cook, I recommend the cuisine that taught the French..the Italians. Anything by Marcella hazan is good. As is silver spoon cookbook.

Www.Food52.com as well as www.thekitchn.com are also good. Altho they are websites and it is what it is.

I also love Donna hay books from Australia. Anything by Mark Bittman. Milk street can be ok. Available on Netflix iirc. America’s test kitchen can be proper lessons for those who are complete newbies.

I was just so mad reading six seasons and I had just finished skimming it because there was literally not one page that made me what to linger. I was just disappointed and seeing it mentioned here literally 3 seconds after I closed it with a huff on kindle is kinda funny.

Second that. My tip: Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. It will teach you the structure of common preparations, and free you from the shackles of recipes. Especially suited for nerds.

> 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

> No. You'll find recipes whose authors did bare-minimum SEO, not produced better recipes.

This advice is only true because if you do this with many western foods it turns up Kenji Alt-Lopez's recipes that are named this way, and they actually are the best (well, most researched and perfected).

Perhaps a...

  s/best/Kenji Alt-Lopez/

...is warranted in order to improve the tip?

Make that 97

> Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

No, I keep a bad knife because I don’t want to ruin my good knife by cutting open boxes with it. The bad stuff is useful to prevent wear and tear on the good stuff on low value things that don’t need to precision/durability/whatever.

Sounds like you're in the market for a good box cutter.

> When dating, de-emphasizing your quirks will lead to 90% of people thinking you’re kind of alright. Emphasizing your quirks will lead to 10% of people thinking you’re fascinating and fun. Those are the people interested in dating you. Aim for them.

I'm all for displaying your blue https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/43/79/ae43791d3a1f23e37bdd... , but downplaying quirks on early dates is important. You aren't showing that you don't have quirks, you're showing you are a sensible enough person to know when to air them and when not to.

> 25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.

This is why everyone remembers the MPMan F10 and no one has heard of the iPod.

Being the first to get it right is more important than being the first to get to market.

Wht about the Creative NOMAD??

I think it's also important to be precise about what "it" is.

Most MP3 players at the time had around an hour's worth of storage. The Creative NOMAD was 64 MB. That means those products were from a user experience perspective in the same category as Walkmen and Minidisc players. It was a writable music player that held about an album. It let you make your own mixtapes, but selecting media while at home was a fundamental part of the user experience.

The first iPod had 5-10 gigs of storage. You didn't have to decide what to listen to before you left the house. You just put everything on there and decided on the fly. This was a completely different experience.

Whether the little box played MP3s is essentially an implementation detail. It was the storage size that made the iPod an entirely different "it" from the devices that came before it, because the way you used it was so different.

For what it's worth: Creative Nomad with 64MB was just the first one. The one with 6GB of storage came out about a year before the iPad. Hence the iconic "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." by CmdrTaco. iPod hadn't won on the storage alone.

product market fit is tricky like that

I totally agree that having enough storage space for your full collection was an important differentiator.

But the thing is that the iPod wasn't the first to market for that either.

I remember having the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Jukebox and loving it before the iPod came along.

I don't think it was just the storage size that was the difference. It was the combination of a well designed simple UI together with excellent marketing that seemed to make the difference.

Two other factors that are often overlooked in the early success of the ipod:

400mb/s Firewire let you actually put a lot of files on it in a reasonable amount of time. The theoretical 11mb/s of USB 1.1 was painfully slow in comparison.

The ipod was _tiny_ compared to the other hard drive based mp3 players of the time.

I remember it was slow to load up at the beginning, but that since it held all my music, I wasn't constantly switching what music was on the device, only occasionally loading a small new set of files, so the slow transfer didn't make much difference to me. Perhaps others had a different case where the transfer speed mattered more.

I also remember iTunes (despite it's fall from grace later on) to be miles ahead of any syncing app. The difference in just plugging your iPod in and choosing which music to sync vs. erasing/reformatting/error-handling transfers to your mp3 was lightyears. That was part of what did it for me.

Also, on the iPod you could browse your music in an organized fashion (e.g. by artist), whereas with other mp3 players it was just a long list of tracks.

I can't tell you any other mp3 player commercial from that era. They were all kind of relegated to bestbuy fliers. The iPod was advertising with the colored background and the white headphones. It was good clear advertising and it was playing during the superbowl.

There's always been better mp3 players but normies don't know about them.

"Your blanket truism has a counter-example! I shall provide a counter-truism to fill the void."

One counter example ? I can’t even think of a single example where the first to market eventually won.

Most people use Google, not ALIWEB. How often have you flown on a Burgess plane instead of a Boeing or Airbus ? I bet you’re reading this on a Dell, Mac, HP, or other current brand PC, and not on a Ferranti. There are countless counter examples.

First-to-invent isn't guaranteed to succeed (your criticism) but "first to get it right" (your counter-truism) is also not a truism. After all, what is "right" and what is the "first" "right" in [anything]? Certainly there's no permanent guarantee to being first, but neither is being first-improver.

Chances are more people remember the MPMan F10 than - similar product that was released later by a competitor, the MMan 1.

Even if the mostly remember the MPMan F10 mostly because the play button kept getting stuck.

Facebook and Google anyone ? :-)

I don't remember the ipod being successful until the second generation, with the ipod mini. So i would say you need to get something out that you can improve upon quickly, and make it the thing it needs to be.

Indeed, no rule like the "be the first" promulgated here can be universalized across all situations. It does encourage urgency which makes it a useful heuristic and not much else.

Sorry, but a lot of this advice makes no sense or is pretty bad.

26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge.

Seems illogical. Presumably the reason that people are happier after leaving their job is because, on average, they wait until they are ready. That doesn't mean anyone with the inclination to quit should do so.

27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.

This is a meme that seems pretty unhealthy to me. Discipline and motivation are not interchangeable things. They exist in a balance. If you regularly do things that you don't feel any motivation to do, you're on track to have a midlife crisis where you realize that you wasted your entire life trying to impress others without listening to yourself. Ideally, good discipline will nurture motivation, and motivation will help to maintain discipline.

If you find that your motivation to do something disappears, maybe you should question why you're doing it rather than just telling yourself that motivation is fleeting.

If you quote instead of giving numbers then people can follow what you're saying.

Done, thanks.

Your second point is a good one. Discipline is superior to motivation for getting things done, but not for deciding what to spend your time on (which is probably more important). Too much discipline can lead to putting up with bad situations that you hate.

I think 27 makes more sense with 97: Liking and wanting things are different.

I'm guess if those usually line up quite well, this advice seems insane. But if they don't, it is solid advice. I wasted years of my life waiting for motivation to show up, and it never did. It amounted to years of my life I simply regret.

Eventually I saw advice to the effect of 27, and it seems like it has mostly worked to help correct course.

I worked at my first job for over ten years, hated the last five... I guess you could say I waited until I was "ready" to quit, but in retrospect I think I was just scared. One day I quit on a whim and it felt great! That was the beginning of my journey of self-actualization.

Me too, and I've watched many of my friends go through this as well.

Basically, some people have jobs that are analogous to abusive relationships. Easy enough to get into one when you depend on your job to get money. And it is rarely a good idea to wait until you're "ready" to get out of an abusive relationship.

> Discipline and motivation are not interchangeable things. They exist in a balance.

Motivation ignites, discipline inflames.

> “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

Keeping around a couple beater knives is how I have a good knife. I think there's value to the general point, but a lot of the cases where I have variable quality items, it's not for sloppiness.

Yep, I use my bad knife to open cans. Or when I need to cut meat on the grill

> 48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing.

At the same time, identity can be used for positive change. My family values balance and as a result I've grown into a renaissance man.

I'm at the time of my life (college, looking for internships) where balance isn't something I need. I need dedication and focus to make a dent in the world with the field I care about - programming.

Recently I've immersed myself into communities that self identify as nerds. Identifying as a nerd "tricks" my brain into liking all-day grinds, and putting in the necessary work to achieve my version of success.

