Philosophical dilemmas around hobbies and automation
Automatic Chicken Doors, Smokers that smoke meat perfectly every time, a robot that weeds, plants and harvests a vegetable garden, an automatic beer maker.
Optimizing yourself out of a Hobby:
Theorems:
- When the tool you buy to support a hobby, eliminates the dedication, knowledge or cultivation needed to get good at that hobby.
- When the skill/heuristics of the hobbyist are primarily centered around mastering a proprietary device.
- When time optimization is chosen over exploration, growth, variation and challenge.
Related: premature optimization:
Some examples in my life:
-Sourdough bread making: no longer a hobby – optimized recipe for time and least amount of fuckery. I make devices to reduce variables (temp controller). Make the same thing now exclusively.
-Guitar: still a hobby but prematurely optimized. Don’t need all the equipment.
-Painting: once again a hobby – I was getting pretty good results tracing the initial sketch of a drawing and then painting it afterwards – I even got good at making traces, not look like traces – howaboutthat! . Blocking use of the computer/pictures has increased my knowledge of composition and allowed me to think outside of photos – coincidentally my pleasure of this activity has increased tremendously.
-Chickens: Hobby is kind of a weird word, but since one cannot actually talk to chickens, there is a sense that you must learn to understand their behaviors by spending lots of time with them, and reading about them. Also problem solving for chickens is challenging and interesting.
Have you optimized yourself out of a hobby?
—
On the edge of the abyss: concerns about an automatic chicken door – I have really been going back and forth about an automatic chicken door. Right now I wake up myself and Melissa at 6am (sunrise) to let them out and have to be back by dark to put them to bed. If I fail to put them into bed they could become racoon food. It has happened before. If we go out of town, I need a chicken sitter to follow the same heinous schedule.
Since we have been so busy working on the house and whatnot, these obligations make up half my interactions with the ladies – small pleasure result. Such as = when I say goodnight, one of the chickens always clucks! These times are also important to just take stock of supplies and to inspect my ladies for any distress or happiness.
Chicken doors run from about $100-$300. Making one is possible but complicated. And could be done for around $30. These doors can also accidentally kill your chicken (many 1 star reviews on the $100 model). Also, if i make one i don’t want it to be like one i could buy (boring) so then i can post it on instructables! (awesome!)
The seduction of invention: is the hobby really about the optimization? Do you have a hobby of automating things? Can you invent something meaningful for a hobby if you haven’t mastered the hobby first?
The seduction of a purely mechanical solution. Can something be human powered, chicken powered, counterweighted.
I do like inventing. I have many ideas, rotational wheels with counterweights, cheap ideas with pumps and bottles. I have thoughts of making the best thing ever and selling it. But it is hard for me to pull the trigger when I don’t know what will happen to my chicken relationship and my hobby. I do not want to make something too comfortable and useful and then grow soft as a result. I am stuck.
