Rands in Repose: The Shop I Want | Hacker News Reader

Rands in Repose: The Shop I Want

randsinrepose.com

66 pointsfilament31 comments

All he wants is better salesmanship. He wants someone to tell him why he wants something so that he'll actually enjoy owning it. A desk becomes more than just a desk. Shaving cream becomes more than just shaving cream.

Looking for reasons to not just buy el-cheapo shaving cream. Is there anything out there worth spending a little money on?

The best shaving cream isn't worth spending money on until somebody sells you on it.

Here's another idea: if you don't get pleasure or a feeling of discernment out of your shaving cream, maybe you should accept that. If the Ikea desk makes you just as happy as the Stow Davis desk, maybe you should accept that, instead of yearning for a salesman to help you believe you have better taste. It's moralistic and a downer, but looking for ways to get more satisfaction out of your purchases is a sickness.

Example: I don't have a very sensitive palate for wine. Therefore, I don't spend much on wine and don't pretend to know anything about it. When my friends talk about wine, I sit back and wait for the subject to change. Part of me feels like I'm missing out, part of me feels like an inferior yuppie -- which I suppose I am. It would be so easy to fake it. Fooling myself would be almost as easy as fooling other people. I could read reviews of every wine I buy and parrot what they say about bananas, strawberries, and barnyards. I would enjoy myself immensely, and people would like me better because I would be more fun. High-end wines would provide another way of buying excitement and validation. I could transmit that excitement and validation to other people. I could even make them feel loved by my careful attention to the wine I served them. My conscience, my intellectual integrity, is the only thing holding me back from these benefits.

Wait, you say -- wouldn't the pleasure be genuine? Sure. It would. So why pass up an opportunity to manufacture pleasure? Aren't I just stealing happiness from everybody to gratify a moralistic urge that has no valid moral basis? If it's one kind of empty self-indulgence versus another, shouldn't I pick the one that provides happiness to myself and other people?

This is a serious question, and I can't claim to have an answer that is much better-founded than my simple engineer's (or prude's) instinct that there must be a catch. However, I can name a few things that would be wrong about it.

First, I would be financially supporting wine prices that could, for all I know, be completely fraudulent. Unless I can be confident I can tell the difference between a $12 wine a $60 wine, my spending $60 just creates an opportunity for unscrupulous folks to make money by overpricing wine. That might not hurt me, but it would hurt real connoisseurs.

Second, I suspect that I would get more pleasure out of real appreciation than out of an illusory appreciation, as my "appreciation" of wine would be. The excitement, validation, and pleasure in tasting would all be genuine, but the taste itself would not be stimulating. I would, at best, be imagining novel sensations based on the descriptions of people with more sensitive palates. Nothing would exceed my imagination. I would be investing time, thought, and money into a cognitively incestuous and sterile experience. Aesthetic masturbation, if you will. Wouldn't I be better off concentrating on areas where I have the capacity to be truly surprised and stimulated? Wouldn't Rands be better off ignoring desks and focusing his attention on something he has legitimate taste for, instead of asking a salesman to manufacture an illusory appreciation for a Stow Davis desk?

(After all, you've been exposed to various kinds of furniture all your life, and if you still need a pep talk from another person to care deeply about the widely admired qualities of a certain desk, then you're simply blind to it. It's okay. Everyone has domains of insight and domains of blindness, and to elevate wine and furniture over other domains is just snobbery.)

Third, you should be careful what you do with your money. My bank balance affects how much I invest in truly worthy causes. Every year I sign up for recurring charitable deductions from my paycheck. When I decide how much to sign up for for the next year, the state of my finances has an effect on how much I feel comfortable comitting to. I also lend money to friends and family when they need it; again, my bank balance affects how much I'm comfortable giving. Basically, I'm a selfish, risk-averse person, and my willingness to be altruistic is heavily dependent on my own security and comfort. It's easy to give away excess. Looking for expensive new ways to turn my excess into pleasure is another way of saying, "I'd better find something better to do with this money than give it to the EFF/Doctors Without Borders/<your favorite charity here>!" If you're really miserable and money is all you have going for you, then converting money into happiness should be your top priority (though buying stuff is probably not the best way.) If you're already reasonably happy, then go ahead and buy what you enjoy, but don't look at every expensive toy and think, "Oooooh, I want to learn how to appreciate THAT so I can enjoy BUYING and HAVING it!" You already know a million ways money can buy happiness; if you've exhausted all the ones that apply to you, then maybe you should spend the money on somebody else.

