8 ms·

Ambient Cruelty

145 points by kawera 8y ago

byproxy 8y ago
"The students found the writer voicing negative opinions much more intelligent and persuasive than the one voicing praise." Well, this resonates. One of the things I do when scouring online reviews is to search out the negative reviews. I dismiss reviews that are irrelevant to the product itself and do (what I hope) is a reasonable job filtering out the less-informed negative reviews. When I find a good, informed negative review I tend to search through that particular reviewer's history to then find what they HAVE reviewed positively. Because I do tend to think that person has more expertise/knowledge. Until I find a good, informed negative review on something they've rated positively. An aside: This site has lovely design.
- lostgame 8y ago
  >> An aside: This site has lovely design. The design is very neat, but I found it's actual readability on my MacBook Pro to be awful.
  - byproxy 8y ago
    Interesting. I'm on Windows and I tend to find sites with custom fonts render terribly, but this one is quite pleasant.
    - lostgame 8y ago
      The fonts render correctly - they are slightly large, however, and there is an absurd amount of space on the left and white sides of the page. There's a strange sort of parallax-scrolling effect where some items actually hang off the side distractingly. It looks more like an example of funky design rather than something designed for readability. This is all IMHO.
      - jamiek88 8y ago
        It looked great on the iPad, really readable. Optimized for mobile maybe?
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    iPhone legibility is excellent, didn’t even need to go into reader mode.
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    Wait... is he actually saying the site has nice design, or was that a joke? I thought it was a call back to praise being dismissed and thought less intelligent.
    - byproxy 8y ago
      No, I was being earnest.
  - mrob 8y ago
    It's unreadable by default with Javascript disabled on Firefox, but Reader View fixes it.
    - thedailymail 8y ago
      Reader view has rescued many a reading experience! I'd love it if I could set it as the FF default for opening webpages.
- MattyRad 8y ago
  You could argue that HN is similar, where the highest comments are often the most contrarian. Which isn't to say they're not always valid, but I think it's important to be aware of this pattern.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    Either we agree and elaborate, or disagree and eloborate (which is hard when you simply don't have additional knowledge). If we just agree, we upvote, because there is nothing to say, right? So that itself shifts the "pattern" some more. I remember it also being like that in the small forums I remember fondly. We didn't have upvotes, but I still noticed that agreement is shorter than disagreement. But that was fine, since we kept talking through the months and years, we actually learned a lot. The flamewars very never so bad because we were few and close enough to be able to not "stop" them, but simply throw all fuel into the fire right away, and then cleared out the air after it was all burned. I remember a guy thanking us when he finally got around to not being a bit of a racist anymore.. We ribbed on him occasionally for several years, but never in a mean way, and he ended up writing us a thank you letter style post. I forgot all the details, but I'll never forget that actually happened. Still proud of that guy whatever the nick was ^^ That really can only happen in small, long-term communities, I think. Maybe it's simply not possible to "scale" that indefinitely, because it's about human capacity.
    - grawprog 8y ago
      I had a conversation in a forum recently about something like this. This particular forum has a kind of upvoting system but no downvoting system. Occasionally there's threads asking to put in a downvote system or asking why there isn't one. The general consensus tends to be that it's easy to just agree with something but if you disagree with a topic or post it encourages better conversation to have to explain your stance and why you disagree. I've posted on those forums for a long time and generally i notice this is what tends to happen more as opposed to a place like reddit, or even here sometimes, where a post just gets downvoted away with no counterpoints or discussions.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
- lmm 8y ago
  I find the narrow column very unpleasant; on my screen it forces a lot more scrolling than should actually be necessary for how much content there is.
  - phoboslab 8y ago
    Wider columns are harder to read. That's why newspapers and magazines typically divide a page into slimmer columns. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
    - lmm 8y ago
      I know this is the conventional wisdom, but it just doesn't match my experience; I can't stand to read these thin-columned websites.
- baldfat 8y ago
  Resonated with me a lot. As a faculty member college students would rally around a critic (no matter how illogical their words) and attack someone creative with criticism almost out of habit openly in class. Also I have seen religious people constantly rally around negativity for decades and it always rubbed me the wrong way. This also seems to be the idea that the negative stance is seen as the most intelligent. I have years of Theology and learned 3 dead languages to better understand Theology and the scriptures and yet some yahoo with a high school education will have the upper hand ever talking about Kindness or Trust or Love. The message of fear is very powerful and sadly the message of hope and love is seen as weak.
  - dhimes 8y ago
