But none of that really matters. Don't plan for the next three years. Life is long, plan for that.

Many of the people I worked with in the '90s achieved a sort of fame like the fame the people you see achieve today. But when their achievements were superceded, they didn't go and do new amazing things. Instead they didn't do much at all, or did things that were completely tangential to their skill set, things they couldn't really excel at.

Part of the reason was that, having worked their way to huge XP, they couldn't start at 0 when they needed to restart the game. So they just didn't play. But we all start back at 0 when we do something new. We progress faster the second and further times around. We talk about learning from failure and doing better the second time around. These people couldn't learn from success.

So now I admire most the people who can achieve thing after thing, even if each of those things is not fame-worthy, not so much the people who have done a single thing, even if that thing gets a TechCrunch headline. The turtle, not the hare. I think the turtles do more good over their lifetimes than the hares, and that people who continue to be productive year in and year out are much, much happier.

My fears now are a different sort: do I still have time to accomplish the things I want to accomplish? Then I remind myself that I still have another 30 or 40 years of work left, as much in front of me as behind me. I encourage you to think that way: you have another 60 years of work left...what can you do over the course of 60 years? Pick a long-term goal (interstellar flight, artificial intelligence, peace on earth, whatever), break it into manageable projects, then start.

Let's think strategically: if your first project is curing aging and achieving immortality, then every other project after that is just a matter of time. Just sayin'.

Actually, if you "cure mortality" first, you will exacerbate all the other problems related to population overshot, environmental damage, wealth distributions, etc. Then elf-style immortality will find itself cured, at gunpoint, or in more gruesome ways.

On the other hand, you can accept that both of us (along with every human alive today) will die. Once you are free of that burden, you may identify a worthy project, push it as further as possible within your lifetime, and take the time to train some younger replacements that can take over later on.

And of course, I might be wrong, so you might end up enjoying amazingly extended lifecycle. I just don't think it is a good idea to count on it.

Why should I accept this? Humanity hasn't been improved by accepting that it was natural for people to die of smallpox, or be crippled by polio. The belief that such diseases could be eradicated was the first step in doing so.

Our limited lifespan is just another thing for us to defeat as a species. I like to imagine some far-off future where parents tell their children about our mortality in the same manner that we are told about diseases like smallpox.

Regarding immortality, you have to remember that every time a major death cause has been neutralized, the probability distribution reorganizes itself and other death causes raise to pick up the slack, even causes which used to be unknown/negligible a few decades ago. That's to say, every life that has been "saved" from smallpox, polio or whatever was not really saved - strictly speaking those people still died (or will eventually die) anyways of a different cause.

That's not to say that life expectancy cannot be extended, or that that is not a worthy goal in itself. But there is still the practical issue that the clock is ticking for every one of us. According to current data, I am expected to live another 40 years or so. During that time, the line can maybe pushed another 10 years, and combined with positive lifestyle changes, having won the genetic lottery in the form of my family having a track record of many long lived members, and a bit of luck too, I don't think it is unreasonable to think that I personally might make it to 100 years in a relatively dignified state. However, that's it, I will already be old and wasted by then, and the only hope I can think on how to extend that even further would be Deux ex Machina.

Now consider the scenario for a baby born today. Maybe those 100 years will give him plenty of time for science to progress and fix a lot of things during his own time... assuming no major threats raise caused by our increasingly industrialized lifestyles, which is doubtful. Maybe all the things considered he will live to see a time when 150 is the average, and he may be able to push it to 170 by being smart and having a lifestyle healthier than average... but that's it.

If I were extremely optimistic, which I find hard to be these days, I would say this trend will stagnate around the 300's due to the law of diminishing returns. So, our descendants might see a time when dying at mere 100 years old is a tragedy, but there is a world of difference from that and actual elf-style immortality (never age or die but by an act of violence that destroys your physical anchoring to this world).

Great comment. It alludes to 'iterating on yourself'. It's difficult when you feel like you're competing with others, rather than working to satisfy your own essential self.

There are so many moments in life where we have to start back at zero. I like to think about the Teddy Roosevelt "Man in the Arena" speech when I'm back at a "0":

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

And yet having kids is wonderful.

