Right versus pragmatic

http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic

by zdw • 14 years ago

568 156 14 years ago

afhof• 14 years ago

Marco's posts are always short, sweet, and to the point. I wonder if anyone in a position to make these kinds of decisions will heed his advice.

jarek• 14 years ago

No. The point has been made over and over and one more restating, however short, sweet, and to the point, will not materially change the situation.

keithpeter• 14 years ago

Sadly, I'm with Max Planck on this one

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

jtchang• 14 years ago

Get one of these: http://toepener.com/

Of course the people still might continue to throw paper towels on the floor. Changing a habit is difficult.

karolist2• 14 years ago

A large bank in UK has all of it's office doors plated with metal near the bottom, also the doors open both ways making them really suitable for kicking, I don't know if the original intention was that.

sek• 14 years ago

Or when we build the next building, we make automatic doors with a corner so you can't see anything from the outside and nobody has to touch anything.

julian373• 14 years ago

Another solution (albeit more costly) would be to re-hinge the door so it swings outwards, and make the springs easy enough so people can push it open using their shoes.

That's not the gentleman's way of operating a door, but with the trashcan solution people also have to hold the door open somehow while disposing of the towel, unless it comes with springs that are adjusted just right so it stays open just long enough for people to sneak out in time.

Making the door open outwards is the right thing to do anyway with regards to fire safety, as far as I understand.

Of course, if you have the space to spare (without things getting too intimate) you can also just leave out the doors altogether, which is how many airports I've been to seem to handle the issue.

(I'd say an automatic bathroom door is overkill and a bit creepy, too, which probably is why I've never seen one.)

drewjoh• 14 years ago

It's dangerous to have doors swinging out into hallways (which is usually what you exit to in an office building).

snprbob86• 14 years ago

> Making the door open outwards is the right thing to do anyway with regards to fire safety

You've got that backwards. You want the door to open inward, in case there is an obstruction. If it opens outward, there may be something on the ground blocking the path of the door. It may be too heavy (or hot!) to push away, but small enough to climb over or around. Furthermore, it's dangerous to open a door outward into the path of people walking.

Think about the front door on your house or apartment, the door to your bedroom, your bathroom door, etc. They all open in to the room, away from the hallway.

muro• 14 years ago

I think in some european countries the regulation says the doors must always open in the direction towards the exit. So in this case it would open outwards.

julian373• 14 years ago

I'm not a fire safety expert by any means, which is why I added the "as far as I understand" qualifier. That said, don't you have the possibility of something blocking the path of the door regardless of which way it swings? I guess if it's on your side of the door, there is a greater chance that you can move it out of the way as long as it's not too hot or bulky. Then again, if something unexpected is blocking the way in a fire I'd expect there is a very good chance that it is hot or bulky.

So far I was under the impression that doors should generally open towards the exit (as the sibling already noted) in order to make it as easy as possible to exit the building. But maybe that is a misconception. I find this a very interesting topic, if you have more information to share I'd be very curious.

EDIT: Also, aren't hot door handles a big issue in case of a fire? I'd imagine that the ability to push the door open (assuming it doesn't lock when closed) rather than having to pull the handle is a plus. And I guess a door that swings both ways is ideal with regard to blockage.

sgk284• 14 years ago

It's a bit more complicated than that for non-residential buildings over a small size.

Any emergency exits and doors for an area where a large group of people might aggregate (i.e. a classroom) almost always have to open outward because mobs are the biggest problem in an emergency. Emergency exits also generally have to be equipped with a crash bar and other hardware (such as auto-closing arms).

Inward opening doors are frequently problems in emergencies. People get smashed up against them by a mob and are unable to open it.

Generally though, bathrooms and other interior doors that do not open to a path of egress can do whatever is most convenient for the location and use.

If you want to minimize the amount of time required for a building to vacate, you want as many doors to open outward toward the path of egress as possible.

Residential buildings have entirely different constraints (and the code for hallway width / obstructions is vastly different).

_sh• 14 years ago

In the film noir classic 'Double Indemnity', the writers Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler needed to resolve a particular conceit in the plot where the femme fatale shows up at the doomed hero's apartment but needs to be hidden from an occupant inside. They decided to use an outward-opening door.

This small detail has caused much discussion ever since, a good example is here: http://jpgamboa.com/archives/1424

jsankey2• 14 years ago

It seems obvious that the best long term strategy for media companies is to start addressing the demand. Indeed, over the long term, any other strategy will likely result in those companies being left behind.

But if you're in charge of a media company today, and your bonus this year is tied to a cash cow you can keep alive for a few more years, would you be taking the risk and short term pain of making the transition?