    It's not just the students. Faculty members do it. Board members do it. It's a cheap way to look smart and can lead to a toxic environment if left unchecked. It's much harder to make positive work than to criticize.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." I guess I go with Nietzsche's idea that Christianity is an inherently negative faith. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, but you're basically trying to live divine law in a material world. That's not exactly going to bring out the kind and trusting in people, even if the divine law is love.
  - hnuser355 8y ago
    Frankly my opinion on the majority of religious people I’ve met is that they aren’t actually religious and just want a club that encourages them to be a bit nicer, bit more prudent, and where people are a bit more friendly. Sometimes I worry that they are messing with something immensely powerful as if it’s a toy but perhaps it’s not my place to consider that
- lordnacho 8y ago
  My guess is that in pre-technological times, you were sticking your neck out when you criticised something. Saying "XYZ" is great is just an expression of wanting to fit in with the group, and doesn't require explanation. Saying "XYZ" is awful is probably hurtful to someone nearby, and you're going to have to think about what exactly is bad about it. And not only is it bad, it's so bad you are willing to risk the happy consensus in order to help the group. Of course things that worked in small, close groups might be gamed in larger, more loose ones...
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  I find negative reviews better since they tend to have actual discussion of issues and flaws. If it is someone giving 1 star because of the post office or because Wolfenstein dares to portray nazis in a bad light you roll your eyes and move on. I think a positive review could have a similar impact but it would need to be really detailed like say "I did the math and this is the optimal price point for data storage vs cost". The issue mentioned of expected rank inflation from unrealistic standards is probably why. We are used to cheap crap being called awesome and the greatest thing ever and filter out the noise. Negative reviews are the anti-marketing it is no wonder people pay attention.
- matte_black 8y ago
  I find positive reviews are usually useless. Every positive review is the same, but every negative review is negative in it's own way.
- metabagel 8y ago
  I look at reviews which are in between the lowest and highest ratings, in order to discard possible "ballot stuffing", and to find reviews which may be more nuanced.
  - thedailymail 8y ago
    I do this too. But from other comments in this thread, I wonder if 5-star and 1-star comments are significantly more influential than 2- to 4-star comments?
- loup-vaillant 8y ago
  > An aside: This site has lovely design. Took me over a minute to figure out that JavaScript was mandatory. This nullifies any amount of loveliness for me. JavaScript shouldn't be required to read text, dammit.
- gowld 8y ago
  > An aside: This site has lovely design. That line makes your comment look unintelligent and unconvincing ;-)
ds0 8y ago
Goodhart's law comes to mind: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- tCfD 8y ago
  Expect to see this, and/or its close cousin the McNamara Fallacy, among the top blogpunditry memes of the next few years. If only it were possible to buy stock in these phrases...
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > If only it were possible to buy stock in these phrases... Quite. If I'd bought stock in that logical fallacy site that was doing the rounds a while back HN would've made me a billionaire by now.
noonespecial 8y ago
Negative reviews can generally be tracked easily by registered user. It seems like a good enough idea that the force of negative reviews should fall off exponentially with respect to frequency per user that I'm surprised its either not done more, or more apparent. If someone complains all the time about everything, the people around them quickly learn to ignore it. Our systems should too.
- juhzy 8y ago
  Why? I only bother to write negative reviews, does that mean my opinion is worthless, or that I think all restaurants/venues/products are bad?
  - byproxy 8y ago
    No, but it shows that you only care to share in the bad, not the good. There is a tint to your worldview and it'd be useful for others to see that when weighing what you have to say. For the record, I rarely leave reviews. When I do, though, it's only for the exceptionally bad or the exceptionally good.
    - juhzy 8y ago
      Why would I write a good review? If I go to a place and pay I expect to be treated well; being treated the way I expect is not noteworthy (or "reviewworthy")
      - byproxy 8y ago
        I'm not trying to change your process, but just letting you know that that process is not the same for everyone, hence it'd be useful for others to know your "tint." It's interesting that your main criteria is how you feel you were treated, though. Discussed in the article: "Restaurant reviews in which people sound traumatized by perceived injustice don’t tend to comment much on the food — it’s usually the perception of being treated rudely or uncaringly that seems to have pushed people into processing by writing out their feelings in a public forum."
seeker61 8y ago
I'm glad to be old ... I think I'll be fortunate enough to pass by the bulk of the crap that is coming downstream at us all.
village-idiot 8y ago
I think the other interesting factor is that the more you tailor your life’s experiences, either in actuality or in perception, the less happy people seem to be. I believe this to be similar to the choice of paradox, where extra choices beyond a small number not only stress out the chooser, but result in less long term satisfaction in the final decision.
- jamiek88 8y ago
