
Your Life - some1else
http://some1else.github.io/life/
======
fizixer
Every time an existential post is made here, I have to remind people:

As technologists you guys should have a little more confidence/faith/whatever
in the progress we're making every passing day, than is evident from the tone
of most of the comments here.

Smart-phones, social media, startups, IPOs, these are huge blind spots of
technology. It makes you think that's all there is to it.

Technology is much more than that. In that regard I always remember the
DARPA's 21st century forecast of what's the most relevant human progress:

\- Info"Tech"

\- Bio"Tech"

\- Nano"Tech"

We're making huge advances in all three (another blind spot is linear thinking
when technology actually progresses exponentially).

With regards to biotech:

\- CRISPR has made huge advances

\- stem cells are making rapid progress

\- supercomputers and advanced algorithms (including machine learning) are
getting to the point where we're putting human biology on solid "informatic"
footing every passing year. (IMPORTANT: And this is without assuming onset of
human-level AI, which in itself is forecasted to happen by 2030. If that
happens, then the progress would be unbelievably faster!).

\- but most importantly, people like Aubrey de Grey are "waking up" medical
researchers and gerontologists from a narrow view of "cure cancer", "cure HIV"
and asking them to treat "aging" as a problem and treat it as an object of
manipulation.

If people like you (technologists) can get out of the pessimism of pro-aging
trance, a lot can be accomplished in the next 20 to 40 years.

~~~
abootstrapper
If you consider aging and death in old age as a negative, perhaps you should
reconsider your philosophy, instead of chasing immortality.

~~~
ehnto
You have not offered any argument, you have simply said "if you don't see it
my way, you should reconsider".

Why should I reconsider? What about your view do you feel is better than
living healthier for longer?

The way I see it, if you take advantage of doctors at all you are already
competing against your own ideals.

We have made huge leaps in health such that even if we die at 80, our lives
will have been much more healthy and active up until that point.

If I can be healthy and active until 80 and then die at 100, then I will do
that. It isn't immortality they are after, it's just more high quality life.

There is nothing graceful, or more respectable, about succumbing to death
because it is the social norm at a certain age. I will cling on to life until
I can no longer.

~~~
fossuser
One argument is that death and limited lifespans are advantageous for the
species overall. More sex, gene mixing and having offspring is better and
allows for faster adaptations.

Plus ideas can change faster as culture changes.

That said, there may be ways to overcome this and I still think it's worth
working on not having to die. Though trying to determine purpose behind
existential questions becomes difficult pretty quickly.

Even if we figure it out since sex and having children is core to biological
life and the basis for the replicating genetic code that eventually lead to us
- not sure how we'd solve that. Guess we also better get working on space
colonization for our start trek future.

~~~
taneq
Advantageous for species in general, maybe, but for an increasingly knowledge-
based species, I don't think this still holds true. We spend our first 20+
years in training just to be able to contribute to society, and then only have
40-50 productive years left to work. This seems incredibly wasteful.

I'd be interested to know how our species' life span has changed over the past
few million years. We live significantly longer than other great apes, that's
probably relevant.

------
some1else
HTML infographic inspired by Tim Urban's Life Calendar[1]. Made this after
seeing his TED talk[2].

[1] [http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-
weeks.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html)

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...](https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator?language=en)

~~~
Romkinson
Just watched his talk literally last night and ordered the same poster :)
Thanks for sharing!

------
stared
A good friend of mine has a 365x100 rectangle on his (high res) display. As a
reminder that it is small, yet he has less days in his life than pixels in
this rectangle. And every day spent not on a worthwhile project is a great
loss.

A modern, sobering memento mori, I would say.

~~~
coldtea
Because in their death bed one often says "I wish I worked on more worthwhile
projects"?

~~~
louprado
An e-mail I received right before reading this post:

"THANK YOU for your excellent customer service. Your videos on YouTube --
while I little over my head -- tell how you have a passion for electronics and
creating solutions. I have told several people about you and I hope it brings
you business.

Thank you for sharing your talents with the world."

It is so hard to imagine that reflecting on this e-mail might bring me some
satisfaction on my death bed ?

~~~
dominotw
I never understood the big deal about death bed. I don't care much about what
I think when my i am old and senile.

~~~
broodbucket
I'm sure I'll have huge regrets no matter what I do.

~~~
ams6110
I've watched both my parents as well as several other close friend die, and
none of them really expressed any regrets. What's the point? Most people live
the best life they can, and I've never known anyone to spend their last years
or hours mired in regret. They actually seem to mostly reminisce about the
highlights of their life, whatever they were.

