Are things getting more convenient but less satisfying?

Yeah... sitting in front of screens all day makes us forget we are highly developed animals first, then rational minds second (or third). Out “lower” instinctual selves who crave that sensual/physical experience are never fully satisfied/soaked within that disembodied life.

Also, Modern civilization is making a lot of things "frictionless". Less friction is indeed more convenient. However, it makes us forget that a lot of "real-life" frictions (difficulties, challenges, Human interactions...) are what make us grow. Our "higher selves” who crave that "personal growth" are never contented with that bland/rippleless experience.

So, we are left in the middle in superficial satisfaction and security, with deep fulfilment (both lower and higher) always out of reach. I wonder if the "mental illness" epidemic has something to do with this, as a psychological mechanism to get us out of our virtual stupor.

Everything these days seems to come with some monkey paw-esque catch to it.

You can log into amazon and order millions of items to your home without getting up off the couch, but amazon only shows you the same products over and over and what you get is probably counterfeit or broken because amazon doesn't care about quality and they've made reviews useless.

You have endless entertainment for free on youtube, but it's all data collection and an algorithm dedicated to amplification of the worst aspects of your psyche. It'll entertain, and recommend you toward extremism. Don't even ask what it's doing to your kids.

You can use social media to stay in touch with everyone you love, but mostly it will make you depressed, and you'll need to self-censor and craft your social media profiles to best promote your "brand" to satisfy the future potential employers who will google the shit out of you before hiring.

You can have a tiny powerful computer in your pocket but it's designed primarily for tracking and media consumption. The engagement it's designed to extract from you comes at the cost of disengagement with the loved ones around you.

We have more choices in our grocery stores than at any point in history, but that choice is largely an illusion since every brand is owned by one of a handful of corporations. Those corporations can be caught literally and knowingly poisoning you and your children and they'll not only stay in business, but they'll stay very profitable.

It's really not the convenience of things that are the problem though, it's that none of the things we have are designed to serve us. Everything you buy* or use is working for someone else (often against your interests) and companies are dedicated to delivering the barest minimum required to sucker you into forking over your money, your data, and your control.

Give me something that works great and works only for me and I'm perfectly satisfied with it.

*it isn't yours.

Part of satisfaction is completing something, and fewer things end anymore.

You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all written for a sequel.

You don't just buy things, you have to subscribe to them.

You take a vacation, but also 3000 pictures.

Relationships don't end, they have long lingering deaths of less and less a contact on social media.

You never get the moments of walking away from prison a free man, it's just an endless series of half way houses.

I think one thing that is being lost is the idea of discomfort, or contrast. Think about how good it feels to go for a cool swim on a hot day. Or perhaps a warm shower after time in the brisk cold air? The satisfaction comes as a result of the discomfort. One follows the other.

I've long been a proponent for the idea of taking your hobbies outside of the digital world to something physical. So many programmers have Gaming, Twitch or more programming as hobbies. I think there's a rut that comes with distancing yourself from the physical world and I've long since believed the lacking element is "failure". To lose at a game is often just a state. You retry until you win, nothing is lost, perhaps time? Much of programming is similar, there's no risk to the failure of a buggy program. You debug and try again. But something physical has consequences. Using tools to build a cabinet shows you every shortcoming and every failure along the way. The result is not always perfect, but if it was something you poured heart and soul into it is loved despite the flaws.

Without the discomfort of failure. Of risk. Of stepping outside the comfort zone the reward is lessened. I've seen what I talk about summed up as urging people to "Create something, even if it is an experience for others" and I think that rings true to me most.

EDIT: I know others may poke holes in some of this. You can create things with programs. You can share experiences digitally. There's risk and loss in both, and that's true to an extent, but I'm a programmer first, perhaps a writer (ranter?) second so it's just difficult to articulate what the differences are. There's something physical missing from our lives when we center ourselves digitally and I think it's healthy to recognize that we're physical creatures still and need that "real" attachment to the world.

I don't think they're getting more digital and disembodied. I do think they've become far more homogenised and corporate and far less individual and authentically creative. And tech has enabled that.

There are countless examples. In the arts, artists would literally start with a blank canvas and fill it with imagination. Trad media are almost infinitely flexible. You can paint extreme photo-realism with oils, or extreme abstraction, or something between them. The limiting factor is imagination, not the medium.

