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Nah. Walmart totally makes multi-million dollar business decisions with less diligence and critical analysis than random HN posters. I think of this as the soc
by arkades 6y ago
Nah. Walmart totally makes multi-million dollar business decisions with less diligence and critical analysis than random HN posters.
I think of this as the social media Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. You see comments from folks with zero insight and no doubt no specialized knowledge of the relevant industry, recognize that they are likely just making an off-the-cuff comment without any value, open the next thread where it's less obvious how little industry knowledge the posters have, and resume giving their comments the benefit of the doubt.
I fall victim to it with some frequency. Almost any comments here about the medical industry, of which I'm a veteran, are just wildly ignorant - and spoken with the same strident confidence as comments about the airline industry (for example), about which commenters are likely just as profoundly ignorant. But then I don't know they're profoundly ignorant, and suddenly I think, gosh, that person has some incisive insights.
- dumbfounder 6y agoMulti-million dollar decisions (taken literally it means several million, not hundreds of millions) equate to small projects for Walmart. This is a multi-billion dollar decision. But yes, I am speaking speculatively, so take it with a grain of salt.
- paxys 6y agoBecause no multi-million dollar business has ever made a bad decision..
- arkades 6y agoOf course they have. And when they have, it's almost always because of more nuanced reasons than off-the-cuff random internet posters are privy to.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI've seen several people make pretty glaring mistakes based on their nuanced understanding of the details of some situation, when an idiot off the street who knew only the basic, surface-level facts would have gotten things completely correct.
- adamc 6y agoThanks for your perspective. I think this makes sense, and is probably often true. That doesn't necessarily mean the comments have no value -- often they elicit discussion that makes the behavior make more sense.