Very nicely written. I've been slowly removing thin desires from my life. It's hard to do at first, but what I've noticed is once I am free from them, I do not miss them at all. Almost like I was under a spell.
Us software engineers assume value comes from serving more people, faster, with less friction. But many of the things that actually make life feel coherent such as learning a craft, maintaining friendships and building tools for one person, only work because they’re slow and specific.
Tech doesn't give us the wrong desires but the easier versions of the right ones, and those end up hollow.
> A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it.
>
> A thin desire is one that doesn't.
>
> ...
>
> The person who checks their notifications is [a thin desire],
> afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their
> notifications five minutes ago.
[I added the brackets]
The author, I think, would label the desire for sugary drinks as a thin desire. However, that desire tends towards unfavorable consequences: mood swings, poor dental hygiene, weight gain. Thus it undermines one's body. This "changes you" -- for the worse, yielding a contradiction. If the preceding logical analysis is sound, the article's terms or argument are flawed.
I find it ironic that this perspective is being shared in such a "thin" way.
There are some insightful observations but the whole thick/thin perspective just doesn't resonate with me. As an old man (shakes fist at clouds), we have stopped prioritizing people. It is all about building and maintaining relationships and we've gotten lazy. And maintaining relationships is a lot of work and without it we do feel more isolated. So we try to fill that void with things that don't require effort like buying crap we don't need on Amazon and chasing likes on social media. We aren't happy so we try to be busy so we don't notice so much.
We saw a bit of a teeny correction during covid when people starting going outdoors and baking bread and cooking home cooked meals. But now everyone is back to working from home in their pajamas and tell themselves how happy they are with all the time they save not driving but skip over the lack of adult interaction (both good and bad).
But the problem is easily solved for each of us by things as simple as hobbies and volunteering and organizations (church, civic, etc.) Personally, I design board games and have friends over to test them and go to board game conferences. We've built a group that still test and communicate online but are happiest when we get to hang out and play games and go for dinner. There is no shortage of these opportunities but you have to get off the couch and join in. It is a place where you will make new friends and find happiness but you have to decide it is worth it.
From "How to know what you really want" by Luke Burgis [1]:
> There are two kinds of desire, thin and thick. Thick desires are like layers of rock that have been built up throughout the course of our lives. These are desires that can be shaped and cultivated through models like our parents and people that we admire as children. But at some level, they’re related to the core of who we are. They can be related to perennial human truths: beauty, goodness, human dignity.
> Thin desires are highly mimetic (imitative) and ephemeral desires. They’re the things that can be here today, gone tomorrow. Thin desires are subject to the winds of mimetic change, because they’re not rooted in a layer of ourselves that’s been built up over time. They are like a layer of leaves that’s sitting on top of layers of rock. Those thin desires are blown away with a light gust of wind. A new model comes into our life; the old desires are gone. All of a sudden we want something else.
Comparing the above conceptualizations with the ones offered by Westenberg (OP) could consume hundreds or thousands of words -- more than I want to spend at the moment -- but I will say this: both sets feel wrong, by which I mean they trigger my early warning detectors.
I'm not asking anyone else to trust my intuition. But you should trust yours. Intuition is usually a good starting point, at least.
With intuition alone -- without writing a full analysis -- we can see the above quoted explanations/definitions are highly complected. [2] Also, in my view, the offered metaphors don't carve reality at the joints. [3]
When I put ~20 minutes of concentrated thinking into the problem, here are some of the constituent parts of "desire" that I can unpack. (These are only fleetingly glossed over in the article.) In no particular order, to what degree are desires:
Over-simplication can be a disservice. Adding another metaphor reminds me of the "N+1 standards" problem. [4] Maybe the new metaphor helps, maybe not. Either way, now we have more to sift through.
Made me reflect on my own persuasion of thin desires and my struggle to control them.
It also made me see that my hobbies and my career are actually about following my thick desires. I'm in tech, yes. But I chose, among all the possibilities, to be an analog circuit designer. The analog part is what makes it a long hard skill to master, and my day job feels like constant learning from my interactions woth the world. I can't imagine doing anything which isn't interacting with the actual physical world!
