Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game.

I feel like this sentiment is very common, but is implicitly stating that all of the other things, family, friends, personal health etc... are not games - when I don't see why that would be the case. Nothing distinguishes those things for me.

Creating new products, like software that gives people better productivity, or hardware that helps people achieve physical fitness goals, or systems that make getting clean water cheaper - those are life changing to a lot of people, sometimes even millions. The typical response to this is "yea but most people make junk" to which I say, telling junk from non-junk is an exercise in futility.

We wouldn't be quoting Paul Buchheit or talking about Dave Sandberg if they hadn't sacrificed some of those relationships, or health for the products and platforms that we know them for. And that's the real point - legacy. Someone's legacy is not the relationships they had personally, just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle.

Winning in my opinion then, is having an (hopefully positive) impact on those outside of your inner circle, not within it. And the larger the impact, the bigger the win.

View on HN

What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Will it be that you didn't spend as much time as you could've with your parents before they died? How about with your siblings? Maybe it was all of the times that you didn't make it to your kids' soccer games, piano recitals, school plays, or graduations?

Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?

I don't remember the exact genesis of this, and I really wish I did, because it has literally reshaped my life, but a few years ago, I started asking myself the question 'If I were to die tomorrow, would I regret the way I have lived my life?' And I was somewhat surprised and horrified to discover that the answer was absolutely, categorically "yes."

I dropped out of the startup rat-race, took a good-paying 9-5 job working with people who I (still) really like, and started focusing on the other 128 hours in the week that I wasn't working.

I would hate to die tomorrow, but, if that's what happened, I would be satisfied with how I spend each day of my life. My quality of life and happiness have increased significantly since I first started asking myself that question.

What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Always found these philosophical shortcut tropes (eg. if you had just one day left...) amusing, but not particularly illuminating because they over-simplify life long achievements to mere regret-avoidance. If you are asking yourself that, then 1. You are privileged to be at that level on the Maslow hierarchy and 2. you already know the answer.

Embedded in your statements though are a lot of, in my opinion unfounded presuppositions. One, that through force of will, the relationships that you describe can be made positive - something forcefully unfounded in my experience. Two, that someone's startup, social or otherwise, is a trivial farce and there is no real added value - again see my previous statement about common misguided arguments.

My main distinction is that personal happiness is not a goal of mine, but rather a side benefit from accomplishing something that has lasting tangible value for more than just myself and the people I am immediately exposed to.

You should be a little careful. The odd thing about creative professionals, which includes most software developers, is that if you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the truth for the general population, for creative professionals this pyramid of needs is inverted.

You see, most creative professionals are profoundly unhappy people. This is because the equation for happiness is usually easy - your expectations have to be lower than your achievements. As a side note, this is why the renowned mid-life crisis happens, because that's the point in your life when you realize that many of your dreams are impossible.

But going back to creative professionals - our expectations are off the chart. It's because we've been taught that we can achieve anything, with our imagination being the limit and hard work being the currency. It's because many of us come from families of high achievers. Yes, we are profoundly unhappy because our expectations are usually much bigger than our achievements. This is the reason for why many of us are idealists, for why we want to change the world. Many of us are also atheists, but all of us want to achieve some form of immortality, therefore that's the reason for why many of us want to build things that are long lasting.

I used to say the same things as you did. You may not feel the above right now, I'm going to make the assumption that you're in your twenties, which means you've got the energy to be hopeful about the future. But take it from a 32 year old that is going through a mid-life crisis 10 years earlier (or maybe it's just a burnout episode, I don't know), but this youthful energy is going to dissipate and you're then going to feel the emptiness in your life. And I'm lucky, because I have a wife and a 4-year old whom I love very much and which represent my reason for getting up in the morning.

A 32 year old lecturing a (supposed) 20-something about life experience. I guess cynicism is becoming younger and younger.

Could you explain what is cynical about his message, or undesirable (or so I gather from your post, incorrectly perhaps)?

Oh I don't know. Maybe the common dismissal here on HN of any positive outlook or belief in oneself as being the result of naivete and lack of life experience. That in time they will resign themselves to realize that they are as useless as the cynic sees himself and others.

