Are you living an AND life or an OR life? | Hacker News Reader

Are you living an AND life or an OR life?

alanakirk.substack.com

54 pointssubomi54 comments

What if I want to live an AND life AND an OR life?

This post finds reasonable fault with false dichotomies as "OR life" then reifies the structure of false dichotomy in the title and proposition as positivist thinking.

I think the constructive equivalent is "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Or at least be mindful of the false binary trap, even in your personal life...

Like typical self-help blogs, the article is oversimplified and does not provide a balanced analysis of the ideas presented. Disappointing really.

There is a finite number of hours in a day and a finite number of possibilities to combine different activities during these hours. Even with best of intentions and very decent techniques, it's impossible to have a XOR life with too many things at once without getting exhausted and burned out and getting a temporarily NOT life as a result.

NAND life is where it's at.

XOR/XAND life: perfectly balanced, with a harmonious parity.

both, or nothing. or just one.

nothing in between.

> it's impossible to have a XOR life

We tend to invest too much time into activities when we limit ourselves. You can work out, bone up your knowledge, eat healthy, work efficiently, and have time for recreation and a family. It take investing time into planning, which feels wasteful when you're overwhelmed. And it might mean you timebox certain activities to limit burning the ocean.

What do you mean by "limit ourselves" in this context? Also, do you have any resources on the sort of planning that you mention?

In this context: forcing a choice in activities between one option or other when both are meaningful to a person. That's not to say you should never abandon activities, only that folks tend to over-do it.

Some resources you might find useful

[1] https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/weekly-plan/

[2] Todoist/Trello are great for kanban tasks lists for the must-get-dones

[3] Set reasonable goals and milestones -- and be honest with yourself! (see 1)

[4] For larger targets, https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/strategic-planning-kit/...

Planning this way has hallmarks of Agile, when actually done well not the BS we see a lot of.

Probably most important is to give yourself a bit of grace and flexibility.

This reminds me of A Cyborg Manifesto:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto

Instead of identifying yourself in bounded categories, characterise yourself by affinity.

  Haraway calls for a revision of the concept of gender, moving away from Western patriarchal essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender," stating that "Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth."

Would love gender-by-affinity rather than gender-by-bimodal-physical-characteristics. It'd be neat to try on having boobs, especially if it's e.g. temporary to feed my child or something, and still do and be seen with all the guy characteristics I currently identify as.

Surely someone's already selling those on Amazon? In the form of wearable milk bottles, but still, surely?

Edit:

Found it: https://www.amazon.com/Milker-Now-Men-Can-Breastfeed/dp/B00B...

I wonder how improving technology will affect perceptions of of these concepts. Right now, transitioning genders physically is hard, for many reasons, and quality of outcomes is dependent on many factors.

What if you could just pop into a genetic resculpting pod and it could literally physically edit you to be biologically the other gender? What if it was fast and easy enough that someone could do it habitually during a day or week? Be one gender at work and one gender while at home?

I suspect that enough generations will pass that the gradual decoupling of physical biology from our sense of identity will make this a less interesting smooth change with no big-bang, but I'd be kind of interested in reading a short story exploring what our world would look like if this star-trek-tier sophisticated body-modding was invented tomorrow.

Yeah see, that'd be neat. I've heard a lot of unpleasant bra stuff and it'd be cool if women could just not have them if it was such a hassle. (I've heard from women doctors generally refuse breast reduction unless its considered medically necessary or has written permission from a male long-term partner.)

Lactation is the product of a dynamic system of organs in the body. It's more than just "trying on boobs". It actively responds to the baby's needs through chemical signalling.

I feel like this article should replace OR with XOR. It's unfortunate English doesn't have a commonly used word for XOR.

Maybe we should start saying xor as though it is a normal English word, pronounced "zor"?

English determines exclusive OR, inclusive OR, and AND using context.

This kind of ambiguity really drives us logical people nuts. :)

We do the same with "up to" too. I have no idea how non-native speakers learn the English language.

> Count up to 20

Is a prompt to count up to, and include, twenty.

> Describe the events up to WWII

Is a prompt to describe the events leading up to WWII, but leave out the war itself.

In my experience, spoken English is relatively fault tolerant, which probably makes speaking it less challenging than it first appears. To become proficient, you slowly learn the rules.

Not sure how this compares to other languages. I’ve only observed other people learning the language. As a typical American, I only speak American English. If you mentioned the boot of a car, I’d probably ask if you meant the tires. ;)

I think the difference in this case is that we naturally parenthesize the sentences differently:

(Count up) to 20.

and

Describe the events (up to) WWII.

