Ask HN: How are you all staying sane? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

150 pointsthrowaway53463158 comments

Let's start with the simplest: the AI - sometimes I feel like like ground is falling beneath my feet, no one can predict what can happen months in advance let alone years - the future is unknown. The Ukraine, the Iran, the Venezuela, Gaza/Palestine, Israel, Russia - the Taiwan! The conflicts seem distant, but yet so close. The US administration! No one can predict anything. Don't get me started on the Europe! The stock market! Are we in a bubble or not? Should I sell? Or just keep holding? Enshittification of tech. Everything is slow and buggy. Ads, ads and slop everywhere! The erosion of our rights just across the world. The Palantir's, the Flock's...

I feel I have developed a strong pessimistic worldview. The world is going to shit. It feels frustrating and it feels like there's nothing you can do. So I just want to know: how are you all dealing with this all. How are you all staying sane?

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>AI

I'm apathetic. It's there, it's a tool.

>international conflicts

I am fortunate enough to not live in the countries mentioned. I am close to Ukraine so this one is sort-of important to me in terms that I don't want Russia to win, but at the same time there's no point in following the news closely. If something big happens I will most definitively hear about it whether I'd like it or not.

>The US / Europe

Nothing I can do about any of that so no reason to get emotional. The most I can do as an European is to vote. Anything else is entirely out of my control unless I'd dedicate my entire free time and career to change things and I am completely uninterested in doing that.

>the stock market

Invest in index funds and forget it exists. If even that's too much for you then you then just put the money in the deposit. Interacting with the stock market is entirely optional.

>tech sucks

Always sucked. If you don't believe me feel free to go back to any underpowered machine of your choice and use it as a daily driver for a while. Dealing with any tasks on an old PC with a single core processor and 5400 rpm hard drive is pure agony compared to what we have right now.

>How are you all staying sane?

Stop being terminally online and go do something you actually enjoy. Most of the stuff you mentioned doesn't even actually affect you in the slightest.

All of the above.

Stop reading the news. It makes you depressed or angry. Go hiking. Walk on the beach. Play with a dog or your children. Climb a tree.

Leave the slave slab phone at home, or delete every news and social app. Do not browse the web. Take a book and read.

It will be hard at first. Then it gets easier. Best thing I ever did.

Reminder. What passes for news today wouldn’t have registered for most people 100 years ago.

> Reminder. What passes for news today wouldn’t have registered for most people 100 years ago.

This is a great point.

Seconding this. I only heard about Iran bombing 23 hours after it happened. I was playing SimCity 2013 with my 7yo. I’m reading older books, playing older games, exercising, and keeping a loose eye on AI so I don’t fall too far behind, but I always wait about two months before adopting anything new (like Claude Code, new tools, etc.). I know that’s pretty superficial, but the goal is staying sane, right?

Other people did the same as you and are now stranded halfway around the world waiting for flights.

I get the gist of it but I think being informed is useful. The best way is having access to quality news with a balance. It does not need to be constant outrage.

If I knew I was traveling to a region, with a potential conflict, I would do my due diligence and read the news. For the vast majority of people, reading news is a net negative.

You may be right. I just wanted to add that there are probably people stranded in Dubai right now because they booked a Berlin–Sydney flight with a stopover six months ago. Sometimes you simply can’t predict these things.

Yes, staying informed can help in some cases. But there are also many situations where it wouldn’t have made a difference. The amount of noise you have to sift through to “stay updated” is huge. At some point, it becomes a trade-off: consume a constant stream of news to maybe avoid a rare edge case — or tune it out and accept that very occasionally you might get unlucky.

> Reminder. What passes for news today wouldn’t have registered for most people 100 years ago.

Up to a point. There are some things that should not be ignored, e.g., "Trump says he's not mulling a draft executive order to seize control over elections":

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-hes-not-mul...

"Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency":

* https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2...

> should not be ignored, e.g., "Trump says he's not mulling ...

The prior news that "sources close to people who say they hear from a guy who went to school with someone who said ... that trump said he was mulling thinking about drafting an executive order ..." should be ignored, the follow up should be ignored and the inevitable follow to the follow up should also be ignored.

These are attention seeking outbursts at best, clickbait, lies and propaganda at worst.

I feel broadly the same as the above, except on the apathy towards Ukraine.

Ukraine is standing because they took action.

Something that helps me keep my sanity and dignity is by materially supporting Ukrainian soldiers. I will never regret having stood on the right side of history on this.

If anyone wants to contribute but you aren't sure how, I'm happy to help. Email is in the profile.

There's been a couple of posts recently that have been great and I apologize about not having links, but one was about talking to strangers and the other was about helping others. For me, it's amazing how helping someone out or taking with a stranger can revitalize my look on life and everything going on in the world. It reminds me that there's good in this life and the world.

In believe this was the talking to strangers article. I had opened the tab, but hadn’t read it yet.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/feb/24/strange...

Can you link to the one about helping others please?

Going back to some old machines with this hardware and they feel rapid compared to now. Instant UI response

That's because you're more likely than not using the best (or close to the best) hardware that generation had to offer. Try using a mid-end or a low-end machine and doing more than one thing at a time, it gets ugly real quick.

>AI I'm apathetic. It's there, it's a tool.

You won't feel that way in the near future.

Is it the same future where I sent crypto from my no-code app to buy a NFT to use in my Metaverse apartment that I interact with through VR?

This is a really bad take (and bad faith) because all the failed tech initiatives you mentioned barely had any adoption whereas LLM based AI tools are used by a billion people a week.

>barely any adoption

Crypto has a market cap measured in trillions of dollars. The future is (almost) here!

If you're sure of this, then what actions have you taken to shield yourself and/or profit from this? If I were a true believer that AI was going to takeover, I'd be allocating a large part of my portfolio into AI companies (hardware & software) along with learning a trade that's relatively safe, like cleaning septic tanks or construction.

Do you really believe in the narrative you're pushing?

> allocating a large part of my portfolio into AI companies

Even if you were certain that AI would take over virtually everything, the problem is deciding which AI companies to invest in. Thinking back to 1996, just when this new thing called "the web" was gaining tracking and assuming you were certain it was going to be huge, what companies would be the best investment? A lot of the companies doing web stuff went nowhere. Many of the biggest successes didn't even exist in 1996. It's not obvious which (if any) AI companies are worth investing in even if you're positive that AI is the future; the current companies might be massively overvalued; the best AI companies might not even exist yet.

