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[–]keeper52 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Yes. When "lack of socks" is the constraint that causes me to do laundry, I buy more socks.

[–]PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIANhad a qualia once 22 points23 points  (2 children)

This is a false dichotomy. I have at least four different types of socks, some of which I have enough of, some of which I don't.

For the curious: nylon sports socks for the summer, regular cotton socks for spring and fall, thick wool socks for winter, nylon sock liners for very cold days, fancy dress socks, etc.

[–]Diggsi 14 points15 points  (0 children)

If you have enough of some, and not enough of others, then it sounds like you don't have enough socks.

[–]SvalbardCaretaker 10 points11 points  (0 children)

So, do you have enough socks for all this?

[–]Richard_Berg 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yes, 11-20, less than annually, me, algebraist. (I'll bet those dirty analysts poke holes in socks more often.)

[–]ruecondorcet 9 points10 points  (5 children)

A few years ago I threw away all my socks which was an assortment of socks from many different places, in different colours and sizes (as I'm sure is the case with most people).

Then I went on AliExpress and bought 40 pairs of exactly the same sock in exactly the same colour. I would not be able to tell you how many socks I have now. I just know it's more than enough to last me until laundry day, and I never have to mess around finding pairs

[–]workingtrot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I did almost the same thing. I was sitting folding my laundry and trying to match up my various and sundry socks. Then I thought, "I only have one life and I am spending 20 minutes a week sorting socks. This must end."

So I have a bunch of pairs of identical boot socks, a bunch of identical exercise socks, and a few pairs of identical wool socks. Life is so much better. I do wish I could go 100% one type of sock but too many different shoes and activities

[–]TheAncientGeekAll facts are fun facts. 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm almost there. I just have gray, and brown and black.

[–]nicholaslaux 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I did the same thing, but with two sets, one set of white socks, and another of black socks.

[–]ralf_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

When are you wearing white socks?

[–]nicholaslaux 0 points1 point  (0 children)

90% of the time, when I'm wearing gym shoes.

[–]mousepads 5 points6 points  (7 children)

I have 3 pairs. One pair of dress socks, and two pairs of darn tough socks, maybe 2.5 (I lost one darn tough sock).

It's much easier to keep track of my socks, and they have a lifetime warranty, so I can just RMA my socks if they get holes in them.

I highly, highly suggest getting Darn Tough socks, or something with a similar manufacturing process and warranty. I believe Costco has a similar store brand.

Now only if I could find an underwear company who was so bold.

[–]White_Dudeness 6 points7 points  (6 children)

That's very interesting, but a) do you wash your socks daily or do you go multiple days in same socks, and b) if they really don't get holes, don't you worry about your feet getting damaged instead?

[–]mousepads 4 points5 points  (5 children)

No, I can wear the same pair for about 3-4 days before they start to smell. They get holes eventually, after about 9-10 months. I'm thinking of buying one or two more pairs a year just to support the company. They're the best socks I've ever worn.

[–]White_Dudeness 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Are you a woman? Sorry for asking so bluntly but I think it's extremely relevant in this case.

[–]mousepads 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nope. I don't have a job where I need to wear dress socks either. I've never been into fancy socks/underwear either. So that probably plays a part.

[–]aquaknox 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Huh, socks have always been a daily consumable for me (or even more frequent if I've worked out) as a fundamental philosophy. I don't think I could shift away from that regardless of the actual smelliness of my socks.

[–]_chris_sutton 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve transitioned to non smelling fabrics for most everything (merino, linen, some nylon) and underwear is now the only daily consumable for me. Everything else is wear till actually dirty/smelly. It’s great

[–]hippydipster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With darn tough socks, they are mostly wool. They don't wear out much, and they don't get stinky much. I tend to wear mine for about half a week before throwing them in the laundry.

If I were still young and playing basketball a lot, this probably wouldn't hold. However, you don't wash your sneakers every day, right? Yet they stink worse than your socks probably (if you play sports in them).

[–]amaxen 4 points5 points  (3 children)

I'm not on Twitter, but I have a family of 4, both of the parents of whom hate matching socks. So, we've standardized around this make/model/brand of socks. I have purged all of the heretic socks from the household, bought about 10-15 total six packs of socks (with some ankle socks for summer/sporting, but these can be in a pinch combined with a full length sock and no one know the diff in the winter). When we start running low through typical sock attrition I order another 3-4 six packs. Works for us. And I just match whatever socks are around and throw out any deviant socks that show up.

[–]GravenRaven 0 points1 point  (2 children)

All four of you wear the same size sock? Seems like having otherwise identical socks would be really annoying if not.

[–]amaxen 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, the socks are slightly tight on me and slightly loose on my pre-teen kids but they're catching up.

[–]hippydipster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My son is approaching me in sock size. I get him green or gray, I get me blue or brown or black.

