5 ms·

There are some simple rules my partner and I live by: buy implements/tools that make life easier/save time/produce good results, avoid items used only or largel

There are some simple rules my partner and I live by: buy implements/tools that make life easier/save time/produce good results, avoid items used only or largely for signalling or which lack utility, buy quality so that the item will last as long as possible and will be a pleasure to use. I'd say the easiest hack would be: stop signalling. You're not your fucking Babushka dolls or Banksy print. You're not the coffee style you drink or the coffee shop you drink it in. No one gets you by seeing what clothing you're wearing, and anyone who is attracted to you because of those things will be toxic company.

taurath 9y ago
This works as long as you don't wish to attract people, or have such a strong personality that it signals more than anything else. Yes, being in a particular place is a signal. But if you wear a Tommy Bahama shirt and khakis to a BDSM party you are probably not going to get attention. Home decor is another point - if you want it to be a comfortable home and nothing else, great! Do whatever you like. But if you want the space to act as an occasional community center for you and your social group, signals help. There aren't many fancy 50 year old wine parties in basement apartments.
libertine 9y ago
Signalling is part of who we are, it's a trait of our species - long before LV and Cartier, there was feathers, bones, fur. Things that would define positions in society, wealth, or simply to please others. We are social beings, and we have a lot of unconscious decisions made via interpretation of such signs. You can't just say someone who noticed you because you had some cool Vans shoes, is toxic because that someone used his senses and made a judgment - that maybe you are a cool approachable dude. No one likes you because of what you buy - that's not how it works.
- icanhackit 9y ago
  > No one likes you because of what you buy - that's not how it works. Some people really are that vapid. Anecdotes aren't worth much in this space but a lot of people I know are recreational shoppers and the extent of their conversational capacity is places they've dined at, things they have and shit they like. Now, maybe most people don't mind that sort of person. I don't think it would be uncharitable to call me a misanthropic arsehole. But I enjoy people who can think creatively, have even just an interest - not necessarily foundational knowledge - in science, history, politics, economics, engineering, and technology. To know whether someone is interested in these things does require some knowledge signalling - but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about stuff you buy, and I was suggesting that anything used almost exclusively for signalling which lacks utility should be toned down if you don't want to be a slave to your possessions. Someone interested in astronomy might have a reflector telescope in their living room - it has utility and indirectly signals what they like, which is fine. Someone who likes eating but has never cooked a meal in their life and surrounds themselves with celebrity cookware and stylised kitchen appliances should consider just saving money for eating out - the return on investment will be greater.
  - shubb 9y ago
    Some guys, usually is guys, love to talk about sport. They don't play sport - maybe they did back at college but the drinking aspect of being in a team was just as important as athleticism. But now sport is something they watch and talk about. Not something they do. In the office or at a party where they don't know people, they find other sport talkers. If you don't sport, you get kind of shut out of these conversations because the up to date body of knowledge needed in order to have something to say requires more effort to maintain than you would want to put in unless you were genuinely interested. And I'm not. That's fine. Instead, I'd talk to my friends about economics or tech. If I was at an awkward party and found a guy who could talk with nuance about 20th century Korean history I'd just found a new friend. I felt honestly superior to these sport people. I don't do politics though. I don't make history. And economics is like the weather only less predictable. It's the same thing. People talking about stuff they don't do. Neutral ground where opinions seem important but don't really matter where you can dance to show cultural fit, intellect, negotiation skill, and signal the way you think of your conversation partners. Hockey and football are different games, and if you want the social and emotional rewards of being in your local amateur team you had better pick one and practice it. if you view it as networking, then you'll meet different kinds of people in different types of sport team. Better learn golf if you want to meet that sort of folk. Some people talk about stuff they do. Everyone goes shopping. Most people go to work, bring up kids, repair thier houses. It's not so abstract but in a way, those conversations matter more. You can tell because liking the wrong team gets you teased, but the wrong opinion about child rearing could lose you a good friend. If you think about it, looking down on talking about what we actually do is more a judgment on how lame that stuff is. In sure if you were talking to someone with a truly interesting life it would be fine. How interesting are we though?
    - icanhackit 9y ago
