Humans Are Neither Angels nor Beasts. We Are Beasts Who Can See Angels—and Walk toward Them.
Translated by AI. Read the Chinese original ↗
Contents 21 sections
A recently popular GitHub project is called A High-Value Guide to Life.
Copy this address to read it:
https://eternity4719.github.io/HowToLiveBetter/
Seeing many people save and recommend it, I read it through. It is genuinely interesting, exceptionally practical, and well worth recommending.
1. A life guide written by a Minecraft server owner
The author’s GitHub profile says he spent eight years as a full-time Minecraft server owner.
A “server owner” is the owner or administrator of a game server.
In the sandbox game Minecraft, players can rent servers and create their own worlds for hundreds or thousands of people to play online together.
The owner is like the mayor and chief engineer of a small virtual society.
He handles the underlying technology—plugins, bugs, hackers, server performance—and maintains the community and economy: setting rules, mediating disputes, organizing events.
Eight years full-time means this little virtual society supported him for eight years.
Perhaps that helps explain his thorough understanding of real-life “value-for-money rules.”
How can you read more efficiently?
On a phone, I recommend two efficient approaches:
1. WeChat Reading: close reading and discussion
Import the EPUB into WeChat Reading to see other readers’ highlights and thoughts and discuss them.
Reading everything takes time. Scan headings and read selectively, stopping for a careful reading of chapters that truly interest you.
2. Ask AI for a structured summary: a rapid efficiency boost
Download the HTML version and give it directly to AI; HTML is the format AI parses most accurately.
Ask it to extract practical points under “what to do, benefits, and precautions,” filtering out lengthy arguments and academic citations. You can grasp its central value in minutes.
On a computer, just read the website. Its clean layout and marked key points suit a large screen.
2. Causal relationships we mistake
Let us discuss reversed causation, a concept frequently mentioned in the project.
Daily life is full of familiar cognitive traps that quietly treat effects as causes or fall into survivorship bias.
1. “Marriage increases longevity”
Apparent correlation:
Statistics show higher mortality among unmarried people, leading many to assume marriage prolongs life.
The actual situation:
Healthy, financially stable, socially capable people are already more likely to marry.
Their favorable circumstances already help them live longer. Marriage is a result of those circumstances, not the cause of longevity.
2. “Slightly overweight people resist illness and live longer”
Apparent correlation:
Many statistics find higher mortality among thin people, encouraging the belief that slight overweight protects against illness and prolongs life.
The actual situation:
The thin population includes many seriously ill patients who have wasted away because of cancer or severe organ failure.
This mistakes the statistical effect of serious illness causing weight loss and higher mortality for evidence that extra weight prolongs life.
3. “Red wine softens blood vessels / moderate drinking is healthy”
Apparent correlation:
Early epidemiological observations found fewer cardiovascular diseases among people drinking a little red wine daily.
The actual reversed causation:
People who can regularly afford wine and drink moderately often have higher incomes, more balanced diets, and better medical care. Meanwhile, “nondrinker” samples contain many people who stopped because they were already ill or frail.
Alcohol itself is a Group 1 carcinogen. Its supposed benefit is a misleading companion of affluent, healthy populations.
4. “Coffee or tea drinkers live longer”
Apparent correlation:
Many long-lived elderly people regularly drink coffee or tea.
The actual reversed causation:
Those still drinking strong tea or enjoying coffee daily in their seventies and eighties already have robust digestion, hearts, and metabolism.
People with stomach ulcers, serious arrhythmias, or severe illness have often already been forced to stop caffeine.
5. “People sleeping eight hours are more successful or intelligent”
Apparent correlation:
Successful people are often praised for regular routines, sufficient sleep, and efficient work.
The actual reversed causation:
Often they are not financially independent because they sleep enough. They sleep eight hours because they control their work and need not hold two jobs or work late to survive. Insomnia often results from pressure or illness, not simply poor discipline.
6. “Bird’s nest, ejiao, or expensive supplements improve health”
Apparent correlation:
People who regularly eat bird’s nest or fish maw have good skin and seldom become ill.
The actual reversed causation:
What really works is the accompanying quality sleep, low-oil and low-salt diet, premium skincare, and good medical environment.
Expensive supplements are a consequence of disposable wealth, not the source of good health.
Many glorified habits, stripped of their mystique, are simply companions of wealth, leisure, and a good state of mind.
7. “Only the greatest suffering makes you rise above others”
Apparent belief:
Many successful people recall extremely hard struggles, so some even deliberately create hardship for the next generation.
The actual logic:
Success centers on talent, favorable trends, resources, and opportunities. Hardship is an accompanying process.
Suffering never automatically leads to success. The eventual winners hold the spotlight, so people mistake their suffering for an admission ticket.
8. “Running shoes or knee supports make injuries more likely”
Apparent belief:
Statistics find more knee strain among runners in specialized shoes and knee supports than among casual runners in ordinary shoes. Some conclude that equipment makes people fragile and injury-prone.
The actual logic:
Advanced runners with old injuries and huge mileage—over a hundred kilometers monthly—are the ones buying cushioning shoes and supports. Someone who jogs two kilometers and goes home is naturally less likely to suffer strain.
Old injuries and heavy training cause protective equipment use; equipment does not cause the injury.
9. “People having frequent checkups have more illnesses”
Apparent belief:
Older people often say, “I was fine until the hospital found a whole list of problems.”