I see what you mean. It did sound a bit too inevitable and forceful, perhaps.

That said, I didn't read it as a dismissal or even outright cynicism. Rather, it seemed like a personal experienced they wanted to share as a bit of a warning. Which I think is really good, because I and many people I know feel similar looking back.

But looking back in that manner doesn't mean I don't look forward with hope. It just means that I wish I'd been a bit more careful at times about what I pursued, as I definitely feel more of a struggle in the energy department that I didn't feel a few years ago.

There's a relevant old saying that comes to mind: "Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty."

I'm 36 and I endorse this message.

As am I :)

I was more cynical than he is at 32 when I was 14. On the one hand, I've learned to be more idealistic, but on the other hand, with how things are these days, what sort of worldview do you expect kids to learn? Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?

before that it was the threat of nuclear war, ecological collapse, and economic stagnation. before that it was the draft, violent racial injustice, and a nearly complete collapse of legitimacy of national leadership. Idealistic youts have always had reasons to be cynical. (and sadly typing up this list, I see how many of the reasons to be cynical remain powerful generation after generation)

Exactly my point! Cynicism is often well-warranted, especially if you actually have high moral ideas. What people ought to be scared of are the people who aren't cynical because they simply don't care.

You just described skepticism, not cynicism.

> Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?

Maybe because:

1. Headlines don't equal reality. Do we live in a worse world than before, or do we just have better ways of spreading information, and that such headlines tend to sell more than more benevolent news?

2. They perhaps wouldn't be doing anything about it anyway. Many cynics tend to be complainers rather than complainers + doers. What good does it do if you're a cynic if all it does is that it makes you sit around and mope? And if you are living in a good place with good people, and you aren't out to change the world having a positive outlook might be better for you own good than worrying about people in distant lands that you don't intend to try to help anyway.

People have been asking this same basic question for years - heck, vast swaths of literature have been devoted to this basic question. The shortest answer I can come up with is that, if you look at it with a wide enough lens, the world fundamentally sucks. War, terror, corruption and the like are part of the human condition so as long as we exist, so will the darkness. In my mind, the key is to turn off the news, shut down a web browser and simplify, but my key likely won't work in your lock.

Have you ever read The Sun Also Rises?? Hemingway struggles with similar questions and he's a far better writer than I am!! :)

First of all here's the good news: You have been deceived! By the media!

The media is making money by reporting on "things that could kill you". It's getting more efficient at that over time, so if you do watch the news - and I implore you not to - you will start to believe the world is a bad place. That is because you will never, ever hear anything positive in the news. Because it won't sell.

For every crime in this world, there are ten million selfless acts of love. If the news reported on both equally, it'd be very boring. You'd constantly hear about somebody helping another, or putting somebody else before themselves, and you would never even get to the crimes. Not enough time.

For every murder in this world, there's a friend risking his own life for another. Or 10. We won't know. For every war, there's a million times more peace.

Look at the facts, people. Is it so hard to understand? Is propaganda, dull, dumb, and effective as it is really so hard to get around? Open your eyes, and turn off your TV, newspapers, and the associated websites.

There are three reasons why watching news is a huge waste of your time. 1 - negative bias to an extreme that is hard to imagine, as described 2 - non-actionable items. Each time you consume news in any form, ask yourself: What can I do about it? What do I have to do about it? Why did I need to know this? Am I just rubbernecking here (hint: YES, you are!)? 3 - Propaganda and lies. I used to read my local paper front to back every day. And there were a handful of reported-on news where I was an eye-witness. A demonstration, an accident involving me. And even for these harmless items, the news was just plain wrong. THIS WAS NOT WHAT HAD HAPPENED. But it was in the paper. Facts had been altered. Not even maliciously, just to make better story, or because the journalist on the ground couldn't see everything, or whatever. Now if the stories I had direct first hand knowledge of where wrong - how about all the others I knew nothing about? How accurate is that going to be? It's not.

