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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this idea of engineers and tech people glorifying effort.

The whole point of engineering is about efficiency, like making a bridge that holds while using the minimum amount of work and materials. A bridge using more materials is not necessarily a better bridge.

You can often make things better by putting in more effort but it may also be counter productive, sometimes the easy solution is the best. Some ready to eat food may be better than what you can cook yourself, even some reputable chefs admit it and the efforts they save on these parts let them focus on the parts where they can make a difference.

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I think you’ve misunderstood the point by seeing it through a purely practical perspective.

The point is that the most treasured and memorable things in life are products of great effort. You can have a ready to eat meal but there’s also some value in learning how to cook and eating something that you yourself made. Sometimes a ready to eat meal is the only option, but limiting yourself to ready to eat meals for the rest of your life (for their practicality) is a very bland way to enjoy your ability to eat.

Even if you achieve the exact same outcome (e.g., you buy a well-made omelette from an eat-in restaurant, versus learning to make a good omelette by yourself), it's more satisfying when you've done it through your own effort. It's for similar reasons that food tastes better when you're very hungry. I think there's an element of scarcity, sometimes being a little uncomfortable, that makes it satisfying, or else you won't notice the contrast between having something and not having it.

It’s absolutely not more satisfying. This is not shared across people like some sort of natural way of being. There are plenty of things I can learn how to make but can’t be fucked because I’ll never find satisfaction in doing so. Cooking is a great one, I can cook quite well but I still hate doing it. Just because I can make something well, it doesn’t give me any extra satisfaction. I’d still rather buy a good spaghetti than make and I surely enjoy one I didn’t cook more because I didn’t have to do shit.

I hadn't considered that not everyone would agree with what I said; thanks for telling me what you think.

My understanding is that much research does, in fact, show that it's more satisfying. Kids enjoy food more (eg, are less picky) when they've contributed to making it. People tend to value their own, lower-quality artwork than someone else's higher-quality work because they themselves put the effort into making it (and have some emotional connection to it).

I want to say I first heard of this finding through Jonathan Haidt or Daniel Gilbert, but a cursory search doesn't bring up the study.

This sounds like a common myth and not fact. I’d be happy to read research but I’m not going to bother myself because I 1) doubt very much it exists, 2) doubt that it’s remotely conclusive or good.

The point is more general than cooking. Clearly if you hate cooking, it's going to negatively affect how you feel about your efforts cooking. But the point still stands. Putting in effort to achieve something you want will very likely make you value it more. I built a new shower in my master bathroom - it's easily my favorite shower now because I made it. I built a road bike from individual parts, and it's my favorite bike, even though it's heavier and uglier than other bikes. I raise my kids every day, and I value them more than other kids, etc...

You’re missing my point entirely. It doesn’t. Thats what I’m saying there are plenty of things I can do, or learn to do, that I still hate. It doesn’t give me more value learning to do it myself because I just don’t care about somethings. It’s assumed and incorrectly so that this is some sort of shared natural way of being.

There is the famous case of Betty Crocker's cake mix. They found that buyers were happier if they had to do a little work, so they made the recipe more onerous!

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-the-box/20140...

That's an interesting thing to learn; thanks for sharing it.

The point of these dating apps is to make it much quicker to meet a potential long-term match, and thousands of people then end up marrying that someone after putting in the effort. I think as person who's used these apps can attest, finding someone who's a good long-term fit and then establishing a relationship is still a great deal of effort even with these apps.

I think that's the point being made. Those that put in effort will get something out of Tinder etc., but the bar of entry is so low that the high effort user base gets diluted and makes using the service less rewarding for other high effort users.

Our bodies believe that sugar is amazing. It's dense energy that is very fast to absorb and use. So they are built around seeking for it and indulge in it.

It worked because things that used to contain sugar were rare and not loaded with it.

Our smart species then went for concentrating the stuff we love so much, and make it easy to get.

And today, it's a problem for us.

It's the same thing with netflix, dating apps, porn, etc.

There is nothing wrong with a little sugar to make your life sweater.

But sugar alone is not going to sustain you. And too much will be very bad for you.

We have have been very good are removing the effort at getting a lot of it. But we are not good are taking just what we should now that we have it. And even worse at getting the rest as well.

