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First, there is a huge difference between art and engineering that the author completely misses. Because most people are not competent to judge the quality of

by palata 2y ago

First, there is a huge difference between art and engineering that the author completely misses. Because most people are not competent to judge the quality of two similar product does not mean they don't care about quality. They just usually can't tell, so they go for the cheaper (which has a higher probability of being worse). And it drives the prices down, and the quality with it. Or it reinforces monopolies, because only those who already produce at scale can produce better quality at lower price. But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? The problem is not that people don't care about quality, it's that they are not competent to judge it and marketing does the rest. Then the article talks a lot about art. Interestingly, the author says "I'm pride to not understand art, but let me still explain to you how it works". And then proves it by giving contradictory examples like "people don't care about quality, they will just listen to ABBA or go to the Louvre". You have to not understand ABBA or what's in the Louvre to think like that. So here is my rant: it's okay to be proud to not be knowledgeable about stuff. But then don't be surprised if people notice that you have no clue if you write about it. (Yes, I noticed the irony of writing a pedant comment about a mediocre article that prides itself in being mediocre and criticises pedantry :-) ).

maxerickson 2y ago
Economics has the idea of expressed preferences. So for instance, with that framework, if you choose the cheaper item instead of the inconvenience of understanding the tradeoffs between the items, you obviously care less about quality than price and convenience.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  Yes, but that's because the cost of evaluating the quality is very high, often infeasibly so. (Seriously, it's pretty difficult. Read reviews? They can give some idea, but it's rare that they do any rigourous testing, and they can be corrupted. Have a brand or specific model that you like and has a good reputation? How do you know they haven't started to cash in on that by cutting quality but still charging the same prices?)
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    This is where Project Farm provides its value. Consumer Reports ostensibly once filled a similar niche. But building trust in brands like Project Farm or Consumer Reports suffers from the same bootstrap problem.
- palata 2y ago
  You would be right if it was possible to estimate the quality of the items. But it generally is mostly impossible. Of course you can read about the products, you can read reviews, and then you can build some kind of belief around that. "From what I read, and assuming that the company doesn't bankrupt suddenly, and assuming that they won't deploy an update that erases all my data, I believe that this one is better". But that's a belief: you don't know anything about the hardware that is inside (other than a list of a few high-level components you think you understand, maybe) or about the software that is running inside.
- graemep 2y ago
  IMO that is economists trying to argue that the market is working when the market is actually failing. If people would like to be informed of the tradeoffs but do not have the information the end result is not optimal.
throwup238 2y ago
> But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? Wrong. Most of the population is limited by cash flow so that extra 20% they get to spend on food today is worth more than the quality of the phone a year from now. That’s a problem for tomorrow, hunger is felt now. That’s why most people choose the cheap option, not some inability to evaluate quality.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  I think this is less common than you would assume. Yes, there is a 'poor tax' on low quality items that are more expensive in the long run, but also people have gotten burned enough times paying more for an item that still turned out to be crap, so it's hard to justify taking the risk on such an investment.
  - mirsadm 2y ago
    I think this is true as well. Paying more does not mean higher quality. There are a few brands which seem to release quality products consistently (Apple etc) that paying more is justified but for many others it is just not worth it.
    - palata 2y ago
      > Paying more does not mean higher quality. Exactly! It is actually hard to estimate the quality of a product. And when you can't, most of the time you go for the cheaper one (unless money doesn't matter much for you).
      - presentation 2y ago
        Or you use brand as a proxy for quality and buy the Apple one without actually knowing why or how it’s “better”
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
For the tools that we use day-to-day and week-to-week, it should be impossible for us to not be a judge of quality. A have a tale of ladles... those pieces of kitchenware that we use to slop soup into our bowls. For years and years, I'd only had really horrible, shitty ladles. Those plastic-handled, plastic-everything-ed pieces of garbage that Walmart buys in volume for 3 cents each and sells for $12.99, you know the ones I'm talking about. With bizarro neon-green colors that are so flexible that you know there must be three dozen banned-in-the-United-States plasticizers in them. And if you could find one that's just plain stainless steel (with or without a nice wood handle), it was paper-thin steel, stamped into shape, that no one had ever bothered to grind/polish the burrs off the edge. Then, just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were checking out this tiny little Korean grocery store. And the owner apparently orders everything from some Korean supplier. He had several different sizes of ladels. Stainless, in what must be 3/16ths, all the edges soft and beveled. The shape was nice too, not something rough and rushed, but looking like someone who cared about design actually spent time on that. And the small one was like $3.89 and the large was $7-something. This did not come from a Chinese factory. Am I a world-renowned ladle expert? Do I have a PhD in ladelology? No. Hell, as a utensil, it's probably one that I only use twice a year. I couldn't design a die to make one of these, I couldn't tell you if the hydraulic press needed to be 50tons or 250tons, I'm not very knowledgeable at all about any detail that matters. I just care (some interesting psychology there... childhood trauma or something). I don't think anyone needs to be especially qualified to judge the quality of products that they do or will use. Everyday experience should suffice, and the only people who might not manage that are kids who have just recently graduated and mama's not doing their laundry for them anymore.
- geodel 2y ago