I don't think it's stubbornness or stupidity we're looking at, it's a classic case of misaligned incentives.

abraxasz2• 14 years ago

I will have to disagree. Not that I think that the people in charge of the MPAA and co. are altruistic, nice people. But I don't think they act the way they act because they are looking for immediate profit, or rather this is not the principal reason.

There was an excellent comment on HN a month or so ago (during the SOPA madness, I can't find it though) from a guy from the industry that explained that the main problem was "ignorance and misunderstanding". And this echos what the OP explained so well: the MPAA think they are right, and don't understand why people are downloading illegally (they most likely think it's just about money).

jsankey2• 14 years ago

I think it's too easy to look at people in these positions and say they just don't get it. This is their industry, they're immersed in it every day. They may not have seen this coming, but it's been in their face for a while now, and even if a few can't see what's going on I simply can't believe that none of them do. At best I would say any "ignorance" could still be tied back to incentives: even if they know the truth, it's inconvenient and not worth acknowledging widely (or perhaps even to themselves). Better to keep on peddling the line that piracy is theft to preserve the status quo as long as possible.

greedo4• 14 years ago

This is as old as the hills. A business has an incredibly difficult time cannibalizing a line of business that is profitable. And the music, television, gaming and movie businesses are very profitable.

The music business got lucky with Apple and iTunes. But this caused the TV and movie industry to get upset about having to a) give a cut to another middleman and b) reduce prices.

So piracy will continue until either the businesses stumble into a solution, or someone comes along and disrupts them.

And despite the wailing and teeth gnashing about DRM in the tech blogosphere, I'm not convinced that the public is truly concerned about this to the extent that techies are.

maxharris• 14 years ago

There's a third option Marco forgot. Imagine that the problem is avoided because someone says, "it's right that we have a trash can by the door because people don't want to touch the door knob with their bare hands," and then follows through on that _correct_ theory by putting a garbage can there.

So I say: if your theory is correct, it'll make sense as a theory (i.e., integrate with the rest of your existing knowledge) AND it'll work in practice. If what you're trying keeps failing, the solution is to go back, check your premises, and identify what's wrong with your theory. Often people do this automatically (and call it being "pragmatic"), but with bigger ideas, an explicit approach is required.

To go for long without theory is to fly blind, and that's dangerous. Ideas and theory are what allow us to fly in the first place, as well as to change course before we hit the proverbial mountain hidden in the fog just ahead.

Sivart13• 14 years ago

Most importantly, I never knew why so many people at my office threw their paper towels on the ground next to the door (or in a trashcan located thereabouts, when available). Now I do.

I still don't understand why people think the post-bathroom door is disgusting enough to merit hand protection. If anything, it's the door people are most likely to have touched AFTER washing their hands. Do these people bring another paper with them to open the door on the way in?

whamill2• 14 years ago

Well the difference between the pre-bathroom door handle and the post-bathroom door handle (opposite sides of the same door, presumably) is that one of them is much more likely to have been touched by someone who may have just been to the toilet without washing their hands.

You wouldn't be that worried about touching the door on the way in especially if you knew you were going to be washing your hands in a moment.

karolist2• 14 years ago

Isn't that just a psychological thing? I mean, if people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom they might be less likely to wash their hands in general, but they're still using other doors, kitchen appliances, papers and (depending on culture) you shake hands with them in the morning. There's no way to avoid that while not looking socially awkward, just wash your own hands more.

Also, don't you remove some of that bacteria left on the door handle by touching it yourself? The amount of bacteria on bathroom door handles should remain rather constant given that you take some away as you leave some of your own, also door handle not having favourable replication conditions for germs.

potater• 14 years ago

In heading to the restroom I know that I'll have the opportunity to wash my hands after, so the handle leading in is of little concern to me.

In my admittedly anecdotal experience, the rate of full grown adults who casually ignore the sinks after finishing up their business and leaving a stall seems to be disturbingly high. It just kinda gets my ick-factor going. Granted, I'm something of a germaphobe (I wash my hands many times/day) so I might just be more inclined to notice those who don't vs those who do--- regardless, I'll almost always save a paper towel or something to turn the door handle when possible.

Anyway, I don't think the lack of a trash can nearby excuses those who would dispose of it on the floor though. I just hold onto it until I find the next closest trash can outside the bathroom. That usually takes less than a minute, depending on where I am.

rflrob• 14 years ago

> In my admittedly anecdotal experience, the rate of full grown adults who casually ignore the sinks after finishing up their business and leaving a stall seems to be disturbingly high

I dunno about stalls, but there is some not totally unreasonable (though still mildly icky) argument for not washing your hands after using a urinal: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1987#c...

