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Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

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Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#41

Post by mrfox321 »

lallysingh wrote: post #31
carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

My cats are a pain the ass. They provide nothing for the effort and cost put into them.

What effort and cost? They're so cheap and easy to take care of.

Maybe I'm being too generous since I am using dogs as a reference point.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#42

Post by jbaber »

lallysingh wrote: post #31
carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

My cats are a pain the ass. They provide nothing for the effort and cost put into them.

My can't moves the distributed scat and bodies of a dozen mice into a centralized sandbox over the course of its life. Worth it for me.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#43

Post by arctangent »

avmich wrote: post #38

> The total complexity of a system is a constant. If you make a user’s interaction with a system simpler, the complexity behind the scenes increases. It's almost obvious complexity can be created. So why it can't be destroyed as well?

Fred Brooks said [1] that there are two types of complexity, accidental and essential. While accidental complexity can be reduced the theory is that the essential complexity cannot.

"Accidental complexity relates to problems which engineers create and can fix; for example, the details of writing and optimizing assembly code or the delays caused by batch processing. Essential complexity is caused by the problem to be solved, and nothing can remove it; if users want a program to do 30 different things, then those 30 things are essential and the program must do those 30 different things."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#44

Post by m463 »

carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

you misspelled dogs.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#45

Post by m463 »

david422 wrote: post #36
georgeecollins wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! I was his student many, many years ago. I had to take his class because he was the head of our department. I thought I was going to do something very different with my life and I wasn't very interested, except that he was a great lecturer. In retrospect he was easily the most influential professor I ever had. If his work in something like "Design of Everyday Things" seems underwhelming I would guess that is beca…

I noticed that with the ATM. And I've left my card in there before. Good change.

You know there are some ATMs that don't take your card at all. You put them in enough to read them and pull them out.

but many ATMs were designed with a business goal of confiscating cards.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#46

Post by ablekh »

While the article is quite nice, the title is certainly misleading. The article is about complexity of products and services and its management, but not about complexity of life. The latter, I believe, mostly comes from a myriad of interactions between numerous underlying psychological, social and economic networks/graphs (it's the same thing in this context: https://bence.ferdinandy.com/2018/05/27/whats-the-difference...) of forces, types of actors, incentives and other factors.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#47

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #44
carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

you misspelled dogs.

[deleted]

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#48

Post by georgeecollins »

aspaceman wrote: post #39
war1025 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the trouble is I read the "revised and expanded edition." From some of the reviews I remember reading at the time, the revisions did the book no favors.

I think the biggest additional thing from that book is the concept of "affordances". Practically every UI related person I talk to talks about the concept intentionally or not and he put a name to it. I would agree the book has little in terms of practical advice nowadays. It was brief and straightforward at the time, and age has only lessened the impact.

Yeah that is another one that really sticks with you.

Later in life I was a video game designer and every time I had to make a UX decision I channeled Donald Norman.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#50

Post by adrianN »

mrfox321 wrote: post #41
lallysingh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cats are a pain the ass. They provide nothing for the effort and cost put into them.

What effort and cost? They're so cheap and easy to take care of. Maybe I'm being too generous since I am using dogs as a reference point.

Travel becomes a lot harder if you have a cat.
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