Photoshop, Illustrator, and AI art generators are far more limited. You start with a set of standard tools which force you to approach creativity in standard ways. If you're in a hurry you can click-bang with a plugin.

Behind this are uniform corporate expectations of how art and design are supposed to be styled.

Example: currently images are supposed to be generic flat cartoony characters doing useful things. There's plenty of inoffensively tame corporate blue and/or green, some nice rounded maybe slightly quirky sans serif fonts, and standard layouts and sections. Sites that want to seem a little more exciting use red and orange - still pale though - and perhaps some actual photos.

It's all so tame. So is corporate productivity culture - to do lists, self-improvement, efficiency, fitness. And so on.

There's almost no randomness, unscheduled weirdness, surprise, or creative passion. (Real passion, not corporate "yes I'm passionate please hire me.")

When was the last time anyone was genuinely surprised by something they saw online? Not in the "Cool meme!" or "OK quite edgy" sense - but in the "Who ordered that and where did it come from, actually this is amazing" sense.

There's a sense in which all of this is like Newspeak. It actively trains people not to be too original or imaginative. I don't think that's a good thing.

I can strongly relate to the "less satisfying" part, but not to the "more convenient" part. Many things are instead getting more broken, unusable, and generally mildly infuriating.

Call any support line, get a robot suggesting you chat with another robot over some messenger app. Both the voice-call robot and the chat robot proceed to bombard you with ads. Not very convenient, that.

Even the stuff that was digital to begin with constantly degrades in quality. Certain apps on my Windows 10 box decide to autostart and can't be uninstalled (by conventional means, anyway), the latest example being "Xbox toolbar" or something to that effect. Published by Microsoft, wanted by absolutely nobody, not on this machine anyway.

As someone in my 40’s, I’d like to point out that you can still do most of this stuff. Want to visit a construction site? Talk to the foreman and ask for a tour. They probably won’t let you do the work, but that’s a liability issue the OP neatly skirted past.

EDIT: Have a look at baremetal's response to this. Volunteering on a site may still be possible, if you ask!

Want to look at Yellowstone? It’s a natural park with lodging, tours and all that. Make a holiday of it and go visit it.

Want to listen to Vinyl? Barnes and Noble sells records and players.

None of this is remotely off the table. There’s just options now we didn’t have 40 years ago.

Anticipation is one of the things I miss most about the 'old world'. I remember sending off for things in magazines, eagerly awaiting the 6-8 week delivery. Rushing home from school and checking the mail. The wait was delightfully painful. And when it finally came it was either awesome or a crushing disappointment.

Back in the late 90s I was looking for a CD copy of Primal Rock Therapy by Blood Circus. I went around to all my independent record stores to browse their used bins and talk to the staff, and checked trade-in stores/thrift shops etc whenever I saw one when I was out. Looked on and off for two years, and I remember to this day the exact moment I found it in a half-price bin in a bookstore.

I have trouble replicating that same feeling by browsing ebay listings; it's not an adventure, just a transaction. Like the dozens of other transactions I make every day. Comfort and convenience are nice, but they're not things that stir emotions and create memories.

I do music production as a hobby, and I definitely see this. You can get a lot of plugins these days that will do all sorts of auto generation for you — chord progressions, melodies, stylistic aspects, variations, and so on, and a lot of them are incredibly high quality.

Each to their own of course, and if I was on the clock and doing this for money I think I'd love to be able to click a button and create an authentic-sounding Motown bassline or whatever, but for me... while it does sound great, and somewhat depressingly is almost certainly better than what I could create by myself, I find it quite an empty and unsatisfying way of working. I loved it at the start — look how fast I can make a track! — but I've been slowly moving away from this sort of thing, and I'm back to having more fun as a result.

This question reminded me of Louis CK from a Conan appearance, "Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy" He says something very similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4

I think that’s my comment[1]! You’re mixing an anecdote about the 1930s vs. today a wee bit but that distinction is not really relevant to your question.

For what it’s worth, my dad and I generally agree that things have gotten both more convenient and satisfying on the handyman front. Far more tasks are DIYable now. Expertise isn’t a limitation and I’ve been able to do even more projects than he was able to. There is an incredible amount of satisfaction in learning and solving a problem yourself.

