Ask HN: How do you accept your place in the world?

Sampling bias.

You're reading articles good enough to come through to you, from millions of people actively trying to get theirs read. There will be millions of great articles that most of us will never even discover.

I think you should spend at bit of time thinking on the scale of the world, the scale of combined human effort, and try to consider the statistical chance that something any individual does will "make it" to the top, even of hacker news..

Now, also consider whether you want to be spending your time becoming someone who contributes in that way instead of the way you currently do. Consider the amount of brilliant people doing work that nobody will ever see.

There's nothing wrong in being a "nobody" in the grand scheme of things, your primary motivation in life has probably not been to have the world know your name, if so, you'd likely have pursued a different career. But the feeling is familiar, I think, to most of us.

My personal fix to this is to think on it, and maybe sometimes make a little side-project, that's guaranteed to not be brilliant or even good, and post it somewhere online, and enjoy the little bit of attention it got.

I also struggle to accept my place in the world, to be honest, I've gotten further in my life than I thought I would, and still, feel disappointed in myself because I've not done anything great, or contributed to or furthered any field in any meaningful way. But I try to keep in mind that, most people aren't and of those who do, orders of magnitude more are trying hard and still fail, and honestly, I don't want it _THAT_ bad, I can conclude that, because when I look at my own efforts to "become somebody", they are fairly low, and so it's no surprise that I'm a nobody, just coding away and generally being content with what I do.

The global playing field is extremely competitive. It's so competitive in fact, that the best people rarely win. Nowadays, the winners are usually selected among those who are good in a conventional way and not among those who are exceptional. The winners are 'selected' top-down because it's usually rich and powerful people who decide who the winners are going to be.

You think Pablo Picasso was the best artist of his time? Probably not. He was picked by a bunch of rich, powerful people... Had they chosen to spend millions of dollars on the works of a different artist, that other artist would now be famous and nobody would know who Picasso is. It's also why almost all famous artists knew each other or had some social connection; it's mostly about social networking with rich, powerful people - Talent is secondary. It's the same in every industry where the quality of output cannot be easily or objectively measured.

Unfortunately, software development ability is very hard to measure. It can take years to properly evaluate someone's ability. Also, to rub salt into the wound, coders who are good at solving puzzles and other short-term problems are often regarded as better than those who are able to solve long-term problems (e.g. through good software architecture)... Even though the second one is far more valuable economically. It just takes a lot more time to prove that someone is a good coder in the long run so this leaves more room for choosing winners arbitrarily (for example; arbitrarily using 'short-term puzzle-solving ability under time pressure' as the criteria for deciding who should get jobs).

So basically, don't beat yourself up if you're not 'chosen'. It could mean that you're mediocre but it could also mean that you're exceptional beyond the grasp of powerful incumbents. Think Galileo and the Catholic Church.

I’ve found peace by focusing on life outside of my own head.

If you spend your day all busy and stressed out about computer things and then go home and spend all your time on more intellectual or virtual entertainment then your brain is fully primed to work more on those things.

My advice is to disconnect and focus on relationships and people.

There are IMHO two issues that you have to take into consideration:

#1 Most people will ONLY talk about their (possibly very few) successes and brilliant ideas and be very silent about the (possibly many) times they mde mistaks or spoke foolishly, etc. (so you have no real way to know the rate of good/bad ideas or products they generate).

#2 you are comparing yourself (single person) not only against a multitude of people, but to a "selected multitude" that believe (rightly or wrongly) to have had an idea worth being talked about.

Then, when/if you find some single person (like the Aleksey Kladov you mentioned) that you believe has an exceptional depth and breadth of knowledge in a given field, it is very possible that that person is simply exceptional.

I think we all have (even those like me that have not the capability to understand their work) some reverence towards scientists like (say) Einstein or Feynmam but ask yourself how many classes of 30 something people get a degree in physics at each university in the world each year (and very likely are all very good and smart professionals) you never heard of.

My favorite line from the movie Lost in Translation:

"The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you."