And war propaganda. Just read up on Goebbels, every nation in the world is today doing the same things, and the patterns are so easy to spot you will wonder how you could ever miss them. All the media, particularly in the US, but also other countries, are full of it.

I think this is a good writeup and your point about expectations is spot on. That doesn't mean that we lower expectations though, that means you keep driving till you meet them - however Sisyphusian it may seem.

By the way I'm 31, married with three kids and just recently joined the software/startup world - so your send up doesn't really fit my profile. I haven't seen any dissipation of "youthful energy" yet - if anything my energy is just more and more focused as the years go by.

I am incredibly privileged to be at (or near) self-actualization, but—then again—so are most of the folks who have time to spend here on HN.

And regret-avoidance is an interesting beast: for me, it is incredibly hard to balance short, medium, and long-term goals, and understand when I'm actually pursuing a long-term goal vs simply wasting my time on something that will never really matter.

Props to Zuck for building something that a double-digit percentage of the world uses every month, but he's the exception to the rule. Most of us will not be so lucky(?), and it behooves us to spend our time wisely.

It depends what you value. If you value your work on products above everything else then fine. The reason that people commonly say things like "the time with people in your life is what really matters" is because that actually matters to people more than anything else - I don't think either can be dismissed.

My personal stance is that I'm yet to be convinced that technology really has a lasting tangible benefit other than for maybe 5% of the population. For those 5% specialised technology will have made huge changes e.g. being able to see or hear for the first time. But why does it make such a huge change to people's lives? Because they can communicate more with the people they love, with the world around them.

And let's be honest pretty much all technology gets 'productised' to be sold, and to do that people have to be convinced to buy into it when they don't really need it (I'm open to being convinced otherwise).

I love working on technology but for me it's one of the smaller (but definitely fun) games that play out in life.

"My main distinction is that personal happiness is not a goal of mine, but rather a side benefit from accomplishing something that has lasting tangible value for more than just myself and the people I am immediately exposed to."

Speaking of unfounded presuppositions... how do you know that this would make you happy? If you'd already done it, you'd already be happy. If you haven't, you can't know. Unfounded presupposition, then.

I don't want to make a semantic argument here though; the reason I think it won't make you happy is that nothing outside yourself, nothing external, can make you happy. You are, at the core of your being, already happy, already whole, already loved. Nothing can change that. You can uncover it by asking questions and by discovering and then questioning all the unfounded assumptions that govern your beliefs and opinions.

"Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?"

There's a snarky response in here somewhere that would get to the core of how code is trivial and not a 'legacy' whereas product might be, but I'm scared it will uncover something uneasy about the nature of the work most of us here feel is an integral part of our identities...

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

What does it matter?

Let's say the deathbed will last seven days. That's nothing compared to the rest of your life (let's say ~70 years). Why would you guide your life according to a projection of what you will feel in a mere seven days of your whole life?

Why not ask more immediate questions: is anything I do right now, day to day, that I could do differently in order to live a more fulfilling life? A more fulfilling life day to day of course, not necessarily fulfilling memories for some distant deathbed future.

I guess what you say is actually what that means. Not a literal deathbed realization.

There is no end-game, there is no winning, no failure, no goals in life except what you put in it. The only thing that will decide if you are worthy or not is yourself. Yourself today and yourself tomorrow up to the day you die.

Financial gain is a dangerous goal in life because it very often has a very poor ROI. On the other hand, your whole biology, tweaked by million of year of evolution, made it so that taking care of people around you is very often the best bang of happiness for buck.

But then whatever, plenty of religion / philosophies to rationalize yourself into happiness almost regardless what you decide to do.

> I guess what you say is actually what that means. Not a literal deathbed realization.

Then why not just say that? Compel me to self-improve. Don't guilt me in to some existential dread.

> On the other hand, your whole biology, tweaked by million of year of evolution, made it so that taking care of people around you is very often the best bang of happiness for buck.

Evolution compels you into procreating and taking care of that offspring. But there are many more motivators than good feelings. As long as you passed on your "legacy", it doesn't matter whether you did it out of joy or out of fear and worry. As far as the cause and effect of evolution is concerned.