Also it turns out the effort of getting it was not awesome, but came with some benefits we have now to artificially put back in our life. And we are not doing so with enthusiasm.

See also the hedonic treadmill. Anyone who has gone on a sugar fast finds out that most sodas are too sweet to tolerate. We have to acclimate to such calorie dense food. Which should be a sign we’re doing it wrong.

> The whole point of engineering is about efficiency, like making a bridge that holds while using the minimum amount of work and materials. A bridge using more materials is not necessarily a better bridge.

It takes a lot more effort to make an effortless-looking bridge.

Nobody is glorifying effort. Just using it as a tool. What's up with your idea of declaring effort useless? Do you have any evidence behind it?

The obvious engineering solution for people struggling with finishing a marathon is to get them motorcycles. It completely and immediately solves the problem. Do you expect those people to be satisfied by this solution?

Glorifying effort is something the Silent Generation did and the Boomers picked up. It still reverberates in Gen X in part because it turns out it’s not entirely wrong. Low effort rewards really has caused problems for the grandkids, and while the rest of the hipster aesthetic is mercifully gone the way of unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts, the return to craftsmanship is the silver lining. They didn’t invent it of course, but they cultivated it. The bulk of that material has moved from PBS to YouTube, for better or worse.

You don't have to glorify effort in order to vilify taking bad shortcuts or being lazy. Humans do have the tendency to do things the easier way even if it's an overall worse decision, that's the issue here.

>I don't understand this idea of engineers and tech people glorifying effort.

Because context matters, just like effort matters and easy solution in relationship doesn't seem to work often

I mean, effort comes from either time grinding of time thinking. The time to think of an elegant solution is arguably more effort than spending 100 hours brute forcing.

>Some ready to eat food may be better than what you can cook yourself, even some reputable chefs admit it and the efforts they save on these parts let them focus on the parts where they can make a difference.

It's not about putting effort into everything, it's about putting effort into nothing in your life. Sure, if you're fine eating fast food it's fine (just don't let it affect your health too much). It's fine having low quality hobbies as long as you have some other passion in life, even if that passion is as traditional as taking care of your family. It's fine not having passion in work as long as you have an enjoyable hobby. Etc.

But if you cut corners on every aspect of life, you end up without edge. Safe, bland, potentially lifeless. That's what mid life crises are made of when you realize you just existed for 40+ years (most people's better years) and don't really enjoy anything, or anyone.

The only reason to engineer a bridge is to cut costs as much as possible. There are very few bridges made that are engineering challenges because they couldn't just be brute forced with more materials, but all bridges are focused with money first. Look at old architecture, it is beautiful because they said "if we're gonna throw this much money at it, we might as well throw a little more to make it beautiful".

Getting better at making stuff made stuff less cool and more functional. In dating apps, instead of trying to actually match people that would probably be great together, they use the app to match as many people as possible together, knowing it will fail (or, function as a hookup), and keep the people coming back.

Procuring raw materials is a different kind of effort. The chunks of aqueduct still standing in Italy are there because they were accidentally over engineered to outlive five empires instead of one.

It takes more finesse to build a bridge out of half as much rock. And not necessarily half as much effort. In fact arches require you to build a temporary building, then the real building, then demolish the temporary building. Today we call it scaffolding.

If you can get the same thing for less effort that's a no brainer.

If you can get a similar thing that is of lower quality for significantly less effort, that may be worth it.

But sometimes, it's worth the extra effort for the extra quality.

Do you shove everyone into such tiny, restrictive boxes? Romantic partners certainly don't like being told what they should or shouldn't be and do.

Did the poster above you edit their comment? Asking because your reply is a complete non sequitur.

Doesn't look like it, and it's not an irrelevant response at all.

They generalized across an entire group of people "engineers and tech people" all but insisting that they should value "efficiency" over "effort". I am responding to the generalization and the forced assignment of values for those people (me included) prioritizing certain values over others (I don't). In general such an attitude of "shoulds" goes hand-in-hand with a lack of respect for others expressing complexity, subtlety, nuance, and especially agency in such matters. And also encourages race-to-the-bottom behaviors not just economically but also in social dynamics. It's an antisocial attitude and especially romantic partners lose interest very quickly when people act this way.

Source: I was like this once and see it in many techies I know socially. It's a mental shortcut that is common in social settings where techies dominate.

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