I'd like to emphasize that I have absolutely nothing against gear.
But I'm a little surprised that people continue to insist that no, one really needs lots of stuff.
It's just not true that you need a huge variety of stuff for over $1,000 to bake bread. Think about it. The history of bread goes back thirty thousand years. You don't need a cupcake tray. You don't even need a baguette pan to make decent baguettes. I'm not making this up: I baked bread nearly every day for months using nothing special.
With podcasts, I again resist the idea that to go beyond "superficial" you need anything except a phone. I've recorded audio on my iPhone lots of times. In a quiet room, it works fine. There are plenty of very serious podcasts with people who participate by phone, and that's just fine.
Again with running. Nope, you don't need that stuff. How did people run a hundred thousand years ago? It's a fundamental bodily function. I have a pair of Merrell Trail Gloves that I also use as walking shoes in the summer, and they're just fine for running, and no other equipment is necessary at all.
I program just fine with just a laptop.
Again—it's all just preference and availability. But you can't say that everyone needs this stuff, because they don't. And I resist the notion because I think it can prevent people from getting started with the stuff they actually have.
> It's just not true that you need a huge variety of stuff for over $1,000 to bake bread. Think about it. The history of bread goes back thirty thousand years.
"You don't need a guitar to make music, because people once made music by banging two sticks together". I mean, the GP even specifically mentioned pie tins, cake containers, cupcake trays, and you retort with "baking is nothing but bread"? "You don't need stuff, because a simplified subset of what you want to do can be done without stuff"? Hell, you don't even need a hammer to drive a nail, but it's a lot more efficient if you have one.
It's doubly weird that you invoke how people ran 100k years ago, and then say "all you need are shoes". Nope - it's "no footwear". It's perfectly doable - I had an anarchist friend who spent several years without wearing shoes (excluding when he had to - boots for protection when motorcycle riding). You should ditch the shoes in your example, for both running and walking, as shoes are just as unnecessary to human locomotion as $1k of kitchenware is to baking. There's even a subgenre of running that is specifically about no shoes; I'm not aware of a subgenre of baking that is specifically about making cakes with no mixer.
Sigh. I mentioned baking as a possible hobby that doesn't require a lot of stuff beyond what's typically available in a kitchen. "But cupcakes" doesn't invalidate that. Who needs cupcakes? Anyway, I'm out of this discussion. Sorry for this whole thread. Whatever.
I do go barefoot a lot when it's warm enough. Running, too. So, yeah, if the climate allows, you don't even need shoes. How nice!
Sure, no one truly needs anything, but having the right tools can make a huge difference between merely being able to do something, and doing that something well. I think we all can understand the nerd impulse to really want to get into something, learn as much about it as possible, and do it well. Having the right tools can easily be the difference between a given hobby being rewarding or frustrating, because you can't yield the results you want, or because you don't have the right tool to make a really tedious part of the process easier.
Some of the more esoteric hobbies I've gotten into have included amateur telescope making, ham radio, long-range precision reloading, and shed construction, all of which are very tool-dependent. The more and better tools you have, the more capable you are in the hobby, the better your results, and the more satisfying it is. Sure, some hobbies are more amenable to getting farther along in them with having less stuff, but that doesn't help you if you end up interested in something that is tool-dependent.
Agreed. All I'm saying is that there are plenty of hobbies that don't require many tools, and that even hobbies that require some stuff can be done fruitfully and fulfillingly with just the minimum. Some people enjoy that kind of minimalism, some people don't. Lots of people have to make do because they can't afford equipment, but they can still find fulfilment in life.
I'm in a position similar to Sivers, in that I don't have a permanent home, and I'm unlikely to find one in the near future. Like him I'm in a furnished apartment with barely any stuff of my own save for clothes, a laptop, a phone, a kindle, and a handful of other belongings. Some days I really yearn for a place of my own, and the things I could have in there...
But when I read someone saying they cannot wrap their head around how anyone could be fulfilled with living like Sivers... I feel obliged to respond. This is how my life is, and it's fine, I'm quite happy.
I play music with my friends in a rental rehearsal space, I meditate, I take photos with my phone, I code on my laptop, I discuss things, I read, all those things I listed. It's not some awful deprived life of poverty just because I don't have several bags of camera equipment!
Your original post says, 'baking' and 'running' with no context. People's ideas of seemingly simple tasks evolves as they get into it.
If you are just baking bread sure, you could do that with minimal equipment. But if you want to bake a cake, you need a cake tin, scales etc. If you wanted a really fancy cake...
If you want to run around the park, sure, pair of sneakers. I know ultra marathoners. When they enter a race they are given a checklist that they must have on race day. They have all sorts of gear to help them train. Not to mention the travel gear they need to get to the location their race is in.
You really don't need a cake tin to make a cake. A sauce pan can actually be really convenient due to the handle, the release thing is generally useful, but you can also use a liner.
I have watched a professional baker make several high end cakes and she used very few specialized tools. The icing/Pastry bag was really the only non standard cooking item.
Remember, people want to sell you stuff. That does not make stuff necessary.
Unless you buy a liner as part of the ingredient list and toss it when your done. Sure, it's less than optimal if your making a lot of cakes, but if you just make 1 or 2 per year for birthdays then it's really not a big deal.
