Ordinary Abundance • Hacker News Board

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#21

Post by techblueberry » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

I feel like in discussions about nostalgia, there can be this default presentish reaction which talks about all of the things that are better

But in the hedonic adaptation sense like - and comparisons are complicated - people aren’t by and large happier now (because of the hedonism this is sidestepping the argument of how well distributed it is, and I’m talking the past 50-100 years not compared to subsistence farming and the like early Industrial Revolution etc et al)

I do think a lot of the senses that things are better now are based on this adaptation, not thinking about would you be less happy if you didn’t know about some of the small things you were missing.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#22

Post by techblueberry » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #3

carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

I don’t know if I’m just weird, but my reaction is usually the opposite.

When the power goes out, and you’re forced to sit and talk to people or just enjoy the quiet of the night. I think about how much we’ve lost in the modern rat race.

One of the things that sits with me is that for all we’ve been given, most of us have lost the ability to just sit out in a field and enjoy the stars (light pollution, starlink, etc)

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#23

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

Go camping

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#24

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #15

This is an interesting premise, and I would like to read the article, but the weird scrolling makes that almost impossible; the pictures overlay the text to such an extent that I can only read a couple of lines at a time. I wish there were some browser feature that would force sites to use normal scrolling.

Reader mode

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#25

Post by stuporglue » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

For the last year I've been on well water for the first time in my life. High iron, manganese and iron bacteria - safe, but tasted eggy and ruined shower heads, dishwashers, clothes, washing machine, kettles...

I just finished installing a whole-house filter & softener system and everyone is delighted. I told my kids that once a month we're going to serve untreated well-water with dinner, so we stay grateful for it.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#26

Post by Aperocky » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #15

This is an interesting premise, and I would like to read the article, but the weird scrolling makes that almost impossible; the pictures overlay the text to such an extent that I can only read a couple of lines at a time. I wish there were some browser feature that would force sites to use normal scrolling.

This is so ironically on point.

I recall reading a shampoo bottle in the bathroom maybe 25 years ago because there was nothing else to read.

Meanwhile now you are correctly complaining about how weird the scrolling feels like.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#27

Post by croisillon » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

the future is a nice place to be, if our bikes still had pedals we couldn't hang them at the wall after commuting

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#28

Post by snide » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

stuporglue wrote: post #25

For the last year I've been on well water for the first time in my life. High iron, manganese and iron bacteria - safe, but tasted eggy and ruined shower heads, dishwashers, clothes, washing machine, kettles... I just finished installing a whole-house filter & softener system and everyone is delighted. I told my kids that once a month we're going to serve untreated well-water with dinner, so we stay grateful for it.

As a fellow filtered well-water maintainer... just give it time. Even the best filtration systems break down. There are lots of moving parts to keep that water clean. Odds are you'll see or smell that brown water soon enough!

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#29

Post by idiotsecant » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

techblueberry wrote: post #22

xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years

I don’t know if I’m just weird, but my reaction is usually the opposite. When the power goes out, and you’re forced to sit and talk to people or just enjoy the quiet of the night. I think about how much we’ve lost in the modern rat race. One of the things that sits with me is that for all we’ve been given, most of us have lost the ability to just sit out in a field and enjoy the stars (light pollution, starlink, etc)

Yeah, OK but this is clearly romanticizing away the fact that you are deeply dependent on these services. See how long you can just sit and enjoy the stars when your indoor plumbing and refrigeration goes away, and more importantly when your neighbors go away, not to mention the billions of little moving parts that must operate flawlessly for something like the global supply chain that brings you those shorts you wear and that tea you drink sitting in the grass and staring at the sky.

I'm not trying to single you out but I am intensely annoyed by the light and airy disregard of an intensely complex graph of interconnected services that make life possible at the density and quality that we enjoy.

We've lost a great deal less than we've gained, and anyone who doesn't think so has not had the joy of involuntarily going without them for a significant length of time.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#30

Post by keybored » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

Everyone reaches the hedonistic plateau, and fast at that. Except for people who sound like they just read a book from some neoliberal think smithy. They will have a euphoric fainting spell over the wonders of the convenience store.

Think about all those elated anecdotes about how someone used an inferior tool for a decade, was fine with it, then tried a better one and now “can’t imagine how I lived without it...” well it’s a bittersweet memory distortion innit.