10 ms·

The Tyranny of Convenience

125 points by johnny313 9y ago

andrewtbham 9y ago
give me convenience or give me death
- lifeformed 9y ago
  But only if you doing the killing for me
croshan 9y ago
Especially when it comes to products, consumer convenience often seems to be at odds with consumer well-being. Take everything from McDonalds's fast food, to Facebook's engagement optimization, to overprescribing of antibiotics and painkillers. The products that sell the most, are the ones that cripple the users ability to independently operate, and keep them coming back for more.
- jnordwick 9y ago
  > The products that sell the most, are the ones that cripple the users ability to independently operate, and keep them coming back for more. Sounds like you are talking about government services like welfare. (Meta: easily my fastest comment to -4 ever. It took less than 6 minutes.) Ps, stop complaining about my perceived complaining. I don't care. Its almost a badge of honor to me - even straight out spam doesn't get buried so fast.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    "(Meta: easily my fastest comment to -4 ever. It took less than 6 minutes.) " Congratulations!
    - jnordwick 9y ago
      Although there is a non snarky way to say what i was implying, i don't think it would have made much of a difference. I do feel there is an apt comparison in there if you try to apply the same critique to government services. No reason to single out private services.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        To me you came across as one of the types who blames government for everything reflexively. I also think your comparison is not accurate. Going on welfare is not convenient in the sense of the article.
      - mirashii 9y ago
        Maybe it would've made a difference. Your comment was downvoted because it put words into the author's mouth that were obviously not his own, about a topic that's going to be known to be controversial, and followed it up with absolutely zero substance. Many folks would happily debate the merit or lack thereof of welfare programs if they had some substantive opinion, statistics, or really content to debate about. Your comment was nothing but snark, and to dismiss the downvotes as downvoting the subject matter and not the snark is a second piece of disengaging snark that is also not contributing meaningfully to the discussion.
  - croshan 9y ago
    Haha no. But there's something to be said about the bimodal situation that the non-granular tiered system of benefits put people in. Having a sharp drop in benefits once you go from nothing to a moderate income really takes the coal out of the furnace.
    - essayist 9y ago
      Yes. What the article and the GP miss is the importance of design. Tailing off benefits gradually makes the most sense from the perspective of providing an incentive to work and earn more, but (a) government seldom looks at how the incentives actually work across the whole set of support programs (tuition assistance, CHIP, Medicaid, housing assistance, etc.) and (b) when you tail things off gradually, you will have people doing fairly well on their own still getting some subsidies, albeit small ones, and that's politically challenging to explain.
  - hasbroslasher 9y ago
    For the record, if you've ever tried to go on welfare/unemployment (in USA) you'd know that it's anything but convenient. I had to fill out paperwork, meet deadlines, show up for in-person meetings that took an hour longer than they ought to have, remember to re-apply each week... definitely not as easy as checking Facebook for the millionth time this morning. It's also a bit disingenuous to say that these services cripple your ability to independently operate - when I was on the dole I was having a blast going hiking and biking, drinking wine, writing music, and playing Nintendo Switch. That's about as independent a life as I could ask for, frankly.
- gascan 9y ago
  consumer convenience often seems to be at odds with consumer well-being I've begun to think that's intrinsic, not anything nefarious. We long for convenience, laziness, sugar, etc. We're meant to want them, but never get much of them. As far as we can tell, our minds & bodies run best on a diet of exertion, activity, and whole foods, which are the very opposites of the things we crave. I keep thinking about TDR's Strenuous Life.
leggomylibro 9y ago
>Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. It's a good dystopian trope, and one of the more uncomfortably plausible ones. A streamlined pipeline from cradle to creche to college to a cycle of job->transit->housing->transit until you're too expensive to keep around anymore. It's probably where we'll end up. The constant message in society today is, "you're on your own," and the constant message from other people is, "go away." It hurts, but that's dystopia for you.
- MollyR 9y ago
