How to live an intellectually rich life

I appreciate the spirit of this essay, but I think it overstates the idea that intellectual pursuits are an escape from modern dissatisfaction. I&#x27;ve spent most of my life driven by curiosity, forming my identity around being someone who seeks knowledge. But over time I’ve come to see how that, too, can become a kind of consumerism—chasing ideas for the dopamine hit of a new insight, then feeling the letdown and scrambling for the next one.<p>The essay frames an intellectually rich life as a kind of antidote to consumer culture, but for me it often mirrors the same patterns: FOMO, compulsiveness, neglect of relationships, a deep anxiety that I’ll never learn enough. The awareness that I’ll only ever scratch the surface of all there is to know has become a source of existential stress, not peace.<p>This isn’t to say intellectual life isn’t meaningful—but it&#x27;s not a cure-all. It can be just as prone to distortion as anything else if pursued as a form of escape.

For my part, one of the most striking things which I recall from my youth was reading Dumas&#x27; _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and the Abbé Faria contending that everything a gentleman needed to make his way in life was contained in less than 100 books --- which he had memorized the content of, and could impart to the young Edmond Dantes.<p>A naïve younger me tried to brute force this by reading one non-fiction book from each major section of the Dewey Decimal system catalog, but was stymied by the paucity of a high school library in a county in the second smallest tax base in the state....<p>Since then, I&#x27;ve actually been trying to put that list together (and lightly updating it for availability from Project Gutenberg&#x2F;Librivox).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;list&#x2F;21394355-william-adams?ref=nav_mybooks&amp;shelf=abb%C3%A9-faria-s-books" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;list&#x2F;21394355-william-adams...</a><p>Suggestions and comments and recommendations welcome.

&gt; In August 2018, in the last month of my three-month sabbatical, I arrived at the Hamta village in Himachal Pradesh. I rented a one-room cottage, and my caretakers were Dolma Aunty and Kalzang Uncle, a couple well into their 70’s.<p>I got to this part and realized: I&#x27;ve read this article before in some form.<p>It&#x27;s a really common trope to head out to some remote area of Asia and admire how happy people are. There&#x27;s often a spiritual component to it. I will write the guy a bit of a pass, because he himself is (I think) Indian.<p>But westerners have been doing stuff like this for ages and prattling on about it - it&#x27;s kind of a cornerstone of Orientalism. This was actually a plot point in the recent White Lotus season. People rarely go to Appalachia to have these experiences, but you certainly can find people living simple happy lives there. (At least, if they do, nobody publishes those articles - it doesn&#x27;t fit our preconceived notions of who gets to be enlightened, which is to say it has to be some place far away and people very different than your average Americans)<p>Not to say there&#x27;s no value in this article (there is), and it was a fun read at that.

Just because you can prove mathematically that most link chains &quot;end&quot; at &quot;philosophy&quot; doesn&#x27;t mean that&#x27;s the end <i>you</i> should end up at. I spend at least 2 nights a week just reading links through wikipedia as I&#x27;m falling asleep, and I almost inevitably end up at <i>languages and cultures</i> or historical events that I knew little about. Philosophy isn&#x27;t an end, and it&#x27;s pretty meaningless without some stone cold knowledge about the world. Or you could say it comes as a result of knowledge, not before it.

I tried this for awhile, but was dissatisfied. I found myself a constant consumer of intellectual material instead of being an engaged participant. Once I realized that, I set course to become more of a producer of useful things. That&#x27;s led me to woodworking, to running a consultancy, to producing AI&#x2F;ML for nonprofits, and to writing academic works. All in all, I enjoy life substantially.

Not sure about the intellectual part of it, but how to live a rich life? Surely not by secretly cherishing a feeling of <i>superiority</i> and <i>sophistication</i> because these sentiments will cut you out of a lot of insights and encounters that make your life <i>rich</i>. True, life is a farce in a lot of ways, but who cares? Accept it where you can&#x27;t change it and find your own islands of happiness. These may be intellectual if you like, but don&#x27;t expect the people around you to follow the same (high) standards, that will only make you unhappy.

This is interminable and appears to be a disaster of mixed self-help metaphors and embarrassingly naive writing -- a TED-talk blog post, though TED talks mercifully have a length limit.

