I'm 34. Here's 34 things I wish I knew at 21 | Hacker News Reader

I'm 34. Here's 34 things I wish I knew at 21

elliot.my

71 pointsclowes107 comments

This is well done. I can't say I agree with all of them, but I agree with the fact that you sat down and thought about them, and that you wrote them down. Good job.

> Adults make a lot more sense when you realise they're just children in big bodies.

That one, I absolutely agree with.

I'm 55. I would have a hard time limiting myself to 55 things I wish I knew when I was 34. When I'm 105, I still will have too many for now. :)

This one made me chuckle, so true!

Write them all down. Please.

I was wondering why the original poster chose 21. Maybe it was because he's 34 and that's the previous Fibonacci number.

Following this logic, you're precisely the age you should be to write a list like this :P

> If you're a man, one of your hardest battle may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others. History is littered with otherwise entirely brilliant men who succeeded at everything but this. You must succeed.

I'm not sure I like the framing of this

Uh, yeah. I've been a man my entire life and I've never ever had a problem with wanting to let my sexual urges cause harm to others. I have a very high libido even. Not once has this been a problem.

The fuck is this about?

That was my first reaction as well. Maybe if we include letting others harm themselves or others by choosing poorly it makes more sense, but then it’s patronising to the opposite sex, like their agency is invalid.

OTOH I can remember being a 16 year old sex crazed sociopath, maybe adolescence is what op refers to? I definitely participated is some extremely questionable decisions at that age, and sometimes I wonder if others were significantly affected by my ignorance and selfishness. Probably not, as they were also sex crazed sociopaths at the time, but still. Such a cringefest.

Being ashamed of your past actions is how you know you are growing.

Ask a divorce lawyer that question.

If you actually did that you'd know most domestic violence is from women towards men.

But it doesn't transcend as men are usually way stronger and just brush it off.

Hint: It's so prevalent it's even considered "funny".

Nope, that's not true.

If you mean, by reporting statistics, you’re probably right. But men in general are widely used to physical abuse and are expected to take it. Granted, it is rarely significantly harmful and women use it as a way to reassure themselves that men are “in charge “ or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is vile behavior.

Men’s behavior is as much shaped by female expectations as the behavior of women is molded by men.

Like it or not, we’re in this together, and cooperation with mutual understanding and benefit is the only way forward. We can see what happens when this breaks down, as in sharia law. How do you think this ends if we ceaselessly demonize men? Shame has its limits, and they start where the violence begins.

Your assertion, which feels "right" to you, is by your own admission unprovable with available reporting facts.

Give up that assertion. Violence in relationships can go both ways. Neither sex gets to "win" here.

Of -reported- incedents, 1 in 4 women report having been the victim of significant physical harm by an intimate partner, as do 1 in 7 men. Now if you consider the comparative likelihood of severe physical harm in M vs F and F vs M, and factor in the likelihood of reporting for women vs men, I think you can see that the rate is not at all what it seems at first glance.

(FWIW, despite the relative -frequency- of incidents , I do agree that the danger is greater to women just on the basis of the likelihood of harm in a MvF conflict.)

Reported incidence of psychological/emotional abuse are almost exactly at parity, with just under half of both sexes reporting abuse in their lifetime. Physical abuse prevalence in lesbian relationships is also much higher than either heterosexual or male-male relationships.

From this I would estimate that the willingness to act out in violence against a domestic partner is something close to evenly distributed among the sexes.

Collection of definitive data about subjects such as this is notoriously difficult, but reading between the lines both here and in violence among youth (m-m, f-f, m/f) seems to indicate that the predilection, if not the severity, of violence is relatively evenly distributed among.

I think this is where the "may" applies.

Same.

Leaving aside the "If you're a man ..." condescending crap, that "cause harm to others" bit reveals a lot about the author.

Sorry pal, you're alone on that hill.

Women also cause enormous turmoil and suffering through their indiscretions and poor choices. Men are hardly alone on that journey.

This bullshit is why #NotAllMen is a farcical trope among feminists.

Can ya'll please grow slightly thicker skin?

It doesn't take much effort to give the author benefit of doubt, especially when he already qualified his claim with "If you're a man, one of your hardest battles may be..."

To those who are unaware, "may be" signals uncertainty. It signals #NotAllMen.

Stop whining.

> Sorry pal, you're alone on that hill.

No, he's absolutely not.

Sadly, rape and cheating on partners is far too rampant in the world, in my experience. But I never see any one talking about it – only the news articles and Facebook posts after the fact.