[–]MosDaf 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I seem to have both too many and not enough.

Eerie socks paradox.

[–]SlightlyLessHairyApe 2 points3 points  (9 children)

I must be out of the loop in some fashion, can some one break this down for me?

Is this about "if you lost half your socks one day you'd buy more immediately but if you lose them one at a time you can get to 25% before you did"? True, I suppose, but that can't be it (can it?).

[–]gwern[S] 1 point2 points  (8 children)

That's my working theory so far.

[–]SlightlyLessHairyApe 0 points1 point  (7 children)

And that was the sum total motivation for your tweet?

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

I think it's an interesting little rationality failure mode which is a clean-cut test case, and which may be representative of more and larger issues - that a lot of what we call status quo bias or sunk cost fallacy is more a failure to activate System 2 & think strategically about an issue at all.

[–]SlightlyLessHairyApe 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Can I posit an alternative explanation that is not a "rationality failure mode" (or perhaps is, but is nevertheless rational in a different light, I don't want to get bogged into the semantics of it):

The provision of socks is non-critical for most people. The expected gains from different sock strategies are not very divergent either, there are no 'major wins' to be had. Thinking strategically about socks may be wasted effort in this respect, in that the gains from being rational are less than the cost of the additional effort spent on it.

This is known as 'rational ignorance' theory over in the behavioral economics side. It costs real effort to make a spreadsheet of your sock totals each week, account for which are missing, look at whether socks are on clearance at different stores and really optimize the heck out of it. It may be perfectly rational to just chose ignorance here -- the cost of activating system 2 is simply not justified.

[ Of course, there's an infinite regress here -- you have to decide which matters "deserve" system 2 analysis, which has to either be made by system 1 or system 2 and so forth. In reality, we can intuit using system 1 that there is very little upside or downside to having a detailed sock-management plan versus, say, stock-management of one's retirement plan. ]

[–]gwern[S] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Who said anything about spreadsheets?! That's a straw Vulcan. It takes a few minutes, max, to order some new socks, and the gain is easily amortized over the many months you'll be wearing more comfortable socks, not looking for socks, and not doing laundry more frequently. (If you save even one load of laundry because you don't have to do it thanks to running out of socks, that repays all your time right there.)

In reality, we can intuit using system 1 that there is very little upside or downside to having a detailed sock-management plan versus, say, stock-management of one's retirement plan.

I think we can safely say that there is no one in the world for whom taking a few seconds to think about whether they have enough socks means that they will forever omit to do retirement savings...

[–]SlightlyLessHairyApe 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I suppose on the internet the difference between light-hearted caricature and a straw Vulcan doesn't come out. Mea culpa.

Yes, it takes only a few minute to buy new socks, but this is only once you decide to buy new socks. And this is only if you are aware that you need new socks, which in turn only happens when the topic of sock supply comes to the front of your brain.

My point about rational ignorance kicks in on the latter point. I have a limited number of items that I can actively "check" to see if they need to be fixed or not. If I frequently can't find socks or if a door is drafty or creaky, it will come to the front of my brain and can be dealt with.

I think we can safely say that there is no one in the world for whom taking a few seconds to think about whether they have enough socks means that they will forever omit to do retirement savings...

But in order to take a few seconds to consider it, you need to think about considering it. And it's not just socks, it's any of the hundreds of mundane household items that get depleted very slowly. Just thinking about all the items you need to think about requires mental attention, versus the strategy of 'get more when you notice them lacking'.

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Yes, it's the kickstarting which is the problem. I increasingly see this as a major rationality failure mode, which is often conflated with 'sunk cost bias'.

It's not that anyone is walking around with holes in their socks or doing laundry multiple times a year just to get clean socks because they spent 5 seconds seriously thinking about it and kept on deciding to not get new socks out of some misguided belief that that would save them time/money. Rather, it's that at no point did any external trigger or internal prompt make them spend those 5 seconds thinking about it (and if it had, they would have gone 'oh duh, I should just buy some frigging replacement socks already!').

Similarly, when someone is wasting years getting a PhD they shouldn't, they don't waste those years by once a year sitting down for an hour, drawing up a list of pros and cons and listing their current progress towards the goal, and then explicitly concluding that 'I am going to commit the sunk cost bias and continue getting a useless PhD and racking up student debt', and their problem was not having heard of 'sunk cost bias'. Rather, they waste those years 1 second at a time, reading papers, doing literature reviews, going to talks, idling on Reddit... and their problem was not thinking about it at all.

So the question becomes, how can we avoid that kind of thoughtlessness and become more strategic?

[–]SlightlyLessHairyApe 0 points1 point  (1 child)

So the question becomes, how can we avoid that kind of thoughtlessness and become more strategic?

My claim is that for most topics (certainly socks) devising and implementing such a thoughtful strategy would entail the expenditure of effort that would exceed the benefits.