  For long time I used to think about crappy ladles and why steel ones in decent shapes not available in US stores. The kind that I had in India would last lifetime. Finally I found these kind of things in webstaurant store. Seems this kind of stuff is readily available in catering/ restaurant supply stores. Things mainstream stores sell is all inspired from Tv, media celebrity cooking etc. This stuff is more fragile but supposedly fancy looking. I now have stuff more practical, reliable and all steel (or at least part that touch food) from catering stores.
nox101 2y ago
> "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now" That is not the proposition. A Motorola Moto G Play is $110 no contract. The cheapest iPhone is $429. It's is not 20% more, it's 4x more. My sister got a Moto G Play this summer. She's perfectly happy with it. She's got a family of 5 so $550 for 5 phones is quite a deal compared to $2145 for 5 phones. The Moto G Play also has a micro-SD slot so she can take it to 512gb for $40.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  The phones market is completely distorted by several kinds of anti-competitive and purposeful social-engineering forces. For a start, it's not a given that the Moto G Play has a lower quality than the iPhone. If the market was competitive, there would be comparable alternatives on every dimension, but it isn't, and those can't be compared.
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  To answer this question properly she would have to use both and then make a judgement, no?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  That is not the proposition. For $15/month savings her child will be ostracized at school because of the blue message box. Is it worth it? Phones have outsized influence on our lives. A phone costs 1/10 as much as a car per month, but we spend more time with them, and most younger people today would rather give up their car than their phone. Better screen quality will more than pay itself in optics prescriptions later in life. Batter quality photos you take today will stay with you for the remainder of our life, and past it. Longer battery life would mean avoiding a lot of unpleasant situations.
  - circlefavshape 2y ago
    > For $15/month savings her child will be ostracized at school because of the blue message box FWIW I have teenage kids, and nothing like this has ever happened in their lives.
braza 2y ago
> The problem is not that people don't care about quality, it's that they are not competent to judge it and marketing does the rest. I disagree with this. Just a small background: I was around in some of the cultures that value quality (e.g. Switzerland, Germany (in some aspects), Nordic countries, etc.), and the biggest issues that I have with the modern concept of quality are 1) quality is not property anymore but instead is something that "someone needs to tell you 'cause you're not capable to see for yourself" and it gives not only a lot of avenue for status signaling but as mechanism that I call "veil of sophistication and exclusivity," and 2) due to the economies of scale, lack of education in terms of taste (aesthetics), and due to the number 1) most of the quality industry became a pervasive mechanism to place huge premiums that does not match with the marginal utility. One simple example that I can think of is about the car industry, specifically the German auto industry for luxury cars. With the new competitors from China and the US, several people are perceiving that, in relative terms, those new competitors are bringing more perceived and felt quality in comparison with the European brands. Some editions of Mercedes you pay more than 100K in a car with a lot of plastic in its finishing, very dubious vehicle dynamics (if you're outside of the nice german/european roads) or if you need to operate in the 40% vehicle performance, awful spare parts coverage outside of Europe, and way inefficient (due to sandbagging and green washing) engines in terms of performance x value. I can go on and on bringing several examples of this "Premium Scalping" in a lot of products: Beer, Wine, Fashion Industry, Watches, etc.
- prmph 2y ago
  I'm not sure how you are disagreeing with the comment you are replying to. > With the new competitors from China and the US, several people are perceiving that, in relative terms, those new competitors are bringing more perceived and felt quality in comparison with the European brands. So you agree that when people can actually perceive quality, they car about it, right
- dnate 2y ago
  Didn't you just prove their point / agree with your post? The German car pricing example fits right in the "people can't judge quality adequately and marketing does the rest" narrative: People buy overpriced cars that are not actually high quality. or You/marketing are telling me about how these chinese cars are higher quality and I should by them. While most people have no Idea whether "green engines" are good or bad. I could take your word for it and believe that they are inefficient. But that sounds bogus given that efficiency is a cornerstone of "green".
gspencley 2y ago
Agreed. This is the part of the article that I really took issue with: > You may take pride in your craft, but the majority of people physically cannot notice the difference between good and bad design. Not even subconsciously. Particularly the "not even subconsciously" part thrown in at the end. Because, if this were true, then YouTube creators would not pour an insane amount of effort into the THUMBNAILS of their videos. Marketing talent would not study human psychology and do A/B tests to figure out why certain ads sell products and others don't. There is so much theory and study behind design, attraction, pattern recognition, contrast and standing out from the crowd that even though the average person doesn't necessarily notice how these strings are being tugged on, it doesn't mean that they aren't having an influence . And I don't even mean to this to say "we're all sheep being brainwashed by corporations." That's actually far from my point. My point is that attention to quality affects the user experience regardless of whether the user can recognize or articulate WHY. In a photograph, and think about YouTube thumbnails as a good working example, the "mise en scene" is critical for supporting the clarity of the message. There's a reason that the majority of thumbnails contain pictures of peoples' faces: the human brain is distracted by faces... so if you're trying to pull attention to your thumbnail, it's a good method. Why are these faces usually obnoxious? Because the facial expression also communicates the tone of the content and how the viewer is intended to feel about it. The ALL CAPS sections in titles and captions, while annoying, also has a purpose: to highlight key words that describe the promise of the video. All of this speaks to the quality of design. And users might not know why they prefer certain designs over others. Why certain websites sell products and others don't. Why certain videos and articles get clicked on while others don't. That doesn't mean that, therefore, "most people don't care about quality." It means that, like you said, most people don't have the relevant domain expertise necessary to be able to judge why the quality of one design "feels" better than the quality of another.
