On Choosing the Inferior
Blubs of Verbs, Commentary, Thought Crime Comments (3)
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”-Abraham Lincoln
We’ve alluded to the fact, in these editorials, it seems humans like settling for second best. We claim we want a better mouse trap but really we really don’t want a better mouse trap, we want to not see the dead mouse. Humans over and over again make choices based on “profitably” and “little hassle.” This entire thing brushed into my mind to me as i listened to JFK. “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
When’s the last time we really did something hard? Is living a risk averse lifestyle so much better? I’d actually say yes, A risk averse lifestyle does not make you sedate or prudish, but, some risk are calculations meant to fight spending money.
People do not like change. Infact, they fear it, and any excuse, given political, religious, monetary or simply hate, develops and positions become intractable. Often, we reduce it to money but money is the easy culprit as is trying to ensure share holder value.We see this trend toward second or inferior applications of products and services in many industries:
Take for instance the safety saw. Inventer STeven Gass spent considerable amount of money, time and effort in trying to stop you and i from cutting off a limb with a circular saw. Why did it cost so much effort to even get agreement it worked? The commonly accepted reason of course is that he was fighting corporate interest, blah blah blah… What he was fighting was the bottom line, the cost of innovation and more importantly an uncanny ability of people to rationalize dangers as acceptable. Assembly lines are run at unit cost and even a small change, affects variable cost, which will change not only Gross Margin but also may touch on capital budgets and operation cost. EBIT will of course be affected. And in todays Wall street , earnings per quarter world, that is a nono.
Phones companies were the same way, until the Iphone. They constantly worked at making the phone do phone things and hiding features only the young would bother with. Now since Apple has redesigned the phone, it’s amazing how we all wanted those new features (note at the time of this writing i don’t have an iphone.)
Other examples? Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse, and that had to be dragged out of storage decades later by Bill gates and his Partner. It’s flat out a better way to use a computer to move about the screen quickly, yet, it almost died in a small closet. Jay Harman has invented a better way for mechanics to move about it fluids and air (which curiously models fluid dynamics) and years later, nothing, he’s not been able to convince anyone to use his knowledge. Use of other inferior products are not new. Nascar drivers fight almost every incrase of saftey devices, until someone dies. The HANS device was one of the best example of this resistance until the death of a very popular driver in Dale Earnhardt. Ever wonder why a race car driver can walk away from a 200mph crash in which his car flipped 6 times, yet 15 people die in a 40mph collision? I do.
Such weird, paradoxical examples are new, but may I remind you of the old examples about Galileo, and the fact that we were the Center of the Universe for a while, contrary to all evidence.
This “Thought Crime” is baffling, yet fascinating all the same. Yet we look back at people smoking and wonder why? or those who ride without helmets. On a genetics level, i wonder where this permanent skepticism comes in and why it’s there. We don’t want to be gullible fools, but why do we insist on keeping things, doing things, advocating things we know to be inferior to the new things that are presented to us. Is it that GUT feeling I talked about? Or is it Cognitive Dissonance gone wrong?
Sometimes, I weep for us.
What do you think?
OceansOfThought @ June 9, 2008
I haven’t had access to the internet in a few days, courtesy of the flooding and subsequent evacuation of my office building, so you’ve been spared my opinion; alas, the waters have subsided and so has the refuge of my silence.
I have seen television commercials of household chemical producers stating that their company prides itself on releasing new versions of a product only when the consumer can tell a marked difference in quality. However, when I go to the local shopping emporium, I’m given dozens of laundry soap alternatives, and to be honest I can’t tell the difference between any of them. It may be because even the best is only incrementally superior, or it could be (and more likely is) because I just have never had a deep-seeded love for either laundry or fashion. I.E. I don’t pay attention to differences in things I don’t really care about.
The same holds true for technology. I have a working radio and a pile of CDs that I never listen to, incremental changes in MP3/iTunes/downloading quality don’t mean anything to me. I don’t know what makes a BluRay (sp?) disk better than a DVD, and I doubt I’ll ever feel the need to find out. It’s not that I don’t like music or movies, they just are not the most important things in my life, and second best really is good enough for my needs (or wants).
This is not to say that I’m cheap, or that I live an Amish (luxery-adverse) lifestyle. In the past two weeks I spent $600 on playground equipment for my children to play with in my backyard, and another $400 on fancy tiles so I could decorate a table and chair set for my patio. I’m not interested in a hand-held machine negating my ability to read a hard-copy map or to use my own common sense, but I am interested in creating and maintaining a hospitable environment for myself, and those with lives touching mine. Sometimes choosing second-best in one aspect of life is not settling, but necessary in achieving excellence elsewhere.
PS-I actually intended this comment to appear under “On Choosing the Inferior”, but I wasn’t able to post on that page.
Perhaps i should change the editorial to say, the dangerously inferior. I chose the $9 shirt over the $50 even thou i know the $10 shirt will not last. I however wouldn’t really stand in the way (legal, governmental, etc) of someone losing a limb. We are too concerned with both money and the bottom line over safety.
[…] is good we know, yet, as I look around, I think i now know part of the reasons why humans like to default for the second best.., they have forgotten why they wanted top rate equipment or information, technology or […]