  This is a great point. Back when I was a kid the choices available within the budget of a lower middle class person of holiday, house location, schooling, medical care, dentistry, food, restaurants, everything was much less. You were delighted to even be in a restaurant, on best behavior and it would have to be terrible to warrant complaint. People can now eat and drink pretty much whatever they want from around the world at any time of the year having service business available to cater to every whim that people of a certain level affluence can have their lives very tailored to their tastes and expectations of service. To then not get that, not be treated as the in crowd or perceive being valued, can be very jarring. Easy to dismiss as first world problems but I think it’s a real point.
mLuby 8y ago
Asking the crowd: does anyone know of an in-depth comparison of rating systems (thumbs, 3 stars, 5 stars, 1-10, etc)? Also obligatory Black Mirror reference: Nosedive S3E1
- alleyshack 8y ago
  I don't know where the specific article wandered off to, but about six months ago I read a thinkpiece talking about those "happy face/frowny face" buttons that have popped up. The article talked a lot about how the binary up/down, with no ability to comment on specific people/processes/whatever, actually improved both overall ratings and the businesses' ability to address negative ratings considerably. If I find it again I'll update this comment. Edit: This article has less detail than I remember, but covers the gist (and makes the same Black Mirror reference): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satisfaction-at-the-push-of-a-button https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satis...
  - naravara 8y ago
    >The article talked a lot about how the binary up/down, with no ability to comment on specific people/processes/whatever, actually improved both overall ratings and the businesses' ability to address negative ratings considerably I guess that makes sense. Individual end-users only ever see the tip of the ice-berg when interacting with a large organization, so they are likely to blame the parts of it that they interact with while ignoring the deeper root-causes. If you let them blame the customer service rep's attitude or the size that their vegetables are chopped then you wind up trying to over-optimize around making the reps smile or definining exactly how to chop the veggies. But if all you know is that people aren't happy with the experience you send a process minded person who is familiar with the whole stack of how things get done to figure out why the service reps are in a foul mood or how come irregularly chopped veggies are winding up on peoples' plates.
- combatentropy 8y ago
  I don't know, but I prefer binary. I agree with the author about numeric ratings. If service meets my expectations, then I want to put a 3 or 4, which to me means average or above average. A 5 means not only were all expectations met but they surprised me by going way beyond my expectations. In fact this is how Yelp describes it: 1 - Eek! Methinks not. 2 - Meh. I've experienced better. 3 - A-OK. 4 - Yay! I'm a fan. 5 - Woohoo! As good as it gets! But the subjects of review seem to interpret the ratings like this: 1 - A black hole. 2 - Don't bother. 3 - If you're desperate. 4 - Could be better. 5 - Met all expectations. To compound the problem, many people actually rate like this, causing what the article calls "reputation inflation." The result is that I end up having to use this higher scale when looking for service, because enough people have been rating that way. This is why I would prefer a binary up or down vote, with the option to comment. My 1-2 would would translate to No, and 3-5 to Yes.
evrydayhustling 8y ago
Reading this reminded me of an old favorite lecture, on the origin of the word "loser". It turns out losing wasn't always a widely used noun - it came into popularity as a shorthand for lenders to evaluate loan prospects, specifically in order to turn someone's past experience into a current trait. He goes onto argue that this slight of hand really contributes to anxiety and inequality, because it reinforces the idea that one bad experience can define your identity. It looks like Prof Sandage ultimately turned the lecture into a book: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan27.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan...
voidhorse 8y ago
A related note, taking the point about negativity's correlation with being perceived as more intelligent: I've long wondered whether Hegel's notion that thought itself is fundamentally negative is true; it seems to make some intuitive sense and also gels with findings like those article opens with. If this is true to some extent, it's perhaps not that positive thoughts are less intelligent, but that meaningful positive thoughts are more difficult to obtain—as one necessarily has to pass through the negative first (thinking) to reach them. Outright positivity is not thought but simple satisfaction. If something doesn't disappoint us we really don't have any reason to think about it aside from the way in which we think about wants and urges, which isn't really thinking so much as it is desire. Really, only those poetic spirits seem to have mastered thinking purely positively—that is thinking desire. In other words, it is not negative thought that's praiseworthy, but critical thought—thought that questions—which must begin negatively. Often this questioning begins (and unfortunately ends, for most) by questioning a thing on its aspects that disappoint or dissatisfy, that's after all what urges the questioning. To emerge from that position and to be able to, in turn, acknowledge the positive qualities of the thing is to dwell in that serene and moderate realm called reason, not too negative, not too positive—reasonable.
- daotoad 8y ago
  No it's not. Sophomoric joke notwithstanding, you've hit on the distinction between a thought out critique and mere criticism.
- hnuser355 8y ago
  If someone is negative I usually hold them to a higher standard (and correspondingly think them dumber for fixed intelligence) in many cases. If you’re wrong but positive at least you’re helping to be in a good mood and bring up people around you. If you’re negative incorrectly you’re wrong and damaging the social mood.

