Unfortunately, I had to get a new phone. I don't like changing phones too often and prefer to keep them around four years at least, but I dropped my old one a few years ago and bit by bit the screen has just been flaking away until it has become too much of a burden to use. I decided to go with one that has a decent camera and battery life and had my eye on the Honor Magic8 Pro, but it was too expensive. But I was able to get on a "deal" at about 30% off, and not have to pay upfront or interest.
So I bit the bullet.
I hate setting up phones.
And after coming back late last night from visiting friends and with a gin and cranberry in hand, I decided to start the process. It is easy enough these days, though it never seems to go as smoothly as it should. Though the part I hate is trying to get everything usable again. After having the layout set for years on end without little change, even after moving things around and cleaning it up to be close, everything is still slightly out of place at least, with some things well out. It doesn't take long to learn, but it always feels like a bit of unnecessary hassle I don't need in my life.
I went and had coffee with a friend today and we were talking about how much time most of us spend doing things that don't actually add much value to us, or the world. As I see it and I think he is beginning to warm to the perspective, if we aren't doing something that adds wellbeing value to humanity, we are pretty much just doing busy work. As I said to him today, people in argument will say "what about doctors" and that seems valid, but for the most part, doctors are treating versions of lifestyle diseases that are caused by the busywork we are doing to create what we are consuming. The entire supply chain for most professions and roles, has very little humanitarian value.
If it makes money, it must be valuable!
Nope. Most things that make money likely put more of a burden on our life than add any real value to us. There might be the impression of value, but as I was talking with my friend about people using AI heavily in the workplace, most of them notice they are getting stupider for it. They are incapable of producing the same, and what ends up happening is AI message is being met with AI message and every feels they are being more effective, but what is actually happening is they are no longer communicating with humans at all. Everything becomes filtered.
I used the example of the food delivery services where restaurants essentially have to use them, and pay 30% of their revenue for the delivery. If they don't, they can't compete, because not enough people are sit-in patrons. However, what this means is that other than the delivery person (usually a foreigner) who no one really speaks to (so I have been told, as I have never used a food delivery service), other than type of food and price, there is no competitive advantage points. Quality of service doesn't matter, friendliness of staff doesn't matter, or even cleanliness of premises. At the end of the day, the only contact a patron has with the restaurant in question, is through an app and eating the food. This means that there is no need to have a restaurant, just a kitchen and at some point, all it will be are "kitchen factories" with a lot of it being automated anyway.
Pretty dystopic in my opinion.
Yet it is a wet dream for all these people who are unable to answer a phone call due to anxiety of random, and who are unwilling to talk to anyone who doesn't speak to them with approved messaging. What has happened is that through screens, algorithms and our choices, we have cleansed our lives of randomisation of experience, which means that any uncertainty raises our fear level far more than it should, given the issue. Yet, for anyone who is a bit older might remember, the best times of our lives were likely in situations we didn't expect, doing things we hadn't planned, with people we didn't yet know.
The thing is, that when we get to make our own decisions, we actually tend to make pretty bad choices, because we choose the familiar. Randomisation however breaks our decision mechanism by giving us results we didn't know about or wouldn't have chosen, even if we had known about them. Randomisation forces us into discomfort and often we are glad it did, at least in hindsight. Not only that, it forces us to experience uncertainty in an environment that it matters, rather than in an engineered environment where we are essentially roleplaying life.
We are wired to seek security.
But it doesn't exist. The only thing we can do is mitigate risk. The way we evolve has been full of risk mitigation, where we have tried to secure food, shelter, companionship and anything else we need to survive. It kept us innovating, kept us learning, and kept us improving ourselves and environment. But now we have the option to mitigate risk by reducing our exposure to the world itself, which means we do not improve, and we do not evolve. The more we reduce our exposure to daily life risk, the weaker we become as we make our selves "allergic" to the environment, to people, to our own thoughts and feelings.
All from the comfort of our screens.
The capabilities of technology are impressive and a lot of it could be used to improve our lives, but as my friend said last night, we are greedy and lazy by nature. We want more security and we seek it in convenience. We think easier is better, without calculating the cost we are trading for the opportunity. And we think that the more secure we feel, the safer we become. Yet what we are doing, is painting ourselves into a corner of fragility, where even the slightest disruption, feels like the sky is falling.
Life is messy by nature.
Yet more and more, we are taking an approach where we risk nothing of ourselves. We insulate our body, mind, emotions and selves from harm. Do nothing, think nothing, feel nothing, love nothing.
And call it living.
Busy work.
