I see it in another way, a bit nihilistic though. Sure, there are plenty of exits. But we will all have to make the final exit at some point. Either now or 10 years or 50 years. We will all have to go. And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim. And 100 years is, in the grand scheme of things, a blink of an eye.
Even 1000 years would be inconsequential. So why fret about it? Life is yours. It is the only thing that is truly yours. Deal with it as you see fit. Including not wanting to deal with it anymore. It is all your choice and, in the end, we are all the same.
Yep, even famous people in their time are quickly forgotten. How often does anyone under age 60 think about JFK? In another 50 years he’ll be a name among many in a history class, which is more than most people get but that will be the extent of it.
> And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim
FWIW I've been building a family tree recently and I've made it back to 1890. Don't know a lot about those folks but I do have pics. And they're the only tie I have to some family in Germany who I met just recently.
Bit of a tangent though. I don't think I'll optimize for rememberability.
I think it stems from the same reason people care about what others think of them. That has some benefits, but people care about it directly rather than the indirect benefits it brings themselves.
Because if you care about what people think of you, why could that change just because you’re dead?
That wider society sees opinions like - that you are mortal, furthermore, you are only alive for the time being, so make sure not to undervalue the richness of life! - as synonymous with nihilism, has always been a little bit amusing for me. To me, strictly speaking, something like this is like the exact opposite of nihilism, possibly even the most non-nihilistic statement I can think of :) [0]
[0] I mean, when I consider the whole possible space of questions I could ask about life, and the answers that I could arrive at just sitting in my armchair, I think it's quite a rare thing to be comforted in knowing I can easily know in my bones that the answer is correct: that the time to start living is TODAY!
> And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim.
You won't be remembered. The image of you is remembered. Not even that. It would be a photograph of a photograph of photograph of an image. We don't remember julius caesar or george washington. We remember the image of them. They themselves ( who they are or were ) doesn't matter. Just like we remember the image of Jesus Christ, even though the guy might not have even existed. Besides, eventually, there won't be anyone left to remember the image of you. So what's it all about?
Plot:
After you die, you get to another place, call it heaven.
Every time someone who is alive remembers about you, you get a coin.
Coins are used in this afterlife community for food, entertainment, labor, etc
You cannot steal them, although can give as gift to another afterlife person.
Of course, in the beginning you are rich, people miss you. Then income drops...
When you are out of coins - you die second time, most likely forever.
Well written, good plot, etc.
But! In this after world Hitler and cavemen whose body is part of the exhibition in natural sciences museum live better and longer than any "normal" and "ordinary" person, especially in the long time perspective.
P.S. You still can do many things in this world to make people remember you for a long time after you are gone.
We spent a lot of time finding historical data from across the world and building our family tree back a few hundred years. But records didn’t keep as well back then. Now everyone is posting everything everywhere all at once. Do you think there’s a greater chance someone 20 generations from now will be able to look at TikTok and Threads archives and understand and get to know their forebears from 1,000 years ago? I think there’s a good chance of that.
I feel I'll outlive TikTok and Threads, and that paper in records offices will ultimately turn out to be the most durable of current record formats in 20 generations.
I have already outlived many of the websites where I posted information in my teens, and in recent days we've heard about even big sites like Twitter losing some historical data. Not to mention all the users of sites like Orkut, Google+, Friendfeed, Bebo, that one where you checked in your location that I can't even remember the name of...
Twitter/X is evidently seriously bitrotting [0]. Evidently, links to all pre-2014 pics & vids are now dead. Supposedly still on the servers, but whether this is just failing infra or Musk considering destroying all the old data, or putting it behind a paywall is unclear. Either way, all this data is very ephemeral.
> > Even 1000 years would be inconsequential so why fret about it?
Being remembered many years in the future is
very correlated with conspicuous consumption during the individual lifetime
Especially for leaders, but even for artists who get to work for leaders and have their lifestyle subsidised
So even if your goal is just abundance of stuff and experiences then seeking a position that would have you remembered 1000 years from now is the way to go
The death of a living entity is a black hole in itself: matter just get rearranged. Assuming black holes are just galactic sized blenders that leak matter out, eventually.
