
The Tyranny of Convenience - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html
======
philipkglass
_An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is
that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme,
we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a
flimsy basis for a life._

There is no shortage of hard problems left to solve. If everything in your
life looks uneasily easy, raise your eyes to something harder before gamifying
your routine with deliberate refusal to use a microwave oven.

Before big government-funded science programs started in the 20th century,
people born into affluent families were greatly over-represented in the
sciences, because you can't theorize or research if all day is spent on
routine chores. The same goes for composers, mathematicians, and authors.

I find it kind of sad if people liberated from routine chores choose to use
their new leisure time exclusively on TV and Facebook. But I'm certainly not
going to tell them that they should wash clothes by hand to break out of the
entertainment rut. That's a waste of a life too, admittedly one with a
lengthier historical pedigree than binge-watching.

Even if you lack the inclination or the skills to advance the frontiers of
art, mathematics, or science, there are plenty of rewarding activities that
are orthogonal to convenience technologies. Hiking, biking, fishing,
birdwatching, learning to sing or play an instrument, woodworking, cooking
food that a microwave simply _can 't_ make, playing sports, gardening... I
_do_ think that people suffer physically and mentally if the only parts of
their bodies they use are their fingers and their eyes. A sedentary life spent
entirely looking at electronic displays isn't good. (Even reading paper books
_all the time_ without using the rest of your body isn't great, and I say that
as a serious bookworm.) The best way to fill excessive time freed by
convenience technologies is to take up leisure activities that use the rest of
yourself, not throw away labor saving machines and start beating rugs like
your ancestors (or ancestors' servants).

~~~
drdeca
My contrarian impulse leads me to ask whether for a small portion of people,
having a short period of time in which they wash clothes by hand, and
afterwards go back to the more convenient and efficient way of doing it might
have some benefit by resetting something.

But I'm guessing the answer is "probably not, and if so, probably for
exceedingly few people. If something like that was a good idea, washing
clothes probably wouldn't be the ideal form of it."

~~~
gascan
Clothes washing machines do seem to be one of the unmitigated "goods".
Machines use less water, less energy, are gentler on clothes. Reportedly,
manual clothes washing is also very hard on the body- physically laborious
combined with scalding water and caustic chemicals. There was some article
here on HN a little while ago in which the authors were surprised that women
of decades past voted the clothes washing machine as the single greatest
invention & engine of their emancipation, instead of planes or semiconductors
or medicine or-

By all means though, gardening, cooking food, human-powered travel, repairing
& making things of all kinds, etc I do believe can have great value.

~~~
contingencies
I don't think machine washes are gentler on clothes. Maybe gentler than the
traditional whack-against-a-river-rock technique, but certainly hand-washing
is generally less physically abusive than a machine wash, in my experience.

~~~
jdietrich
Americans still inexplicably prefer the top-loading washing machine, rather
than the front-loading type that dominates the market in nearly every other
developed country. The agitator in a top-loader makes mincemeat out of
delicate items, versus the much more gentle lift-and-drop action of a front-
loader.

------
leggomylibro
>Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to
imagine are our true preferences.

It's a good dystopian trope, and one of the more uncomfortably plausible ones.
A streamlined pipeline from cradle to creche to college to a cycle of
job->transit->housing->transit until you're too expensive to keep around
anymore.

It's probably where we'll end up. The constant message in society today is,
"you're on your own," and the constant message from other people is, "go
away." It hurts, but that's dystopia for you.

~~~
MollyR
Yes this very true. I used to volunteer at a suicide prevention center before
my twins were born. I dealt with a ton of college grads who couldn't find
jobs, and were depressed, suicidal and deep in debt. They said they felt
alone, and their parents just thought they were lazy.

Society has become a dystopia with a hall of mirrors and flashing lights for
many kids. They feel more alone then ever, even with all the social media. I
have a strong suspicion though social media is making it worse, since you are
constantly bombarded with beautiful and successful people (or people faking
it).

~~~
howard941
Not just kids. All of us.

------
marnett
I never quite thought I'd be linking this here, but in Ted Kaczynski's
Manifesto[1] he wrote, amongst many other things (plenty certainly to be found
controversial), that there exists an intrinsic need for humans to undergo a
'power process' that allows us to exert power over people or processes in
order to fend off purposelessness (the Manifesto is separated into numerical
subsections, he makes this point in the section entitled 'DISRUPTION OF THE
POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY' which is paragraph 59). The entire thing is
worth reading, for historical significance alone.

