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Comment by agomez314 | Hacker News Reader

When you read about the Classics (stories that have stood the test of time because of how well they convey human truths), it's as if you are living a thousand different lives instead of living just one. As a humanities major working in tech, I observe daily how the miopia of living with the experience of the present only can have negative effects on the products it produces. For a distillation of this thought I recommend reading this short story (15min) by Anton Chekhov: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml

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>As a humanities major working in tech, I observe daily how the miopia of living with the experience of the present only can have negative effects on the products it produces.

Interesting. Is it possible to elaborate on this? I enjoyed the short story you linked (thank you) but still would like to understand your unique perspective.

How about just read reddit and learn about real experiences of real people?

It takes longer to sift through the dreck of reddit curated by popular vote of random people on the internet (who might be expert in a sub's subject or might just like funny pictures) to get to stuff worth reading than it does browsing through a list curated into a canon by civilisation over millenia.

Signal, noise, etc.

Yeah the timeless universal appeal of white ,15-25,male, nerdy American sub-urbanites. They are like 0.001% of humanity at best (talking historically)

And that's before you consider that much of what appears on reddit isn't "real experiences of real people" anyway, it's self-indulgent, exaggerated or downright made-up rubbish posted for meaningless "karma".

That is a very good point I didnt even mention, but you are totally correct. That demographic must have actual interesting stories and POV , but they will not appear on reddit without being grossly transformed.

This isn’t 2010. There are now female and middle aged redditors as well

There are Christians in Iraq too, the Pope will be visiting this week. Stay tuned.

It is impossible to understand what has been lost and gained by looking at the current moment.

"Real lived experience" is heavily overrated nowadays, in all sorts of domains. A bunch of individual anecdotes is not data - at least not before people have taken the time to tally them up properly, which usually happens on generation-level timescales.

The comment you replied to already answered your question:

"I observe daily how the miopia of living with the experience of the present only can have negative effects on the products it produces."

Redditors are not real people

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