I’ve been hearing this for 3 years now. Exactly how long do you want people to live in fear?

This feels like Elon’s FSD predictions. In 2013 he claimed 90% of the miles would be driven autonomously by 2016. It’s now 2026… 10 years after the prediction was supposed to come true and we’re still waiting.

> Always sucked. If you don't believe me feel free to go back to any underpowered machine of your choice and use it as a daily driver for a while.

No, tech didn't always suck. Sure, it was slower hardware. But it was empowering hardware. You owned it, it served only you, didn't spy on you and you could make it do whatever you desired.

Now it's mostly walled corporate gardens, you are the product, every gadget spies on you and pushes advertising at you. On some phones you can't even choose what to run. Every mouse click and finger movement is tracked and phoned to the corportate overlords.

So yes, tech mostly sucks now but it wasn't the case earlier.

Yes but holy shit I can describe what I want and AI writes the code for me and then I describe the bug, talking to my phone, doing speech-to-text, and the computer fixes the problem for me! And you can be negative and dystopian about it and get hella depressed, or you can just choose not to be. Yeah, I get the Sunday scaries and freak out every so often, but are you gonna let that take you down or are you gonna do something about it?

You can buy the same hardware today and do whatever you want with it.

Not really. Sure you can find something on ebay but some parts can be hard to find (I collect old SPARC machines).

More importantly, you can't go back to the time where you could interact with the world with the older machines. My SPARCstation10 would run a web browser marvelously in 1993, but that combination isn't going to browse any website today.

Right that's fair. But you can browse websites made with the technology of that time -- maybe ?

Or work with it disconnected on other bits... but yeah. The world you're connecting to has changed..

I feel like I could've wrote this word-for-word.

I'm Pierre Menard

I am astounded by how many comments recommend completely withdrawing from worldly matters. While I can understand why this may seem like a smart move, it cannot be the right choice ethically (think of Kant’s categorical imperative). Of course, you cannot directly influence world politics. But choosing a small area where you can make something better—anything that positively affects your fellow human beings—seems to me the more appropriate path. In the end, it will likely also lead to less nihilism and more happiness. And more sanity.

Not watching/reading "news" or engaging in mass or social media is not withdrawal.

Rather it is doing that which opens the space in your mind to be able to "choose a small area where you can make something better".

As long as you are on a hamster wheel of "Trump said this" "Trump said that" you can't make anything better in your life, nor be of much service to anyone else.

I'm all in on a healthy information diet. I was more concerned with comments like:

"I am apathetic to everything because there is nothing I can do about any of that. I am a speck of dust on a cog of a machine. There is absolutely no point of worrying about any of this."

Is it because "the news" has changed beyond what we are designed to handle. It used to be just local gossip, and every now and then you'd hear about the king having a son or something. Eventually things progressed to where you would get newspapers and TV telling you what's happening in your country and maybe some global news, but you would only get that once a day and space was limited. Now it feels like news sites dredge up every bad thing happening everywhere at every minute and give it a big headline, trying to convince you it is important to know.

I saw people trading the macro for the micro, focusing on family and those close to them. That is a small areas where they can make things better. Focusing on giving children a good childhood and teaching them well, will do more than filling them with the anxiety they’d pickup from a news obsessed parent who is too stressed out to play a game. This is the most positive thing most people can do for the world.

As a bit of a counterpoint, I'd say focusing on world politics can make you less effective at effecting local change. The amount of anger in my Blue city to the Trump admin has made more of our attention focus on Palestine or ICE and less on traffic safety or local tax revenue. We can save lives right here, right now by focusing on traffic safety. But 100x more people show up to a Gaza rally than a DOT hearing on traffic safety.

Obviously completely throwing your head into the sand is deleterious, and understanding the national political climate is certainly an important part of things like applying for grant funding or understanding how to get Federal dollars to match State and Local dollars. But IMO the nationalization of politics is having a real effect on the effectiveness of local politics.

I understand your point and I would agree. Most likely there is no general right approach. One has to navigate based on skillset, personality, environment and so on. I see the problem only if all the "good" people withdraw, there are always some on the other side who will take advantage thereof.

I don't know if consuming world news makes you ethically better. That sounds a bit much and yes you can make something better in your society by what ever ... opening a hacker space in your village... I just do not get the relation between scrolling through news and affecting fellow human beings

A lot of the replies here are saying to just not worry about any of this stuff because most of it doesn't really affect you and you can't do anything about it anyway. As someone who battles chronic anxiety every day, I don't think those answers are helpful.

Yes, the world is always full of uncertainty, and yes, you being less online will probably help, but that doesn't mean we should all just ignore the horrors unfolding around us.

While it may feel like there's nothing you can do, there's a phrase I've found helpful: action absorbs anxiety.

You don't have to fix the world. But you can try to improve your tiny corner of it. Whether it's creating a small stockpile of emergency supplies, or writing letters to elected officials, DOING something can help a lot more than you might think.

For me, I have made a hobby out of self-hosting as many services as I can so I can at least feel like I'm a little less dependent on big tech. I study history to try and better understand the present. I write a blog to give expression to my anxieties, and that helps too, even if very few people ever read it.

And yes, limiting your social media time is a good idea. I recently set a "no social media after 8pm" rule for myself. I'll read a book, watch a movie, or play a video game instead. It helps.

Have a link to your blog?

Sure: https://pickleglitch.com/

I agree with you. Withdrawing into one’s own little world cannot be the answer. And saying it’s the only realm you can control isn’t really true.

For me personally, doing that would always feel like avoiding responsibility. It might bring a kind of shallow happiness, but not a real sense of meaning or connection.

That only comes from taking responsibility—not just for your own small world, but for the world around you as well.

Pay enough attention to find worthy causes too contribute to. Don't pay so much attention that you get overwhelmed into depressed inaction. There's always going to be bad shit going on in the world. Sitting at home crying about it is less effective than if I hadn't heard about it and am able to go out there and do something about something I did manage to hear about.

