I really appreciated this post and thought it was quite a novel way of viewing situations where one must make a choice where while one option is the clear winner, there is still a lingering feeling of having lost something.
Your final conclusion here appears to be—Do not expect your new pleasures to replace the old.
You will still want these old joys—restaurants, bustle, packed gatherings. Plan for this, as it will not be replaced by the extra space or quietude of the suburbs.
Your final conclusion here appears to be—Do not expect your new pleasures to replace the old.
Yes. And thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
One of my goals was to also apply “Do not expect your new pleasures to replace the old” to other types of decision making. It was a critique of using net-benefit analysis on non-fungible costs. The benefits of a policy don’t replace its harms and costs. Tradeoffs are not the same thing as substitution.
Every tradeoff between non-fungibles incurs a debt, and net-benefit hides that behind a single positive number. It’s an uneccessary step—one can still make tradeoffs, while keeping a ledger of this debt.
This influences real-life outcomes in things like City Planning (where housing people quickly, without underlying infrastructure results in permanent slums) or Politics (where those on the wrong end of the net-gain in jobs are ignored).
These phenomenon wouldn’t come as a big surprise if one had recognized the debt incurred every time we made these tradeoffs.
I really appreciated this post and thought it was quite a novel way of viewing situations where one must make a choice where while one option is the clear winner, there is still a lingering feeling of having lost something.
Your final conclusion here appears to be—Do not expect your new pleasures to replace the old.
You will still want these old joys—restaurants, bustle, packed gatherings. Plan for this, as it will not be replaced by the extra space or quietude of the suburbs.
This was very enjoyable read. Thanks for posting.
Yes. And thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
One of my goals was to also apply “Do not expect your new pleasures to replace the old” to other types of decision making. It was a critique of using net-benefit analysis on non-fungible costs. The benefits of a policy don’t replace its harms and costs. Tradeoffs are not the same thing as substitution.
Every tradeoff between non-fungibles incurs a debt, and net-benefit hides that behind a single positive number. It’s an uneccessary step—one can still make tradeoffs, while keeping a ledger of this debt.
This influences real-life outcomes in things like City Planning (where housing people quickly, without underlying infrastructure results in permanent slums) or Politics (where those on the wrong end of the net-gain in jobs are ignored).
These phenomenon wouldn’t come as a big surprise if one had recognized the debt incurred every time we made these tradeoffs.