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The pros and cons of placebo buttons
- carbocation 8y agoI feel like there is a bit of ethical hysteresis here. If you have buttons that are designed to be placebo from the start, I find that unethical. If you have buttons that work, but have to be disabled due to a change in plans, that strikes me as less problematic (but they should still eventually be removed). So, how you get there matters.
- fredley 8y agoEh. I think although it's a 'dark pattern', it's one with measured effects on behaviour that result in less people crossing against the light, which (I would assume) correlates with less accidents. I think calling it unethical is a bit much.
- carbocation 8y agoI am curious about the effect on the people long-term. I am not sure that reducing the number of people crossing against the light at the crossings in the article in particular tells the full story. An analysis that considers the reduction in crossing against the light without weighing the consequences of dishonesty is incomplete.
- snarf21 8y agoI'm sure I'm in the minority but I don't even think it is that. If the button at each intersection prevents one accident (hospital or even death) then it is worth it. So people got tricked to be safer? Oh, the humanity. People who are going to cross anyway still will.
- samdoidge 8y agoI think if people realise buttons may be placebo - this will reduce how much people use / wait for buttons in general.
- drcube 8y agoWhat if it prevents one accident today, but causes two accidents tomorrow?
- q3k 8y agoWhat if eating cereal for breakfast is healthy today but causes two accidents tomorrow?
- justtopost 8y agoHello diabetes!
- zimablue 8y agoIt's immoral because you don't have the right to deceive and make decisions for other people. Let's take the example further and see if you can find a point where it starts to be obviously unethical, then work your way backwards on the principle discovered. How about we lie to you about the contents of your food, in some way that manipulates you to be healthier? Still OK with that, why don't we tell you that something is vegetarian if you can never tell the difference, by your utilitarian metric you've increased my happiness, I got to enjoy some delicious meal. If I find out you have one day left to live and that day will be happier not knowing that fact, do I have the right to lie to you about it? The utilitarian benefit calculation goes up so case closed right? If someone if a devout Jehovah's witness, give them a blood transplant and deny that it ever happened, do you have the right to do that? Not everyone is on the same utilitarian value curve as you and you don't have the right to mess with and deceive them because you think you're smarter than they are. Some (most) people value truth, dignity or reality in their utility function, and you might not even be smarter than all of them.
- snarf21 8y agoI'm sorry but I don't buy the slippery slope argument here. No one is saying that the ends justify the means. Is adding a stop sign to a random intersection any different? Who decided that people should stop there? In small towns, a lot of times it is because an elderly person went to the township meeting every week for years complaining so they gave up and added one, not because there is any inherent safety issue. Governments and corporations literally lie to us every day. Not causing a light to change three seconds earlier (because it will still change) doesn't violate anyone's civil liberties or religion or cause their death. Governments do manipulate things already to make people healthier and safer. Soda taxes, seat belts, food pyramids (bought by the FDA) are all examples. In this case, most municipalities have laws against jay walking. One could argue this is just an enforcement of that law.
- grkvlt 8y agoIf action X is unethical/immoral in some situation S, this in no way implies that for all situations, X is unethical/immoral. See killing people for an example, perhaps, or maybe telling people they are (not) ugly?
- dtech 8y agoThere are better ways though. A countdown that shows remaining time until green has both a positive effect on perceived wait time, the same effect on crossings without green and does not have this ethical problem.
- sevensor 8y agoCall it impractical then? At least in Lebanon, as people become aware of this deception, they came to reject crosswalk rules in general. Ethics notwithstanding, breaking the honesty clause of the social contract is going to backfire on you.
- amelius 8y agoIt's still better than the "nocebo buttons", which make the waiting longer the more often you press them :)
- daveFNbuck 8y agoA nocebo is still inactive, just with negative rather than positive expectations. So the nocebo button would still be a button that doesn't do anything, but people believe that pressing it increases their wait time.
- rolandog 8y agoWouldn't a countdown timer solve the need for those buttons?
