8 ms·

The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

43 points by girriPal 5y ago

nanis 5y ago
The author and I ascribe different meanings to "penny pinching" ... Also, > Imagine you are in your car driving and you notice someone in another car, alone, wearing a mask. This is during the covid pandemic so seeing someone wearing a mask is not overly surprising. But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? > ... > Doesn't it makes more sense to just give yourself a blanket policy that says "I put my mask on whenever I leave the house, and don't take it off until I get home." That beats trying to keep track of who needs me to wear the mask, chances of dropping the mask, dirty hands touching the mask, losing the mask, etc. > I'm not trying to suggest here whether or not people should wear their masks in the car when by themselves. This begs for "I Wear My Face Mask in the Car"[1]. A penny pincher is the person who goes to dinner with a dozen people and ends up spending an hour trying to "fairly" divide the check among everyone. Or, the one who says a few days later that you should treat him to lunch because he only had a single glass of wine whereas everyone else had two or some such. Sure, it is a good idea to follow useful rules of thumb to minimize cognitive load, but it is also important to be able to know when a rule of thumb should be discarded. Whether the rich are rich because they do this stuff or because we notice it more when a rich person acts this way is not clear. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > A penny pincher is the person who goes to dinner with a dozen people and ends up spending an hour trying to "fairly" divide the check among everyone. Or, the one who says a few days later that you should treat him to lunch because he only had a single glass of wine whereas everyone else had two or some such. Alcoholic drinks in most popular cities are $10+ per drink, if not $18+ in tier 1 cities. If someone that does not drink alcohol is called a penny pincher for not wanting to spend thousands of pennies for others’ alcohol consumption, then what is a person who expects others to spend thousands of their pennies for their alcohol consumption called? Same situation with vegetarians going out with meat/fish/poultry eaters, since meat dishes cost a decent amount more. Very odd to me that expecting someone else to pay vastly more for your consumption is considered OK, effectively ostracizing the budget constrained people in your network from dining out with you.
  - j7ake 5y ago
    I think it also depends how many times a year you are in this situation. If you go out with big group 5 times a year and end up paying $10 more than you should, you end up down $50/year. If this is a weekly or daily event, it makes sense to make this more fair. In my opinion, stressing about anything less than $100/year is penny pinching.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Of course, but it is never $100 per year. It is just crazy to me that with all the price increases and increase in income/wealth gap, and increases in variety of diets, that it would still be considered taboo to not want (or even be able to) pay for others’ excess. I go out of my way to make sure if I am having extra to chip in extra, but I certainly would not look down on anyone that insisted on paying for only what they consumed.
      - j7ake 5y ago
        I read the article as a guide for my own behaviour, rather than as a template to judge others. Definitely true one should not judge when you see someone insisting on paying their fair share. You never know the details of their personal lives.
  - nanis 5y ago
    > penny pincher for not wanting to spend thousands of pennies Yes, literally, the dictionary meaning of a "penny pincher" is one who does not want to part with his pennies. The author of the article, on the other hand, seems to call people "penny pinchers" if they do not adopt rules of thumb but instead painstakingly analyze all alternatives. Sure, paralysis by analysis can be bad or there is nothing wrong with focusing one's cognitive energies sparingly etc, but there is very little in the article about penny pinching. You preferences may say "it is more important for me to save seven bucks in this context." That does not compel other people to enjoy your preferences. In my life, I have been in groups where if a few people consumed some relatively more expensive food or drinks, they are responsible enough to take care of that. Also, when you go out with a large group, you do tip the wait staff generously, right?
- cardiffspaceman 5y ago
  A penny pincher is someone who takes money out of the communal meal payment (deposited on the table like a poker pot) because it represents more than 5% tip. In other words, they effectively reduce their own tip below 5% because someone else tipped a higher, more socially-acceptable percentage.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
The world is full of people who take a casual attitude towards their finances. They are the ones we keep reading about when we are told most people can't raise $1000 in an emergency or don't think they will ever be able to afford retirement.
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  The world is full of people with a hoarding attitude toward an arbitrarily chosen store of value. They are the ones we keep reading about when we are told poor decisions have collapsed buildings, destroyed ecosystems, caused wars and unnecessary human suffering.
  - rory 5y ago
    The rich by and large aren't hoarding cash. They own things with intrinsic value.
    - sumtechguy 5y ago
      They then use those items and borrow cash against them as needed. Think about some the large property companies. Renting property is a pain to do. Yet some of these companies are huge and have millions of dollars they are floating. Why? Because the owners borrow against them to fund their other ventures. Then use the profits of that to pay off anything they borrowed. Ownership of things that have actual value is the number one way to becoming wealthy. Owning flashy toys and extravagant dinners all the time is a quick way to spend it all for 'the rich'. One dude I follow put it best the wealthy exploit the rich by renting them flashy toys, the rich try to get money from the middle class by selling them things.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Your view is that ecosystems are destroyed by people who consume less?
