Life is simple*

* YMMV. You might need to live in a developed world that assures you won't be left to die, that is not at war, that you can find a way to sustain yourself, and that you're not involved in any accidents that drastically change your otherwise simple life.

I have been in countries at war, like Congo, and life there was the simplest thing you could have.

In fact, all the complexity appears when there is peace. People do not save or study or anything secondary when there is war.

Are you going to study when you don't know where your family is? When your mother or sister or daughter has been raped and you have to protect her for being raped or killed? When they go after you because you abandoned guerrilla (or the army)?

You make a simple mistake(like looking weak, with no friends or too smart) and you die, it was as simple as that. A kid without beard with an automatic gun does not like or respect you? You are dead.

People at war, they need something, they take it(with automatic weapons). Super simple.

In China things were also super simple. When I was there a biker was hit by a car and died. Nobody gave a dam. Cars were circulating as usual around the dead person. It was the most brutal thing I ever saw in my life, including Congo, in Congo people cared more about each other.

It is the developed world that is complex and sophisticated. People work for abstract things like "career", "pensions", "tenure" or even paper money that are promises that don't really exist as real things but really are symbols of trust in the society.

BTW you feel alive living at the moment and I personally miss some part of that, even when I was risking my life.

> You make a simple mistake(like looking weak, with no friends or too smart) and you die, it was as simple as that.

Dying is simple, life living is harder.

Reminds me of the Charles Manson quote: "Living is what scares me. Dying is easy."

I actually got the idea from Hamilton, the musical about the founding father. I loved the Washington-character there.

> In China things were also super simple. When I was there a biker was hit by a car and died.

What would you need to see to conclude that life in China for local people is as complex as for American living in United States?

I am not even differencing rural part of old school China from rich inhabitant of Beijing.

There's no escaping Maslow's Triangle.

Sure there is, once you have your basic needs met, you opt-out of any further status games.

The whole point of Maslow's triangle is that first, people meet their basic needs before moving higher up in the triangle. So how are you escaping the triangle when you stipulate "once you have your basic needs met"

Because you need foot/water/shelter. You can't just ignore those needs.

Status is something we choose to opt-in to. You can choose to ignore it as well.

> People at war, they need something, they take it(with automatic weapons). Super simple.

That is not actually true. Most people in war zone are civilians without weapons. The survival depends a lot on navigating power structures and negotiating. And luck. But it is not simple and everyone speculates.

> When your mother or sister or daughter has been raped and you have to protect her for being raped or killed?

How exactly would you protect them? You don't. Cause I had relatives survive war and read memoirs from civilians and it was more that everyone was looking for source of income. If males had to join army or guerilla (or died), then it is women trying to survive and trying to care for those who stayed (children, old, themselves). And that is not simple.

> Are you going to study when you don't know where your family is?

Hardly. But school systems in war countries and occupied countries do somehow move on, as malfunctioning as they are. People leave them to search for income and food. People clinge on activites too.

Mental health issues get worst under those conditions. The conflicts between people escalate while everyone being even more dependent on each other. People live in cramped conditions. And none of that is simple. Living in one household with mentally ill or abusive relative you would normally cut off is opposite of simple.

> When they go after you because you abandoned guerrilla (or the army)?

Majority are civilians.

I’d argue that if you are living in a warzone, life is simple too. Just in a completely different way.

You know what drives me crazy? All these people talking about how great technology is and how it saves all this time. But what good is saved time if nobody uses it? It just turns into more busy work, right? You never hear somebody say, "Well, with the time I’ve saved by using my Word Processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out.” (Jesse)

The problem with everything that 'saves time' is that it doesn't save time in way a that actually frees up blocks of time, because most things in your day are running to someone else's schedule. Saving 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there only adds up to give you hours to do what you want if you're not waiting for some event to let you begin the next task. If you are waiting for something then saving 10 minutes just gives you 10 minutes more dead space in your day to spend waiting. If I have two meetings and I can manage to get the first one done early the only impact that will have is that I'll have to wait longer until the second one. I guess that's a little more time to spend writing nonsense on HN, but it doesn't feel useful to have saved that time.

Saving time on tasks to give yourself more time to do other things only works if you have complete autonomy over your schedule.