I know Rands is exploring this issue from the consumer side for the sake of working the sales side. That doesn't make it any better. If you wouldn't feel right doing it yourself, how could you feel right making money by persuading other people to do it?

I totally agree. I'm absolutely with Rands here:

You can have an opinion. It sounds like work, but it’s really not. An opinion is not the definitive view or judgement regarding a thing; it’s you staring at that desk and saying, “You know, I like the look and the feel of those brass handles. I also like the drawers that squeak just a bit when you open them. It speaks to the character of the whole desk.”

It’s not that I want a Stow Davis desk, it’s that I want to find that desk. I want to go to seven different antique shops and spend a weekend developing an opinion about the state of antique desks. I want to find someone who knows the entire history of Stow Davis desks and won’t fucking shut up about them.

Half the fun of having an opinion is the quest to find one, but the everything problem remains. You don’t have the time to have an opinion about everything...

But then he makes this totally ridiculous leap:

...but someone has the time.

So what? What good is it if it's someone else's opinion? Why would you want someone else to feed you their opinion on shaving cream, even if they've got a really objectively great opinion? It's not as if it actually makes any goddamn difference what shaving cream you buy, unless you believe it does. Ditto for desks, and so on.

I have an opinion on lots of stuff like that, but it's because I'm an opinionated little fuck. I don't think it's really a state to aspire to. Rands, on the other hand, apparently values being this complicated, networked, shopping consuming machine, and to what end? I don't understand.

P.S. Rands, you could, you know, try different brands of shaving cream until you find one you dig, like a normal person.

Er... nothing makes any difference. We die, and then everything we have done gets washed away by Alzheimer's, worms, and the rain. However, if we care about things—other people, for instance, but shaving cream's as good a thing to care about as any—then we can spend our lives happier for the choices we have made. Rands wants people to give him reasons to care about more things, so he can make more choices and therefore define himself more clearly. He's not asking for someone to pick the best shaving cream, and then just say "here, use this one, it has 10^23 utilons subjective to your experiential context"—he's asking for reasons to care about liking particular shaving creams at all. It turns out the best way to solicit those reasons—the dimensional parameters that define the space of shaving cream quality, so to speak—is to get someone to sell you a few particular creams, and explain why their "earning five stars on the Bugnatti face-feel scale" or "resisting incursive facial bacteria" facts are important. Those lessons learned, you can then pick your own shaving cream, "like a normal person"—but you'll know why, not just how, to choose.

The best analogy I can think of is to music. Have you ever met someone who just didn't care about music, at all? Didn't you feel like something was missing from their lives? Do you think you could get them to care about music by showing them a bunch of music-theoretical math and physics? Or would you just say "this is my favorite band; they do X and Y really well", and expect them to explore outward from there, now listening for other bands' Xs and Ys, and eventually forming their own opinions of what makes a good band?

Now, for "music", replace with every single possible other interesting thing in this world.

I appreciate what you're saying, and if you interpret Rands' post as some rational, utilitarian statement of preference in which he claims to actually care about learning the particular distinguishing virtues of shaving cream, and desks, and presumably a thousand other consumer goods, then I suppose I can't tell him he's wrong about his strategy.

Rather, I'd choose to be even more presumptuous, and tell him he's wrong about what he wants. I think that few people are genuinely destined to love careful research into what kind of socks you prefer at the moment and which coat hangers are the most durable. It's an awfully crowded and indistinct way of defining yourself. To the extent that people like doing those kinds of things, I think that they are easy escapes which tend to take the place of more ultimately fulfilling endeavors (I'm guilty of this.) I think that it's a dumb waste of time to find ways to spend even more effort on such tasks, providing marginal benefit, and yielding what I wager is only a brief satisfaction.

