Nothing More, Just for Fun!

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

Today I saw laike9m recommending the latest episode of “The Python Hunter,” featuring a conversation with Hawstein, the author of Five Years of an Indie Hacker. After reading the transcript and some related materials, I felt inspired to share some thoughts. This is a bit scattered and unsystematic, so please bear with me.

The Randomness of Life

In the transcript, at 13:49, the article by Professor Chen Jiaying should be “Is Saving Black Bears Important?” Life is often random, not the optimal solution after precise rational calculation—whether I should go save black bears, donate to Project Hope, or personally teach in rural areas, these decisions are often determined by things that happen by chance. Looking back, everyone has several such moments when they were completely unaware that their life trajectory would change completely afterward. For me, one such moment was winning first place in the city chemistry competition in middle school. At the time I thought, “Hey, am I the chosen one? Should I study this?” The next steps seemed to follow naturally—continuing chemistry competitions in high school, getting recommended to Peking University for chemistry, coming to the University of Chicago for my PhD. I felt I was doing quite well with effort plus talent, but reality slapped me hard—it’s difficult to find a job! Going through it all, meeting brilliant classmates and friends, I realized I was definitely not the chosen chemistry person. There was no need to persist stubbornly, so I switched to coding.

High Agency

Successfully switching to coding became the main narrative of my life after graduation. I was quite pleased with myself for a few years, feeling I had personally practiced high agency—my fate is in my own hands! Here I’d like to recommend High Agency in 30 Minutes that Hawstein mentioned. People with the highest agency always find ways to get things done. I remember MacMillan from Princeton (turns out he won the Nobel Prize in 2021?! Amazing!) joking during a seminar at UChicago: “The good thing about starting your independent research career at a top school (Berkeley) is that you just give some ideas to top students, and they’ll always make the ideas happen.” To make an imperfect analogy, the difference between regular stars and superstars in the NBA is whether they can create opportunities in seemingly impossible situations, make something out of nothing. Recently I’ve been reading about the American Revolutionary War period, and I’m amazed at how strong these people were—overcoming all obstacles to get things done, like transporting cannons over mountains with ox carts… This might be the difference between great people and ordinary people. But that’s okay, this isn’t black and white. Using our agency reasonably in daily life to make life better for ourselves and those around us is already quite good.

Side Quests

I’ve been a programmer for over seven years now. The initial novelty has long passed, and promotion doesn’t seem to have as clear a path as before. The era’s dividends will eventually (already?) be exhausted, but life must go on, so let’s try something else. I didn’t think about becoming an indie developer. I tried YouTube before, but felt video production was too time-consuming, so I gave it up. Spending 10 hours could only produce a very ordinary video, but if I used that time to write articles, the quality could be higher and reach more readers. My recent theme is experiencing life—while I can’t claim to “read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles,” when visiting scenic spots and such, if I’m interested, I deeply appreciate the people and events of the past and record them (recent examples: Hartford, West Point).

Contemplating Death

“Death and life are indeed great matters!” Many principles in Buddhist scriptures are quite enlightening. Am I also a chosen one with wisdom? Just kidding, but in real life I often still can’t control my emotions toward people and things around me. The three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance still need to be gradually resolved. Hofstadter’s view in “I Am a Strange Loop” makes a lot of sense—we are just survival machines evolved by evolution, so don’t worry too much about “grand narratives” like the meaning of life. After all, life’s truths aren’t learned from books, but lived out. Camus said that facing life’s absurdity, there are three choices: physical suicide, which is complete acceptance of absurdity and a form of escape; philosophical suicide, which resolves absurdity by directing the world’s irrational parts toward God or eternity, but this is also a form of escape. The only viable path is to become an absurd person, face absurdity directly, experience absurdity, create absurdity. In the end, people just pursue “seeing what they want to see in others’ eyes, hearing what they want to tell themselves from others’ mouths” (source). No need to worry about ultimate meaning anymore. Work hard to live each day well, do everything seriously, without being perfunctory or pretentious. If lucky, find some like-minded people in real life or online to chat nonsense with—that’s good enough. Finally, let me add this: after productivity becomes extremely advanced, anything humans produce can be replaced by machines/AI with faster, cheaper, better quality products. What meaning does human life have then? To make an imperfect analogy, in games like Go and chess, humans can no longer beat computers, so why do professionals and amateurs still play? Nothing more, just for fun!