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Everyday ‘Placebo Buttons’ Create Semblance of Control
- dre85 10y agoI find that the placebo elevator close buttons are a very North American kind of thing. In other countries that I've been to, I've surprisingly seen them working. In Brazil for example the door will close instantly. I'm pretty sure they worked in Germany as well.
- kens 10y agoWhile placebo "walk" buttons in New York City are amusing, more malevolent was that NYC had thousands of placebo fire hydrants. The city would ticket people who parked in front of these unused fire hydrants even though they had been disconnected decades earlier. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/23/nyregion/soapbox-a-little-secret-about-fire-hydrants.html http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/23/nyregion/soapbox-a-little-...
- bendykstra 10y agoPostscript: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/09/nyregion/dormant-fire-hydrants-fading-into-city-history.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/09/nyregion/dormant-fire-hydr...
- tedmiston 10y agoThere was a similar controversy with NYPD issuing parking tickets illegally for parking in front of sidewalk pedestrian ramps that are not at crosswalks. The most ticketed one collected $48,000 in parking tickets over 2.5 years despite actually being a legal spot. http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/144197004989/the-nypd-was-systematically-ticketing-legally http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/144197004989/the-nypd-was-sy...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- parent5446 10y agoMaybe I'm alone, but I feel like this makes sense. It would be difficult, and take more effort than its worth, to have to decide which hydrants are legal to park in front of, somehow designate them so drivers know they're inactive when looking for parking spots, and instruct police and parking enforcers on which hydrants they're allowed to ticket for.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoPutting a cover over the hydrant? Like they do with out of order parking meters.
- toomanybeersies 10y agoYou could paint inactive hydrants a different colour. Cheap and easy to do. I guess that's open to abuse with people painting active hydrants to make them appear inactive and open up more parking spaces.
- parent5446 10y agoOnly issue with this is probably the city would have to hire somebody to paint it, so they have to decide on a budget, have a bidding process, comply with union requirements, and then finally execute it. The covering of them mentioned by nommm-nommm might actually work, though.
- taneq 10y agoMaybe remove or fix the non-functional hydrants? It seems to me that firefighters wasting time trying to use one in an emergency could have far more serious consequences than just some parking tickets.
- parent5446 10y agoThe article clearly explains why this was not considered before, and I presume firefighters are well aware of which hydrants are functional.
- 10y ago
- aninhumer 10y agoI don't think this is necessarily malevolent. If you don't enforce the parking law for the non-functioning hydrants, people may become complacent or confused and start parking in front of necessary ones. But removing them isn't worth it either, because it's expensive, and there's no particular need to. (The article says they can afford it, but even so, there are probably better uses for the money.)
- wongarsu 10y ago>there's no particular need to How about creating legal parking places? Obviously some of those parking places were heavily desired.
- r00fus 10y agoSo it needs to be clear which ones are non-functioning so people know it's ok to park there. Ignoring that, and profiting off of it is malevolent.
- aninhumer 10y agoMaking it clear (say, by painting them) would still cost money.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoMaybe training people to develop an illusory sense of control isn't really a good thing?
- spyrosg 10y agoYou don't need to train them (us), we will seek it naturally. Happiness depends on it, and most people want to be happy.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoOn the other hand, who knows? Has there been a time when people where not generally trained from infancy to believe fallacy?
- TeMPOraL 10y agoA lot of what we today consider fallacies are in fact very reasonable heuristics if you live in the conditions of our ancestors from before civilization. Though with illusion of control, people are pretty good if inventing it for themselves if no external placebo is provided. Consider rain dances, or various folk beliefs around curing diseases...
- Aelinsaar 10y agoOh the folk cures are the best! The ancient Greek ones were literally and figuratively, batshit. IIRC To treat epilepsy it was recommend that you eat the heart of a black donkey beneath the light of the moon on some specific night. Foolproof!
- nxc18 10y agoIt honestly sounds like a budget issue in most cases. I take issue with the description of these as placebo when really they are just broken devices that were too expensive to remove.
- 10y ago
- raverbashing 10y agoCrosswalk buttons do work in some cases, where the lights are usually open for cars but if a pedestrian comes, presses the button then it goes red Now, to expect that a 4-way intersection will have any way of obeying the buttons (of that crossing and of all the other pedestrians in all the other crossings) is just laughable
- ChrisClark 10y agoI have run in to a lot of 4-way intersections where the button doesn't change the timing, but if the button was never pressed, once the traffic lights change the walk sign will not come on. It needs to have been pressed before the light change to show the walk sign. It's either dumb, or it really did increase the delay until the next light change, to allow a pedestrian to cross. It just didn't speed up the initial light change.
