etakeh:

I don’t like “spoon theory” because ?? how are spoons relevant?

You don’t have enough spoons? neither does anyone else because NO ONE CARRIES AROUND A BAG OF SPOONS and NO ONE USES THEM FOR BARTER

From now on, it’s “I don’t have the latinum for this”. “No, going there costs too much latinum”. “That’s not worth the latinum”. “I wouldn’t pay a half-slip of latinum for that”.

Contrariwise, “Wow, that’s a bargain at twice the latinum” for something that’s actually pleasant and good for your brain.

Latinum may be a fictional currency, but at least it’s a currency.

So yeah you can go trade spoons but the only way spoons relate to brains is when you’re eating brain-shaped flan or eating the brains of your enemy straight from their skull.

Which I’m not saying you shouldn’t do, of course.

ALT

if you really want I suppose you could make some spoons out of latinum

Haha okay I do like this.

I personally have always thought of it more as a battery charge than a currency. Spoons are a much less effective way to illustrate it than either of those.

And yet– the spoon analogy was coined (haha) by someone who was out to dinner with someone and trying to explain the concept of “energy as an exhaustible resource” with whatever props happened to be available, and… spoons were there.

There may quite easily have been other, better possible ways of explaining it.

But, when you are low on “spoons,” you are quite liable to pick the first thing you see.

And there is a certain poetic fittingness there.