Second, I suspect that I would get more pleasure out of real appreciation than out of an illusory appreciation, as my "appreciation" of wine would be.

But if you did try to become a wine fanatic, you would train your palate and your ability to distinguish wines would actually increase, not just imaginatively increase, wouldn't it?

It's not literary criticism where you interpret what someone says and there's no right answer; wine does actually have taste and you can taste it yourself, without relying on an authority to tell you what it tastes like.

And anyway, why would you get more pleasure from real appreciation than illusory appreciation?

Wouldn't Rands be better off ignoring desks and focusing his attention on something he has legitimate taste for

If you follow the Barry Schwartz and Dan Gilbert TED talks, Rands would be better off if there was one shop and it stocked one shaving cream and didn't accept refunds.

my spending $60 just creates an opportunity for unscrupulous folks to make money by overpricing wine. That might not hurt me, but it would hurt real connoisseurs.

No no no, real connoisseurs who could tell the difference would be able to tell the wine was overpriced. And if there isn't really anything to wine tasting, then they wouldn't notice and therefore it wouldn't hurt them - it would, must, be what happens now. And in either case the sellers aren't unscrupulous folk, they are making money providing the exclusive expensive wine experience that connoisseurs will pay money for, even if the wine is nothing special.

It doesn't hurt art collectors to pay more for a painting when the painter turns out to have been the brother of Richard the Lionheart. That's the sort of thing that doesn't change the picture in the slightest but does make it more valuable art and the sort of thing art collectors want.

It's easy to give away excess. Looking for expensive new ways to turn my excess into pleasure is another way of saying, "I'd better find something better to do with this money than give it to the EFF/Doctors Without Borders

Unless you are an extremely frugal minimalist you already implicitly do spend money on things which do less for the greater good than a good charity, so arguing about quite where you draw the line to 'excess' is a bit irrelevant - you could likely afford a very fancy shaving foam and still have 'excess' enough to donate to charity, and it wouldn't take much change in income to enable you to afford an antique desk and still do the same.

real connoisseurs who could tell the difference would be able to tell the wine was overpriced

As long as people like that are the ones buying most $60 wine, then wine sellers have an incentive to be honest. If people like me are buying lots of $60 wine, then there's going to be lots of plonk selling for $60, forcing connoisseurs to be more careful and less adventurous.

I may gladly give in to consumer desires, but I don't feel sad when my consumer lust is not excited. I don't send out a plea saying, "Somebody, please get me excited about shaving cream. I want to spend a lot on it and feel good about it." That's like a porn fiend who has satiated himself but remains at the computer looking through porn, trying to find something that will make him horny again. That goes beyond fulfilling desire; it's addiction.

It looks like he wants the old days, where salespeople in shops new everything about a product. They new the customer by name, because they had been coming there since they were young. And there were only 5 fridge types anyway.

Unlike the present, were you walk into a computer shop and the seller doesn't even know the difference between dual core and dual processor.

Those days are gone.

It's not opinions that Rands or other consumers are looking for. What consumers are looking for is a story to tell. It's the story you tell to a friend about the new desk. Or, the ability to explain to a coworker about why this new shaving cream works way better than the old one. It's stories that people are buying and it's a story that Rands really wants.

A moment in a store with a salesman does not make the sale. It's the countless times he will get to tell the story that is valuable.

The cheap IKEA furniture is cheap, simple, well designed and functional. But almost everyone knows that story. The story of IKEA furniture is always how inexpensive it was. Not a great story and definitely not unique. A vintage desk or a high end pair of speakers however has a whole beautiful story behind it to tell. The rare wood, the kevlar drivers, the quality, the craftsmanship.

Ever ask anyone about where they got a cool vintage T-shirt they were wearing? You will usually get two stories. Either "I got it at a thrift store" which is boring. Or, hopefully you will get something like, "This? I got this Huey Lewis and the News shirt at my very first concert ever. It was 85 and my dad took me..." . They are both wearing the same shirt. The only difference is the story.

