That's been my experience as well.

I'm much happier in my 30s, having enough experience that I've learned to let go and accept existential dread for the useless bother that it is, than I was in my 20s. Truly realizing that nobody's that special also was a qualitative leap.

Not that I'd call myself « smart » with a straight face, but I certainly used to care a lot about things outside of my control.

Same, but part of that is I realized how much I didn't know about things which I was originally quite certain about. Epistemology is a field which is sadly usually confined to religious schools. It's pretty eye-opening when you start applying it to things you think you knew.

It was more than a little disturbing when I started reading the methodology sections of scientific papers that make the headlines and I realized at LEAST 90% of them were absolute bullshit.

> Epistemology is a field which is sadly usually confined to religious schools.

Funny that you're mentioning that, the Epistemology classes I took in university while I was studying History were some of my favourites.

You have the life experience to know what will and won't affect you, and you've found an equilibrium of control and impact that apparently makes you happy.

That's very you specific, not really related to your age, other than that it took you until your 30s to find that equilibrium.

There's nothing at all written down anywhere that ensures such an equilibrium for everyone, however. Especially for folks who represent a minority in their society, life is a lot more threatening and a lot less controllable for them, typically.

For some, that equilibrium may never come, and while that doesn't invalidate your experience, it certainly doesn't support the idea that "you'll calm down when you're older".

> You have the life experience to know what will and won't affect you, and you've found an equilibrium of control and impact that apparently makes you happy.

I think some people have too much empathy to ever reach that point.

I have a few friends that literally broke out in tears when Russia began the invasion of Ukraine. They don't know a single person in Ukraine. Nothing about the war truly has an effect on their day-to-day lives. They don't even have investments that got clobbered.

Yet they shed tears over innocent civilian lives being lost.

These people have been on the verge of nervous breakdown ever since COVID hit.

Seeing people on such an extreme end makes me feel like I might be slightly sociopathic because I read the news and just think "Well that sucks" and then move on with my day, knowing it makes no difference to me and my life.

What you're feeling is selfishness, not sociopathy, for what it's worth! I don't think a sociopath would wonder what you're wondering here, but I'm no expert.

Not just selfishness... I'd describe it as a healthy amount of selfishness, and the others he's mentioned probably don't have enough.

I think of selfishness and I think of taking deliberate actions to serve ones self at the detriment of others. Things like hoarding limited resources or taking a second slice of cake before everyone has had their first.

I will never forgive you, John. You denied me cake.

So inaction can't ever be selfish?

Ding! At a certain point constant existential dread becomes tiring. You spend years mulling on it and the answer continues to be there’s nothing you can do, so what’s the point in worrying? Might as well go do something else and enjoy yourself.

Precisely! In the end, life will kill all of us at some point. Until then we have two choices: We either do what we can with what we have, or we don't.

That’s exactly my strategy for shutting down the existential dread mill. Whenever it bothers me too much I’m pointing my attention to how it all eventually turns to dust. The effect of that enables me to try to enjoy the now.

To me it is mostly that life is boring. At some point you have seen everything interesting and anything you see hence are just fitting into the same basic patterns. Discussions, tv shows, books etc. Living is still better than not living, but every time you experience something new the things left to experience becomes smaller. A few romance movies and you have seen all of them, a few action movies etc, or even psychology papers or math papers etc.

You haven't seen all of them, but the more you see the less value you get from seeing another. So we can conclude that living for an eternity wouldn't be particularly more interesting than living for 100 years, as 100 years is more than enough to see many things in each category. You might not become a world expert in everything, but experiencing the things worth experiencing in the categories doesn't take particularly long to do and after that life is just padding.

The main reason to live now is that there are new interesting things coming out still, since computers are still young. That adds new things over the years. But interesting progress isn't really the norm, it isn't like physics or math has gotten any more interesting over my lifetime and I expect computers to get there before I die and then there isn't much left.

Edit: For example, everything we produce today is based on the same math and physics my grandfather learned in college. There has been no practical progress since then there. Main thing since is new tools enabled by computers that are more precise or automate things, that is interesting but the discoveries enabled by more automation/precise tools will run out at some point.

True when you focus solely on consuming.

Turn to creating (art, science, a better mousetrap), and there’s no end in sight.