- reitanqild 10y agoThis sounds like a reasonable compromise if you optimize for vehicles. Also it means you can possibly have shorter intervals between pedestrian crossing openings because they won't affect anyone as long as nobody pushes the button.
- thatswrong0 10y ago/rant On 3rd street in SF (effectively 6 lane road with 2 lane roads intersecting) they have this setup at most intersections. It makes sense for crossing the 6 lane road, especially since it makes the crossing light extra long to allow for crossing the wide road in time. There's not too much cross traffic, so no point in slowing the 6 lane traffic down unless there's someone crossing. But they also have the no cross light until the button is pressed for the 2 lane crossing and I think it actually makes things more dangerous. If you don't hit the button early in the cycle, you of course have to wait until next cycle.. Which can be a while! Not that many drivers are turning.. So most people in the neighborhood jaywalk. Which means that drivers looking to turn see a red hand and probably think it's okay to turn even if it's not.
- 10y ago
- stephengoodwin 10y agoIf you're looking for something new to listen to, 99% Invisible is also a fantastic podcast.
- kylehotchkiss 10y agoThe "report" buttons on social networks?
- drdeca 10y agoI think the down vote on YouTube comments also. Not sure.
- sanqui 10y agoAt one point about a year ago it was indeed a no-op. I checked and while the thumbs up button sent a request, the thumbs down one did nothing. It was changed a few months ago though, and now both send requests - though that doesn't guarantee anything server-side ;)
- agumonkey 10y agoMaybe they accumulate downvotes locally for batch ?
- reitanqild 10y agoWorks, at least for some it seems: I read a writeup by someone who tried a year or so ago, creating two almost exactly identical Facebook groups only one was telling how one group of people were just sh*t and the other was just the same only with people in the country right across the border from the first one. One was taken down almost immediately, the twin was still up when the experiment ended IIRC. Won't name the nations here but it goes to show the influence Facebook actually has.
- jccalhoun 10y agoMost of these stories use large cities like NYC or London as an example. I wonder though how common it is that the crosswalk buttons don't do anything in the rest of the world or even other cities in the USA. I often wonder if pressing the crosswalk button does anything when I wait for the crossing light. Of course, if we knew which ones worked and which didn't then they wouldn't be as effective.
- kwhitefoot 10y agoFrom reading the comments here I get the impression that such crossings are only at intersections. In Drammen, Norway, where I work, we have in addition crossings that are not at intersections and the only time the lights change in favour of the pedestrian is when you press the button. In addition there are some at intersections that also require a button press because the one way system means that there is never a conflict between vehicles.
- tedmiston 10y agoIn Cincinnati, many of our crosswalk buttons at intersections that trigger automatically, which are most of them, have small signs "push button for audio only."
- TeMPOraL 10y agoSomething like 6-7 years back from now, I was working as a guy who distributes free newspapers on the street in Kraków, Poland, and my assigned street corner was next to an intersection with those crosswalk buttons. I decided to check out the story about placebo buttons then, so I took measurements how long it takes for the pedestrian green to turn on depending on whether or not someone pressed the button. It turned out that the button cut down the waiting time by about 20 seconds, which was at most 50% reduction AFAIR. So sometimes they may work, but the change may be subtle enough to be easy missed.
- pandler 10y agoI think it was Melbourne, Australia where I experienced this, but there were no automatic cycles for the crosswalk lights - they don't go green unless you press the button. Even after learning that, I would still forget sometimes that the buttons weren't just a placebo and would find myself getting frustrated at how long I was having to wait.
- ndespres 10y agoI'm so used to the NYC crosswalk buttons being useless, that when I visit other cities I'll find myself waiting at a crosswalk for 2 or 3 cycles before remembering that I won't ever get a "walk" sign without pressing that button. On the other hand I ride the office elevator every day with people who slam on the "close door" button multiple times despite that the door closes automatically very quickly, as if slamming on the button will increase the speed of the already-closing door.
- Chattered 10y agoI see this frequently in Edinburgh. I join a group at the pelican crossing and after waiting too long, realise that the button hasn't been pressed. Many of our crossings do nothing if you don't press the button. And if the light has been green for road traffic for a while, pressing the button /immediately/ sets the traffic sequence towards red. I often let the odd car pass so the traffic looks clear before pressing, rather than force a poor driver to a stop.
