Terraform Gotchas and How We Work Around Them - <AUTHOR> http://heap.engineering/terraform-gotchas/ <comment><USER12> > Always write your plan -out, and apply that plan

I have in my dotfiles:

        alias tfplan='terraform plan -out=.tfplan -refresh=false'
        alias tffreshplan='terraform plan -out=.tfplan'
        alias tfapply='terraform apply .tfplan; rm .tfplan'

That way I never accidentally `terraform apply` without creating a plan first. I also have it not refresh the state by default, which is mostly unnecessary and speeds up the planning significantly.

<comment><USER13> Hey all - Seth here from HashiCorp (the company that makes Terraform). The next version of Terraform (0.10) natively adopts very similar behavior, presenting a plan before applying as an added safety step. You can read more in the 0.10 upgrade guide. At the time of this writing, 0.10 is not yet released, but compiling Terraform from source at master will inherit this behavior.

[https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/master/website/s...](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/master/website/source/upgrade- guides/0-10.html.markdown)

<comment><USER14> I feel bad about not following up on it yet but my comment on TF#13276 sums up the issues I have with Terraform after using it for a little under a year now.

[https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/13276](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/13276)

I hope you all can work on improving the definitions, because many of them really are a chore compared to setting things up in the AWS dashboard, at the moment (security groups for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Terraform has interested me for a while, and I've been meaning to give it a try, but haven't had a chance just yet.

From what I have seen so far though, there isn't _really_ that much difference/benefit over CloudFormation. We currently have 95% of our resources in AWS with about 4% in Azure, and 1% in Google Cloud. It's great that Terraform is 'mulit-cloud' but it still seems like you have to write .tf's catered to each cloud, you can't just lift and shift to another cloud by copying and pasting a file?

People say the 'plan' feature is one of the advantages over CFN, but as far as I can tell, CFN now offers the same feature... it tells you what's going to change when you upload a new stack.

I sound like a CFN advocate now, but I genuinely don't have _that_ much experience with it, and really do want to give Terraform a chance. Convince me?

 _Oh, and since CFN started supporing YAML it looks easier to write too_

<comment><USER16> I've been thru the CFN v TF question. We came up with a list of benefits of TF over CFN. (Yes, I know - one-sided, but we wanted to document the decision with a bit more substance than "oh it's just better")

      * Ability to separate data (variables/parameters) from configs.
      * Easier to read (well at least pre-YAML CFN).
      * Allows comments in the code.
      * Version control changes (diffs) are easier to read.
      * Multi-Cloud support. Works against AWS, Google Compute, Azure, Docker, more.
      * Multi-provider in general: can provision resources across multiple different cloud providers at once.
      * Can write modules in TF that can be reused in multiple different configs.
      * Tracks state via a version-controllable data file.
      * 'terraform plan' is essentially a no-op mode to see what changes would occur without actual running or making changes.
      * Actively developed.

<comment><USER17> Cloud Formation has good support for use from Python, Ruby, Node and the JVM (with template generators, to help out). If you're writing JSON directly, yes, some of the points above -- the first four, and the seventh -- are an issue; but if you use Python you get all the benefits of it being "real code" and "just a library" (unlike Terraform).

<comment><USER18> This is a situation where I think not being "real code" is a feature of terraform. You declaratively represent your infrastructure rather than generate it with real code.

<comment><USER17> Over time, I have come to view "declarative infrastructure" as unrealistic. It's right 90% of the time, but not 100% of the time -- kind of like using only CSS and HTML. One should use markup whenever possible; but not everything on a page is truly "declarative". Occasionally one needs to script an input field or a transition.

One example of this is scripting the handoff process that's part of a blue/green deploy. In practice you'll want to look at organization defined metrics. There are libraries to do this -- either internal to your organization, or provided by a metrics vendor -- and scripting the process looks like this:

        (1) Setup new environment.
        (2) Divert some traffic.
        (3) Check metrics.
        (4) If metrics are okay:
            (4.1) Post message internally (IRC/Slack).
            (4.2) Divert all traffic.
            (4.3) Set up timed task to tear down old environment (in a day, hour, &c.).
        (5) If metrics are okay:
            (5.1) Post message internally (IRC/Slack), maybe to different people.
            (5.2) Stop diverting traffic.
            (5.3) Tear down new environment.

A large part of the work here _is_ declarative: (1) by itself is a big piece of it, and is fully declarative, as is the teardown in (4.3) and (5.3). However, the need for control flow in this and many other cases means that, without a library, one must drive Terraform by templating and shelling out. Not being "real code" pushes one in the direction, not of greater declarativeness (libraries can certainly have declarative interfaces, like Troposphere does), but of worse code.

Many complex and powerful features are exposed to a modern business through libraries -- AI, payments, telephony -- and software defined infrastructure can be, too. The benefits of "infrastructure as code" won't be realized until that happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've wanted, and tried and failed, to adopt Terraform several times now. What always gets in my way is that we _already_ have all our infrastructure in place, and Terraform's import capabilities are too limited.

For example, the last time I used it, a few months ago, it was not able to import almost any of our Google Cloud stuff, and I discovered that import support is only provided for some resources. There's a third-party tool called Terraforming, but it apparently only works with AWS.

I'm quite disheartened that the world is lagging this far behind. The only competitor I've found is Salt, and I found its orchestration support to be a bit of a mess. And just as with Terraform, the code is constantly lagging behind the providers.

The one provider I'd have expected to be on the forefront of orchestration is Google, and in a different multiverse their engineers are swarming around Terraform to make sure it has top-notch, official, first-class support, but alas, not in this one.

Are there any competitors that provide a smoother experience?

<comment><USER20> Hey there- Dana from Google here, I lead the efforts around Terraform from our side. You'll be happy to know that in the last 2 months alone we've added import for:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - <USER7>
      - <USER8>
      - <USER9>
      - <USER10>
      - <USER11>

, with more to come shortly!

We only have one open issue around import, so if there are other resources you'd like to see imported feel free to file an issue: [https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider- go...](https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider- google/issues) (just moved to a new repo a few days ago, and we're still in the process of getting existing issues moved over). A big factor in our prioritization of what to work on is based around issues filed (and thumbs ups on those issues), so that's a great way to get in touch with the team.

If you have any other questions around the Terraform+GCP experience, feel free to ask us in the #terraform channel in the GCP slack ([https://gcp- slack.appspot.com/](https://gcp-slack.appspot.com/) if you aren't already there). Best of luck, and do reach out if you need anything!

<comment><USER19> Thanks! I'll take yet another look at Terraform, then. Fourth time the charm, or something.

My lasting fear is that even if it has 90% of the support, there will always be one thing, or one edge case or bug, that will become an annoying blocker. Using a tool like TF means becoming dependent on it to a large extent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using terraform for a couple of months now (love it), but honestly our biggest pain was just project organization. It looks like a lot of people make a file per-resource type (elb.tf, ec2.tf, rds.tf) but we thought that would be a lot of bloat. We opted to have a file per system (dev_db.tf, dev_ecs_asg.tf, dev_haproxy.tf, etc) and everything related to that particular system is contained in a single file (security groups, dns entries, roles/profiles, etc). But it's still in one flat directory per environment. (I know tf has introduced environments, but we haven't switched over yet.)

I know you can hack this together with modules, but it seems like environment/project organization would be easier if _terraform just recursed subdirectories_. Right? I've seen a couple of issues for it, but I don't believe I've seen a concrete reason why it's a no-go.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's another similar issue with how EC2 security group rules are encoded: you can encode them either as ingress/egress stanzas on an "aws_security_group" resource, or you can attach rules to a security group resource with separate "aws_security_group_rule". You can't mix the two approaches on a single security group resource.

We adopted the ingress/egress stanza on security group resource approach.

If we ever wanted to change to the other approach (as described in the article), I don't think I would do state surgery by hand or even use "terraform state mv". I would:

        1. change terraforming to generate .tf files and tfstates the way I want
        2. remove the security groups from my config and my state
        3. use terraforming to regenerate the .tf files and tfstate

<comment><USER23> Hey there. Disclaimer: one of the creators of Terraform

I wanted to apologize that this is super confusing. All the scenarios where this exists (there are many) are historical. We originally went with the "nested" approach and now prefer the "split" approach for good reasons shown to us by users. But we kept both for backwards compatibility reasons. We have no good mechanism to enforce a migration at the moment. There are a couple ways we can resolve this technically in the future. For now, we should probably make sure the docs are annotated in all situations of the limitations of nested vs. standalone. I'll mention this to the team!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh, geeze. This is about: terraform.io

<comment><USER25> Yeah, a title change would be nice. I was anticipating something much more interesting.

<comment><USER26> And I wanna hoverboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I absolutely can't stand how destructive terraform is by nature. We have switched to Ansible, which has an excellent AWS module, and never looked back.

<comment><USER28> Why Ansible rather than Elastic Beanstalk or Cloud Formation?