I don't think it is about feeling satisfied on the deathbed. We imagine the deathbed as the place where we finally understand what is important and what isn't, and then try to apply this knowledge to the limited timespan in between. It is a way to take a step back and evaluate our lives.

Actually, I think I would regret all the stuff I could build if I were alive a little bit longer.

People who are creative and say otherwise are just lying (to others and to themselves probably). Or maybe, like you wrote, they are living a life they suppose they should live, instead of the life they actually want to live.

Everyone says: "No one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at the office". Perhaps that's true. But I bet there are people who, on their deathbed, regret not having been more able to provide their families with financial security, or not doing a better job on something important they worked on.

You might die tomorrow. But it's more likely that you won't, and you should plan accordingly.

(I am not arguing that today's culture of overwork isn't harmful. I think it is, and I think most people in tech startups should probably be spending less time working. And if that what-if-I-died-tomorrow question is what it takes to get someone to think about what they really want to be doing with their lives, that's great. But it's still something of a cheat, and if you draw the conclusion from it that you should be optimizing your life for minimal regret on premature death then I think you're probably making a mistake.)

Now it depends by what you mean by that. Many people's idea of financial security is very different, some see it in ability to live comfortably with materialism, others see it as not having to worry about the next meal and your shelter.

If the financial security is materialistically based, I feel working more for that will be regretted.

> Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?

That's kind of an unfair comparison like saying that you might regret not spending nearly enough time telling your kids to clean up their rooms. I won't regret the tedium of work, but I may regret not spending enough time in whiteboarding sessions with colleagues that I respect.

"Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?"

For me, that quote would ends all auruments.

(I had a liver scan a little over a year ago, over some vague(probally psychosomatic?) pain in my upper right quadrant. Driving home from my primary care's doctors office with the ultrasound script in hand, I took a detour and went to the beach. I called certain family members and just told them "I just wanted to say hello." The whole day was kind of a blur, but I didn't take any part of that day for granted. I splurged and got an $8.99/lb salad. It tasted better that day? All my aches and pains went away that day. It was a bad day, but a wake up call. I ended up being o.k., and started to take life for granted--again. I won't die wealthy, but I will die knowing I treated kind people well. I don't think I will ever overlook the selfish, narcisstic one's though. I will die knowing certain people do awful things in order to "get ahead" in life. I will never forgive them completely. Yea, I have a sister who trampled on family in order to get ahead. I don't hate her, but I honestly don't knows how she can enjoy it all--when it was gotten so ugly?)

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Probably the fact that I'm dying[1].

[1] http://www.theonion.com/article/man-surrounded-by-loved-ones...

Famous article about someone who worked with hospice patients and the question about what they regret the most:

http://www.hospicepatients.org/five-regrets-of-the-dying-bro...

It's pretty interesting, although none of the five will shock you.

Good for you for focusing on creating the life you really want. Too often people sleepwalk through life, only to wake up in their 40's and discover they've lost so much time and are disenchanted with the decisions they've made.

Thank you for sharing. My father passed away 6 days ago and I am going through this process. I am staying in the "rat race" though no longer care to rush, rushing isn't important - taking the time to bring good, kind people together who have the talent needed to succeed when put on task is all that really matters.

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Dying.

I too used to think this way. I can't explain it now that I have a child and family and have lost people very close to me. Where as before the mere thought of innovating I felt like I was some of the first people ever to be doing something where in now I find it was all just a race. I.E. - Someone else could've finished that super fancy product and made lots of money. Just today I missed my daughter swimming for the first time and no amount of money or technology can fix that.

I agree with you about the hopeful positive impact. Impact is hard to quantitively measure though so much as love is hard to measure. You only know how much you are loved by surrounding yourself with people who love you and sharing your love for them I guess. I never realized how alone I was until I had an inner circle to miss.

I can't explain it now that I have a child and family and have lost people very close to me.

As I posted to someone below you, I am married and have three kids. I have also lost a lot of my friends - I am an Iraq war veteran and was in the Air Force from 2003 until last Feb.

