

Rands in Repose: The Shop I Want - filament
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/05/17/the_shop_i_want.html

======
dkarl
All he wants is better salesmanship. He wants someone to tell him _why_ he
wants something so that he'll actually enjoy owning it. A desk becomes more
than just a desk. Shaving cream becomes more than just shaving cream.

 _Looking for reasons to not just buy el-cheapo shaving cream. Is there
anything out there worth spending a little money on?_

The best shaving cream isn't worth spending money on until somebody sells you
on it.

Here's another idea: if you don't get pleasure or a feeling of discernment out
of your shaving cream, maybe you should accept that. If the Ikea desk makes
you just as happy as the Stow Davis desk, maybe you should accept that,
instead of yearning for a salesman to help you believe you have better taste.
It's moralistic and a downer, but looking for ways to get more satisfaction
out of your purchases is a sickness.

Example: I don't have a very sensitive palate for wine. Therefore, I don't
spend much on wine and don't pretend to know anything about it. When my
friends talk about wine, I sit back and wait for the subject to change. Part
of me feels like I'm missing out, part of me feels like an inferior yuppie --
which I suppose I am. It would be so easy to fake it. Fooling myself would be
almost as easy as fooling other people. I could read reviews of every wine I
buy and parrot what they say about bananas, strawberries, and barnyards. I
would enjoy myself immensely, and people would like me better because I would
be more fun. High-end wines would provide another way of buying excitement and
validation. I could transmit that excitement and validation to other people. I
could even make them feel _loved_ by my careful attention to the wine I served
them. My conscience, my intellectual integrity, is the only thing holding me
back from these benefits.

Wait, you say -- wouldn't the pleasure be genuine? Sure. It would. So why pass
up an opportunity to manufacture pleasure? Aren't I just stealing happiness
from everybody to gratify a moralistic urge that has no valid moral basis? If
it's one kind of empty self-indulgence versus another, shouldn't I pick the
one that provides happiness to myself and other people?

This is a serious question, and I can't claim to have an answer that is much
better-founded than my simple engineer's (or prude's) instinct that _there
must be a catch._ However, I can name a few things that would be wrong about
it.

First, I would be financially supporting wine prices that could, for all I
know, be completely fraudulent. Unless I can be confident I can tell the
difference between a $12 wine a $60 wine, my spending $60 just creates an
opportunity for unscrupulous folks to make money by overpricing wine. That
might not hurt me, but it would hurt real connoisseurs.

Second, I suspect that I would get more pleasure out of _real_ appreciation
than out of an illusory appreciation, as my "appreciation" of wine would be.
The excitement, validation, and pleasure in tasting would all be genuine, but
the taste itself would not be stimulating. I would, at best, be imagining
novel sensations based on the descriptions of people with more sensitive
palates. Nothing would exceed my imagination. I would be investing time,
thought, and money into a cognitively incestuous and sterile experience.
Aesthetic masturbation, if you will. Wouldn't I be better off concentrating on
areas where I have the capacity to be truly surprised and stimulated? Wouldn't
Rands be better off ignoring desks and focusing his attention on something he
has legitimate taste for, instead of asking a salesman to manufacture an
illusory appreciation for a Stow Davis desk?

(After all, you've been exposed to various kinds of furniture all your life,
and if you still need a pep talk from another person to care deeply about the
widely admired qualities of a certain desk, then you're simply blind to it.
It's okay. Everyone has domains of insight and domains of blindness, and to
elevate wine and furniture over other domains is just snobbery.)

Third, you should be careful what you do with your money. My bank balance
affects how much I invest in truly worthy causes. Every year I sign up for
recurring charitable deductions from my paycheck. When I decide how much to
sign up for for the next year, the state of my finances has an effect on how
much I feel comfortable comitting to. I also lend money to friends and family
when they need it; again, my bank balance affects how much I'm comfortable
giving. Basically, I'm a selfish, risk-averse person, and my willingness to be
altruistic is heavily dependent on my own security and comfort. It's easy to
give away excess. Looking for expensive new ways to turn my excess into
pleasure is another way of saying, "I'd better find _something_ better to do
with this money than give it to the EFF/Doctors Without Borders/<your favorite
charity here>!" If you're really miserable and money is all you have going for
you, then converting money into happiness should be your top priority (though
buying stuff is probably not the best way.) If you're already reasonably
happy, then go ahead and buy what you enjoy, but don't look at every expensive
toy and think, "Oooooh, I want to learn how to appreciate THAT so I can enjoy
BUYING and HAVING it!" You already know a million ways money can buy
happiness; if you've exhausted all the ones that apply to you, then maybe you
should spend the money on somebody else.