145 points by kawera 8y ago

"The students found the writer voicing negative opinions much more intelligent and persuasive than the one voicing praise." Well, this resonates. One of the things I do when scouring online reviews is to search out the negative reviews. I dismiss reviews that are irrelevant to the product itself and do (what I hope) is a reasonable job filtering out the less-informed negative reviews. When I find a good, informed negative review I tend to search through that particular reviewer's history to then find what they HAVE reviewed positively. Because I do tend to think that person has more expertise/knowledge. Until I find a good, informed negative review on something they've rated positively. An aside: This site has lovely design.

lostgame 8y ago
>> An aside: This site has lovely design. The design is very neat, but I found it's actual readability on my MacBook Pro to be awful.
- byproxy 8y ago
  Interesting. I'm on Windows and I tend to find sites with custom fonts render terribly, but this one is quite pleasant.
  - lostgame 8y ago
    The fonts render correctly - they are slightly large, however, and there is an absurd amount of space on the left and white sides of the page. There's a strange sort of parallax-scrolling effect where some items actually hang off the side distractingly. It looks more like an example of funky design rather than something designed for readability. This is all IMHO.
    - jamiek88 8y ago
      It looked great on the iPad, really readable. Optimized for mobile maybe?
- village-idiot 8y ago
  iPhone legibility is excellent, didn’t even need to go into reader mode.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Wait... is he actually saying the site has nice design, or was that a joke? I thought it was a call back to praise being dismissed and thought less intelligent.
  - byproxy 8y ago
    No, I was being earnest.
- mrob 8y ago
  It's unreadable by default with Javascript disabled on Firefox, but Reader View fixes it.
  - thedailymail 8y ago
    Reader view has rescued many a reading experience! I'd love it if I could set it as the FF default for opening webpages.
MattyRad 8y ago
You could argue that HN is similar, where the highest comments are often the most contrarian. Which isn't to say they're not always valid, but I think it's important to be aware of this pattern.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Either we agree and elaborate, or disagree and eloborate (which is hard when you simply don't have additional knowledge). If we just agree, we upvote, because there is nothing to say, right? So that itself shifts the "pattern" some more. I remember it also being like that in the small forums I remember fondly. We didn't have upvotes, but I still noticed that agreement is shorter than disagreement. But that was fine, since we kept talking through the months and years, we actually learned a lot. The flamewars very never so bad because we were few and close enough to be able to not "stop" them, but simply throw all fuel into the fire right away, and then cleared out the air after it was all burned. I remember a guy thanking us when he finally got around to not being a bit of a racist anymore.. We ribbed on him occasionally for several years, but never in a mean way, and he ended up writing us a thank you letter style post. I forgot all the details, but I'll never forget that actually happened. Still proud of that guy whatever the nick was ^^ That really can only happen in small, long-term communities, I think. Maybe it's simply not possible to "scale" that indefinitely, because it's about human capacity.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    I had a conversation in a forum recently about something like this. This particular forum has a kind of upvoting system but no downvoting system. Occasionally there's threads asking to put in a downvote system or asking why there isn't one. The general consensus tends to be that it's easy to just agree with something but if you disagree with a topic or post it encourages better conversation to have to explain your stance and why you disagree. I've posted on those forums for a long time and generally i notice this is what tends to happen more as opposed to a place like reddit, or even here sometimes, where a post just gets downvoted away with no counterpoints or discussions.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
