You are probably right that quite often it is simply a time optimization decision. But when it is not, I find it interesting that few people enjoy troubleshooting at all.

In the rational part, there is a second angle: whether you trust the so-called ‘expert’ or not. My wife’s laptop broke down a couple of years ago and the “official” by the book process was to take it back to Best Buy where we bought it. After some clueless probing, they sent it to some central repair place in Minneapolis from where it returned with the recommendation to replace the mother board for $900. That seemed suspicious to me, since the main symptom was an unreliable “start” button and I suspected a simple power supply connection problem.

So I had a h/w hacker friend look at it, and I was right. A connection was loose and with a penny’s worth of solder, he was able to fix the issue.

This is of course a moral hazard for the by-the-book repair people: the ones who diagnose are the ones who fix, and it is in their interest to sell you more than you need, and they often sell you the maximum they can (a return to ‘pristine’ which is what a motherboard replacement is).

But the reason repair people in general are able to operate in such ways possibly has to do with our general reluctance to improvise…

The visible effect of time on objects reminded me of wabi-sabi a little, where the impermanent and time-worn is celebrated. Which fits in with the whole fear of death thing , not trying to maintain the illusion of an everlasting unchanging state (which is a fair description of death ironically!).

Anyway, a few thoughts from a new subscriber, love it here!

About 4 years later, when I was ready to sell my car (with its more-than-a-few wrinkles-as-personality), some well-meaning acquaintances actually advised me, “Don’t spend too much and try to spruce up your car’s appearance, it makes buyers suspicious. Leave a few credible signs of age!”

Point to ponder: celebrating aging too hard may not be due to lack of fear of death, but actually a way to cope with that same fear.

Today I find many who, having graduated beyond an unthinking adherence to play-by-the-book, always trying to improvise–equally unthinkingly–often reinventing the (or, a lesser) wheel. In effect, this is replacing *the* book with a new book rather than a true spirit of improvisation. I am trying to observe and catch myself from doing this. But this is a mandatory, messy, intermediate stage in the innovation process. While in it, we do not know if it will lead to a better eventual result. Except our own experience, all discussion regarding this suffers from survivorship bias.

You say, “This kind of improvisation is great fun.” Is fun possible without it? Can by-the-book ever be fun? Sure, it may be prudent, necessary, or even “good”, but fun?

Humor (the funniest kind of fun) depends and thrives on improvisation and going against the norm.

Notwithstanding the tenuous (in my mind) connection between improvisation and aging, I think the whole tension between trying to keep something in its pristine condition vs. letting it age gracefully is a very interesting one in its own right.

Part of it is that societies that have the money to preserve stuff in pristine condition cannot resist the temptation to do so. In India, there is a minority of those who have a hand-wringing reverence for the old and struggle to keep it up with very limited resources. On the other hand, there are those who cheerfully hack ancient stuff with Microsoftian service packs until it becomes a hacked-together monster. In services, modern Indian land measurement schemes for taxation are basically 300 year old British systems retrofitted on 500 year old Mughal systems retrofitted on 2500 year old Hindu systems. A delightful mess that is only now being slowly dismantled and rebuilt ground-up. Until very recently, there was no sense of “heritage” monuments — high quality bricks and stones from ancient buildings would be cheerfully ripped out and reused in newer construction. The ancient city of Varanasi is a clunker among clunkers. There is very little attempt at preservation for the sake of preservation.

I find that sort of cannibalization very satisfying in some sense. It is at once improvisation, renewal and creative destruction.

Traveling to Italy makes me feel almost claustrophobic because it seems like the entire country is trapped by it’s history. Everything there is older than anything from Seattle and their entire legacy seems to be to preserve their history.

The east coast is interesting because I feel the same thing, but from a social perspective. All of the institutions are established, everyone knows how the game is played and it’s just a matter of execution. You go to this school and then that college and then you experience your requisite number of life changing experiences before slotting into your career.

My plane’s about to board so I’ll figure out if I have anything more interesting to say about this later…