- GuB-42 8y agoHow you get there matters for the budget. But ethically it is the same. In any case, you are consciously lying to people for their own good. Is lying to people for their own good ethical? You decide, I don't think there is a correct answer. In fact the second case (not removing the buttons) can be seen as the least ethical of the two. In the first case, it is an assumed choice, you did it because you think it is for the best. In the second case, you let money guide your ethical choices. That's essentially Black Hat's answer to the trolley problem (https://xkcd.com/1455/ https://xkcd.com/1455/)
- Retra 8y agoIt's not really about lying, IMO. (In any case, lying isn't even unethical. -- deceit is.) It's pretty much ok to deceive people if they indirectly agree to it and you stay within bounds of what they agreed to. It is not unreasonable to expect people will be ok with deception conducted to engage in data collection and scientific study, so long as the consequences are negligible, as they are here. The only ethical problem here is caused if you do not use the collected data, or do not stop the study after a sufficient amount of data is collected.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoI'm saddened to find a comment about ethics only after pages of uninteresting comments. Placebos are psychological manipulation and that's why they are illegal in medicine in various countries. Deception, especially in a safety-critical scenario, leads to mistrust, cynicism and even paranoid thinking. Guess what? The antivax movement and most silly conspiracy theories are fueled by mistrust.
- vhold 8y agoAgreed, and having the button there allows for more flexibility in the future. I know some buttons that went from doing something, then nothing, then something again. Like they now will make sound when its your turn to cross for people with impaired sight, but only if the button is pressed so people living nearby don't have loud crossing sounds going off all the time. Also some now activate flashing lights surrounding the crosswalk to alert drivers.
- jkingsbery 8y agoI work in New York, but I go to Seattle periodically because that's where my company's headquarters is. How people treat the buttons is wildly different between those two cities. I hardly ever see anyone press the cross button in NY, since the convention is to wait for there to be no cars and then cross (and not bother with the button). In Seattle, I've seen people wait patiently at a cross walk even though there's no cars anywhere in sight. I would imagine rather than a placebo effect, it's more of a self-selection phenomenon - rather than pressing a button making people more patient, the people who are more likely to follow "the rules" are more likely to press the button. And even if there is hypothetically a placebo effect, the result would be irrelevant if almost no one presses the button.
- Balero 8y agoI believe jaywalking is illegal, and enforced in Seattle. When I'm in the UK I will normally not press the pedestrian button (unless its the type of pedestrian only crossing which only activate with the button, not on traffic lights on a junction) . But when I'm in the US, or a different country with jaywalking laws, I will stick to the rules much more rigidly. I also really enjoy the first time crossing a road when I get back, the taste of freedom!
- s1mon 8y agoJaywalking is illegal pretty much everywhere in the US, but enforcement is very selective and regional.
- edoo 8y agoIf people's behavior can be modified simply by giving them the perception of their input mattering then I would expect the coming AI interfaces/assistants and goal oriented concierge services to pick up on this and leverage it, which could get pretty creepy depending on the goals involved. Advertisement disguised as meaningful interaction.
- JansjoFromIkea 8y agoI notice a lot in London that there are a bunch of pedestrian lights in areas witha steady flow of traffic that will only work if the button has been pressed, yet every single day I see people, often the same people, stand there until someone else presses the button. Part of me wonders if there's almost an aspect of not wanting to cause offense involved. If you're the person who presses the button, you're responsible for the ire of whatever drivers you delay, so you'll either wait for an gap to run across the road or someone else'll press the button and absolve you.
- ddeokbokki 8y agoLondoner here - I personally don't press the button if it's only me and the road is not busy since the time I would save would be lost over all the people I would make stop just for me. I've seen many people not press the buttons thinking it's just there as a placebo, it's mostly tourists though as it's common knowledge amongst Londoners that the button signals the traffic operating system that a pedestrian would like to cross.
- test1235 8y agokinda makes me think of the buttons on certain tube train doors which do nothing
- fyfy18 8y agoMy experience is even locals wait and don't press the button. Near where I live there is a pedestrian crossing across a busy road, and I've seen people waiting there many times without pressing the button. This is in Zone 2, far from where tourists would go.
- entity345 8y agoIf traffic is heavy and I think I won't get a chance to cross then I push the button. Otherwise I just wait and cross when there's a gap without bothering anyone.
- avian 8y agoI’ve seen this behavior in parts of Europe where offending other people in traffic is much less frowned-upon than in England. I think it’s just the case of everyone assuming that someone else has pressed the button.
- _bxg1 8y agoThis makes me so annoyed. I much prefer ones without buttons because I don't have to mess with it; when there is a button, I assume I have to go over and press it, but it sounds like in some cases I don't (for a while now I've suspected them to be pointless). But there's no way to tell the difference so I still have to everywhere.