All of that has led me to my conclusion because I see what is left after these people have gone away - and largely it's...nothing. Once their friends and family die, their "legacy" dies too, there is nothing lasting beyond those narrow impacts. So I feel like it's almost the easy way to go to focus on those around you and those relationships because they give the most immediate and personally impactful response - but they forgo a much wider and more grand legacy that could extend centuries.

What do you see in a legacy? The opportunity to do good for humanity, or the opportunity to be remembered?

For there will come a day when even Jesus, Shakespeare, and Newton will be forgotten. Eventually, we will all be forgotten.

Reminds me of Ozymandias:

  I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972#poem

The words are still there, aren't they? That counts.

That counts.

By which math? 90% of the world doesn't know 90% of the history and doesn't care to know. The same history that includes big names of their era. Steve Jobs may be held up as an Ozymandias of our day, but will he be remembered for any of his "accomplishments" a thousand years from know? I doubt it. Why? How many Steve Jobs does 90% of our planet remember from 1000 years ago? One, two, ten, Zero? So is it about a named legacy or an anonymous one? If you are talking about impact. Sure. How about your impact on those whose actions affect your life the most? Whose choices influence your decisions about your life? Why does the focus have to be binary? Either, or?

I feel 'leaving a legacy' would be dying knowing that your work left some tangible mark on humanity that you shared the planet with. It doesn't have to change people lives twenty years from now. Just the fact that my creations were enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people in an year(or five years) is the satisfaction most people would happily die with and would include in 'legacy'. Of course there is a different spectrum of 'legacy' for different profession and depending on your work the value of 'legacy' would fall somewhere in the spectrum specific to your work. So comparing 'legacy' across professions might not even make sense as long as you are helping thousands(or some higher number) of people. And as others have said, I believe 'impact' is a better word for hacker/scientific community than legacy.

I guess my juxtaposed argument is that to me the notion of any sort of legacy is just not good. I'd rather have my daughter be remembered for being a good dad. Than some guy who made something neat. A "legacy" is an ideology. To me when you're dead, you're dead, that's it.

I think I feel similar to AndrewKemendo. "Legacy" is a wrong word, maybe "positive impact" is better. Being a good dad is cool and nice, but if I had to chose one, I'd rather die knowing that I helped lift a million people out of poverty. Or even a thousand.

I get strong feelings of love and need for relationships, but I sometimes feel they're more of an hormonal failure mode than anything fundamental. I want to love and be loved, and be the best I can be for those close to me, but I don't feel that those in my immediate vicinity are somehow morally more important than all those random people I don't know.

I guess there might be no good answer, but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you. Maybe it's a common sentiment, but there are people who genuinely don't feel that way.

>but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you

Apart from the genetics thing, part of it is that most people are not going to be involved in impactful work. They do bullshit jobs and fret over it way too much than they really should. In turn, they lose out on quality family time and take people close to them for granted. So some of the comments about 'deathbed regrets' is actually valid for such people. If they were really fretting about solving cancer, aids or any thing that would change millions of lives, the apparent wisdom would immediately make less sense.

You tend to get what you value, so if you believe that your legacy is more important than your close personal relationships, there's nothing anyone on Hacker News could say that will make that "wrong".

Just remember that everybody's legacy is fleeting. In a generation, Steve Jobs will probably be remembered like the Duesenberg brothers.

I guess legacy is the wrong word - as it implies a level of vanity that is uninteresting in my opinion. Rather, lets call it impact.

For example Leo Szilard I feel had a much broader and deeper impact on the world than did Einstein, but with significantly less fame. Same with Woz vs Jobs etc...

On the flip side, you only get one life. Each person has to make the decision how he/she wants to live it. Is a larger legacy worth pursuing at the cost of those claimed to be dear to each person? That is a question one must consider, and I don't think there is a right answer.

To first approximation, there are almost no people who would have a "grand legacy" that could extend centuries. How many do you know from 1850? Eventually, no one will remember you, and that is true even if you are the most successful person on earth.

The urge to have a legacy is a manifestation of the fear of death, and is primarily an exercise of ego. It does not have to overtake one's life.