This is a little meandering so just to focus on one part:<p>Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas meaningfully requires discernment. I’m thinking particularly about the popularity of “Meditations”, for example.<p>Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor believed knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives, an idea illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in Phaedo (EDIT: It’s Meno).<p>Sure, it’s worth stepping back to reassess what’s going to increase your “PC” to borrow from seven habits. That could involve leaving behind surface-level achievement in favor of deeper reflection, as the referenced article suggests.<p>But let’s not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge. Even they couldn’t agree; there’s no need to treat any one of them as infallible.

Seek movement .Move towards discomfort. Settle only in your values, never in loyalties or kinship. Be homeless in regards to ideologies, be merciless to those that subvert what your values brought about , be subversive to all things to see the brittleness of things.<p>Disregard detected retardations in yourself, invest your lifes work in little turtles crawling towards abilities up the scenario tree. Do not attach, to fortresses, kings and nations built on those branches.

I have been wondering lately if &quot;intellectually rich&quot; can be found solely in books.<p>I read Jim Stanford&#x27;s Economics for Everyone, and he recommends to go out and talk to people and see what problems they are having in life.<p>That&#x27;s not to say that long time dead philosophers cannot give good insights, but I feel that looking at other people&#x27;s problems (especially in different cultures) is a lot more relevant for understanding the world.

The author seems to favor episteme (theoretical knowledge, sought for its own sake) over techne (application of knowledge in a craft).<p>I find the latter far more intellectually rich and rewarding.

As with nearly anything, an obsessive pursuit of knowledge, simple living, or &#x27;enlightenment&#x27; to the exclusion of other things can be very harmful.<p>We should be constantly exposing ourselves to new ideas and exploring new avenues; but diving down a rabbit hole for a years-long journey is not the way.<p>Sitting in a mountain shack trying to digest the best 100 (or 1000) books ever written, might yield some real benefits; but at what cost?

How to:<p>Read lots of non-fiction. Whatever interests you.<p>Try to find overlap over the different interests. Try to find new thoughts there. You might be the first to find them.<p>Assume everything you know is wrong. It&#x27;s generally true of &gt;50%.<p>Hard is best, too hard is bad, too easy is bad.

That is my conception of the world that we all have different interests and cognitive functions. Also, call it serenpidity, synchronicity, fate or luck, but as this article showed, the best ideas come from places you could never have expected.<p>Read about the discovery of LSD if you haven&#x27;t, it&#x27;s one of the perfect example of this.<p>So you have to find your nature, the garden of iteas that resonates with you. For that, just read. From any topic that interests you and sometimes, dare to read something you would never do. Comics, mangas, niche recipes, biographies, romance, everything is fair game and you never know, sometimes you might just click on something you never might otherwise.<p>In the age of Wikipedia, kindles and libraries, you really have no excuse to not indulge in your curiosity.<p>For all we know, we could ever be &quot;hard-coded&quot; to love certain topics more than others(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europeanscientist.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;research&#x2F;the-way-we-appreciate-music-is-genetic&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europeanscientist.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;research&#x2F;the-way-we-app...</a>). Maybe in the future, a drop of saliva would be enough to know if you should study architecture or dancing ?

A lot of passion was put into this article. I appreciate that. And I do think that there are several huge themes that need to be periodically grappled with.<p>Just to pick one, the ego hit when jumping into a new field is real (I&#x27;m currently immersed in math &amp; ML from a CS background). It&#x27;s one of the things that I feel is least talked about. It&#x27;s very easy to peak in a field and then rest on your laurels. Despite being particularly willing to start at the bottom, I also identify as &quot;being smart,&quot; and getting schooled by 22 year olds stings.<p>But the rewards for &quot;owning&quot; two peaks are so huge, and much of the process is so satisfying.

I have great difficulty in believing that a real human and not a LLM wrote this. It reads like self-help tripe and is far too long.