[1] [http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf](http://editions-
hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf)

~~~
philwelch
_Industrial Society and Its Future_ isn't a good moral justification for
mailing bombs to people, but it's still an interesting set of ideas that's
difficult to refute.

------
dclowd9901
The author seems to be trying to make an issue where there isn't any.

The many conveniences I enjoy in my life allow me to circumvent rote tasks
that offer no enrichment and no sense of accomplishment. What do I do with my
free time? Difficult activities that give me a sense of accomplishment and
enrichment.

To tack on the concern that people are falling back to "screen time" to fill
the time left by convenience is a problem more to do with people not led to
explore other facets of the world they're not familiar with, or a sense of
inability from being coddled while raised.

~~~
b0rsuk
I think he's making a good point but arguments it poorly.

A better argument would be not that "it makes us less human" etc, but that it
teaches people to be lazy and avoid problem solving. It's the "there's an app
for that" attitude. The calculator attitude, the GPS attitude. You're trained
to avoid any difficulty, and I can imagine a person trained to only use ready
solutions will just give up if he can't buy/download/solve it in browser. It's
not just about being washed away on a remote island or emergency events like
wars. It's also loss of resourcefulness.

------
croshan
Especially when it comes to products, consumer convenience often seems to be
at odds with consumer well-being.

Take everything from McDonalds's fast food, to Facebook's engagement
optimization, to overprescribing of antibiotics and painkillers. The products
that sell the most, are the ones that cripple the users ability to
independently operate, and keep them coming back for more.

~~~
gascan
_consumer convenience often seems to be at odds with consumer well-being_

I've begun to think that's intrinsic, not anything nefarious.

We long for convenience, laziness, sugar, etc. We're meant to want them, but
never get much of them. As far as we can tell, our minds & bodies run best on
a diet of exertion, activity, and whole foods, which are the very opposites of
the things we crave.

I keep thinking about TDR's Strenuous Life.

------
rhn_mk1
> Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can
> be the solution to the question of who you are.

I'm convinced that people derive meaning from restrictions they have to
overcome. In the land of perfect convenience, everything would be instantly
possible, and nothing would be valuable, so nothing would be worth doing. What
would make people tick?

In this vision, convenience merges with powerlessness, leaving no options. At
some point, we could observe that making things easier doesn't benefit society
by freeing up time, but harms it by removing meaning.

As a believer in a transhumanist future, this possibility concerns me.

~~~
goatlover
It's interesting on Star Trek how they avoid that with various challenges for
the crew, including holodeck malfunctions. But you have to wonder how people
back on cozy planet Earth outside of the highly motivated Starfleet types are
able to stay away from the total convenience and immersion of holodecks,
replicators and transporters.

~~~
Analemma_
I believe it was Scott Adams who said that "the holodeck will be Mankind's
last invention", and it's a hard point to argue with.

~~~
rhn_mk1
Virtual reality exists now. Perhaps the exit is in it, and within rules and
restrictions which people would apply to themselves to have something to do.

People grind for something as inconsequential as Steam achievements.

------
moneytide1
I saw "WALL-E" as a sobering critique on the "progression" of civilization.

Maybe walking to the well to get water is an inefficient, time consuming task
when you could just use plumbing. But maybe the ones performing this routine
throughout their entire life would have healthier blood pressure, or less risk
for osteoporosis, because of more frequent physical activity.

~~~
contingencies
Also cleaner water, increased lifestyle mobility, less infrastructure
maintenance overhead.

Incidentally there is a famous Chinese morality animation about three monks
fetching water
[https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s](https://youtu.be/Z802JqJ2A7A?t=30s)

------
redthrow
>> _But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it
anymore. Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made buying
music even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient beat out
free._

Does the author talk to his students? "Getting music free" is more prevalent
than ever. Many just go to YouTube to get their music.