Because "count up" and "count down" have precedence over "up to" in the linguistic order of operations, so to speak. There's of course no "describe up" or "events up", so "up to" has precedence in the second case.

I'm not sure if I agree with that.

> Describe the events up to WWII

For me that sounds like you would include WWII, just like if you counted up to 20.

> Describe the events leading up to WWII

Then I would agree, that would be "explain the set of events on which WWII depended" so that would include all prior events which are relevant to WWII, without including WWII itself, but also missing out any events not relevant to WWII, so not e.g. "OK so the ice age was before WWII, so let's start there".

(Native English speaker, from UK).

No one is forbidden to ask to clarify :)

Thanks. I feel less alone now :)

Yeah, but the "everyday meaning" of AND is different too. Everyday meaning: you can have A and also B, but you don't have to; boolean logic: you have to have A and B, otherwise you don't have anything.

I think "Either" is what makes an OR a XOR. "You can go with either red or green"

I suggest "ecks-or". This developed in university CS labs, as a result of exchanges like "OK are we going to finish the shell project tonight or shall I just slam my head into the desk until I fall unconscious?" "Yes"

I've thought the same thing, haha. I was thinking about going the other way though, with dor for and/or and or for xor. We already have doff and don, which for some reason seem like similar constructions.

Yes, when reading the headline, I thought "the moral is: pick (inclusive) OR!".

Which in this article is called "AND" (which logically requires both, rather than allows both).

I'm married with kids, so my life is more of a 3SAT situation.

You’re life is [np]complete :)

Binary thinking limits. Control is an illusion or at best minimal. You are not your emotions. There are seasons in life. Let the river carry you to the ocean. It's up to you how that process feels.

I don't get the "control is an illusion" part. Maybe in some cosmic/determinism sense, but that wouldn't be very useful for day-to-day.

Ultimately it's an article of faith. A leap. If it helps, here's a metaphor: you're in a vessel in the middle of a vast, swift river. You have a paddle. Do you have control? Yes. Can you control the outcome? No. More pithily, "Man plans, and God laughs."

I view it as a variant of the basic lesson the parable "The Oak and the Reed" presents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oak_and_the_Reed

DeMorgan's law says there's no difference between AND-life and OR-life if you throw in some negations

You. I like you. Follows my own thought process. Few people would jump immediately to the axiomatic foundations of set theory.

It's quite silly in hindsight how we invent false choices (I am A XOR B) to "escape" the daily responsibility of real decisions, i.e. whether to spend this moment working on A or B.

I'm living the ternary life.

Yes.

No.

Time to do something else entirely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic

Came here to see a reference to Karnaugh maps :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map

Returning on topic, like others have stated, some times you need to be an OR, others an AND, others a NOT and some others combinations of all.

Binary thinking doesn't lead to a good life. Continua.

I landed on a "flexible OR" life. I've found that focusing on fewer things (OR) without being dogmatic (eating healthy can mean cake sometimes) brings me a lot more satisfaction than focusing on many things and not enjoying any of them fully.

Anytime I open an article and it has that art style, I know it's not for me.

Corporate Memphis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

though I've also heard it called Alegria, and I'm not sure the exact difference.

edit: Alegria was Facebook's style specifically, Linus Boman has a great video which briefly discussed its place in history of clip art:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLlpxE6AYM

Wow! This is exactly what I was talking about. Didn't know it had a name!

Any article that features art in the style of that header image? Why exactly? That seems like an unnecessarily uncompromising attitude, no? I get that we all have our own heuristics and signals we rely on, but maybe the author here just didn't think through what image to use very deeply at all and just threw something on there last second before clicking to publish? Dismissing the entire post out of hand just based on that seems a bit rash.

It's definitely irrational on my part, but as you said, it's one of the heuristics I base spending my time on. If a friend or someone I respect tells me otherwise, I'll read it though.

I opened the article after I read you comment, and agree - something about that style is off-putting.

That style has a name, and you’re not alone in disliking it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

My life is a mix of switch, if then else, many nested blocks, unconventional formatting and even a couple of goto statements.

AND/OR, a techie in the Digital Circus, fell in love with a frankie, Angel Lips.

Funny, he never seemed to have met up with the techno witches Onoffon and Offonoff.

I’m definitely living a for loop and package.json life.

Shocked no one has suggested the XNOR life yet. What could be more expressive of the hell-yes-or-no mentality?

Or are you living a FOMO life?

You can do anything but you can’t do everything (well).

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