------
daw___
Would it be great if you could select ranges of blocks and assign a color to
each range according to how you felt those days, i.e. green: good, yellow: not
that good, red: not good.

I did something like this in past, with colors, and contrarily to the
expectations it actually cheered me up to see all those green blocks making up
a huge chunk of life.

Also, it reminded me of [http://moriclock.com](http://moriclock.com)

~~~
Jonovono
hehe just came here to post my project - moriclock! Cool to know people still
remember it.

I like your idea of coloring of the blocks. I had big plans of turning it into
some sort of journaling application.

~~~
vitd
I'm not sure what it's attempting to do, but the data it provided me was
completely wrong. It was claiming there were only 6 days left in the year, for
example. (It's April 10th, so there are many more than 6 days left.) It said
20 minutes left in the hour, but it's 8:22, so there's more like 38 minutes
left. WTF?

~~~
Jonovono
Weird. Looks correct to me. Is it possible your system time is weird? It might
be based off of that.

------
misingnoglic
I think the website needs a better job explaining what it actually is. What's
the point? I just drew a smiley face by clicking random squares.

~~~
some1else
It's just an info-graphic. A reminder at how important it is to have weekly
goals. The squares toggle, so I could mark the current week, or a short
period. I think it's pretty awesome you drew a smiley face :-)

~~~
capote
I think these things are kind of grim. Living life without considering its
length as a motivation to do things is perfectly fine.

~~~
sdegutis
Ever since the 60s, epiphanies and ideas like this are fads, fashion
statements. How did George Romero say it? Something like "it was the 60s,
everyone had something to say." The 60s never ended, people keep thinking they
have something to say, and since nobody's listening to them on Twitter and
Facebook anymore, they're just getting more creative.

~~~
tekronis
People will always have something to say. That's the nature of being thinking
beings.

------
joeyspn
Ahh yeah, this is from Tim Urban's _Your Life in Weeks_ post [0], and way
before Tim discovered and wrote his awesome posts about the AI Revolution [1]
and cryonics.... I guess he knows now that 90 might actually be quite short
sighted.

So, I'm forking and adding the estimated date where we trascend from humans to
cloud-beings (around 2045, Kurzweil's™ prediction) [2]...

[0] [http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-
weeks.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html)

[1] [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-
revolu...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-
revolution-1.html)

[2]
[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299,00.html)

------
sampl
Here's a similar project where the dots fade as you get older to indicate
chance of death (the opacity is based on actual US mortality data from
actuarial tables).

[http://www.sampl.us/life-of-dots/](http://www.sampl.us/life-of-dots/)

------
nice_byte
For somehing equally depressing, check out this comic by Abstruse Goose:
[http://abstrusegoose.com/51](http://abstrusegoose.com/51)

------
ams6110
Someone once sold a desk clock that counted down until the end of your life.

Edit--now available as a watch:
[http://mytikker.com/collections/tikker](http://mytikker.com/collections/tikker)

------
jondubois
On my death bed, my only regret will be that I didn't work smarter, harder and
longer. That's why I work so hard now; to minimize the amount of regret.

------
ak39
I immediately began marking some memories of my early teen, a period when I
remembered being genuinely happy (memories of growing up in Central Africa
with my heroic elder brothers). But then I began marking several squares in my
late teens for doing things I regretted. I marked a few squares in my mid
twenties for doing things I regretted. I marked more in my early thirties for
things I regretted. All dumb shit, nothing serious.

I was about to mark a few more blocks towards the end of my thirties too for
things I regretted ... I had by then realised that I was one colossal self-
bashing negative joy-sapping son of a bitch. How do I stop this self-
criticism, dear lord?

Nice tool! Maybe it can be modified to aid psychotherapy.

------
greggman
There was this piece at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

[http://i.imgur.com/6uVRUff.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/6uVRUff.jpg)

It shows 100 years of days with someone's life highlighted. Kind of sobering.

I want to be believe like fizixer but it's hard to notice any medical changes.
I'm 50, what's changed since I was born? I'm no a doctor so I have no idea.
Sure I know we've got CRISPR and we've mapped the genome but where are the
actual changes? Friends have gotten cancer, AFAICT treatment hasn't changed
much. I still get colds. My hair is still falling out and turning gray. Face
getting wrinkles.

Life doesn't look like the Jetsons

~~~
kaybe
Well, over here we're shooting at people's heads with a particle accelerator
beam to kill brain tumors. Works pretty well if the conditions are met. Next
up: Moving targets you can't bolt to the table because the person will die
from not breathing. (So the beam has to be moved.)