- Semaphor 8y agoAnd unless you remember which ones are fake, you always have to press. And because you don't know if the people in front of you pressed, you have to awkwardly walk past them and press it (again). It's always annoying me.
- joombaga 8y agoYou could ask them to press it. "Excuse me, could you press the crossing button?" There are few strangers to social awkwardness.
- rootusrootus 8y agoNewer signal buttons have an LED indicator that shows they've been pressed, which is a nice touch. Saves having to reach around someone to make sure they pressed the button already.
- zimablue 8y agoThis whole piece, and to be honest most of the comments here come from such a dark, authoritarian, arrogant perspective. "lying to the plebs modifies their behavior very slightly in a good way or is it in a bad way?" It's irrelevant, treat your fellow humans with some modicum of respect and dignity. Terry Pratchett's first rule of morality "don't treat people as if they're objects". Anyone caught casually deceiving people for some tiny perceived benefit to either themselves or the people deserves a severe lesson in how "irrationally" angry people get when they're lied to. You can save this page and the comments as an example to future generations of how the elites of this century had become morally bankrupt.
- 8y ago
- Konnstann 8y agoI'm fairly certain most, if not all, the lights in my area are automatic, however pressing the button rapidly causes the "wait" message to repeat as fast as you press it, which is a good way to pass the time while waiting. More on topic, I wonder if people who jaywalk don't press buttons, or people who press buttons don't jaywalk? Seems like people who are already not going to jaywalk are more predisposed to button presses, but will not cross against the light even if they don't press the button.
- notatcomputer68 8y agoI'll press if I think I can't jaywalk in a reasonable timeframe. If I can then no sense holding up traffic.
- weavie 8y agoFor my daughter quite often the highlight of our walk to the shops is that she gets to push the button at the traffic lights. Whether they do anything or not, she just loves pushing buttons.
- markwillis82 8y agoMy 3 little ones have to take turns pressing the button, otherwise it gets messy... by the time they have all pressed the button it's time to cross
- lunchladydoris 8y agoIn the UK, we have these little conical spinners on the bottom of the signal that start to turn when the light turns green. My son and I often make games out of them while we're walking around.
- Tepix 8y agoIn Germany, there is a twist: When you press such a placebo button, a white light that reads "warte" (wait) starts flashing.
- Semaphor 8y agoWe have many different kinds of buttons. Difference 1, of course, is functional vs non-functional. Both exist. Then there are acoustic buttons that activate the sound upon turning green. Sometimes these are normal buttons, sometimes you can't press the normal ones and the sound button is below it, and sometimes there are two buttons. Some traffic lights have some kind of notification that one of all these types of buttons was pressed, sometimes they don't. There is no rhyme or reason for how traffic light buttons work in Germany. It all seems random.
- skaomatic 8y agoThis reminds me of an elevator's "Door Close" button. Manufacturers still include them for the peace of mind of passengers, despite computerized systems and many area laws (in the US, the ADA has language regarding door-open timespan for wheelchair access). EDIT: Thanks to a_c_s for pointing out that the button can work when the elevator is in emergency/service mode. More fun information on elevators, crosswalk and other buttons can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/placebo-buttons-elevators-crosswalks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/placebo-buttons-elevat...
- majewsky 8y agoIn my office (in Germany), when the elevator door opens and I hold the "close door" button, it immediately starts closing as soon as it's finished opening. So at least that one is definitely not a placebo.
- CM30 8y agoSame here in the UK. Both the close and open buttons work immediately after being pressed in my office, so they're clearly not placebos.
- a_c_s 8y agoThe door close button is used when the elevator is in fire service mode (where all actions are manually activated)
- skaomatic 8y agoInteresting - and makes sense! A detail missed by my tour at the Elevator History Museum in New York, NY. [elevatorhistory.org]
- gadders 8y agoThey're not placebos in all cases. They definitely work in one tall bank building I worked in in Canary Wharf.
- tzs 8y ago
- yholio 8y agoSeems there is an important opportunity here to apply machine learning to video feeds of incoming traffic and people flow, and shape the phases to minimize wait time for all citizens, equally. The current systems require expensive induction loops and only care about cars and button pushers, this being how we got here. If people learn the system acknowledges their needs and tries it best to let them cross safely, it might lead to much better long term compliance then some fake buttons which are bound to be exposed as fake. The whole idea of giving higher priority to cars is an insult to taxpayers walking their neighborhoods.
- shereadsthenews 8y agoIt would be better to just build smaller intersections that do not need millions of dollars worth of signals and cameras and ML inference rigs.
