[HN Gopher] The Last Viridian Note (2008)
___________________________________________________________________
The Last Viridian Note (2008)
Author : kerkeslager
Score : 17 points
Date : 2024-11-29 23:59 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.viridiandesign.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.viridiandesign.org)
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Should have "[2008]" in the title, probably. If someone with
| powers could edit that in, I'd appreciate it.
| brudgers wrote:
| The Viridian Design Movement,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridian_design_movement
| euroderf wrote:
| Any time I read about how a mass market "should" do this or that
| for the environment, I am reminded of this Viridian manifesto:
|
| https://www.viridiandesign.org/manifesto.html
|
| Eco-friendly products that succeed in the marketplace "get it":
|
| "Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic
| scolding. [..] However, contemporary civil society can be led
| anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. The task
| at hand is therefore basically an act of social engineering.
| Society must become Green, and it must be a variety of Green that
| society will eagerly consume."
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| So, scolding is a type of manipulation that doesn't work, let's
| instead use this one, which does?.. I don't even oppose their
| goals, but I still find this kind of anti-Enlightenment
| realpolitik inherently repulsive. (Cf.:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-
| beauty-o....)
| talldayo wrote:
| > So, scolding is a type of manipulation that doesn't work,
| let's instead use this one, which does?..
|
| Sure. If it was a for-profit product they would arrive at the
| exact same conclusion for the purposes of marketing. Any
| serious pro-environment protestor that wants Americans to
| care about their movement has to market it effectively. Your
| movement has to be a product, something that people are
| afraid of missing out on lest they be a square.
|
| It sounds horrible, yes. But this is the status quo for all
| environmentally harmful marketing so it also becomes the
| status quo for protest. I'd love to live in a country where
| conscious protest is considered normal, but America isn't
| that.
|
| > I still find this kind of anti-Enlightenment realpolitik
| inherently repulsive.
|
| It's post-enlightenment. Individual righteousness means
| nothing when the most important "cause" the average American
| can be made to care about is what the new iPhone looks like.
| vlz wrote:
| I feel you. Whenever this topic comes up I am somewhat torn.
| On the one hand just pointing out facts should clearly
| suffice everyone to behave properly on the other hand it
| clearly doesn't.
|
| Where I often land is, that the dichotomy between scolding
| and persuasion might simply be a false one. The Viridians, if
| I may call them that, also seem to think that we can only do
| one or the other, that we have to decide. It is however not
| necessarily inconsistent to both scold and try to persuade
| people, especially for organizations or movements.
|
| In our personal relations we are either angry at someone and
| might scold them or we are more sympathetic and might try to
| persuade, both behaviors are mutually exclusive as they are
| grounded in different emotions. However, a societal movement
| is not bound by personal emotions like that and can, maybe
| should employ both strategies and probably more.
|
| As an individual it can also be fine to "scold" more in one
| case and persuade more in another, whatever seems more
| authentic and fits the situation and the personal background
| and emotions. There might simply be no need to decide on one
| strategy.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| "Manipulation" is a pretty broad and loaded term. If I put a
| lot of effort into making a beautiful product(compared to an
| ugly product with the same exact feature set), because I know
| it will increase the sales of it - am I manipulating my
| potential buyers?
| samatman wrote:
| Before dismissing the value of rhetoric, I recommend reading
| it: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html
|
| I'm perfectly serious, it's literally the foundational text
| on the subject and we still have that text for good reason.
|
| Here's the first paragraph:
|
| > _Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are
| concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the
| general ken of all men and belong to no definite science.
| Accordingly all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a
| certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to
| maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.
| Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice
| and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the
| subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is
| possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed
| through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will
| at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an
| art._
| kerkeslager wrote:
| It's pretty difficult for me to see this as manipulation,
| because the alternative is what, making products that society
| doesn't want?
|
| To me, "manipulation" usually implies some sort of dishonesty
| or omission of relevant facts, and I'm not seeing that here.
| This is roughly "the customer is always right" as it applies
| to the design of green products.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| If like me you're someone with no prior idea of what this guy was
| talking about, the first 1/3rd it going to be hard to get
| through.
|
| However the latter 2/3rd talking about how to approach what items
| to remove or retain in your life is pretty solid and worth a
| browse.