      > How interesting are we though? It's kind of a pointless question. There's value in gaining and sharing knowledge that allows you to analyse and interpret the machinations world so that you can make educated decisions rather than be blindly subjected to change. There is objective value in understanding human history, economic basics, biology, nutritional health etc compared to who kicked a goal in 1987. Who you're interesting to depends on preference. Someone who is too busy thinking about football than the cons of buying a house in a floodplain will probably suffer from their ignorance. If we're to evolve as a species we need to be highly considerate and take an interest in the world around us.
avaer 9y ago
> anyone who is attracted to you because of those things will be toxic company It's naive to believe there exist people that don't judge humans and places by aesthetics. We just have different parameters. Maybe Babushka dolls don't represent the aesthetics you like, but refusing to signal entirely isn't the path to less toxic relationships; it's the path to being alone in your bubble.
- icanhackit 9y ago
  > but refusing to signal entirely isn't the path to less toxic relationships; it's the path to being alone in your bubble. You can still talk to people and you can both gauge each other based on personality and topics of interest. In fact you'll find more people of interest by talking to them rather than filtering by outward appearance. I'd argue you remain in a relative mono-culture or bubble by filtering via aesthetics. We might have differing opinions due to circumstance - I live in an inner city suburb and work in an office of ~700 people, so you're having conversations with a lot of people whether you like it or not. I can understand this might be different if someone lived a in a rural area where aesthetics means someone can trust that you're a local and can use aesthetics as a short cut to kick off a conversation. But even suburban life allows us to graduate from using the shit we buy as a way of defining us to what we do and say.
  - setr 9y ago
    >In fact you'll find more people of interest by talking to them rather than filtering by outward appearance. ...at the cost of time/effort. Of course you'll find more people by removing a filter that isn't 100% correct; you'll just find more noise too. I've never understood "don't judge a book by its cover"; the alternative is to read every single book? If your metric is decent (and being corrected over time), then judging should drastically refuce your rate of false positives. Assuming the 90% rule, finite time, and sufficient resources that even with lots of false negatives there'll still be enough books (or otherwise) for you to go through; then not judging by the cover is a massive inefficiency. You're just doing a naive brute force search by not filtering by the cover. The problem occurs when your policy is strict, not that it exists. And its pretty difficult to imagine that aesthetics aren't a useful signal to watch for, unless you simply aren't paying attention; very few communities don't construct their own slang, attire, quirks and what-nots. Even long-standing groups of two or three will do so. And few are skilled at hiding it. So you can get at least some indication of a person's background and interests based off their behavior and clothing; they question is if you can get enough information to construct a useful filter from, and that's partially dependent on your own awareness of various cultures, your ability to detect and the actual information available from this signal.
zbobet2012 9y ago
One thing not to do is remove "minor" pleasure because you _think_ they are signalling. The [research says](http://time.com/59684/the-simple-thing-that-makes-the-happiest-people-in-the-world-so-happy/ http://time.com/59684/the-simple-thing-that-makes-the-happie...) "savoring the small things" is hugely important. That includes enjoying your cup of coffee. If you genuinely can't taste the difference, don't buy it. But if you do, then buy good coffee. Adding small, every day joys that you savior to your life is worth your money (and time).
- icanhackit 9y ago
  > If you genuinely can't taste the difference, don't buy it. But if you do, then buy good coffee. Perhaps I should have been more clear about signalling. I'm not suggesting you remove the small pleasures from your life. If something has utility (including pleasure) and the capacity to signal, then go nuts. Consider it a bonus.
  - grwthckrmstr 9y ago
    I like your approach. Another thing I see is the once people have accumulated things they don't want or actually need or the product has no utility after several years, I find people unable to let go off those stuff, and instead keep storing more and more and more. Now imagine that being done over 25 years, and then I realised that's the home I'm living in with my parents.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    Much easier said than done. Empirical studies of wine-tasting and reproducibility show that our unconscious minds are wonderfully good at tricking us into mistaking mere signalling for intrinsic qualities such as better taste. Without a lot of meditation (Samadhi then Vipassana) you can't stop being fooled, a lot of the time. (As well as confusing secondary reinforcement for primary, in general.) Nature doesn't want you to; it wants you to attract "better" mates and impress others (establish dominance.) One or two simple rules can help, however. Rarely buy what's generally coveted, never buy any product that's advertised, and do not hang out with those who do.
DonaldFisk 9y ago
As Tyler Durden said, "The things you own end up owning you." And as Dave Ramsey said, "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."
gozur88 9y ago
From what I can see there seems to be a shift in thinking as people buy less stuff and spend more on experiences. The signaling is still there with the experiences, though. I like your "stop signaling" rule. That's really the root of the waste, and not many of us mix in circles where the spending is expected.

