Blog/2026-08-01/Motivated Reasoning

I read a recent thread which I think is fairly typical of a kind of motivated reasoning common in the US.

Home Cleaning

Nicholas Decker @captgouda24

Something I really like about America is how uncomfortable we are about servants. People who do services do not *serve you*. They *do tasks*. They are a professional, working independently, and below nobody. This is not common around the world, and is to America’s credit.

Aug 1, 2026

Nicholas Decker @captgouda24

Replying to @captgouda24

I certainly feel *profoundly* uncomfortable with anyone in a servile role. People should not be doing the things you should be doing yourself. It’s only acceptable when they are doing it for many — someone cooking in a restaurant is acceptable, but never a personal chef.

Aug 1, 2026

Nicholas Decker @captgouda24

Replying to @captgouda24

Similarly, daycare is acceptable but a nanny is not. (A babysitter is acceptable, because it is a gift relationship). Personal food delivery never, but acceptable for a group. A maid never, a housecleaner no, but a cleaned hotel room yes (but it’s my responsibility to clean too).

Aug 1, 2026

A thing I have observed is that this is not actually true once one reaches a certain level of wealth and income. Instead, dual-income households (and yes, multi-generational non-Hispanic White Americans) that I'm familiar with routinely hire home cleaners, nannies, and handymen. To be clear, two things are simultaneously true:

• we don't currently hire for these jobs
• I think it's a good thing that people hire for these jobs

Currently, my parents are visiting, and both Julie and I work from home. This means that we have eyes on Astra so it's pretty easy for Julie and me to do most housework. We do hire plumbers etc., but that's because we don't have the skill set. In general, however, I think it smart to be using one's own time economically, so when I was working in an office we'd call the cleaners in once a month. The reality of America, though, is that this is relatively expensive. It costs us about $300 for one round of this because most people in the US make a lot of money and so you need to outcompete the other tasks they could be doing before this becomes worth it. So what is more likely to be true is that people who agree with this view are just not sufficiently wealthy or high-income to be able to meet the bid price for this.

As is usually the case for these things, some minor amount of rebranding is required to make it generally palatable but the service is still offered. For instance, while many people do have nannies, some require rebranding night nannies to night doulas so that they can avail their services. But regardless, my observed reality is that the use of nannies and the like is widespread in the US among sufficiently high-income people.

The Grand Metric v Imperial Debate

I won't spend a long time talking about this, but it's honestly trivial to handle both of these. Our Google Home responds to Julie in F and me in C because of some setting I must have done a long time ago, and I can still comprehend what's going on in both. It's fairly intuitive to comprehend what's hot and what's cold. I know when it's going to be comfortable outside. None of this is hard. This seems like nothing more than bilingualism - it costs a little at read time but doesn't hurt too much.

This applies to centimetres and inches, and feet and meters, and pounds and kilos. Decimals aren't hard. They're pretty easy. Most devices have F/C conversions so they don't even gain BOM advantages. The whole thing is an explanation for someone who already follows a system and is rationalizing its use. Conversion factors being non-uniform for imperial measures does make that stuff a little harder and length additions requiring the use of 15/16ths and 31/32nds of things is balanced by the fact that 12s are easy to chop into 2s, 3s, and 6s. But none of all of this is hard in any way.

The real reason for the whole thing is that neither of these systems really matters. With unit systems you just need consistency and the US economy has moved too far with too many entrenched players to make any attempt at switching to metric reasonable. You'd gain a little bit of consistency with an easy conversion factor, but even that only applies at one level. After all, no one uses megametres. You go to tonnes and then switch to factors of ten anyway, imperial or metric. Who cares?

The Large America Myth

For eons, online discourse has focused on the large America myth - the theory that a lot of things are explained by the fact that the US is large. No one had fiber to the home because the US is large. No one had trains in the US because it's large. No one had good peri-peri chicken because the US is large. Well, the North-East Megalopolis (NEM) of Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-Baltimore-DC is roughly the size of England, with the population of England, and an economy a third larger than England. In a strange coincidence, NYC also has about the same percent of people in the NEM as London does in England.

High-density rail networks would happily yield results there alone. Fibre had no reason not to exist. As is usual in these situations the real constraint is land-use laws of the present-day United States which constrain this country from being once-again that absolutely magical thing that everyone aspired to be. We should be building more megacities, and more rail, and more industry, and we should do all these other things. America chooses not to do these things because Americans believe other things are more valuable. It's an opinion I disagree with, but at least it's coherent. The Large America myth would have you believe that owning 1.7 million sq. km. (about 670,000 sq. mi.) of Alaska makes it near impossible to do anything but spend $2 b and 25 years on a 2 mile metro line in San Francisco. It might sound like a nice theory, but it doesn't explain anything. In fact, it's not even a nice theory. It's clearly a rationalization!

Conclusion

I love America. I think it's awesome. I think it should be even more awesome. But a lot of Internet stuff around American life seems entirely divorced from reality and it's by a bunch of generally intelligent people who have used their intelligence to only produce sufficiently plausible rationalizations.