What to Do

From what I encounter, almost daily, I don't think everyone is on the same page, on that; especially amongst folks of means.

I have seen people without a pot to piss in, treat others -even complete strangers- with respect, love, caring, and patience, and folks with a lot of money, treat others most barbarously; especially when they consider those "others," to be folks that don't have the capability to hit back or stand up for themselves.

As to what I do, I've been working to provide free software development to organizations that help each other, for a long time. It's usually worked out, but it is definitely a labor of love. The rewards aren't especially concrete. I'll never get an award, never make any money at it, and many of the folks that I have helped, have been fairly curt in their response.

I do it anyway.

I have a saying (among others from my dad) that captures a similar idea: “Make things, and be good.”

[0] Saying "prioritised" instead of "good", because "creating good new things" is tautologically, uninterestingly "good".

- global warming - antibiotic resistance - environmental contamination - food quality diminishing - explosive increase in chronic disease, especially in young people - extinction of most other species - fertility problems - declining birth rates - poly-pharmacy becoming normal - now things related to energy consumption with AI and cryptocurrency - huge decline in social behaviors across the population

Just seems like for every new advancement we're making new chronic issues that are barely incentivized at all for being managed and alleviated

https://charlieharrington.com/create-wonderful-things-be-goo...

How?

Is the internet a net positive or net negative thing? How about Social Media? Is it maybe even more complex such that we can't tally up positive/negative "points" and a term like "net positive" doesn't even make sense for these things?

So, these posts err.. essays.. of his are pieces of abstract textual art that arrive here to be interpreted by commenters and also for admiration and mandatory vc adulation (maybe)?

Or maybe since he is rich now and is influential in making other people rich, lots of them actually, he gets to post whatever it is and also gets to make them gain traction. Yeah, this makes sense. Of course.

Or maybe I am from the crowd that doesn't understand modern art of making money at all; obviously.

The first thought I had after reading the thesis of the essay is that some people don't make new things but instead maintain important things. I'm more of a builder and if wager pg considers himself one, and I assume the majority of authentic HN users are builders. However I suspect the majority of people are maintainers.

Nurses, electricians, emergency dispatchers, firefighters, mechanics, etc.

We all depend on many complex systems working in order for our lives to not fall apart. Our homes, electricity, running water, soap manufacturing, etc. Choosing to be someone who makes sure these systems keep working is a good thing to do and deserves respect and appreciation. Someday AI may do all this stuff, but someday AI may build all the new things too...

So my response to this specific essay: PG, your answer is incomplete and biased towards your own values. ikigai does a better job of answering this question already, why not build on it? Also thanks for your writing, don't stop.

My biased answer to the question: - do lots of different things and stay curious, and with enough time, effort and luck you will find something you're good at, enjoy, the world wants, and will reward you with all the resources you need and then some. Just keep doing different things and being curious until you get there.

One last thought: Is PG publishing less robust essays in hopes that people will be more compelled to comment and discuss them, bringing together the best ideas on the topic? Something like "the best way to get a question answered on the internet is to post the wrong answer" or however that goes...

I dislike the way this is framed and I think the rule/exception are inverted. Certainly, building the jet engine or microprocessor is a big uplift on all boats, but the chances you pull one of these out of the hat are pretty low.

I spent a good chunk of my career attempting to build things that I thought were amazing. It took a lot of drama and disappointment to discover that helping other people means meeting them where they are at right now, not where I want them to be.

At a time when it seems like so many pursuits or activities or things to make are overshadowed by " but won't there be a model in the next 6 months that can just do this itself?", not to mention all the other present world uncertainties...

Well, it would be nice to hear more thought as to how to focus one's energies.

(I have my own thoughts on this of course, but what I'm really advocating / hoping for is more strong takes on the question.)

How well has Y Combinator done at upholding this principle with the companies it funds?

A "good" motivation doesn’t guarantee a good outcome, nor does a bad outcome ensure a good one.

Intuitively, I'd have thought "making good new things" would be a tactic to helping people and/or taking care of the world.

If I ask him "What new good thing should I make?" surely his answer has to be, "Make something people want," right??

