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If you lose something, you always find it in the last place you search... because why would you keep searching after you found it
by jn5 4y ago
If you lose something, you always find it in the last place you search... because why would you keep searching after you found it
- dec0dedab0de 4y agoIt took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that it was a joke when people said "It's always the last place you look." Like well into my teens. But ever since I figured it out, I always look at least one more place after finding something.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoDo you find it again?
- quercusa 4y agoI think that there are many people who don't recognize it as a joke and pass it on as great wisdom. I was also pretty old when I realized the tautology.
- wrycoder 4y agoIf you're disorganized, you'll search in random places until you find it. Joke applies. But if you are organized, you'll start with the most likely place and progress to increasingly less likely places. When you find it, there's no surprise, and no one gets much of a chuckle over your efforts. If you don't understand the problem space, then saying "That's the last place I would have looked!" is an expression of exasperation about your lack of knowledge.
- layer8 4y agoA tautology can still provide an insight by recognizing that two things are really just the same. In that sense I didn’t perceive it as a joke, even though there’s of course some humor attached to it.
- selimthegrim 4y agoLast is semantically ambiguous here, you’re not wrong, could also mean “last place (most unobvious) you would think to look” as well
- narag 4y agoBecause it it were obvious, you had already found it.
- ithinkso 4y agoWell, at least you were a teen when you realized it. In my case it was 1min ago in this very HN thread... I always assumed it was kind of a 'life's a bitch' aphorism