The advice is still good. An identity, deliberately self-selected, can be a useful thing and bring you some happiness. Going from, "I'm the guy that hates exercise" to "I'm the guy that likes running" probably bought me an extra decade or more of life, and a lot more comfort vs being 240+ lbs. But many identities are not self-selected or are not deliberately selected. And they can create unhappiness and conflict, so people should be careful with how they finish the phrase "I am...".

> If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking.

I don't agree. Use a virtual desktop instead and switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut.

I'm currently using 9 workspaces, and monitors couldn't ever beat that UX.

I'll disagree with you - the value of 2 or more monitors comes when you want to simply have more stuff on screen at the same time so you can compare / check / whatever.

I.e. you can have a spreadsheet on one monitor, and the results of a bunch of terminal windows on another, and be typing out an email about those two things on another.

You can continue to type the email while reading the spreadsheet and checking the terminal results without having to "switch", or take the draft email off the screen to check that other thing.

I really notice this falls down when I have multiple tabs open in my browser and I want to be mentally dealing with info from one, and inputting it into another. Switch tabs means the one you're entering data into goes away. (Of course, the solution is to have the tabs in different windows, on different monitors, though this example always makes me realize the HUGE time saver of having so much information in view at the same time.)

A simple solution to that is simply copy the stuff you want to process into your clipboard, and pasting it into the document you want to edit, and then edit out all the stuff you don't need or want to change.

I'm personally not in that kind of situation very often. And switching workspaces is faster for me than turning my head to another screen.

An added benefit is that my window manager always knows what workspace I'm looking at. With multiple monitors, your computer doesn't know that, and so keyboard focus becomes a problem, e.g. finding what is currently "in focus" takes more time, finding where your mouse cursor is, etc.

Finally, my setup is the same everywhere I go (at home, at work, on a laptop, etc.) since I only use one physical monitor. I think this is a huge advantage too.

I agree with the point about being able to compare two windows, but I feel like the second monitor adds much less value now that affordable 32" 4K monitors are a thing. Now the more useful investment is simply learning your OS's window management hotkeys to immediately snap your window to either the left side or right side of the screen.

Even if they're not in the same context, it can be easier to switch between contexts by just moving your head, instead of having to press a keyboard shortcut or a button. I use a tiling WM and usually have two contexts side-by-side (half of my 4k 27" display is usually enough for one window to work in) and when I want to switch to something else I can instinctively move to the other one without having to think about it. On the flipside, the lack of friction also means you can get distracted pretty easily, so YMMV.

It's much easier to comprehend the data from multiple windows if I can see both at the same time. Instead of switching back and forth just have them both open. Virtual desktop work very well too, but they're still improved with multiple monitors.

It really depends on what kind of work you're doing. You can get pretty far by just using a tiling window manager, though.

Information is independent in windows currently opened on my computer, seeing them simultaneously will only distract me with currently irrelevant information. Seeing the second monitor is another big if, I once had two monitors, but the second was too far away I didn't see anything on it and didn't bother to look.

Depends on what you do. My setup is simple and I don't see how it could be improved with an external display - I've tried a couple of times but have always reverted to a single (laptop) display. Instead of switching between desktops I'd have to be moving my head.

Desktop 1: Browser & chat apps (alt+tab switching)

Desktop 2: Code editor

Desktop 3: Terminal (tiled and tabbed)

Desktop 4: Rarely used

There are certainly use cases where multiple screens have their advantage and I've also every now and then drooled over a 4k monitor, but then I'd lose the portability a laptop gives me (and/or suffer when constrained to it).

Shifting your eyeballs to another monitor will always be more efficient than the key combinations to toggle back and forth between workspaces.

How do you figure that?

Shifting my head and eyeballs back and forth is way slower, for me, than an instantaneous Super+1, Super+2, etc. or Super+Tab (for switching to the last used workspace) to see a "second" monitor.

Same. I tried that too and I don't see the efficiency.

Have you tried both?

I do love me some virtual desktops with a bonus non-switching physical one to the side

I used to use multiple monitors, but now I’m using a Mac with a single large screen, and I use the Divvy app to easily split open application windows evenly across a single desktop. https://mizage.com/divvy/

I'm enjoying this, and I also appreciate how it is a delightful accidental commentary of the lesswrong crowd. I especially appreciated this one:

> You can figure out doing laundry

Same vibe from #43:

> Deficiencies do not make you special. The older you get, the more your inability to cook will be a red flag for people.

...well, it's essentially a primer for mildly autistic and very smart people to deal with modern life outside of their narrow fields, and most of it is the kind of advice the average grandmother would give someone if they asked her.

We're talking about the movement that created "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" though, I'm not expecting life-shattering insights in a list by them anyways.

Well now I'm super curious to know if you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. What did you think of it?

> After a breakup, cease all contact as soon as practical. The potential for drama is endless, and the potential for a good friendship is negligible.

Strange. It's a bit of a red flag if someone is in complete radio silence with all their exes, frankly.

Obviously, you aren't going to enjoy hanging out next week, but I'm surprised you dated enough that there's a "breakup" if you don't enjoy each other enough to have something to salvage.

this is a bit of conventional wisdom that I have always questioned. the default expectation that you would spend a few years with someone and then cut them out of your life entirely if things don't work out strikes me as kind of tragic. that person was likely one of your best friends.

there are exceptions of course. if the relationship ended because of very different levels of interest, it might take some time before a healthy friendship is possible. if the relationship became codependent or ended due to some sort of betrayal, it's probably best to make a clean break.

I don't bear ill will towards my exes and would be totally willing to grab a coffee with any of them.

That said: it has always been my experience that cutting off contact is best for me emotionally regardless of if I broke up with them or vice versa.

Agree.

IME, cutting contact particularly useful/beneficial for men in the relationship.

I agree about the red-flag part for avoiding all your exes, but I also find it a red-flag when someone says how well they get along with their exes. "If so, why do you have so many, and why aren't you still with any of them?"

If you were with someone with serious intent of trying to be a compatible partner, and failed despite your best efforts such that you and your partner agree the best thing is to not be together, then probably your instincts aren't as good as you would want... Maybe you don't fully understand why "being friends" won't be as helpful for either party as desired.

It's important to be capable of being friendly with your exes, all the more so the less you actually get along. But it's probably unwise to put this to the test.

Honestly, I'm not in contact with any of my exes. It's not on purpose, we just grew apart and have moved on. If we happen upon a chance meeting, I'm sure we would be friendly with each other, but we're not going out of our way to seek out or avoid each other. I find these black and white rigid "rules" (such as not keeping in touch with any exes as a red flag) to be incredibly judgmental and limiting.

The point isn't a guiding rule for you, so it's not limiting on your actions. It's where I see red flags. And yes, but judgement is a good thing.

It's almost always good to have some period of no contact. It takes time and space to sort out difficult emotions after a breakup. Seeing the object of those emotions impedes that process.

Friendship after that is possible, but will undoubtedly be a complex relationship that will take much attention and care to manage. Most of the time one (or several) simpler relationships will be better for all parties. Complete radio silence isn't the requirement, and lack of contact isn't the goal; it's a means.

For most personally types, this zero-contact, zero-social-media seems to work best.

> It's a bit of a red flag if someone is in complete radio silence with all their exes, frankly.

Why?

> I'm surprised you dated enough that there's a "breakup" if you don't enjoy each other enough to have something to salvage.

Some relationships are mistakes; not all of us are prescient enough to know how they will work out. Other times you simply grow apart.

> Why?

The same reason why it's a bit of a red flag if someone has no long-time friends or has no job references. Because it hints at relationships going in such a way that the people don't even so much as want to talk ever again after, and the common factor is the person.

Beware that some of these are US-centric (or I simply don’t get them) like “don’t talk to cops”. Why not? Mine would be “talk to cops whenever you have a chance. They’re nice”.

You can easily implicate yourself at the scene of the crime by speaking to an officer, but in the U.S. you have the "right to remain silent". The article is generally referring to cases where you are guilty of something or could be guilty of something.

Was that the section title or something? “Things to remember when committing crimes?”