<comment><USER29> It's vendor-agnostic? And CF is super slow and limited to a small number of resources (not sure if it's a 100 or a 1000).

<comment><USER26> Definitely 100. And every little thing is a resource.

<comment><USER30> [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuid...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/cloudformation- limits.html) Am I a missing something? Nothing in these docs about a 100 resource limit

<comment><USER26> It used to be 100. Looks like it's 200 now.

<comment><USER30> That's 200 resources per CF template. That's a massive CF template :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am just now implementing Packer and Vagrant in our devops workflows. Terraform is next on the list.

So far, it leaves me rather anxious - Packer and Vagrant appear to offer the bare minimum of usable functionality, with any advanced scenario bumping into (sometimes intentional) walls.

For example, it takes me 15-20 minutes to transfer a 50 MB file to a Windows VM being created by Packer. The GitHub issue, filed nearly 2 years ago, is closed with a comment that this is by design: [https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/2648#issuecomment...](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/2648#issuecomment-307354697)

Yet there is a PowerShell command that uses the same communication mechanism that can somehow do it in a matter of seconds. Of course, I cannot use this PowerShell command because Packer does not give me a variable with a machine's IP address because... it is improper somehow? [https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/4993](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/4993)

What the hell, Hashicorp...

I have a list of 10+ issues I have found so far and I am only starting to use these tools. From the activity in GitHub, they seem to be abandonware.

Maybe if I submitted PRs they might be accepted (then again, maybe not: [https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/pulls](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/pulls)) but I expect more from software than just accepting PRs - I expect its authors to actually develop it and to show an interest in improving it.

There is unfortunately nothing better out there. I admit, I am forced to use these products even though I do not find them satisfactory and the authors do not seem helpful.

If I had to start all over again with my current knowledge, I might perhaps just write my own scripting and skip Packer/Vagrant altogether. The value they offer with VM management comes with the downside of being left in the mud and having the system work against you when you try something nontrivial.

I am scared of what I will find when I touch Terraform. As I write this, I think I will first see whether I can just script it manually.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey author here! Happy to answer any questions etc :-)

<comment><USER32> No questions, just a suggestion: implement the part where the terraform plan is added as a comment in the PR. We set this up at my current employer and it makes the review process much quicker (also, commenting on lines in the ~plan~ terraform code changes is the bee's knees).

Don't have the apply be automatic after a review is approved; terraform apply's occasionally go sideways and need human intervention (remember: rollbacks are not automatic). A human should always kick off the apply and monitor state change activity.

<comment><USER33> Questions from our team:

\- Are you commenting with the output of show on the planfile to get human- readable version?

\- Line by line commenting on comments?

\- Do you have state-splits? Do you run plan on each individually for every PR?

<comment><USER32> May I email you answers to these?

<comment><USER33> Yes, that works. (email in profile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> here's something i got bit by more recently re: terraform plan -out and tooling using Terraform's Golang API.

Handling package dependencies with Go is not straighforward. There are several ways of doing it, and none are native to Golang.

Additionally, Go doesn't support getting versions of packages by tag or branch.

This bit me hard when I tried to update Palantir's TFJSON utility (turns tfplan binaries into json) so I could do unit testing of my Terraform plans with rspec.

The utility depended on v0.7.4 of terraform, but Terraform maintains a plan format constant that defines which plans can be used by what versions. They changed the plan format between 0.7.4 and 0.9.8 without bumping that constant, so when I tried running tfjson against plans created by the latter version, I got a weird non-matching datatype error that took a while to figure out. (I eventually had to vimdiff the hex outputs of plans created by both versions to figure that out.)

Additionally, HashiCorp made a significant change to the way they handled providers between 0.9.8 and 0.10.0 that justified them to bump the plab format version AGAIN. The catch: 0.10.0 isn't released yet, despite that being the code in their master branch.

I figured that updating tfjson's vendored terraform library to 0.9.8 would solve it. I first did a go get to fetch the latest TF codebase and used gvt to vendor it. That's when I discovered that plans generated by 0.9.8 are no longer compatible. After discovering that go get can't fetch packages by tag (Hashicorp tags their release commita) because Google believes in stable HEADs, I had to find a tool that could support fetching packages by tags. Govendor did that, so I used that.

It takes FOREVER to fetch all of the subpackages used by terraform. I couldn't do it during a three hour flight. Rubygems has its problems, but fetching deps isn't one of them. And even when I thought I fetched the entire source tree at v0.9.8, I would still get errors about missing types or missing packages.

I'm hopeful that I'll eventually find a solution, but it's a dog compared to using Gemfile.lock.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought terragrunt was a must have for that kind of deployment.

<comment><USER36> I'm curious about that as well. I was told by coworkers that Hashicorp added support for DynamoDB which rendered terragrunt redundant but I haven't had time to look into it.

<comment><USER37> terraform {

      backend "s3" {

        region = "us-west-1"

        bucket = "foo-tf-us-west-1"

        key = "foobar.tfstate"

        dynamodb_table = "tf-lock"

      }

}

[https://www.terraform.io/docs/backends/types/s3.html#dynamod...](https://www.terraform.io/docs/backends/types/s3.html#dynamodb_table)

<comment><USER38> Awesome! Any idea when this was added? I feel like this wasn't in the documentation a week or two ago; everything had still said "Use Hashicorp Atlas for remote state locking".

<comment><USER37> I've been using it for weeks if not months.

Their documentation might be lagging occasionally. It's a small team tackling a big challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This sums up our experience with Terraform perfectly:

> Most outages are caused by human error and configuration changes, and > applying Terraform changes is a terrifying mix of the two.

Terraform is a great tool nonetheless. Just like Heap, we have code reviews for the configuration itself, and a CI pipeline for validating it. This pipeline is quite superficial (`terraform validate` mostly does syntax checking), so we are too working on using centralized state to `terraform plan` for reviews.

</comment><comment><USER40> >Terraform state surgery

Did you try to use `terraform state mv`? I've found that command useful (albeit for much less than thousands of resources).

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it would work in this case, as the `ebs_block_device` block isn't a resource. In fact, the TF state doesn't even have the volume IDs for them!

An alternative to doing this was `terraform import` on all the volumes, then defining attachments, and hoping it all worked when you run `terraform plan`. I don't 100% remember now why we didn't do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So... _ahem_ what other idiots came here expecting a post about troubleshooting Martian habitability?

::Sulks off dejectedly::

<comment><USER42> At least one :)

<comment><USER43> at least two :)

<comment><USER44> at least many!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Brian Eno managed to piss in Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal - <AUTHOR> http://dangerousminds.net/comments/how_brian_eno_managed_to_piss_in_marcel_duchamp <comment><USER2> I though Duchamp was making fun of the art world. There is a large group who are obsessed with curators and experts, and will praise anything that's put in a gallery whether it's any good or not.

Edit: well it seems that was wrong, so let's derail the thread some more with a strong recommendation to watch "F for Fake", and a long Twitter rant I found about how to approach the "are video games art" conversation. [https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/882933955174989825](https://twitter.com/ForgetAmnesia/status/882933955174989825)

<comment><USER3> This Twitter thread is just really really bad. The argument it attributes to Benjamin is just not what his essay says at all. In fact, Benjamin was a pioneer in what we'd call "media studies," and he wrote about popular entertainment long before the rest of academia took that sort of thing seriously.

And if that were all that were wrong with it, it'd be a petty criticism, but this attitude--of assuming every critic is an elitist snob--just pervades the whole thing. Critics don't hate Thomas Kinkade (dude gets his name wrong, also, twice) "because he mass produced his art"\--so did Warhol, so do most modern artists on some level. They hate him because his work is kitschy and boring. It's the elevator music of painting.

Contra the author, comics are taught in higher education. There was a whole furor roughly a year ago because religious students at Duke were angry about being assigned Fun Home. There are academics who specialize in science fiction, who write about comic books. This entire long thread is against an enemy that doesn't exist anymore.

<comment><USER2> Asking for game(r)s to be taken seriously is specifically asking the elitists to legitimize the medium. Non-elitist critics might take games seriously but they don't count because culturally they aren't the gatekeepers to legitimacy.

I think the Kinkade point wasn't about mechanical mass production but mass appeal. Critics might not like the work but he sold zillions of prints. There's clearly a disconnect between what people think is good and what gets praised as good.

<comment><USER3> That's the thing, though--who are these gatekeepers he's imagining? Game studies are growing rapidly in academia. So-called "elite" media (which is, let's face it, much cheaper to consume than the games themselves) don't necessarily exclude games anymore. The New Yorker runs articles about games, for instance.

But it's silly to act as if dislike of games never has anything to do with quality. A lot of games, even now, have stilted dialogue, poorly-considered plots, inept voice acting. They're bad _as games_, and this applies even to many of the widely-praised ones. It's counterproductive to act as if lack of coverage for games has nothing to do with this.