Another thing that is an unchanging constant, but also changes.
“Black holes have so much gravity that nothing can escape it, not even light”
“Except for all those particles there, and there, it’s called hawking radiation, and eventually the black hole which nothing can escape, not even light, will evaporate from everything escaping it”
I tend to read obituaries of everyday people (as opposed to the long form for famous people) when I see them. They are almost always a cruel distillation of what was certainly a far more complicated life. I think the tradition has evolved so they are written so that the people who knew them best can fill in their own memories. Especially when I don’t know the person they feel callous and lacking.
I imagine that's partly because the obituaries are written soon after the deceased's passing. Someone in the group of people close to the deceased has to write it, and probably someone less emotionally destraught by their passing. So it ends up colder than if someone more emotionally invested had written it.
It’s also in the middle of the insane logistics that get dropped on you when a loved one dies. I wrote my dad’s obituary. Three days prior none of us would have ever thought about it. We were dealing with figuring out what actually happened, planning the funeral, tracking down contact info and notifying friends and family who we hadn’t talked to in sometimes decades, notifying my work, his work, medical bills and health insurance, life insurance claim, police reports, autopsy and coroner, notifying banks, canceling gym membership, unlocking computers and online accounts, pulling out old photos, actually talking to people because everyone I knew was suddenly messaging at once, coordinating family flights and housing from overseas… it’s just one of an crazy number of tasks at that point. You want to do a good job, but you also very quickly want it behind you.
I recall talking to the newspaper and they said it was something like $40 for a text obit, and $75 for one with a picture. For whatever stupid reason I was on autopilot frugal instincts and went with the lower cost option. It didn’t even occur to me until days later that was the dumbest place to save money, and not even that much.
It has been suggested that one should write their own obituary. It gives you perspective. I just tried writing my own and it was a depressing affair. Maybe I need to reconsider my priorities.
Also, it goes without saying that your loved ones will appreciate it when you do finally kick the bucket.
When writing my dad's eulogy I came across a few different pieces of writing he had done describing his life. They weren't exactly obituaries and mostly were full of dumb jokes but they helped a bit.
A good thing to know is there are exits from bad things too. Exit from a vicious cycle, exit from a mental rut etc. While it's best not enter, almost everyone ends up in bad places somewhere along the road.
Some bad things have exits into permanently bad/worse states. And no, it's not required to suffer a lot to accomplish something meaningful, this is just a part of the christian mythology.
For everything you do, there is a last time you do it:
ride a bike, make a new friend, visit Italy, hike a mountain, write code, see the sea, watch Shakespeare, see your mother, post to HN, play tennis, hug your grandchild, eat tiramisu, listen to Miles, have sex, walk without pain, remember your first love, drink a beer, take a breath.
Some are already in your past, you may not know which ones.
The rest are in your future of unknown duration.
They will each pass without fanfare, mostly without you noticing. Like crossing the event horizon of a large black hole: there is no going back, but you may not know it at the time.
I suspect, for me, the last two on my list will be quite close together.
> Upon your exit, your contributions, actions, decisions, opinions and presence most likely will have affected the trajectories of the people and the world around you, in obvious and less obvious ways.
Oh I wouldn't be too sure. The company that had acquired us some years earlier for millions of dollars then proceeded to can our entire division, sunset our product, and laid, more or less, everyone involved off. I cannot fathom what the point of the acquisition was: our wings were clipped before we even had a chance to fail; to date our acquisition is the largest unforced financial error I have seen made in my career, and it will be quite hard to top. We left no mark on the industry, the IP, if it still exists, will collect dust for all eternity. The company is no longer in the market, and I doubt ever will be again.