GvS• 14 years ago

It would be interesting experiment to inspect those doors in large amount of bathrooms and see how clean they are.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

I'd rather have people understand there's no simplistic black or white right vs wrong. But only each ones personal interests. Than to come up with subjective excuses of why we shouldn't try to do the "right".

Piracy isn't "wrong", it's in the best interest of some and not of others. The most healthy attitude, imo, is to objectively measure the pros vs cons and only then judge what should you do. Almost any decision you ever take will favor someone and not others. What we cannot let happen is let those of opposite interest convince us that our interest is "wrong", ignoring one of the sides of the issue.

Intellectual monopoly privileges might be in the interest of a few select copyright holders. But maybe not in the best interest of users. No side is right our wrong, but just have different interests.

sedev• 14 years ago

On a personal note, I had a workplace bathroom once that was worse than this, also in trash bins. The one you were supposed to throw paper towels into after washing your hands, had a spring-loaded lid that required at least two pounds of pressure to open - and that was the least of the design problems.

More to the point, it fascinates me how the media companies' obduracy makes hackers in particular blindingly angry. It's interesting that from our side, they seem so insanely, self-destroyingly, offensively stupid that we just can't believe that they're really doing this. It's interesting on that cultural level as well as on the less abstract levels.

tnuc• 14 years ago

For management to be right they should take away the paper towels and install a hot air hand dryer.

Jarred• 14 years ago

The door should have metallic arm-slots where people can push the door open using just their arms. People usually don't pee/poop on their arms, so it'd be and appear clean, while removing the need to use paper towels to open the door.

newbusox• 14 years ago

This article seems to imply that you can never change people's behavior by law (i.e. like posting a sign on a door saying not to throw towels on the floor) because people will always do whatever they want. I don't think I agree with that--I think the quesiton is to what extent are entities willing to impose penalties and enforce the law to sufficiently change people's behavior. For example, obviously if the company in the hypothetical hired a guy to sit in the bathroom to make sure that people threw paper towels in the trash can and then fired people who disobeyed, far fewer people who throw paper towels on the floor.

So, the issue as related to piracy is not necessary that people would never change their behavior, its just that the cost of monitoring behavior and enforcing currently existing law/creating new law to effect such a behavioral change ("don't pirate stuff") is extraordinarily high. Right now, the strategy of the media industry appears to be to spend money under the presumption that the amount of money they spend enforcing/lobbying/trying to pass laws to prevent piracy makes economic sense: they will gain/save more money than they spend. This seems unlikely, but probably people have punched the numbers for these companies and concluded that this is the case. The radical alternative approach is to completely rethink the distribution and pricing scheme, and focus less on margins but more on quantity--distribute the content to as many people as possible, but make fewer $/product. To impose that would require either some fairly revolutionary thinking in companies that have repeatedly shown a hesitancy to innovate (and would require them to abandon a strategy now that still makes hefty profits), or to make media companies hurt to such an extent that they have no alternative (which, right now, does not appear to be happening).

icebraining19• 14 years ago

Right now, the strategy of the media industry appears to be to spend money under the presumption that the amount of money they spend enforcing/lobbying/trying to pass laws to prevent piracy makes economic sense: they will gain/save more money than they spend. This seems unlikely, but probably people have punched the numbers for these companies and concluded that this is the case.

Of course it's the case: their endgame is to get governments to criminalize all copyright infringement and get the taxpayer to pay for all that. Of course, the balance for society as a whole is well in the red, but why should they care?

But the worst is not the economic costs, but the (much more important IMHO) costs in terms of human rights, such as freedom from censorship, privacy, access to a indispensable medium, etc.

paulovsk• 14 years ago

Really nice piece.

icebraining19• 14 years ago

    The single least-attractive attribute of many of the people
    who download content illegally is their smug sense of entitlement. …

    The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in
    the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you
    want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you
    have the free-and-clear option of not having it.

This isn't any kind of counterargument. No, the world doesn't owe me¹ that, but I'm not forcibly taking it either.People are voluntarily sharing it with me. So what I'm owed is irrelevant. YCombinator doesn't owe me access to HN either, but I'm not a bad person for using it if they're offering it to me.

¹ completely hypothetically and for the sake of argument. For all you know I'm just playing devil's advocate, so let's keep the personal attacks to a minimum, please.

EDIT: fixed typo.

avree• 14 years ago

Are you typing "own" instead of "owe"? Why?

Also—"people offering" you something doesn't mean it wasn't "forcibly taken."