Doing things I love:

  - Learning French and Japanese
  - Drinking tea and exploring tea culture
  - Playing Geoguessr (or in my case, Geotastic) to see different places in the world and just generally have a fun time figuring out languages, and unique traits of different countries and cultures
  - Reading and watching science fiction, lots and lots of it!
  - Coding. I really do love writing code.
  - Trying to improve my communication skills, and ability to break down and describe tasks. It relates to AI, but also relates to working and interacting with other humans. :)
  - Working
  - Hanging out with my family
  - Eating yummy food that I enjoy
  - Doing crosswords
  - Playing video games
  - Writing
  - Rock climbing, other physical activities like walking or doing a quick work out
  - Cleaning and fixing the home.

These don't solve all of the problems, but they make me feel better about my own life and that positivity helps me interact with others and think more positively about the world and all the cool things in it.

Playing an instrument

Somehow I missed that, even though I regularly play several of the instruments in my home... Thanks for reminding me of one more awesome thing!

My biggest problem right now is thanks to Claude I'm making much faster progress on my passion project and I'm working in a maniac state almost, but then I remind myself that it's probably meaningless because if things progress as they have, anyone can just copy what I've built, and if we get to AGI all bets are off anyway. Balancing these two moods is tough. Lots of sleepless nights lately. Thankfully I have a large financial cushion to fall back on, but then again the market could tank 50% this year and then even that wouldn't be much of a consolation. Can't be in cash either, opportunity cost too large.

In a similar boat. I’m running “ClaudClaw” a clone of Openclaw to enforce discipline in my limited free time to get an AI agency off the ground, in order to try to escape the miserable corporate grind. On the one hand, it’s a massive productivity boost, on the other hand, this tech is going to further hollow out the middle class everywhere and make so many people redundant. I don’t have the luxury to simply quit and focus on it full time.

Leaving your job has a different sense of finality now. When time comes to look for a new job, will the job even exist anymore? Makes the risk calculus a bit different. Maybe there won't be mass unemployment, but even a modest increase in SWE unemployment could make it so much harder and more stressful to find a job.

We’re already seeing the impact of AI in the jobs market for junior devs, and in marketing and more. So there’s unquestionably going to be a rough adjustment period. My thought on it is to build something concrete that I own, and take advantage of the disruption of possible, instead of being crushed by it.

I could be wrong but I feel like there are more opportunities in marketing now with seo being polluted by ai. Paying for ads seems more necessary.

I’m seeing loads of posts in the likes of /r/n8n where people are figuring out how to do the jobs of multiple people with just one person, using workflows built and enhanced by AI. Copywriting, cross posting on social media, blogging, cold email outreach, fully automated user generated video content, running Facebook and Insta ad campaigns, google ad campaigns and more. All this can can be done once you nail down a solid workflow, powered by the likes of n8n, Claude code etc.

How are you using it to enforce discipline? And whats the business case for the AI agency? Helping other businesses adopt or something like that?

> robably meaningless because if things progress as they have, anyone can just copy what I've built

Most other people lack the prerequisite skills even with Claude at their disposal. And it was always the case that other people could copy your things, it's just the effort was much higher, now it's more accessible.

Regardless, I would suggest you don't let this deter you from bringing something new into this world. It might have enough value to make it all worth it. Or not, but not releasing it you won't find out for sure.

I like working on it and will definitely release it, just don't want to set myself up for disappointment later. Try to enjoy the process of creation instead. But, it could also be that it's something that has value for a few years, and maybe that's enough.

Make sure to fix sleep issues. Maniac state + lack of sleep can get you in some serious trouble. Disconnect for a while.

I'm in a pretty similar position. I've been wanting to make something to align incentives between advertisers and the people who see ads for years. Finally sat down with Claude last month and now I have a working prototype. It feels surreal, I'm not a 10x programmer by any means. If I can do it, so can a lot of other people. It does feel like I don't have much time to capitalize on the first mover advantage.

But on the other hand... The things we really believe in we'd still cheer if someone else executed the idea better than us. Sure, we might make less money, but the idea gets to live.

And the odds of someone executing better didn't really go up, ai is just average across the board. So at worst, the odds of someone executing our ideas as well as us went up. Could be worse.

Sell enough that, if the market tanks, you won't regret it. Keep enough in that, if the market doesn't tank, you also won't regret it.

For me, I moved some money out of the stock market. The PE ratios are just too high to make sense. (I mean, I think that the competition is bonds, and the interest rates on bonds being lower means that stocks can support a higher PE. Still, I think the current level is probably insane. I especially suspect that AI stocks are going to get hammered, so I reduced my exposure there.) But I didn't get completely out; for medium- to long-term money, I still want to be there.

Could I miss some gains? Absolutely. But I also could dodge some losses.

Hey you can always tell yourself to take it easy because in 6 months the AI will get better and you could build the whole thing that's preventing you from sleep, in 30 minutes in the future. Unless you are worrying about the progress towards AGI.

I have split my life into things I can control and I can't control. Both at home and at work. There are things that sit on the line of course but global affairs are firmly non-controlable in near term at least, baring any elections I can express my view through.

I do get why people are generally struggling more, the concept of stability in many senses of that word seems to be gone.

No one has a clear idea about what’s going on, especially with AI. I’ve spoken to a glut of people at this point, consumed months of content from leaders to influencers and used it myself.

Currently Singularity fears, AI factories, Vibe coding productivity are super positioned with unthinking hallucinations, vibe disasters, ghost productivity and cognitive debt.

“Nothing changes in my life if GenAI disappears tomorrow” coexists with “I’m wildly productive and having the best time of my life.”

I’ve heard of negative productive gains, 15% faster search times, to 2x productivity and an increase in new project starts.

I think the bull case for AI is wrong, and I have not yet seen a process that will work with the quality and process control expected of assembly lines.

You hear hints of it, or major headlines, which don’t pan out.

Recently LLMs were used to generate financial models, and they looked like they worked.

Except they got the historical wrong and made mistakes humans would not.

Many claims do not survive scrutiny. Except for the new project starts.

The best analogy I can share for this moment is to talk about sketching or pottery.

AI gets a master, with the right workflow, to a rough sketch or rough state quickly.