Many people like Thomas Kinkade. Many people like hundred-hour long video games with badly-dubbed dialogue, repetitive battles, and lots of bugs. People should be allowed to like what they like, but that road goes both ways. Critics aren't obligated to pretend they enjoy things that actually make them miserable, just because that's what people are buying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the cleaning lady who tossed an installation in the trash because she mistook it for garbage. [1] Apparently, they were able to re- create the installation before the trash was taken out, but I believe leaving it would've sent a stronger message.

[1] [https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/8qkvab/a-janitor- thr...](https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/8qkvab/a-janitor-threw-away-a- boozy-art-exhibit-thinking-it-was-trash)

<comment><USER5> Dadaists and Surrealists would have argued that the cleaning lady did an an even better aesthetic gesture than the original artist by throwing the installation to the garbage...

<comment><USER6> The cleaning lady was actually just a performance artist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic pun:

"Since "decommodification" was one of the buzzwords of the day, I described my action as "re-commode-ification.""

<comment><USER8> Interestingly, "commodity" and "commode" are cognates. They both derive from the Latin "commodus" which means "convenient" or "suitable". In different ways, commodities and commodes are both things you need like-right-now-please.

<comment><USER7> Even better! Thanks for the TIL :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are four of them. Tate owns two; one for display and one in case of any 'accidents'

<comment><USER2> Source?

<comment><USER10> it is a _ _favourite belittling expletive goes here_ _ urinal there are millions of it.

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)#Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_\(Duchamp\)#Origin) "Other scholars such as William Camfield have never been able to match the urinal shown in the photo to any urinals found in the catalogues of the time period." "an artist's multiple was manufactured in an edition of eight in 1964."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Things go in a strange direction in the comments section...</comment>


Where are we going? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/11/where-are-we-going/ <comment><USER2> Can someone define "freemium" for me?

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium>

"Freemium is a business model which works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features."</comment></comment>


Google relents, will hand over European Wi-Fi data - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/109953/google-relents-will-hand-over-european-wi-fi-data

<comment><USER2> If I'd be a person whose wifi data was collected I'd be much more concerned about regulators having it then google. I'd really prefer for google to just erase all traces of it.</comment>


Ask HN: How did your plans for 2010 work out? - <AUTHOR>

Now that the end of 2010 is nearly upon us, and many of us may be thinking about what we're going to try to accomplish in 2011, perhaps its time to review how we did against our stated 2010 goals?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013531
In my case I got the big raise (and big increase in responsibility) I worked hard for.  How did the rest of you do?  How do your successes or failures in 2010 shape your plans for 2011? <comment><USER2> 3/5 goals achieved 1) Aced my masters 2) Landed a sweet gig at a boutique firm 3) Did some major surgery on my house

Failed 4) Did not get into a solid exercise routine 5) Investments did not go the way I would've liked them to</comment>


Living In A Photoshop World - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/10/11/living-in-a-photoshop-world

<comment><USER2> The domain ihavepsd.com sounds like a support group for people with an STI.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Can you imagine your world without PSD?"

Yes. It's exactly like the world now, except with fewer ads and lolcats.</comment>


Thoughts on the X10 Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://whiley.org/2010/08/05/the-x10-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> Why do people keep naming things X10? It is already confusing enough...</comment>


Node.js infographic. Convince the boss the next project should be built w/ Node - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/community/nodejs-infographic

<comment><USER2> This infographic has exactly zero reasons why a business owner would choose to use this technology. The people who hold the purse strings don't care if its popular, trending, or used by big companies. The questions that need answers are:

        * is it the right tool for the job?
        * is it better then our other options?
        * will it save us money and/or development time?
        * will it save us money and/or maintenance effort?

Positive answers to those questions are a reason to use node for a particular project. Not the fact its popular with developers who, as a group, always want to play with new toys.</comment>


Most of what chimpanzees and humans do today is not directly comparable - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/chimpanzees-cant-tell-us-much-about-being-human/ <comment><USER2> Well if Chimps can't then Baboons sure as hell can. Have a read of A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. The vast majority of human social and politic interactions are stereotypical of almost all primates, the only difference is that we have the gall to think that walking erect seems to have freed us from our vicious primate past. Spend some time watching a group of primates or work with a group of them over time as I did a number of years ago, and you will start to see that humans behave in almost the exact same way, our brains lie to us about our motivations so we are obivious to the fact that we are acting from ancient primate social instincts, and worse you get stuff like this piece which pulls on the old great chain of being.

Chips may not have governments, as the author says, but I suggest that he go back an take an introductory course in political science, because our entire understanding of modern political structures is founded on the idea that in some sense all politics are family politics (in group behavior). Macaques, chimps, baboons, and many more have extremely well studied and understood family group politics.

One of the steps on the road to enlightenment is the realization that the monkey on your back is you.

<comment><USER3> _Well if Chimps can 't then Baboons sure as hell can. Have a read of A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. The vast majority of human social and politic interactions are stereotypical of almost all primates, the only difference is that we have the gall to think that walking erect seems to have freed us from our vicious primate past._

I thought the difference is that by dint of our language use and our ability to modify our environment, we have the potential reproduce all the different social behaviors that the various primate species have - as well as social behaviors from even non-primate species.

Sure, it's wrong to image one is entirely outside of a social species, that things like dominance and submission don't play any part. But it seems just as wrong to make a single analogy to a single species and be done. We can be like wolves (predictors), sheep (prey), chimps (violently competitive), Bonabos (nonviolently cooperative), and so-forth but it's the complex structures of human society that are going to determine which of these sorts of animal we wind-up with.

It's important not to let the shock of realization "wow, human are just animals" stand in the way of thinking, "but we can still collectively shape _which_ animals we will resemble".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline probably wasn't chosen by the author, and is pretty bad. The minor headline is actually quite good:

> Although there is merit in recognizing how we resemble our primate > relatives, sometimes we need to understand what sets our species apart.

That's 100% true. Both sides are right.

But it's not just the headline which is bad. The author goes too far in one direction:

> The argument goes that if warfare, sexual coercion, male aggression, the > creation and use of tools, hunting, and other patterns show up in both > chimpanzees and humans, then these are evolutionarily old, shared traits. > Thus, understanding the reasons behind these behaviors in chimps can offer > insight into similar behaviors in humans. This premise is nice, but it is > mostly wrong.

No, as the previous sentence says, it can offer insight - not complete answers, but _some_ amount of insight. How much is still very open to debate.

> We have evolved the capacity to be the most compassionate, the cruelest, the > most creative, and the most destructive of all life on this planet.

The first two - most compassionate, cruelest - are an overly anthropocentric perspective. It would take extraordinary evidence to claim that humans are more compassionate than all other animals. And that's just not likely to be true - why would it?

> Racism and global climate change are not explained by our shared history > with chimpanzees, nor are gender diversity

No, _some amount_ of them probably are explained that way.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that splitting the difference is accurate here because the article contains "This premise is nice, but it is mostly wrong."

But the title is arguably baity, so we replaced it with a representative sentence from the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Racism and global climate change are not explained by our shared history > with chimpanzees, nor are gender diversity, the #MeToo movement, and the > recent rise in nationalism.

No. It can all be compared to how most social mammals operate.

Racism & nationalism have their roots in tribalism, a very useful tool to keep a tribe cohesive and thus competitive against other tribes.

Climate change: Have a look at any invasive species for examples.

Gender diversity & MeToo: Genders in mammals will take on certain specialized roles in order to survive in their environment.

Are they right and ethical? Of course not. Times have changed, and our psyches haven't kept up. But ignoring our evolutionary heritage only results in treating the symptoms rather than the cause. That's not how you correct problems.

> It's only by delving into humanity's distinctive evolutionary history, since > our split with the other ape lineages, that we are better able to develop a > fuller understanding of the human niche, of what makes us specifically > human.

Uh, no. It's also important to find out what's baked into our psyche, no matter how ugly or inconvenient, and take steps to compensate for them or maybe even correct them. That's what higher reasoning is for.

<comment><USER7> I would say that racism is rooted not specifically tribalism but more broadly in inductive reasoning (particular-to-general heuristics) which has been absolutely indispensable to survival and evolution.

It is critical to classify a creature as friend or foe based on what class it belongs to, rather than granting the instance benefit of doubt.

How previously observed members of a group have behaved in the past constitutes rational evidence for estimating the future behavior of a newly observed member of that group.

<comment><USER8> Trying to understand the thread of reasoning here so correct me if I didn't interpret this correctly.

An individual observing some members of a group with different physical characteristic with a certain behavior, an individual infers all members of that group behave that way.

Then with an individual being exposed to a sampling of that groups behavior due to say the news or social media algorithms the individual makes an inference but is unable to account for the bias these sources might have.