There's nothing wrong with admiring and respecting and feeling inspired by what others have accomplished, but I've found it has very little to do with my own personal feeling of self-worth.

First understand that in a room full of engineers—no matter how many—90% of them will say they are above average.

Second understand that what separates you from these people is they have something to show for what they did. How do you expect people to find your “brilliance” if you don’t show it off somehow? They work for their recognition. People using your “low-level systems” won’t automatically think you’re brilliant because…what? Because it works? Is that the bar?

Write some blog posts. Open source some projects. Give some talks. If you do all that and no one cares, maybe it’s not the rest of the world that has the problem.

As said before, most people are "nobodies". A small number people just happen to be both brilliant enough and be at the right place at the right time with some luck involved to strike some type of more famous success for example, and also happen to have all the time in their hands to do just their one passion.

I used to compare myself to others all the time, thinking about who did what by what age etc., but in reality it's just useless and fake. It used to be that maybe you compared yourself to the other kid at school who was good at something. Now you compare yourself to somebody who made it famous on the internet who's like the "best in the world" at something. Makes comparisons like that horrible for your mental health. These days I'm just happy to have decently paying job so I can pay my taxes, which mostly contribute to many good things in my country, meaning I can still be a positive force.

Do what you want to do, rather than what you "need" to do, and you won't think about this stuff.

I'm not the world #1 badminton champion. So?

Be grateful. Really really spend time thinking about all you have, your obvious intelligence, skills.

If you had the privilege of studying in good schools that helped mold you, acknowledge how rare that privilege is worldwide.

If you are self-taught,be proud of yourself, many people lack the discipline or motivation.

Once you reach some goals and get some recognition, youll probably start hanging out with people who also have great accomplishments, and invariably some of them will have greater accomplishments than your own. Its a balance between being inspired but not comparing youself to others.

Its similar to how it works with money, you make some, buy a nice house and a BMW x3. Then the guy next door gets an x5, So you get an x6. Then at the golf club you hear some people are only flying on chartered planes, you start doing that and you start meeting people who have their own plane. It never stops.

You talk about "people", but if you actually count them, how many are they? Hundreds, maybe a couple of thousands at best? The vast majority of us are average, maybe somewhat above-average if we're lucky.

I would say, ask yourself why do yo need to compare yourself with anyone? By your own account you do very interesting work, why is that not enough? Start from there.

You remember how silly the work of high schoolers looked when you were in university? You'll get that same feeling when you hit 40, and evaluate the movers and shakers who are in their 30s.

Read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. He talks about this a lot, but in the other vein. He was probably the most powerful man in the world and constantly reminded himself he is nothing but a sack of meat and bones.

You don't have an alternative to being yourself, so there is nothing to think about.

By all means, do what you feel you would enjoy doing and balance it off with the needs of society (by making sure you earn enough currency to live).

If you feel you want to become a better researcher or a better chess player, go and do it. Keep in mind there is no reason comparing yourself to others. Everyone's life is vastly different.

Maybe that brilliant researcher has a broken family, maybe a great philosopher is broke and living in a barrel. What's the point of comparing yourself to someone else? Compare yourself to your past self and try to improve. And don't fret if you become worse, you'll have the rest of your life to improve.

I'd recommend reading something about stoicism: https://www.orionphilosophy.com/academy-stoicism/stoicism-fo...

>The more content I discover, the tinier and irrelevant I feel.

This is called knowledge. This is a good thing, keep going.

>I go down a rabbit hole of brilliant relevations of one person after the other, and I come out tired and discouraged.

Compare yourself only with the person you were yesterday

Comparing yourself to others is completely fruitless, will generate desires, and will cause suffering for yourself.

When you are say 30 you might see someone driving the new Chevy Corvette C8. Such a beautiful car being driven by an old dude who is barely touching the accelerator. You desire to have a corvette as well, maybe something better? But you dont have it and cant afford it and you suffer. But did that old dude have a corvette at 30? Nope, he was looking at corvette c3 back in the day with astronauts driving it and had the same desires and suffering.