lmm 8y ago
I find the narrow column very unpleasant; on my screen it forces a lot more scrolling than should actually be necessary for how much content there is.
- phoboslab 8y ago
  Wider columns are harder to read. That's why newspapers and magazines typically divide a page into slimmer columns. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
  - lmm 8y ago
    I know this is the conventional wisdom, but it just doesn't match my experience; I can't stand to read these thin-columned websites.
baldfat 8y ago
Resonated with me a lot. As a faculty member college students would rally around a critic (no matter how illogical their words) and attack someone creative with criticism almost out of habit openly in class. Also I have seen religious people constantly rally around negativity for decades and it always rubbed me the wrong way. This also seems to be the idea that the negative stance is seen as the most intelligent. I have years of Theology and learned 3 dead languages to better understand Theology and the scriptures and yet some yahoo with a high school education will have the upper hand ever talking about Kindness or Trust or Love. The message of fear is very powerful and sadly the message of hope and love is seen as weak.
- dhimes 8y ago
  It's not just the students. Faculty members do it. Board members do it. It's a cheap way to look smart and can lead to a toxic environment if left unchecked. It's much harder to make positive work than to criticize.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." I guess I go with Nietzsche's idea that Christianity is an inherently negative faith. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, but you're basically trying to live divine law in a material world. That's not exactly going to bring out the kind and trusting in people, even if the divine law is love.
- hnuser355 8y ago
  Frankly my opinion on the majority of religious people I’ve met is that they aren’t actually religious and just want a club that encourages them to be a bit nicer, bit more prudent, and where people are a bit more friendly. Sometimes I worry that they are messing with something immensely powerful as if it’s a toy but perhaps it’s not my place to consider that
lordnacho 8y ago
My guess is that in pre-technological times, you were sticking your neck out when you criticised something. Saying "XYZ" is great is just an expression of wanting to fit in with the group, and doesn't require explanation. Saying "XYZ" is awful is probably hurtful to someone nearby, and you're going to have to think about what exactly is bad about it. And not only is it bad, it's so bad you are willing to risk the happy consensus in order to help the group. Of course things that worked in small, close groups might be gamed in larger, more loose ones...
Nasrudith 8y ago
I find negative reviews better since they tend to have actual discussion of issues and flaws. If it is someone giving 1 star because of the post office or because Wolfenstein dares to portray nazis in a bad light you roll your eyes and move on. I think a positive review could have a similar impact but it would need to be really detailed like say "I did the math and this is the optimal price point for data storage vs cost". The issue mentioned of expected rank inflation from unrealistic standards is probably why. We are used to cheap crap being called awesome and the greatest thing ever and filter out the noise. Negative reviews are the anti-marketing it is no wonder people pay attention.
matte_black 8y ago
I find positive reviews are usually useless. Every positive review is the same, but every negative review is negative in it's own way.
metabagel 8y ago
I look at reviews which are in between the lowest and highest ratings, in order to discard possible "ballot stuffing", and to find reviews which may be more nuanced.
- thedailymail 8y ago
  I do this too. But from other comments in this thread, I wonder if 5-star and 1-star comments are significantly more influential than 2- to 4-star comments?
loup-vaillant 8y ago
> An aside: This site has lovely design. Took me over a minute to figure out that JavaScript was mandatory. This nullifies any amount of loveliness for me. JavaScript shouldn't be required to read text, dammit.
gowld 8y ago
> An aside: This site has lovely design. That line makes your comment look unintelligent and unconvincing ;-)

