

Is there anything you wish you knew at 16 as you made decisions that shaped the rest of your life? - falsestprophet
http://reddit.com/info/5yvva/comments/

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yters
Be very careful with advice from people who don't know you and don't
necessarily care what happens to you, i.e. people on some anonymous forum.

For example, #1 on the highest rated comment is horrible advice. It has
screwed up the lives of many, many people and will adversely affect all the
future relationships of anyone lucky enough to get away with it.

~~~
rms
Seems like arbitrary morality is the only thing against safe sex.

~~~
yters
Even if all you care about is yourself, this isn't true. Plato explains this
in the Republic. Indulging in extreme pleasures dulls their effect, while
making us want more extreme pleasure. This makes us more dependent upon the
changing world and at the mercy of our bodily desires and others. Not a recipe
for a fulfilling life.

~~~
euccastro
You're preaching ascetic suspension of earthly desire in the Make Something
People Want forums?

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yters
Where did I say that? I suspect you are just jumping to conclusions based on
the fundamentalist stereotype; not that I'm one of those, either. There is a
position inbetween having alot of promiscuous sex and having no sex. I am
merely stating why I think alot of promiscuous sex can be a problem. People
are, of course, free to do whatever they want and don't have to listen to me.

Anyways, I'm not trying to be a troll. People keep misunderstanding or needing
elaboration, so I explain and elaborate. If people ignored what I said I
wouldn't see a need to keep posting.

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jkush
I recently sent this link to my 16 year old brother:
<http://paulgraham.com/hs.html>

There's a lot in there I wish I'd known.

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brianmckenzie
_Make good friends. Hang around smart intelligent educated 'moral' people.
Form networks - these networks matter to get jobs, etc. Remember, 90% of the
good things you get in life (jobs, stock tips, hot dates) will be informally,
via your network of friends/colleagues._

On my first day of high school, my dad gave me a priceless piece of advice:
Don't be friends with people just because they're available and easy to be
friends with. Seek out the people worth befriending, and become their friend
no matter how hard it is.

I didn't really understand him at the time, but 15 years later it strikes me
as one of the most valuable things anyone has ever told me.

~~~
cglee
This is expected advice from a father, as mine dispensed something similar as
well.

But those described are not friends, but merely partners.

To me, friends are those who will be around during bad times as well as good.
In other words, they'll be around even when your "worth" is very low.

~~~
brianmckenzie
Yeah, that is an important distinction.

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Goladus
Not all that much, really. I'm mostly satisfied with the decisions I made up
until my 3rd year of college or so. And given that a lot of the problems that
began then were related to a relationship, I'm not sure that there was
anything I could have known that would have made a difference.

------
cglee
\- start your spiritual journey asap

~~~
curi
how about a rational exploration instead

~~~
mgummelt
same thing