No end?

Spider Robinson, Melancholy Elephants:

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm

I'd agree that at some point being "creative" feels like just another kind of killing time with minesweeper or crossword puzzles or whatever.

I think you need bias for the things you create for that to work. For me, if I create something then it isn't more interesting than if someone else created it, and creating something that is really interesting is really hard, people who can do that get rich.

You're focusing on how socially valued your creative work is (and how it ranks relative to others), which is an external factor. I tend to find that if you justify doing creative work on whether it'll be better/more interesting than others or you think it'll increase your status somehow (popularity/wealth), it's not as fulfilling and you'll probably never create anything.

What I find more fulfilling is creating for its own sake and for myself. Completely abandoning the thought of whether what I'm making will have utility for the whole world and I'll be lauded for it. Creating things that I find interesting, and also abandoning the view whether others will find it as interesting or high quality. For me, I've realized that I feel more fulfilled if I'm doing/creating more and consuming less. The mere act of doing/creating something in of itself is the end I try to seek.

> Creating things that I find interesting

But I don't find the things I create to be interesting, that was my point. To me things aren't interesting just because I create them, but that seems to be the case for you, you think that the things you create are interesting somehow, I don't understand that.

Do you mean you find it interesting to learn how to create things? I can agree with that, but once I've learned to create something then I don't see why it would be interesting anymore. That feeling ends very quickly once you've created a few things and understand how to create most related things. If you have programmed games, web, low level and ML at a professional level there isn't much more fun things to learn in programming, and so on. And you get there very quickly if your goal is to learn those things and not to make the most money you can. And even learning more domains and more things gets boring after a while, as the process isn't that different between learning different things.

I think there a few aspects to whether something can be 'interesting' to me with regards to creation (i'm probably missing some):

1. Is the broader topic/activity interesting to me? (interesting in of itself, not for the other reasons listed below)

2. The act of doing is interesting to me in of itself (as opposed to consuming)

3. The act of growth/learning/getting better is interesting to me

4. How good the output of my creation can/will be

5. How will the output be socially valued in a way beneficial to me (whether status/wealth/whatever)

I will say as I've gotten older, I've started to really decrease focus on #5, as I've found it to be the most empty for me (not to say I haven't achieved success there, but it's just a never-ending treadmill when you compare with others).

I try to really focus on #'s 1-3, as they give me the most joy.

> So we can conclude that living for an eternity wouldn't be particularly more interesting than living for 100 years

It should be. As you get to see the heat death of the Universe. Or at least experience its beginnings; or at experience an ice-age or something.

As another commentator pointed out you seem entirely focused on consuming. Yes, I can see where this gets boring. I am less apt to visit Reddit because I've seen the same posts dozens of times. I am not apt to watch many movies or shows for the same reason.

But life boring because consumption becomes boring? Nothing could be further from my experience! Instead of a focus on consumption, or even a focus on creation, I find a focus on skill-building to be where it is at. This summer I have taken up beekeeping, keeping chickens, and learning to fish. (We also got a second puppy which is also an adventure in getting to know this dog's way-of-being and how we can train her to be one of us even as she changes us by her inclusion.) Even though I've put hours and hours into all of my projects I am a novice and I recognize that. I have more questions and ambitions now than when I began. With fishing I've caught 9 different species so far this summer. Now I want to catch another set (pike, walleye, perch, catfish), try new lures and learn how to use them, explore new places to fish, and learn how to clean and cook them. (Catch and release solely so far.) I haven't harvested honey yet from my hives nor dealt with mite infestations. With my chickens I'm still learning their patterns and waiting for the first eggs. The chickens also forced me to upskill my building abilities so I could make them a coop and run.

I also have in my wheelhouse of fun-to-me (ie not work) skills house repair (remodeled a bathroom last year), my own car repairs, woodworking, reading and writing, baking, sourdough, kombucha, beer-making, yogurt making, gardening etc. I am no where near a master in any of them and I don't do them all all the time. There is so much fun in learning a new skill, and seeing over time how I become better at it. I am a master of none of those, but I keep growing in all of them. There's always someone else better than me at an aspect of each of those. There is always a new thing to learn to do, something to be better at, feedback to receive. Any one of these could keep me extremely busy for several years trying to master them.