I’m not convinced this is universal. I think there are definitely cases where convenience is a thief of joy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33904360

Digitizing experiences (like metaverse, etc), yes, but I think I prefer digitization for completing everyday tasks. There are many times though where I've seen that making physical experiences accessible for those that are not capable of doing those (for financial or health reasons) has been a great source of contentment when it otherwise would not have been possible. If in old age, you're unable to get to a theatre but can still watch it on Netflix or at home, I consider that a win overall.

Things like banking, visa registration, and digital payments have gotten more convenient and accessible and make time for better experiences. I'm glad to have autopay for many recurring expenses and not have to worry about writing a check for every one of these. Making books and notes more portable has improved my contentment.

I have sometimes seen that once things have been made convenient and need to be optimized, they become less convenient than the original service. Customer Service over chat or tickets is oftentimes horrible, and every action you take needs your confirmation. Automation introduced in the customer service over phone is even worse than it used to be. I've started to see ads presented before watching videos on Youtube, and even before being able confirming an Uber or Lyft Ride. That time when you are focused to stay on the screen until they are ready for your decision are neither convenience or satisfying and worse than what originally existed. Here, convenience is being exchanged for profit.

All of modern comforts, and distractions, and noise, will make you less aware of what’s wrong in your life. It’s very important to know what’s wrong in your life. The problems of our time are very different, unlike previous generations whose problems were mostly material in nature. In our generation, the biggest challenge is to live life with all its pain and all its pleasure in equal amounts, which is very hard considering that technology solely exists to reduce as much pain as possible, and increase as much pleasure as possible.

And it’s not just technology, there are many other ways to distract oneself, which the previous generations used as well, but I emphasize technology because technology exists for that sole reason, and unlike anything before it, it is only going to increase exponentially. For most things, technology only provides a band-aid solution for the human condition without fixing the root cause, and people end up applying ten thousand band-aids, and then wonder why they still are still broken inside and need more band-aids.

In the end what this means is you need to reduce things in your life that you do out of avoidance of discomfort, and increase things that you do because you want to, despite any discomfort that they may bring. You can use social media if you want to. But if you are using social media where your want is borne out of avoiding some other itch in your life that you can’t seem to scratch, it is better to not use social media. Same applies to any other comfortable distraction. What matters, is not just the specific thing you are doing, but rather the intent behind it.

heh, I just finished reading "In Praise of Shadows" the other day and this same idea has been floating around my head for a while now.

My take is take any kind of technological advancement comes with trade-offs. In the book I mentioned, the author talks about a traditional Japanese toilet and how the way it is designed lets the light come in just the right way that it makes for some interesting shadows on the walls. The traditional toilet is not as clean as a modern toilet and inconvenient, especially in the winter, but its white and sterile tiles miss out on the beauty of the traditional wooden toilets.

That book was written 90 years ago, so it's pretty obvious this is not a new feeling.

I myself still buy The Economist in print, every Sunday morning at my local convenience store. My girlfriend always makes fun of me for doing so. She says I should just get a subscription. It would be cheaper and more convenient to do that, but I would miss out on other things I truly enjoy: I wake up early on Sundays and go for a walk at a nearby park. I get to see some dogs playing around, squirrels carrying nuts as they make their way up the trees, etc. I then walk over to the convenience store where I greet the cashier (which at this point is as used to my routine as I am) and we exchange some banter as I order "the usual" and then head home.

I have the similar relationship with the girl at a coffee shop near my house, where I always stop at around the same time. She sees me come to the door and laughs as she looks at me and asks "The usual?" and I laugh back and say "yeah, double espresso again". I could easily make that espresso at home, but I get value from my walk to the coffee shop and from chit-chatting with the people working there. I also sometimes get a free chocolate which is always a nice bonus :)

None of these things are convenient but I derive value from them. Technology will always advance and bring trade-offs with it. It's up to you to choose what you make use of.

The book 'Digital Minimalism' by Cal Newport expands on your reasoning. It mentions that social media, although convenient, severely impact your social life (in a negative way).

Us humans have been developing an immensely complex social system for thousands or even tens of thousands of years, and this simply can't (and shouldn't) be replaced by Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Agree with the statement.

