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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

You're not the only one. There are millions of people out there who have no appreciation for art, craft, skill, quality, or finesse.

They're very base people who go through life seeing only price tags, and tallying worth only in dollar figures. They act like life is a video game and money is the score.

It's a shallow life, devoid of the appreciation of all the wonderful things available, and in my estimation, barely living. It's just existing as a robot does.

Why spend vacation in Fiji when there are sunsets in Fresno, too?

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This is needlessly judgmental and draws false equivalences between expression, impression, and consumerism.

I do think the mention of consumerism is apt. In my own encounters with those that seem to take pride in their inability to distinguish certain nuances, it does come off as a mental block borne of not wanting to feel like they are missing out on expensive things.

I think it cuts both ways though — there are those who will exaggerate or outright fabricate subtle differences in order to justify their expensive purchases, and also those that will deny real differences because they think everyone is just doing the first thing.

One can also look at distinguishing what is important to what is unimportant to a particular person. Personally, I look towards functionality over aesthetics. That isn't to say that I will completely disregard aesthetics, but I have certainly gone with those black bricks called ThinkPads over MacBooks in the past.

You are right about it cutting both ways though. I remember laptop shopping with a colleague in the past. They were trying to replace a barely functional laptop that they purchased because of its "design" with something they could get work done on. Unfortunately, they refused to acknowledge that functionality is an element of design. The whole experience was one of frustration.

This calculator appears to fit into a similar category. I'm sure it is a perfectly fine calculator, functionally speaking, if you are performing basic financial calculations. It isn't going to cut it if your working outside of that domain. When you consider that a calculator that is a tenth (or even a hundredth) of the price is going to offer a similar experience, I'm not even sure I would regard the nuances in its design a good thing. Yes, it says something about it's owner. I'm just not sure it says the right thing.

Somewhat convincing analysis.

But I should add (contrary to the rebuttal my provocative take attracted) that I am in fact very finely tuned to esthetics. As a photographer I'm obsessed with getting everything right (composition, light, texture, color, details) and routinely delete everything that doesn't make the cut.

It just seems obvious to me that in consumer products, most of the differences are pretty small in substantive terms. Big economic interests are at stake in amplifying them, and conjuring up demand through marketing, and generally manipulating us.

The example I had in mind was actually audio equipment. Like, clearly the high end stuff gets into diminishing returns to a point somewhere between absurdity and mysticism. But I’ve also had a friend that was completely convinced that vinyl sounds the same as spotify, and that anyone who thought otherwise was just a pretentious poseur.

Years ago I looked into this when ripping some CDs, because the question has of course been tested under controlled conditions. From memory, the general finding is that most people are incapable of distinguishing audio quality over 128kbps, and even self-declared audiophiles have trouble at 256. So I picked 192.

> But I’ve also had a friend that was completely convinced that vinyl sounds the same as spotify, and that anyone who thought otherwise was just a pretentious poseur.

This is a great example because the ambiguity could go either way (e.g. spotify lossless FLAC vs vinyl will set off picky people on each side).

Sometimes different is just different, and each will be better to some.

Yeah, frankly I'd have more money and be happier when watching a lot of movies if I couldn't tell the difference between OLED black levels and projector/LCD ones.

I didn't ask for it and I don't want it, hah.

I feel no need to convince others that they should try to find the difference.

I'm happy that, say, cheap wine doesn't give me the same mental-twitch.

Valuing fancy material possessions is not much different than valuing the money itself

I have almost exactly the opposite reaction. By not caring so much about the minute details of physical things, or having the very best croissants or whatever, frees you up to enjoy anything or focus on interactions with people, ideas, anything else.

There’s a difference between caring about something and being able to appreciate it. You can do the latter without the former.

Being able to enjoy/tolerate a cup of coffee from my cheap machine at home saves me €2 and 30 minutes of my day. I’m happy that I am not a connoisseur.

And what’s wrong with that? You’re rarely or never disappointed while enjoying most things. I’d say it results in a life well lived rather than nitpicking every single little detail.

And that blissful ignorance is the upside! But I would say it is a life not well lived; a life without contemplation, with appreciation of only that which is superficial and accessible.

We're beginning to go round in circles here, but I'll just rhetorically ask: does contemplation and appreciation of, say, art or poetry or nature, count in order to "live a life well", or must it be only consumer goods?

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