4 ms·

The whole "back then, stuff lasted forever" thing always seemed very susceptible to survivorship bias to me: you get the impression that stuff lasted forever be

The whole "back then, stuff lasted forever" thing always seemed very susceptible to survivorship bias to me: you get the impression that stuff lasted forever because the old things that are still in use today must have lasted to still be in use while all the things that broke are not taken into consideration because they have long been thrown out.

meric 12y ago
I think there's a truth in that though. Rice cookers - decades ago they had no electronics, and was just a case of pressing a switch to complete a circuit to create heat. My grand mother use one that is older than I am. Nowadays rice cookers are full of electronics, I doubt they can last as long. Of course, survivorship bias is still in play here...
- krapp 12y ago
  >decades ago they had no electronics, and was just a case of pressing a switch to complete a circuit to create heat. Not disputing your point but that 'old' style of rice cooker is very much still being sold. I have one, recently bought, with just the one switch ('warm' and 'cook' - you have to unplug it to even turn it off) and I use it constantly. Though with electronics in general, you're probably right. Particularly networked devices, game consoles, anything using proprietary software or data formats or which is designed to depend on the cloud. We're going to regret as a civilization in 100 years when most of our collected wisdom and intelligence has simply vanished into the aether or become utterly unreadble, but find that cuneiform tablets are still around.
sitkack 12y ago
Which is why we should find all of the old things that are still running and reverse engineer them so that our future things run for even longer.
rsl7 12y ago
But these products - dishwashers, ovens, clothes washers - are all fragile today due to their electronics. Touch pads, microcontrollers, ribbon cables, tons of small plastic components. None of these things are made to last 50 years and none of them will be available as replacement parts in the long term. I've had many over the past 20 years and almost all have failed do to "the board" going "bad", according to the repair techs. Company policy is always to replace the board, and it always is 60% of the cost of a new one, and will take 3 weeks to get, so you end up just buying a new one because you can get it installed in a day or so. And hey, new features, too. Local independent shops won't fix a blown capacitor or whatever the electronics issue is - they order the parts online. I repaired my oven once - the touchpad keys stopped responding, and I seriously doubt that in 10, 20, or 50 years that particular part will be available. The fact is that simple devices are more reliable, and could be built again, to last, but people seem to buy for features. We like sensors in our dryers, for instance, and the new ones are more efficient and better in many ways. Just not built to last or be repairable.

meric 12y ago

I think there's a truth in that though. Rice cookers - decades ago they had no electronics, and was just a case of pressing a switch to complete a circuit to create heat. My grand mother use one that is older than I am. Nowadays rice cookers are full of electronics, I doubt they can last as long. Of course, survivorship bias is still in play here...

krapp 12y ago
>decades ago they had no electronics, and was just a case of pressing a switch to complete a circuit to create heat. Not disputing your point but that 'old' style of rice cooker is very much still being sold. I have one, recently bought, with just the one switch ('warm' and 'cook' - you have to unplug it to even turn it off) and I use it constantly. Though with electronics in general, you're probably right. Particularly networked devices, game consoles, anything using proprietary software or data formats or which is designed to depend on the cloud. We're going to regret as a civilization in 100 years when most of our collected wisdom and intelligence has simply vanished into the aether or become utterly unreadble, but find that cuneiform tablets are still around.

sitkack 12y ago

Which is why we should find all of the old things that are still running and reverse engineer them so that our future things run for even longer.

rsl7 12y ago

But these products - dishwashers, ovens, clothes washers - are all fragile today due to their electronics. Touch pads, microcontrollers, ribbon cables, tons of small plastic components. None of these things are made to last 50 years and none of them will be available as replacement parts in the long term. I've had many over the past 20 years and almost all have failed do to "the board" going "bad", according to the repair techs. Company policy is always to replace the board, and it always is 60% of the cost of a new one, and will take 3 weeks to get, so you end up just buying a new one because you can get it installed in a day or so. And hey, new features, too. Local independent shops won't fix a blown capacitor or whatever the electronics issue is - they order the parts online. I repaired my oven once - the touchpad keys stopped responding, and I seriously doubt that in 10, 20, or 50 years that particular part will be available. The fact is that simple devices are more reliable, and could be built again, to last, but people seem to buy for features. We like sensors in our dryers, for instance, and the new ones are more efficient and better in many ways. Just not built to last or be repairable.