  Yes this very true. I used to volunteer at a suicide prevention center before my twins were born. I dealt with a ton of college grads who couldn't find jobs, and were depressed, suicidal and deep in debt. They said they felt alone, and their parents just thought they were lazy. Society has become a dystopia with a hall of mirrors and flashing lights for many kids. They feel more alone then ever, even with all the social media. I have a strong suspicion though social media is making it worse, since you are constantly bombarded with beautiful and successful people (or people faking it).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - howard941 9y ago
    Not just kids. All of us.
philipkglass 9y ago
An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life. There is no shortage of hard problems left to solve. If everything in your life looks uneasily easy, raise your eyes to something harder before gamifying your routine with deliberate refusal to use a microwave oven. Before big government-funded science programs started in the 20th century, people born into affluent families were greatly over-represented in the sciences, because you can't theorize or research if all day is spent on routine chores. The same goes for composers, mathematicians, and authors. I find it kind of sad if people liberated from routine chores choose to use their new leisure time exclusively on TV and Facebook. But I'm certainly not going to tell them that they should wash clothes by hand to break out of the entertainment rut. That's a waste of a life too, admittedly one with a lengthier historical pedigree than binge-watching. Even if you lack the inclination or the skills to advance the frontiers of art, mathematics, or science, there are plenty of rewarding activities that are orthogonal to convenience technologies. Hiking, biking, fishing, birdwatching, learning to sing or play an instrument, woodworking, cooking food that a microwave simply can't make, playing sports, gardening... I do think that people suffer physically and mentally if the only parts of their bodies they use are their fingers and their eyes. A sedentary life spent entirely looking at electronic displays isn't good. (Even reading paper books all the time without using the rest of your body isn't great, and I say that as a serious bookworm.) The best way to fill excessive time freed by convenience technologies is to take up leisure activities that use the rest of yourself, not throw away labor saving machines and start beating rugs like your ancestors (or ancestors' servants).
- essayist 9y ago
  Right. Many things get easier, but "everything" is not easy, especially not in comparison to every-other-thing. And +1 for pointing out that drudgery-for-the-sake-of-drudgery is hardly the solution.
  - justinator 9y ago
    But the convenience itself becomes the drudgery. Does everyone love to drive a convenient car, even though it leads to traffic/congestion, bad posture, poorer help (Which , now you have to go to the gym), and environmental collapse? Have you ever noticed the public space we give up to the convenience of the automobile? How much of your town/city has been paved over?
essayist 9y ago
The article confuses a variety of perspectives. First, how do I, an individual, use convenience in my life, without getting drawn down bad paths? I commute by a McDonalds on the way home, when I'm hungry and exhausted. Perhaps I make alternatives easy (yummy leftovers I can pop in the microwave), perhaps I fortify myself to resist temptation (eat an apple at my desk so that cheeseburger doesn't seem as tempting), perhaps I remind myself that cooking with my spouse is part of the fun and imagine her smiling as I wield that frying pan. Second, and different, how do I as a benevolent dictator manage convenience for those I'm responsible for? For instance, as a teacher, I want to make certain things easy (access to the right texts and helpful videos) and other things (problem sets) just the right amount of "difficult" to keep students engaged, learning, and successful. We actually know how to do this, in general. Intensive care units are there to make everything "easy" for really sick people, but few people get trapped forever in the ICU. The "tyranny of convenience" is a sexy title, but people always are drawn to what's easier, even before the washing machine arrived. There's probably a general cycle - we go nuts on the easy alternative, and then discover that there's more to life. E.g. "slow food", custom-configured PCs, "back to the land", etc.
vests 9y ago
We don’t wear bulletproof vests because it’s inconvenient while we wear seatbelts and bike helmets.
deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
moneytide1 9y ago
I saw "WALL-E" as a sobering critique on the "progression" of civilization. Maybe walking to the well to get water is an inefficient, time consuming task when you could just use plumbing. But maybe the ones performing this routine throughout their entire life would have healthier blood pressure, or less risk for osteoporosis, because of more frequent physical activity.
- contingencies 9y ago
  Also cleaner water, increased lifestyle mobility, less infrastructure maintenance overhead. Incidentally there is a famous Chinese morality animation about three monks fetching water https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s
redthrow 9y ago