Well, that's part of why I'm personally not interested in making fancy cakes or running ultra marathons. My comment was a reply to someone who could not imagine a fulfilling life without a bunch of equipment, and who said "I actually like doing things", as if that necessarily means acquiring special equipment... Apparently it's controversial that many fulfilling activities can be done with very little material help?
Jaimie[1] said something a while back when he was getting started on constructing his fiberglass boats by hand... "'Dude, why don't you have any tools? Why don't you just go get the right stuff?' To which I respond: 'I am the right stuff!'" I don't know how to break people from the delusion that you need so much stuff to do anything, other than perhaps watching other people do things with far less stuff...
My biggest hobby these days is gaming on my PC, it's incredibly cheap and stuff-minimal compared to other hobbies like skiing. I'm using a moderately powerful PC build from 2009 and updated my GPU a few years ago, still runs a lot of or even most new games on high settings. Occasionally I appreciate a good hike, and my brother got me a nice backpack and poles last year that I haven't used yet... because I've been hiking since I was a kid with no equipment but a bottle of water and maybe some bars (I do have hiking boots but I've gone hiking in my regular tennis shoes too) so I've forgotten it the last few times I've gone out. It's become just functionally another item in my stuff that I don't actually need, though when I do eventually remember it I'm sure it'll be convenient. Just like my external monitor for my work laptop is convenient, but not necessary. And so on.
Hey, thanks, that's fun to watch, the way he talks out loud about what he's thinking about trying and stuff. "I wonder what shape this piece of roofing metal would make if I just bent it like this... hmm, let's see..."
I'm inclined to want to do things with less stuff rather than more stuff. Sure, I wouldn't mind a villa full of studio equipment and musical instruments, but I also love to make music with just a ukulele and my voice—that's good practice, too. And you don't even need the uke. These guys are doing pretty well:
Maybe I'll sound pretentious but I like to make programs kind of the way that guy makes boats. Look at the fundamental tools available, see how to glue things together in the most efficient way. Use the aspiration to stay minimal as a source of inspiration and a way to get past analysis paralysis.
You don't need $1k to bake bread, but I think your parent is objecting to how much you are taking for granted. You didn't just use mixing bowls, you also used a sponge, dish soap, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a couple ingredients, bowls, fork/spoon/whisk, some kind of pan or tray... If we believe the author, he has none of those things.
The post says he's in a furnished home with an unspecified amount of kitchenware. That's what I'm taking for granted. You can easily make a loaf of bread with exactly these items: flour, water, salt, yeast, a bowl, your hands, an oven, a sheet pan. Amounts can be eyeballed, and you knead and add flour or water as needed. Yeah, dish soap is nice to have, but who is imagining that Mr. Sivers is trying to live without dish soap?
This is a group of predominantly young computer-people. They are not going to be wise to depreciation or the effects of old age.
If I buy a new video card, when I open the box its resale value instantly drops perhaps 50% of its price, and in perhaps two years its resale value is "you're gonna have to pay me to recycle that for you...". Money spent on computer hardware in 1981 dropped in value to $0 if not less by, perhaps, 1983. The experience is worthless, or negative worth, on your resume (trust me on that one) If you're a computer-person, money spent is money wasted, in the long run.
28 years ago I got a nice full set of fractional/number/letter drills in a Huot case. Instantly when I opened the package its value dropped from whatever it was sold for, to $10 at a garage sale. I get 28 years of use out of it, some are getting a little shorter from resharpening or have been replaced, and I could still get $10 at a garage sale. If I sold my drill bits to raise $10 today, I'd just have to rebuy them again in a month or two at full list price and eat the substantial depreciation a second time. Its not like my world is going to run out of things to make holes thru. I'm not wealthy enough to buy the same tools over and over; likewise I'm not wealthy enough to buy cheap tools that fall apart such that I have to buy them over and over. I'm not wealthy enough to rent things I use on a regular basis. Actually I am wealthy enough now, but character traits like this are exactly the cause of why I'm wealthy enough now. Minimization of total overall lifetime system cost. Nobody ever got rich by spending more money than is necessary.
Now multiply the set of drill bits by every other capital good / tool I own, and in some capital intensive hobbies it adds up. And there's really nothing wrong with that. That's how you end up with (old) carpenters having $30K shops like my accountant neighbor, or (old) bakers with $1K of gear, (old) ham radio operators with $10K radio stations... At least with some hobbies, not making dumb decisions adds up over time.
But I'm a little surprised that people continue to insist that no, one really needs lots of stuff.
It's just not true that you need a huge variety of stuff for over $1,000 to bake bread. Think about it. The history of bread goes back thirty thousand years. You don't need a cupcake tray. You don't even need a baguette pan to make decent baguettes. I'm not making this up: I baked bread nearly every day for months using nothing special.
With podcasts, I again resist the idea that to go beyond "superficial" you need anything except a phone. I've recorded audio on my iPhone lots of times. In a quiet room, it works fine. There are plenty of very serious podcasts with people who participate by phone, and that's just fine.
Again with running. Nope, you don't need that stuff. How did people run a hundred thousand years ago? It's a fundamental bodily function. I have a pair of Merrell Trail Gloves that I also use as walking shoes in the summer, and they're just fine for running, and no other equipment is necessary at all.
I program just fine with just a laptop.
Again—it's all just preference and availability. But you can't say that everyone needs this stuff, because they don't. And I resist the notion because I think it can prevent people from getting started with the stuff they actually have.