- athenot 10y agoFrom a UX perspective, I wish the signals were retrofitted to reflect that, i.e. maintain the automated traffic flow control but when someone presses the button, start a countdown until it's ok to walk.
- neppo 10y agoThe buttons are only there because it would be too expensive to remove them. I guess turning them into something useful is out of the question when there are not enough funds to remove them
- marcosdumay 10y agoIt's very possible that one has enough money to add something useful, like a count-down, even if there is no money to use for something cheaper, but plainly useless, like removing the button.
- tedmiston 10y agoI have seen this in some cities, but not much. It would be very cool to have.
- jasoncchild 10y agoHow silly! I love the tinfoil hat account of office thermostats. When you retrofit a controls system, based on my experience, it's not uncommon to leave existing fixtures and wiring in place...disconnected. It's not a conspiracy, however it is often the case of people being cheap. It costs far more labor to rip everything out in addition to installing new equipment. I've seen things...awful things...that inform my opinion on the subject ;) That said...road side pong!
- joshagogo 10y agoMakes me wonder what kind of placebo buttons will be put inside self-driving cars. Maybe a "vroom" button to tell your self-driving uber to take the fast route, or maybe even a "NY Cabbie" button to make it super aggressive in the city, along with a few honks. Latest research shows that people think biggest benefit of SD cars will be time to do other things (http://unu.ai/self-driving-cars/ http://unu.ai/self-driving-cars/), but I bet one of those other things might be to hit the placebo button....
- zitterbewegung 10y agoAre there placebo buttons in regular cars? Why would self driving cars have this as a feature? Especially whoever is paying for the car which would have to pay money for this useless feature.
- MichaelGG 10y agoThe additional cost is negligible. Current cars don't need placebo buttons because you can drive aggressively yourself. Current cars do have placebos though. Some newer sports cars would play engine sounds thru the speakers to make users feel more power.
- HappyTypist 10y agoAlso electric cars by law are required to play engine sounds because they're so quiet otherwise
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoOutside the cabin, to protect pedestrians. That's not a placebo.
- taneq 10y agoThat is so very Brave New World.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
- kstenerud 10y agoThere are few things more infuriating than a placebo button. They talk about illusion of control, but it's actually just a cruel and borderline sadistic demonstration of the control you don't have. “Doing something is better than doing nothing, so people believe. And when you go to press the button your attention is on the activity at hand. If I’m just standing at the corner I may not even see the light change, or I might only catch the last part of the change, in which case I could put myself in danger.” Probably the most condescending and patronizing statement I've heard in a long time.
- hinkley 10y agoSeveral of the crosswalk graffiti examples pictured in the article are sociopolitical commentary on our illusions of control. "Naturally, a number of street art projects have popped up around the humorous futility of pedestrians pressing placebo buttons:" I think the depths of the satire on these is lost on the author.
- developer2 10y agoThen there are those who try to find deep meaning in something as innocuous as a joke placed at a crosswalk signal. It's not "sociopathical". There is no "depth" or "satire". It might be "art", but even that is debatable. It's just citizens putting up something funny. Why is there a need to attribute it to something more deeply rooted in the psyche?
- hinkley 10y agouh, socio-political. I think a lot of these stickers are a form of graffiti with a political agenda, of thinking for yourself and noticing you're losing your autonomy. Some people scream it and throw things, others use satire to prod us into action.
- developer2 10y agoThis is what I mean. You're reading way too much into the situation. If I were not such a lazy are artistically-challenged person, I would absolutely set up such a display at a useless crossing signal. And it would have no meaning whatsoever other than to make fun of the fact that the specific button does nothing. Nearly equatable to being satire, but with less meaning than the term "satire" generally refers to. It would be purely for the purpose of a fun moment in my life, nothing more. No philosophical meaning about how "many actions in life are fruitless", but rather "heh, this one button doesn't do anything, time to have fun with it". Our brains may be wired with complexities we don't understand, but I know the difference between having a moment of enjoyment for myself, vs. doing something with an ulterior motive of pretending to be a genius making grandiose remarks about civilization as a whole. More people need to remember what it's like to be an innocent child who, in such a case, would instantly proclaim "a button that doesn't do anything... whyyyy?", instead of going full-on adult with a cynical point of view. For fuck's sake, stop overthinking every single moment in life. It's depressing.
