4 ms·

Going over the conversation here I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-fo

Going over the conversation here I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one. The Twitter thread clearly points out that the electronics serve strictly as an intermediary layer between the paper test and the user. They just binarize the paper reading. This in turn gives a false psychological sense of security ("it's the computer that says it, not me"), without any credible benefit. Why should I trust the people who calibrated the electronic device more than my own eyes? More generally, why are people so eager to discount the reliability of their own senses? You have eyes and a mind which are the product of billions of years of evolutionary refinement. If you're not sure whether it's || or |+, pee again on a different test and compare; or wait a few days. If the lighting in your bathroom is bad, take the test in natural light or a better lit room. My personal instinct is to rely first and foremost on my own mind and senses. It's of course important to defer to expert knowledge, but we need to use our critical thinking when deciding if something is the result of expert knowledge, or simply a marketing gimmick.

shawnz 6y ago
> Why should I trust the people who calibrated the electronic device more than my own eyes? Do you as a layperson know how sensitive the test strip is, or how blue it needs to turn to have a reasonable guarantee against false positives? It seems like the engineers of the device would have a much better perspective on those things.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  I know that whoever made the test, if it's a reasonably competent enterprise, made it with human capacities in mind. I don't think the threshold between positive and negative is easier to tell for an engineer than for anybody else with reasonable eyesight. I might change my mind if it would surface that the paper tests used in the electronic devices were somehow different from those available to the general public and they were tailor made for the sensors and diodes in order to make the results more reliable. I doubt this is the case, however.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    > I know that whoever made the test, if it's a reasonably competent enterprise, made it with human capacities in mind. Are you sure they weren't just constrained by technological limitations when they designed the paper test? Maybe the reason the digital test exists is that a competent enterprise wanted to adapt the paper technology to better fit human capacities?
    - leto_ii 6y ago
      Maybe, although I doubt it. It would mean that they put in extra research to, for example, plot an ROC curve and see what the optimal threshold for the test would be. Even if that was the case, you can still frame the question in terms of cost/benefits. The electronic test is, let's say, 10 times more expensive than a basic one. Is it more reliable than taking 10 basic tests (maybe at different times) and averaging the results? Probably not.
      - eru 6y ago
        > Even if that was the case, you can still frame the question in terms of cost/benefits. The electronic test is, let's say, 10 times more expensive than a basic one. Is it more reliable than taking 10 basic tests (maybe at different times) and averaging the results? Probably not. Food that costs ten times more usually doesn't taste ten times as good. Perhaps twice as good. It can still be worth it. Convenience and time have value, too.
      - arsome 6y ago
        I mean the giveaway to me seems to be the fact that they don't seem to include an "inconclusive" state.
        wbl 6y ago
        The levels of hCG are two orders of magnitude larger post conception and rise to five orders of magnitude a month post conception. The antibodies the test uses are extremely selective.
      - 6y ago
davewritescode 6y ago
I actually saw this last night and initially had the same reaction but had some time to think on it. Remember, for a lot of people taking a pregnancy test is incredibly stressful. Reducing the complexity of reading by outputting a less ambiguous result has a lot of value to some people.
- rubidium 6y ago
  This exactly. I had to convince my wife not to doubt herself. “Yes that’s a line. Instructions say that if anything appears even if faint then you’re pregnant. No we don’t need to double check. Wahoo you’re pregnant!!”
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    We had the same conversation, followed by at least $30 worth of double-checking over the next several days...
    - zaphod12 6y ago
      Super glad to know that my experience is a common one - precisely the same conversations over a very faint line!
    - copperx 6y ago
      That should have started the usually uncomfortable dialog about enrolling in a basic statistics course. It could save your relationship.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        This is one of best, perhaps the singularly the best, times in life to smile and go along with it. (She has a PhD in neuroscience; entering some kind of Statistics Olympics wasn't going to improve anything in my life at that moment.)
      - ponker 6y ago
        Yes, someone who’s made it as far in a relationship as intentional pregnancy should “save” their relationship by suggesting remedial education to their partner...
avs733 6y ago
>I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one. This makes many presumptions about the users and whether to them this design is unnecessarily complicated or obfuscating. Beyond whether it actually is for them or not, advertising works or people wouldn't do it...the old tech has been labeled and messaged and reinforced for years as confusing to the point that it can become a normative perception whether or not it is true.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> Going over the conversation here I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one. Welcome to modern IT, where complexity fetishests have ruined everything.
nullsense 6y ago
I'm a kind of color blind where I only see 150,000 colors. I have trouble distinguishing where purple ends and blue starts. Same goes for a bunch of other color pairs. I didn't figure it out for decades, and before I did I remember some heated arguments where it was me vs everyone else on "this shelf is purple" vs "that shelf is blue, not purple". The day I figured it out those memories started coming back and it all clicked. I stopped trusting myself after that. I knew I didn't trust myself anymore when my 3 year old son would reference the bus I used to catch by it's color and I didn't know whether he was wrong or I was, so I just kept my mouth shut cos there was a better chance he was right.