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  > > You may take pride in your craft, but the majority of people physically cannot notice the difference between good and bad design. Not even subconsciously. > Particularly the "not even subconsciously" part thrown in at the end. It's a bit of a tautology: people don't notice things that are targeted to guide them subconsciously. I don't know if that's the point the author was making; either way, it was kind of weak.
marcosdumay 2y ago
> nobody would go for the worse quality, right? Some people would, some people wouldn't. Informing people is still important (and something that has been actively destroyed basically everywhere, for decades), so people can make the best choice for their situation. Also, some people won't make the best choice for their situation. That's also ok for most choices.
- palata 2y ago
  Sure, but that's not quite what I meant. I meant "if you could provably show them". Of course, if I tell you "this one is 20% more expensive but it will last twice as long", you have no reason to trust me. But that's a problem of trust, not a problem of how much you care about quality. If quality provably means it's cheaper (because it will last twice as long), then it's completely irrational to buy the lower-quality, more expensive one. The whole idea is that people don't have a way to know about the quality for sure in advance, so they can't take the decision based on that.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > If quality provably means it's cheaper (because it will last twice as long), then it's completely irrational to buy the lower-quality, more expensive one. No, it's not "completely irrational", and also not everybody acts rationally. People exist in all kinds of contexts and situations. You won't be able to predict what the best option is for every single person.
    - palata 2y ago
      It's a thought experiment. I am telling you: "What if, for this person, in this context and situation, we could know for sure what is the best option? Would that person go for the best option or not?" and you answer "it's not possible, you cannot know". You are right: we cannot know (that's the reason for the debate), but that's beside the point. The point is that in my opinion, if people could know for sure about the quality when they make their choice, then quality would matter to them.
pb060 2y ago
Serious question: how do you understand ABBA? Because I consider music listening a journey and songs that I dislike now might be my favorite ones in the future. But I really don’t know how it could lead me to like ABBA.
- grajaganDev 2y ago
  Those women's voices are incredible.
- palata 2y ago
  Is it ABBA in particular, or do you not like the style in general? Because there is a difference between quality and preference. You can totally dislike the Mona Lisa, but in its style, it would be very hard to say that it is not high quality painting. And that brings me to another point that I think goes against the philosophy of the featured article: music is acquired taste, if I can say. We generally don't like music we don't understand. Some styles are easier to get (maybe because the music is just easier, or because it's broadcasted everywhere you go), some are harder. I like a lot of different styles of music (from classical to metal through rap, pop and jazz, etc). But in each of those styles, I did not immediately like everything. Of course there is good and bad quality, that's one thing. But the other axis is what I could understand of the style. In rap, I started with very melodic songs, and then I started to get the rhythm and flow, and then downright the culture and the meaning of what they would say. I still don't like everything, but vastly more than I used to. In jazz, I liked big bands and "soft" stuff like this until I started studying jazz. I forced myself to listen to jazz styles I really did not enjoy, up to free jazz. I regularly listened to good quality songs (I had to trust my music professor about the quality, of course) in those styles for a few months. And after a while (and I can't say precisely when it happened), I started enjoying some of those, until I could enjoy songs in all of them. Again, I don't like everything, but by learning and getting used to new styles, I got to enjoy them as well. Of course, in doing all that effort, I improved my musical expertise. So I am now more critical about quality, which I feel like I compensate by being more open to very different styles. By voluntarily staying ignorant, I doubt the author enjoys all styles of music. So maybe they don't ruin the low-quality music of the style they are used to, but on the other hand they miss the high quality music in all the styles they are not used to :-).
dqft 2y ago
This is the most natural thing I've found here in a long long time.
graemep 2y ago
I agree. I have made a lot of recent purchases of things for which I would be willing to pay a premium for something better (e.g. more durable washing machine) but where I settled for cheap and not obviously bad because I do not know how to verify the more expensive option is actually higher quality. > And then proves it by giving contradictory examples like "people don't care about quality, they will just listen to ABBA or go to the Louvre". True. IMO what is in the Louvre is of higher quality than anything you are likely to find in "some little art gallery showcasing new artists". Is the article seriously arguing that it is probable that some little gallery will have works better than the Mona Lisa?
- indigoabstract 2y ago
  I'm not sure if quality is objective or subjective, especially when referring to art. I read this anecdote somewhere: A visitor to the Louvre in Paris viewed the renowned Mona Lisa and stated loudly: "That painting is nothing special. I am unimpressed." A curator who was standing nearby said: "Sir, the painting is not on trial. You are." Could have said the same thing about "Starry Night".
  - palata 2y ago
    Not sure why you are being downvoted here... But yeah, defining "quality" may be difficult for art. Maybe rather for contemporary art, though. I think we tend to have some kind of consensus for older art? Then for instance in cinema, I think it's pretty objective. It doesn't have to be related to how popular the movie is, though.
    - indigoabstract 2y ago
      Yes, it's puzzling to me how posterity can tell if something has the quality to stand the test of time, but we, the contemporaries, cannot. Though it seems that eventually, remarkable work does find its way up, even if the authors might not be around to enjoy the belated appraisal. And in that case, what more can one do but do the work and hope for the best?