I joked to my friend it is like Stockholm Syndrome. You have no choice. You made your bed and must now live in it. Of course you are going to enjoy your kids, it is biologically wired into you and you also have to do it, regardless of how overwhelmed every other part of your life has become because of that one decision.

It has also become very trendy in the last decade or two to devote your entire life to your kids and to never leave them alone, to invade every aspect of their day to the detriment of a parent living their own lives. Extreme detriment. Constant parental involvement. Vicariously living life through your children. It's actually fairly distressing to see adults so subservient to their children. A very modern malaise, this was not how parents acted 20 years ago.

Never trust a parent telling you having kids is great.

I am personally undecided, but I'm deadly serious, never trust a parent saying having kids is great. It's quite literally like they're some sort of possessed zombie, everything they say is basically "HELP! HELP! This is AWFUL! All joy apart from worshipping my child has been DESTROYED!". And yet they all say "Oh, it's wonderful!" in the next breath.

Also, about not having control and not having any time after becoming a parent. I struggled a lot with this myself until I read a passage in a book which shifted my perspective:

"In the past I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself."

Having kids is a totally subjective decision. There are plenty of parents who hate their children, who felt forced into having them by family or society, and end up making their kids' lives terrible (or, in some really extreme cases, murdering them). If you feel pressured into anything, it's probably a bad start.

I'm 32 and I have 3 kids, but I meant to have them. There was no accident, and certainly no regret. I had my first kid, my daughter, when I was 24.

Then again, I never had feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness. I just wanted to have kids while I was young enough to roughhouse with them if they wanted. I grew up with too many friends with OLD parents (who are now dead, generally) who couldn't do anything with us because their back was out or their knees were busted. It's a sad thing to see.

This is one of the many incredible things I discovered when daughter was an infant, and even into her toddler years.

There were days where she was pretty awful, crying and not sleeping, and when she did sleep it wasn't more than an hour. I was upset and distressed, but not once did I ever blame her or get angry, which is a complete departure from my usual "someone has to pay for this" anger that I direct everywhere every day. I'm an incredibly selfish and somewhat unempathetic person.

I had a number of self-aware moments, where I was actively questioning why I wasn't angry at my baby, or at least tired of her, but my only answer was that looking at her, holding her, taking care her, filled me with such joy. And when I was distressed, I was distressed for her sake, concerned for her wellbeing. But never mad at her.

Now I have homework, bed time, bath kids and all the other stuff.

So when a non-parent friend says "We're going to see this amazing band for $$$ we'll be back at 3am" It is VERY tempting to say "Oh my life, my poor life, you guys are so lucky." Because you do feel a little bit like that. For a nano second. And because your mates don't want to hear "Well I HAVE KIDS AND THEY'RE AMAZING!!" so. There's that.

So you (the non-parent) hear part of the story. You are working (as I was a few years ago) on part of the information. It is a lot easier for us parents to talk 'my kids is amazing' at school drop off, or over a cup of tea at lunch time.

Re: "devote your entire life to your kids and to never leave them alone" that is a hard one, your kids NEED YOU. So you can't just drop them off at the park and go to the pub. Also, all your old friends don't want to play football with the kids, so your kids start to be your new friends. Which is weird.

Why not? I used to play in a park with other friends all the effing time after around 2nd grade or so.

I guess though, that the US has a far lower "implicit layer of support" though -- if anyone in our community saw kids going somewhere they weren't supposed to, they wouldn't bat an eyelid at hauling us up and taking us back to our homes. In th US if it's someone's else's kid, you automatically go into "NOT MY PROBLEM" mode :)

If your friends are doing nothing, and they aren't a single parent, it's their fault - because they would rather be with their kids, or doing something else. It doesn't take two people to watch/play with a kid.

I have one and it isn't so bad. I'm more productive at work because my time is more accounted for. Things are a bit hectic but it's not like I'm in some coal mine in Siberia. Life is mostly the same.

We can't do all night 5am ragers, but we can individually show up and go home around midnight. My wife still does happy hour once a week. I usually get some extra time on weekends to play some games.

