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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2638 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 31, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Wake up, babe, new scissor statement just dropped on March 32.

“Cleaning the dryer lint after you dry your clothes is the socially responsible thing to do.”

Do both! Before and after, belt AND suspenders.

You get peace of mind, accurate information about the habits of the people who share the dryer, and the warm fuzzy satisfaction of doing a good deed. Any time spent in optimizing this trivial life detail is wasted. Just check before and after, never think about it again, and you'll come out ahead.

If it's in a house, the person who does the most laundry should clean it when it makes the most sense to them. If the lint builds up in the duct, the person who has cleaned the lint the least has to pull it out and fix the problem. In most households, this will loosely map onto the wife cleaning the lint and the husband cleaning/fixing the dryer itself.

If it's a laundromat, it makes more sense to clean it before, since you know nothing about whoever just used it.

This is one where I think the optimal equilibrium is the natural one. You need to pull the filter to check anyway, which means that everyone cleaning the last person's lint saves time overall.

The expectation that everyone cleans the dryer lint before using the dryer is one where someone else not doing it means nothing to you (just fluffier lint, I guess).

In my experience with dryers, fluffier lint is even easier to clean out, so I don't even care if other people aren't doing it.

“Cleaning the dryer lint after you dry your clothes is the socially responsible thing to do.”

Simpsons did it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/u0rzo7/i_forgot_to_clean_the_lint_basket_in_the_dryer_if/

“Cleaning the dryer lint after you dry your clothes is the socially responsible thing to do.”

Yes, but kinda no. Some morality stems from pure social equilibrium. Not tipping your waiter is bad purely because society expects tips and has built that assumption into their wages, unlike for mailmen or call center employees. Not cleaning lint is likewise bad, but purely because others expect you to, and if you don't, you're free-riding on the people who do post-clean. A hypothetical society where the equilibrium is that everyone cleans the lint before use has an equal amount of work for everyone and no free-rider problem.

This is why it's good to fight bad equilibria while they're in the process of forming. I always just take the free coffee when someone starts a stupid "Pay It Forward" chain. If it ever does entrench as a social norm, though, I will have to submit.

This post, of course, was inspired by my housemates always cleaning afterward, except when they don’t, which has led at times to me cleaning (beforehand) a double or triple layer of lint.

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