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paulgraham.com

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Re: Stuff

#71

Post by gwern »

Luc wrote: post #39
wyclif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books Until you find yourself having to move.

I have thousands of books and would love to get rid of them. I would need a future-proof platform that allows annotations, and that lets me migrate between devices (so I can keep my books for at least my lifetime). I guess I would also need a convenient book scanner, for those books that are no longer in print.

JPGs in PDF form? Both of those formats will be around forever.

I recently scanned a bunch of books using gscan2pdf; it makes it relatively easy, and integrates some decent utilities like Tesseract for OCR. (Some fiddling with controls meant that I could start playing a movie and mechanically flip pages and punch the scan button.)

Relatively high-resolution scans like 3-500 DPI mean you can get big PDFs (~200MB for a big anthology was normal), but this isn't much of a concern to me: I can clean them up later if I really need space, and in an era where 1.5tb is 100$, 200MB is nothing (1 or 2 cents of space?).

Re: Stuff

#72

Post by JadeNB »

derwiki wrote: post #66
Luc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thousands of books and would love to get rid of them. I would need a future-proof platform that allows annotations, and that lets me migrate between devices (so I can keep my books for at least my lifetime). I guess I would also need a convenient book scanner, for those books that are no longer in print.

I've often wondered why Amazon doesn't have a program like "send in your books, get a free Kindle copy of them"

I think that it's fairly clear why they don't do this --would they do it only for books purchased from amazon.com? If not, would they require some sort of proof of purchase? What about used books? What about books not currently available on the Kindle? If you send them an old edition of a book, then what edition do you get on the Kindle?-- but it's such a gorgeous idea. This has been one of the biggest roadblocks in my attempts to decide whether to buy a Kindle: I have a huge library, and the idea of spending thousands of dollars in format-shifting doesn't appeal to me. If I could even just get a discount for books that I already own, it would make me much, much more likely to take the plunge.

Re: Stuff

#73

Post by gwern »

oliveoil wrote: post #63

I often think about this. And of one more hidden cost of stuff, especially furniture: it occupies space in a place you pay rent for for. If that sofa takes 2 square meters out of my 40 square meters apartment, that means every 20th rent I pay is just because of this. If my rent is approximately the same as the price of that sofa was, I refinance if every 1.6 years.

> If that sofa takes 2 square meters out of my 40 square meters apartment, that means every 20th rent I pay is just because of this.

If you get rid of the sofa, does your landlord give you a 1/20th discount? If he doesn't, then your reasoning is a bit unsound...

Re: Stuff

#74

Post by tomjen2 »

I seem to be the only one here who doesn't agree with him.

Just a week and a half ago the zipper in my winter jacket broke, it is fucking cold here so I was mildly annoyed but since I had saved my previous jackets it was no problem. If I had thrown it out I would have had to spend a day chasing down a new decent one (I am really short, so getting clothing around here is a bit of an issue).

Re: Stuff

#75

Post by [deleted] »

TheSOB88 wrote: post #29
jotto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fight club: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJdfWdIBfE8 "byproducts of a lifestyle obsession" "things you own... end up owning you" "working jobs we hate so we can buy ish we don't need" edit: link fixed

You can cuss here, if you want.

[deleted]

Re: Stuff

#76

Post by fnid2 »

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.

Wow, Paul, you really don't understand what it is like to be poor. The poor people don't have a lot of cars in their yard because they can afford lots of cars. They have lots of cars because they never throw them away. Rich people throw lots of fine stuff away, but poor people keep everything forever, because they don't know when they can afford to buy another one.

I've been rich and poor and most of my family is still poor. While they don't have lots of cars in the yard, they are pack rats and worry constantly about a time in the future when they won't have anything anymore.

Poor people keep stuff because there may be a day when they'll need it but won't have the money to buy it. The regret of, "Oh... i had one of those but i got rid of it" is pretty strong when you need something you don't have but once did.

Re: Stuff

#77

Post by praptak »

abstractbill wrote: post #12

Except books—but books are different. I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay. Mine isn't books (I usually give good books to friends after reading them, and bad books to ebay). My own caveat would be raw materials for building or repairing things (electrical components, nuts and bolts, tools, etc).

"I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay."

I believe anything is OK (even in large numbers) as long as it is easy for one's mind to treat it as one "item". Books (and probably your raw materials) are uniform. You put the next one with all the others and forget it, so it creates little additional drag on you. Yeah, up to a point when you need to expand storage, but the general rule remains.

Re: Stuff

#78

Post by dennisgorelik »

Books are no different from other stuff. It's better to apply the same standards to books when you you are trying to get rid of useless stuff. And it's not only about paper books (it's obvious they have huge downsides, because they are heavy). Electronic books are also should be deleted if they are not useful anymore. Our attention span is very limited, and new information tends to have better quality than old information (on average).

Re: Stuff

#79

Post by dkarl »

dkarl wrote: post #61
mortenjorck wrote: post #42

When I moved into my first apartment after college, I brought a laptop, a sleeping bag, a folding chair, and a clip-lamp. It was great. I felt I could go anywhere and do anything. Of course, with a new job, 650 square feet, and an an IKEA nearby, I couldn't turn down a few basics. So I picked up a spartan bed, a minimalist sofa, a function-oriented desk. Then time began to pass. Though I'd resolved never to subscribe…

The key is to keep your stuff out of your lifestyle. I have an immersion blender that I use about a dozen times a year. I got it as a gift, and it lives at the back of a cabinet underneath my kitchen counter. It's awesome! I have three kettlebells that I use two or three times a week. They live beside my couch. There's a weight belt and a medicine ball beside them that I rarely use, and I swear I keep putting them in…

Bizarre downmod. Its placement as a reply to parent doesn't make sense (it mystifies even me in retrospect) but I think I made a valid point: the classic unnecessary "junk" we rarely use doesn't hurt us when it's out of sight, but valuable possessions that serve an important purpose can drag us down if they're always in sight, altering the look of a space and affecting how we behave in it.

I know this is supposed to be an inspiring "carpe diem" type essay, but everything is susceptible to practical considerations, and with "stuff" it's important to identify the right culprit. Frivolous domestic accessories and the worthless junk in the back of your closet might not be the problem -- something eminently practical that you use regularly might be your burdensome "stuff."

I hope I made myself clear this time.

Re: Stuff

#80

Post by philwelch »

fnid2 wrote: post #76

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. Wow, Paul, you really don't understand what it is like to be poor. The poor people don't have a lot of cars in their yard because they can afford lots of cars. They have lots of cars because they never throw them away. Rich p…

Or maybe people with marginal incomes spend themselves into sustained poverty through wasteful consumption. If they saved money instead of buying minimally useful possessions and saving the possessions, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being able to afford stuff they need. You and I have probably known different sets of poor people, but I've seen cases of this.

That doesn't justify throwing things away once you have them, though, but how does one get them in the first place and were they all really necessary at the time?

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