Then the master has enough experience and skill to know if the foundations are solid, and what to discard to get to a final working vase.

Something that can actually hold water, doesn’t have holes in the back or a stem which is blocked, or is made of paper.

I believe we (humankind) have been transitioning to a phase of what I call "time compression." Everything is happening too fast compared to say 40-50 years ago. You can attribute it to many things (tech in particular), but primarily it's the fact that everyone has a terminal in their hands where they can access information, people, news, etc. at a whim. It's affecting both our mental health and our collective social fabric. I think humans were not meant to be overwhelmed this way; our mental capacity hasn't increased, but the stimuli have increased by orders of magnitude.

I don't have a solution to this problem. But one thing I've been trying is to immerse myself in a hobby I enjoy, and ignore most of the noise around me. I closed most of my social network accounts 9 years ago, and it has improved my mental health significantly. I still read the news, but I skim the headlines and go back to what I was doing. Yes, it does affect me, but I try to minimize its impact and focus on things that compensate their effect.

There's no silver bullet. Just know that you're not alone. Unfortunately time compression is here to stay (and it will probably get worse), and those of us who fight it back will hopefully stay sane.

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

My 2c:

1) Reflect daily, and inspect your feelings. Most of the negative sentiments and positive sentiments of AI arise from how they impact your identity. ("I'm a great programmer", "I build complicated systems easily". Doing an RCA on your thoughts is like debugging.

2) List down things you can control, and you cannot control. "I cannot stop the launch of the new model." .. "I control my usage of these models" .. "My family needs me to do this, and I can" .. "I can do this in my team".

3) Fully accept both of above. It's a process.

4) Finally, you can then see what are the new identities and new things you can do in this disrupted new world, and you can begin to focus on those.

I think these also model the stages of dealing with trauma, because both require acceptance to truly figure out the next steps in a positive way.

The world at large always sucks. Most enjoyable things in life do not come out of worrying about the world but from things close to you, your family, your friends, your community. Focus more on the things you can actually have an influence on than everything that's out of your control.

  echo 0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com | sudo tee /etc/hosts

Repeat for reddit.com, x.com, yourfavouritenewssite.com

It’s a long story, for other venues. I participate in an organization dedicated to personal development, and helping others.

Gives me a purpose, and a framework for life.

Acceptance is a pretty key Principle for me. There’s only so much I can actually affect, so I’m best off, dedicating my focus where it will actually get something done.

I'm a Christian. That changes several things for me.

Despite all the mess, I believe that God is ultimately in control. (Yeah, I hear you say, "Sure doesn't look like it!" And you're right, it doesn't. And yet, how would you expect a world in rebellion against God to look? Do you expect it to be peaceful, running smoothly? I don't.) This world is crazy, and we're making it crazier. But I believe that God is there, limiting the craziness.

I believe that this life is not all there is for me. I don't have to have everything work out perfectly for me here, because this isn't all that I get. If war comes, if I get killed, I'm not cheated out of my one chance to live. I get another.

I believe that God cares about what happens to me. (This does not mean that everything works out perfectly for me! My life has had issues, a couple of them pretty major. Still, I trust Him, not to give me a perfect life, but to do good to me.

But a bunch of you aren't Christians. Well, if what you just read appeals to you, you can come and get it. But if not:

Life is still pretty good. I'm enjoying walking. (I had foot surgery three months ago. The days when I can walk without pain are nice.) I can't fix all that out there, but I can speak encouragement and, hopefully, wisdom into the lives of people close to me. I have a wife who loves me. We laugh a lot together. Yeah, there's a whole lot of crazy that I can't do anything about, but life is still pretty good.

I am apathetic to everything because there is nothing I can do about any of that. I am a speck of dust on a cog of a machine. There is absolutely no point of worrying about any of this.

I assume previous generations had similar feelings with the looming threat of nuclear annihilation for 30 years. I came of age in that wonderful time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. It feels that was an unusual period of time without major threat - however still had the messes of the balkans, terrorists blowing up kids in my home town,

A couple of wise words. One from decades ago:

Que será, será Whatever will be, will be The future's not ours to see Que será, será What will be, will be

And of course one from more recent times

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old-- and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders

>prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old-- and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders

I think I get what you mean but personally "in the end you'll be too retarded or numb to grasp reality" isn't really comforting

> I assume previous generations had similar feelings with the looming threat of nuclear annihilation for 30 years.

The threats yea, but I don’t think this sense of exponential acceleration was the same

Olanzapine. I was rather distraught that it worked so well after the psychiatrist suggested it. I mean, I'm not psychotic, so why the anti-psychotic? They used to call them "major tranquilizers" back in the day. And wow yeah. The edge is softened. The anger dissipates. Also the deeper significance to things, the untied threads that leave my mind racing, reaching for signs, signs which point to doom mostly these days, that gets significantly quieted too. I now get why people who have to take these drugs every day describe them as turning them into "zombies". But as a practical tool oh I don't know what I would have done this winter without it some nights.

As for me I feel the AI fear. Just a few months ago, narrative that AI won't replace programmers, made a lot of sense, and still somewhat does.

But after spending a few weeks totally vibe coding my new project, which is technically advanced, which for sure would be very hard to do on my own, I felt the pressure of what happens in the future with my career.

The only thing keeping me sane is hope, that even if AI takes SE jobs, it makes us a potentially strong founder candidates, we know how to code, how the good architecture should look like and have amazing tool, to iterate very quickly. Although the fact that rapid development is not enough to succeed is another thing.

If we are replaced, it means that a lot of other white collar occupations will also face replacement.

But, we are responsible for a disproportional parcel of the aggregate demand and also, the white collar middle class holds a giant share of all credit.

Put all these people out of a job, and you'll end up with the mother of all economic depressions ever.

Either the powers-that-be find a solution (like return to office was arguably a response to a potential office real estate value crisis) or something else will happen (communism? butlerian jihad?).

Given that all of this is completely out our control, we need to concentrate in what we can control:

1) Save money.

2) Cut expenses.

3) Stay ahead of the curve by learning fanatically.

4) Stay fit and healthy.