The actual logic:
People with persistent discomfort, advanced age, or family medical histories already get more checkups. Modern instruments also discover many benign, asymptomatic abnormalities.
No checkups does not mean good health. It may simply mean delaying hidden disease until it becomes irreversible.
10. “Swimmers have great bodies, so swimming creates a perfect physique” (the horse-leg theory)
Apparent belief:
Seeing professionals’ broad shoulders, narrow waists, and streamlined bodies, people assume daily swimming will make them look the same.
The actual logic:
Swimming does not lengthen the skeleton. Only winners of the genetic lottery, with naturally broad frames and long arm spans, survive harsh selection into provincial and national teams.
For ordinary people, swimming mainly burns calories; it does not change skeletal proportions.
3. Truth is not always the most important thing
Many “scientific recommendations” we trust have weak evidence chains.
Science’s cautious objections struggle to penetrate barriers to communication. Eventually, marketing becomes packaged as social consensus.
“Breakfast is the most important meal; skipping it seriously harms you”
Supposed common knowledge:
Skipping breakfast makes you less intelligent, causes gallstones, and greatly increases weight.
The actual scientific evidence:
“Breakfast is most important” began as commercial publicity sponsored by early-twentieth-century cereal companies such as Kellogg’s.
A recent BMJ systematic review of randomized controlled trials found that breakfast does not decisively determine daily energy metabolism or long-term weight change. Health depends on total daily calories and nutritional composition, not the time of eating.
This reminds me of Saturdays in high school.
After morning reading, classmates sometimes skipped breakfast because it was inconvenient—or perhaps they were tired of school food and wanted more at home for lunch. Our teacher would come in specifically to say, “Go eat breakfast. Skipping it is bad for your stomach; do it often and you will get stomach problems.”
Strictly scientifically, that may not hold up. As a human bond, though, the care behind urging us to eat was deeply moving.
We investigate causes and truth not to use science to condescendingly reject someone’s kindness.
Understanding the facts frees us from health anxiety when we are occasionally too busy for breakfast. Sometimes a person’s information is imperfect, but being genuinely cared for is itself an immense warmth.
4. Understanding rules reduces inner friction
Following procedures is often most efficient
When dealing with public officials or customer service, do not dwell on a cold face or personal mood. They may simply be exhausted, or the previous customer may have been infuriating. Nor must you explain your difficulties or seek connections when something fails.
The right approach is to supply missing documents according to the checklist, and use legitimate appeals when blocked.
Treat them as workers fulfilling a defined role under rules. Follow the established procedures with the required inputs; that is often most efficient.
This too is civilization’s progress.
Previously, much depended on connections, favors, and status. As laws and regulations become more complete, strangers need not know or like you; they may even be rude. As long as the procedure exists, you have a path.
Rules and a stable system
Like physical laws, legal rules are not meant to constrain a particular person, but to keep the system stable.
Many assume law exists principally to deliver fairness and justice.
Its most fundamental purpose, however, is to maintain social order and stable operation.
Even when absolute fairness in an individual case must occasionally be sacrificed locally, preventing overall collapse takes priority. Stability is the soil in which all justice grows.
Understanding this helps explain many major, unspoken historical events.
Some view strict drunk-driving checks and widespread surveillance as restrictions on freedom. Conversely, because others are constrained too, we can walk outside at night with peace of mind.
5. Causal certainty makes change possible
Some argue that unbreakable causal laws make the world deterministic: fate’s script is written, and humans have no free will.
Look differently, and that is wonderful news: precisely because causal rules are reliable, change becomes possible.
Without causation, every effort would be a roll of the dice. Because we reap what we sow, eating less and moving more, working attentively, or enjoying games can reliably produce fitness, results, or pleasure.
Rules contain the freedom to create
In Minecraft, its underlying physics—gravity, collisions, logic gates—is certain and unshakable, allowing players to build tools, enormous houses, even computers.
In reality, if physical or physiological rules changed randomly every second, we could not even stand steadily.
The impossibility of breaking rules gives creation and construction their greatest freedom.
Ancient people attributed plagues to divine punishment: genuine despair and fatalism. Only when modern medicine understood the causal chain of pathogens and immune systems could we develop vaccines and antibiotics.
Acknowledging causation is not surrendering to fate. It is unraveling the unknown into clear influencing factors.
The better we understand a system’s causal links, the more real free will we can exercise.
Seeing causes, following rules, and using certainty is precisely the only way to overcome and reshape ourselves.
Of course, knowing does not mean immediately doing.
If a sentence instantly changed us, the world would not need so many books and philosophers.
Water slows against an obstacle, but keeps moving forward.
Perhaps a habit once only seemed vaguely good; today you have more evidence. As environments, behavior, and understanding accumulate over life, persistent long-term commitment on the right path quietly produces change.
6. What else you can become
As Gibran wrote, only through the night can we reach the dawn.
Human nature is imperfect. Precisely because we can be selfish, fearful, and evasive, kindness, courage, and honesty are precious.
Humans are neither angels nor beasts.
We are beasts who can see angels—and walk toward them.
That is why literature, philosophy, religion, art, and words that move us exist.
They do not describe only what people already are.
They remind us:
What else you can become.
Human greatness and life’s meaning lie in never stopping the work of self-overcoming.
So far, every living thing has created something beyond itself.
Will you be the ebbing tide in this great flood?