from Hacker News

The Diderot Effect

by henrik_w on 3/25/23, 10:10 AM with 88 comments

• by noduerme on 3/27/23, 3:58 AM

  There's probably a corollary, although I don't know the name for it. I still have one pair of shoes and a week's worth of shirts and underwear, an old projector and 10 year old speakers although I own a house and have a net worth over $1m.

  I've certainly felt the sudden gravitational pull that comes from having one nice new toy enter your life. It manifests as a sense that "wow, this little overpriced thing is so enjoyable... why am I sitting on a pile of savings and denying myself things that would make my life so much nicer?" Slowly, I started spending $20 for a bag of coffee beans I really like instead of $12 for something that's just okay. But it has to stop somewhere.

  I realize I only buy the big ticket items when I either am seriously depressed or feel like I'm going to die soon, or both. The rest of the time, money in the bank is more interesting to me than nicer stuff. This is probably a phobia of spending money that I'll go to my grave with.

• by gwd on 3/27/23, 8:54 AM

  How strange -- I'd never heard of the Diderot effect, but it was exactly the topic of a book I had when I was a kid. It starts with an older couple who are poor, and have shabby worn-out things, but are happy. One day the man breaks his shoelace, so he buys a new one. But then it makes his old shoe look shabby, so he buys new shoes. But then his clothes look shabby, so he buys new clothes. But then his wife feels shabby, so she buys new clothes. But then all their furniture looks shabby, so they buy new furniture. But to buy the new furniture they had to borrow a bunch of money; and of course they can't afford the payments, so everyone comes and takes all the new things away, and they're happy and poor again.

  EDIT: Although, according to Wikipedia, the term "Diderot Effect" was coined by a paper published in 1988. I don't remember when I saw the children's book, but must have been published before, or very soon after, that paper was published.

• by tobr on 3/27/23, 11:51 AM

  I can’t remember where I heard this quote, but I often think about it:

  “I don’t like to buy things for my things”.

  For example, if you buy a car or a house, it’s basically guaranteed that you will soon need car things and house things. Many of those things will in turn require their own things, and so on.

  It’s interesting to consider the longest thing chains you have in your life, so you can avoid making them longer or avoid starting new ones.

• by great_psy on 3/27/23, 5:44 AM

  I think this some of this is actually forced upon us by technological advancement too.

  I started doing photography over the pandemic, I started with a 2009 dslr, because that’s what I had lying around.

  Because I did not even know how to expose a photo, it was great, and it felt like it did everything I wanted. I was very used to the layout, the functions, and although it was only 12MP, it took some of my favourite photos. All with lenses worth <300$.

  Later I received a new mirrorless, 4K shooting, 24MP camera. I changed brands, So some of it is on me, but I had to buy new lenses as well. Getting new $150 lenses was not possible, and it felt wrong to put $150 lens on a $2000 camera.

  So I got a few lenses to match. Not only that, but my 2012 MacBook Air was not able to run the latest Lightroom, and the older Lightroom version I had was not able to decode the new raw image format.

  So I had to get a new computer as well.

  All in all, a gift, that although is very much appreciated, cost me a lot more than the gift itself.

  I have no regrets now, the newer sensors, the better tracking, the better lenses, all allow me to take much better photos. But if I would have stayed with my old camera, I would have never known what I was missing.

• by BaudouinVH on 3/27/23, 6:43 AM

  My native language is french and I'm flabbergasted to see that this wiki page hos no french translation. I plan to create it.

• by crazygringo on 3/27/23, 1:46 AM

  Huh. I definitely experienced that with OXO brand tools in my kitchen. Once I had a few of them, the rest of my kitchen tools seemed so cheap/crappy in comparison, now they're somehow 80% OXO after a few years.

  The Diderot Effect is real.

• by leoxiong on 3/27/23, 1:50 AM

  Interesting. I guess this partly explains lifestyle inflation.

  Also came across this blog[1] after reading the wiki page.

  [1] https://jamesclear.com/diderot-effect

• by eimrine on 3/27/23, 7:06 AM

  The "Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown" is a life-changing short story for me. I considered this as a nice introduce of Stoicism in my life. Old dresses are so more comfortable especially because I do not need to care about minor issues with it and because it forces me to stop considering about my look as something important at all. My work is what really important.