Instead you should plan, 'how do I get to the point where i can buy that Corvette C9 in some time. I'll have it decades earlier than that guy and I wont be blind and can use the throttle to its max.'

What does that plan look like? Maybe it means you need to save more or go learn Rust. I'd bet Rust will survive, you could go do that.

You have to figure out what the end point looks like; then reverse engineer. Go look at job postings, what are they asking for? Go get those things in the next year. Then you apply for the job. In the interview you explain this very process that brought you to them. You get hired and you are now on the way to getting that corvette. When preorders of the C9 open, you show up and have the cash.

Here's the clincher. Before you even get there, you'll find the interest in the C9 wanes. You saw a dude driving the F150 lightning and now you want that. You realize that these desires are the real problem. You learn to break the desires.

Everybody is somebody to somebody. Nobody is somebody to everybody.

Also, you don’t know for certain what kind of person you will become. Who knows what your experience today will bring you in the future?

You're seeing the polished output of a lifetime of work. It's just like seeing the influencers on InstaWhatever, not real life. Getting there is messy, and doesn't always happen. It's a matter of having a lucky ticket... each project you take on is a ticket, the more, the better your odds.

It takes perspective and insight to see just how brilliant our ancestors were, and it gives me joy each time I learn some new tool they left behind for us. It also gives me joy when I pass those mental and actual tools on to others to add to their toolkits.

We're all tool makers, in the end. Our tools can be art, books, programs, or goods and services used by others.

I myself am joyful that there is always more to learn.

Try CBT and address the underlying negative perspective... or you could just put head to grindstone and publish a few ground breaking white papers.

Try to be grateful for x y z, and try not focus on 1st world problems like your unfounded imposter syndrome. ZZ

Get a few kids to put things in perspective is the most common solution.

My own opinions as a mid-level web-focused SWD.

I think about it sometimes. It is an ego/attention thing imo if you need other people to say "great job". But you can't live in a vacuum either.

I mean part of it is personal interest, I was watching people reverse engineer an s-band transponder from the Apollo missions like cool but what is the point.

I guess just because you won't be an Einstein doesn't mean what you're doing isn't worth it. Personal satisfaction.

I used to love building/flying model airplanes until I got into social media. Then everything I made I had to post online/get upvotes. I lost the passion in it overtime because I was more interested in impressing people.

Nowadays I will build things even if it's a piece of a crap because I had fun figuring it out from scratch.

This other thing I ran into is ego-satisfaction where I would share a fantasy/idea/sketch before it was real/work done for the upvotes.

I also am aware there is just an innate capability/caliber. Like I am not a math guy.

I get the "place in the world" thing in another way eg. being poor but I think I can change it.

Oh yeah the other field I think about this is regarding physical attractiveness/relationships ha. I'm not killing it in that department.

To be fair I still post my crap on a blog, whether or not someone reads it is something else.

a quick observation here: you are comparing ONE of YOU against THE COMBINATION of THE MOST BRILLIANT MINDS on the internet. Are you not capable of learning any of those topics in depth if you had the time and resources? No, I think you are certainly capable.

It took me a long time to realize that the universe doesn’t give a shit about me. In the grand scheme of things my life isn’t going to rate a mention. There is such a freedom in this understanding. Nothing inherently matters, so I can just make my life about what I want.

I spend time deciding what matters to me, then I fill my mind and heart with it. I don’t generally pay attention to what everyone else is doing, unless it helps me with what I’ve decided is worth doing, or makes me aware of something great that I’ve missed. I definitely don’t compare myself to some external standard. My life, my measuring stick.

At the end of my life I will die, and at that moment I will be alone, no matter how many friends surround me. In that moment, I will have things I’m proud of and things I regret, and they will based entirely on my own value judgements and experiences, not on other people’s ideas about what matters. So I focus on that. What will I regret? What will I be proud of?

It works for me, where other things have not. Perhaps this gives you a contrasting perspective. Perhaps I just needed to write it out. Either way, best of luck and may you find freedom in your own way.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I think this[0] video might help to visualize the mind-boggling scale of the world (in the video you can substitute dollars with human beings). And it's only one billion visualized so in order to go through the entire human population you would have to watch it 7.9 times which would take something over 10 hours.