And there are definitely more skills than anyone could learn in a lifetime. Off the top of my head I have on my to-learn list leatherworking, blacksmithing, circuitry, furniture building, 3dprinting, basic microbiology and chemistry, cnc machining, publishing a book, photography, guitar, piano, singing, hunting, target shooting, skeet shooting, and on and on. This is my list, I'm sure other people have their own list with really cool things I've never thought of. (And once I do they get added to my list!)

I think the difference is the mindset. It isn't about whether or not someone else cares about the end product. It isn't even about whether the end product is really any good. It is about me being able to do it adequately. It is about growth and change in myself. If I judged myself by Hollywood, YouTube, or Instagram portrayals of any of my hobbies I would despair. I'm not as good a fisherman as Richard Gene. I'm nowhere near as capable with hand tools as Paul Sellers. My sourdough is pathetic compared to Maurizio of The Perfect Loaf. I don't have the teaching/communication skills of someone like Feynman. But that isn't the point. The point is I'm better at something today than I was yesterday. The point is I did something successfully, even if it isn't perfect. After enjoying that success I can always find more areas to improve which is a new challenge to accept.

Boring? Only if I gave up my personal drive to improve and find things to do.

edit: I focused entirely on skill here. There are also interpersonal relationships that take time and effort and can be richly rewarding. Even without all of the above my life would never be boring because of the people in it.

But isn't it boring knowing roughly where you will be in a year or two? It isn't like fishing or cooking are unknown territory, the skill curve is very easy to look up so you know roughly what you will be able to cook or what kind of things you will do when you go fishing. When I learned physics or programming that altered my worldview, many other things I've learned like play tennis didn't give me anything like that at all. Its just a list of things to practice, and then you have built the skills to execute them and that is it you can now serve properly or whatever you practiced, doesn't give any satisfaction since you knew the outcome even before you began.

So at least to me there aren't many things left worth learning. Maybe chemical engineering could be interesting to learn, as it isn't entirely clear to me how people work with chemistry, I have no idea what I'd be able to do with a few years learning chemical engineering.

I can see the argument. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing is by saying your position is something like: because I can look up the best and what that looks like it is boring to strive for it.

The difference for me is I haven't experienced what it is like to be good. You know how an olympic gymnast makes insane feats of body control appear easy? I have no idea what that feels like. (and I never will, in my upper 30s I am beginning to lose flexibility needed, not to mention I have no desire to put in the effort in that area.) I don't know what it feels like to fight a 70lb halibut in the north pacific. Sure I can watch someone do it, but to have the skill to do it, to have the experience of catching a massive fish is entirely different than watching someone else do it.

yeah, someone else does it better. (In fact I'm watching Richard Gene the Fishing Machine on Youtube as I write this. I'll never be a fisherman like him. ) The difference is doing as opposed to watching. I have all sorts of second-hand fun watching youtube. But I have so much more fun when I make my own accomplishment. My fish may be smaller and objectively less interesting than the one I saw caught on YT. But the experience of doing is radically different than the experience of watching. I find doing much more engaging.

If I were you I'd look for something that you like to do. Doesn't have to be fishing, that's me. Maybe you like to crochet or program, cook or build. Whatever it is, find something that makes you say "hey, I did that. cool." and go with it. That's where living is!

People have treated me like a genius wherever I go. I got invited to do research in my freshman year in college. To me being among the best at something isn't very interesting, its just going through the motions, have gone through it many times. It gets boring quick, instead of focusing on one area I just went into new ones because it isn't fun to be among the best. But that gets tiring as well. Made lots of money working for Google, so now I don't even have a good reason to work so quit and spent time just learning whatever and now I don't have anything left I care to learn really.

Not sure what to do, maybe people who learn faster run out of things to learn faster and therefore aren't as happy? I can see life being much more interesting if you learn much slower, since then there are more interesting stuff left to explore. Basically, the better you are at predicting stories the more boring movies and books will be, etc.

Seems you’ve resigned yourself to “default boring”. That’s your prerogative, but it’s no different from the “existential dread attitude shift” which spurred the conversation.

You have the means to meaningfully improve the lives of others and are focusing on how to entertain yourself. Do something for another, like teaching them your skills or donating your money. Heck, start a non-profit which does both! It’s not as easy to be the best when your success depends on the outcome and performance of others.