ds0 8y ago

Goodhart's law comes to mind: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

tCfD 8y ago
Expect to see this, and/or its close cousin the McNamara Fallacy, among the top blogpunditry memes of the next few years. If only it were possible to buy stock in these phrases...
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > If only it were possible to buy stock in these phrases... Quite. If I'd bought stock in that logical fallacy site that was doing the rounds a while back HN would've made me a billionaire by now.

noonespecial 8y ago

Negative reviews can generally be tracked easily by registered user. It seems like a good enough idea that the force of negative reviews should fall off exponentially with respect to frequency per user that I'm surprised its either not done more, or more apparent. If someone complains all the time about everything, the people around them quickly learn to ignore it. Our systems should too.

juhzy 8y ago
Why? I only bother to write negative reviews, does that mean my opinion is worthless, or that I think all restaurants/venues/products are bad?
- byproxy 8y ago
  No, but it shows that you only care to share in the bad, not the good. There is a tint to your worldview and it'd be useful for others to see that when weighing what you have to say. For the record, I rarely leave reviews. When I do, though, it's only for the exceptionally bad or the exceptionally good.
  - juhzy 8y ago
    Why would I write a good review? If I go to a place and pay I expect to be treated well; being treated the way I expect is not noteworthy (or "reviewworthy")
    - byproxy 8y ago
      I'm not trying to change your process, but just letting you know that that process is not the same for everyone, hence it'd be useful for others to know your "tint." It's interesting that your main criteria is how you feel you were treated, though. Discussed in the article: "Restaurant reviews in which people sound traumatized by perceived injustice don’t tend to comment much on the food — it’s usually the perception of being treated rudely or uncaringly that seems to have pushed people into processing by writing out their feelings in a public forum."

seeker61 8y ago

I'm glad to be old ... I think I'll be fortunate enough to pass by the bulk of the crap that is coming downstream at us all.

village-idiot 8y ago

I think the other interesting factor is that the more you tailor your life’s experiences, either in actuality or in perception, the less happy people seem to be. I believe this to be similar to the choice of paradox, where extra choices beyond a small number not only stress out the chooser, but result in less long term satisfaction in the final decision.

jamiek88 8y ago
This is a great point. Back when I was a kid the choices available within the budget of a lower middle class person of holiday, house location, schooling, medical care, dentistry, food, restaurants, everything was much less. You were delighted to even be in a restaurant, on best behavior and it would have to be terrible to warrant complaint. People can now eat and drink pretty much whatever they want from around the world at any time of the year having service business available to cater to every whim that people of a certain level affluence can have their lives very tailored to their tastes and expectations of service. To then not get that, not be treated as the in crowd or perceive being valued, can be very jarring. Easy to dismiss as first world problems but I think it’s a real point.