I know Rands is exploring this issue from the consumer side for the sake of
working the sales side. That doesn't make it any better. If you wouldn't feel
right doing it yourself, how could you feel right making money by persuading
other people to do it?

~~~
mquander
I totally agree. I'm absolutely with Rands here:

 _You can have an opinion. It sounds like work, but it’s really not. An
opinion is not the definitive view or judgement regarding a thing; it’s you
staring at that desk and saying, “You know, I like the look and the feel of
those brass handles. I also like the drawers that squeak just a bit when you
open them. It speaks to the character of the whole desk.”

It’s not that I want a Stow Davis desk, it’s that I want to find that desk. I
want to go to seven different antique shops and spend a weekend developing an
opinion about the state of antique desks. I want to find someone who knows the
entire history of Stow Davis desks and won’t fucking shut up about them.

Half the fun of having an opinion is the quest to find one, but the everything
problem remains. You don’t have the time to have an opinion about
everything..._

But then he makes this totally ridiculous leap:

 _...but someone has the time._

So what? What good is it if it's someone else's opinion? Why would you want
someone else to feed you their opinion on shaving cream, even if they've got a
really objectively great opinion? It's not as if it actually makes any goddamn
difference what shaving cream you buy, unless you believe it does. Ditto for
desks, and so on.

I have an opinion on lots of stuff like that, but it's because I'm an
opinionated little fuck. I don't think it's really a state to aspire to.
Rands, on the other hand, apparently values being this complicated, networked,
shopping consuming machine, and to what end? I don't understand.

P.S. Rands, you could, you know, try different brands of shaving cream until
you find one you dig, like a _normal person._

~~~
derefr
Er... _nothing_ makes any difference. We die, and then everything we have done
gets washed away by Alzheimer's, worms, and the rain. However, if we _care_
about things—other people, for instance, but shaving cream's as good a thing
to care about as any—then we can spend our lives happier for the choices we
have made. Rands wants people to give him reasons to care about more things,
so he can make more choices and therefore define himself more clearly. He's
not asking for someone to pick the best shaving cream, and then just say
"here, use this one, it has 10^23 utilons subjective to your experiential
context"—he's asking for reasons to care about liking particular shaving
creams at all. It turns out the best way to solicit those reasons—the
dimensional parameters that define the space of shaving cream quality, so to
speak—is to get someone to sell you a few particular creams, and explain why
their "earning five stars on the Bugnatti face-feel scale" or "resisting
incursive facial bacteria" facts are important. Those lessons learned, you can
then pick your own shaving cream, "like a normal person"—but you'll know why,
not just how, to choose.

The best analogy I can think of is to music. Have you ever met someone who
just didn't care about music, at all? Didn't you feel like something was
missing from their lives? Do you think you could get them to care about music
by showing them a bunch of music-theoretical math and physics? Or would you
just say "this is my favorite band; they do X and Y really well", and expect
them to explore outward from there, now listening for other bands' Xs and Ys,
and eventually forming their own opinions of what makes a good band?

Now, for "music", replace with every single possible other interesting thing
in this world.

~~~
mquander
I appreciate what you're saying, and if you interpret Rands' post as some
rational, utilitarian statement of preference in which he claims to actually
care about learning the particular distinguishing virtues of shaving cream,
and desks, and presumably a thousand other consumer goods, then I suppose I
can't tell him he's wrong about his strategy.

Rather, I'd choose to be even more presumptuous, and tell him he's wrong about
what he wants. I think that few people are genuinely destined to love careful
research into what kind of socks you prefer at the moment and which coat
hangers are the most durable. It's an awfully crowded and indistinct way of
defining yourself. To the extent that people like doing those kinds of things,
I think that they are easy escapes which tend to take the place of more
ultimately fulfilling endeavors (I'm guilty of this.) I think that it's a dumb
waste of time to find ways to spend even more effort on such tasks, providing
marginal benefit, and yielding what I wager is only a brief satisfaction.

------
boredguy8
This is the gristle behind buzzwords like "authenticity" and "community". When
I wanted the perfect pen, I asked 'that friend' and he pointed me to a Tiffany
fountain pen I love. When I wanted to know: Xbox or PS3, I asked my gaming
'that friend' and he pointed me in the right direction. When another friend
told me I had to try a particular hole-in-the-wall restaurant, I went and,
despite myself, enjoyed it.

Unless I have some reason to think you have my interests at heart, all the
'also liked' in the world means very little. For some purchases, I'll become
the expert. (Still looking for that perfect keyboard!) But for most things, I
want people I can trust to give me their best suggestion given what they know
about the domain and what they know about me.

~~~
lincolnq
I don't know you, but I've been happy with the Kinesis Contoured keyboard. I'm
comfortable making this recommendation based on the fact that we're both on
Hacker News (and therefore probably have some other things in common). If I
knew your HN voting history I might be able to do a better job.