Have you ever tried getting an addict in a bad place to straighten their life? Frustration is the opposite of boring. There is no formula for that problem or a myriad of other societal issues. There is no right answer for you to arrive at and be objectively the best. In the off-chance that you do crack it, you would have revolutionised at least one field, solved some of humanity’s problems, and gotten a challenge for a while.

You should have gone to a college where that wasn't special.

This view is really interesting to me.

It seems like you are hyper-focused on ends/outcomes. And if an end/outcome of a pursuit isn't completely novel, unpredictable, or result in you being the best at the pursuit, then what's the point? Is that an accurate summary?

I wonder whether there's a higher level view that really prioritizes status seeking, and that a life should be valued based on outcomes/production. And if you can't produce things at the level of the best, what's the point?

If that is the case, I've certainly had those thoughts when I was younger, and I would offer to consider giving yourself a break. Release yourself of expectations of being the best/most novel/etc. Give yourself permission to be a flawed human. Focus on enjoying the little things, focus on the present. Focus on the journey, not the end. We're the self-aware universe, we're so lucky we get to experience things as we do, let's enjoy the ride while we can. And contrary to what you're hinting at, there are an infinite number of possibilities/knowledge to gain. To think us humans have answered all of the questions of conscious experience and the universe (and what may lay beyond) is incredibly naive.

You sound like a fun person to go fishing with :) at least one of us has figured out how to live!

you may be too deep into your grindset to appreciate the unquantifiable value of creating art only for creation's sake

Not sure. I've done original contributions to math, physics and did some significant work as a software engineer. It was fun, but then the void hit where you look back and realize the end result wasn't really interesting. And then you go look for that feeling again, but it gets harder to find every time, just like everything else. Not sure how art would make a difference here, it isn't like art is more interesting than those things, will likely just meet a void again.

In Buddhism, they advise against spending time pondering "unanswerable questions." [1]

If you know a question is unanswerable, and mulling it over makes you unhappy, then it's foolish to continue thinking about it. You can just leave it be and move on with your life. I think most people eventually figure this out on their own some time in their late 20s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions#Sabba...

I thought Zen Buddhists pondered unanswerable questions, like what is the sound of one hand clapping.

I'm not too familiar with Zen, but questions like these are often meant to be nonsense questions with no answer. They push you to think harder and harder until you realize the futility of doing so, at which point you've found the "real" answer.

Previous poster either got this subtly wrong, or phrased it badly, or belongs to a tradition that I'm not familiar with, but a good story on this is the parable of the poisoned arrow: Someone gets shot by an arrow and his friend tells him they have to get to a hospital - the person shot starts worrying about what kind of poison it is, who shot him and why, if the hospital they are going to is any good, etc, etc - really he needs to go and get it treated RIGHT NOW and nothing else matters - he can answer all those questions after he's treated.

And I wouldn't say the zen koans are unanswerable, you can think of them like riddles that force you to think a different way than you normally do.

Yeah this - it just takes time, and some don't reach that point, but it's a natural progression after you get your first glimpse at how things are. I often forget how dark it can get when you first face that dread.

Could it be that 'smart' people have accomplishment or material gain later in life they are satisfied with?

Unsolicited advice from some random guy on the internet:

Don't start down that road. Material success will always be just over the next hill, regardless of how much you already have. Happiness and satisfaction can't come from accomplishment or material gain.

Compared to what it was like when I was working at Walmart...?

Yeah, material gain has certainly made me a thousand times happier. I haven't had to worry about an Electric bill in years. I used to have to navigate and memorize the electric company shutoff routine so I could pay as late as possible while selectively mitigating late fees and disconnect fees in relation to payday.

I can afford to go on vacations now. Take PTO when I want to. When my AC dies I don't have to just suffer until my landlord decides to do something; I can just pay the repair guy $700 to fix it and have AC in a couple hours. Eating healthier is easier; I don't have to stress in social situations about how run down or holey my clothes are. I have the luxury of being able to eat and survive if I am fired allowing me to be more confident in how I carry myself at work. (Meaning I don't have to kiss-ass when I am being mistreated). I have the money to travel if god-forbid my wife needs an abortion, or I can move away from bad neighborhoods very quickly.