Expanding on "could be guilty" meaning not just "I might be guilty" but also "I might be perceived as being guilty"

It's not about being guilty or not being guilty. For worse, the police in the US have become (or are perceived to be) generally antagonistic towards the communities they police. It's not a universal truth, but it is a common truth.

Just like you wouldn't volunteer everything to a rival in the office, you don't volunteer everything to someone who has the authority to arrest or fine you. Especially when they know all the rules and you know a handful.

Exactly. US centric. If you trust that the policeman is a well trained professional there to serve you and with only your best interest in mind, why would you be scared to talk to them?

To put it another way: if a policeman isn’t the best (safest, most informed, whatever...) person to talk to among hundreds of strangers you could talk to, isn’t that a sign that the police force in question has failed completely?

My experience, in being in a fair number of non-US non-European countries, is that cops can vary considerably, and many of them are worse than US cops in many ways.

"...isn’t that a sign that the police force in question has failed completely?"

Sad, but true, in a lot of cases. Hence the suggestion not to talk to them.

> isn’t that a sign that the police force in question has failed completely?

Yes, yes it is. And that's the current state of policing in the US. With the irony of police committing acts of brutality against people protesting police brutality, and the officers and their enablers being too ignorant or too hateful to recognize the stupidity of the action and how 2020 has set them back decades in getting people to trust them.

Many conservatives (that's how I'm labelled on here, so...) do not support the police as is. I've specifically witnessed more than one instance of absolutely treasonous behavior by police - threatening to hurt people and make up charges. It's counterproductive to think that only 'the left' is against bad police - nobody wants to pay people to ruin the system.

However, those people probably don't think that the police "committed acts of brutality against protestors", they likely see the videos of BLM peacefully protesting and police standing by, and Antifa committing arson and attacking police and police fighting back. (Portland, Chicago, Kenosha) And they think that fighting and arresting rioters is exactly what they pay police for.

> their enablers being too ignorant or too hateful to recognize the stupidity of the action and how 2020 has set them back decades in getting people to trust them.

You were talking about BLM here? Because "Breona" is just as fake as Jussie Smollet's story, and Jacob Blake would have been shot if he was white, etc. Watch the videos of woke white people in Portland shouting racist slurs at black cops to show how much they care about black people in general.

Perhaps meditate on #48 from the linked article about keeping your identity small. You may find that you're less likely to assume that a comment that makes no mention of left/right or BLM is an attack on you personally so that you don't feel a need to defend yourself from an imagined attack.

Right, because the issue of calling people 'enablers' of bad policing is generally so bipartisan that I'm coming from nowhere with my group labels... What's the # of the one about psychological projection?

I didn't dwell on my identity (because those aren't the words I'd choose to use if I had to). It was a way of self-disclosure like saying if you work for the company being discussed. It's to say "while I'm probably one of the people you're talking about ...".

> an attack on you personally so that you don't feel a need to defend yourself from an imagined attack.

Oh, no. You're out to left field. I'm explaining, not defending, everyone who tends to be misunderstood. I'm trying to say that people can support a thing without being 'enablers', and that two people who both see the same problems (police violence) can see different solutions.

I'm sharing my personal views to help explain how, regardless of labels, that most of our group hatreds are based on intentional (by others if not us) misstatements about the others, not their own words or actual views.

"don't talk to cops" doesn't mean you should be afraid to ask a police officer for directions or something like that. if I'm on foot and see that a street is blocked off, I will sometimes ask an officer nearby what is going on. this is fine. what you shouldn't do is volunteer unnecessary information. maybe this is just american myopia, but it's hard to imagine that anything could be gained by giving police more personal information than you are legally obligated to share.

That is not very US centric at all - my experience in this wealthy European country is that I am clocked as looking "too foreign" immediately, and treated accordingly.

I've been harassed by the police simply for my looks, I've seen them beat up handcuffed people. I have policemen in my extenden circle of friends, whom I like to keep at the fringes of "extended", because they are anything but well trained or professional.

The police here fought a case all the way to the local supreme court that they should be allowed to harass people based on the color of their skin - no weasling around, trying to not say the quiet part out loud either, straight up "black people are more prone to crime".

> isn’t that a sign that the police force in question has failed completely?

I don't know about completely, but if the police aren't there for everyone then it certainly is some sort of failure.

The most US centric part is you could actually try refusing talking to them. The vast majority of countries out there let police ID anybody at will. And challenging the police in court tends to be tough in most places.

Strangers don't have the authority to potentially detain and arrest you. I don't think anybody should be rude to the police. But obviously most people interact with the police in adversarial situations. Last time I remember talking to them, I was stopped for crossing (on foot) an empty street on a red light in the middle of the night.

> If you trust that the policeman is a well trained professional there to serve you

They're not. In any country, that is fundamentally not the purpose of police.

I don't think so, there is no context of that in the article. This perpetuates the mantra that cops are an evil force out to get you. In my country, police are quite respected, and the ability to go over to a police officer and ask for help means that a more trusting relationship is built. How can the US ever hope to achieve police reform with this kind of antagonistic attitude!

Maybe the line instead should be, if you believe you are being interrogated by the police, do not speak until you have an attorney present? Different entirely.

Nuance is sort of counterproductive here because most people don't recognize how many things could trigger an interrogation. Any little personality quirk, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the officer is suddenly taking note of every word you say.

Watch the video about this and how the law professor says that your casual honest comment to a cop might be taken to be a lie based on nothing. Not just wrong, or potentially incriminating, but a lie, and because of that they can and will start to try to fit the evidence to you.

> This perpetuates the mantra that cops are an evil force out to get you.

That's not a requirement for this rule to be useful, but I'll act carefully to protect myself rather than to test that theory in either case.

It refers to cases where you aren't guilty of anything and don't do anything wrong. USA has felony laws that make word itself a crime.

Yeah, that one was weird. If you follow the link it leads to this [0] lecture about why you should exercise your 5th amendment right to remain silent if being interrogated by authorities. Which seems like more sensible advice than "DON'T TALK TO COPS", though still out of place on a list of general everyday life tips

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

To anyone who hasn't seen this yet, it's worth a watch. Half of it is a lawyer talking about why you invoke the 5th even if you don't think you're a suspect. The other half is a response by a police officer whose opening statement was "Everything [the lawyer said] is true. Ok? And it was right, and it was correct."

I think you don't get that one, probably because of the framing. I definitely don't think "don't talk to cops" is nuanced enough on it's own, but the perhaps US-centric part of it isn't the statement itself, but the context people will understand around it.

The core idea is that there are institutions in society (police being one of them) whose goals and incentives are contrary to your best interests. It doesn't matter that the people who work for them are "nice" or not, the act of performing their job can be very detrimental to you even if nobody involved actively wishes it. This observation is true.

I think the US part of this is that it's not some theoretical "don't talk to people who have interests that don't align with you", it's that actually talking to the cops in the US can never help you, only hurt you. If you incriminate yourself or lie to them that can and will be used against you, but if you make a good argument or have a good reason that will not be used in your defense.

By design, "anything you say can and will be used against you" which is a one way street.

*Note: have a lawyer in the family

Cooking is also western specific. Because eating out in a western country costs arm and legs.

Back, in my developing country, I ate out every meal every day because it costs like 1 USD a dish.

Food banks are becoming increasingly more popular in the western countries... :P

"DO NOT TALK TO COPS" is very much US specific advice.

There are some countries like the UK where not talking to the cops can potentially land you in trouble too. (In England and Wales, juries are permitted to draw adverse inferences from a defendant not raising information with the police that they later rely on at trial.)

If you are arrested, exercise your right to counsel. This is guaranteed in both the US, the UK and most of Europe (under the European Convention of Human Rights), as well as lots of countries elsewhere.

Yes, it might mean you have to wait an hour or so for the lawyer to get there. Yes, the police will try to convince you that only guilty people need lawyers (not true) or that it'll make things worse for you (also not true).

The counterpoint to this is: if the cops are following procedures correctly and have legitimately collected evidence, they have nothing to fear from you exercising your right to free and independent legal advice.

