[WhatsTheBigIdea]

I really like this article.

I bake bread. I have spent a good deal of time optimizing the recipe for deliciousness but also for time efficiency. Proving in a warm oven is a great tip. Also baking two loaves at a time!

All this nit picking about writing style is disappointing. I like that this person got their ideas out there. They are good ideas. Legible and easy to parse == good enough. I don't care about the writing style any more than that and you shouldn't either. It is a waste of everyone's time... yours especially.

It's very nice to hear about someone else who is interested in doing hard things/real things. Seems like there ought to be a meet up or a get together opportunity for people working on stuff like that. Perhaps a get-together where everyone gives a 2-5 minute talk about something they are working on then we all hang out for another hour or two. Seems like alcohol might help get the wheels spinning?

I fully appreciate the need for a catchy headline with a hook (it got me!) but I wonder if these ideas would be more powerful/useful if expressed in positive language rather than doom speak? I guess doom speak is the fashion these days and we all have to conform to the dominant paradigm... at least a little around the edges.

Generally... Bravo. Nice piece. Nice ideas.

[arximboldi]

I really enjoyed the piece also, in spite of the off-putting writing style.

It reminds me of the Epicurean hierarchy of desires, the genius Epicurus had it figured out more then a couple of millenia ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

The thing about "apps for one" actually resonated with me quite a bit.

The last year I've struggled finding freelance work and I've found myself with more time (and less money) that I would like. I feel guilty, because one side of me feels like I should have spent this time to learn ML or to make an app that makes passive income. The thing is: I have no interest in making "apps" to make money. I wouldn't even know what app to make, because there is no quotidian problem for which I think an app would make my life easier. On the contrary, I don't have a smartphone and apps are making my life harder, as we move towards a world where apps are expected for everything. But instead, I have made a couple of games for my girlfriend's birthdays, and I also made her web portfolio, all forms, I guess, of "apps for one" made for love. Other than that, perhaps, I enjoy tuning my Linux system (recently migrated from Xmonad to Hyprland), a form of making, perhaps, an app for one, in the only tech device that still feels like I can control instead of it trying to control myself. Other than that, I use my time to go to the gym and sometimes to paint or DJ or just party, even though I often spend on Hacker News, Youtube, Wikipedia and other media way more time that I would like to.

So all in all, I find it difficult to write code these days with the joy of when I was younger, and it is hard to motivate myself if there's no money involved, with the exception of those gestures of love. It saddens me, because I believe it is such a powerful and beautiful skill. But I just find the current state of world and how "technology" is used to extract capital out of all human relationships rather depressing. The current wave of "AI" only makes the problem worse, and adds an dark sense of impending doom...

[skeltoac]

The writing style is perfect.

It’s not just like that to be spaced out visually. It suggests slowing down, taking your time, digesting each sentence. Not just racing to the end so you can drop a thin take and keep scrolling.

It is a THICK PIECE.

Consume it that way. :)

[R_D_Olivaw]

HN particularly has this "let me critique their writing style and write them off because of it" kind of undercurrent to every blog thread.

I guess it's just the way programmers operate, the text is just code, and they don't like the way it's written. Or, some tendency to boast how it should have been written.

[lucyjojo]

there are waves of people like us. it's the zeitgeist of the era for a sub-category of coders/hackers.

i, too, started baking sourdough bread. and DIY, electronics, music for myself.

i suspect a double digit percentage of that subcategory also dabbles in lisp/clojure/emacs and another double digit subsection abandoned AAA for indie gaming. and a single digit percentage might have enjoyed ruby in the old times.

[cheschire]

It reminds of reading Tao Te Ching.

[CGMthrowaway]

I asked my agent to rewrite this in a more traditional style, if it's helpful to anyone:

A defining experience of our age is a paradoxical hunger: we crave more even when we have an excess, and we crave less while more accumulates around us. It is a vague hunger we often can’t articulate, a deep sense of wanting something fundamental. This is the essence of "thin desire": a craving for something undefinable and ultimately unattainable, from a source with no interest in providing it.

The distinction between "thick" and "thin" desires is simple: a thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it, while a thin desire does not. Consider the desire to understand calculus versus the desire to check your notifications. The desire to learn calculus is thick; it transforms the learner, revealing new patterns in the world and expanding their capacity to care about new things. The desire to check notifications is thin; afterward, you are the same person you were five minutes before. A thick desire transforms its host; a thin desire merely reproduces itself.

The business model of most modern consumer technology is to exploit this distinction. It identifies a thick human desire, isolates the part that produces a neurological reward, and then delivers that sensation without the enriching substance. Social media offers the feeling of connection without the obligations of friendship. Pornography provides sexual satisfaction without the vulnerability of partnership. Productivity apps can give a sense of accomplishment without anything of substance being accomplished.

This thin version of desire is easier to deliver at scale, easier to monetize, and far easier to make addictive, resulting in a cultural diet of pure sensation. Yet, despite getting what we want with such efficiency, we are not happier. Surveys consistently show rising anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Perhaps we have become so proficient at giving people what they want that we have prevented them from wanting anything truly worthwhile.

Thick desires are inherently inconvenient. They cannot be satisfied on demand and often take years to cultivate. Mastering a craft, reading a book slowly, or becoming part of a genuine community requires sustained effort. These pursuits embed us in webs of obligation and make us dependent on specific people and places—all of which is pure inefficiency from the perspective of a frictionless global marketplace.

As a result, the infrastructure for thick desires—workshops, apprenticeships, local congregations, front porches—has been gradually dismantled. In its place, the infrastructure for thin desires has become inescapable, residing in the pocket of nearly every person. Grand programs to "rebuild community" often fail because they try to apply the same logic of scale they hope to escape. The thick life, however, doesn't scale. That is the entire point.

The antidote, therefore, may not lie in large-scale movements but in small, deliberate, and beautifully inefficient acts. Bake bread; the yeast is indifferent to your schedule, and the process teaches a patience that the attention economy has stripped away. Write a physical letter and send it through the mail; it creates a connection that exists outside the logic of engagement metrics. Code a software tool for just one person; building something that will never be monetized is a beautiful heresy against the assumption that all creations must serve millions.

These individual acts will not reverse the great thinning of our culture. But the thick life is worth pursuing anyway, on its own terms. The person who bakes bread isn't trying to fix the world; they are simply trying to spend an afternoon in a way that doesn’t leave them feeling emptied out. They are remembering, one small act at a time, what it feels like to want something that is actually worth wanting.

[canyp]

To put it politely, nobody gives two shits about what "your agent" said, in case you were wondering why this was downvoted to hell. This reply adds nothing to the conversation, and it also doesn't take a mastermind to figure they, too, can paste the post in ChatGPT and get a summary out of it. Also, reading a summary instead of the sources butchers the post entirely.

Hopefully you'll spare us the spam next time. Have a good day!

[elestor]

It's not ChatGPT, try paste it into any AI detector.

[ludvigk]

Did you even read this yourself? You've turned something succinct and readable into a tedious, impenetrable blob.

[CGMthrowaway]

I read both of them. Different strokes I guess