I believe that far too many men are messed up and have desires of sexual harm and struggle to contain these desires – way more men than people think. I was attempting to call it out, but I may have done so clumsily, writing it as if every man struggles with it, or that it's a struggle I've had (when I haven't).

It is poorly worded, but might make sense if interpreted to be about cheating and not sexual assault.

You're right, poorly worded. My initial draft of it had nuance that I think was lost when I condensed this entry down. But it was meant to largely cover cheating, as well as sexual assault, and any sexual acts that harm others.

My original draft from Obsidian:

"The smartest, most talented and otherwise kind men throughout history – who have overcome hurdles beyond imagining to save lives, get rich and get us the moon – still totally failed when it came to not giving in to their sexual desires. They cheated on the partners they love. Some even groped and raped.

It’s not discussed enough, but many mens hardest battle is simply not giving into sexual appetites that cause harm – cheating, sexual assault, or any other form of harm (you could argue simply buying and consuming porn is immoral). These acts can spread misery through multiple generations. And yet many men do it. If you happen to have these urges (and it's not all men), you must not give in to them. [[2026-01-06]]"

I definitely interpreted this one as meaning emotional harm.

I won't say most, but it's clear a lot of men are tempted by the flesh and have to actively choose not to cheat on their partner. This is a trope throughout cultures and histories for a reason. Some are lucky enough to find monogamy trivial and natural, but a lot of people are practicing self control.

Congrats, you're half way there to publish your first self-help book!

And then there is the “11 Simple Rules of All Self-Help Books.”

People have mentioned that some of us add our blog links in the comments but here we go https://brajeshwar.com/2024/11-simple-rules-of-all-self-help...

> Don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.

The funny thing I find about criticism is that you actually don’t have a choice about whether or not it affects your future actions. Criticism that I have dismissed has persistently come back to haunt me, perhaps via my subconscious.

We care so much that we even care about the opinions of those we do not care about.

Or, as Marcus Aurelius put it, "It never ceases to amaze me, we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."

Heh. This is why there's no need to win arguments.

Some great life lessons here, but also some I don't agree with:

- The lazy person works twice as hard. Often I found you can save a lot of time just trying to the minimal possible and gain a lot of insights of why something is minimal vs not

-The opinion of the person who rarely offers it is listened to more closely. I found the opposite to be true, those who don't offer their thoughts frequently are often dismissed when they do want to share something

Anyway, many of the points are great.. I would also add to keep a journal and write down what was meaningful throughout the day.. you will find time passing by with more quality since you know what the take and what to avoid

I agree with most of these except 28.

> Some people are profoundly broken – usually from life's harsh trials. Give yourself permission to remove them from your orbit. Their healing requires years of professional help, more than well-meaning friends and family can achieve.

If you give up on those people and cut them out, you're pretty much condemning them to continuing being broken.

This conflicts with the earlier advice of trying to be kind.

Don't let them control you but don't cut them out. Give them some of your time and some kindness. You never know how much time a "profoundly broken" person has left.

It's definitely a balancing act. I have a friend with whom I try gently help him fix his spiraling life. That would let me help him if he's open to it. But for my own sanity and the health of my family, I can't make it a year-long repeated ask.

> If you give up on those people and cut them out, you're pretty much condemning them to continuing being broken.

I've seen what happens to those who spend their lives trying to fix others.

No thanks.

Keep in mind the idea that "Some people are profoundly broken." There are those you can help. There are also those who you will never be able to help. Know your limit. Know when to say enough and let them live with their choices. You can't fix everyone even if you wish you could.

I think perhaps the author's 35th lesson¹ is that brevity can lose nuance.

I interpreted this one to be in the context where having them in your orbit is causing you (or others) harm, and it ain't something you can fix.

¹ Actually it would be the 50th lesson. For some reason tacking on fifteen "bonus" lessons annoyed me. Felt like having your alliteration and eating it too. 51st lesson: math.

> curiosity is a superpower

I like this. I’ll take it a step further:

curiosity plus follow-through is a superpower. Lots of people I know are curious… they just never really follow through on it, so they end up average, wasting that superpower. They’re curious in their head, but it stays in their head.

I’m thinking about curiosity in a work sense (“could I build a better widget?”) and in a personal interest sense (“I wonder if taking a dance class / volunteering at a soup kitchen would be fulfilling”).

I’ve learned that the people who tend to excel are the ones who follow that curiosity to completion for something.

>If you're a man, one of your hardest battles may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others.

What the ...

Author telling on himself here

Totally!

