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Comment by jister | Hacker News Reader

Balance.

An extreme of "something" is not good...

I consider it a good thing when a person is extremely reasonable. Or extremely thoughtful. Or extremely honest. Or extremely patient. Or extremely gracious.

We don't need balance in all things. A rocket only makes it safely to the moon if the engineers are extremely cautious. Bill Gates is extremely charitable. Einstein was extremely intelligent.

The idea that "extreme X for any X" is bad is some sort of pseudo-wisdom that doesn't even pass the sniff test.

If you are extremely thoughtful to the point that you never get any work done, then this is also a bad thing.

And if you're so patient that you keep waiting for food indefinitely you'll starve. This is just silly.

On the other hand, it is wise to be moderately moderate.

I disagree somewhat.

>Bill Gates is extremely charitable.

This is following two decades of Bill Gates being extremely selfish.

>Einstein was extremely intelligent.

This is something different. Einstein was extremely intelligent in some areas but not all of them.

It's been said that for anyone to become great at anything that it requires 10,000 hours of practice. This does take dedication and there is nothing wrong with doing what you love. That said, caring too much or being too emotional can affect rationalization.

Please. You think Bill Gates made $50 billion by stealing it? Yeah, he was agressive, but not any more so than Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy or Larry Ellison would have been in the same position.

Gates and his lieutenants are guilty of extortion rather than theft. "Nice OEM you got, a pity if something were to … happen to it." That wealth is an enormous market failure that the others were not sociopathic enough to cause.

How extreme is it really? The guy has 15 things with resale value that he treasures. How many things to do you own that you use day in, day out that you treasure.

For me, discarding kitchen things and stuff needed to run a house (furniture, hoover, ironing board etc) I use / wear maybe 25 things frequently.

The main difference between that guy and most people is he chooses to sell / discard / not buy crap he doesn't need. Most people accumulate stuff and fill their attic with it.

What do you mean by "balance"? Is it that which you and the culture that conditioned you would consider "normal"?

That's a good question. But such things go together with a certain lifestyle. For example, when you start having children, it becomes terribly hard to have such a lifestyle. Not only do they need toys and more clothes. But you will require a bigger house, a bigger house goes together with tools for fix stuff, etc.

The question is whether you should define minimalism quantitatively or qualitatively. Isn't minimalism to buy what you need to lead a reasonable life, rather than a race to have the lowers number of possessions? The minimum number depends on so many factors: family size, illnesses, hobbies (some people require only a GPS for hiking, others need a climbing gear), etc.

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