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Comment by boberoni | Hacker News Reader

I moved to San Francisco a few months ago. In my second week in the city, I went to a party and someone I had never met before opened a conversation with "What do you care most about in life?"

After a second of thinking, I answered "Having fun."

I asked him the same question back and he said "Having an impact on the world."

Although I don't think about it that much, I realized that I personally didn't care that much about my impact on the world. Any impact that I create would simply be a byproduct of me pursuing whatever activities I find fun.

Moreover, a positive impact in my eyes might end up being a negative impact to others. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Cynically I believe that person to be judgmental and self-absorbed in their motives for asking the question at the party. They didn't care about your answer, they wanted you to ask them the same in return so they could feel good about themself. It's all too typical in SF in my experience. That said, I love living in a city where people are genuinely passionate about making things better (at least in their estimation).

How would you differentiate between those who are:

"genuinely passionate about making things better (at least in their estimation)"

and someone who is

"judgmental and self-absorbed in their motives"

Based on this three line exchange?

The context of the situation. If you're at a party you're there to meet people and have a good time. Plenty of deep conversations have been had at parties, but they rarely start out that personal.

Starting a conversation with a question like that means the other person will have to reflect it back to you, which means you get to answer however you like. If the person wasn't self-absorbed, they could have answered like "I want to be helpful to others" or something along those lines.

It's not the kind of thing you ask a stranger at most parties. It's a challenge and who goes to a party to be challenged, and who does not know that?

It's not like the idle "So what do you do?" which can be an intentional challenge but usually is idle and innocent.

It's rude and almost certainly caused by self-absorption and self-importance as they said.

Any conversation could randomly wander onto a topic where the question becomes topical, so it's not that the question can never be asked legitimately at a party, but it's not normal.

We may have run in to the same person in SF.

When I used to attend in-person network events, I was sometimes asked "what do you care about?"

Which, to me, tagged them as people who weren't all that interested in you, but really wanted you to ask the same question back so they could feel good about their answer, e.g. "having an impact" or "making the world a better place."

My answer to that question was always "fucking around and finding out."

But more often than not, people would ask, "what is it you do?"

And my answer to that was always "whatever the fuck I want to, it makes money and everyone goes home happy."

> whatever the fuck I want to

I'm definitely using this response from now on when people ask me what I do. That's fucking gold

I help around Japanese language learning communities and one of the core tenets of a successful "language learning career" is being able to enjoy doing stuff with the language without necessarily trying to learn the language. Learning the language becomes a byproduct of having fun with it.

For this reason, I have this kind of conversation almost daily with people asking for help in studying or just ways to "find motivation", etc. I always ask them "Why are you learning Japanese?".

The amount of answers I get that revolve around the idea of "I want to get better at it" always amaze me. I'm the kind of person that just does things because I want to have fun. I learned Japanese because I enjoy doing stuff in Japanese. I never cared about learning Japanese, it just happened that doing so made it fun for me in the process. And yet there's people out there whose entire goal of learning Japanese is to "learn Japanese"... I will personally never understand that mentality myself, it's very puzzling.

Maybe that's lost in the brevity of answers of the people you talked to, but some things I know I only have fun doing when I'm (moderately) good at it. Talking to someone in a different language and having to think about every second word is not fun. Being able to talk and only having to think about a word every few sentences is fun. Same for sports or whatever activity. You think you like it but you're so bad that it's not fun. You try to improve in order to have fun.

Then the goal was all the things the language enables, not the language itself. You want to talk with people who speak that language. You want to function in an environment written in that language.

Even a language theorist researcher who learns a language just to study the language itself with no practical use planned, is still learning it for some other rrason, which is to study it's rules and construction and correlate that with other languages and information systems etc.

Even someone who learns a language not to use it and not even to study it, but merely as mental excercise, has that other reason, mental excercise.

> You want to talk with people who speak that language

No, there's a good chance I can talk to those people in a common language, mostly English. I didn't say my explanation was valid for 100% of the cases, only that it's a bit like that for me and there's a chance other people feel the same.

"I want to talk to people" and "I want to talk to people in their native language when I visit their country" are related, not a complete match. And honestly, I think that borders on overanalyzing. I am sure I am learning languages because I have fun doing it, but I also have fun having mastered a certain level.

I agree that the two are different, and the latter is still a distinct reason.

You can also desire both. I would ideally like to have an impact on the world while having fun. That said, the reason I want to have an impact on the world is because I like helping people, and helping people is fun for me; constant problem solving and seeing other people helped as a result is extremely rewarding, and simultaneously fun.

Yes, but the question said "most", which, by definition, means you have to choose one.

Touché.

When I was younger I cared more about having an impact on the world.

A lot of reflection later, I've dropped most of that, and I've embraced your view. The following quote influenced me a lot.

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” —Vonnegut

I remember Vonnegut saying that on a PBS interview quite a few years back now, but I didn't realize it was in one of his books. I'm happy to entertain people who want to tell me different, but so far no one has been able to convince me. Most people don't seem to think it's the case though.

It's nice to see it stuck with someone else.

I've a quip of my own that I use in the same sort of situations:

"Don't worry, all of this is temporary." (A modern take on "this too shall pass".)

I think it comes from the constant context in my mind, something along the lines of "will this matter in a thousand years?"

That phrase is my mantra.

I feel the same way, no one has been really able to tell me I should think differently so I keep that top of mind. Sure, there are some genuinely important things that can be counted on one hand. The rest are just window dressing and are just me farting around, mostly.

I mean its a pretty personal thing - similar to most moral beliefs. At the end of the day it mostly comes down to "I believe what i believe about purpose because i believe it"

At the end of the day we’re all just hitting rocks against something and trying to make it do something.

Sometimes hitting rocks or making things is considered a craft or a hobby, like a blacksmith swinging their hammer against the hot iron. Each impact forging the steel into your desired shape.

Hammers or rocks are just tools like any other craftsman or hobbyist uses in their work.

Pens and keyboards don’t make great hammers, but you don’t always have the best tools for the job. We all know how it gets. When you get in a pinch and something is laying there that fits the puzzle. So if it looks like it will work you gotta pick it up and swing.

Pottery and poetry are hobbies, should world domination be any different?

Such a question is so context-dependent that it becomes fairly meaningless. For example, in some cases (such as imminent risk of drowning due to a being in a capsized boat), your next breath of air will be the thing you care most about in life. If a person has a new baby, taking care of that baby tends to become the thing they care most about in life. And so on.

It's the kind of question people are instructed to ask in a marketing/networking tutorial, i.e. 'when meeting the client, try to find out what makes the client tick, via asking big picture questions and engaging in active listening.'

Ugh. I think my reply would be something like "I'll trade you, Why did you come to a party?" Or "Why do you ask a question like that at parties?" or maybe just "Why do you ask?". Somehow bounce that right back on them. Force them to declare their own odious transparent self-important nature, or wriggle on the hook trying not to.

I'm curious if you asked this person what exactly s/he is doing to "have an impact"?

Yeah, I asked him to elaborate, although I don't remember his answer in detail. He said something about AI safety and making sure that AI is used for good and not evil.

I don't want to strawman him, though. I simply don't remember his answer in detail.

They released Covid from the lab.

Ironically by doing things that you have fun with, you are more likely to make an impact on the world then someone who is focused on making an impact.

What would my interviewer think if I answered that question with pussy and money tho?

That answer is given unironically too often in my circle. "Changing the world" is a cliche among the VC crowd, "pussy and money" is a cliche in the business world.

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