Showing posts with label Mortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mortality. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Sad But Timely
Thinking about Steve Jobs reminded me of this XKCD comic describing how cancer survival rates actually work.
This is why you can be cured of your pancreatic cancer, and still die a few years later.
The picture at the bottom is sobering - give it enough time and all the paths go off to the right, into that night which shall be yours, anon.
Steve Jobs, of course, was well aware of what this all meant:
This is why you can be cured of your pancreatic cancer, and still die a few years later.
The picture at the bottom is sobering - give it enough time and all the paths go off to the right, into that night which shall be yours, anon.
Steve Jobs, of course, was well aware of what this all meant:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
...
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
In Memoriam: Steve Jobs
Apple is reporting that Steve Jobs has died. A sad day indeed.
Much will be written about him in the next few days, no doubt. The world does not often celebrate businessmen. Steve Jobs was one of the exceptions to this, because his products held such immense appeal to so many people that even those with an instinctive anti-business bent had to admit they were cool. But rather than praise his design skill, or his determination to come back from being exiled from Apple or his many other achievements, I'd like to celebrate something more basic.
Steve Jobs created a truly stupendous amount of value for the world. The $345 billion I was talking about yesterday is only the starting point. The consumer surplus to these products must be many times more than that, as evidenced by the devotion of Apple customers to their products.
It is ridiculously hard to create $345 billion worth of value. This is merely another way of saying that it's incredibly hard to become rich.
And he did it without rent-seeking, without big negative externalities, without lobbying for legally privileged positions, or anything else. He did it the old-fashioned way - creating truly excellent products that people voluntarily wanted to buy, and sold them cheap enough that they treasured the surplus they got. In the end, he seemed at times a victim of his own success, as yesterday's announcement indicated - when expectations become high enough, great products still create market disappointment. Which is why market cap can drop by $8.7 billion, and people will still be lining up around the block to buy the new phone. Which they will be, you can depend on it.
Human nature being what it is, however good the product or service you provide is, people will end up taking it for granted and complaining that they wanted more. Which, I blush to add, I have been guilty of. The point is not that such criticisms are unwarranted, but that I was only motivated to write a post complaining about Apple, and never one praising it. People in this category must be feeling pretty small and mean today, when they finally reflect on what an immensely difficult achievement it is to create such products from scratch.
Society tends to heap the most praise on those whose inventions tend to extend life, but human welfare takes on many different forms. Steve Jobs created gobs and gobs of it, and the world is immeasurably better off because he was born into it. And that is tribute indeed.
Steve Jobs, I hereby induct you posthumously into the Shylock Holmes Order of Guys Who Kick Some Serious Ass.
Ave Atque Vale, Mr Jobs.
Much will be written about him in the next few days, no doubt. The world does not often celebrate businessmen. Steve Jobs was one of the exceptions to this, because his products held such immense appeal to so many people that even those with an instinctive anti-business bent had to admit they were cool. But rather than praise his design skill, or his determination to come back from being exiled from Apple or his many other achievements, I'd like to celebrate something more basic.
Steve Jobs created a truly stupendous amount of value for the world. The $345 billion I was talking about yesterday is only the starting point. The consumer surplus to these products must be many times more than that, as evidenced by the devotion of Apple customers to their products.
It is ridiculously hard to create $345 billion worth of value. This is merely another way of saying that it's incredibly hard to become rich.
And he did it without rent-seeking, without big negative externalities, without lobbying for legally privileged positions, or anything else. He did it the old-fashioned way - creating truly excellent products that people voluntarily wanted to buy, and sold them cheap enough that they treasured the surplus they got. In the end, he seemed at times a victim of his own success, as yesterday's announcement indicated - when expectations become high enough, great products still create market disappointment. Which is why market cap can drop by $8.7 billion, and people will still be lining up around the block to buy the new phone. Which they will be, you can depend on it.
Human nature being what it is, however good the product or service you provide is, people will end up taking it for granted and complaining that they wanted more. Which, I blush to add, I have been guilty of. The point is not that such criticisms are unwarranted, but that I was only motivated to write a post complaining about Apple, and never one praising it. People in this category must be feeling pretty small and mean today, when they finally reflect on what an immensely difficult achievement it is to create such products from scratch.
Society tends to heap the most praise on those whose inventions tend to extend life, but human welfare takes on many different forms. Steve Jobs created gobs and gobs of it, and the world is immeasurably better off because he was born into it. And that is tribute indeed.
Steve Jobs, I hereby induct you posthumously into the Shylock Holmes Order of Guys Who Kick Some Serious Ass.
Ave Atque Vale, Mr Jobs.
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