The title should be "Opinionated Tips that work for My Life"

I'd say half of these are flat out wrong to me, with the other half sounding pretty good. I suspect other people would react differently to each individual point. But the larger point is that no single person's life is the same as another's - lists like this are anecdotes of what worked for one person, and should be read as such.

> 7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify. Buy them merch from a band they like instead. It’s more personal and the band gets more money.

I'd generalize that a bit: don't just pick gifts from someone's profession or passion, if you are not familiar with that field.

Even if you buy a merch, they might already have a same one.

Instead, ask the giftee what they wants, or ask another professional, or offer a gift card of a shop frequented by the them.

> 11. Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality.

I was shocked when I got a smart air-purifier and it would send severe warnings when I was cooking. Especially in winter with windows closed for the entire day, my air quality would stay low for extended periods after cooking.

Make sure you open a window for a few minutes even if it's cold outside.

I need to test my home air quality while cooking, but I've found that running the bathroom exhaust fan helps.

Also, most central HVAC system already recirculate air (albeit quite slowly). Most residential living rooms have an ACPH (air changes per hour) of around 6-8.

I'm wondering if there is a difference between gas and electric. Of course, you can burn food and generate smoke on both, but I think just heating things up with electricity will by default produce less pollution (and yes, before any smart alecks chime in, my house is powered by renewable energy).

> If you want to find out about people’s opinions on a product, google <product> reddit.

Type "<product> site:reddit.com" instead (without the double quotes). That way Google will only return results it found in reddit.com

Maybe this was good advice in 2015. This is terrible advice in 2020. Reddit is astro-turfed up to it's eyeballs and the parts that aren't are people with little to no experience in niche X giving generally bad and nuance-free advice on niche X. The more niches you develop proficiency in the more you will see this.

What would be a better advice?

Google/DDG/Bing it and read some forum threads. Sure you can't get people to spoon feed you answers that way but do you really want to be spoon fed by people who don't actually know anything?

How do you usually format your searches to avoid all the SEO crap?

How do I know if forum threads are written by people with enough experience? Especially if they are giving conflicting advice. I don't have the expertise to make that call myself. If I had, I wouldn't need to look it up.

> Especially if they are giving conflicting advice.

That's the most useful scenario.

When you have people debating one thing being better than another, gives you specific claims you can follow up on and think about which factors are most important to making your decision.

If everyone agrees, or only one option is argued for, I would be more suspicious of the advice.

>Google/DDG/Bing it and read some forum threads

and that doesn't have the reddit shill issue?

> Sure you can't get people to spoon feed you answers that way but do you really want to be spoon fed by people who don't actually know anything?

Or you know, people want to spend 10 minutes looking for the best product, rather than spending a few days going down a rabbit hole of their own personal research.

Realize that the days of quickly finding good information on the internet are gone. Search engines are gamed, product review sites are gamed, most popular forums such as reddit are gamed, many blogs are gamed.

Seeking out niche enthusiast websites, authoritative sources, mailing lists, or actually doing your own research at the libarary are about the only ways you can get anything remotely reliable. If it's easy, it's probably been gamed.

Look for proofs, details and independent sources. If you see something short, flashy, buzzwords, slogans, it's probably not very solid. Propaganda still follows Goebbels' scheme, you can simply reverse it.

I'd still recommend digging through reddit results, personally. The signal:noise ratio may not be great but you can still often find valuable reviews of things if you look at a lot of different posts.

Searching HN can also sometimes be good. Slightly higher signal:noise than reddit, generally.

Maybe this is true, but without any sort of evidence or detail it reads far more like you status signalling how above-it-all you are than a meaningful comment.

I don't use reddit much, so maybe I've got this completely wrong. (But the post doesn't say "use reddit", it says "search reddit".)

Look at frying pans.

Reddit will tell you that cast iron is the only option. Carbon steel is wrong ("home burners don't get hot enough", stainless steel is wrong ("too hard for you to use"), aluminium non stick is wrong ("only good for beginners who don't know what they're doing"), aluminium with ceramic non-stick is wrong (ok, they're right about this one).

Ask about boots, or hammers, or any of dozens of products.

Reddit fetishizes some products and disdains others and there's not much reason to it, it's mostly memetic.

Most redditors don't have the money to buy 8 different pans or 7 different pairs of boots. They tend not to work in these industries, so they can't give that experienced view point. And most redditors are young so they just haven't lived long enough to give a credible review of how long something lasts.

A 40 year old person who works with a tool 8 hours a day, and who's used a wide range of those over the years, will tend to give a better review than a 20 year old who works with a tool for a few hours a week.

I just googled "frying pan reddit" and this was the first result:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/4lnezr/best_option...

You have a point, but this "Reddit will tell you that cast iron is the only option." is not accurate.

I read reddit while holding the opinion of "reddit is always bitter" and the site gets much much better.

That scotch you liked? Reddit doesn't like it because they're bitter. And if reddit does like it, well then its probably great!

56. Sometimes unsolvable questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why should I exist?” lose their force upon lifestyle fixes. In other words, seeing friends regularly and getting enough sleep can go a long way to solving existentialism.

I really dig this particular one. It reminds me of something similar mentioned in Lex Fridman's interview with Daniel Kahneman:

"When you ask people whether it's very important to have meaning in their life, they say oh yes that's the most important thing...but when you ask people what kind of a day did you have...what were the experiences that you remember? You don't get much meaning, you get social experiences."[0]

I'm a big fan of Man's Search for Meaning, and I have generally enjoyed reading existentialist philosophy. That quote, however, presented an alternative foundation for a happy life in such clear terms, and they were terms I simply hadn't considered using! After thinking about it, it's almost obvious. I'm pretty young, and even now I look back fondly on the best social experiences in my life. It's incredible to be alive, and to have had the experiences I've had with the people I've gotten to share them with.

I still highly value having meaningful pursuits, but above everything else, these days I aim to enjoy the company of good people and to be good company for others. I find it's a nice cure for the existentialist blues if you ever catch them.

[0]: https://youtu.be/UwwBG-MbniY?t=3120

> 9. Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple!

That just sounds incredibly bitter. I highly recommend using more tea to less water, and much, much, much lower steep times. Especially for greens as they're more delicate.

If your tea is bitter or astringent, its a combination of water that might be too hot, and long steep times.

80-90C for most green teas. The hotter you go the lower your steep times should be. 90C+ for blacks.

At the extreme you could try gong fu brewing if you're really into your tea :) steep times as short as ~10 seconds are not uncommon.

As a concrete guideline I steep black tea for a little over 2 minutes. That's enough to get the flavor of the tea without it becoming bitter. If you want strong tea, use multiple tea bags or more leaves, but don't increase the steeping time.

> 41. Selfish people should listen to advice to be more selfless, selfless people should listen to advice to be more selfish. This applies to many things. Whenever you receive advice, consider its opposite as well. You might be filtering out the advice you need most.

I think of this with parenting books. The parents who tend to be strict read the books telling them to be strict, because those are the books that resonate with them. But what they need are the books telling them to love more and be harsh less. And those who tend to be lenient need the books that tell them that kids actually do need discipline, but they tend to read the books that tell them that kids really need to be given room to do their own thing.

> 5. If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking.

I really don’t do well with a second monitor, because humans suck at multitasking. Invariably slack or email end up on the second monitor, not real work.

Better advice IMO: don’t task switch, stay in the shell as much as possible. Serialize your work to the limitations of human attention

I'd suggest explicitly keeping those apps off the second monitor. I like keeping reference documentation and running notes there.

Yeah, the main thing that I find occasionally useful with a second monitor, really, is when I need to go back and forth quickly, for instance when copying and pasting from one data source to another, or checking one thing against another.

And then the thought that comes up, of course, is, don't copy or verify data that way. Automate it.

I used to use three huge monitors at work, but since working at home during Covid I've found that I not only like typing on my HP laptop's built-in keyboard better than on my full-sized mechanical keyboard, but I mostly prefer just using the laptop's display to using multiple displays, and for exactly the reason you gave -- I'm better off automating things and serializing work from the command line. I've made aliases for opening the web sites I need from the command line and usually just kill them when I'm done with them, instead of using tabs. It really does have a kind of head-clearing effect.

