
Ask HN: What is your 'end game'? What kind of life are you striving to live? - rblion
Something that&#x27;s been on my mind lately. I enjoy the depth of thought on HN, I always learn the most here.
======
mud_dauber
Waking up to a (very good) cup of coffee.

Donning a favorite old band t-shirt, some ragged hoops shorts, flip-flops, and
sipping my coffee on the back deck of a VERY modest, but paid-off, house.
Watching the deer from said deck.

Then riding my bike into town (TBD, but someplace with <50K people) to a part-
time job at the local supermarket. Plan B: doing the same at a local, for-
young-people rural incubator & being the wise software sage. Making enough to
pay for a Lagunitas Lil Sumpin or two.

At night: dinner with friends. Probably a bowl of pho. Steakhouses (and the
requisite dress codes) are for other folks.

Twice yearly: taking the trailer to a coast. Probably alternating between Port
Aransas, Texas and the North Carolina barrier islands.

~~~
rblion
I like you. I'm halfway there already and will soon have the rest. I'm 28.

I drink coffee I got from Colombia or Guatemala in the morning. While the
coffee is brewing, I go through everything I'm grateful for and brush my
teeth.

I drink my coffee while I check my email, reddit, HackerNews. I make a list of
everything I need to do or continue the list from the previous day. I don't
have Facebook, rarely check Twitter or Snapchat, save Instagram for later in
the day or bathroom breaks. I turn on some good music that isn't overwhelming
too sometimes.

I'm a consultant/creative director, I work remotely. I wear a comfy tee (band,
Star Wars, plain) and sweat pants or basketball shorts.

I'm scaling my agency/consultancy at the moment by adding bigger and more
interesting clients. I have gotten out of debt and started saving money to
reinvest into some side projects that can become income streams.

The end goal: to own a camper van and travel all of North America with my
camera while running this company from coffee shops and BnB's. It would be
nice to share this with a dog and a woman, but the latter is optional. I can
save money from my income streams to travel the world and eventually buy a
cabin/farm out West somewhere, live a quiet and peaceful life away from the
hustle and bustle of the city but still have good wi-fi and good shipping
times from Amazon.

In the last year, I've quit drinking, smoking, and meat. I've added
meditation, yoga, and grown closer to my family. I don't feel the need to
'change the world' or 'be the best' anymore. I just want to be a nice person,
enjoy my day, create value for others.

I'm so glad I asked this question, I don't feel weird for not wanting the 'SV
dream' anymore.

~~~
mud_dauber
Good for you. It's quite liberating to actually put this stuff to paper.
Thanks for posting the question!

------
malux85
10 million GBP to eliminate need for money.

Retire and use my data engineering and deep learning skills to help genetics
and drug discovery field. I think this area is ready for vast technological
improvement, and we can help alleviate a lot of suffering here.

Almost at the 10M, maybe in 1-2 years I’ll be there

~~~
aaavl2821
The time is right for applying data engineering to drug discovery. Probably
the best time ever to work in this field, and markets like this don't last
long.

Why not start pursuing this right now and earn a smaller paycheck (presumably
compared to what you do now given your net worth :) rather than wait until you
hit your net worth threshold?

~~~
malux85
I'm working on it part time. The largest problem at the moment is datasets, I
have crawling infra that has about 280GB of molecular data pulled from
universities and every public dataset I can find.

I've also gone quite far into novel vectorization and auto-encoder spaces, and
have several models now ready

I need to sell my company soon, that'll push me over the line, then I will get
to work.

Do you work in the field? We should keep in touch ...

~~~
aaavl2821
Not bad for a side project :). I work in drug dev and dont understand the
technical side of Ai one bit, but from conversations with folks who do (at big
companies and universities) the compute resources and models certainly are
challenges, but the lack of good datasets is the real bottleneck

What's your thesis / search space if you dont mind me asking? Ie virtual
structure or ligand based screening with structure or affinity data, machine
vision for analyzing cell based assays or histology slides etc, lead
optimization, mining annotated genomic data etc

------
hguhghuff
To own a house. To not be on abject poverty as I grow old. Two goals that
should not be this hard, except we are now in a society of rich and poor and
I'm not rich, I'm poor.

~~~
abusoufiyan
May I ask why you want to own a house? I am kind of realizing that the
majority of people in the world do not own a house.

~~~
celticninja
Because then it's yours. If all else fails you have 4 walls and a roof over
your head. Also it's not fair to compare an individual to the rest of the
world due to the large and varied place that it is.

~~~
jazzyk
But in the US, some people argue that the house is not completely "yours" \-
if you don't pay your (ever increasing) real-estate taxes, the house may be
taken from you.

------
aaavl2821
I was thinking about this the other day. I'd like to provide my family with
all they need to be happy (but not necessarily all they want), to live
somewhere near nature and have a small farm / garden, and spend my time
learning about science, software and medicine and applying that knowledge to
solve problems

Then I realized I'm doing a lot of that now, but without much financial
security and with a lot of stress. I live in a small apartment but my gf and I
have a nice outdoor garden in our complex, I volunteer at a ranch working with
kids with disabilities on weekends, and all of my work is at startups trying
to use science and software to solve medical problems. I make a small fraction
of what I did working in finance, at the moment not enough to save much even
with low expenses, and the stress of trying to make super early startups work
is real, but I really enjoy my work and have almost complete control over
where and how I work. My biggest worry is not making enough to provide for the
family at this point. I have a few years to see if I can make it work until
this issue trumps all others and I'm forced to get a "real" job, make enough
money, and then retire to do what I'm doing now :)

------
Joona
I haven't really come up with the perfect endgame yet, but some ideas I've
had:

    
    
      Teaching in an university or such (I love teaching)  
      Traveling the world to meet my friends  
      Financial freedom to do things I'm interested in (racing, VR)

~~~
ilovecars2
I’d love to have enough $$$ to spend 3-4 months each summer living and driving
the Nurburgring. This is what I’m working towards in life.

Right now I go once a summer and it costs about $3000 - all in. That includes
hotel, food, track car rental and lap tickets.

When I have more capital I want to build a car for the ring and get a lease on
a house, but that requires about $50,000 disposable income (Year 1) that I
don’t have at 25YO.

Disclaimer: I am British and live in the U.K., prices in USD because of the
wider international audience on HN.

