Keep It Simple, Stupid

By Rory McClannahan

Occam’s razor tells us that "entities are not to be multiplied without necessity." In mathematics, this means that if the solution to a problem can be solved in numerous ways it is always best to use the one with fewer sets of elements.

Of course, even saying the word mathematics gives me the cold sweats. I got a D in high school algebra only because it would mean that I would get credit for and not have to take it again. I don’t think the teacher liked me much because I had never heard of Occam’s razor. I was usually so lost that I would throw everything at a problem hoping to find a solution and usually just end up guessing.

In popular parlance, Occam’s razor is usually thought of as if there is a problem, the simplest solution is the best. I know all of this now because Occam’s razor has had a long history of slapping me in the face and saying “Duh!”

What I hadn’t realized in high school was that thinking through all of the solutions to a problem is usually how I went about solving it. It’s not something I’m especially proud of, and many times can lead to crippling indecision, but as Popeye the Sailor once said, “I yam who I yam.”

This latest example of Occam’s razor inserting itself into my life has been ongoing for about the past year.

In my house, I have three television sets. My grandfather would not have been able to understand that concept. To him, one TV would be fine. Not only was there not much on it to watch, but a set wasn’t really something inexpensive. However, us modern folks know that the television has become much more than three channels that went off the air at midnight. Plus, relatively speaking, they are dirt cheap.

So, I have the main big TV in the living room, I have a set in my little home office that is used mostly for background noise and for playing video games and then there is the set in the bedroom, where I can set the timer and fall asleep to the sound of old movies or Perry Mason episodes.

Last year, the office TV started acting kind of buggy. It was a cheap set that I got at Walmart for under a hundred bucks. I moved the bedroom TV into the office and went shopping for something new and cheap for the bedroom.

As you all know, it is nearly impossible to buy a television that is not a “smart” TV. The sales pitch on smart TVs is somewhat alluring – not only can you get your programs from your cable or antenna, but you also have a host of streaming options to keep you entertained. My old bedroom TV was not smart, but I got one of those Roku devices and used that for streaming. I thought it worked fairly well, and the large set in the living room was a Roku TV and also was okay.

What I was learning, though, was that my smart televisions had some annoying habits. For instance, every time you turn them on, there is a delay while it hooks into your internet and does whatever updates it needs to do. This can be quick, but usually take some time. And that smartness can be a little buggy at times while the television thinks about what it wants to do. Sometimes it won’t let me change the channel. Sometimes it makes me sign into whatever streaming service I want to use, forgetting that I had entered that 10-digit password only the day before. Sometimes it won’t even turn on, sending me to unplug it, count to 30 and plug it back in.

This doesn’t even get into the privacy issues and the advertising. The Roku set in the living room isn’t horrible in this regard, but I found the new Vizio set in the bedroom to be especially annoying. Added to all of the bugs I just mentioned, turning on the Vizio set triggers a set of advertisements that I have to either watch or try to get off the screen before it takes me to the home screen, where I am shown a scroll of the entertainment “chosen just for me.” Honestly, it kind of creeps me out that my television is giving me recommendations based I what I’ve watched before. Actually, that’s only part of the equation, these recommendations are paid for by the companies that want me to watch these shows, which I find to be even more annoying than advertisements.

It takes some doing, but I can eventually make it to the antenna to watch the local news. Mostly, I just want to be able to turn on the set and it will be on the channel where I had left it. Is that really too much to ask? I know in the scheme of things, this is nothing but a First World Problem and that I shouldn’t complain. But it is still a problem and an annoyance. I don’t know about you, but being annoyed is not conducive to relaxing and falling asleep.

I set out to solve this problem and got it into my head that its solution was in purchasing another television, a dumb television. I figured if I wanted to stream something on it, I would get another Roku streaming device and use that. I found out, though, that one cannot purchase a dumb television anymore. I take that back, you can, but it has to be online and seemed to be pricey.

Another solution I mulled was going to a thrift store in search of a dumb TV. In fact, I found one that turned out to be a piece of shit that ended up at the dump. (I had wanted to recycle it, but televisions aren’t recycled. Figures.)

It was a conundrum, and you have to understand that this whole procedure took place over months, the solutions to my problem were not satisfactory and I didn’t really want to spend the money on a new television while I had one that, while not perfect, worked.

But I had not given up. If I am anything, I am tenacious. Over the weekend, I went online looking for a deals on dumb televisions when I glanced over at my little cheap, pink laptop. It’s not much of a laptop having been designed for teenage girls to do their homework. As implied before, I’m cheap and I got this one new for nearly the change I had in my pocket. It was fine because I only wanted to use it for writing.

I don’t have the wi-fi on the laptop turned on because when it is, it is slow as it constantly updates the operating system and my Microsoft subscription…

Can we all say “Duh!” now?

After my epiphany I went in a disconnected my smart television’s brain from it’s Vizio masters. Now I have a television that when turned on starts without ads on the channel on which it was last used. It’s still a little buggy and confused as it tries to connect to its brain, but the level of annoyance at it is not even close to what it once was. After attaching the little Roku streaming device, it is nearly as perfect as I had wanted it to be at the beginning.

Total time to find the solution to my problem? About 15 minutes, if that. Total cost? Nothing.

I guess Occam was right, the best solution is the easiest.