Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#111

Post by meiraleal » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #93

DangitBobby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author seems to indicate that what makes something "unnecessary" in this context is when it very temporarily scratches an itch but does nothing to meaningfully improve your quality of life in the longterm. What would really improve your life is less money, fewer purchases, and more free time.

Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.

Nobody said it is wrong, but a life optimized for work and short-term pleasures is the lifestyle corporations have carved for you. Many people enjoy it, nothing wrong with that. But for some, it is meaningless.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#112

Post by whiddershins » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #13

ilamont wrote: post #5

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of suc…

Counterpoint: What do you think "fashion" is? I used to think there were some very cool, fashion-adept people, who have the ability to predict what will considered modern next year. The reality is, the clothing industry decides what to produce at least 6-12 months in advance. It's not like they produce everything and public opinion decides in the end what is "cool". Granted, the industry tries to predict what will be…

Even an emergent intelligence is different from top down dictate.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#113

Post by CyanBird » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #106

ilamont wrote: post #5

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of suc…

That quote is right out of Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man ). Marcuse argues that we only think we're choosing to pursue certain things (pop music, sex, cars, food, etc). Actually, society has been transformed by certain parties to push these "false desires" on us. I think there's something creepy about telling people their desires are false. This is an exampl…

> I suspect you're right, this stuff isn't top-down.

But it is, thats where Bernays enters on the picture with Manufacture of Desire and Manufacture of Consent through Propaganda and Mass Media imprints

> “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” - Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927

> “No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.” - Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda 1927

> “Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.” - Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda 1927

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#114

Post by meiraleal » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #66

slv77 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longer work weeks we’re mostly confined to Industrial Age city populations that didn’t have access to land to farm. Few laborers working in early industrial mills was doing so because it was easier then farming. Agfa, Foraging and hunter-gatherer populations, work about 20 hours per week and transitioning to farming increased working hours. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.h... !Kung spend 4…

And hunter gatherers lived to what age, 40? And you’re skipping a few thousands of years of civilization between hunter gatherers and the industrial revolution. I can guarantee a Roman or medieval farmer worked pretty much every hour of sunlight

You can't guarantee that. If that was the case the bourgeois revolution would have happened way before with all the surplus someone working every hour of sunlight would produce on a piece of land.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#115

Post by RandomLensman » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

meiraleal wrote: post #111

RandomLensman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.

Nobody said it is wrong, but a life optimized for work and short-term pleasures is the lifestyle corporations have carved for you. Many people enjoy it, nothing wrong with that. But for some, it is meaningless.

People have been pleasure seeking long before corporations existed, so I think the causal chains runs the other way: corporations exist because they cater to that. My life does not revolve around work, so that part isn't for me. I'd be happy not to work at all.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#116

Post by codemonkey-zeta » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #93

DangitBobby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author seems to indicate that what makes something "unnecessary" in this context is when it very temporarily scratches an itch but does nothing to meaningfully improve your quality of life in the longterm. What would really improve your life is less money, fewer purchases, and more free time.

Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.

> Why is short-term pleasure wrong?

This is a great question, and firmly in the realm of philosophy, so there will never be a definitive answer, only ones which you might find useful.

I prefer the Stoic's attitude toward pleasure. To (very loosely) paraphrase Marcus Aurelius:

For each evil characteristic a man can have, the gods gave also a counteracting virtue. For dishonesty, honesty. For fear, courage, etc. To counteract pleasure-seeking, self-control. How can it be good if we are given a virtue counteracting it?

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#117

Post by RandomLensman » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #116

RandomLensman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.

> Why is short-term pleasure wrong? This is a great question, and firmly in the realm of philosophy, so there will never be a definitive answer, only ones which you might find useful. I prefer the Stoic's attitude toward pleasure. To (very loosely) paraphrase Marcus Aurelius: For each evil characteristic a man can have, the gods gave also a counteracting virtue. For dishonesty, honesty. For fear, courage, etc. To cou…

I am more a proponent of some forms of hedonism. An emperor talking about indifference to pain or not seeking pleasure isn't someone I could follow philosophically.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#118

Post by throwawayboise » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

irremediable wrote: post #79

SavantIdiot wrote: post #77

The part in the article about finding time to work out hit hard. He's right: there is so little time to work out because it takes 1hr to work out and 1hr to travel/clean up: 2hrs is a big deal when you only have ~4 hours free hours per day to take care of life. That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. You have to exercise a lot to alter y…

> That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. FWIW most weight change is due to diet. If you're overweight, exercise is probably a much lower priority than finding a way to sustainably eat less. I'm not just sounding off here; I lost 20+ kg by tracking what I ate and eating less.

Weight change happens depending on whether calories consumed - calories burned is positive or negative.

Diet tends to be more effective for weight loss because it's a lot easier to cut excess empty calories than it is to burn them off with exercise.

Jogging a mile might burn 150 calories. Eating a Big Mac adds 600.

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#119

Post by nautilius » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

postoak wrote: post #42

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as a paradise of freedom.

Or don't have them =)

Comments like this always remind me of the interview with some kids dumpster diving behind some grocery store that I read many years ago: “Look at all those suckers going into the store to buy stuff with money, when you can just pick it up for free behind the store. Idiots!”

Re: Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

#120

Post by anemoiac » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #63

goodpoint wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not forced to do anything You are forced to choose between working to pay rent and health insurance or go hungry, homeless and ill or in prison. In various developed societies there is free healthcare, social safety nets, or some forms of UBI or other help. > but you're seduced out of your mind, I guess it's fair Fair? Consumerism is threatening all ife on the planet. Humanity can do so much better.

> You are forced to choose between working to pay rent and health insurance or go hungry, homeless and ill. Oh lord, being “forced” to provide work in order to receive the work of others I think the US has serious progress to make on safety nets, but this type of statement doesn’t really help move the discussion forwards

> Oh lord, being “forced” to provide work in order to receive the work of others

I didn't write the comment you responded to, but I don't think its author was advocating for the mythical "free lunch." I read their comment as a statement decrying the seemingly artificial constraints built into modern (American, I presume) society that force workers to make an essentially binary choice between a stable, secure life and one of, potentially, poverty and marginalization.

To be more explicit - most people can't simply provide (even valuable, in-demand) work on their own terms, so they're forced (by various intentional and unintentional social/economic/legal/etc. barriers) to work according to terms that may not make sense to a rational third-party. This is (probably) why the commenter you responded to mentions the binary distinction between financial stability and physical insecurity - there's hardly any middle ground between the two categories when it comes to most fields of employment. Although "tech" is probably the most flexible industry in this regard, it's still difficult to find positions that allow part-time employment with health insurance benefits (even at lower-than-average pay rates), for example.

In most industries, the prospect of being able to work to provide only enough "value" to comfortably sustain oneself, as opposed to "being forced" to fully commit to the lifestyle (i.e. 40+ hours/week, car for commuting, lodging within commuting distance, childcare, general cost of paying for convenience in food/housework/etc. due to having less free time, etc.) is laughable. I believe this is what the commenter you reference was referring to - having the freedom to live cheaply without becoming financially insecure or socially marginalized, not some desire to have others pay for their lives.