shawnz 6y ago

> Why should I trust the people who calibrated the electronic device more than my own eyes? Do you as a layperson know how sensitive the test strip is, or how blue it needs to turn to have a reasonable guarantee against false positives? It seems like the engineers of the device would have a much better perspective on those things.

leto_ii 6y ago
I know that whoever made the test, if it's a reasonably competent enterprise, made it with human capacities in mind. I don't think the threshold between positive and negative is easier to tell for an engineer than for anybody else with reasonable eyesight. I might change my mind if it would surface that the paper tests used in the electronic devices were somehow different from those available to the general public and they were tailor made for the sensors and diodes in order to make the results more reliable. I doubt this is the case, however.
- shawnz 6y ago
  > I know that whoever made the test, if it's a reasonably competent enterprise, made it with human capacities in mind. Are you sure they weren't just constrained by technological limitations when they designed the paper test? Maybe the reason the digital test exists is that a competent enterprise wanted to adapt the paper technology to better fit human capacities?
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    Maybe, although I doubt it. It would mean that they put in extra research to, for example, plot an ROC curve and see what the optimal threshold for the test would be. Even if that was the case, you can still frame the question in terms of cost/benefits. The electronic test is, let's say, 10 times more expensive than a basic one. Is it more reliable than taking 10 basic tests (maybe at different times) and averaging the results? Probably not.
    - eru 6y ago
      > Even if that was the case, you can still frame the question in terms of cost/benefits. The electronic test is, let's say, 10 times more expensive than a basic one. Is it more reliable than taking 10 basic tests (maybe at different times) and averaging the results? Probably not. Food that costs ten times more usually doesn't taste ten times as good. Perhaps twice as good. It can still be worth it. Convenience and time have value, too.
    - arsome 6y ago
      I mean the giveaway to me seems to be the fact that they don't seem to include an "inconclusive" state.
      - wbl 6y ago
        The levels of hCG are two orders of magnitude larger post conception and rise to five orders of magnitude a month post conception. The antibodies the test uses are extremely selective.
    - 6y ago

davewritescode 6y ago

I actually saw this last night and initially had the same reaction but had some time to think on it. Remember, for a lot of people taking a pregnancy test is incredibly stressful. Reducing the complexity of reading by outputting a less ambiguous result has a lot of value to some people.

rubidium 6y ago
This exactly. I had to convince my wife not to doubt herself. “Yes that’s a line. Instructions say that if anything appears even if faint then you’re pregnant. No we don’t need to double check. Wahoo you’re pregnant!!”
- sokoloff 6y ago
  We had the same conversation, followed by at least $30 worth of double-checking over the next several days...
  - zaphod12 6y ago
    Super glad to know that my experience is a common one - precisely the same conversations over a very faint line!
  - copperx 6y ago
    That should have started the usually uncomfortable dialog about enrolling in a basic statistics course. It could save your relationship.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      This is one of best, perhaps the singularly the best, times in life to smile and go along with it. (She has a PhD in neuroscience; entering some kind of Statistics Olympics wasn't going to improve anything in my life at that moment.)
    - ponker 6y ago
      Yes, someone who’s made it as far in a relationship as intentional pregnancy should “save” their relationship by suggesting remedial education to their partner...

avs733 6y ago

>I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one. This makes many presumptions about the users and whether to them this design is unnecessarily complicated or obfuscating. Beyond whether it actually is for them or not, advertising works or people wouldn't do it...the old tech has been labeled and messaged and reinforced for years as confusing to the point that it can become a normative perception whether or not it is true.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

> Going over the conversation here I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one. Welcome to modern IT, where complexity fetishests have ruined everything.

nullsense 6y ago

I'm a kind of color blind where I only see 150,000 colors. I have trouble distinguishing where purple ends and blue starts. Same goes for a bunch of other color pairs. I didn't figure it out for decades, and before I did I remember some heated arguments where it was me vs everyone else on "this shelf is purple" vs "that shelf is blue, not purple". The day I figured it out those memories started coming back and it all clicked. I stopped trusting myself after that. I knew I didn't trust myself anymore when my 3 year old son would reference the bus I used to catch by it's color and I didn't know whether he was wrong or I was, so I just kept my mouth shut cos there was a better chance he was right.