- drdeadringer 10y agoPlacebo or not, what makes no sense to me is when people continuously slap at the Walk button as if toggling it more than once will somehow make the signal change over faster.
- pasquinelli 10y agoit's not a toggle button. when you press one it doesn't necessarily feel as though you've depressed it enough, so you press it a few times. you don't want to miss your signal and have to wait for the lights to go around again.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAlso, an unsophisticated mind will think that maybe "the system" will understand multiple presses as multiple people and prioritize the change somehow. A more sophisticated mind would consider that maybe they interpret short bursts at the button as one (impatient) signal. Anyway, I find myself hitting those buttons multiple times just because... I'm not really thinking about it, I just press and then press few more times to be sure. It's probably driven more by the knowledge that doing so will not do anything negative, than from expecting a positive outcome.
- drdeadringer 10y agoPressing twice in case you "didn't depress it enough" is perfectly fine and understandable. However, standing there repeatedly slapping or pressing at the thing like a rat trying to get another dose of heroin is crazy to me.
- colejohnson66 10y agoI'm guilty of pressing it repeatedly sometimes just because I'm bored
- throwanem 10y agoYou shouldn't be guilty about that. You're doing the button a favor. Its only reason to exist is to be pressed, to be useful. It was good at that once. And now it isn't, because it's no longer connected to anything meaningful. The world has moved on, and its purpose is gone, and it is unaccountably still there. And it's durable, of course, being made for outdoor use, and so it stays pretty much the same even though no one really cares about it or looks after it any more, day upon day and year upon year, and it stoically refuses to show much sign of its advancing age and the existential uncertainty which now pervades it, and every day puts it one day further away from its memories of brighter days long gone. Days when it was useful. Days when it mattered. And then someone comes along who's bored. Hey, there's nothing better to do, so you push the button. Maybe you push it a few times, maybe a bunch of times. Maybe just once. Doesn't matter. You're not as bored now. And the button gets to be useful again. Not in the same way as it used to be. Doesn't matter. Useful again. Making someone's day a little bit better again. Worthwhile again. Even if only for a minute. Don't be ashamed of that. Never feel guilty about that. Small kindnesses matter, too. Me, I just like the sturdy feel of the switch.
- rmxt 10y agoMaybe five, ten, twenty years ago traffic signal buttons in NYC were an everyday sight, but they are increasingly further and fewer between. Taking the article's 100 functioning + 1000 non-functioning buttons at face value, combined with the fact that there are ~12,000 signalized intersections in NYC [1], means that it is likely that less than 2-5% of the crosswalks in NYC have buttons. A fully equipped traditional "+" shaped intersection would have 4 crosswalks and 8 buttons, so 1100/(12000 * 2 to 8) = 1% to 5% of crosswalks could have buttons. NYC gets a lot of grief for decrepit infrastructure, but this is an area where they have actually started to remove the unused stuff. [1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/signals.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/signals.shtm...
- umanwizard 10y agoI can't remember ever seeing a walk button in Manhattan. In Brooklyn I do see them sometimes.
- kylec 10y agoI always press the street crossing and elevator door close buttons, even though I'm well aware that in many cases it won't work. Why? Sometimes it actually does work, and the effort required is minimal. I don't do so because the button has provided the illusory feeling of control.
- revelation 10y agoThis article seems to suggest that it's all in good fun because "traffic flow is now computer-controlled", the suggestion being that traffic is cars and cars only. In many many parts of NYC, pedestrian traffic dominates cars, yet signals and streets continue to give preference to cars and other motorized vehicles. If there is an overflowing sidewalk full of people waiting for a signal it's a testament to the 1960s era thinking that permeates DOTs planning and construction.
- rhizome 10y agoyet signals and streets continue to give preference to cars and other motorized vehicles I don't know about NYC, but in SF this is not necessarily the case. Signal timing can be optimized for pedestrian rates of speed, or bicycles. Planners do think about this stuff.
- gnclmorais 10y agoI hate these buttons. Everyday in London I see people pressing them and I mentally roll my eyes.
- throwanem 10y agoAre you sure it's the buttons you hate?