~~~
gnode
Aren't you just saying that free plus convenient beat out convenient?

~~~
redthrow
I'm saying the prof is out of touch with reality when he says "But though it
remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore".

------
tmnvix
Once upon a time the accepted tradeoff was between quality and cost. Now it is
between quality, cost, and convenience. This is why things like bottled water
can cost more than fuel. It's also why Apple can charge a premium for it's
products (the convenience of "it just works"). People will pay a huge premium
for convenience and are also willing to almost ignore quality in some cases
(e.g. food).

It seems that if you want to be successful in today's market you have to
prioritise convenience. Just consider how many startups are based on the idea
of making something 'easier' as opposed to 'possible'.

Unfortunately, convenience is killing us.

------
essayist
The article confuses a variety of perspectives.

First, how do I, an individual, use convenience in my life, without getting
drawn down bad paths? I commute by a McDonalds on the way home, when I'm
hungry and exhausted. Perhaps I make alternatives easy (yummy leftovers I can
pop in the microwave), perhaps I fortify myself to resist temptation (eat an
apple at my desk so that cheeseburger doesn't seem as tempting), perhaps I
remind myself that cooking with my spouse is part of the fun and imagine her
smiling as I wield that frying pan.

Second, and different, how do I as a benevolent dictator manage convenience
for those I'm responsible for? For instance, as a teacher, I want to make
certain things easy (access to the right texts and helpful videos) and other
things (problem sets) just the right amount of "difficult" to keep students
engaged, learning, and successful.

We actually know how to do this, in general. Intensive care units are there to
make everything "easy" for really sick people, but few people get trapped
forever in the ICU.

The "tyranny of convenience" is a sexy title, but people always are drawn to
what's easier, even before the washing machine arrived. There's probably a
general cycle - we go nuts on the easy alternative, and then discover that
there's more to life. E.g. "slow food", custom-configured PCs, "back to the
land", etc.

------
PatchMonkey
Wow. Karl Marx the prophet all up in this op. If only the author would
recognize that.

Not saying Marx's solutions are best. But he certainly was relevant in
describing the problems.

------
makecheck
Convenience also weighs in to make it hard for people to push back on things,
by design. “Oh, creating an account is one click; to cancel your service you
have to call, wait, listen to a spiel, etc.” Or: “What’s this extra $1.25 on
my monthly bill? Well I could spend time inquiring but I guess I won’t
bother.” I am much more worried about these abuses of convenience.

------
andrewtbham
give me convenience or give me death

~~~
lifeformed
But only if you doing the killing for me

------
vests
We don’t wear bulletproof vests because it’s inconvenient while we wear
seatbelts and bike helmets.

------
b0rsuk
It's a bit subtle, but Frank Herbert's Dune universe is based on the premise
that spoiling convenience is outlawed, and punished by death:

\---------------------

 _In Terminology of the Imperium, the glossary of 1965 's Dune, Frank Herbert
provides the following definition:

Jihad, Butlerian: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers,
thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108
B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a
machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Herbert refers to the Jihad many times in the entire Dune series, but did not
give much detail on how he imagined the actual conflict.[4] In God Emperor of
Dune (1981), Leto II Atreides indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-
religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided
and controlled they had become by machines:

"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto
said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our
necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the
machines were destroyed."[5]

In the series, Herbert illustrates how the Jihad leads to many profound and
long-lasting effects on the socio-political and technological development of
humanity. The known universe is purged of all forms of thinking machines,
resulting in not only a ban on the re-creation of similar devices (which
remains in effect throughout the periods described in the original six Dune
novels), but also a great technological reversal for humanity. The chief
commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible, "Thou shalt not make a machine in
the likeness of a human mind", holds sway, as do the anti-artificial
intelligence laws in which the penalty for owning an AI device or developing
technology resembling the human mind is immediate death. This leads to the
rise of a new feudalistic galactic empire which lasts for over ten thousand
years, until the rise of the God Emperor Leto II in 10,217 A.G.[6]

To replace the analytical powers of computers without violating the
commandment of the O.C. Bible, "human computers" known as Mentats are
developed and perfected, their mental abilities ultimately honed to the point
where they become superior to those of the ancient thinking machines.
Similarly specialized groups of humans which arise after the Jihad include the
Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order with advanced mental and physical
abilities, and the Spacing Guild, whose prescience makes safe and
instantaneous space travel possible. Fringe societies such as the Ixians and
Bene Tleilax eventually begin to develop mechanical and biological technology
that, if not actually transgressing the commandments of the Jihad, at least
come extremely close. Prohibitions spawned by the Jihad also include
artificial insemination, as explained in Dune Messiah (1969) when Paul
Atreides negotiates with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who is
appalled by Paul's suggestion that he impregnate his consort Princess Irulan
in this manner.[7]

Herbert's death in 1986[8] left his vision of the actual events of the
Butlerian Jihad unexplored and open to speculation.[4]_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The author is correct. Maybe he should start by stopping the use of a computer
to write articles and columns. I mean what is more convenient that typing an
article into a word processor that makes it easy to edit and change words and
checks for grammar and spelling mistakes. Also, did he use Google to look up
any facts? How awful!

Once Tim Wu goes out cuts papyrus, pounds the papyrus into paper. Gets a
feather from a bird and fashions a quill with that, then makes ink, and
rewrites his column until he gets it perfect, then hand copies his column and
walks to my house and delivers it to me, then I will take him seriously.

Until then, by response is "bug off hypocrite!"

~~~
goatlover
You criticize society from within society, not from some cave in the desert.
Well, maybe if you can leave a scroll for future generations to misinterpret.
Also, just because you find some things wrong with society doesn't mean you
want to ditch all of it.