I agree. I used to use 2-3 monitors. But now I can get by with one. I think it helps me to focus. Even having slack or email gets distracting since you'll see it update. So I have it hidden behind other apps in my main monitor.

Sometimes I do use a second monitor to put anything I might need to reference. But most of the time, it's blank.

Main monitor for work, second monitor for active reference materials. No slack, no email. I am much more effective this way.

Two monitors doesn't work great for me because I always feel like one is "primary" and one "secondary", where all the crap like Slack and email that distracts me goes, which just hurts productivity.

I switched to an ultrawide, and though it's about the same amount of screen space I tend to organize it differently, keeping mostly on-task stuff visible. It's real nice to have 3 tabs of related code and an iOS simulator running as well as a console without having to tab switch.

I have tried dual monitors many times and I really don't prefer it over one large, high-resolution monitor. I have a 2019 5k iMac, which I run both macOS and Windows (for work) on, and it's damn near perfect.

Cheat sheets or reference material is great on a second monitor.

There's some real gems mixed in with some fairly mundane stuff.

I would summarize the good stuff like this:

Try to understand how evolution works, because you are a product of it. What you like to eat, what you like to do, who you want to hang out with, why you feel good or bad when {situations} happens.

But don't be a slave to it. Yes, there is a pressure to be the alpha male. Yes, you will get angry when people cheat you. But you are not a meat machine, you are still a person that can respond to the world with your own agency.

> When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

For something new I'm trying, I favor recipes by authors I've found reliable in the past, e.g. Alton Brown, Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen), Ina Garten, Julia Child. They have high quality bars, so if they have a recipe, it's usually a good one.

I could not agree more. And I may add IMO the opposite of what the author is saying is true. By checking only for best, in my experience, one lands in optimized seo pages that are not the best.

It is like discovering music by searching for „the best“ music.

Agreed. It also gets easier to determine if you will like one recipe over another one the more experience you get cooking. In a way you get used to a specific cooks style so you start recognizing it in other recipes.

Big plus one. The Nth Edition of Fannie Farmer's Cookbook (or equivalent) is a great entry point for self-starters.

Playing with the basic recipes in there helps develop an instinct for ingredients and the cooking process, with relatively low-risk ingredients and processes.

Once you've mastered those fundamentals, you develop an ability to simulate whether a recipe, ingredient substitution, or bizarre process "makes sense" or not, which is invaluable in deciding whether to risk a dinner on some crazy recipe recommended to you by the internet.

The internet is a great place to deepen a knowledge of cooking, but it's hard to dive in without the fundamentals. And for the time and money, these great cookbooks are the easiest way to acquire the norms and fundamentals.

This blog post is the hipster version of those IG/FB click bait posts on the same subject. Very shallow content, disappointed this made to first page on HN

Halan chill out

>5. If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking.

It's an overly american meme, it's a bad idea to work all day long. Anyway, if you think all day long, you don't really think.

> 95. Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.

I disagree with this one. Even though sophistication means that one cannot enjoy bad wine/music/art/food as much, it also is the condition for having a full appreciation of the work of art you are enjoying.

> 56. Sometimes unsolvable questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why should I exist?” lose their force upon lifestyle fixes. In other words, seeing friends regularly and getting enough sleep can go a long way to solving existentialism.

Been seeing this for myself recently. I got really depressed continuing to search for answers to questions of why excel instead of stagnating, why work hard instead of slack off, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that there is no answer to these questions (unless you are deeply religious), and that just by doing the former set of things makes us happy, and non-depressed people just do them because it makes them happier.

Same.

1. The philosopher's disease of always asking "why?" and critically evaluating things is a strange one. In Western countries this is how we are taught to think and it has many benefits, but physical happiness is seldom one. I have also found the line of thought to lead to a deadlock of "But why should we always ask why?". That question can ultimately only be answered by stating that "Asking why?" should be considered an axiom. And the matter of stating those axioms is up to everyone. In other words, like you say, trying to find answers to statements instead of questions is nonsensical.

2. I have come to like the idea that I am merely an organism programmed to survive and reproduce and all my needs and wants branch off from that. That may sound somewhat hollow, depressing and like giving up, but it has helped me a lot. Makes me question things a lot less. At least it gives me some kind of answer with which I can justify and understand my irrational behaviour.

Also, the moment I am around people more often I find that 1. flies out the window and I completely forget about it – only living by 2.

Just like point 56. says it does.

> You do not live in a video game. There are no pop-up warnings if you’re about to do something foolish, or if you’ve been going in the wrong direction for too long.

In the good old times most video games weren't like that.

It's a pity that those times are gone, to the point video games are now used as such a comparison point!

Not sure how old your good times, but relatively recently I played an indie game that first gave me a very subtle footgun without any warning, pressed me to use it and when I did the wrong thing, sent me in the wrong direction for the rest of the game. It was quite some hell.

When taking advice from people, I weigh it by how much I want aspects of their lives

The Lesswrong community live in a narrow rationalist bubble.

I got that perspective from hiring an artist (and being hired as an artist). What's the secret? Have what the client wants.

I was looking to get a dog tattoo. So, I looked for a tattoo artist with dogs in the style I wanted in their portfolio.

As a visual effects artist I happened to make some dust in my early features. Since then, after looking at my demo reel, I've gotten hired to make more dust in movies.

What dust have you worked on? Has your dust evolved over time?

Dozens of hollywood movies from Hellboy (2004), Constantine, to R.I.P.D.

Absolutely, and it tracked along with technology and my ability to just cram more particles in the simulation or use new structures entirely like VDBs or Sparse Volumes. But the basic use of many (many many) layers of sculpted Perlin noise never changed.

> 7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify. Buy them merch from a band they like instead. It’s more personal and the band gets more money.

What? Now I’m a bit more curious about the life of the author lol

I'm in the same boat, and I don't know anybody who still uses CDs. Maybe my 60+ year old uncle? If I received a CD as a gift, I wouldn't even have a way to play it, and haven't for almost a decade. I think my car has a CD player?

Hello! I'm in my twenties. I listen to music from vinyls, CDs and tapes. I also like to watch my VHS cassettes. Nice to meet you.

(now that you know about me, you cannot say you don't know about anybody who still uses CDs)

Well there you have it :P Do enough of your friends do the same? It was just interesting to see this so high on your list hah

I really liked #48, "Keep your identity small." There is a lovely and profound story, the culmination of which is "he heard a still small voice." It occurred to me recently that this is something that can be internalized. A person can become still and small, and so become ever so much more aware.

> Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality.

is this based on the assumption that I am using a gas stove, or is it more generally true? I would be surprised to learn that, eg, simmering a tomato sauce is itself harmful to the air quality in my apartment.

Generally true. Particles generally reach your lungs, and the cooked food goes through chemical reaction and so on, so you ideally don't want that.

Probably high-heat cooking of anything (e.g. pan trying) will pollute quite a bit even on an electric range.

I use the stove vent every time I cook for this reason.

Any cooking will decrease it.

I have several air sensors and even using the oven will change the air quality from "green" to "yellow".

Even just frying veggies with a bit of oil on an electric cooktop sends my air quality into "red". Overheating oil sends it into the "purple" level which is "unhealthy".

I would love to know which air sensors you use.

Dyson Cool+Hot Air Purifier (built-in sensors), Atmotube and Awair.

1. Dont listen blindly to people to tell you to do things or not

> 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’.

Precede it with 'seriouseats'. Kenji is the ultimate hacker in the cooking world.

Amen. Even when I don't make the recipes, Kenji at least tells me the things I can do to make the most difference in the dish.

I recently found out the power of #27 (habits > motivation). I've been doing James Clear's habit tracking for a few weeks and see a big improvement in my life, especially for studying and exercising.

Possessions

> When buying things: consider buying second hand. It saves a lot of money and we as a people have already fabricated far too many things which will last for centuries to come.