Also applies to the very tired ”work smarter, not harder” saying: it never means working less with the time you gain but actually means ”work smarter so you can work even more”

At some point, you stop working though right? And all that smart work probably earned you enough money to retire early compared to someone working a dead end job.

Thankfully the trend of boasting about "multitasking" has died. A decade or two back everyone seemed to think it was a good idea.

That depends on your career goals and your attitude towards the concept of "buffer time", though.

I am getting "smart" technology fatigue. I want old fashion technology, mechanical, analog. Whiteboard, Pen and Pencil, Dump TV.

Yeah, "smart" is just a marketing buzzword.

It's not an intrinsic property of technology, either. It's just businesses that want to take advantage of you in new and more abusive ways. Don't let them.

I agree on the short timescale, but look at the longer one. like coal mining was horrible during Orwells times, and now it is difficult but much much better due to technology. Or take saturdays. I do not know about your country, but here not having to work (and not having to go to school) on saturday happened in the last 50 years; or in Singapore in the last 15 years.

The funny thing is, that horrible coal mining that technology liberated us from was part and parcel of the Industrial Revolution. Thank you technology, for saving us from the fallout of technology! Good thing this time there's no fallout.

I prefer it this way, with renevables in (far) sight and maybe some fusion, much better than not heating the apartment in winter (which of course you can choose to do up to a certain limit)

Life is busy work. I mean, we give sense to our life beyond filling the atmosphere with CO2, and yet, on a planetary scale, there is not much more to humanity than that.

Technology allows us to experience things that wouldn't be possible otherwise. And your word processor can indeed save you enough time to do other things you want to do with your life. And if word processors and overstimulation are not your things, you can go to a Zen monastery, technology have your back: food, medicine, construction, transportation,... so you can meditate in peace.

I have known several people who live a simple life. Small house in the middle of nowhere, no phone signal, grow their own crops, etc... But they still have a car, go out to town to buy stuff that come out of large factories, they have a few electric devices powered by solar panels, etc... They take advantage of technology and people love of word processors to live their simple life, and that's fine! That's what technology is for, to allow those who want to disconnect to do so without putting their life at risk, and to give a dopamine rush to those who can't stay still.

As long as workers who trade their labor time for money do not participate in the productivity gains at a rate that sufficiently outpaces wage adjustments to the new productivity, this will continue.

It's why I think more and more as the days go on that the Internet, while being humanity's greatest invention, is turning out to be a net negative. Despite most human-development-related statistics pointing to the fact that humanity/civilization is at its most productive/safest in all of history, the Internet is slowly eroding away what it means to be human.

This is funny because the most unhappy and anxious people I know are cat owners.

I remember talking to a coworker friend of mine who was a cat owner. She said that she didn't understand dogs. They just loved you unconditionally all the time no matter what. So I guess she liked the life with the cat where it was just randomly mean or not interested in her sometimes. Kind of illustrated things to me.

You gotta earn it with a cat.

Dogs are for people that need the reassurance of the unconditional love

Cats are for people who have the kind of levels of self-confidence that makes the unconditional love of a dog both suffocatingly annoying and suspicious.

Depends on the dog.

Get a terrier. Best of both worlds. You have to earn their love, and they're as prickly as cats sometimes.

But you can also take them hiking, skiing, biking, or just chilling by a campfire growling at hypothetical bears in the dark forest at night.

> Get a terrier. Best of both worlds. You have to earn their love, and they're as prickly as cats sometimes.

Yes, might be really the case. I'm pretty much a cat person and when I'm thinking about getting a dog, then terriers are pretty much on top of the list.

What about Burmese cats - which act pretty much like cat shaped dogs - at least in terms of sociability and playfulness.

Dogs love everyone. Never as much as the cake on the table perhaps.

They are also much smarter than cats, which cat owners have problems to admit in their confidence.

The first statment makes the second one very dubious.

Seriously, one species has undergone intensive inbreeding with the express purposes of cultivating physical and mental dependency, the other is still a feral predator that can continue flourishing without you. That robustness necessarily implies intelligence, the ability to discriminate perceptions (Chimpanzees can perceive magic tricks; they can discriminate that something has taken place that should not have followed from what was known). People mistake socially pliable for intelligence.

Dogs are partners. You can work closely with them. You don't have to hunt with a dog to appreciate this but it's very obvious if you do.