>> But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore. Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made buying music even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient beat out free. Does the author talk to his students? "Getting music free" is more prevalent than ever. Many just go to YouTube to get their music.
- lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  Anecdata: My teenage kids don't use iTunes, even though we have the unlimited family package. Their music is on youtube.
- gnode 9y ago
  Aren't you just saying that free plus convenient beat out convenient?
  - redthrow 9y ago
    I'm saying the prof is out of touch with reality when he says "But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore".
dclowd9901 9y ago
The author seems to be trying to make an issue where there isn't any. The many conveniences I enjoy in my life allow me to circumvent rote tasks that offer no enrichment and no sense of accomplishment. What do I do with my free time? Difficult activities that give me a sense of accomplishment and enrichment. To tack on the concern that people are falling back to "screen time" to fill the time left by convenience is a problem more to do with people not led to explore other facets of the world they're not familiar with, or a sense of inability from being coddled while raised.
- goatlover 9y ago
  That's like saying modern transportation and easy access to lots of calories isn't a concern, because some people are motivated enough to get enough exercise and not overdo it on the sugar and fat. Meanwhile some countries have a majority of the population overweight.
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  I think he's making a good point but arguments it poorly. A better argument would be not that "it makes us less human" etc, but that it teaches people to be lazy and avoid problem solving. It's the "there's an app for that" attitude. The calculator attitude, the GPS attitude. You're trained to avoid any difficulty, and I can imagine a person trained to only use ready solutions will just give up if he can't buy/download/solve it in browser. It's not just about being washed away on a remote island or emergency events like wars. It's also loss of resourcefulness.
rhn_mk1 9y ago
> Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are. I'm convinced that people derive meaning from restrictions they have to overcome. In the land of perfect convenience, everything would be instantly possible, and nothing would be valuable, so nothing would be worth doing. What would make people tick? In this vision, convenience merges with powerlessness, leaving no options. At some point, we could observe that making things easier doesn't benefit society by freeing up time, but harms it by removing meaning. As a believer in a transhumanist future, this possibility concerns me.
- Diederich 9y ago
  Did you just describe a possible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter ?
  - rhn_mk1 9y ago
    Seems to fit the description! Future philosophers, please cite my name as "rhn" :) Looking at Wikipedia's list, I'd put it behind 9. The colonization explosion. As long as there is something to do - discover, colonize, compute - there will be a part of humanity that finds outside challenges. Colonization is the raison d'etre of Culture in Iain Banks' series, as described in this article: http://sciphijournal.org/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ http://sciphijournal.org/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciatio...
- goatlover 9y ago
  It's interesting on Star Trek how they avoid that with various challenges for the crew, including holodeck malfunctions. But you have to wonder how people back on cozy planet Earth outside of the highly motivated Starfleet types are able to stay away from the total convenience and immersion of holodecks, replicators and transporters.
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    I believe it was Scott Adams who said that "the holodeck will be Mankind's last invention", and it's a hard point to argue with.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
The author is correct. Maybe he should start by stopping the use of a computer to write articles and columns. I mean what is more convenient that typing an article into a word processor that makes it easy to edit and change words and checks for grammar and spelling mistakes. Also, did he use Google to look up any facts? How awful! Once Tim Wu goes out cuts papyrus, pounds the papyrus into paper. Gets a feather from a bird and fashions a quill with that, then makes ink, and rewrites his column until he gets it perfect, then hand copies his column and walks to my house and delivers it to me, then I will take him seriously. Until then, by response is "bug off hypocrite!"
- goatlover 9y ago
  You criticize society from within society, not from some cave in the desert. Well, maybe if you can leave a scroll for future generations to misinterpret. Also, just because you find some things wrong with society doesn't mean you want to ditch all of it.
- Retra 9y ago
  Hypocrisy is also not a fallacy. It is not even a weak indicator of flawed reasoning.
