(In my experience at least. I'm open to recommendations!)
235 karma · joined February 21, 2013
Discounting the fact that humans aren't coldly rational is irrational. People love to hide behind "logic", but poking a bear and expecting it not to attack you because that would be an "irrational" emotional response is not smart, it's wishful thinking. I can understand why people crave a "grand unified theory" on how the world works and the importance of emotion is an obstacle to having an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but that doesn't mean it's right to ignore it.
It's telling about many HN users' capacity for empathy that they think their reaction, real or hypothetical, has anything to do with whether this was a bad thing. Regardless of how any of us would react, it's clear from the many people who lawyered up or experienced anxiety because of the emails that this study had victims. Not seeing them as victims because you would have disregarded the email reveals what I'd consider a solipsistic mindset that causes them to regard others' experiences as less valid than their own.
Sorry to get off topic, but I think this is an interesting way of thinking about this. I wonder if it represents any kind of larger difference in our worldviews. I would say that we have knowledge of the answer 0% of the time. If we guess and it happens to be correct, that's a coincidence, not an indication of knowledge.
IMO this goes hand in hand with thoughts I've had about the concept of mistakes. When I used to dabble in day trading (I've been clean for a few years now), I gained and lost and gained a lot of money. Whether any particular gamble ended up as a gain or a loss, I consider them all mistakes because I had no rational reason to expect any of them to pay off.
My uneducated hypothesis is that whether somebody thinks of a successful gamble as a mistake or a good decision could be a decent predictor of certain personality traits and political views. Maybe the same applies to the question of whether being correct implies knowledge.
Have you tried giving feedback directly to the company? They feel like a small enough operation that they may actually listen.
The timing was so abrupt that I really doubt this was just a horrible rash decision. That's totally still possible though.
I think the way they do returns is pretty unfriendly compared to other electronic companies I've gone through this with. I was going to exchange my tablet after I bricked it, and they wouldn't send a replacement until they received and processed the return. Based on the label, the return center is in Hong Kong (IIRC), so it probably takes a while to get the replacement even if everything goes according to plan. I ended up recovering the device myself (that ordeal's another story, but that's entirely my fault) so fortunately I just had a week without use of it, not a month+.
I would expect it to be beneficial to them to send the replacement first along with a return box, then charge for a whole new device if the return isn't received on time. Maybe that only works if you have the scale and resources to build such a system that companies like Amazon have.
It's amazing to me that the company feels that the benefits of this outweigh the goodwill it costs them among the fanbase. Trekkies are going apeshit over this. It makes me more hesitant to buy Star Trek media in the future, and I'll admit I'm not one to change my buying patterns based on companies' behavior ordinarily.
* there are probably a handful of millionaire nurses out there
Edit: to be clear, I'm not arguing that the market doesn't reward people for providing economic value to the world. I just disagree that that's the type of value that's relevant when discussing whether someone is virtuous. If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.
Yep, a toddler who was born into an aristocratic family has provided more value to society than any public school teacher ever has.
I don't know about you, but I need more than -10 million dollars.
I'm definitely overestimating my own ability to avoid Amazon's scammy tactics. I, like most people, am reluctant to admit that I'm vulnerable to manipulation by things like these dark patterns (and ads, PR, etc.). But since I'm talking about my subjective feelings towards the websites, I think how good I _feel_ I am is relevant.
I totally agree with everything you've said, but just want to clarify my initial comment. I'm not trying to let Amazon off the hook, though they are less problematic than almost all of the other examples in the article.
It would be interesting to see where e-commerce would be today if a company as dominant as Amazon never came about. My hypothesis is that people would have more trust in a random shopping site they click on when Googling a product they want to buy, but it's impossible to test that.
If it weren't for Amazon's dominance, other sites would be able to compete without resorting to these dark patterns, so this is a self-perpetuating cycle: people only shop on Amazon -> the only other sites that can survive are the ones that engage in deception -> trust in non-Amazon shopping sites decreases -> people only shop on Amazon -> ...
I don't mean to cast these scammy shopping websites as victims. My concern is more about how the legitimate sites that could exist don't because they're crowded out by Amazon (and other big players like Walmart) and the scammy shopping sites this article discusses.
I believe that the type of person the author thinks Michael Scott is exists and sucks (and I'm probably one of them), but I don't think Michael Scott is one of them.
If DDG has such severe memory-related side effects, I'm not sure I want to switch.
Is that true? That sounds illegal.