I'm not even sure the new things are "good" unless people want them, or if new things aren't making the world better in some way.

pg notes in the last paragraph that there's "often" a lot of overlap between making good new things, helping people, and helping the world, but it seems like even pg is forgetting his own motto…?

What is interesting is if you read Chandler's Wikipedia entry it has a quote on how he talked about pulp fiction being formulaic and attempts to break free of the formula were trounced but if you didn't try you'd have been a hopeless hack.

This is fascinating in comparison that PGs formulism appears to be a self-styled self-help (?) essay. Is PG stuck or trying to break free? He certainly has an audience. To what quality should we ascribe his writing?

Understand people. With all the talk in the news about the current Disney Snow White, got out the DVD for the old Disney Cinderella: Yup, have learned enough about people to see that the many plot events are not just incidental for the drama but examples of deep fundamentals about people. In particular understand what's important for good family formation.

Understand human societies, e.g., cultures, religions, economies, politics, war and peace.

Understand academics: E.g., a lot of academics that has done research that results in good tools to enable "Make good new things" has deep contempt for doing that.

Understand, say, math, physical science, biology, medical science, nature, technology, fine arts.

Smile, be kind and have compassion, don't judge others unfairly, do what is good and right, say only good things of others, and don't remain silent or inactive in the face of true injustice or cruelty. Respect all life. This is the human challenge and journey.

To this I would also add in these difficult times… Understand that much of what we are told is opinion rather than fact. Our own formed opinions and views based on them should be considered potentially unreliable and should be questioned.

Make something amazing is not an insight.

Seriously? People have done horrible things in the name of "progress". For example, shipping slaves from another continent to make good new things.

But what are the good new things? The new part is pretty clear, as in something that wasn't done before. But what does the adjective "good" mean when applied to "new things"?

The author says you should make sure "new things you make don't net harm people or the world."

I'd argue that the world has no meaning without people, so not "net harming people" is what he can mean. But how can one know if things will produce net harm or not? I think we can even quantify after the fact if discovering gunpowder or dynamite is producing net harm or not. We can't decide if discovery of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion is producing a net harm or not.

Of course, for some "things" it's easy to say if they produce a net harm or not, i.e. producing a biological weapon or a vaccine.

And what if the result of our struggle, be it a scientific endeavor or not, while "new" and certainty not harmful doesn't produce any impact whatsoever? Maybe we come up with something that will be usable in a few years, a few decades, e few hundreds of years years or never.

So, should be there an impact? Shouldn't we strive to produce something that is not only not harmful but useful?

I think that we should give some more thought about the "good" part.

What we should do is not "make good new things" but "maintain things that work and improve upon it".

We have too many people that WANT to make new things. Ideally good, but when so many people value NEW things we obfuscate what good means.

Maintaining thing that works includes everything: it makes you learn something,(how can you maintain something you don't understand?) often structured and you stand on a giants shoulder. Since it have been maintained so far, most likely it's also valuable. But also, most likely it can be improved upon.

I think PGs essay here actually go against his previous post of "Great Work". In this essay he mention art needs to be new/unique but usually art (and fashion) is cyclic; they reuse and rehash old ideas all the time. And even in science, such as Einstein and Newton, they usually just IMPROVE on the existing understanding, although in a major way.

Is newness essential? Not really in the modern attention based economy of 2025. Newness chasers are often similar to clout chasers. More noise there and you'll end up surrounding yourself with style over substance kind of people.

What not to do (just as important)- Suck. Be nosy, passive aggressive, judgmental or hateful. Allow yourself to be duped because you're to lazy to seek out information.

I urge you not to take these opinions as facts. Originality is admirable, but it is not "your potential", "proof of great thoughts", or "the most impressive thing you can do".

The answer to the question: What to do? is not "Make new things", but rather begins with a simple question: In what context?

The idea of dividing people into two categories: 1) those who "take care of people and the world", and those who 2) "make good new things", is harmful.

This is what makes silicon valley is so amazing. It's filled with those who want to make good new things, who aren't afraid of looking awkward. This type of culture is actually quite weird. In most other places, you'd be dissuaded by conventional wisdom, or "who-do-you-think-you-are-isms".

