Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

For the longest time I had this crappy serving spoon that I got in college. It was flimsy and would bend almost to the point of breaking every time you used it. It made it difficult to use it for its one job of scooping food out of large containers into smaller containers, but still I put up with it for years.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I could just, you know, buy another one. Eventually I did, and it’s much more pleasant to use.

I don’t see any particular virtue in burying yourself in daily annoyances out of…what exactly? So you can pretend you’re better than other people because you “don’t care” about material things? So you can play at being a fun-loving free spirit who stomps on their flatware during an impromptu dance party?

You can buy decent stuff and still not need to feel owned by it. That’s an issue that’s all in your head. Pay $50 for a fork but also let it go that your friend might ding it up.

That is kind of Moxie’s point. Buy functional stuff. Use it. Don’t become owned by the consumption, selection and use of it.

He’s not saying functional though, he says the worst version of something, which usually means crappy and unpleasant. Things like that make your life a little worse every time you use them. If it’s something like a fork that you use a lot every day, that’s just adding a lot of low-grade background unpleasantness to your life that is completely unnecessary.

He is using the hyperbole and contrast to "best" to make his point.

"The okayest" would have made for a much better article. I get what he means, but it's really not an argument for the worst thing, and I suspect that if pressed, even Moxie wouldn't deliberately e.g. buy a boat with a gaping hole in the bottom! But generally buying an okay version of something, which has no glaring problems and is available right now for a reasonable price, works pretty well.

“Satisficer” and “maximizer” are more useful concepts I think.

That explains a lot about the user experience of Signal the first and last time I used it.

Don't forget, worse is better

Perhaps the comparison between cutlery and motorcycles in the article is a little unfair, because (I imagine?) few people develop experience, knowledge and deep insights into cutlery that lead to a sense of blissful freedom, whereas that can probably happen to someone who gradually learns motorcycle maintenance by overcoming a series of practical real-world challenges.

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