A cat is a dumb version of a human. Who needs a cat when you have your couple and friends?

A dog is something different and special

Seriously, I get enough passive aggression from coworkers and romantic partners, why would I want more?

> Dogs are for people that need the reassurance of the unconditional love

I used to think this until I got a dog. The love is not unconditional and the dog takes more work to maintain than the cat.

“Dogs are for people who want a much more interactive pet.”

this is a very weird take, probably only possible by a cat owner.

Would you feel suffocated and suspicious from the unconditional love of your child? Its not about reassurance, its just that it is a beautiful experience in this life, and i give just as much love back to my dog.

if you view disinterested cats as the ideal relationship, I hope you can separate that from your human relationships

> You gotta earn it with a cat.

Do I detect catholic guilt ?

> So I guess she liked the life with the cat where it was just randomly mean or not interested in her sometimes.

If you think your cat is randomly mean to you, then you really don't understand your cat, you don't correctly read the clues it signalizes to you.

If I'm e.g. petting my cat and don't stop if she starts wagging her tail, which pretty much means she's overexcited, then she will scratch me to make it more clear to me.

To expect that your cat is all the time interested in you also seems honestly quite a bit narcissistic.

This says a lot about their romantic life, too

Think of how unhappy they'd be without cats!

Not true from my experience. All cat owners I know are relaxed go with the flow type of people. Few dog owners I know are as you describe but the rest don’t make the pattern significat to notice. Maybe the anxious people you know attempt to rid their anxiety by soothing themselves with cats and it is not working properly for them. I personally love cats and their presence gives me a relaxed attitude but would never have one in my apparent, the smell is too much to bear. And hair everywhere...

At least they know what's good for them!

I am a cat owner and happy like a clam ;)

This is what your cat wants you to think

I'm allergic to cats.

Pets also add complexity to life, e.g. when you want to go away for any length of time.

They can even give you Toxoplasmosis!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis

And there's a hypothesis that says toxoplasmosis can manipulate the behavior of their hosts to encourage risk-taking activities, including entrepreneurship, and cat owners are more likely to have an interest on startup companies [0][1]...

Which brings us to Hacker News.

Full Disclosure: I was a cat owner, but I'm on HN for its news and the forum, I'm not particularly interested in startup companies...

[0] Toxoplasmosis has been linked to a higher likelihood of entrepreneurial behavior in people who get infected

https://www.businessinsider.com/parasite-in-cat-poop-linked-...

[1] There's a Really Weird Link Between Cats And Entrepreneurs

https://www.sciencealert.com/toxoplasma-gondii-correlation-e...

You can leave cats alone for a weekend without an supervision, just a bowl of food and some water.

We do up to about 6 or 7 days. I often joke I'm not responsible enough to own a dog, and if I was going to get a dog, I might as well just have kids. The idea of having to find a way to take care of the dog when you want to go out of town is definitely a little anxiety-producing.

I guess the other side of that is you can often take a dog or kids with you in the car or train but with a cat it’s a bit trickier. That being said my mum used to throw (kinda literally) the cat in the back of the car when I was a kid and we’d drive 2 hours to my grandmas place. The cat didn’t seem to care much and went to sleep.

A dog on the train? In what country and what dog size?

Pretty normal in Europe, at least where I live for dogs to be on public transport and regional trains.

Edit: just double checked the rules for the ICE (regional fast train), if it fits in a carrier it's free of charge, a bigger dog you have to buy a child ticket for.

For the UK:

https://www.seat61.com/dogs-by-train.htm

> This bit is easy. You can take dogs, cats and other small animals with you free of charge on all British trains, up to a maximum of two per passenger, as long as they do not endanger or inconvenience passengers or staff. Dogs must be kept on a lead at all times unless contained in a basket. Dogs without leads, cats, birds and small animals must be carried in an enclosed basket, cage or pet carrier which must be rigid and not open (to prevent escape) and the animal able to stand and lie down in comfort. Animals and containers must not occupy seats, otherwise a charge may be made. If you want to use a Caledonian Sleeper to or from Scotland, you'll need to pay a fee, see here. For full details of dog & pet regulations on British trains see www.nationalrail.co.uk/passenger services/luggage animals.html.

In what country can't you?

You can in the UK. Any size. They can’t sit on the seat though.

How do you deal with litter boxes?