That's rich coming from pg. Is he really in a position to dispense this valuable advice? Did he ever look back at his contributions to this world through this prism? Does he consider the impacts of friends he has, platforms he uses and promotes, posts he writes, on lives of other people? Does he think just withdrawing from new decisions made by (the thing) is enough to wash his hands from all the negative impacts such decisions cause? People tend to attribute good outcomes to their own contributions and hand wave bad ones to forces outside their control, and this article is a great case in point for this phenomena.

But this text is so escapist... I am ashamed to have read it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)

1. theoria concerns acts that aim at knowledge, understanding, and wisdom; the aim is truth for its own sake

2. praxis concerns acts performed for their own sake; these are the primary subject of ethics, the practical philosophy

3. poiesis concerns acts of production where the end is distinct from the act that produces it as an effect

Paul claims that "[t]he most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done". I agree that "thinking", or precisely the capacity for intentionality, abstraction of concepts, and the ability to reason about them (to which I would add the capacity to choose between apprehended alternatives) is, indeed, the most impressive and indeed most distinctive thing human beings are capable of. These constitute our rationality. However, what is the highest expression of this capacity? Paul claims that "the best kind of thinking, or more precisely the best proof that one has thought well, is to make good new things". This is confusing, as "the best kind of thinking" and "the best proof one has thought well" are talking about two different things. It's not clear what exactly the point here is in relation to the prior claim. Are we talking about the best kind of thinking or the best proof of having though well? And what about it?

"So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious. [...] Taking care of people and the world are shoulds in the sense that they're one's duty, but making good new things is a should in the sense that this is how to live to one's full potential."

Paul says such things are "duties" and that they are "obvious". Perhaps they are, in some sense, or perhaps these are hazy cultural attitudes he has absorbed that may not be obvious elsewhere, whether true or not. But what is the basis for such duties? What is their explanation? What is the basis of the good? Of morality? Of the normative (the "shoulds")?

The reason I harp on this point is because had Paul had a basic grasp of something like virtue ethics, he would have found that human nature is the foundation and basis for the objective good and thus for objective morality. He would have found the key that could systematically reconcile and explain and relate all these seemingly arbitrary "shoulds" he lists. He would have a basis for evaluating the place of theoria, praxis, and poiesis in the context of human nature, the good life, and the end of human life (its ultimate good).

We could then answer questions like "what is the best expression of human rationality?" Is it production as in poiesis? Or praxis? Or perhaps theoria? I claim it is theoria, and this does nothing to diminish the importance and the good of praxis or poiesis. They simply are not the highest expression of human rationality. They play supporting roles methodologically (and this is where Paul's comment about "proof of one has thought well" can enter the discussion), but they are not the end.

"There was a long stretch where in some parts of the world the answer became "Serve God," but in practice it was still considered good to be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest. [...] for example by saying, as some Christians have, that it's one's duty to make the most of one's God-given gifts. But this seems one of those casuistries people invented to evade the stern requirements of religion: you could spend time studying math instead of praying or performing acts of charity because otherwise you were rejecting a gift God had given you."

Why is "serving God" construed as distinct from "wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just" and so on? Why can't these be part of what it means to "serve God"? Why are we setting them in opposition as if they were in competition with one another rather than one and the same thing? Apparently, Paul is unaware of the parable of the talents in Matthew's gospel, or the five tasks given Mankind in Genesis by which Mankind better participates in the life of the Trinity, let alone the metaphysical "obviousness" of this being the case. The demonstrated grasp of "religion" in general (if we may even speak of it in general in any meaningful way) and "Christianity" in particular leave much to be desired, to put it mildly. I feel as if I'm reading the superficial tropes of a lazy observer rather than a sound grasp of the basics.

If anything, as Stanley Jaki among others argue, the reason why we saw an explosion of sustained scientific progress and techne in the West is because it follows from Christian principles, like the notion that all of the created order is inherently and totally intelligible (I would claim best expressed in John 1:1); that human beings are capable of grasping this intelligible reality (rooted, I would say, in the Imago Dei); the notion of the logos spermatikos; the distinction between creator (first causality) and created (second causality); the notion that human beings are "co-creators" (or "sub-creators", to use Tolkien's term) cooperating with God in the work of creation; and so on. These provide strong motivations to pursue this kind of work in a sustained and intense fashion. If you don't believe that the world is rational, that human beings can understand it, that it is somehow evil to investigate it, that religious texts are the only source of human knowledge (or even epistemically primary), that such texts can contradict truths known by unaided reason, that effort is futile and pointless, then you're not going to accomplish much.