All pirated material, movies, etc are forcibly taken by someone. They're ripped from DVDs, captured from telecasts, etc. Just because they're offering it to you doesn't mean that it's free.

If I steal something from a store and then give it to you, the item's still stolen.

dlitz• 14 years ago

> All pirated material, movies, etc are forcibly taken by someone.

Really? What force was used to take them?

icebraining19• 14 years ago

Are you typing "own" instead of "owe"? Why?

Typo, sorry.

Also—"people offering" you something doesn't mean it wasn't "forcibly taken."

All pirated material, movies, etc are forcibly taken by someone. They're ripped from DVDs, captured from telecasts, etc. Just because they're offering it to you doesn't mean that it's free.

They did not forcibly took it: they bought the DVD, Blueray and/or access to the telecast. It's theirs.

If I steal something from a store and then give it to you, the item's still stolen.

Yes, but it's not what's happening here, so that's irrelevant.

jiggy20119• 14 years ago

It's not really like HN though, YCombinator may be voluntarily providing the service and us users are voluntarily providing the content.

The difference with a torrent download (in many cases at least) is that the author is not voluntarily sharing it with you so they're not really offering it. Somebody else may be voluntarily sharing their bandwidth with you but that's about it.

icebraining19• 14 years ago

The owner of the copy is voluntarily sharing it with me.

The author may not be, but then again when Renault sold me a car, they don't get to tell me who I can share it with.

gwern• 14 years ago

My own thought was actually:

'yes, the world does. Copyright is an artificial construct whose moral basis exists solely as a calculated decision to try to increase production, a bargain between the public - of which I am one - and the creators - misleadingly called "the world" - about creating and providing works. Now, under the current rules, I and the rest of the public have chosen not to impose explicit mandatory terms of access, but we have in other cases like bandwidth and orphan works, so let's not pretend that we can't do it for you too. You may welsh on the spirit of our agreement while satisfying the letter of our law, and we may choose to overlook it because it's not serious enough a problem to invoke the grim majesty of the legal meatgrinders or for other reasons, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that there is welshing going on here. And you certainly do not get to lecture me about it!"

superkinz• 14 years ago

This argument goes equally well for the war on drugs. Possibly even immigration.

jd• 14 years ago

People are so grossed out by a doorknob they refuse to touch it, only to immediately walk to their desk to type on their keyboard. A keyboard which is typically far dirtier than the bathroom they just avoided touching[1]. Oh, the irony.

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Germs/story?id=4774746&page...

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

Their own keyboard may be dirty but it's not transmitting any diseases.

robryan4• 14 years ago

I think it would really suck to go through life worrying about every surface I touched and the gems it contained.

mechanical_fish2• 14 years ago

It does. But it beats catching a cold or flu every couple of months.

And it's not as if hand-washing is some kind of crazy placebo:

In a research published by British Medical Journal on November 2007, physical barriers, such as regular handwashing and wearing masks, gloves and gowns, may be more effective than drugs to prevent the spread of respiratory viruses such as influenza and SARS... Handwashing and wearing masks, gloves and gowns were effective individually in preventing the spread of respiratory viruses, and were even more effective when combined... Another study, published in the Cochrane Library journal on 2007, finds handwashing with just soap and water to be a simple and effective way to curb the spread of respiratory viruses, from everyday cold viruses to deadly pandemic strains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing_with_soap#Disease...

brown9-22• 14 years ago

Not only this, but these same people seem to have no problem touching other door knobs throughout the office, which presumably all of the dirty-bathroom hands of your officemates have also touched.

amanuel• 14 years ago

This reminds me of the story of the paving the walkways story http://sivers.org/walkways

bobbles• 14 years ago

The university I used to work at had walkways with at least 5 years with of dirt trails from being used as walkways across the grass.. When the administration had paths built.. they built them in completely different locations so that they matched the aesthetic of the other paths in the area when viewed from the top of the hill.

Now they have great looking new paths (unused) AND the dirt trails across all of the grass..

jeffool• 14 years ago

I'm reminded of school, where the bathrooms had no doors. Yet they were designed in a way that you walked in, around one partition to get to the sink, and a second partition to use the bathroom. The sounds and smells of the bathroom never seemed to be an issue there.

oz• 14 years ago

"The signs never worked. Instead, they just annoyed and angered people. Some people even threw more paper towels on the floor because they didn’t like the condescending way they were being instructed."

"This pattern is common. We often try to fight problems by yelling at them instead of accepting the reality of what people do, from controversial national legislation to passive-aggressive office signs. Such efforts usually fail, often with a lot of collateral damage, much like Prohibition and the ongoing “war” on “drugs”."