I was fond of the product, and while the tech had the inevitable layers of PM-driven tech debt layered upon it, it wasn't the worst? The only lesson I can learn there is that caring will bring nothing but disappointment, and that's continued to be driven in by subsequent employers. Today's corporate zeitgeist does not want nor produce, IMO, history-changing labor². (I think the ones listed are products of earlier zeitgeists that could produce such.) Employers do not value retention, so experience is not built within the company. The PMs driven desperate desire to push new features out and bugfix never do not make good products. The inability of today's "agile" to handle uncertainty¹ and dependencies means little to no planning is done (and bad tools like JIRA do not help here).
As for getting my name carved into the annals of history … screw that? Unless that's life's secret to joy and happiness (and I rather doubt it), I think the advice I was once given is sound here: walk around a graveyard and note what is written upon the stones: "loving mother" "caring father" — what you don't see is "excellent <occupation>".
I have a nephew, and I've probably left a larger mark on him and his life (I hope for the better) than anything I've done in my career, despite my career being longer than his life.
¹Yes, I've read the manifesto, yes, I feel the irony in this statement.
²To some extent, at least two companies in FAANG I know do things that do make for a good atmosphere … I partly think this is why they became part of "FAANG". I wish we could emulate some of their less boneheaded decisions (and ignore the boneheaded ones). Perhaps that would someday snowball into another letter in that acronym.
Most businesses fail. Most acquisitions get shitcanned, because statistically most of them are acquisitions of failing businesses. Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP. Or it could have been because they needed to get funds moved, and that company was used to empty the bank, so they could ask VCs for another round, with the added bonus of that purchase raising the valuation. I’m sure there are a million other reasons but I know that every company eventually starts to gobble up other companies so it’s some “tie it up”, “use up the surplus”, or “dodge taxes” reason
> Then there’s the possibility they bought that company and killed it to stomp out completion and suppress the IP.
At their own expense, then, since they lacked a competing product. (And still do, and AFAICT, forever will, since I think this company has declared publicly they're out of that market.)
> other reasons
Yeah, sorry, none of these apply or make sense. Occam's Razor applies: it was a bad 9 figure mistake, that's all there is to it.
If we are applying Occam’s razor then the reason that they are letting the IP rot unused must be because there’s more value in doing so than there is to use it. Business don’t burn 9 figures by mistake usually and the fact they haven’t sold it off to recoup their losses tells me they didn’t make a mistake and the IP rotting unused is exactly where they want it to be and that it was worth the cost to get it. Companies will sell off losses to use the funds elsewhere. They don’t sit on assets that are worthless to them.
“ you should be grateful if your loved ones keep you in their thoughts for those ensuing decades.” I wonder how exactly anyone can be grateful after their exit from life, far as we know that don’t matter after to that person
FYI: (Based on the title) I thought this was an article about how people die, not about prosaic endings like graduating high school and retiring from your job.
This book used to be banned due to its contents, but in 2012 I was able to easily buy a copy from Amazon Japan. And now it's only sold in their third party marketplace, not sure if it's banned again.
A big one for me is exiting one city and entering another (i.e. moving) especially when the new city is in another state. I've switched cities 7 times in the last 9 years and 6 states.
Does it matter? It’ll all be lies to spin something anyway, and that’s if humanity exists, or the same governments do. We won’t hear the lies about George Washington anymore if the country is gone.
Also there’s no way of knowing everything wasn’t created last thursday, or that you’re all figments of my imagination, or we are all in a simulation, or dead, or aliens.
Being remembered after I’m dead doesn’t matter to me. Being thought of while I’m alive does. The only legacy I care about is that my children felt loved by me and that they have good memories with me. I want to die knowing that I succeeded in the one area of my life that actually mattered. Status doesn’t. Money doesn’t. Career doesn’t. I have none of those. My impact on them is what matters
Yeah and I'm surprised at the lack of "exit from parenthood" it's an exit that I dread even though I've just begun the journey. It seems like a poorly thought out piece to have skipped one of the core human experiences.
But you never stop being a parent, unless you are referring to the children dying. On the other hand, you can certainly exit from the not-a-parent state.
Even 1000 years would be inconsequential. So why fret about it? Life is yours. It is the only thing that is truly yours. Deal with it as you see fit. Including not wanting to deal with it anymore. It is all your choice and, in the end, we are all the same.