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Comment by brailsafe | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but I can also view such strident commitment to a fixed set of ideas to be pretty unimaginative, or lacking in categorical ambition, lacking in exploration perhaps depending on the person. My father for example has not been on a plane in 34 years. Not for any legitimate practical reason, though he'd come up with something if prompted; almost like he's archived his exposure to the world in 1989. He has no idea what it's like to even book a flight, how much it really costs, how security procedures have changed over time, and has no ambition to ever leave the continent.

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Being far too broad and shallow in life is just as bad, if not worse.

In the worst case, the depth-first life leaves a person mostly useless except for at least one deep skill, but the breadth-first life in the worst case can leave a person completely useless since no skills have been developed past an arbitrarily superficial level.

These are, of course the extreme ends where life has been well wasted. :)

True, but then you have to evaluate the value of having a deep skill versus a wide range of xp. Usually, it's a feat in itself b/c starting things often require money, which is difficult to obtain with no deep skills (unless given/inherited).

I'm more of the opinion that no deep skills is no skills at all. Similarly, a wide range of experiences from a blank slate without the necessary effort to connect the dots might as well be no experience at all.

Often an inheritance comes with an upbringing full of entirely different experiences, culture, and values from those who do not inherit much if anything. Deep knowledge and skills are naturally imbued into the next generation without much deliberate effort despite the fact that someone did put in much deliberate effort to manifest that situation. Every lineage begins with someone who had to learn it all the hard way.

I respect that though. Like what is the point in leaving if you’re happy?

I suppose that's a deeper question of why do anything different at all if your current set of things results in your happiness?

Aside from practical limitations, health, economic prosperity, I'm of the opinion that there's value in staying compelling by exploring your curiosities instead of dismissing them in favour of protecting your current happiness. In order to have resilient connections with others, you need to find ways to stay attractive over time, and it's a consequence of doing new things from time to time, travel maybe being one of them.

> has no ambition to ever leave the continent.

There’s a lot to do on most continents.

> There’s a lot to do on most continents.

There's a lot to do in most cities, even. I think you could spend all your free time exploring, e.g., London and you'd be good for a few years worth.

There's plenty, it would be good to explore it further I'd think.

You can go wide and shallow or narrow and deep. There's no enough time in the world to go wide and deep on all topics. To each it's own, but personally I prefer to go explore fewer topics, but in great depth. I travel very rarely, but when I do, I try to make it at least weeks if not months. When I take up a hobby, I stick to it for years.

> He has no idea what it's like to even book a flight, how much it really costs, how security procedures have changed over time

TBH I don't think that's something to miss. I'd be pretty happy to not know that either. Unless you're writing a book about air travel security, that's probably not worth any attention.

> TBH I don't think that's something to miss. I'd be pretty happy to not know that either. Unless you're writing a book about air travel security, that's probably not worth any attention

It's more of a personal revulsion I have against having pride in being ignorant, and then relying on ancient knowledge only to inform current and future decisions. "Flying is a hassle and expensive" just isn't true in many but not all cases. It's one thing to have a preference, it's another to have prejudice, and I think ignorance turns into prejudice if you go long enough without re-evaluating the criteria you once used.

Fair enough. But flying still is an expensive hassle. And it will probably just get more expensive and more crappy experience in the future.

>...no ambition to ever leave the continent.

That's an interesting way to put it. I certainly wouldn't say I have much ambition to leave the continent either. If the time and money come up, there's places I'd like to go, and maybe I will some day. It's not a big life goal I'm working towards though.

Cross-continental travel can be tricky to convince yourself of the value, if you've never really been driven toward it, but there's a certain type of person who will imagine a burden before even exploring the real numbers, and dismiss forever as too expensive without an idea of what it costs; in the case of my dad, not ever even acquiring a cursory sense of the cost

I know the cost is going to be a couple thousand dollars. It's something that I'd be reasonably able to afford in the next few years if I made it a goal. It's value, however, is less to me than a lot of other things that would cost the same amount. I could upgrade a lot of my hobby equipment for the price of a trip to Europe. That would be an investment that gives back every day for years. I'd like to experience other cultures, but the amount of immersion I'd get for that price is nothing compared to the enjoyment I could get from better landscaping in my little yard, a project horse to spend the next 15 years bonding with and enjoying, or some better power tools to keep the house up with. I'm not 20 any more. I'm married. I certainly can't just leave the country for 6 months and backpack and to keep me and my husband in reasonable accommodations for that length of time is well beyond our resources and the amount of time off I can finagle at the job I love.

With a bit of effort we could afford say, 5k, to go off for a couple weeks and do the tourist things in basically any region that piques our interest. That same amount of money could provide both of us a lot more growth and enjoyment without leaving the US.

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