[HN Gopher] The Worst (2012)
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The Worst (2012)
Author : harporoeder
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-05-16 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (moxie.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (moxie.org)
| tomxor wrote:
| Neither extreme makes sense as an absolute, however I think there
| is more truth in "the worst" or maybe "the ok" or "the threshold
| after which diminishing returns take a nosedive", we certainly
| shouldn't be owned by our possessions and the vast majority of
| people can't afford the best of everything.
|
| However for select items it is worth taking "the best" route -
| the key is to not be owned by them even then, find the best item
| (for a usually more subjective definition of "best") and _use_
| the fuck out of it, because that 's what it's for. Identifying
| when it's worth getting "the best" is the trick to learn, but it
| should be a low number of items.
|
| I think the problems comes when "best" is distorted into
| something highly biased towards aesthetics, taste or status -
| which is a consumerism trick - I'm not a brutalist, I understand
| aesthetics are important to the human experience, but when those
| attributes become the main focus people start behaving weirdly,
| and not necessarily in a healthy way.
| onebot wrote:
| "Any reasonable person wouldn't feel liberated by a $50 fork, but
| constrained by it." I mean define "reasonable person".
|
| I feel content is just about being divisive now-a-days. Moxie is
| someone I always put on a pedestal for his seemingly altruistic
| values. But this content seems to be a passive aggressive attack
| consumerism (nothing wrong with that) through Dustin Curtis,
| which in turn seems kinda personal.
|
| I don't know when we stopped: "live and let live".
| runnerup wrote:
| > I feel content is just about being divisive now-a-days.
|
| I don't want to make assumptions about your perception of
| timeline, but it's worth noting that the blog post is fully one
| decade old.
| onebot wrote:
| Ha! Good point. World was, in fact, quite different that long
| ago.
| TimPC wrote:
| I kind of feel like someone needs to do a post about the missing
| middle now.
| dang wrote:
| I think this was the original megathread:
|
| _The Best_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470 - Nov
| 2012 (295 comments)
|
| I feel like this response also got discussed on HN back then -
| but if so, I can't find it. Anyone?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Yes, despite being resubmitted every so often with little
| interest, there was this original URL and discussion from 9
| years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838109 - Nov 2012, _(209
| comments)_
| neura wrote:
| "I bought a seven-dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got
| sick of not caring." -- Mitch Hedberg
| st-keller wrote:
| ,,I did the same and it got stolen!" --- me
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| One time I dropped my iPhone and broke the screen. Apple wanted
| $150 to fix it but I can buy a whole Android phone for that much
| so that's what I did.
|
| Now I don't really give a fuck if my phone breaks.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Far be it from me to suggest that the _$50 fork_ is an
| artificially constructed edifice set up for the sole purpose of
| being tilted at, but the $50 buys an entire place setting of five
| items, not just the fork.
|
| A set by the late David Mellor, the British designer who invented
| the pillar box, the traffic light and the bus shelter as well as
| arguably the 20th century's most iconic cutlery, will set you
| back twice that much.
|
| https://www.davidmellordesign.com/cutlery/stainless-steel
| dhosek wrote:
| $50 for a place setting is not that outrageous for something of
| quality. My one suggestion would be to get twice as much
| silverware as you think you need because somehow pieces end up
| going missing. Our pattern was discontinued and when I looked up
| getting replacement pieces, it was going to be some ridiculously
| large amount per piece (I think $40 or $50--whatever it was was
| high enough that I've been trying to talk my wife into just
| getting a whole new set of silverware with at least 12 place
| settings, but better 16).
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > My one suggestion would be to get twice as much silverware as
| you think you need because somehow pieces end up going missing.
|
| This is not the way. No!
|
| Perfection is to get one of each type of cutlery per person.
| Then if something goes missing you get, no, not a replacement--
| you get the very best household metal detector. You do
| meticulous research--probably using the 50-book Searchum
| Arcanum collection, leather-bound--meditate on your findings,
| and then finally ask for a second opinion from the best person
| you know (skip the last step if you are the best person you
| know).
| Sebb767 wrote:
| 50$ for a place sounds insane to me. That's 800$ just for your
| set of 16. My whole set of 12 set me back 80EUR and it still
| works six years later; if it ceases to do so at some point,
| I'll gladly get another one. I'm not saying you should buy
| cutlery where you'll eat paint after the second dishwasher run,
| but you can get something solid and nice looking for far less.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Maybe this is a dumb question, but why is it so important that
| all of your flatware match that you would replace your full set
| because you can't replace a few pieces with ones that match?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Try eBay.