taurath 9y ago

This works as long as you don't wish to attract people, or have such a strong personality that it signals more than anything else. Yes, being in a particular place is a signal. But if you wear a Tommy Bahama shirt and khakis to a BDSM party you are probably not going to get attention. Home decor is another point - if you want it to be a comfortable home and nothing else, great! Do whatever you like. But if you want the space to act as an occasional community center for you and your social group, signals help. There aren't many fancy 50 year old wine parties in basement apartments.

libertine 9y ago

Signalling is part of who we are, it's a trait of our species - long before LV and Cartier, there was feathers, bones, fur. Things that would define positions in society, wealth, or simply to please others. We are social beings, and we have a lot of unconscious decisions made via interpretation of such signs. You can't just say someone who noticed you because you had some cool Vans shoes, is toxic because that someone used his senses and made a judgment - that maybe you are a cool approachable dude. No one likes you because of what you buy - that's not how it works.

icanhackit 9y ago
> No one likes you because of what you buy - that's not how it works. Some people really are that vapid. Anecdotes aren't worth much in this space but a lot of people I know are recreational shoppers and the extent of their conversational capacity is places they've dined at, things they have and shit they like. Now, maybe most people don't mind that sort of person. I don't think it would be uncharitable to call me a misanthropic arsehole. But I enjoy people who can think creatively, have even just an interest - not necessarily foundational knowledge - in science, history, politics, economics, engineering, and technology. To know whether someone is interested in these things does require some knowledge signalling - but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about stuff you buy, and I was suggesting that anything used almost exclusively for signalling which lacks utility should be toned down if you don't want to be a slave to your possessions. Someone interested in astronomy might have a reflector telescope in their living room - it has utility and indirectly signals what they like, which is fine. Someone who likes eating but has never cooked a meal in their life and surrounds themselves with celebrity cookware and stylised kitchen appliances should consider just saving money for eating out - the return on investment will be greater.
- shubb 9y ago
  Some guys, usually is guys, love to talk about sport. They don't play sport - maybe they did back at college but the drinking aspect of being in a team was just as important as athleticism. But now sport is something they watch and talk about. Not something they do. In the office or at a party where they don't know people, they find other sport talkers. If you don't sport, you get kind of shut out of these conversations because the up to date body of knowledge needed in order to have something to say requires more effort to maintain than you would want to put in unless you were genuinely interested. And I'm not. That's fine. Instead, I'd talk to my friends about economics or tech. If I was at an awkward party and found a guy who could talk with nuance about 20th century Korean history I'd just found a new friend. I felt honestly superior to these sport people. I don't do politics though. I don't make history. And economics is like the weather only less predictable. It's the same thing. People talking about stuff they don't do. Neutral ground where opinions seem important but don't really matter where you can dance to show cultural fit, intellect, negotiation skill, and signal the way you think of your conversation partners. Hockey and football are different games, and if you want the social and emotional rewards of being in your local amateur team you had better pick one and practice it. if you view it as networking, then you'll meet different kinds of people in different types of sport team. Better learn golf if you want to meet that sort of folk. Some people talk about stuff they do. Everyone goes shopping. Most people go to work, bring up kids, repair thier houses. It's not so abstract but in a way, those conversations matter more. You can tell because liking the wrong team gets you teased, but the wrong opinion about child rearing could lose you a good friend. If you think about it, looking down on talking about what we actually do is more a judgment on how lame that stuff is. In sure if you were talking to someone with a truly interesting life it would be fine. How interesting are we though?
  - icanhackit 9y ago
    > How interesting are we though? It's kind of a pointless question. There's value in gaining and sharing knowledge that allows you to analyse and interpret the machinations world so that you can make educated decisions rather than be blindly subjected to change. There is objective value in understanding human history, economic basics, biology, nutritional health etc compared to who kicked a goal in 1987. Who you're interesting to depends on preference. Someone who is too busy thinking about football than the cons of buying a house in a floodplain will probably suffer from their ignorance. If we're to evolve as a species we need to be highly considerate and take an interest in the world around us.

