I don't really get it, but still kind of liked it?
I enjoyed the abstractness of the story and the disjointedness of the time aspects. I don't disagree with the salience of the point Death made but it kind of felt like an exposition dump in a movie.
Not that I'm a good writer (or reader tbh) but I think focusing more on the first kind of writing and less on the second would have connected more with me.
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” - Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
This story has a strong "life sucks then you die" vibe going for it. And the afterlife also sucks apparently (although I don't personally believe in an afterlife).
Hopelessness and injustice seem to be the current zeitgeist - at least for anyone who spends a lot of time online. And I get it, there's plenty to be unhappy about.
But my counter-argument is that it's possible to do things in life that you're proud of. And find happiness in the simplest of places. And most people would do better to focus the majority of their attention on those things.
This story says "do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all" - which I agree with. But I'd go one step further and add "celebrate your successes" and try to align your life in such a way that you can have successes worthy of celebrating.
It makes me wonder: with everyone seemingly so unhappy, why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture. You don't need the whole world to go along with you - just a handful (or less) of likeminded people. Or some people even manage to go it alone.
It seems a lot of people (perhaps a vocal minority?) actually enjoy being upset. Or maybe everyone is going through ups and downs but we just tend to be more vocal when we're upset.
> why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture.
I think the brony and furry community count for some examples. Brony community has been a major counter-culture since its inception and I truly believe it's had a measurable impact on gender norms and some other areas. Many of us see it as something of a lifestyle where it dominates the spaces we primarily engage in etc.
Furry is even bigger and easier to argue as a popular counterculture lifestyle, and growing all the time (record convention attendance every year).
They're also places where some other things like polyamory are more common, and much more LGBT/etc inclusive than average (which is less of a statement now, but they were both far ahead of the curve on that years ago), refreshingly sex-positive (at least the parts of the communities I identify with).
Personally all of those things apply to me and I love being a part of those communities. Brony community has been a hugely important thing in my life since high school and working on game development there was a big jumpstart on experience working in a team/technical experience. Furry I only started exploring more a few years ago but I've made a lot of great friends and met my current partners there too.
Brony's a consistent core of lifetime holdouts like me and a steady trickle of new people at this point, and furry's growing faster all the time - even the little bonfire meetup at a nature preserve I like to go to had a record smashing attendance on opening day this year.
I'm going to say it will be similar to the experience prior to birth / conception, ie. we were nothing, and to nothing we shall return.
It's a scary feeling if you can grasp it. Grasping non-existence from within existence is difficult, I've consciously tried to do it and succeeded a couple of times, but it's fleeting and both times it affected my breathing and heart rate in a similar way to fear or panic or pain.
As someone who was born, I can attest that the experience of not being born consisted of billions of years passing by in an imperceptibly short instant, followed by being five.
I go through that exercise of visualizing the void and it is fascinating and terrifying at the same time, especially if you do it before going to sleep.
That being said, you can't just assume that existence is bounded by your living memories. You might as well have been everything instead of nothing prior to being spawned and you just don't remember it.
There's a perfect balance of absurdity and casualness that makes almost perfect sense that you can follow the show, and yet bizarre enough that you stick to know more.
Many coast on just that knowledge and die without the WHY to survive question ever coming up.
But if it does come up for you at some point in life, know that different philosophies have different answers. These days you can find summaries of all of them neatly complied like a restaurant menu thanks to LLMs.
People are very diffefent so you find the philosophy that fits you. Also thanks to all those differences proving one is the best is a waste of time and energy. Different ones are useful for different situations.
I had the experience recently of asking an LLM about the Buddhist view on reincarnation, and then hearing its views on what this means for its own existence. I'm not sure any of it left me feeling better about death, but it was a fascinating conversation.
I appreciate the Australian salty outlook on life, feels very much present in this story.
To my mind there is a Buddhist story hiding in here. The whole idea about an endless black void and that the protagonist considered sitting felt…allegorical? metaphorical?
The end is what drove it home for me. People generally speaking would prefer not to do any internalizing about death whatsoever and will take an endless wandering over the hard work of being human.
For some reason I imagined death from The Seventh Seal by Bergman here. Very calm and matter for fact kind of a character. Maybe once in a while he may decide to visit for a game of chess...
