Hacker News

points by patcon 1 day ago | 0 comments

I think they're noting how the nature of baby duck syndrome might depend on whether the change introduced is within something that is for work or for play.

As in, that people who refuse change in their play activity are in some way different (less rational? more "syndromatic"?) than those who refuse change in their breadwinning activity.

I see the distinction, but am not sure I agree. It's just a neurotype spectrum of the same phenomenon. Baby duck is baby duck

[–] fc417fc802 1 day ago

Not quite. The distinction is between avoiding an articulable and concrete negative impact versus mere aesthetic considerations. For example, this pan is more difficult to use because it is somewhat undersized for what I'm trying to cook versus I don't like this pan because it's the wrong color or has the wrong accents or whatever. I understand baby duck syndrome to refer to the latter - ie having an unsubstantiated bias towards aspects of the thing first encountered.

[–] conartist6 1 day ago

I'd only point out that undersize and oversize aren't purely objective concerns, but are also aesthetics compared to what you're used to.

I wouldn't be arguing about this except that I can't trust my clock app on my phone because some bozo keeps redesigning it to work a different way every 6 months

[–] fc417fc802 20 hours ago

And I think that's an excellent example. I don't think dislike of sudden and unexpected changes to your clock app would qualify as an instance of baby duck syndrome precisely because it has a material impact on your usage of it.

In contrast, if you prefer phones with blue bodies for no particular reason and your first phone happened to be blue then it's at least possible that's an example (or maybe you just really like that color, I dunno).