The pursuit of wealth in and of itself as a measure of personal worth will not bring happiness, but let's not all pretend that money doesn't bring happiness insofar as it provides individual autonomy over their lives.

I agree with the OPs point that some older people may have just reached a level of material success that grants them the luxury of 1. Processing their existential dread through things like therapy; and 2. Live a less stressful life that comes with a certain level of wealth

> Compared to what it was like when I was working at Walmart...?

No kidding. I wonder how many tech workers have had a job outside the industry. Money solved a whole shitload of my problems.

Whether you like my definition or not, I would argue that you are describing the difference between poverty and sufficiency. This is not wealth or achievement, but our system makes it easy to assume that.

The churn at the bottom is intended to motivate your continued activity and striving.

You are perhaps still too close to the stress of poverty to see that what you are describing is not happiness either, but something more like the removal of capitalism’s sharp rocks from your shoes.

Jordan Peterson (I know, I know...) made an interesting remark in one of his lectures recorded long before he became famous:

"Once you make about $60,000 a year for your family, but let's say for you personally, additional income makes zero has zero impact on your quality of life."

https://youtu.be/NV2yvI4Id9Q?t=63

I've definitely gotten better at consciously adding things the list of shit I try not to to think about. Which is pretty long at this point.

I finally tried weed well into my 30s and discovered it's great at making sure I don't think about those things when I'm trying to go to sleep, which is really nice.

In general I'm pretty sure I've got a fair amount of derealization going on all the time now, which... helps?

I suppose that all adds up to some kind of mellowing out.

Yeah, I find that looking at anything space-related helps me remember that our entire species and history are completely and utterly insignificant in the grander scheme of things. All this day-to-day drama just really isn’t that important.

well i mean it's also completely valid to say everything else in the universe is completely and utterly insignificant compared to my decision on what to have for lunch.

just because the universe is big and old doesn't mean it has any special meaning or significance.

Cognitive decline is a natural consequence of aging

Whereas in youth cognition is still developing.

A possible explanation is that the mellowing is due to the loss of acuity with age. The more likely explanation is that it's an evolutionary adaption in response to how ones function in society changes with age.

I think it's just increased wisdom and maturity. Some people need a certain number of years (their twenties) before you start noticing how pointless and bad for you it is to be angry at the world.

I think it is more you start out trying to fix the worlds problems, and then after some years you give up and become happier. I don't think it is wisdom or maturity, many people give up as a kid and just go through the motions from the start, I wouldn't call those wise or mature.

> I think it is more you start out trying to fix the worlds problems,

I can't think of that many young twenty-somethings who want to fix the worlds problems. If anything, younger people are more focused on themselves [1] that people after the 30-35 yo mark.

[1] That's not an accusation or anything. It's natural that, when you're young, you need to figure out who you are and what you want out of life, and that requires a lot of focusing on oneself. Not to mention just growing into being an actual adult is also not easy and requires a lot of trial, error and introspection - something that is not as required when one is older and more formed already.

I think both generalizations are off the mark a bit. A lot of young folks are very idealistic and think they can have a larger impact (i.e. fix the world's problems). You also have those that are self-focused. Some of that is combined - focused on self means you may have an over-inflated sense of what you can accomplish and how your contributions will be received.

A lot of that is why some young entrepreneurs do go on to actually change the world (and we definitely need those people, although it isn't always for the best). But most that think that's what they are going to do fail a few times, and become more realistic in their views of what they can accomplish.

Sometimes the smarter someone is, the more quickly they can think through the possible results and come to those conclusions that they probably aren't going to be one of the few that does succeed to change the world, and that can (to the overall point here) lead to a sense of sadness and loss, maybe without having gone through the effort and failure, even. Which is a bit sad for everyone, because some percentage of those people probably could succeed if they just got out of their own way and stopped over thinking things, also.

Speaking as someone not totally young, and (hopefully) not totally un-smart, I think its true one mellows out with age, also you can "be the change you want to see". That to me is the only thing we can do. If we all do our bit we can make things a bit better. Some people can make a disproportionately large positive difference. Its never too late to do that.

"going through the motions" is a phrase associated with sadness, not happiness. That's not at all what OP was describing.

EDIT: rephrased to not be snarky