5) Don't get emotionally invested in every bit of news you see. Everyone got an agenda, everyone has bias, everyone commit mistakes.

> Put all these people out of a job, and you'll end up with the mother of all economic depressions ever.

> Either the powers-that-be find a solution ...

I don't personally feel very optimistic that they are actually trying to find a solution

Stay sober and mostly away from news.

Is this a mental health advice request or an invitation to rant? Serious question. We can do one of these, but not both, I think.

Are you sure rants aren’t (or can’t be) good for mental health?

An emotionally charged rant (what other kind is there?) is a projection. It can be good when you're overwhelmed and need to get through a crisis, but it's bad long term. That's how I see it, at least.

“It’s bad long term” is an unsupported assertion. Why do you believe it?

It's bad if it's all you do for the long term. You need to move on from it eventually.

The same is true for being overly positive all the time: toxic positivity. It's fairly obvious to say that something is bad if it's all you do. There's no particular reason to single out rants here.

In fact, IME people who do that often tend to have an attitude than leans toward the toxic positivity side.

Experience? Lying to yourself only seems to make things worse? It can be agonizing, and you rob yourself of agency. I'm surprised this is not self-evident. How do you see projections affecting people long-term?

Lots of people suggesting consuming news / social media in a reserved and more healthy way. I agree, but I also suggest a step further; get involved in local community. You'll feel a much greater sense of agency and can have a measurably positive impact on people's lives when you're not so focused on the global stage.

Focus on things you can control. Everything else is like.. good to know, I guess, but ultimately irrelevant. You getting stressed about some conflict abroad isn't going to change the situation, right, so instead of stewing about it why not go work out or something?

I totally get you. My way of staying sane is to find a place where I can act and do some good. Even if, obviously, it doesn't make the slightest change to the big, big issues you listed. Also reading about all the cool new stuff scientists invent every day, especially advances in the field of medicine gives me some hope. I have also subscribed to a good news newsletter recently, and that little bit of positive news help balance all the stuff that makes the headlines. Finally, I tried to remind myself of the selection bias of media. Good news don't sell. They are under represented by a massive factor in the information space. But they do exist if you look for them.

It helps to have lived through some of this (especially conflicts) in 1990s (former Yugoslavia), so it is really more of the same.

Even the president US got, we have claim to being early birds ourselves with our current sitting president in Serbia for ~13 years now (they've switched between being a prime minister and president to work around two-term limit): we are very familiar with the rhetoric and "style" (lack of?) of communication, albeit from a less influential position.

AI, as mentioned, is just a tool. A very powerful one, so will cause damage left and right, but also some large productivity jumps when wielded well. Pick up and do good with it.

All the issues you mention are about uncertainty.

Uncertainty is one of the largest perceived threats by the human brain, it’s normal you feel it like a threat, it can even cause you anxiety and force you to take severe and unnecessary decisions. If that’s the case talk to a mental health professional because it is not an issue.

However if mental health is not an issue, try some of the many techniques that are there on how to handle uncertainty psychologically, you may start with stoicism (a modern book is fine) and with distribution of risk only of the threats that are an actual problem to you and you have any little of control over them

I’m deep into nihilistic territory myself, but here’s one neat trick to turn nihilism on itself!

Jokes aside, the fact is that humanity will always find ways to disappoint you.

So the moment you completely give up hope, humanity will find a way to prove your doomsaying wrong.

For AI and policy, the questions I found that was useful to ask smart people is “what are you sure of / 100% confident about.” If it’s people who have a tendency to not be taken away by hype you can add “confident about In a practical, ‘I am betting money on this’ way“.

Hopefully that helps extract signal from noise for you.

Just go out and talk to random people. Or if you're very shy, participate in a club of something you're interested in. When I was younger I found myself in a 'squat' with people I didn't know at first (very rural, with tents, stone abandoned homes), it cured my of my fear of ridicule (that and being a youth camp counsellor). Since we found ourselves there for the same reason, it was for the first time very easy for me to find common ground, and I think that helped a lot.

One thing I have noticed is that people rarely break from one massive fear, and more often it is the accumulation of too many unresolved things sitting in the background at once.

At some point the mind stops treating them as separate and just experiences all of it as pressure. Stepping away helps, but so does reducing how many of those things you let live in your head at the same time.

Feels more like things are chaotic and uncertain to me rather than explicitly negative.

eg still think there is a fair bit of upside to be had from AI even if it does make me wary about job situation on a 5-10 year scale.

It sure as hell won’t be boring the next 10 years that’s for sure. And that to me is a positive on itself.

I go outside in the woods frequently. It is quiet there. I find peace, within myself, and with the earth where we live. Trees fall from the weight of the snow, but the landscape has been there for millennia and it reminds me that this, too, will pass.

Why do you think the world is going to shit ? Maybe disconnect from the internet a little bit ?

Life has never been safer and better for majority of the population in the world, what good does it do to you to keep engaging with content that makes you feel bad ?

Talk to a therapist and possibly get on medication. I'm seriously upset by all of the things you are talking about, but I am able to put them away and live my life thanks to those things. Not everyone can just decide to not worry.

Find like minded people in real life. Don't use social media. Drink a lot.

Just play pickleball every day

As a 60yo male, pickleball is the best complement to weight lifting for my overall physical and mental health. Life is definitely better with adrenaline, dopamine and endorphins flooding your brain

I'm ready to start my own counter-culture. Turn on, tune in, drop out.

A lot of people predicted all this. Check out Ray Dalio's analysis.

Empires rise because of resourcefulness, education, good work ethic and humanity, effective resource allocation (low corruption), high productivity. There's a snowball effect here. These countries become stable. Stability turns them into financial centers.

Then they get rich. There is no work ethic - cultural values reward consumption and not working, which tends to lead into things like colonization and slavery. The wealth gap increases. Wars overextend and become more cost than income.

To catch up with lowering productivity and the habit of war for wealth, there's more debts. They hit a point where it's not possible to pay debts, so printing money becomes excessive. Excessive printing causes them to be dropped as a reserve currency. The wealth gap causes internal conflict. There's more gatekeeping. Castes grow stronger (in modern times, it could be ivy league degrees, gender, and skin color).

All these conflicts and problems end up with weak leaders taking advantage of the situation. Eventually, it ends up in civil war or revolution/reformation.

