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What to Do

(paulgraham.com)
274 points npalli | 2 comments | 29 Mar 25 12:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.595s | source
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jebarker ◴[30 Mar 25 19:50 UTC] No.43527006[source]▶
I don't believe you can choose to make good (whatever that means) things. You can certainly choose not to try, but choosing to try and believing you'll succeed is a recipe for disappointment in my opinion. All you can do is make a sincere effort at whatever you choose to do and the world will decide if it's good or not.
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1. asadotzler ◴[31 Mar 25 00:24 UTC] No.43529267[source]▶
You can choose NOT to make things you know are bad and you can choose to try to make things that are good.

Disappointment is irrelevant. It's the choice that matters in the context of this article and discussion and pretending that there is no choice is cowardice.

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2. jebarker ◴[31 Mar 25 01:37 UTC] No.43529771[source]▶
Which of my four uses of choose/choosing made you think I was pretending there was no choice? My point is that the choice is to try and do something as best you can, but you can't choose whether it'll be received as a "good thing", that's out of your hands.