The example demonstrates an offline situation where you see (feel, hear, smell) what happens physically, which is infinitely richer than watching a video. Next, the youngster participates in physical labor, which is very engaging. You feel it. You contributed something meaningful and this is immediately validated by real people. Senior people that you look up to. Body and mind feel accomplished.

The video alternative is fully passive. You didn't do anything or interact with anybody. Simply put, you didn't experience anything.

In general you could say we've become incredibly good in servicing our wants, whilst completely ignoring our basic needs. And frankly, most of the wants are made-up, a result of marketing and peer pressure.

With human needs in this context I mean your body needing to be physically active outdoors. We're not designed to sit in a cave in artificial light in poor quality air. We're not even designed to sit at all. And, we need to spend a LOT of time with physical people, not digital ones. We are a physical social species.

All of that has become optional. You can live, work, connect, entertain yourself and have anything shipped to you, nothing requires you to leave your house, get physical or talk to real people. That's wonderful, because with all this time saved...one can spend even more time in the house, sitting.

It's a hard pattern to break because it requires willingly becoming inefficient. As dinner time approaches, I can open an app and tap on whatever comes to mind. Or, I could cycle to the store, hand-select ingredients, might meet/talk to somebody, cycle back, prepare dinner, eat, clean dishes.

Quite a lot more steps, but you'll definitely feel more accomplished. You moved, got out into the world, saw/met real people, produced something of your own.

This is quite obvious in games.

I had the most fun in WoW when things weren't known at all, but then thottbott and friends came out and I became the "quest whisperer" in my group. It was even more fun as there was a feeling I didn't miss anything; but then those all got integrated into the game via add ons and then into the game itself, and there was no reading of quest text at all and the fun evaporated.

Puzzle games with a walkthrough are performative; there's not much difference between that and just watching someone, and the latter doesn't have the "aha" satisfaction of finally figuring it out.

But avoiding the walkthroughs and hints may mean you get stuck on part of the game for hours/days/months.

Or maybe you are getting older. Ask the teens and other young people around, they seem quite in the zone and satisfied with whatever we have nowadays.

>So I'd be interested to generalize this: with things getting more and more digital and disembodied (ahem, ChatGPT), does it produce convenience at the expense of contentment?

Hard to generalize because digital-virtual-experience being better/worse than in-real-life depends on the situation.

For example, I used to travel to many developer conferences but I now much prefer Youtube videos of the recordings. I can watch many more at 2x speed and skip around to the segments that are interesting. Youtube is not only a substitute but actually superior to real-life because I don't have to get on an airplane and listen to someone speak too slowly and thus get bored.

On the other hand, even watching Yellowstone videos in hi-res 4k on Youtube will not convey the same peace and contentment as actually visiting.

But back to the digital convenience producing enough contentment... I needed to know how to disassemble an appliance to replace a heating element. There was the perfect Youtube video of someone showing how to do it step-by-step. At the end, it wasn't like I wish he was actually here in person so we could have an emotional bonding moment or anything like that. I was perfectly content with the digital virtual instruction because it empowered me to fix something on my own without calling an expensive repairman.

I guess it ultimately depends on what aspects of the experiences are important to you as to whether digital substitutions will leave you discontented.

Yes it would have way more satisfying to write an answer myself and not have it generated by chatgpt:

It is a common belief that as technology advances and life becomes more convenient, people may experience a decrease in overall satisfaction or fulfillment. This is often referred to as the "hedonic treadmill" or the "hedonic adaptation," which is the tendency for people to quickly adapt to new levels of pleasure or pain and return to a relatively stable level of happiness.

One reason for this phenomenon is that as people become accustomed to a certain level of convenience and ease in their lives, they may develop higher expectations and desires, which can make it difficult to feel truly satisfied or fulfilled. For example, a person who is used to being able to instantly order food or clothes online may find it difficult to be satisfied with the same level of convenience in other areas of their life.

Additionally, the constant availability of technology and the pressure to be constantly connected can also lead to feelings of burnout and exhaustion, which can further decrease overall satisfaction and fulfillment.