This is something I've learned in when trying to convince people to do something that's for their own good. Often times, it all too easy to yell. But human nature is such that if you 'attack' a person's beliefs or actions, (rational or not) they will defend them, further entrenching them and encouraging the person to continue if even out of spite.

Sure, sometimes an 'intervention' is necessary. But I've found that in most cases, it's more strategic to boil a person as a frog rather than a lobster.

r00fus• 14 years ago

There's even a term for it: cognitive dissonance [1]. Fact is, the best way to make a point is to appeal to your audience. The appeal can be to authority, ethics, humor, aesthetics, etc. WIIFM applies here.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#The_Induce... [2] http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2...

djrconcepts• 14 years ago

Ya know, the bathroom door swing problem has to do with the swing direction of the door + no one wants to touch a door knob.

If the door gets replaced with one that swings in both directions by push... problem solved.

philwelch6• 14 years ago

There are lots of examples of this. Moralistic thinking simply isn't productive in this context. If you build an economic system that depends on everyone voluntarily cooperating rather than acting self-interestedly, self-interested people will ruin it; if your public health strategy for HIV is to discourage people from extramarital sex, lots of people will have extramarital sex and get HIV; if your strategy to compete with BitTorrent is to try and make people feel guilty about using BitTorrent, people will tune you out and use BitTorrent.

Of course, if you used those examples instead of a silly example about designing an office restroom, the HN thread gets derailed by people talking about economics or HIV. One could criticize the HN community for that kind of bikeshedding, but it's more pragmatic to just use a boring, contrived example to sell the point. Certainly, a HN thread won't end up filled with a side discussion about office restroom design.

negw• 14 years ago

What's funny is that the second comment down here is about office restroom design :-)

ericwaller• 14 years ago

I actually like the side discussion about restroom design a lot. The difficult part about these types of problems is that the guy who's picking up the paper towels doesn't have the authority to move the trash can.

dsr_• 14 years ago

Authority is a funny thing. In many situations, simply doing the right thing -- putting a trashcan in the right place, here -- is much, much easier than getting the notional authority to do it.

Or as so many people have put it, forgiveness is often easier than permission.

philwelch6• 14 years ago

Honestly, I don't mind the tangent that much. I just thought it was worth a gentle ribbing.

julian373• 14 years ago

Certainly, a HN thread won't end up filled with a side discussion about office restroom design.

I've upvoted your comment to help ensure that won't be the case.

My other comment being close to the top of the thread at the moment, I'm sorry to have addressed the door design aspect rather than Marco's main point, it's indeed not as interesting a topic for discussion. I might learn something about fire safety today, though. And I'm confident HN voters will make sure there's no derailment.

Confusion2• 14 years ago

Don't be sorry; you're not derailing anything. Just having a discussion on a specific part of the post. It's not obligatory to address the main point of a post; in fact, sometimes the main point is boring and some minor point is far more interesting.

I find it interesting to read these various clever technical solutions for the same problem, even so mundane as "users don't want to touch the doorknob on the way out". As long as they acknowledge it is a problem and don't get into the moral argument about what ought to be.

Some of the ways in which this issue can be addressed may have analogs in the problem space actually being addressed.

mechanical_fish2• 14 years ago

Of course we'll change the subject to restroom design. What else is there to say, here, about BitTorrent?

This article, and the Oatmeal comic which inspired it, are great, but they could have been written a decade ago, if one replaced Game of Thrones with Kid A and "BitTorrent" with "Napster". (Ten years ago, Napster had already been shut down for seven months. How time flies.)

We've had this discussion, had it again, printed it on T-shirts and coasters. Apple went and instantiated this concept in the music industry, and made billions of dollars in the process, and even that is old news now.

The sad thing about Marco's argument is that it's not only right, but it applies to itself. Being correct feels great, and it certainly helps, but it's not the same thing as making progress.

philwelch6• 14 years ago

I think outlining the fallacy of applying moralistic thinking ("well people just SHOULDN'T DO THAT") to systems design was the more interesting part of his post, though.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

This is one of the weird things about the information economy. So if you make a gizmo in the goods economy, and price it outside of the demand line, they sit on the shelf and you go broke.

Of course in the goods economy you had a cost of making the item, sure there was R&D and advertising Etc. but each good also has some raw materials so you really can't sell them below a certain price or you lose your shirt.

In the information economy you get this weird artifact. Your 'good' gets copied and distributed without remuneration. This appears to be lost sales, but in fact it is simply that your good is priced outside the demand curve for those buyers. What is even stranger is that you can lower your price all the way to zero if you choose because the marginal cost to make a new one is zero. This gives you tremendous pricing leverage in the info economy and people who use it well typically price high for novelty value early, then lower to capture the larger market, and then lower still to pick up the remnant market. The cost of R&D, marketing, etc can be amortized over all of these and if you look at it as an integral value function you can actually make reasonable pricing decisions.