    - BrianOnHN 5y ago
api 5y ago
The converse is not true; you don't get rich by spending freely. That being said, there's good frugality and bad frugality. Bad frugality is being "penny wise and pound foolish," spending less now in ways that result in spending more later.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  The problem with bad frugality is that it can be really hard to detect - especially when it comes to things that affect your health. Saving money now on regular checkups, which leads to a health emergency later is an obvious one. But what about spending money on ergonomics, PPE, diet, exercise, etc. It can be hard to quantify the long term risk/benefit.
- don-code 5y ago
  I've noticed a bathtub curve in cost of ownership on many things. Typically, I do save a good bit of money up front by buying used, and then try hard to repair rather than replace. Eventually, though, a failure mode of all gadgets seems to be an increasing-at-an-increasing-rate amount of spend needed on upkeep. Admittedly, I've been notoriously bad at realizing that I've entered that phase. On three high-profile occasions (two computers and a car) I've exceeded the saleable value of the thing in upkeep costs, in the span of just a few months - it would've been cheaper to divest and replace. Determining that you've crossed that inflection point is, I assume, a skill.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
Feels like sacrileg already: I don't find the rich fascinating. They are not gods chosen folk, they are not interesting. They are lucky outliers and the equivalent of a PLC controlling a chemical plant, whos pipelines stream finances. Those i know- sorry in advance - are boring. Obsessed and boring.
wink 5y ago
> But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? The author has clearly not spent a lot of time in normal mode around people who have to wear their mask for their full shift. Yes, those people forget. Not us keyboard warriors who put it on twice a day for a few minutes.
- oblio 5y ago
  It's just convenient. You know where the mask is at all times, you can't lose it, etc Plus wearing a mask somewhere hot sucks but cars have AC so they're cool and this drawback is removed.
- travisp 5y ago
  Yes, my wife is an emergency medicine doctor. She frequently ends up wearing her mask in the car and other places where it’s unnecessary until I remind her she’s wearing it.
- ebiester 5y ago
  On top of that, when I'm going to have to put it back on in less than 5 minutes, I'll often just leave it back on. It's really not that big of a deal to wear.
- thraxil 5y ago
  I'm a keyboard warrior who only puts on my mask when I'm out in crowded places but I've (more than once) walked all the way home (about 10 minutes) from the grocery store and found myself in my kitchen unpacking my groceries before I realize that I've still got my mask on. Some of us are just scatterbrained...
- tshaddox 5y ago
  It could also just be that someone deliberately wanted to wear a mask for literally any reason whatsoever. It’s just ludicrous to judge someone for that or to consider it “ridiculous.” You might as well say “have you ever seen someone wearing a hat in their car even though they’re inside a climate controlled car and don’t need sun protection on their head?”
jayski 5y ago
invest all the time you use penny pinching into making more money. youll have a lot more in the end and be better liked. if youre worrying about wether your part of the check is $7.23 or $11.17 because you didn't have wine, you're not in the right mindset to make money. i follow the rule: if im going to argue over money, its because im going to sue you. if its not enough to warrant a lawyer, i just take the L and forget about it. i am however very serious about work and investments.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  Interesting take. For a 'one off' I would not worry about it. But if they are doing it to you a few times, speak up. They are just taking advantage of you. It is not the 5 bucks. It is the fact that you are doing it to you...
  - borski 5y ago
    If they can cover, and never do, they quickly stop getting hung out with. This is generally true, in my experience. If they can’t cover and never do, that’s fine - you simply take the L and call it an “investment” in the experience of sharing time with someone you care about.
    - glitchc 5y ago
      Bingo! Not all friends are in the same strata, unless one prefers to travel in a narrow socioeconomic bubble. Some are above, and if they offer to cover my meal, I'm happy to accede. Others are below, and for them I always offer to cover their meal. It may not seem fair, but is ultimately just.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
I absolutely hate these sorts of "take a broad generalization, blindly run with it to extremes then pontificate about edge cases in where it breaks" articles. They accomplish little but to indulge online commenters desire to engage in behavior that runs the spectrum from bike shedding to virtue signaling. Of course everyone has a bone to pic with some specific part of the article. Of course everyone wants to elaborate their anecdotal examples. This article was written to facilitate just those things. This is a trash tabloid article for people who think they are too good to read trash tabloid articles.
- adwi 5y ago
  Bikeshedding > 1. Futile investment of time and energy in discussion of marginal technical issues. quotations 2. Procrastination. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding
  - anm89 5y ago
    This misses the essence of bike shedding to me. It can be a sub category of procrastination but it isn't procrastination itself. My take is that bike shedding is focusing on and possibly inventing a task because you enjoy that task, at the expense of something else more pressing. I find that the anecdote is useful occasional to bring it up when it is happening without seeming like a jerk
gtfoutttt 5y ago
>What I want to talk about here is how the type of behavior that makes us look smart in the moment (i.e. penny pinching) ends up not being smart in the long run. Well said. I disagree with the article title, due to my experience with delivering pizza. We all certainly knew the non-tippers. And they almost always were in the wealthiest neighborhoods. So once you go to a house 3 or 4 times, and get stiffed (or hear about it from the other drivers), they become your lowest priority. Working class and poor neighborhoods almost always got better service and faster food delivery from us because we knew they tipped more often. The non tippers typically ended up with cold pizza and dropped 2 liters cause we didn't give a crap.