|
| You might be able to buy the missing piece.
|
| If not, especially if that missing piece seems to expensive,
| then you can sell yours.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Any reasonable person wouldn't feel liberated by a $50 fork,
| but constrained by it. [...] is it going to get dropped or
| stepped on if a dance party erupts in the kitchen?_
|
| I've always thought part of the "flex" of owning certain
| expensive things isn't just that you're rich enough to afford it,
| but that you're rich enough you _don 't care about it getting
| damaged_.
|
| Plenty of people could afford to _buy_ a $10,000 watch (if they
| wanted to save up a bit). Not many people could afford to _lose_
| a $10,000 watch.
|
| If you buy a $100 wine glass and a guest drops it by accident,
| you gotta be ready to laugh it off.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm much more in favor of the original compared to the cynical
| response.
|
| The original focused on owning few items of ultimate quality.
| When you read about the examples, they are not status items, they
| are "best" in their utility and durability. Owning few items of
| high quality is not snobbery, I consider it common sense.
|
| It's more sustainable. It rewards good product design and
| craftsmanship. I hope we can all agree that expecting a towel to
| actually dry is not an elitist thought.
|
| The only matter worth discussing is whether you should obsess in
| finding the best in every single category of products that you
| buy. No, probably not. But you can make the counter point that
| this means that apparently we don't have reliable reviews.
| Because if we did, somebody else would have done that for you.
| [deleted]
| charles_f wrote:
| > A whole language can start to develop around not just the
| consumption of goods, but the consumption of experience: "We did
| Prague." "We did Barcelona."
|
| Couldn't agree more with that statement. I hate that terminology,
| it maps travel and experience into check-boxes that you ought to
| complete. I don't know why, but it feels wrong to me.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| There's an ad I see a lot for a travel company with a catch
| line that goes like 'what do you think you'll regret more when
| you're old, [scene of production of perfume/couture ad in
| background] the things you didn't buy [cut to generic-looking
| sandy beach] or the places you didn't go?'
|
| Every time I see it, I think 'well obviously neither, that's
| not what people regret' and I guess I'm just worried that
| people believe the message of the ad.
| turzmo wrote:
| What I hate is the implication that there is a correct way to
| "do" a particular city. It takes all the adventure and
| serendipity out of travel and reduces each city to a standard
| and usually bland set of experiences.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| As others are saying here, this seems like taking it to the
| extreme.
|
| As usual in life, the middle path seems best.
|
| Unless it is your hobby, it isn't worth finding the absolute best
| of anything. Find something that is good and that you like and
| you'll be doing well.
|
| At the same time they are just material possessions, so don't get
| too attached.
|
| Things were meant to be used. When they get scuffed, scratched,
| and dinged in the course of duty why worry about it (unless it
| impacts the use of it).
| Tronno wrote:
| As with most things, the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
|
| Obsess over extremes of design or performance if that's what you
| need. Cheap out on the dollar store version if it gets the job
| done. Buy the middle-of-the-road version if that's the best
| value.
|
| The "best" of anything can be defined along many axes (price,
| performance, design, durability, weight, etc), and compromise is
| usually necessary. It's strange that both authors abandon this
| nuance.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| My life is more similar to that of a "partisan of the worst", so
| I sympathize with his general sentiment. However, this is full of
| strawmans.
|
| For example, this is from the Dustin Curtis post he's
| criticizing:
|
| > Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a
| book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the
| feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds
| completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?
|
| Moxie reduces that to just "internet research [which] isn't
| necessarily the same as understanding".
| runjake wrote:
| (2012) and repeatedly submitted to HN in the past, at least 7
| times.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=moxie.org
| mikestew wrote:
| Looks like this is the first time anyone has ever posted a
| comment in response, too.
| armitron wrote:
| I guess moxie no longer abides by "the worst":
| https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/signal-moxie-marlin...
| ws404 wrote:
| Ha, the best part of all this is due to these posts that cutlery
| set is being copied by a Chinese manufacturer and will be on
| Amazon next week so others that share "the worst" philosophy will
| be able to buy it for 20 bucks for a set of 4 and use it to play
| spoon drums all day long.
| mwattsun wrote:
| I don't really have a comment except some random associations
| having to do how people feel about objects and processes. It
| sounds to me that Dustin Curtis and the HN people responding
| favorably are searching for material objects that give a certain
| feeling.