marnett 9y ago
I never quite thought I'd be linking this here, but in Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto[1] he wrote, amongst many other things (plenty certainly to be found controversial), that there exists an intrinsic need for humans to undergo a 'power process' that allows us to exert power over people or processes in order to fend off purposelessness (the Manifesto is separated into numerical subsections, he makes this point in the section entitled 'DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY' which is paragraph 59). The entire thing is worth reading, for historical significance alone. [1] http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf
- philwelch 9y ago
  Industrial Society and Its Future isn't a good moral justification for mailing bombs to people, but it's still an interesting set of ideas that's difficult to refute.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  It's mostly an individualist re-hashing of Marx's theory of alienation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
tmnvix 9y ago
Once upon a time the accepted tradeoff was between quality and cost. Now it is between quality, cost, and convenience. This is why things like bottled water can cost more than fuel. It's also why Apple can charge a premium for it's products (the convenience of "it just works"). People will pay a huge premium for convenience and are also willing to almost ignore quality in some cases (e.g. food). It seems that if you want to be successful in today's market you have to prioritise convenience. Just consider how many startups are based on the idea of making something 'easier' as opposed to 'possible'. Unfortunately, convenience is killing us.
makecheck 9y ago
Convenience also weighs in to make it hard for people to push back on things, by design. “Oh, creating an account is one click; to cancel your service you have to call, wait, listen to a spiel, etc.” Or: “What’s this extra $1.25 on my monthly bill? Well I could spend time inquiring but I guess I won’t bother.” I am much more worried about these abuses of convenience.
PatchMonkey 9y ago
Wow. Karl Marx the prophet all up in this op. If only the author would recognize that. Not saying Marx's solutions are best. But he certainly was relevant in describing the problems.
b0rsuk 9y ago
It's a bit subtle, but Frank Herbert's Dune universe is based on the premise that spoiling convenience is outlawed, and punished by death: --------------------- In Terminology of the Imperium, the glossary of 1965's Dune, Frank Herbert provides the following definition: Jihad, Butlerian: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." Herbert refers to the Jihad many times in the entire Dune series, but did not give much detail on how he imagined the actual conflict.[4] In God Emperor of Dune (1981), Leto II Atreides indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided and controlled they had become by machines: "The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."[5] In the series, Herbert illustrates how the Jihad leads to many profound and long-lasting effects on the socio-political and technological development of humanity. The known universe is purged of all forms of thinking machines, resulting in not only a ban on the re-creation of similar devices (which remains in effect throughout the periods described in the original six Dune novels), but also a great technological reversal for humanity. The chief commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible, "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind", holds sway, as do the anti-artificial intelligence laws in which the penalty for owning an AI device or developing technology resembling the human mind is immediate death. This leads to the rise of a new feudalistic galactic empire which lasts for over ten thousand years, until the rise of the God Emperor Leto II in 10,217 A.G.[6] To replace the analytical powers of computers without violating the commandment of the O.C. Bible, "human computers" known as Mentats are developed and perfected, their mental abilities ultimately honed to the point where they become superior to those of the ancient thinking machines. Similarly specialized groups of humans which arise after the Jihad include the Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order with advanced mental and physical abilities, and the Spacing Guild, whose prescience makes safe and instantaneous space travel possible. Fringe societies such as the Ixians and Bene Tleilax eventually begin to develop mechanical and biological technology that, if not actually transgressing the commandments of the Jihad, at least come extremely close. Prohibitions spawned by the Jihad also include artificial insemination, as explained in Dune Messiah (1969) when Paul Atreides negotiates with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who is appalled by Paul's suggestion that he impregnate his consort Princess Irulan in this manner.[7] Herbert's death in 1986[8] left his vision of the actual events of the Butlerian Jihad unexplored and open to speculation.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