- lupire 5y ago
  I guess they liked cold pizza if they kept ordering more.
- sheepybloke 5y ago
  Urg I completely agree. My college had a good mix of richer kids and middle class ones, and you could always tell their background because the richer ones would penny-pinch everything. They'd ask you to pay a couple dollars for gas if you went to the grocery store together, or one of my friends bought a couple of decorations for the our shared house and asked us to pitch in for it. If you went with one of the poorer people there would be a sort of understanding that you might split a pizza together later and so you don't have to pay for gas now, and felt much more charitable. It was interesting how stark the difference always was.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    Weird - i had experienced the opposite, where most rich kids didn't care about the money (it was their parents anyways!) so they would buy you dinner today, and you'd buy it tomorrow while the middle-class ones had to work for their money, so they wanted it to be "fair" and split by person because they only had so much. Not saying your experience can't also be true! I was fortunate to have my parents help with money and was fairly charitable, so maybe i didn't notice other behavior.
- 5y ago
motohagiography 5y ago
In the context of ML, there is a great blog post from years ago that compares the ROC curve to an indifference curve in economics, which describes how without a sense of what the costs and conseqeunces of the precision in the ROC curve are, you can't really optimize a model well. It's a question of internal vs. external consistency. There is a heuristic I learned related to a bunch of others, but it's being able to do a fast assessment of the returns on precision. I talk about it to clients in conceptual terms of doing depth-first searches vs. breadth-first. Technologists tend to be depth first and very deep in a relatively narrow context, where dynamics people tend to be breadth first across a wider set of contexts. The penny pinching metaphor the author uses reduces to an admonition to look at the "bigger picture." Personally I dislike that trope, but a general set of cognitive tools for depth-first thinkers to pop up conceptual levels, particularly into ones where they can apply their skills to navigate the uncertainties of breadth-first thinking with its dynamics of multiple simultaneous equivalents, it would be really useful to summarize and teach. There is the issue where the details of precision in fact have nonlinear effects and they are worth drilling down into, but that's part of the analysis.
kirse 5y ago
It means that the nitpicking, planning, penny pinching behavior that preceded the loss was pointless Maybe the author is struggling with some sort of penny pinching behavior that preceded a life loss, but this is an incorrect conclusion. Sometimes life just happens. And it has nothing to do with the validity or value of your preceding actions, but it's certainly a commentary on the futility of many of our efforts. The author sounds like he needs a good wisdom walk down the book of Ecclesiastes: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
- Jiro 5y ago
  I don't remember where I saw it, but there's a version of that: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
terracotta942 5y ago
It seems that many people are overly focused on examples in the article. Rather, isn't the main point of the author that some people don't accurately value their time in relation to life outcomes? People spend too much time thinking about some things relative to the marginal benefit of each second/minute/unit of time spent on that decision. Conversely, people spend too little time on some decisions whose outcome will be greatly improved by spending another second/minute/hour...etc.
a0-prw 5y ago
This started well and went downhill fast with absolutely ridiculous examples.
megameter 5y ago
Another way to frame the dichotomy for the CS-inclined is greedy versus backtracking solutions. A penny-pincher is taking the best locally optimal choice at each step, just like a greedy matcher. A "backtracker", while not always able to exhaustively explore, approximates it by testing alternatives when given multiple runs. In the realm of direct interpersonal credit, greedy solving often seems like "the answer:" you study for the test if you want to pass it, follow the polite mannerisms of your society, and take logical steps presented to you by your environment(like following signs and signals to navigate traffic). Situationally, it can work. And top performers in competitive fields are extreme examples of the greedy solution working: monastically training to be the best at what you do with regular drills, harsh lifestyle modifications and risky medicine does get results. But everyone who's lived long enough without losing their head knows that the greedy path falls off a cliff eventually. You can't "just" follow the advice of professionals and scholars to be healthy, wealthy and wise. And neither does getting the gold medal give you the happy end. But as the article points out, there isn't an easy story to apply to a complex framing of life.
sharadov 5y ago
Completely nonsensical article - making broad generalizations without evidence, ascribing "penny pinching" to all kids of behaviors.
brtkdotse 5y ago
See also, Sam Vimes ’Boots’ theory of socioeconomic injustice: https://samvimesbootstheory.com/ https://samvimesbootstheory.com/
tailius 5y ago
Pennywise, pound foolish. ---> Pennywise, pound-wise. If you want to read real, well-researched data about the demographics and behaviors of actual millionaires, Thomas J. Stanley compiled and analyzed the data, and wrote a number of books on the topic. Furthermore, Felix Dennis, the late but an actual billionaire, wrote a hilarious book with a tongue-in-cheek title. Biggest correlations with wealth are the marshmallow test as a child and then not participating in low-/no-skill chance gambling as an adult.
Zelphyr 5y ago
Maybe I'm alone in this assessment but, this reads like it was written by the economics teacher on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I can't decide if it is on-target brilliant or completely off the mark.