- superuser2 10y agoThe fact that building HVAC controls are so often owned and locked down to people outside the building is infuriating. I worked on a community theater production that rented space from a high school in the summer. It was perfectly cool throughout rehearsals, but sweltering hot when we came in on Saturday because the HVAC system's schedule hadn't been overridden to reflect being occupied over the weekend. The thermostats around the building (less than 5 years old, with very powerful AC) were, of course, placebos. We called the district-level administrator who had control of HVAC, but she was out of town and couldn't get her VPN client to work. So no AC for us.
- betolink 10y agoElection after election, the ones in our voting machines are the ultimate placebo buttons.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoTry telling that to a gay person.
- betolink 10y agoI have gay friends and most of them agree, what about trying telling that to a poor person? elections are -on its current form- a very unrepresentative way of democracy. There are concrete issues that can be addressed by electing certain persons but generally speaking, change and elections(especially with money involved) it's like the traffic buttons... you think the light changed because you pressed it.
- throwanem 10y agoHi. I think he's right. But that's beside the point. Whether I think he's right or wrong, I can say so, or not say so, for myself. You don't need to worry about it. Thanks for the thought, but I've got it covered.
- pluma 10y agoI think I'm out of the loop. Is this a reference to anything?
- throwanem 10y agoGay marriage, would be my guess.
- pluma 10y agoI assumed as much, but I don't understand how gay marriage was affected by voting for either of the two parties. As far as I could tell from an outside perspective it was a Supreme Court decision that followed a long series of changes in state law in large parts of the US. It was my understanding that these kind of "contentious" issues are generally only resolved by the Supreme Court when there is already a de facto majority decision in state laws making it a "safe" decision. I'm not sure how much impact the president can even have on these, seeing how the Supreme Court is supposed to be impartial and non-partisan.
- mattnewport 10y agoI knew a gameplay programmer years ago who got frustrated with a particular designer constantly requesting minor tweaks that required code changes. He built a fancy control panel with a bunch of sliders and dials to adjust all kinds of gameplay parameters and gave it to the designer who happily spent the rest of the project making endless adjustments without bothering the programmer in question. Of course he never hooked up the controls to actually do anything and the nicely balanced gameplay was entirely due to the decisions he hard coded.
- cloudjacker 10y agoI like how all designers without fail put their meaningless design tickets as CRITICAL, BLOCKER in the ticket tracking system
- mod 10y agohttp://nathanbarry.com/design-approval/ http://nathanbarry.com/design-approval/
- caf 10y agoApparently audio mixing desks are sometimes built with such a slider or knob.
- m-jones 10y agoThe illusion of control is not limited to the placebo effect. When you consider that our Universe is causal and that all actions (including that of a human) result from a set of conditions determined by previous actions, it is quite easy to discount the existence of free will. Without getting existential, I would like to raise that not only does pushing a placebo button give you no control, but the choice even to press that button was not one you took but one which was predefined. This means that even if that button wasn't a placebo, you would still ultimately have no control over what happens as the choice to push the button is not yours. This extends further questions as to who you are as you are defined by your actions which were not your choice to make. This obviously has serious implications with our legal system where by a person could not be held accountable for commiting a crime however it is also worth noting that the notion of awards would be invalidated as a person had no choice in doing good thing X.
- Houshalter 10y agoId recommend reading this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/rb/possibility_and_couldness/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/rb/possibility_and_couldness/ Intelligent agents do make choices and it's a useful abstraction to think of the world that way. A chess playing program may be deterministic and make the same move Everytime. But it still picks the move it thinks is best, out of all the possibilities. If it thought another move was better, if would have chosen that. And so it does have control, it does make choices , in some sense.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI love the street art, but believe the article is fundamentally flawed. It picks three examples of placebo controls, crosswalk buttons, elevator door closing, and office thermostats. Let's go through those Crosswalk buttons - When traffic through an intersection (both pedestrian and vehicle) merits "knowing" when pedestrians want to cross, the buttons are considered. When such information will not change the flow, they are not. At some point in time if the cycle of walk/dont walk red/yellow/green will not differ based on button input, you can stop considering the button input. However, we get into situations in the Bay Area where the button is important and people who don't push it never see a walk sign. So sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Elevator buttons have a similar issues. There are regulations about how quickly after the doors open that the doors can close, and there are mechanisms that control the speed of closure (also regulated for safety reasons). Few people feel consider the door open button is a placebo because they can see, "Yup the doors are still open" but they feel that close is a placebo because the doors don't immediately start to close when it is pushed. And office thermostats. Having been responsible for a company move, and consequently dealing with the landlord of the old and new space. The HVAC system was always divided into "zones". The thermostats were placed based on some previous zone. So when you reconfigure the space, new thermostats get added (if necessary) but old ones don't get removed. The old ones are either useful in the new configuration, or not useful now, but may be at a future date. Since it was $300+ to add a thermostat into the space, the landlord kept all thermostats that exist, so that future tenents might be able to use one that wasn't needed before but is already installed, saving $300+ in tenant improvement costs.