125 points by johnny313 9y ago

andrewtbham 9y ago

give me convenience or give me death

lifeformed 9y ago
But only if you doing the killing for me

croshan 9y ago

Especially when it comes to products, consumer convenience often seems to be at odds with consumer well-being. Take everything from McDonalds's fast food, to Facebook's engagement optimization, to overprescribing of antibiotics and painkillers. The products that sell the most, are the ones that cripple the users ability to independently operate, and keep them coming back for more.

jnordwick 9y ago
> The products that sell the most, are the ones that cripple the users ability to independently operate, and keep them coming back for more. Sounds like you are talking about government services like welfare. (Meta: easily my fastest comment to -4 ever. It took less than 6 minutes.) Ps, stop complaining about my perceived complaining. I don't care. Its almost a badge of honor to me - even straight out spam doesn't get buried so fast.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  "(Meta: easily my fastest comment to -4 ever. It took less than 6 minutes.) " Congratulations!
  - jnordwick 9y ago
    Although there is a non snarky way to say what i was implying, i don't think it would have made much of a difference. I do feel there is an apt comparison in there if you try to apply the same critique to government services. No reason to single out private services.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      To me you came across as one of the types who blames government for everything reflexively. I also think your comparison is not accurate. Going on welfare is not convenient in the sense of the article.
    - mirashii 9y ago
      Maybe it would've made a difference. Your comment was downvoted because it put words into the author's mouth that were obviously not his own, about a topic that's going to be known to be controversial, and followed it up with absolutely zero substance. Many folks would happily debate the merit or lack thereof of welfare programs if they had some substantive opinion, statistics, or really content to debate about. Your comment was nothing but snark, and to dismiss the downvotes as downvoting the subject matter and not the snark is a second piece of disengaging snark that is also not contributing meaningfully to the discussion.
- croshan 9y ago
  Haha no. But there's something to be said about the bimodal situation that the non-granular tiered system of benefits put people in. Having a sharp drop in benefits once you go from nothing to a moderate income really takes the coal out of the furnace.
  - essayist 9y ago
    Yes. What the article and the GP miss is the importance of design. Tailing off benefits gradually makes the most sense from the perspective of providing an incentive to work and earn more, but (a) government seldom looks at how the incentives actually work across the whole set of support programs (tuition assistance, CHIP, Medicaid, housing assistance, etc.) and (b) when you tail things off gradually, you will have people doing fairly well on their own still getting some subsidies, albeit small ones, and that's politically challenging to explain.
- hasbroslasher 9y ago
  For the record, if you've ever tried to go on welfare/unemployment (in USA) you'd know that it's anything but convenient. I had to fill out paperwork, meet deadlines, show up for in-person meetings that took an hour longer than they ought to have, remember to re-apply each week... definitely not as easy as checking Facebook for the millionth time this morning. It's also a bit disingenuous to say that these services cripple your ability to independently operate - when I was on the dole I was having a blast going hiking and biking, drinking wine, writing music, and playing Nintendo Switch. That's about as independent a life as I could ask for, frankly.
gascan 9y ago
consumer convenience often seems to be at odds with consumer well-being I've begun to think that's intrinsic, not anything nefarious. We long for convenience, laziness, sugar, etc. We're meant to want them, but never get much of them. As far as we can tell, our minds & bodies run best on a diet of exertion, activity, and whole foods, which are the very opposites of the things we crave. I keep thinking about TDR's Strenuous Life.

leggomylibro 9y ago

>Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. It's a good dystopian trope, and one of the more uncomfortably plausible ones. A streamlined pipeline from cradle to creche to college to a cycle of job->transit->housing->transit until you're too expensive to keep around anymore. It's probably where we'll end up. The constant message in society today is, "you're on your own," and the constant message from other people is, "go away." It hurts, but that's dystopia for you.