- yholio 8y agoThe cost of smart trafic lights is peanuts compared to the costs of reconfiguring and rebuilding a major intersection.
- noobiemcfoob 8y agoYour comment is based on no data at all and just a handful of assumptions that are most certainly far from true.
- yholio 8y agoI happen to work for a council and know the general order of magnitude for road infrastructure investments - I participate in their approval. I would file this suggestion of "building smaller intersections", that is, completely re-routing the traffic flows in a given area, in the purely fantastical bin. If we could squeeze 20% more traffic capacity from a given congested intersection with a one time investment of, say, under €200K, it would be a major breakthrough. We use a complex system that involves periodically measuring traffic flows using pneumatic tubes, then feeding that data to a computerized model that will produce the timing sequences for the lights lights and their evolution during a day. There is a crew moving around the district installing these tubes and counters for a week or so. The current state of the art are induction loops embedded in the asphalt that measure the number of incoming vehicles and adjust the timings in real time. A purely optical detection that can work in all weather and recognize all types of vehicles or even pedestrians would be quite a feat. Anyway, thank you for your factual and data infused contribution.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoSo it means sometimes cars should stop even when there is no pedestrian trying to cross the road? I thought initially these buttons were made to improve road traffic.
- rootusrootus 8y agoIn the article they point out that the switches have been removed/deactivated on intersections where there is no benefit. In other words, there is nearly always a pedestrian waiting at that point in the cycle. Some intersections that don't see that same pattern continue to have a working button.
- r_klancer 8y agoWorse yet, at least in Somerville and the general Boston area, I'm seeing touch-sensitive buttons instead of physical buttons that depress--with no haptic feedback; and only some of them play a recorded "Wait" when you press. I'm gradually training myself not to jam my finger painfully against them to be "sure" I pressed. If it turns out they're also placebos, I think I'm just going to give one a good kick next time I go by...
- mxwsn 8y agoIn the same area; don't those have a visual light indicator that flashes when you press it?
- r_klancer 8y agoThere's some kind of light but I've never quite understood what the light means.
- laken 8y agoThose aren't placebo buttons, rather for the hard of sight. The audible "Wait" is to tell to not cross yet, and it will then tick when it's safe to cross, and increasingly tick faster the time lowers.
- cimmanom 8y agoWhich doesn't explain the ones with neither haptic nor audible feedback.
- empath75 8y agoTo me the only purpose for having a button is for intersections that only go red when there is a car or pedestrian waiting to cross.
- GeordiePowers 8y agoIn Toronto, most of the buttons have long done nothing to control the light cycle, and only trigger the audio crossing indicator. Lately they've been replacing the signs signs on these, with each now saying "Button for audible signal only". Good way to re-purpose the existing hardware. See here for a comparison of old vs. new https://i.imgur.com/a0FXI5c.png https://i.imgur.com/a0FXI5c.png
- cannonedhamster 8y agoWelp, that's a few hours I'm never getting back from that rabbit hole. I really should have seen the Admiral shouting about it being a trap.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoI just used a button yesterday in Herndon, VA (D.C. suburbs) that had the audio crossing indicator, and actually announced the street name with a voice when the light changed. My friend commented that it would seem unlikely a blind person would be crossing there, but I have a blind friend who commutes downtown every day on the Metro. I don't know if the button does anything else, or if it was just repurposed like you describe.
- mikepurvis 8y agoIn Kitchener (just west of Toronto), we have a bunch of intersections where there are two possible changes. For a car-triggered change (from the inductive loop in the pavement), the light just changes for a few seconds, to get the car through. If you push the beg button, you get the pedestrian change, where there's a momentary walk signal followed by a countdown. I get why this exists in terms of not having cars on the busy street waiting for a countdown when there's no actual person there, but I find it very frustrating that there's basically zero chance that I will just "get a green" crossing the busy street, since it's such a narrow window now. And because I can't trigger the road sensor with my bicycle, it also means I have to ride up on the sidewalk to get to the button. I would really rather it was just a timer.
- goodcanadian 8y ago
- NPMaxwell 8y agoPros: You save money & reduce jaywalking. Cons: you spread germs and further erode trust and respect for government. The saved money and jaywalking compliance are Pyrrhic victories as citizens sass officers and vote for tax-cutting politicians.