That's the pattern of rise and decline. It's not chaotic but rather quite predictable.

Instability and poverty is the norm globally; the average person does not have disposable income. While Americans can afford to buy a car with cash lol. It's the US falling to the situation where they're similar to the rest of world. And place like China which are starting to feel things like disposable income and 40-hour work weeks.

I guess just adjust your expectations. The mismatch hurts sanity.

> Empires rise because of resourcefulness, education, good work ethic and humanity, effective resource allocation (low corruption), high productivity.

If you check the history books, it looks more like ruthlessness and amorality are more reliable predictors.

Staying sane is a gradient.

But personally the current war gives hope. Ayatollah was Putin's serious leg to stand on, not just in the region. If Iran's new govt is normalcy-adjacent, not just the terrorist orgs suffer without support, but also the Putin's war thing collapses. A decade (or less) of peace and prosperity is upon some of us.

And AI is neat, it highlights so many things about people. We start to value agency in fellow human beings. People understand context better now, and give more context proactively when talking; but also understand that there's context poisoning, which is why derailing is bad.

In the end everything is a tool: AI is a tool, war is a tool. We think AI is for coding, and war is for power, but in the end AI makes us know ourselves better. War makes us know ourselves better (and also gave us fast airplanes). This is the important, this is what will remain -- when the kingdom is ash, and the echo still drums.

This reads like a Jeopardy answer for "What is stoicism?"

Well, the Hebrew word for adversary or opponent is satan. Regardless of whether you actually believe in satan or god(s), I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to point out that there are lots of adversarial things happening in the world at the moment. All sorts of things in opposition to peace, to harmony, to human flourishing, etc., which are the good things any sane human would pursue.

I think the main goal of an opponent, concrete or imaginary, is to leave you in a discouraged state. When you get discouraged, you start to lose your momentum and your will to live. You become anxious, paralyzed and confused, which is to say: easy to defeat. This is exactly what an adversary would want you to do.

So, to answer the question: I do everything in my power to not get discouraged. I keep on trucking, being productive, helping out people, taking care of my loved ones and maintaining a positive, lighthearted mindset. I am hitting back by the sheer audacity of staying cheerful in these times, because that would absolutely enrage an enemy that wants to see me discouraged and defeated.

Just ignore it and go outside, unironically. I finish work, shut the laptop, and go work in the garden or lift weights. Venezuela is not affecting my foxgloves nor my deadlifts.

Absurdism and appreciating the small things. Also, media hygiene.

First, study history. Our generation is downright lucky. This is the best time to be alive, truly.

Then avoid the news and politics. Live your own life, and enjoy analog hobbies.

- AI will not replace human attention / domain expertise for a long time

- International conflicts do not impact you at all

- Human systems are anti fragile (they get stronger with challenges). Trump migh actually reinforce Europe by antagonize it.

- Stock market doesn't matter if you own a farm (methaphorically and practically).

- Rights are eroding some places but also increasing other places (lgbt rights have been generally on the rise in the past 10 years)

- in general the quality of life EVERYWHERE (except the middle class of developped countries) has WILDLY improved in the past years: medical access / water access / education access has increased in most countries.

You are what you feed yourself..

- feed yourself with more positive news

- learn to ignore what doesn't impact you or you can't control (stoicism)

I keep my mouth shut. Rational self interest, with the caveat that my own self is irrational. Let other people dig their own graves.

Just stop reading the news. Work normally, after work go for a long walk and read a book. Trust me on this one

If your sanity depends on things going the way you expected them, you were never sane in the first place.

I think we are all collectively coasting on a wave of lagging behind the current technology. Yes the new models have been exceptionally strong. But I think it's just because developers are exposed to the ecosystem more that we fear its impact more. In reality most white collar work is about one or two generations of AI models away at most from being easily replaced. Basically anything that doesn't involve human contact. Like I'm sorry but a lot of jobs in billing or middle management or form processing are not more difficult to replace than managing a whole ass several million LoC legacy application with 8 layers of architecture. As soon as AI can reliably navigate these quantities of context and memory, it's over for a lot of professions as we know them.

I keep myself sane by one, as others have said, realizing that developers will still very likely have a better understanding of how to use AI to create stable and maintainable software; There's more to software development than just coding.

Second, I am increasingly becoming aware that I'm more than my white-collar output, which I feel like many devs struggle with specifically since programming is also many devs personal hobby. It's a bit depressing when you have an idea for a side project to solve a personal problem and Opus can shit it out in 5 minutes. But I've also realized it frees up a lot of time. I can realize a lot of those small automations that were piling up on my backlog now. Ideas that I dreamed up but never had the time to personally implement. I can write more. I can read more small blogs by real humans with real opinions. I'm learning more about networking and selfhosting, topics I never had much time for because I spent my little free time on coding projects. And I will probably also get back into game development since that's where creativity and expression, as opposed to implementation, really shines, and that's something that I don't see AI taking away from us very soon.

As for the economical impact, well, lol lmao we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. I just think that personally by the time I myself am affected by this problem, we have a global crisis anyway so it's not really like I can personally prepare for it.

The world is changing all the time. Nothing new. And nothing compared with the 2nd world war etc.

All this and I'm just hoping that I will get a good job finally because of all this somehow

I noticed my pessimism scaled perfectly with my screen time. That was enough data for me.

I am from former ost-block (weird it still has weight even 35+ years later) and my grandpa was Palestinian. The overal feeling is, that this was always the case. Sometimes we win some, sometimes there is prosperity and oasis of stability but in general, it is mostly chaos, even if it seems stable.

People in protesting in 1988 thought communist politburo is here to stay forever and maybe we get concessions, iron curtain fell year or so later.

It does feel more stressful as I have a kid and a house and a mortgage.

And maybe it works out and I remember my greatgrandma who built her her with her husband in late 1920's and the hous survived a world war and two occuppations and her daughter inherited it could sell it and lived off of it for decade in her pension.

And maybe it works out differently and I remember my grandpa where he had to run from his home country and would never see the house his grew up in but died in a nice flat with big family that cared about him.

