[HN Gopher] Plumbing vs. Internet, Revisited
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Plumbing vs. Internet, Revisited
Author : Ariarule
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-11-02 04:59 UTC (10 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gwern.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
| rzzzwilson wrote:
| Have to agree, Internet over Indoor Plumbing, since I spend the
| great majority of my time on the internet vs the toilet. That
| might be easier for me as I was toilet-trained in a household
| that used an outhouse containing the infamous "thunderbox".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I spend the great majority of my time on the internet vs the
| toilet._
|
| ?Por que no los dos?
|
| https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/man-sits-toilet-bowl-laptop-...
| kg wrote:
| "No indoor plumbing" would make life functionally impossible in
| apartment buildings, condos, and suburbs - and at least in the
| US, a _lot_ of people live in places like that.
|
| I suppose you could take an elevator down multiple floors and
| then climb into your car to drive to the nearest outhouse any
| time you need to use the bathroom, but that seems unreasonable to
| me. So I think in practice "no indoor plumbing" means "a
| different structure of life", similar to the rural plot of land I
| spent part of my childhood on with well water, a septic system,
| and no official fire department or police department. (We had 56k
| dialup though!)
|
| The point of this article feels like "we've made life without the
| internet really difficult", which is true, but we use indoor
| plumbing dozens or hundreds of times a day - washing our hands
| before handling food, washing our dishes, going to the bathroom,
| taking a shower, washing clothes, preparing food, having a drink.
| Its impact on hygiene and general quality of life is hard to
| overstate and any amount of time spent camping should drive this
| home I think. The author seems to have actually spent long
| periods of time without indoor plumbing though, so maybe they
| just love that lifestyle.
|
| In comparison, sure, the modern person uses the internet a _lot_
| , but most of that time is spent doing inessential stuff like
| browsing social media or sending work emails. If the internet was
| gone you just wouldn't have those things and you'd go back to,
| IDK, the radio, newspapers, and typewriters.
|
| Props to the author for keeping Robert's question alive.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Interesting. So basically an individual out in the sticks can
| genuinely get by with Internet but not plumbing, but urban life
| would be impossible at scale without plumbing, and without
| urban civilization at scale we probably wouldn't be able to
| maintain the internet at scale?
| ak217 wrote:
| Correct. At the risk of stating the obvious, indoor plumbing
| (and public sanitation in general) is not something required
| for _you_ as an individual. It 's something required for
| society as a whole to sustain value added activities that
| require dense urban areas without debilitating epidemics
| wiping out productivity (and any other measure of well-being)
| in those urban areas.
| XorNot wrote:
| Always how it shows up too: someone says "I've been camping
| and it was fine".
|
| That's not what a lack of indoor plumbing is like though.
| In fact going camping when indoor plumbing exists isn't
| even the same: when it's a few enthusiasts digging holes
| sparsely is very different to when the entire population is
| doing it.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Yeah, "would you, personally, forgo this" is a very different
| value proposition vs. "would you delete this from
| civilization".
|
| A single person might choose the internet over plumbing
| because at worst they have to compost and use an outhouse,
| which is less inconvenient than being locked out of most web
| services.
|
| But while giving up the internet globally sends you to the
| 1980s, giving up plumbing globally sends you to the 1780s.
| YouTube and Amazon ain't worth chamberpots, dessicated
| skyscrapers, and regular cholera outbreaks that would reduce
| most cities into dysfunctional public health disasters.
| skgough wrote:
| One counterpoint I can think of: most forms of electronic
| payment require the Internet now. Credit card transactions,
| Venmo et al. You could transition back to cash but there would
| be enormous switching costs and short-term chaos, and I could
| imagine paper-based transactions are also way less efficient in
| terms of transaction fees and literal loss of the cash.
| wavemode wrote:
| I think we're imagining a scenario where the internet never
| existed, not one in which it disappeared suddenly
|
| Though, if we were going to discuss the "disappear suddenly"
| scenario, losing indoor plumbing seems even more
| horrifying...
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > You could transition back to cash but there would be
| enormous switching costs
|
| How much of a switch this would be depends a lot on the
| country: in quite some countries cash is the common method
| for payment:
|
| > https://www.forex.se/en/travel/forex-index/cash-index/
|
| > https://dailypassport.com/countries-that-still-rely-on-
| cash/
|
| > https://www.travelex.com.au/travelex-hub/travel-
| inspiration/...
| wiml wrote:
| Depends on what you consider "plumbing" I suppose. People can
| live in dense housing carrying containers of water into their
| living space for cooking and cleaning, and using chamberpots
| for most elimination. It has some obvious downsides, but it
| works.
| dontdoxxme wrote:
| It's also interesting to consider that most commercial data
| centres depend on plumbing for aircon or even direct water-
| cooling. Therefore depending how far you take this, it could
| result in an internet that exists, but with a limited set of
| services (as they can only be self hosted, or at least not at
| the huge scale we are accustomed to).
| tpmoney wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy looking at the numbers of poor people without
| indoor plumbing but with internet access tells you about what
| they would actually prefer all things being equal. Internet
| access seems much cheaper to get and maintain access to than
| indoor plumbing, both in terms of monetary cost and also
| infrastructure.
|
| Assuming you don't have indoor plumbing, you need to add more
| rooms onto your house (or take indoor space away). You also need
| to plumb both the water supply and the drainage system into your
| space, which if you're lucky you can already get under your
| house, and if not requires digging up the floor and foundation.
| And if you're doing this solo (a la a well and a septic system or
| similar) you need to acquire the necessary skills (electrical,
| plumbing, drainage management) and build it all out. I'm not a
| waste disposal expert, but I suspect the nature of indoor
| plumbing sending all waste water to the same location makes just
| running a big pipe to your existing outhouse (assuming you have
| enough downhill slope) not a good idea. A big hole that can
| handle the amount of human waste a few people produce is probably
| would not do great adding a bunch of additional waste water to it
| every day too.
|
| By comparison, internet can be had with little more than a phone.
| In fact if you have a wireless phone at all, you probably have
| internet access, wether or not you intended to get it. And that
| applies to the homeless people the article mentions too. Let's
| ignore the fact that a person that is homeless by definition has
| no home in which to put indoor plumbing, there are also often
| programs, charities and NGOs providing cell phones and internet
| connectivity. Basic internet access could be had for $25 / month.
| I can't think of anything a homeless person could spend $25 on
| that would secure them indoor plumbing access for a month. Maybe
| a gym membership? Then again, your internet provider isn't likely
| to kick you out and call the cops, but a gym might if they catch
| on that you're just here to shower and use the toilets every day.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I cannot imagine people (or at least tech people) didn't have
| life altering experiences at the dot com bubble times. I was 9
| when I logged onto my first bbs begin 80s and in coming years I
| started to believe that was far more important than plumbing. You
| could make friends, exchange software, plan meetups etc all
| without leaving my desk. When internet came, I definitely
| would've had that, if this was needed, if it meant crapping in
| the bushes.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I wish I could understand the people who have internet without
| toilets: Is it something where it's just not a big deal to pee /
| poop outside where they live?
|
| I could see, if I lived in an area where the weather was nice,
| and it wasn't a big deal to just walk over to a tree and water
| it, I might not care as much either.
|
| Is it like camping where it's often easier to just duck behind a
| tree instead of walking to the bathroom?
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