> 57. There are two red flags to avoid almost all dangerous people: 1. The perpetually aggrieved ; 2. The angry.

I'm not saying this is wrong, but I do think it's oversimplified and misses a lot. Some of the most dangerous people I've known come across the opposite. Charismatic and sociopathic, they can smile while lying, stealing, cheating, manipulating, and sadistically hurting others for pleasure. The clues for these sorts of people are often more subtle.

The rest of this section (Hazards) are good though. This one in particular:

> 61. It is cheap for people to talk about their values, goals, rules, and lifestyle. When people’s actions contradict their talk, pay attention!

Actions are the real signs that break through the sociopathic facade. Talk can be faked and used to warp perception of reality. Action ultimately requires actually interfacing with reality.

> 59. Those who generate anxiety in you and promise that they have the solution are grifters.

It's a little more complicated than that; a bit dangerous here in its simplicity.

Renting: Read up on local tenant/landlord laws before you rent. When moving in, ask for a walkthrough with a landlord and note everything that is wrong, take pictures of everything (including a newspaper) and email it to them. Before moving out, ask the landlord what you will need to do to get your security deposit back. Get a cheap can of spackle and fill and smooth any minor holes you made (it's not always required but it's easy) but mainly don't leave anything that isn't considered wear and tear. Do a walk-through with the landlord when you leave, take pictures of everything, send it to them. Follow any steps required by law, such as returning the keys on time and providing a forwarding address. If the landlord tries to take your security deposit or charge you for damages or cleaning, reference the laws, pictures, and conversation, and ask them to reconsider. If you do everything right you may still have to go to court for some reason or another, but you will be well prepared and confident. You can also often have free 30 minute consultations with lawyers; ask your employer if they provide assistance.

> Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple!

It isn't though. Water temperature is just as important. Black and herbal teas typically do well with boiling water, but green and white teas need a lower temperature, between 140-175 depending on the tea.

Also, while 3 minutes is a fine general rule for green tea, I've found that some green and white teas taste best steeped for longer at lower temperatures.

I usually desperately despise these "make your life better" lists. This one is well thought out, and solid. Nicely done.

I like these! I do want push back on

I'm not a wine snob, but I might be a food snob, in the sense that I'm "more keenly aware of how [most mass-market food] isn't good enough". But in response I usually cook my own food most of the time and go to a decent restaurant once a week and a "nice" restaurant once a month. "Sophistication" increases my enjoyment of the "nice" restaurant -- it's like cultivating a hobby at level n and then seeing somebody do it at level n+3, I appreciate it more and can even experience surprise, wonder, curiosity, etc. So I think in this case this kind of "sophistication" makes me happier.

To add to this, I’ve met a few wine/food/music “snobs” who leverage their sophistication to appreciate less-expensive/mass-market produce.

Nothing you stop you liking pop music!

So, in my opinion it’s your approach and mentality more than the the sophistication that matters.

I don't think I've come back around to enjoying the lettuce in fast-food salads, but maybe I'll ascend to that level one day.

Note that many of the item numbers are links.

Regarding

> 52. If you want to become funny, try just saying stupid shit (in the right company!) until something sticks.

There's some quote (Oscar Wilde?) that says being witty consists of saying out loud what other people are thinking.

There's an obvious downside to overdoing it though!

> 11. Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality.

After bad bush fires where I live I invested in both a CO2 monitor and a particle air quality monitor (Dylos DC1100 Pro Air Quality Monitor). It shocked me just how much cooking (and other factors I can't quite determine yet) affected the air quality. Think 10 times more particles due to cooking, even with the fan on and windows open.

Another possible source of indoor air pollution are carpets and other manufactured things, interestingly.

CO2 was bad too, but opening my window has a greater impact on that. But it is shocking to see levels of ~800-900ppm inside with windows closed.

"Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not." very nice

The part about always dying... I have struggled with this concept since I was a child. If anyone has any words of advice on dealing with that that aren’t “just accept it” or religious in nature, that would be helpful.

Try to stay busier so you think more about what you want to accomplish and not about what you haven’t.

I was pretty suicidal by normal standards because of how much I would think about my death and everyone’s death. I moved countries and started working 15hs a day and didn’t have time to spend thinking about that anymore. I got fixed

My problem is that I can do this but I know all it will do is make me temporarily forget, not fix the fundamental problem I feel I am facing. I am afraid of self deception I guess.

Just now I wrote up all my thoughts on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25524409

> 92. You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk.

For those of us fortunate enough to live in more or less functioning democracies, this is very bad advice. Consider what our lives would be like if everyone thought this way. Instead of trying to ignore politics, maybe if you spend a lot of time thinking about it you should consider getting involved at a local level instead. Then you can be part of the solution instead of burying your head in the sand.

Consider what our lives would be like if everyone thought this way.

They don't though do they.

> Foolish people are right about most things. Endeavour to not let the opinions of foolish people automatically discredit those opinions.

could someone rewrite that in a way that is more clear? I’m not getting the point.

Fools aren't fools all the time, don't dismiss everything they say as foolish just because it's them saying it

Just because the fool says "The sun is shining" doesn't make it dark out.

If Donald Trump tweets something, you might get hurt if you go ahead acting under the assumption that he was wrong, without checking for yourself first.

>77. If you haven’t figured things out sexually, remember that there isn’t a deadline. If somebody is making you feel like there is, consider the possibility that they aren’t your pal.

What do you think this means?

I think it could mean at least two things.

1. If someone is pressuring you to sleep with them and you're not sure whether you want to, they're not your friend.

2. If someone is harassing you because you're still a virgin, they're not your friend.

[Edit: It's in the relationships section. So I guess it means "If things aren't great yet in the bedroom, and someone's making you feel inadequate because of that, the someone in question isn't your friend."]

#1 is interesting. Does it imply malicious intent towards a romantic partner, if you would break off the relationship over a lack of sex? Or imply that you might?

Seems to me like misaligned desires are more unfortunate than evil.

Misaligned desires are unfortunate. Pressuring the other veers toward evil.

Seems like that misalignment, if communicated, is inherently pressuring. Which would mean that the dissatisfied party is obliged to keep their resentment secret. Which is also a generically bad idea. I wonder what a healthy recovery from that situation looks like, if it even exists.

It looks like communicating the dissatisfaction without pressuring the other party. That's not easy, but I claim that it is possible.

Some people don’t know what they are atteractived too. Or flip flop. Or aren’t sure what they are. It’s saying that’s okay.

> Steeping minutes: Green at 3

I just leave the bag in. Anything wrong with that?

It's all about taste. I find green tea to get bitter after a few minutes of steeping.

Yes, your teeth will fall off!

Jokes aside, the longer you leave the bag in, the more bitter your tea will be. You also get more caffeine. For a lot of tea connoisseurs it destroys the taste of the tea. I say try taking it out after 3, see if you like the taste more or less.

You can also re-use tea for a 2nd or 3rd brew, but that's not possible when you leave the bag, the 2nd batch will come out too light.

Overcooking and oversteeping your tea releases extra unwanted tannin. This is what makes the bitter taste. This can be hard on an empty stomach and for people prone to nausea.

High presence of tannin lowers the absorption of iron:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/106/6/1413/4823172

It also increase the oxalates:

https://www.urologyofva.net/articles/category/healthy-living...

All of that being said, many people aim for teas high in tannin for the taste. There are also studies that will show the potential health benefits of tannin. As with many things, moderation is probably the answer.

This is more important if you have good tea leaves. When you steep too long, you get the bitterness and the sort of "dry" mouth feel.

You might be using weak tea. Buy some good stuff (I recommend Barry's as an excellent black tea, the gold blend is really good) and you will absolutely want to take the bag out. If you're drinking Lipton, well, stop, but if you have to drink it you might as well leave the bag in.

None of this matters. In the end, you die and nobody will remember shit about you. Or about anyone else. Because the world also will die.

True.

But might as well feel as good as practical, while you can. These don’t appear to hurt that. If anything they lead to more enjoyment of the limited time we have.