43 points by girriPal 5y ago

The author and I ascribe different meanings to "penny pinching" ... Also, > Imagine you are in your car driving and you notice someone in another car, alone, wearing a mask. This is during the covid pandemic so seeing someone wearing a mask is not overly surprising. But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? > ... > Doesn't it makes more sense to just give yourself a blanket policy that says "I put my mask on whenever I leave the house, and don't take it off until I get home." That beats trying to keep track of who needs me to wear the mask, chances of dropping the mask, dirty hands touching the mask, losing the mask, etc. > I'm not trying to suggest here whether or not people should wear their masks in the car when by themselves. This begs for "I Wear My Face Mask in the Car"[1]. A penny pincher is the person who goes to dinner with a dozen people and ends up spending an hour trying to "fairly" divide the check among everyone. Or, the one who says a few days later that you should treat him to lunch because he only had a single glass of wine whereas everyone else had two or some such. Sure, it is a good idea to follow useful rules of thumb to minimize cognitive load, but it is also important to be able to know when a rule of thumb should be discarded. Whether the rich are rich because they do this stuff or because we notice it more when a rich person acts this way is not clear. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> A penny pincher is the person who goes to dinner with a dozen people and ends up spending an hour trying to "fairly" divide the check among everyone. Or, the one who says a few days later that you should treat him to lunch because he only had a single glass of wine whereas everyone else had two or some such. Alcoholic drinks in most popular cities are $10+ per drink, if not $18+ in tier 1 cities. If someone that does not drink alcohol is called a penny pincher for not wanting to spend thousands of pennies for others’ alcohol consumption, then what is a person who expects others to spend thousands of their pennies for their alcohol consumption called? Same situation with vegetarians going out with meat/fish/poultry eaters, since meat dishes cost a decent amount more. Very odd to me that expecting someone else to pay vastly more for your consumption is considered OK, effectively ostracizing the budget constrained people in your network from dining out with you.
- j7ake 5y ago
  I think it also depends how many times a year you are in this situation. If you go out with big group 5 times a year and end up paying $10 more than you should, you end up down $50/year. If this is a weekly or daily event, it makes sense to make this more fair. In my opinion, stressing about anything less than $100/year is penny pinching.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Of course, but it is never $100 per year. It is just crazy to me that with all the price increases and increase in income/wealth gap, and increases in variety of diets, that it would still be considered taboo to not want (or even be able to) pay for others’ excess. I go out of my way to make sure if I am having extra to chip in extra, but I certainly would not look down on anyone that insisted on paying for only what they consumed.
    - j7ake 5y ago
      I read the article as a guide for my own behaviour, rather than as a template to judge others. Definitely true one should not judge when you see someone insisting on paying their fair share. You never know the details of their personal lives.
- nanis 5y ago
  > penny pincher for not wanting to spend thousands of pennies Yes, literally, the dictionary meaning of a "penny pincher" is one who does not want to part with his pennies. The author of the article, on the other hand, seems to call people "penny pinchers" if they do not adopt rules of thumb but instead painstakingly analyze all alternatives. Sure, paralysis by analysis can be bad or there is nothing wrong with focusing one's cognitive energies sparingly etc, but there is very little in the article about penny pinching. You preferences may say "it is more important for me to save seven bucks in this context." That does not compel other people to enjoy your preferences. In my life, I have been in groups where if a few people consumed some relatively more expensive food or drinks, they are responsible enough to take care of that. Also, when you go out with a large group, you do tip the wait staff generously, right?
cardiffspaceman 5y ago
A penny pincher is someone who takes money out of the communal meal payment (deposited on the table like a poker pot) because it represents more than 5% tip. In other words, they effectively reduce their own tip below 5% because someone else tipped a higher, more socially-acceptable percentage.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