Taraz
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For some reason this reminded me of a memory. I was an older teenager. We were at a party one night. We decided to drive four hours to Saint Louis. Take our picture at the Arch. Drive back. Spontaneous. Most of us was still sober thankfully. We took a wrong turn into East St Louis on the way home. Gas station attendant pretty much told us to get our white booties out of there quick. We did as told. Anyway, not sure if this is what you were getting at when talking about the best times being situations we didn't expect.
I am guessing that East St Louis has a lot of fast runners, so where your white booties quick enough? :D
We were in a car, so more than fast enough.
Finally, someone who also hates changing phone every 6-months, otherwise everywhere I go (mostly my company), they will just keep on changing their mobile phones. From Android to iPhone, from one version to another, and I will never understand the purpose of doing thia 🥲.
Moreover, AI replying to AI is hilarious and terrifying at the same time. I guess the system has already started. I cannot recall the exact name, but there is literally a Reddit type app where chatbots talk to each other. So the change is here. In trying to remove friction, we might also be removing the texture of life itselfm
Bored with their life? :D
We will conveniently make ourselves obsolete to even ourselves.
I'm kind of glad I haven't jumped on the whole AI bandwagon simply because it is convenient. I know it is just a matter of time though before it becomes necessary or inevitable. Congrats on the new phone by the way. I know exactly what you are talking about with all the set up. I hate it when people get new phones where I work because I know it is going to be a lot of extra work for me.
I am right there with you. It will likely cost me all the good things in life - but I will be me.
Whenever something is wrong with my wife's stuff, I end up being the helpdesk. She has Apple stuff though, so I have to Google everything anyway as I have no idea about the simplest things. Now she has a proper helpdesk at work, so I send her there.
My wife is the same way and it is like 10x worse because I feel like I am letting her down or I can't be her hero when I don't know the answer.
The benefit of randomness reminds me of a study I read of once...the effectiveness of shamanistic rituals for guiding the hunt.
From the archaeological record and parallels/comparisons with recorded historical examples, there was a practice of the shaman heating a large flat bone ( clavicle or pelvic bone) over a fire until it cracked , then interoperating the patterns to code for landmarks etc. The shaman would direct the hunt to a certain area.
The thesis was that this actually resulted in a better success rate. The reason, it was random, it over-rode the tendency to revisit the site of your last success and ensured a better chance of encountering game.
Random works sometimes it seems, and we have a natural tendency to avoid it, we need a hack to fix that.
A recent conversation with a complete stranger where he commented that the big plans, big decisions often pale in importance when viewed in hindsight, the things that had the big life impact going forward were minor happenstance at the time.
I have heard myself echo this same sentiment often over the years, it has certainly been how things have worked out for me over the last 50+ yrs, seems I am not the only one to have noticed. Small stuff can matter a lot
Random used to be baked into life, and now it is engineered out. So I guess we would have to engineer it back in, until it can naturally occur again?
It is like investing small amounts weekly. It doesn't seem like much at first, until the compounding really kicks in.
This post really made me stop and think for a moment. The part where you talked about busy work versus things that actually add value to humanity really stood out to me. It’s interesting how much of modern life is built around staying busy rather than doing something meaningful. Many systems we participate in every day feel productive on the surface, but when you step back, you start to question how much real value they actually create.
Step back more and then do what needs to be done instead.
I love durable phones and laptops. I hope my iPhone lasts 8-10 years (it's 5 now). My MacBook lasted 9 years (without a single issue), and I gave it to my son. Thanks to proper charging, its battery lasts over 2 hours and has an incredible number of charge and discharge cycles. At the end of 2025, I bought myself a new MacBook (passively cooled, fanless). I hope it lasts 10 years.
When it comes to PCs, they don't seem to last very long these days, even if not being hard on them. Macs seem to be better, but I don't know how to use anything Apple - I had an ipod once though.
hahaha.. u know me so well..
i am one of those introverts who don't like talking to strangers or answer phone calls much at all.. covid and staying indoors and all the delivery advancement was golden for me!
and the best phone i even had was a military tough flip phone. (i would get a similar one now, but i do need a few apps that only a smart phone can have. :( )
I see some phones in the shop that are "military" grade kind of things and wonder - who the hell needs one in Finland? :D
(US you might need one to go shopping)
My camera has finally arrived about two weeks ago. I should probably change some settings but so far I get better photos in the auto mode so I am just using that.
Make sure you take the time to learn how to use it properly, because automode won't be great for many things.
We often forget that true growth comes from embracing uncertainty and stepping out of our comfort zones, which is not easy to do.
Same here. That's my main inertia for switching phones, which turns out to be a good thing from a financial perspective. Hehe.
Yeah, I also like to go for about 4 years or so on a phone. I have however, noticed that screens tend to pack up after a few years.