As the dollar meter keeps running relentlessly you can imagine yourself being one split of a second somewhere there, and then you can imagine the sea of people working hard at compilers, optimizers, math etc. blasting you all at once with their brilliant observations. It's only natural to get overwhelmed if you expose yourself to the aggregate of the most brilliant and productive humans, because as rare as they might be, the human population is so staggeringly big that there are LOTS of them. You might not be doing so bad compared to the rest of the humanity though ;)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg (A Million Dollars vs A Billion Dollars, Visualized: A Road Trip)

Most of us are nobody. I’ve never heard of Aleksey Kladov myself — he is simply nobody to me. So are most of the people you’re probably comparing yourself against.

What you’re encountering is existential angst; we live in a world with over 7 billion people and the reality is that for 99.9999% of us, our existence will be forgotten entirely within a hundred years of our death. The only people we tend to remember culturally are the horrible ones. At best, you are a cog in a machine and at worst, you give in to the nihilism.

For me, the solution to this was not to focus pouring more of myself into work, but to focus on surrounding myself with people who make the day to day more bearable. The project of my life is not to produce more economic output, but to build the connections with the people I share my life with.

Life is long, and most of us are nobody. The people who can help make your life more bearable are probably also nobody. Surround yourself with family / community and don’t focus so much on “legacy”. Nobody is gonna build a statue of you.

You can only be truly great at a single thing. All the little things that you enjoy spending time doing are taking away from time spent improving at any of the other things.

I love listening to great complicated music, but I don't know how to play an instrument, and I've come to find peace in that I will never achieve any kind of musical instrument mastery. Its within my realm of possibility if I so choose, but I refuse to give up the things that would have to make way for it. It's my choice, and I'm conscious of that, so I can live with it.

I've recently come to realise that I have had to cut more things than expected out of my life. And it's fine, because the things that are left are the top priorities - I get to spend more time at X, which I love, at the cost of Y, which I only like, or love slightly less. Distillation of self.

Can't do everything, that's why there are other people.

This is not something that’ll happen in the short term, but consider abandoning the idea that your life needs to be more significant than anyone else’s.

I found I’m much happier and more secure when I began to think of others more as a collective that I’m a part of, instead of as a bunch of atomized competitors.

I seek happiness and meaning in what I do, and that's how I find my place in the world, no matter how good I am, job and private life alike, as long as I do things that I think are relevant and meaningful to me, and I enjoy what I do.

Of course, the fact I'm exceptionally good doesn't hurt ;-)

Will you be a little happier when you accept your current place? You are a nobody at this moment, that's fine. But are you going to stay at that place for years? I don't think so from what you have written here.

What matters is you should get clear about what you want and how you will get there.

Don't compare yourself to others, instead think about where you were X years ago vs. now and recognize the progress you have made.

As for successes of other people - the fact that they succeeded means success is possible, likely also to you. Learn from successful people by studying their stuff and the ways the go about things and see if you can apply those lessons to the domain you want to excel in.

All that being said, also remember this: its OK to be mediocre and most of us are. In the grand scheme of things, we are just a particular incrustation on some edge of a possibly infinite fractal structure... don't let this stop you from trying to be great, but also don't let the self-imposed pressure kill the everyday joy of doing stuff and just being a human. Good luck and have fun

I get similar comments about intellect, potential, etc. I too am a nobody. It sucks that I'll never make any "good" money and be stuck in boring jobs. Who cares though? I'm fine being a nameless peasant - the vast majority of people live their lives that way.

Stop thinking about others and start thinking about what you can do to be better then you were yesterday, then let your focus consume you, such that the accomplishment of others no longer occupies space in your brain because you are too focused on yourself.

The first step is to accept that you probably won't change the world in any large and consequential way. But you can change a small part of the world for the people around you in a meaningful way. Find the joy that comes from helping out one of the people you interact with. Solving that problem that's causing significant pain for one person can be a huge deal to them! Sure there is joy from solving technical problems, but humans are social creatures and need to see that their work is having an impact on other people. Figure out what works for you.

