
What Makes People Collect Things? - ub
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/itamar-simonson-what-makes-people-collect-things
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kazinator
I wasn't into collecting, until I got a really cool list comprehension macro
at someone's garage sale. Now stuff is just piling up around me.

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Nadya
100% guilty of this...

I had 1 - and I was happy. It was nice. It was my favorite thing.

Then I got a 2nd one. Suddenly, I needed more. I needed them all. It felt like
Pokemon.

Now I have over 160 of them. Oh god help me...

Knowing not to own 2 of things to avoid collecting more things is nice. It's
strange that it seems to only require 2 of some 'thing' to create an urge for
a collection. I'll need to start throwing more things out. Pick my favorite of
the two and give the other away.

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cortesoft
What is the 'them' in this case? Just curious.

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extc
Icons on his desktop.

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knieveltech
True story.

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marincounty
I saw an episode of Horders on T.V.. The psychologist and team went to this
older gentleman's home and talked him into throwing away his book collection.
He mentioned a lot of the books were 1st editions. Know one payed attention to
the "crazy" old man.

At the end of the show, one of the hosts was surprised all the books were
taken out dumptster by some other crazy Horder.

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emcrazyone
I can relate. My mother hoards old magazines thinking someday she will need
the information in them. She hoards magazines, reader's digest books, you name
it.

Before my father died, he kept her in check. Throwing piles of old news papers
out. Growing up it was a common scene to hear her yell at him that he threw
something out she needed.

My mother use to write a news letter for a government agency. She is a very
good, articulate writer. She is so good that one time I was suffering through
a creative writing college course, came home got some help from my mom, and
the college professor told me I had a career in journalism if I didn't like
engineering. It was a family joke for many years.

I have a little bit of this myself. My wife yells at me to get rid of things.
History repeats itself... I take broken electronics apart for their parts.
Kids toys break, toy gets put on my work bench. I eventually get around to
taking it apart to harvest parts like LCD panels, MMC slots, etc...

I'm getting better. I realize some when I blow dust off of it, it's time to
throw out.

I think it's a mental thought process that what you have has some value to
you. Not like value as in it is worth something to someone else but a cost
saving thing. I would rather use a harvested MMC or LED than go to Digikey and
buy a bag of them and wait a day or few for it to arrive. The value is in
having instant access to it while on a project. At least that is how it is for
me.

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pbhjpbhj
I've got the instinct to hoard - particularly when it comes to electronics.
Most recent example of the condition for me: I had a bag of old wine bottle
corks gathered maybe 15 years ago, boxed away. I needed a stopper and one of
those corks fitted the bill perfectly. Perhaps that's just reinforcing
unhealthy behaviours??

In part for me it's about waste - it pains me to throw away plastic (for
example) knowing that it came from a finite resource and had so many different
inputs. There's so little effort made to recycle - I swear that within a
century or two we're going to be mining old landfill sites.

People throw out TVs when the power button fails, throw out whole computer
base-stations (aka towers) when a HDD fails, scrap cars that just need new
piston rings ... as a society we seem particularly bad at addressing these
things; corporations move ever more to accelerate [the appearance of]
obsolescence. To encourage the throw-away society.

I wonder if there's not a structure that can be used to gather in and
warehouse, for example electronics, and make them available without cost -
maybe using something like prisoner labour. It definitely doesn't seem to be
immediately financially sustainable to (for example) gather in all the working
components from household goods. A second-hand washing machine controller
might cost £100 for an old machine, commercially; when in reality it's just
saved from someone's scrap. Given a new machine can be had for £200, it's not
financially valid. But that scrapped controller can give 12 months more
service to a complete machine - how can we engineer in a greater value to
repair and recycling than the immediate financial saving/cost? Should we?

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anabis
Another psychological bias exploitable by Free To Play games?

As an added bonus, if items A..E can be randomly obtained on equal
probability, getting the last item is harder then instinct suggest. Thus,
"Complete Gacha" lead to 1k $ spends.

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WalterBright
I collect things. I regard it as a mental OCD defect and try hard not to add
to them. Sometimes I have been able to dispose of one or another collection,
and have never regretted it.

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nasalgoat
For anyone thinking of starting a collection, I suggest not picking heavy
ones.

I collect heavy, hard to move things like cars and pinball machines, and my
life would be a lot simpler if it was stamps.

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fufufishie
Explains my Amiibo addiction.

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contingencies
Does this work for spouses?

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libredroid
>April 1, 2015

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whoiskevin
"People are more likely to build a collection of something once they possess
two of them."

Really? Did they spend a lot of time studying that?

~~~
icebraining
Research isn't just about finding new and unintuitive effects, its also about
scientifically confirming and measuring what we know - or think we know -
intuitively.