The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning, it’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually you’ll be dead. - BoJack Horseman

Perhaps a more enlightening view is in the book &quot;The Socratic Method,&quot; by Ward Farnsworth, who is dean of the UTexas Law School. This is a great book for those just starting on the adulthood road, though it could have been shorter.<p>It analyzes the dialogs of Socrates with practicality in mind, showing how to question the world around you, question your own beliefs, and question the beliefs of others, all without coming off like a dick (as Socrates often does). Moreover, as related to the OP&#x27;s article, it tells you precisely how Socrates would have defined an intellectually rich life, and I think Farnsworth is correct.<p>Farnsworth&#x27;s Socratic method is about much more than just asking questions. The trite &quot;Know thyself&quot; injunction is seen to be a specific outgrowth of the Socratic method, echoing in some way the OP&#x27;s claim that everything tracks to philosophy.<p>Incidentally, the book includes a stunning revelation from Ben Franklin saying that he found the Socratic method to be the best way of getting people to change their mind and do what he wanted. He gave it up, however, because it was too powerful a tool and he decided to adopt instead a more diffident personality, which he found also successful.<p>I would have thought a book like this would sell about 10 copies, but it has 800 comments on Amazon! [I have no connection with the author or with Amazon.]

I wouldn&#x27;t advise this as a life goal. Better to live an intentional live. I am sure people can come up with even better formulations.

I enjoyed this article.<p>I am confused though how this was a difficult problem to begin with, particularly with the internet. It is not exactly hard to find intellectually stimulating concepts if that&#x27;s what gets you off.<p>I also find &quot;philosophy&quot; to be a pretty miserable and unrewarding topic to think about, and I tend to run quickly away from those who want to talk about it. I find it very curious that the author finds it to be a natural place for your focus to land. I think this is a red herring: the secret to long-term contentment is not thinking at all if it&#x27;s not strictly necessary. Aristotle got &quot;contemplation is the greatest good&quot; <i>dead</i> wrong.

This stirs up a good discussion. My way of having a satisfying intellectual life is not just by juggling many ideas, but also by problem solving. I find immense satisfaction in making something work or creating something that didn&#x27;t exist before. Many times, this requires problem solving with creativity, compromise and tradeoffs. Some times, it requires deep diving into academic papers and doing some math. When this ends up working it is truly a triumphant feeling; however it might sometimes not work at all.<p>Another thing is meeting and absorbing knowledge from other people. It&#x27;s incredible to learn or even just watch skillful people do their thing.

Read Nobel Literature too young to understand but old enough to remember the stories. Then when &quot;life happens&quot; the meaning of those Nobel Books hits with a physical epiphany and sudden unexpected wisdom is realized.

&gt; Our ideas become Oscillators<p>it is the muscle working, the tide going back and forth.<p>i liked reading it, lots of things to unpack, new descriptions of the elephant in the room to absorb.<p>The conclusion itches me, (sorry for the spoil, readers)<p>&gt; After all, aren’t we all trying to understand our place in the universe?<p>are you sure about that ? that &quot;you&quot; are trying to do that, or that, something else works hard on you, much like in those &quot;Goals that are physically, emotionally and economically crushing us&quot;

This whole spiel is a piece of content marketing for a course on creating a newsletter. Pfft.

I am still searching for the definition of &quot;Intellectually Rich Life&quot;.<p>There are some compelling and imaginative calls in the article, but can we drop with the metaphors? I rather have the author develop deeper examples, instead of vague focus and practicality.<p>Maybe because I am not searching for inspiration, but detailed roadmaps.

You might find A. G. Sertillanges&#x27;s &quot;The Intellectual Life&quot; interesting [0].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;549384.The_Intellectual_Life" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;549384.The_Intellectual_...</a>

In finance there are some people that say &quot;All roads lead to quantitative finance&quot;

For those of you who&#x27;re interested in the Wikipedia Philosophy thing, check out this video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-llumS2rA8I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-llumS2rA8I</a>

I don&#x27;t like this answer so here&#x27;s mine.<p>&quot;Read. Not too much fiction. Mostly books.&quot;