Everything apart from global termonuclear war or literal paperclip-scenario level AI take-over feels survivable. And those are real risks. Like, that is the reason I celebrate Stanislav Petrov day!

Apart from that ... I am lucky I live in the city where musicians still play live and tickets to small venues are under 10 Eur and people still dance. So I dance. It helped me through my divorce, it helps me keep my current relationship alive, it helped me find community both local and across europe. It was nice to go to a small gig of an unknown bluesband in London and commending the guy who organized that for nice event and he went "Oh, where are you from? Ha, I have friends from there, we danced in Vienna!".

> No one can predict anything.

Nobody ever could. Accept this reality and everything will be fine.

All this and I'm just thinking how I might finally get a good job somewhere

It seems like you are in some kinda bubble were you are getting feed doom and gloom, most of what you have said is just normal stuff and cycles the world goes through, the difference is you are connected to it more now.

What if you weren't connected to this? what if you didn't know? Ukraine/Iran/whereever, sucks for those people but if your always connected to everything, there is always something bad going on in the world, so you will always see it and it's too much to bare. Some people argue this is just sticking your head in the sand, but what is it that you can personally do? if you want to take up some form of activism in this area, go ahead, but if you aren't, then it should be ignored.

You only have a certain amount of **s to give, choose widely.

And focus on what is local to you, In the scale of the universe who cares about you? in the scale of the planet who cares about you? In the scale of your country who cares about you? in the scale of your city? Your street even, who cares about you? But on the scale of the people you know and interact with, your family, coworkers etc, who cares about the universe?

The problem is you are connecting yourself to the universes enitre problems and then struging to stay sane. No wonder.

Stop consuming news media. It's actually that simple.

  No phone, no notifications before the laptop opens. A simple
  mantra practice creates inner stillness that carries through
  the day, the model releases still drop, the threads still
  spiral, but there's a quiet center that doesn't get pulled
  around.

  Tapasya, disciplined austerity, is the most underrated
  concept missing from this conversation. Cold exposure,
  fasting, sitting with discomfort instead of reaching for the
  dopamine loop. You're training your nervous system's interrupt
   handler. Less reactive to stimuli you can't control, which in
   2026 is a genuine edge.

  The Gita's answer to this thread: act without attachment to
  outcomes. Ship your work. Keep your practice. Let the results
  belong to something larger than your portfolio.

  The AI isn't going anywhere. Neither is the chaos. Your
  practice can outlast both.

Off topic? By a throwaway account AI slopper no less.

I saw a similar issue on r/PrivatEkonomi (Swedish.) Two doomerism post with subject somewhat adapted to the forum at hand. The two users were young accounts with private comment history.

Someone is definitely on a propaganda tour trying to seed negative sentiment.

I'm glad you said this otherwise someone would call me paranoid. Over on https://lobste.rs/ there is a user currently on their third account called "datarama3" who doom posts exactly like this once a week. It's really tiring.

It's the same as it has always been, the only difference is that you are being bombarded with these issues because you are terminally online and use social media while previously you were blissfully ignorant. The solution is to touch grass and stop worrying about things outside of your control.

Ask yourself: could I be wrong? In other words, be humble. Maybe the world is getting better, but in your frame of mind, it is getting worse.

For AI: none know the future. The future you thought you saw before was an illusion, as it always is. So be humble, and take things a day at a time.

For Politics: Maybe the US and the US administration isn't the bad guys. Maybe the bad guys sent the murdering dictators cash, and maybe the good guys are taking them out, giving actual democracy and the people a chance. Consider you could be wrong. Be humble.

For Tech in general: choose agency. Take one area where you can try to build or use things which you don't think is slop and is good. Build, use, or support that. Ignore the slop and let it rot. You don't need to control the world. You just need to control you. You are limited. Be humble.

I feel very similar. I'm not sure if it's all the issues you listed, or just being at a specific point in my life and career, or a combination of both. Nothing is enjoyable to me anymore, and I find there is nothing I am looking forward to. There seems to be so much evidence for the "everything is getting worse" line of thinking, food prices, housing prices, wealth distribution, the job market. I think all the commentors noting "it doesn't affect you, go talk a walk" are really missing the point. On one hand I feel privileged and lucky with what I have materially but on the other, a really deep feeling of despair that is getting harder to hide day to day.

Road trips, bike-packing, overnight hiking.

Go to anthropic/google/openai/xai/whatever website. Navigate to Jobs. There are still a motherfucking load of openings for software engineers? If yes, go back to work and stop worrying.

Oh, but tomorrow....

Tomorrow is another day, you worry about it when it comes.

Easy… I lean into my unraveling sanity.

> How are you all staying sane?

Making some bold assumptions, eh?

But more seriously, you can do very little about most of the things listed. Do that little and leave the rest behind.

Tune out of news. Find sources of news that are relevant to you immediately. Like your local community, city council news, your employer, that sort of things. You can’t do anything about war in Iran or wherever, it’s not actionable, stop worrying about it, stop following the news.

Be more offline. Go for walks. Read paper books. Listen to music, preferrably not streamed. Meet real people. Like, talk to a stranger at a coffee shop shop or in a park.

I'm not, just rolling with it.

AI: I use it - i can keep multiple things going in parallel which seems to work well with my ADHD.

Foreign BS: I worry a bit about my draft age kids, worry about donald rumsfeld's ghost making us go back to nation building again.

Enshitification: well, I've thrown my ios26 powered phone a few times, its a constant source of ire. I long for something better to come along.

overall, I just play with my dogs, lift heavy things, and just keep my head down. Last night the wife broke the tractor and I had to improvise a fix - which entailed using the MIG welder. I went to sleep happy.

real answer is touching grass

Ain't no grass in february. Sorry, march. It's march already?

maybe stay away from news if they make you anxious?

Personally I just adopt an attitude of utter nihilism and fatalism. I remind myself regularly that I'm going to die someday, like a mantra. Everything I think or care about won't ultimately matter. The only rational choice is to try and make the most of today.

This is a very understandable way to feel, but I promise you the world is not quite so close to destruction as you might feel, though that isn't to say the risks aren't real and worth counter-acting. The goal is to ensure that you are well-grounded within yourself and avoid becoming overwhelmed but at the same time to stay engaged with the things that matter; total disengagement is not the way.