I think this article is really true, and I think a consequence is that people are really hungry for thick desires these days but they cannot put a finger on it. They notice themselves not growing, they get the dopamine hit they were looking for but it feel like empty calories.
As a software engineer, I decided to build an app about side quests. Reading this article I realized I could not put a finger on what I was getting at either, but I just knew I hadd to add wholesome activities that were not part of my life into my life and I kinda built this app for myself (initially for a hackathon) and just shared it with friends.
Excellent piece, easy to read and I agree on most until this part:
'The surveys all point the same direction: rising anxiety, rising depression, rising rates of loneliness even as we've never been more connected.
How could this be, when we've gotten so good at giving people what they want?
Maybe because we've gotten good at giving people what they want in a way that prevents them from wanting anything worth having'
As much as it is true we are technologically more connected than ever, I would argue that much was taken away in parallel to what was given. The capabilities came to fruit but at the same time the governance and politics thinned out much of our desires at their core; ie now we're being told we want more and more because it's been determined we can't have certain things.
Even with thick desires, I sometimes find myself day-dreaming about the state when I have mastered a skill or understood a topic deeply. At the same time, I know from experience that the process never ends. Even when one does master a skill, one is deeply aware of what one doesn't know or understand or what one is not good at within that domain.
What helps me is to focus on today. If I can spend even an hour on a topic and get lost in it or even get frustrated by it, it is time well-spent. I was going to say "it is progress" instead of "time well-spent" but even that's a trap. Progress implies moving forward in a preferred direction. While I can't say I don't want to make progress, I am training myself to care less about it. It is really the time spent engaging that's most valuable (at least to me).
> The dough will rise when it rises, indifferent to your optimization.
Joke's on them! I run my oven until the temperature inside is ~100F - about a minute or so. Then I turn it off and set the dough in there along with some water (for humidity). It rises super fast compared to my kitchen which is ~65F in the winter and the bread is just as flavorful. Definitely not indifferent to my optimization.
I can't help but feel that this article was written in a format that is the textual equivalent of thin desires…
Every sentence is separated into its own paragraph, like each one is supposed to be revelatory (or maybe tweet-worthy). It's pretty common design knowledge that if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing. The result is that reading the article feels choppy, and weirdly unsatisfying, since the larger arc of each point is constantly being interrupted.
Why choose such an antithetical form, to what is otherwise an important and deep message?
The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.
I've seen this author's work elsewhere like Substack/Threads.
Good article, good writer.
But this whole post reminds me of a series of 1 or 2-line tweets. And I think that's the point. It's almost written as a series of scheduled posts that dribble out once a day for the next X days. Write once, re-purpose many times.
107 comments
[ 977 ms ] story [ 1643 ms ] threadTech doesn't give us the wrong desires but the easier versions of the right ones, and those end up hollow.
The author, I think, would label the desire for sugary drinks as a thin desire. However, that desire tends towards unfavorable consequences: mood swings, poor dental hygiene, weight gain. Thus it undermines one's body. This "changes you" -- for the worse, yielding a contradiction. If the preceding logical analysis is sound, the article's terms or argument are flawed.
There are some insightful observations but the whole thick/thin perspective just doesn't resonate with me. As an old man (shakes fist at clouds), we have stopped prioritizing people. It is all about building and maintaining relationships and we've gotten lazy. And maintaining relationships is a lot of work and without it we do feel more isolated. So we try to fill that void with things that don't require effort like buying crap we don't need on Amazon and chasing likes on social media. We aren't happy so we try to be busy so we don't notice so much.
We saw a bit of a teeny correction during covid when people starting going outdoors and baking bread and cooking home cooked meals. But now everyone is back to working from home in their pajamas and tell themselves how happy they are with all the time they save not driving but skip over the lack of adult interaction (both good and bad).
But the problem is easily solved for each of us by things as simple as hobbies and volunteering and organizations (church, civic, etc.) Personally, I design board games and have friends over to test them and go to board game conferences. We've built a group that still test and communicate online but are happiest when we get to hang out and play games and go for dinner. There is no shortage of these opportunities but you have to get off the couch and join in. It is a place where you will make new friends and find happiness but you have to decide it is worth it.