• by k7vin on 3/27/23, 2:51 AM

  Diderot Effect and a few more points re: our consumption habits. Via Dr Laurie Santos [cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Yale University] and her podcast about 'demonic possessions': https://objet.substack.com/p/demonic-possessions

• by lordleft on 3/27/23, 3:29 AM

  Fascinating. I guess there’s an element of aspiration in purchasing things…we are partially constructing the person we want to be

• by 5mv2 on 3/27/23, 2:49 PM

  As a European, I really appreciate San Fransisco deca-millionaires intentionally tastelessness.

  I remember a podcast of Tim Ferris where he was boasting that people often complimented him on his Vans black shoes because "they could pass as dress shoes". No one past the age of 15 would be so tasteless as to share such a compliment, and that's what's beautiful about SF.

  SF also happens to be the place where I heard a deceptively powerful method to get rid of stuff

  1. Put all your stuff in boxes 2. Pick items out when you need them 3. After a year, throw everything you don't use

• by notShabu on 3/27/23, 3:41 PM

  Photography and similar hobbies tends to have a "quality bottleneck"

  A full frame camera needs more expensive bigger lenses which needs a higher quality tripod, larger and faster memory cards, more powerful computer for the editing, etc...

  Improving one thing requires improving everything since the final output is limited by a "bottleneck"

  The Diderot Effect seems to point out a similar "identity" bottleneck where a higher quality(status) identity is bottlenecked by the lowest quality frustration.

• by shmde on 3/27/23, 11:09 AM

  Damn didn't realise that I went through this.

  Had a broken mouse, bought an expensive mouse to replace it. Mouse looked better than my keyboard. Ditched my membrane keyboard with a Mechanical keyboard. Read that different switches make different sound. Bought a new pack of switches. Someone recommended that those switches work best with XDA profile keycaps. Went ahead and bought that. This effect is real.

• by totetsu on 3/27/23, 3:49 AM

  This was referenced at the end of the recent Japanese Toilet episode of South Park.

• by sammalloy on 3/27/23, 8:51 AM

  Fascinating article. This has happened to me several times, the most notable of which occurred when I spent an unusual sum of money on a fine Italian shirt for a wedding reception, and everything went crazy after that. I opened my closet one day and I had thousands of dollars of shirts, all of which I wore, but I couldn’t afford. Most of those shirts are gone now, due to their limited shelf life, but as luck would have it, the original Italian shirt was so well made, it’s still in my closet and looks brand new. I’ve worn it and washed it a hundred times and it looks as good as the day I bought it. I’ve never had another shirt like it.

• by pgt on 3/27/23, 10:20 AM

  Reminds me of good coffee, high-fidelity audio and Lisp (Paredit, specifically).

  Once you have heard well-tuned, low distortion audio, it is difficult to enjoy a badly-tuned, distorted system. The curse of knowledge.

• by gspencley on 3/27/23, 2:50 PM

  Been there. Most recently with filmmaking gear. Started with a new camera, I knew I'd need lenses and accessories and budgeted accordingly. What I didn't expect was the external monitor, mounting cage, lens filters, haze/fog machine and some of the lighting-related gear that I ended up getting. Then I found myself going down the vintage lens rabbit hole ... luckily by that time I saw what was happening and cut myself off lol.

• by apienx on 3/27/23, 5:54 AM

  The effect explains many a divorce. Identity is much more fluid than most people realize (corollary: strong values and principles are uncommon).

• by Borrible on 3/27/23, 4:09 AM

  What's more expensive, to be rich or to be poor?

• by eternityforest on 3/27/23, 10:11 AM

  Tech has this effect very strongly since almost all modern tech is part of multiple ecosystems. Luckily it's nowhere near as expensive as true luxury goods, and often seems to almost replace their role, so overall consumption and expense isn't as bad as one might expect.

• by trilobyte on 3/27/23, 2:55 PM

  Warhammer 40k players <sweating intensifies>

• by hgsgm on 3/27/23, 12:59 PM

  Load-balance your luxury, don't min-max.

• by bananatron on 3/27/23, 3:19 PM

  Try to only acquire stuff that looks kind of broken and life becomes cheaper.

• by dandare on 3/27/23, 12:14 PM

  To save this planet, we need to make frugality sexi again