Taking advantage of social ties and external sources of information is
definitely something that automated recommenders should be able to do. Few of
them actually do it, however. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread,
recommendation algorithms just aren't very good. Once they get good (and
fast), all sorts of external information will instantly become useful.
Recommenders will be able to find significant correlations between the browser
you're using and your preference.

~~~
benatkin
Is this you?

[http://www.keyboardmods.com/2010/04/wireless-split-
kinesis-c...](http://www.keyboardmods.com/2010/04/wireless-split-kinesis-
contour.html)

If not, since you take the arms of your office chairs, I'm going to hazard a
guess that you have wider shoulders than most keyboards are designed for. If
that's the case, you might wish your Contour had either a bigger split or an
adjustable split. I would be more interested in getting a Contour if I could
have a bigger gap between the left and right sides.

~~~
polotek
I think this is my underlying problem with keyboards. I have very wide
shoulders. I"ve had the most luck with the microsoft natural, but I find
myself wanting to increase the split angle all the time.

Also having an ergo keyboard with low soft keys like the Mac would be awesome.

------
joshwa
Note to tech pundits-- the average joe can't ping his twitter network to get
40 responses to a question about shaving cream. This is a benefit only pundits
enjoy. Stop touting it.

~~~
po
You just summed up the point I've been trying to articulate for a few days
now.

When I watched Conan O'Brien speaking at Google he was talking about how
amazing it was that his show sold out in record time with one tweet… how old
media took notice of that. But he is a product of old media. He had hundreds
of thousands of followers on day 1.

No doubt, many people can build up a huge following through twitter or
whatever social tools they use. Many people I follow have done it. But it's
not a walk in the park.

------
scotch_drinker
Maybe it's a personality type thing, or a quirk or just me wanting to be fed
my beliefs but I feel exactly the same way as Rands. When he says he doesn't
have time to figure out the best shaving cream or shaving method, I understand
that what he means is "he doesn't have time to find the best shaving cream AND
do other things that are really important to him", or at least I interpret
that's what he means.

We've come to an age where it's not just mathematicians and scientists who
stand on the shoulders of giants. We all have the ability to do that in vast
arenas of our lives while still contributing to our own chosen arenas. It's
fabulous if you ask me.

It's not about the fact that I can't make a decision, it's that I have the
opportunity to make the very best decision based on the experiences and work
of others on subjects as mundane as desks and shaving. If I spent as much time
figuring out shaving as the guy who wrote the shaving article did, that would
be hours of time I didn't spend on doing something I appreciate. It's not
better salesmanship, it's better living. I know that there are people out
there who just don't want to have someone else tell them what the best thing
is and that's fine. But for me, I want to have the best desk or the best
keyboard or the best shave but I'd prefer not to have to spend the time of my
own figuring out what that is when there are people out there who know and who
I can find out from. A good shave is really more than a average shave. A good
desk really is better than a average desk. Having people who can tell me which
is which is both fulfilling and efficient.

We live in a time when information is easily discovered and contributes to a
better life. Why keep figuring out the same things? If the journey intrigues
you, great. But if you have other journeys to travel, why not short cut those
that don't intrigue you?

------
michaelbuckbee
What he seems to be asking for is [aardvark](<http://www.vark.com>) this is
_exactly_ what they were trying to pull off prior to Google buying them.

~~~
polotek
They are still trying to pull it off and hopefully the resources of google
will help them. The problem vark faces is that they have to build up a large
and active community of people willing to answer questions.

I was an early user and I still make myself available for questions all the
time. But I'd say probably 3 out of 5 times I get a question, I just don't
have the time to respond with anything useful. And after a certain amount of
time, you're past the "real-time" threshold so there's no point in responding.

But when vark works, it _really_ works and it is awesome.

------
aresant
His two examples - a custom antique desk or shaving cream that's a delight to
use - hammer his point home: despite the abundance of choice online, he who
organizes and specializes the data to the user wins.

I have yet to see a truly personalized experience that finds me that one
esoteric object that I'd never heard of, but desperately need.

I'm always stunned by how poor Amazon & EBAY's reccomendation engines are, and
how infrequently they suggest anything I want or am compelled by.

What start-ups are playing in this space and building something compelling?

~~~
stcredzero
His example is still smoke and mirrors. The opinion of someone known and
trusted just _feels_ more valuable, because of the way our minds are put
together. Granted, this may be enough to build a business on.

What he wants would be a search engine that can detect passion. Page Rank only
detects this indirectly. Not sure if anything direct is possible.

~~~
inerte
He wants something to find the perfect product for him, even if he doesn't
know there's a need for it.

I guess that's a nice desire for someone with lots of disposable income. I
really don't want anyone offering me anything to buy right now, because I
don't have the money to spend on a 1800's table instead of what I'm currently
using.

When I do have money, then I have my list of priorities about where to spend
it. Fix the roof leak, change my car tires, etc...

That's why it's called "buying mode". Offer me a 1700 table today and I will
tell you to get real, and get out. Offer me when I actually have the money and
desire to buy, and you've made a sale.