It's not about being remembered, it's about your life having positive impact beyond those you can personally see.

Yeah, but the question nobody's posing is: why should it? That's a question I personally can't answer. I don't see any higher meaning in "leaving a legacy". You'll be dead anyway. Why shouldn't we focus on living a better, more relaxed and less stressful life while we're here to recognize that?

And the reverse question would be: why shouldn't it? Why should I focus on living happily and have family and relationships? I'll be dead anyway, and so will everyone I ever loved. So I guess it's up to one to pick for him/herself. Some want to focus on their own small world, others want to leave behind some lasting change affecting many.

People try to be happy because they intrinsically want to be happy. Not because being happy matters after you're dead -- obviously you're not in a state to be happy after you're dead. At least not in this world.

Why do people want to make a lasting change? Purely for intrinsic reasons? Or is there some hidden assumption like for example that it will make them happy in their later years?

Satisfaction from seeing "fruits of your labor" improve the condition of everyone is also a source of happiness. I don't think it's worse than happiness from having a good family life. I also don't think there's some kind of "altruism" that isn't ultimately just another way of getting happiness - maybe a more intellectual one, out of the feeling of doing something one considers morally good.

> Satisfaction from seeing "fruits of your labor" improve the condition of everyone is also a source of happiness. I don't think it's worse than happiness from having a good family life.

Yet you seemed to want to draw a distinction between happiness and a lasting impact. Though the distinction was perhaps just with the family/local impact.

> I also don't think there's some kind of "altruism" that isn't ultimately just another way of getting happiness - maybe a more intellectual one, out of the feeling of doing something one considers morally good.

Right, but a family-related happiness is less because it's just a result of chemicals (oxycotine?) that are related to survival, a sort of failure mode? You said yourself that it is less fundamental. What is fundamental? And why is your derivation of happiness higher than those who go by the supposed more base instincts of focusing on their family? Because the hormonal causes are harder to pin down and analyse? So what? Something more complex and harder to describe is better?

If you feel happy, I think the distinction of why is unimportant.

Good question... Somehow if we can get out of the hyper rationalist maximization seeking robot mentality, an answer of some form may present itself. Accepting death helps. Not just my own but that of much more. Buddhism has some very interesting insights here. And I bring up belief deliberately, because the answer here is faith. Not certainty, but faith. Whatever it may be (leave legacy, do no harm, etc), it's doing what you believe that results in a satisfactory answer.

If you were born into a very tough situation in a war torn or third world country, you'd do what you needed to with what was given to you. While we do have a lot of material wealth and might have more free time, we still face the same great equalizer: death. As do our civilizations and our planet (and likely us, way before that). Given the constraints, you can simply "try your best". Living without regrets might be a job to one person, a 90 hour startup to another, traveling and learning to others. Whatever your belief is, following it is the best that you could do. Ultimately you have to answer to yourself & be able to live with yourself. Personally, living selfishly, while it maximizes certain things simply goes against my core beliefs. I don't necessarily know that living less selfishly is necessarily better. But for me, it is. Your beliefs, may defy logic, and may not necessarily maximize legacy, wealth or whatever, but in having acted you will have done your best given the situation to be able to live with yourself, which is all you can ask of yourself.

> Somehow if we can get out of the hyper rationalist maximization seeking robot mentality, an answer of some form may present itself.

If you have to be less rational to accept an answer, doesn't that imply that the answer is wrong?

And if you're supposed to come to an emotionally satisfying view of life by rejecting rationality, doesn't that screw-over those of us who gain emotional satisfaction from obtaining rational answers to things?

Oh, wait, everyone with a scientific turn-of-mind has already been labelled a "robot". Beep boop, then /s.

Legacy is about being remembered; it's your name attached to tangible achievements, your name credited for effects.

Impact exists with our without legacy. The network effect of your friends' lives may be outwardly invisible, but the impact of their work, on the lives of anyone they lived near and around, had fun near and around, served near and around, worked near our around... is quite vast.

You don't have to be Abe Lincoln or John Rockefeller to have lived a meaningful life.