Of course old school media doesn't get the 'info' economy any more than telling a teenager that the 'fair' price is one that someone will pay even if they think it is too high.

Over time these concepts are making themselves known in the mainstream but it does take waaaay more time than it does to innovate so it seems like its not changing at all.

philwelch6• 14 years ago

There's two sides of this. There's the side where the seller's price is above the demand curve, so the buyer pirates the movie. But there's also the side where the seller's price is below the demand curve, but the buyer pirates it anyway to capture more consumer surplus.

What's really happening is that, the easier piracy becomes, the closer the supply curve comes to turning into a very flat line at price 0. Now, the actual cost to the consumer in time, energy, bandwidth, and guilt is higher than 0, and it's possible to reduce those costs by trading off some actual money cost to get the permission of copyright holders the way Apple or Rdio are doing, but it's not clear that this will last forever.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

> Of course, if you used those examples instead of a silly example about designing an office restroom, the HN thread gets derailed by people talking about economics or HIV. One could criticize the HN community for that kind of bikeshedding, but it's more pragmatic to just use a boring, contrived example to sell the point. Certainly, a HN thread won't end up filled with a side discussion about office restroom design.

But we can still make poop jokes, right?

ThaddeusQuay2• 14 years ago

"Certainly, a HN thread won't end up filled with a side discussion about office restroom design."

I like those really tall faucets, the ones used by surgeons when they scrub in. I want one in my office restroom, so that I can easily wash up to my elbows after a messy coding session, and I don't care to listen to the moralists who tell me that those faucets are only for surgeons.

chj• 14 years ago

All these is in our gene, called Selfish.

pbreit• 14 years ago

Where I thought Marco might have been going with this is all the web designers who try to solve their design deficiencies with help text.

petercooper• 14 years ago

But some of them dislike it so much that they’ll take their paper towel over to the door, turn the knob with it, and throw it on the floor while exiting.

OK, cool post, cool story, etc. But is it merely for rhetorical effect? I've used a lot of office and public bathrooms over the years and have never seen paper towels scattered around the doorway.

Protip for the slovenly scatterers, though, this is what cuffs are handy for ;-)

brown9-22• 14 years ago

Yes, I've seen similar things and almost-identical signs posted in office bathrooms before.

ChristianMarks• 14 years ago

Bring rubber gloves to the bathroom. I remember the graffiti written on the seat cover dispenser in a bathroom stall at the NYNEX Science and Technology offices. The hand-written inscription provided a helpful arrow with the legend "ass gasket."

rasper2• 14 years ago

The article assumes it is wrong for the restroom user to discard his paper towel onto the floor. But why? A complete moral analysis would take into account the fact that he is a valuable employee and he doesn't want to pick up germs and thereby risk becoming ill.

Just because his action imposes a small cost on somebody else _who is payed to tidy up_ that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

(Besides, picking up the towels takes a few seconds. Not much more time than picking up one towel, and far less time than cleaning the rest of the restroom.)

It's a false christian morality which says that actions taken on behalf of oneself are always wrong and that actions taken on behalf of others are always right. There's a right use for a paper towel and there are right uses for various people's time. Morality is practical.

ok_craig• 14 years ago

This really doesn't seem like he was saying at all. If you read the article, he actually doesn't have a problem with people throwing things on the ground, and is quite antagonistic towards the posted messages telling people to do otherwise. The only thing the article assumes is that it is desirable to have a bathroom that isn't persistently littered with paper towel on the floor. Is that something you disagree with?

The solution provided was to adapt to what users were already doing, suggesting that the management, who implied the action of discarding paper towels on the ground was bad, was wrong, and that it was the management which had to change. He was not suggesting that the behavior of the paper towel litter-ers had to change.

Especially the part about "false christian morality" is kind of weird. It's like you scanned through until you found one thing you think some philosophy you have applies to, so that you can comment on it, but you didn't understand or follow through with the rest of the article.

rasper2• 14 years ago

He thinks that throwing the towels on the floor is OK and that better still would be to install a new waste bin by the door. I agree with him. But he wants to reject moral language and label his approach 'pragmatic'.

In reality he merely has a different opinion as to what is right in the first place.

