Happy to incentivize thoughtful posts like yours!

Great conversation starter. I heard this idea somewhere (maybe Jordan Peterson? maybe he got it from somewhere else? maybe I'm just thinking of The Giver by Lois Lowry?) , that if humans were actually able to achieve some form of [structured] utopia, it would feel like death and the first thing we'd do is destroy it.

I think there has to be balance between structure and, well, chaos and unpredictability. And actually, I think that dichotomy is that the center of a lot of interesting issues.

Conservatism and liberalism, for example, represent the political beliefs of people who prefer the safety of structure vs joy of change and unpredictability. It's deep shame that polarization is pitting us all against each other - the reality is, each needs the other!

I think highly disciplined individuals without kids should make sure to build in some unpredictability if their lives truly follow a strict schedule every hour of every day... But as far as the day to day life of a parent of 3 kids goes... Listen, even if you have a super strict structure, the kids will inherently counterbalance that. If you still feel like you're languishing in your structure, I think that's a symptom of something deeper.

So, all that to say, structure or no structure, you need to seek a deeper meaning either way. My personal belief is that our minds are very finite, and truth lies beyond our ability to comprehend it. That necessitates faith.

I believe that we can discover and establish truth in our minds, and logic and reasoning can be used to bridge the space between truths, and find pathways to discover more truth. BUT: our ability to use logic and reason is limited, and therefore, to truly pursue the truth and meaning of life, we have to use faith to bridge some of those gaps.

Faith is a way to experience and embrace unpredictability and change and uncertainty, without letting go of truth. Faith is a way to reach meaning that structure and logic cannot reach.

8:00, not 7:30

Can we assume that the lines that go from 12:00 to 5:30 and 1:30 to 7:30 are straight lines?

These are great! Definitely an honorable mention

Definite an honorable mention. I like this one because it has potential to be divisive.

Love this one! Simple enough, makes you think.

Yeah, I check it from time to time. Learning rewards straight to free sats, why not?

Pretty sure you're only taxed if you convert to USD.

Great conversation starter, kudos.

The older I get, the more I realize everything can be taken away at a moment's notice, and it seems like I probably should to know how to literally survive in the woods. Not that I've done much towards that, but to your point, I do think we're becoming increasingly dependent on technology (especially with incoming AI products), and while there's a lot of potential to continuously "stand on the shoulders of giants" and innovate and expand out knowledge to infinity and beyond......... it does seem it like most of the population is going the way of the Wall-E people.

Keep telling everyone we're still early

I’d be surprised to see follow through tbh

I don't think that all people who decide not to have kids are selfish, but this does indeed seem like a selfish perspective.

But the bottom line for me is, I don't think people who think like this should be having kids, haha

I appreciate you making this post - to be completely honest, I wasn't sure what the specific intention behind this territory was, and generally there wasn't a specific "philosophy / deep thoughts / life questions" space, which is why I started ~FiresidePhilosophy... I think there's still going to be some overlap between that territory and this one, but my impression of ~alter_native is that it's intentionally unstructured. I say if that's working well, keep it up!

Super interesting. Honestly it seems super rare that the scandi works out well for folks. Even if they end up with an early advantage, scandi players seem so overly aggressive that it becomes too difficult to maintain the position, and they overextend somehow.

Gradually then Suddenly is one way a to look at it... and a lot of people think it's going to be similar to Weimar. Interest rates and the monetary supply won't just go in the same direction until it's unsustainable... They'll go up and down and up and down until we crash and burn. Each time we print money, we'll over correct with higher interest rates, then we'll over correct with more money printing, then even higher interest rates, then even more printing... At first it'll be boiling the frog, then it'll be an exponential nightmare. At least, that's one theory. Definitely seems like we're in the frog boiling stage rn.

ooooo, that's a really great way to think about it

True. But they don't have eth.news so we're better 😜

The internet should make it easier to break down narratives and misinformation, but there's a bit of a "deconstruction effect" imo... Now there's an infinite amount of misinformation, and it gives people a reason to distrust everything that doesn't fit into their worldview.

There's always been division and misinformation, the internet is exacerbating it at this point in history.