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Comment by otreblatercero | Hacker News Reader

You must be younger than 45, not to be patronizing but, otherwise, you'd get it.

I'm retirement age. I don't get it, and found the piece to be overly-pessimistic. I'm with joshuamcginnis. OTOH, one could argue that I've just stumbled through life, and succeeded (for however one might define that) through mostly luck. I'm fine with that.

> one could argue that I've just stumbled through life, and succeeded (for however one might define that) through mostly luck. I'm fine with that

This resonates. I'm also at retirement age. And when I look back over my career I realize that it was mostly luck. I was so anxious much of the time (afraid I might make a mistake or make the wrong decision) and I wonder if I would've been more relaxed knowing what I know now? And if as a result of being more relaxed I would've actually performed better. I'm pretty sure I would've felt a lot more at peace.

You really expect everyone at 45 suddenly turns around this switch and comes to your conclusion? Now not to be patronizing but that seems really naive.

It's not a sudden realization, it's just realizing that the body is just not the same, and time is more precious, not much margin of error.

I think somewhere around that age is when a lot of folks start noticing how many “last times” for various experiences are piling up, and that a ton of their remaining experiences are also going to be “last times”. It’s when you realize you’re in a slow-motion process of saying goodbye to life.

Here is the thing - the last times were always true. It's just that during youth it doesn't feel that way. Life seems endless. It never was.

I'm not an example of anything, but it happens that I was concerned about mortality from about age 7 - not frightened of it, but indignant. This should obviously be the most urgent concern for everybody, yet we do nothing about it, I thought. Before I decide what I'm going to do with my life, I'm going to fix the problem of it ending way too soon. But as it turned out, I would rather die than study molecular biology, so now I just vaguely hope somebody else will fix the problem.

Humanity's earliest surviving major work of fiction, Gilgamesh, is largely concerned with this. Ancient Egyptian literature is obviously full of these concerns, and you can keep on going down the list of ancient civilizations with surviving literature, it's always there. Worrying about this, wishing to find a solution to this problem, and even working at it (and, always, failing) is about as human as anything can be.

The good news is that we are probably a few decades away from robust rejuvenation, that will allow us to live more or less indefinitely absent catching a disease or meeting with a horrible accident or something. In the next 20 years or so we have a very good shot at a first wave of treatments that will extend our quality lifespan to where we will see the next wave, so-called "longevity escape velocity".

And yes, this is an ancient, ancient dream of mankind, one replete with cautionary tales about the Bad Things that will befall you if you attempt to actually solve it. (One such tale, The Substance, was nominated for a few oscars.) But so was human flight. We yearned for it, and our elders told us what fools we would be for even trying with things like the tale of Icarus... and then one day on a hill in Kitty Hawk, NC...

tales against flying? you forget daedalus who made it out just fine sans a son. icarus’s problem was that he overstepped his limits, not that he dared to fly.

from what I’ve seen tales against a search for immortality are in regards to enjoy life while you have it, make relations, laugh, love, mourn, and remember, rather than have your entire life consumed in a desperate attempt to postpone the end, sucking all the joy out of it. we still have a long ways to go to avoiding death entirely, so I’d figure the best course of action is to enjoy life rather than to waste it in hopes of getting some extra time.

Sure, that is more or less what I meant by expressing an aversion to molecular biology: I have some living to do, so I can't invest effort in avoiding death. It is however true that there's a tiresome trope in fiction, the villain whose badness is centered on the search for eternal life. I remember more than one Doctor Who baddie with this quest. It's like a signifier of an evil character, like desiring unusually long life is a sin against destiny, or somehow unfair, and this trope gives life extension a bad rep. This probably stems from witch hunts in the 1500s, and fairy tales.

Voldemort is another example; his name literally means "fleeing from death".

ah, fair enough

and yeah bringing up what you've brought up, I see your point. it does seem like the trope has been distilled down to "searching for eternal life is bad" instead of "don't waste everything in the hopes of eternal life".

Of course! It's a perspective shift, not a change in reality.

Of course the body is not the same. Time is more precious. But that really doesn't mean your margin of error is smaller. When I was in my twenties I had a lot less margin for error. Failing a test could mean the end of my degree. Not finding a job meant I could not pay rent. This is even worse for some other people. Imagine not getting accepted into Harvard because your letter just not being good enough slightly. If I fuck up my job now, the worst that can happen is that I get fired. I have enough financial means to support myself and find a new job. There is a ton of risk I could never take as a younger person. Precisely because now my margin of error is much larger.

There are, of course, also examples where the converse holds true. Finding a long term partner who you want to create a family with for example. But all in all the balance strongly favors that the error margin becomes smaller.

I'm sixty and can see both points.

Sorry, not everyone over 45 is painfully self-critical.

Example: the fact that I don’t have the DNA to be an NBA player is not a flaw of character. The fact that I don’t have an eye for painting or the brain for quantum physics isn’t a flaw of character.

This article basically encourages us to punish ourselves for happily existing.

Not being self-critical does not mean things don't happen. Suppose you love drinking, for example. At 20 it will be just a hangover, but at 40 it could even kill you. If at 40 you get drunk knowing you no longer process alcohol like you used to, that's a flaw of character. It doesn't have anything to do with DNA(supposing you're not an alcoholic). Mistakes have much more weight the older one gets. It's a fact, not a way of seeing things.

I would say that the ability to recognize a past mistake and avoid it is completely detached from age.

The drinking analogy is not a great one because that’s an obviously detrimental activity. A lot of activities are positive.

E.g., trying to publish a book when you’re 65 after failing when you were 25 is not a character flaw.

I'm with you about being an NBA player but I suspect most people, if they devoted themselves to it, could learn to paint competently or understand quantum physics at a phd level. It would "just" take years of study and practice.

We only live so long so we have to pick and choose. Especially as the years remaining clock down.

I disagree. It is my observation that I also saw confirmed by bits of research that certain things as "simple" as programming or quantum physics are simply beyond the levels of abstraction attainable by majority of people.

Cool.

Abstraction is one skill. It's quite useful, especially in an age of computation. But it's just one skill.

There are many other human skills too. They all have their own value (which may vary across time and space).

Few people are really good at more than one or two of them.

Part of learning is that if you hate doing something enough your pre-existing deficiencies are amplified.

Is it a literal truth that I can’t learn to paint? No. Have I done enough of it to know my progress is extremely slow to the point of not wanting to study it formally? Absolutely.

I’ll do a paint and sip but I’ll never get much better than that even if I put in the hours.

I'm 42

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