  - 2y ago
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
>nobody would go for the worse quality, right? people who cannot afford to go for the better quality would, in fact where Smart phones are concerned I think it is commonly considered that for most metrics iPhone is better and people often buy Android because they cannot afford iPhone (of course except for specific subsets of HN who will not buy Apple for various social/cultural reasons)
- palata 2y ago
  > I think it is commonly considered that for most metrics iPhone is better I would debate that. One thing is that iPhone is one, whereas Android is thousands. It's easier to trust an iPhone than a random Android phone. But there are certainly really good Android phones that are cheaper than iPhones. It's just hard to estimate the quality, again.
- flawn 2y ago
  I know you are not probably part of this group - but can we stop just comparing Android to iPhones? There are Android Devices which are in a lot of metrics way better than an iPhone and vice versa a lot of iPhones better than a big set of Android devices. But still, depending on different factory like price, ecosystem, habit etc., people go for one or another. It's not 2010, where iOS has been the only (relatively) mature OS. Really not an Android Fanboy, and had devices from both worlds but this one thing is bugging me out as it is just a blatant product of Apple's "our devices are better because our name is on it" marketing - and it's bugging me out.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
He also completely misses the point here: > Audiophiles complain about MP3 compression and crappy headphones. Most of us just want to listen to our tunes, not listen to the equipment. I won't even bother. It's not possible to discuss with people having such bogus opinions.
s1megguy 2y ago
"look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right?" But that assumes if you pay more quality increases as well. But that is not always the case. Case in point my iphone which has display issues within 2 yrs and apple is expecting me to pay half the price of the device to fix it. Against my old android which is 4x cheaper and still working great after 2 yrs. Quality should not be associated with price.
- palata 2y ago
  > But that assumes if you pay more quality increases as well. It's just a thought experiment. In this situation, people would probably go for the higher quality, because they would know it's higher quality. In reality, it's very hard to assess the quality of a product, that's correct. And that's my point: people do care about quality, it's just often very hard to have a good idea about it.
eddyzh 2y ago
>But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? I am not sure if we are living in the same world. No most people absolutely do not make rational choices like that. No matter how you tell them. Most importantly what you think is best for people is stil a perspective. Especially in the context of tv.
- palata 2y ago
  I find it incredible how many times I have to re-explain this. Between those literally trying to find which model of smartphone costs 20% and lasts twice as long and those telling me "there is no point to wonder, because we can't know in advance if it will last twice as long". Let me restart: the article says that "most people don't care about quality". I disagree, and offer a thought experiment. It is not real, it is just a way to share an idea. "Imagine a world where a person is offered a choice between two smartphones, where one is 20% more expensive but will last twice as long. Imagine that this person confidently knows this (it is impossible in real life, but let's imagine it for the sake of this argument). And obviously, imagine that the person does not have an irrational reason that will completely ruin the experiment, like someone putting a gun on their head and telling them which one to buy. Do you think that this person will say "I will take the one that is obviously worse, because I am completely irrational", or do you think that this person will say "well, the more expensive one is apparently a better deal due to the quality guarantees I know to be true"? The point that I am trying to make being: quality matters to people. It's not the only thing that matters, and they don't always have a way to know about the actual quality of whatever they buy. But if they could know about the quality, then it would probably be part of the decision process. Therefore it feels wrong to say "most people don't care about quality". In real life, people don't buy the better quality products, that's a fact. But it does not mean that people don't care about quality.
bluGill 2y ago
In the case of phones lasting twice as long may not be a good thing. There are many phones out there that are old enough they don't have 5g which is standard even on the cheapest phone now. All 3g phones are junk today because no towers exist they can talk to - probably no phone left as 3g, but plenty of cars are still 3g only and thus cannot phone home (farmers paid to upgrade their tractors because they find their tractor calling home useful - the radio itself was designed to run for 50 years, but it was still obsolete)
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  Is it just me or is 5G not an appealing feature? When I had good 4G signal I never felt limited in terms of speed. Now that I have 5G everything’s the same. What more am I going to do on my phone besides watch one 1080p video stream?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    That depends. 5G at low speeds allows for much longer range which I like when I travel in a very remote area. 5G also allows for much faster speeds at very low range, so if you are in a very crowded city you will notice. For most people most of the time they are not in such a remote area that only 5G towers can be affordably built, nor are is data so congested that they would notice the shared bandwidth limitations. About once a year I do travel through those remote areas where my 4g phone never got service, but as soon as I got 5g I had service (there are still areas so remote I don't get 5g service either)
jalapenos 2y ago
I think more accurately: it takes them a while to learn to judge quality, and in the meantime "at least it's cheap". Also most people can't actually afford quality, even if they're aware in the long run it's more economical. Same reason pay day loans exist. Yes buying one solid dining table that'll last a lifetime sounds great, but a poor person just doesn't have that dining table budget. So I think many of these articles come down to middle class cluelessness, and sometimes narcissism. They either can't understand the situation of the poor, and so come to the conclusion they don't care about quality. Or they're fully capable of understanding but don't want to let this opportunity to subtle brag their superiority go to waste.