MollyR 9y ago
Yes this very true. I used to volunteer at a suicide prevention center before my twins were born. I dealt with a ton of college grads who couldn't find jobs, and were depressed, suicidal and deep in debt. They said they felt alone, and their parents just thought they were lazy. Society has become a dystopia with a hall of mirrors and flashing lights for many kids. They feel more alone then ever, even with all the social media. I have a strong suspicion though social media is making it worse, since you are constantly bombarded with beautiful and successful people (or people faking it).
- deleted 9y ago
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- howard941 9y ago
  Not just kids. All of us.

philipkglass 9y ago

An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life. There is no shortage of hard problems left to solve. If everything in your life looks uneasily easy, raise your eyes to something harder before gamifying your routine with deliberate refusal to use a microwave oven. Before big government-funded science programs started in the 20th century, people born into affluent families were greatly over-represented in the sciences, because you can't theorize or research if all day is spent on routine chores. The same goes for composers, mathematicians, and authors. I find it kind of sad if people liberated from routine chores choose to use their new leisure time exclusively on TV and Facebook. But I'm certainly not going to tell them that they should wash clothes by hand to break out of the entertainment rut. That's a waste of a life too, admittedly one with a lengthier historical pedigree than binge-watching. Even if you lack the inclination or the skills to advance the frontiers of art, mathematics, or science, there are plenty of rewarding activities that are orthogonal to convenience technologies. Hiking, biking, fishing, birdwatching, learning to sing or play an instrument, woodworking, cooking food that a microwave simply can't make, playing sports, gardening... I do think that people suffer physically and mentally if the only parts of their bodies they use are their fingers and their eyes. A sedentary life spent entirely looking at electronic displays isn't good. (Even reading paper books all the time without using the rest of your body isn't great, and I say that as a serious bookworm.) The best way to fill excessive time freed by convenience technologies is to take up leisure activities that use the rest of yourself, not throw away labor saving machines and start beating rugs like your ancestors (or ancestors' servants).

essayist 9y ago
Right. Many things get easier, but "everything" is not easy, especially not in comparison to every-other-thing. And +1 for pointing out that drudgery-for-the-sake-of-drudgery is hardly the solution.
- justinator 9y ago
  But the convenience itself becomes the drudgery. Does everyone love to drive a convenient car, even though it leads to traffic/congestion, bad posture, poorer help (Which , now you have to go to the gym), and environmental collapse? Have you ever noticed the public space we give up to the convenience of the automobile? How much of your town/city has been paved over?

essayist 9y ago

The article confuses a variety of perspectives. First, how do I, an individual, use convenience in my life, without getting drawn down bad paths? I commute by a McDonalds on the way home, when I'm hungry and exhausted. Perhaps I make alternatives easy (yummy leftovers I can pop in the microwave), perhaps I fortify myself to resist temptation (eat an apple at my desk so that cheeseburger doesn't seem as tempting), perhaps I remind myself that cooking with my spouse is part of the fun and imagine her smiling as I wield that frying pan. Second, and different, how do I as a benevolent dictator manage convenience for those I'm responsible for? For instance, as a teacher, I want to make certain things easy (access to the right texts and helpful videos) and other things (problem sets) just the right amount of "difficult" to keep students engaged, learning, and successful. We actually know how to do this, in general. Intensive care units are there to make everything "easy" for really sick people, but few people get trapped forever in the ICU. The "tyranny of convenience" is a sexy title, but people always are drawn to what's easier, even before the washing machine arrived. There's probably a general cycle - we go nuts on the easy alternative, and then discover that there's more to life. E.g. "slow food", custom-configured PCs, "back to the land", etc.

vests 9y ago

We don’t wear bulletproof vests because it’s inconvenient while we wear seatbelts and bike helmets.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago
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moneytide1 9y ago

I saw "WALL-E" as a sobering critique on the "progression" of civilization. Maybe walking to the well to get water is an inefficient, time consuming task when you could just use plumbing. But maybe the ones performing this routine throughout their entire life would have healthier blood pressure, or less risk for osteoporosis, because of more frequent physical activity.