~~~
Joona
Sounds great! I'm looking to race a little closer to where I live, maybe karts
or something like Legends Cars.

------
bigbluedots
My end game is the same as everybody's: to die and eventually be forgotten,
along with whatever I may have done while here.

------
patatino
Financial freedom so I can work on whatever I want.

~~~
abusoufiyan
And what do you want to work on?

------
cmorgan8506
I'd like to be a good role model for my kids and help some people along the
way.

------
amingilani
Goal 1: make $25 million to take money out of the equation for my work plans

Goal 2: hit the three coma club (billionaire) and ensure long-term cryogenic
storage for me and my wife at EOL

Goal 3: solve the global food and clean water crisis

~~~
alltakendamned
Ambitious. So, how are you doing ?

~~~
amingilani
Currently at my third startup, first one with a steady revenue stream.

------
rayalez
Be healthy and rich. Live in NYC.

Build a startup in the field of AI.

Spend my free time writing comedy (and get really great at it).

Maybe teach the stuff I've learned about startups/CS (through
articles/books/video courses).

Find a group of good friends. Get a dog.

Invest in life extension and cryonics so I'd get to enjoy my life for as long
as possible.

Really long term:

Live long enough to upload my brain, and merge with AI. Explore the universe,
learn everything there is to know. Create a universe that doesn't suck (or fix
this one).

------
inertiatic
Get a remote job (and keep getting them) that's interesting enough, move to a
smaller town. That would free up so much time and energy to help experience
life with my family by spending time with them, travelling etc. while also
allowing me to have both the time and energy to learn about stuff, which is
the only other thing I care about really.

A somewhat hedonistic pursuit but whatever works.

------
SirLJ
As soon as the "internet form space" becomes a reality in the next few years,
I am selling my house (my kids are almost out the door) and buying a catamaran
and sailing around the world with my wife for the next 10 years (or whatever
we feel like), until I find a place I like to spend my golden years, reading,
fishing, etc...

------
fghtr
If there is somewhere the meaning of life, we did not discover it precisely
yet. It means, it must be beyond our scientific knowledge. Therefore, anyone
who helps to expand the knowledge in any way, helps to find the meaning of
life. The catch is to take part in this process hoping that the answer might
appear already during the life.

~~~
abusoufiyan
Meaning of life isn't going to be found by scientific knowledge. Sorry to
burst your bubble.

~~~
fghtr
You, of course, may be right. But if you cannot prove it, you shoudn't be too
sure.

~~~
abusoufiyan
This is such a silly way of thinking.

Everything in the world cannot be proven. Everything that cannot be proven
sufficiently to you right now shouldn't be assumed to be untrue.

~~~
fghtr
This reply is quite rude. I will ignore the insulting part.

Scientific knowledge [0] is in principle the only true knowledge in the word.
It is repeatable and testable, which means it is reliable and can be applied.
(By the way, too many people do not know what science means. They think it is
just one of the ways to discover the world...)

If the meaning of life exists, it must be possible to find it with science. I
see no contradictions here. If you see, you are welcome to reveal them if you
will.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge)

~~~
abusoufiyan
>It is repeatable and testable

Except when it isn't and when it isn't.

A vast majority of articles published right now will never even be reproduced
and yet we take nearly all of them as if they are gospel.

>If the meaning of life exists, it must be possible to find it with science. I
see no contradictions here. If you see, you are welcome to reveal them if you
will.

Science is based on some kinds of assumptions taken on faith (like every
thought system). Here are a few (there are more surely).

1) Everything is observable to us as human beings.

2) Everything scientific will be reproduced and confirmed by someone else
despite there being very few financial incentives for anyone to undertake all
this costly reproduction and confirmation.

For (1), we know that there can be multiple dimensions, yes. A 2d figure can
never really experience and observe the third dimension. He can only wonder
about it, ponder about it, conjecture about it, but never know it because his
physical senses will not let him understand that third dimension. Observations
are powerful but they are limited by our observing senses. For (2) there have
been countless hoax papers snuck into scientific journals, I don't need to
cover this too much. Most scientific work is not reproduced, but posting it
online will make most people think it is true.

You also forget that the meaning of life may exist and yet operate in a way we
cannot sense. Just as there are planets we cannot see and may never be able to
confirm.

~~~
natch
>we take nearly all of them as if they are gospel.

No we don’t. You are projecting. Look up “projecting” if you don’t follow what
I mean.

Science is not what you seem to think it is. Anyone who says science operates
on faith is mistaken and ignorant.

Many such people like you are insanely overconfident about their knowledge and
refuse to consider that they might be utterly wrong.

>Observations are powerful but they are limited by our observing senses...

omg this is so wrong I don’t know where to begin. There is such a thing as
tests which can be devised to go way beyond our senses while still giving us
the ability to falsify theories...

------
abusoufiyan
End game is to move back home and bring back the share of the first world
which was stolen from my home and planted there.

~~~
celticninja
I'm confused.

------
psyc
Bare-minimum, subsistence (+laptop +internet) lifestyle, fully supported by
independent game programming.

------
NotQuantum
FIRE and move to the Netherlands. Work on open source projects.

