Hacker News Reader

Comment by ngriffiths | Hacker News Reader

In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't.

even George, perhaps the most boring and least reactive person you've ever read about or met, would just laugh at the goal of being "entirely unfazed by everything happening around you." Even he falls in love, experiences great joy and brutal heartbreak, finds his own small ways of making an impact, makes peace with difficult things. For a character who supposedly does nothing important, he does a hell of a lot.

Good luck, I guess!

View on HN

i am not sure why people are interpreting so extremely.

the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".

it is not "never let anything affect you ever, then die".

The post says "it might sound a bit extreme," and it does!

> the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".

So basically, a main character life, the life of a player. A player can even choose not to play the game, and it isn't their whole world.

The reason this post is incendiary is due to their overwrought metaphor which ultimately works quite poorly, if at all.

Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.

while it's not how i would have written it, i am struggling to understand many of the interpretations being posted in the comments. it's like people skipped over all the lines that say (or imply) "just do your own thing", and got immediately hung up by the use of "npc".

>Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.

okay?

I'm just trying to explain why people are posting what they are posting. E.g. "likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis" stems partly from the immature writing style.

But given that you are posting passive-aggressive "okay?"s to my explanation while purporting that you don't understand the comments while alluding to the notion that you do understand exactly why...makes me think you are just a troll, or worse.

>makes me think you are just a troll, or worse.

not trolling, just found it to be an odd thing to add on. none of the other comments that i read at the time of my comment, except yours, brought up the age of the author.

i typically try to avoid using age as an insult. i find it rude. you don't, apparently.

(out of curiosity, what is the "worse" thing you think i am?)

I mean, the example they give is pickpocketing the blacksmith and the blacksmith just doesn’t care. So, never let anything affect you is kind of exactly what the author is proposing.

They try to reign it back in at the end with “goal is to do your own thing” but the examples given, and really NPCs in general, are the antithesis to that.

Ironically, the NPCs are designed to do exactly what they are supposed to with no free will at all. I have programmed you to do this, and thus you shall.

I think the author lost the plot.

>I think the author lost the plot.

they stretched an imperfect metaphor. i think that's forgivable. the piece, as a whole, is (as they say) a retelling of stoicism.

I’d prefer not to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com