|
| In fact the following is pretty much what I've been doing this
| past month:
|
| >You will need to divide your current possessions into four major
| categories.
|
| >Beautiful things.
|
| >Emotionally important things.
|
| >Tools, devices, and appliances that efficiently perform a useful
| function.
|
| >Everything else. "Everything else" will be by far the largest
| category. Anything you have not touched, or seen, or thought
| about in a year - this very likely belongs in "everything else."
|
| >You should document these things. Take their pictures, their
| identifying makers' marks, barcodes, whatever, so that you can
| get them off eBay or Amazon if, for some weird reason, you ever
| need them again. Store those digital pictures somewhere safe -
| along with all your other increasingly valuable, life-central
| digital data. Back them up both onsite and offsite.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Nothing wrong with organizing your stuff or getting rid of low
| quality items, but in the era of inflation, offshoring of
| production, and the cheapening/enshittification of goods,
| assertions like this:
|
| > Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally.
| The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking,
| washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that
| you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you
| have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them
| from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is
| lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.
|
| need reevaluated. Scissors of equivalent quality to the ones
| you bought in the 90's for $10 will set your grandkids back
| $200, if they can even find any.
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like for this to pay off, we need to imagine a
| rather specific transaction: good scissors are hard to find
| for theoretical grandkids, so they ask if you have any
| scissors and you give them your scissors. Maybe, but there
| are other scenarios where your grandkids don't live nearby
| and buy their own scissors at a store without asking you, and
| later your junk goes carted off to the landfill after you
| die. So that bet might not pay off, because the transaction
| didn't happen.
|
| If scissors turn out to be valuable in the future, maybe you
| could sell them, but probably to a stranger. It's not
| obviously a good investment?
|
| Currently, most people don't bother to try to buy or sell
| used scissors. They buy new scissors at a store. It's pretty
| easy to end up with scissors scattered throughout the house,
| so having a hook where you put all the scissors is a first
| step to figuring out how many you can get rid of. Or at least
| it avoids buying new scissors because you can't find them.
| samatman wrote:
| Good scissors seem to obviously fit into the "Tools, devices,
| and appliances that efficiently perform a useful function"
| category, so I'm not sure what to do with your specific
| example.
|
| I can't easily come up with examples of items which don't fit
| the taxonomy that my beneficiaries would nonetheless
| appreciate receiving in my will, and I think "if I don't want
| it my grandkids definitely won't" is a pretty good rule of
| thumb here.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I think you seriously misunderstood what you quoted. He's not
| saying you should maintain your items, he's saying time spent
| maintaining items is wasted time (with caveats that you
| didn't quote).
|
| "Scissors of equivalent quality to the ones you bought in the
| 90's for $10" isn't the goal here. The goal is that you don't
| have items that require maintenance unless they fit into the
| categories mentioned, and _IF_ you judge an item to be in one
| of the categories, they should require minimal maintenance.
|
| I have three pairs of scissors for different purposes (hair,
| kitchen, medical) and all of them are under $12 on Amazon
| (well, the hair scissors are some no-brand from a pharmacy,
| but similar-looking ones on Amazon are $6-$8). All of them
| work well for their intended purpose--maybe there's some
| minor improvement that could be made, but it's not
| significant. The hair and medical scissors will probably
| outlive me given how infrequently I use them. The kitchen
| shears might need replacement at some point (I think they
| could rust in the joints if I'm careless with leaving them in
| water) but they've lasted me over a decade and if I buy 2 or
| 3 more pairs in my lifetime that's not exactly a tragedy.
| Outside of putting them back where they belong when not in
| use, I will not maintain these scissors--if they so much as
| require sharpening, I won't do it, because the cost (both
| monetary _AND_ environmental) of sharpening is greater than
| the cost of replacing them.
|
| Are any of these scissors equivalent in quality to $10
| scissors from the 90s? I don't know, but I don't particularly
| care.
| pronoiac wrote:
| As the credit's left to the end: this was written by Bruce
| Sterling.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _The Last Viridian Note (2008)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33674735 - Nov 2022 (5
| comments)
|
| _Bruce Sterling: The Last Viridian Note_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=383591 - Dec 2008 (1
| comment)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-03 23:02 UTC)