"But there's nothing in it about taking care of the world or making new things, and that's a bit worrying, because it seems like this question should be a timeless one. [...] Obviously people only started to care about that once it became clear we could ruin it."

Obviously? I seem to recall Genesis giving men the authority of stewardship over the earth. I don't think the ancients doubted they could ruin the earth (ask a farmer), even if they did not know the scale at which we could eventually do so, but then this is not a matter of having or lacking said care, but a matter of prudential application of care.

"The traditional answers were answers to a slightly different question. They were answers to the question of how to be, rather than what to do."

Doing is act and being is act. Doing has as its ultimate end being, or else it is unintelligible. They are not opposed.

"Archimedes knew that he was the first to prove that a sphere has 2/3 the volume of the smallest enclosing cylinder and was very pleased about it. But you don't find ancient writers urging their readers to emulate him. They regarded him more as a prodigy than a model. [...] his contemporaries would have found it strange to treat as a distinct group, because the vein of people making new things ran at right angles to the social hierarchy."

I don't know what this means. He maintained relations with other scholars. Some scholars and philosophers ran their own schools (Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc), some did not.

This is so not true, that I'd like to point the author, and people who think in a similar vein, to a very enjoyable podcast on the history of philosophy, namely the "History of Philosophy without any Gaps" [1].

Hopefully this will persuade you that there are many ways to think about what to do with the life that was given to you. Pick two random Greek philosophers and they would probably take opposing standpoints. And if Confucius might say that you should be wise, I guess that Lao Tse would promptly disagree.

Our Western culture has largely been shaped by Christian values, yet when I observe the ideas of the obscenely wealthy, I can only lament how little those values seem to be understood or embodied.

[1] https://historyofphilosophy.net/

This suggests we need a fourth principle: "Cultivate discernment about goodness." Not merely as an afterthought, but as an essential companion to creation. Such discernment acknowledges that innovation contains both medicine and poison in the same vessel—and that our capacity to create has outpaced our ability to foresee consequences. And perhaps equally important is recognizing that meaningful contribution isn't always about creating anew, but often about cultivating what already exists: preserving, interpreting, and transmitting knowledge and practices in ways that transform both the cultivator and what is cultivated.

Yet Graham's framing—"What should one do?"—contains a deeper limitation. It positions ethics as an individual pursuit in an age where our greatest challenges are fundamentally collective. "What should one do?" seems personal, but in our connected world, doesn't the answer depend increasingly on what seven billion others are doing? When more people than ever can create or cultivate, our challenge becomes coordinating this massive, parallel work toward flourishing rather than conflict and destruction.

These principles aren't merely personal guideposts but the architecture for civilization's operating system. They point toward our central challenge: how to organize creativity and cultivation at planetary scale; how to balance the brilliant chaos of individual and organizational impetus with the steady hand of collective welfare. This balance requires new forms of governance that can channel our pursuits toward shared flourishing—neither controlling too tightly nor letting things run wild. It calls for institutions that learn and adapt as quickly as the world changes. And it asks us to embrace both freedom of pursuit and responsibility to others, seeing them as two sides of the same coin in a world where what you bring forth may shape my future.

The question isn't just what should I do, but what should we become?

It seems these sorts of things happened more in the 1980s, when we had lower inequality - middle class post-teens could pretend to study while actually learning something in their free time.

Now students are burdened with debt before they even get started, and have too many part time gig jobs to attend lectures, or mope around the campus having random conversations that challenge their ideas.

Disappointing response.

Looking forward to showing HN one day.

The novelty is important, because, tautologically, if your are just copying others, you are still a side character in their story. However, I do not think this should be read as, "create the next unicorn startup". I think it is rather a principle to live by. Like for example, if you have three job offers, go for the one that allows you to build something new, rather than the one where your task is to manage a legacy product. Or for example, let's say you move to a new city and you are a bit disappointed with the activities that are available for your kids. You can either try to convince your kids to attend the available activities or you can try to organize a new after school club.