> There are two kinds of desire, thin and thick. Thick desires are like layers of rock that have been built up throughout the course of our lives. These are desires that can be shaped and cultivated through models like our parents and people that we admire as children. But at some level, they’re related to the core of who we are. They can be related to perennial human truths: beauty, goodness, human dignity.
> Thin desires are highly mimetic (imitative) and ephemeral desires. They’re the things that can be here today, gone tomorrow. Thin desires are subject to the winds of mimetic change, because they’re not rooted in a layer of ourselves that’s been built up over time. They are like a layer of leaves that’s sitting on top of layers of rock. Those thin desires are blown away with a light gust of wind. A new model comes into our life; the old desires are gone. All of a sudden we want something else.
Comparing the above conceptualizations with the ones offered by Westenberg (OP) could consume hundreds or thousands of words -- more than I want to spend at the moment -- but I will say this: both sets feel wrong, by which I mean they trigger my early warning detectors.
I'm not asking anyone else to trust my intuition. But you should trust yours. Intuition is usually a good starting point, at least.
With intuition alone -- without writing a full analysis -- we can see the above quoted explanations/definitions are highly complected. [2] Also, in my view, the offered metaphors don't carve reality at the joints. [3]
When I put ~20 minutes of concentrated thinking into the problem, here are some of the constituent parts of "desire" that I can unpack. (These are only fleetingly glossed over in the article.) In no particular order, to what degree are desires:
This is complex!Over-simplication can be a disservice. Adding another metaphor reminds me of the "N+1 standards" problem. [4] Maybe the new metaphor helps, maybe not. Either way, now we have more to sift through.
[1]: https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/mimetic...
[2]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...
[3]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/303819/what-do-t...
[4]: https://xkcd.com/927/
We all cheer. We know this. Then we move on.
A catchy title. A novel enough term. That will hook them.
We all read. We all smile. The daily grind.
This insight is not original to me.
[1] It’s just content now
Not essays
Not music
Content
https://findingfavorites.podbean.com/e/ry-jones-postcards/
Made me reflect on my own persuasion of thin desires and my struggle to control them.
It also made me see that my hobbies and my career are actually about following my thick desires. I'm in tech, yes. But I chose, among all the possibilities, to be an analog circuit designer. The analog part is what makes it a long hard skill to master, and my day job feels like constant learning from my interactions woth the world. I can't imagine doing anything which isn't interacting with the actual physical world!
As a software engineer, I decided to build an app about side quests. Reading this article I realized I could not put a finger on what I was getting at either, but I just knew I hadd to add wholesome activities that were not part of my life into my life and I kinda built this app for myself (initially for a hackathon) and just shared it with friends.
Hopefully it's useful to someone else on here (nasty self promotion): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidequests-hq/id6751321255
What helps me is to focus on today. If I can spend even an hour on a topic and get lost in it or even get frustrated by it, it is time well-spent. I was going to say "it is progress" instead of "time well-spent" but even that's a trap. Progress implies moving forward in a preferred direction. While I can't say I don't want to make progress, I am training myself to care less about it. It is really the time spent engaging that's most valuable (at least to me).
> The dough will rise when it rises, indifferent to your optimization.
Joke's on them! I run my oven until the temperature inside is ~100F - about a minute or so. Then I turn it off and set the dough in there along with some water (for humidity). It rises super fast compared to my kitchen which is ~65F in the winter and the bread is just as flavorful. Definitely not indifferent to my optimization.
But I think optimising yourself, or the world, hopefully in a positive way, is one of the thickest things you can do.
Every sentence is separated into its own paragraph, like each one is supposed to be revelatory (or maybe tweet-worthy). It's pretty common design knowledge that if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing. The result is that reading the article feels choppy, and weirdly unsatisfying, since the larger arc of each point is constantly being interrupted.
Why choose such an antithetical form, to what is otherwise an important and deep message?
The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.
I don't mind that.
It's a vibe.
Source: I talk to zoomers. (Some of them couldn't make it through an article of this length...)
Good article, good writer.
But this whole post reminds me of a series of 1 or 2-line tweets. And I think that's the point. It's almost written as a series of scheduled posts that dribble out once a day for the next X days. Write once, re-purpose many times.