- greggman 10y agoYes, the myth of placebo buttons continues unabated. Maybe that's a NYC thing. I know plenty of crosswalks in SF and LA areas where if you don't press the button it will never say walk. Also, here in Japan nearly all elevator close buttons work instantly
- delinka 10y ago"Myth"? You have certainly not debunked ChuckMcM's detailed hypotheses about the reasons a placebo device exists. San Francisco, Los Angeles and (presumably all of) Japan are not indicative of much of the rest of the planet. There's still Chicago, Berlin, England (encompassing London), Brazil, Beijing...
- dlandis 10y ago> At the end of the day, placebo buttons do little harm and may well do a bit of good. Except for the fact that all of those buttons are contaminated with germs. If one person contaminates a walk button at a busy intersection with the flu virus, how many hundreds of other people will be exposed to that over the next few hours? How many people will they expose?
- chmars 10y agoEasily mitigated by washing your hands and keeping up with other standard hygiene measures. With the words of Douglas Adams: Don't panic! :)
- MertsA 10y agoIt's more easily mitigated by not placing a useless button in a high traffic area.
- dlandis 10y agoDo you think everyone diligently follows those practices though, or depending on their background, even knows about them? Even conscientious people have lapses where they touch their eyes or mouth after touching something like that.
- rgbrgb 10y agoI've put placebo buttons on forms that autosave in order to give the user a feeling of resolution. Never thought about their meatspace analog.
- headmelted 10y agoIn Belfast, there don't appear to be any placebo buttons, and yet I wonder if everyone else knows something I don't. People here seem to like spending their lives congregated at traffic lights waiting for someone else to push the button so they can cross. Maybe they're just waiting for me so I don't have to cross by myself?
- Tharkun 10y agoKurt Vonnegut predicted this in Sirens Of Titan. His spaceships have two buttons: on and off. The on button starts the auto pilot. The off button doesn't do anything at all, but gives its human passengers a sense of control.
- clarry 10y agoPretty silly, these buttons, especially in areas with combined cycle & pedestrian traffic, at winter or during a wet period. You're supposed to cycle on the right side, but then you swerve to the left to reach for the button. Stick your foot in the snow or dip it in the puddle. If you're carrying a big box, you may also have to drop that before you can reach the button. And now people get confused as to who's going to stay where when they cross, some on the wrong side, others not. All this for a button that you probably didn't need to press in the first place. But if you don't, you'll find another intersection where you'll wait a bit too long and realize the light is not going to turn green and you're almost late for the bus. There's one reason I just don't care about red lights anymore when I'm on foot or saddle.
- kaybe 10y agoSome of the cycling lanes here have inductive coils below the pavement to detect the bike and switch the light, no button needed. This fixes that problem at least.
- Animats 10y agoElevator open/close buttons are enabled when you put the elevator in "service elevator" mode. There's usually a key switch for that. This is for freight; it's not a maintenance function. In "service" mode, the doors won't close unless you press the door close button, so you can move things in and out without interference from the door. With some service elevators, pressing a hall call button when the doors are open rings a bell to tell you to stop hogging the elevator. Other key switches may include "independent operation" (decouples that elevator from the group controller) and "attended" (enables buttons Up, Down, and Non-Stop). When moving in or out of a multi-elevator building, ask to borrow the service elevator key. That's what it's for.
- louprado 10y agoOne of my first supervisors formerly worked a Motorola and explained that the retractable antenna on late 90's cellphones eventually morphed into a placebo. In the course of phasing out external antennas, the initial design had a fake antenna. However, by extending the fake antenna to its maximum, it turned on an high-gain amplifier. So while deceptive, it did improve reception. But later the retractable antenna served no function other than a placebo that reduced complaints about poor reception.
- sevenless 10y agoIn some countries, voting serves the same purpose, doesn't it?