Pardon me to interrupt strive for greatness, but the world I live in is massively interconnected, and it's becoming more and more every day. Even if you try hard to avoid it, you have some impact, mixed with impact of other people. Yes, it might be local, and in some really unfortunate situations it might really eventually +-die, but let's focus a bit on average joe.

The world I see does indeed need to improve a bit, on all possible levels. If you strive to improve mankind as a whole, or at least big parts of it, please go ahead and do your best. Just don't neglect that personal, "local" aspect as so many do these days (ie crappy parents raising even crappier kids). This world also needs happy, balanced and positive people, not only depressed, exhausted overachievers (or overaimers) I see so often around me.

I tend to focus locally (friends, family, coworkers), and let the effects seep wider if possible, on their own. One example - 2 weekends ago, I took my girlfriend to Mont Blanc with guide, on skis, and on top, after gruelling march on skis, I surprised her proposed marriage. The reactions from people around, but also total internet strangers were overwhelming, quite a few wrote that in these (for them) depressing days, seeing this gave them positive energy and hope (for life, relationships, people around etc.).

Did I change the world with it? Of course not, I am not the first nor the last guy that did it. Does this have some, maybe minor but positive impact on other people? Definitely yes. Enough drops in the pond can also have an effect.

One can want a legacy without fearing death, and one needn't die to have a legacy.

There are lots and lots of people with a legacy, granted few of them may be mentioned on a day to day basis, but when the talk falls on specific topics that is another matter.

For one Lincoln was around that time, so was a host of others that are famous.

It is a part of that being good to yourself he talks about. Creating things, lasting impactful things, is a great favor we all do ourselves. Martin Luther king wrote about it well in the 3 dimensions of man. Man being all he can be, is his length. It's an important dimension. But you must balance that with your breadth and height. Outwards to others and your spirituality. Worth a good read. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documen...

There's nothing to "fix" about not being around for every single moment.

"firsts" aren't really such a big deal.

1. There are many many "firsts". 2. Each one isn't really a "first", because so much of what we do is gradual, that's arbitary where you draw the line of accomplishment.

> ... before the mere thought of innovating I felt like I was some of the first people ever to be doing something where in now I find it was all just a race. I.E. - Someone else could've finished that super fancy product and made lots of money

You're implying that technology doesn't ever improve people's lives. But, especially if you take longer term view, it clearly can and does.

Sheryl Sandberg is being talked about because she happens to be in the public eye and has gone through tragedy that we can all relate to (or eventually relate to for those of you that are in your 20's). The real point is not "legacy". The real point is everyone goes through this stuff and we empathize with it. I actually forgot what Buchheit did, but still remember his touching essay from 2012 (as did the first responder to this thread).

"Legacy" may be the focus of your life, but that's just you. There's nothing wrong with that, but also your values are no more valid than anyone else's.

I think part of the reason "investing money, creating new products", etc. are "games" is that they're often done only to earn money. It's like a clicker game where you click on a button and gain gold, and you don't give a damn whether the button says "save drowning children" or "OMG ROTFL WTF", as long as it pays out.

> Winning in my opinion then, is having an (hopefully positive) impact on those outside of your inner circle, not within it. And the larger the impact, the bigger the win.

I share that sentiment. And then I find most of startups to be stupid games - because only few of them are made to have that impact; majority is created to trick people into joining, which generates growth, which increases the chance you'll have a successful "exit" and boatloads of money. But if one genuinely goes for having a positive impact, fixing or enhancing something about our world, then I cheer the effort. And this is something I myself would want to do - so that on my deathbed I may find comfort in that I left the world a little bit better place than I found it.

I used to think that. Then I realized that the one reason to think that legacy is important, is that losts of very influential people, the kind that leave a legacy, seem to think so. By that lens, legacy is nothing but a virus that uses your resources to replicate.

Currently, I aim to love as much as I can and to have some fun! Any other aim, just seems like a great way to fret.

> We wouldn't be quoting Paul Buchheit or talking about Dave Sandberg if they hadn't sacrificed some of those relationships, or health for the products and platforms that we know them for. And that's the real point - legacy. Someone's legacy is not the relationships they had personally, just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle.