avaer 9y ago

> anyone who is attracted to you because of those things will be toxic company It's naive to believe there exist people that don't judge humans and places by aesthetics. We just have different parameters. Maybe Babushka dolls don't represent the aesthetics you like, but refusing to signal entirely isn't the path to less toxic relationships; it's the path to being alone in your bubble.

icanhackit 9y ago
> but refusing to signal entirely isn't the path to less toxic relationships; it's the path to being alone in your bubble. You can still talk to people and you can both gauge each other based on personality and topics of interest. In fact you'll find more people of interest by talking to them rather than filtering by outward appearance. I'd argue you remain in a relative mono-culture or bubble by filtering via aesthetics. We might have differing opinions due to circumstance - I live in an inner city suburb and work in an office of ~700 people, so you're having conversations with a lot of people whether you like it or not. I can understand this might be different if someone lived a in a rural area where aesthetics means someone can trust that you're a local and can use aesthetics as a short cut to kick off a conversation. But even suburban life allows us to graduate from using the shit we buy as a way of defining us to what we do and say.
- setr 9y ago
  >In fact you'll find more people of interest by talking to them rather than filtering by outward appearance. ...at the cost of time/effort. Of course you'll find more people by removing a filter that isn't 100% correct; you'll just find more noise too. I've never understood "don't judge a book by its cover"; the alternative is to read every single book? If your metric is decent (and being corrected over time), then judging should drastically refuce your rate of false positives. Assuming the 90% rule, finite time, and sufficient resources that even with lots of false negatives there'll still be enough books (or otherwise) for you to go through; then not judging by the cover is a massive inefficiency. You're just doing a naive brute force search by not filtering by the cover. The problem occurs when your policy is strict, not that it exists. And its pretty difficult to imagine that aesthetics aren't a useful signal to watch for, unless you simply aren't paying attention; very few communities don't construct their own slang, attire, quirks and what-nots. Even long-standing groups of two or three will do so. And few are skilled at hiding it. So you can get at least some indication of a person's background and interests based off their behavior and clothing; they question is if you can get enough information to construct a useful filter from, and that's partially dependent on your own awareness of various cultures, your ability to detect and the actual information available from this signal.

zbobet2012 9y ago

One thing not to do is remove "minor" pleasure because you _think_ they are signalling. The [research says](http://time.com/59684/the-simple-thing-that-makes-the-happiest-people-in-the-world-so-happy/ http://time.com/59684/the-simple-thing-that-makes-the-happie...) "savoring the small things" is hugely important. That includes enjoying your cup of coffee. If you genuinely can't taste the difference, don't buy it. But if you do, then buy good coffee. Adding small, every day joys that you savior to your life is worth your money (and time).

icanhackit 9y ago
> If you genuinely can't taste the difference, don't buy it. But if you do, then buy good coffee. Perhaps I should have been more clear about signalling. I'm not suggesting you remove the small pleasures from your life. If something has utility (including pleasure) and the capacity to signal, then go nuts. Consider it a bonus.
- grwthckrmstr 9y ago
  I like your approach. Another thing I see is the once people have accumulated things they don't want or actually need or the product has no utility after several years, I find people unable to let go off those stuff, and instead keep storing more and more and more. Now imagine that being done over 25 years, and then I realised that's the home I'm living in with my parents.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Much easier said than done. Empirical studies of wine-tasting and reproducibility show that our unconscious minds are wonderfully good at tricking us into mistaking mere signalling for intrinsic qualities such as better taste. Without a lot of meditation (Samadhi then Vipassana) you can't stop being fooled, a lot of the time. (As well as confusing secondary reinforcement for primary, in general.) Nature doesn't want you to; it wants you to attract "better" mates and impress others (establish dominance.) One or two simple rules can help, however. Rarely buy what's generally coveted, never buy any product that's advertised, and do not hang out with those who do.

DonaldFisk 9y ago

As Tyler Durden said, "The things you own end up owning you." And as Dave Ramsey said, "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."

gozur88 9y ago

From what I can see there seems to be a shift in thinking as people buy less stuff and spend more on experiences. The signaling is still there with the experiences, though. I like your "stop signaling" rule. That's really the root of the waste, and not many of us mix in circles where the spending is expected.