- xg15 10y ago> Feeling you have control over your world is a desirable state I wonder when exactly in business the "experience" of something became more important than the actual thing - but this pattern seems to become increasingly more common: It's more important that customers feel valued than that they are actually valued; it's more important that food looks fresh and tastes nutritious than that it actually is; it's more important that a device has a high-quality exterior than that it has high-quality specs; etc, etc. I feel this kind of thinking is the source of many frustrations and even health problems. I find it sad if it's now apparently so widespread that papers take the assumption for granted.
- meric 10y agoI think it's a cycle that will pass. E.g. Early Rome vs Late Rome vs Early Islam.
- xg15 10y agoRegarding the crosswalk buttons: The article mentions that in NYC the purpose of the buttons were obsoleted by "careful automation". That leaves me a bit stumped. Whatever sophisticated machine learning algorithm you have running behind the scenes, wouldn't you want at least some input on the state of pedestrians to tune it? That is, unless the "careful automation" is actually just a fixed sequence of traffic light changes or a rigorous "cars first" policy.
- paulsutter 10y agoIn Japan elevator door close buttons are used the majority of the the time, and they really work. If you don't press the door close button, the door can stay open for an uncomfortably long time. Since returning from Japan, I've noticed that many door close buttons in the US are actually functional which surprised me (I had always believed they were placebos). Also, many elevators in the US will close the door as soon as a floor is selected, which in most cases eliminates any need to press door close. In Japan you can press a floor button right away even if others are entering, and as I have discovered by habit, not polite here :)
- niccaluim 10y agoI admit I feel a tiny sense of superiority when I don't press the crosswalk buttons in SF. There are some that actually need to be pressed but they're different: instead of a button they have a little touch sensor and make a very pleasing chirp.
- dredmorbius 10y agoPrayer.
- throwanem 10y agoLive in a world that doesn't give a damn about you for long enough, and it gets hard to sustain that contempt for people who can successfully convince themselves that it does. Something you might want to watch out for.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'm not following the connection here. My (rather pithy) comment also alludes to a larger scope of activities which people go through (various forms of ritual, cargo-culting, false beliefs, etc.), which give an illusion of control or agency. As your comment seems to suggest, these may simply be psychological self-inflicted tricks to retain sanity in an uncaring universe. That thought has occurred to me. It's also possible to engage in self-aware self-trickery. Though that's somewhat more complicated. I'm also of the view that all models are false. Some models are useful.
- toomanybeersies 10y agoThe whole placebo buttons thing has become a bit of a meme. It's always the same 3 things as well, elevators, thermostats, and crossing buttons. Cracked, WSJ, the NYT, and the BBC (twice!) have all covered it.
- galdosdi 10y agoFirst sentence is strange to me > Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. In other parts of NYC maybe, but in most of Manhattan I can't imagine anyone doing this more than a few times. They'd be more likely to just "jaywalk." Signal phases are very short and "jaywalking" is so accepted and normal that it seems odd here to have a word for it. The real irony is that (so I was told) "jay walking" comes from an old derogatory term, "jay" meaning someone from the country not familiar with the city. But in Manhattan, it's the other way around -- the tourists are usually the ones that scrupulously _don't_ jaywalk.
- taneq 10y ago> "jay walking" comes from an old derogatory term, "jay" Really? I always wondered where the term came from, the best explanation I could think of is that the original offense was walking most of the way across the street and then doubling back (so walking in a 'j' shape) which would confuse traffic and lead to more collisions.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoReally. To make it better the term really came into its own because the automobile industry ran various PR campaigns using it in order to combat the many campaign groups who were against bringing large numbers of vehicles to the city. Pretty standard smear campaign.
- will_hughes 10y agoThe TV Show Adam Ruins Everythign has a cute little bit on the origins of jaywalking[1]. At work without headphones so can't verify if this clip covers the origin of the term, but the whole episode does. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s
- foxylad 10y agoWe have a placebo button on the last page of our online school interview booking system. The last page clearly states that their bookings are confirmed and have been emailed to them, but during usability trials we found many people wanted another button to confirm completion. So now we have a "Finished" button that simply takes them back to our home page.
- Fuzzwah 10y agoBest one I ever saw was in near the exit door of a skydiving plane; a big red button with PANIC on it which did nothing at all.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoIn Kentucky, I've encountered crosswalk buttons that don't actually change the traffic-light cycle at all, but the walk light doesn't come on during parallel green-light traffic unless the button was pushed. I have no idea what that's supposed to accomplish, unless it's just another level of placebo.