<comment><USER7> > _individual infers all members of that group behave that way._

E.g. "all sharks bite legs off"

This leads to survival: not having your legs bitten off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Several years ago I attended a distinguished lecture by a researcher with a long history of working with non-human primates. For an entire hour we watched clip after clip of chimps failing at trivially easy human mental tasks mostly involving 2nd order cognition, even after extensive training and guidance by researchers in each task, and videos of research data in which the researcher had anthropomorphized the observed anaimal behavior when the data doesn't actually support it He was trying to undermine the notion that humans are just a better chimpanzee (i.e. quantitative) but are a different order of chimpanzee (i.e. qualitatively different). I was convinced.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I have a good sense of what mental tasks require 2nd order cognition - what are some examples of the tasks that you saw?

<comment><USER11> thinking abstractly or indirectly — thinking about thinking

<comment><USER9> Thanks. That is exactly what I meant. I was busy writing up some research today and didn't make my way back here to answer.

<comment><USER10> I'm still curious how you'd design a task that requires "thinking about thinking" and give it to chimpanzees, given that they don't have language. It's a useful restatement, but do you have an example you could share please?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah but they can tell us a whole lot about being a chimpanzee. That's about all we can rightfully expect of them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Chimps defend territory and go to war. Its not just human nature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War)

</comment><comment><USER14> Of course they can't, they don't speak.

</comment><comment><USER15> How can this be the leading sentence in a scientific article??

"Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee?"

Edit: this is in response to this idea being floated in the media and this article is responding to it. Thanks child comment for the context.

<comment><USER16> _> How can this be the leading sentence in a scientific article??

>"Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee?"_

If you look again at that sentence you quoted, it has a hyperlink to primatologist Jane Goodall comparing Trump to a chimpanzee.[1]

Because Goodall is somewhat of a celebrity on the subject of chimps, and Trump is...obviously Trump, a lot of various media outlets picked up on the combination. E.g. Guardian, FT, Huffington, Fox News, etc.[2]

So it seems like the author is basically responding to all of that.

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-aggressive-chimp-and- ma...](http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-aggressive-chimp-and-may-not-last- long-668128)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=comparing+President+Trump+to...](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparing+President+Trump+to+a+chimpanzee)

<comment><USER15> Great point. Updating my comment.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How Did You Think About Having Children? - <AUTHOR> I'm noticing that it seems to be a serious competitive disadvantage to have children if you're in tech. You get more locked in to your path, can't take as many risks, and may have a lot less free time to experiment and improve. That doesn't even factor in time for more personal things like exercise, reading, having hobbies, meeting/making friends, vacationing, etc. You obviously have to commit to being a lot more selfless once you have children.
If someone is in their 30s, married, but hasn't hit their really time-intensive stretch goals (be it entrepreneurship, financial independence, becoming an industry leader, achieving a senior title, and so on), how should (s)he approach the decision? What are the ways you can stay competitive and dynamic? What compromises are unavoidable? Is it unreasonable to expect to be both professionally successful as well as a great parent? Under what circumstances would it be advisable to delay? How long? Should a really ambitious person seriously consider not having children at all?
Child birth is probably the most consequential inflection point in peoples' lives and yet many seem to rush into it headlong without asking the right questions. I'm sure there's some great collective wisdom out there on the subject. It would be especially helpful to hear from people who decided to remain childless. <comment><USER3> I've yet to see any meaningful "collective wisdom" on whether to be a parent. Since you seem not to see the value, it is probably best for you not to do it --the payoff is likely not something your quantification would measure, but the cost would be.

The value isn't quantified in economic terms, because you can't quantify love.

It might help me hit some achievement milestone if I had no kids, perhaps, but that would feel shallow. Maybe I'd have built something that made a nice bullet point on a director's resume, but no one will be singing songs of my heroic deeds in the halls of Valhalla.

For me, kids are great because I have lots of love and affection to share. I've never had such unreserved un-self-conscious love as I get from my children. When I walk in the door after a long day, I get a rock star greeting --three little people cheering my name. I'm never lonely anymore. I have lots of great memories. I get tons of cuddles. I get to pass on things I've learned. Providing a good upbringing feels meaningful.

Staying competitive on an hours basis is hard, but would not be hard if my spouse was a stay-at-home mom, which would be feasible. Staying competitive on a knowledge-basis is not hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I largely agree with what you're saying. Out of curiosity, what makes you think I don't see the value? I omitted the 'pros' of having children simply because they seem self-evident. I don't think I'd bother asking this question at all if I didn't appreciate the argument in favor.

<comment><USER3> You didn't list any pros. For people who don't want children, I imagine many don't value the pros, or even see them as pros.

You asked specifically to hear from childless folks--usually that type of request is a self-affirmation from someone who has already decided, but wants to buttress their decision.

Also, you seemed like you were trying to quantify the decision, but with matters of the heart, usually people just _know_.

I think people who don't want kids actually do ask this question often. There can be spouses or parents who apply tremendous pressure, and the decision is massive, and irreversible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _How should (s)he approach the decision?_

By looking into one's heart, and deciding what one really wants out of life.

Financial constraints are one thing. But one really shouldn't sacrifice truly important life goals (like having children; or even moving to the same city to be with one's partner) for the sake of this industry's (really quite shallow and ego-aggrandizing) "meritocratic" standards. Or even weigh them on the same scale.

To put it another way: By all means, don't give up your _creative_ and _intellectual_ goals -- and don't foolishly neglect your baseline financial goals, either. But really, just _screw_ this idea of "achieving a senior title", or "becoming an industry leader", or any of that stuff.

I mean, these things OK if they come as the result and _after-effect_ of creative and productive work. But the moment one starts to think "Wait, should I have kids with this wonderful person like I've always been dreaming of, or... should I keep plugging away in the hopes being... recognized and chattered about in major media outlets" \-- I'd suggest that that's not only where one starts to lose perspective on what's really important in life; one also starts to lose perspective on what it really means to be genuinely creative and successful (by personal, or any other standards) in the first place.

Which after all comes down to: throwing caution to the wind, and putting all your energies into what _you_ think is important and meaningful - and not what other people think is important. (And certainly not what journalists in the business media think is important).

 _Should a really ambitious person seriously consider not having children at all?_

I would put it this way: _decide what your ambitions really are_ , and act accordingly.

If having kinds happens to fall into the space of "ambitions" for you - that's great. If not, that's fine also.

But the "should I have kids _or_ follow my ambitions?" line of analysis seems like a mental trap.

</comment><comment><USER5> The question is - what are your priorities in life?

I'm sterile, I will have no biological descendents. yet I have an increasing number of children and grandchildren. On the day I got married, I became a father to three boys, 6,5 and 3. Within 2 years, I became father to a 13 year girl. As time has gone on, three of them got married, so I increased to 4 sons and 3 daughters. In recent years, that has changed to 5 sons and 4 daughters, and 5 grandchildren.

It is all a perspective of what is important. Financially, life has had its ups and downs. There have been many health problems along the way, extended family conflicts, etc, etc, etc.

Would I change any of it. yes, in all the areas that I could have done better by my wife and children. But otherwise no. As my wife, children and grandchildren have made life incredibly exciting. Even with an autistic grandson and the problems that autism brings, I wouldn't give that up for anything. Not even to have him not have autism.

Life brings many challenges and we grow through them. Work is a minor part of life not the major event.

But the funny thing is that knowing God (Father, Son and Spirit) personally is the very thing that has rounded out, completed and made my entire life with my family worth every problem, trouble, difficulty, disease, cancer, accident, death and misery that has happened.

I have hope for now and the future, irrespective of what may be happening in the world right now.

So I'll go back to my question - what are your priorities in life?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to be the contrarian of the thread and tell you that children and family are the ultimate competitive advantage. They make you focus and become more of a realist. I say this as I have become a surprise father (we adopted a niece to keep her out of states custody, sad story) in May and something about having someone so tiny and unconditionally loving depend on you really changed my out look. It's hard to put into words how I feel and what's changed but my side projects I fiddled with now either have a purpose or they're shelved. I am of a singular mind to march forward and provide for my wife and child. I think that's what makes someone successful singular mindset and a clear goal and a family and child have sure provided that for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I ended up having children (adopting them, actually), my time for extra activities outside work went to zero. However, as the children have been getting older, I've been getting slowly and gradually getting that extra time back. I try to allocate some time to spend with the children and some time for learning new stuff or working on a side project. It's worked out pretty well.

I have had no problem with professional development, and I think it's because I've worked at places with reasonable work hours. It might have not gone so well if I had been working at a place that expected 10 hour days (or longer) or lots of weekend work. Instead, it's been 8 hours a day on weekdays for the most part, with the occasional bit of work outside that area.

I've become a tech lead and moved into a senior role with no problems. My company is pretty family friendly and they value my abilities and experience even if I insist on making time to spend with my children.

I lost a lot of time to spend on fun activities, but once the children become older, it's also a lot of fun to do activities with them. I got my kids the Robot Turtles board game to teach them programming, and they've had a lot of fun with that.