There's this one guy that used to be a regular of tech events where I live. He was building some sort of crappy luma clone.

Anyway, one day out of nowhere he posts on LinkedIn "PSA to girls, when at a conference, we are not reading your name tag, we are looking at your breasts[1]", and then some bizarre argumentation of how if we all used his app this would stop.

He was trying to sound like an "ally". I'm not a girl and it even made me feel uncomfortable, yikes.

1: He used that exact word, mega cringe.

You wouldnt think thats cringe if you just used his app. Kind of your fault when you think about it.

Hi there – author of the post here. I included this quite intentionally.

I consider rape and sexual assault to be one of the worst things one human can do to another – just behind murder and torture. And yet society is littered with it. Ask any woman (and some men), she'll more than likely have a story. And it should be obvious: don't sexually hurt people! I _shouldn't_ need to include this in a simple list of rules for life. But sadly, I feel I do.

I've noticed advice articles, personal development books, and "self-help" podcasts aimed largely at men never seem to address this simple fact: far too many men commit or have thoughts of sexual violence. This was true hundreds of years ago and it's still true now. These men are out there, amongst us. They're "good" in every other way – they're kind to strangers, they love their mother, they're great fathers to their kids (how many of the world's great men have an "allegations" section on their Wikipedia page for goodness sake?). And yet they give in to this disgusting, horrific lust that ends up ruining someone's life (and often their own).

I purposefully included it in my list, because others don't. Because it appears to be something that more men struggle with than people realise.

I don't care if it's taboo. If my post stops just one man acting on his evil desires and harming a woman, man, or child, it was worth it as far as I'm concerned, despite the controversy I've stirred up.

Having said that, if what I wrote was clumsy, inconsiderate or implies I have similar desires – as you and theblazehen suggests – then I do apologise. I am NOT on the side of rapists.

Edit: I probably should have mentioned that my advice was meant to also cover cheating on your partner as a form of "harm", as well as sexual assault. But maybe I was too vague.

The issue is not if it's a good/bad thing. We all know that.

The issue is that is neither common nor a natural thing for men to "struggle not to rape someone" as much as you think it is. While your intentions might be good, and I do believe that, it reads like some sort of freudian slip.

Imagine if someone wrote "hey guys, let's be honest, I don't really like this thing of urinating on your food before eating, can we just agree to stop doing that :)".

You wouldn't think "oh what a sensible comment, finally someone has the balls to talk about it", no, you would just :O and think the guy is crazy ...

Fair point. I can see the Freudian slip bit for sure.

Frankly, there are far too many men who have one foot in the “rape is OK” camp. (Framed as “you have to be forceful even if she’s reluctant,” “if she’s drunk or passed out it’s still OK,” “society owes me sex,” etc.) Just look at the insane popularity of Andrew Tate. I think it’s a salient point.

Anyway, I’d reframe the advice as “be (actual) friends with women and stay the fuck away from the manosphere.”

Rape culture is real. Sexual violence is common. Serious feminist liberation has to come with the total dismantling of rape culture.

"Men who don't rape really do want to rape and just exert enormous self control over their intense desire to rape" is not the conclusion to draw from this. The fact that you seem to think that this is fairly universal to men tells us something about you that is worrying to many readers.

I can assure you that it takes me zero self control to not rape or sexually abuse women and zero self control to not cheat on my wife.

Fair criticism on the framing. I meant it as: “If you ever feel tempted to do sexual things that would betray, coerce, or exploit someone – don’t. Remove yourself, get help if needed, and never make your urges someone else’s problem.”

I absolutely don’t mean “men who don’t offend are merely restraining themselves from offending”. That framing is both inaccurate and unfair. Most men aren’t sitting on violent impulses; they simply don’t want to harm anyone.

The point I was aiming for was narrower: sexual harm, cheating, and boundary-crossing still exist at scale, and some men *do* rationalise it (including sexual assault, coercion, entitlement, misuse of status, infidelity, etc.) The point was meant as a warning to take it seriously if you have these feelings, not a description of universal male psychology.

That said, I accept the phrasing invited misreading. If I were rewriting it, I'd be more precise.

Appreciate your explainer, and agreed with you. The way it was written came off to me as "don't worry about the pain you cause others for their sake, avoid causing pain because it'll be bad for yourself"

The days are long, but the years are short

Also, wear sunscreen

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xfq_A8nXMsQ

> Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. Unless it will be detrimental to your health, eat as little as possible.

Carnivorous animals, are they immoral?

One might argue the difference is that they are ignorant of the suffering caused by their behavior, and that the knowing and doing anyways is the moral problem, not just the doing.

