Physical constraints and enjoyment

I’m back to thinking about constraints. This time, Terry Godier’s great video The Feeling Music Used to Give You (hat tip to Robert). Having what amounts to an infinite library of background music was fixing the wrong constraint. And that’s why streaming music hasn’t increased enjoyment of music. Enjoyment, like anything phenomenological, isn’t easy to measure and quantify. And perhaps enjoyment isn’t even the right word here since it’s so fleeting. Satisfaction. A lot of things that have been “solved” haven’t really increased a deeper, longer-term satisfaction. As I’m sitting through one of Europe’s most intense heatwaves to date, it’s easy to notice that numbers don’t tell the full story, especially when it’s one number. Some people go all in on fiddling with the temperature, but that’s not a direct proxy for comfort. Running a dehumidifier in a room raises the temperature by a degree or two, but the resulting feeling is much more pleasant. Some ventilation, even at the cost of…