So yes, having kids will significantly reduce the amount of time to spend on all those things you used to do, but it doesn't have to mean stagnation. I've still been able to make progress, although I certainly haven't had time for entrepreneurship.

So you have to decide whether the reward (children and interacting with them every day) will be worth the effects it will have on your life. For some people, it's very much worth it. For other people, it's not.

Life doesn't have to be go go go until you die or retire. You can slow down and enjoy it without becoming a dinosaur. In our field, demand is high, so we don't have to spend every waking moment trying to get ahead.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really thoughtful answer. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Deciding whether to have kids is not a spreadsheet problem. Using hard numbers you'll never see a profit. It's always negative. But there are so many more benefits to parenting that you can't put into numbers. You either want them or not. If you want to pass on your wealth then you should have them.

Some people just don't want them. They are hard to raise and there is always the risk of heart breaking pain even if everything is great. Are you one of the ones that don't want them? Take a hard look and decide.

If you are one of the ones that want them and look at the future and feel bad that you never had any then START.

If you do have them then make sure you're a loving parent. Having parents that love you is worth anything and everything.

</comment><comment><USER9> Being a mother myself and having witnessed many of my friends become parents, if there's one take away for me it is this - no amount of preparation can get you ready for gamut of feelings you'll experience as a parent. Yes, there is exhaustion, there is self-doubt, there is an overwhelming feeling of being alone (especially until the baby starts to talk). But, there is also the inexplicable high of being completely responsible for shaping the future of another human being, experiencing the joy of being a hero in the eyes of your child.

So I am not really sure I buy the "rushing without asking questions" part. I don't know what questions would prepare for this unique experience. Please understand that I am, in no way trying to demean you or question.

Another thing that motherhood has brought about is that every problem gets put into a larger context. Small workplace squabbles do no seem as important as teaching math or alphabet to your child. As an engineer, I also see that I have become more efficient with my attention span, time management, energy management and most importantly content with life.

<comment><USER9> I also wanted to address some of the other points you raise with some anecdata

\- I do MOOCs after I put the child to bed \- No facebook or channel surfing for me. I use my time and call friends/family on the phone (usually after my child leaves for school and right before I head to work). So in a sense, I use my time for synchronous, deeply meaningful relationships vs. trying to be up to date with 300+ people on FB

\- I don't get to go to post work social events. But that's a tradeoff I will accept because it means I pick up the kid from school, go the park or take my child to her classes

\- We have people over for lunch/dinner, so I do keep in touch with friends - probably more deeply than before

\- The things that truly take a hit are doing things on an impulse - <USER2> on a weekday or eating out randomly. All of which are completely doable with some planning ahead of time.

So for me, it has been about planning, managing time and energy and trying to do fewer things well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _it seems to be a serious competitive disadvantage to have children if you > 're in tech_

Children are generally competitive disadvantages for all adults with careers, not just for those in tech.

But competitive advantages are not why people have children.

<comment><USER11> Unless you're a farmer in a developing country.

<comment><USER12> Only after the kids hit a certain age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm 45, no kids, by choice. It's not because of my career, it's just because of the life I choose to live. I would simply not live a single day of my life the same if I had children. I do live every single day of my life as I choose (and like).

If you have kids, you don't have that choice anymore. You can adjust your needs, your expectations to the presence of kids... but it's a different story, isn't it?

For me, it's all about freedom. YMMV

<comment><USER14> I am sorry for you, because you'll never experience unconditional love in this life...

<comment><USER15> I'm a parent, but even love of a child is not "unconditional". There are too many ugly counterexamples to easily disprove that. The bond between parent and child is special, for sure, but I do believe you can build such bonds with people that are not your offspring - you just have to spend a ridiculous amount of time together and sacrifice a lot for them and that's rare for people that aren't your children (because you're not biologically programmed to do it).

<comment><USER14> Agreed, everything is possible, but how likely to happen with someone who is not your child (either biological or adopted), as you said it is very rare indeed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is this even a consideration, people seem to create a new one every now and then and become all giddy about it. If there is no shortage, we should not be creating more humans. I wish human birth was more regulated. Once born, if people can't afford, properly maintain or educate their kids, it automatically becomes government's problem to fix, with all of us having to pay with taxes or otherwise having to live with. There is little if any, personal or economic benefit to having created one as individual.

<comment><USER17> curious, how old are you?

<comment><USER16> How old would I have to be to make my comment look understandable to you for my age?

<comment><USER18> <25.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Everything I have ever read, seen or heard suggests to me that plans to make babies need quite a lot of buffering on your time frames in ways that can account for kids showing up vastly sooner than intended or vastly later than intended. Almost no one seems to take this into account.

</comment><comment><USER20> Children are complimentary to most endeavors. Maybe with them you won't get as far when measured by some metrics. But with them you will certainly better understand the world at large. That increased knowledge helps no matter what you pursue.

Another perspective is when should you start a 20+ year endeavor? There is no a priori optimal time so long as you are baseline ready for the financial and emotional responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is obviously a really complex and personal decision, but I wanted to focus on this bit:

 _> If someone is in their 30s, married, but hasn't hit their really time- intensive stretch goals (be it entrepreneurship, financial independence, becoming an industry leader, achieving a senior title, and so on), how should (s)he approach the decision?_

Do you really think you'll accomplish your major goals by some point in your 30s? I sure hope I don't - I hope to keep setting and accomplishing (and failing to accomplish) career goals until I retire, if I ever do. And I don't mean necessarily an up-and-to-the-right trajectory, but at least keeping things challenging and fulfilling throughout. I know this isn't what you intended, but it makes it sound like the goal is to get to a certain career "plateau", if you will, and then have kids and rest on those laurels.

I also think it's healthy and a good thing to have your kids see you challenge yourself in your career, to succeed, and yes, to struggle. When they're young, they won't notice, but when they're older, what are you going to say? "Well, son, I worked really hard before you were born so that now I don't have to and we can play catch!" \- not a great role model for that child, IMHO.

Even within my local community (far from SV), if I think of some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs, quite a few of them are parents of many children (5 or 6, even!) and had those children long before their businesses became the success they are today.

I don't know if children are as big of a "disadvantage" as we might think. Sure, there are practical limitations, but personally, I found that becoming a parent forced me to become much more focused, prioritized, and productive with the time that I did have available. While the children are young, I certainly cannot be as productive (in total) as I was before, but I have no doubt that once they are older, in school, my productivity will blow away my pre-parental accomplishments due to the increase in efficiency.

As far as risk-taking - this is obviously just an N of 1, but I quit my FT job weeks after our first child was born to go consulting/freelance after a 10-year career as a 9-5er. It's been 3+ years and they've been the most successful and happy I've had. Business is good and I'm also looking into more entrepreneurial opportunities - something I did nothing of when I was single or married without children.

</comment><comment><USER21> In Asia, children are a retirement scheme. Sure, there are pensions and build a board. But in case of illnesses or strokes and so on, children are expected to take care of you, because nurses certainly won't. Children are also a measure of wealth - someone with a mansion and no kids is still considered poor.

If you build a business empire, your children are the ones who manage it and continue running it. If you make mistakes while building a business, you have someone to explain it to who can learn from them and do much better.

Plus there is the very biological requirement of passing on your genes. I don't believe anyone can truly be dead as long as their genes go on.

Perhaps the most productive and ambitious person in this world is Elon Musk, and he has 6 kids.

</comment><comment><USER22> You'll notice most people (of all ages) who have kids will say they are the best thing in the world. Hard work but it's worth it, in their opinion (how could it be otherwise?? How mean/bitter someone has to be to say their kids were a waste of life? A lot).

Conversely, people without kids will fall into two camps: the young who will say they are being pragmatic but probably aren't sure they won't regret this in the future... And the old people who either discovered late in life they wanted kids or not. The latter is the more interesting perspective but I don't think you'll get that many answers from old people without kids here.

</comment><comment><USER23> I just had a baby boy two months ago, I also work and go to school at the same time. My wife is staying home to raise him but she is quite content.

Having a kid forces you to think about what you're leaving behind on the planet. The realization that there's a little one who is going to look up to you for every little thing makes you really question and think about your own point of view, your own ways of doing things.

I felt like I became a leader when I had my son. It changes you in a way that nothing else quite can. It opens your heart. Check out The beginning of life on netflix. It's quite an eye opening piece.

I would almost posit that if you are going to be successful, then you can certainly be successful regardless of having a kid or not.

I also don't think any material success is quite so valuable as the experience of having a child. I know millionaires that decided to never have kids, and I wouldn't say they regret it, because that may be harsh, but they certainly would reconsider their choices.

I think world view defines a lot of it as well. I subscribe to my own esoteric beliefs. I believe in karma. There is an intangible joy, happiness, and luck that kids bring. They've certainly blessed my life. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> there is a recent post on the same topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777851)

<comment><USER25> That's a great thread. Anyone who has a comment or is looking for info >>> go there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Thanks for the suggestion @billconan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a counterpoint to some platitudes expressed here, let me say this: I unequivocally hate my dad. The reasons are complicated, and personal. But there is something I know with absolute certainty. Everything he ever did in relation to me was with the best of intentions, and he always placed my well- being (as seen by him) before his.

