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MrMind comments on Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Wrist computer: To Buy or Not To Buy
I'm considering whether or not to buy an Android phone in a wristwatch form-factor, and am hesitating on whether it's the best use of my money. Would anyone here care to offer their opinion?
One of my goals: Go camping and enjoy it. One of my constraints: A limited budget. I suspect that taking a watch-phone, such as an Omate Truesmart or one of its clones ( eg, http://www.dx.com/p/imacwear-m7-waterproof-android-4-2-dual-core-3g-smart-watch-phone-w-1-54-5-0mp-black-373360 ), and filling a 32 gigabyte SD card with offline maps, Wikipedia, and related materials would improve my camping experience. However, I could also purchase an iPhone-like Android phone of comparable stats for half the price, allowing me to also purchase, say, a Kelly kettle, which would also improve my camping experience. (I already have various other digital devices, but none with enough room for the maps etc. I already have solar panels to hang from my backpack and external batteries, to keep any such devices charged while in the field.)
I have some leeway in timing, to get whatever items I decide on before camping season starts, and I find myself having spent several days being indecisive about what options, if any, to pick. My thoughts keep bouncing between something like "Wrist-computers are cool and I want one" and "I've made poor electronics purchasing decisions in the past and regretted them".
How do you think I should redirect my thought processes?
For a long time I've wanted to want a smartwatch so badly I was forced to buy it, but the actual advantages of owning one never amounted to the desired threshold. In the end, and quite sadly, I've decided that there will probably never be enough reasons.
I think it's happening the same to you: you want to want to buy a wrist-phone, but are rational enough to know that there's no reason to do such a thing. I suggest you to meditate on the fact that you probably already know what's the right course of action, it just sucks to follow.
In a curious twist to this process, I just dreamed that I checked this thread for a response to this comment, and found one, of which I explicitly remember only the words, "You're playing with fire here" and "You're taking your life into your hands", and implicitly remember something about the authour reminding me that I'm a cryonicist.
Going camping does happen to increase the odds that I'll have an accident where my brain ends up warm and dead. Having a communications device that's quite likely to remain intact and ready to use if I fall down a cliff and break my legs modestly reduces the odds of that particular negative scenario. In fact, assuming that I'm not going to quit going camping, and that I already have my chosen first-aid equipment, there are few expenditures I can make which are as likely to increase my QALYs.
So: Does /that/ sound like actually useful reasoning, or mere rationalization?
While that's true you might want to consider what other activities also happen to increase the same odds and whether you want to spend your life avoiding all of them.
My lifestyle is mostly urban; whatever accidents befall me, I'm nearly always well within range of ambulances and hospitals with personnel able to call up my medical proxy. Camping is the exception where it would likely take a few hours just for emergency personnel to reach me.
Be realistic. If you're hit by bus on a city street, how long do you think your brain will spend being warm and dead before the information reaches someone who could call in the cryo team? And that even providing your brain stays intact.
My immediate family all know my wishes, I have a medic-alert type necklace with cryo contact info, there's similar info in my wallet, and so on. Basically, as soon as medical professionals learn who my corpse was, which should be close to as soon as they arrive, they'll know to contact someone who knows to tell them to put ice around my head (as a first stage in the cooling process).
By contrast, if I'm camping, then even if I stay within range of cell towers, and have arranged to call someone twice a day, then even just getting the info out that I might be in trouble (and possibly dead) will take hours-to-days, let alone finding me. (For not-quite-as-lethal accidents, I've got everything from a mirror that can be used as a signal mirror to a pen-style flare launcher to help point possible rescuers in my direction.)
Sounds like a rationalization to me.
I think you would be better off buying a ruggedized cell phone or radio if that is your true purpose. I suspect a watch is quite likely to get smashed in a serious fall like that.
Fair enough.
Hm... brainstorming a bit, I'm considering looking up one of the cheaper watch-phones, removing the wrist-band, getting a SIM card for a phone service that only needs to be paid for annually, and keeping the miniaturized backup cellphone somewhere about my person. But that's a completely separate use-case than the device for camping, so I'm not going to even consider it until I finish my annual camping gear refreshing.