by palata 2y ago

maxerickson 2y ago

Economics has the idea of expressed preferences. So for instance, with that framework, if you choose the cheaper item instead of the inconvenience of understanding the tradeoffs between the items, you obviously care less about quality than price and convenience.

rcxdude 2y ago
Yes, but that's because the cost of evaluating the quality is very high, often infeasibly so. (Seriously, it's pretty difficult. Read reviews? They can give some idea, but it's rare that they do any rigourous testing, and they can be corrupted. Have a brand or specific model that you like and has a good reputation? How do you know they haven't started to cash in on that by cutting quality but still charging the same prices?)
- dotancohen 2y ago
  This is where Project Farm provides its value. Consumer Reports ostensibly once filled a similar niche. But building trust in brands like Project Farm or Consumer Reports suffers from the same bootstrap problem.
palata 2y ago
You would be right if it was possible to estimate the quality of the items. But it generally is mostly impossible. Of course you can read about the products, you can read reviews, and then you can build some kind of belief around that. "From what I read, and assuming that the company doesn't bankrupt suddenly, and assuming that they won't deploy an update that erases all my data, I believe that this one is better". But that's a belief: you don't know anything about the hardware that is inside (other than a list of a few high-level components you think you understand, maybe) or about the software that is running inside.
graemep 2y ago
IMO that is economists trying to argue that the market is working when the market is actually failing. If people would like to be informed of the tradeoffs but do not have the information the end result is not optimal.

throwup238 2y ago

> But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? Wrong. Most of the population is limited by cash flow so that extra 20% they get to spend on food today is worth more than the quality of the phone a year from now. That’s a problem for tomorrow, hunger is felt now. That’s why most people choose the cheap option, not some inability to evaluate quality.

rcxdude 2y ago
I think this is less common than you would assume. Yes, there is a 'poor tax' on low quality items that are more expensive in the long run, but also people have gotten burned enough times paying more for an item that still turned out to be crap, so it's hard to justify taking the risk on such an investment.
- mirsadm 2y ago
  I think this is true as well. Paying more does not mean higher quality. There are a few brands which seem to release quality products consistently (Apple etc) that paying more is justified but for many others it is just not worth it.
  - palata 2y ago
    > Paying more does not mean higher quality. Exactly! It is actually hard to estimate the quality of a product. And when you can't, most of the time you go for the cheaper one (unless money doesn't matter much for you).
    - presentation 2y ago
      Or you use brand as a proxy for quality and buy the Apple one without actually knowing why or how it’s “better”

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

For the tools that we use day-to-day and week-to-week, it should be impossible for us to not be a judge of quality. A have a tale of ladles... those pieces of kitchenware that we use to slop soup into our bowls. For years and years, I'd only had really horrible, shitty ladles. Those plastic-handled, plastic-everything-ed pieces of garbage that Walmart buys in volume for 3 cents each and sells for $12.99, you know the ones I'm talking about. With bizarro neon-green colors that are so flexible that you know there must be three dozen banned-in-the-United-States plasticizers in them. And if you could find one that's just plain stainless steel (with or without a nice wood handle), it was paper-thin steel, stamped into shape, that no one had ever bothered to grind/polish the burrs off the edge. Then, just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were checking out this tiny little Korean grocery store. And the owner apparently orders everything from some Korean supplier. He had several different sizes of ladels. Stainless, in what must be 3/16ths, all the edges soft and beveled. The shape was nice too, not something rough and rushed, but looking like someone who cared about design actually spent time on that. And the small one was like $3.89 and the large was $7-something. This did not come from a Chinese factory. Am I a world-renowned ladle expert? Do I have a PhD in ladelology? No. Hell, as a utensil, it's probably one that I only use twice a year. I couldn't design a die to make one of these, I couldn't tell you if the hydraulic press needed to be 50tons or 250tons, I'm not very knowledgeable at all about any detail that matters. I just care (some interesting psychology there... childhood trauma or something). I don't think anyone needs to be especially qualified to judge the quality of products that they do or will use. Everyday experience should suffice, and the only people who might not manage that are kids who have just recently graduated and mama's not doing their laundry for them anymore.

geodel 2y ago
For long time I used to think about crappy ladles and why steel ones in decent shapes not available in US stores. The kind that I had in India would last lifetime. Finally I found these kind of things in webstaurant store. Seems this kind of stuff is readily available in catering/ restaurant supply stores. Things mainstream stores sell is all inspired from Tv, media celebrity cooking etc. This stuff is more fragile but supposedly fancy looking. I now have stuff more practical, reliable and all steel (or at least part that touch food) from catering stores.

