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Which is an interesting parallel to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Essentially one's own fringe preferences dictate

by adolph 2y ago

Which is an interesting parallel to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Essentially one's own fringe preferences dictate the design requirements of something that doesn't utilize that preference a significant amount of time. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

robcohen 2y ago
Which makes sense, imagine only have shoes that worked on 95% of the floors you walk on. Imagine a fridge that only cools 95% of your food, and it’s a fun surprise when it doesn’t. This is entirely rational, and reminds me of people who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t bike everywhere. It just reeks of solipsism. I own a Tesla, and I have to tell you it’s a massive pain to own an EV and live in an apartment complex. It’s honestly frustrating to the point that I regret getting it. The performance is great, but the interior, significant price drop in the year I’ve owned it, and the constant anxiety about the battery has not made for a pleasant experience. If I could go back I’d get a Mercedes S class that’s 5-7 years old.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Gotta admit, after moving to the Netherlands, it’s kinda legit insane how much stuff people will carry on a bike. A new 55” tv is not uncommon! Today I saw a lady with two toddlers and a grocery bag swinging from the handlebars. I take your point though. There are still plenty of delivery trucks and personal autos, even in this biking paradise.
- jpetso 2y ago
  Imagine you have a portable laptop that works for 95% of all your use cases except those days when you need a cluster of GPUs training a ML model or doing some large-scale scientific calculation. Imagine having a fridge that isn't cold enough for storing ice cream and frozen veggies. And yes, none of my shoes are even remotely close to covering 95% of floors. Some are good for hiking, some are good for running, some are warm in the winter. The issue is not the lack of 100% coverage. The issue is that there is no sufficiently appealing option for a large number of people to get access to the 5% of cases when you do need it. Apparently rentals and other sharing options aren't quite up to snuff, so everybody overprovisions like crazy.
  - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
    It's not exactly irrational though. Swinging back to car rental companies, they will overbook their vehicle fleets in order to maximize the amount of time that they're out generating revenue. Even if you prepay a reservation, it's no guarantee you will get a car. It gets awful stressful awful quick when you have to deal with availability uncertainty and other things depend on it.
  - coderenegade 2y ago
    Those items are all vastly cheaper than a car. When shoes were expensive relative to what the average family could afford, families bought for quality and longevity, because they would need to last for years at a time, and most people only had a single pair. A car is just a fundamentally different product to a set of shoes. If cars ever get to the point where the cost of one is trivial for the average person, we'll probably see the kind of specialization you see in other cheaper products. Also note, we can see pressure in the opposite direction for phones. Phones have become more expensive as they become more general purpose.
AlbertCory 2y ago
I've read all of Taleb's major works, twice. "The Most Intolerant Wins" is not in any way an explanation of the market failure of EVs. His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. "EVs vs. ICEs" is nothing like that. EVs have been rejected by vast numbers of consumers because they find them impractical. That's all.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. Which is a great example of how Taleb's "examples" are BS. Really, when Taleb goes into a grocery store, is all of the food kosher? Or even a majority? Kosher has not "taken over". It's a niche product.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    so why did you quote him in the first place? Secondly, his examples were from the Middle East, where kosher food is indeed ubiquitous even for non-Jewish consumers. Because almost no one really objects to it. Whereas US consumers really do object to EVs.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > why did you quote him in the first place? I didn't bring Taleb into the thread, adolph did. > his examples were from the Middle East Not the one in the article adolph referenced: "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."
      - dghlsakjg 2y ago
        > "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher." This implies that some sort of considered effort has been made to produce these drinks as kosher. This is just paying some money to get the private certification and the license to put it on the can. In the context of a drink, the drink ingredients is almost certainly already kosher, so the certification is just saying: "there was no cross-contamination in the making of this product". Which isn't a special consideration made for kosherness. If I told you that you could increase your TAM by a million people, and open new wholesale marketing opportunities for a onetime payment of ~$1000, you take the deal.

by adolph 2y ago

robcohen 2y ago

Which makes sense, imagine only have shoes that worked on 95% of the floors you walk on. Imagine a fridge that only cools 95% of your food, and it’s a fun surprise when it doesn’t. This is entirely rational, and reminds me of people who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t bike everywhere. It just reeks of solipsism. I own a Tesla, and I have to tell you it’s a massive pain to own an EV and live in an apartment complex. It’s honestly frustrating to the point that I regret getting it. The performance is great, but the interior, significant price drop in the year I’ve owned it, and the constant anxiety about the battery has not made for a pleasant experience. If I could go back I’d get a Mercedes S class that’s 5-7 years old.

yurishimo 2y ago
Gotta admit, after moving to the Netherlands, it’s kinda legit insane how much stuff people will carry on a bike. A new 55” tv is not uncommon! Today I saw a lady with two toddlers and a grocery bag swinging from the handlebars. I take your point though. There are still plenty of delivery trucks and personal autos, even in this biking paradise.
jpetso 2y ago
Imagine you have a portable laptop that works for 95% of all your use cases except those days when you need a cluster of GPUs training a ML model or doing some large-scale scientific calculation. Imagine having a fridge that isn't cold enough for storing ice cream and frozen veggies. And yes, none of my shoes are even remotely close to covering 95% of floors. Some are good for hiking, some are good for running, some are warm in the winter. The issue is not the lack of 100% coverage. The issue is that there is no sufficiently appealing option for a large number of people to get access to the 5% of cases when you do need it. Apparently rentals and other sharing options aren't quite up to snuff, so everybody overprovisions like crazy.
- somerandomqaguy 2y ago
  It's not exactly irrational though. Swinging back to car rental companies, they will overbook their vehicle fleets in order to maximize the amount of time that they're out generating revenue. Even if you prepay a reservation, it's no guarantee you will get a car. It gets awful stressful awful quick when you have to deal with availability uncertainty and other things depend on it.
- coderenegade 2y ago
  Those items are all vastly cheaper than a car. When shoes were expensive relative to what the average family could afford, families bought for quality and longevity, because they would need to last for years at a time, and most people only had a single pair. A car is just a fundamentally different product to a set of shoes. If cars ever get to the point where the cost of one is trivial for the average person, we'll probably see the kind of specialization you see in other cheaper products. Also note, we can see pressure in the opposite direction for phones. Phones have become more expensive as they become more general purpose.

AlbertCory 2y ago

I've read all of Taleb's major works, twice. "The Most Intolerant Wins" is not in any way an explanation of the market failure of EVs. His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. "EVs vs. ICEs" is nothing like that. EVs have been rejected by vast numbers of consumers because they find them impractical. That's all.

pdonis 2y ago
> His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over. Which is a great example of how Taleb's "examples" are BS. Really, when Taleb goes into a grocery store, is all of the food kosher? Or even a majority? Kosher has not "taken over". It's a niche product.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  so why did you quote him in the first place? Secondly, his examples were from the Middle East, where kosher food is indeed ubiquitous even for non-Jewish consumers. Because almost no one really objects to it. Whereas US consumers really do object to EVs.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > why did you quote him in the first place? I didn't bring Taleb into the thread, adolph did. > his examples were from the Middle East Not the one in the article adolph referenced: "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      > "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher." This implies that some sort of considered effort has been made to produce these drinks as kosher. This is just paying some money to get the private certification and the license to put it on the can. In the context of a drink, the drink ingredients is almost certainly already kosher, so the certification is just saying: "there was no cross-contamination in the making of this product". Which isn't a special consideration made for kosherness. If I told you that you could increase your TAM by a million people, and open new wholesale marketing opportunities for a onetime payment of ~$1000, you take the deal.