|
| I first heard the word _Numinous_ used by Terrance McKenna to
| describe objects with spirit:
|
| _numinous, adjective, having a strong religious or spiritual
| quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity,
| "the strange, numinous beauty of this ancient landmark"_
|
| Upon further research, I found a related Japanese word
| "Tsukumogami":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami
|
| _" tsukumogami are tools that have acquired a kami or spirit.
| Today, the term is generally understood to be applied to
| virtually any object "that has reached its 100th birthday and
| thus become alive and self-aware", though this definition is not
| without controversy._
|
| Robert Pirsig wrote a book related to these concepts:
|
| _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into
| Values is a book by Robert M. Pirsig first published in 1974. It
| is a work of fictionalized autobiography, and is the first of
| Pirsig 's texts in which he explores his "Metaphysics of
| Quality"._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...
|
| Finally I once picked up a stainless steel spoon at a Portsmouth,
| Virginia thrift store for a quarter while in the Navy that had
| "NYC Rikers Island" engraved on it. That was my favorite spoon
| for a long time.
| anm89 wrote:
| I have an appreciation for Moxie's argument but I think the first
| guy (Dustin) is a bit of a strawman here. As someone who more or
| less agrees with the "buy nice stuff once so you aren't
| constantly accumulating shit" mantra, I would never buy a $1000
| silverware set. My personal silverware set I think cost maybe $40
| because as Moxie mentions, I'm not particularly worried about a
| fork malfunction.
|
| I have a $200 coffee grinder though. I use it once or twice a day
| and it's 3 years old, meaning I've paid maybe 10-20c / use over
| it's life time and it's 20x better than the $50 one I used before
| it that constantly caused me headaches and was terrible at it's
| only job which was to grind coffee.
|
| I also don't wanted to be surrounded by other peoples old gross
| used junk. I'm not a slave to my $40 dollars in silverware and
| I'm happy every time I used it that I'm not wondering if it was
| some rat's and cockroaches play thing for 20 years before someone
| found it behind a refrigerator while cleaning a house and threw
| it in the good will bin.
|
| There's a middle ground.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > I'm not a slave to my $40 dollars in silverware and I'm happy
| every time I used it that I'm not wondering if it was some
| rat's and cockroaches play thing for 20 years before someone
| found it behind a refrigerator while cleaning a house and threw
| it in the good will bin.
|
| I assure you that after a good wash there's no permanent damage
| a roach can possibly do to silverware. I'm not about to throw
| around the word slave in regard to silverware or consumerism,
| but you've fallen for the "used is unclean" myth that's
| partially contributed to the absurd amount of waste in the
| world.
| anm89 wrote:
| Sure. I just don't care. I've got $40 and that's my
| preference.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yes, we all make these decisions in one way or another...
| but this blog post is in a response to another post that
| extols the virtues of _always_ seeking "the best" to the
| point of claiming that everything he owns is "the best."
|
| If you value silverware of a specific quality that's fine,
| but insisting that everything you own be the best feels
| like it exists somewhere between banal and foolish.
|
| Seeking out the extremes on either end feels like navel-
| gazing, I agree... and I think finding a middle-ground was
| the purpose of the author's counter-examples.
| anm89 wrote:
| He is explicitly advocating for the worst. That's the
| literal title. If you made a spectrum of options, he's
| advocating to go as extreme on that spectrum as you can.
|
| According to him, anything beyond the good will used bin
| is the wrong choice. He's advocating for an extreme.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah I can see that, I guess I wasn't taking it as
| literally.
|
| > But the worst counters that if we'd like to de-
| emphasize things that we don't want to be the focus of
| our life, we probably shouldn't start by obsessing over
| them. That we don't simplify by getting the very best of
| everything, we simplify by arranging our lives so that
| those things don't matter one way or the other.
|
| My take away from the conclusion was "care less about
| stuff" and I interpreted the counter-examples as more
| demonstration of why "the best" doesn't always literally
| mean "the best" and that sometimes "the worst" ends up
| better in a different way.
| sandgiant wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the scale from exuberant consumerism
| to rodent play thing. I think your middle ground is still just
| a singular point at the consumerism extreme.
|
| One could argue that "old gross junk" is just another strawman.
| Not something that can really be quantified outside of your
| personal feelings.
|
| I think we might be better off if we came to terms with the
| fact that old gross junk may actually be all we have in the
| future if we continue our current way of living.
|
| Might as well try to get along today.
| anm89 wrote:
| Old gross junk isn't all I have right now. So I'm happy to
| take the option. I guess I'm supposed to be embarrassed by
| that according to certain people? I'm not at all.
| munificent wrote:
| I think the failure of both of these articles is that they imbue
| things with meaning without considering that doing so is a
| _choice_.
