

Mindless Accumulation - neil_s
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/you-cant-take-it-with-you-but-you-still-want-more.html?src=me

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tascheitrum
First time commenting on hacker news: Just wanted to say there's a difference
between enjoying a treat you've worked for, and saving for retirement. When
you have no clue how long you might live and how expensive your taxes,
insurance, mortgage, medical bills, etc might cost in the future, it breeds
the mindset of 'save as much as possible as quickly as possible so I can feel
safe and relaxed about my future.'

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stegosaurus
Yeah. I get bored of trying to explain this.

I don't really care about fancy food and toys and cars and blah. Yeah, they
are nice, but they are side effects of saving for housing and so on.

The absurd thing is how irrelevant and cheap they are. I could buy a brand new
car once per year and scrap it for less than my rent. Ace.

A tiny tiny number of people find themselves in a position in which they have
the choice to accumulate 'more than they need'. We used to call them
millionaires, but suburban homes are starting to cost that now.

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PaulHoule
I like the quote "both groups were driven by the same thing: not by how much
they need, but by how much work they could withstand."

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WalterSear
>Nonetheless, the researchers note that productivity rates have risen, which
theoretically lets many people be just as comfortable as previous generations
while working less. Yet they choose not to.

Oh, ffs.

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humbleMouse
This is hilarious. Definitely can see what they are talking about. Did they
control for how much people like chocolate and sweets?

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gojomo
I find the study's interpretation, as reported, to be somewhat dubious.

Seated for what you know to be a study, with few options, even "pleasant
music" is pretty boring. (And other sounds that can be accurately described as
"white noise" are sometimes so pleasant that people buy devices to generate
it!)

Turning a boring situation into a game helps make it less boring, and the
researchers provided only one prominent option for doing so: how many
chocolates can I 'score'? Plus, it's a psychological study... which
participants know may have twists or deceptions. So possible motivations
include:

• "I have all the music I can hear at home; maybe something interesting
happens after choosing the 'noise' 10 times!"

• "Maybe they'll change the story after phase 1 and I will be able to take the
chocolates away, or trade them for something else!"

• "My friend also signed up for this study, afterwards we can compare how many
we each earned."

I'm also reminded of the study from about a year ago that got widely forwarded
under headlines like "men prefer painful electric shocks to sitting alone with
their thoughts". It was also over-spun to claim more than it showed, but the
tendency there would be another way to explain this study's results: people
prefer to try doing something novel, even if it's superficially/temporarily
unpleasant, over idleness. That's not chiefly 'mindless accumulation', just
curiosity and testing the edges of your environment.

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WalterSear
You forgot the obvious: 'A scientist in a white lab coat asked me to withstand
as much as I could - for science.'