&gt; Imagine you are sitting in a meeting at work. The discussion is around the plan your team had set in motion last quarter, and the results are being reviewed. Data is being twisted and harassed to confess to whatever version of reality the group wants to see. You are sitting there, and you see through the charade.<p>&gt; You’re wondering what the point of this is? You did not slog through life, battling inhuman entrance examinations, irrational parental expectations and eight rounds of interviews to get this coveted job, only to do this data jugglery. You’re wondering - why is nobody asking the fundamental, first principles questions? Why are we not questioning our premise? Why are we misinterpreting cause and effect? Why are we chasing these vanity metrics, when the metrics themselves are poor indicators of reality? Why have we accepted as gospel truth some ‘self-evident’ principles?<p>&gt; The meeting is adjourned, congratulatory messages are passed around, and a vague way forward is discussed. You shake your head, sigh deeply and groan internally, grab coffee and head to the next meeting.<p>I call people like the author of this post &quot;intellectual superiors&quot;. You know, like in the meme with the fedora-wearing man looking out of a window. I was like him when I was in high school. Now trying to keep my ego in check, still struggling sometimes...<p>But even though the guy is such an intellectually superior person, he didn&#x27;t manage to come up with the idea that maybe he&#x27;s there in that meeting to... contribute? You know, you&#x27;re part of the team, you&#x27;re in the meeting for a reason, if you disagree with others, it&#x27;s your responsibility to say it? You may be right that they are misrepresenting the data or arriving at wrong conclusions -- but it doesn&#x27;t matter, because you chose to instead indulge yourself silently at feeling superior over these sheep.<p>Philosophers... right?

I was expecting a flowery puff piece but I’m pleasantly surprised at how…helpful? Mindful? This is.<p>And lengthy, good grief. I’ll be reading this over the weekend.

Read HN, of course.

Brilliant article, love it! Reminded me of YC, but with no money involved which is infinitely better in my book.

If living an intellectually rich life is as exhausting as reading this article I want no part of it.<p>And I truly honestly mean this comment to be more of a thoughtful contribution than my high level of snark makes it sound.

True knowledge is to know yourself.

I was initially fairly sceptical of this essay, but getting to the parts about Erdős I find myself more in agreement. The title misled me!<p>Intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism is a road that leads to isolation. And then, what&#x27;s the point of it all?<p>Connection and collaboration is where it&#x27;s at - which is more or less what the author concludes, although still under the banner of intellectuality. Perhaps my definition of intellect is&#x2F;was too narrow?

all big talk. feels like a linkedin post

It loops at Existence and Reality.

I&#x27;m not sure about the metaphors. The &quot;Axe of Satisfaction&quot; suggests that some of the ills of late-stage capitalism can be overcome through individual grit alone. Maybe we need to band together and target the root system rather than hacking down individual trees?

there are 25 comments here now, but none of them yet mention the opening idea of TFA, that if you click the first link you see on wikipedia and lather, rinse, repeat, you will get to philosophy every time.<p>if true, this is fascinating.<p>...<p>i just tried it a few times, and it worked! although the reason seems to be a bit less interesting. biography page: &quot;so and so was a botanist&quot; --&gt; and we&#x27;re headed to philosophy. &quot;political party&quot; --&gt; decision making. &quot;vehicle ramming attack&quot; --&gt; --&gt; power.<p>encyclopedias start each page by saying what category something is in, and you inevitably category your way back to, metaphorically speaking, earth, air, fire, or water

Logorrhea

Can LLMs achieve intellectual richness?

Check out The Wiki Game. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thewikigame.com&#x2F;group" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thewikigame.com&#x2F;group</a>

325 points for this nonsense? Oh, HN.<p>From the title I expected something serious. I gave up halfway, having pigeonholed the pompous verbiage as a first cousin to Women Who Run With The Wolves. But really, the game was up when I read the phrase &quot;late stage capitalism&quot;, which is the verbal equivalent of a plague bell, used by halfwits to warn us of their presence.<p>Friends, here&#x27;s how to have an intellectually rich life: read serious authors. There&#x27;s Montaigne out there. There&#x27;s Orwell. After a while, you&#x27;ll recognize good writing and thinking, and you won&#x27;t waste your time on pap.

In trying to live an intellectually rich life, there&#x27;s a risk of adding too much noise. Chasing more input, more ideas, more learning. Sometimes less really is more. Depth often comes not from adding, but from subtracting. Clear away the noise, and what’s left tends to have &#x27;meaning&#x27;. Personally I prefer a deep life to a rich life, but maybe that&#x27;s just semantics...

TLDR

Bro, that was a lot of text... I mean, chill. Life is simpler then that. Enjoy your flaws and get along with things as they are, without the need of a &quot;framework&quot; to navigate life