Biology is hard though.

------
mentos
Crazy to think how many people will get up tomorrow morning and hate the
outlook of their day. To me that is insane and something that future
generations will look back on in awe.

~~~
namenotrequired
Is there any indication this will suddenly stop being true in a few
generations?

~~~
OJFord
Or indeed that it hasn't always been true.

"Man will always have shit days." \-- Greek proverb

------
diegorbaquero
The idea is nice (depressing, but nice). But what's the use, you can only turn
tiles to red. Can't even drag the mouse to select many, state is also not
saved :(. My 2c

------
drworm
There is a Chrome extension with a similar concept that I enjoy:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mortality-new-
tab/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mortality-new-
tab/eeedcpdcehnikgkhbobmkjcipjhlbmpn)

~~~
ghostly_s
I made a script for shell profiles which does something similar last year:
[https://github.com/brightghost/memento-
mori](https://github.com/brightghost/memento-mori)

------
simplexion
Why do people always feel like they are wasting time? How exactly do you waste
your time? I ask people this every time I am told, by them, I am wasting my
time playing games on my computer. I love playing games... why is doing
something you love wasting time?

------
Walkman
Would be cool if we could write our own life events.

~~~
some1else
Noted.

------
ps4fanboy
I have printed out one of these before and it made me feel really crappy.

------
atemerev
Way too optimistic. Here, all rectangles look similar, but actually, quality
of life in bottom rectangles deteriorates rapidly, medical expenses are
skyrocketing, and basically everything sucks.

~~~
duaneb
Medical expenses only accelerate if you attempt to fend off death. There is no
need for this with assisted suicide laws.

~~~
atemerev
I am living in the country with such laws in place (Switzerland); but most old
people I talked to really want to live. Nobody wants to die, unless they are
in great pain.

~~~
duaneb
> quality of life in bottom rectangles deteriorates rapidly, medical expenses
> are skyrocketing, and basically everything sucks.

That sounds pretty painful.

------
bronz
This is really profound. I made a rough estimate of when I will die and ticked
the box that corresponds to it. Being able to see each individual week that I
have left really gave me pause. Wow. And this graph is generous. Your
perception of how long a week is decreases with time. So if this were a graph
of how much perceived time you have left it would be even smaller...

------
diimdeep
Buster Benson made something similar but much more interactive
[http://busterbenson.com](http://busterbenson.com)

------
benjaminfox
If you want a customizable life calendar like this as your homepage, I made
one that's usable as a bookmark or Chrome extension:
[http://count.life](http://count.life)

------
d33
> <div class='week'></div><div class='week'></div><div class='week'></div><div
> c

Why was THAT not implemented in JavaScript?

------
dataker
I feel bad for myself.

I first thought this was a Google Calendar view for some reason.

------
blairanderson
fork here, make it more alive
[https://github.com/some1else/life](https://github.com/some1else/life)

------
bo1024
This is a somewhat alarming site to view without javascript.

------
PeCaN
Aw, I thought this was some kind of colorful Conway's game of life and spent a
while looking for a play button after drawing a bunch of gliders and such.

------
peace011
.simple-life { background: linear-gradient(360deg, #975162, #956282, #85769E,
#688CAF, #45A1B2, #37B2A6, #56C08F, #87CA74, #BDCF5E, #F6CE59); }

------
glxybstr
this is interesting. colors are an important addition. i made a demo of the
same concept a few months ago. i wrote up a few notes.

[http://galaxybuster.net/notes/thoughts-on-
timeleft](http://galaxybuster.net/notes/thoughts-on-timeleft)

------
audiodude
I don't believe in gods, but if I did, I'd pray that I don't live to 90.
Yikes.

------
unixhero
I hate stuff like this.

"Tick tock" et cetera. I get terribly depressed thinking too much about it.

------
andrewfromx
this is amazing. It so clearly shows the human aging process and why 27 is the
hardest year/color. But if you survive it, you break on through to the next
color. I think around 87 there is another tough year.

------
ramblerman
Live as if you will die tomorrow and learn as if you will live forever -
Ghandi

------
milkey_mouse
Life is effort and I'll stop when I die!

------
neals
Yup. Almost there!

~~~
ak39
Hey bud, I'm not too far. Can I sit next to you? We can throw crumbs & seeds
for the birds together.

------
Raed667
Assuming you're going to live to 90

~~~
a3n
Cut it off where you like.

------
vaulstein
Does everyone die at 91?