Alternately, one might argue the difference is that they have no alternative to inflicting suffering, and that having the option to reduce suffering and choosing to inflict it anyways is the moral problem, not just inflicting it.

That does track with those who are most stridently Good and Moral and Kind and Right having some glaring blind spots when it comes to understanding the consequences of their actions.

I don’t think that mammals are, in general, ignorant of the character of harm, violence, and death. Animals even kill to end suffering. Life is short, brutal, and violent. We do what we can to make it less so.

Morality is a human construct and applies to humans, arguments that try to argue morality on the basis of applying naturalistic arguments to humans do exist, but I don’t think they have much credence in modern moral frameworks ?

Appeal to nature.

Can any animal be immoral to our standards?

Rape culture among ducks?

Or crows that attack a member of the flock that misbehaved to a minor of the flock? (this is one of the animals that seem to have their own morals).

Anyway: humans should not project our sense of moral to animals.

And humans are no carnivores. Most likely we're omnivores (like our close animal relatives the primates: and they prefer fruit over meat any day, just like human babies).

I'm sure the concept of self-restraint exists in the animal kingdom among apex predators. Don't hunt too much or otherwise you will destroy your habitat.

This applies to humans too, and not just in the context of eating meat.

It does not. One predator eats all the prey, because if he doesn't, the other predators will. The next year they all starve. This is a documented effect. No reference to geopolitics intended.

Unless they are bugs, then it's not!

1) Animals do not (pretend to) have morals, unlike humans

2) Carnivores do not have a choice of food, humans have great alternatives, being omnivores not carnivores.

Citation required.

For both, really. Wild wolves are actually omnivores (choice of food), but generally choose to act like obligate carnivores.

That’s why we are humans, and they are animals.

The best advise I ever got was this.

https://youtu.be/sycgL3Qg_Ak?si=aDnxo-S6eYXJVheC&t=190

Don’t listen to other people’s advice. Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing.

Just do your own thing.

So you took the advice of not taking other people's advice & you don't see the inherent contradiction in that?

There is no contradiction, i can give you the advice to live healthy and also tell you to not listen to my advice and do your own thing / research.

But I guess for people who are used these days to ask a word generator for live, love and health advice and end up telling a doctor in the ER that they don’t get why their liver is failing because ChatGPT must know it better, this concept is hard to grasp.

Best of luck to you.

“Many a true word is spoken in jest.”

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

"Dump a good friend or family member because they're on a rough patch"

Suuuuure

35. Women can be as horny and lonely as men and all you need to do is talk to them to meet them.

This was a revelation to me in my early-thirties.

>This was a revelation to me in my early-thirties

Have you considered that this had less to do with how you acted but more with your marked value increasing and there's decreasing?

Maybe its that the social norms around sex are that women do not enjoy it and men have to force it on them.

The harm of that is that women feel shame for enjoying it and men feel shame for wanting it.

The social norms are garbage, at some point in life you figure it out by experience...

Ah, yes, thanks - good to remember some folks think women stop having “value” at 30ish, and still, somehow, feel comfortable posting that publicly.

Interesting how you focused on that and not men only being interesting once they gained material value and women being forced to settle which is far more superficial

I focused on the bullshit Andrew Tate-isms - there was no need, whatsoever, to engage with any part of your comment, thought process or person, beyond that.

Andrew who? Sry 80/20 and co has been well established a decade before that boogieman

> One day – probably somewhere between 28 and 38 – you'll wake up and just feel 'off'. A bit sore. A bit tired. That feeling will never leave you. Be grateful for your youth while you have it.

This happened when I was 20. I don't know what else to say other than, it fucking sucks.

This represents a fork in the road that becomes apparent by your mid-40s.

Those who ignore it will be overweight, unfit, and on daily meds. Those who change their lifestyle will not.

The fix is:

> Leading a healthy life is simple: sleep well, exercise three times a week, have an active social life, eat a variety of vegetables and whole foods, avoid sugar, processed foods, alcohol and drugs. That's 90%. Everything else is optimisation.

I can honestly say that this happened to me, but the feeling did leave me. It required a massive change of lifestyle and the habits that went with it.

I wonder how true this really is if you make an reasonable effort to keep yourself in shape. It wasn't until I hit 60 that I felt unquestionably different, and even then it wasn't terrible.

At the time I was walking about 4 miles every day for years both uphill and downhill. Around the same time as me waking up exhausted, the walks became harder and harder for no apparent reason until I eventually just couldn't do it anymore. No doctor I've met has been interested in diagnosing why, because "lol you just need to get fit".