Sure, I mostly feel like an ungrateful wretch. And yes, now that he's an old man, I do treat him very poorly and wish he were dead, mainly because it'd save my feelings of guilt with how I treat him.

I wonder if he resents having me. I will never ask him. I fear his reponse, that he'll deny it.

If you're willing to have a kid, I'm one of the ugly corner cases.

I don't have any kids. I'm beyond the age where they're on my radar. Perhaps a relationship with someone a fair bit younger would change that, but I doubt it.

Good luck.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry to hear that. Just to clarify, you're saying you hate your father despite him having done nothing intentionally to deserve that hatred? You're obviously not obliged to go into more detail, but I guess I'm wondering if your message is: "Be warned that you can have kids and do your best as a parent and they might end up hating you anyway"?

<comment><USER26> The specific part of your comment, which is true, is, yes, I am essentially warning that you can do your absolute best to raise a child and put their interests (as you see it) ahead of your own, and they still may end up hating you for it.

I'm not, however, going to comment on any other part of your response. I just don't want to get into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My kids are always awesome, even if they're occasionally a little _less_ awesome. My wife and I had our first child in our mid-20's after being married for not quite 2 years.

We've both found ways to nurture our careers while we raised a family. There was one 5 month period where our infant daughter would fall asleep around 8:30 PM, so my wife would head to bed also and I'd open the laptop. Between 12:30-1:00 AM, like clockwork, my daughter would wake up needing a dry diaper and a bottle. I'd close my laptop, care for my daughter, and head off to sleep. She'd wake up again before 6, but my wife would get up with her and I'd sleep in until 7:30.

Lots of detail, but you find new rhythms and ways to get things done.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a question of priorities, not pragmatics. Your priorities seem to be career-oriented, and making your personal mark on the future. That's okay. Someone with different priorities would be asking things much more like "will my career path allow me to have the kind of family that I want?"

The people who "rush into" having children have gotten to a point where they feel like they can, and so they do. They're employed because they need money in order to have a family. They don't have a family because it's a nice hobby to add meaning to their work-oriented lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER29> > It would be especially helpful to hear from people who decided to remain > childless.

Looking down the thread it seems that mostly people with kids have answered. Not surprising. Here's one more...

> Child birth is probably the most consequential inflection point in peoples' > lives and yet many seem to rush into it headlong without asking the right > questions

"the right questions" are very subjective. From your post we can extrapolate one of these questions to be "Will having children give me a competitive disadvantage". A person with no children will see this as one of the "right questions" to ask. A person _with_ children will likely disagree and think the question irrelevant.

I have kids. I'm always surprised to see people talk about prioritising career over children. In hindsight now, my kids are the most important thing in my life. But it's easy to forget that once I was young and wasn't sure if I wanted kids at all. They would impact my life. They would limit my freedom, in career, holidays, commitments, hobbies. This was all accurate, but it was worth it. I could live my life over again, I think I'd probably have them younger, and damn the consequences.

> If someone is in their 30s, married, but hasn't hit their really time- > intensive stretch goals ...

If you have an inkling that you want kids, have them as young as possible. There will be no perfect time. Even if you hit all those "time-intensive stretch goals" you mentioned, there will be more reasons to put it off.

On the other hand, if you don't want kids, then don't stress it. there are plenty of childless couples out there who are happy.

That you're posting this at all suggests you _do_ want kids on some level.

Some facts:

\- Fertility declines with age. It is increasingly difficult to have a successful pregnancy for every year past the age of 35. IVF is expensive and does not always work.

\- Careers also decline with age, though not so much. it is orders of magnitude easier to land a new job at 40 than get pregnant

\- The later in life you have your children, the less time you will have with them, and the less time they will have with grandparents

</comment><comment><USER25> WHY - would it be "especially helpful to hear from people who decided to remain childless?"

Would it be "especially helpful to hear from people" who were going to learn to Scuba dive...and then didn't? How could they help you learn to navigate - what they didn't actually learn?

You're not going to get quality advice from people with comments like this. It's clear you don't like the trade off, so it would leave the reader to guess that you don't have any?

So - what are you looking for? Agreement?

<comment><AUTHOR> Presumably those people represent the minority opinion/path. Their view would therefore be underrepresented in any sample on the question. We all probably know lots of adults with kids. Maybe not so many without.

Nothing sinister intended there and I apologize if that came across as offensive. I'm genuinely curious about this topic.

<comment><USER25> Okay - so let's give you the benefit of the doubt.

I would presume that people with children on HN are the minority. Not the other way around (for a number of reasons you mentioned).

Also - As Americans become more self focused ("Self Focused" \- because it's a larger category that just - career. It could include love of learning, PHD focused, Yoga, traveling, or even just video games) the birthrate is going down across America.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/health/united-states- fert...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/health/united-states-fertility- rate.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Suppose you achieve all of your goals. What have you accomplished?

</comment><comment><USER31> If your ethics include reducing human suffering, deciding to conceive is unethical due to the quantity of pain your child is almost certain to endure.

<comment><USER32> > If your ethics include reducing human suffering, deciding to conceive is > unethical due to the quantity of pain your child is almost certain to > endure.

If your ethics are _limited to_ reducing some simplistic measure of suffering, that seems clear.

OTOH, under such an ethical system, if there were a means to immediately and painlessly eradicate humanity, it would be ethically obligatory to execute it.

If, to go to an opposite extreme, your ethics is limited to maximizing human joy, refraining from having a child would, in most situations, be unethical.

Real world ethical systems (both as expressed and the things people actually believe) tend to be more complex, though, than either extreme simplification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you see children as a "serious competitive disadvantage", you've answered your own question...at least for now, you may change your mind later.

Being a parent is the single most challenging and rewarding thing I've ever done. Nothing else comes close. If you're asking a ton of questions, you're not ready.

</comment><comment><USER14> Children are the best thing that can happen to someone, just see how many depressing posts we are getting from lonely people with nothing but work in their lives, so my advise: don't be selfish and enjoy life or if you want to save every penny, just move under a bridge...

</comment><comment><USER34> >yet many seem to rush into it headlong without asking the right questions

What are the right questions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. Maybe instead: 'enough' questions? The point I was driving at is that having children is perhaps a default behavior, but the dynamics of our industry (and of modern society more generally) have evolved so that the decision creates a lot more friction than it may have in the past. The questions it seems wise to ask (at least to me) are related to mindset and tradeoffs.</comment></comment>


Translations of the Dao De Jing - <AUTHOR> http://www.daoisopen.com/ddjtranslations.html <comment><USER2> It's worthwhile to read many translations of this book. I find this really helps to "triangulate" the nuance and depth of the original. Inevitably, you come across translations that you like more, and others that you like less.

I was attracted to the Dao De Jing at a fairly young age. It took over a decade, though (as I was reading a related text—I can't remember which one, maybe the Zhuangzi), for it to suddenly dawn on me how _alien_ this was from the way of reasoning that's been ingrained in me through the culture I was brought up in.

I had been able to extract tons of enjoyment (and, hopefully, insight) from them already at that point. But from then on, the daoist classics suddenly looked very different to me. They took on a depth that I hadn't seen in them before.

A related book I would recommend is Edward Slingerland's Trying Not to Try[1]. A very interesting dive into the concept of Wu Wei. His interpretations of the old texts get a little one/two dimensional at times, but he also brings along a lot of insight.

1: [https://eslingerland.arts.ubc.ca/tryingnottotry/](https://eslingerland.arts.ubc.ca/tryingnottotry/)

<comment><USER3> I'll second that recommendation! One of the better books I've read last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A page about hair-splitting on translations of a philosophy whose chapter one paragraph one states the notion isn't possible to convey in words!

 _The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery._

<comment><USER5> It does try to convey something in words in the next chapters, no?

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the intention of the text isn't to explain what Dao is and how to live according to Dao. It clearly says that's impossible, and even calling the concept 'Dao' is counterproductive to a full understanding.

So the text is meant to do something else, like help others start thinking and learning for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was another site that hosted 80+ versions that I scraped a long time ago and made this: [http://tao.scrame.com](http://tao.scrame.com)

It shows a random passage from a random translation, with an attribution link to the long dead parent site. I should probably dump the db back to the constituent pieces, enduring issues and all.

Initially it was a test for rails, but I rewrote it in php ages echo.

<comment><USER8> That's not a bad idea for an app. Maybe get an alert with a random passage every day or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug, the free Standard Ebooks edition of the Legge translation: [https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te- ching/james-l...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te-ching/james- legge)

<comment><USER10> Your site has been one of my favorite finds of this decade. Thank you for the fantastic work.

