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I read through the comments and what I noticed is that many of the commentors seem to take it as a slight against them personally. To me it is a perfect example

by jaxn 16y ago

I read through the comments and what I noticed is that many of the commentors seem to take it as a slight against them personally. To me it is a perfect example of why we need to not be religious about technology. It is just a damn phone. Yes there is an issue of whether or not Engadget has a bias, and they very well might. It is just too hard to make sense of through the noise of zealotry.

MrFoof 16y ago
Anecdotally and simply observed over the years, individuals seem to be very defensive about what they choose to spend their money on, but how defensive they are decreases as their income increases. Houses. Colleges. Cars. Big-ticket electronic items. I'm curious, does anyone have any interesting material or studies that have looked into this phenomenon?
- defrex 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  From memory (sorry no source) I believe it is related to the amount of emotional tension the individual experiences, and the release felt, in making the purchase. It is not the amount of money involved. So taking two people with the same income and net worth, if one person gets very emotionally committed and spends a lot of time socializing and projecting how great product X is going to be and feeling bad because he doesn't have it yet, and the other person just buys it on a lark? The first person will tend to be very dogmatic, perhaps religious or irrational, about the value of the product. This effect is culmulative. By the way, this "release" that is felt after the immediate purchase has a tremendous cognitive blinding ability. The purchaser is something like 100 times more willing to buy some related product in the immediate minutes after the big decision is made while the "glow" is still there. LOTS of folks make BIG money exploiting this. By the way, the tendency among intelligent people is to view a lot of this as "psycho-babble" or some such. So they spend a lot of time online, doing research, reading various opinions, making an informed choice -- all the while falling into the trap outlined above. Except they don't see it. Humans are really cool to observe. They are the only creatures that can act completely emotionally and then beat the heck out of you using logic and facts when you point out what's going on. That's neat
  - Kadrith 16y ago
    http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
jarin 16y ago
Those poor oppressed Android users... This is truly their Kristallnacht.

by jaxn 16y ago

MrFoof 16y ago

Anecdotally and simply observed over the years, individuals seem to be very defensive about what they choose to spend their money on, but how defensive they are decreases as their income increases. Houses. Colleges. Cars. Big-ticket electronic items. I'm curious, does anyone have any interesting material or studies that have looked into this phenomenon?

defrex 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
From memory (sorry no source) I believe it is related to the amount of emotional tension the individual experiences, and the release felt, in making the purchase. It is not the amount of money involved. So taking two people with the same income and net worth, if one person gets very emotionally committed and spends a lot of time socializing and projecting how great product X is going to be and feeling bad because he doesn't have it yet, and the other person just buys it on a lark? The first person will tend to be very dogmatic, perhaps religious or irrational, about the value of the product. This effect is culmulative. By the way, this "release" that is felt after the immediate purchase has a tremendous cognitive blinding ability. The purchaser is something like 100 times more willing to buy some related product in the immediate minutes after the big decision is made while the "glow" is still there. LOTS of folks make BIG money exploiting this. By the way, the tendency among intelligent people is to view a lot of this as "psycho-babble" or some such. So they spend a lot of time online, doing research, reading various opinions, making an informed choice -- all the while falling into the trap outlined above. Except they don't see it. Humans are really cool to observe. They are the only creatures that can act completely emotionally and then beat the heck out of you using logic and facts when you point out what's going on. That's neat
- Kadrith 16y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

jarin 16y ago

Those poor oppressed Android users... This is truly their Kristallnacht.