nox101 2y ago

> "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now" That is not the proposition. A Motorola Moto G Play is $110 no contract. The cheapest iPhone is $429. It's is not 20% more, it's 4x more. My sister got a Moto G Play this summer. She's perfectly happy with it. She's got a family of 5 so $550 for 5 phones is quite a deal compared to $2145 for 5 phones. The Moto G Play also has a micro-SD slot so she can take it to 512gb for $40.

marcosdumay 2y ago
The phones market is completely distorted by several kinds of anti-competitive and purposeful social-engineering forces. For a start, it's not a given that the Moto G Play has a lower quality than the iPhone. If the market was competitive, there would be comparable alternatives on every dimension, but it isn't, and those can't be compared.
mirekrusin 2y ago
To answer this question properly she would have to use both and then make a judgement, no?
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
That is not the proposition. For $15/month savings her child will be ostracized at school because of the blue message box. Is it worth it? Phones have outsized influence on our lives. A phone costs 1/10 as much as a car per month, but we spend more time with them, and most younger people today would rather give up their car than their phone. Better screen quality will more than pay itself in optics prescriptions later in life. Batter quality photos you take today will stay with you for the remainder of our life, and past it. Longer battery life would mean avoiding a lot of unpleasant situations.
- circlefavshape 2y ago
  > For $15/month savings her child will be ostracized at school because of the blue message box FWIW I have teenage kids, and nothing like this has ever happened in their lives.

braza 2y ago

> The problem is not that people don't care about quality, it's that they are not competent to judge it and marketing does the rest. I disagree with this. Just a small background: I was around in some of the cultures that value quality (e.g. Switzerland, Germany (in some aspects), Nordic countries, etc.), and the biggest issues that I have with the modern concept of quality are 1) quality is not property anymore but instead is something that "someone needs to tell you 'cause you're not capable to see for yourself" and it gives not only a lot of avenue for status signaling but as mechanism that I call "veil of sophistication and exclusivity," and 2) due to the economies of scale, lack of education in terms of taste (aesthetics), and due to the number 1) most of the quality industry became a pervasive mechanism to place huge premiums that does not match with the marginal utility. One simple example that I can think of is about the car industry, specifically the German auto industry for luxury cars. With the new competitors from China and the US, several people are perceiving that, in relative terms, those new competitors are bringing more perceived and felt quality in comparison with the European brands. Some editions of Mercedes you pay more than 100K in a car with a lot of plastic in its finishing, very dubious vehicle dynamics (if you're outside of the nice german/european roads) or if you need to operate in the 40% vehicle performance, awful spare parts coverage outside of Europe, and way inefficient (due to sandbagging and green washing) engines in terms of performance x value. I can go on and on bringing several examples of this "Premium Scalping" in a lot of products: Beer, Wine, Fashion Industry, Watches, etc.

prmph 2y ago
I'm not sure how you are disagreeing with the comment you are replying to. > With the new competitors from China and the US, several people are perceiving that, in relative terms, those new competitors are bringing more perceived and felt quality in comparison with the European brands. So you agree that when people can actually perceive quality, they car about it, right
dnate 2y ago
Didn't you just prove their point / agree with your post? The German car pricing example fits right in the "people can't judge quality adequately and marketing does the rest" narrative: People buy overpriced cars that are not actually high quality. or You/marketing are telling me about how these chinese cars are higher quality and I should by them. While most people have no Idea whether "green engines" are good or bad. I could take your word for it and believe that they are inefficient. But that sounds bogus given that efficiency is a cornerstone of "green".

gspencley 2y ago

Agreed. This is the part of the article that I really took issue with: > You may take pride in your craft, but the majority of people physically cannot notice the difference between good and bad design. Not even subconsciously. Particularly the "not even subconsciously" part thrown in at the end. Because, if this were true, then YouTube creators would not pour an insane amount of effort into the THUMBNAILS of their videos. Marketing talent would not study human psychology and do A/B tests to figure out why certain ads sell products and others don't. There is so much theory and study behind design, attraction, pattern recognition, contrast and standing out from the crowd that even though the average person doesn't necessarily notice how these strings are being tugged on, it doesn't mean that they aren't having an influence . And I don't even mean to this to say "we're all sheep being brainwashed by corporations." That's actually far from my point. My point is that attention to quality affects the user experience regardless of whether the user can recognize or articulate WHY. In a photograph, and think about YouTube thumbnails as a good working example, the "mise en scene" is critical for supporting the clarity of the message. There's a reason that the majority of thumbnails contain pictures of peoples' faces: the human brain is distracted by faces... so if you're trying to pull attention to your thumbnail, it's a good method. Why are these faces usually obnoxious? Because the facial expression also communicates the tone of the content and how the viewer is intended to feel about it. The ALL CAPS sections in titles and captions, while annoying, also has a purpose: to highlight key words that describe the promise of the video. All of this speaks to the quality of design. And users might not know why they prefer certain designs over others. Why certain websites sell products and others don't. Why certain videos and articles get clicked on while others don't. That doesn't mean that, therefore, "most people don't care about quality." It means that, like you said, most people don't have the relevant domain expertise necessary to be able to judge why the quality of one design "feels" better than the quality of another.