I remember thinking this after my 6th birthday. I must have picked it up from what adults around me were saying, but I just thought to myself "I guess this is what it's like getting older. When I was 5, I'd have just went up and down that slide all day. Now, I just don't have the energy."

I was convinced! That pervasive optimism has stayed with me throughout life, too. Lucky.

3. Fear of being cringe will stop you living fully. Get over it.

This happened to me at age 40, when a 24yo advised me that some thing I owned, wore, or said made me look uncool. "The difference between 40 and 24 is that you care what looks uncool to 24yos."

24. One day your parents' names will be spoken more often in memories than in conversations. Every word shared with them now is a gift. Don't wait. Create a recurring calendar entry for coffee with your Dad. Visit your Mum every Friday. Force it. Squeeze it in. It will become one of your biggest regrets if you don't.

I'm happy it is a good lesson for you, but do not claim this is one-size-fits-all advice. Some of us have abusive, ugly parents, and are plenty tired of being lectured about how "you're going to regret not making amends with them!" No I fucking won't. Again - good for you, and I'm not saying you said this applied to me.

Everything has an end. Only the sausage has two.

Yes my friend, it is over.

But what of the cumberland ring sausage, spherical Sai krok Isan from Thailand, or the legendary Zirkelwurst?

"Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. Unless it will be detrimental to your health, eat as little as possible."

lol

yeah wtf is he talking about?

Factory farms enable mass torture of intelligent, feeling animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk

Hi there – author of the post here. I eat meat – to my shame. Unless you're rearing your own livestock and giving them happy lives and a painless slaughter, I consider eating meat immoral. Aniamls bred for food are kept in awful conditions and killed usually in inhumane ways. I think it's tough to claim eating the results of the the mass livestock industry isn't anything other than supporting the torture of animals. Animals who have the ability to think and feel. It's simply wrong. I would even argue it's this centuries slavery, in that it's something future generations will look back on us in shock, unable to comprehend how we were okay with it all.

"Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. " - Nope.

Sex and violence intersect and interweave. It's not realistic to avoid any hurt.

Transportation and traffic injuries intersect and interweave.

Mating is where humans are still closest to nature. Traffic has rules. Love has none.

And men wonder why women choose the bear...

As a hypothetical. In reality, men and women wonder why men and women choose the sociopath.

In reality, you can predict a bear's behavior but you can never tell what a man will do to you given the chance. Maybe nothing. Maybe years of gaslighting, cruelty and violence because of mother issues. Maybe nothing and one day they just snap and shoot you and your entire family.

And it isn't simply a matter of sociopathy, but a model of masculine behavior and culture that trains men to view women as a currency and an entitlement, and doesn't allow them healthy emotional expression and identity separate from sexual and material conquests. A bear is just operating by instinct. Men choose their abusive behaviors and society often enables them.

How do we know men and women don't just operate by instinct?

Bears are smart. They can't design bearproof trash cans for national parks because the smartest bears are smarter than the dumbest national park visitors.

>How do we know men and women don't just operate by instinct?

Because we define "instinct" in a way that separates the behavior of animals from humans and we have evidence from both personal experience and observing the behavior of other higher primates that humans are capable of operating beyond their instincts, for instance by creating social and political abstractions which optimize for things other than survival and procreation. The existence of art, language, science, philosophy and law cannot be reduced to purely instinctual drives.

This is a profoundly uninteresting and juvenile line of argument which inevitably reduces to solipsism.

>Bears are smart. They can't design bearproof trash cans for national parks because the smartest bears are smarter than the dumbest national park visitors.

Humans split the atom, sequenced genomes and went to the moon. We can't design bearproof trash cans because those trash cans have to be usable by humans, which creates fundamental engineering weaknesses that animals can exploit, not because bears are smarter than humans.

Humans are known to come pre-wired to learn languages and to strive for social status (which explains art, politics, philosophy, law and so on) — what is that if not instincts?

We're well aware that it's some combination of antagonistic attention-seeking and suicidal naivety.

It really seems quite difficult for straight men to succeed at this.

Or you know, any kind of men... or women.

Think for yourself my friend. Don't just parrot what you hear.

Yes, as everyone knows, there is truly no less modest and respectful demographic in their sexual behaviour than those chaste homosexual men.

History is much more littered with people who aren't getting any - for reasons - who try to solve that problem by criticizing those who are (without harm).

Any statistical facts about this? I have a few about other groups but I'm sure you won't like or accept those.

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