<comment><USER11> Although the ebooks are generally good quality, the spelling and grammar are in many cases (deliberately) changed from the original. When I read a book I want to read the words of the original author, not a modernized version. It would be nice if you could download versions without the "[Editorial]" changes.

<comment><USER9> That's probably the most common complaint we get. However I think most readers are unaware of how heavily the older works they read today have been edited over the years, not just in spelling but in grammar too, often by many different people.

For example, the original spelling of Shakespeare in 1609 looks something like this:

        From off a hill whoſe concaue wombe reworded,
        A plaintfull ſtory from a ſiſtring vale
        My ſpirrits t'attend this doble voyce accorded...

        Vpon her head a plattid hiue of ſtraw...[1]

How dare anyone change the spelling of the patron saint of English literature! ;) But of course most modern readers would find that pretty impenetrable, and would prefer a more modern spelling to be able to appreciate the text.

As early as 1700 people have been modernizing (for example) Shakespeare, going so far as to add apostrophes that weren't there (I remember one guy in a discussion with me on this topic lamented that modern editions _removed_ apostrophes, when in fact they were _added_ by editors in times past...).

Our small, entirely one-for-one spelling edits are in the same spirit. For your example, I don't think removing the apostrophe from "phone" changes the _meaning_ of the text at all. It _does_ remove the explicit announcement to the reader of "phone" as a contraction (though a clever reader will notice that the word "phone" occurs in the word "telephone" in this same story); but does it change the story's _meaning_? Or, is it more like replacing the long "ſ" in the quote above with a modern "s"? After all, removing "ſ" removes the history of our written language as a descendant of Roman cursive script, which, like the history of "phone" being a contraction, is something that someone somewhere probably would prefer to preserve!

The only difference between SE and the editors of old is that we're being upfront about it, and we give readers a chance to undo those changes using Git, if they prefer. And, ultimately, our editions don't _prevent_ anyone from reading older editions with their preferred spelling variant preserved. Old books with old spelling and 100% faithful digital transcriptions are out there for everyone to still enjoy. We're just another option for readers who want to enjoy a timeless book without having to fight through dated spelling. :)

[1] [http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/UC...](http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/UC_Q1_Son/66/?work=lc)

<comment><USER11> Changing "ſ" to "s" is just changing the font, so I don't have any problem with that. Changing "v" to "u" is arguably also changing the font, if you assume that the original text had two visually identical but semantically different "v"s.

I do think removing the apostrophe from "'phone" changes the meaning, because it implies a different relationship to the technology. It's like writing "internet" without the capital I. This is still considered incorrect, but it's becoming more common, and I think eventually it will replace "Internet". The loss of the capital letter, just like the loss of the apostrophe, shows the technology fading into the background and losing its novelty.

And the works of Shakespeare are an extreme example, being older than most works on the site. I'd prefer the original spelling, but for works of that age I can understand changing it. I'd set the publication of Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) (or a few years later) as the cut- off point for spelling changes.

<comment><USER9> I think your "the text's relationship with the spelling" argument can certainly be applied to the Shakespeare example above, just as I stated. When viewed in that light, replacing long-S and u for v change Shakespeare's relationship with the Roman script and Roman history of his day, too. (Though those are not the only spelling changes in the example I provided.) The question becomes, does that really _matter_ , in light of the text? Most editors throughout history seem to think "no," as evidenced by the huge amount of quiet spelling and even grammar changes editors have been slipping under our noses for centuries, without so much as a whiff of outrage.

I think, rather, in text a character's relationship with technology is part of the _text_ , not of the spelling. A character does not know how he spelled "phone" when they're speaking dialog. The sounds out of his mouth do not include an apostrophe whether it's there in the spelling or not.

And, I think there are plenty of people who would be just as upset at using Johnson's dictionary as a cutoff for spelling. If we demand original spelling in everything we read, why is _any_ cutoff acceptable? (Or so they would argue.) Of course, I disagree that a we need a cutoff at all, or that spelling matters in the general sense :)

(Of course, spelling can matter when the text makes a point to be old-timey; so if you note in the H.P. Lovecraft short fiction example, the "A Reminiscence of Samuel Johnson" short story retains its archaic spelling and style, because Lovecraft wrote it archaically on purpose. In fact we retain several archaic spelling styles in Lovecraft that we might otherwise modernize, because he was famous for thinking of himself as an "aged antiquarian" and wanted his prose to reflect that. This is where a careful and well-read editor matters, and those are the kinds of people we have volunteering at SE.)

Ultimately it comes down to taste, and the trust you have in the editor of the volume you're reading. This project is unintentionally making it a mission of mine to reveal to readers how much of what they've read in the past and think is "genuine," has in fact been heavily edited by many people on its journey from first printing a hundred years ago to your hands today, no different than what we're doing. SE just says so up front and gives you the option to undo.

<comment><USER11> >If we demand original spelling in everything we read, why is any cutoff acceptable?

I proposed Johnson's Dictionary because it's the first English dictionary that was widely accepted as authoritative. Before then you could argue that there was no real standard spelling, and all that mattered was whether writers could be understood. After it was published, idiosyncratic spelling gained meaning.

>In fact we retain several archaic spelling styles in Lovecraft that we might otherwise modernize, because he was famous for thinking of himself as an "aged antiquarian" and wanted his prose to reflect that.

I checked Lovecraft first for that reason, and I was relieved to find the changes were much less than I feared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, let me plug Peter Boodberg's startlingly bizzare version, which begins "Lodehead lodehead-brooking : no forwonted lodehead"... It's such an alien approach to translation, you can see his logic, but the end product looks like something from a Markov chain.

[https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/142657117089/philological-n...](https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/142657117089/philological- notes-on-chapter-one-of-the-lao-tzu) [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2718364?s](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2718364?s)

<comment> crooked-v While the analysis is interesting, the resulting "translation" is useless nonsense.

<comment><USER13> Odd. I looked at it and thought it was a brilliant use of English, on par with anything James Joyce did.

<comment><USER14> That is not necessarily disagreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the text is just too mystifying to "get into", I highly recommend Red Pine's (non-free) translation. It is not the most authoritative but he includes translations of commentary from centuries of Chinese scholars that shed a lot more light on each passage than you are likely to get without a more serious course of study.

<comment><USER16> I second this. The commentaries are what made me really enjoy and appreciate the book in a way I hadn't before even with my illustrated coffee-table version of the barebones verses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a special place in my heart for Ron Hogan's translation.

[http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.txt](http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.txt)

A representative sample translation from the beginning of stanza 20:

        Don't spend too much time
        thinking about stupid shit.

</comment><comment><USER18> It wasn't on the list, but this is my favorite translation:

[https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html](https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for this link! Great translation indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Red Pine's translation ([https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_R0...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_R0L5Ab8DADXNM)) isn't great— he's a bit too into "the mystic Orient!" sort of thing— but one major plus is that it includes English translations of later Chinese commentators on the text, which is very important.

As for the best translation, the Penguin edition translated by D. C. Lau might be it.

If you're really interested in it, I would recommend getting both of these – the synthesis helps.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ursula LeGuin has also published a nonliteral interpretation of the Tao Te Ching (derived from the work of several Chinese-to-English translations) that is absolutely wonderful.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2WJQNM/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2WJQNM/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

<comment><USER22> Seconding LeGuin's translation. It has a poetic quality to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem with translating any Chinese classics lays in their multi-layered meaning. Old Chinese literature is complicated because every author expected that the reader was accustomed to volumes of other classics and could comprehend all the references to them hidden in the text. No matter how many good translations we have, they will not help us resolve this issue. Furthermore, understanding Dao De Jing is problematic even for native speakers of Chinese, because they do not have proper educational background to comprehend what ideas the author wanted to convey even being able (as they think) to read the original text!

<comment><USER24> > The problem with translating any Chinese classics lays in their multi- > layered meaning. Old Chinese literature is complicated

I concede that can be troublesome. But, from a different perspective, it's also kind of liberating.

> understanding Dao De Jing is problematic even for native speakers of Chinese

That being true, it allows you enough room of not being ashamed of your own interpretations, if you find them useful. In that sense, the text is much more alive, talking to you directly, instead of being an unsolvable puzzle that takes you away from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The first chapter by Google translate:

        Road to Road, very Avenue;
        Name, name.
        The beginning of the unknown world;
        There is the mother of all things.
        Therefore, often do not want to observe its wonderful.
        Often, they want to see what they are.
        Both of these have different names.
        With the same meaning,
        Mysterious,
        The door of the public.

Baidu translate:

        The Taoism, the very way;
        The name is famous and very famous.
        The beginning of the nameless world;
        Yes, the mother of all things.
        It is often not, to view it.
        Often there is a desire to view it.
        The two are the same names.
        The same predicate of metaphysics,
        Mystery of mysteries,
        Many wonderful doors.

Hapless algorithms can only struggle with this!

</comment><comment><USER26> A lot of words in ancient Chinese are loaded with subtleties of meaning. Its hard to choose a single English word to translate it. In modern Chinese Dao mean path.