mLuby 8y ago

Asking the crowd: does anyone know of an in-depth comparison of rating systems (thumbs, 3 stars, 5 stars, 1-10, etc)? Also obligatory Black Mirror reference: Nosedive S3E1

alleyshack 8y ago
I don't know where the specific article wandered off to, but about six months ago I read a thinkpiece talking about those "happy face/frowny face" buttons that have popped up. The article talked a lot about how the binary up/down, with no ability to comment on specific people/processes/whatever, actually improved both overall ratings and the businesses' ability to address negative ratings considerably. If I find it again I'll update this comment. Edit: This article has less detail than I remember, but covers the gist (and makes the same Black Mirror reference): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satisfaction-at-the-push-of-a-button https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satis...
- naravara 8y ago
  >The article talked a lot about how the binary up/down, with no ability to comment on specific people/processes/whatever, actually improved both overall ratings and the businesses' ability to address negative ratings considerably I guess that makes sense. Individual end-users only ever see the tip of the ice-berg when interacting with a large organization, so they are likely to blame the parts of it that they interact with while ignoring the deeper root-causes. If you let them blame the customer service rep's attitude or the size that their vegetables are chopped then you wind up trying to over-optimize around making the reps smile or definining exactly how to chop the veggies. But if all you know is that people aren't happy with the experience you send a process minded person who is familiar with the whole stack of how things get done to figure out why the service reps are in a foul mood or how come irregularly chopped veggies are winding up on peoples' plates.
combatentropy 8y ago
I don't know, but I prefer binary. I agree with the author about numeric ratings. If service meets my expectations, then I want to put a 3 or 4, which to me means average or above average. A 5 means not only were all expectations met but they surprised me by going way beyond my expectations. In fact this is how Yelp describes it: 1 - Eek! Methinks not. 2 - Meh. I've experienced better. 3 - A-OK. 4 - Yay! I'm a fan. 5 - Woohoo! As good as it gets! But the subjects of review seem to interpret the ratings like this: 1 - A black hole. 2 - Don't bother. 3 - If you're desperate. 4 - Could be better. 5 - Met all expectations. To compound the problem, many people actually rate like this, causing what the article calls "reputation inflation." The result is that I end up having to use this higher scale when looking for service, because enough people have been rating that way. This is why I would prefer a binary up or down vote, with the option to comment. My 1-2 would would translate to No, and 3-5 to Yes.

evrydayhustling 8y ago

Reading this reminded me of an old favorite lecture, on the origin of the word "loser". It turns out losing wasn't always a widely used noun - it came into popularity as a shorthand for lenders to evaluate loan prospects, specifically in order to turn someone's past experience into a current trait. He goes onto argue that this slight of hand really contributes to anxiety and inequality, because it reinforces the idea that one bad experience can define your identity. It looks like Prof Sandage ultimately turned the lecture into a book: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan27.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43081-2005Jan...

voidhorse 8y ago

A related note, taking the point about negativity's correlation with being perceived as more intelligent: I've long wondered whether Hegel's notion that thought itself is fundamentally negative is true; it seems to make some intuitive sense and also gels with findings like those article opens with. If this is true to some extent, it's perhaps not that positive thoughts are less intelligent, but that meaningful positive thoughts are more difficult to obtain—as one necessarily has to pass through the negative first (thinking) to reach them. Outright positivity is not thought but simple satisfaction. If something doesn't disappoint us we really don't have any reason to think about it aside from the way in which we think about wants and urges, which isn't really thinking so much as it is desire. Really, only those poetic spirits seem to have mastered thinking purely positively—that is thinking desire. In other words, it is not negative thought that's praiseworthy, but critical thought—thought that questions—which must begin negatively. Often this questioning begins (and unfortunately ends, for most) by questioning a thing on its aspects that disappoint or dissatisfy, that's after all what urges the questioning. To emerge from that position and to be able to, in turn, acknowledge the positive qualities of the thing is to dwell in that serene and moderate realm called reason, not too negative, not too positive—reasonable.

daotoad 8y ago
No it's not. Sophomoric joke notwithstanding, you've hit on the distinction between a thought out critique and mere criticism.
hnuser355 8y ago
If someone is negative I usually hold them to a higher standard (and correspondingly think them dumber for fixed intelligence) in many cases. If you’re wrong but positive at least you’re helping to be in a good mood and bring up people around you. If you’re negative incorrectly you’re wrong and damaging the social mood.