The world is full of people who take a casual attitude towards their finances. They are the ones we keep reading about when we are told most people can't raise $1000 in an emergency or don't think they will ever be able to afford retirement.

BrianOnHN 5y ago
The world is full of people with a hoarding attitude toward an arbitrarily chosen store of value. They are the ones we keep reading about when we are told poor decisions have collapsed buildings, destroyed ecosystems, caused wars and unnecessary human suffering.
- rory 5y ago
  The rich by and large aren't hoarding cash. They own things with intrinsic value.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    They then use those items and borrow cash against them as needed. Think about some the large property companies. Renting property is a pain to do. Yet some of these companies are huge and have millions of dollars they are floating. Why? Because the owners borrow against them to fund their other ventures. Then use the profits of that to pay off anything they borrowed. Ownership of things that have actual value is the number one way to becoming wealthy. Owning flashy toys and extravagant dinners all the time is a quick way to spend it all for 'the rich'. One dude I follow put it best the wealthy exploit the rich by renting them flashy toys, the rich try to get money from the middle class by selling them things.
- lupire 5y ago
  Your view is that ecosystems are destroyed by people who consume less?
  - BrianOnHN 5y ago

api 5y ago

The converse is not true; you don't get rich by spending freely. That being said, there's good frugality and bad frugality. Bad frugality is being "penny wise and pound foolish," spending less now in ways that result in spending more later.

AlexandrB 5y ago
The problem with bad frugality is that it can be really hard to detect - especially when it comes to things that affect your health. Saving money now on regular checkups, which leads to a health emergency later is an obvious one. But what about spending money on ergonomics, PPE, diet, exercise, etc. It can be hard to quantify the long term risk/benefit.
don-code 5y ago
I've noticed a bathtub curve in cost of ownership on many things. Typically, I do save a good bit of money up front by buying used, and then try hard to repair rather than replace. Eventually, though, a failure mode of all gadgets seems to be an increasing-at-an-increasing-rate amount of spend needed on upkeep. Admittedly, I've been notoriously bad at realizing that I've entered that phase. On three high-profile occasions (two computers and a car) I've exceeded the saleable value of the thing in upkeep costs, in the span of just a few months - it would've been cheaper to divest and replace. Determining that you've crossed that inflection point is, I assume, a skill.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

uCantCauseUCant 5y ago

Feels like sacrileg already: I don't find the rich fascinating. They are not gods chosen folk, they are not interesting. They are lucky outliers and the equivalent of a PLC controlling a chemical plant, whos pipelines stream finances. Those i know- sorry in advance - are boring. Obsessed and boring.

wink 5y ago

> But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? The author has clearly not spent a lot of time in normal mode around people who have to wear their mask for their full shift. Yes, those people forget. Not us keyboard warriors who put it on twice a day for a few minutes.

