Jamie: Human nature is odd. We crave new things, but simultaneously dislike change.
Phil: Not that odd; we like to choose and hate to have things forced on us. We usually embrace the changes that we have chosen for ourselves.
You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
Jamie: Human nature is odd. We crave new things, but simultaneously dislike change.
Phil: Not that odd; we like to choose and hate to have things forced on us. We usually embrace the changes that we have chosen for ourselves.
Martin S
on 09 Dec 11Søren Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher, 1813 – 1855) said it too: “Everybody wants progress – nobody wants change” Human nature indeed.
Good point by Phil. A sense of control (or lack thereof) will affect our perception of the changes we face.
Jean-Rémy Duboc
on 09 Dec 11Hopefully this lecture will make the issue of why we do the things we do clearer for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yT477trEMA
David Tolsma
on 09 Dec 11People generally love change, they hate learning.
jimmeh2
on 09 Dec 11Crows intellectual life can be divided into two periods the first is one of curiosity and novelty seeking and the second part an extreme aversion to anything new. It’s interesting to hypothesise (though as a rule I hate such armchair evolutionary hypothesising because it’s impossible to prove and usually used to argue for a social bias, e.g. social Darwinism) that this was conditioned evolutionary by a need to stake a a territory early and life and having survived tho ordeal into adulthood, not make any changes to what ended up being successful behaviour and conducive envirnment.
Nate
on 09 Dec 11Hmm, Phil, as humans I think we hate choosing too :) That’s why people like Rails and 37signals so much after all, you guys don’t give people that hated state of “what do i choose now” very often.
Hamid
on 13 Dec 11We love to choose and act on their decisions.
This discussion is closed.