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jmyeet 2 hours ago

In 100 years nobody will know who you were. In 200 years, only a few hundred people will be remembered from today. So what is the goal of your ambition? Is it the self-satisfaction? Temporary bragging rights that will be soon forgotten? Whatever wealth you accumulate, you can't take it with you. The pharoahs already trie this. It doesn't work.

Nobody's going to give a shit that you founded an AI company and sold it to Meta for $600 million. Sure you can enjoy the material benefits while you're here. Maybe you can even pass some of that onto your children.

The Good Place was one of the best TV shows of the best shows of the last decade (IMHO) and it brought up a relatively recent (1998) book "What we owe to each other". It makes the point that it's not a question (ie "what do we owe to each other?"). You're only meaningful impact is on the people you affect around you, positively or negatively.

Personally, I have no opinion on whether people should or shouldn't have children. That's none of my business other than this: you have to make a choice between having and raising those children and chasing material "ambitions". Bringing people into the world without their consent and then neglecting them makes you an objectively terrible person. Pick a lane.

And if you do choose ambition instead, at least ask yourself why. Studies have been done on this. Money does buy happiness but only to a very limited point. Beyond that it's isolating. So why are you doing whatever it is you're ambitious about, really?