You're not taking into account that what he has now is just outright bad (in his opinion), or he just doesn't like the choices available to him. I've bought plenty of shitty products and have gone out looking for something better.

And you're also equating dollar value with quality and personal value, which isn't always the case. I've had plenty of wine lovers tell me which cheap wines taste the same as expensive ones, and spent enough time in garage sales and thrift shops looking for interesting things.

Sometimes a desk is more than just a desk.

This is the gristle behind buzzwords like "authenticity" and "community". When I wanted the perfect pen, I asked 'that friend' and he pointed me to a Tiffany fountain pen I love. When I wanted to know: Xbox or PS3, I asked my gaming 'that friend' and he pointed me in the right direction. When another friend told me I had to try a particular hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I went and, despite myself, enjoyed it.

Unless I have some reason to think you have my interests at heart, all the 'also liked' in the world means very little. For some purchases, I'll become the expert. (Still looking for that perfect keyboard!) But for most things, I want people I can trust to give me their best suggestion given what they know about the domain and what they know about me.

I don't know you, but I've been happy with the Kinesis Contoured keyboard. I'm comfortable making this recommendation based on the fact that we're both on Hacker News (and therefore probably have some other things in common). If I knew your HN voting history I might be able to do a better job.

Taking advantage of social ties and external sources of information is definitely something that automated recommenders should be able to do. Few of them actually do it, however. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, recommendation algorithms just aren't very good. Once they get good (and fast), all sorts of external information will instantly become useful. Recommenders will be able to find significant correlations between the browser you're using and your preference.

I've looked at the Kinesis quite a lot, but have never been able to use one, so the cost held me back. One thing I like about it over other keyboards (Microsoft Natural, for instance) is that it doesn't maintain the leftward 'sweep' of the keys. The MS Natural is perfect for the right hand: fingers 'sweep' up and down along the axis of the wrist/elbow. But the left hand, while pointing the wrist in the right direction, forces a finger sweep that's now nearly perpendicular to the wrist. It's mindboggling.

So two things hold me back: I've grown to love 'short travel' keys: if activation was at 1mm I'd be ecstatic.

In reality, I'll probably order it here shortly: I need something that's more comfortable. Getting the foot pedal as well (for shift) is probably the best combination.

Do you use a foot pedal? If so: single or triple? From years of bad habits, I pretty much only use left shift and ctl (even going so far as to use my ring finger for QAZ): I think moving that motion to my feet would be a pretty good change.

Apart from eagerly awaiting your reply, I have to say: I don't see how our voting history would have much to do with our preferred keyboard layout.

Disclaimer: This is going to sound like a sales pitch, but I don't have any affiliation with Kinesis.

I'm only 25, but I've dealt with tendinitis in both wrists since I was 18 (me and computers have a love/hate going on.) The only real downside to the Contour keyboard is the cost. Effin' $300? Are you kidding me? On the flip side, they're so good that I actually own 2 (1 for home, 1 for work). They're amazingly comfortable, and have become the only keyboard that I can use for more than 20 minutes. I have a single footswitch at work, and a triple at home. Honestly, I wish the triple at home was just a single, as I only use one switch on it. That switch is the shift key, and saves my hands lots of "acrobatics" and time, especially when coding (special characters). A hardward Dvorak mode is just icing on the cake.

On the flip side, for a $300 keyboard, their support department sucks. One of the keyboards was exhibiting some really funky behavior out of the box, and they made me pay return shipping on the faulty keyboard. Obnoxious given that you assume a premium product like that would just work, and if not then they don't stick you with the bill. That just sounds like sloppy management, but the product is excellent.

Pair it up with a Kensington Expert Mouse (actually a trackball) and I can work away for hours on end with far less of the pain and fatigue I used to deal with.

Is this you?

http://www.keyboardmods.com/2010/04/wireless-split-kinesis-c...

If not, since you take the arms of your office chairs, I'm going to hazard a guess that you have wider shoulders than most keyboards are designed for. If that's the case, you might wish your Contour had either a bigger split or an adjustable split. I would be more interested in getting a Contour if I could have a bigger gap between the left and right sides.

