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Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

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Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#81
post #3

A fine heuristic if you have enough money to make the choice in the first place. [1]Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, propounded in Men at Arms: "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hun…

The Boots theory is funny because it's absurd. It's not actually applicable to life in powerty. There is no class of items where if you are poor you spend more on it than when you're wealthy. People in poverty spend more _time_ on things, yeah, but not more money or money per use. You can see some discussion on that from people who actually grew up poor in https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068036776213383

There are many things where the poor spend more: laundry; check cashing; many groceries; and anything else where smaller purchases are less efficient.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#82
post #3

A fine heuristic if you have enough money to make the choice in the first place. [1]Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, propounded in Men at Arms: "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hun…

There are solutions. I find myself posting this [0] here on HN from time to time. It doesn’t work for everything (I’m not sure how well it would work for a pair of leather boots, though the same approach is theoretically possible there as well) but it is a step up from just continuing with the status quo. [0]: https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg003...

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope for the best.

For almost everyone--and I hate to admit it but this group includes me--food is a core, irreplaceable pleasure. Even when just doing it alone, not even for social purposes. At this point, I'm receptive to arguments that it's the main thing that most people look forward to every day. You can set up all kinds of plans (read: diets) and tech to assist you in this experience, but I think if you live in the rich world, the primary goal of eating is to feel this pleasure, it is a major part of your pleasure life, and as a result these plans and this tech will only ever assist you in that endeavor. They will never be more than assistants, secondary to this goal.

Next, micronutrients are best ingested in whole food form. Multivitamins are literally a supplement, they really shouldn't be your primary source of micronutrients; unless you're willing to do lots of research, you really shouldn't submit yourself wholly to their vicissitudes. Not only are there micronutrients that can't be combined because they interfere in each others' absorption (iron and calcium are the most infamous for this but there are others), but only some multivitamins will actually show you the amounts that your body absorbs in the first place, and you have to know how to look for that (look for amounts in IUs basically, but that's not 100%). You also can't be sure you're not just eating coagulated sawdust, or worse straight up poison (if you think this is hyperbolic just google around).

It's also likely (though the research on this is pretty fuzzy) there are lots of negative microbiome implications for switching from a varied diet to a diet of soy pancakes and multivitamins.

This diet doesn't have enough of the various forms of fats (Omega 3/6/9s, not just sunflower oil). The only way to get here via supplement is to take them by the handful, which you shouldn't do, if only for cost reasons.

This diet really only has half the fiber content you need (the RDA for which is arguably pretty low, i.e. if you were eating RDAs for leafy greens and whole grains you'd easily exceed it). Add that to your list of supplements.

---

To totally argue against myself here, it might be hard to believe but I'm also open to the idea I've seen around that none of this stuff matters as much as research indicates, or at least we're missing something huge. The general idea is that humans have known basically nothing about nutrition for all of our existence--including right now--yet we have somehow thrived, so it seems like no matter what trash we jam into our digestive tracts our bodies find a way to make it work. This is obviously true up to a point, the question is up to what point exactly.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#83
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions. I find myself posting this [0] here on HN from time to time. It doesn’t work for everything (I’m not sure how well it would work for a pair of leather boots, though the same approach is theoretically possible there as well) but it is a step up from just continuing with the status quo. [0]: https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg003...

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope fo…

You speak of food as a pleasure only to describe it as a chore.

Food and nutrition do not require that much thought for the average breathing human.

Your hominid ancestors figured it out already— without an app.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#84
post #79

Cost/use really only works well for things where the results of use are broadly equivalent across price tiers. In the example given, expensive socks and cheap socks are basically the same when new (they'll keep your feet warm, padded, and wick away moisture), the only difference is how long that lasts. For things like tools its often a bad metric unless you truly only need it once. In addition to durability; the ergo…

My problem is that not all cheap socks wear out quickly and not all expensive socks stay nice. It's a bit of luck and who actually counts? But that's basically the real problem. I want to believe decades ago there was more of a relation between higher cost (but not outright a luxury brand) and quality. Now that is completely random and even if you look for reviews hardly anyone does any "5 years later" tests (except…

Darn Tough socks. Expensive, but free replacement when they wear out.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#85
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope fo…

You speak of food as a pleasure only to describe it as a chore. Food and nutrition do not require that much thought for the average breathing human. Your hominid ancestors figured it out already— without an app.

Oh, yeah this probably got lost in my wall of text. I 100% agree with this; I might even say that all the fixation with it by people like me is a way of coping with general anxiety, or a brain that always needs something to do, or a person who was so consistently let down by the knowledge, traditions and ways of their people that they groped around wildly for any idea of how to feed themselves / live their lives.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#86
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions. I find myself posting this [0] here on HN from time to time. It doesn’t work for everything (I’m not sure how well it would work for a pair of leather boots, though the same approach is theoretically possible there as well) but it is a step up from just continuing with the status quo. [0]: https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg003...

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope fo…

To be clear, I was not linking it for the specific dietary recommendations but rather the approach enabling one to - progressively - avail one’s self of more expensive upfront but cheaper-per-unit options.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#87
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope fo…

To be clear, I was not linking it for the specific dietary recommendations but rather the approach enabling one to - progressively - avail one’s self of more expensive upfront but cheaper-per-unit options.

Haha fair, sorry to hijack. I do think strategic buying can be super advantageous, but it's hard to do that when you're also laboring under the mental load of being poor. But, yeah clear guides or maybe just less opportunity to buy junk (better regulations) would probably bear a lot of fruit here.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#88
post #35

This really kicked in for me when I bought a grill. The first time I used it, that cost me "1500". The second, it was just 750 per bbq. By the time I cooked a hundred meals on it, it is a 15 bucks per meal. Etc. Longevity is obviously a big factor too

I spent $5000 on the fastest consumer computer available in 2011. It had a 6-core CPU which was pretty amazing at the time. I still use that same computer today as my main workstation. I've put a little bit of money into it over the years, expanding it. Most recently I bought the fastest CPU that would work in that motherboard, a 12-core/24-thread Xeon for $30 on ebay. So even with adding RAM, Hard drives, new video…

Did you overall have a better experience than buying mid range and periodically upgrading components? I'm skeptical. I've probably spent around that much (very rough estimate) on 3-4 builds over the same period, and for most of it I had a i7-6700k (4C/8T). If I hadn't just upgraded from a i7-12700F and RTX 3080 to i9-13900k and RTX 3090 within a year I'm pretty sure I'd be well under $5000.

Perhaps I'll put together a spreadsheet with the total inflation adjusted spend for comparison...

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#89

When I was a younger cyclist, I felt this way about stop signs. The fine for ignoring one was fixed, rare, and occurred at random, so getting my marginal cost per run sign as close to zero as I could was the rational choice. Penalties that affect your license change those incentives, but arbitrary enforcement rewards noncompliance.

Stop signs should really be yield signs for bikes, the cost to actually stop on a bike at every stop sign is ridiculous, and furthermore ruins the enjoyment of a casual ride around the neighborhood. But don't let my kids hear me talking like this...

I would phrase this differently: cyclists and pedestrians don't need stop signs. Drivers do.

We already give pedestrians right of way at four-way stops. It's pretty reasonable to extend that to cyclists.

Re: Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use

#90

I do this a lot for games, but cost per hour. Some games now are really expensive (£60 etc) but if I get 40 hours entertainment out of it then per hour that is actually pretty good.

Games are cheaper for hour of entertainment than pretty much any other class of entertainment/hobby where you normally pay, even if you only play the game for a dozen hours or less. Movies, concerts, going to the bar, fishing, gardening, sports (including transportation/facility costs), etc.
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