Modern Chinese has a lot more multisyllable words than classical Chinese. That tends to narrow meanings.

</comment><comment><USER27> I keep a copy handy at all times. I don't think it contains the indisputable truth of all life/everything/stuff like that - but invaluable wisdom and perspective. Reading it can help me achieve mindfulness similar to meditation.

</comment><comment><USER28> Surprised not to see David Hinton's[1] fine translation[2] mentioned, it has a playful quality that I think suits Taoism better than many of the more traditional translations.

1: [https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/david- hinton](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/david-hinton)

2: [https://www.davidhinton.net/tao-te-ching-sample- poems](https://www.davidhinton.net/tao-te-ching-sample-poems)

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://taotedev.com](https://taotedev.com) An "interpretation" of some writings applied to software development. Not very serious, but sometimes rather interesting.

If I have to pick a favorite it's probably [https://taotedev.com/2016/01/29/3-state-v- action/](https://taotedev.com/2016/01/29/3-state-v-action/)

</comment><comment><USER30> My favorite is the Stephen Addiss translation, all the other ones try to shoehorn certain ideas/westernizations into it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I really like the 1980s translation by Gia Fu Feng with black and white photos by Jane English: [https://www.amazon.com/Ching-25th-Anniversary-English- Mandar...](https://www.amazon.com/Ching-25th-Anniversary-English-Mandarin- Chinese/dp/0679776192)

</comment><comment><USER32> My preferred translation is by Charles Muller. It also includes the original text.

[http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/daodejing.html](http://www.acmuller.net/con- dao/daodejing.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is learning German & Chinese at the same time, this is a very helpful site: [http://www.tao-te-king.org/](http://www.tao-te-king.org/)

</comment><comment><USER34> The website is broken both on layout and some links. How can one reach the author to offer some help?

</comment><comment><USER35> Too bad this website is a little broken on a large screen. [https://screenshots.firefox.com/mBWI8eKC7tz6BSmL/www.daoisop...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/mBWI8eKC7tz6BSmL/www.daoisopen.com)

<comment><USER36> Most of the links 404 as well.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can advertisements be better? - <AUTHOR> I personally envision a day where advertisements are both relevant and of immediate use to users. Instead of "HEY LOOK BUY THIS!" they function as useful reminders, suggesting we purchase goods that are of personalized use to us.<p>What do you all think is limiting advertisements (across all mediums) from achieving this? Is this even possible? Will ads forever be necessary evils used to finance freemium businesses and Google? <comment><USER2> The best advertisements have

        display:none;

no but seriously, the whole idea of adverts is to "push" you to buy things you don't need, so how could they ever be good?

Also the general idea of selling my website visitors eyeballs to a third party is very difficult to swallow for me. If I run a content website and I put adverts on it, selling to the highest bidder, what respect to I have for my readers?</comment>


Scale of the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://uploads.ungrounded.net/525000/525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me if the Universe is supposed to be 14,000,000,000 years old, how can it be estimated to be 93,000,000,000 light years wide?

Assuming the Big Bang, doesn't that imply the 'outer matter' must have an average velocity of about 3.3 times the speed of light?

<comment><USER3> The answers from benihana and cromulent are correct, but the following may possibly be a useful thought experiment.

Imagine a balloon (our universe) with lots of ants crawling on it (photons moving at the speed of light). The ants can't walk any faster than 2mm/s. They can't take a message from any part of the balloon to any other faster than that. (And, let's suppose, there's nothing living on the balloon that moves faster than an ant.)

Now someone blows up the balloon; it gets much bigger. Its expansion moves the ants apart much faster than 2mm/s. But it's still true that if you have two points 10mm apart, no ant can get from one to the other in less than 5s.

Suppose the balloon starts off rather small, and then is blown up very rapidly: perhaps it grows abruptly from 100mm across to 1000mm across in less than a second. (The corresponding phenomenon for the universe is called "inflation"; it explains many otherwise puzzling things but no one knows for sure whether it really happened.) Then it may happen that the only ants that have been able to reach one particular place on the balloon (our observatories) have come from a smallish fraction of the balloon (the observable universe).

<comment><USER4> Epanding into what???

This is what I cant wrap my head around... into what is the universe expanding?

What if the universe is not a balloon - but a doghnut where the outer edges fold back into itself, the overall space it is in can be finite yet the surface is curved away. The light would travel along the curved surface of space-time and thus travel a greater distance than is linear.

<comment><USER3> It's not expanding into anything (so far as we know), just expanding. A curved spacetime doesn't need to be, and so far as we know isn't, embedded inside a higher-dimensional not-curved thing in the way that a balloon is embedded in (more or less) flat three-dimensional space. (That sort of embedded picture is useful for the intuition, though.)

So, you might be asking, whatever does it _mean_ to say that space, or spacetime, is curved? It means, e.g., that if you measure the radius and circumference of a small circle very very very accurately, the relationship isn't C = 2 pi r. If the circumference is "too small" then space is positively curved there, like a balloon. If it's "too large" then space is negatively curved there, like a saddle. The curvature might actually be different depending on the orientation of the circle, but if space is the kind of thing we think it is then you basically only need six numbers to tell the whole story at each point of space. (In two dimensions -- the surface of that balloon -- there's only one possible orientation for the circle, so you only need one number to describe the curvature at each point.) Note that you can measure this thing without needing to go "outside" space: the radius and circumference are measured within the space. Distances along the surface of the balloon.

Yup, the universe could be curved and topologically nontrivial in all kinds of interesting ways: it doesn't have to be like the surface of a balloon. (There's some intriguing but inconclusive evidence suggesting that the large- scale geometry of the universe is a "Poincare dodecahedral space": take a dodecahedron, and apply some magic to its faces so that when you try to leave it by one face you come back in by the opposite face.) And yes, light travels along the shortest paths it can within the universe, and doesn't take out-of- the-universe short cuts even if there are any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it's still nice but it's been here before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460>

BTW: since there's no search feature to check for older posts, I suggest you use google: site:ycombinator.com

<comment><USER6> I've also created an API to look up URLs that have been posted to HackerNews.

[http://api.ihackernews.com/getid?url=http://uploads.unground...](http://api.ihackernews.com/getid?url=http://uploads.ungrounded.net/525000/525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And I was getting big-headed this morning for solving a silly problem for a client. Thanks for reminding me of my place. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> If there is a minimum physical length, that is a planck length, does that mean that nothing is technically continuous? Or, is it possible to imagine 'half a planck length'?

<comment><USER9> The quantum world is indeed discreet, and (as far as we know) half a planck length doesn't make any sense physically.

<comment><USER10> I think of it as: Newtonian physics makes down to a certain scale where it is no longer accurate. Quantum makes sense down to a Planck length where beyond that, we may need different theories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Try doing a fast zoom out from the smallest to the largest. If you do it at just the right speed, it will give you serious goosebumps.

</comment><comment><USER12> Always been amazed at how really small things (atoms) look a lot like really big things (solar systems) (ya, ya, same forces...)

<comment><USER3> They don't really -- in particular, the picture you might have from high- school physics lessons of electrons orbiting a nucleus like planets orbit a star is really wrong. And it's not really the same forces; the way an atom looks is mostly down to the electromagnetic force, whereas the way a solar system looks is mostly because of gravity.

On the other hand, it _is_ true that Newtonian gravity and the electrostatic force (i.e., what the electromagnetic force becomes when you make the approximation that there are no moving charges) have very similar mathematical forms, with the same sort of differential equation governing them. What Newtonian gravity and electrostatics have in common is mostly that they are convenient simplified approximations; you could say that they're so similar because there's a limited repertoire of differential equations simple enough to make good approximations. (There's a bit more to it than that; for instance, inverse square laws fall naturally out of the geometry of a 3-dimensional world.)

<comment><USER13> (Elaborating:) Electron shells "look" more like this: [http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Azimuthal_quantum_nu...](http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Azimuthal_quantum_number)

They really don't resemble gravity-based orbiting in solar systems at _all_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would point out that the ant is precisely in the middle of the scale between small and large. Think about that, grasshopper.

</comment><comment><USER15> Aw, they changed the theme tune.

</comment><comment><USER16> How not to feel sooooo small and insignificant after that !?

<comment><USER17> _Some people get depressed when they find out how huge the universe is... What is the big deal about bigness? A cow is much bigger than you, but it is a ridiculous animal and you are a valuable person. You know it's a cow. It doesn't know anything. it just stands there eating grass (grass!) and mooing. And if it were bigger, that would only make it more ridiculous._

\- David Deutsch

<comment><USER18> David Deutsch, while making valid philosophical/metaphysical points, exhibits symptoms of a serial cow-tipper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That... is spectacular...

<comment><USER20> It is! I don't have particularly clever thoughts about it, but I want to say it's amazing. Thanks a lot to the creator!</comment></comment>