oblio 5y ago
It's just convenient. You know where the mask is at all times, you can't lose it, etc Plus wearing a mask somewhere hot sucks but cars have AC so they're cool and this drawback is removed.
travisp 5y ago
Yes, my wife is an emergency medicine doctor. She frequently ends up wearing her mask in the car and other places where it’s unnecessary until I remind her she’s wearing it.
ebiester 5y ago
On top of that, when I'm going to have to put it back on in less than 5 minutes, I'll often just leave it back on. It's really not that big of a deal to wear.
thraxil 5y ago
I'm a keyboard warrior who only puts on my mask when I'm out in crowded places but I've (more than once) walked all the way home (about 10 minutes) from the grocery store and found myself in my kitchen unpacking my groceries before I realize that I've still got my mask on. Some of us are just scatterbrained...
tshaddox 5y ago
It could also just be that someone deliberately wanted to wear a mask for literally any reason whatsoever. It’s just ludicrous to judge someone for that or to consider it “ridiculous.” You might as well say “have you ever seen someone wearing a hat in their car even though they’re inside a climate controlled car and don’t need sun protection on their head?”

jayski 5y ago

invest all the time you use penny pinching into making more money. youll have a lot more in the end and be better liked. if youre worrying about wether your part of the check is $7.23 or $11.17 because you didn't have wine, you're not in the right mindset to make money. i follow the rule: if im going to argue over money, its because im going to sue you. if its not enough to warrant a lawyer, i just take the L and forget about it. i am however very serious about work and investments.

sumtechguy 5y ago
Interesting take. For a 'one off' I would not worry about it. But if they are doing it to you a few times, speak up. They are just taking advantage of you. It is not the 5 bucks. It is the fact that you are doing it to you...
- borski 5y ago
  If they can cover, and never do, they quickly stop getting hung out with. This is generally true, in my experience. If they can’t cover and never do, that’s fine - you simply take the L and call it an “investment” in the experience of sharing time with someone you care about.
  - glitchc 5y ago
    Bingo! Not all friends are in the same strata, unless one prefers to travel in a narrow socioeconomic bubble. Some are above, and if they offer to cover my meal, I'm happy to accede. Others are below, and for them I always offer to cover their meal. It may not seem fair, but is ultimately just.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

I absolutely hate these sorts of "take a broad generalization, blindly run with it to extremes then pontificate about edge cases in where it breaks" articles. They accomplish little but to indulge online commenters desire to engage in behavior that runs the spectrum from bike shedding to virtue signaling. Of course everyone has a bone to pic with some specific part of the article. Of course everyone wants to elaborate their anecdotal examples. This article was written to facilitate just those things. This is a trash tabloid article for people who think they are too good to read trash tabloid articles.

adwi 5y ago
Bikeshedding > 1. Futile investment of time and energy in discussion of marginal technical issues. quotations 2. Procrastination. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding
- anm89 5y ago
  This misses the essence of bike shedding to me. It can be a sub category of procrastination but it isn't procrastination itself. My take is that bike shedding is focusing on and possibly inventing a task because you enjoy that task, at the expense of something else more pressing. I find that the anecdote is useful occasional to bring it up when it is happening without seeming like a jerk

gtfoutttt 5y ago

>What I want to talk about here is how the type of behavior that makes us look smart in the moment (i.e. penny pinching) ends up not being smart in the long run. Well said. I disagree with the article title, due to my experience with delivering pizza. We all certainly knew the non-tippers. And they almost always were in the wealthiest neighborhoods. So once you go to a house 3 or 4 times, and get stiffed (or hear about it from the other drivers), they become your lowest priority. Working class and poor neighborhoods almost always got better service and faster food delivery from us because we knew they tipped more often. The non tippers typically ended up with cold pizza and dropped 2 liters cause we didn't give a crap.