A friend of ours still watches 2 movies/week in the movie theatre, because that's what she really enjoyed. Another goes to brunch every sunday, because it's a tradition with her friends.

Basically, you pick what you care about the most, and cut the things that don't matter as much to you.

You stuck your penis in someone (assuming you are male). That's all you did. And then did all the exact same things that billions of other parents do, feed, burp, clothe, ship 'em off to be educated by someone else. Statistically speaking, you're probably not a fantastic parent, just another average Dad. One of literally billions of parents.

So why are your kids 'better' than anything you've done? Almost anyone can do it. It is probably one of the least impressive achievements any human can do, yet a large amount of parents list it as a major lifetime achievement, often as their only achievement. It's another one of those 'zombie' phrases, there is nothing at all, absolutely nothing, remarkable about raising a child. It is one of the most ordinary, banal things, a human can do. And yet so many people are proud of doing it.

I simply can't understand, looking from this side of the mirror, not having kids. But can you understand just how utterly unremarkable and unimpressive it is having kids? From this side of the mirror?

Call your parents, folks. Go check on the kids too, if you've got them. There's pretty much no higher human activity than either of those two things. As long as they keep happening, everything will be alright. The rest is just icing on the cake ..

You can say "So what, all you did was run 26 miles, lots of people do that, some even run hundreds, or walk cross country, what you did isn't that special."

Well, yeah, it's not, but that doesn't mean it doesn't feel good to look at your accomplishments and feel awe that you completed it.

It's like that with kids. You pass off the whole raising them with "feed, burp, clothe, ship 'em off to be educated by someone else" which is just sad and insulting. You gloss over the sleep deprivation, the worry that wake you up in the middle of the night, the laughter and tears of the kids, and parents teach kids more than you give them credit for.

Absolutely. This is exactly how I and a whole lot of people remember feeling before having kids. This is part of the thing that makes it so remarkable: before having kids, I couldn't imagine myself being so enamored with it, and yet here I am, victim of some kind of strange brainwashing that turns out to make the incredible, incredible pain in the ass of it all worth it. And not merely worth it in a "this is tolerable" way, but worth it in a "omg I have to tell other people about this" way. It's ridiculous, I know. But it happens. I'm of the opinion that this delusion is inextricably linked to the survival of our species, because in your worst moments, it's what keeps you from letting the screaming little bastards die.

I can sort of understand how you might not understand it if you have no idea what's involved in being a parent.

But you do seem to be ignoring some stuff:

i) The biological imperative. Not everyone has this, and it's important not to stigmatise people who just don't want to be parents. But it's strongly there for many people, so having children seems to be important.

ii) "You stuck your penis in someone (assuming you are male). That's all you did." well, it's not that easy. For some parents it's a lot more difficult than that; and a few adopting parents don't even have the stage involving biological gloop.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/2295.aspx?CategoryID=54

> Most couples (about 84 out of every 100) will get pregnant within a year if they have regular sex and don’t use contraception. However, women become less fertile as they get older. A recent study has found that couples having regular unprotected sex:

> aged 19-26 - 92% will conceive after one year and 98% after two years

> aged 35-39 - 82% will conceive after one year and 90% after two years

iii) For most parents it's a big step. They make a concious choice to stop contraception and to start trying for a child; or they start the adoption process. It's not like buying a car or changing job - both of which are pretty significant life changes for some people.

iv) Oxytocin

v) sleep deprivation and some form of domestic Stockholm Syndrome. You have to give up so much for a child, and your life totally changes in ways that you can't fully predict until it happens. So you kind of have to say how brilliant it is.

vi) The fresh perspective a child has will teach you about the world. You learn most when you teach someone else. Watching a child learn how to manipulate a toy or learn to read is enriching.

And so many people repeat this - that children radically change their lives, and that their children are the best thing they've ever done - that I'm surprised you haven't considered whether it might be more significant than just "You stuck your penis in someone".

(I don't know much about adoption but I do know some very kind, loving, great parents who adopted so I'm trying to be inclusive of their experiences.)

Random, but I think there's a correlation between "age > 30" and capitalization of folder names.