From dustin's article:<p>"Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?"<p>Out of curiositiy: how much money 20 sets of designer flaware cost? Because if it is something around the price I suspect, then dustin's original article is very close to saying: 'I am rich, and you should be too'. You know where I live ... I've just sold some of the used clothes of my 1 year old child to a middle-class woman... Even buying designer stuff is about money, not to mention buying 20 sets just to try out...<p>Fortunatelly there are obscure hobbies for unreasonable people which do not take money. (Like learning set theory just for the fun (or insight) of it.)<p>tl;dr: dustin's original article is a triviality:<p>1. if you have enough money
2. you have enough time
3. your obsession is buying very well designed things<p>then go for it.<p>But it is a triviality that most people lack (1.) even if they do not lack (2.) and (3.) (And because of lacking (1.) many people lack (2.) and maybe even partially (3.) (having bigger problems, they do not think about these things that much))
It seems like this author misses the point too. At first it seems like he was trying to reshape the original posts' message into a sort of 'live the best way possible' message, but instead he turns his focus back onto material goods.<p>"This isn’t materialism, it’s a deep consideration for the non-materialistic things that depend on the material. A lamp for reading or helping. A flatware set for eating. A backpack for hiking. A towel for traveling. These are all intellectual and spiritual pursuits that are also important."<p>Eating is not about flatware, neither is hiking about backpacks, nor traveling about towels. Obsessing over the best backpack takes away time you could be spending actually hiking.
This does not share an interpretation with the "empty madness" retort - they may as well be talking about totally different posts.<p>Doshi writes "the takeaway for me is: find the best possible things you deeply depend on in life." Clearly, mapgrep instead read the post as a celebration of materialism. The meanness of the language may have been unjustifiable, but the point made was not irrelevant. There <i>is</i> an argument around how we prioritise people versus things, and some will fall so far on the people side that a preoccupation with things seems almost offensive. pg asserting that the popularity of the post was "the decline of HN embodied" seemed to me equally wrong. I (a lowly newcomer) thoroughly enjoy a top-voted post that strongly contrasts the submission, especially when the pair serve to draw attention to a dichotomy.<p>Edit: On reflection, the most interesting thing about the two texts might be that they actually seem to <i>share</i> a frustration with materialism. Where the author of the vitriolic response wants the notion of design quality entirely out of the equation, dcurtis liberates himself by settling it one object at a time. I see examples of both in my own life: choosing <i>the</i> watch or <i>the</i> sneakers and buying them over and over, so that I never again need to think seriously and qualitatively about watches or sneakers. And, in moments of design obsession, waking as if from a trance thinking "When was the last time I called my mum?"
Interesting that engineers spend an inordinate amount of time researching the best hardware and software, yet can't understand someone who extends that search into the material world. A search for perfection is admirable in my opinion.