Another way to phrase it is that active attention and thoughtfulness is a scarce resource, and that applying it to trivial matters like socks is not a productive use. Applying it to PhD studies, on the other hand, is a productive use. The heuristic of "don't worry about the socks until an external trigger makes you think about it" is likely utility-maximizing in the long run, but same heuristic as applied to PhD programs is likely not.

If that view of correct, then the real 'bug' is applying the wrong heuristic.

Also, maybe he takes it a bit too far, but Whitehead has a point:

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

[–]gwern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Another way to phrase it is that active attention and thoughtfulness is a scarce resource, and that applying it to trivial matters like socks is not a productive use. Applying it to PhD studies, on the other hand, is a productive use. The heuristic of "don't worry about the socks until an external trigger makes you think about it" is likely utility-maximizing in the long run, but same heuristic as applied to PhD programs is likely not.

I disagree. Since socks are worth having, it follows that there must be some point at which it is worth making an effort to get socks and that is a productive use of time, just as there is for any other quotidian detail of life like grocery shopping or changing the oil in your car. The optimal moment may not come often, but if you find yourself barefoot and desperate for socks (or your car breaking down on the highway because 'thinking about a PhD program is more important than changing the oil'), you have clearly overshot.

[–]actuallyusefulreddit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No. The heels all have holes either forming or already formed. This has been an issue for months yet I don't do anything about it.

[–]ralf_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So .... Are we not talking about this twitter comment?

I declined to vote, as I suspect I am an outlier adn should not be counted. I buy myself vast quantities of socks (probably 30/3months) and my wife steals them, and presumably consumes them.
I currently have 4 pairs
I purchased 15 pairs in late november.

[–]BaronVSS 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I wear two or three layers of socks during the winter because my feet are too damn cold, and I swear I can't be the only one

[–]workingtrot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Get your thyroid checked and buy some wool socks, friend

[–]pusher_robot_PAK CHOOIE UNF 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I reached a maximum number of socks that comfortably fit in my drawer and don't cause laundry pressure. I receive sock replenishments semi-annually through an Amazon subscribe-and-save, at which time I retire an equal number of worn socks.

[–]PlacidPlatypus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, 20-30, my parents get them for me for Christmas every year.

[–]SaiNushi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, 30+, annually, me, algebraist (I counted "special pairs" that are rarely worn... otherwise it would be 20-30 pairs)

[–]SvalbardCaretaker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, 30+, semi-annually, me.

[–]ulyssessword{57i + 98j + 23k} IQ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, 21-30, less, me.

[–]ArkyBeagle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes.

[–]rds2mch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As I have grown older and my bank account has grown larger, much of my domestic concern orients around my good socks: how many do I have, and are they now -- or will they soon be -- clean? The reality is that I have an abundance of socks, but I only wear about 25% of my stockpile; the remainder, laggards from my poorer days or unwanted Christmas gifts, sit on their shelves with every indication that they might be worn. False indications, it turns out, because they never move.

My inventory of balega no-show padded running socks, however, is monitored with a technical efficiency, ensuring that at least one pair is always available.

[–]NwallinsFree Speech Warrior 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, 31+, not counting a bunch of socks I recently inherited. I purchase them annually or even less frequently.

[–]deerpig 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, one pair. But I don't have any shoes. Unless I need to go to a cold country sandals work fine. The problem is that I don't know where to buy socks my size here. You need a bank account or at least a debit card to buy anything online.

[–]highoncraze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find a style I like, buy 18-20 pairs or so (so I can get ~2 weeks of wear before laundry time with some cushion), and I replace them as they get worn out or ruined. If I find a new style I like better, I repeat the process for that one. I usually enjoy a certain style for 2-5 years.

[–]workingtrot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not on twitter so here's my take: Yes

31+

Semi annually

Me

[–]ferb2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was planning to buy replacement socks tomorrow. I'm getting dangerously low on the number of socks I own.

[–]dazed111 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Socks are like sex, tons of them about but I never seem to have any.

[–]skiff151 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I buy 25 pairs of black socks every few months for £10. They have no design so I've always got ones that match straight out the drawer. They are shit quality but get the job done. If I can find better ones for 2-5x the price I'll switch but this seems unlikely.

I do the same with boxers. Get rid of that stress forever.

[–]the_nybblerBad but not wrong 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have never literally run out of socks. I recently bought 2 packs (14 pairs) of socks and threw out most of my old ones, so I'm good. I have, however, gotten to the point where I was wearing socks I would not wear (due to wear or staining) were other socks I have clean -- thus, you can say my sock supply degrades gracefully.

[–]remizidae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is one of the great things about being rich: I have socks, that are comfortable, without holes. Going to enjoy it while it lasts.

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Writeup: https://gwern.net/Socks