- grkvlt 8y ago> you spread germs Really? I don't think there would be any change or effect regarding microbes passed around the population if pedestrian crossing buttons did not exist. They just aren't a disease vector, or at the most optimistic are down in the statistical noise at a one in millions chance of having an effect.
- NPMaxwell 8y agoYeah. Given that coffee pots are the most virulent vector in the workplace, it seems unlikely that a button everyone presses with their fingers is not an important vector as well. The issue is getting germs on your fingertips, and then wiping your eyes or nose with those fingers. If pump handles are a problem, I bet traffic buttons are as well.
- grkvlt 8y agoInteresting, did not know about coffee pots. However for pump handles the contact area and time in contact is much greater than a single touch of one fingertip, plus the fact that it is much more likely for the hand on the pump to then immediately be in contact with drinking utensils or even wiping the mouth etc. So I still think crossing buttons are not a plausible vector. Be happy to read any sources that contradict this though...
- NPMaxwell 8y agoJust a quick and dirty literature search on pubmed: When you have a cold or flu and wipe your nose, pressing a light switch transfers active viruses to the switch. (J Med Virol. 2007 Oct;79(10):1606-10. Environmental contamination with rhinovirus and transfer to fingers of healthy individuals by daily life activity. Winther B1, McCue K, Ashe K, Rubino JR, Hendley JO.) Flu and cold viruses found on handrails, TSA luggage trays, & buttons of airport payment machines (BMC Infect Dis. 2018 Aug 29;18(1):437. doi: 10.1186/s12879-018-3150-5. Deposition of respiratory virus pathogens on frequently touched surfaces at airports. Ikonen N1, Savolainen-Kopra C2, Enstone JE3, Kulmala I4, Pasanen P5, Salmela A5, Salo S4, Nguyen-Van-Tam JS3, Ruutu P2; PANDHUB consortium. Viruses contaminating touched surfaces last for about 7 days, maybe more. (Am J Infect Control. 2018 Jan;46(1):105-107. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2017.07.014. Epub 2017 Oct 12. Isolation and identification of human coronavirus 229E from frequently touched environmental surfaces of a university classroom that is cleaned daily. Bonny TS1, Yezli S2, Lednicky JA3. Viruses on contaminated surfaces last longer outdoors in sub-zero temperatures than in heated indoor environments (Appl Environ Microbiol. 1983 Oct;46(4):901-5. Survival of human parainfluenza viruses in the South Polar environment. Parkinson AJ, Muchmore HG, Scott EN, Scott LV.) Touching a surface and then wiping your eyes or nose gives you a 50% chance of getting a cold/flu (Am J Epidemiol. 1982 Nov;116(5):828-33. Transmission of experimental rhinovirus infection by contaminated surfaces. Gwaltney JM Jr, Hendley JO.)
- it 8y ago"people more readily obey a system which purports to heed their input". Sounds like democracy.
- winrid 8y agoCare to clarify your point?
- it 8y agoIn a country with millions of voters, a single vote isn't likely to be what decides who gets elected. In the limit of infinite voters, casting a vote is a lot like pressing a placebo button. It's not directly useful for the voter, but it makes the voter more likely to accept the outcome.
- andai 8y agoI wonder, has any research been done on the size of a democracy and how represented the average individual feels?
- AgentME 8y ago>In a country with millions of voters, a single vote isn't likely to be what decides who gets elected. Forget worrying about single votes: even having most of the votes isn't necessarily enough to influence things! (Referring to the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, and to the concept of gerrymandering.)
- marcosdumay 8y agoDemocracy works by the very direct effect that almost always when anybody is powerful enough to make a coup and take the government, that somebody has been powerful enough to take the government by vote for a long time. There are many indirect effects that may help, people feeling represented is one of them. But they are near to irrelevant when compared to that direct one.
- squarefoot 8y agoWith all that AI fuss and widespread video surveillance, would it be that hard to mix the two, then count the number of cars and optimize traffic/pedestrian lights accordingly?
- justtopost 8y agoThe number of frusturating failure modes and possible abuses simply boggles the mind.
- TheAlchemist 8y agoYou don't have this kind of problems in Paris. Nobody cares about the crossing lights here :) It's pretty impressive, or scary, when you come from a country where people respect the crossing lights, but once you're accustomed to it, you just can't stand waiting for the green light if there is no car in sight (let's be honest, no car in 30m range is enough)
- dshuang 8y agohttps://outline.com/kAmVHb https://outline.com/kAmVHb