contingencies 9y ago
Also cleaner water, increased lifestyle mobility, less infrastructure maintenance overhead. Incidentally there is a famous Chinese morality animation about three monks fetching water https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s

redthrow 9y ago

>> But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore. Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made buying music even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient beat out free. Does the author talk to his students? "Getting music free" is more prevalent than ever. Many just go to YouTube to get their music.

lowbloodsugar 9y ago
Anecdata: My teenage kids don't use iTunes, even though we have the unlimited family package. Their music is on youtube.
gnode 9y ago
Aren't you just saying that free plus convenient beat out convenient?
- redthrow 9y ago
  I'm saying the prof is out of touch with reality when he says "But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore".

dclowd9901 9y ago

The author seems to be trying to make an issue where there isn't any. The many conveniences I enjoy in my life allow me to circumvent rote tasks that offer no enrichment and no sense of accomplishment. What do I do with my free time? Difficult activities that give me a sense of accomplishment and enrichment. To tack on the concern that people are falling back to "screen time" to fill the time left by convenience is a problem more to do with people not led to explore other facets of the world they're not familiar with, or a sense of inability from being coddled while raised.

goatlover 9y ago
That's like saying modern transportation and easy access to lots of calories isn't a concern, because some people are motivated enough to get enough exercise and not overdo it on the sugar and fat. Meanwhile some countries have a majority of the population overweight.
b0rsuk 9y ago
I think he's making a good point but arguments it poorly. A better argument would be not that "it makes us less human" etc, but that it teaches people to be lazy and avoid problem solving. It's the "there's an app for that" attitude. The calculator attitude, the GPS attitude. You're trained to avoid any difficulty, and I can imagine a person trained to only use ready solutions will just give up if he can't buy/download/solve it in browser. It's not just about being washed away on a remote island or emergency events like wars. It's also loss of resourcefulness.

rhn_mk1 9y ago

> Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are. I'm convinced that people derive meaning from restrictions they have to overcome. In the land of perfect convenience, everything would be instantly possible, and nothing would be valuable, so nothing would be worth doing. What would make people tick? In this vision, convenience merges with powerlessness, leaving no options. At some point, we could observe that making things easier doesn't benefit society by freeing up time, but harms it by removing meaning. As a believer in a transhumanist future, this possibility concerns me.

Diederich 9y ago
Did you just describe a possible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter ?
- rhn_mk1 9y ago
  Seems to fit the description! Future philosophers, please cite my name as "rhn" :) Looking at Wikipedia's list, I'd put it behind 9. The colonization explosion. As long as there is something to do - discover, colonize, compute - there will be a part of humanity that finds outside challenges. Colonization is the raison d'etre of Culture in Iain Banks' series, as described in this article: http://sciphijournal.org/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ http://sciphijournal.org/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciatio...
goatlover 9y ago
It's interesting on Star Trek how they avoid that with various challenges for the crew, including holodeck malfunctions. But you have to wonder how people back on cozy planet Earth outside of the highly motivated Starfleet types are able to stay away from the total convenience and immersion of holodecks, replicators and transporters.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  I believe it was Scott Adams who said that "the holodeck will be Mankind's last invention", and it's a hard point to argue with.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

The author is correct. Maybe he should start by stopping the use of a computer to write articles and columns. I mean what is more convenient that typing an article into a word processor that makes it easy to edit and change words and checks for grammar and spelling mistakes. Also, did he use Google to look up any facts? How awful! Once Tim Wu goes out cuts papyrus, pounds the papyrus into paper. Gets a feather from a bird and fashions a quill with that, then makes ink, and rewrites his column until he gets it perfect, then hand copies his column and walks to my house and delivers it to me, then I will take him seriously. Until then, by response is "bug off hypocrite!"

goatlover 9y ago
You criticize society from within society, not from some cave in the desert. Well, maybe if you can leave a scroll for future generations to misinterpret. Also, just because you find some things wrong with society doesn't mean you want to ditch all of it.
Retra 9y ago
Hypocrisy is also not a fallacy. It is not even a weak indicator of flawed reasoning.