My concern is that if people do what they judge to be right but call it 'wrong' or 'pragmatic' or whatever then this can cause harmful confusion and guilt. And I think that the idea that 'Selfish == wrong; selfless == right' is the hangover of a puritanical strain of Christian thinking.

bipolarla• 14 years ago

In human history there are always problems. An individual or group needs to change it only happens when they decide to. If we want to stop HIV we need to decide if we want to make a smart choice to have safe sex. Young people want adventure and like risks. This is why there are so many overdoses and young people who get STD's. The smart ones decide they value life and don't drug or do other risky behaviors. My main suggestion for change is to create an exciting dialogue that might change the "coolness" of negative acts. Smoking is being done less due to the real negative media ads, people knowing about cancer deaths, and many talking about why smoking kills.

Hominem• 14 years ago

One of the VPs at my current company actually won $100 in a best suggestion contest in the office. His suggestion was "garbage cans next to the bathroom door". That is why the man is a VP.

SG90• 14 years ago

It is totally correct that condescending people, more often than not tends to have a negative effect, but what about those people who do not care if their paper towel falls in the dustbin or outside it?

A lot of people are out there who do the wrong thing, just for the kick of it, what can be done to influence such people. Same is the case with piracy, a lot of people share content because they get a feeling that by doing this they are getting back at the world

jamesrcole2• 14 years ago

I agree with his point, but I dislike how he talks of it as right versus pragmatic. It should be moralising versus pragmatic.

'Right' means 'true', and the moralising stance he talks about is not the correct way to deal with the problem. It's not 'right', it's blinkered moralising.

Calling such things 'right' muddles the notion of truth. We don't need more of this. Most of the people I come across seem to think there's no such thing as truth because it's all relative, and uses of 'right' like in this article serve to reinforce such beliefs.

zerostar072• 14 years ago

"Right" is a moral concept, not necessarily the (empirical) truth, it's the opposite of "wrong", not of "false".

jamesrcole2• 14 years ago

He says

They just kept posting more signs, because they were convinced that they were right.

They believed that the right way to solve the problem was for people to use the bin where it was located (that is, an empirical view as to what was the best solution, driven by a moralising attitude).

His point is that their view was incorrect - false.

zerostar072• 14 years ago

Valid points about piracy. People use whatever way is fastest to view content, but nobody gets paid that way. How about selling virtual "tickets" that allow you to download the movie from wherever you want as long as you have bought the ticket?

xiaoma3• 14 years ago

I really don't understand where the author is coming from on this:

---

"One of the floor’s tenants attempted to solve this problem by posting passive-aggressive notes on the paper-towel dispenser.

(Image of a paper with "Please discard paper towels into wastebasket." written on it)

The signs never worked. Instead, they just annoyed and angered people. Some people even threw more paper towels on the floor because they didn’t like the condescending way they were being instructed.

---

That message is anything but passive-aggressive. It's direct, reasonable and courteous. It's also very ordinary and I've seen signs like it in various public restrooms, train stations, subway stations and other areas. If someone is actually angered by this kind of sign and decides to litter more as a response, they're probably not a very easy person to get along with.

In many places, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and much of east Asia, this problem is solved via fines. Over time the fines even change social norms about littering and the situation improves in areas without the fines. The analogy to copyright is pretty weak. Many places with more civilized norms in terms of litter really don't care about copyright infringement to the extent that English-speaking countries do. Copyright behavior has also been very resistant to being altered by fines.

rue2• 14 years ago

It's passive-aggressive, because it doesn't directly address the problem.

A direct message would have been at the door and said: “Please stop throwing paper on the floor, there's a wastebasket on the other side of the room”.

(I also suspect that the reaction would have been at least somewhat more positive.)

xiaoma3• 14 years ago

I disagree.

"Please discard paper towels into wastebasket" is direct and specifies exactly what kind of behavior is desired. Your example doesn't do that. It says there is a wastebasket, but the only request is not to throw paper on the floor. It could be satisfied by leaving the wet paper towels on the sink, leaving them draped on the door handle or slapping them on the wall. (How's that for passive-aggressive!)

The original message is both shorter and clearer. It's both pro-active and respectful. Getting angry at the notice and littering to show you won't tolerate "condescension" is just being a dick.

Czarnian3• 14 years ago

Although I think this is a bit of an apocryphal anecdote, I presume this is happening in a professional setting. Messages of this type require a bit more tact than what you're suggesting.

LaGrange2• 14 years ago

The point is, whatever we think about the litterers, the note is not going to change it. Yes, you can go draconian and put cameras in toilets. Or you can adapt to those people at little cost (in this case, of course — if they drop cigarette butts on the street the situation is very different). Instead, both sides here engage in passive-agressive behavior. The litterers litter, instead of asking the management to move the trash can. The management puts up notices, instead of moving the trash can (it's pretty easy to guess why there's litter). Both sides are trying to prove a point instead of getting things done.