dpkirchner 2y ago
> > You may take pride in your craft, but the majority of people physically cannot notice the difference between good and bad design. Not even subconsciously. > Particularly the "not even subconsciously" part thrown in at the end. It's a bit of a tautology: people don't notice things that are targeted to guide them subconsciously. I don't know if that's the point the author was making; either way, it was kind of weak.

marcosdumay 2y ago

> nobody would go for the worse quality, right? Some people would, some people wouldn't. Informing people is still important (and something that has been actively destroyed basically everywhere, for decades), so people can make the best choice for their situation. Also, some people won't make the best choice for their situation. That's also ok for most choices.

palata 2y ago
Sure, but that's not quite what I meant. I meant "if you could provably show them". Of course, if I tell you "this one is 20% more expensive but it will last twice as long", you have no reason to trust me. But that's a problem of trust, not a problem of how much you care about quality. If quality provably means it's cheaper (because it will last twice as long), then it's completely irrational to buy the lower-quality, more expensive one. The whole idea is that people don't have a way to know about the quality for sure in advance, so they can't take the decision based on that.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > If quality provably means it's cheaper (because it will last twice as long), then it's completely irrational to buy the lower-quality, more expensive one. No, it's not "completely irrational", and also not everybody acts rationally. People exist in all kinds of contexts and situations. You won't be able to predict what the best option is for every single person.
  - palata 2y ago
    It's a thought experiment. I am telling you: "What if, for this person, in this context and situation, we could know for sure what is the best option? Would that person go for the best option or not?" and you answer "it's not possible, you cannot know". You are right: we cannot know (that's the reason for the debate), but that's beside the point. The point is that in my opinion, if people could know for sure about the quality when they make their choice, then quality would matter to them.

pb060 2y ago

Serious question: how do you understand ABBA? Because I consider music listening a journey and songs that I dislike now might be my favorite ones in the future. But I really don’t know how it could lead me to like ABBA.

grajaganDev 2y ago
Those women's voices are incredible.
palata 2y ago
Is it ABBA in particular, or do you not like the style in general? Because there is a difference between quality and preference. You can totally dislike the Mona Lisa, but in its style, it would be very hard to say that it is not high quality painting. And that brings me to another point that I think goes against the philosophy of the featured article: music is acquired taste, if I can say. We generally don't like music we don't understand. Some styles are easier to get (maybe because the music is just easier, or because it's broadcasted everywhere you go), some are harder. I like a lot of different styles of music (from classical to metal through rap, pop and jazz, etc). But in each of those styles, I did not immediately like everything. Of course there is good and bad quality, that's one thing. But the other axis is what I could understand of the style. In rap, I started with very melodic songs, and then I started to get the rhythm and flow, and then downright the culture and the meaning of what they would say. I still don't like everything, but vastly more than I used to. In jazz, I liked big bands and "soft" stuff like this until I started studying jazz. I forced myself to listen to jazz styles I really did not enjoy, up to free jazz. I regularly listened to good quality songs (I had to trust my music professor about the quality, of course) in those styles for a few months. And after a while (and I can't say precisely when it happened), I started enjoying some of those, until I could enjoy songs in all of them. Again, I don't like everything, but by learning and getting used to new styles, I got to enjoy them as well. Of course, in doing all that effort, I improved my musical expertise. So I am now more critical about quality, which I feel like I compensate by being more open to very different styles. By voluntarily staying ignorant, I doubt the author enjoys all styles of music. So maybe they don't ruin the low-quality music of the style they are used to, but on the other hand they miss the high quality music in all the styles they are not used to :-).

dqft 2y ago

This is the most natural thing I've found here in a long long time.

graemep 2y ago

I agree. I have made a lot of recent purchases of things for which I would be willing to pay a premium for something better (e.g. more durable washing machine) but where I settled for cheap and not obviously bad because I do not know how to verify the more expensive option is actually higher quality. > And then proves it by giving contradictory examples like "people don't care about quality, they will just listen to ABBA or go to the Louvre". True. IMO what is in the Louvre is of higher quality than anything you are likely to find in "some little art gallery showcasing new artists". Is the article seriously arguing that it is probable that some little gallery will have works better than the Mona Lisa?

indigoabstract 2y ago
I'm not sure if quality is objective or subjective, especially when referring to art. I read this anecdote somewhere: A visitor to the Louvre in Paris viewed the renowned Mona Lisa and stated loudly: "That painting is nothing special. I am unimpressed." A curator who was standing nearby said: "Sir, the painting is not on trial. You are." Could have said the same thing about "Starry Night".
- palata 2y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted here... But yeah, defining "quality" may be difficult for art. Maybe rather for contemporary art, though. I think we tend to have some kind of consensus for older art? Then for instance in cinema, I think it's pretty objective. It doesn't have to be related to how popular the movie is, though.
  - indigoabstract 2y ago
    Yes, it's puzzling to me how posterity can tell if something has the quality to stand the test of time, but we, the contemporaries, cannot. Though it seems that eventually, remarkable work does find its way up, even if the authors might not be around to enjoy the belated appraisal. And in that case, what more can one do but do the work and hope for the best?
- 2y ago