Stepping away from rolling news and/or social media of the scrolly-scrolly variety is probably a good step 1!

Next, try finding something you can work towards that exists outside of the spaces that are causing this stress: e.g. take up running, practice a musical instrument, or read some fiction. In short: touch grass.

Finally, when you feel calm: identify issues in the middle of the Venn diagram of things you care about and things you have the ability to affect. If this is, e.g. US domestic politics, then maybe join an activist group or attend some protests about issues close to your heart; if it's the genocide in Palestine, then there are many international solidarity campaigns you can get involved with; if it's the environmental poly-crisis then look at ways you might be able to leverage small efforts for big payoffs like joining a campaign for walk-able neighbourhoods or donating money to legal foundations looking to hold the people most responsible for these crises to account. If you want to find the power to affect change, you must join with others in an organised fashion; relying on individual action and market forces sure as shit hasn't helped yet and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

Depends what you mean by sane I guess...

I've been thinking (and worrying) about AI for decades so this last few years have been extremely hard for me. A lot of the stuff I worried about when deep neutral networks first began to work are now beginning to play out and if anything timelines are significantly shorter than I imagined they would be.

I've believed since around 2012 that the most likely way I'd die is from AI so this isn't new, but until around 2021 the error bars have always been quite large. In the last few years that error has rapidly compressed to the point at which I'd now very confidently bet we're all doomed (were there any point in me betting on that). I have few uncertainties left in the core trends of how things will progress from here, and the uncertainties that I do have are really more about how quickly doom will come and how bad the ending will be.

People who know me IRL kinda get why I'm freaking out right now because stuff I said that sounded insanely stupid before are actually now starting to materialise. But online I keep having to decide if I'm okay with sounding insane on this given how important it is and how concerned I am. I think the right thing to do is to sound insane and at least try to convince people we need to change course ASAP because this will not end well. Plus I'm having nightmares constantly at the moment so I'm really feeling the need to just express myself.

The number of serious risks we now face are almost endless and the probabilities that they occur are relatively high for the most part. Even most people with vested interests in the AI industry who are actively building these systems will give high single digits to low double digit odds that they're helping to build a technology that will kill us all lmao. And more concerningly most them are either lying or genuinely uneducated on why alignment is hard. The lunacy of the situation we're in is astounding.

So how am I staying sane? At this point I've more or less come to terms with what's coming. I'm just worried about those I love because I don't want them to suffer. It's frustrating so few seem to be thinking beyond risks like job losses right now and that's making me feel a bit insane at the moment tbh. I suspect people will catch up within the next 12-24 months.

As for the geopolitical uncertainty, that's always been a thing. 9/11 felt far more scary than anything that's happening today imo. The full scale invasion of Ukraine was significant, but hardly unexpected or even unprecedented.

Dorritomaxxing

I have plans.

Define sane.

Popcorn

That's what happens when you have to hit the ground running. Welcome to USA.

Focus on what you can control. Detach from social media. Get outside. Spend time with the people in your life who matter. We live in an information age where we know everything immediately, but it's a blessing and a curse.

Tried that in 2022 before the war broke out. Didn't take long for reality to catch up with me, sitting in a neighbor's cellar hearing missile whooshing past up above.

Ignorance is a very costly commodity.

You couldn't have prevented the reason why the missiles are flying in the first place though. Of course a realistic sense of alert still helps, but it's lunatics in Russia running the show, not you or anybody else you know.

This is a time and target where "them-ing" is appropriate.

Even that will pass (for most — for some, it might simply "end" :/). I've been sitting in a cellar and bomb shelters in 1999 myself: yes, your struggle is worse and longer, but it will pass. The information you need today is very limited, so focus on that (what will be hit next; are there potential targets around you at all times, where do you get water/food in case systems break down, etc).

We are all victims of this weirdo game of global, live Risk, and unless you commit yourself to politics, really not much you can do here either: survive and focus on what's next!

Stay safe and good luck!

"Chaos isn't a pit, chaos is a ladder."

Go hiking.

And drop the "the". It`s cleaner.

You're just feeling what the rest of non western world has felt for centuries. Welcome to the club.

By not giving a shit

the beach. mantras. tapasya.

you complaining? wait until you get bombarded with microwave-slop voice messages 24/7 for couple years https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9366412

If you open yourself to be cranked up, you'll get cranked up constantly.

Pollution is real - a legit problem and a worthy cause, but the anthropogenic global warming thing was always just wealth extraction by elites. They cranked up at least three generations scaring them half to death and making them crazy and depressed and now, oh ... it was nothing, we need more power for AI data centers, you can go sod off now. No one can claim otherwise: the models' predictions never panned out and the data was always cooked for $$$. The trash we sort into the blue bin goes to the same landfill as the grey bin.

Almost all the latest crazes are like that. How fast did we go from Covid-to-Ukraine-to-destroying Tesla dealerships? Just don't get cranked up, it is all intended to stun you. Live your life. Focus. The people doing this to you need you to be unproductive and vulnerable.

I said "almost all" because the wars are real. The isolation and despair brought on during Covid lockdowns was real, oxes were gored, people were emotionally stunted and scarred. Covid itself likely came out of a lab, and it seemed to be designed to kill the elders.

Regarding the real harms that happened to real people and myself, I keep them separate as lists in my mind, I try to remember to hold scoundrels accountable if I am ever personally given that honor, and I try not to go to bed angry and to forgive people.

"Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold."

> “anthropogenic global warming thing was always just wealth extraction by elites. They cranked up at least three generations scaring them half to death and making them crazy and depressed and now, oh ... it was nothing, we need more power for AI data centers”

This kind of conspiracy-driven anti-science crankery is part of the problem.

The science behind anthropogenic global warming hasn’t changed. Since you’re clearly unfamiliar with it, here’s a good introduction with many references: https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-cha...

The group of people pushing large AI data centers have essentially no overlap with the people who raising the alarm about climate change based on very strong scientific evidence.

> Covid itself likely came out of a lab, and it seemed to be designed to kill the elders.

More crankery.

Apparently some people deal with the concerns raised by OP by retreating into weird fantasies that give them an illusion of understanding or control. It’s a mild form of insanity.

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