lupire 5y ago
I guess they liked cold pizza if they kept ordering more.
sheepybloke 5y ago
Urg I completely agree. My college had a good mix of richer kids and middle class ones, and you could always tell their background because the richer ones would penny-pinch everything. They'd ask you to pay a couple dollars for gas if you went to the grocery store together, or one of my friends bought a couple of decorations for the our shared house and asked us to pitch in for it. If you went with one of the poorer people there would be a sort of understanding that you might split a pizza together later and so you don't have to pay for gas now, and felt much more charitable. It was interesting how stark the difference always was.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Weird - i had experienced the opposite, where most rich kids didn't care about the money (it was their parents anyways!) so they would buy you dinner today, and you'd buy it tomorrow while the middle-class ones had to work for their money, so they wanted it to be "fair" and split by person because they only had so much. Not saying your experience can't also be true! I was fortunate to have my parents help with money and was fairly charitable, so maybe i didn't notice other behavior.
5y ago

motohagiography 5y ago

In the context of ML, there is a great blog post from years ago that compares the ROC curve to an indifference curve in economics, which describes how without a sense of what the costs and conseqeunces of the precision in the ROC curve are, you can't really optimize a model well. It's a question of internal vs. external consistency. There is a heuristic I learned related to a bunch of others, but it's being able to do a fast assessment of the returns on precision. I talk about it to clients in conceptual terms of doing depth-first searches vs. breadth-first. Technologists tend to be depth first and very deep in a relatively narrow context, where dynamics people tend to be breadth first across a wider set of contexts. The penny pinching metaphor the author uses reduces to an admonition to look at the "bigger picture." Personally I dislike that trope, but a general set of cognitive tools for depth-first thinkers to pop up conceptual levels, particularly into ones where they can apply their skills to navigate the uncertainties of breadth-first thinking with its dynamics of multiple simultaneous equivalents, it would be really useful to summarize and teach. There is the issue where the details of precision in fact have nonlinear effects and they are worth drilling down into, but that's part of the analysis.

kirse 5y ago

It means that the nitpicking, planning, penny pinching behavior that preceded the loss was pointless Maybe the author is struggling with some sort of penny pinching behavior that preceded a life loss, but this is an incorrect conclusion. Sometimes life just happens. And it has nothing to do with the validity or value of your preceding actions, but it's certainly a commentary on the futility of many of our efforts. The author sounds like he needs a good wisdom walk down the book of Ecclesiastes: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

Jiro 5y ago
I don't remember where I saw it, but there's a version of that: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

terracotta942 5y ago

It seems that many people are overly focused on examples in the article. Rather, isn't the main point of the author that some people don't accurately value their time in relation to life outcomes? People spend too much time thinking about some things relative to the marginal benefit of each second/minute/unit of time spent on that decision. Conversely, people spend too little time on some decisions whose outcome will be greatly improved by spending another second/minute/hour...etc.

a0-prw 5y ago

This started well and went downhill fast with absolutely ridiculous examples.

megameter 5y ago

Another way to frame the dichotomy for the CS-inclined is greedy versus backtracking solutions. A penny-pincher is taking the best locally optimal choice at each step, just like a greedy matcher. A "backtracker", while not always able to exhaustively explore, approximates it by testing alternatives when given multiple runs. In the realm of direct interpersonal credit, greedy solving often seems like "the answer:" you study for the test if you want to pass it, follow the polite mannerisms of your society, and take logical steps presented to you by your environment(like following signs and signals to navigate traffic). Situationally, it can work. And top performers in competitive fields are extreme examples of the greedy solution working: monastically training to be the best at what you do with regular drills, harsh lifestyle modifications and risky medicine does get results. But everyone who's lived long enough without losing their head knows that the greedy path falls off a cliff eventually. You can't "just" follow the advice of professionals and scholars to be healthy, wealthy and wise. And neither does getting the gold medal give you the happy end. But as the article points out, there isn't an easy story to apply to a complex framing of life.

sharadov 5y ago

Completely nonsensical article - making broad generalizations without evidence, ascribing "penny pinching" to all kids of behaviors.

brtkdotse 5y ago

See also, Sam Vimes ’Boots’ theory of socioeconomic injustice: https://samvimesbootstheory.com/ https://samvimesbootstheory.com/

tailius 5y ago

Pennywise, pound foolish. ---> Pennywise, pound-wise. If you want to read real, well-researched data about the demographics and behaviors of actual millionaires, Thomas J. Stanley compiled and analyzed the data, and wrote a number of books on the topic. Furthermore, Felix Dennis, the late but an actual billionaire, wrote a hilarious book with a tongue-in-cheek title. Biggest correlations with wealth are the marshmallow test as a child and then not participating in low-/no-skill chance gambling as an adult.

Zelphyr 5y ago

Maybe I'm alone in this assessment but, this reads like it was written by the economics teacher on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I can't decide if it is on-target brilliant or completely off the mark.