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

>nobody would go for the worse quality, right? people who cannot afford to go for the better quality would, in fact where Smart phones are concerned I think it is commonly considered that for most metrics iPhone is better and people often buy Android because they cannot afford iPhone (of course except for specific subsets of HN who will not buy Apple for various social/cultural reasons)

palata 2y ago
> I think it is commonly considered that for most metrics iPhone is better I would debate that. One thing is that iPhone is one, whereas Android is thousands. It's easier to trust an iPhone than a random Android phone. But there are certainly really good Android phones that are cheaper than iPhones. It's just hard to estimate the quality, again.
flawn 2y ago
I know you are not probably part of this group - but can we stop just comparing Android to iPhones? There are Android Devices which are in a lot of metrics way better than an iPhone and vice versa a lot of iPhones better than a big set of Android devices. But still, depending on different factory like price, ecosystem, habit etc., people go for one or another. It's not 2010, where iOS has been the only (relatively) mature OS. Really not an Android Fanboy, and had devices from both worlds but this one thing is bugging me out as it is just a blatant product of Apple's "our devices are better because our name is on it" marketing - and it's bugging me out.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

He also completely misses the point here: > Audiophiles complain about MP3 compression and crappy headphones. Most of us just want to listen to our tunes, not listen to the equipment. I won't even bother. It's not possible to discuss with people having such bogus opinions.

s1megguy 2y ago

"look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right?" But that assumes if you pay more quality increases as well. But that is not always the case. Case in point my iphone which has display issues within 2 yrs and apple is expecting me to pay half the price of the device to fix it. Against my old android which is 4x cheaper and still working great after 2 yrs. Quality should not be associated with price.

palata 2y ago
> But that assumes if you pay more quality increases as well. It's just a thought experiment. In this situation, people would probably go for the higher quality, because they would know it's higher quality. In reality, it's very hard to assess the quality of a product, that's correct. And that's my point: people do care about quality, it's just often very hard to have a good idea about it.

eddyzh 2y ago

>But if there was a way to correctly tell people: "look, this smartphone is 20% more expensive, but it will last twice as long and it will be more convenient for you in ways you can't understand right now", nobody would go for the worse quality, right? I am not sure if we are living in the same world. No most people absolutely do not make rational choices like that. No matter how you tell them. Most importantly what you think is best for people is stil a perspective. Especially in the context of tv.

palata 2y ago
I find it incredible how many times I have to re-explain this. Between those literally trying to find which model of smartphone costs 20% and lasts twice as long and those telling me "there is no point to wonder, because we can't know in advance if it will last twice as long". Let me restart: the article says that "most people don't care about quality". I disagree, and offer a thought experiment. It is not real, it is just a way to share an idea. "Imagine a world where a person is offered a choice between two smartphones, where one is 20% more expensive but will last twice as long. Imagine that this person confidently knows this (it is impossible in real life, but let's imagine it for the sake of this argument). And obviously, imagine that the person does not have an irrational reason that will completely ruin the experiment, like someone putting a gun on their head and telling them which one to buy. Do you think that this person will say "I will take the one that is obviously worse, because I am completely irrational", or do you think that this person will say "well, the more expensive one is apparently a better deal due to the quality guarantees I know to be true"? The point that I am trying to make being: quality matters to people. It's not the only thing that matters, and they don't always have a way to know about the actual quality of whatever they buy. But if they could know about the quality, then it would probably be part of the decision process. Therefore it feels wrong to say "most people don't care about quality". In real life, people don't buy the better quality products, that's a fact. But it does not mean that people don't care about quality.

bluGill 2y ago

In the case of phones lasting twice as long may not be a good thing. There are many phones out there that are old enough they don't have 5g which is standard even on the cheapest phone now. All 3g phones are junk today because no towers exist they can talk to - probably no phone left as 3g, but plenty of cars are still 3g only and thus cannot phone home (farmers paid to upgrade their tractors because they find their tractor calling home useful - the radio itself was designed to run for 50 years, but it was still obsolete)

teaearlgraycold 2y ago
Is it just me or is 5G not an appealing feature? When I had good 4G signal I never felt limited in terms of speed. Now that I have 5G everything’s the same. What more am I going to do on my phone besides watch one 1080p video stream?
- bluGill 2y ago
  That depends. 5G at low speeds allows for much longer range which I like when I travel in a very remote area. 5G also allows for much faster speeds at very low range, so if you are in a very crowded city you will notice. For most people most of the time they are not in such a remote area that only 5G towers can be affordably built, nor are is data so congested that they would notice the shared bandwidth limitations. About once a year I do travel through those remote areas where my 4g phone never got service, but as soon as I got 5g I had service (there are still areas so remote I don't get 5g service either)

jalapenos 2y ago

I think more accurately: it takes them a while to learn to judge quality, and in the meantime "at least it's cheap". Also most people can't actually afford quality, even if they're aware in the long run it's more economical. Same reason pay day loans exist. Yes buying one solid dining table that'll last a lifetime sounds great, but a poor person just doesn't have that dining table budget. So I think many of these articles come down to middle class cluelessness, and sometimes narcissism. They either can't understand the situation of the poor, and so come to the conclusion they don't care about quality. Or they're fully capable of understanding but don't want to let this opportunity to subtle brag their superiority go to waste.