The advice is more aimed at people who think that human life has some kind of intrinsic value, I think. (Certainly that's one of the common LessWrong-o-sphere beliefs.)

This might be relevant to you:

> "None of this matters. In the end, you die"

People are born curious, and prefer pleasurable experiences to suffering. That's all it takes for something to matter, and it matters in the time before the end. People are what make things matter, maybe that's why the universe created some.

"Phones have gotten heavier in the last decade and they’re actually pretty hard on your wrists!" -- what's this about?

> 1. If you want to find out about people’s opinions on a product, google <product> reddit. You’ll get real people arguing, as compared to the SEO’d Google results.

Reddit is increasingly becoming aware of this, and a good deal of their advertising efforts seem to be dedicated towards obfuscating paid corporate ads as organic results.

I went the opposite of number 5. Instead of having multiple monitors, I just have 1 big 4k 32" monitor. I found that I am more distracted when having more than one monitor.

Lots of people are guilty with no. 49, especially when it comes to romance. Social media and dating sites has made cultivating a personal brand a top priority.

Single 4K ftw. If you feel like you need more, I recommend "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller.

Treat your credit card like a debit card. Pay it off every 1 to 2 weeks. After getting caught with a maxed out Amex and being laid off, that's how I treat credit cards. Saves me TONS of grief and money not going to the credit card companies' coffers.

Oh, and go looking for cards with the best APR and reward points.

If you're paying off every month, why does APR matter?

Agree with finding good rewards and I'd substitute low APR for low/no annual fee.

This may be the first time that I’ve ever seen one of these lists that was actually valuable. Thanks.

> 23. (~This is not medical advice~). Don’t waste money on multivitamins, they don’t work. Vitamin D supplementation does seem to work, which is important because deficiency is common.

Or just use examine.com -- it demystifies which supplements are bullshit and which aren't.

Nice article, I found many gems.

I do disagree with a few, in particular the one about not talking to cops. I say this because like everybody else the vast majority are good people; they are public servants; and the day you need one you will realize how wrong the idea really is.

As someone with concerning myopia, the 20-20-20 rule has always been a difficult habit to make.

20 minutes is not long and getting up to look at something outside is quite demanding. I often have 2-4 hour sessions without looking away if I'm in flow or distracted.

Probably the only person that could do with pomodoro to reduce how much you're working in a session haha

Not a big fan of make your life better (articles/books motivation speakers etc) but i bookmarked this one mainly because of all the practical tips and real world examples. And the (product opinions) with a "reddit" after its so true :d

> 4. “Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

Bad example. Buy a knife sharpener! It's so easy to make an awful knife new again. I bought an AnySharp for about $5 and it's saved me $100s.

> 78. If you have trouble talking during dates, try saying whatever comes into your head. At worst you’ll ruin some dates (which weren’t going well anyways), at best you’ll have some great conversations. Alcohol can help.

Or try listening.

Some people talk enough that just listening/responding will yield a good conversation. Many don't, or will only do so in certain moods, or after they feel very comfortable with you. If you are one of these people, learning to connect with others of the same "type" could expand your world.

I think this advice is very much addressed to the kind of person who has no trouble with listening

I think the complete opposite. A shy, nerdy person who has trouble talking probably isn't truly listening when they're not talking.

A better response might have used a word that wasn't "listening" - like "empathetic response" or something - which immediately dissolves the illusion that you disagree.

My suspicion too

40. Should you freak out upon seeing your symptoms on the worst diseases on WebMD? Probably not! Look up the base rates for the disease and then apply Bayes’ Theorem

^ The most applicable use of Bayes' Theorem I've ever seen.

Item 14 says if -w3 is added the search result would be better. The symbol "-" isto filter out the results , but in this example whar does it mean to filter out "W3" mean ?

>img html

>will return inferior results compared to:

>img html -w3

Perhaps it is referring to w3schools which produces web development tutorial that many find low-quality or spammy.

I take it the author is not a fan of w3schools.com, a web site that's been around for a very long time and is highly ranked for many html-related queries.

Personally I find most of their content to be pretty decent, so I wouldn't filter it out as a rule.

> 92. You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk.

I don't get it. should I not care?

You should care about politics, but also understand that your isolated action will not magically change the world. Your individual action does have an impact, but it’s likely a small one. So adjust your efforts and expectations accordingly.

> I don't get it. should I not care?

Pragmatically: no

Following national and international politics is a waste of time and emotional budget unless your work depends on it. It's basically a TV series, you can't change the outcome.

Focus on local and neighborhood issues which you can change.

I don’t get #65, why it is in the future tense? And what does it even mean?

65. You will prevent yourself from even having thoughts that could lower your status. Avoid blocking yourself off just so people keep thinking you’re cool.

There is an implied "inevitably" in there. Rephrased:

You will inevitably discard ideas that could lower your status. Be aware of this bias and don't box yourself in to try to maintain your status.

> 96. If other people having it worse than you means you can’t be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you can’t be happy. Feel what you feel.

This one was fresh.

Also the malaria one is very stock market like.

Great list. Better than any I’ve read so far.

You don’t have to agree down to the letter of everything listed for it to be a great list. If you got one thing out of it that was helpful to you then it was a success.

> Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple!

This is simply not true unless you drink cheap tea bags. Some good teas, for example green, should sit for only 10-20 seconds.

I actually don't like list like these.

No one person knows everything , this is why self help books are mostly silly ( unless it's a true rags to riches story- even then take it as entertainment not a life guide ).

As long as you aren't hurting anyone else, do what you want .

Edit : Don't fight morality wars with people. For example, I'm very particular on who I let into my life , and won't even consider being with anyone making less than 100k. This isn't something I need to argue about. I've moved to a city where it's much easier to find other high income earners, with fantastic results.

What's gained by me arguing on Reddit about my own values ? I don't care how others live , and no one cares how I live

Does anyone know what comment/discussion software lesswrong uses on their site ?

I sort-of-kind-of remember that they maybe built it themselves ? I find it very aesthetically pleasing ...

Yeah it's custom. Perhaps the old version used to be based on the open-source bit of Reddit's codebase. But I think the new one is totally home-grown. I think its source code is available though.

hmm ... I see that this exists:

https://github.com/LessWrong2

... but there is nothing there about the commenting features ...

LessWrong lead developer here: The commenting features are pretty embedded in the codebase, so a bit hard to say something specifically about that.

A number of people have asked us whether we could somehow make it a package and support the same commenting systems on other sites, but it would be quite a bit of work and really doesn't factor out very nicely.

Glad to hear you find them aesthetic! We put a lot of work into them over the last few years.

Yes, the entire site is very well done and I appreciate the design very much. Great job!

Thank you! :)

> 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes.

Even better: if a dish originates overseas, google the recipe in the native language of that place.

25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.

Does not apply for Cyberpunk 77 imo

> 9. Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple!

Please don't do this to your tea. This is massively, horribly oversteeped.

> 23. (~This is not medical advice~). Don’t waste money on multivitamins, they don’t work. Vitamin D supplementation does seem to work, which is important because deficiency is common.

Sorry, but this is BS. The first consideration is: are you able to get all the nutrients you need from the food you eat. Even if you can (and that's a big if) did you know that absorption of the said nutrients gets worse with age? (ie it may be a sensible thing for a 20yo to not take multivitamins, but if you're 60 you're sort-of better off taking them).

What is the downside of taking multivitamins?

It costs like 10 bucks a month and ensure you achieve some decent nutrition level. If you are afraid of overdosing, then take it every 2 days instead.

If you are a person who eat one head of broccoli every day, then by all means. No need to take multivitamins.

It’s not BS. There’s no evidence demonstrating a significant difference and clear link in health outcomes for people who take multivitamins or placebo.

http://phs.bwh.harvard.edu/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/do-multivitamins-...