It seems to me that you're measuring the quality of a person's "legacy" by how famous they managed to get. That seems like a really horrible rule to live your life by. I would much rather be a little person who brightened some other little people's lives than an asshole who cheated his best friend and abandoned his child but, gosh, sure did make some cool toys and a lot of money.

> "just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle."

I'm sorry but am I the only one that doesn't buy the view that Steve Jobs was this irreplaceable visionary everyone eulogizes him for?

Wouldn't pocket size touch screen computers get invented anyway eventually?

Based on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon - touchscreen phone and PDA from 1994 - I'd say the concept was firmly established prior to Jobs return to Apple in 1996.

I think the vision comes in concreting the conceptual developments that had happened in to a product and creating a market for that product at a price that made the company hugely profitable.

Hmm... legacy. That's the bit that's tricky.

You suggest that "telling junk from non-junk is an exercise in futility," and in many ways that's quite an agreeable sentiment. So much speculating and lots of people mostly get it wrong.

But if it's futile to tell the junk from the not-, what's the argument for sacrificing your joy and happiness while "chasing the rabbit?" If we can't generally tell the difference between fantastic and flotsam, what's the argument for removing ourselves from the lives of people that care for us and love us?

If it's legacy, I think we're missing the point of it all. Because legacy is a personal goal, is a self-effecting goal. Legacy isn't about helping other people, it's about some lasting kind of immortality.

We have to be more whole than the people we're trying to help. If we deficit of our joy and happiness, if we don't know how to give that to ourselves and our loved ones, how can we possibly hope to give it to others?

There's that parable about dealing with the plank in your own eye, so that you can see clearly enough to deal with the speck of sawdust in your brother's. I think this is a time we might find some wisdom in that story.

It sounds like a lasting impact of Dave Goldberg was the love he helped grow in his family and their friends. There's a heartbreaking outpouring of love in Sandberg's essay. I don't wonder if it was their achievement in being whole in their love, his commitment to his inner circle, that allowed him to bring passion to those outside of it.

I think we'd all be so lucky.

But if it's futile to tell the junk from the not-, what's the argument for sacrificing your joy and happiness while "chasing the rabbit?"

Local vs. global extrema. That is to say, the person working on something thinks it's not junk - for them it's a global maximum. For observers, what the person is working on looks like a local maximum (or minimum).

The AirBnB story is a good example of this. "I want to make a way for people to pay to stay on an air-bed in my house" sounds a lot like a local minimum to the outside observer.

It sounds like a lasting impact of Dave Goldberg was the love he helped grow in his family and their friends.

Undoubtedly. Based on his work however, it looks like that is where it will stop.

but would you really rather be remembered as a successful businessman by some strangers on Internet or as a loving human being by your own family? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just it's not the same level of emotion... not even close

Not close at all. --Wait, which one are you saying is higher? Because different people have different values; there's no need to shit on someone's life choices if they aren't hurting people.

Wanting to be remembered is very narcissistic. Personally, if I have influenced people (knowing and unknowingly) positively over my life, I'll be happy. That could mean raising a child to be a good person or providing tools for people to help themselves become better. There are many ways to achieve the goal.

You have a basic misunderstanding of perception. It's common, everyone has this, the idea that you're this bag of meat separate from everyone. What are you supposed to do?

But, you will be good to yourself, and to others, if you discover who or what you really are, on a level where it cannot be described by words. It makes sense, therefore, to put your effort into that discovery.

The products you create - cool, but irrelevant as well. Bucheit is right about that. It's a game.

You think Steve Jobs lived a meaningful life because he sold some fucking electronic toys to rich people? You really think that's what matters?

Spoken like somebody without kids. They trigger responses built into our brains that make family very much more important that all the rest. Thus, family isn't a game any more.

I have three kids (5, 3 and 1) and a wife of 6 years.

> trigger responses

> game

That's exactly why I feel having a family is nothing fundamental, it's just bunch of hard-wired hormonal failure modes. Not to say they aren't pleasant though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com