Comment by fc417fc802
21 hours ago
Not quite. The distinction is between avoiding an articulable and concrete negative impact versus mere aesthetic considerations. For example, this pan is more difficult to use because it is somewhat undersized for what I'm trying to cook versus I don't like this pan because it's the wrong color or has the wrong accents or whatever. I understand baby duck syndrome to refer to the latter - ie having an unsubstantiated bias towards aspects of the thing first encountered.
I'd only point out that undersize and oversize aren't purely objective concerns, but are also aesthetics compared to what you're used to.
I wouldn't be arguing about this except that I can't trust my clock app on my phone because some bozo keeps redesigning it to work a different way every 6 months
And I think that's an excellent example. I don't think dislike of sudden and unexpected changes to your clock app would qualify as an instance of baby duck syndrome precisely because it has a material impact on your usage of it.
In contrast, if you prefer phones with blue bodies for no particular reason and your first phone happened to be blue then it's at least possible that's an example (or maybe you just really like that color, I dunno).