I think this is my underlying problem with keyboards. I have very wide shoulders. I"ve had the most luck with the microsoft natural, but I find myself wanting to increase the split angle all the time.

Also having an ergo keyboard with low soft keys like the Mac would be awesome.

No, that's not me. I appreciate the link though!

Haven't tried this keyboard yet, but it looks promising:

http://smartfishtechnologies.com/products-keyboard.php

Thanks for the link. I'm pretty much done with keyboards that hve the back row higher than the bottom row. Right now I'm using a diNovo (flattest keyboard I could find) with a pencil (hexagonal, so it doesn't roll) under the front edge. The only downside so far is that it's still a straight keyboard layout.

I like the idea of a changing position, though. But I take enough breaks from typing that I think it's more position and comfort at this point.

If you are into buckling-spring (IBM model-M keyboard-style clicky keys) and split keyboard layout, you should get this:

http://www.ergonomicsmadeeasy.com/store/integrated-pointing-...

and then get a ps2 -> usb converter.

I use it with my MBP. it is great!

Note to tech pundits-- the average joe can't ping his twitter network to get 40 responses to a question about shaving cream. This is a benefit only pundits enjoy. Stop touting it.

You just summed up the point I've been trying to articulate for a few days now.

When I watched Conan O'Brien speaking at Google he was talking about how amazing it was that his show sold out in record time with one tweet… how old media took notice of that. But he is a product of old media. He had hundreds of thousands of followers on day 1.

No doubt, many people can build up a huge following through twitter or whatever social tools they use. Many people I follow have done it. But it's not a walk in the park.

Maybe it's a personality type thing, or a quirk or just me wanting to be fed my beliefs but I feel exactly the same way as Rands. When he says he doesn't have time to figure out the best shaving cream or shaving method, I understand that what he means is "he doesn't have time to find the best shaving cream AND do other things that are really important to him", or at least I interpret that's what he means.

We've come to an age where it's not just mathematicians and scientists who stand on the shoulders of giants. We all have the ability to do that in vast arenas of our lives while still contributing to our own chosen arenas. It's fabulous if you ask me.

It's not about the fact that I can't make a decision, it's that I have the opportunity to make the very best decision based on the experiences and work of others on subjects as mundane as desks and shaving. If I spent as much time figuring out shaving as the guy who wrote the shaving article did, that would be hours of time I didn't spend on doing something I appreciate. It's not better salesmanship, it's better living. I know that there are people out there who just don't want to have someone else tell them what the best thing is and that's fine. But for me, I want to have the best desk or the best keyboard or the best shave but I'd prefer not to have to spend the time of my own figuring out what that is when there are people out there who know and who I can find out from. A good shave is really more than a average shave. A good desk really is better than a average desk. Having people who can tell me which is which is both fulfilling and efficient.

We live in a time when information is easily discovered and contributes to a better life. Why keep figuring out the same things? If the journey intrigues you, great. But if you have other journeys to travel, why not short cut those that don't intrigue you?

What he seems to be asking for is [aardvark](http://www.vark.com) this is _exactly_ what they were trying to pull off prior to Google buying them.

They are still trying to pull it off and hopefully the resources of google will help them. The problem vark faces is that they have to build up a large and active community of people willing to answer questions.

I was an early user and I still make myself available for questions all the time. But I'd say probably 3 out of 5 times I get a question, I just don't have the time to respond with anything useful. And after a certain amount of time, you're past the "real-time" threshold so there's no point in responding.

But when vark works, it really works and it is awesome.

His two examples - a custom antique desk or shaving cream that's a delight to use - hammer his point home: despite the abundance of choice online, he who organizes and specializes the data to the user wins.

I have yet to see a truly personalized experience that finds me that one esoteric object that I'd never heard of, but desperately need.

I'm always stunned by how poor Amazon & EBAY's reccomendation engines are, and how infrequently they suggest anything I want or am compelled by.

What start-ups are playing in this space and building something compelling?

His example is still smoke and mirrors. The opinion of someone known and trusted just feels more valuable, because of the way our minds are put together. Granted, this may be enough to build a business on.