Overall, it is difficult to say whether things are getting "more convenient but less satisfying" in general, as this can vary greatly from person to person and is influenced by many different factors. However, it is important to be aware of the potential impact of technology and convenience on overall satisfaction and well-being, and to take steps to maintain a healthy balance in our lives.

"The value of a technical advance to the whole undertaking of life must be judged by its contribution to the human opportunity for spiritual occupation."

"Other technical inventions enrich only the life of the inventor himself; they represent a gross and ruthless theft from humankind’s common reserve of experiences and should invoke the harshest punishment if made public against the veto of censorship. One such crime among numerous others is the use of flying machines to explore uncharted land. In a single vandalistic glob, one thus destroys lush opportunities for experience that could benefit many if each, by effort, obtained his fair share."

A couple of Zapffe quotes on how we aren't thinking enough about the effects of the technology we deploy. I don't agree with his statement against 'flying machines' but he is correct about theft of experience. People are robbed of experience and motivation by being able to go on Youtube and watch others do what they could likely do themselves with motivation and time.

I'll put it like this:

Before, if you wanted to meet hippies you'd have to go outside and find them - usually in a park or at a concert.

Now? Find their Discord.

Before, if you ever wanted to be a hippie you'd have to talk to hippies, hang out with them, debate them, and relate to them.

Now? You spend 2 hours on a search engine and realize they're full of shit.

Now no one wants to be a hippie, but a lot of people wish they did.

the human mind is not designed for instant gratification and overstimulation. Things seemed more satisfying to me 20 years ago, standing in line waiting for a playstation or game release and then playing it. Now a days, i download a bunch of games but never seem to finish any of them. The same goes for movies, friday night movie rentals were magical.

"Things" is broad.

For basic entertainment, I don't think it's entirely true. To me at least, a great home theater and gigantic back catalogs of damn near everything ever made available in my living room is a flat-out better experience than waiting and hoping for whatever is worth watching to be available in a nearby theater. Learning about the history of a musical genre I get into from AllMusic and Wikipedia, and being able to find the music more or less instantly on Spotify is far better than having to find old issues of New Musical Express and Rolling Stone somewhere in print and then scouring every record store in the city hoping what I wanted was there.

For human interaction, absolutely. You guys are great and all, but back in the high school/college days of hanging out late in a room talking the whole damn night about current events, philosophy, whatever topic we cared about, those resulted in far stronger bonds with people whose faces and names I actually knew. Sometimes friendships. Sometimes touch. Sometimes sex. Lots of basic human needs being met that are not all that well met by reading and typing text.

I don't know how far to take this, though. Remember you're romanticizing the experience of a guy who grew up in the Great Depression. Both my grandfathers are dead now, but they lived until I was at least in my late 20s, so I remember them fairly well, and have learned quite a bit more about them talking with my own parents now that I'm in my 40s and we can talk as adults. Their lives were not great. They suffered through incredible hardship that scarred them terribly. They were closed off, withdrawn, emotionally distant, and abusive to their own families. They killed people and witnessed enormous numbers of their own friends getting killed.

If you ask me was the pre-digital age better than now, you're asking me if my childhood was better than getting old. Of course it was. Everything was new and magical. I was healthy and got better at things and learned quickly. Life now is a boring grind. Is that because the world has gone digital or is it that I've gotten old?

Maybe.

Take fuel injection as an example. You used to need to adjust carburetors for altitude, environment, performance; today, an engine's computer auto adapts. It can be modified but the specialization required is much higher with much less reward.

Take computers as an example; 30 years ago, and updating an OS took hours and a dozen floppy disks, installing a new program took purchasing it, installing via floppies, now we have app stores and wifi. (Installing apks not from store is an example to still get this technical detail and satisfaction).

Take networking; a single access point is solved, but if you explore into mesh, or figure, hey, i stream 4k there a lot, i should use cat5, it's exciting when you solve the problem.

Yes! I had the shower thought this morning that gathering to go out to the movies with friends is nearly a thing of the past now, and one of the reasons is we have giant TV's in Walmart that take up your living room wall for $500.

I have an 80" tv myself and I can attest that it is LESS satisfying. I can see so many details in the film now that almost every movie looks low budget. No one wants to "come over for movie night" ..they have their own 60+ TV at home. It's easier than ever to watch a movie, but boring as heck for sure.

Just an anecdotal part of my life that is as you suggested - more convenient but less satisfying.

Traveling comes to mind. It used to be quit an adventure to travel (even in a neighbourhood country where people don't speak your language). You needed to do some research and put some work. Nowadays, you plan a trip to the other side of the world with a few clicks. Different experience. I enjoyed traveling more in the past.

Overall, I don't like the fact that everything is on the computer now. Work, traveling, watching movies, making music, paying your taxes, communicating with friends... I'm on holiday at the moment, It feels I spend as much time online as when I'm working.

Digitalization and disembodiment per se do not decrease my contentment. After all, touching and holding an great piece of engineering that is a computer or a phone is not that different from touching and enjoying any other physical object.

It's the ease with which digitalization and disembodiment open avenues for eroding my ownership of things and for making my things actively work against me that decrease my contentment.

Kindle is a great example. I like the hardware, I love being able to haul a lot of books around and not break my back, but I loathe Store UI part that is being pushed to me all the time.

I'm going to reflect on my faith to think about this (and, before you immediately skip, maybe hear my logic).

One of the most fundamental teachings of any religion is that we are a composite being of both a body and a soul. We have both a physical essence, and a spiritual essence, of what we are. Your daughter cannot be quantified by her body alone, as that ignores the wonders of her mind.

Many of the issues I see with the "frictionless" society (where everything gets more convenient but less satisfying) is that there is an increased focus on only one or the other - but not both. Bitcoin has a spiritual essence (as does paying with, say, a credit card), but no real "body" representing its worth. ChatGPT as well could be viewed as having a spiritual value, but no physical "body" representing it. Physical media (CDs, DVDs) are, in my view, ideal as a media distribution method because they are a body, and a soul, together. Why is an eBook so much less satisfying than a real book? Conversely, why are blank pages with ink smudged all over so much less satisfying than a book that's well-written? Why as an original console much more interesting and nostalgic at parties than an emulator?

It's just a thought on one potential reason for this. The best things, it appears, are a composite of both physical and spiritual realities; and something is missing when one or the other is lacking.

The Internet is a data transfer mechanism. Considering it equivalent to people or living things is a mistake. It can be used to deliver elaborate illusions, which are fun, but you have to have the ability to lose yourself in illusions for that to work, and at a certain point it's not healthy. But we live in a world that is anything but healthy except for the very, very well-off, and sometimes it's better to be lost in illusions rather than allowing oneself to be totally destroyed/subsumed in a hostile, unconquerable reality.

> does it produce convenience at the expense of contentment?

I don't understand those who have a constant/ambient need to interact with whoever is near them--seems to be a vehicle to relieve boredom. I don't want to talk to people while I buy groceries, renew my driver's license, or do other mundane stuff, and if someone is just talking to me because they are bored, that is something they need and I don't - honestly, it's not my job to entertain you. So I'm very glad of these conveniences such as online shopping, etc. and I am fine with it happening at the expense of those who use me for their own boredom relief/contentment without regard to mine.

It's an interesting thought experiment.

Recently, I've started switching my note taking to being more aligned to the ideas in the antinet zettlekasten. (See https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/). Basically, I handwrite notes into images that I store. This basically makes it less "convenient" to search, but I've found that doesn't matter - I seem to recall things that I handwrite far, far better than anything I've ever typed. And I can make pictures. But it's still pretty nice to have it on my tablet vs a card index (though I can still transfer between the two formats pretty easily using a scanner or my phone camera).

My sense isn't that there's this strict "convenience vs satisfaction" thing going on, but that there's more of a bit of a UX mismatch between how people kind of naturally interact with the physical world and the very limited interactions we currently have with the digital ecosystem. I find handwriting to be much more engaging, even on a tablet, versus typing anything. Though it still feels like we've barely scratched the surface here of what you can do with digital interaction.

Maybe AI improves on this, making these more physical interactions easier for machines to understand. Like, in my note taking example, maybe my handwriting could be used as input to a recommendation system for new books. Or, instead of thinking about YouTube as a replacement for physically being on a construction site, you could have shorter, contextual videos sent to something like an AR system while on a site, and then ask more significant questions of people when you get stumped.

I believe it is: I recently got rid of my music streaming service because I found myself constantly unsatisfied with my music listening. Don’t get me wrong I got to explore a lot but with that comes the “Tyranny of Freedom”. I then recalled the simple days when I had an iPod and how satisfied I was with my select FLAC albums.

Needless to say I installed VLC on my iPhone and imported my FLACs…

Karl Marx talks a lot about alienation as capitalism advances. Alienation from our labor, alienation from our society, and eventually alienation from the self.

Independent of how you think of the rest of Marx's work, I think it's useful to examine this specific concept in the modern era. What you are describing is a classic example of alienation from society - as our society turns increasingly to machines to create and deliver entertainment it's easier for us all to just... stay separated and isolated. Machines tell us marvel movies are profitable, so we get marvel movies, etc.

And I know hn is not a fan of Marx, generally, but this concept I really think is applicable here.

Not really.

You know what is satisfying? Watching a 10 minute video on how to replace my cars brakes and it taking me less than an hour to do it successfully the first time around. Or my dryer blowing cold air and finding a reason within minutes to have a part arrive at my home the next day.

It is both convenient and satisfying. I can focus more of my time and effort on my meaning as a human.

> does it produce convenience at the expense of contentment

Let me try: Have you ever purchased currency from an in-video-game shop? Did you feel like it was freeing to be able to then purchase everything in the game, and be a god amongst the NPCs? Did you feel later like you were bored, because you had already unlocked everything?

I have purchased currency a few times in games. Each time, I realize it was a mistake, because it took away from the hard work and the resulting payoff once I achieved my goal. By bringing out my wallet, I simply bypassed the game mechanics, thus removing the fun part of the game for me. Some people might find that convenience freeing, but for me it was boring. I think sometimes that we make things too easy, and it removes the challenge from life, resulting in lack of that feeling of achievement. Same with easy jobs, for some of us, which make us feel like we're useless.

I wfh, order most things online,etc... life has never been better. It depends on your personality in my opinion. Before I couldn't go to most restaurants because I don't like dining alone or just don't feel comfortable but now I can order those same foods at home. I could stay at hotels ir airbnb when traveling, Uber on its own has had a huge impact on me. I don't like to go out or meet peope so it's been a luxury!

The only bad trend is the cost of housing, less space and no backyard/garage means I can't do a lot of hardware/physical stuff that generates noise/fumes but someone here recommendes storage units and I've been looking into those.

I think age also matters a lot, generally people want or expect different things and interactions at different phases of life.

As someone that often watches videos on YT as research, then goes on to do the thing I can say I get little satisfaction from the YT videos and much more from the action of doing it. For me, it's usually small home things (bathroom remodel, etc). The youtuber's doing these videos make it look easy. You can use it as a planning phase and to see how things aught to be done but there is nothing easy about laying tile or making nice looking drywall plaster. It comes with experience. So, I find that when I actually do a decent job that I am pretty satisfied. Although, if I hired someone to do it, my expectations would have been just short of perfection and I probably would end up disappointed.

I'm putting together a litter bot (to pick up litter, not to drop it!) and it's incredibly how simple it is compare to hobby robotics, say, twenty-five years ago. You just plug things together and then write some code (which you can also do by plugging things together, e.g. Scratch.)

It's almost anticlimactic.

(Speaking of which, I found a Roomba in the dumpster. I'm thinking of putting a costume on it and calling it done, but that would be more of an art piece than a real litterbot, eh?)

- - - -

Anyway, contentment comes from within, it's not intrinsically dependent on any external condition whatsoever.

This is something we're very interested in at Double [0].

There's an abundance of consumption streams where, like what you described, you can watch something 10 different ways and get that instant gratification. But not much where you do things alongside others and create a sense of community, a sense of actually doing - something that is a core part of being human.

In my opinion, there's still a ways to go to make the web feel more human, and we're actually very hopeful for the future of it.

[0] https://doubleapp.xyz

Yes, because we are all becoming similar, through being fed the same information. Our brains are becoming all more or less the same, and this is powered by tech.

The end result is a progressively more boring world.

my perspective, which might not be universal:

the teen at the construction site was acquiring knowledge that wasn't otherwise available to him. the teen in front of youtube only sees previously available knowledge.

we're wired to be excited by doing new things - we like a positive first derivative (available knowledge increasing). the absolute amount of available knowledge is less important to us.

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

It certainly is. I can keep thousands of books on Kindle and read any at any time but there is something very enjoyable about reading a deadtree book that is just missing from the Kindle experience.

It's more convenient to get exactly the stuff you want and you get a lot more. Of course it get's less satisfying. For me, it's gotten so far that the satisfaction of getting things has gone down so much that now I don't really want much new things.

Also, everybody was a different definition of convenient and most of the time it means giving up control for it. I'd much rather have control and keep things a bit more complicated.

I was thinking this exact question earlier today but for a slightly different reason. I'm on holiday and I used a "Henry" to vacuum up after my kids this morning.

At home we use a cordless Dyson which is convenient but damn does it pale in comparison, despite the convenience and it cost 3-4x more than the "Henry" does.

We've made things convenient with engineering, but they often suck in comparison to older technology.

I was fortunate to travel a lot in my teens - all over Europe and parts of Asia in the 80s.

I have perhaps a dozen photos of those trips, but I have lots of memories seared into my brain.

Today my phone "reminds" me of experiences I had by showing me some of the dozens of photos I took.

These are totally different experiences, and it's hard to say the more modern one is less satisfying. Perhaps over-satisfaction is a malady worth considering.

Online dating is more convenient. Meeting a stranger in a bar or at a party, and striking up a conversation in the moment, is more satisfying.

Starting a startup.

10 years ago, that meant renting an office, hiring cool people from your city and hang out with them every day.

Today it is more effective to work remotely.

Tim Wu wrote an essay on this a few years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-co...

Also the abundance and instance satisfaction of many things makes the thing itself less satisfying.

A kid loves Christmas because of the presents, ritual, food.

But if you made every day like Christmas, it wouldn’t make the kid happier overall. The kid would get sick of it and move on to the next new thing.

I think in general, in regards to human companion and aprentenceship, yes.

I think however that with these conveniences, we're able to achieve much more satisfying things though. I certainly couldn't do half the things I do if I didn't have those convenient guides online.

It’s almost like when you put more effort into something, it’s more rewarding when it works out…

It has nothing to do with the screen, or living life virtually/digitally.

It boils down to the paradox of choice. Or getting older. Mostly when it's getting older - it's nostalgia talking. Humans have been bemoaning this state of affairs for centuries.

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality" - Seneca

Nostalgia is Greek for "returning [home] to suffering/pain".. ironic, isn't it?

We have more choice than ever before, and because of that, sometimes our choices don't seem as valuable. We are simple apes, after all, accustomed to making choices that determine the outcome of our survival.

So, instead of being able to only choose from an action movie, a horror film, and a rom-com.. it was simple - what were you in the mood for?

I have an unfortunate theory that "fun" and "fulfillment" are tied significantly to variable reward. If it's consistent you wont find enjoyment from it.

This is not new. It's always been more gratifying to eat what you kill than what someone else did.

imo sitting down with a newspaper and reading the whole thing is/was a lot more satisfying than reading news on the internet.

Poking about a vast news stand at all the magazines was very satisfying too. This activity, a hollow shadow of its former self. Very sad.

In the absence of quantified data, I'd say yes.

My personal opinion is that this is due to a lot of things besides digitization though. Regulation is one thing -- I think regulations sometimes do increase safety but then decrease access which is critical to experimentation and discovery.

Some of it is the nature of capitalism too. If you have a product, at some level you have to get the purchase to the point of sale (or at least to the point of no return). So that leads to a lot of selection for product characteristics that get the product to the point of nonreturnable sale, many of which increase convenience and superficial aspects of immediate satisfaction, at the cost sometimes of long-term satisfaction. Pushing back against this requires a longer-term process of not returning to a seller, or complaining about it, which is less immediate than refusing a purchase outright.

Add in monopoly and monopsony and things get even more complex.

I think what you're mentioning -- convenience allowing for short-term benefits that then miss the less convenient but long-term more satisfying alternative -- also definitely plays a role. I just think it's part of a mix of things that are separable but not necessarily totally independent.

There should just be a big popup that says "you win" and we can call it a day.

Yes, this is called “the industrial revolution and its consequences”