I'm not quite sure I got it either, but I guess this is probably the main gist:
> by the time most people wind up here, they’ve got plenty of regrets. Nobody gets it all right. You’re born, and then you go through life making the choices that you think are the best given the information you have at the time, and you don’t always have all the information to make the right choices. Do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all
I’m going to annoy people who actually wield this language well. I feel like there’s less of a clear point and more of an aesthetic. Like not even metaphorical or allegorical. It’s just the overall feel of wandering and pointlessness that creates a sense of calm.
I'm reminded of the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Time:
"And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
no one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun"
The longer you live, the more tiny little mistakes you make. Things that at the time you could have done better, if you'd known, if you'd been a bit more careful. And these weigh on you, emotionally, pretty consistently.
And while it's pretty absurd, in the story, such tiny mistakes having such outsized consequences, the story reminds us that such severe consequences are well within the realm of possibility. People do lose limbs off of little, careless mistakes. Doubly so with all the incredibly concentrated sources of energy we have in the modern world - power tools, automobiles, explosives.
Would one really lose ten years trying to pick out a single Netflix show? No. But could one wake up one day and realize that they'd accomplished nothing of note for a decade, that all their free time was dumped into Netflix shows that weren't even that good?
So, what do you do with all that? Memento Mori, I guess.
It's an allegory for AI hysteria and WFH depression. Generally, anything to put a wet blanket on the nice things that have happened to tech workers in the past few years. To put salt in the wound, it's done in a style that used to delight HN.
It reminded me of those cringe videos CGPGrey put out for COVID.
I don't really get it, but still kind of liked it?
I enjoyed the abstractness of the story and the disjointedness of the time aspects. I don't disagree with the salience of the point Death made but it kind of felt like an exposition dump in a movie.
Not that I'm a good writer (or reader tbh) but I think focusing more on the first kind of writing and less on the second would have connected more with me.
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” - Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
This story has a strong "life sucks then you die" vibe going for it. And the afterlife also sucks apparently (although I don't personally believe in an afterlife).
Hopelessness and injustice seem to be the current zeitgeist - at least for anyone who spends a lot of time online. And I get it, there's plenty to be unhappy about.
But my counter-argument is that it's possible to do things in life that you're proud of. And find happiness in the simplest of places. And most people would do better to focus the majority of their attention on those things.
This story says "do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all" - which I agree with. But I'd go one step further and add "celebrate your successes" and try to align your life in such a way that you can have successes worthy of celebrating.
It makes me wonder: with everyone seemingly so unhappy, why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture. You don't need the whole world to go along with you - just a handful (or less) of likeminded people. Or some people even manage to go it alone.
It seems a lot of people (perhaps a vocal minority?) actually enjoy being upset. Or maybe everyone is going through ups and downs but we just tend to be more vocal when we're upset.
> why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture.
I think the brony and furry community count for some examples. Brony community has been a major counter-culture since its inception and I truly believe it's had a measurable impact on gender norms and some other areas. Many of us see it as something of a lifestyle where it dominates the spaces we primarily engage in etc.
Furry is even bigger and easier to argue as a popular counterculture lifestyle, and growing all the time (record convention attendance every year).
They're also places where some other things like polyamory are more common, and much more LGBT/etc inclusive than average (which is less of a statement now, but they were both far ahead of the curve on that years ago), refreshingly sex-positive (at least the parts of the communities I identify with).
Personally all of those things apply to me and I love being a part of those communities. Brony community has been a hugely important thing in my life since high school and working on game development there was a big jumpstart on experience working in a team/technical experience. Furry I only started exploring more a few years ago but I've made a lot of great friends and met my current partners there too.
Brony's a consistent core of lifetime holdouts like me and a steady trickle of new people at this point, and furry's growing faster all the time - even the little bonfire meetup at a nature preserve I like to go to had a record smashing attendance on opening day this year.
> And the afterlife also sucks apparently (although I don't personally believe in an afterlife).
Why don't you believe in the experience after dying ?
I'm going to say it will be similar to the experience prior to birth / conception, ie. we were nothing, and to nothing we shall return.