What he wants would be a search engine that can detect passion. Page Rank only detects this indirectly. Not sure if anything direct is possible.

Recommendations from people you know might actually be more valuable, if you count things other than the literal quality of the product as part of the equation. For example, post-purchase you have someone to talk to about the thing, whether in a "wow that worked out great, thanks for the suggestion!" sort of way, or to get tips or troubleshooting, or in some cases (like books or films) for discussion.

He wants something to find the perfect product for him, even if he doesn't know there's a need for it.

I guess that's a nice desire for someone with lots of disposable income. I really don't want anyone offering me anything to buy right now, because I don't have the money to spend on a 1800's table instead of what I'm currently using.

When I do have money, then I have my list of priorities about where to spend it. Fix the roof leak, change my car tires, etc...

That's why it's called "buying mode". Offer me a 1700 table today and I will tell you to get real, and get out. Offer me when I actually have the money and desire to buy, and you've made a sale.

I think more than that he wants a search engine that projects confidence. Newegg does something I think is brilliant, and somewhat related--it watches what you browse, and if you browse enough without buying anything, it sends you an email the next day basically saying "hey, we noticed you spent six hours last night looking at cheap point and shoots. Here are some cheap point and shoots."

Now, in my case, it didn't work exactly--I had a pretty good idea what camera I wanted, and was just browsing options while I waited for Newegg to get it in stock. But if the email had been a bit more direct and assertive, I might have pulled the trigger right then. ("Hey, we noticed you were looking at cheap point and shoots, here's our one top seller, and the three most recommended reviews for it. Oh, and hey, if you buy now, we'll give you free shipping or a cheapo card or whatever.")

Confidence counts for a lot. My friends come up to me when they buy computer equipment because they know I'll weigh their likely use cases against my own personal preferences, ask a few questions, and then give them a link to exactly the product I think they should buy. Knowledge is important, but tailored knowledge is invaluable.

To continue with the Newegg example--instead of presenting me with a few dozen options when I click on video cards, maybe it would be more pleasing if they looked at my buying history, noticed I generally only buy cheap, last gen nVidia stuff, and make sure my first four items fit that general profile. And then maybe one more row with outliers--slightly more expensive cards or an ATI card. Partner up with a content provider and add a link if that particular card was featured in, say, an AnandTech system build. Link to the 50 page forum post about that case on HardOCP.

I challenge anyone here to try buying electronics like the average person does. Go out to Best Buy and buy the headphones "the guy" recommends. Then go home, use them, read some reviews on one of the bigger boards, and try NOT to feel like an idiot who just wasted at least some of his money. Until you invest either a lot of time learning or a lot of money experimenting, you won't know what you prefer. You won't even know what questions to ask to narrow down your options.

And that's the feeling Rands is trying to avoid with his future shaving cream purchase.

PS - HLGAUGHALUGHALUGHALGUGHALUGHA.

Recommendation is really hard. It's not a matter of execution, it's a matter of research -- and that's a risky proposition, because the research may not pan out. I know because I tried it (recommending news, but the problem is similar).

I had two or three ideas for recommendation algorithms. My cofounder had quite a few more than that. Over the course of a year with very little income, we iterated intensively on recommendation engines -- we tried four or five completely different ideas, and refined each one until we got stuck. We had a small, but active, community of people who would try any of our recommendation engines and give us feedback. And the feedback was always "this isn't good enough."

I don't know how to solve the problem. The Netflix Challenge results were not especially algorithmically impressive; most of the benefits seemed to come from iterative tuning to the dataset. I admit that I haven't followed much recent research. I think we need an algorithmic breakthrough (on the order of PageRank) before recommendation startups will succeed.

I don't think it's a recommendation problem. He doesn't want to find products that he naturally likes. He wants someone to take a product that isn't exciting in itself and weave a compelling story around it: what the product means and what the product says about a person who appreciates it. He wants to feel like a connoisseur without being able to recognize quality himself. He wants a salesman to teach him how to appreciate the product and, at the same time, convince him that his appreciation makes him a more sophisticated person.

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