Clean before the trip, clean after trip? It probably depends on the cat, but in case of ours, the litterbox can stay untouched for a week before it starts pooping outside of it.

(However, we always arrange for someone to take an active care of the cat, including cleaning its litterbox, if we have to leave for more than 3 days.)

so- we have a large "concrete mixing tub" we use as a litterbox for the 2 cats. it's roughly 36" x 24". It's in a 2-level wooden enclosure my father-in-law built just outside our house, with a cat door connecting it to the interior of our house.

No reason it couldn't be used inside, of course, but it would eventually smell more inside, versus a smaller box you scoop more frequently. (of course, you can scoop a large box frequently too, it just takes longer).

I tell myself I scoop it twice a week, but to be honest, it often ends up being more like "weekly", on garbage day.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Plasgad-Black-Large-Concrete-Mix...

Once during college, I lived with roommates (and girlfriend) who loved cats. Think we had 3-4 indoor cats at one point and some other strays outside they liked to feed.

We had 3 litter boxes and they had to be scooped daily or they quickly became disgusting.

My point was that cats still need upkeep and it's really not fair to leave them living in filth for a week at a time just because someone can set up an auto-feeder.

Any pet is going to be an inconvenience if properly cared for. Doesn't mean a person can't travel, but as mentioned they will likely need to ask or pay someone to come and check on the pets.

Giant litter box is helpful but still needs to be regularly scooped.

If someone can invent a feasible self cleaning litter box (or a good way to toilet train a cat) I would love to have a cat pet, but right now the idea of them using dirty litter boxes and walking on every surface in the house is just too unappealing.

My friend did that. His cat ate all the food in a single sitting and was both fat and almost dead from not eating for two days.

It doesn't work if you normally don't let your cat choose their meal times. But cats do develop food intelligence unlike dogs and will only eat what they need - the key is they have to have a reliable expectation that food is always available.

An automatic feeder helps - since getting one there's always good in my cats bowl but she only eats a little at a time.

Ahem, my dog will not eat and save his food for later when he's had too much food lately - I think that's what you're referring to as food intelligence.

He often does this by burying the chicken drumstick under dirt and leaves, which I think is not uncommon for dogs.

Not unlike dogs. Dogs are the same.

Cat don't become fat from single large meal.

Your cat isn't diabetic, I guess.

There is cat food that exists or is being developed that should help somewhat.

[0] https://www.purinainstitute.com/science-of-nutrition/neutral...

[1] https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(19)30349-5/ful...

I'm also allergic to cats. I have two of them and live on antihistamines. It's worth it.

My cats are a pain the ass. They provide nothing for the effort and cost put into them.

What effort and cost? They're so cheap and easy to take care of.

Maybe I'm being too generous since I am using dogs as a reference point.

We have 3 cats and just got a puppy. The dog is already much more beloved and worth the higher effort than the cats have ever been. Cats are basically dry goldfish that you can play with and pet a bit. Dogs are part of the family.

Travel becomes a lot harder if you have a cat.

Get a cat, save the planet!

Save the planet and simultaneously eradicate all the birds around you.

Travel becomes almost impossible when you have a cat. Can't leave decent amount of time to anywhere, sometimes just possibilities of what may happen is enough.

Not cheap nor easy

They are incredibly annoying

But are funny

That's why people keep them

(I got two)

Edit: if they can roam freely they are also a threat to many other life forms and bio diversity

> Edit: if they can roam freely they are also a threat to many other life forms and bio diversity

They are the most prolific mass murderers of animals in the western world. My vegetarian (cat owning) friend got very upset when I pointed this out.

My can't moves the distributed scat and bodies of a dozen mice into a centralized sandbox over the course of its life. Worth it for me.

Happiness has been debunked by the replication crisis.

you misspelled dogs.

And chickens!

> happiness actually derives from having cats

Not if you're part of the massive destruction of wildlife wrought by these biodiversity annihilators masquerading as cute pets.

'As an invasive species[1] and superpredator,[2] they do considerable ecological damage.[2] In Australia, hunting by cats helped to drive at least 20 native mammals to extinction,[3] and continues to threaten at least 124 more.[3] Their introduction has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world.[2] Feral and domestic cats kill billions of birds in the United States every year, where songbird populations continue to decline.[4]'

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