marnett 9y ago

I never quite thought I'd be linking this here, but in Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto[1] he wrote, amongst many other things (plenty certainly to be found controversial), that there exists an intrinsic need for humans to undergo a 'power process' that allows us to exert power over people or processes in order to fend off purposelessness (the Manifesto is separated into numerical subsections, he makes this point in the section entitled 'DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY' which is paragraph 59). The entire thing is worth reading, for historical significance alone. [1] http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

philwelch 9y ago
Industrial Society and Its Future isn't a good moral justification for mailing bombs to people, but it's still an interesting set of ideas that's difficult to refute.
jdietrich 9y ago
It's mostly an individualist re-hashing of Marx's theory of alienation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

tmnvix 9y ago

Once upon a time the accepted tradeoff was between quality and cost. Now it is between quality, cost, and convenience. This is why things like bottled water can cost more than fuel. It's also why Apple can charge a premium for it's products (the convenience of "it just works"). People will pay a huge premium for convenience and are also willing to almost ignore quality in some cases (e.g. food). It seems that if you want to be successful in today's market you have to prioritise convenience. Just consider how many startups are based on the idea of making something 'easier' as opposed to 'possible'. Unfortunately, convenience is killing us.

makecheck 9y ago

Convenience also weighs in to make it hard for people to push back on things, by design. “Oh, creating an account is one click; to cancel your service you have to call, wait, listen to a spiel, etc.” Or: “What’s this extra $1.25 on my monthly bill? Well I could spend time inquiring but I guess I won’t bother.” I am much more worried about these abuses of convenience.

PatchMonkey 9y ago

Wow. Karl Marx the prophet all up in this op. If only the author would recognize that. Not saying Marx's solutions are best. But he certainly was relevant in describing the problems.

b0rsuk 9y ago

It's a bit subtle, but Frank Herbert's Dune universe is based on the premise that spoiling convenience is outlawed, and punished by death: --------------------- In Terminology of the Imperium, the glossary of 1965's Dune, Frank Herbert provides the following definition: Jihad, Butlerian: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." Herbert refers to the Jihad many times in the entire Dune series, but did not give much detail on how he imagined the actual conflict.[4] In God Emperor of Dune (1981), Leto II Atreides indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided and controlled they had become by machines: "The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."[5] In the series, Herbert illustrates how the Jihad leads to many profound and long-lasting effects on the socio-political and technological development of humanity. The known universe is purged of all forms of thinking machines, resulting in not only a ban on the re-creation of similar devices (which remains in effect throughout the periods described in the original six Dune novels), but also a great technological reversal for humanity. The chief commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible, "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind", holds sway, as do the anti-artificial intelligence laws in which the penalty for owning an AI device or developing technology resembling the human mind is immediate death. This leads to the rise of a new feudalistic galactic empire which lasts for over ten thousand years, until the rise of the God Emperor Leto II in 10,217 A.G.[6] To replace the analytical powers of computers without violating the commandment of the O.C. Bible, "human computers" known as Mentats are developed and perfected, their mental abilities ultimately honed to the point where they become superior to those of the ancient thinking machines. Similarly specialized groups of humans which arise after the Jihad include the Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order with advanced mental and physical abilities, and the Spacing Guild, whose prescience makes safe and instantaneous space travel possible. Fringe societies such as the Ixians and Bene Tleilax eventually begin to develop mechanical and biological technology that, if not actually transgressing the commandments of the Jihad, at least come extremely close. Prohibitions spawned by the Jihad also include artificial insemination, as explained in Dune Messiah (1969) when Paul Atreides negotiates with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who is appalled by Paul's suggestion that he impregnate his consort Princess Irulan in this manner.[7] Herbert's death in 1986[8] left his vision of the actual events of the Butlerian Jihad unexplored and open to speculation.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad