How To Have Things Correctly

I'm often told months/years after giving one out that the recipient still has it and cherishes it and keeps it in some special place where they always see it, which provides another little burst of me enjoying the thing.

This also teaches a lesson on the social skill of 'gift receiving'. Just remembering the gift received and signalling appreciation almost certainly created more goodwill and affiliation than actually buying an expensive gift and giving it to gravitron.

Every time I think I've run out of ones that are worthy of gifting, someone notices one in particular that they really love, and I say "you can have it" and they jump for joy and tell me I'm the greatest person ever.

Cost of jumping and uttering words: maybe a kJ. Social and emotional benefit to both parties: ??.

This is an excellent example/anecdote; thank you!

I'm going to start awarding "Gwern points" to people.

See also.

I actually see a connection between the two: One of the points in the article is to buy experiences rather than things, and Alicorn's post seems to be (possibly among other things) a set of ways to turn things into experiences.

participants who knew they could exchange their poster anytime were deprive of this emotional benefit of commitment

Cognitive dissonance FTW. "I cannot return it, so I better enjoy it!"

That link gives me a 404.

I think I just rationalized my spending on computer "stuff" - the ultimate experience good.

If you aren't currently someone who would use a muffin tin, and you don't want to self-modify in that direction, then the article seems correct in advising that you don't buy a muffin tin...

I think Alicorn's intended point was closer to "How will owning this item change my preferences and my habits? Do I want my preferences and habits to be changed in this way?" (Sometimes the answer is "Yes!")" than "self-modifying into someone who likes to make muffins just because I bought a muffin tin." You need to do the value-weighing before you purchase something.

Also, she's made an underlying assumption that a) you have limited resources, such that buying something is a tradeoff against buying something else, and b) having stuff you don't use creates "clutter" which is unpleasant. These points may not be true for everyone: someone making $150,000 a year probably doesn't have to ponder very hard on whether or not buying a muffin tin is worth it, because it has a negligible effect on their savings, and not everyone finds having a lot of stuff distressing. I do think it's true that most people err on the side of buying too much (see rising Canadian household debt) and keeping too much stuff around.

This particular post mostly agrees with the received wisdom, though the mention of the skill of owning positional goods might disagree with it. (Note the amount of signalling trouble that surrounds that conversation, though.)

Heh. For me it was mainly "Which Etsy supplier was that?" I've been wanting a good cloak.

Although the bits about "just having a thing that you could get the benefit of may not help if the previous lack of it meant the necessary motivation to use it was never really instilled as a pattern" actually helped. Going to have to plan to make more muffins.

I can't seem to find it in my quotes file, but I recall once reading an interesting few paragraphs by someone explaining that capitalism allows them to "own" nearly everything they want in the world. In some sense I am the owner of a 16 inch telescope, a jet ski, a table with a gourmet meal at the best restaurant in the city, etc., regardless of whether I've gone out and bought those things and had them assigned to be my property, because at any time I could go out and buy them if the whim struck hard enough. The world is full of warehouses and store shelves and other buildings whose sole purpose is to store stuff-that-I-can-have-whenever-I-want-it. Even if the transaction costs are still high enough that I may end up foregoing some of those luxuries, just having the option is itself a kind of wealth.

And in a way this bounty of materialism leads one to be anti-materialistic. If I own all these wonderful things, why bother with the inconvenience of storing them in my own house until/unless I'm ready to really experience them?

I wonder if other places in the world are more access- rather than ownership-friendly.

Strikes me that a lot of communal living would have this. Even just living with a roommate, she "owns" some of our kitchenware, and I "own" other portions, but we're both 100% free to use it.

Quotes on "own" because we'd probably work out who-gets-what based on practical considerations if it ever mattered (for example, I would have no use for most of our baking supplies if I moved out, since I only bake socially)

I place zero value on the fact of ownership.

I think I might be the same way. It almost seems weird to be any other way.

If you want to become this way yourself, here's a possible way to do it. Next time you're moving, as you're packing your stuff, decide, for each item, whether you ought to keep, sell, or trash it. (Keep in mind that most of the things you own you could buy anew pretty easily, so selling something amounts to converting it to a more convenient form of wealth (currency) for a certain overhead cost.) I used to experience a lot of cognitive dissonance when I did this, because I'd find myself wanting to hold on to stuff that had negligible market value and no obvious use cases. Then I made the connection with the endowment effect, realized I was irrationally overvaluing the stuff just because it was mine, and became way more willing to throw stuff out.

Or read this essay. Or watch this video.

...giving away/smashing to bits/losing/selling.

All kinds of used stuff can be traded online at sites such as eBay.

Leasing contracts are generally more complex than simple sale transactions, and they are more likely to generate contention between the parties, hence they are typically avoided for all except very expensive goods.

I take some comfort in knowing that some things are available for my immediate use at no marginal cost beyond that inherent in their use.

I also take some pleasure in knowing that I am responsible for the creation, maintenance, and decisions regarding some things.

Both of those are things that I consider 'mine', even when I recognize that the title belongs to someone else.

Of course, I value having hassle-free access to things when I need them, and often the only way to ensure this is by owning them, but when there is a choice, I'd rather not, even if it costs a bit more.

That's really interesting. Do you think this has to do with the hassle of looking after stuff you own, maintaining it, having it take up space, etc? Or is it something else?

Thinking about it, it's also true for me that I dislike some aspects of owning things I need–storage, mostly, and having to organize stuff and keep track of it. Every time I move apartments, I feel a brief urge to give away half of my belongings, even though nearly all of them I do use on a day-to-day basis. I still err on the side of buying rather than renting/leasing, though, mostly because it usually leads to long-term savings and this is something I place a high value on.

Is this supposed to be a way to save money? If so, maybe this strategy makes sense if you frequently find yourself overcome with difficult-to-resist urges to buy stuff that your rational mind considers a low-utility use of your money?

This is a fairly common problem. Mostly with girls–it's kind of a Western-cultural thing for girls to go shopping "for fun" and get pleasure from acquiring stuff, which they won't necessarily use frequently. I don't have this problem either, mostly because my threshold for actually buying stuff is really high and I've integrated "being thrifty and good at saving money" as part of my self-concept. But I observe it a lot.

There's also the aspect that using stuff is a good way to increase your day-to-day physical pleasure. A cloak feels nice on your skin, it's warm, it's comfy, etc...and reminding yourself to use it increases the amount of attention you pay to those simple, easy-to-obtain pleasures.

I think it's shifting from thinking about buying something to possess it, or to just have it on hand in your magical bag of holding, and actually buying it to use and experience it. I think the muffin tin example was a little more helpful, since the problem is you haven't trained yourself to spot muffin-baking opportunities. Similarly, I might think "Oooh, sweater-weather" not cloak-weather until I build up a new habit.

So, I'll make smarter purchases if I think about the times I want to trigger "I should use this!" ahead of time and make sure they exist, and I'll actually make good on my pre-commitment if I try and train those triggers. It's not penance, it's just habit-making.

My rule of thumb is that I generally don't buy an X for myself unless I've tried living without it, then borrowed a friend's X and found it helpful. This mainly applies to cooking and hiking instruments. And I try really really hard to not buy yarn (for knitting) without a project in mind.

Number 2 sounds suspiciously like a sunk cost fallacy to me.

Actually this statement seems like an example of Yvain's non-central fallacy, since her hacking her mind into enjoying the stuff she bought is not a bad thing unless she ends up buying more junk just because she knows that she can always make having it fun.

Of course I can give away, sell, or discard things I don't want. I don't see what about the post gave the impression that I'm unaware of that.

Key concept: "generally useful" versus "actually useful". I find the former to be another term for "not useful".

Electronic copies of every book and a reader you actually enjoy reading books on. I was surprised to find a Blackberry phone doing a decent job of being the latter, a much better job than my laptop did - I read all the time now, whereas I have paper books by my bedside I haven't opened in a year. YMMV, this is a highly personal thing.

Depends on:

• whether you like reading on screens
• how often you reread
• how many friends you have who a) have similar tastes and b) reliably return borrowed objects
• how much living space you have to work with
• how convenient you are to a library
• your finances, and
• to what extent you enjoy books as decor.

Buy all of them.

(More seriously, I go back and forth on this. My books are some of my favorite possessions, so long as I'm not moving- but every time I move, I get that much closer to switching to a Kindle.)

I generally dislike owning things that I can't physically carry with me at all times (because "if you don't have something with you, owning it probably hasn't made you more powerful").

This seems false on all sorts of levels.

• I own a kettlebell. It makes me literally and figuratively stronger.
• I have shelves full of performance enhancing substances. They make me stronger and not all of them require that I have them with me or even have a dose currently in my system.
• The Nuclear ICMB that I own is too big to carry around but being able to have it launched at will (or even if I fail to report in with a don't-launch code at regular intervals) certainly makes me more powerful.
• I can't carry a mansion with me, or a racehorse, yacht or business. Yet owning these things changes the way people perceive me and makes them more likely to do what I want. That is power.
• Owning the tools of my professional trade has made me more powerful---they allow me to earn more money. I don't carry them with me at all times.
• Owning jacket suitable for wet and cold conditions increases my power---it means I can go to cold wet places without getting cold. I don't carry with it with me when it's summer at the beach. I carry my surfboard instead. Generalising this principle I can't use all my power at once, so I only carry the power enhancing objects that are relevant to the immediate task.

I launched a project this week to replace [physical books] with digital versions which is moving at a decent rate of ten shelves a day.

I have a question about this, but I decided to put it in the open thread.

Here 'tis. Apparently I misremembered the price; there were a few dollar amounts batted back and forth before she determined how much what I wanted would cost. I'll edit my post.

The loved one just got her other boyfriend's cast-off laptop: a Dell XPS M170 gaming laptop from 2006. The key attraction is the 17" 1920x1200 screen and the decent graphics card. Uses: art, gaming, movies. Weight: 4kg. Not quite convenient, but can in fact be used in one's lap. I must say, I've found 11-inch gaming laptops a temptation (though I still think of laptops as things one's employer pays for).

This is all somewhat ironic, considering I just bought a desktop PC specifically to start gaming again.

I just bought a new laptop specifically with gaming in mind. Seems to work great, though I've only tried it with XCOM so far.

Possible approaches:

1. Unplug your gaming PC and put it in a closet for a week. See how your time use changes.
2. Investigate getting really long monitor / keyboard / mouse cables, so you can have the desktop PC somewhere besides your workstation, but still have low-ping access to it from your workstation. (Alternatively, remote into it from elsewhere, though this may run into graphics issues.)
3. Become at peace with the space it takes up around your workstation.

I find playing the best liked games from three years ago sort of optimal.

1. Looking back the best games of 2010 or 2009 are easier to identify
2. Fully patched pirated versions are around
3. You can run them on a reasonably priced laptop.

No, it's a reference to the fact that Eliezer appears to use the parties as focus groups and this is silly.

For my own part, I think I'm one of those people who is not made happier by having things have the wrong things. Although I'll admit it amuses me sometimes, depending on what wrong things those things have.

Would it help if I added an ellipsis between "having things" and "have the wrong things"?

That kind of money would certainly enable happiness, but I doubt it'd reliably cause happiness. Suddenly removing the need to ever work again, without developing the mental habits needed to exploit that freedom, sounds like a recipe for boredom and listlessness.

I get the impression that money is important to happiness mainly insofar as it affects people's locus of control. That explains the data pretty well: lower-income individuals are on average likely to feel less control over their lives and thus to be less happy, but where we find exceptions to that rule (i.e. broke college kids) we find happier populations. More money implies more options and also a cultural presumption of agency (which hasn't been researched much but probably should be). Above a certain point, though, we hit diminishing returns: an upper-middle-class income gives you more options than a middle-class income, but the diffs are smaller. Eventually they're drowned out by uncorrelated noise: happiness set points, habits, accidents, non-financial life choices.

This predicts that uncorking a $10^10 financial genie wouldn't much affect most people's happiness. As far as I know, windfalls of that magnitude are so rare that there's no data to speak of, but there is a pretty good record of happiness research on lottery winners that seems to back this up on a smaller scale.

If money doesn't buy you happiness, you don't have enough money.

It's trivially true that multiplying the amount of money you have by 10,000 will probably make you much happier, but the interesting question is whether this is the easiest or most efficient route to increasing happiness. Since most people have no practical path to acquiring ten billion dollars, and most people could learn to enjoy their possessions more, Alicorn's piece is quite useful.

"I would never work again; instead, I'd pursue whatever projects I found interesting“. That kind of freedom could enable you to be quite happy.

Why is there this cultural assumption that everyone dislikes their job and would do something else if they had the option? I honestly think that if I had ten billion dollars, I would continue to do a lot of the things I currently get paid to do, only for fun. This has a lot to do with the way my brain's motivational system works–if I'm not in a structured environment, my default is to mess around doing random stuff that doesn't output much of value, which I don't endorse myself doing and which I don't actually find all that pleasurable (although it is a good way to recharge when I'm exhausted.) Work provides a structured environment, and it's not all that hard to modify the environment a little bit and yourself a little bit to enjoy work more.

Maybe this isn't attainable for everyone–there are some jobs I wouldn't want to do–but given that most people do have to work, shouldn't enjoying it be more of a goal?

I think what you intended to say is "There are a lot of things which would make people happy, except that they are not financially feasible."

Also, when discussing amounts of money which approach the GNP of a small country, you can't just 'get' the wealth without there also coming into existence a small country whose GNP you get. For small amounts of wealth, rounding errors in inflation will mask the effect.

I'd like to hear more about your Empowerment framework.

The way I keep from leaving my laptop anywhere is to put my car keys in the laptop bag.

Barring rides with other people and mass transit, it's impossible to leave your car keys somewhere. And if you travel mass transit, you could leave your wallet in the laptop bag instead. But even if you do travel sans car, you will notice your lack of keys/computer the second you get home, instead of figuring it hours or days later when you try to use the computer.

I do this trick with things beside my laptop, like if I'm helping move furniture and don't want to endanger the phone in my pocket, I make sure my car keys are one of the things I remove also. If I'm somewhere else, and there is anything I might leave, my keys are with it. (And this rule also requires that all of my things are in the same place, another good rule in general.)

I also do this at home, in a way...I put things I need to remember to take with me on top of my car keys, so I can't take the keys without picking that thing up. (This is obviously not a good plan if you can't keep track of where you leave your keys at home, as it will make them harder to find. But I don't have that problem, I only have one place they ever get left.)

Physically attach the computer to something which is impossible to leave behind, or which provides a physical cue when you walk away from it?

I keep my smartphone in a belt holster; it is (almost) always either on the charger, in the holster, or in my hand.

There exist wallet-finders and so on but I haven't used one. Attaching it to a laptop may keep you from forgetting it places, though it might be the sort of thing that's inconvenient enough that you end up not using it.

If you want to attack this from the "quit losing them" angle, one way is to use spaced-repetition software to train you to notice when you're in circumstances where you might be about to walk away without your computer (or whatever your failure mode is). I do something like this to train myself to be mindful whenever I get out of my car. (For context, I drive almost every day.) Specifically:

• I have an Anki card that says, "When's the last time you got out of a car? Did you check what you should have?" The back of the card says "Dome light, keys, headlights, lock."
• When Anki gives me this card, I score myself well only if I remember getting out of the car and checking the things on my checklist while doing so.

I've been doing this for less than three months and it has not fixed my brain yet. But I'm pretty sure it works: Currently I might go up to three days without doing my getting-out-of-car ritual, while previously I might go for months and months at a time without doing it. (I lock my keys in my car around once a year.) I have similar cards for checking the parking brake, doing my leaving-the-house checklist, and putting my car keys in my pocket when I turn the car off but do not immediately get out. (This last is a specific locking-the-keys-in-the-car failure mode for me.)

Smartphone or tablet, with really snazzy synchronization with your main box?

If anyone but a resident female LW'er had made this exact post, it probably would have been downvoted. Instead its friendly banter, "community building" and sharing personal anecdotes.

Counterexample: imagine Eliezer or Yvain posted this.

If anyone but a resident female LW'er had made this exact post, it probably would have been downvoted. Instead its friendly banter, "community building" and sharing personal anecdotes.

Being a notable female probably helps when making this kind of post, being Alicorn specifically probably helps somewhat too, especially since Alicorn's post-related status includes this general area of topics. But don't underestimate the value of the post being well formatted, easy to read, and including a clear summary of the content at the top. There is also clear acknowledgement of the accepted finding in the related areas (positional vs absolute, experience vs objects, etc.).

Add lots of signalling about feeding the LW alphas.

I don't understand what you are saying here that relates to the post. (Nevermind my objection to using 'alphas' as a plural within a single social group.)

We already have a poll about whether this is useful content, and it's currently at +32. I can imagine a few reasons why you made this second poll, but none of them are exactly complimentary.

I agree with you that this shouldn't be in main, and retracted my upvote accordingly. I did still find the post useful though, and I'm really damn certain it wouldn't be downvoted no matter who posted it. (Have you seen how few posts get downvoted!?)

This poll suffers from Lost Purpose. It sounds like you are mostly interested in "Does this belong in main?" but used a poll based on a premise that people don't necessarily agree with as the actual poll target.

Voted “Incorrect” just for the “female” part -- see thomblake.