|
| Curtis buys "the best" things so that the things he owns reflect
| back an ethos of caring about the things you build, making
| choices deliberately and carefully, and being able to rely
| completely on what one owns.
|
| Moxie buys "the worst" things so that the things he owns reflect
| back an ethos of focusing on people and experiences over material
| acquisition, and having a life of serendipity and unexpected but
| gratifying hardship.
|
| Neither of those are wrong, but the mistake is to believe that
| the items themselves carry that connotation. They don't. Curtis
| could carefully select a perfect spoon from the 50 cent thrift
| store spoon bin and that spoon would still be "the best" and
| reflect his values. Moxie could win the lottery, buy a yacht, and
| run it into a jetty without a care in the world and that yacht
| would be "the worst" according to his principles.
|
| Conversely, Curtis could feel obliged to use some $1,000
| parachute material daypack perfectly designed to carry his
| equisitely selected pen and paper when what he feels like right
| then is grabbing the pretty purple bag because he is an unwitting
| slave to having his stuff reflect his higher principles. And,
| likewise, Moxie might refuse to be caught dead behind the wheel
| of a BMW even though it turns out he would love the experience of
| roadtripping it in with friends and the way it feels cruising
| down the Interstate at night because having it would mean
| "selling out".
|
| Curtis and Moxie can still both end up slaves to their things
| because they've given them totemic power without realizing it.
|
| The trick is to realize that we can choose to apply meaning to
| things, or not, and we can give and take it when we want.
| onebot wrote:
| wow. Perfectly stated.
| charles_f wrote:
| > No matter how much research they do, a partisan of the best
| might not ever know as much about motorcycles as the partisan of
| the worst who takes a series of hare-brained cross-country
| motorcycle trips on a bike that barely runs, and ends up learning
| a ton about how to fix their constantly breaking bike along the
| way.
|
| I don't know much about motorbikes, but I do about mountain
| bikes. Since it's so expensive, your first bike can and almost
| should be a shitty one, just to validate you like the sport. But
| once you determined you like it, you're so much better off
| investing in a good, stable, reliable bike, and go into harder
| terrain, rather than risking your life on simple trails with a
| shit bike. For once it will be more fun, but also you'll progress
| faster with equipment that you already over-class.
|
| If the point is to maximize your enjoyment of life, I think
| generally speaking it makes sense not to spend on stuff that
| doesn't matter. But saving your nickels and pennies on stuff you
| actually enjoy doesn't make any sense, because it will in fact
| make your experience worse.
| foogazi wrote:
| > But once you determined you like it, you're so much better
| off investing in a good, stable, reliable bike, and go into
| harder terrain, rather than risking your life on simple trails
| with a shit bike.
|
| No, no, no - get the worst bike with the worst seat, tires and
| brakes then instead of merely "doing the hill", if you even
| make it to the top, throw your bike down the hill and walk all
| the way down - see if you go too fast you'll end up missing the
| little things nature has in store for you
|
| /s
| evilotto wrote:
| When you're buying tools, buy the cheapest one that will do the
| job. After you use that tool for a while and it breaks (because
| it's cheap) then go out and buy the best one you can afford,
| because you're already justified that you use the tool enough
| to break a cheap one.
| imgabe wrote:
| 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.
| bitexploder wrote:
| That is kind of Moxie's point. Buy functional stuff. Use it.
| Don't become owned by the consumption, selection and use of it.
| imgabe wrote:
| 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.
| krater23 wrote:
| That explains a lot about the user experience of Signal the
| first and last time I used it.
| ryanackley wrote:
| He is using the hyperbole and contrast to "best" to make
| his point.
| camtarn wrote:
| "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.
| joe5150 wrote:
| "Satisficer" and "maximizer" are more useful concepts I
| think.
| xvector wrote:
| Meh. Own what you want. I get personal satisfaction out of having
| all of my items be high quality. The hand feel, the weight, the
| craftsmanship. I feel comforted and at home when surrounded by
| "the best."
|
| Just because I own nice things doesn't mean that they are the
| "focus of my life," but rather that I simply appreciate owning
| nice things.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I feel comforted when I buy nice things, use them however I
| feel like, and have them hold up for years.
|
| I feel annoyed when I own something that so nice, but otherwise
| useless, that I don't feel that I can get rid of it and so I
| carry it around for years.
| dubswithus wrote:
| Me too. I love my Vitamix. But I've never had cutlery break.
| In fact, I frequently use the same forks, spoons, and knives
| that I used when I was 5 years old. They look like shit too.
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