Summary

The article discusses the importance of finding personal fulfillment through hobbies and meaningful goals to counteract the monotony of daily life, suggesting that this approach is more effective than the vague concept of 'love' often proposed as an antidote to life's weariness.

Abstract

The author reflects on a previous post that suggests 'love' as a solution to the repetitiveness and weariness of life but finds this answer unsatisfactory due to its lack of specificity. Instead, the author proposes that engaging in hobbies and setting achievable goals can provide a more tangible sense of purpose and satisfaction. Drawing parallels between human motivation and the vanishing gradient problem in neural networks, the author argues that clear, personal objectives can act as a 'gradient' to guide one's efforts and improve one's life. The article highlights various hobbies, such as app development, game development, and travel, as means to create one's own sense of achievement and break the cycle of monotony. The author emphasizes that while love and relationships can contribute to happiness, the focus should be on pursuing activities that offer a sense of progress and accomplishment.

Opinions

The author disagrees with the notion that love is a sufficient answer to the feeling of weariness in life, finding the suggestion too vague and random.
Depression is likened to the vanishing gradient problem in neural networks, where individuals struggle to see the impact of their actions on the larger picture.
Engaging in hobbies, particularly those that can also benefit one's professional life, is presented as a practical way to create a sense of purpose.
The author believes that setting subgoals in life, similar to achieving objectives in a video game, can make life more enjoyable and less monotonous.
While acknowledging that relationships and meeting new people can be beneficial, the author prefers concrete activities with clear objectives over the abstract concept of love.
The article suggests that the human mind can be approached with logic akin to solving problems in computing, and that setting meaningful tasks is key to overcoming life's repetitiveness.

The Antidote For The Weariness And Repetition Of Life

I recently read this post.

I’m Tired of Life

Is there an antidote for the weariness and repetition?

medium.com

which talks about how many people are tired of life. And it can definitely feel like that sometimes. You wake up, eat, go to work, eat, go home, eat some more, and sleep. Like what’s the point?

The author says love is the answer. I don’t agree. Especially as the answer being love is so random given the rest of the post. They’re just like:

The higher aim of our existence, the antidote to weariness and repetition, is love

Well, love can work. But, I don’t know, the way the author just randomly says ‘love’ is just a bit… strange. But I think the word ‘love’ is not specific enough. What do you mean by love and how does it actually help?

Everyone Needs A Hobby

I’m actually reminded of this post that I wrote

What Is General Intelligence, Really?

Ever since ChatGPT came out I keep on hearing this term: ‘artificial general intelligence’. This is the idea that……

medium.com

In it I talked about general intelligence and what it actually means to have general intelligence. And I said this:

Humans are the same. And if you doubt that consider depression. What is depression but a suppression of your long term goals? Think about it. There’s no reason to keep on living because at the end of your life it’s not going to make any difference. So why do you do it? Because you have some survival instinct programmed into you?

I mean, it’s a bit cynical, but it’s accurate. In fact the more I think about it the more I think depression is remarkably similar to a problem in neural networks: the vanishing gradient problem.

The vanishing gradient problem comes about when you have too many numbers. Because neural networks are basically extremely complicated equations, having them be too big makes it extremely difficult to know which number to increase or decrease and by how much (called the gradient) to improve the neural network.

Humans are the same way. Most people do not see how their work helps the company, let alone the world. So it’s very difficult to know what you can change to improve. Too many numbers, too complicated of a system, vanishing gradient.

So how do you fix this? Well, you short-circuit the equation. You create your own gradient, your own thing you can improve at independent of the outside world. And what is this? A hobby.

There are many hobbies you can do. For example I’m an app developer and that’s a hobby. Just because it makes money doesn’t mean it can’t be a hobby. So you could make an app. Although this can be difficult to get into if you don’t have an interesting idea.

Another interesting hobby is game development. It’s easy to get into, just copy a game you like. And it will take you forever to finish. And plus it could give you skills that help you in your professional life.

That was the idea behind Stardew Valley. The developer, Eric Barone, made it to learn programming. It took him four years and it ended up making him millions.

Now the point isn’t to get rich on your hobbies, Eric Barone was in the right place at the right time. It’s just to show you how engaging hobbies can be. And don’t be restricted to programming. You can also take up photography, hiking, painting, writing, gardening, travel.

Actually travel can be expensive. Well… it can be cheaper than staying at home. There’s a person on Reddit saying they are able to travel for only $300 a month by finding cheap European flights, house sitting, and eating in. But there’s a reason why that post had a lot of negative comments: it’s just not the lifestyle for everyone. But it can work.

And when I say ‘hobby’ I don’t mean this has to be a skill that you constantly improve on. That would help, but all you need is a meaningful goal.

It’s like in a video game. Cheat codes can make a video game more fun but you can’t keep on using cheat codes forever otherwise the game isn’t fun anymore. Because that goal that you were reaching for is no longer meaningful.

So I guess you can think of life as a video game. The common remark is ‘graphics are amazing but the gameplay sucks’. Well, make the gameplay funner. And do that by setting subgoals to achieve.

That is the true antidote for the weariness and repetition of life. I guess love would also work. Although I don’t see a romantic partner helping that much. Maybe love as in ‘relationships’ or ‘meeting new people’.

I don’t know, ‘love’ is too vague and I hate vague things. I deal in logic. And I guess it’s a good thing that the human mind is so similar to a computer and we know how to solve problems with computers. It’s very simple, all you need is a new objective function, a meaningful task to finish, a hobby.

If you liked this article consider following me on one of my publications: The Rest Of The Story (RSS) or Lost But Coding (RSS). You can do so with my RSS reader Echo available one iOS (and Apple Silicon Macs) and Android.