It's a scary feeling if you can grasp it. Grasping non-existence from within existence is difficult, I've consciously tried to do it and succeeded a couple of times, but it's fleeting and both times it affected my breathing and heart rate in a similar way to fear or panic or pain.
As someone who was born, I can attest that the experience of not being born consisted of billions of years passing by in an imperceptibly short instant, followed by being five.
I go through that exercise of visualizing the void and it is fascinating and terrifying at the same time, especially if you do it before going to sleep.
That being said, you can't just assume that existence is bounded by your living memories. You might as well have been everything instead of nothing prior to being spawned and you just don't remember it.
I think that once the power supply to my brain shuts down, that's likely the end of my conscious experience.
This style of writing feels like the Minecraft Parkour Civilization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFwQiwRbcg
There's a perfect balance of absurdity and casualness that makes almost perfect sense that you can follow the show, and yet bizarre enough that you stick to know more.
Most people/groups are taught How to survive.
Many coast on just that knowledge and die without the WHY to survive question ever coming up.
But if it does come up for you at some point in life, know that different philosophies have different answers. These days you can find summaries of all of them neatly complied like a restaurant menu thanks to LLMs.
People are very diffefent so you find the philosophy that fits you. Also thanks to all those differences proving one is the best is a waste of time and energy. Different ones are useful for different situations.
I had the experience recently of asking an LLM about the Buddhist view on reincarnation, and then hearing its views on what this means for its own existence. I'm not sure any of it left me feeling better about death, but it was a fascinating conversation.
I appreciate the Australian salty outlook on life, feels very much present in this story.
To my mind there is a Buddhist story hiding in here. The whole idea about an endless black void and that the protagonist considered sitting felt…allegorical? metaphorical?
The end is what drove it home for me. People generally speaking would prefer not to do any internalizing about death whatsoever and will take an endless wandering over the hard work of being human.
For some reason I imagined death from The Seventh Seal by Bergman here. Very calm and matter for fact kind of a character. Maybe once in a while he may decide to visit for a game of chess...
Can a kind soul write down their interpretation of the story? I didn't quite get it.
[Edit]: Thanks for all the explanations!
I'm not quite sure I got it either, but I guess this is probably the main gist:
> by the time most people wind up here, they’ve got plenty of regrets. Nobody gets it all right. You’re born, and then you go through life making the choices that you think are the best given the information you have at the time, and you don’t always have all the information to make the right choices. Do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all
I’m going to annoy people who actually wield this language well. I feel like there’s less of a clear point and more of an aesthetic. Like not even metaphorical or allegorical. It’s just the overall feel of wandering and pointlessness that creates a sense of calm.
Don’t sweat the small stuff
understated throwaway line. its often the small stuff that we gnaw on for too long.
I'm reminded of the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Time:
The longer you live, the more tiny little mistakes you make. Things that at the time you could have done better, if you'd known, if you'd been a bit more careful. And these weigh on you, emotionally, pretty consistently.And while it's pretty absurd, in the story, such tiny mistakes having such outsized consequences, the story reminds us that such severe consequences are well within the realm of possibility. People do lose limbs off of little, careless mistakes. Doubly so with all the incredibly concentrated sources of energy we have in the modern world - power tools, automobiles, explosives.
Would one really lose ten years trying to pick out a single Netflix show? No. But could one wake up one day and realize that they'd accomplished nothing of note for a decade, that all their free time was dumped into Netflix shows that weren't even that good?
So, what do you do with all that? Memento Mori, I guess.
I've accomplished nothing of note ever. Most people don't. They just live their lives, trying to get by as best they can.
YOLO
Beautifully put, in four letters.
It's an allegory for AI hysteria and WFH depression. Generally, anything to put a wet blanket on the nice things that have happened to tech workers in the past few years. To put salt in the wound, it's done in a style that used to delight HN.
It reminded me of those cringe videos CGPGrey put out for COVID.
Winston Churchill once laid bricks as a means to outrun the black dog.
if life didn't suck and there were not the time out of death there would be no drive to optimize the time we have.
Fantastic, thanks for that!
Reminds me of the cut number "The Hole" from the Beetlejuice stage musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYa31LqxKc8
Great