It is ok to feel lost and overwhelmed from time to time. Even the most brilliant people often go through hardships and difficult times. Try to find things to do that you enjoy not because other people expect them of you. External validation can be nice but also a burden. Set your own goals and try to check from time to time how much progress you have made to accomplish them. For me at the moment, this is to publish a bunch of good papers at ML conferences and land a permanent research position. But this can literally be any other goal and I don’t think it is helpful to compare yourself to others, too much. Opportunities will come to you if you are doing good work.

Where do you get your belief system from? We all have one. Mine teaches me not to think of myself more highly than I ought. It also teaches me to work hard, not seek poverty or wealth, and to think deeply on what I am ambitious about. My ambition is to follow Jesus's teachings. One of the best people (and workers) I know recently died of cancer. People celebrated how good a man he was at his funeral. There was no mention of any of the projects he had worked on bar how much client's loved working with him.

I have been testing this belief system for 35 years. It has worked well for me and given me a perspective on time, ambition, tough times and good times.

Remember that even those people you are citing built on someone else's work. Someone's contribution may simply be a tinny layer on top of an already existing massive amount of work. It is difficult to distinguish new work from pre-existing work in a domain you have no expertise in.

The other thing is: no person is an island. The rust compiler is the work of an absurdly large amount of people, the most visible members of the community absolutely deserve their reputation, but you must not forget that rust is mostly people like you and I. People who may have contributed a tinny bit and do not get a wide recognition.

If it makes you feel better my own mediocrity in life despite passion and interests has gotten me to realize/reconcile a couple of things:

1. You cannot control results, just your efforts. So keep at it and don't worry about failures/lack of brilliance (don't seek failures ofcourse). 2. Trust there is a higher power (you don't need to be religious about this). There is pretty big chance you just stumbled into your bad luck the same way most of the "great folks" stumbled into their greatness (I am pretty sure you are not working orders of magnitude less than them).

If you want to write a crazy compiler, I’m sure you can if you go take the time to bother.

The problem with life is that you only have so much time to do what you want to do. So it’s up to you where you spend your efforts.

There are 8 billion people on Earth and most of them will spend their entire life accomplishing nothing. I wouldn't worry too much. If you're so brilliant then prove it. Or are you too tired.

I accept nothing. I try to become better.

A sense of awe and appreciation, a belief these things were made to be discovered by me and others like me, and realizing later in life that what people who really become excellent at something find they lack are other people with enough understanding at all to appreciate what they've done.

Being good enough to truly appreciate what greatness really means is usually sufficient. If you would like to understand how that all feels, look up the BWV 1006 prelude.

The richer sense of fulfilment comes from your own family and close community, the people who you care about most and to whose lives you can make a big difference. It would be nice to have that (which is achievable by everyone) and make world historical contributions to the progress of civilisation, but often the people who achieve the latter fail on the former, and in the end few would envy them.

>> I try not to compare myself; but I'm also unable to shrug these feeling off, however indirect.

I would suggest that you start mindfulness practices. In this way you would simply observe the feeling of being "nobody" without trying to shrug it off. And once you achieve the "indifferent observer" state, these feelings simply stop appear and the whole different perspective opens for you.

You don’t have to. Not accepting your current situation can be a great motivator. What the hell does that even mean “your place”? Forget that be anywhere, inject yourself in to anything , grow, learn… or not and just chill.

You don’t have to accept a place in the world because you don’t even really have one, just your idea of what that means. So run with it.

The older you get then the less relevant the opinions of others are about you. Be what you are and what your want so that you feel self-fulfilled. Don't measure your self worth relative to others as there are always more relevant people to you in the world. Ultimately we all realize that we mostly don't matter in the end.

If you want to further humble yourself, look at all those brilliant exploits malware writers discovered and used.