Besides, there really should be a trash can near the door.

guelo• 14 years ago

> Many places with more civilized norms in terms of litter really don't care about copyright infringement to the extent that English-speaking countries do.

Maybe that's because English-speaking countries produce the majority of the media content that the superior littering cultures want to consume. No surprise that the producers care more about copyright infringement than the consumers.

Iroiso• 14 years ago

I think you are missing the point xioma, you are focusing on the use of grammar instead of the essence of the entire post. Anyways you make a valid point nonetheless.

orangecat2• 14 years ago

That message is anything but passive-aggressive. It's direct, reasonable and courteous.

It's easily possible to interpret it as "we know we're inconveniencing you, and we don't care".

twfarland• 14 years ago

This is related to the concept of 'desire lines' used by architects.

protomyth2• 14 years ago

It is an interesting example, but I will bet that putting the trash can by the door didn't work either. I've worked in a place with a design that has the trash cans by the door and there is still paper on the ground. So, the next step would be to put a camera in the bathroom and review the tape to find all the people who didn't use the cans. Simple, quick, and only takes a couple of minutes after the cleaning staff says there is still towels on the ground.

At some level, the people throwing stuff on the ground know that someone has to clean it up. They probably justify it, when they think about it at all, with some happy thought of keeping those people employed. After all, they are probably sure that is all the maintenance worker does (never mind all the things they need to do everyday).

Pirating content and throwing towels on the floor both come down to placing a lack of value on the work of others and not caring about them.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

To push the analogy to the limit - no, putting the trash can by the door doesn't stop 100% of the people, but for the 95% of the people who just don't want to touch the door with their hands, it does.

Likewise, making content easy to purchase won't stop 100% of the pirates who can afford to pay for their shows, but for the 95% of us who can, and just want to watch Game of Thrones, and are more than happy to buy it from iTunes, it will capture our revenue.

protomyth2• 14 years ago

If I install the camera, I will catch 99.9% and know who is so unconcerned with our maintenance workers. In a pragmatic world that is an acceptable solution. It would probably be a good idea to find out who those people are so you know not to trust them with doing anything that is not convenient.

hdalskfhkjlad• 14 years ago

the problem starts when you want to sell the same show in us, UK and Thailand. in uk it would cost twice as much then us and ten times as much then Thailand, why? because people can pay more, and the industry wants to squeeze as much as they can.

if they get rigid price, then in Tainan people may need a month pay for an episodes, and or the opposite, huge losses in uk.

solve that, and you got the piracy problem solved.

Czarnian3• 14 years ago

I'll probably lose a bunch of karma over this, but here goes.

This is my takeaway from the article:

The pragmatic approach means that the company (media companies) should accommodate the folks who:

1) Are so emotionally damaged that they can't perform the simple act of opening a door without making a mess (pay a couple of bucks for content that they like.) 2) Are so ill-mannered that they have no respect for the people they share a space with (take content without the creator's permission.) 3) Are so poorly socialized that any attempt to correct their behavior causes them to act out like a 5 year old by making a bigger mess (downloading even more stuff that they don't even really want.) 4) Are so lazy that they can't be bothered to take the simple action of taking the towel back to their desk and putting it in their own trash can (using the distribution channels the creator asks them to use.)

I find his argument unconvincing.

orangecat2• 14 years ago

It's understandable that you aren't happy with the state of the world and of human nature, but that's not an argument. Believing that it is, is in fact exactly the fallacy the article describes.

drawkbox• 14 years ago

I like the final line of the article. It is really basics, if you are making a product tailor it to the way the customer demands it. Path of least resistance, if there is an easier way it will be the way.

zwischenzug• 14 years ago

I spend a lot of my time at work telling junior designers: "That's a great idea - let's not do it!" "Why not?" "Because no-one behaves like that" "But if they only put the info A into the place B every time, their jobs will be much easier" "Yes. But they won't. We have to find a way to force them (which will annoy them), or work around it."

Miky• 14 years ago

This article reminds me quite a bit of linguistic prescriptivism and descriptivism.

Many people like to pretend that there's some platonic, right form of language. Splitting an infinitive is wrong, ending a clause with a preposition is wrong, using pronouns in the accusative case as a subject (“Me and her do this”) or a predicate nominative (“It's me”) is wrong. This attitude reflects the same stubborn insistence on being right instead of pragmatic. The reality is that language changes over time and is defined by usage, so Those arguing that a common usage is incorrect are wrong by definition.

Right versus pragmatic

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