8% less cancer in healthy people is pretty significant (your 2nd link). But the whole discussion is moot when you assume everyone to be healthy. It's like saying plasters are useless because there's evidence that most legs aren't broken. Multivitamins are fine because most of us aren't perfectly healthy. Targeted vitamin supplements are better, but require regular blood testing (who has the time...).

here: https://www.insidetracker.com/

This is expensive AF, but you can get 40+ markers measured once every X months. And you can monitor exactly were you are and if the supplements you are taking are actually doing their job. (spoiler alert: not all supplements are created equal from purity and active ingredients pov)

It's not a bad idea, but instead of mailing samples across the Atlantic Ocean, I'd rather visit my doctor 2-3 times per year and let him take blood samples. If I wanted to spend more, I could get one to visit me at home.

I was actually looking at buying lab equipment for myself for extra flexibility, but lost interest. It's an interesting and underdeveloped market niche for all the self-tracking people though.

you don't mail stuff. you go in to do blood-work

I have seen this opinion and I see it reinforced everything that multivitamins (and supplements in general) are just really expensive urine. I also saw that experts in gerontology disagree.

I believe the cost of a high quality multivitamin makes this a no-brainer (if all the info we had was just the study you linked to 8% reduction in the risk for cancer is still nothing to sneeze at)

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/micronutrient-inadequacies/o...

I've been toying with a PM2.5/PM10 sensor lately and #11 definitely seems to be true. Causes a pretty strong spike in the readings

This is a beautiful post, filled with wisdom. Whoever you are, you are a wonderful human. Thank you for sharing.

Well, it is lacking to recommand to always use enough sunscreen.

On a more serious not: for item 14) what is with the -w3 ?

I guess they want to avoid w3 schools.

In Google, it seems to remove w3schools results.

Done is better than perfect.

This one made my day.. if getting there is 100% how much perfection is ? #showerthoughts

The "Compassion" section is especially powerful. I will try to keep all those in mind.

For #9 (good tea) I would add boil for black/herbal but only 180 degrees F for green.

...and make lists.

(This is an excellent one.)

> 7. Don’t buy CDs for people. They have Spotify.

Seriously? A CD offers far superior overall experience. Some of these are little works of art (as physical objects), not to mention the sound quality. Spotify offers good value for money, but that's it, you can't compare the two.

76. After a breakup, cease all contact as soon as practical. The potential for drama is endless, and the potential for a good friendship is negligible.

Lol. Or don't date people who you wouldn't be friends with if it weren't for the sexual attraction.

Not every broken relationship started out that way!

I know, but also, not every relationship completely self destructs on the way to a breakup. Giving the advice to cease all communication with all previous romantic partners as soon as possible indicates that there are some bigger interpersonal issues to work out.

Yes, at least for me this would be very bad advice.

It seems to be some kind of common wisdom, but from personal experience staying in contact immediately after a breakup really helped me to get closure sometimes.

Sometimes I also had to break of contact for a while, because it hurt me too much, until I was ready for meeting them again. Looking back I am almost a bit surprised by how good I was at recognising my needs with this, when I felt ready to meet them again I was never wrong so far.

I am still friends with almost all of my exes.

Quote: "Things you use for a significant fraction of your life (bed: 1/3rd, office-chair: 1/4th) are worth investing in. "

I won life. I use my bed as my office chair. Praise me! :P

25. History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.

Which is not true at least for Cyberpunk 77 case

> 11. Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality.

LessWrong externalizing costs.

> Those who generate anxiety in you and promise that they have the solution are grifters. See: politicians, marketers, new masculinity gurus, etc. Avoid these.

More provocatively, an interesting experiment is to try saying this:

"Bernie Sanders is a con artist" (replace placeholder Bernie with your fav person)

If this makes you upset or you vehemently disagree, you're probably brainwashed.

Dhamma. Thank you.

TLDR; become an autistic asshole :D

As an introvert, so level of becoming an extrovert has helped me. E.g. dating and the getting married, learning to dance and weight lifting, which helped with the dating and getting married. Also, Toastmasters got me comfortable speaking my mind.

I also try to achieve my goals in the easiest, most direct way. E.g. ask for a raise instead of wait to be given one, find the fastest way to finish the degree, use online dating, become Catholic to end the despair etc. Also, ignore the haters, of which there will be many if you follow my advice. But, there will also be more people that respect you for being direct and decisive. That being said, don't be a jerk, and use what you gain to benefit others, especially look out for those that get sidelined by society and give them a chance.

"become Catholic to end the despair" - could you elaborate?

I'm also curious about this. Maybe OP was struggling with "what's the point of life if we all die anyways" and found Catholicism gave them an answer more quickly and efficiently than other methods like reading/synthesizing/applying what philosophers and other thinkers had to say about the issue?

(I consider myself Catholic so this is definitely not meant to be a dunk on religion or Catholicism)

One thing that I appreciate about Catholicism is that it attempts to be a much more rigorous and academic approach to faith when compared to the more "evangelical" strains of Christianity popular in the US.

The Reformation did some good with pointing out that religion doesn't need to be a solely academic pursuit, but some branches went to far and seem to have interpreted that as "there is nothing academic worth pursuing in religion"

Yes, this is the reason. I read through plenty of philosophy and such, and Catholicism was the best synthesis as well as claiming to be historically and empirically demonstrable. Previously I was protestant and then maybe atheist, and I always felt an underlying sense of emptiness and despair. Since becoming Catholic this fundamental sense of spinning through the void has disappeared, partly because Catholicism seems to be the only worldview that really takes rigorous truth seriously. Every other perspective seems to have fundamental questions they are unwilling to entertain. I don't feel I sold out by accepting an answer to my questions.

No, not really. This is kind of a "converts mistake," in that they assume that the religion they convert to is only the educated, attractive apologists that won them over. The popular church venerates Padre Pio and really believes he could bilocate, manifested stigmata, and that you can pray to him for healing.

Happens with orthodoxy too, a lot of people get a rude awakening when they actually go into a Orthodox church and talk to people, aka "The Rod Dreher effect."

Yes, very odd for a religion based on the premise their founder is literally God incarnate, could work miracles, levitated into the sky, walked through walls, said his followers will do even greater things, and can secure his followers eternal life. Pretty inexplicable why they have all these other nutty beliefs about members of his movement. I see where you are coming from.

Url belatedly changed from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-f..., which points to this.

57-59 seem to contradict 88-90. If you’re willing to presume judgment towards people whose grievances or anger make them a headache, you really cannot practice compassion, because those Scroogely people probably have real, valid reasons behind their outward manifestations. Just because you don’t find dealing with them to be particularly pleasant or productive, doesn’t really entitle you to ignore it or cut it out of your life (assuming you’re trying to be compassionate).

post physique

This reads like "Tips of blatant common sense/nonsense for morons." If you read any of these and don't have a shred of skepticism of these little proverbs, you're pretty naive imo.

It tends to be easier to criticize than to see what’s good.

What are you trying to accomplish with your comment?

(My goal is to help...and farm karma)

I'm aware of whats good, but if you've never thought about these things and actually knew why you should do them, again, I'd say, you're pretty naive.

Let’s assume someone is naive. Doesn’t that just make them feel bad? Is that helpful to them?

Are you me? More than half of these advice I discovered myself!

76. After a breakup, cease all contact as soon as practical. The potential for drama is endless, and the potential for a good friendship is negligible.

To me this kind of contradicts

43. Deficiencies do not make you special. The older you get, the more your inability to cook will be a red flag for people.

In my experience one of the best questions to filter new partners is, how is your relationship with your former partner?

Do you want someone who is still entangled with their pasts relationship? From experience, it's a lot easier to move on with a clean break. And it's a lot easier to date someone who has moved on with a clean break too.

A good alternate question to ask is why the relationship failed. If they accept responsibility for at least some of the issues, green flag. Otherwise, you can bet they accept no responsibility in other aspects of their life.

> 3. Things you use for a significant fraction of your life (bed: 1/3rd, office-chair: 1/4th) are worth investing in.

The most brilliant invention I've seen in a long time is the MyPillow. Like a bed, it's something you spend a lot of time with - but there was no brand recognition in the space. This guy created the best pillow he knew how to make, then advertised the heck out of it with premium positioning. The company is local, I hope I run into the founder someday.

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