That said, I accept that I'm a nobody in this world, and I leave nothing important in the world. I still want to improve myself but I don't have high hopes if I look at the number of uncompleted projects along the way.

There is always places people can contribute. Look at some terrible softwares.. medical, insurance, 3pl logistics etc.. they don't need extraordinary brilliance to improve.. just UX, better systems, process and lots of area to cover.

If you can improve one industry a bit more than it is today, isn't that a sufficient place in the world?

your self worth is more than just your intelligence.

we are blessed and cursed with different gifts.

no one measures up.

so stopping measuring and start living.

You are in a system that is telling you to be the greatest, and that anyone can be the greatest is the are smart and just try hard enough.

It’s bullsht.

You can either decide to try stop playing the game of capitalism, or look down instead of looking up while playing it.

The later means you are still playing the game, but it will be easier to cope with your suffering and you might just make some friends.

You are only seeing a deep truth that others cannot see; your work is insignificant. Go out and help someone less fortunate and you will see your true significance.

Start looking for small opportunities to do something different and bold. Do that before you're asked to do it. Sooner or later you will get "hired" for the kind of job where you get to do the things you described here. That's how everyone else did it.

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.” —Zen Shin

You are craving "External Validation and Recognition". Nothing wrong with it except that this is a "Desire" which if unchecked will make your Life miserable and unhappy. The Internet has made it worse by giving you a very very large sample size to compare to. Also remember that 90% of what you read on the Internet is fake/exaggerated and the remaining 10% is showing only their best face (and no failures). "Outliers" are always few and far between (it is still more or less a bell-shaped curve); If you want to become one, then be prepared to put in a lot of hard work.

Read the "Discourses" of Epictetus for some perspective;

In every act consider what precedes and what follows, and then proceed to the act. If you do not consider, you will at first begin with spirit, since you have not thought at all of the things which follow; but afterwards when some consequences have shown themselves, you will basely desist (from that which you have begun). “I wish to conquer at the Olympic games.” [And I too, by the gods: for it is a fine thing]. But consider here what precedes and what follows; and then, if it is for your good, undertake the thing. You must act according to rules, follow strict diet, abstain from delicacies, exercise yourself by compulsion at fixed times, in heat, in cold; drink no cold water, nor wine, when there is opportunity of drinking it. In a word you must surrender yourself to the trainer, as you do to a physician. Next in the contest, you must be covered with sand, sometimes dislocate a hand, sprain an ankle, swallow a quantity of dust, be scourged with the whip; and after undergoing all this, you must sometimes be conquered. After reckoning all these things, if you have still an inclination, go to the athletic practice. If you do not reckon them, observe you will behave like children who at one time play as wrestlers, then as gladiators, then blow a trumpet, then act a tragedy, when they have seen and admired such things. So you also do: you are at one time a wrestler (athlete), then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a rhetorician; but with your whole soul you are nothing: like the ape you imitate all that you see; and always one thing after another pleases you, but that which becomes familiar displeases you. For you have never undertaken anything after consideration, nor after having explored the whole matter and put it to a strict examination; but you have undertaken it at hazard and with a cold desire.

So have confidence/faith in yourself, use others as inspiration/motivation and only compare your "current" self to your "previous" self for improvement.

"How do you accept your place in the world?" Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7HmltUWXgs

At some point you have to accept that being the 100,000th best at something is just fine.

take a look at stoicism and maybe nihilism. The reality is nothing you do will matter. Nothing anyone does really matters in the scope of the universe.

That doesnt mean you cant live a meaningful life to you.

Accept it and move on.

My 2-cents.

> I feel like I know that I'm a nobody. I try not to compare myself; but I'm also unable to shrug these feeling off, however indirect

Everyone is a nobody even famous people. Everyone also feels that way, if you don't feel that way you are probably a psychopath, but that's also fine.

Focus on what matters, wealth, leisure time, whatever you pick keep in mind the clock is always ticking.

Small clarification fame really does not matter, it just makes wealth easier to attain usually.

Contribution to science or humanity in general should never be your focus, it usually happens as a side-effect of work you do either for money or because you enjoy it.